Christopher Hitchens: 1949-2011

I woke up this morning to the terrible, but not unexpected news, that Christopher Hitchens had passed away.

Hitch (always Christopher, never Chris) was a man of outstanding intellect and his mastery of the English language was, in my experience, unsurpassed by anyone. Reading his words and hearing his voice was like having a intravenous drip of knowledge delivered straight to your very core. Hitch's greatest weapon, for me, was his ability to make you think about a subject, even if you vehemently disagreed with his stance on something you had to admire his ability to make a compelling argument on just about anything.

Christopher was diagnosed with stage 4 oesophageal cancer in June 2010 ("there is no stage 5", he remarked), who knows if it was a result of his lifestyle, it was rare up to that point to see a picture of the man without a cigarette or a drink, but his father also died of the same disease so perhaps his genes are to blame.

His tour-de-force, in my opinion, was 2007's God Is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything. But his attacks on people like Mother Theresa should also not be forgotten and showed just how much damage she did as opposed to good.

Many people are wary of Hitch's political yo-yo performance over the years, but the left-right sides of politics should be much more blurred than what they are and he showed this over the years, I think. It seems almost ridiculous that you can often take a subject and predict someone's political leanings based on their answer (abortion, education, etc, etc) but each subject should be tackled on its own merits and people tend to stick to political ideologies through stubbornness.

One of the four horsemen of New Atheism (self-proclaimed by Hitch as he knew they would only be given a name by someone else at some stage) along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Dan Dennett, Hitch's performance in religious debates leaves a trail of defeated opponents that would make even a vengeful deity proud.

So often were his opponents left realing after a verbal knockout, the term Hitchslap was born.

This particular performance is a snippet from a debate he had alongside Stephen Fry, against Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop Onaiyekan (you can find the whole debate on youtube, search for Christopher Hitchens Stephen Fry Intelligence Squared or something similar).

While his support of the Iraq war surprised some and lost him some friends and allies, it is easy to understand why he supported it. Throughout his life the one thing you can say he was absolutely consistent with regards to a subject was his disgust of anything totalitarian in nature. This was his biggest gripe towards religion, the unjustified worship, the need to be subservient to a dictator that was not elected, he compared heaven to a celestial North Korea.


The world has lost a great intellectual and possibly our most devastatingly intellectually honest writer. He passed away with an unrivaled dignity. He never wavered during his illness, honest until the end. His last article on Vanity Fair titled Trial of the Will in particular is a brutal exercise in realising one's own mortality. But while some argue there are no atheists in foxholes, Christopher continued to prove many people wrong about such notions.

It is our office christmas party tonight, and I shall be having a contemplative toast in his honour, and if the bar has any Johnnie Walker Black Label then all the better. Christopher, thank you.

Book review: Sam Harris - The Moral Landscape

The Moral Landscape (How Science Can Determine Human Values) by Sam Harris

 

This is the first of Sam’s books I have read but it certainly won’t be the last (in fact I ordered The End of Faith at the start of the week). The book is about the concept of a science of morality based on the well being of conscious creatures, made possible as we begin to understand more and more about everything that happens at the level of the brain. Using a baseline of the worst possible suffering for the longest amount of time (for everybody), we can see that all experience moves up or down this landscape Sam has created (if one does not want to avoid the worst possible misery for everyone for the longest possible time, then I don’t know what you’re talking about, and more importantly I don’t think you know what you’re talking about either). Everything we do that is worth talking about is something that alters our consciousness (mostly very little, other times hugely so) and anything that affects consciousness is happening at the level of the brain.

I had the pleasure of getting tickets for an evening with event that Sam and Richard Dawkins were doing at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford in April earlier this year. I hadn’t yet read the book, in fact I only picked it up earlier that same day so I could get it signed afterwards. The talk was filmed and you can watch it here on youtube:

The talk is a good primer for the book (and while some people have attacked his idea as another form of utilitarianism, I think the tour he has done in support of this book shows he is not guilty of this), and of course some of his introduction is almost a direct lifting from it (as you would expect), but the book certainly goes into more detail. If I were to note a slight disappointment then it would be that I was expecting perhaps a bit more on the technical aspect of the brain given Sam’s expertise in neuroscience, though there is plenty about the brain and his FMRI experiments and it's these moments where the book is most compelling. Regardless, the book left me wanting more in that regard (better that way than bore me to tears), Sam writes with a razor sharp clarity and shows the fallacy of religious moral teachings admirably, if religion is ever right, it’s right by accident.

The criticism towards the book comes from a misunderstanding of the matter in my opinion, Sam has not written (or attempted to write) a book that has all the answers, merely opening the door and exploring how and why we should be able to deride moral values from science. Perhaps this humility is disappointing for some people. It’s a liberating idea and not one that should be met with scorn, he makes plenty of analogies towards a science of physical health, when Doctors tell us things like “smoking causes lung cancer”, we don’t picture this as hostile men in white coats telling us how to live our lives in some kind of Orwellian horror show. Indeed, physical health itself is difficult to define but we don’t doubt that a science of medicine is based on physical health, and so we should deal with moral science in a similar way. Sam points out the blurred lines between facts and values as processed by the brain (this is why beliefs matter so much), how we should not confuse a position between not having answers in practice and not having answers in principle, and how there will doubtless be many different ways to travel up and down the moral landscape regarding the same questions. Harris has responded to the most compelling criticisms of his book on his website - http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-critics/

It’s a huge topic that should be taken seriously, in my opinion, and hopefully The Moral Landscape is a means towards a rational dialogue on the matter.

8/10

I'd also urge you to read Sam's blog which never fails to make you think.

Misconceptions of Atheism

(Image by Terry Border)

The term atheist strikes many different emotional chords which usually depend on a person’s own feelings towards the existence of deities (all across the scale from the major religions to simple deism and even agnostics). I want to convey what it actually means to be an atheist, and the unfortunate misconceptions that people tend to have towards the subject of atheism.

So, let’s start off with what atheism is. There is only one thing that makes someone an atheist, and that is the lack of belief in the existence of deities. Aside from this relatively simple criteria, atheists are free to think and do as they wish (though atheism is no free pass to anarchy!). This is a very liberating position in which to be.

It’s true that as a consequence of not believing in the existence of god (or gods, but from this point on I will specify god as a singular entity as not to continually repeat myself) there are likely and logical conclusions that the majority of atheists will share. Agreeing or disagreeing with other atheists does not make one a bigger/better or lesser atheist, however. You can’t sort-of believe in a god, anything greater than 0 (the number of gods one believes in) is not atheism. People also confuse atheism with secularism (separation of church and state) or humanism, which is a non-religious belief system. Atheism needn’t be confused with either as many religious people are secularists, seeing the benefit of a church/state separation and atheists needn’t adhere to any particular belief system.

“But why aren’t you agnostic?” - One of the more common attacks on atheists is that we’re sure that there is no god, how arrogant! We’re all atheists with regards to Zeus, Poseidon, Neptune or any of the numerable gods that are no longer considered in our current discourse. The only difference between atheists and monotheists is that we have gone one god further. Theists (and I would urge, agnostics) only need to understand why they themselves do not believe in any number of other gods to realise why we don’t believe in theirs. Which position holds greater arrogance - the one that doesn’t believe the universe was created by a deity with only our benefit in mind, or the one that does? We also don’t make or have materials to make claims about physics, chemistry or biology that not even the greatest scientists currently know.

And yet, people who criticise religion are often claimed to be little more than disrespectful bullies. This is usually a last resort from a theist or religious apologist. Similar low-blows include claiming that atheism is just another religion or that there are fundamental atheists, it’s funny to consider that such desperation is little more than saying you’re just as bad as we are! However, atheism is not a religion (how could it be? Consider whether not collecting stamps is a hobby, for example) nor a belief system or a way to live ones life, and if there are atheist fundamentalists this is a case for fundamentalism being wrong, not atheism. When criticising religion I believe it is important to recognise a couple of things: Criticise the idea, not the individual – ignorance is not a crime and neither is stupidity, we are all ignorant and stupid with regards to many subjects and every single person is capable of being the victim of delusion. We can only hope that people are honest enough to look at evidence and come to a realistic conclusion when better reasons appear to believe something (in other words; ignorance is redeemable, but choosing to remain ignorant is indefensible). Secondly, one has to realise that when criticising religion, all people are doing is delivering rational critique, ridicule and satire in the same manner that everybody else does when it comes to every other topic available to us, and hope that people have the requisite mental capacity to deal with that as they would in those other topics (this to me, is nothing but a mark of respect). People who scream about intolerance and lack of respect must recognise hypocrisy whenever they use these tools elsewhere. 

 (Images from the Hubble Telescope)

 

I’ve heard that atheists see no wonder or mystery in the world by reducing everything to a material/mechanical level – Science may tell us how things work or what things are, but this does not take away any beauty in reality. Stars and galaxies are no less awe inspiring just because the god of Abraham didn’t click his fingers and make them. The flora and fauna on this planet are no less miraculous having ultimately evolved from a common single-cell organism billions of years ago. There is beauty and awe for all to see in every direction, past and present. Flying horses and burning bushes cannot hold a candle to the images we are treated to of space (see images above). Atheists can be spiritual, have spiritual experiences and appreciate the numinous - these words need not be linked with the supernatural.

Consider the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc - often cited as criticisms towards atheistic or secular societies. The problem with these monstrous dictators of the 20^th century were not that they were the opposite of religion, they were too much like a religion! Any form of totalitarianism is a very, very bad thing indeed (as well as dogmatism/fundamentalism, these are the greatest crimes of which the human mind is capable). It’s also worth noting that wherever there is fascism in history, the catholic church doesn’t tend to be very far behind. It has been said elsewhere, but no society has ever suffered for being too reasonable.

Thankfully the notion that atheists have no sense of morality has long been quashed but it does crop up from time to time. There is no genuine moral action that a person of faith could undertake (because of their faith) that a non-believer could not. However, there are numerous immoral actions that religious people have undertaken because of their doctrine. Do people who make these claims on morality think that they themselves would be raping and pillaging were they to stop believing? This line of reckoning strikes me as having little confidence in their own moral compass. The golden rule, and versions of it, has been in many cultures throughout history much earlier than many appear to give it credit. We have great evolutionary reasons for our innate sense of right and wrong.

My own path to atheism? I suppose I can’t remember a time where I did truly believe in a deity, I don’t remember a eureka moment where I suddenly decided that religion couldn’t possibly be true, or that any of the numerous gods were simply man-made. I remember at primary school, dreading that we had to waste our time in communal prayer at assembly every day (basically forcing all the children in the school into a single room to utter the lords prayer among other bible stories), perhaps this early attempt by society to unjustifiably force worship down our throats was the beginning of my critical thinking (in which case I should be grateful?), but how many were lost to this seduction? Skipping ahead a few years into my first few days of secondary school, our first lesson in Religious Education (compulsory in schools, which I don’t disagree with, but it should be taught purely in a historical and cultural context. The King James Bible in particular is a fine work of literature with which one must be familiar to appreciate the English language at all) and our homework was to draw god. I failed to complete this task as the teacher said it was due for not the next lesson but the lesson after, yet called for the work in the next lesson and was angry when I said I hadn’t done it (not my fault!). Since the rest of the class had already completed the work, my god page remained blank, with hindsight this seems the best possible answer in any case. I don’t even remember ever hearing the word atheist until I heard Captain Sensible mention The God Delusion with praise at a Damned Gig back in 2006 (I got the book as a present the next year), perhaps we shouldn’t even have a word for atheism, we don’t feel compelled to describe ourselves as non-racist, for example. I’m happy to call myself an atheist given the current zeitgeist, but who knows if culture will change in the future. For the most part, I would argue today that it’s generally considered that most people have a religious belief unless otherwise specified, therefore it feels necessary to have such a label for those that don’t believe. Personally, I can hope for a time in the future where the roles could be reversed - through means of rational inquiry and critical thinking.

There is nothing wrong with having the humility to admit ignorance to things we don’t know, indeed it is a necessary position in all topics until compelling evidence arises (this is the reason why most atheists have come to their conclusion about god - a lack of evidence) and to accept change when yet better evidence becomes available. Let’s be realistic about our ignorance and not give in to the temptation to give credence to fanciful ideas and mere wish thinking, even if a religion may help someone behave kindly, there are surely better reasons, and reasons where one doesn’t have to cherry pick and ignore numerous acts of cruelty. One should be able to take influence from their religion (if they have one) the same way that one can take influence from anywhere. Claiming that holy books are the word of god is an unjustifiable and immoral position, and is one of intellectual dishonesty we can ill afford. Who knows, one particular religion may be right, but let’s not fool ourselves in the face of the evidence we currently have and the great lengths our species has gone to achieve it.