Atheism/Character

"La perception d'un ange ou d'un dieu n'a pas de sens pour moi. Ce lieu géométrique où la raison divine ratifie la mienne m'est pour toujours incompréhensible."

- Camus, Le mythe de Sisyphe , p.68 (ISBN 9782070322886)


"The perception of an angel or a god has no meaning for me. That geometrical spot where divine reason ratifies mine will always be incomprehensible to me."

- The Myth of Sisyphus , p.47, trans. Justin O'Brien (ISBN 9780141182001)

Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Caractère

Du mot grec impression, gravure . C'est que la nature a gravé dans nous. Pouvons-nous l'effacer ? grande question. Si j'ai un nez de travers et deux yeux de chat, je peux les cacher avec un masque. Puis-je davantage sur le caractère que m'a donné la nature ?"

- Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique  (Garnier Frères 1967)


"Character

From the Greek word impression, engraving. It is what nature has engraved in us. Can we efface it ? Vast question. If I have a hooked nose & two cat's eyes I can hide them with a mask. Can I do better with the character nature has given me ?"

- Philosophical Dictionary, p.75, trans. Theodore Besterman, (ISBN 014044257X)



For some time Man has not been satisfied by what is in front of him, by what is really there, by the sky, the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, the sea. He has so often felt he has to create something or someone behind or above it all. This something or someone he makes in his own image, & then genuinely feels that the thing he made, made him. What evidence is there that Man made God or the gods & not the other way round ? One indication is the startling resemblance between a given God or gods & those that worship Him or them. As Xenophanes (c.570-c.478 BCE) wrote at the very dawn of philosophy:


"Ethiopians say their gods are snub-nosed & black;
Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed & red-haired."

- Fragment 16

"But if horses or oxen or lions had hands
or could draw with their hands & accomplish such works as men,
horses would draw the figures of the gods as similar to horses, & the oxen as similar to oxen,
& they would make the bodies
of the sort which each of them had."

- Fragment 15

-  Xenophanes, Fragments , trans. J.H.Lesher (ISBN 0802085083)


In worshipping a god, people are worshipping their own projection. This remains true whether the god in question is conceived in the most concrete or the most abstract terms, & everywhere in between.

The Universe is nothing but an unfolding process. It has no intention as far as Man is concerned. Therefore there is no Providence, no Destiny, no Doom & no Fate, except in so far as fate is character & vice versa. There is no heaven, no hell, no Last Judgement, no afterlife whatsoever, no reincarnation, no transmigration of souls. There is no soul except to the extent that soul  is a synonym for individual consciousness . However, I must admit here that as far as I know at this time none of the sciences are able to explain either the origin or the precise nature of consciousness.

That leaves the form of life after death called Fame or Reputation, which was an absolutely crucial part of the Heroic Ideal. The Warrior took satisfaction & inspiration from the expectation that his great deeds would be remembered & celebrated by generations to come, whether it be Achilles or Beowulf or their counterparts in real life. As you can see, I disagree with the Stoics in general about the existence of Providence & with Marcus Aurelius in particular about the real existence of the gods, on which point he is most insistent, e.g. Mediations, Book 12, 28. However, I agree wholeheartedly with another of Marcus' themes, which is the complete meaninglessness of posthumous fame. For instance, the following:


"30. Look down from above on the numberless herds of mankind, with their mysterious ceremonies, their divers voyagings in storm & calm, & all the chequered pattern of their comings & gatherings & goings. Go on to consider the life of bygone generations; & then the life of all those who are yet to come; & even at the present day, the life of the hordes of far-off savages. In short, reflect what multitudes there are who are ignorant of your very name; how many more will have speedily forgotten it; how many, perhaps praising you now, who will soon enough be abusing you; & that therefore remembrance, glory, & all else together are things of no worth."

- Meditations , Book 9


I think that was true when Marcus wrote it, & it's even more true today, when there are so many more people. More succinctly:


"35. All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer & the remembered alike."

- Meditations , Book 4


Picking up the point about fate being character, by fate is character  I mean that one's fate is the outcome of one's character or personality, & is alterable to the extent they are. But as to the Fates of classical mythology, or the Norns, or some suprapersonal force separate from Man himself deciding how things will go for you, what happens to you - no. The fate of a nation or culture is determined in exactly the same way, it is an outcome in time of the character or personality of that nation or culture.




I want to finish with a long quote from Voltaire, on the subject of character & the extent to which it is possible to change it.  It is the last 2 paragraphs from his entry in his Dictionnaire philosophique  on Character, the start of which is quoted beneath his portrait above: you can find the French text in the edition referred to there. I am often wary of Voltaire's views in his writing, because he is the Devil himself for mixing fact & opinion so they cannot be separated. This quote ends with two illustrative anecdotes; I'm not sure how far I agree with Voltaire's point here, but I think they are very funny:


"Age weakens the character; it is a tree that produces nothing but a few degenerate fruits, but they are still of the same kind; it gets to be covered with knots & moss, it becomes worm-eaten, but it is still an oak or a pear tree. If we could change our character we would give ourselves one, we would be masters of nature. Can we give ourselves something ? Do we not receive everything ? Try to arouse continuous activity in an indolent mass, to freeze with apathy the boiling soul of the impetuous, to inspire a taste for music & poetry into one who lacks taste & an ear: you will no more succeed than if you undertook to give sight to one born blind. We perfect, we mitigate, we hide what nature has placed in us; but we place nothing in ourselves.

A farmer was told: 'You have too many fish in this pond, they will not thrive; there are too many animals in your fields, there is not enough grass, they will lose weight.' After this exhortation it so happened that pike ate half my man's carp, & wolves half of his sheep; the rest fattened. Will he congratulate himself on his management ? This countryman is you yourself; one of your passions devours the others & you think you have triumphed over yourself. Do we not really all resemble the old general of ninety who, coming across some young officers who were causing a disturbance with some women of the town, said in a temper: 'Gentlemen, is this the example I give you ?'

'Sisyphus' by Titian

A Little Light Atheism

I would like to see the following refuted:


The statement There is a God is one for which there is no evidence; the statement There is no God is one for which there is no evidence to contradict it.


This seems to me unanswerable. It is no good getting lofty (You're simply unable to understand the mysteries of Faith) or offended (Are you really suggesting I'm just making this up ?). Neither of these actually answers the point.

I am aware that there is no evidence for the existence of God, but I find belief in him/her/it comforting, consoling, & it gives me strength & direction seems to me an honest position. To go beyond this & assert there IS a God is simply that, pure assertion, asserted more shrilly the more it is questioned.

To those who say Without God what is the basis for ethics & morality ? I say - how can something that doesn't exist, i.e. God, be the basis for anything ?

Click on the label atheism to see all of my thoughts on this topic on this blog

In Fossgate Books

One afternoon I was in a second-hand bookshop called Fossgate Books which is owned and run by my friend Alex. We were chatting about this and that. A young couple came in and disappeared off to browse. Later they reappeared. The man had two books to buy. His partner said in mock reproof, "You don't need those books." To which he simply replied, "You never need any books," and bought them. They left. It made both Alex and I think about the justice of what they'd each said. I remarked that by definition almost anyone who is in a bookshop has no business being there, since they probably already have more books than they know what to do with.

It makes me think now - can you put a limit to the book-lover's desire for books ? There is always some rationalisation, more or less satisfactory, for buying the next book or books. Some of them are justified (e.g. buying a guide book to the city you are going to visit) or almost so, some merely plausible, some impudent, some scarcely even believed by the book buyer themselves. "I want this because it is by X, or about Y , or fits with Z, which I am interested in." Prudence could well reply, "You seem to have a remarkably wide range of interests." The book buyer buys anyway. He or she is satisfying their obsession.

Some stray favourite stories now about book buyers & their libraries.

When Darwin, who as we know was a very methodical man, was thinking about getting married, he drew up a list, for & against, so that he could consider his options carefully. In the against column he wrote, "Less money for books."

Michael Foot's father, Isaac Foot, was supposed to have the largest library in private hands in England at that time. When I heard this fact, my instant reaction was "I want a bigger one." Isaac Foot also taught himself French at one point so that, as he said, he could read Montaigne in the original . This is one of the best reasons I have ever heard for anyone doing anything.

When Stanley Kubrick was alive, he once saw a television programme by the journalist Jon Ronson which he admired, so he invited Ronson to come & see him at his home, Childwickbury Manor in Hertfordshire. Ronson recalls that there was one room filled from floor to cieling with books about Napoleon. (Kubrick long planned a film about Napoleon which was ultimately never made. He had many discussions about it with Ian Holm, who he wanted to play the Emperor.) The existence of this room & its contents makes perfect sense to me, & if I could have such a thing I surely would.

One mad book collecting idea I have is this (many of my friends will have heard this one): I would like to get a copy of every single book of Christian theology ever written, then build a city of libraries to house them. When they were all assembled, & the city was complete, I would stand in the middle of it, stretch my arms out to indicate the millions of books all around and cry, "IT'S ALL NONSENSE !" Of course one could do this with the books generated by any monotheistic religion. But there has to be a limit somewhere.

Freedom of Thought

"And I will war, at least in words (and - should
My chance so happen - deeds) with all who war
With Thought;- and of Thought's foes by far most rude
Tyrants and Sycophants have been and are.
I know not who may conquer: if I could
Have such a prescience, it should be no bar
To this my plain, sworn, downright detestation
Of every despotism in every nation."

- Byron, Don Juan, Canto 9.24


Further to my last post on here, actually both of my grandfathers were Methodist ministers: & my maternal grandfather, his father was a Methodist minister too. So I've got Protestantism running deep in my blood.

This Protestant heritage in me manifests itself in the following ways, among others:

The primary importance of the text.

The focus is on the text at hand, the attempt to understand as far as I can what the text is saying, including the context of its composition -

& then, if this understanding is something that applies to my own conduct or outlook, applying it.

Text has consequences in real life.

This understanding of the text is reached by reference to authorities on the subject if appropriate, but emphatically NOT in slavish subjection to them.

I am happy to hear what the priest* has to say, but I do not require the priest as an intermediary between me & God, or between me & the truth as I see it after due study & reflection.

If the views I arrive at displease the priest, or contradict the authority he represents, then that is the problem of the priest & the said authority, not mine.

In other words, I have the right, & in fact the duty, to make up my own mind on any questions whatsoever.

The more important the question is, the more this applies

e.g. the existence of otherwise of God, the meaning or the lack of it in human life & the Universe.

This Protestant legacy makes me suspicious of authority & of hierarchy - suspicious that they are based essentially on imposture. In my case this applies especially to academic & cultural orthodoxies.

However, I don't oppose for the sake of opposing, & insist on decrying everything. If I think some element of an orthodoxy is correct, I am happy to admit it.

The point is that there is nothing - NOTHING - which is exempt from my critical scrutiny, neither in me nor in the world.

My search is for the truth as I see it: & I don't rule out any potential sources, & I'm not bothered who else agrees or disagrees with my conclusions; often conclusions which are likely to be temporary & subject to revision, abandonment, inversion.

As my experience increases, my point of view changes: & if it stays the same on the surface, it deepens below that surface.

Having discovered some fragment of the truth by patient & detailed research & reflection, it is part of my Protestant heritage to then feel the requirement to proclaim it: however popular of unpopular it proves to be, however palatable or bitter to the taste. This is the Protestant imperative to preach, & bear personal witness.

The hero-figure of this urge is surely John the Baptist:

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."

(- Mark. 1.3)

My urge to preach finds one of its expressions in this blog, in Bulletins.

*The figure of the priest is introduced here in a synecdochical capacity, evidemment.

God is a Fiction

Faith is just a fancy name for opinion.

If I have faith in an opinion that comes from a source external to myself, it's still my opinion, I'm still responsible for it.

The term faith gives opinion a spurious air of sanctity, of mystery.

When I say I've got faith, I mean I've got opinions for which there is no evidence to evaluate their validity.

To say I have faith so proudly is almost as if I am celebrating having no evidence for my opinion, as if that somehow elevates my opinion out of the dirty world of mundane facts.

There follow some questions for Christians about the nature of their God & their religion. If there are satisfactory Christian answers to these questions, I've never heard them. It's to do with / it's an issue of my faith is not a sufficient answer to any of these.

1. Does God intervene in His Creation or not ?

If He doesn't, what is the point of praying to Him for intervention ?

Is He responsible for unwelcome & destructive interventions like earthquakes & other natural disasters ?

What about prayers which are not answered ? Is that God refusing ?


2. When I die, will I go straight to Heaven or Hell ? or - will I lie in the ground until the Last Judgement, & my destination be decided then ?

As far as I can see, Christians believe both at the same time, & both can't be true at the same time.

Or - Heaven, Hell & the Last Judgement are figurative, in which case - what's the point of them ?


3. If the Devil exists, why does God permit him to continue ?

If God cannot do anything about the Devil, then He is not omnipotent.

If God could could do something about him, but chooses not to - why ?


Looked at from a non-Christian perspective, the Devil - or Satan if you prefer - is necessary & indispensable for 2 reasons.

First, because God is a fiction. & any successful fiction requires an antagonist, its disruptor-figure, its supreme opponent e.g. Loki, Sir Kay, Moriarty. Note that archenemy is a term used familiarly in talking about stories, & is also, when capitalised, - Archenemy - a synonym for the Devil.

Second, because the Devil is a personification of something we know from experience to be true, that evil is a real force in the world & in human affairs. You only need to look around you, keep up with the news, & study history to confirm that e.g. events in the world in the 1930s & '40s.

There Is No Inherent Meaning in the Universe

This post arose out of thinking over my sister-in-law Rachel's very valid objection to Jahweh: His Remarkable Rise that I was possibly confusing deity & divinity in that piece of writing.

Monotheism: it's not the outcome of the history of ideas, it's just another stage in that history.

I am prepared to accept a kind of ultimate divinity - but - it is one which is unknown & unknowable, in the sense of whatever you say or think about it, it is not that - like the Tao, or apophatic theology in the Christian tradition. As it says at the very opening of the Tao te Ching:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

- trans. Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English

This Divinity is beyond the capacity of human conceptualisation. It is certainly not God the father or the Trinity.

(In passing, the Trinity is never referred to by Jesus, it appears nowhere in the Gospels. You can see how it can be derived from the Gospels, but it is not actually present in them as an idea.)

So what is the point of It, this unknowable Divinity ?

There isn't one. I don't believe there is any ultimate meaning in life, or that the Universe or Nature has any intentions for us. The Universe & everything in it are simply a set of processes working themselves out. The Universe doesn't mean anything, & that doesn't matter. The only meanings there are are the ones we ascribe, individually &/or collectively. These meanings are not inherent in the Universe, & discovered by us. We put them there in the first place.

So - if the Universe is meaningless, if there's no God commanding, or Divinity to discover & conform to, what is the basis of morality ? The basis of morality is practical. Certain behaviours lead to better outcomes for everybody, & that is desirable.

What I am saying here is not The Truth, it is my Truth.

With these kind of speculations, I may not know, but I know that you don't know either. The one thing I know for sure is that nobody, neither me nor you, knows anything for sure about the ultimate purpose of life.

I am most definitely not arguing that nothing can be known. If my left foot is chopped off, that's a fact. If I leave the house at 11.26 as opposed to any other time, that's a fact. If I catch a disease & die, that's a fact. It is precisely because in my opinion there are such things as certain facts that I am arguing that the nature of the Divine, & the ultimate nature & purpose (if any) of the Universe & of human life are not among these certain facts. All there ever can be is a given individual's best guess.

So what of the gods & goddesses I mentioned in Jahweh: His Remarkable Rise ? To me, the gods are personifications of psychological forces within humans, & of natural phenomena. I do not think there is any externally existing God, or gods. The gods are metaphors. They are particularly rich & powerful culturally invested & sanctioned metaphors.

The lack of inherent meaning does not mean we are abandoned, because there never was anyone or anything there to start off with. It means we are free to discover our own meaning. Does this inevitably lead to a philosophical free-for-all ? Absolutely. The more the merrier.

Jahweh: His Remarkable Rise

"Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests."

- Jim Morrison, 'An American Prayer'


Jahweh or Jehovah, if I may name that god so familiarly, has had a remarkable journey from obscure Bronze Age tribal deity to his present exalted position - if we identify him with Allah - as Boss of 3 of the world's major religions.

It's like the spread of coffee from its home in Ethiopia to its status now of being consumed throughout the world.

The spread of an idea is like the spread of a commodity. People pass it on because they like it & because it suits them, & other people new to it accept it & incorporate it into their lives for the same reason. At least, that's when it happens benignly. Less happily, ideas & commodities are also spread by force & conquest of course, & here resemble the spread of disease.

I cannot accept that Jahweh/Jehovah/Allah/God the Father/God the Trinity is the one true God. How can the Trinity be simultaneously 3 gods & 1 god anyway ? Rowan Williams might know; he is apparently one of the leading experts in the world on the Trinity. But at first glance it doesn't seem very likely; & I strongly suspect that once Occam's Razor had been to work on the reasons why the Trinity is in fact 1 god, they would be left looking pretty tattered.

I recognise Jahweh as a god, but not the one true God. I reserve the right to worship some or all of the Celtic, Norse/Anglo-Saxon, Greek, Egyptian & Romano-British gods & goddesses, all of whom are in my cultural inheritance as an Englishman and a European. For me personally I would include Woden, Thor, Aphrodite, Demeter, Isis & Osiris. More primally, I reserve the right to worship directly the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Sky, the Earth & the Sea, Sacred Animals; & to experience the sacred & the numinous wherever I find it.* You may say this is rather a mish-mash, but isn't Christianity, in terms of its ritual & iconography, just such a mish-mash ?

If we take Christianity & Islam together (I can't find a reliable figure for the current total number of adherents to Judaism), Jahweh/Allah has 3.7 billion adherents who regard him exclusively as the one true God - 2.2 billion Christians & 1.5 billion Muslims. He hardly needs me as well.

In this connection, you will be acquainted I suggest with the terms polytheism, monotheism, atheism, agnosticism, deism, animism, & pantheism. But have you heard of the term henotheism ? I stumbled across it while reading about religion in the Classical world. It means you have one god who you personally, or as a tribe or a cult, venerate in particular, but that you are perfectly happy at the same time to recognise the validity of all gods & godesses whatsoever. A position of total tolerance. It strikes me as supremely civilised. And dangerous to the exclusive claims of Christianity, Judaism & Islam, which is why I think you never hear the term. It's suppressed as an option. The options you're presented with are the ones I named at the start of this paragraph, which are in fact the possibilities of religious belief & practice viewed from a monotheistic perspective, one that regards monotheism as true, right & natural.

When it comes to Christianity, I don't hear the term henotheism. The terms I do hear are heresy, schism, anathema, excommunication & idolatry.

On the subject of idolatry, I find it singular that the Christian Church, East & West, condemns idolatry so roundly while at the very same time practicing it so enthusiastically. It's odd sometimes to see a copy of The Ten Commandments set up in a church which is simultaneously full to bursting with graven images. The proscription of graven images in The Ten Commandments is explicit & insistent, & Muslims & observant Jews in general follow it's obvious & intended meaning. The proscription of graven images from The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 is worth quoting in full because of the stress it is given, & the prominence, being the Second Commandment:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the the third & fourth generation of them that hate me;

& shewing mercy to thousands of them that love me, & keep my commandments.

Now, in a pagan world, not having graven images is a ready & highly visible way to distinguish your religion from all the others around you, who precisely do have graven images which they venerate.

The Christian Church defends its use of graven images by asserting it is not idolatry to have them, because the worshiper does not worship the image itself but rather what it represents. This is sheer sophistry. The proscription in the Second Commandment is perfectly clear & straightforward. There have often been iconoclastic movements & controversies in both the Eastern & Western Churches, & quite rightly so.

The Christian use of images is an excellent example of the fact that mores are vastly more important in terms of their effect on human behaviour than the official morality that people are supposed to be following at a given time. Mores shape almost everything, morality virtually nothing.

A final thought on Christianity. It has always struck me as funny, and so human, that the opposing factions in Christianity call themselves Catholic, meaning universal when it is nothing of the kind, & Orthodox, meaning 'Right-Believing', or 'Just so you're clear, We're Right & Everyone Else is Wrong.'

It's not Sacred - it's sacred to you !


With thanks & respect to Xenophanes, William of Occam & Voltaire. Further reading: The Lost Gods of England by Brian Branston.

*Before I wrote this, I had no idea I was such an old hippy. But let it stand .....

On Being Wrong, & On Conversion

"I've seen religion, from Jesus to Paul."

- John Lennon, I Found Out


Many people think,"If my enemy is wrong, I must be right." But this is not true. My enemy or opponent can be wrong, genuinely wrong, & I can be wrong as well at the same time. My enemy's wrongness does not automatically validate my position. Both parties to a dispute can be wrong.

You may object that applying this makes it impossible ever to decide who is right or wrong, or who is which in which combination or mixture; that all one can do is float reading the newspaper in a Dead Sea of indecision. Not at all. It is simply a permanent caveat in this impermanent World.

A similar idea applies to the experience of conversion in the individual. Just because I've been converted, it doesn't mean I've gone from wrong to right. I can be wrong before conversion, & wrong in a different way, or in the same way but expressing it differently, afterwards. St.Paul - going from Saul to Paul & the Road to Damascus (Acts, ch.9) being one of the great paradigms of the experience of conversion - & St.Augustine of Hippo seem to me prime examples of this; they were wrong before conversion, & wrong in a different way afterwards.

You can see the continuity before & after in St.Paul's personality in action; whether against or for Christianity, whatever he thought & believed, he was going to do something about it. As Saul he was wrong to persecute the new sect. His strong reaction against it surely betrays a secret attraction, as is so often the case with Inquisitors, which prepared the ground for the Road to Damascus. After his conversion, Paul was equally insistent that Jesus was the only true route to salvation, which if you're not a Christian is a highly contestable position, granting that 'salvation' of some kind is even necessary. I can argue that Christianity is offering me the solution to a problem I don't have in the first place, creating a problem where there isn't one; that I am in a state of lacking God's grace. If there is no God in the Christian sense, then I cannot lack his grace. Salvation as a metaphor for psychic development is a different matter. I may well be in need of that. To be fair to Christianity, what matters is the actual experience & not the cultural label clumsily attached to it.

When I hear St.Paul preaching Christianity, my reaction is to shout out with the craftsmen & people of Ephesus, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians !" Things move on though, & it is as anachronistic to worship the Classical gods & goddesses, however attractive, as it is to write a play in blank-verse.

This proposition that one can be wrong both before & after conversion is one of the things that Camus is getting at in La Chute, although he never states it explicitly that I can remember. This is one of the reasons I find that book so powerful.

A thought to leave you with: western Christianity in my opinion has far more to do with Paul & Augustine than it does with Jesus.