Dear Christopher Howse
25th November 1999
As we run up to Christmas, I find myself torn as always between the pleasures I take in the familiar rituals of the season and my deep conviction that as an institutionalised religion, Christianity has been a terrible disaster. I am an unabashed atheist on purely philosophical grounds. I think that there is no God and therefore that Christ cannot be his son, or indeed any other relative. But that is not the issue here. My point is that just as Christianity might be false as doctrine but useful and attractive as an institution, so it might be true as doctrine and mischievous as an institution. But what I believe is that in fact, it is both false as doctrine and mischievous in its social effects.
Let me begin with toleration. On the whole, paganism was tolerant. Certainly no classical state tolerated views which threatened its stability, but it was happy to allow individuals to worship the gods they preferred, so long as they were not a threat to social order. The Romans symbolised willingness to admit conquered people to membership of the Roman state by admitting their gods to Rome.
It is Christianity which brought religious intolerance into the world. We must not exaggerate; the ancient world was scarcely squeamish about slaughtering prisoners, raping, looting and so on. But it did not enforce doctrinal orthodoxy and murder those who dissented from it. The concept of heresy emerges only at the point where Christianity uses the power of the state to enforce a doctrinal uniformity that argument can never achieve.
It was in revolt against Christian intolerance that the first law on toleration was issued by a Roman emperor-Julian the Apostate. Eventually, to be sure, there arose a distinctively Christian idea of toleration, one which took seriously the idea of the sanctity of conscience. But it arose only after it became apparent that neither protestants nor catholics had a serious prospect of dominating the whole of Europe and imposing their own views on the recalcitrant.
What makes the spectacle of intolerance peculiarly repellent is, however, the wickedness of the creed on whose behalf the persecutors acted. Christianity's interest in exactly what heretics and unbelievers think is rooted in a hatred of the world and the flesh that has made enormous numbers of people pointlessly miserable. Of course, I don't mean that you have to be a Christian to have curious views about sex, morality and ordinary human happiness. Plato had curious views about all three-which no doubt explains why St Augustine found Platonism so congenial.
What are we asked to take as our standard of morality? Is it the well-being, in this life, of everyone around us, so far as we can affect it? No. We are asked to attend to the salvation of our own souls. This is a doctrine of simple self-centredness-a sort of transcendental version of the narcissism which afflicts young people. Yet, paradoxically, self-sacrifice is also enjoined for its own sake, whereas in any rational ethic, we want people to sacrifice themselves only for some overwhelming good. And the sacrifice that is mostly asked is the sacrifice of the pleasures of everyday life.
In primitive societies it is useful if people can endure pain, survive the routine loss of family members, and so on. The emphasis on stoic virtues has a point; and so does an emphasis on courage and military skill in a society where predators are a fact. But Christianity embodies a primitive moral code whose point has got lost. Its point is to satisfy the dictates of an arbitrary deity, who is obsessed with the sexual desires of his creation.
The simple complaint against all this is that it has caused much pointless guilt and misery-more than any other moral doctrine could have caused. The more complicated complaint is that it has corrupted our understanding of human happiness. On the one hand, people are unable to enjoy harmless pleasures because they think them sinful; on the other, the only thing many people can take pleasure in is whatever is thought to be sinful. Without the Christian sense of sin, the Sun's "phoo-ar, look at those" approach to sex would be impossible.
In these semi-civilised times, when the threat of outright persecution by Christians has receded in the affluent west, if not in the Balkans, it is the afterlife of the concept of sin that is Christianity's legacy. In short, where Christianity has the power to oppress, it has always used it. Where it has lost that power, it undermines the search for a sensible and sustainable human happiness. The narrowness of its focus on sexual immorality undermines a rational understanding of what morality is about, and subverts the constant, uphill struggle to reduce the amount of misery in the world. Oh, and one last thing: it's not good for people to believe what isn't true-at any rate, not systematically and on a large scale.
Yours sincerely,
Dear Alan Ryan
28th November 1999
I do not look forward to the familiar rituals of the season: overheated shops, piped carols and patches of vomit on the pavement. Perhaps if we still celebrated the festival of Sol Invictus it would be more restrained and tasteful.
I am delighted to agree, though, that it is bad for people to believe what is not true. It is also bad for people to profess what they do not believe. That is an argument against modernists who say the creed with their lips but disbelieve any item they think unlikely, such as the virgin birth, the resurrection-indeed, the divinity of Jesus.
It is no surprise that as an atheist you are hostile to Christianity. You must be hostile to revealed religion which proposes teachings to be believed: Judaism, Islam, Christianity. Some Hindus and Buddhists are less at odds with atheism. Anyway, I am not going on a comparative religion window-shopping spree. My proposition is that Christianity is true and beneficial.
It is surprising that you say Christianity has caused more misery than any other moral doctrine could have done. That is Pangloss upside-down. Top ranking for actually causing misery must go to atheistic regimes where morality is whatever suits the state: the China of Mao, the Soviet Union of Stalin, the Albania of Hoxha. Hitlerism is a special case-a deranged thought system and a bitter foe to both Judaism and Christianity.
Is Christianity meant to get people to heaven? Yes. You call that self-centred and narcissistic. But Christians only get to heaven if they obey the commandment to love God and their neighbours. The self-centred are excluded. True, it is hard to measure Christianity's results if its aim is to get people to heaven. We do not know how successful it has been. You would say that it could not succeed, because there is no God and no heaven.
But getting people to heaven is not the sole aim. Christianity is also a mystery religion: it deals with realities beyond human comprehension (but not contrary to it). The first duty is to worship God. Since the God of Christianity is utterly good and true, this duty has beneficial side-effects for the worshipper.
This does not mean that you are entitled to say: "Oh, you are talking about a religious effect. I am looking for measurable reality." It is meant to be a religious effect, and human beings have a hunger for the numinous. Many people who are not Christians share in its expressions of spiritual insight. Take music. Bach is a Christian apologist simply through his music; Christian liturgy says things through performance which cannot be conveyed by syllogisms. This also applies to Fra Angelico or Dante.
Here we have a difficulty. Western civilisation is clearly Christian, but it is also influenced by the classical world. The most scandalous acts of Christians-keeping slaves, examining suspects under torture-are legacies of the pagan world. Christianity has only slowly broken from such ungodly practices. Wars continue because angry rulers do not listen to Christian preachers. Christianity is, in a way, a victim culture.
Christianity always refers back to Jesus: a historical figure, a man-who was God. But this man who was God did not come in power. He was crucified. Christians find meaning for suffering by participating in his suffering. Moreover, by the sacrifice of Jesus, the people of the world, maimed by moral evil (murder, theft, hatred), are reconciled to God. Atheists have to try to find a different response to suffering and moral evil. Francis Bacon painted images that some think interpret the worst horrors of this unChristian century, but he was a jolly soul, always game for a drink and, in his case, a spot of masochistic sex.
Which brings us to your repeated complaint that Christianity is obsessed with sex. I can't think that is true. The ancients found some sexual acts shameful and some ludicrous, as they undoubtedly are. Simply put, Christianity prohibits genital activity outside marriage. Many pagans have weirder taboos. I do not want to go into female circumcision.
What I find offensive is the assertion that the Christian moral system is "primitive." Christianity did take over the decalogue from Judaism, but the Judaic understanding of God is not at all primitive-it is belief in a single, immaterial, almighty, good creator.
There are plenty of "primitive" cultures still around, with their good and bad points. Mary Douglas found that Lele women became Christians, because in traditional Lele society they had to suffer the unpleasant experience of being "village wives"; Christian monogamy was an obviously attractive alternative.
As for paganism being tolerant-well, was it? The Aztecs glorified in human sacrifice. Rome tolerated slavery, infanticide, murder in the circus for entertainment, ritual prostitution. Rome would not tolerate Jews who threw down Roman images in the Temple.
Hardly anyone is an atheist-or anything else-on purely philosophical grounds. Most people acquire beliefs from the culture around them. Things are bad enough without denying them the bright hope of Christianity.
Yours,
Dear Christopher
29th November 1999
You say, quite rightly, that there have been innumerable very wicked non-Christians and atheists; I forbear to observe that Stalin emerged from an Orthodox seminary, and say nothing about the Christian and, more especially, the catholic roots of anti-semitism.
I might say that it is exactly the excess of belief that leads to totalitarian excesses of one sort or another, but my target for the moment is Christian belief. And I should clear up a confusion. When I talk of the misery that Christian morality causes, I mean to those who hold Christian moral views. Of course, sexual misery is vastly less important than suffering in the Gulag or in a Nazi camp; but the latter are not self-inflicted wounds. It is the gratuitous repudiation of the happiness of the world that I complain about.
But I would like to take you up on the notion of a mystery religion. The idea that the wonders of Bach are distinctively Christian is not one to which I would subscribe. Consider that reprobate young man Mozart, with his scatological enthusiasms. His Requiem Mass is wonderful, but does it express a distinctively Christian view of life, death and endurance-other than in using the words of the Christian liturgy? I think not. Richard Strauss was, in all probability, at least a half-convinced Nazi: are the Four Last Songs a Nazi farewell to life? Stravinsky was right to be sceptical of the idea that music, as music, means anything.
It is true that many things strike us as mysterious. Most philosophers are still baffled by the phenomenon of consciousness. All the same, intellectual progress consists in the removal of mystery. The causation of typhoid was mysterious; now that we know what causes it, we can cure it. I hope the same will soon apply to Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's.
Luxuriating in mystery is, if I can say so inoffensively, a bit close to intellectual laziness: understanding how the world works is a matter of unveiling the secrets of nature, not drawing the veil more tightly about them. The world doesn't suffer from being understood, and there is no reason to think that we shall suffer if we understand it and ourselves better. The world does not need the conviction that there is a mystery at the heart of being; rather, it needs more common sense.
Which brings me back to where I started. I did not acquire my disbelief on philosophical grounds; rather, it has never seemed to me remotely possible that there was a deity of the sort described in the Bible, nor that when we died we did anything other than die. But my chief complaint is against institutionalised Christianity, a retrograde force both politically and intellectually-not always, but certainly more often than not; certainly better than mad and bad pagan or atheist regimes, but equally certainly worse than the best. I won't mention Northern Ireland at this time of moderate optimism-but my colleagues will forgive me if I end by gesturing at the somewhat lethargic bigotry which characterised Oxford until the repeal of the Test Acts allowed the unbelievers to liven up the place.
Best wishes,
Dear Alan
1st December 1999
"Intellectual laziness" is a funny concept. It probably isn't intellectual at all, but derives either from fear (of what might be discovered) or from the slothfulness which makes one neglect piano practice or postpone the washing-up. I do not think that the concept of mystery need contribute to this vice; on the contrary.
I admit that recklessly, if not lazily, I used "mystery" ambiguously in calling Christianity "a mystery religion." The mysteries of Christian cult are the rites which Christians are convinced bring reconciliation between God and man. The Latinate word for such a mystery is sacrament: a physical act that signifies and effects spiritual realities. Prayer and worship are excellently human activities. I count them among the benefits of Christianity, neither luxurious nor miserable.
The other meaning of "mystery" is the one used in "murder mystery." In your consistent, atheist way, the only kind of mystery you admit is an unknown quantity-the answer to a question such as "What causes Parkinson's disease?" In my vocabulary there are mysteries which transcend nature and are not fully comprehensible to the human intellect, no matter how well-trained it is. The reconciliation of mankind to God by the sacrifice of Jesus, God and man-the central mystery of the Christian religion-is a prime example. I think the danger is not so much intellectual laziness, but reductionism. Just as the human person is not explained by electro-chemical variations in the brain, so, analogously, the meaning of the Christian religion is not exhausted by science. Certainly not by empirical science, but not even by metaphysical science. If God is what Christians say he is (pure act, infinite intellect and so on), then he is not explicable by a formula, no matter how powerful. This does not imply enmity to philosophical endeavour. Christianity is no friend to anti-intellectualism; as you know, Aquinas's Summa puts the question: "Does God exist? Apparently not." And even if Ockham and Descartes had some pernicious influences, they were Christians and philosophers and Christian philosophers.
But you continue to object that Christianity makes people unhappy by not allowing them enough, or not the right kinds, of sex. Obviously you do not advocate all sorts of sexual activity in any circumstance. But I should have thought that wanting to do some things (say, having a happy, balanced family) implied refraining from doing other things (one-night stands). I don't know what sex you do want-you are the one who brings it up.
But I am more worried about your antipathy to an "excess of belief." I mentioned Stalin and Mao not as individuals who were wicked and happened to be atheists, but as people who built up atheistical systems which were wicked. They did not believe too much, but rather in the wrong things-things which had disastrous consequences for others. I think that if you succeed in knocking down Christianity, you will find that another, perverse, ideology will flourish like a weed in its place.
It is all very well living your sensitive, tolerant, carefully moral Ryanism in Oxford. The trouble is that the alternative you implicitly offer to Christianity-and totalitarianism-sounds mightily lacking in idealism.
Christianity is characterised by intellectual energy, sublimity in art, regularity in worship, balance in personal morality but also, among its most respected adherents from St Francis to Mother Teresa, a zeal to do good to others.
Happy month, white rabbits,
Dear Christopher,
2nd December 1999
Well, yes and no. Of course, as we go on, I begin to yield to my philosophical inclinations as well as my sociological anxieties, and start to say that it all depends. In that frame of mind, I certainly feel tempted to agree that when people do not believe in the nuanced doctrines of a traditional faith, they do not believe nothing, but absolutely anything.
But first to sex, happiness, and what morality might be about and might be sustained by. Of course, I do not think that all forms of sexual behaviour should be endorsed; I don't even think that all forms of sexual activity between consenting adults are all right-although I am inclined to think that the law should keep out of them. I merely observe that the Christian tradition has done a bad job at teaching people how to promote their own and other people's happiness, and has tried, too successfully, to instil guilt, fear and misery instead.
And the root cause of the problem is thinking of morality as a set of commands issued by a deity, rather than as a set of sensible rules for living together and some useful suggestions about self-restraint and self-regard. To be sure, many of the morals of modern Christianity overlap with those of a sensible secular ethics; John Stuart Mill assured us that Aristotle was a utilitarian, and that the utilitarian spirit was embodied in the teaching of Christ. My footnote is that what is distinctively Christian is what we should shed. Ordinary happiness is what we have too little regard for.
As to reconciliation, only if there were a God who for some curious reason chose to make humanity's life difficult (because Adam and Eve went scrumping on the wrong tree) would there be a need for reconciliation. But what would we think of an orchard owner who pursued his grievance for several thousand years? And why would having one's child murdered by idle Roman governors and a bloodthirsty mob be the way of achieving reconciliation? Supposing we take all this as an elaborate allegory-what is it an allegory of? If it is an allegory of the need many of us feel, as we age, to be ready to wrap up our lives, square our moral accounts, make peace with our enemies, and tell our friends how much we value them-why don't we get on with it, rather than bewildering ourselves with this dubious allegory?
In short, I want Bach and Mozart, but I deny that Christian belief is the price we have to pay. By the same token, I want steadiness in belief, a proper respect for the value of human life, and a decent seriousness about life-but I deny that Christianity is the best foundation for this, let alone an essential one. I began as an intuitive atheist, continued as a philosophical atheist, and in late middle age have reached the view that I wouldn't wish there to be a God-if only because we'd have to try him for crimes against humanity.
With all good wishes,
Dear Alan,
3rd December 1999
Your alternative to Christianity sounds disappointing, dangerous and dull. Good God! Imagine living in a world with the moral rules worked out by John Stuart Mill!
Very well, you can have your sex. May it give you pleasure. But I doubt if it will bring happiness. You can also have the tragedies of Sophocles, but you can't have even Marlowe's tragedy of Dr Faustus. You can't claim Bach or even Mozart, let alone Dante and Fra Angelico. You want a rational morality, not a God-given one. Certainly morality must be reasonable. But how are you to get anyone to agree with your own invented system? Christians agree that there is a law written on the hearts of men; but many people ignore it and no one seems to have the strength, from their own resources, to follow it.
You do not want the freedom from materialism of St Francis, the hospitality of St Benedict, the insights of St Thomas Aquinas, the unconditional love of Mother Teresa. Instead, what utilitarian benefits can we expect? The panopticon prison, the workhouse, embryo research? You are grateful that God does not exist, or you would have to blame him for the evil in the world. At least you recognise that there is something terribly wrong with the world; how are we to be free from it? You accuse Christians of "hatred of the world"-although in their Bible they read that the creator, God, "saw that it was good." But the blameworthy, Manichaean God you have invented is not the God of Christianity.
The Jewish people followed the moral law without certain hope of a future life. Christians have the same obligations, and, despite their wicked actions, hope for mercy and eternal happiness. That is quite a bonus. I'd like to see you there.
Happy millennium,
