Forsaken by God (3)

This afternoon, Journey's "Atheism for Lent" Course created a "Forsaken by God" service for Good Friday, to reflect on the content of the Course (see here) and to encourage others to think about doubt, disbelief, and God's own atheism on the Cross.

I began with a Welcome and Introduction that explained a little about what we'd been doing over the past few weeks:

On the Cross, God experienced the absence of God, so we have been giving up God for Lent. We have looked at atheist critiques of God, religion and faith, purging ourselves of an instrumentalised religion in which God and faith are instruments for sanctioning our own means and achieving our own ends. We have sought to discover a richer and more honest faith, in which our doubt and disbelief are recognised and remembered. Our experiences of the absence of God do not signal our distance from God but, rather, our identity with God, who too was forsaken by God.

After we sang Sydney Carter's "Friday Morning," I read an imaginative re-telling of the Crucifixion narrative that I wrote:

We crucified Jesus of Nazareth with criminals, and together we mocked him, calling him Christ, King of the Jews, Friend of Elijah, Son of God. At noon, a thick darkness descended and we could hardly see his face up there, veiled in blood and black. But at three o’clock we heard him cry a loud lament. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And then he breathed his last. As if his body were its own, the whole earth echoed his expulsion of air; the ground trembled terribly, rocks split and burst forward, and bodies buried recent and long shifted in their tombs so that in the days to come many would say that they had seen the dead arise. But I think I also heard him say, “It is finished.”

Then we had a reading from G.K. Chesterton, "Let the Atheists Choose a God":

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. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. 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.

And Dave performed Prince's "The Cross"

I modified (adding a sprinkling of Nietzsche) a section of "Angels in America" (see here) to make a reading, "Sue the Bastard," which our Pastor Chris read wonderfully:

The prophet, yes. That is what they call me. I am like a madman in a market place.

God abandoned us. He isn’t coming back. And if he ever did come back, if he ever dared to show his face in the garden again, if he ever returned to see how much suffering his abandonment had created, and if all he had to offer was death, we should sue the bastard. That’s my only contribution to all this theology, all this a-theology. Sue the bastard for walking out. How dare he?! He walked out on us, He ought to pay.

We suffer. But we don’t want death, we want life. I want more life. So bless me anyway. I want more life, I can’t help myself, I do, I want more life. I’ve lived through such terrible times and there are people who’ve lived through much, much worse. But we see them living anyway, when they’re more spirit than body, when they’re more sores than skin, when they’re burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. I don’t know if it’s not braver to die, but I recognise the habit, the addiction of being alive. We don’t want death, we don’t want After Life, we want life, here and now. And if we can find hope anywhere, anyhow, that’s it, that’s the best we can do. So bless us anyway, we want more life. Thus spake the prophet!

Then we sang the chorus of Depeche Mode's "Blasphemous Rumours" like a Taize chant:

I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours

But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humour
And when I die I expect to find Him laughing

We had a ritual, "Sacred Cows," of submerging and washing away names and images of God from paper in bowls of water, and had a wonderful poem written by a member of Journey's writing group, "Queer Ink," reflecting on the content of the "Atheism for Lent" Course, asking, "What is the name of this god you disbelieve in?"

 
Then Dave performed George Michael's "Praying for Time:"
 

 
I edited one of Pete Rollins' parables so that it was short enough for a reading:

There was once a preacher who possessed an unusual but powerful gift. Far from encouraging people’s religious beliefs, he found that from an early age, when he prayed for people, they would lose their religious beliefs, beliefs about the prophets, about the sacred Scriptures, even about God. Now he rarely prayed for others, instead limiting himself to sermons.


One day, however, whilst travelling across the country, he found himself in conversation with a businessman who happened to be going in the same direction. This businessman was very wealthy, having made his money in the world of international banking. The conversation had begun because the businessman possessed a deep faith and had noticed the preacher reading from the Bible. He introduced himself and they began to talk. As they chatted together, the rich man told the preacher all about his faith in God and his love of Christ. It turned out that although he worked hard in his work he was not really interested in worldly goods.

“The world of business is a cold one,” he confided to the preacher, “and in my line of work there are situations in which I find myself that challenge my Christian convictions. I try to remain true to my faith. Indeed, it is my faith that stops me from getting too caught up in that heartless world of work, reminding me that I am really a man of God.”

The preacher thought for a moment and then asked, “Can I pray for you?” The businessman readily agreed, not knowing what he was letting himself in for. And sure enough, after the preached had said his simple prayer, the businessman opened his eyes in astonishment. “What a fool I have been for all these years,” he said. “There is no God who is looking out for me, there are no sacred texts to guide me, there is no spirit to inspire me.”

They parted company and the businessman returned home to work. But now that he no longer had any religious beliefs to make him question his work and to hold it lightly, knowing himself to be, deep down, a man of God, he was no longer able to continue with it. Faced with the fact that he was now just a hard-nosed businessman working in a corrupt system, he began to despise himself. And so, shortly after his meeting with the preacher, he gave up his line of work completely, gave the money he had accumulated to the poor, and started to use his considerable expertise helping a local charity.

One day, years later, he happened upon the preacher again. He ran up to him and fell to his knees. “Thank you,” he cried, “for helping me to lose my religion and find my faith.”

I also modified a wonderful poem by Kester Brewin, which he shared on his blog this morning, and added a few lines of my own (inspired by Pete):

Today, there is no hope.
God is nowhere.

There is no resurrection,
No looking forward to a Sunday which does not yet exist in even the wildest imaginations.
There is no prayer, no solace, no point.
God has died.
It’s over. Finished.

The best you can do is carry on the memory.
The only remainder of belief (now all has been strung up and screwed up) is to consider that maybe his life was well lived,
And that helping the poor, and standing up for the oppressed
Was worth dying for.

God has died.
But we live still… this Friday… to do Good.

God is nowhere.
God is now here.

Then I said:

During our closing song, we invite you blow out a candle to symbolise your doubt, disbelief and atheism, and to recollect that we all find our home in Babylon, in exile, forsaken by God, without God and yet with God still.

And while we sang Pádraig ô Tuama's "Maranatha," we extinguished all the candles in the room and then I closed the service, in the dark, by saying:

At three o’clock we heard him cry a loud lament. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” I think I also heard him say, “It is finished. Go in pieces to love and serve the Lord.” Amen.

We left the room as it was... to re-light all the candles as part of the liturgy on Easter Sunday.

Forsaken by God (2)

Here's some of the material that we're using for the "Forsaken by God" Good Friday service that the "Atheism for Lent" are putting together at Journey, Birmingham, UK, tomorrow, 3pm.

Sydney Carter's "Friday Morning" will sound awesome when played by Dave, our very talented musician.



It was on a Friday morning
That they took me from the cell,
And I saw they had a carpenter
To crucify as well.
You can blame it on to Pilate,
You can blame it on the Jews,
You can blame it on the Devil,
It’s God I accuse.

Chorus: “It’s God they ought to crucify,
Instead of you and me,”
I said to the carpenter
A-hanging on the tree.

You can blame it on to Adam,
You can blame it on to Eve,
You can blame it on the apple,
But that I can’t believe.
It was God that made the Devil,
The woman and the man,
And there wouldn’t be an apple,
If it wasn’t in the plan.

Now Barabbas was a killer,
And they let Barabbas go.
But you are being crucified
For nothing here below.
But God is up in heaven
And he doesn’t do a thing,
With a million angels watching,
And they never move a wing.

“To hell with Jehovah,”
To the carpenter I said.
“I wish that a carpenter
Had made this world instead.
Goodbye and good luck to you,
Our way will soon divide.
Remember me in heaven,
The man you hung beside.”

And we'll end with Pádraig ô Tuama's "Maranatha."


Maranatha from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.


You are my strength, but I am weak
You are my strength, but I am weak
You are my strength, but I am weak
Maranatha, maranatha, maranatha.
I’ve given up some times when I've been tired
I've given up some times when I've been tired
I've given up some times when I've been tired
Does it move you? Does it move you? Does it move you?

I've fucked it up so many times
I've fucked it up so many times
I've fucked it up so many times
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

I've found my home in Babylon
I've found my home in Babylon
I've found my home in Bablyon
Here in Exile, here in Exile, here in Exile.

Forsaken by God (1)

To mark the end of the “Atheism for Lent” Course, the group is going to create a worship service for Good Friday to reflect on the content of the Course. "Forsaken by God." Remembering Jesus’ words on the Cross and God’s own atheism, this service will also help us to feel something of what God felt at the Crucifixion when God experienced the absence of God.


How might a worship service enable us to call to mind those times when we have been guilty of what these great atheist critics of religion accuse us? Of using Christianity instrumentally? To fulfil our own psychological needs, desires and wishes? To legitimise various forms of oppression and justify our social complacency? Or to enact revenge through moral superiority?

What kinds of words, acts and performances can we stage to encourage others to ask these questions?

How might a worship service allow us to recollect through liturgy and ritual our doubts and our uncertainties?

Our very real experiences of the absence of the presence of God?

Our theism, atheism and a/theism?

Thinking ahead to the "Forsaken by God" service, I came across this song, "Church of No Religion" by Ed Harcourt:



Now it’s time to readdress
What is sacred?
Are you sacred?
Are you cursed or are you blessed?
Were you created
From all this hatred?

And I don’t need a devil to change my mind
And I don’t need an angel to keep me in line
I've got my head screwed on like a nail in a cross
And I'll make my own decisions

And so the cut it overfloweth
Into the Red Sea
Into the Dead Sea
Above the mountain or deep below it
It flows as freely
As you believe me

And I don’t need a devil to change my mind
And I don’t need an angel to keep me in line
I've got my head screwed on like a nail in a cross
In the church of no religion

You would think all of your cardinal sins will stay underground
You have ruined almost everything so step down down down down down

All your money and all your faith
All your miracles and holy visions
Won’t make the world a better place
So take a pew and stop to listen

I’m tellin’ you the truth
If World War III comes soon
You’ll find me singin’ in a church
Singin’ in a church
Singin’ in a church
Of no religion

Get the scissors, cut the strings
It’s time to move on
It’s time to move on
The puppeteer is out of time
We’ve waited so long
We’ve waited so long

And I don’t need a devil to change my mind
And I don’t need an angel to keep me in line
I’ve got my head screwed on like a nail in a cross
And I’ll make my own decisions

You will think all your cardinal sins will stay underground
You’ve ruined almost everything so step down down down down down

All your money and all your faith
All your miracles and holy visions
Won’t make the world a better place
So take a pew and stop to listen

I’m tellin’ you the truth
If World War III comes soon
You’ll find me singin’ in a church
Singin’ in a church
Singin’ in a church
Of no religion

Singing in a church
Singing in a church
Singing in a church
Of no religion

Singin’ in a church, singin’ in a church
Preachin’ in a church of no religion
Singin’ in a church, livin’ in a church
Prayin’ in a church of no religion

Singin’ in a church
Singin’ in a church
Singin’ in a church
Of no religion

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]").

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?

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

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).

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).

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.

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 (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?

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).

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?"

Religion as Lie: Gervais (1)

Next Sunday at "Atheism for Lent," we'll be watching and then discussing Ricky Gervais' (2009) film, The Invention of Lying (entry at Internet Movie Database here).


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)

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?

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

Religion as Trickery: Brown (1)

Religion as Trickery: Brown (2)

Religion as Trickery: Brown (3)

Religion as Trickery: Brown (4)

Religion as Trickery: Brown (5)

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.

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 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.


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?

Here's the entire documentary on Channel4's YouTube Channel, but it can also be downloaded from iTunes.

Derren Brown: "Messiah"

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.

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.

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.

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")

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")?

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?

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.

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").

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.

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.

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.

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?