Justice and Revenge

In yesterday’s Metro newspaper (See, I don’t just get my news from the BBC!), there was a very brief story that I found extremely disturbing.

The shirt worn by the American Navy SEAL who killed Osama Bin Laden is to go on display in the 9/11 Museum in New York.  Ostensibly, this is to act as a tribute to ‘recognise the bravery’ of US soldiers.  To me though, it represents a distasteful vindictiveness and vengefulness on the part of a country that is vehemently Christian.

If it were the coat of a fire-fighter who helped during the rescue operation on September the 11^th 2001, I would understand and applaud an exhibit representing selflessness and courage.  If it were the jacket of one of the victims, or even one of the survivors, it would represent tragedy and the senseless loss of human life.  If it was the shirt of an American serviceman who’d lost his life fighting the Taliban or in Iraq (or even in the apprehension of Bin Laden, although I don’t believe there were any casualties), I would agree that it could represent and remind us of the bravery of soldiers and other military professionals.  But it’s not.  It’s the shirt of the man who cornered and killed Bin Laden. 

It’s time for the unnecessary disclaimer in which I point out that I execrate Bin Laden and everything he stood for, did and believed in, and that I am well aware that he was a dangerous man and a criminal who needed to be brought to justice.  That he was killed is saddening in that he had no chance to repent of his deeds, but was perhaps justified by the conditions both of his capture and the global military and diplomatic situation at the time.

However, the exhibition of the soldier’s shirt smacks to me not of justice and courage, but of revenge.  When the news broke that Bin Laden had been killed, American papers (and others elsewhere) printed triumphant headlines.  The New York Post’s read ‘GOT HIM!  Vengeance at last! US nails the bastard!’  The Daily News went with ‘Rot in Hell!’  I’m not American, and I’ve no idea about the quality of these papers, nor can I claim that our tabloids wouldn’t go with something very similar in the same position.  However, our country no longer makes any realistic claim to be a Christian nation, whereas religious rhetoric seems to be common in America.

A couple of Sundays ago, one of the readings was from Paul’s letter to the Romans, and in it he exhorted the Roman Christians not to take revenge, but to leave it to God.  ‘Vengeance is mine says the Lord.  I will repay.’  Obviously earthly justice needs to be done, and criminals and terrorists prevented from committing more crimes, and punished and (if possible) rehabilitated.  Others should be deterred from committing similar acts.  Bin Laden’s death, though regrettable was probably both justified and necessary.  America’s jubilation at the news can certainly be understood, if not entirely condoned.

However, to me what this exhibit seems to be doing is making a relic of the shirt, celebrating neither courage or justice, but revenge and the death of a man, and if America made no claims to be Christian, it wouldn’t bother me nearly so much.  Terrestrial justice has been done, but now surely we should leave Bin Laden in the hands of his maker, and not crow over his death.

I am well aware that I am not American, not a New Yorker, and not someone who lost a loved one to the terrorist attacks on the 11^th of September.  I feel no vindictiveness or need for vengeance against the men who perpetrated the bombings in London, although again neither myself nor anyone I know was directly involved in them.  I hope that I wouldn’t even if that was the case, although I can’t know it.

I hope and pray that I will never have to find out, and that if I do, I will be able to leave the final justice to God.

The Long Conversation

There is nothing new under the sun, least of all that quote, but especially not the ancient discussions about the nature of the universe.  

One of the books I’m reading at the moment is Reasons for Faith by Oliver R Barclay, published in 1974.  I picked it up for a pound in a second hand bookshop, and so far it’s fairly good.  It’s a work of apologetics, arguing for faith, and specifically Christian faith, from the perspective of reason and logic.  It is very much what I was hoping Maurice Wiles’ extremely disappointing Reasons to Believe would be.  I don’t happen to agree with all of Oliver Barclay’s conclusions, but it’s still fairly good.

A while back, I downloaded The Necessity of Atheism by David Marshall Brooks from Project Gutenberg, first published in 1933.  Needless to say, I found his arguments less than convincing and his tone less than endearing.  For the most part, they were the same old arguments against religion repeated, and all I could conclude was that he had a very flawed and one-sided understanding of what religion is.

The one thing that did strike me about both books however, is that what the first is responding to, and what the second is stating, are indeed exactly the same arguments that the New Atheists are still using now, in almost exactly the same terms and tone.  Barclay’s responses are very similar to those used today by people like Allister McGrath; Brooks’ are very close in both content and tone to Dawkins.  It isn’t that he’s using ‘the same old arguments’ (although of course they were already old in 1933) but that Dawkins et al are.  Barclay uses the term ‘scientism’ to describe the almost irrational faith in science and the exclusively scientific worldview that some New Atheists seem to hold, a usage that I had thought relatively recent.

One of the pithy memes I’ve seen on the internet is a quote apparently from Epicurus, questioning the existence of evil and the omnipotence of God.  The caption reads ‘Atheists: Winning since 33AD’.  For a start, Epicurus died in c. 270BC, so I’m not sure why they’ve gone with the approximate date of the death of Christ, but there you go.

The main point though is that if the case for atheism is so obvious to anyone of even marginal intelligence, if religion is so clearly wrong, why, after all this time, and after the arguments have been repeated so often, are the arguments still being repeated.  It seems like every couple of decades or so, someone proclaims that religion will be dead within a generation.

Now inevitably there will be some people who obtusely stick to their ignorant beliefs and refuse to change, even in the face of clear arguments to the contrary, but these should be a tiny and isolated minority by now, surely?

And yet here we are, still believing, still arguing, still struggling to understand how another person can look at the arguments and come to a conclusion other than our own.  It cannot be denied that the old traditional organised religions are in decline in this country, and across Europe, but I suspect that that is more sociological and technological, than because more and more people are being won over by the ‘rational’ arguments of the New Atheists.

The conversation (I’d prefer to call it that than an ‘argument’) goes on, and I dare say that it will continue to go on until the mountains crumble and the seas boil, and we will finally be told the answer directly.

A Topical Parable

A story for you:

A man was standing outside his house.  He was fully grown, and extremely fit and strong.  The family next door had a little boy, a four year old whom everyone acknowledged was a complete brat, always causing trouble and misbehaving.  In the past, he had even damaged the man’s garden, and vandalised his house.  Despite many complaints, the boy’s family appeared unwilling or unable to do anything to moderate the child’s behaviour.

Seeing this man standing outside his house, the little boy ran straight up to him and hit him as hard as he possibly could in the leg, which was about as high as he could reach.  Even though the boy was small and the man was large, it still rather hurt.  After all, even small children can hit surprisingly hard if they want to.  The boy turned to run, and far more angry than hurt, the man gave chase.  The boy fled into his house, the man followed, smashing furniture and kicking down doors to get at the child.  The boy had several equally young brothers and sisters, and these were sent flying or trampled underfoot as the man furiously chased the little boy.

He finally cornered him, leant down and retaliated in kind, punching the child as hard as he possibly could, sending the child crashing into the floor.  This was witnessed by a large number of people, and the police were immediately called.  When they arrived, the man pointed out that the boy had struck him first, and that he had merely responded with a proportionately equal degree of force in order to defend himself, and he was shocked when instead of being sympathised with, and even praised for teaching the little brat a lesson, he was arrested and carted away.

Who was in the wrong?  The boy, for hitting the man?  The boy’s family, for not disciplining him sooner?  Perhaps the brothers and sisters who got in the way and were badly hurt through no fault of their own?  Or was it a grown man, striking out with all his power and fury, and not caring who he hurt so long as he could deal out the punishment that he considered just, no matter how disproportionate?

I know what I think, and I’m pretty sure I know what the court said when the man was brought before it.

Intelligence and Goodness

Last week, there was an article on the BBC website (Yeah, I know, I really need to start getting my news from more than one source) about landing the Rosetta probe on a speeding meteorite.  For reasons best known to themselves, the BBC opened it up for comment.

Strangely, specifically scientific articles seem to generate anti-theistic comments almost as much as specifically religious stories, in which posters compare religion unfavourably with science in the most scathing terms, and involving some curiously dogmatic (almost fanatical) claims about the beneficence of Science and its universal utility.  Wearily, I took up the Keyboard of Justice, and posted two or three times in defence of religious thought.

One of the responses to my posts included the following:  “(…) the fact there is a direct link between low IQ and religious beliefs says all you need to know.”

Now I’ve heard this assertion made before, most notably (and inexplicably, given the book’s stated aim of converting the religious to atheism) in The God Delusion, by Professor Dawkins.  I’ve no idea about the details of the study which turned up this interesting statistical gem, the numbers involved or whether it was conducted in a training camp in rural Somalia or an Oxford theological college, but then, as now, it strikes me as both curiously irrelevant and strangely revealing.

Curiously irrelevant, in that I’m not sure that it adds or detracts to either position in any way.  I can only assume that the intended meaning is that people with a low IQ are more likely to be wrong about these complicated sciento-philosophical questions, and mistakenly come down on the side of religion.  Obviously, those more intellectually gifted people would be able to see straight through the false claims of the liar Religion, and instead turn to the Truth and Light of Science.

Does this actually hold true though?  Is intelligence of the sort prized by the scientism of the new atheists, and measured by IQ tests, the kind of intelligence that’s required when considering the nature of the universe?  An interesting way of looking at this is provided by the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons, which involves rating a character by six different numerical traits.  Three cover physical abilities, while the rules divide mental ability into Intelligence and Wisdom.  The former involves book-learning, knowledge and analytical skills, while Wisdom reflects a character’s insight, perceptiveness and intuition.  I’m not saying that this is a perfect way of modelling the way people’s minds work, but the division (and a similar one is followed in many other games) can be a useful one.  When dealing with questions beyond the ability of science to provide an empirical answer to, I wonder which is more relevant, if either?

It is revealing, because I think it says much about the way such people view the universe.  As far as I can tell, and I make no claim to be an expert, intelligence is prized above all things, and the ability to apply the scientific method to any given idea or phenomenon, no matter how inappropriate.  The likelihood of being right or wrong on the nature of the universe can be estimated by a given person’s IQ.  There is an arrogant intellectualism that attaches the greatest value to intelligence, and gives little if any to what we may, in the phraseology of D&D, call wisdom, or to kindness or gentleness or charity or hopefulness.   The aggressive, proselytising atheists that make themselves heard on such boards seem remarkably uninterested in concepts like love, mercy or hope, presumably since they don’t fall within the purview of Science.  Now obviously (I hope) I’m not levelling this accusation at all atheists, since I dislike generalisations of that sort, but for the evangelical new atheist scientism-ists, the above sadly seems to be fairly accurate.

Many (in fact most) of the more or less witty sallies made against religion by individuals of this school focus on the supposed intelligence of atheists and the comparative stupidity and gullibility of theists.  Morality and questions of Right and Wrong, of how we should conduct our lives, rarely if ever seem to enter into it.  Type ‘Atheist Quotes’ into google, and you will see plenty of more or less cutting attacks on the intelligence and gullibility of the religious.  Type in ‘Christian Quotes’ and you will find that most are concerned not with belittling others, but in how to live well, and with faith, hope and love.

I know which I hold to be more important.  If I was to be given a binary choice as to whether I would want to live amongst the intelligent or the good, I would choose the latter without hesitation, although obviously I’d take people who are both for preference.

Focussing on intellectualism in this way also leaves hanging the question of something else as well: Happiness.  Ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes, and while that is demonstrably rarely actually true, it is also true that the most intelligent people are seldom the most contented.

Assuming that it must be one or the other, give me a world of dull but blissful tranquillity over a world of intelligent, amoral strife any day!

The Right to be Wrong Part 2: Stuck in the Middle With You

It would be easy to get the impression from this blog that I get all my news from the BBC.  Well, that’s pretty much the case, except when I go on Russia Today to get the opposite side of the story, and become slightly frightened.  This week the BBC website had a story about atheists in the United States, and the fact that (according to the story) they are effectively an oppressed minority in some parts.

A couple of posts ago, I was defending the right of more traditional Christians to hold and act on their beliefs in the face of secular society.  This time, I will be upholding the right of atheists to hold and act on their lack of belief in the face of religious society.  It is the problem (and, in some ways I suppose the privilege) of being a wishy-washy medium-liberal moderate.  I sit in the middle, arguing the cause of one end to the other and vice-versa, with “why can’t we all just get along?” as my plaintive refrain.

In the increasingly secular (and increasingly vocally so) UK, the concept that atheists might be oppressed for their lack of belief might seem strange, at least outside of certain Middle Eastern or African fundamentalist Muslim countries.  Although officially religion and politics are mixed here, with bishops in the House of Lords and an Established Church, in reality they very rarely come into contact.  “We don’t do God” is the famous quote from the Blair administration (which is ironic seeing as he’s quite a staunch Catholic nowadays).  Recently Mr. Cameron said a few things about faith, and having confidence in being Christian and, while they were appreciated, caused quite a lot of uncomfortable shuffling even amongst many Christians.  Similarly, British patriotism tends to be of a quiet and understated sort, except for the Last Night of the Proms, which is the only socially acceptable occasion in which one is allowed to get noisy and enthusiastic about it.  In this country, being overly enthusiastic about religion, especially for a politician is simply not done.

Our colonial cousins on the other hands expect their politicians to be openly and vocally religious.  According to the story linked to above, there is not a single openly atheist politician in the US.  This seems bizarre to me, since in the UK, while I assume that most politicians are atheist, or at best agnostic, very few of them are openly Christian (except, one might hope, for the Bishops who are only politicians, at least public politicians, part time).  In our increasingly secular society, the idea of ‘coming out’ and admitting your atheism seems strange, since it (or perhaps a vague unconscious agnosticism) is generally seen as the default position unless otherwise stated.  It is a bigger step to ‘admit’ to people that you’re religious.  The fact that by stating their unbelief, people in (parts, at least, of) America face ostracism or outright abuse seems incredible.

It need not be said that I think that atheists are mistaken, and I would like to be able to convince them of that if I were capable, but as I have said in that earlier post, what is far more important than being right is the right to be wrong.  It can be easy sometimes to forget that the vast majority of atheists are not of the loud, aggressive and mocking Dawkinsian school, and that indeed most are of the quiet, live-and-let-live type, who simply want to be able to believe what they want, and get on with their lives.

If I go through that article and replace the word ‘atheist’ with ‘Christian’, it immediately becomes even more offensive to me, although of course it shouldn’t.  Ultimately, if I want the right to believe what I want and not be ashamed of it, the right to be able to say what I want and have no-one try and shut me up, then I need to be equally rigorous in upholding that right in others; those whose beliefs are opposed to my own, those whose beliefs are offensive to me, and even those who believe that I should not have the rights that I will fight for them to enjoy.

Ultimately, as Someone once said, “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”  And, perhaps even more pertinently, “Love those who hate you, bless those who curse you.”