The faith that shakes atheism and moves goggles

There are times when it’s hard to maintain my hard-won atheist convictions. 

Not on the big things. I still find it conceptually impossible to reconcile the existence of an all-powerful, beneficent deity with, say, ISIS running amok in Iraq and massacring its prisoners for the crime of belonging to a separate branch of the same faith. To be honest, I have difficult reconciling such a belief with the blundering, flip-flopping behaviour of the leaders of our Western world in response to that terror.

I’m often reminded of the excellent exchange in that outstanding film Lincoln when Mrs Keckley, dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln, expresses her confidence to the President that the 13th Amendment banning slavery, will be passed by the US House of Representatives.

Elizabeth Keckley: I know the vote is only four days away; I know you're concerned. Thank you for your concern over this, and I want you to know: they'll approve it. God will see to it.

Abrahan Lincoln: I don't envy him his task. He may wish He'd chosen an instrument for His purpose more wieldy than the House of Representatives.

Quite so. In the same way, it’s hard to imagine that an all-seeing God could ever have put any faith in a Dubya Bush or a Tony Blair to make anything but a pig’s ear of the Middle East.

No, much smaller things shake my atheistic faith – or lack of faith, for why shouldn’t lack of faith be shaken too?

The other day I turned up at our local leisure centre for another early, far-too-early, swim. Now as I’ve said before this is not an activity ever likely to give me what one might call pleasure. It’s a grim business, undertaken for health reasons and absolutely no other. I therefore take a number of measures to guard against the horror of the exercise. I take what I like to think of as a water Walkman (as in “what – a Walkman?” to which the correct answer is “Yes”). 

And I take goggles.

The Walkman staves off insanity, if merely being at the pool at that time of day isn’t sufficient evidence of insanity in itself. The Walkman’s a key contributor to surviving the ordeal. But the goggles are even more vital. Without them I emerge from the chlorine with bloodshot eyes and, while I’m not bothered about the effect on my appearance (looking like some kind of undead monster might actually win me more respect), it does gall me that the eyes hurt in a low-grade way for the next three days. 

So when I looked in my bag and realised that I didn’t have my goggles with me, I cursed myself under my breath. Going home was out of the question. Buying another pair meant going back out to reception and, in any case, I hadn’t brought enough money with me. There was nothing to it but to go ahead and swim without them and bear the consequences.

And there, as I approached the showers, lying on the floor in front of me – was a pair of discarded goggles.

Now I wasn’t going to steal someone else’s. I naturally gave them in to reception to hold in Lost Property. Just – not immediately. Getting on for an hour later.

A mighty matter of miracle and faith

After all, you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, even if in this case it’s a loan horse. And you certainly don’t reject a miracle. Which, surely, this must have been.

So, Lord, please accept the thanks of this your errant and unbelieving servant. Even though I don’t really believe you exist, I’m deeply grateful for the mercy you showed me the other day.

If, existent or not, you had a moment to sort out the mess in the Middle East too, well, that would be just great. But I don’t want to sound too grasping. I remain truly thankful for any minor miracle you put my way, to save me from my many incompetencies.

No miracle too small

Richard Dawkins and tedious fanaticism

I enjoyed an article by Deborah Orr in Saturday’s Guardian, in which she took Richard Dawkins to task for his militant atheism.

It does seem extraordinary that anyone can be militant for non-belief. You fervently don’t believe in God? I’d have to ask, do you have a sense of irony?

In any case, there is a common feature that runs through all my friends who are believers. None of them attempts to convert me. I have my beliefs, they seem to say, and I value them but I’m not going to thrust them on you, and I’m certainly not going to expect you to embrace them.

As a result, they don’t try to put up an argument to convince me to adopt their viewpoint. Now, it’s perhaps unreasonable for me to try to assign motives to people whose beliefs I don’t share, but I think their behaviour is based on two considerations.

In the first place, they know that faith isn’t a matter of rational argument. If something can be proved, it doesn’t need faith to accept it. The whole point is that faith goes beyond rationality to a different realm – one, as Kierkegaard said, that requires a leap. I can see no way of proving that Christ was resurrected, or that the Archangel spoke to Mohammad, or indeed that Moses heard the voice of God in a burning bush. These are things you believe because you believe them; or you don’t.

Secondly, these are matters on which people must be allowed to reach their own conclusions. The believer may be saddened at the idea that a friend is making a decision that will exclude him or her from the Kingdom of Heaven, but that is no justification for trying to override that choice.

God’s so important if you believe in him
But why fixate on him if you don’t?

Now, I believe both these considerations matter deeply. I appreciate the religious friends who apply them. And I think at the very least I owe it to them to return the favour. Their choice to believe is as valid as mine not to. Since, what’s more, the choice is not one that is susceptible to rational argument, there’s no point even in debating it. I may ask for information, out of interest, about a religious person’s beliefs, but I see no more point in trying to refute them as in expecting to be converted by them myself.

So I really can’t get Dawkins’ position. Militant Atheism? If God exists, he’s all-important. But if you’ve decided he doesn’t, why on earth would you spend any time debating the matter? There are quite enough things that undeniably do exist and need debating; why would you fixate on one that, in your view, doesn’t? And if it offends people who deserve more consideration, people who are or could be friends, isn’t that an even better reason for desisting?

Dawkins reminds me of one of Winston Churchill’s wiser sayings: “A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.”

Frankly tedious.