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Conspicuous by His absence
12:01am BST 27/09/2007
Tibor Fischer finds that proving God's existence -- or non-existence --
remains as difficult as ever
After Harry Potter, God has become the booksellers' new darling. Indeed,
the BBC presenter John Humphrys sifts through the recent crop of
God-is-a-scam books by luminaries such as Richard Dawkins, Lewis
Wolpert, A. C. Grayling and others in his own investigation into deity,
In God We Doubt.
Humphrys's book is an addendum to his radio series Humphrys in Search of
God. The book, a mixture of his musings, interviews and letters from
listeners, is a bit messy and is composed more for the ear than the
page, but has the easy patter of the seasoned broadcaster.
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Humphrys interviews the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams; the
Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, and a Muslim academic, Professor Tariq
Ramadan. The Archbishop comes over like his church, rather feeble, and
it is the Chief Rabbi who has the best footwork, but then he is a
champion of a culture of disputation.
But despite the up-to-date references to the evil of Darfur and Beslan
(as opposed to the earthquake in Lisbon, one of the catalysts for
Voltaire's Candide) the essence of the dispute about the existence of a
god hasn't changed for thousands of years; you either have faith or you
don't, whether you're utilising the beauty of flowers or multiverses as
your evidence.
John Cornwell's Darwin's Angel: A Seraphic Response to The God Delusion
is, as suggested on the cover, a riposte to Richard Dawkins's
bestselling savaging of religion, with an irritating and pointless
conceit of a 'guardian angel' for scientists.
Cornwell nevertheless has some interesting remarks to make about
Dawkins, and cites a paper by Stephen Hawking, 'Gödel and the End of
Physics', in which Hawking gives up the idea of finding a 'Theory of
Everything'. So again, whether you are an atheistic scientist or a
priest, you are ultimately left without proof and only belief.
The word atheist is of ancient pedigree, as Michel Onfray reminds us in
his In Defence of Atheism: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism and
Islam. But it's difficult to write a history of atheism (one of Onfray's
aims) as atheism was, generally speaking, an unprofitable venture; even
a glimpse of impiety could get you burnt at the stake or quaffing
hemlock. But then atheism is inherently less marketable than religions,
especially the successful ones, which have a Supreme Being offering
carrots and sticks.
Onfray has, in his forties, become one of France's leading intellectual
figures. Unlike the previous generation of thinkers, who often delighted
in barricading themselves behind obscurity and complexity, Onfray has a
much more direct approach.
This is partly because he doesn't conjure up new ideas; he is
essentially a DJ of thought, a stylist of ideas, giving forgotten
philosophers a make-over.
Jean Meslier, the 18th-century curé, is one of the little-known names
that Onfray elevates -- although Meslier's bon mot that he'd like to see
'the last king strangled with the guts of the last priest' has always
been popular with anarchists and the far Left. Meslier led the quiet
life of a country priest, but left a massive manuscript which circulated
after his death which debunked religion and God. His testament was taken
up by Voltaire and Diderot (who is often suspected of being the
originator of the strangulation jibe).
Onfray's background is key. He is a tribute to the French educational
system (selective, no-nonsense). From a working-class family and an
inmate of a church-run orphanage, he became a philosophy teacher at a
lycée for many years. His first book, Philosophers' Stomachs, was a
study of how philosophers' diets influenced their work and was written
after he had a heart-attack at the age of 28. Ordered on to
low-cholesterol foods, he decided he'd sooner die with butter and rich
sauces than subsist with margarine (hedonism is another one of Onfray's
obsessions).
Onfray's atheism is visceral and he gives a close reading to the
absurdities and inconsistencies in scripture. Inevitably, post 9/11,
Islam gets the lion's share of scrutiny. He ably trashes the PC notion
that Islam is intrinsically more tolerant than Christianity.
Catholicism in Europe, he asserts, has become a sort of deism (you'll
have to go a long way to find a Catholic who truly believes in
transubstantiation, the Pope's infallibility and the evil of condoms).
Many people believe, as Onfray scathingly phrases it, in 'something', in
religious gestures rather than religion (he got Nicholas Sarkozy to
confess to this reflexive church-attendance in a recent interview in
Philosophie Magazine ).
Onfray is hard to assail on the history of ideas, although I was
disappointed that he didn't find space for Diagoras of Melos (often
called the first atheist), who reputedly chopped up a wooden statue of
Hercules for a fire to cook his turnips.
Onfray's attacks on God occasionally sound like Hannibal Lecter's
sneering about a benign deity. We all know (as Alex observed in A
Clockwork Orange) about the ultraviolence in the Old Testament, we're
all aware of the incompatibility of autos-da-fé, the Crusades and the
Inquisition with Christ's message of love and compassion. What's harder
to assess is the good religions do; the micro-aid, the solace offered,
the hands held, the hungry fed. Because there is that side to religion
too, one that's tricky for the historians to measure and one that Onfray
and other rabid God-baiters overlook.
Should you want an antidote to the materialism of Messrs Dawkins and
Onfray, let me recommend that you track down The Physics of Immortality
by Frank Tipler, a professor of mathematical physics at Tulane
University. He offers you all the pie-in-the-sky that you could want
(God, resurrection, sex in the afterlife) and a mathematical proof to go
along with it (not that I understood one symbol of it).
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/3akhhr
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/clorebeast/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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"Don't just question authority,
Don't forget to question me."
-- Jello Biafra
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