atheistic fundamentalism?

In the so-called season of goodwill, the Archbishop of Wales has made an attack on what he sees as ‘atheistic fundamentalism’, whatever that is. It is difficult to see how one can be a fundamentalist atheist. An atheist can’t disbelieve in a deity to a greater or lesser degree: it’s a simply either/or option where one either believes there is a god or that there isn’t. Likewise, religious fundamentalists do not believe in a god to a “greater degree” that their fellow non-fundamentalist religious worshippers. The difference between them, religious fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists, is one of ideology and intepretation of holy text, neither of which atheism has.

Either way, this “fundamentalist atheism”, in the view of the Archbishop, is apparently responsible for two events in particular: the Winterval festival in Birmingham, in 1997 and 1998, and the recent dispute involving a BA employee’s run in with BA’s dress code.

We have be careful of the “political correctness gone mad” elephant trap. It’s clear that Christmas was never “banned”, and neither was its name changed, in Birmingham: the term ‘Winterval’ was a blanket term to cover a variety of celebrations that occurred during late November and December, of which Christmas was the central event.

Likewise, the facts of the BA case are equally mundane. The Christian Cross was never banned, but the wearing of necklaces outside of clothing was. The emphasis is important – it’s not an anti-religious or anti-Christian edict, but a dresscode with the (no doubt unintended consequence) that would include any necklace with a religious symbol. The reason that came about was simply because no one has ever claimed that the Christian cross on a necklace was part of the Christian faith, one as recognisable as the Sikh Turban, for example. It has echoes of the Great Silver Ring Thing Scandal about the same time – there was no ban against Christian symbols as such, but a ban on jewellry. The essential point in both is the same: neither rings nor crucifixes are central, ideological, manifestations of the Christian faith, and so these dress codes did not seek to include any exception for allegedly “Christian” jewellry.

That these events are cynically distorted by such a senior figure as the Archbishop of Wales is disgraceful, not least because it gives propagates the myth that these event represent rather than the more mundane truth.

Nevertheless, that he saw fit to say such a thing is probably part of the same phenomena, noted before, where the Right in particular is using Christianity to re-label Britain culturally, and to make it easier to divide people into “them” and “us”. In this particular case, the issue is more subtle.

As was said before, we are a largely secular country, hence the news (for example) that more people shopped online than went to an Anglican service. In itself, it is not a surprising story – it only points to the growing use of the internet to shop online, which has been a trend noted before, anyway. As every Sunday testifies, the overwhelming majority of the population are out and about in the High Street, shopping in person, rather than in any Church, Anglican or otherwise.

The point here is that it is not “fundamentalist atheism” (whatever that is) that is responsible for this trend, but the growth of the of the consumer society in the last sixty years or more, and the parallel decline of Christian worship. Hence, the blaming of nefarious atheists for the woes of Christianity, to the point of distorting fact to promulgate myth, must be to try and create, firstly, a sense of identity, and, secondly, a sense that this identity is threatened in some way.

But if not by athiests, who? Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society was quoted in the 2000 Guardian article linked to above as suggesting Islam. Multiculturalism – something that is now openly attacked by the Right – might be more accurate in the dying embers of 2007. It seems to fit into a coalition of interests emerging that is attempting to redefine Englishness and Britishness along exclusive, “them and us”, lines.

Whatever the real reason, it demonstrates the sectarian nature of religion generally, especially when it’s used for political ends. To then claim, as the Archbishop does, that “God is not exclusive, he is on the side of the whole of humanity with all its variety” is laughable, not least because God by any Christian view necessarily excludes those who do not accept Jesus as their Saviour.

Even more on Christmas…

Very interesting to see that Polly Toynbee in today’s Guardian has written an article that makes the some of the points I made ten days ago – right down to citing Dawkins’ “coming out” as a Christmas carol lover…

On her postage stamp point – the ONLY stamps available at my local shop were the Christmas stamps, and a book of twelve at that, too. It means I’ll be sending Christmas stamps in March, given the rate at which I use them…

Christmas… again

Although some on the Right may be surprised, Richard Dawkins has made it known that he is a “cultural Christian”. The Right in Britain are busy these days trying to persuade anyone who’ll listen that there’s a leftwing plot to undermine Christmas in the guise “Political Correctness”. The recent “Christianophobia” debate testifies to the jostling among those on the Right for the use of Christianity some sort of “British culture” campaign, which is apparently threatened by what they see as undue deferrence to the cultures of ethnic minorities and the like, in particular (I suspect) the Islamic traditions within this country.

On this reading, it is not secularisation that is changing the face of Christmas. Yet – as I’ve said before – what the overwhelming majority of people in Britain today celebrates is in fact a secular version of Christmas, one that is only in part informed by Christianity, and to an extent that will vary from family to family. Hence a recent finding that British people don’t seem to know much about the Christian origins of Christmas – although there are about 4.4 million people who may wish they’d never heard of Christmas at all.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no shred of evidence that anyone wants to actually ‘purge’ the Christian basis of our culture or our heritage: you can’t study either without coming up against it. Ignoring it represents a failure of understanding, both of our present and our past. But Christianity itself doesn’t need to be promoted or publicly defended in some way to underline this – it should be learnt and understood as and when one comes across these things, in its correct context, as you would the influence of Greek and Roman mythology. After all, no one would suggest that we should continue building in the English-decorated Gothic style, lest architecture should somehow forget its past and traditions.

Contemporary culture is – or should be – something that people should freely choose to engage in, or not, and on their own terms, as they see fit. Hence Dawkins has no problems with singing Christmas carols, whereas I choose not to celebrate Christmas at all. Both are valid, although one wonders if the view is soon to be that one who doesn’t celebrate Christmas is to be seen as “not British”.

Eitherway, it hardly seems an area in which the the State could effectively intervene, if indeed it should at all. Not celebrating a Christian version of Christmas, or not celebrating Christmas at all, is not to attempt a purge of anything; rather, it’s the exercise of choice.

The problem is perhaps that Christmas is bigger than Christianity – both in terms of adherents, but also culturally. The fact is that any story of Christmas that restricts itself to merely the birth of Jesus amounts to Christian propaganda: again, as I’ve said before, the “story” of Christmas also encompasses other pre-Christian European traditions – Germanic, Celtic and Roman – as well as more recent traditions, such as the American Santa Claus, the European cult of St Nicholas, and the British Father Christmas (sadly almost completely usurped by Santa). A far bigger, and dare I say it, a far more interesting story, which would of course include the Christian story.

Hate campaign against female clergy

Church of England female clergy are still unnaccepted in some quarters. A Cornish curate has now taken a couple of weeks leave after a recent spate of arson attacks, although there’s been a problem for sometime. This usefully reminds us that Christian fundamentalism (which logically must be behind this as no one else would be ideologically opposed to female Christian ministers within the Church of England) is clearly shown to be as dangerous as any other fundamentalism, religious inspired or otherwise. Naturally, it will only be a minority or even (as in this case) an individual extremist – an often recited phrase in other contexts.

Christianophobia?

A Parliamentary debate has today been scheduled on something which the MP Mark Pritchard calls “Christianophobia”. His complaint appears to centre on a perceived fear that people in this country are somehow afraid to express Christian sentiment due to “political correctness” and a wish not to offend minorities. The finding recently that four-fifths of schools are not putting on Nativity plays by the Telegraph, allegedly for the same reason, appears to have prompted the debate.

The debate raises the question of whether Christianity in this country should be supported or propped up by the State (more than it is already, of course). As a secularist, I don’t believe that any religion should be supported by the State – it is up to people themselves what cultural traditions – religious or otherwise – they want to keep onto.

But Pritchard forgets that most of the country – well over ninety per cent, in fact – are don’t practice any religion at all, let alone Christianity. With respect to Nativity plays, there may be, perhaps an excessive, desire not to “offend” other religious sentimentalities in some of the more mixed ethnic areas, but it is also a fact that cultures change. It needs hardly to be said that for two or three thousand years before Christianity was (forcibly) introduced into this country, the winter festival now called Christmas had different cultural meanings. Indeed, as we all know, very little of the origins of Christmas has to do with Christianity.

The period we now call “Christmas” has undergone yet another transformation in the last thirty to fifty years in the UK. To all intents and purposes, it is now largely a secular festival, reflecting a largely secular society, as the annual pleas by religious figures to remember what Christmas is “really” about testifies. You could disparagingly characterise Christmas as one that now celebrates Santa Claus as the god of consumerism, and there’d be some truth in that, although it is also one that has the remnants of previous Christian, Roman, Germanic and Celtic beliefs, among other native folk traditions. (Oddly, those concerned with the “true” meaning of Christmas don’t tend to talk about these earlier beliefs.)

The lack of interest in specifically Nativity plays by schools more than likely represents a broader cultural change associated just as much with secularism as with anything to do with “political correctness”. It’s not that there is a rise in “Christianophobia” so much as a radical decline in Christian worship, and a lack of relevance of the previously Christian message of Christmas to the modern day secular festival that is now Christmas.

This is something that has been happening for a number of years, if personal experience is anything to go by. Because of house moves, during the 1980s I went to three different primary schools in Essex – two of which were Church of England Voluntary Controlled – in places which were overwhelmingly white British. Not once did I see, or was ever part of, a Nativity play.

Scientific facts and theories

Following very belatedly from my last post, a reasonable question is “what is a scientific theory?”, and what constitutes a “scientific fact”?

The question of a scientific fact arose in a brief discussion I had on a creationist blog. The objection by said Creationist was to a BBC web page about science talking about scientific facts. That’s an odd state of affairs for non-Creationists such as myself – a bit like being outraged at naked people on a porn site. But the objection centred on the idea that science – and in particular the theory of human evolution – was being portrayed at “fact”, while misunderstanding the context within which these “facts” appeared.

It is – I find – a common misunderstanding within the Creationist/”Intelligent Design” camp. So let’s recap what a “scientific fact” is, as no doubt I shall refer to such things as this blog develops. Apologies in advance for those that find this basic, but it’s better to be clear on such things!

A scientific fact is one which has been corroborated by reproducible results from experiments that themselves can be repeated – that’s not the same as “proved”. It’s virtually impossible to prove a theory. So it’s true to say that no one has proved that gravity exists – it’s just that all the known experimental data corroborates the theory that it does, and it is referred then as a “scientific fact”.

Evolution is likewise a “scientific fact”, for exactly the same reason that garvity is; and evolutionary theory – aka theory of evolution – explains the fact of evolution.

For a theory to be a theory, one needs to be able to make a prediction – or a hypothesis – based on this theory which can then be tested by experiment. The data either corroborates or disproves the theory. So, with evolution for example, your hypothesis would be that you would expect to see increasing complexity over time. You would not expect to see birds before the existence of land animals, for example. To do so would prove evolution wrong; not to do so corroborates the theory as it falls in line with our hypothesis.

Disproving that theories relating to gravity or evolution exist is only that – proving that that those particular theories are wrong. So if cars and buses and trains tomorrow all start floating, or that daylight in the UK doesn’t appear until 1.30pm, we can say that our theory of gravity is wrong. Likewise, if we found a fossilised rabbit in a strata of rock that was a billion years old, we’d say that the current theory of evolution is wrong.

Saying a theory is wrong is NOT the same as saying that another is right. It is an odd feature of the Creationist debate that an awful lot of energy of Creationists and their ilk is spent on “disproving” the theory of evolution. They have continually failed so far, but even if they were correct in their assertions, that doesn’t prove anything at all about Creationism – they would only have only shown that evolution is wrong.

Likewise, demonstrating or showing that “irreducible complexity” exists (a favourite of the so-called “Intelligent Design” adherents) only proves that such thing appear to exist – it does not prove that there is in fact a Designer or Intelligence or Creator. Separate experimental data would be needed for such a thing to be established in a scientific manner. So far, “irreducible complexity” has not been shown.

But as I’ve pointed out, that would at best only show that evolution is wrong – not that Creationism or Intelligent Design is actually correct in its further claims about Designers and Creators. Here, to the best of my knowledge, no attempt has even been made to even say what kind of experiment could be done or what evidence would be required that corroborates the existence of a single Designer or Intelligence at work somewhere, rather than disproves current scientific theories. And it’s precisely because it fails to produce a testable hypothesis, that Creationist “science” and ID “theory” are not theories or science.