Richard Dawkins: A Reply

I've not read Richard Dawkins' best-selling book, The God Delusion, but I have watched his television spin off, The Root of All Evil? I found it interesting and engaging viewing, if only because Dawkins was not so much convincing as amusing in his splenetic attempts to portray all persons of faith as, at best, misguided, and at worst, dangerous irrationals guilty of every crime from child abuse to terrorism.

Having said all this, there were issues of import buried beneath the invective; the pity of this program was that the legitimate criticisms and concerns Dawkins articulated were shouted down by his own loud and bitter polemic. The parade of fundamentalists, bigots, and isolationists whom Dawkins paraded before the camera did serve to remind all people - but especially people of faith - of the dangers posed by arrogance, hubris, and conceit. But the underlying premises upon which Dawkins operated - that the phrase "intelligent person of faith" is an oxymoron, and that religion actually has anything to do with God - not only portray his own bigotry, but undermine the valid points he did raise.


So, what were my impressions of this program? Briefly, my thoughts below:

• Dawkins focused on the "easy targets". As indicated above, Dawkins paraded one extremist after another before the cameras in order to buttress his argument that religion is not only a nest of rabid radicals, but that it breeds generation after generation of the same. Perhaps more significantly, he only presented one "moderate" in more than two hours of television - the Anglican Bishop of Oxford. In other words, Dawkins made no attempt to seek out or present the views of moderates who would provide countervailing evidence to his central thesis. Hardly what you'd call intellectual honesty from someone who spends a lot of time banging on about his reasoned atheism; but, more disturbingly, it is indicative of an intellectual laziness that does both science and faith a grave disservice.
• Dawkins tarred everyone with the same brush. Related to the above point, the effect of Dawkins' slanted presentation was to tar all persons of faith with the same brush: not only are we ignorant fools believing absurd fairy tales, we're actually incapable of both reasoned analysis and/or reasoned behaviour. In short, we're all potentially dangerous, potentially violent, and certainly imbecilic, irrationals. Not only is this supposition patently false and offensive, it is indicative again of Dawkins' own intellectual laziness and bigotry.
• Dawkins made no reference to the debate between moderates and fundamentalists. Conveniently for Dawkins' presentation of all persons of faith as irrational extremists, he made no reference to the strong and ongoing debate within all faiths between moderates who see faith as a process of growth, exploration, and freedom, and those fundamentalists who regard faith as a matter of rules, fear, and obedience. The significance of this is that Dawkins can't actually show that many millions of people are not the wild-eyed berserkers he portrays them to be, or that they are engaged in an ongoing effort to prevent faith from being hijacked by extremists - because if he did, his whole thesis would collapse. In other words, Dawkins was intellectually dishonest by omission.
• Science and faith. Related to the above point, Dawkins was very careful not to present those scientists who are not only people of faith, they are actually confirmed in that faith by their work as scientists. In part, this is because Dawkins wants to present science (and scientists) as a field (and people) free from the "infection" of faith; but mostly because Dawkins wants to present science and faith as diametrically opposed to one another, because that suits his purpose of presenting science as reason and faith as irrationality. But he makes no mention of prominent scientists like Paul Davies who are definitely theists; nor does he mention the contributions to science made by Father Angelo Secchi SJ, for example; nor does he even acknowledge that the modern science of paleontology was effectively founded by English country parsons who were passionate about natural theology! Interestingly, he did not even make mention of the observation by fellow physicist and atheist Stephen Hawking that the only people who agree with him these days are theologians.
• Confusion of terms. Dawkins seems incapable of understanding that faith does not involve a "suspension of disbelief" as he contends, but does involve the necessity of holding different concepts or perspectives in tension. In other words, at its core, faith is a mystery, and the essence of all mysteries is a preparedness to embrace ambiguity, to enter into that which cannot be empirically known. Christians (or Jews or Muslims) cannot "prove" God exists any more than atheists can "prove" God doesn't exist; but this does not involve a suspension of disbelief, it involves holding in tension what can be empirically proven and what can be spiritually experienced.
• Confusing religion with God. As noted above, one of the mistakes Dawkins makes is to imagine religion has anything to do with God. In other words, Dawkins seems to suggest that the extreme elements within religion demonstrate that God does not exist by virtue of the very irrationality of those extremisms. Aside from being circular arguing, and aside also from the fact that since he cannot actually prove God doesn't exist Dawkins is reduced to attacking religion as a proxy for God, Dawkins cannot seem to appreciate that religion is not about God or from God; rather, it is the human response to God and the possibility of God. Therefore, that there are flaws within religion - as within any other human endeavour, such as science - is only to be expected. But those flaws say nothing about God, nor even about whether or not God exists.
• Intellectual fraud. Despite Dawkins' protestations that science is the realm of reason and enlightenment, science is replete with cases of intellectual fraud. Among these are the notorious Piltdown Man, cold nuclear fusion, and molecular scale transistors. Happily, these were exposed by other scientists, pointing to one of the strengths of the scientific method: peer review and review committees. But the mere fact of these frauds demonstrates that Dawkins' contention that there is something about religion which is inherently dishonest and which promotes intellectual dishonesty is itself completely dishonest.
• The basis for belief. Dawkins asserts that persons of faith simply "make a decision to believe" in the existence of God or the veracity of scriptural texts. This gross generalisation betrays Dawkins' complete ignorance about the process by which people come to faith; he seems to assume that people just wake up one day and decide that they will believe in God or accept a particular text as authoritative. But for many people, the process that leads to belief is painful or traumatic, precisely because they don't want to believe in God, but some inner conviction militates against this, no matter how hard they try to ignore it. It only requires a careful reading of C S Lewis' Surprised by Joy to appreciate how utterly absurd Dawkins' flippant remark in this respect is.
• Selectivity. Dawkins accuses moderates of "fence sitting" and selective use of scriptural texts to reinforce their delusions of intellectual respectability. But this is exactly what Dawkins does to reinforce his gripes against faith: he selects those passages from the Bible that speak about killing and death and capital punishment to justify his claim that God is a vicious, homicidal fiction. Curiously, he never mentions the 2,000-odd references to justice for the poor and marginalised that Christ spoke in the Gospels; or the many passages in the Books of Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, or Micah which condemn the powerful for victimising the helpless. Ultimately - and ironically - what Dawkins' does is replicate the same mistake the fundamentalists make: he selectively hurls proof texts at his opponents to justify his own prejudices.
• Reason for belief. Dawkins asserts that people of faith venerate scriptures that teach hate; that they stubbornly and intransigently indulge in hidebound belief for belief's sake; and that people should do good things for their own sake instead of because they want to suck up to God. Once again, all these bigoted statements do is highlight Dawkins' own ignorance of the religious impulse. With the exception of literalist fundamentalists, persons of faith do not venerate scriptures of their own accord; that would be idolatry, raising those scriptures to the same level of God. Scriptures are "venerated" because they form authoritative texts depicting the human response to the possibilities of God throughout human history. Moreover, belief is not indulged in for its own sake; it is an approach to life, an approach that encompasses moral, theological, rational, and social dimensions that are reflective of the relationship between humanity and the divine. Finally, "sucking up to God" simply is not the reason most people of faith act morally; they do so because they believe it reflects the love which God has for humanity. "Sucking up" is simply Dawkins' puerile and childish attempt to denigrate this sense of the human-divine relationship.

Was there anything in Dawkins' program that was legitimate? Yes; he made a number of important observations about the distortions and abuses of faith that must be guarded against: intellectual dishonesty; authoritarianism and isolationism; the corporatisation of faith; the hijacking of faith by nationalism; the failure to act decisively against the abuse of children; arrogance and self-righteousness. But these are abuses and distortions are not limited to faith; they are dangers that are latent within any human enterprise. More importantly, Dawkins' ranting and self-important posturing only serves to undermine the legitimate criticisms he does make. Combined with his own methodological laziness and intellectual dishonesty, they make for an end product that comes over more like a childish rant than a reasoned or considered critique.

More's the pity.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: A fanatic is someone who sticks to his guns, regardless of whether they're loaded or not. (Franklin P. Jones)

Bogroll Blues

Life involves certain inevitabilities.

Someone else always takes the last after-dinner mint. There's never anyone around when you have something brilliantly witty to say. The perfect come-back occurs to you hours after you've been insulted. Toilet rolls are impossible to unwind.

No kidding. And I know what you're thinking: what could be easier than unwinding a roll of toilet paper? Afterall, millions of people do it all over the world, every day.

Yeah, well, other people don't get my toilet paper. Now don't get squeamish on me: I'm talking about toilet paper immediately after it's been taken out of its plastic wrapper.

Every roll I get always comes with the first ply of paper sealed down to the rest of the roll. So no problem, you say: just unpeel it, and the rest is child's play. Except for the fact that once I've unwound the roll a single circuit, I discover that the spot immediately under the first ply is also stuck down to the rest of the roll.

Why do they do this? I can understand sealing down the first ply; afterall, you don't want the whole roll of paper unravelling in its packaging. But why is the corresponding ply for the next half dozen circuits also sealed down? What do they think is going to happen - that some toilet roll gremlin is going to sneak into the master toilet roll repository and unwind ever damn roll in the place? Okay, so accidents happen; seals come unstuck, so it pays to be cautious. I could understand if they sealed the relevant ply on the second circuit - but the next half dozen as well?

I mean, would it be that much of a disaster if the occasional roll unwound in the packaging? Hell, speaking for myself, I would be positively delighted to remove a roll of toilet paper from the package to find the end flapping loosely in the breeze. No problem: straight on the dispenser and straight into action!

But nooooo - every roll of paper Yours Truly gets his hands on is stuck down for layer after layer after layer. Which means lots of fiddling and muttering and swearing as I try and unstick each layer; because - and you know what I'm talking about - one loop of paper is never enough.

So then I only make things worse by trying to be clever. You'd think I learn, wouldn't you? I try and circumvent the seals by tearing laterally across the roll of paper to a depth of several circuits, the idea being that if I get down to a level which doesn't have a seal, I'll be able to unwind the roll at ease. All I end up with are lots of half circuits of paper - and a bloody roll that's still sealed!

*Sigh*

Once - just once - I'd like to buy a brand of toilet paper that was easy to unroll. I mean - and I'm not going to get into gruesome details - there are times when ease of unroll makes a heck of a difference to my day. Especially the morning after the evening I consumed a super-hot Mexicana pizza with extra jalapeno peppers!

So here's a heartfelt plea to the manufacturers of loo rolls everywhere: can you please, please, please find a way of making user-friendly toilet paper? If customer satisfaction means anything to you guys, you'll really make my day if you can see your way clear to producing toilet paper that doesn't double as confetti!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Capitalism: survival of the fattest. (Anonymous)

The Lost Cause

I have just finished reading a rather remarkable book: Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon. It is a science fiction novel, originally published in 1931, and is a companion piece with its "sequel" Star Maker, published in 1938.

Olaf Stapledon was a British philosopher who lived from 1886 to 1950. Although he published widely on philosophy, ethics, industrial history, and psychology, it is as a science fiction author that Stapledon is best remembered. He used SF to disseminate his philosophical ideas, and was both commercial successful and critically acclaimed during his life. He was also deeply influential on the science fiction of writers such as Arthur C Clarke, C S Lewis, and Brian Aldiss.

Stapledon's philosophy was essentially existential, although he is now also regarded as one of the pioneers of the philosophy of transhumanism (the philosophy of improving humanity - whether physically or existentially - through genetics, integration with non-organic devices, psychological intervention, etc). The essential problem with which Stapledon grappled in his fiction is eloquently expressed by the Book of Ecclesiastes, 3:11 - God has put eternity into man's mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end. In other words, the fact that humans have both an innate sense of eternity and of their own mortality and transience; and the question of how this conflict is to be addressed if we are not to lapse into either apathetic melancholy or outright insanity.

Last and First Men is a "future history", in this case, the future of humanity related as a past event by someone living in the remote future. "Future history" is a device that has frequently been used by SF writers from the inception of the genre, usually to extrapolate on a line of speculation arising from present social and/or technological trends. Writers like H G Wells went a step further; in novels like The World Set Free, and, most notably, The Shape of Things to Come, Wells articulated his expectation that humanity would bring itself to the brink of destruction and then establish a kind of utopia in which an enlightened cabal of scientists, technologists, artists and philosophers would assume control of human affairs to bring about genuine civilisation. In effect, these "future history" novels by Wells were extrapolations on Plato's Republic.

Stapledon also utilised a philosophical base for his "future history", although this time it was existentialism. In it, Stapledon depicts humanity's efforts over billions of years to rise above the limitations of its physical self, in order to become pure "intelligence" or "mind" that would be able to establish communion with the "cosmic mind" of all life within the universe. Stapledon did not imagine this "cosmic mind" to be God, so much as the "All Real" or the "Soul of All", the once and always awakening of all life within the cosmos to its own reality and worth, death and entropy notwithstanding. In other words, Stapledon's novel depicts humanity's struggle to understanding itself, to perceive, in objectively verifiable terms, its own "reality" as distinct from its mere existence.

This yearning, this search for transcendence from mere existence into awakened reality, is powerfully expressed toward the end of Stapledon's novel:

For, if ever the cosmic ideal should be realised, even though for a moment only, then in that time the awakened Soul of All will embrace within itself all spirits whatever throughout the whole of time's wide circuit. And so to each of them, even to the least, it will seem that he has awakened and discovered himself to be the Soul of All, knowing all things and rejoicing in all things. And though afterwards, through the inevitable decay of stars, this most glorious vision must be lost, suddenly or in the long-drawn-out defeat of life, yet would the awakened Soul of All have eternal being, and within it each martyred spirit would have beatitude eternally, though unknown to itself in its own temporal mode.

Stapledon's conclusion is gloomy: humanity's efforts to rise above itself, to escape the limitations of flesh and become "spirit" or "mind" and enter into he cosmic communion of life and being are doomed by our species' nature as beings. Yet he also declares that the struggle itself, doomed though it may be, is heroic and beautiful and worth undertaking; it is an aspect of weltschmerz, the terrible cosmic sadness and beauty of being that is part of the whole symmetry and tragedy and glory of the universe.

Man himself, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall afterall make a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man.

And it is this bitter-sweetness that underlines one of the most extraordinary aspects of Last and First Men: the very fact that its does not see man as immune from the effects of evolution and the operations of the physical universe. Time and again in the novel, humanity is brought low by cataclysmic environmental or geological or astronomic events; time and again, humanity has to adapt to drastically altered climactic conditions. And as a consequence of these changes, humanity evolves: indeed, Stapledon depicts seventeen different human species, each one radically different from its predecessors, but each one also recognisably human. And in doing so, Stapledon draws our attention to a very important point: the present human species is not the "end of evolution". There will come a time when homo sapiens is extinct, either because we have succeeded in destroying ourselves, or because we have (or have been forced to) evolve into a different human species. Just as homo neanderthalis no longer walks the earth, there will come a time when homo sapiens belongs exclusively to the past.

His existence has ever been precarious. At any stage of his career he might easily have been exterminated by some slight alteration of his chemical environment, by a more than usually malignant microbe, by a radical change of climate, or by the manifold effects of his own folly.

Moreover, one of the most startling - and to a modern reader, disturbing - aspect of the novel is the centrality of eugenics to progress human evolution. To be sure, the eugenics Stapledon depicts is not the "racial eugenics" of the Nazis. Rather, Stapledon saw no ethical quandary in humanity manipulating its own physical state - "remaking" itself - in order to improve its psychological/existential/emotional/spiritual condition. This has subsequently developed into the philosophy of transhumanism, and at the time Stapledon wrote, was a widely held and regarded possibility among many scientists and philosophers. Nonetheless, to modern readers it will seem vaguely sinister and disturbing, redolent of Nazi atrocities and nightmares about servile human or quasi-human underclasses (a la the "replicants" in Bladerunner).

Finally, the feature of Stapledon's novel that is most striking is his prescience in anticipating many things that have either come to pass, or which closely resemble what he thought the near future might look like. Granted, he missed his target in several respects - the effectiveness of the League of Nations, for example; the speed with which space technology would develop; the impact of coal burning on the environment; or the development of first atomic and then nuclear weapons - but many of his social and political anticipations are astonishingly accurate. How many of these were reasonably predictable in 1931 I have no idea, but the list is impressive nonetheless:

• The emergence of globalisation - the pre-eminence of industrial-economic imperatives in world affairs - in the late 20th century;
• The emergence of India and China as world economic powers
• The collapse of state totalitarian societies through their inevitable interface with, and dependence upon, market/consumer capitalism;
• The preservation in China of the facade of one party rule with a highly individualised society the underlying reality;
• The global dominance of American cultural, social, and economic values;
• The emergence of Christian fundamentalism in the US and its alliance with radical free-market capitalism;
• The philosophical sympathy between theoretical physics and theology;
• The development of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction;
• The increasing specialisation and complexity of the various branches of science;
• The pre-occupation of industrialised society with economic growth and mass consumption to the point where resources are exhausted;
• The rapid exhaustion of reserves of fossil fuels and their replacement with renewable alternative energy sources;
• The illusion of material prosperity as an index of human well-being;
• The emergence of the cult of celebrity;
• The emergence of "extreme sports" as a distraction from existential ennui or in the increasingly desperate search for originality;
• The growing importance of "major events" as means of mass entertainment;
• The emergence of anti-intellectualism and the imperative on "practical" or "vocational" education;
• The emergence of existential nihilism as a consequence of excessive materialism.

All this can seem rather depressing, a litany of human failure in the midst of the splendour of being and the majesty of the cosmos. But Stapledon noted that humanity was in many ways a noble creature, striving to rise above its limitations, to become greater than the sum of its parts. Therein lay its great tragedy; but therein also lay its poignant beauty.

We, who have now learnt so thoroughly the the supreme art of ecstatic fatalism, go humbly to the past to learn over again that other supreme achievement of the spirit, loyalty to the forces of life embattled against the forces of death. Wandering among the heroic and often forlorn ventures of the past, we are fired once more with primitive zeal. Thus, when we return to our own world, we are able, even while we preserve in our hearts the peace that passeth understanding, to struggle as though we cared only for victory.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! (William Shakespeare)

Wonderful Sacred Art

Check out My Dearly Beloved's Blog for a link to some wonderful sacred art she's uncovered. Well worth the visit.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality. (John Ruskin)

What To Do?

Last night, my Dearly Beloved and I watched Andrew Denton's excellent documentary "God on My Side", screened on ABC TV. We also watched the first part of the TV adaption of Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion", likewise screened on ABC. So it was somewhat serendipitous that I read this article in the current edition of Eureka Street.

I provided some comments in response to the article, provided below. However, read the article first then my comments for the proper context.

I plan to provide my thoughts the Dawkins documentary after its conclusion.

Thankyou for this interesting and timely piece.

Like many Australians, I am watching (with interest and fascination) the TV series of "The God Delusion" currently screening on ABC; and I also watched Andrew Denton's "God on My Side" last night, also on ABC.

I actually agree with you that the current surge of anti-theism is a substantial good - although I'm not sure I'd agree with you as to why. My essential feeling is that it is time that "moderate" persons of faith made it clear that the phrase "thinking Christian" (or Jew, or Muslim, or Hindu, etc) is not an oxymoron - which is essentially Dawkins' argument, inasmuch as he asserts that religion, a priori, prevents free thinking and destroys intellectual freedom.

For me, this was brought home when, at the conclusion of Denton's excellent documentary,my wife sighed rather wistfully: "I wish they'd do a film about moderate Christians to show the world we're not all like the fundamentalists".

And that, of course, is the rub; films about fundamentalists get made because they're "interesting" - that is, they are so far outside the lived experience of the vast bulk of the population as to be assured of generating a response (and, hence, commercial success). But the danger, of course, is that the fundamentalists become the sole projection of faith; just as right-wing Republicanism has, sadly, become the sole projection of US society.

And that, in turn, is why the likes of Dawkins regard religious belief as a synonym for unthinking, authoritarian imbecility.

But here's the other rub: the dilemma facing all "moderates" or "progressives" is that, in order to be true to their philosophical raison d'etre, they have to allow others the freedom they claim for themselves. In other words, if someone wants to be a fundamentalist, I have to give them the freedom to be a fundamentalist, otherwise the freedom I claim for myself is simply an illusion at best, a lie at worst.

Extremists of any persuasion don't have this problem: in their minds, they are right, and everyone else has to tow their line. But this "dilemma of conscience" can effectively cripple "moderates" and prevent them asserting themselves, lest they trip over the thin line between self-assertion and oppression. So the question is: how do "moderates" ensure that fundamentalism doesn't become the sole projection of faith, thereby adding more fuel to the anti-theist fire?

I don't have any easy answers to that; partly because I don't think there are any such easy answers; but also because I think part of the solution is to be found in the good that the current wave of anti-theism will do for people of faith. Which is to say, how "thinking Christians" (or Jews or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists, etc) respond to the charges laid by Dawkins and co in such a way as to demonstrate the fallacy of their position (whilst at the same time recognising any legitimate criticisms they may have to make), may give those same groups an insight into how to ensure fundamentalism doesn't become the sole projection of faith.

Which brings me around to the basic reason why I disagree with you about why the present prominence of Dawkins and Hitchins is good for faith. To be honest, I am rather tired of this notion that Western culture is a bland wash of relativism or that our efforts to afford dignity and respect to competing worldviews is some fatuous ornament to liberal pluralism". On the contrary, I think that Western society is amazingly robust and dynamic, and that its attempts to facilitate multiple approaches to being is both its strength and its greatest validation. No, we don't always do it right, and yes, we must ensure that critical debate and analysis continues and that we do not meekly accept "whatever is going" in some facile gesture to "pluralism" or "multiculturalism" or even "tolerance"; neither must we turn a blind eye to the cruelties and inhumanities practiced in the name of culture, or religion (our own included) out of some misguided notion of respect. But that is a completely different thing from asserting that Western pluralist culture is suffering from some fatal malaise that Dawkins and co will help knock us out of.

In this respect, I would make two observations. 1) If we are being assailed by ennui at present, it is one that exists within faith generally and Christianity particularly. That is why the fundamentalists on the one hand, and the anti-theists on the other, are so attractive to so many: because they appear muscular, robust, alive, and this is interpreted as synonymous with intellectual or moral integrity. 2) The solution to the problem of fundamentalist monopolisation of faith, and the anti-theist critique, lies with ourselves, not in any suggestion of Western cultural malaise. We need to get our own house in order, because the fight is not between faith and a relativistic society, or between faith and anti-theist criticism: the fight is between faith as freedom, diversity, and vigour and faith as uniform, monochrome, authoritarianism.

Thanks again for this article.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: A fanatic is a man who does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew the facts of the case. (Finley Peter Dunne)

A Word About The Word

Last night, my Dearly Beloved and I had the very good fortune of attending a presentation by John Bell, a minister in the Church of Scotland and noted composer of hymns, who is also a member of the Iona Community.

The subject of the presentation was how we read the Bible, and how that reading affects the way we relate to and understand the Bible as the Word of God. He made the important point that the content of the Bible was originally composed by a predominantly oral-transmission society; that is, a society that was largely illiterate (from the standpoint of modern society) but which composed and transmitted stories across generations through a process of memorisation and embellishment and story-telling. The importance of this insight is that it points to the fact that the Bible is, for Christians, part of our lived history - but is too often approached from a literary (reading) perspective instead of from an oral / lived tradition perspective.

To further illustrate this point, Bell spoke about the traditions of sacred story-telling and poetry and hymn-making from the Celtic-speaking communities of the UK and Ireland, which were only written down and compiled in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many of these poems and songs and stories are hundreds of years old; some, indeed, in one form or another, over a thousand years old. And yet they have been retained and transmitted across generations by the societies in which they were retained; partly as an aspect of those societies' cultural identity; but also as a vibrant and ongoing manifestation of the life of those communities.

But what needs to be particularly remembered is that these poems and songs and stories are part of these communities' understanding of, and engagement with, the text of the Bible - as this text was transmitted orally to those communities via the media of pictorial representation or dramatic presentation. By way of example, Bell read a poem from Ireland in which a woman talks about her desire to entertain Jesus and Mary and the apostles, and describes heaven as a lake of beer from which they might refresh themselves for all eternity. In a telling phrase, Bell described poems like this as "the argument between the common people and the text" - the word "argument" being used in its original sense as a conversation or dialogue. In other words, the text of the Bible wasn't simply a "dead weight" to be passively received; it was a living expression of faith which in turn prompted and inspired their own interpretation, their own understanding of and response to the Word of God.

However, one of the outcomes of the Reformation, and the invention of printing in the wake of the Renaissance, was that the Word of God ceased being a Word that was transmitted and served as a point of discussion and expression; instead, it became a matter of "black and white", a text which existed in an unchanging - or, perhaps more accurately, in a solid - form that could only be read, not listened to. And in this regard, Bell made some important points about the assumptions among Christians that this has lead to:

• That understanding the Bible is an intellectual exercise. The point being that this assumption mistakenly believes that the intellect is the only vehicle through which the Word of God can be - or must be - understood. But as the poem from the Irish woman who depicted heaven in terms of hospitality and a lake of beer that lasted for eternity demonstrates, she was responding at a far more visceral and human level - a level that involved all her senses as well as her intellect. She was giving expression to her yearning to see Jesus and Mary and the apostles, and to incorporate the experience of knowing them into her life through the cultural and communal expressions of hospitality and the pleasure of food and drink. It is altogether beautiful and moving and deeply, intensely human.
• That we should be able to understand or "work out" the Word of God. Many Christians have a highly attuned sense of the transcendence of God, of the ineffability and mystery that is God viewed from the human perspective. And yet, when it comes to the Bible, especially if we approach it as a "text", we have this assumption that we should be able to work it out and understand it completely in all of its parts. In other words, while God is ineffable, a mystery, God's Word isn't! But of course this is absurd; partly because the humans who composed the Bible were themselves attempting to respond to, and make sense of, the mystery of God; and partly because, if "understanding" is the only point of the Bible, then it is in fact pointless. In other words, the point of the Bible is not "enlightenment" but response; it's not about "getting it", it's about how we find meaning, and how we incorporate that meaning into our lives so that God's Word becomes a lived experience.
• That people should take their Bibles to church and follow the reading instead of listening to it being spoken. Of course, Bell recognised that there were perfectly good reasons why someone might take a Bible to church and follow the reading; for example, those who were hard of hearing. But the point he was making was that, in assuming that we should "read along", we are in fact missing out on a crucial means by which the Word of God becomes a lived experience. Because the oral tradition was not simply about conveying a story; it was concerned with conveying meaning through speech, transmitting to the audience elements and ingredients of understanding and potential for response through the way the speaker delivers the text to the hearers. Cadence and inflection and all the modes and mannerisms of speech affect the outcome, affect how people will receive information and respond. But that is the very point of the oral tradition; and it is the very reason why we should listen to the Word of God, instead of merely "reading along".

In detailing these assumptions, Bell was making the point that although it is frequently pointed out to us that the Bible consists of many different literary forms, we are rarely - if ever - taught how to read those forms in a manner suited to them. More critically, we are not taught how to speak those forms or listen to those forms in a fashion that gives attention to their literary construction. Indeed, we tend to approach the Bible as though it were a homogeneous document written by the same person; as a result of which, we pass through the various literary forms in the Bible without changing our "perspective as reader". We read the poems as though they were prose; we read the historical chronicles as though they were fiction; we read the prophetic literature as though they were text books. The result is people who tend to read Scripture in one of two extremes: either in a dull monotone; or as though it were a production from an amateur dramatics society.

Bell's point is simple and important: different kinds of literature require different kinds of attention. They need to be approached in different ways and conveyed in different moods and voices. In order for the Word of God to be part of our lived experience, we must appreciate the textual diversity and richness of the Bible; we must listen to the different literary forms with a different ear; we must ditch our assumptions about the Bible and how we must approach it as God's Word; and we must view the text not as a "text" carved in stone, but as one half of an engagement - one half of an argument, a conversation, a dialogue in which both we and God are active participants, and in which we formulate and work through and live out our own response and understanding.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: The Bible is literature, not dogma. (George Santayana)

One of the Boys

I have just finished watching Bastard Boys, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's two-part mini-drama about the "docks dispute" in 1998.

I won't talk about the show itself: it has attracted enough superlatives, all of them richly deserved. Nor will I talk about the politics of the dispute, or the right or wrongs of the issues by which it was underlined: plenty of commentators more qualified than I have already undertaken this task.

What I want to talk about are my memories of that dispute - because I was there, on Swanson Dock, on the picket line. Not as one of the wharfies; but as a white collar union official, and as a citizen supporting the Maritime Union of Australia.

Bastard Boys understandably concentrates on the "headline" features of the dispute: the experiences of the MUA and its members, the motivations behind the actions taken by their employer, Patrick Stevedores, the involvement of the Howard Government in precipitating the dispute, and the courtroom machinations that eventually decided the dispute's outcome. But what went unremarked at the time and afterwards is how soon the dispute ceased being an industrial confrontation and became a community protest.

Many people felt that the involvement of the Federal Government in this dispute, and the measures utilised by the employer, represented both an assault on citizens' rights to be members of a union and not suffer prejudice in their employment, and a violation of the much-vaunted Australian "value" of a "fair go". And this was a feeling that crossed the divides of socio-economic standing, political opinion, or industrial attitude. I met many people on the docks who didn't like unions, who were politically conservative, and who believed industrial relations in Australia needed to be reformed. But they were nonetheless participating in the picket because they objected to what they regarded as the illegitimate measures utilised by the Government and Patrick. Which didn't mean they regarded the MUA and its members as benighted martyrs or innocent angels; rather, that the mechanics of Australian society had to operate on a higher plane than mere industrial flexibility or economic advantage.

I don't think either Patrick or the Howard Government expected the public to react in this way. Indeed, I suspect they thought they would be able to rely on the stereotype of portraying the MUA and its members as a small cabal of corrupt, blue-collar thugs in order to win the public-relations war. However, by being too clever by half - and by engaging in behaviour that could be shown, prima facie, to amount to a conspiracy to subvert the law - Patrick and the Government surrendered the high moral ground.

Sadly, the MUA's success in using the law against the government resulted in the union movement being hoisted on its own petard. Having gained control of both houses of Parliament at the last Federal election, the Howard Government promptly passed the so-called "Workchoices" legislation that spelled out in tortuous detail the prohibitions and limitations on union activity. In other words, the Government weren't going to take any chances of their own legislation being used against them; freedom of association was going to mean the right to not belong to a union - or the right to belong to a union that could do bugger all to help you.

But I digress. As I say, the dispute quickly turned into a community protest. And it was amazing to see the variety of people down at the docks during the long, cold nights of the dispute. Elderly men in business suits; suburban housewives; professional people; tradespeople; young folks from the city fringe; old folks from the leafy inner suburbs. There were musicians and entertainers, food vendors and first-aid workers. A barrier of twisted iron railings dubbed the "community art project". Cut down steel drums to serve as braziers, and chairs, sofas, and improvised seating for all to share.

And the atmosphere was remarkably relaxed. A general air of bonhomie prevailed; there was no drugs, no drinking, no violence; a truce been the police and the protesters had been agreed and kept by both sides. After the initial drama and anger of the lockout, the prevailing mood was of good-natured, though always defiant, resistance.

For myself, I remember two things: how cold it was at night, and how constantly exhausted I felt. The union I worked for at the time somehow managed to draw the midnight to 6am shift on the pickets; we divided into two shifts of three hours each, but that still meant getting up at hellishly early hours to be on the docks, and then having to go to work during the day. I lived at Ocean Grove at the time, down on the Bellarine Peninsular, an hour's drive out of Melbourne. I think I lived on Jolt Cola and Mars Bars, hoping the caffeine and guarana and yerba mate would keep me awake! And I don't think there wasn't a shift when it wasn't bitterly cold, and it didn't matter how close to the braziers you stood, you could never get warm enough.

Well, it was a long time ago now. The political and economic and social and financial and industrial and legal consequences of that dispute have played, and are still playing, themselves out. I only know this: that however tangentially, I was on the side of the boys, I was one of the boys. And I was proud to be so.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: It is always a minority who occupy the front line. (Major-General Orde Wingate)

Original Sin

This semester, one of the subjects I've been studying is Introduction to Biblical Text. This has been a fascinating subject on many levels, not least because it has introduced me to the depths and relevance of the pre-exilic prophets (Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, etc). However, it has also opened my eyes to some of the intricacies and mysteries of the Book of Genesis, especially concerning creation, original sin, and the story of the Flood.

Speaking of original sin, this subject has helped me to see that a close reading of the text reveals a fascinating fact: that when Eve is tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden to eat from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she actually argues with the serpent, and then makes a decision to eat the fruit based on rational criteria: its pleasing appearance, the fact that it would be good to eat, etc. By contrast, when she offers the fruit to Adam, he simply takes it and eats, without either argument or assessment.

Now this is significant, because this passage in Genesis has frequently been utilised to oppress and suppress women, to view them as the source of evil or the originators of original sin. In other words, to treat women as sub-human. The implication in all this is that it was a woman who was weak and fallen, and who was responsible not just for original sin but for all the evils of which humans are capable; by extension, therefore, women are "more fallen" then men and are "more at fault" for the horrors and hardships of the world. Thus, when a man commits some evil - especially if it involves some sexually motivated evil - a woman usually ends up getting the blame, even if only by implication or through the assumptions that undergird our unspoken prejudices.

But examination of this passage in Genesis demonstrates that this attitude is not simply unfair, it's downright wrong. The argument that a woman was responsible for bringing original sin into the world is, in essence, just an excuse to let men "off the hook". Eve argues with the serpent, then makes her own decision; Adam just does what he is told. Thus, it is Eve who displays independence of thought and strength of mind and character, and Adam who is weak and compliant. Eve is guilty, perhaps, of poor judgement; Adam is guilty of moral cowardice.

And let's face it, guys: we've been disguising and warping and covering up the fact for most of human history.

So I was delighted with the following cartoon from one of my favourite cartoonists, Wiley. I really do think it sums up the situation perfectly; note especially Eve's reaction in the cartoon. Click on the cartoon to get an enlarged image.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Original sin: the only original thing about some men. (Helen Rowland)