From The Times
April 21, 2007
Shout your doubt out loud, my fellow unbelievers
Matthew Parris
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article1685452.ece
"Christianity was part of my upbringing and education. Because I am
fascinated by moral philosophy, enjoy reading the Bible and, as
Private Parris in the Boys’ Brigade, detested military drill, nautical
knots, whiting-up my sash and polishing my brass belt-buckle, I have
acquired a reasonable grounding in the other skill you could shine at
in the BB: religious knowledge. I think religion, like politics, is
tremendously important.
The trouble is, I’m sure religion is wrong. This drives me as a
columnist into a curious dilemma. My subject is of interest mostly to
those of my readers who are liable to be offended by me. One is left
writing for a minority audience predisposed to take umbrage at what
one says. Those who don’t care for religion don’t care to read about
it.
The dilemma was brought home by readers’ responses to a column I wrote
on Maundy Thursday, inveighing against claims that a French nun has
recently been cured of Parkinson’s disease through invoking the name
of the late John Paul II, and that this alleged miracle could lead to
the possible canonisation of the late Pope. I have been deluged with
letters, almost all from Christians, and overwhelmingly critical of
the column.
Three strands of opinion in particular emerge from this fascinating
pile of letters. The first insists that miracles do occur, that saints
may be invoked and that the successful invocation of putative saints
may be grounds for canonisation. Such assertions have been made by a
number of Anglican correspondents. I should remind them that their own
Church had something to say on this more than 400 years ago. Article
22 of the Thirty-Nine Articles states: "The Romish doctrine concerning
.. . . invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and
grounded on no warranty of Scripture." I rest my case.
The second strand is more tentative. "Why rule out the possibility?"
sums up the thought, variously expressed to me. Things do occur for
which there is no available explanation in Nature; in such cases is it
not perfectly rational to accept that the divine explanation is at
least a contender for the truth?
For the answer to this, I need only go back two-and-a-half centuries,
to the greatest philosopher our islands ever produced: the Scot David
Hume. Hume took a cool view of "the usual propensity of mankind
towards the marvellous".
A miracle, began Hume (On Miracles, pt I), "may be accurately defined,
[as] a transgression of a law of Nature by a particular volition of
the Deity".
But "there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by
a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education
and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves."
Forced to choose between doubting the evidence, and believing in a
divine suspension of the laws of Nature, only someone already
convinced that divine intervention occurs could opt for the miraculous
as an explanation. Miracles cannot therefore be evidence of a
divinity: belief in a divinity must be the evidence for miracles.
In consequence, Hume concludes (hinting at atheism with such sly
elegance that no Edinburgh pharisee could pin it on him): "The
Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but
even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without
one."
But stop. Why should Hume, or Richard Dawkins, or lesser polemicists
such as me, bang on about this? For heaven’s sake, wail many of my
correspondents (and this is the third strand in my pile of letters),
what are you getting so het up about? You don’t believe. Fine. Well
why not shut up, then? Tell us about things you do believe in. Surely
it is those who believe who should be proclaiming. How can one be a
passionate non-believer, they ask, hinting that, like Saul, I may be
battling against my own inner faith.
Proselytisers for atheism such as Richard Dawkins will be as familiar
as am I with the lament. I heard it most memorably from a Conservative
Chief Whip (urging me to pipe down about homosexuality) who remarked
to me that he had never believed in God, but felt absolutely no
imperative to jump to his feet in church and broadcast this fact to
his astonished constituents.
How do we reply? An ad hominem response would be to remark that when
the Church had the upper hand it was happy to persecute, imprison or
behead non-believers and fight crusades against other religions. Now
it has lost its boss status it simply asks us to keep our opinions to
ourselves (but still wants laws to criminalise us for mocking its
pretensions).
On the back foot at last, it discovers (first) a brotherhood between
all its sects. Then as the situation deteriorates Christianity
discovers within itself a respect first for Judaism (suddenly we are
all "Judaeo-Christians"), then women with a Christian vocation, then
for divorcees, and finally finds a common purpose with religions such
as Islam, too (the "faith" community). Needs must.
And as the Devil (or falling church attendance) drives, these "members
of the faith community" cease enforcing their moral imperatives upon a
secular world and retreat into whimpering about their "freedom of
conscience" to carry on persecuting the minority groups upon whose
sinfulness they can still find a consensus. Freedom of conscience, my
eye! If only there were an afterlife: Martin Luther would have loved
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor’s protests. They don’t like it up ’em.
As mainstream Christian church attendances fall farther still I
predict that the Church of England, and finally the Roman Catholics,
will be driven to conclude that they cannot even afford to make
enemies of homosexuals, unmarried couples and family planners, and
start welcoming them in too. I expect they’ll call it the "love
community". In truth it’s the "can’t afford to be choosy" community.
But there I go again. Getting passionate, fighting dirty. But we have
a better argument than "you’d do the same to us if you could" — though
they would, and until about half a century ago they did.
It is that they will again, unless we non-believers are watchful, and
energetic and — yes — passionate. I hate ending up in scraps with nice
Anglicans and thoughtful Catholics because the Church of England and
intelligent Catholicism are not the problem. They are the best kind of
Christians, but the best lack all conviction. It is the worst who are
full of passionate intensity. Look at the evangelical movement in
America, and to some extent, now, here. Look at the Religious Right in
Israel. Look at fundamentalist Islam. What they share, what drives
them, the tiger in their tanks, is an absolute, unshakeable belief in
an ever-present divinity, with plans for nations that He communicates
to the leaders, or would-be leaders, of nations. They are the very
devil, these people, they could wreck our world, and their central
belief in God’s plan has to be confronted. Confronted with passion.
Confronted because, and on the ground that, it is not true.
Disbelief can be passionate. Sometimes it should be. Agnosticism can
be passionate. A sense that we lack certitude, lack evidence, lack the
external command of any luminous guiding truth, may not always lead to
lassitude, complaisance or a modest silence. Sometimes it should
provoke a great shout: "Stop. You don’t know that. You have no right."
I hit you, earlier on, with a burst of the admirable David Hume. But
he was not always right. "Opposing one species of superstition to
another," he wrote, "set them a-quarrelling; while we ourselves,
during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the
calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy." No, David. Listen
instead to Nietzsche. "This eternal indictment of Christianity," he
said, "I will write on walls, wherever there are walls."
We who do not believe must be ready with our paintbrushes, our chisels
and our cans of aerosol spray. Disbelief can be more than an absence
of belief. It can be a redeeming, saving force."
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