Posts Tagged ‘religion’

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Legislating ‘Religious Freedom’, again

December 25, 2018

The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney has been demanding “religious freedom” in his Christmas message and it is interesting to know what he means by that…
He complains that Christmas is “one of the few occasions when the public expression of religious faith is tolerated”. Archbishop Fisher should at least include Easter as a time in which Christian expression is ‘tolerated’ or heard in considerable detail.

We also seem to have quite a lot of Christians who belong to political lobby groups, comment in newspapers and in political chambers and so on all year round. They don’t seem to realise they are ‘forbidden’ from so doing by anyone -and that is absolutely good, it indicates some degree of religious freedom is present.

Christians are pretty active in politics and in social life from what I can see, as they should be, and faith is not excluded from the public domain at all. They still have Christian prayers in parliament, and talk about the importance of the judeao-christian tradition etc. We recently had many Christians telling us that recognising gay marriage was a terrible thing, and others telling us it wasn’t. Christians were hardly quiet. The problem is, perhaps that the Archbishop’s pronouncements are not automatically respected, just because he makes them. He needs to make a case for them. This is what preaching is supposed to be.

But let’s look at his case in this Christmas message:

“We’ve witnessed moves to make the celebration of the sacrament of confession illegal…”
No one at all has wanted to make sacrament of confession illegal. People have suggested that absolution could be withheld from people who rape children until they confess to the police, or that priests should have to report such events to legal authorities. That is all. Repeat no one has tried to make confession illegal. This claim would seem to be false.

There are no serious moves to defund church schools either as he claims. Indeed the Federal Government has moved to increase funding for Church Schools. There are moves, so far unsuccessful, to make sure that the Church does not continue (as it apparently has been) to give all the funds to its most wealthy schools and leave other poorer schools ill funded. In other words there have been requests for transparency for government, taxpayers, and parents. It would appear his second claim is also false.

Moves “to charge an archbishop with discrimination for teaching about marriage” Which archbishop has been charged for teaching about marriage? None? What chance would such a case have of success? According to another source I’ve read, which may not be accurate, the person “teaching about marriage” had said something to the effect that same sex parents were all paedophiles. If he did issue this teaching, it is clearly false and possibly libellous. Perhaps we should call the Archbishop of Sydney’s claim a rhetorical exaggeration, rather than a falsehood?

He is pretty correct that people have been worrying about organisations discriminating against people who genuinely would like to belong to them, so moderate truth in that statement.

For a supposed Christian, he is being as honest as, well, a well-known Coalition politician who also claims to be Christian.

The Church not only asks to be able to bring its message to people as he states, it asks to receive taxpayer funded support for that activity, the ability to discriminate against particular taxpayers, and to hide child abusers…. and that does not really seem like hope or healing, just power and politics…

This is also an organisation which does not pay tax, accumulates property, has been found to abuse children in its care, protect the abusers and engage in financial corruption. And of course, there is the event of which none of us in Australia can speak, and that does not appear to show the Church has no influence.

So, it appears that for him religious freedom involves:

  • 1) The ability to take taxpayers’ money without accountability.
  • 2) The ability to protect criminal members of his organisation.
  • 3) The ability to lie about people and persecute them.
  • 4) Automatic respect for his pronouncements.

    • This is not religious freedom, but religious privilege, and it is not remotely clear, from his arguments, why the Church needs more protection…

    Other high status Christians managed to preach the gospel this Christmas.

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    Conservatism as a philosophy

    October 17, 2018

    Conservatism is a coherent philosophy that essentially argues we should be beware of perfectionism and radical change, and we should regard tradition favourably as it has ‘evolved’ to deal with social and political problems. Tradition provides checks and balances that we may find we desperately need even if the traditions may look silly. Rituals can provide stability and, sometimes, tacit understandings of life. Conservatism instinctively knows about social complexity, and that deliberate change can be disorderly. In Conservatism people aim to produce islands of order amidst the flux of life.

    Conservatism argues that people are not equal in everything. Different people are better at different things than others, consequently we should always listen to the advice of experts or experienced people, while being aware they may be corrupted by self-interest. We should be beware of abstract theoretical knowledge which may miss important ‘irrationalities’, and prefer the knowledge of the craftsperson with experience, whose work we can judge by its excellence. We should particularly be beware of demagogues; that is people who say anything, lie continually, and constantly shift position so as to persuade people to follow them. Demagoguery leads to tyranny, as it suffers no interior compunction to do what is right.

    This presents a mild problem because it is impossible to govern ‘practically’ without some deception as you are trying to persuade conflictual groups to work together. However, people (and leaders in particular) should in general cultivate truth as truth is the ultimate basis of understanding, morality and good governance. As humans are prone to self-deception the commitment to truth is a commitment to honour. People can have no lasting agreements without honour.

    Honour means keeping your word, and being trustworthy, especially when it is difficult. Trust is the basis of society. Without trust and the honour necessary to keep trust, everything falls apart. Virtue is often difficult and people who say we should not do the right thing, because it is difficult, should be shunned. Honour is also involved in being polite. Politeness is a ritual which indicates respect for others and oneself, and helps cement social solidarity and free discussion. One should be polite to one’s inferiors, as ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. Calling people you disagree with ‘libtards,’ screaming extermination threats at them, or lying about their policies, is neither polite nor conservative – it is demagoguery and to be shunned.

    Conservatives believe cultural heritage is important – people should be aware of the best that has been thought, written, painted and composed. Appreciation of good art and philosophy is vital to cultivation of the soul and the development of character, as are tests and challenges. Those people who are particularly good at these kind of things should be encouraged to act as exemplars for us all, as humans tend to learn by imitation. If society values the best, then people will live up to the best.

    Religion should be treated with respect, but we should be aware of the potential for religions to become extreme. Moderation is important, as it is to all virtues. The idea of God is necessary for human morality, human modesty, and the cultivation of tradition. Attending religious events also builds social solidarity, as all layers of society mix harmoniously and observe each other. If the rulers show no respect for God and tradition then ordinary people will loose it as well. It used to be said ironically that the Church of England was the Tory Party at prayer, but this should held to be entirely correct without irony.

    While power should be centered in the Government and a governmental elite (ie people with experience and knowledge), the government should not have total power, and there should be a large number of other sources of power, so that one source of power does not dominate over all the others, and the self-interest of the governmental elite is checked.

    This is the basis of Civil society, and organisations of business people, soldiers, workers, churches, ‘media’, arts and so on are vital to maintain this balance. Wealth is good, not because it enables show or power (that is to be disapproved of), but because it enables people to engage in actions, like supporting charity, the arts, philosophy, and because it provides the leisure necessary for people to cultivate excellence. However, wealth is not to be allowed to control Government, any more than should the military or the churches.

    Conservatism is an art of cultivation. It attempts to bring out the best in people, and conserve and beautify the land they live in. Progress occurs gradually and builds upon experience, not on abstraction.

    Unfortunately there are very few Conservatives any more. Most have sold out to the corporate sector who will do anything to make a buck. Corporations have little respect for tradition, art, honour, truthfulness, politeness, religion, moderation, or diversity of power. The more we cultivate corporate power, then the more we tend to destroy those things that conservatives value.

    Conservatives are trying to be good people, and that is important. And I think many people on the Right would like to be conservative, but are not served well by their parties, just as people on the Left are not served well by their parties.

    See also: Three forms of Contemporary Politics, and

    Conservatives, the Left and the Right

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    Protecting Christian Liberties?

    October 10, 2018

    We are continuing to hear a lot about protecting “Religious liberties” (which seems to mean Christian liberties) but we are still not hearing much evidence that these liberties are under threat.

    So let me go by responses to articles in newspapers and articles I’ve read in favour of new ‘protective’ legislation. These are the liberties people seem to be talking about.

    1) People no longer automatically genuflect to people who claim they are preaching the word of God. Given the massive differences in interpretation of that word over history, then even if the Bible did result from the exact dictation of God to various humans, then we still don’t know that the preaching is correct. Secondly, not everybody nowadays genuflects to the word of Marx, Mises, Morrison, Science or whatever. If you have a case put it forward and expect some people to disagree, or not listen. Don’t expect that if you say some group of people are subhuman or will burn in the eternal flames of hell, you will receive automatic praise. Do expect to be able to speak, but don’t expect protection because you think you are saying something vital.

    2) Christians should be powerful because they have the truth, and everyone should live by their words. Sorry this is not an argument. This is an assertion.

    3) Christians do a great deal of good in society, and should not be discouraged from doing good. Do people really need special privileges to do good? If you really want to help people go and help them. But don’t always expect praise for it. If you want to help people because they should obey you, or your word, then expect to be criticised as anyone else would be. Jesus was not complimentary to those who performed religious duties to gain social status.

    4)Some schools are asking people to opt in to participate in Christian festivities like Christmas or Easter plays. This does not stop those interested in Christian tradition from participating, or setting up their own Church based festivities. What it does stop, is Christians assuming that they have the right to impose their views and ceremonies on others unless those others explicitly opt out. This supposed imposition on liberty, is an imposition on Christian dominance, and again Christians by objecting seem to be seeking the right to dominate others by default.

    5) Some people are rude to them online. Well that is what online life is like. Try giving a reasoned and heavily documented argument against Trump in a Republican group on Facebook and see how you go. We may not like people being rude, but we cannot stop it for one group of people alone. And besides some Christians are rude to other people, but usually people being rude cannot see their own rudeness. What they are saying seems fair to them.

    6) Some people refuse to agree that Christians should be able to persecute other groups of people, even if that group is other Christians. Little case is made as to why Christians should be able to persecute, except they think it is their right because they are always right. But on similar grounds, others have the right to disagree. And note persecute means more than disagreeing with someone. Its means disagreeing with their right to exist or speak at all. You are not being persecuted if you are told your views are rubbish. In many countries where Christians are persecuted, they would probably relish this kind of rubbish persecution.

    7) Some TV comedy shows occasionally mock Christians. Some TV shows mock politicians, business people, academics, gays, bogans and so on. Why should all Christians have the privilege of being exempt, even if particular Christians appear corrupt?

    8) Religion is good for people and society, therefore religions should not be criticised. The first part of this statement may be true, but if those good effects come about through harming and persecuting others, or scapegoating people who don’t belong to their denominations, then we have a moral dilemma. Can people be religious without condemning and persecuting others, without using violence and exclusion? I would hope so. What happened to the idea that you should set an example to the world, and convince people by your virtues rather than your cruelties?

    From a theological point of view, there is nothing Christian about these arguments for privilege. I am not aware of Jesus being reported as saying “Come to me. I will give you social power, material wealth, respect and obedience from your fellows. No one will ever dare object to whatever you say.”

    Let’s push this further. The thing Christians have gained the most fame for over the last 20 years is child abuse within Christian organisations. Let’s not be imprecise, and decide to avoid the term ‘child abuse’ as that might suggest the odd blow in anger, or verbal abuse, something anyone might commit on a bad day; we are talking about child rape. Clearly not all Christians were involved in this, and many had exactly the same response to it as non-Christians. However their organisations protected people who had raped children while attacking the victims and trying to silence them. Protecting the reputation of their Christian organisation was more important than protecting children. In this campaign of silence and denial they were usually supported by right wing commentators and politicians who dismissed the allegations, or diminished the numbers of allegations, or pretended that it was not happening. We know that when it all came out, one Church underestimated its fortune by billions, to try and avoid compensating its victims. We have just heard (the truth is not confirmed) that some schools have been sending gay students to organisations who strapped electrodes to their genitals to torture them into being straight. Should we preserve their liberty to do this?

    This is corruption.

    Sadly, these actions seems to have been acceptable until recently. Most Christians do not seem to have pressed their organisations to uncover the truth and stop the abuse (certainly there were no reports of such mass movements), even though Jesus seems pretty clear that people harming children are not the best people. Most Christians seem to have ignored the issue, even if it was their own children at peril.

    If religious liberties legislation had been in place and if people were not allowed to dispute truth with Christians or dismiss the platitudes of their organisations, then the Royal Commission could probably not have happened, and the state of institutional child rape would be preserved. Can you imagine Tony Abbott or Scott Morrison instigating such an inquiry and risking the liberties of the Churches? The whole right wing machine would be devoted to persecuting those who said there was a problem, and the law would be there to help them stop any inquiry. People would be unable to publish accusations. It took an atheist Prime Minister to set up the inquiry. Not a Christian one.

    Yes, this is an extreme example, but do we need to protect Christian liberties to attack people, persecute people, not receive disagreement, hide their crimes, and not receive any mockery? What good does it do? What real liberties need preserving? So far there is no case that liberties are curtailed for Christians any more than for other people. There are no examples being given of Christians being stopped from worshipping in their Churches (except by other people in those Churches), reading their Bible, trying to convert other people, or preaching the good news. Christian organisations already get massive privileges in matters of tax, financial reporting, influence on politics and so on.

    What the people who are pushing this idea seem to want is not liberty, but guaranteed privilege and immunity.

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    Identity politics 2

    September 15, 2018

    We are having a lot of announcements from our government that religious freedoms must be protected. There is no doubt that there are areas of the world where religious freedoms are under threat. It is increasingly difficult to be Christian in many Islamic countries, and Muslims in many Christian countries can face daily abuse – in particular women in hijab. Fundamentalist Hindus in India seem to be attacking everyone else. Buddhists in Myanmar are behaving with apparent brutality to Muslims who have lived in the country for centuries. While this level of religious intolerance and violence should not be accepted, there is no evidence I have seen that suggests that Christians in Australia face anything remotely resembling this level of attack or that they are remotely likely to face this level of attack in the future.

    The evidence presented does not seem that persuasive either.

    The prime minister has mentioned that kids have been stopped doing Christmas plays. He does not present evidence for his statement. He says that Christians have been prevented from discussing the real meaning of Easter. No evidence is presented again. We are told that boards of directors may stop people from being members because of incompatibilities of belief. No evidence is presented, and the PM even seems to think the lack of evidence for it happening now, is evidence for it happening in the future.

    If indeed Church groups have been prevented from preaching to their members, or prevented from putting on Christmas plays in the Church, then we do have real problems. But nobody seems to be claiming this. Likewise Christians and others have discussed the meaning of Easter in public with me, with no apparent hinderance. The local newspapers usually have meaning of Easter articles, and editorials, and summarise the various Easter messages from the main churches. There is no one screaming in the papers that Christians should not be allowed to talk about Easter – nothing like the screaming against various right or left wing speakers that seems a regular feature of contemporary debate. Sure people commenting on articles with a Christian slant may be abusive or more likely dismissive, but facing abuse online is a regular event for everybody, and there is often abuse from Christians in return, suggesting atheists are subhuman or deserve to burn in Hell for eternity and often expressing joy at this hypothesis.

    We also have continuing tax exemption for religious organisations, even if they seem run for profit or for the income of the leaders. Taxpayer subsidy of religious schools, public money spent on Chaplains to council school children who don’t need any qualifications in counselling, and a total lack of funding for qualified counsellors who are not approved by the local denominations. We still effectively have compulsory religious instruction in public schools – as the NSW government does not allow schools to reveal if they have the substitute ethics courses available. We allow religious schools to sack people if they find them incompatible with their beliefs (ie they are gay, feminist, or the wrong form of Christianity) – oddly this is one area that people say is not strong enough for religious liberty! We have politicians and right wing commentators who have defended the clergy from accusations of child abuse. We have politicians claiming their religion as a matter of course. No one has persecuted them in any effective manner. There is not any movement to curb much of this.

    I am absolutely open to counter evidence for impingement on Christian liberty.

    All of this, along with the lack of concern for the religious freedoms of Muslims or Buddhists, suggests that there is a level of fantasy in these allegations and they are really about identity politics of a specific group that seeks privilege over others.

    Now it is true that the secular state has stopped human sacrifice, religious torture and persecution of other religions. It has tried to stop child abuse by churches, it has recognised rape in marriage, it has allowed women to claim equal rights, and not be beaten in marriage as a matter of religion. It does not allow people to sell their children into slavery, or have them wedded by the age of 12. It has failed to stop male genital mutilation, but that failure is an example of religious power. I would suspect that most Christians and other religious people, can live quite happily with these restrictions.

    However it was notable during the debate on whether the State’s category of marriage could be extended to homosexual relationships. No religion was being forced to carry out marriages, just recognise them, as they do other marriages not held in their churches. Many religious people seemed to consider that the attempt to stop them discriminating against others was a threat to their freedom. They naturally did the suggesting that homosexual people were subhuman immoral and deserved to burn in hell line, and seemed surprised that other people responded strongly to these suggestions. Is it that only they should be allowed to abuse others, or that they don’t they see these comments as abuse? Later in the debate when the ‘burn in hell’ lines did not seem to work amongst the general population who don’t think gay people are any worse than other people, they decided to attack heterosexual and Christian marriages as illegitimate if there was no chance of producing children. Naturally they did not put it that way, but that was the logical consequence of arguing that marriage was solely for the production of children. They also kept imagining gay couples will deliberately go to Christian bakers for wedding cakes to upset them. Such are the stands Christians have to take nowadays.

    The suggestion of all this, seems to be that Christians should not have to live under the same conditions as everyone else. They demand protection from debate, from having to justify their positions, and from any opposition, even opposition that they have provoked. This campaign, does not seem to be about freedom, but about privilege, and fits the general pattern that right wing identity politics differs from left as it is not about recognising more people’s rights to participate in public life with their full personal identity, but about saying “we are special, and better than others”. It represents an attempt to shut others down. Given Christian history, Christians from minority sects, those who try to live with love rather than condemnation, people from other religions, agnostics etc, should all be worried by this movement.

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    What would Satan do?

    September 8, 2018

    Let us imagine that there is an incredibly powerful evil being who has influence over the earth, and was free for some time to do as he could, for whatever reason.

    Well, what would he do?

    Well one obvious answer is that he (and let’s be traditional and say he is male) would not try and tempt people one by one. That is a terrible expense of time and effort, for very little result, and he would probably think most humans are contemptible, so why spend time with them? My guess, as to the answer, is that he would try and confuse and corrupt whole civilizations, because its easier – humans reinforce each other’s behavior.

    For this purpose he might try to set himself up as the one true God. He could tell his followers that if they obeyed him they would be virtuous and successful, and only they would be virtuous, as everyone else was following false gods. Followers should support each other, and would be rewarded with material prosperity as well. Sounds good, and it reinforces group boundary lines and group loyalties. Then he might ask them to go and kill some people he didn’t like (perhaps they had rejected his claims) and take their land. His followers might object, so he might say he would punish them, so they then decide to go ahead with it, and occupy the land and slaughter the original inhabitants. They would probably not think, “Satan claims to be omnipotent – why can’t he just provide us with unoccupied land, or change some piece of desert into a land of milk and honey for us. Why did we have to slaughter people?” After all obeying Satan is good, by definition, and those who don’t obey him must be evil, so slaughtering these people is permissible.

    Satan tells them what they are doing is just. Genocide becomes virtue. Maybe he tells them to kill the men and rape the women. That’s good too, by definition. So Satan gets a war machine. His chosen people, or true believers, can murder, steal and rape with impunity, as long as they keep it under control with each other. He tells them they are surrounded by evil, and they must not associate with non-believers (unless to convert them to be his followers). They should not share food with them, as this is a good way of maintaining boundaries. Non-believers are corrupt and frightening – anything can be said about them, and it is probably true. This further reinforces both group boundaries and the assumption that other people are evil, and deserve persecution.

    Some time later he gives up the rewarding followers thing, because well he is evil and its boring, and he tells people he will generally reward them after death. No one will ever find out and bring the real news back. But people now know if the rewards don’t come immediately, with Satan testing their faith, rewards will come in the afterlife, and you should not struggle against Satan’s will, or you might not get the rewards.

    However, when things go wrong, he can tell them he is punishing them, perhaps not for their disobedience but for the disobedience of some other people nearby. As the rules are contradictory, or difficult, it is not too hard to find someone (or yourself) to hate and sacrifice to appease Satan’s wrath. That’s good as it produces more terror, although most believers don’t object to terror being the aim, because terror is the beginning of wisdom, or so Satan says.

    He then tells people he is a loving and compassionate being. This can confuse people, and as they emulate him, it also shows murder and so on must be compassionate, as long as it is not against fellow true believers. if they worry about that, well Satan is a mystery beyond human understanding. Eventually a few people do think this is incoherent as well. So he responds by telling people he is loving and compassionate and has people who disagree with him tortured for eternity. That can be really confusing. But you had better believe or else you face a dire fate, and you might decide you need to please Satan, and send people to hell to prove you are on his side. If the people you kill are really virtuous, then you can be sure Satan will make it up to them after they are dead. So no worries. If you think hell and compassion don’t go together that well, you must be allied with the forces of real evil, because if you were good, you would have no problems with this teaching, because Satan is good and truly compassionate. He tells us so.

    Because they know that by following Satan they are as good as it gets, believers know they are better than non-believers and should rule over them. If they don’t rule over heathen infidels, then they are being oppressed and should strike back. Likewise, men are better than women and should rule over them. Older people should rule over their children. This creates more bad temper, friction and murder. There are few families which are not rent inside, spurring on those evil, vicious and cruel acts, which are (not that) secretly pleasing to Satan.

    Perhaps some people come to think that people can be moral without obeying Satan, and that he does not show a very good example anyway. Those people are told that there is no basis for morality other than Satan’s word, and so they are without morality, and should not be listened to, or should be persecuted until they know better. Whatever Satan says is right, and the basis for a good virtuous life. If believers are not allowed to follow Satan’s word exactly, then they are oppressed. Believers also know that rebels against Satan always fail, and are always cursed, because he is the source of everything – so he says. And Satan says he cannot lie, or be mistaken. So that is the end of that. Unbelievers demonstrably have bad morals, as you can see by looking at any society run by non-believers, and they will not be saved – they are not righteously human.

    Followers really try to please Satan and even end up fighting other Satan worshipers, over massively important factors of doctrine or history (which look pretty trivial to ignorant non-believers), to preserve the real purity of belief and teaching which is necessary for rewards, and Satan is pleased.

    He sits back in his mighty throne and smiles…. It all worked well.

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    Max Weber and the unintended consequences of Protestantism

    June 18, 2018

    When writing about Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism two obvious things have to be born in mind (and I wouldn’t bother writing about them except a friend pointed to an article which completely ignored them). You need to understand what Weber understood by the ‘Protestant Ethic’, and explain how and why Weber connected it to ‘capitalism’. Weber did not write about the ‘Christian Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’, or the ‘Modernist Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’, but the ‘Protestant ethic and… ‘

    The book is about the Ethic/ideology of Protestantism, and why this led to the formation of capitalism as an unintended consequence of the actions and dispositions protestant (really puritan) religion generated. It is a reply to those Marxists who insisted that economic behaviour and structures was the complete determinate of religious ideology. In counter argument Weber proposes we have a positive feedback loop (although he could not use those terms of course). In this argument Protestantism both was, and generated, a major break with the Christian past and previous economic formations processes. For Weber, Protestantism formed the generator and essence of capitalism or in other words its ‘spirit,’ or ‘internal rationality.’ It is also a mild criticism of that ‘spirit’ and of those people who think wealth is a sign of God’s blessing, and the consequences these views have built.

    So the Protestant and particularly the puritan ethic had the following consequences (and this is a bit of elaboration of Weber, and taken from other places).

    1) Salvation became purely individual. You could not work together for salvation, such as say prayers for those in purgatory. Hence the idea that everything depends on the individual – and there is no such thing as supportive community with anyone other than believers.

    2) Everything that happened is and was predestined, including your salvation or damnation. Nothing you did in the way of good works could make a difference to your future, only your strong faith, and separation from sin.

    3) Poverty was a result of sin and God’s will, so the poor were beyond help through charity, only through their personal/individual conversion and God’s will. It was even considered sinful to give ‘indiscriminate charity’. The Poor had no legitimate demand on the rich, or anyone else, for help. This helped to break the social relations which operated against capital accumulation. It also led to punishing the poor through workhouses, which may have formed the template for the factory.

    4) As you did not know whether you were saved or damned and good works did nothing, you looked for signs of God’s favour in this life such as wealth.

    5) Work and capital accumulation became the measure for true ‘vocation’ rather than mysticism, open charity, love or prayer for others.

    6) Eventually work became everything, and everything that was not work was an indicator of potential damnation – the devil makes work for idle hands – the poor must work, human life is work/labour. Time is money and must not be ‘wasted’…. etc. The Workhouse was considered good for the poor as well as preventing them from committing sin.

    7) Nature was purely a resource for work and conversion into wealth. Unless land was ‘productive’ for good puritans it was valueless, and needing ownership and improvement to make productive. Hence, first people’s did not treat land as ‘property’ or ‘properly’ and it should belong to protestants by right of God.

    With the loss of joyful activity, all that was left was work, money and condemnation of the sinful.

    None of these results were intended by the original protestants, and only a fairly small portion of the population were ever driven puritans, but the ideology and the habits it inculcated had a major effect on the formation of modern life.

    While this opened a pathway to allow the formation of a prosperous and plentiful mercantile middle class, as opposed to peasants and aristocrats, priests and warriors, the problem is (and I think that the criticism is implied by Weber), is that this protestant ethic is not a particularly pleasant foundation for a society. It destroys human sociability, mutuality, joy, spontaneity and connection to the Earth, and reduces all value to money and self-righteousness…. It is a very bleak basis for life and permeates the modern world.

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    C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton and the Spiritual Problems of Our Time

    January 2, 2018

    In a great Post John Woodcock drew attention to the importance of visionary experience amongst other things. However he also drew attention to C.S. Lewis, and this is where I have a problem.

    John reminds us of the end of the Perelandra Trilogy in which the (literally) demonic scientists aim to bring about immortality. He quotes them

    It is for the conquest of death: or for the conquest of organic life, if you prefer. They are the same thing. It is to bring out of that cocoon of organic life, which sheltered the babyhood of mind, the New Man, the man who will not die, the artificial man, free from Nature. Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick her away.

    The people on the side of the angels (again literally) are joyous when Merlin (yes that Merlin) breaks up the possibility of the scientists communicating, and then summons hoards of animals to eat them. Unlike John, I don’t find this denouement either satisfying or hilarious.

    Indeed, the passage from Lewis reminds me exactly why I find him so disappointing. He is caught up hopelessly in surfaces and binaries. It’s spirit/matter, godly/ungodly, good/evil and so on. If God is on our side then whatever happens must be right, whatever discomfort our enemies suffer is wonderful. There are no tensions because God will win. God is all powerful after all, and the good guys are on the side of all power. Suck on that Demons!

    It’s reminiscent of the bits in Narnia where the young woman is exiled because she likes stockings and make-up and the good crusaders slaughter heaps of evil Muslims in the battle to end all battles. All surface, dressed up to be deep. Faced with imagined people who think life is a bit more complicated than he does, all he can imagine is to break up their attempt at communion and praise murder. What a righteous attempt at solution! What imagination! What empathy! Lewis cannot even suspect the shadow of his spirituality, or his God, which he projects onto what he sees as science. His own spirituality can have nothing to do with the problems we face – it is all elsewhere and he is not responsible even a bit.

    Its easy to imagine Lewis an inquisitor sadly condemning someone to excruciation until death, and thinking that if there is any sin in the matter its the fault of the secular authorities alone – he is innocent and unsullied. [As a caution we should all note that when we start condemning people, especially collectivities of people, we are probably engaged with the Jungian Shadow – ie the ‘evil’ in ourselves which it is less painful to see in others.]

    Lewis needed to dream more freely rather than confine vision to allegory, see deeper and depend less on dogma for his interpretations.

    By comparison good science is precisely about not stopping with surfaces but exploring reality and letting it impress us; not trying to trap it in binaries and given understandings. And we find an awe – even in people like Dawkins – which is perhaps more spiritual than almost anything in Lewis. The world revealed by science is weirder and more complex than anything Lewis or his characters could imagine. The God revealed in creation is not the tyrant of the Bible, but a being who delights in complexity, chance, freedom, creativity, who puts life into the fundamental bits of existence. Sure science has limits, but what doesn’t? While scientists are more Merlin than Lewis’s Merlin, science probably needs a little more more alchemy (in Jungian terms).

    Perhaps Lewis’s apparent spiritual impoverishment (yes that is strong, but that is the kind of language he might use) arises not because of his Christianity, but because of his Platonism. Platonism constructs an ideal world and then regards this world as a falling away, a bad copy, which is of little value, except for the elite to transcend. Dying is good, as it could get you to reality; we must make sure everyone dies. Hence Lewis’s anger that anyone might want to live for ever, unless this life is non-material and it involves his elite and no one else. We probably don’t need Nietzsche to point out the problems with a mythology that seeks its fulfilment in death, either personal or in the death of others (indeed they might well tend to be the same). In that sense Platonism seems to be at the root of our ecological problems, and perhaps our problems of power – in which everything living has to be ordered to be good, when everything that is living is, in reality, messy and unpredictable. For platonists the only good creature is a dead creature. Platonism, and the demand for order is almost certainly one of the roots of the Anthropocene.

    Let’s compare Lewis with another and far greater writer: G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton does have his low moments (in Father Brown, you always know it was the atheist what done it), but his work is full of the sense of mystery impinging on and in the world, and the joyous knowledge that arises from catching a glimpse of this reality.

    Chesterton’s books on Aquinas and Francis are amongst the best of their kind, and full of the glory of spirit, faith and intellect. He does not see intellect as evil but as part of God’s way, part of the way we go beyond appearance to reality. The Man who was Thursday explores the complexity of an omnipotent God, even if Chesterton denies it does, he can do it. Chesterton fights with what he sees as the evils of the modern world; fiercely as with Shaw and Wells (although he accepts their point that unfettered capitalism is not good), but he never lets go of the insight that his enemies are also expressions of the glory of God, and he remains friends with his foes and engages in dialogue – as that communion is more important than righteousness and murder, even while he admits that sometimes war may be necessary. There is no poverty of imagination here. The real ‘material’ world is potentially holy, or even holy already (God made it and it was good).

    Life is a constant potential for transfiguration – although Chesterton would probably use the model of the mass rather than alchemy or hermeticism. Further, he has no need to be of the spiritual elite, because he knows real humility and not the display of humility. He can celebrate the joys of ordinary people who are not perfect, because it is not his business to exclude people from ‘heaven’ or the heaven of Earth. He knows surfaces are holy, and that there are depths beyond the capacity of allegory to imagine.

    My only complaint is that Chesterton is largely ignored, except by those usually on the political right) who would confine him, and pretend he was one of theirs – when he most certainly is not.

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    Materialism, Spirit and Shadow

    December 31, 2017

    [Re-edited 14 Feb 2018, responding to comments]

    I’m sometimes surprised when people say that we live in a ‘material age’. It is true that we are governed by an economics and politics that only values money, profit and power, but that is not usually the subject of people’s disapproval, they usually object to science. To be clear, I’m not arguing that we live in an effective spiritual age – I’m not sure such has ever happened – but we hardly live in a scientifically materialist age. The urge for spiritual experience is as great as ever, and its dangers are as great as ever.

    We (and it’s a Western ‘we’ here, apologies to everyone else) have probably lived in one of the most exciting spiritual and theological periods of human history. Since 1880 or thereabouts the flourishing of spiritual thought and action(of various levels of sophistication), has been extraordinary – partly because of the, perhaps beneficial, decline of religious authority.

    In theological terms we have had Mary Baker Eddy, Albert Schweitzer, Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, Martin Buber, Simone Weil, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Wolfhardt Pannenberg, Rudolf Bultmann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teilhard de Chardin and Mathew Fox to name some of the original and more well-known writers. That’s just off the top of my head and I’m not a theologian; I’m sure people will think of other influential originals. We have had important movements such as liberation theology, death of god, process theology, ‘traditionalism’, feminist theology, historical Jesus, and green/gaian theology. We have had the popular recovery of alchemy, hermeticism, gnosticism, kabbalah, sufism, goetic magic and altered states of consciousnes. We have had the ongoing (and again popular), cross fertilisation between Christianity and Buddhism (to the betterment of both in my opinion, with the shift of Buddhism from suppression of desire to active compassion, and the recovery of Christian meditation and oneness). We have had the influx of Indian religious practice, and we may have some popular understanding of Taoism. We have popular contributions from science (Haldine, Bateson, Capra), philosophy, (Bradley, Wittgenstein, Edith Stein, Heidegger, Barfield, Agamben, Vattimo), anthropology and comparative religion (Frazer, Eliade, Levi-Strauss, Victor Turner, Evans Pritchard, Rene Girard (ok this list could go on :), literature (From Kazantzakis to Dan Brown and C.S. Lewis) and of course psychology (Jung, Maslow, Ornstein, Houston, Mindfulness, AA etc). We’ve had arena’s full of popular spiritual writers and practitioners. We have probably had more channelled texts than at any time in history (from the ‘Book of the Law’ to the ‘Course in Miracles’). The world is full of spiritual healers. We have even had important and influential ‘joke’ spiritualties like Discordianism (All hail Eris!). Again this is not to say that all are beneficial; that is the point, because something claims to be spiritual does not automatically mean it is a good guide to life or ‘spirit’.

    If ‘materialism’ means not limited and not dogmatic, then we have had a materialistic age. However, if ‘materialism’ means non-spiritual then this has not even remotely been a non-spiritual age. It has been an age of flourishing experiment rather than authority, and an age in which few people have been burnt at the stake for heresy. We should probably celebrate it, rather than denigrate it.

    However, this does not mean we have had an age without shadow. Clearly not as the ‘spiritual’, (like everything human) is rarely without shadow or its specific ‘evils’, and it is dangerous to think that because something is spiritual it is automatically good or constructive. Part of the spiritual problem is that spirit sometimes can only see its own as spirit and protects its own and only its own, and attacks all else. Hence, perhaps, the apparent inability of ‘spiritual people’ to perceive current spiritual flourishing, and the (perhaps necessary) descent to dogma.

    As for the ‘darkness’: we now know about child rape in church and the protection of rapists for the spiritual good of authority, of the insistence on obedience and not thinking, of spiritual desolation in proposed saints, of spiritual violence against the failing world. There was Nazism, and if you don’t think Nazism was a spiritual movement you have not read enough of the original Nazis. We have the activity of some Christian and Islamic Fundamentalists who work in a unity of hatred to bring about the apocalypse in the middle east, with the second coming of Jesus and the birth of perfection in the death of millions of sinners and infidels, and we have religious terrorists, sexists and racists – every ‘evil’ you can think of will have some spiritual defenders.

    We have many spiritual programmes that primarily seem to seek personal wealth as the mark of divine favour, and who often condemn the poor as unspiritual or undisciplined. I would tend to agree with the proposition that people are mislead by much of this kind of spirituality; that is part of the shadow I am discussing. But simply stating that one is not so mislead, and that the followers of such movements are, does not mean one is without shadow. We perhaps need to ask whether this condemnation of others is an inherent part of the shadow of spirit, which helps to justify the elite who ‘get it’ and their position as beings of influence?

    Then we have Platonist spirituality where focusing on the ideal spirit, or absolute perfect forms, can lead to denigration and attacks on the ‘fallen’ ‘imperfect’ real/material world and help foster ecological crises and the destruction of Nature. In this wordview only death opens perfection as we escape the material we hate. Only a dead or transcended world seems a good world. Or we can say everything is in the hands of God, and nothing harmful will eventuate from human action – spirit is already perfect and that is all that matters. People can attack their bodies, their minds and their empathy for others, in the name of spiritual perfection. We can see murder of the ‘evil others’ on whom we have projected our spiritual shadow, as the solution to problems – particularly if our God is good because ‘he’ is all-powerful and prone to vengeance. In that case, what difference is there between our spirituality and existential fear? Our righteousness seeks to prove we are on the right side, by condemning others before we ourselves are condemned. The shadow is massive.

    The idea that all that is spiritual is totally of the light, or immaterial, is dangerous. Especially when it is phrased as if people on the right path cannot be deceived. Again, this can be a basis for murderous righteousness. The idealist shadow can penetrate all modes of life, making the possible seem deadly material by comparison, and lead to the sacrifice of both humanity and nature for a perfection which exists elsewhere – and possibly only imaginally.

    If we need more spirituality then we need as much care in identifying its shadow and integrating it as we do in all other parts of life. We may well need a material spirituality, in which the world itself is part of the sacred and, if we transcend, it is as in alchemy, and endless circulation in which we bring back the spirit to this world and unify the two – neither being complete without the other. We respect what is, as we live amongst it.

    To repeat, just because something can be called spiritual, it does not mean it is unalloyedly good or beneficial for either humans or nature. This has to be discovered rather than claimed in advance – anything can have unintended effects.

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    Science and spirit yet again

    March 3, 2017

    Let me suggest that ‘Mysticism’ and ‘Reason’ have the same origins and face similar problems, although they can be used to ‘correct’ each other. They work better together than apart, but they are still vulnerable. In particular, they are both vulnerable to social factors and to being used in power struggles

    Let me begin by asserting that most human knowledge is fallible. This is a proposition usually agreed to by theologians, philosophers and scientists. They may disagree on what is required to fix the problem, but they agree on the problem

    I’d suggest that most people who disagree with this proposition are likely to be destructive, because they will not try to modify their actions to suit the world but the world to suit their ‘truth’. Indeed one of the problems we face is that climate change is being ignored because of the ‘truth’ of the virtues of capitalism. This is a truth which has little reason behind it, but perhaps lots of intuitive/spiritual value

    Reason always depends upon either a spiritual vision or intuition or a dogma for its axioms. Axioms exist outside of the field of reason or science. They cannot be proven in themselves, they simply seem obvious. Because the axioms seem obvious they may not even be perceived as axioms they may be seen as reality itself. If the axioms are wrong then reasoning from them will eventually produce incorrect results

    Spirituality can give a ‘direct perception’ of the workings of the world. However, this perception can be as wrong (in parts) as the axioms deployed by Reason. Acting on this perception may also not have the results which are intended.

    As I have argued previously, modern ideas of ‘Reason’ made their way into the West as part of a spiritual vision that God had made the world in a way which was uncoverable by human thought processes and deduction. God did not cheat and God was not irrational. Reason is based on this intuition/tradition that reality is reasonable and explicable.

    There are two big differences between modern patterns of science and traditional patterns of reason.

    Firstly scientists try to interact with nature to find out if the conclusions from their theories are the same as expected. The reasonableness of the proposition is not recognised as enough to guarantee its truth. Science demands an open interaction with reality, not with hunches or intuitions – although hunches, intuitions and spiritual experiences, may lead to suspicions the theories do not work, or to new theories (which then need to be tested).

    Secondly, scientists frequently attack the axioms of science, or conduct thought experiments to see what would happen if the axioms were different.

    Frequently these processes lead to power struggles (scientists are humans, and they work for the State or private enterprise, both of which may have their own non-reasonable drives). However, the ultimate ideal arbiter is the interaction with Nature – the experiment.

    One of the axioms of science is that, ideally, the people participating in the experiment should not make a difference to the experimental results. The experiment must be replicable to be true.

    Scientists tend to ignore things which are not replicable, not testable or which seem to be personal. This may limit their effectiveness, or their ability to relate to other humans.

    Spirituality, especially in an organised form, rarely does any of this. Rather it tends to ignore any inaccuracies and teach them to students, holding that any deviation from the teaching is a problem. It is also expected that different people might get different results depending on their virtue, dedication or whatever. So failure to replicate the experiment is easily explained away as a moral or spiritual failing. Spiritual people tend to include more of what seems to be human, and can thereby seem more persuasive, as we all know that non-replicable, personal events are important to our lives. However, because of this, there is often nothing to decide between different visions other than violence – unless reason or science is admitted into the debate.

    So the point is:
    Both science and spirituality depend upon an ‘irrational’ intuition, or perception, of the nature of reality.

    Scientists tend to deduce things from this intuition/vision and test them in interactions with nature. Testing is built into the discipline. Nature is the final arbiter. They tend to suppress personal factors which are important to people’s lives.

    Spiritual people tend not to test their intuitions or perceptions. They accept them as truths, until they are superseded by new visions. They do generally accept and elaborate on personal issues, making those issues relevant and conceivable in life.

    Both factors are needed for the whole human.

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    Spirituality in the Anthropocene

    February 26, 2017

    I keep reading and hearing people saying, or implying, that what we need is a spiritual approach to fix the problems we face. I hear this a lot in the Depth Psychology community in particular.

    I think this is fundamentally wrong. Spirituality is not automatically a solution, and ‘rationality’ is not always a problem. Human knowing is very often fallible, irrespective of its source, and this should be remembered, otherwise both spirituality and reason become props for the ego, its limitations and defence, rather than ways of accessing knowledge or relatedness.

    The potential problems with spirituality seem as important to me, in terms of our ecological problems, as is the use of science or technology to ‘control’ nature.

    For example, in Western and many other traditions, spirituality has been used to deny the reality of nature, or used as a means to get out of nature or to diminish nature. Christianity and Islam have both taught that our true life is elsewhere. It is not in nature. Nature is a snare, at best a distraction to be mastered. Reality is found after death.

    Intensely spiritual people can believe and intuit strongly that everything is in the hands of God, and that humans can do nothing to hurt the cosmos. They can be both calm and beautiful as they destroy the world. They could for example, think it is their duty to cut down forests and destroy fertile fields to bring forth their temples, unaware of what they are doing, or even condemning those who protest as heretics or unspiritual. They can be passionately devoted to killing people or animals as sacrifices to the Gods.

    Perhaps one of the most harmful ideas ever proposed, is the spiritual idea/experience usually associated with Plato, that the real is perfect and unchanging and not of this world. This may completely alienate people from any engagement with life and the natural world as it is, as that is constantly in flux, birth, death and decay. The acceptance of such an idea, and the spiritual practices around it, may mark our initial separation from Nature, and our attempts to control it rather than live with it.

    There is nothing inherent in spirituality which leads to a beneficial interrelationship with natural processes. Spirituality can impose a hostile order on the world as much as any reason.

    Similarly, while we may want to forget, war can be intensely a matter of spirituality. Not just for zen samurai, Vikings, Nazis, shaolin monks, warring Tibetan temples, jihading Muslims, Crusading Christians, and Aztec warriors gathering sacrificial prisoners, but to ordinary people who may frequently tell you that they felt more alive, more connected and more meaningful when the war was on. Not all people feel this way, of course, some live in terror and die in agony. However, this aspect of spirit should not be forgotten.

    People can see the position put forward here as an attack on valuable experiences. However, I want to suggest that ‘peak experiences’ or ‘spiritual experiences’ have little to do with ‘spirituality’. They are, in some ways, frequently ‘mundane’, they seem to happen irrespective of whether a person is particularly spiritual or not. They might imply connection, or simply the sheer strange presence of something different from yourself. Spirituality has little to do with this, and is more like a theory of everything or an approach to the world.

    Whatever it is, spirituality is often assumed to be good, and in opposition to whatever is bad – many people seem very confident of that. Indeed, contemporary spirituality is often defined by opposition. It is opposed to logos, it is not science, it is not reason, it is not materialism. People also seem to assume that logos, reason and so forth have the dominant position in the world, and are therefore responsible for the destruction we observe. However, even a brief look at our politics should lead to that particular theory being cast aside. Reason, whatever its failings, is not even vaguely dominant. If it was then we would be seeing some attempts to deal with climate change. Science is largely captive to State and commercial interests.

    Given the oppositions people set up, it becomes too easy for spiritually aligned people to say science is the problem, and spirituality is the solution, when they may well be both parts of the problem and solution. The Sacred and the Profane are perhaps not separate… Personally I was relieved to discover that anthropologists decided this distinction was not present in many societies.

    Historically, spirituality has grown up alongside (and with) logos, science, materialism, reason; and similarly they grow out of it. As mutually dependent, both ‘sides’ are as responsible for our problems as anything else.

    Jungians might be expected to sit with these opposites, rather than to declare one side responsible for harm and the other good. We might find that both are necessary, to correct the other, or we might find that we discover something new.

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