March 28, 2007
'We'd be better off without religion'
Download the podcast here: Part 1 | Part 2
By the time the debate actually got going, I have to confess I was feeling pretty cross. I was looking forward to getting more fuel for my crossness from Richard Dawkins and going home in a right old temper to take it out on this blog.
But to my sorrow, Dawkins thwarted this intent.
The motion was: 'We'd be better off without religion.' On his side were Professor AC Grayling and Christopher Hitchens. Against were Baroness Julia Neuberger, Professor Roger Scruton and Nigel Spivey. The incomparable Joan Bakewell was in the chair. At these debates, styled along the lines of Oxford and Cambridge debates but disappointingly less hecklesome, a vote is taken at the start and another at the end.
The first vote was 826 votes for the motion, 681 against and 364 don't knows. By the end, the voting was 1,205 for the motion, 778 against and 100 don't knows. And would you know, so thrown into confusion was I by being almost convinced of the case by Dawkins that I actually voted for the motion at the end. Is God - I have no doubt that such a being exists at least - trying to tell me something I wonder?
The debate was not about the existence of God. It was about religion. But none of the speakers gave a proper definition of religion, not even those arguing in its favour, thus handing the opponents a gift. In addition, all the speakers for the motion spoke without a script. All those against it read from notes or a script. Keith Porteous Wood and Terry Sanderson from the National Secular Society sat in the 'congregation', grinning.
At one point, when he was speaking, Dawkins seemed suddenly to realise that religion had not been defined in the terms of the debate, and that therefore its definition was up for the taking, and therefore religion could perhaps be broadened to include all kinds of things that he quite aproved of, such as worship of the scientific glories of the universe, or of the beauties of complex mathematical equations. He visibly faltered and a look of shock fleetingly passed across his face as he felt the pull of temptation towards this rational black hole. He quickly recovered. It was 'odd of God', though, that with the exception of Hitchens, they all seemed to veer half the time towards arguing for the opposing side. And I'm not sure I'd ever want Hitchens on the side of religion.
Nigel Spivey, who teaches classical art and archaeology at Cambridge and Rabbi Neuberger were particularly anxious to emphasise their non-religious credentials. Julia repeatedly emphasised that she was so liberal as to be almost near to dropping off the edge, and Spivey likewise was keen to make sure we knew he was not one bit religious himself. Oh no. He was just enormously appreciative of the enormous contribution that religion had made to art and archaeology. The religious instinct was an intrinsic part of human nature, he said. It was either there because it was necessary for survival, in a Darwinian sense, or because it was an ineradicable side-product of some other essential gene. I felt here that I was a bit like a monkey, still in thrall to this strange religious gene, and Spivey was a zoo keeper, observing the phenomenon and its benefits. He had evolved to the point where he was aloof to it all himself, but he was happy to nurture and acknowledge it, especially when usefully caged in the prism of arts and architecture. Spivey actually opened the debate on the side of religion! I knew then we'd lost it.
Professor Scruton was the best for religion. I could have listened to him for hours. Central Hall is of course a place of Methodist worship and several of the speakers seemed to have long links with it. Rabbi Julia had been taken there for synagogue worship. It was used as the overflow by the West London Synagogue on festivals and highholydays. She described fasting during Yom Kippur and long services at Central Hall, having to smell the odour of fish and chips floating up through the wooden floorboards from the cafe below.
Scruton likewise had been introduced to Methodism at an early age by his father. 'When it crossed his mind that he could not bring his kids up totally without religion, he looked for the gloomiest chapel he could find and it was the Methodist chapel. We were sent there every Sunday and he did not attend. It had a profound effect on me.' His rebellion was to bunk off chapel, and secretly attend the nearby Anglican church instead. 'This was totally unrelated to the fact that there was a very attradtive girl there in a white makintosh. That was my first encounter with a transcendental religious experience.'
That's the thing that its opponents will never understand about religion. As this blog bears witness, so much of its appeal is that it is actually about drives and instincts related to love - love for our fellow humans as well as for the transcendent.
In a debate redolent with platitudes, Scruton was the least platitudinous, in spite of lecturing us on why Plato got it wrong in his Republic. Arguing on rational grounds that a society would be better off without religion was like arguing that society would be better off without love, he said. And as we all know, love is frequently irrational. He did not deny that there were wrong ways of pursuing the religious quest. But there was nothing irrational in looking for what is sacred. It was part of the human condition to search for meaning.
Hitchens, I thought, almost lost it for the anti-religionists when he interrupted Rabbi Julia with a vituperative: 'How dare you!' as she was speaking. She had been casting aspersions about the sensibilities of atheists. Joan Bakewell quieted the beast and reason took hold once more. And soon it became clear that the pro-religionists did not have a hope, given the calibre of Dawkins and Grayling.
ACGrayling, whose new book is called Against all Gods, was philosophic. By that I mean quick of tongue and logic. His mind at one point went too fast for his tongue and he lost me. But I got one paragraph down that contained the thrust of his argument: 'You do not need supernatural agencies or religion or scriptures to explain the fact that human beings are capable of good and that most of the good in the world has come from that source and not from some alleged supernatural source.'
Not surprisingly, Dawkins had no difficulty at all destroying Spivey's argument. I suspect that they are in fact on the same side. 'Speak for yourself,' he said about the allegation that the religious gene is in us all. 'It is not a part of me. It is not a part of the great majority of my friends in universities in England and the US and elsewhere.' (Dear Dr Dawkins, that's because you and your academic friends are all 'zoo keepers' in the Spivey sense. Spivey wasn't talking about 'people like you'! He was talking about people like me.) And as for Spivey's point that religion had given us the Sistine Chapel and other similar great works, Dawkins correctly pointed out that great artists painted about religion because the Church had the money to pay them. Even Hitchens was right to to note that every brick of St Peter's was paid for by a special indulgence.
It is strange how Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion and Channel 4's Root of All Evil programme, came over as an angry man. Because he is not at all like that in the flesh. Especially when seated next to someone like Hitchens.
'There are very good grounds to believe there is no actual truth in the claims of religion. I rather liken it to a child with a dummy in its mouth. I do not think it a very dignified or respect-worthy posture for an adult to go around sucking a dummy for comfort,' said Dawkins, perpetuating a common but gross misunderstanding of why people need religion. Some of us, I suspect quite a lot, are not religious for comfort. It is because we need to be battered, reduced, to have our monstrous egos squashed so we can control them properly. Speaking entirely for myself here of course.
Dawkins also compared giving children a religious education to erecting in their minds a firewall against scientific truth, rather like a computer firewall against viruses. He was particularly upset about a well-known Christian geologist who had abandoned his science when it became clear it was not compatible with a literal reading of the Bible. 'He said that even if all the evidence in the world pointed against creationism, he would still be a creationist because that is what the word of God pointed him to.' Well I'd be upset if my son became a creationist but there is no chance of that, not in the Church of England at least.
Dawkins did not have to work very hard to win the argument last night. His problem is that he takes religion too literally, and as many have pointed out, is too fundamentalist about his own atheistic creed. Apart from that fleeting moment of doubt I spotted, we are all creationists in his eyes. But I hope I might have the opportunity to explore some of these areas in an interview with him soon. I'll still be using in in my mind the nickname I have adopted for him: 'Mobius Dick.' But after last night I accept that Dr Dawkins does have more than two sides to his soul, more that two dimensions to his spirit. He just doesn't know it... yet.
(Update: Dawkins, who celebrated his birthday recently, has called me to reassure me there was no 'moment of doubt' whatsoever. And there was I beginning to think he was human. More soon I hope.)
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