The way things are

There is a lot of optimism, not all of which I share. Ian Dunbar, 61, a physicist, said: “Actually, I think humanism is on the verge of a breakthrough. It only feels as though it’s under threat because faiths are hurting and lashing out.”

Ultimately though, I saw it much more as a call to arms than a reason to be cheerful. There has never been a more important time, if you are secular, to say so. Call to arms I mean metaphorically, by the way. Nobody take up any arms, ok?

Zoe Williams, The Guardian, Saturday 9 August 2014

John Hagee

I have never read Bertrand Russell’s Why I am not a Christian, the title of which was of its time, and – if written today – would probably be something like The Delusion of the Supernatural. I confess to sometimes finding the whole topic extremely tedious, but when I hear talk – and see murderous approaches to – the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate, or listen to the ‘hellfire’ rhetoric of American televangelists, how can I let the matter rest? It is said that religion is good for good people. I understand that, and of course such people do indeed lead good lives. They are, I imagine, content with their beliefs, and do not proselytise. However, I think it true to say that the majority of ‘true believers’ are not at all content to keep their beliefs to themselves. And let’s be honest, we know this to be true: existential doubt drives people to attempt to convert the whole world to their beliefs, because they find they cannot bear to live with uncertainty (and Keats’ ‘negative capability would be incomprehensible to them – total anathema, if the truth be told).

Well, we all dwell under the cloud of unknowing, and our existence is a riddle and an enigma. In over two thousand years of conceptual thinking we still have no answers to the major ontological questions, and I doubt that we ever will. We live in a postmodern world from which there is no going back. ‘Truth’, with a capital ‘T’ has, it would seem been fatally undermined; reduced to a will–o–the–wisp; abrogated; made redundant; and relegated to the dusty shelf entitled ‘Illegitimate Questions’ – in the spirit and letter of Wittgenstein’s approach to such matters. This is a hard lesson, but those who cannot accept it must still live in the Universal State of Doubt. 

Shall we still clutch and cling? It is too late: the religions of the world have all gone under the sea.    “It is impossible to love life, Freud intimates, without loving transience”, writes Adam Phillips. Exactly so. Yet still we hanker after that which has irretrievably gone, and so spoil and darken our days. Is it not better to let go? We live for moments. And that, I think, is the healthiest and best way. Out out with the dreary suburbs of convention and certainty!

Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.   

Emerson   

Endnote:  I have quoted the following passage before, but for those who think that some great impoverishment must follow from the excision of religion from life – that its poetry will evaporate, and leave us bereft of mystery – this quite startling piece of writing should change their minds:

Culture…does not take up any dogmatic attitude with regard to the existence, or non–existence, of God or of the gods. It recognizes irrational hopes and fears. It takes account of many rumours caught on passing winds, of many voices heard in solitary places, of many reef–bells over strange waters. It allows for queer second–thoughts and for startling, mysterious intimations that escape all logical capture. 

John Cowper Powys, The Meaning of Culture