A Pusillanimous Priest.

This morning Radio Four had "Humphrys in search of God", interviewing Rowan Williams. John Humphrys is an ex-believer, and the purpose of the program is that he asks leaders of three religions to convert him back. Given that Humphries is a journalist, it is no surprise that it was the good old fashioned Problem of Evil which did for his faith. As a consequence, much of the focus of the program was on that area.

It was a truly painful experience listening to Williams negotiate the twists and turns of the architecture of nonsense which he has had to construct in order to find some evidence of God in the world. What it seems to amount to is that if people pray and are generally sort of holy, then they weaken the membrane between this world and God's, and occasionally some good stuff gets through to help people cope with all the pain and misery of existence. And that's about it. It's as if he's an atheist who feels a duty to pray because he can't think of anything else useful to do for the world.

Strange; so often we atheists are accused of nihilism. Whereas, it seems to me that the world is a neutral place which we can fill with true glory and beauty if and when we so choose. In other words, I live with and through hope every day. Williams, on the other hand, seems to see the world as a horrible place, so horrible that he has to explain any good he can find in it as God's work, because he can't imagine that it just comes from people. (Or, indeed, nature, chance, and all those other wonderful things). Wretched man.

Fascinatingly, at the end he says "God alone can judge how much of your resistance to God is culpable, due to selfishness, laziness of spirit, bloodymindedness, and how much is just due to whatever got in the way." I despise with all my being this idea that there is some sort of moral responsibility to accept God, but it is easy to see how this offers Williams his own get out clause. In his worldview, God is in all the good bits, and so he is doing good just by believing. That must be comforting to a man whose moral cowardice was written large, in public, in his pitiful climbdown over gay priests. Bugger off and write your rubbish poetry, say I.

Faith. No More!

The problem with faith is that once you use it to justify anything, you can use it to justify everything.

Female genital mutilation. It's illegal in this country, and it's also illegal to take someone abroad from this country to have it done. Bloody well right. Those who practice it, though, say that it is expected in their culture, and will argue that it is required by their religions. It's all about their relationship with their God, and it's nobody else's business.
This may sound familiar to anyone who has paid any attention to the news recently. I don't like a lot of the people who have come out against the wearing of the niqab, and "it makes me feel uncomfortable" is just about the most pathetic, bleating excuse for a contribution to a political debate I've ever heard. But as soon as you admit the argument "It's about my faith" you've lost any possible claim to moral authority.

This is thrown into sharp relief when people justify their adhesion to nonsense in the face of evidence by saying "you don't understand, it's not about evidence, it's about faith." In which case, you can believe absolutely anything and give it equal moral weight and truthfulness. If you accept, alternatively, that some things are taboo, no matter what the faith-based reason for them, then you have admitted something which cuts to the heart of many of the arguments which are used to justify faith based schools and the like.

Morality does not derive from faith. It is imposed on it from without, and often in spite of it.

This means, among other things, that extremist, mine-is-the only-true-faith bigots are actually more rational than tolerant moderates. Morality can only be associated with faith where there is only one faith; if a negotiated morality is acceptable, then it derives from without.

This should be obvious, really. Anyone who has ever read the bible with an open mind will be aware that alongside the "thou shalt not kill" stuff, which everyone can appreciate, is the "go slaughter your enemies and rape their wives and beat their babies brains out" stuff. Yet few who claim their morality to be biblical would argue that the latter exerts moral precedence over the former (even when behaving in the latter manner). Why not? because our morality doesn't come from the damn book, it comes from somewhere else. I would suggest that it is probably from a mixture of hard-wired behaviour and social negotiation, but that's not really important.

What is, is that if you call on faith to justify your position, you have lost the argument by any reasonable intellectual standard. And if you say that religious people tend to be better, because they derive moral standards from their faiths, then you are a liar, a fool, or a bigot.

And as for the veil, by the way, wear it if you want to. But don't tell me that your religion requires it, because if that's not an excuse for genital mutilation - and it isn't - then it's not an excuse for anything else either. You wear it because you want to, and if you have political reasons for wanting to these days, that certainly makes sense. But just because you have individual reasons for wearing it, you have not changed its essential nature. Its purpose and function is to dehumanise women, no matter what any God's mouthpiece says.

Live by this

A new motto:

"Give a good supper to the righteous, and a sound drubbing to the wicked."

Strange mushrooms in the woods...

So here's an interesting ethical one. When I talk to the little ones about God - which has occurred already - I say it's an idea that some people have. As and when the issue of what I think comes up, I will explain in no uncertain terms my own position on the subject. Yet I'm quite happy for them to think that this was put in place by fairies, rather than, as is in fact the case, Jem Finer.

Neologism: "dringley" (hard 'g').

Yeah, you and your pork pie hat.

The Guardian's been giving print space to the tiresome Pete Doherty again. (If you don't know who he is, don't worry, you haven't missed anything at all).

If you've read that and aren't sure what the problem is, exactly, then read these two letters, because they sum it up quite nicely. In fact, they sum it up quite nicely in any case.

If Pete Doherty is our best hope for lyrics better than Noel Gallagher's, then God help us poor atheists. Folks, you can do better. Go out and listen to The Pursuit of Happiness, Warren Zevon, Simon and Garfunkel. if you still think Pete Doherty's got anything to say, then tell me so - I'll be fascinated. For comparison:

"It's the story of a coked-up pansy
Who spent his nights in a flights of fancy
Met two fellas over gin and mixers
They talked for a while he soon got the picture"

vs.

"Don't talk of love
Well I've heard the word before
It's sleeping in my memory
I won't disturb the slumber
Of feelings that have died
If I never loved I never would have cried"

If anyone's writing great lyrics at the moment then I can't think of them off the cuff, although "You Suck" by Strapping Young Lad is very funny. Any suggestions welcome...

Why the human race does not deserve to exist part 342.

Blunt's "Goodbye My Lover" most requested funeral song, it says here, presumably by people who want to make their loved ones suffer. I know that listening to that kind of banal cack makes me want to die.

Me, I want "Surprise, You're Dead" followed by the Dropkick Murpys' version of "Amazing Grace" from "The Gang's All Here". And if there's a band at the wake they can play a version of the Hoodoo Gurus' "Dig it Up" with the lyrics transposed.