Spiked, August 31, 2018

Diversity quotas kill comedy
Michael Palin was dead right to criticise the BBC’s PC box-ticking.

The Catholic Herald, April 29, 2016

The atheists who take heaven for granted

According to recent research by the University of San Diego, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as atheists doubled to 22 per cent between 1984 and 2014, while the proportion of the populace who believe in or regularly pray to God has reached an all-time low. No surprise there, you might say. It’s a while now since atheism in the United States was considered “un-American” or tainted by association with godless communism.

Yet the research also shows that this decrease in the belief in God has been accompanied by a rise in the belief in heaven or some kind of afterlife. This figure has risen from 73 to 80 per cent since 1972. “It was interesting that fewer people participated in religion or prayed, but more believed in an afterlife,” remarked the University of San Diego psychology professor, Jean Twenge. “It might be part of a growing entitlement mentality – thinking you can get something for nothing.”

I suspect that Twenge, author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – And More Miserable Than Ever Before (2006), is on to something. People’s day-to-day religious outlook is inevitably shaped by social, technological and cultural forces. Just as the first information technology revolution, the printing press, occurred in tandem with the emergence of Protestantism – both of which challenged authority from below – so the second big information technology is likewise fostering a society in which greater importance is placed on the 
individual. 

For instance, some sociologists noted in the last decade the resurgence of a belief in guardian angels. This was deemed a logical outcome in a society that both adheres less to organised religion and has become more atomised, consumerist and focused on the self.

This shrinking inwards towards the self has been accelerated by the age of Instagram selfies and Twitter. A generation that grew up with the internet has come to expect most commodities – from online news to television to movies – to be free and instantly available. A “paywall” is spoken of as a monstrous effrontery. 

For those today who know only instantaneous gratification – who wouldn’t understand the concept of waiting for holiday photos to be developed, or for one’s favourite television programme to be repeated – even reading a book seems daunting. Accomplishment is measured instead by more superficial methods, such as how many “likes” or “retweets” you get on social media.

“Self-esteem” and “self-belief” is what matters now. This is why, when they go to university, Generation Me become so easily upset and offended, demanding “safe spaces” and censorship. The new generation, as Professor Twenge outlines in her book, are taught “to be whatever you want to be, as long as you ‘believe in yourself’.” This is why the language of gender-fluidity appeals to them (and baffles their elders): one can “be” a man or a woman as long as one simply “identifies” oneself as such.

Yet some things don’t change in human nature: a hardwired fear and incomprehension of death. Appropriately, this can be witnessed most obviously on the internet when a much-loved celebrity dies before their time: Victoria Wood and Prince being the most recent examples. They are “out there somewhere” or “looking down on us now” or “resting in peace”. This language transcends ages and cultures. 

For centuries, belief in heaven in Christian cultures was accompanied by the notion that for some reason, usually by good behaviour and avoidance of sin, your soul warranted a place there. Thanks to my generation having cosseted them and filled their heads with all this babyish talk of “self-esteem”, Generation Me don’t believe in making an effort to get your rewards. I mean, why do good or try to change the world when a quick sympathetic hashtag will do? Let’s hope the Pearly Gates don’t have a “paywall”.



One of the most pleasing aspects about the 1998 film Shakespeare 
in Love was that it portrayed the Bard not so much as a poet or grand man of letters, but more akin to a hack. He’s always searching for new ideas, looking for sponsors to pay him money to write, scribbling into the small hours to meet urgent deadlines.

I like to think of his Spanish contemporary Miguel de Cervantes, the 400th anniversary of whose death we also commemorated recently, as likewise an inspiration for creative types. Here was a man who endured injury, kidnap, imprisonment, bankruptcy, an unhappy marriage and ill-health, and who in his prime saw his 20 to 30 plays sink into obscurity.

Only in 1605, in his 59th year, did he publish Don Quixote, which became an instant bestseller, and which today is regarded as a masterpiece of European literature. There is a lesson here for all writers and artists who toil alone.

Patrick West is a columnist for Spiked

Spiked, November 13, 2015

Blind altruists shall not inherit the earth
Teaching children to be discriminating is an important life lesson.

in The Catholic Herald, July 18, 2014

Even bishops are forgetting the community

Notebook, Patrick West

 

Whenever an Anglican bishop makes the headlines, I find it hard not to think of Dr Spacely-Trellis, the fictitious Bishop of Bevendon. The monstrous creation of the Daily Telegraph’s late Michael Wharton, he was the trendy, go-ahead cleric who wants to jettison such “outmoded” ideas as belief in the Immaculate Conception, the Trinity, the Resurrection and so on.

 

The latest real-life candidate is the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev John Pritchard, who has called for an end to mandatory collective worship in schools. The 70-year-old legal requirement belongs more to the 1940s, he says, than to a 21st-century Britain in which Christianity is but one faith among many (and none). 

 

The comparison with Wharton’s grotesque is admittedly a little unfair. One of the Church of England’s greatest merits is that it’s never really been literal-minded. My father, for example, would always conscientiously go to St Giles-in-the-Fields in central London to sing hymns and hear sermons about the Somme, and he still enjoys Songs of Praise. But like many church-goers, he’s never been especially interested in the theological aspect of religion. And like many conservative Anglicans, he is suspicious of Evangelical "do-gooder” types.

 

To my father, being an Anglican and singing hymns is merely part of being an Englishman. And now that the Irish community in England has to all intents completely assimilated, a similar case could be made for the ritualistic, congregational, community-centred nature of English Catholicism.

 

In my mind, the real problem with religion, and indeed atheism, is when it forgets its communal role and starts to become too literal-minded. Witness the wilful ignorance of young earth creationists or bellicose homophobes who cherry pick Leviticus – or, even worse, intolerant Islamism. Richard Dawkins’s reported disapproval of telling children fairy tales is a milder version of this mindset, as is the Bishop of Oxford’s opinion on daily prayer in schools. Both the bishop and Dawkins overlook the role of communal ritual, religious narrative and England’s Christian heritage.

 

Far from creating imaginary divisions, daily acts of communal ritual bind people together. As Jonathan Sacks argued in his splendid 2009 book, The Homes We Build Together, the best way to bring people together is encourage them to do things together. This is the key to creating harmony in a multi-ethnic country such as ours – not to “respect” or “celebrate” difference, but rather to ignore difference.

 

Of course. a lot people do take their theology very seriously. But my hunch, as an ex-atheist, born-again agnostic, is that most Catholics and Anglicans go to church on a Sunday more for the ritual, the stories, the sense of community and the sheer mental escape, rather than for answers to the big questions. Even religious groups who aren’t big on theology, such as the Quakers, recognise the importance of communal ritual. 

I have a friend, who now works on the Guardian, whose Hindu parents came from India, and yet he attended a Quaker school in Reading. He’s an exemplar of how multicultural Britain is a success story when we don’t make a fuss about cultural difference, but instead concentrate on what we have in common. A basic Christian daily ritual offends only attention-seeking self-flaggellants.

 

This brings me to another fictitious cleric, Fr Dougal Maguire from Father Ted who, when asked his thoughts about religion, replied: “Ah, come on. You’re not meant to take it seriously.” Most of you wouldn’t agree, of course, but these words are worth thinking about the next time you’re at Mass: the very act of communal prayer might sometimes be as important as what is said during it.

Articles in the New Statesman

Articles in the New Statesman

http://www.newstatesman.com/writers/patrick_west

in The Catholic Herald, July 6, 2012

Give me Opus Dei and Richard Dawkins any day, by Patrick West

The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith, by Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp, OUP, £16.99

One characteristic shared by fundamentalist believers and hardened atheists is a predilection for literal-mindedness. The former assert the literal truth of revealed holy texts, which the latter dismiss as stuff and nonsense easily refuted by science and philology. On the other hand, tacit ambiguity has been a constant among mainstream Christian believers, many of whom have tended not to regard the Bible as a historical text, but a holy book rich in metaphors, symbols and parables. Quarrels as to the exact nature of transubstantiation or the reality of miracles are testament to Christianity's long relationship with doubt.

This is particularly true among more liberal and progressive elements within the Christian fraternity. And herein lies the problem. Once a believer accepts the dubious historicity of and contradictory elements within the gospels, and attempts to square the New Testament with science, his faith invariably becomes emptied of theology. All that will remain in its place is the system of ethics upon which it is built. This is why you usually hear calls for "social justice" from progressive, borderline agnostic Christians - because they no longer believe so much in divine justice (think Richard Holloway, for example)

The authors here could be described as progressives, but they are adamant that Christianity should not be stripped of its spirituality. Indeed, in an otherwise polite tract they are derisive of liberal post-Christians, who "critical of inherited doctrines, cheerfully jettisoning convictions that once defined the core commitments of Christianity... subject their own proposals to rather less critical attention... Whatever is deemed worthy of preserving - an experience of 'new being', a commitment to environmental stewardship, or resistance to racial, sexual, or economic oppression - is often put forward with the same unwavering passion of religious conviction with which the traditional beliefs themselves were once advanced". 

The authors fully acknowledge the scientific and historic challenges to Christianity. The New Testament is an unreliable guide to faith, they write. The gospels, for instance, differ as to who was at Jesus's execution, what was said by Jesus and those around him and what happened afterwards. Evil will always be with us. God cannot stop bad things happening because that would break the laws of nature; if He violated natural law once he would be compelled forever to do so again. 

There are also contemporary, social challenges. They speak of the dilemma of pluralism "and the consequent difficult of asserting with any confidence that specifically Christian claims are actually true,". Being a Christian is often merely the result of being raised as one. They confess, almost ruefully, that their own theology has a "christological tinge", and if The Predicament of Belief wasn't mired with verbs in the conditional and subjunctive moods, one could conclude that the authors were certified cultural relativists.

Yet, they maintain, these obstacles need not lead us to refute the claims of Christianity. They "find the either/or challenge - the demand either to accept the biblical narratives at face value or to abandon distinctively Christian claims altogether - unhelpful". Their alternative would not demystify Christianity, and would acknowledge the "axiological and theoretical power" of religious accounts. Thus they call for "Christian minimalism": a pared-down belief system that asks us to adhere to fewer of the Church's claims, and of those that remain, with less certainty.

A cynic might call this watered-down Christianity. Invoking the "anthropic principle", the argument made by some scientists that the Universe is "fine-tuned" for life, they extrapolate that there must be an "intelligent designer", or what they call a "not-less-than-personal" cause to everything - something like a mind, which has intentions and desires, and seeks our well-being. What exactly this is, we will never know: "God is involved in every instance of human action and experience in ways that infinitely exceed our comprehension". But this doesn't really matter, because humans have the capacity to willingly suspend disbelief, to play make-believe. Of supernatural rituals they affirm: "one striking characteristic of adept practitioners is their ability to enter into such moments with great regularity and frequency, all the while preserving a tacit awareness that the claims in question may well not be literally true". Jesus of Nazareth retains "a uniquely authoritative role ... in determing the relation of that divine reality to human beings"; in other words, He matters because other people think so. And in any case, we need to believe in God: "the contemplation of our finite selves, in isolation from any broader communal or spiritual context, quickly becomes a source of nausea or claustrophobia, leading to despair or madness". This is a model example of confusing is with ought. 

The Predicament of Belief is written in a measured and courteous tone, and its exhortation to embrace truths contingently is superficially quite reasonable. Yet it seems simultaneously cynical and feeble. It asks that we believe in something because it's better than believing in nothing, that Christianity is probably true, and even if it's not, let's pretend it is anyway because it makes us happy. This is expedient Christianity. 

While too much conviction can be a dangerous thing, I actually prefer the certitudes of evangelical Protestants or Opus Dei, and judging by the former's ascendency in South America in the latter's packed seminaries in the United States, so do millions of others. Likewise, give me the clinical rationalism of Richard Dawkins any day. They adhere to beliefs because they think them to be true, not because they want them to be true.

from The Catholic Herald, January 20, 2012

God, the brain and the myth of 'rude atheism'

'War of the Worldviews', by Deepak Chopra & Leonard Mlodinow

In the 21st century’s “war” between religion and the New Atheists, both sides often like to protest that they are the underdog. The former point to aggressive secularism in the workplace and public sphere, while the latter lament the persistence of Christian Creationism, especially in the United States, and the appeal of violent Islamism. In a society that places a premium on victimhood this is not surprising, but is it true? And as they say, can the two sides ever be reconciled?
This series of dialogues between Deepak Chopra, “a world-renowned authority in the field of mind-body medicine”, and the theoretical physicist Professor Leonard Mlodinow, mercifully avoids repeating the cliche that “science explains the how and religion explains the why”. Instead, it is a measured exchange that seeks to address pithily all the big questions: how did the universe begin? Why is there something rather than nothing? Can there be a mind without a brain? And is God an illusion?
The authors’ central point of contention is the mind-body division, and if there really is one. This, it transpires, is the key to determining the meaning (or lack of it) of existence. If there is no “mind”, only brain activity, there is no soul, and therefore no God (as we know Him). Mlodinow, a materialist, doesn’t believe that there is a “ghost in the machine”, elaborating that neuroscientific experiments demonstrate that thoughts, feelings and sensations in subjects’ minds can all be traced to specific areas and activities in the brain. “Every day more evidence emerges to support the idea that mental experiences like beauty, love, hope, and pain are produced by the physical brain,” he writes.
This is most commonly seen in people who suffer damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, with a consequent loss of empathy and reduced revulsion to hurting others. Strokes also can alter personalities. Last November it was reported that after suffering a stroke while playing rugby, a 19-year-old man from South Wales recovered to find he had become gay. Other stroke victims have woken up with hitherto unknown artistic skills or speaking in a foreign accent, which adds weight to the argument that who you are is what you are made of: literally.
Mlodinow’s counterpart remains unconvinced, regarding the mind and brain as working in symbiosis. “Human consciousness created science, which ironically is now moving to exclude consciousness, its very creator!” he says. And he is even less keen on atheists than he is on scientists. “We live in a time of rude atheism,” writes Chopra, repeating a now familiar cry, that at the mere mention of God, your average atheist will become enraged, start shouting and throw furniture around the room. If you read the journalism of the late Christopher Hitchens or listen to Richard Dawkins on the radio, you could be forgiven for thinking this. But most atheists are not so intolerant (and thus not so vocal), and Dawkins the author of science books is far more measured than Dawkins the crabby media personality.
Dawkins has argued that the straw man of the “militant atheist” is the creation of those who believe it taboo to have their belief system questioned. And some people do not like having their feelings hurt. Rather than seeking to refute the argument that those who experience visions or mystical experiences may be suffering from brain lesions or epilepsy, Chopra decries such judgments as “foolish” and “insulting”. This is not a rational retort, but it is befitting of our culture in which being “offensive” has become a secular sin (witness the disproportionate opprobrium recently heaped upon footballers who’ve said stupid things), and being a “victim” bequeaths one secular sainthood. Chopra may bemoan the hegemony of science (“Now we are paying the price... Homo sapiens is in danger of extinction”), but Mlodinow replies similarly by complaining about how many Americans don’t believe in evolution, and that America would never elect an atheist president. “Science is not the lord of modern life Deepak imagines, but its under-appreciated servant”.
In an age of being inoffensive, Chopra’s perspective is appropriately “spiritual” and “non-dogmatic”. His response to dealing with life’s big questions is therapeutic: “I believe every home should have a nook devoted to divinity – a shrine or roses, or an altar of scented lavender. A shard of crystal would do, or a small bronze Buddha placed where the sun can warm it.” Ultimately, in a logical dead end, he announces: “Belief becomes knowledge that can be trusted.”
Urging us to be “open-minded”, not “empty-minded”, Mlodinow is more circumspect, asking what, if there is a designer, explains wisdom teeth and the appendix. There needn’t be Intelligent Design either, he says: beauty can emerge from randomness, in the form of rainbows and snowflakes. “Whereas Deepak and I both would like to see a better world, one in which people have transcended their worst impulses, as a scientist I cannot let the way I want the world to be drive my apprehension of the way the world is,” he writes.
This strikes me as a more honest appraisal of your average atheist, who is sceptical rather than cynical, a slightly gloomy borderline agnostic, and more likely to be a secularist than a dogmatist.
Despite the inconclusive nature of War of The Worldviews, the sober dialogue is refreshing, and far removed from the shrill certitudes held and insults often exchanged on this matter.

Patrick West is a music columnist for Spiked-online.com

From The Catholic Herald, September 24, 2010

This was a PR disaster for atheism

Full text of an article that appeared in The Catholic Herald

Well, I think we can safely say that the Pope's visit to Britain was something of a triumph. The vast numbers who came to greet the Holy Father dwarfed the coterie of angry atheists who came "to protest" him. And as much as I regret to admit it, the whole affair has proved to be something of a public relations disaster for atheism.

Some reasons for this are obvious. There was the shrill invective of the likes of Richard Dawkins and A.C. Grayling, who both continue to ignore the first rule of proselytising, in that you are not going to win friends or influence people if you call them horrid names all the time. There was also the idiotic innuendo about the Pope being a Nazi; calling someone a "Nazi" is invariably a substitute for seeking to refute their arguments. And it's juvenile. "You're just like Hitler!" is the kind of cry made by teenagers when told to tidy their bedrooms.

Moreover, there was the omnipresence of celebrities giving their two pence worth. You always know there is something suspect about a cause when it is endorsed by actors and pop stars.

The garrulous Stephen Fry was the best-known culprit, referring to the Vatican thus: "It is a rump accident of history that this place has an autonomous, or autocratic, absolute monarchy of one organisation". This line, that the Vatican is not a real country, and consequently that the Pope didn't merit a state visit, was bandied around routinely. But it ignores the fact that no states are essentially natural, and that the creation of the Vatican City in 1929 only gave back to the Holy See what had been taken away from it in 1870, when the Papal States were incorporated into a united Italy.

Then there was the singer Sinead O'Connor calling for the entire Catholic hierarchy to resign over child sex abuse. The comedian Stewart Lee, the fantasy writer Terry Pratchett and restaurant critic Jonathan Meades also voiced their opposition to the visit on the grounds of the Pope's views abortion, condoms, human rights... you know the rest.

People often bemoan our "celebrity culture" as manifest in tabloid newspapers and magazines such as "Hello!" and "OK!". We are told that it is vacuous, and resembles a kind of ersatz religion. I don't think in itself this is a bad thing. People need their circuses as well as their bread. And it is not necessarily a new thing. People gossiped as much about Nelson's affair with Lady Hamilton and George IV's disastrous marriage to Caroline of Brunswick as much as they discussed their roles as statesmen. In his day Joshua Reynolds was as much a celebrity as he was a painter.

What is novel and objectionable, roughly since Jane Fonda's opinions on the Vietnam War were given publicity, is the notion that we should take seriously the opinions of performers. After all, actors are, literally, professional liars: they earn their living by pretending to be someone they are not. Comedians and fiction writers are by definition fantasists. These people shouldn't be allowed to vote, let alone be indulged by the media so generously.

I had hoped the marvellous 2004 film "Team America: World Police" had put an end to all this nonsense. The movie lampooned the self-importance of actors and their political opinions, featuring marionettes representing the likes of George Clooney, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, all parroting left-liberal, anti-American dogma. It featured a grotesque representation of the film maker Michael Moore, whose rampant egomania was not too far removed from the real thing. In it we had Penn's character declare: "Last year I went to Iraq. Before Team America showed up, it was a happy place. They had flowery meadows and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate, where the children danced and laughed and played with gumdrop smiles".

It was not a particularly partisan film. It also satirised America's aggressive and reckless foreign policy (all the best satire targets both the Left and the Right, from Jonathan Swift to Monty Python.) "Team America"'s essential message was that the US was wrong to invade Iraq, yet it was equally wrong for us to listen to the opinion of Hollywood stars. It should be mandatory viewing for anyone who assumes that people who appears on television are automatically conferred special wisdom as a consequence. We should pay no more attention to Stephen Fry's views on Catholicism than Mel Gibson's pseudo-Catholic reflections.

Ultimately, the Pope's visit was a triumph because it demonstrates that people full of resentment, self-pity and spite are unappealing, where as Benedict, who exuded humility and grace, put a smile on millions of faces. You don't have to be religious to recognise this basic lesson in human nature: be nice and people will like you.

in spiked March 13, 2010

Going all Jesus freaky over the solar system

Professor Brian Cox is an engaging guide to the wonders of space. But he might be just a bit toowide-eyed.

in The Times Online, December 30, 2009

Catholic education: a church divided

in The Catholic Herald, 31/7/2009

The thinker who says we are all mad for believing