Mr 'Bunker' says Something Interesting

Very occasionally, even our old friend Mr ‘Bunker’ manages to produce something which stands out from the buzz,  from the hum and tinkle of background noise  which he spends most of his time making.

 

Two days ago, he posted the following comment. I have interleaved some responses, marking them **

 

 

Mr ‘Bunker’ : ’Mr Hitchens said that if anyone asked him why he believed what he believed, he'd tell them. So I asked him. By sheer coincidence, Mr Hitchens now recalls an interview he gave "some weeks ago". Why does he reproduce it here? Because bits and pieces of it have turned up on the web! Can I be excused for thinking that this is in fact an indirect reply to my question? – ‘

 

PH***No, he can’t be excused.  Or I suppose he can , but he’s quite wrong and has an exaggerated idea of how large he looms in my consciousness. Generally a brief glance at his postings is enough to persuade me that I have something else to do. I reproduced it because I finally got access to it and was able to. I didn’t have Mr Bunker on my mind at the time. I’ve many times said that I chose to believe because I prefer to live in an ordered purposeful universe , rather than in a chaotic, purposeless one. That’s the answer. It doesn’t vary.

 

Mr ‘Bunker’ :  ‘Whatever, I'm grateful to Mr Hitchens for what I consider an excellent response to that question. And I'm so relieved, because the way Mr Hitchens returned to Christian belief is entirely understandable. Until now I'd thought he had "decided to choose" and then "wished" to believe in God again - and it had happened just like that.’

 

PH***He may have thought that it happened ‘just like that’, or that the decision came in some sort of flash or instant.  I’d never given him any reason to do so. And had he read my book, ‘The Rage Against God’ as I seem to recall urging him to do, he would know this wasn’t the case.

 

Mr Bunker ‘And I understood that he said I could do the same - if I wanted to.’

 

***PH : Again, he misunderstood. I certainly did take such a decision, just as I had, earlier in my life, taken the decision which Mr Bunker says he did not take, namely to believe that there is no God and that the universe is chaotic and purposeless, an admission dispiriting in itself, but useful in removing any deep significance from my own actions,  in abolishing (for a while, anyway) any guilt or regret I felt for them, and in reducing my conscience to a thing of no account.

 

But then, I did not take that decision on an instant. It just became my position, and then a day came when I was asked to state my position and I said that I was an atheist.  But I have no doubt that I had taken the decision a long time before I articulated it in a conversation. This, in my experience, is how people do decide things, especially changes of mind. They are aware of a battle of logic and desire in their minds. They will be persistently aware of doubts about certain positions they have held, perhaps out of habit or instinct or protective colouration. There are many different responses to those doubts, and one of the main ones is to suppress them, so hard that it is possible, most of the time, to act as if they don’t exist. This often takes the external form of anger or (more commonly)  contempt towards those who publicly express one’s own private doubts. Many people never formulate such decisions clearly at all, as they don’t discuss them with others and they feel no need to write them down or publish them in any other way. Even so, if asked, they would give the opinion they have formed. . As someone whose business is writing and debating, I’m bound to clarify my opinions into words, and probably think more verbally than most people and so am more aware of my own thought processes as they are taking place.

 

Mr Bunker: ‘But apparently that is not so. Look at this paragraph: "It was a process so gradual that the moment at which I might have been said to be a believer again cannot be clearly distinguished from the moment when I didn’t believe. I can’t remember a specific moment. It was a very gradual, imperceptible thing and at some point it was necessary for me to acknowledge to myself and to other people that, that was the case." I can honestly say that if I were to become a believer in God, it would be by a similar process. A process in which new facts and evidence were to be forthcoming, or in which my perception of those facts and evidence changed - in such a way that I would have no other option than to believe that God exists.’

 

***And here again we catch Mr ‘Bunker’ in his invariable three-card trick, though I am rather touched that he has had the manners and generosity of spirit to provide God with his capital ‘Go’ on this occasion, and left out the usual ‘gods’ goblins and others whom he likes to drag into the discussion.

 

 You have to be quick to spot it, but there it is . He says that he would only become a believer if  he had ‘no other option’ than to believe that God exists. Once again, I had, have and will always have (this side of the grave) the option to believe, as Mr Bunker does, that God does not exist. On the balance of probabilities, I have chosen my measuring scale and find that the nature of the universe seems to me to be very strong evidence of the existence of God.  The nature of my decision (which was taken when I decided to use a measuring scale which would favour that outcome) , and my reasons for taking it (reasons which preceded the process, which led to the decision) become clear to me when I review it.

 

But, had I chosen a different measuring scale to start with, I could conclude that there was very little evidence, and so dismiss the possibility..  The choice of measuring scale was evidence of my decision, not evidence on one side or the other. The choice I made was not one of science or logic, which cannot really help me, the choice was a moral one. Mr Bunker has mistaken *how* I chose belief for *why* I did so.

 

 

But the confusion of how with why is no great surprise in a man who constantly uses the expression ‘I can’t’ when he means ‘I won’t’ (a formula well-known to most parents trying to persuade children to do new things ) .

 

And then of course there is the question of *why* I prefer to choose to live an ordered and purposeful universe, despite the very high price of admission to that universe . This I have always kept private, saying that it concerns matters which are simultaneously commonplace, verging on the banal, in general;  and deeply personal and private , in particular. I think any reasonably intelligent person can work out roughly what I mean.  It is when you realise that for one small but vital thing to be true and right, as you most powerfully desire it to be, your whole cosmos has to be reordered, that you see it most clearly. But I was always free to take that chocie, just as I am free now to go back on it.