Humphreys in Search of God.
A critical look at the statements made by each interviewee and a comparison of each ideological stance. By Simon Quick. Cham CH, December 2006 e. quick@thirdperson.ch w. http://www.thirdperson.ch
Introduction:
Over three weeks in November 2006 the formidably interviewing talent of John Humphreys, of Radio 4’s Today show, interviewed three prominent members of the main religious movements in the UK. Dr Rowan Williams, for the Christian church, Tariq Ramadan for the Muslim tradition and Sir Jonathon Sacks for the Jewish believers.
The purpose of the programme was quite simple, each was given the chance to try and ‘convert’ Humphreys to their particular religion. Humphreys being a self-confessed ex-Christian, years of witnessing and reporting from terrible situations having slowly eroded any faith he had.
The programmes were some 30mins long and are available as transcripts and Podcasts via the BBC Radio site or from iTunes. The format of the programmes although not identical were similar in that Humphreys asked similar questions of each guest and as a good interviewer should, listened and responded accordingly to the answers given; thus not all shows covered all the same themes, in quite the same order, or detail.
Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/misc/insearchofgod.shtml
For this critique, I have grouped some of the comments made by the interviewees under the common headings of, the general questions asked by Humphreys and the responses given. Making commentary as a form of ‘translation’, to assist you, the reader, to fully appreciate each statement and see the similarity or contradictions made by each person. I have tried not, of course, to place sentences out of context so as not be guilty of misrepresentation To this end, I have used the transcripts from the BBC web-site as a source of what was said, thus the quotations are not wholly sequential, or are at times grammatically correct.
The purpose of this critique is to give you time to consider the actual words used by the speaker, to be able to read and re-read what was said and not be distracted by the style of the speaker, their intonation or any other means of persuasion or expressions of conviction that were used to formulate their arguments. I have also added questions to provoke further thought. Thus, helping you arrive at your own opinions on the merits of each case.
Let me start with the definitions of god as they came out of the discussions. - The use of the lower case g for god in my own commentary is intentional. I have followed the sequence of the radio show broadcasts, i.e. Williams, Ramadan, Sacks, for each group of comments.
Definitions of god:
Dr Williams started by saying:
“I don't know that there is God or a God in the simple sense that I can tick that off as an item I'm familiar with. Believing is a matter of being committed to the reality of God. The knowledge that comes, that grows, if you like, through a relationship”.
Here we see for the first time that faith is an intrinsic factor in defining god. What Williams is saying is, he has no proof or true definition, just a reliance on faith. One has to ‘commit’ or convince oneself there is a god and then god exists and that the more one ‘commits’ oneself, the more one believes.
Dr Williams went on to say:
“…belief in God appears to come more naturally to children than to adults. And you can take that in one of two ways can't you; you can take it as saying belief in God is one of those things like belief in Santa Claus...”
“Or, you can say there's something instinctive about belief in God which life educates out of some of us in ways that are not always positive or constructive”.
Here one can agree with him, children can be fooled into believing in god as they are about Santa Claus. But then do we have an ‘instinctive’ belief in god? And is this instinct then educated out of us? Is it not simply that, as children we believe most things people with status and authority tell us until some of us begin to see the fallacy in it, either through education or experience? This is not instinctual but innocence; what will later become naivety on the part of those who do not question it?
Ramadan took a more, conveniently, non-committal view of god, saying:
“…you cannot imagine how he is and you cannot define him. The only thing you can say about him is what he's saying about himself, so no image, no representation, his name everything”.
Imagine starting a new religion, what easier way to avoid all those nasty difficult question like, ‘what is god like’, by saying you cannot imagine or define him. Later we shall see that he says quite categorically that Islam is not blind faith, interesting, given this statement about incomprehensibility?
Please note that Ramadan also falls at the first post, with ‘you cannot imagine how ‘he’ is’. ‘He’ is a male pronoun, so we have already limited him to a male form, interesting also that Ramadan never refers to his god as a she or even ‘he or she or it’ just to cover all circumstances.
Ramadan later goes on to say:
“Allah, God knows best. So, to this at that level humility among human being is to say I don't know, he knows, I don't”.
Being non-committal can mean saying nothing, it can also mean saying absolutely everything. And again ‘knowing best’ stops any further questions about why; how convenient. Humility or blind faith?
Sacks was the most verbose on this matter, for example:
“I think God is a human universal, and history shows that when people don't believe in God they believe in other things. I'm thinking about fascism, about communism, about idolatry, whether you worship the folk, the race, the economic or political system. One way or another, if you worship anything less than God, anything less than the totality of all, then you get to idolatry, which begins innocently enough but ends in bloodshed on an enormous scale”.
A statement that beggars belief. Is he saying if we look back at the history of bloodshed we shall find only atheists as the cause?
What, one might ask, is the difference between idolatry and a scripture based religion; quite frankly, nothing. As such, his statement about ‘it beginning innocently and all ending in bloodshed’ is rather apt when one considers the true history of religion.
To compound his argument he continues later with:
“Ours is a merciful God. Ours is the first God of mercy in the history of the human spirit and every book in the bible is saturated with that”.
I can’t help asking myself if this man has read the Old Testament? The words ‘bible’ and ‘saturated’ collocate better with ‘bloodshed’ than ‘mercy’ I believe.
He then changes tack:
“I cannot believe in God the creator of the physical world, and at the same time have a view about the physical world that makes every phenomenon of physics or biochemistry, the intentional and interventionist act of a God who is doing everything.
Let’s be clear here Sacks is saying that he cannot believe that god both built and maintains the universe. By implication he is saying that god built the universe and lets it run itself. This non-interventionist theory is self-defeating in that it nullifies the need to pray, a theme picked up later, and the idea that god has any future plans for us, a common idea of all three of the interviewees.
“God married himself to a people, a people married itself to God and they agreed to go hand in hand together to an uncertain future”.
This final statement I would find rather sweet, except for the selfish, arrogant and deliberate use of the indefinite article to define a definite people, twice!
So to start, we have a god that one has just to believe in, a skill that is easier for children. Who is beyond all definition, and luckily knows everything, because we don’t. Who shows mercy to all, who only created the universe, but ignores it now; and is, sadly for some, only available to Jews.
Faith, mankind and god:
Again, over the period of the interviews the three gave their opinions on what they describe as faith and how they saw their faith relating to their gods.
Dr Williams in answering a question about a child with cancer and the questions the parents might ask themselves said:
“My faith tells me, and it's very hard to believe in these circumstances, but it tells me and I trust this. That the world, yes, is such that suffering arises in these unspeakable ways. It also tells me that what God can do with those circumstances and those persons is not exhausted by the world, there's more”.
Are these the words of a man who knows what he is talking about or someone clutching at straws, ‘suffering arises in unspeakable ways’, his faith told him that? Interestingly, note, he trusts his faith, not directly his god.
Then, more, what more?
“God has more to give. God has more to do with the mother, the child, whatever the circumstances are. God has an eternity in which to heal or to lead forward the people involved in those circumstances. I don't mean make it up to them but I mean that there's a future”.
So the ‘more’ comes much later not in the form of recompense, just in ‘a future’. Here we see the non-committal get out clause of ‘eternity’ being used; suffice to say that nobody will be around to disprove him.
“In God's perspective, in God's time, maybe within this world and maybe not. And part of the difficulty of living with faith is the knowledge… that for some people in our time frame in this world there is not that kind of healing. It's not there. And that's not easy to face or to live with”.
This is a very roundabout way of saying shit happens, or maybe not, and we must live with it. An idea picked up by Ramadan later on.
Later, expanding on the same theme, Williams says:
“God is the agency that's at work in everything and has set up the world in such a way that not only is evil possible, but moments are also possible where something breaks through of healing, of miracle for the newness. Why it breaks through here rather than there, we don't know the causes that make that possible”.
‘And again, ‘we don’t know’. Like Ramadan early, ‘I don't know, he knows, I don't’. The same remark, things happen but we don’t know why. This is a perfectly acceptable position to take, we don’t know everything; but, its attribution to god’s work that makes it a nonsense. I can’t explain the chance elements in our lives so it must be a positive intent of this character I like to call god. Note that it is a positive intent. It is never a negative intent, like god is keeping things to him-her-itself just to piss us off! This perpetual none critical positive bias is an indication in itself of the fictional nature of this belief.
Humphrys’ reaction was clear: “Something else we have to take on trust”.
“On faith, on faith” retorted Williams. “What I'm trying to outline, and I know it's not a, not a simple thought, is that God set up the universe in such a way that when certain causes come together, certain circumstances come together, more is possible than those immediately involved, than I'd imagine, as if there's something breaks through”.
Dr William’s reply is beginning to sound a little like George W. here, but let’s interpret it as just repeating what he said above. He doesn’t know, and has no explanation.
Positive faith again; hope that something positive will be the outcome, why doesn’t he believe that something bad will be the outcome?
Note how, if you eliminated god from his answer it still retains the same logic. What does this tell us?
Humphrey’s final question on this matter was:
“The greatest puzzle to me remains why it is that faith - which is a gift, yes - has not been given to people like me”.
“It's gift of faith or no gift of faith. The gift of God is there for you…”
‘This answer puts me in mind of the Emperor’s new clothes; It is there for you if you ‘commit yourself’ and allow yourself to see it. Again, here is an ‘I don’t know the answer’, answer, couched in yet another way.
Speaking to Ramadan on the same topic Humphrys made the following statement:
“…you yourself obviously accept that the Qur'an is literally the word of God. It was not what Mohammed interpreted God as saying and wrote it down, because he was illiterate wasn't he. He was reciting the literally, over a period of twenty-three years, the word of God. So what you read in the Qur'an you believe to be quite literally the word of God”.
I don’t think I need to point out here the improbability of Mohammed, an illiterate living as did in circa 600 CE, being able recite something for 23 years, and it being listened to and written down by others and it still being something like the original ‘word of god’. Though this does not seem to matter:
“Yes but you have to be very, very precise”. Says Ramadan. “The fact that it's literally the word of God doesn't mean that I have to read it literally, it's not the same. It's the word of God sent to a human being, a prophet, in a specific historical context”.
If we understand him correctly, god was speaking in the historical context of some 1400 years ago and we now have to interpret it for 2006. Which begs the question how one can ‘very, very precisely interpret’ something for oneself? No updates have as yet been given. Though, if we misinterpret it then we are likely to be blasphemous and we know the consequences of that. The questions are, what do we read literally and what not? What is the criteria and who chooses, how do we stop it becoming cherry picking? - Presumably the flying horse bit goes without saying - This statement also means that we have to be both culturally universalistic and individualistic; that is, accept the words as both universally binding for all, because it’s the word of god, and at the same time, be able to adapt it for our own time and person, because it is historically contextual. This is again a non-committal position based on its ‘everything theory’, we saw him use above.
Later Humphrys used a favourite scenario of his, also presented to the other two interviewees, that of the cancer suffering child and the questioning parents. Paraphrasing Ramadan he said:
“You said you look at the suffering child and you do not know why that child… you don't know why that child is being allowed to suffer, but in the end you have to accept it. But if that is not blind faith I don't know what is”?
Ramadan came back immediately with:
“No it's not blind faith. I said something else which you didn't quote right now. I said you have to do your best with what you know and what you can. This is exactly the opposite, it is not blind faith”.
Again and again, ‘I don’t know why…’ but I have to accept it - which is what he said, actually - is interpreted as not being blind faith. In simple terms you have no idea why something happens other than it is your belief it is the will of your god; and the acceptance of this is not blind faith. What is it then?
Surely isn’t ‘doing the best with what you know/can’ the atheists’ point of view? That is, we are in this position and we have to deal with it ourselves without resorting to gods, books, etc. Because what you know and can do is literally that, it is not a belief.
Soon after Ramadan defeats his own logic with the immortal: "Allah, God knows best." I don't know. In the words of Humphrys, if that is not blind faith then I don’t know what is’?
Jonathon Sacks again demonstrated incomprehensibly naivety in his logic when he said:
“To my mind faith lies in the question; if you didn't have faith you wouldn't ask the question. If I did not believe in a just and law-abiding God, I would not find injustice and human suffering worthy of question whatsoever”.
Read that again! His logic, if it was not perfectly clear, is that non-believers in god are incapable of questioning injustice. According to Sacks, belief in god is an essential prerequisite for having an intolerance of inhumanity.
He continued more tersely with:
“After all, the universe, if it has no God, is utterly indifferent to my existence, it's blind to my hopes and deaf to my prayers. So if I have no faith I can't ask the question. Faith is in the question”.
Correct on the first count and incorrect, again, on the second Jonathon. Once again Sacks reinforces his thesis that without god one looses the cognitive ability to question one’s existence. That tantamount to saying, if I don’t know the answer before I ask the question I can’t ask the question.
Just in case Humphrys was not completely convinced by his assertions of a master race, Sacks reminded us that:
“God is listening to me in a much more direct way in Judaism than in Christianity, because in Christianity you pray through a son of God, in Judaism we talk directly”.
I wonder what Williams would say to that; he is obviously talking to the monkey not the organ grinder.
Sack’s final words on the matter were:
“For 4000 years the Jews have wrestled with god and god has wrestled with us, but we never gave up. Faith is the refusal to give up”.
Admirable in one sense but ridiculous in another. 4000 years asking the same questions, have they ever thought are they asking the wrong questions? Have they ever considered properly answers they don’t really want to hear? And, how do they know that god has wrestled with them?
Again, we have a god that created the universe including the chaos principle. Does not layout his plans in advance or given reasons why things happen. Expects that we accept that’s the way it is. The advice given is to wait an eternity to find out if there is a reason, or maybe not. To call direct and not stop questioning, but don’t ask questions that question your faith.
Intervention of god on earth and with mankind:
This has been touched on above, and Humphrys uses two clear examples with each of his interviewees. The child with cancer and the questions of the parents and the Auschwitz concentration camp, both examples where one would expect a merciful god to jump in and rescue the situation.
Starting with Rowan Williams again, Humphrys asks:
“How do you reconcile a God of love and a God of mercy with what we see happening? How do you say to the mother whose child is dying of cancer that God is a God of love? Where is the love of God here”?
Williams responds with an interesting point, the degree of suffering requiring intervention:
“In a way it's the same kind of question that arises, is there a point at which you know God has to intervene to clear his character. And how bad does it have to be? A child with cancer, an innocent in those circumstances, suffers and suffers appallingly because certain causes, certain processes have kicked in, we don't quite know why”.
But fails to give any answer. ‘I don’t know why’, is repeated yet again.
Though note the correction from ‘causes’ to ‘processes have kicked in’. Causes naturally demand a ‘causer’, a god and that would not create a positive image; having a god that causes suffering.
He reiterates his non-point with:
“I'm not saying there's a purpose in the sense that God has said, oh yes don't, for that goal, for that end I will devise this disaster, or even that there's a reward in heaven, I'd say there's hope”.
Again no answer from Williams, leaving aside ‘hope’, which is not an answer but a wish, and note he only manages to tell us what he is not saying.
Humphrys then goes on to ask about prayer as a means to ask for intervention:
“But if we accept freedom of will, why do we pray? Why do you pray if you know that in the end God is not going to intervene, unless through a happy combination of circumstances, and that very rarely indeed. They prayed in Auschwitz”.
This was a rare interviewing error by Humphrys adding the crunch topic at the end, distracting form the true question. Williams picks up on it:
“They prayed in Auschwitz, and they prayed I imagine for two reasons. One is God is always to be praised, and the extraordinary thing is that they prayed in Auschwitz. That people felt that God's name was to be honoured even there”.
Williams again began to sound like George W, in citing two reasons and then repeating the first one twice. No answer, again. Yes they prayed and no, nothing happened.
A slightly fuller answer came later with:
“I pray so that in my own focus tempting to be loving focus on this person, this problem, I may somehow make a channel for God's action to come through into the situation. To what degree and with what effect I won't know, but I've got to do it because I believe that's one of the factors that might make a difference”.
Just to be clear, he prays to clear a pathway for god’s interaction, but has no idea of the consequences, despite presumably being quite specific in his prayers. Then, the last phrase ‘…that might make a difference’. The modal verb of probability, said with all honesty, he has no idea.
Moving on to Tariq Ramadan Humphrys firstly addresses the idea of Islam and its god as a lifestyle determiner.
“If I become a Christian, if I am a Christian, I observe broadly speaking the pieties. In the case of Islam you surrender your life to Islam, Islam directs, determines the way you live in every respect”.
Remember Ramadan’s comment about it not being blind faith, well his reply is:
“Yes, you know, my life belongs to him”.
He continues:
“There is something which are the pillars of Islam, so the fact that we are praying, the fact that we are fasting, these are you know the practices showing that we are with him in our daily life. So it's not something which is a blind, you know, submission. When the people are translating Islam by submission that is wrong…
“So it's doesn't mean a blind completely submission with no use of what you have, no”.
Hold on, if you give yourself to him, continue to live within the pillars, this is not blind submission? Surely ‘not blind submission’ is the opposite, you don’t give yourself to him, and don’t live within the pillars? Or is something missing; is it the word blind here? Does he mean, it is submission, but not blind?
Humphrys reiterates the point:
“Islam is a complete way of life, and let me give you the list. Governing dress, economics, business ethics, rates of taxation, justice and punishment, weights and measures, politics, war and peace, marriage and inheritance, family and domestic life, care of animals and livestock, sexual relations within marriage, education, diet, cookery, social behaviour, forms of greeting, rules of hospitality, even I am told the way in which a glass of water is to be drunk…”
Ramadan again defends the none submissive approach:
“Yes but be careful, once again it's not wrong to say it's a complete way of life. Now in your way of life not everything is at the same level. For example you have ethics, you have some convictions, you have rules in your life…”
‘It’s not wrong to say it’s a complete way of life’, so it is a complete way of life then? But not a complete submission? I thought complete meant complete, i.e. all. So it’s a undefined matter of degree, an all and nothing non-commitment again.
Humphrys apologised for asking a perfectly valid question, perhaps in the embarrassingly obvious knowledge that no valid answer is possible.
“You describe Allah as all merciful, and this is an entirely predictable question, forgive me for asking it, and it's crucial, and it may even be simplistic but there we are. Why does Allah allow suffering in the way that he does”?
Ramadan then begins to sound like Williams:
“There are limits between what we understand and what he wants. And then here what we are asked to do is to deal with our reality as much as possible to the limit of what is possible”.
“So it's all right if they ( little children ) suffer on this earth in the knowledge, in your knowledge, that they will go to paradise”. Replied Humphrys, to a categorical statement by Ramadan.
“No, said Ramadan, to my intelligence, to my understanding it's difficult to accept it as something which is intellectually understandable. But this is life, we are going to suffer because at the end of the day life is suffering”.
So life is suffering? What sort of a god allows suffering and asks the ‘people to deal with the reality’; is that merciful a god?
By ‘difficult to accept as intellectually understandable’ he is saying, I don’t know why it happens. What he cannot bring himself to say, like Williams before him, is that his image of god is a good god and to explain suffering in intellectual terms would necessitate saying his god is not a good god.
“But why did God want that ( suffering ) to happen, why did Allah want that to happen”? A valid question from Humphrys, answered by Ramadan this time with a clear:
“I don't know you, I don't know why even he wanted me to be here, or you to be here. I don't know why sometimes he makes me happy or sad, but this is life”.
Again, sounding like Williams, ‘I don’t know’, but shit happens’. ‘But this is life’. Not, you note,‘ this is god’. It is never god’s fault.
“We have a verse in the Qur'an, says Ramadan, - he creates death and life in order to put you in a test, it's to test you, this is test.
A test, is the same as saying I don’t know; I do something I don’t know the outcome of. In fact it is used to reverse the problem away from god to man, conveniently keeping god good. Now man has the problem to pass this test and man can fail, but you can’t fail if you are the examiner, he just determines the standard.
Suffering is a gift and a problem, is very often of course for us a problem, we live with this with great difficulty. And sometimes out of our suffering we become better, we become wiser, we become more knowledgeable about life”.
Or sometimes, we just suffer! Again, the positive outcome ploy as Williams above. Read this as, ‘I don’t know but it will be okay in the end, honest it will John’!
Humphrys approaches the same merciful intervention debate a week later with Sacks with a direct example from the Old Testament:
“Why would a merciful God have done to Abraham what he did to Abraham - faced him with that agonising dilemma, "Sacrifice your child if you believe in me"? Why would God have faced a human being with that wicked choice”?
Sacks justifies god’s action with:
“We know that child sacrifice was incredibly wide spread in the ancient world, we know that from every kind of archaeological evidence. Child sacrifice which is referred to many, many in the Hebrew bible as the most abominable of all acts, was the kind of thing you expected a God to ask of you, it's what gods regularly asked for their devotees. The essence of the story of Abraham is that at the critical moment God says "Stop - I am not that kind of god".
Let’s look at the sequencing of this, The Hebrews supposedly thought child sacrifice was abominable, but Abraham, having been instructed by this god, started to go through with it, thinking he was talking to a regular child-killer type god. But no, at the last minute this particular god says stop. What would Abraham’s reaction have been, because in the words of Humphrys: “So he played with him, he was toying with him”. Something like, ‘Oh I’ve learnt my lesson god. Actually, I thought all gods were child-killer types, I’m so glad that you are a different type of god, thanks, you stopped me thoughtlessly killing my son’! Because that is what Sacks says: “He was teaching him”.
What actual lessons did Abraham learn? That child killing is wrong, or other such ground-breaking insights?
Just a language point, ‘was the kind of thing you’d expect a god to ask of you’ plus ‘I’m not that kind of god’ do rather suggests that other gods exist, which does go against the Jewish one god theme. Finally on this point, I shall not bore you with the fact that not ‘every type of archaeological evidence reveals child abuse; some reveal things like cooking habits etc.
“God says "if you knew why this suffering happens you would live with it, you would accept it as the will of God. I don't want you to accept it as the will of God, I want you to go out there and heal the sick, feed the hungry, tend those who are injured. I want you to be", in that wonderful and very distinctive Jewish phrase, "my partners in the work of creation". So Judaism is in the question, not in the answer”.
So we heal the sick, feed the hungry etc not because it is god’s will but because it’s not god’s will? But if it isn’t god’s will then it is by chance that we suffer, which is again the atheists’ point of view.
This is also a god protection strategy We don’t want to impose our good god with having created suffering, because that is not a positive god message. ‘My partners in the work of creation’ allow him to blame suffering on you, mankind. Sacks just manages to stop just short of saying mankind created suffering.
He then expanded the same message with:
“…if I can explain, a parent of a baby who is ill, who is crying, gives that baby some medicine even though it knows that baby's going to cry even more, because it knows that suffering in the short term is justified in order to make the baby better in the long term. If we take those stances the suffering is in the short term is necessary for good in the long term, we would accept suffering as God's will, God does not want us to accept suffering as his will, God wants us to fight suffering. Judaism is God's call to us to accept responsibility.
This metaphor and conclusion is nonsense, firstly, it is self-contradictory; does god want us to suffer at all, even if it will bring future benefit? And secondly, note the illogical leap from accepting the benefit of short term suffering to it being god’s will? Extending his own logic Sacks is actually saying; he wants the baby to ‘fight its suffering’ and to accept responsibility for being ill and crying; because, even for the child, it is still not god’s fault, it’s the child’s.
Humphrys takes a slightly different line in questioning next:
“But if God is omnipotent why did he not simply say, "Here is this perfect structure that you can go off and inhabit and worship me"?
Like all good salesmen, Sacks personalised his argument, bringing in emotions and pleading for acceptance of the undeniably obvious:
“John, you are a father. Why didn't you say to your child "Here it is, this is what life is, what you've got to do is go and do exactly what I've told you and you'll be happy and I'll be happy"? Because you know that your child is not going to grow into an adult unless you give that child the space to make mistakes and to learn by it”.
To dismantle Sack’s metaphor, god does not interfere in people lives because that would make him-her have faults and thus open to criticism. He-her lets people screw things up and can then say, well you didn’t pass ‘the Ramadan test’ did you! You have caused suffering by not living your life perfectly.
Sacks then contradicted his previous statement with:
“And so we find in the bible at the very childhood of the Jewish people God intervenes to rescue them, he rescues them from slavery, he takes them out Egypt, he leads them across the red sea, he does miracles, he gives them water to drink and food to eat. He is a very protective father”.
Is this then giving the Jews ‘space to learn’, or is it interfering?
Frankly, I only added in this answer for the sake of continuity and because it leads onto Humphrys saying:
“And he abandons them”. Steering his argument round to his second example.
“No he doesn't at all abandon them, says Sacks, God has not at all abandoned us to this day”.
“He let the Holocaust happen”. Says Humphrys.
Sacks must be thinking I’ve heard this before so prefaces his answer with a rhetorical opener:
“I am sometimes asked where was God in Auschwitz”.
Following up with:
“And I answer as follows: God was in Auschwitz in the command "thou shalt not murder", in the words "you shall not oppress the stranger", in the words "your brother's blood cries to me from the ground". God was saying those things to the German people and they didn't listen. I cannot let human beings off the hook by blaming things on God; if I do then I'm betraying the mission that he sent me and sent all of us. We cannot escape from responsibility; Judaism is God's call to responsibility”.
So, god did nothing, but took the moral high ground! Not a very ‘protective father’ here then. What was he teaching them this time? Don’t alienate yourselves from the rest of society or your will be chastised, they haven’t seemed to have learnt that lesson in the last 4000 years.
Sacks conveniently uses the truth for his own purposes by actually ‘letting god of the hook by blaming things on human beings’. So let’s blame the Nazis, they were responsible, absolutely true, but let us also be honest about why Sack’s god didn’t interfere; the same reason the flying spaghetti monster didn’t.
Later Humphrys returns to the subject of the mother and sick child with Sacks:
“Well then it takes me back to the question that I ask incessantly, possibly boringly, which is… why, unless he's a very discriminatory type of God, does he not do it ( intervene ) for everyone who sincerely wants help? And heaven knows the mother whose child is dying sincerely wants help and may well be a person of great faith. Why choose Jonathan Sacks”?
Sacks then resorts to patronising use of schoolboy science to avoid answering the question:
“John I think we know enough about science today, we probably always did, to know that a physical universe without collision, destruction, cannot exist. I mean we are...
...we are the dust of exploded stars. If those exploded stars had not exploded we wouldn't have an earth, and you and I wouldn't be here”.
Is this an attempt at acceptance of the big bang theory? Perhaps it has escaped Mr Sacks that we did not always know about a physical universe with collisions and destruction. One of the reasons we have taken so long to understand this is because of the creationist teachings of he and fellow interviewees’ scriptures.
He continued unabated:
“God has set us in a physical world in which physical happenings can be random. Now there are faiths that do not believe that,
Not the other two interviewees here though.
“God is a remote cause not a proximate cause. And if you find the randomness of that really challenging then John you have more faith than you think you have. Because actually you want to believe in a just world, and that is the first movement of faith, the belief that what we do on this earth is not insignificant, that there is such a thing as a moral purpose to a universe”.
Why would an intelligent man like Humphrys find the two opposites of remote or proximate really challenging? Is Sacks saying that if you find the concepts of opposites really challenging then you are stupid enough to have faith
in god? That’s what his words say. In fact you really have to be a person that finds the ideas of opposite a challenge to understand if you agree with his last statement; that you, a few squashy cells a very few years old,
‘are not insignificant’ in the universe of 14 billion years old and 156 billion light years across, which has a moral
cause.
Just in case you had thought Sacks has all the answers, unlike the ‘I don’t know’ other two, he brings himself into line.
And what I'm really trying to distinguish is the question why did this happen, for which I don't have an answer. And the question what then shall I do, for which I have a very clear answer.
This clear answer what to do, he does not elaborate on.
To conclude this episode Humphrys summarises referring to the points made earlier:
“You don't blame God for anything though do you, you can't blame God for anything can you”?
All Sacks can say is:
“God gives us life and the circumstances in which we can grow toward him… I do not believe that a blame culture is a terribly great culture”.
He cited Adam and Eve and the Serpent each blaming one another for losing paradise. All of which is the philosophical equivalent of saying Mickey blamed Mini and Mini blamed Donald and so I can’t blame god.
A more honest answer would be; if I blame god for something then god is at fault and as I like to think of god as a perfect almighty this would rather ruin my image of my god. So I can’t let myself think that, can I?
Conclusions:
The purpose of the discussions was to convince Humphreys to convert to each interviewee’s respective religion. In drawing my conclusions I searched for arguments that would be in any way persuasive and that might lead Humphreys to consider conversion. In truth, I could find none. Which is a conclusion in itself.
This said, by way of a summary the overriding themes that are apparent, and at times blinding obvious to those not blinded by their faith, are as follows:
Firstly, each position is based on a matter of belief, or ‘faith’ as Williams would say. So long as you suspend your logical questioning, your search for evidence and allow yourself to believe, that’s sufficient. Despite Ramadan’s protestations, this is blind faith. Sack’s idea that faith is questioning, depends wholly on whether you are willing to ask the truly challenging questions necessary and be open to accept contra arguments. It is abundantly clear from the three above that faith is not the question but the blind acceptance of the conforming answer.
They ask and seek answers only to questions that reaffirm their and their ideological leaders’ beliefs. Their beliefs are the same as those of persons 1500 or more years ago. They seek answers from the same source texts and dare not contradict either the source or the previous interpretations. And again, despite Ramadan’s assertions that the Koran is to be interpreted in a modern context, he, like the others, never says it is wrong, they just cherry-pick to suit their own purposes never questioning the ‘bad bits’.
Secondly, they just don’t know, by their own admission they simply can’t say. But still seek reasons why they shouldn’t know; or why it is acceptable within the confines of their religion not to know: It’s god’s will, we can’t know, it’s not the appropriate time and other such facile excuses. Reasons that all seek to justify and, again, reaffirm their existing belief; laying bare, on many occasions, their state of continual denial. They simply don’t know because there is nothing to know about.
The third and final theme is that of, protecting one’s god at all costs and never blaming or criticising him, her, it. Accepting any amount of criticism, no matter how small, is the same as saying god is fallible which contradicts all other claims they may make about their gods. This ‘protection racket’, another example of their continual denial, uses all of the above ploys to ensure that god’s image is never damaged; it is always man’s fault. Yes it is always man’s fault, every single time; but not because it is not god’s fault, but because it is man’s fault. There is no one and nothing to blame beyond ourselves.
In the final words of Humphreys:
“Am I selfishly entitled to feel disappointed that having had long conversations with three very serious thinkers there's been no blinding flash, there's been no road to Damascus, there's been no great revelation that says to me Ah! This will open the door for you to accepting faith”.
Sack’s reply was simply, ‘not to give up’, thus I would challenge you the reader to look again at any of the above or the full texts and find anything that would convince you. Alternatively, you can regain your logic, admit there is nothing to know about and accept that it is your fault; because there is no one else to blame, or rescue you.
Finally, given all of the above and the full content of the programmes, I would question the statement by Humphreys that the three are ‘serious thinkers’. I have not heard anything that justifies this. Accepted, famous, often heard, salesmen, yes, but serious? No.
I therefore call upon the BBC to remove them from the their list of sources of serious comment and for the reasoning public to disregard them, they have demonstrated that they no longer provide any serious added value.
A critical look at the statements made by each interviewee and a comparison of each ideological stance. By Simon Quick. Cham CH, December 2006 e. quick@thirdperson.ch w. http://www.thirdperson.ch
Introduction:
Over three weeks in November 2006 the formidably interviewing talent of John Humphreys, of Radio 4’s Today show, interviewed three prominent members of the main religious movements in the UK. Dr Rowan Williams, for the Christian church, Tariq Ramadan for the Muslim tradition and Sir Jonathon Sacks for the Jewish believers.
The purpose of the programme was quite simple, each was given the chance to try and ‘convert’ Humphreys to their particular religion. Humphreys being a self-confessed ex-Christian, years of witnessing and reporting from terrible situations having slowly eroded any faith he had.
The programmes were some 30mins long and are available as transcripts and Podcasts via the BBC Radio site or from iTunes. The format of the programmes although not identical were similar in that Humphreys asked similar questions of each guest and as a good interviewer should, listened and responded accordingly to the answers given; thus not all shows covered all the same themes, in quite the same order, or detail.
Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/misc/insearchofgod.shtml
For this critique, I have grouped some of the comments made by the interviewees under the common headings of, the general questions asked by Humphreys and the responses given. Making commentary as a form of ‘translation’, to assist you, the reader, to fully appreciate each statement and see the similarity or contradictions made by each person. I have tried not, of course, to place sentences out of context so as not be guilty of misrepresentation To this end, I have used the transcripts from the BBC web-site as a source of what was said, thus the quotations are not wholly sequential, or are at times grammatically correct.
The purpose of this critique is to give you time to consider the actual words used by the speaker, to be able to read and re-read what was said and not be distracted by the style of the speaker, their intonation or any other means of persuasion or expressions of conviction that were used to formulate their arguments. I have also added questions to provoke further thought. Thus, helping you arrive at your own opinions on the merits of each case.
Let me start with the definitions of god as they came out of the discussions. - The use of the lower case g for god in my own commentary is intentional. I have followed the sequence of the radio show broadcasts, i.e. Williams, Ramadan, Sacks, for each group of comments.
Definitions of god:
Dr Williams started by saying:
“I don't know that there is God or a God in the simple sense that I can tick that off as an item I'm familiar with. Believing is a matter of being committed to the reality of God. The knowledge that comes, that grows, if you like, through a relationship”.
Here we see for the first time that faith is an intrinsic factor in defining god. What Williams is saying is, he has no proof or true definition, just a reliance on faith. One has to ‘commit’ or convince oneself there is a god and then god exists and that the more one ‘commits’ oneself, the more one believes.
Dr Williams went on to say:
“…belief in God appears to come more naturally to children than to adults. And you can take that in one of two ways can't you; you can take it as saying belief in God is one of those things like belief in Santa Claus...”
“Or, you can say there's something instinctive about belief in God which life educates out of some of us in ways that are not always positive or constructive”.
Here one can agree with him, children can be fooled into believing in god as they are about Santa Claus. But then do we have an ‘instinctive’ belief in god? And is this instinct then educated out of us? Is it not simply that, as children we believe most things people with status and authority tell us until some of us begin to see the fallacy in it, either through education or experience? This is not instinctual but innocence; what will later become naivety on the part of those who do not question it?
Ramadan took a more, conveniently, non-committal view of god, saying:
“…you cannot imagine how he is and you cannot define him. The only thing you can say about him is what he's saying about himself, so no image, no representation, his name everything”.
Imagine starting a new religion, what easier way to avoid all those nasty difficult question like, ‘what is god like’, by saying you cannot imagine or define him. Later we shall see that he says quite categorically that Islam is not blind faith, interesting, given this statement about incomprehensibility?
Please note that Ramadan also falls at the first post, with ‘you cannot imagine how ‘he’ is’. ‘He’ is a male pronoun, so we have already limited him to a male form, interesting also that Ramadan never refers to his god as a she or even ‘he or she or it’ just to cover all circumstances.
Ramadan later goes on to say:
“Allah, God knows best. So, to this at that level humility among human being is to say I don't know, he knows, I don't”.
Being non-committal can mean saying nothing, it can also mean saying absolutely everything. And again ‘knowing best’ stops any further questions about why; how convenient. Humility or blind faith?
Sacks was the most verbose on this matter, for example:
“I think God is a human universal, and history shows that when people don't believe in God they believe in other things. I'm thinking about fascism, about communism, about idolatry, whether you worship the folk, the race, the economic or political system. One way or another, if you worship anything less than God, anything less than the totality of all, then you get to idolatry, which begins innocently enough but ends in bloodshed on an enormous scale”.
A statement that beggars belief. Is he saying if we look back at the history of bloodshed we shall find only atheists as the cause?
What, one might ask, is the difference between idolatry and a scripture based religion; quite frankly, nothing. As such, his statement about ‘it beginning innocently and all ending in bloodshed’ is rather apt when one considers the true history of religion.
To compound his argument he continues later with:
“Ours is a merciful God. Ours is the first God of mercy in the history of the human spirit and every book in the bible is saturated with that”.
I can’t help asking myself if this man has read the Old Testament? The words ‘bible’ and ‘saturated’ collocate better with ‘bloodshed’ than ‘mercy’ I believe.
He then changes tack:
“I cannot believe in God the creator of the physical world, and at the same time have a view about the physical world that makes every phenomenon of physics or biochemistry, the intentional and interventionist act of a God who is doing everything.
Let’s be clear here Sacks is saying that he cannot believe that god both built and maintains the universe. By implication he is saying that god built the universe and lets it run itself. This non-interventionist theory is self-defeating in that it nullifies the need to pray, a theme picked up later, and the idea that god has any future plans for us, a common idea of all three of the interviewees.
“God married himself to a people, a people married itself to God and they agreed to go hand in hand together to an uncertain future”.
This final statement I would find rather sweet, except for the selfish, arrogant and deliberate use of the indefinite article to define a definite people, twice!
So to start, we have a god that one has just to believe in, a skill that is easier for children. Who is beyond all definition, and luckily knows everything, because we don’t. Who shows mercy to all, who only created the universe, but ignores it now; and is, sadly for some, only available to Jews.
Faith, mankind and god:
Again, over the period of the interviews the three gave their opinions on what they describe as faith and how they saw their faith relating to their gods.
Dr Williams in answering a question about a child with cancer and the questions the parents might ask themselves said:
“My faith tells me, and it's very hard to believe in these circumstances, but it tells me and I trust this. That the world, yes, is such that suffering arises in these unspeakable ways. It also tells me that what God can do with those circumstances and those persons is not exhausted by the world, there's more”.
Are these the words of a man who knows what he is talking about or someone clutching at straws, ‘suffering arises in unspeakable ways’, his faith told him that? Interestingly, note, he trusts his faith, not directly his god.
Then, more, what more?
“God has more to give. God has more to do with the mother, the child, whatever the circumstances are. God has an eternity in which to heal or to lead forward the people involved in those circumstances. I don't mean make it up to them but I mean that there's a future”.
So the ‘more’ comes much later not in the form of recompense, just in ‘a future’. Here we see the non-committal get out clause of ‘eternity’ being used; suffice to say that nobody will be around to disprove him.
“In God's perspective, in God's time, maybe within this world and maybe not. And part of the difficulty of living with faith is the knowledge… that for some people in our time frame in this world there is not that kind of healing. It's not there. And that's not easy to face or to live with”.
This is a very roundabout way of saying shit happens, or maybe not, and we must live with it. An idea picked up by Ramadan later on.
Later, expanding on the same theme, Williams says:
“God is the agency that's at work in everything and has set up the world in such a way that not only is evil possible, but moments are also possible where something breaks through of healing, of miracle for the newness. Why it breaks through here rather than there, we don't know the causes that make that possible”.
‘And again, ‘we don’t know’. Like Ramadan early, ‘I don't know, he knows, I don't’. The same remark, things happen but we don’t know why. This is a perfectly acceptable position to take, we don’t know everything; but, its attribution to god’s work that makes it a nonsense. I can’t explain the chance elements in our lives so it must be a positive intent of this character I like to call god. Note that it is a positive intent. It is never a negative intent, like god is keeping things to him-her-itself just to piss us off! This perpetual none critical positive bias is an indication in itself of the fictional nature of this belief.
Humphrys’ reaction was clear: “Something else we have to take on trust”.
“On faith, on faith” retorted Williams. “What I'm trying to outline, and I know it's not a, not a simple thought, is that God set up the universe in such a way that when certain causes come together, certain circumstances come together, more is possible than those immediately involved, than I'd imagine, as if there's something breaks through”.
Dr William’s reply is beginning to sound a little like George W. here, but let’s interpret it as just repeating what he said above. He doesn’t know, and has no explanation.
Positive faith again; hope that something positive will be the outcome, why doesn’t he believe that something bad will be the outcome?
Note how, if you eliminated god from his answer it still retains the same logic. What does this tell us?
Humphrey’s final question on this matter was:
“The greatest puzzle to me remains why it is that faith - which is a gift, yes - has not been given to people like me”.
“It's gift of faith or no gift of faith. The gift of God is there for you…”
‘This answer puts me in mind of the Emperor’s new clothes; It is there for you if you ‘commit yourself’ and allow yourself to see it. Again, here is an ‘I don’t know the answer’, answer, couched in yet another way.
Speaking to Ramadan on the same topic Humphrys made the following statement:
“…you yourself obviously accept that the Qur'an is literally the word of God. It was not what Mohammed interpreted God as saying and wrote it down, because he was illiterate wasn't he. He was reciting the literally, over a period of twenty-three years, the word of God. So what you read in the Qur'an you believe to be quite literally the word of God”.
I don’t think I need to point out here the improbability of Mohammed, an illiterate living as did in circa 600 CE, being able recite something for 23 years, and it being listened to and written down by others and it still being something like the original ‘word of god’. Though this does not seem to matter:
“Yes but you have to be very, very precise”. Says Ramadan. “The fact that it's literally the word of God doesn't mean that I have to read it literally, it's not the same. It's the word of God sent to a human being, a prophet, in a specific historical context”.
If we understand him correctly, god was speaking in the historical context of some 1400 years ago and we now have to interpret it for 2006. Which begs the question how one can ‘very, very precisely interpret’ something for oneself? No updates have as yet been given. Though, if we misinterpret it then we are likely to be blasphemous and we know the consequences of that. The questions are, what do we read literally and what not? What is the criteria and who chooses, how do we stop it becoming cherry picking? - Presumably the flying horse bit goes without saying - This statement also means that we have to be both culturally universalistic and individualistic; that is, accept the words as both universally binding for all, because it’s the word of god, and at the same time, be able to adapt it for our own time and person, because it is historically contextual. This is again a non-committal position based on its ‘everything theory’, we saw him use above.
Later Humphrys used a favourite scenario of his, also presented to the other two interviewees, that of the cancer suffering child and the questioning parents. Paraphrasing Ramadan he said:
“You said you look at the suffering child and you do not know why that child… you don't know why that child is being allowed to suffer, but in the end you have to accept it. But if that is not blind faith I don't know what is”?
Ramadan came back immediately with:
“No it's not blind faith. I said something else which you didn't quote right now. I said you have to do your best with what you know and what you can. This is exactly the opposite, it is not blind faith”.
Again and again, ‘I don’t know why…’ but I have to accept it - which is what he said, actually - is interpreted as not being blind faith. In simple terms you have no idea why something happens other than it is your belief it is the will of your god; and the acceptance of this is not blind faith. What is it then?
Surely isn’t ‘doing the best with what you know/can’ the atheists’ point of view? That is, we are in this position and we have to deal with it ourselves without resorting to gods, books, etc. Because what you know and can do is literally that, it is not a belief.
Soon after Ramadan defeats his own logic with the immortal: "Allah, God knows best." I don't know. In the words of Humphrys, if that is not blind faith then I don’t know what is’?
Jonathon Sacks again demonstrated incomprehensibly naivety in his logic when he said:
“To my mind faith lies in the question; if you didn't have faith you wouldn't ask the question. If I did not believe in a just and law-abiding God, I would not find injustice and human suffering worthy of question whatsoever”.
Read that again! His logic, if it was not perfectly clear, is that non-believers in god are incapable of questioning injustice. According to Sacks, belief in god is an essential prerequisite for having an intolerance of inhumanity.
He continued more tersely with:
“After all, the universe, if it has no God, is utterly indifferent to my existence, it's blind to my hopes and deaf to my prayers. So if I have no faith I can't ask the question. Faith is in the question”.
Correct on the first count and incorrect, again, on the second Jonathon. Once again Sacks reinforces his thesis that without god one looses the cognitive ability to question one’s existence. That tantamount to saying, if I don’t know the answer before I ask the question I can’t ask the question.
Just in case Humphrys was not completely convinced by his assertions of a master race, Sacks reminded us that:
“God is listening to me in a much more direct way in Judaism than in Christianity, because in Christianity you pray through a son of God, in Judaism we talk directly”.
I wonder what Williams would say to that; he is obviously talking to the monkey not the organ grinder.
Sack’s final words on the matter were:
“For 4000 years the Jews have wrestled with god and god has wrestled with us, but we never gave up. Faith is the refusal to give up”.
Admirable in one sense but ridiculous in another. 4000 years asking the same questions, have they ever thought are they asking the wrong questions? Have they ever considered properly answers they don’t really want to hear? And, how do they know that god has wrestled with them?
Again, we have a god that created the universe including the chaos principle. Does not layout his plans in advance or given reasons why things happen. Expects that we accept that’s the way it is. The advice given is to wait an eternity to find out if there is a reason, or maybe not. To call direct and not stop questioning, but don’t ask questions that question your faith.
Intervention of god on earth and with mankind:
This has been touched on above, and Humphrys uses two clear examples with each of his interviewees. The child with cancer and the questions of the parents and the Auschwitz concentration camp, both examples where one would expect a merciful god to jump in and rescue the situation.
Starting with Rowan Williams again, Humphrys asks:
“How do you reconcile a God of love and a God of mercy with what we see happening? How do you say to the mother whose child is dying of cancer that God is a God of love? Where is the love of God here”?
Williams responds with an interesting point, the degree of suffering requiring intervention:
“In a way it's the same kind of question that arises, is there a point at which you know God has to intervene to clear his character. And how bad does it have to be? A child with cancer, an innocent in those circumstances, suffers and suffers appallingly because certain causes, certain processes have kicked in, we don't quite know why”.
But fails to give any answer. ‘I don’t know why’, is repeated yet again.
Though note the correction from ‘causes’ to ‘processes have kicked in’. Causes naturally demand a ‘causer’, a god and that would not create a positive image; having a god that causes suffering.
He reiterates his non-point with:
“I'm not saying there's a purpose in the sense that God has said, oh yes don't, for that goal, for that end I will devise this disaster, or even that there's a reward in heaven, I'd say there's hope”.
Again no answer from Williams, leaving aside ‘hope’, which is not an answer but a wish, and note he only manages to tell us what he is not saying.
Humphrys then goes on to ask about prayer as a means to ask for intervention:
“But if we accept freedom of will, why do we pray? Why do you pray if you know that in the end God is not going to intervene, unless through a happy combination of circumstances, and that very rarely indeed. They prayed in Auschwitz”.
This was a rare interviewing error by Humphrys adding the crunch topic at the end, distracting form the true question. Williams picks up on it:
“They prayed in Auschwitz, and they prayed I imagine for two reasons. One is God is always to be praised, and the extraordinary thing is that they prayed in Auschwitz. That people felt that God's name was to be honoured even there”.
Williams again began to sound like George W, in citing two reasons and then repeating the first one twice. No answer, again. Yes they prayed and no, nothing happened.
A slightly fuller answer came later with:
“I pray so that in my own focus tempting to be loving focus on this person, this problem, I may somehow make a channel for God's action to come through into the situation. To what degree and with what effect I won't know, but I've got to do it because I believe that's one of the factors that might make a difference”.
Just to be clear, he prays to clear a pathway for god’s interaction, but has no idea of the consequences, despite presumably being quite specific in his prayers. Then, the last phrase ‘…that might make a difference’. The modal verb of probability, said with all honesty, he has no idea.
Moving on to Tariq Ramadan Humphrys firstly addresses the idea of Islam and its god as a lifestyle determiner.
“If I become a Christian, if I am a Christian, I observe broadly speaking the pieties. In the case of Islam you surrender your life to Islam, Islam directs, determines the way you live in every respect”.
Remember Ramadan’s comment about it not being blind faith, well his reply is:
“Yes, you know, my life belongs to him”.
He continues:
“There is something which are the pillars of Islam, so the fact that we are praying, the fact that we are fasting, these are you know the practices showing that we are with him in our daily life. So it's not something which is a blind, you know, submission. When the people are translating Islam by submission that is wrong…
“So it's doesn't mean a blind completely submission with no use of what you have, no”.
Hold on, if you give yourself to him, continue to live within the pillars, this is not blind submission? Surely ‘not blind submission’ is the opposite, you don’t give yourself to him, and don’t live within the pillars? Or is something missing; is it the word blind here? Does he mean, it is submission, but not blind?
Humphrys reiterates the point:
“Islam is a complete way of life, and let me give you the list. Governing dress, economics, business ethics, rates of taxation, justice and punishment, weights and measures, politics, war and peace, marriage and inheritance, family and domestic life, care of animals and livestock, sexual relations within marriage, education, diet, cookery, social behaviour, forms of greeting, rules of hospitality, even I am told the way in which a glass of water is to be drunk…”
Ramadan again defends the none submissive approach:
“Yes but be careful, once again it's not wrong to say it's a complete way of life. Now in your way of life not everything is at the same level. For example you have ethics, you have some convictions, you have rules in your life…”
‘It’s not wrong to say it’s a complete way of life’, so it is a complete way of life then? But not a complete submission? I thought complete meant complete, i.e. all. So it’s a undefined matter of degree, an all and nothing non-commitment again.
Humphrys apologised for asking a perfectly valid question, perhaps in the embarrassingly obvious knowledge that no valid answer is possible.
“You describe Allah as all merciful, and this is an entirely predictable question, forgive me for asking it, and it's crucial, and it may even be simplistic but there we are. Why does Allah allow suffering in the way that he does”?
Ramadan then begins to sound like Williams:
“There are limits between what we understand and what he wants. And then here what we are asked to do is to deal with our reality as much as possible to the limit of what is possible”.
“So it's all right if they ( little children ) suffer on this earth in the knowledge, in your knowledge, that they will go to paradise”. Replied Humphrys, to a categorical statement by Ramadan.
“No, said Ramadan, to my intelligence, to my understanding it's difficult to accept it as something which is intellectually understandable. But this is life, we are going to suffer because at the end of the day life is suffering”.
So life is suffering? What sort of a god allows suffering and asks the ‘people to deal with the reality’; is that merciful a god?
By ‘difficult to accept as intellectually understandable’ he is saying, I don’t know why it happens. What he cannot bring himself to say, like Williams before him, is that his image of god is a good god and to explain suffering in intellectual terms would necessitate saying his god is not a good god.
“But why did God want that ( suffering ) to happen, why did Allah want that to happen”? A valid question from Humphrys, answered by Ramadan this time with a clear:
“I don't know you, I don't know why even he wanted me to be here, or you to be here. I don't know why sometimes he makes me happy or sad, but this is life”.
Again, sounding like Williams, ‘I don’t know’, but shit happens’. ‘But this is life’. Not, you note,‘ this is god’. It is never god’s fault.
“We have a verse in the Qur'an, says Ramadan, - he creates death and life in order to put you in a test, it's to test you, this is test.
A test, is the same as saying I don’t know; I do something I don’t know the outcome of. In fact it is used to reverse the problem away from god to man, conveniently keeping god good. Now man has the problem to pass this test and man can fail, but you can’t fail if you are the examiner, he just determines the standard.
Suffering is a gift and a problem, is very often of course for us a problem, we live with this with great difficulty. And sometimes out of our suffering we become better, we become wiser, we become more knowledgeable about life”.
Or sometimes, we just suffer! Again, the positive outcome ploy as Williams above. Read this as, ‘I don’t know but it will be okay in the end, honest it will John’!
Humphrys approaches the same merciful intervention debate a week later with Sacks with a direct example from the Old Testament:
“Why would a merciful God have done to Abraham what he did to Abraham - faced him with that agonising dilemma, "Sacrifice your child if you believe in me"? Why would God have faced a human being with that wicked choice”?
Sacks justifies god’s action with:
“We know that child sacrifice was incredibly wide spread in the ancient world, we know that from every kind of archaeological evidence. Child sacrifice which is referred to many, many in the Hebrew bible as the most abominable of all acts, was the kind of thing you expected a God to ask of you, it's what gods regularly asked for their devotees. The essence of the story of Abraham is that at the critical moment God says "Stop - I am not that kind of god".
Let’s look at the sequencing of this, The Hebrews supposedly thought child sacrifice was abominable, but Abraham, having been instructed by this god, started to go through with it, thinking he was talking to a regular child-killer type god. But no, at the last minute this particular god says stop. What would Abraham’s reaction have been, because in the words of Humphrys: “So he played with him, he was toying with him”. Something like, ‘Oh I’ve learnt my lesson god. Actually, I thought all gods were child-killer types, I’m so glad that you are a different type of god, thanks, you stopped me thoughtlessly killing my son’! Because that is what Sacks says: “He was teaching him”.
What actual lessons did Abraham learn? That child killing is wrong, or other such ground-breaking insights?
Just a language point, ‘was the kind of thing you’d expect a god to ask of you’ plus ‘I’m not that kind of god’ do rather suggests that other gods exist, which does go against the Jewish one god theme. Finally on this point, I shall not bore you with the fact that not ‘every type of archaeological evidence reveals child abuse; some reveal things like cooking habits etc.
“God says "if you knew why this suffering happens you would live with it, you would accept it as the will of God. I don't want you to accept it as the will of God, I want you to go out there and heal the sick, feed the hungry, tend those who are injured. I want you to be", in that wonderful and very distinctive Jewish phrase, "my partners in the work of creation". So Judaism is in the question, not in the answer”.
So we heal the sick, feed the hungry etc not because it is god’s will but because it’s not god’s will? But if it isn’t god’s will then it is by chance that we suffer, which is again the atheists’ point of view.
This is also a god protection strategy We don’t want to impose our good god with having created suffering, because that is not a positive god message. ‘My partners in the work of creation’ allow him to blame suffering on you, mankind. Sacks just manages to stop just short of saying mankind created suffering.
He then expanded the same message with:
“…if I can explain, a parent of a baby who is ill, who is crying, gives that baby some medicine even though it knows that baby's going to cry even more, because it knows that suffering in the short term is justified in order to make the baby better in the long term. If we take those stances the suffering is in the short term is necessary for good in the long term, we would accept suffering as God's will, God does not want us to accept suffering as his will, God wants us to fight suffering. Judaism is God's call to us to accept responsibility.
This metaphor and conclusion is nonsense, firstly, it is self-contradictory; does god want us to suffer at all, even if it will bring future benefit? And secondly, note the illogical leap from accepting the benefit of short term suffering to it being god’s will? Extending his own logic Sacks is actually saying; he wants the baby to ‘fight its suffering’ and to accept responsibility for being ill and crying; because, even for the child, it is still not god’s fault, it’s the child’s.
Humphrys takes a slightly different line in questioning next:
“But if God is omnipotent why did he not simply say, "Here is this perfect structure that you can go off and inhabit and worship me"?
Like all good salesmen, Sacks personalised his argument, bringing in emotions and pleading for acceptance of the undeniably obvious:
“John, you are a father. Why didn't you say to your child "Here it is, this is what life is, what you've got to do is go and do exactly what I've told you and you'll be happy and I'll be happy"? Because you know that your child is not going to grow into an adult unless you give that child the space to make mistakes and to learn by it”.
To dismantle Sack’s metaphor, god does not interfere in people lives because that would make him-her have faults and thus open to criticism. He-her lets people screw things up and can then say, well you didn’t pass ‘the Ramadan test’ did you! You have caused suffering by not living your life perfectly.
Sacks then contradicted his previous statement with:
“And so we find in the bible at the very childhood of the Jewish people God intervenes to rescue them, he rescues them from slavery, he takes them out Egypt, he leads them across the red sea, he does miracles, he gives them water to drink and food to eat. He is a very protective father”.
Is this then giving the Jews ‘space to learn’, or is it interfering?
Frankly, I only added in this answer for the sake of continuity and because it leads onto Humphrys saying:
“And he abandons them”. Steering his argument round to his second example.
“No he doesn't at all abandon them, says Sacks, God has not at all abandoned us to this day”.
“He let the Holocaust happen”. Says Humphrys.
Sacks must be thinking I’ve heard this before so prefaces his answer with a rhetorical opener:
“I am sometimes asked where was God in Auschwitz”.
Following up with:
“And I answer as follows: God was in Auschwitz in the command "thou shalt not murder", in the words "you shall not oppress the stranger", in the words "your brother's blood cries to me from the ground". God was saying those things to the German people and they didn't listen. I cannot let human beings off the hook by blaming things on God; if I do then I'm betraying the mission that he sent me and sent all of us. We cannot escape from responsibility; Judaism is God's call to responsibility”.
So, god did nothing, but took the moral high ground! Not a very ‘protective father’ here then. What was he teaching them this time? Don’t alienate yourselves from the rest of society or your will be chastised, they haven’t seemed to have learnt that lesson in the last 4000 years.
Sacks conveniently uses the truth for his own purposes by actually ‘letting god of the hook by blaming things on human beings’. So let’s blame the Nazis, they were responsible, absolutely true, but let us also be honest about why Sack’s god didn’t interfere; the same reason the flying spaghetti monster didn’t.
Later Humphrys returns to the subject of the mother and sick child with Sacks:
“Well then it takes me back to the question that I ask incessantly, possibly boringly, which is… why, unless he's a very discriminatory type of God, does he not do it ( intervene ) for everyone who sincerely wants help? And heaven knows the mother whose child is dying sincerely wants help and may well be a person of great faith. Why choose Jonathan Sacks”?
Sacks then resorts to patronising use of schoolboy science to avoid answering the question:
“John I think we know enough about science today, we probably always did, to know that a physical universe without collision, destruction, cannot exist. I mean we are...
...we are the dust of exploded stars. If those exploded stars had not exploded we wouldn't have an earth, and you and I wouldn't be here”.
Is this an attempt at acceptance of the big bang theory? Perhaps it has escaped Mr Sacks that we did not always know about a physical universe with collisions and destruction. One of the reasons we have taken so long to understand this is because of the creationist teachings of he and fellow interviewees’ scriptures.
He continued unabated:
“God has set us in a physical world in which physical happenings can be random. Now there are faiths that do not believe that,
Not the other two interviewees here though.
“God is a remote cause not a proximate cause. And if you find the randomness of that really challenging then John you have more faith than you think you have. Because actually you want to believe in a just world, and that is the first movement of faith, the belief that what we do on this earth is not insignificant, that there is such a thing as a moral purpose to a universe”.
Why would an intelligent man like Humphrys find the two opposites of remote or proximate really challenging? Is Sacks saying that if you find the concepts of opposites really challenging then you are stupid enough to have faith
in god? That’s what his words say. In fact you really have to be a person that finds the ideas of opposite a challenge to understand if you agree with his last statement; that you, a few squashy cells a very few years old,
‘are not insignificant’ in the universe of 14 billion years old and 156 billion light years across, which has a moral
cause.
Just in case you had thought Sacks has all the answers, unlike the ‘I don’t know’ other two, he brings himself into line.
And what I'm really trying to distinguish is the question why did this happen, for which I don't have an answer. And the question what then shall I do, for which I have a very clear answer.
This clear answer what to do, he does not elaborate on.
To conclude this episode Humphrys summarises referring to the points made earlier:
“You don't blame God for anything though do you, you can't blame God for anything can you”?
All Sacks can say is:
“God gives us life and the circumstances in which we can grow toward him… I do not believe that a blame culture is a terribly great culture”.
He cited Adam and Eve and the Serpent each blaming one another for losing paradise. All of which is the philosophical equivalent of saying Mickey blamed Mini and Mini blamed Donald and so I can’t blame god.
A more honest answer would be; if I blame god for something then god is at fault and as I like to think of god as a perfect almighty this would rather ruin my image of my god. So I can’t let myself think that, can I?
Conclusions:
The purpose of the discussions was to convince Humphreys to convert to each interviewee’s respective religion. In drawing my conclusions I searched for arguments that would be in any way persuasive and that might lead Humphreys to consider conversion. In truth, I could find none. Which is a conclusion in itself.
This said, by way of a summary the overriding themes that are apparent, and at times blinding obvious to those not blinded by their faith, are as follows:
Firstly, each position is based on a matter of belief, or ‘faith’ as Williams would say. So long as you suspend your logical questioning, your search for evidence and allow yourself to believe, that’s sufficient. Despite Ramadan’s protestations, this is blind faith. Sack’s idea that faith is questioning, depends wholly on whether you are willing to ask the truly challenging questions necessary and be open to accept contra arguments. It is abundantly clear from the three above that faith is not the question but the blind acceptance of the conforming answer.
They ask and seek answers only to questions that reaffirm their and their ideological leaders’ beliefs. Their beliefs are the same as those of persons 1500 or more years ago. They seek answers from the same source texts and dare not contradict either the source or the previous interpretations. And again, despite Ramadan’s assertions that the Koran is to be interpreted in a modern context, he, like the others, never says it is wrong, they just cherry-pick to suit their own purposes never questioning the ‘bad bits’.
Secondly, they just don’t know, by their own admission they simply can’t say. But still seek reasons why they shouldn’t know; or why it is acceptable within the confines of their religion not to know: It’s god’s will, we can’t know, it’s not the appropriate time and other such facile excuses. Reasons that all seek to justify and, again, reaffirm their existing belief; laying bare, on many occasions, their state of continual denial. They simply don’t know because there is nothing to know about.
The third and final theme is that of, protecting one’s god at all costs and never blaming or criticising him, her, it. Accepting any amount of criticism, no matter how small, is the same as saying god is fallible which contradicts all other claims they may make about their gods. This ‘protection racket’, another example of their continual denial, uses all of the above ploys to ensure that god’s image is never damaged; it is always man’s fault. Yes it is always man’s fault, every single time; but not because it is not god’s fault, but because it is man’s fault. There is no one and nothing to blame beyond ourselves.
In the final words of Humphreys:
“Am I selfishly entitled to feel disappointed that having had long conversations with three very serious thinkers there's been no blinding flash, there's been no road to Damascus, there's been no great revelation that says to me Ah! This will open the door for you to accepting faith”.
Sack’s reply was simply, ‘not to give up’, thus I would challenge you the reader to look again at any of the above or the full texts and find anything that would convince you. Alternatively, you can regain your logic, admit there is nothing to know about and accept that it is your fault; because there is no one else to blame, or rescue you.
Finally, given all of the above and the full content of the programmes, I would question the statement by Humphreys that the three are ‘serious thinkers’. I have not heard anything that justifies this. Accepted, famous, often heard, salesmen, yes, but serious? No.
I therefore call upon the BBC to remove them from the their list of sources of serious comment and for the reasoning public to disregard them, they have demonstrated that they no longer provide any serious added value.
Labels: Humphreys in Search of God
posted by Simon Quick at 2:09 AM
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