On March 27th in London’s Westminster Hall, a debate between Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, AC Grayling (against religion’s benefit) and Baroness Julia Neuberger, Professor Roger Scruton and Nigel Spivey (for religion’s benefit) took place. The event was sponsored by the Times and Hitch, Dawkins, and Grayling won. Christopher Hitchens embarrassed his side by going on far too long, as he’s known to do, and heckling Neuberger during her argument, to which she responded angrily, “You’ll get your turn, sir,” as if she were speaking to a ten-year-old boy. I downloaded the debate in its entirety (though I wonder if the question and answer section was edited for time) here. Richard Dawkins was, as usual, elegant, polite, and incredibly well-spoken, and Nigel Spivey spoke brilliantly about the wonders of the art and architectural byproduct of religion. I treasured his argument mainly for it’s clear love for art and architecture, but, as Dawkins says in his book- I don’t really think that art wouldn’t have existed without religion.
The real article of the debate that left me floored was Neuberger’s opening statement, and it was for its pristine denouncement of her own religion. Neureberger’s exact phrasing was this:
I’m about as liberal a Rabbi as I can be without falling off the edge.
And this is how she opened her argument in favor of religion! Such a dizzying differentiation and apology for what she came to defend: Her charismatic voice pierces the audience, and I must speculate and say that I can almost hear her beaming smile. And, then, wow, she just said that she may as well not be a Jew arguing for Judaism’s and, by extension, religion’s benefit in general.
In apologetics Jews, if not a race and if not a nation and if not a religious creed (all different type of divisions have been made on all different levels, for categorization is the easiest way that one may distance oneself from another’s polemic), have argued that that they can live secular lives under Talmudic law (or at the very least, under the “cultural guidance” of Jewish heritage- which is by nature a religious heritage- but don’t get me started). The Jew, by labeling himself as such, would reasonably hold dear certain Jewish doctrine, but also posit that his is the best example of a religion being “laid-back.” Same goes for Unitarians, Zen Buddhists, and yoga fanatics. Still, the superstition remains. (Sorry, yoga fanatics, but yoga is superstitious, and its benefits are somewhat speculative, and much like a religion).
The moderate often finds it comforting to know that at least some religious institutions are intelligent enough to shirk the more embarrassing, superstitious doctrine of old and dress up their religion in a modern, fashionable way, while at the same time nodding to the stalwart, even cutesy traditions of their forbears (more on that later). Then again, like circumcision and Passover, some of these are actually quite brutal, either physically or metaphorically.
That’s right. Even the forlorn lover’s stolen glance at a single page of the Talmud will bring enough evidence to bear on the “laid-back” debate. Perhaps, in your periphery, you saw large mention of sacrificial ritual, of utterly bizarre diets. This is not some secular, peaceful way of life that exists outside the paradox of which we speak. This is sort of like the “removal” of Judaism and the “replacement” of it with, wait for it, Judaism. Same for Christianity. The primary text is still there, with its inherently flawed ten commandments, its vengeful deities, and its sickening tales of rape and desecration.
As theology was one of humanity’s first great educational disciplines, and for a while the student’s only choice for a major, perhaps atheists, who are attacked for “cherry-picking” religious texts for quotes that do disastrous harm to various religions should fess up: they learned it from the best cherry-pickers in history: theologians, rabbis, priests, intelligent people like Neureberger who have, over history, struggled so profoundly with their doubts that they have made careers out of splitting hairs and trying to “prove” their doctrine’s worth. When proof finally became too stupid for some, they actually began to go around saying that they essentially weren’t religious but still in favor of religious tradition. No religion but tradition firmly rooted in religion. This logic is baffling.
We can take a card from the pro-religious side, or at least from types like Neureberger and Al Sharpton. Al Sharpton nearly admits himself to being an agnostic in favor of religion in his much-referenced debate with Christopher Hitchens. Interesting, elegant thoughts from an interesting elegant, and slightly sensational community leader. It seems that some of our most sane, likeable religious leaders have washed their hands of superstition and yet still hold on to some slim thread of tradition and value to which their original inculcation is too strong a thread to snap.
For myself the half-baked god I was most exposed to was a “benevolent” dictator who could hear my thoughts and “had my back.” As I have said, my grandmother collected small angel statues, hardly realizing that this was evidence that even the Christian church held on, and perhaps for the better, to small paganisms. As it stands, Christianity has splintered into tinier and tinier sects across the world, room being made for thousands of half-gods and thousands, if not millions, of crudely-painted candle labels, each vaguely and obnoxiously differing from the next. Just as we slowly uncover Gnostic Gospels that tell us that the Horrible God we Judeo-Christian types were raised with “really isn’t like that,” and is more of an entity than a deity, so too it seems that the most religious among us, if given a shred of intelligence and the thirst for a more comprehensive education, may find themselves arguing for a more agnostic-type-god. What of their doctrine? Perhaps the argument will be the one we sometimes hear from the moderates among us: there’s a sort of sentimental attachment to the traditions of yore,.
In the future, as these divisions continue, I think, we may find that only agnostics will give some reasonable argument on account of religion, and no matter how eloquent they are, they are still agnostics, barely able to identify with their own side of the debate.
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July 9, 2007 at 5:57 pm
You can find the mp3 downloads of the debate featuring Christopher Hitchens, AC Grayling, Dawkins, Scruton and company here:
http://religionandatheism.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/are-we-better-off-without-religion/
July 21, 2007 at 12:06 am
[...] , Catholicism I spoke a little about the moderate movement, and the unorthodox spectrum, in this post a few days ago. But I felt as though that post sort of begged the [...]