Answers to Correspondents

Some responses to contributors:

 

Mr Godfrey asks :’ Mr Hitchens wrote: 'As this is fundamentally a religious question, one chooses whether one accepts the existence of free will or not, depending on what sort of world one wishes to inhabit.' How is that an argument? Surely reality is not changed by human whim? Either something is true or it is not, this must be the case for 'religious questions'.

 

**My reply. It is not an argument so much as an acceptance that there are several questions which cannot be answered by logic and scientific enquiry. And yet we know that much depends on the answer.  They are, at base, the same argument as the God argument. And they take us to to the same point, where we choose the belief we desire. I just think this is straightforward honesty. Anyone can ask me why I believe what I believe, and I will tell them.

 

But what makes this a dead-end argument is the insoluble difficulty - that the atheists start from a series of presuppositions, which they claim (baselessly) are self-evident.  They engage their emotions at the start, thus rejecting any questions or facts which might suggest even the possibility of created universe. They shut their minds, and praise themselves for doing so,  claiming that they are  ‘bright’ and thast rleigious believers are stupid.

 

They deny that they have any motives for holding these presuppositions, and so refuse to discuss those motives – which are the only interesting things about their position,  otherwise a dull statement of unproven certainty, usually garlanded with jeers about the ‘stupidity’ of those who don’t agree with them. Worse, it is often accompanied by intolerant and potentially totalitarian beliefs about the teaching of religion to children.(See my ‘The Rage Against God’)

 

This is often coupled with the ludicrous claim that babies are all atheists , until they fall into the hands of religious indoctrinators.  This, as I’ve pointed out is as absurd as Christians claiming that atheists born into atheist cultures are all religious believers, until they fall into the hands of atheist propagandists. Babies, of course, have no beliefs of any kind, any more than hedgehogs do.  They are encouraged, as they grow into full humanity, into certain beliefs which are current in the societies in which they are raised.  But as soon as they become aware that these beliefs *are* beliefs, then they can in principle be persuaded to believe something else, or to stop believing what they believe.

 

Only those who pretend that (or have been fooled into thinking that) ‘our belief is not a belief’ are not open to such persuasion. And in this way, atheists who deny that their belief is a belief (a position almost universal among the militant, ignorant, spiteful and intolerant new breed of God-hater) are like worshippers of some jungle idol , who belong to an isolated tribe which has never encountered anyone who does not worship this idol. They, too, do not know (or think) that their belief is a belief, or that any choice is available. But they have more of an excuse for this delusion, as they are surrounded by thousands of square miles of uninhabited rainforest, whereas the modern intolerant atheist is surrounded by two thousand years of learning, literature, history, philosophy, music, art and architecture, in which the existence and nature of an alternative view, freqyuently held by intelligent and informed persons,  is made plain.  

 

The truth is that atheism and theism only exist as concepts because they are two options in a choice (the third option is agnosticism) . If there were no choice, the words would not need to exist. I am sure, in the Newspeak of the ‘new atheists’, some such linguistic measure is being attempted.

 

Mr Godfrey also says : ‘The Nazi party claimed to be socialist for propaganda reasons (**PH : There is a good joke to be had here about a number of other nominally socialist parties, but I will refrain from making it) , one can look at their actions on family (for instance) to see their conservative ideology shining through, espousing in this case exactly the approach you do yourself Mr Hitchens, that a women's place is raising children, and having as many as possible,’

 

**Well, that is not actually my position, at least not so far as I know, and if Mr Godfrey can produce any evidence that it is, I should like to see it. It is a false caricature of my position, which is that state and culture should stop treating full-time motherhood as a shameful waste of resources, and as a demeaning activity for an educated woman, or indeed any woman, and should stop arguing that paid work outside the home is morally superior to unpaid work in the home. I have no views on how many children other people should have. It is up to them.

 

Mr Godfrey also notes that the National Socialists took to “… outlawing abortion, hardly a leftist position.”

***TO which I reply that Stalin’s USSR also outlawed abortion (after an initial period when it was freely permitted, see my ‘Rage Against God’ ), and you can’t get much more leftist than that. Leftists who are in power, have aggressive foreign policies and have big conscript armies tend to be against abortion, for obvious reasons. Leftist governments have also been strong persecutors of homosexuals (Castro, the USSR) users of Torture ( lots and lots of them) and of capital punishment (Castro and now China and Vietnam). The National Socialists did not, as far as I know, have any moral objection to abortion. Though they may ahve uswed the objections of others as cover for a policy essnetially aimed at ensuring the supply of cannon-fodder.

He says that the NSDAP’s ‘approach to Atheism… could send one to the camps,’

 

Is that so? I had never heard of anyone being sent to the German concentration camps for atheism as such. I am pretty sure some of the senior NSDAP figures were openly atheist. Can he give me facts and references on this?
 

 

He then quotes Hitler (I’d be glad of a reference here)  ‘ In this speech from 1933 Hitler makes clear his faith, and his hatred of non-believers: "To do justice to God and our own conscience, we have turned once more to the German Volk." "We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."

 

I would guess he was there referring) in the word 'atheistic') to the Communists, but I’d need context to check.  We have discussed Hitler’s religious beliefs (and his political game with the churches)  before. He was not an atheist. But it is fairly clear that he was also not a Christian. As to what he was, I draw readers’ attention to the extraordinary prophecy made by the poet Heinrich Heine , in ‘Religion and Philosophy in Germany’ , in 1832, almost exactly a century before it was fulfilled :

 

‘Christianity -- and that is its greatest merit -- has somewhat mitigated that brutal German love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the Cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame.  The old stone gods will then rise from long ruins and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and Thor will leap to life with his giant hammer and smash the Gothic cathedrals. ...    

'... Do not smile at my advice -- the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature. Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder comes rolling somewhat slowly, but its crash will be unlike anything before in the history of the world.    

'At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in farthest Africa will draw in their tails and slink away. ... A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll.’

 

Mr Godfrey urges me ‘Please have the decency to admit to where your own ideas, taken to the extreme can end up, as I have to admit and ponder about Marxism, you must about Conservatism.’

 

**Well, if anyone can point to where my Anglican, Burkean ideas can lead when taken to the extreme, I’ll cheerfully own up to it.

 

But his comparison with Franco and the South American juntas seems a bit far-fetched. I have nothing in common with them that I can see, and if I do,  perhaps he can say what it is?

 

He also says that  ‘enlightenment ideas are what give us democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of association and the rule of law, before that was Absolutism, Church and Crown trampling all before them, in lock step. Which I sincerely doubt is what you desire, or I have misjudged you. ‘

 

I think this is a misreading of history, and urge him to read the opening section of Macaulay’s ‘History of England’ in which he points out that absolutism had not flourished in England for centuries before the Cromwellian age, and that it was an attempt to impose it on this country that led to the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution. The rule of law, especially its superiority over temporal power, as set out in Magna Carta (the root of all civilised government in the world)  originates in Christianity.  Church and Crown were endlessly in conflict with each other in England, hence the great cult of Thomas a Becket.  

 

I didn’t say Mr Embery was ‘slow on the uptake’. I said he was ‘obtuse’, an entirely different thing , which I note he is reluctant to repeat, fearing perhaps that others may agree with me.  He was being so, and I didn’t need to get angry, nor did I get angry, to point out this fact to him. He then flounced off, in my view because he was losing the exchange.

 

Mr ‘B’ says : ‘You give the game away when you write: "one chooses whether one accepts the existence of free will or not, depending on what sort of world one wishes to inhabit" , a perfect example of "argumentum ad consequentiam". This demonstrates that you are arguing according to your emotions, rather than to the "facts and logic" which you continually espouse.

 

**I reply ‘This is broadly true. I am quite clear about it. But he fails to note that I only cease to use facts and logic because, in his particular argument, they cannot answer the question. As I have said here before not above a thousand times, the default position on religion, provided by all the facts and logic the human mind can provide, is agnosticism. I cheerfully accept that if I wish to go beyond this point, to religious belief, I am obviously making a choice based upon my desires. But I am endlessly amused by the fact that hardly any atheists are prepared to admit the same, and instead indulge in teenage word-games to pretend that their belief isn’t a belief. I thought English linguistic philosophy was pretentious and dire when I first encountered it, but it is elegant and intellectual prepared with this lumpish ( and usually snotty) evasiveness.

 

 All I ask is that, where facts and logic cannot decide the issue (which is the case on the God question and related matters) my opponents would be so kind as to admit that they, too, are influenced in their choice by their desires. Alas the God-haters are stuck. Their initial impulse is hatred of God, which leads them then to dismiss all evidence of his possible existence. They are so deluded by their own petulant, self-seeking fury that they cannot see themselves for what they are. These seething emotions are then visited instead upon those who dare to suggest that God might in fact exist.

 

He says : ‘You are guilty of precisely the fault of which you accuse Mr Falls. Knowledge of the workings of the human brain and the role of free will are being constantly updated’ . **Well, no doubt, but knowledge of the human brain remains superficial and very sketchy.

 

‘ and some of the conclusions reached by the likes of Sam Harris make for very uncomfortable reading for those brought up to believe in the primacy of free will in our actions. I would hope that it would be common ground that our actions and reactions are determined by the workings of the brain.’

 

** (I’m not quite sure about the word ‘determined’ here. Greatly affected, for certain. But I think there are those who might question the all-embracing description ‘determined’. The argument about consciousness and the brain is very complex and tricky. Just hesitating, not being dogmatic).

 

 ‘If so, surely the introduction of a toxic substance into the brain can affect our judgement, our responses and our ability to control our actions. You constantly argue that the abuse of drugs damages the brain and the psyche. Why do you stop short of conceding that it can damage our ability to make rational decisions, or to exercise free will?’

 

**I haven’t stopped short of it. It damages everything (though it is absurd to say that it makes the exercise of will impossible) .  But I won’t accept initial criminal drug-taking as an excuse (legal or moral) for continued criminal drug-taking. As my main purpose is to deter people from ever taking drugs in the first place, I am mostly concerned with the initial decision, in any case. Severe punishment of those who possess illegal drugs, at whatever stage,  would ensure that in many more cases. This will inevitably involve punishment of so-called ‘addicts’, who would find,  in disciplined and properly-run prisons, that they were quite capable of giving up the substances to which they claimed to be ‘addicted’. So I win both ways.

 

‘Sharispa’ asks : ‘In ‘The Rage Against God’ you say that the most frightening thing for revolutionary socialists to accept is that the socialist project failed because it sought to usurp the place of God in people's lives. Why do you think that some ex revolutionary socialists can accept this (albeit very few) and others cannot? Could it be because those who cannot accept are still actually such socialists and cannot let go of the utopian idea, while those who can accept have let go of the idea? Anyway, I don't want to second guess you and would be interested in your view.’

 

**My view has always been that belief in God and a serious religious position are most likely to form in the minds of mature and experienced adults. The nature of our society allows and encourages people to remain in  a permanent adolescence. People in the university-educated elite classes of the post 1960s West no longer grow up. So they remain moral teenagers, demanding sovereignty over their own bodies and insisting on their ‘right’ to ruin themselves if they so wish, failing to understand that they are not islands unto themselves. It is this understanding that is crucial to abandoning utopian schemes, which are all about human vanity.

 

Mr W  asserts: ‘readers should know that PH defines addiction as something that CANNOT be overcome by will power alone’. Perhaps he could tell me where I have so defined it.

 

I don’t have much to say about Thursday’s ‘Question Time’, except to say that I was distressed by the sycophancy shown in general to Russell Brand  , who was at best platitudinous. And to point out that my views are not identical to those of Melanie Phillips, with whom I have had more than one quite sharp exchange on foreign policy matters and on the Tory Party. I am also not wholly at one with her on the drugs issue, and do not (for instance) accept the validity of figures claiming that drug abuse is falling in this country. How could such figures be reliably obtained? Nor do I believe that drug abuse is something that can be ‘treated’.

 

Can the person now posting as ‘David Jatt’ please settle upon one name  for himself? Others are entitled to know that he is posting under more than one name.