An apple for Mr. Dalrymple

[rj_anderson]

If a godless totalitarian government ever takes over and forces us all to celebrate Take an Atheist to Lunch Day, I want dibs on Theodore Dalrymple. Mind you, that's assuming he's still available at that point, and not locked up as a traitor to the State.

Here's a sample from his recent essay on the books of Dawkins, Harris et al, "What the New Atheists Don’t See":

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins quotes with approval a new set of Ten Commandments for atheists, which he obtained from an atheist website, without considering odd the idea that atheists require commandments at all, let alone precisely ten of them; nor does their metaphysical status seem to worry him. The last of the atheist’s Ten Commandments ends with the following: “Question everything.” Everything? Including the need to question everything, and so on ad infinitum?

Not to belabor the point, but if I questioned whether George Washington died in 1799, I could spend a lifetime trying to prove it and find myself still, at the end of my efforts, having to make a leap, or perhaps several leaps, of faith in order to believe the rather banal fact that I had set out to prove. Metaphysics is like nature: though you throw it out with a pitchfork, yet it always returns. What is confounded here is surely the abstract right to question everything with the actual exercise of that right on all possible occasions. Anyone who did exercise his right on all possible occasions would wind up a short-lived fool.

And another, in response to Christopher Hitchens' assertion that "Religion spoils everything":

It is surely not news, except to someone so ignorant that he probably wouldn’t be interested in these books in the first place, that religious conflict has often been murderous and that religious people have committed hideous atrocities. But so have secularists and atheists, and though they have had less time to prove their mettle in this area, they have proved it amply. If religious belief is not synonymous with good behavior, neither is absence of belief, to put it mildly.

In fact, one can write the history of anything as a chronicle of crime and folly. Science and technology spoil everything: without trains and IG Farben, no Auschwitz; without transistor radios and mass-produced machetes, no Rwandan genocide. First you decide what you hate, and then you gather evidence for its hatefulness. Since man is a fallen creature (I use the term metaphorically rather than in its religious sense), there is always much to find.

There are plenty more gems in the essay, but to appreciate Dalrymple's honesty as well as his dry wit, you really need to read the whole thing.

Thanks to wittingshire for the tip.

Comments

[tybalt-quin.livejournal.com]

First you decide what you hate, and then you gather evidence for its hatefulness.

I agree with this statement, but which massacres/atrocities does Dalrymple ascribe to secularism or atheism?

[tybalt-quin.livejournal.com]

Gah - okay, read the article and understand the context. Query retracted with apologies.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Oh, no need to apologize. :)

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Hitler? Stalin? Communist China?

[tybalt-quin.livejournal.com]

Campion! Yay!

(Why don't they ever repeat that show on UK tv, when they repeat everything else?)

Hitler and Stalin were committing genocide in the name of national socialism and communism respectively rather than in the name of secualrism. Communism was an atheistic doctrine but acts such as the genocide of the kulaks or the Purges in the 1930s were determined by economics and internal politics and where the Chinese regime abuses human rights, it's doing so in the name of communist ideals (even the persucution of Falun Gong (and I've spelt that incorrectly) is argued to be because they're a destabilising influence on Chinese national security).

Not that any of this excuses those acts - Mao, Hitler and Stalin were all scumbags.

The problem that atheists, secularists and agnostics have is that humans fill the void with something in the absence of God and whilst many of them place their faith in science, there's nothing terribly comforting about the idea that we degrade back into carbon molecules and that's about it.

Meh. I don't know. I'm agnostic but I say live and let live. If someone's not hurting me or trying to make me share their beliefs, I don't really give a monkey's what they believe.

[npkedit.livejournal.com]

This religious-and-unapologetic-about-it person thinks it was delightful. Thanks for posting the link.

Brilliant.

[(Anonymous)]

It's nice to know that there are some people who, though they do not believe in God, are not quite as Barking Mad as Mr. Dawkins. A reasonable moderate athiest is a pleasure to read, after considering Dawkins, the same way that dishwater is pleasant to drink, after you've tried a gulp of sulphuric acid.

Warren

[silverlightstar.livejournal.com]

I saw that a few days ago and chuckled, chuckled, chuckled.

The man deserved a salute once he started quoting Joseph Hall and mentioned a painting done by Sánchez Cotán.

[kerravonsen]

Haven't got time to read the whole thing just yet, but it is rather refreshing to find someone who sounds actually reasonable. I see what you mean about him being locked up as a traitor to the State, though. 8-)

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the essay muchly; I think you will, too.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much for the link. That's a very good essay.

[kerravonsen]

I've read it now. Good stuff.