Tonight at the "Atheism for Lent" discussion group, we talked about the atheist critiques of religion that we have been looking at in the context of the Lenten narrative wherein God confesses God's own atheism and in the context of the Journey's own story.
The discussion focused less on Rollins' notion of a/theism (see the below posts for the material I produced) and more on the wider implications of the "Atheism for Lent" Course as a whole for Journey as a community, and I was glad to have been able to stimulate so much reflection in this direction. I was hoping that the Course would be useful for Journey, and not just an intellectual exercise. In particular, we talked about the way in which Journey's move from a church under a railway arch to a vegetarian cafe reflects a hope for fewer barriers to participation and we related this to the move from an atheistic-theistic dualism to the concept of a/theism.
Then we moved on to discuss ideas for the Good Friday "Forsaken by God" service that the group will be creating. We explored ideas for readings and music, and things will continue to take shape over the next few days.
Religion as A/Theism: Rollins (1)
Religion as A/Theism: Rollins (2)
Religion as A/Theism: Rollins (3)
Religion as A/Theism: Rollins (4)
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
Religion as A/Theism: Rollins (4)
While the (more traditional) strands of negative theology in Pete Rollins’ first publication, How (Not) to Speak of God, form a type of ‘believing in God while remaining dubious about what one believes about God’ (p.26), more radical implications can be drawn, since there can be not just doubt about ‘who or what God is’ but, further, ‘doubt about if God is’ (interview with Pete for my PhD thesis).
Rollins’ second book, The Fidelity of Betrayal, follows the deconstructive theology of Derridean philosopher John D. Caputo to make a distinction between, on the one hand, the name and being of God and, on the other, the event of God. This is in order suggest a betrayal of religious beliefs and practices that emphasise the existence of God in fidelity to those that encourage the transformative event of God.
This more radical thread within Rollins’ work stresses that ‘[f]or Christians, it is a happening, an event, that we affirm and respond to, regardless of the ebbs and flows of our abstract theological reflections concerning the source and nature of this happening,’ such that ‘[t]here is no doubt for the believer that God dwells with us (as an event), yet there is a deep uncertainty about who, what, or even if God is (as a being)’ (The Fidelity of Betrayal, pp.141 and 144). This betrayal, negation or atheism is, Rollins suggests, integral to the Christian religion.
This means that critics of religion can be helpful in demonstrating the essentially a/theistic nature of Christianity. In particular, Freud, Marx and Nietzsche, as well as contemporary atheists like Derren Brown and Ricky Gervais, can aid our own recollection of and reflection upon those experiences of doubt and uncertainty in which we most keenly feel isolated from and abandoned by God. This is, after all, an experience that ‘we bear witness to at the very heart of Christianity itself’ (Rollins, "Dis-Courses Theory [Part 3]").
This is an a/theism, then, that is both a theistic atheism in the tradition of negative theology – a mystical affirmation of God’s absence, or “distance” from, our beliefs and practices that idolatrously attempt to grasp and make God present – and a more radically atheistic theism – an existential affirmation of the absence of God’s presence itself. The latter is ‘analogous to the experience of waiting for one whom we love in a café. The later they are, the more we experience their absence. Our beloved is absent to everyone in the room but we are the only one who feels it’ (Ikon, "Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?" in Rollins, How [Not] to Speak of God, p.82). This is perhaps, then, what Rollins means when he says that ‘[o]nly the Christian can be an atheist’ (here).
What does the local atheism of our own religious beliefs and practices look like? Do we see that atheism as integral to our theism? Do our beliefs and practices celebrate or disavow our own experiences of doubt, disbelief, and abandonment by God?
If Christianity is a/theistic...
...what happens to my faith?
Rollins’ second book, The Fidelity of Betrayal, follows the deconstructive theology of Derridean philosopher John D. Caputo to make a distinction between, on the one hand, the name and being of God and, on the other, the event of God. This is in order suggest a betrayal of religious beliefs and practices that emphasise the existence of God in fidelity to those that encourage the transformative event of God.
This more radical thread within Rollins’ work stresses that ‘[f]or Christians, it is a happening, an event, that we affirm and respond to, regardless of the ebbs and flows of our abstract theological reflections concerning the source and nature of this happening,’ such that ‘[t]here is no doubt for the believer that God dwells with us (as an event), yet there is a deep uncertainty about who, what, or even if God is (as a being)’ (The Fidelity of Betrayal, pp.141 and 144). This betrayal, negation or atheism is, Rollins suggests, integral to the Christian religion.
This means that critics of religion can be helpful in demonstrating the essentially a/theistic nature of Christianity. In particular, Freud, Marx and Nietzsche, as well as contemporary atheists like Derren Brown and Ricky Gervais, can aid our own recollection of and reflection upon those experiences of doubt and uncertainty in which we most keenly feel isolated from and abandoned by God. This is, after all, an experience that ‘we bear witness to at the very heart of Christianity itself’ (Rollins, "Dis-Courses Theory [Part 3]").
For in the Cross, when Christ cries out, “My God! my God! why have you forsaken me?” we see that the absence of God, the felt absence of the divine, is brought into the very heart of the faith. Instead of seeing it as some kind of test that we have to endure, or the result of our sin and our finitude, what we see is God experiencing the absence of God. Therefore the absence of God is seen to be a part of the life of faith. If a Christian is to participate in the Crucifixion, to stand with Christ, then part of the Christian experience is that absence itself ("Dis-Courses Theory [Part 3]").This is, however, no ‘simple atheism’ (Ikon, "The God Delusion," Greenbelt Arts Festival, Aug 26 2007), for Christ’s cry represents God’s own feelings of abandonment by God, God’s own doubt, God’s own atheism.
This is an a/theism, then, that is both a theistic atheism in the tradition of negative theology – a mystical affirmation of God’s absence, or “distance” from, our beliefs and practices that idolatrously attempt to grasp and make God present – and a more radically atheistic theism – an existential affirmation of the absence of God’s presence itself. The latter is ‘analogous to the experience of waiting for one whom we love in a café. The later they are, the more we experience their absence. Our beloved is absent to everyone in the room but we are the only one who feels it’ (Ikon, "Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?" in Rollins, How [Not] to Speak of God, p.82). This is perhaps, then, what Rollins means when he says that ‘[o]nly the Christian can be an atheist’ (here).
What does the local atheism of our own religious beliefs and practices look like? Do we see that atheism as integral to our theism? Do our beliefs and practices celebrate or disavow our own experiences of doubt, disbelief, and abandonment by God?
If Christianity is a/theistic...
...what happens to my faith?
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Religion as A/Theism: Rollins (3)
There are both more radical and more traditional elements within Pete Rollins’ work.
The latter can be placed squarely within the tradition of negative theology, according to which ‘we ought to affirm our view of God while at the same time realizing that that view is inadequate.’ The result is both a theism and an atheism, an “a/theism” that is ‘not some agnostic middle point hovering hesitantly between theism and atheism but, rather, actively embraces both out of a profound faith’ (Rollins, How [Not] to Speak of God, p.25).
For Rollins, this is
In a similar way, Rollins’ notion of a/theism introduces what he describes as ‘a type of heat-inducing friction that prevents our liquid images of the divine from cooling and solidifying into idolatrous form’ (p.27). It is ‘an atheism that rejects our understanding of God precisely because it recognizes that God is bigger, better and different than we could ever imagine’ (pp.100-101), one ‘not designed to undermine God but to affirm God’ (p.26). Because ‘God remains concealed amidst revelation’ (p.26,) Rollins suggests that ‘the believer should not repress the shadow of doubt that hangs over all belief (the potential lie that may dwell in the heart of every belief)’ (p.34). If ‘God is beyond all conception’ and ‘can’t be grasped by language,’ if ‘all theological discourse is a dis-course that sends [us] off course’ (see here), then the religious beliefs about God that are thereby formed may well be “lies” (see my posts on Ricky Gervais and Religion as Lie).
The latter can be placed squarely within the tradition of negative theology, according to which ‘we ought to affirm our view of God while at the same time realizing that that view is inadequate.’ The result is both a theism and an atheism, an “a/theism” that is ‘not some agnostic middle point hovering hesitantly between theism and atheism but, rather, actively embraces both out of a profound faith’ (Rollins, How [Not] to Speak of God, p.25).
For Rollins, this is
a deeply religious and faith-filled form of cynical discourse, one which captures how faith operates in an oscillation between understanding and unknowing. This unknowing is to be utterly distinguished from an intellectual lazy ignorance, for it is a type of unknowing which arises not from imprecision but rather from deep reflection and sustained meditation (p.26).This is the form of un-knowing that is operative within negative theology, which describes God through negations, knowing God by knowing what God is not. Thus this theological method functions as a guard against idolatry.
In a similar way, Rollins’ notion of a/theism introduces what he describes as ‘a type of heat-inducing friction that prevents our liquid images of the divine from cooling and solidifying into idolatrous form’ (p.27). It is ‘an atheism that rejects our understanding of God precisely because it recognizes that God is bigger, better and different than we could ever imagine’ (pp.100-101), one ‘not designed to undermine God but to affirm God’ (p.26). Because ‘God remains concealed amidst revelation’ (p.26,) Rollins suggests that ‘the believer should not repress the shadow of doubt that hangs over all belief (the potential lie that may dwell in the heart of every belief)’ (p.34). If ‘God is beyond all conception’ and ‘can’t be grasped by language,’ if ‘all theological discourse is a dis-course that sends [us] off course’ (see here), then the religious beliefs about God that are thereby formed may well be “lies” (see my posts on Ricky Gervais and Religion as Lie).
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Religion as A/Theism: Rollins (2)
Examining their theories of religion in the "Atheism for Lent" Course at Journey, we have seen that for Freud religion is primarily ‘ontological weakness seeking consolation;’ for Marx it is primarily ‘sociological power seeking legitimation;’ and for Nietzsche it is primarily ‘sociological weakness seeking revenge’ (Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.229).
But perhaps it is also possible for a hermeneutic of suspicion to interpret these critics’ sceptical atheism similarly? Perhaps atheism is also wish-fulfilment? Does atheism also function as an oppressive ideology? Does it also operate within slave morality? The claim that atheism – the “new-” or “neo-atheism” of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, etc. in particular – is also a form of religious (i.e. dogmatic) belief system is often made in Christian rebuttals of atheist critiques of religion.
But perhaps atheism and religion are alike in more radical ways than this.
Both Ricky Gervais and Derren Brown note the pervasiveness of atheism, even amongst theists. Brown says, ‘[t]he reality is we’re all atheists regards every other “god” that’s ever been believed in or is still believed in, we just may not be atheists about “the one God” we believe in. So we all know what it is to be an atheist.’
As emerging church author and speaker Pete Rollins, founder of Ikon, Belfast, currently based in Greenwich, Connecticut, US, explains, ‘every concrete theism creates its negative, its atheism. There are as many atheisms as there are theisms.’ This means that ‘atheism is always regional, it’s always local, it’s always connected to an affirmation,’ since ‘[a]ll affirmations create their negations.’ However, he writes that ‘the atheistic spirit within Christianity delves much deeper than this – for we disbelieve not only in other gods but also in the God that we believe in’ (Rollins, How [Not] to Speak of God, p.25).
But perhaps it is also possible for a hermeneutic of suspicion to interpret these critics’ sceptical atheism similarly? Perhaps atheism is also wish-fulfilment? Does atheism also function as an oppressive ideology? Does it also operate within slave morality? The claim that atheism – the “new-” or “neo-atheism” of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, etc. in particular – is also a form of religious (i.e. dogmatic) belief system is often made in Christian rebuttals of atheist critiques of religion.
But perhaps atheism and religion are alike in more radical ways than this.
Both Ricky Gervais and Derren Brown note the pervasiveness of atheism, even amongst theists. Brown says, ‘[t]he reality is we’re all atheists regards every other “god” that’s ever been believed in or is still believed in, we just may not be atheists about “the one God” we believe in. So we all know what it is to be an atheist.’
As emerging church author and speaker Pete Rollins, founder of Ikon, Belfast, currently based in Greenwich, Connecticut, US, explains, ‘every concrete theism creates its negative, its atheism. There are as many atheisms as there are theisms.’ This means that ‘atheism is always regional, it’s always local, it’s always connected to an affirmation,’ since ‘[a]ll affirmations create their negations.’ However, he writes that ‘the atheistic spirit within Christianity delves much deeper than this – for we disbelieve not only in other gods but also in the God that we believe in’ (Rollins, How [Not] to Speak of God, p.25).
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Religion as A/Theism: Rollins (1)
For the final week of the "Atheism for Lent" Course I've been running at Journey, we're looking at the atheist critiques of religion (from Freud, Marx and Neitzsche) in the context of the Lent narrative in which God confesses God's own atheism. I used some of Pete Rollins' stuff to create some reading material for the group. Pete uses a lot of Slavoj Zizek's work, who in turn likes to quote G.K.Chesteron:
When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionaries of this age choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist. (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith, p.207).
Here are some quotations from Pete that I used to introduce the reading:
Christianity is a fascinating religion because, whereas lots of religions have a place for doubt, in Christianity God doubts God.
Atheism is such a difficult perspective to grasp, that only the religious believer can do it. Only the Christian can be an atheist.
They come from the following videos, "Doubt" and "Divine Atheism:"
Doubt from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.
Divine atheism from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Atheism for Lent: Ricky Gervais
I wasn't able to get back to the UK in time for "Atheism for Lent" at Journey tonight, where the group is watching and discussing Ricky Gervais' "The Invention of Lying." Here's the material I prepared on Gervais:
Religion as Lie: Gervais (1)
Religion as Lie: Gervais (2)
Religion as Lie: Gervais (3)
Religion as Lie: Gervais (4)
Religion as Lie: Gervais (1)
Religion as Lie: Gervais (2)
Religion as Lie: Gervais (3)
Religion as Lie: Gervais (4)
Thursday, April 07, 2011
Religion as Lie: Gervais (4)
The supposition at the heart of Ricky Gervais' (2009) The Invention of Lying is that religion is so closely linked to story-telling and historical embellishment that it is understood as lying.
Here, the distinctions made by Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche in their critiques of religion (see here, here and here for "Atheism for Lent" Course material) between appearance and reality, or manifest and latent meanings, becomes that between lies and the truth. But in the world within The Invention of Lying there are no such terms; there are simply “things that are” (the truth) and “things that aren’t” (lies), just “the way things are” and Mark’s new-found ability to say “something that wasn’t.” This language of being or existence denotes Gervais’ scepticism: ‘God doesn’t exist… Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true' (Gervais, "Why I'm an Atheist").
But Gervais’ suspicion is also apparent in the ways that Mark’s theological inventions function as psychological wish-fulfilments (Freud's critique of religion), oppressive ideologies (Marx's critique of religion), and vengeful morality (Nietzsche's critique of religion).
Framed in the sceptical language of falsehood and lies, is it possible to more clearly see the functions that critics suspect religion plays?
If religion existed in a world where we (like Mark) knew it to be deceitful, which of our religious beliefs and practices could we more readily identify as harmful?
In other words, if religion is a lie...
...what happens to my faith?
Here, the distinctions made by Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche in their critiques of religion (see here, here and here for "Atheism for Lent" Course material) between appearance and reality, or manifest and latent meanings, becomes that between lies and the truth. But in the world within The Invention of Lying there are no such terms; there are simply “things that are” (the truth) and “things that aren’t” (lies), just “the way things are” and Mark’s new-found ability to say “something that wasn’t.” This language of being or existence denotes Gervais’ scepticism: ‘God doesn’t exist… Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true' (Gervais, "Why I'm an Atheist").
But Gervais’ suspicion is also apparent in the ways that Mark’s theological inventions function as psychological wish-fulfilments (Freud's critique of religion), oppressive ideologies (Marx's critique of religion), and vengeful morality (Nietzsche's critique of religion).
Framed in the sceptical language of falsehood and lies, is it possible to more clearly see the functions that critics suspect religion plays?
If religion existed in a world where we (like Mark) knew it to be deceitful, which of our religious beliefs and practices could we more readily identify as harmful?
In other words, if religion is a lie...
...what happens to my faith?
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Religion as Lie: Gervais (3)
Ricky Gervais’ (2009) film The Invention of Lying is set in a world where human beings have not evolved the fictional gene that allows them to lie.
Not only can’t they lie – which precludes the possibility of story-telling, mythology and, therefore, religion – but it seems that they have to actively tell the truth, which means that characters air their thoughts without regard for how these thoughts are received by others, since this is how the world has worked throughout centuries of human history.
Individual self-interest is palpable in this world, with the central female character, Anna (Jennifer Garner), primarily concerned with finding a sexual partner who is a good genetic, social and economic match (like Rob Lowe’s Brad). This leads unattractive, overweight, anti-social losers like Mark (Gervais), Greg (Louis C.K.) and Frank (Jonah Hill) to despair, drunkenness and depression.
When Mark one day evolves the lying gene, he hopes it will help him attain the wealth and status to attract Anna.
But the ability has worldwide theological and ethical consequences when he is overheard lying about life after death in an attempt to console his dying mother.
This is the point at which ‘the film swings off in a wild new direction’ and, according to one reviewer (Xan Brooks of The Guardian), ‘achieves vertiginous lift-off.’
His lie that he has new knowledge about what happens after you die – knowledge about heavenly mansions, given to him by a “Man in the Sky” – leads him to write a “Gospel” and to institute a new ethic of “three strikes and you’re out.” Thus this-worldly self-interest morphs easily into otherworldly self-interest and the sentiment, expressed by a homeless man’s placard, ‘screw it, soon I’ll be in my mansion’ (The Invention of Lying).
For a mainstream Hollywood romantic comedy, this is perhaps ‘something rather radical,’ indeed. ‘It’s one thing for Gervais to air his atheism on the standup circuit. It’s quite another to do so in the guise of a glossy, user-friendly sitcom pitched squarely at the huddled masses in the American multiplex’ (Brooks, "The Invention of Lying: Ricky Gervais' new comedy is glossy, but honestly subversive," The Guardian, Oct 2 2009).
Not only can’t they lie – which precludes the possibility of story-telling, mythology and, therefore, religion – but it seems that they have to actively tell the truth, which means that characters air their thoughts without regard for how these thoughts are received by others, since this is how the world has worked throughout centuries of human history.
Individual self-interest is palpable in this world, with the central female character, Anna (Jennifer Garner), primarily concerned with finding a sexual partner who is a good genetic, social and economic match (like Rob Lowe’s Brad). This leads unattractive, overweight, anti-social losers like Mark (Gervais), Greg (Louis C.K.) and Frank (Jonah Hill) to despair, drunkenness and depression.
When Mark one day evolves the lying gene, he hopes it will help him attain the wealth and status to attract Anna.
But the ability has worldwide theological and ethical consequences when he is overheard lying about life after death in an attempt to console his dying mother.
This is the point at which ‘the film swings off in a wild new direction’ and, according to one reviewer (Xan Brooks of The Guardian), ‘achieves vertiginous lift-off.’
His lie that he has new knowledge about what happens after you die – knowledge about heavenly mansions, given to him by a “Man in the Sky” – leads him to write a “Gospel” and to institute a new ethic of “three strikes and you’re out.” Thus this-worldly self-interest morphs easily into otherworldly self-interest and the sentiment, expressed by a homeless man’s placard, ‘screw it, soon I’ll be in my mansion’ (The Invention of Lying).
For a mainstream Hollywood romantic comedy, this is perhaps ‘something rather radical,’ indeed. ‘It’s one thing for Gervais to air his atheism on the standup circuit. It’s quite another to do so in the guise of a glossy, user-friendly sitcom pitched squarely at the huddled masses in the American multiplex’ (Brooks, "The Invention of Lying: Ricky Gervais' new comedy is glossy, but honestly subversive," The Guardian, Oct 2 2009).
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Religion as Lie: Gervais (2)
The preparatory material for the Ricky Gervais session in our "Atheism for Lent" Course at Journey included this article, written by Gervais last December, from the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy - "Why I'm an Atheist."
There's also a Q and A with Gervais as a follow-up here, including questions like, "do you plan on celebrating Christmas?" "have you had any moments of doubt about your atheism?" and "what does a comedian really know about God anyway?"
There's also a Q and A with Gervais as a follow-up here, including questions like, "do you plan on celebrating Christmas?" "have you had any moments of doubt about your atheism?" and "what does a comedian really know about God anyway?"
Monday, April 04, 2011
Religion as Lie: Gervais (1)
Over the next few days, I'll post some of the introductory material on Ricky Gervais that I pulled together as preparatory reading for the group.
It’s better to know the truth… My Mum only lied to me about one thing. She said that there was a God… I wish there was a God. I wish there was. It’d be great. From what I’ve heard, he’s brilliant… But you can’t believe in something you don’t. Also, if there is a God, why did he make me an atheist? That was his first mistake. Well, the talking snake was his first mistake (Ricky Gervais, on "Inside the Actors Studio," available here).
I’ve been an atheist all my life, but I always knew that if my mum asked me when she was dying if there was a heaven I’d say yes. I’d lie. I think that’s how religion started – as a good lie (Ricky Gervais, interview in Shorlist magazine, "When Shortlist Met Ricky Gervais," no longer available online)
...and thank you to God, for making me an atheist (Ricky Gervais, closing comments as host of The Golden Globes, January 16 2011, available here)
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Atheism for Lent: Derren Brown
Tonight at "Atheism for Lent," we split into two groups (there were about 14 of us total) to watch Derren Brown's "Messiah." We spent a bit of time marvelling at how good he is at reading and predicting human behaviour, and wondering how the programme is edited to best showcase his talents. Bracketing his atheistic scepticism about whether or not God exists and whether or not psychics are charlatans, we thought about what his suspicion about why we believe what we believe and why we behave as we do might mean for our faith. In particular, we thought about Brown's presentation of the "false logic" at work in magic (see here), in which we miss certain elements in the trick, thinking they are unimportant and therefore not consciously recognising their existence. Might this also be happening in religion? What might the steps be that we are not aware of, or that we repress?
'...when a magician performs a trick with a small bird which disappears in a cage on the table, a little boy in the audience starts to cry, claiming that the bird was killed. The magician approahches him and finishes the trick, genlty producing a living bird out of his hand - but the boy is not satisfied, insisting that this must be another bird, the dead one's brother. After the show, we see the magician in the room behind the stage, brining in a flattened cage and throwing a squashed bird into a trash bin - the boy was right.' (The Monstrosity of Christ, p.286).
Discussing Brown's perspective on magic made me think about Slavoj Zizek's reflections on Jesus, in The Monstrosity of Christ, where he links the sequence of a magic trick in Chrisopher Nolan's (2006) movie The Prestige to the crucifixion.
'...when a magician performs a trick with a small bird which disappears in a cage on the table, a little boy in the audience starts to cry, claiming that the bird was killed. The magician approahches him and finishes the trick, genlty producing a living bird out of his hand - but the boy is not satisfied, insisting that this must be another bird, the dead one's brother. After the show, we see the magician in the room behind the stage, brining in a flattened cage and throwing a squashed bird into a trash bin - the boy was right.' (The Monstrosity of Christ, p.286).This squashed bird is part of the magic trick that the skilled magician doesn't let us see, the step that we miss.
So in the context of tonight's discussion about magic and religion, I remembered this aspect of the movie and wondered whether there are steps in the "false logic" of religion that we miss either because they seem unimportant or because, like the squashed bird, they are too traumatic to bring into consciousness.
Zizek writes of Jesus as the 'supreme squashed bird' (The Monstrosity of Christ, p.291), and perhaps the crucifixion is one of the traumatic steps in religion that we too often repress, preferring to focus on what Derren Brown calls 'the easier pattern' of Jesus' life and resurrection.
For the material I prepared on Derren Brown, see
Although I'm off to the States on Tuesday for a conference, I've lined up some posts about Ricky Gervais, and we'll be watching his film "The Invention of Lying" next week at Journey.
Friday, April 01, 2011
Religion as Trickery: Brown (5)
On Sunday night at "Atheism for Lent," we'll be watching and then discussing "Messiah," a documentary made by Derren Brown in 2005. Its Channel4 blurb reads,
Derren Brown: "Messiah"
Derren Brown takes his debunking mission to America. In a country where his mind control skills are unknown, he sets out once again to demonstrate just how easy it is to dupe people in believing five impossible things (almost) before breakfast.Here's the entire documentary on Channel4's YouTube Channel, but it can also be downloaded from iTunes.
He tries to convince five leading figures that he has powers in their particular field of expertise: Christian evangelism, alien abduction, psychic powers, New Age theories and contacting the dead.
Can he succeed in convincing the five “experts” of his powers? And will they go further and openly endorse him as a true practitioner?
Derren Brown: "Messiah"
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Religion as Trickery: Brown (4)
Here are a couple of the interviews with Derren Brown that I used to write the material on Religion as Trickery for our "Atheism for Lent" Course at Journey:
"Magic and Being Human" (Derren Brown interview with Nigel Warburton)
"Appearance and Reality" (Derren Brown interview with Nigel Warburton)
I'll post Derren Brown's Channel4 documentary, "Messiah," that we're going to watch and then discuss on Sunday night at "Atheism for Lent" tomorrow.
"Magic and Being Human" (Derren Brown interview with Nigel Warburton)
"Appearance and Reality" (Derren Brown interview with Nigel Warburton)
I'll post Derren Brown's Channel4 documentary, "Messiah," that we're going to watch and then discuss on Sunday night at "Atheism for Lent" tomorrow.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Religion as Trickery: Brown (3)
Knowledge about what Derren Brown calls the ‘false logic’ involved in religious, spiritual, magical, psychical and other paranormal practices can help in this process of questioning.
Thus Brown’s work often hinges on exhibitions and explanations of the human ability to anticipate and manipulate the actions of others, demonstrating powers that condition and convince, transform and convert, as well as revealing luck, fate or destiny to be intricately linked to aptitudes for working with predictability and probability. The elements of illusion involved here come, therefore, from the performer’s adeptness at misdirection and misinformation, rather than from the subject’s gullibility – though what Brown sees as a ‘hard-wired’ susceptibility to make patterns and tell stories that make sense of our experiences of impossibility plays a part as well.
What are the steps – A, C, and E – which we use to form our beliefs and practices? To what extent do we only ‘notice what supports our beliefs’ in order to construct patterns, and ‘disregard the rest’ ("Messiah")?
What might steps B and D actually be? What aspects of our beliefs and practices don’t we consciously remember or don’t seem important?
Are we telling ourselves the story of the easier pattern?
If religious beliefs and practices operate on the unconscious false logic of a magic trick...
...what happens to my faith?
Thus Brown’s work often hinges on exhibitions and explanations of the human ability to anticipate and manipulate the actions of others, demonstrating powers that condition and convince, transform and convert, as well as revealing luck, fate or destiny to be intricately linked to aptitudes for working with predictability and probability. The elements of illusion involved here come, therefore, from the performer’s adeptness at misdirection and misinformation, rather than from the subject’s gullibility – though what Brown sees as a ‘hard-wired’ susceptibility to make patterns and tell stories that make sense of our experiences of impossibility plays a part as well.
As far as what I do goes, I see it about playing very specifically to people’s intelligence [and not naivety]. You create a false logic. You create what appears to be an A, B, C. So, you know, in the case of a card trick, A is you pick a card, B is I make some magic thing over it, and C is it’s in my pocket, and that seems impossible.Just as we might have missed the steps that would expose our experience of an impossible card trick to be based on a false logic that is in turn grounded in a lack of information about the knowledge and skills of a talented magician, might there be steps – that are consciously taken and thereby exposed by Brown, but perhaps unconsciously taken by those in the institutions and ‘industries’ around religious, spiritual and paranormal beliefs and practices – that we also miss (Brown, "Messiah")?
But you miss, in fact, between A and B there was another stage, where maybe you picked a card and then maybe I took them back and gave them a little shuffle and then handed them back to you or there was something in the way that you picked the card that actually I was forcing a card on you, I was controlling your decision, but it doesn’t seem important so you don’t remember that.
And similarly between me doing the magic part [B] and it ending up in my pocket [C] maybe I did something else, maybe I asked you to put the cards in your pocket and I gestured in my pocket as I did that and that’s when I loaded the card in, but it doesn’t seem important to the story and you remember an A, B, C that’s impossible.
But if you see it in terms of that’s actually A, C, E and the real route actually goes A, then B, then C, then D, then E, then it becomes quite possible.
So to me that’s not about gullibility, that’s about a certain grammar that people will follow… We can’t function unless we form those patterns and this presumably goes back to, “if you see half a sabre-toothed tiger coming round the corner at you, you don’t wait for the other half, you run.” …In the same way, the magician creates that pattern knowing that we are hard-wired, probably, to fall for that, and fall for the easier pattern that’s presented to us. (Brown, in interview with Nigel Warburton, "Appearance and Reality")
What are the steps – A, C, and E – which we use to form our beliefs and practices? To what extent do we only ‘notice what supports our beliefs’ in order to construct patterns, and ‘disregard the rest’ ("Messiah")?
What might steps B and D actually be? What aspects of our beliefs and practices don’t we consciously remember or don’t seem important?
Are we telling ourselves the story of the easier pattern?
If religious beliefs and practices operate on the unconscious false logic of a magic trick...
...what happens to my faith?
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Religion as Trickery: Brown (2)
Derren Brown is a performer who ‘combines magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship in order to seemingly predict and control human behaviour’ (website). Behind his performances lie both an atheistic scepticism and a form of suspicion which ask questions about ‘why we believe things’ (Brown, "Messiah"). His study of religion, psychology, magic, hypnosis, psychic ability, spiritualism, and New Age beliefs such as crystal energy and alien abduction leads him to debunk as delusions and deceptions contemporary religious, spiritual, or paranormal beliefs and practices, as well as the ‘mind tricks’ of entertainment, alternative medicine, and other everyday “bad sciences” (Brown, Tricks of the Mind; see also recommended reading list on his website).
His books and TV shows therefore encourage a suspicion of appearances that presupposes the distinctions made by Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche between manifest and latent motives. Brown’s conscious manipulation of human behaviour, including performances in which he converts people to Christianity ‘with a single touch’ ("Messiah"), acts as a mirror to aid reflection upon some of the operative yet unconscious motivations involved in all systems of belief and practice.
What Brown does primarily interests him (and his audiences) not at the transcendent level at which ontological or metaphysical questions are asked about the existence of God or UFOs, the ability of psychics, or the power of crystal energy – but at the immanent level at which historical, sociological and, particularly, psychological questions are asked about how and why we come to believe and do certain things.
As ‘intelligent human beings,’ Brown suggests therefore that ‘we should be prepared to question our beliefs and [to question] the people who encourage us to make life decisions based on the information they give us’ ("Messiah").
His books and TV shows therefore encourage a suspicion of appearances that presupposes the distinctions made by Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche between manifest and latent motives. Brown’s conscious manipulation of human behaviour, including performances in which he converts people to Christianity ‘with a single touch’ ("Messiah"), acts as a mirror to aid reflection upon some of the operative yet unconscious motivations involved in all systems of belief and practice.
What Brown does primarily interests him (and his audiences) not at the transcendent level at which ontological or metaphysical questions are asked about the existence of God or UFOs, the ability of psychics, or the power of crystal energy – but at the immanent level at which historical, sociological and, particularly, psychological questions are asked about how and why we come to believe and do certain things.
Talking to a psychic, there’s the cheap illusion of her psychic ability or his psychic ability that’s questionable, but what to me is more interesting is the human level, the fact that I could sit and listen to a psychic and be so convinced, what that actually says about me and us as people and the way we interact and the way that we do form those patterns, the way that we will see design where there is none, the way that we’ll come to those conclusions, at a purely psychological level is so much more interesting, ’cos that says something about us as humans, which ultimately has to be more powerful and more beautiful than nonsensical guff about the ether. (Brown, in interview with Nigel Warburton, "Magic and Being Human")The more interesting illusions that Brown suspects are involved in religion – as well as, for example, in cold reading (whereby the reader conveys more details about another person than s/he actually does know) and slight-of-hand entertainment – are not related to degrees of either incredulity or gullibility. He does, however, stress the importance of information. He says, ‘it doesn’t really matter how much you believe in it or [don’t] believe in it;’ instead, it depends on whether you have ‘specific knowledge about specific skills’ that magicians or psychics or religious institutions and practitioners employ (in interview with Nigel Warburton, "Appearance and Reality"). For example, he notes that ‘[r]eligions tend to encourage either high-energy crowd activity or candle-lit monotony to invoke a suggestible state among the congregation.’
As ‘intelligent human beings,’ Brown suggests therefore that ‘we should be prepared to question our beliefs and [to question] the people who encourage us to make life decisions based on the information they give us’ ("Messiah").
Monday, March 28, 2011
Religion as Trickery: Brown (1)
Derren Brown, interview with Richard Dawkins for Dawkins' Channel4 programme, "The Enemies of Reason."
Richard Dawkins: Where does your scepticism come from?
Derren Brown: Well, in terms of my history, I used to be a very devout Christian when I was younger, but didn’t have a Christian family, didn’t have Christian friends… but it came from a Bible reading class when I was young; it was an unpleasant childhood indoctrination. But because I grew up without a Christian peer group, when I got to university it was relatively easy for me to kind of think my way out of it, to start to challenge it and not feel too much guilt…
At the same time I was getting into magic and, through magic, realising how things like tarot cards and psychics really work and that there’s nothing mystical about it that could therefore be seen as dangerous, but it’s just simply sort of rubbish and charlatanism and psychology at work…
I’d talked to psychics and I’d listened to their sort of circular beliefs and I remembering thinking, “I am doing exactly the same thing, but as a Christian.” The only difference is that it’s easier to laugh at them because it’s a fringe belief, whereas my belief is so much more endorsed institutionally, it’s more respectable, that I thought, “I’m just being a hypocrite.”
So I started to read some theology texts and books about how the Bible really came together and a kind of mixture of books that I hoped would at least challenge my easy, pat answers that I had as a young Christian. And I felt that if I could just undo all the easy answers, if I just had a bunch of questions, that I might actually be able to build a much stronger, more defensible faith from it.
And then that sort of just didn’t happen. It just all seemed silly and I realised that there was no going back, and once you realise that the Bible isn’t an historical account of things that have happened, then, you’re sort of left with no basis for it at all.
From that, then, I wanted to defend my non-belief as strongly as I felt that I should’ve been able to defend it as a believer, so that’s something that’s been left with me.
Richard Dawkins: Where does your scepticism come from?
Derren Brown: Well, in terms of my history, I used to be a very devout Christian when I was younger, but didn’t have a Christian family, didn’t have Christian friends… but it came from a Bible reading class when I was young; it was an unpleasant childhood indoctrination. But because I grew up without a Christian peer group, when I got to university it was relatively easy for me to kind of think my way out of it, to start to challenge it and not feel too much guilt…
At the same time I was getting into magic and, through magic, realising how things like tarot cards and psychics really work and that there’s nothing mystical about it that could therefore be seen as dangerous, but it’s just simply sort of rubbish and charlatanism and psychology at work…
I’d talked to psychics and I’d listened to their sort of circular beliefs and I remembering thinking, “I am doing exactly the same thing, but as a Christian.” The only difference is that it’s easier to laugh at them because it’s a fringe belief, whereas my belief is so much more endorsed institutionally, it’s more respectable, that I thought, “I’m just being a hypocrite.”
So I started to read some theology texts and books about how the Bible really came together and a kind of mixture of books that I hoped would at least challenge my easy, pat answers that I had as a young Christian. And I felt that if I could just undo all the easy answers, if I just had a bunch of questions, that I might actually be able to build a much stronger, more defensible faith from it.
And then that sort of just didn’t happen. It just all seemed silly and I realised that there was no going back, and once you realise that the Bible isn’t an historical account of things that have happened, then, you’re sort of left with no basis for it at all.
From that, then, I wanted to defend my non-belief as strongly as I felt that I should’ve been able to defend it as a believer, so that’s something that’s been left with me.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Atheism for Lent: Nietzsche
At "Atheism for Lent" tonight, we had the most heated discussion so far on the Course. Nietzsche's critique of religion, which is strongly connected to his genealogy of morality, furnished us with the material for such a great debate that it was hard to get the group to think not only about his atheistic scepticism (see this post for the difference between scepticism and suspicion) and "immorality" (see here) but also about what questions his hermeneutic of suspicion might raise about our own faith (whether atheistic, theistic or neither).
I began with a summary of the material I prepared about Nietzsche (which you can access using the links below), for whom the story of how belief in God arose is the only argument against belief in God that atheists need to employ. To explain the emergence of belief in God, Nietzsche puts forward two interlinking theses, an ontological one about the "will to power" and a more historical or sociological one about the "morality of mores," which taken together suggest that every morality is an expression of that community's will to power.
Nietzsche's "death of God" thesis, which is prophetic even to the atheists for whom God is already dead, highlights that the implications of this death have yet to be properly understood by humanity, since it entails the collapse of western morality. For Nietzsche, the atheists are still acting like theists; the atheists are still acting as if there is an eternally stable point of reference to guarantee the meaning and purpose of life.
It was hard to get some people in the group to really agree with Nietzsche that not even secular human Reason can attain a fixed reference point for morality. Many people felt very strongly that universal values had to exist for ethical and pragmatic reasons, but it was great trying to get them to grapple with Nietzsche's hypothesis that the will to power is what is operative even amongst action for equality, justice and peace - that self-interest, self-preservation, envy, aggression and resentment might be latent in manifestly humanitarian motivations and activism. I would've liked to have explored in a bit more detail about Nietzsche's identification of Pharisaism and moral superiority (see here) within Christian morality.
We talked quite a lot about master and slave moralities, and tried to help each other work through the differences between the two and about what the possibilities of hope might be in Nietzsche's work. But it was hard to do justice to Nietzsche's contention that master morality, with its open and honest revenge, hatred and anger (which are all-pervasive, given the will to power), is preferable to slave morality. Even if equality, justice and peace are functions of the "will to power," many within the group wondered, why isn't striving after these ideals at least a bit better than the "justice" of master morality in which the continued oppression of the powerless is justified as "just the way the world is" (see here).
Walking home, my partner Sim mentioned a Blake poem that would've been useful to illustrate the differences between an open and honest resentment (master morality) which exercises revenge and a festering, poisonous resentment (slave morality) which has no outlet for vengeance.
A Poison Tree, by William Blake
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water'd it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (1)
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (2)
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (3)
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (4)
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (5)
Next week we're going to watch a documentary by Derren Brown, but I've written a bit of material to go with it, so I'll post that here too as this week unfolds.
I began with a summary of the material I prepared about Nietzsche (which you can access using the links below), for whom the story of how belief in God arose is the only argument against belief in God that atheists need to employ. To explain the emergence of belief in God, Nietzsche puts forward two interlinking theses, an ontological one about the "will to power" and a more historical or sociological one about the "morality of mores," which taken together suggest that every morality is an expression of that community's will to power.
Nietzsche's "death of God" thesis, which is prophetic even to the atheists for whom God is already dead, highlights that the implications of this death have yet to be properly understood by humanity, since it entails the collapse of western morality. For Nietzsche, the atheists are still acting like theists; the atheists are still acting as if there is an eternally stable point of reference to guarantee the meaning and purpose of life.
It was hard to get some people in the group to really agree with Nietzsche that not even secular human Reason can attain a fixed reference point for morality. Many people felt very strongly that universal values had to exist for ethical and pragmatic reasons, but it was great trying to get them to grapple with Nietzsche's hypothesis that the will to power is what is operative even amongst action for equality, justice and peace - that self-interest, self-preservation, envy, aggression and resentment might be latent in manifestly humanitarian motivations and activism. I would've liked to have explored in a bit more detail about Nietzsche's identification of Pharisaism and moral superiority (see here) within Christian morality.
We talked quite a lot about master and slave moralities, and tried to help each other work through the differences between the two and about what the possibilities of hope might be in Nietzsche's work. But it was hard to do justice to Nietzsche's contention that master morality, with its open and honest revenge, hatred and anger (which are all-pervasive, given the will to power), is preferable to slave morality. Even if equality, justice and peace are functions of the "will to power," many within the group wondered, why isn't striving after these ideals at least a bit better than the "justice" of master morality in which the continued oppression of the powerless is justified as "just the way the world is" (see here).
Walking home, my partner Sim mentioned a Blake poem that would've been useful to illustrate the differences between an open and honest resentment (master morality) which exercises revenge and a festering, poisonous resentment (slave morality) which has no outlet for vengeance.
A Poison Tree, by William Blake
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water'd it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (1)
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (2)
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (3)
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (4)
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (5)
Next week we're going to watch a documentary by Derren Brown, but I've written a bit of material to go with it, so I'll post that here too as this week unfolds.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (5)
By further examining some specific moral virtues, it becomes clearer why Nietzsche’s hermeneutics of suspicion interpret Christian morality as slave morality and therefore why he disdains it as a ‘great curse’ and an ‘immortal blemish’ of humanity (The Gay Science, Book 5, S343).
For Nietzsche, justice and love (including, compassion, charity or pity) are ‘parallel expressions of the revenge of the resentful’ (Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.252). Within slave morality, whilst distributive justice (equality) expresses the latent envy of those who have the least share, retributive justice (punishment) expresses an operative desire to be executioners. This is why Nietzsche has Zarathustra say, ‘[m]istrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful… the hangman and bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice’ (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 2, Chapter 7). In their mouths, the word “justice” is ‘like poisonous spittle’ (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay 3 S4).
Nietzsche’s comments on the dangers of eager moral judges raise the question of moral fanaticism, even of terrorism and fascism.
Within both justice and love, then, will to power within slave morality, ‘the will to power of the weakest’ (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay 3 S14), expresses the repressed resentment that cannot otherwise find expression in a form of moral superiority. Nietzsche refers to this unconscious vengeful moral supremacy as Pharisaism, since Pharisees are ‘all men of ressentiment… a whole tremendous realm of subterranean revenge,’ who ‘walk among us as embodied reproaches’ (S14). In slave morality, ‘the good must be Pharisees – they have no choice,’ since their goodness depends on the evilness of others (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 3, S12.26). ‘Pharisaism is not a degeneration in a good man,’ Nietzsche writes, ‘a good deal of it is rather the condition of all being good’ (Beyond Good and Evil, S135). In slave morality, moral superiority is therefore inbuilt in the moral value “good.”
From biblical descriptions of Pharisees, it is not hard to see why Nietzsche uses this term to describe the moral superiority of slave morality. Think, for example, of the Pharisee who prays, ‘God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector’ (who prays beside him in Luke 18:11).
Remembering that ‘[o]ne does not have to be a Pharisee in order to be a Pharisee’ (Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.267), to what extent do our beliefs and practices unconsciously express moral superiority?
How close, then, do they lie to moral fanaticism and even fascism?
What happens to our manifest beliefs in forgiveness, salvation or love of neighbour, if our notions of “goodness” depend on latent comparisons with those whom we have first deemed “evil”? How can we forgive ‘those on whose wickedness [our] own goodness depends?’ (p.272)
Do we make virtues out of weakness and various forms of impotence? Do we mask fear and cowardice as obedience and humility?
If “God,” “morality,” “truth,” and other Christian “ascetic ideals” are nothing more than means to justify an unconscious desire for revenge...
...what happens to my faith?
For Nietzsche, justice and love (including, compassion, charity or pity) are ‘parallel expressions of the revenge of the resentful’ (Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.252). Within slave morality, whilst distributive justice (equality) expresses the latent envy of those who have the least share, retributive justice (punishment) expresses an operative desire to be executioners. This is why Nietzsche has Zarathustra say, ‘[m]istrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful… the hangman and bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice’ (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 2, Chapter 7). In their mouths, the word “justice” is ‘like poisonous spittle’ (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay 3 S4).
Nietzsche’s comments on the dangers of eager moral judges raise the question of moral fanaticism, even of terrorism and fascism.
Nietzsche is easy to deal with when he can be treated as a proto-Fascist whose doctrine of the will to power portends Hitler. [But a]… more disturbing [suggestion is]… that the great gulf we have fixed between ourselves and fascism is largely wishful thinking… We would like to say that the fascists and the terrorists represent the distortion and misuse of the ideals of justice. Nietzsche’s reply is that those ideals are in essence, and not accidentally, moral distortions because of their origin in resentment. Probably nothing makes his case stronger than comparing the fascist Final Solution with the Christian Final Judgement (Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, pp.255-256).In a similar way, love within slave morality is a virtue that expresses revenge. In any act of giving, we are able to demonstrate that we are ‘the more powerful’ and to experience ‘the taste of superiority.’ In ‘active gratitude,’ we enact ‘benevolent revenge.’ But the object of love, compassion, charity or pity experiences this as a form of ‘contempt’ (Daybreak, SS133-138), since, ‘[g]reat indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm’ (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 2, Chapter 3).
Within both justice and love, then, will to power within slave morality, ‘the will to power of the weakest’ (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay 3 S14), expresses the repressed resentment that cannot otherwise find expression in a form of moral superiority. Nietzsche refers to this unconscious vengeful moral supremacy as Pharisaism, since Pharisees are ‘all men of ressentiment… a whole tremendous realm of subterranean revenge,’ who ‘walk among us as embodied reproaches’ (S14). In slave morality, ‘the good must be Pharisees – they have no choice,’ since their goodness depends on the evilness of others (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 3, S12.26). ‘Pharisaism is not a degeneration in a good man,’ Nietzsche writes, ‘a good deal of it is rather the condition of all being good’ (Beyond Good and Evil, S135). In slave morality, moral superiority is therefore inbuilt in the moral value “good.”
From biblical descriptions of Pharisees, it is not hard to see why Nietzsche uses this term to describe the moral superiority of slave morality. Think, for example, of the Pharisee who prays, ‘God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector’ (who prays beside him in Luke 18:11).
Remembering that ‘[o]ne does not have to be a Pharisee in order to be a Pharisee’ (Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.267), to what extent do our beliefs and practices unconsciously express moral superiority?
How close, then, do they lie to moral fanaticism and even fascism?
What happens to our manifest beliefs in forgiveness, salvation or love of neighbour, if our notions of “goodness” depend on latent comparisons with those whom we have first deemed “evil”? How can we forgive ‘those on whose wickedness [our] own goodness depends?’ (p.272)
Do we make virtues out of weakness and various forms of impotence? Do we mask fear and cowardice as obedience and humility?
If “God,” “morality,” “truth,” and other Christian “ascetic ideals” are nothing more than means to justify an unconscious desire for revenge...
...what happens to my faith?
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (4)
It is not hard to see, therefore, that Nietzsche’s critique of biblical religion (both Judaism and Christianity) is that it operates within slave morality. When he writes that the Jews ‘mark the beginning of the slave rebellion in morals’ (Beyond Good and Evil, S195) and that ‘[o]ne knows who inherited this Jewish revaluation’ of morality (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay 1 S7), Nietzsche is emphasising both the “Jewishness” of Christianity and the “Jewishness” of Christian anti-Semites – thereby scorning rather than securing later Nazi attempts to appropriate his philosophical legacy for the purpose of fascism. For him, biblical religion is a religion of priestly power, by which he means an impotent power. Whilst priests are a caste that can acquire great political power, even supremacy, and enjoy a strong social function, the origin of their power is weak, or, as Nietzsche increasingly refers to it, “sick,” since it is grounded not in master morality but in the slave morality that first labels its enemies as evil and then labels itself as good. Priests emerge from a slave ‘ressentiment without equal, that of an insatiable instinct and power-will that want to become master’ (Essay 3 S11), but ‘[i]t is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred’ (Essay 1 SS6-7). But priests must also be powerful:
Dominion over the suffering is his kingdom, that is where his instinct directs him, here he possesses his distinctive art, his mastery, his kind of happiness… He must be sick himself… but he must also be strong, master of himself even more than of others, with his will to power intact, so as to be both trusted and feared by the sick, so as to be their support, resistance, prop, compulsion, taskmaster, tyrant, and god (Essay 3 S15).As Paul Ricoeur notes, ‘[t]his passion is all the more treacherous for it believes itself to be serving the truth’ (History and Truth, p.179). This truth is what Nietzsche calls an “ascetic ideal,” shaped by religious and ethical beliefs and practices, which forms the ‘moral basis of pastoral power’ (Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.241) and acts as the ‘best instrument of power’ and the ‘supreme license for power’ (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay 3 S1). That ascetic ideals might function to legitimise the power of its priestly keepers is clear. As an instrument of power, however, ascetic ideals also enable priests to apply their power since these ideals and values are, for Nietzsche, the origin of guilt and bad conscience. Nietzsche describes Greek gods as ‘those reflections of noble and autocratic men, in whom the animal in man felt deified and did not lacerate itself, did not rage against itself!’ – a projection which enabled the Greeks to avoid guilt about desires and actions, ‘the very opposite,’ Nietzsche writes, ‘of the use to which Christianity puts its God,’ which functions to instead encourage bad conscience (Essay 2 S23). Evil as an expression of resentment and an instrument of revenge is thereby applied by Christians to themselves, and this “guilt before God” is then exploited by priestly power.
“I suffer: someone must be to blame for it” – thus thinks every sickly sheep. But his shepherd, the ascetic priest, tells him: “Quite so, my sheep! someone must be to blame for it: but you yourself are this someone… you alone are to blame for yourself!” – This is brazen and false enough: but one thing at least is achieved by it, the direction of ressentiment is altered (Essay 3 S15).In needing to be shepherd of the ‘sickly sheep,’ priestly power manipulates both weakness and guilt into fear and trust. In this way, Christian virtue is, according to Nietzsche, ‘the cunning of impotence.’ An impotent slave morality says, ‘[w]e weak ones are, after all, weak; it would be good if we did nothing for which we are not strong enough,’ making a virtue of weakness and turning ‘anxious lowliness into “humility”; subjection to those one hates into “obedience”… [and] inability for revenge is called unwillingness to revenge, perhaps even forgiveness,’ such that impotence becomes ‘a voluntary achievement, willed, chosen, a deed, a meritorious act’ (Essay 1 SS13-14).
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Religion as Revenge: Nietzsche (3)
Returning to his genealogy of moral pluralism, Nietzsche identifies ‘two basic types’ of morality – “master morality” and “slave morality” – within ‘the many subtler and coarser moralities’ (Beyond Good and Evil, S260). The difference between these two moralities illustrates how Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity centres on the charge that it is a religion born ‘out of the spirit of ressentiment’ or resentment (Ecco Homo, p.312).
These two moralities differ in origin, with master morality found among the strong and powerful, and slave morality among ‘the violated, oppressed, suffering, unfree, who are uncertain of themselves and weary’ (Beyond Good and Evil, S260).
But they also differ in content, as Nietzsche’s account of master morality highlights:
The primary dualism within master morality is good/noble versus bad/base (rather than versus evil) such that even ‘the enemies of the good are themselves good and not evil.’ To designate the enemy or the weak as bad/base is ‘not to signify some harmful quality they possess, some essence they exhibit, but rather to express the “pathos of distance” in which they are recognized as lacking what makes life worth living for the strong, what makes the good good’ (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay 1 S2).
Further, since the primarily value within master morality is good/noble, rather than bad/base, the key to this morality is, as Merold Westphal notes, that ‘the goodness of the good does not depend on the badness of the bad’ (Suspicion and Faith, p.233). As Nietzsche puts it, ‘every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself’ rather than from a denigration of its enemies (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay1 S10). This means that, within master or noble morality, ‘no one is evil’ (S2).
However, Nietzsche observes, ‘[w]hen man possesses the feeling of power he feels and calls himself good: and it is precisely then that the others upon whom he has to discharge his power feel and call him evil!’ (Daybreak S189). This latter point introduces the primary characteristic of a second morality in Nietzsche’s prehistory, slave morality.
Within slave morality, then, the wickedness of the wicked is primary, with the goodness of the good emerging in comparison to enemies already designated as evil: ‘He has conceived “the evil enemy, “the Evil One,” and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a “good one” – himself!” (S10)
This means that, for Nietzsche, “good” has ‘two diametrically opposed meanings, depending on whether its opposite is bad or evil, or, to be more specific, depending on whether it designates the values perceived by the masters to be in their interest or those perceived by the slaves to be in theirs’ (S11). For example, “justice” (to which we shall return shortly) is understood within slave morality as altruism and equality, but this is because it has much to gain from such a virtue whilst master morality has everything to lose. Accordingly, master morality understands justice in the sense of ‘the primordial law of things’ (Beyond Good and Evil, S265), the way things are and should continue to be, because it is from this that it benefits: ‘Big fish eat little fish’ (Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.235).
But because slave morality is that of the weak, weary, and oppressed, it ‘gives no ground for reproaching’ the evil enemy (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay1 S13). This means that whilst revenge is a virtue, as it is for master morality – remembering Nietzsche’s will to power thesis, revenge will be all-pervasive in morality – within slave morality the will to power has no means of exacting this revenge. This resentment is, then, ‘the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge,’ whereas in master morality, revenge, ‘if it should appear in the noble man, consummates and exhausts itself in an immediate reaction, and therefore does not poison’ (S10).
In slave morality, resentment cannot be acted upon, is an impotent resentment, and is compensated with what Nietzsche calls an imaginary or ‘spiritual revenge,’ in which resentment festers and grows (S7). Whilst master morality can be honest about its vengeance, slave morality has reason to be ashamed: ‘It is a morality that preaches forgiveness, but whose motivation is revenge, that preaches love of enemies, but is the creation of the enemy as the incarnation of evil’ (Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.236).
These two moralities differ in origin, with master morality found among the strong and powerful, and slave morality among ‘the violated, oppressed, suffering, unfree, who are uncertain of themselves and weary’ (Beyond Good and Evil, S260).
But they also differ in content, as Nietzsche’s account of master morality highlights:
The concept good and evil has a two-fold prehistory: firstly in the soul of the ruling tribes and castes. He who has the power to requite, good with good, evil with evil, and also actually practices requital – is, that is to say, grateful and revengeful – is called good; he who is powerless and cannot requite counts as bad. As a good man one belongs to the “good,” a community which has a sense of belonging together… As a bad man one belongs to the “bad,” to a swarm of subject, powerless people… Good and bad is for a long time the same thing as noble and base, master and slave. On the other hand, one does not regard the enemy as evil: he can requite. In Homer the Trojan and the Greek are both good (Human All Too Human, S45).As ‘the soul of the ruling tribes and castes,’ the master morality consists of ‘the evaluative traditions and customs’ of a particular community of the strong and the powerful (Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.233). As such, revenge, which is the power to requite evil with evil in the service of the community, is a virtue, a natural expression of that community’s will to power.
The primary dualism within master morality is good/noble versus bad/base (rather than versus evil) such that even ‘the enemies of the good are themselves good and not evil.’ To designate the enemy or the weak as bad/base is ‘not to signify some harmful quality they possess, some essence they exhibit, but rather to express the “pathos of distance” in which they are recognized as lacking what makes life worth living for the strong, what makes the good good’ (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay 1 S2).
Further, since the primarily value within master morality is good/noble, rather than bad/base, the key to this morality is, as Merold Westphal notes, that ‘the goodness of the good does not depend on the badness of the bad’ (Suspicion and Faith, p.233). As Nietzsche puts it, ‘every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself’ rather than from a denigration of its enemies (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay1 S10). This means that, within master or noble morality, ‘no one is evil’ (S2).
However, Nietzsche observes, ‘[w]hen man possesses the feeling of power he feels and calls himself good: and it is precisely then that the others upon whom he has to discharge his power feel and call him evil!’ (Daybreak S189). This latter point introduces the primary characteristic of a second morality in Nietzsche’s prehistory, slave morality.
That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no ground for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: “these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather its opposite, a lamb – would he not be good?” there is no reason to find fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey might view it a little ironically and say, “we don’t dislike them at all, these good little lambs; we even love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb.” (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay1 S13).
Within slave morality, then, the wickedness of the wicked is primary, with the goodness of the good emerging in comparison to enemies already designated as evil: ‘He has conceived “the evil enemy, “the Evil One,” and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a “good one” – himself!” (S10)
This means that, for Nietzsche, “good” has ‘two diametrically opposed meanings, depending on whether its opposite is bad or evil, or, to be more specific, depending on whether it designates the values perceived by the masters to be in their interest or those perceived by the slaves to be in theirs’ (S11). For example, “justice” (to which we shall return shortly) is understood within slave morality as altruism and equality, but this is because it has much to gain from such a virtue whilst master morality has everything to lose. Accordingly, master morality understands justice in the sense of ‘the primordial law of things’ (Beyond Good and Evil, S265), the way things are and should continue to be, because it is from this that it benefits: ‘Big fish eat little fish’ (Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.235).
But because slave morality is that of the weak, weary, and oppressed, it ‘gives no ground for reproaching’ the evil enemy (On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay1 S13). This means that whilst revenge is a virtue, as it is for master morality – remembering Nietzsche’s will to power thesis, revenge will be all-pervasive in morality – within slave morality the will to power has no means of exacting this revenge. This resentment is, then, ‘the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge,’ whereas in master morality, revenge, ‘if it should appear in the noble man, consummates and exhausts itself in an immediate reaction, and therefore does not poison’ (S10).
In slave morality, resentment cannot be acted upon, is an impotent resentment, and is compensated with what Nietzsche calls an imaginary or ‘spiritual revenge,’ in which resentment festers and grows (S7). Whilst master morality can be honest about its vengeance, slave morality has reason to be ashamed: ‘It is a morality that preaches forgiveness, but whose motivation is revenge, that preaches love of enemies, but is the creation of the enemy as the incarnation of evil’ (Westphal, Suspicion and Faith, p.236).
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