Mock the Meek

Someone called Barbara King interviewed Richard Dawkins on NPR, with a clear anti-ridicule agenda. She is concerned about the feelings of the faithful, I presume, and she thinks Richard's famed 'stridency' is counter-productive in any dialogue with them. 

This common refrain from some non-believers (as we've seen from Julian Baggini) perhaps stems from a misguided idea of how civilised discussion should be conducted. Obviously, gratuitous rudeness is not something we encourage, and it's clear that accommodationists perceive Dawkins's many blasts at religious beliefs, and those who hold them, as gratuitously rude. In fact, in this interview Dawkins says he's sorry if he's been rude about anyone, and that he really aims to mock their beliefs alone. This seems like an unnecessary apology to me; if someone mocks my beliefs I think that's much the same as mocking me, and would treat it the same. So they may as well mock me.

And so what? As one grows up one gets mocked repeatedly, and this has a formative effect on belief - how could it not? If ridicule is such a bad idea, then someone needs to tell every single one of my teachers from primary school to grammar school that their every sarcastic put-down was militating against their pedagogy. I suspect 'Pengy' West and Frank 'Hitler' Collins might disagree. And while I and my fellow pupils did not enjoy the put-downs at the time, it made their points memorable and gave the rest of the class a laugh to boot. If it's such a bad idea, then someone should tell every satirist, from Horace to Juvenal, Moliere to Voltaire, Swift to Hogarth, Dickens to Wilde, Dorothy Parker to Peter Cook, that they are simply wrong to do it. I would love to hear their responses.

Barbara King herself draws a distinction between those who are open to discuss evolution and young earth creationists, whose belief she does not respect. I suspect young earth creationists would find her lack of respect for their belief offensive and would treat it as an attack on their very person, just as the 'moderately' religious find Dawkins's attacks on their nutty beliefs offensive. (I put scare quotes around moderately just to indicate that there is nothing about religion that allows us to define someone as extreme or moderate - that metric is not determined by faith, but by reason and evidence).

So I don't think that King is behaving any differently in kind to Dawkins, by adopting what she has decided is a more reasonable approach, so why does she think she is behaving any better than Dawkins? The most obvious conclusion is that she is a victim of our cultural prejudice against non-belief, even while she is a non-believer herself. And this isn't so surprising, being a child of a society that places religion beyond criticism, into a sacred place where it should not be challenged. It's the only belief that we are criticised for the very act of criticising.

But as I hinted at above, even 'moderate' believers believe recklessly. If they are not applying critical thinking to their beliefs, allowing some of their beliefs freedom from the shackles of reason and evidence, then they are accidents waiting to happen. Three Christian MPs, Gary Streeter, Gavin Shuker and Tim Farron, have apparently sent a letter to the Advertising Standards Authority challenging the Authority's ruling against faith healing adverts. They say:

We are writing on behalf of the all-party Christians in Parliament group in Westminster and your ruling that the Healing On The Streets ministry in Bath are no longer able to claim, in their advertising, that God can heal people from medical conditions.

We write to express our concern at this decision and to enquire about the basis on which it has been made. It appears to cut across two thousand years of Christian tradition and the very clear teaching in the Bible. Many of us have seen and experienced physical healing ourselves in our own families and churches and wonder why you have decided that this is not possible.

On what scientific research or empirical evidence have you based this decision?

You might be interested to know that I (Gary Streeter) received divine healing myself at a church meeting in 1983 on my right hand, which was in pain for many years. After prayer at that meeting, my hand was immediately free from pain and has been ever since. What does the ASA say about that? I would be the first to accept that prayed for people do not always get healed, but sometimes they do. That is all this sincere group of Christians in Bath are claiming.
It is interesting to note that since the traumatic collapse of the footballer Fabrice Muamba the whole nation appears to be praying for a physical healing for him. I enclose some media extracts. Are they wrong also and will you seek to intervene?

We invite your detailed response to this letter and unless you can persuade us that you have reached your ruling on the basis of indisputable scientific evidence, we intend to raise this matter in Parliament.

It's hard to believe that grown men, let alone Members of Parliament, could pen such a dreadfully thought out  letter, and I fear for democracy if they apply the same shambolic thinking processes to matters of state. Is it appropriate to respect their belief that praying works? Or should reason and evidence be applied to determine the truth of the matter? Of course, Gary Streeter does have reason and evidence for his belief, but it's a bad reason and it's poor evidence, and when we give the shorthand reason and evidence, we mean good reason and good evidence. How could this man have got to the age of 56 without being taught how to think? Is that too strident? I don't know, but, when he's liable to place lives at risk with such dangerous nonsense, I don't care, and I don't think Barbara King should either. The more often this man's laughable thought processes are called out the better, because it will save lives. To whimper about the evils of ridicule in such circumstances is to be complicit in the harm these beliefs cause.

I'm pleased to see that Martin Robbins throws the book at them:

The implication of prayer-healing is that special people can demand that God heals someone, and he'll just do it. That only makes sense if you believe that a) God is a bit absent-minded and doesn't really notice all the sick people until some clever human points them out to him, or b)God is the fourth emergency service (the AA come fifth in this world-view), and we're entitled customers who pay with prayer and should damn well get some service.

Either way, the message from faith-healers - and the hapless morons who support them - is clear: "Fuck God's plan, He's our bitch." I'm not a Christian myself, but if I were, I think I'd be pretty frustrated with this sort of selfish, arrogant attitude, and I'd laugh in the face of people who claimed to have some divine right over His powers.

Steady, Martin, you called them morons; we wouldn't want to alienate them, would we? But surely ridicule from all is exactly the appropriate response to this anti-scientific avalanche of bullshit. Should we say, yes, Mr. Streeter, because some chronic pain in your right hand disappeared after some prayer, we should all adopt prayer as a tried and tested principle, to be advertised for its efficaciousness? Is there no reason why this datum should not be taken at face value and treated as hard science? But if that's the case, I could write to the authorities pointing out that since I read their letter to the ASA there has been a dull ache in my head, but thankfully ridiculing  its contents has eased the pain. Therefore, please prescribe regular ridicule of religious idiocy on the NHS. At least there's a clear causal link in my anecdote compared with Streeter's.

But, of course, as Robbins points out:

The ASA quite rightly say in their ruling that "testimonials [are] insufficient evidence for claims of healing." To which I would add, "...and I am never going to vote for you, Gary Streeter, you utterly gullible buffoon."

Is Streeter gullible? Plainly. Is he a buffoon? I suppose it's possible he just hasn't had the gumption to investigate all the studies that have been performed on the efficacy of prayer, in which case he's a buffoon to write the letter, or he has seen them but prefers his own anecdote, in which case he's a buffoon to write the letter. 

Sorry to mock, but sometimes there's really no alternative.

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Rosminian Regrets?

After the BBC documentary detailing the abuse meted out by the Rosminian Order to pupils in its charge, and the subsequent cover-up, they have issued a notpology:

A statement from Fr David Myers, leader of the Rosminian order in Britain:

“I apologise without reservation on behalf of the Rosminian brethren in the UK to all those who
have suffered. Such abuse was a grievous breach of trust to them and to their families. We are appalled by what was done to them.
“I and all my brethren are deeply shocked at what has happened and acknowledge our inadequate response. We are committed to the pastoral care and support of those who have suffered abuse and to the procedures laid down by the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission.”

They 'acknowledge [their] inadequate response'. As with the Catholic Church in toto, acknowledgement is just the first trivial step. What victims want is a full and independent inquiry to stop the abuses, and cover-ups, from continuing. And they damn well are continuing, despite any number of mealy-mouthed statements from clergy saying they're sorry when they're clearly not, or they'd do something about it!

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The Cover-up Kings Strike Again

Colourful priest with a practical grasp of Catholic values.

Whatever his weaknesses – and he readily acknowledged that he was as human as the next man – Cunningham was always redeemed by his sense of humour, his sound judgment as to what the church should really be about, and his willingness to serve whoever needed his help.

Obituary, The Guardian, 6th January 2011

Endowed with a genial Chestertonian figure and a powerful voice...

Obituary, The Daily Telegraph, 13th December 2010

He was greatly loved by many people whose lives he touched.

Andrew M. Brown in the Daily Telegraph Blogs, 12th December 2010

One of the good 'uns.

Comment on that blog.

All descriptions of Father Kit Cunningham, a celebrity priest of sorts, of the Rosminian Order. But, in fact, he was another child abusing Catholic priest:

[John] Poppleton had been repeatedly sexually abused as a young boy by Fr Kit, an experience that he says "broke me down and broke my spirit". The abuse took place at St Michael's, Soni, in the 1960s, in what was then Tanganyika, now Tanzania. Four of the priests who taught there, all members of the Rosminian order, and including Fr Kit, perpetrated physical and sexual abuse that made this boarding school, according to Poppleton, "a loveless, violent and sad hellhole".

Now a new BBC documentary, Abused: Breaking The Silence (Tuesday, 22:35 on BBC One), is to be screened telling the story of the abuse that took place at St Michael's, Soni in Tanzania in the 1960s.

The piece by Peter Stanford in The Guardian is chilling, because it shows how easily these evil but charming and charismatic men can fool the credulous. Stanford penned the Guardian obit, but now has to come to terms with his inability to spot a monster in his midst; it turned out that Father Kit had returned his MBE because of the abuse he committed. Not a hint of this in the fulsome obits above, although there are some ironic (if they weren't so tragic) double entendres. How could this have been missed? Stanford is starting to ask questions, thank dog:

In almost three decades of writing about the church, and a lifetime as part of it, I thought I knew how to read a priest. Since the 1990s, when the scandal of paedophile priests first emerged in the public domain, a question mark has been hanging over almost every cleric as a result of the church's cover-up. Almost every priest, but not, for me, foolishly imagining myself a seasoned observer, over Fr Kit.

Such credulity is, unfortunately, an all too human failing. That is why the Catholic church cover-up is an even worse evil than the original abuse, because it has taken a dreadful abuse of authority and multiplied it by n, placing the welfare of the Church above the welfare of people. This supervenience of the institution over people is the evil of the religious institution in principle. Consider this:

However, Frenkiel [the reporter] points out in her film that on the day that Pope Benedict XVI, during his visit to Britain last September, was in Westminster Cathedral expressing his "deep sorrow to innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes", the Rosminian order was writing to refuse to pay any compensation for what it has openly acknowledged are the crimes of four of its own priests.

This is nauseating. Remember, Pope Benny was saying:

"It is difficult to understand how this perversion of the priestly mission was possible"... He said the first priority was to help the victims to recover from the trauma they had undergone "and rediscover too their faith in the message of Christ".

..while his Church was still denying compensation to its victims. Stanford wonders about the ongoing cover-ups and realises it calls into question the priorities of his Church. He continues:

Such questions might nag away slightly less insistently if I thought the Catholic authorities were genuinely trying to understand the root causes of this scandal. But this month the quasi-official Catholic Truth Society published a booklet on clerical sex-abuse that blames it on the "permissive society" of the 1960s. So while everyone else took sexual liberation to mean you didn't have to wait until you were married, priests took it as licence to abuse children?

I would urge Stanford to leave his Church, but first insist that it opens up its records for a full independent international inquiry into this scandal. It's a disgrace that this priest didn't die in disgrace.

UPDATE: Note that Patrick Wall, working for lawyers for the abused, is quoted as saying that abuse continues:

"I'm working on stuff that happened in the summer of 2010," he says. "It's the same old sodomy."

If this is true, the Catholic Church must be held accountable.

He recommends that the church "completely get out" of child protection, hand over all its files to civil law enforcement, and make bishops sign a legal oath every year that there are no perpetrators in the ministry - which would open them to criminal prosecution if they are found to have lied.
"Otherwise," he says, "I'll be prosecuting priest sex abuse cases for the rest of my life."

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Dark Knight of the Soul

India Knight has written an article that is worth analysing, to show the strange way homo sapiens goes about believing what it does. She says:

...there were aspects of Catholicism that I loved, and not only because they made me good at reading religious paintings (this is why RE lessons are so important — never mind God; feel the culture). They were mostly all the things people make fun of and call superstitious: the ceremony, the ritual, the saints, the relics, the Latin, the grace.

A common enough position; she was a believer in belief, rather than a genuine Catholic. An incoherent position, true, but it's clear why she thought that way (look for where she describes her *feelings* about things). She continues:

It is simply not possible, having read the papers or watched the news over the past couple of weeks, to stick with the programme. Like many of my generation, I could hardly be described as a good, or even decent, Catholic, but I’d managed to hang on in there, in the vaguest way imaginable.

Vague because it’s hard to pay lip-service to a faith that you feel hates you; a faith that would rather let you die in childbirth than have an abortion, won’t let you take the contraception necessary to prevent said abortion, hates gay people despite having many homosexual priests; a faith that talks ignorant nonsense about HIV and Aids, that would rather watch people die in Africa than let them use a condom; a faith that is unbelievably slow to say sorry about the fact that some of its members are habitual rapists of children.

What I find faintly incredible about this comment is that, apart from the last item in the list, all these things she has known for, presumably, a long time. The RC cover-up is disgusting, I agree, but seems consistent behaviour for an organisation that considers itself God's representation on Earth (God is right, they teach what God says, therefore they are right, whatever they do). As are all these other abhorrent beliefs! Is this just the straw that broke the camel's back? Is letting women die in childbirth not disgusting enough to persuade Ms Knight?

Apparently not. Even for a plastic Catholic the hooks are in so deep that her religion has to notch up any number of atrocities before she decides to abandon it. This is a signal of the dangers religion poses. No non-religious organisation would be allowed such latitude. If anyone belonged to a secular club or organisation that was guilty of these offences against humanity, they would leave without a second thought, and quite rightly. But consider Sinead O'Connor. She says:

There should be a full criminal investigation of the Catholic hierarchy of any country in which this has been an issue. There should be a full criminal investigation of the Vatican.

There should be a full criminal investigation of the pope.

Well said, and like many a Catholic, her views are admirable on any number of subjects in the political realm. But:

I'm passionately in love and always have been with what I call the Holy Spirit, which I believe the Catholic Church have held hostage and still do hold hostage. I think God needs to be rescued from them. They are not representing Christian values and Christian attitudes. If they were truly Christian, they would've confessed ages ago, and we wouldn't be having to batter the door down and try to get blood from a stone.

(This notion that there is some 'true Christianity' out there, and it just needs to be followed is endemic amongst Christians. But it may be true that there are as many true Christianities as there are Christians. In that circumstance the notion ceases to have any meaning.)

For O'Connor the list of atrocities perpetrated by her Church as listed by Knight are *insufficient* to make her leave it. One wonders what the Church would have to do to alienate such acolytes. Nothing, probably, which is why organisations that engender such unthinking and immutable devotion should be treated with suspicion *on principle*, and why thinking inspired by it (I mean, religious revelation and tradition) should be disallowed in the public sphere.

Because such thinking is ironclad and immune to reason, and thus undemocratic.

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