Speaking for the motion, "We'd be better off without religion", at a debate held in Westminster on March 27; Professor Richard Dawkins, Professor A.C. Grayling and Christopher Hitchens. Speaking against: Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Professor Roger Scruton and Nigel Spivey. The debate was chaired by Joan Bakewell
LISTEN HERE: Are we better off without religion? (Part 1)
LISTEN HERE: Are we better off without religion? (Part 2)
With gratitude to THE TIMES for offering this debate.
Mark Alexander
5 comments:
Interesting. Somewhat predictable result, the English it would seem are a Godless lot, though there were more supporters than I expected. As debaters go, the laurels went to Hitchens and Scruton, though I did think Scruton got a little bogged down towards the end. Dawkins on the other hand, would not be Dawkins without being a pompous twit, and it sure came through in his delivery.
Religion, when it attends to our deepest needs, can indeed bring great comfort and security to a very confusing existence. It seeks to fill a void that secularism does not even recognize exists. Like all human endeavors, religion breeds its good and its bad, depends upon whose leading the herd, and what their goals are; obviously, some good, some not so good.
Yes religion can be a holy terror, but I do seem to recall a little understood, and seemingly not well remembered exhortation. "Do not take the Lord thy God's name in vain". Do you think that man might just not have understood that one too well, does it not set off questions in the little old noggin. Whether you believe in the divine or not, it seems to me to be one of the wisest pieces of advice from the bible, and the most often transgressed of all the commandments.
The history of accomplishments attended to secularist causes is no slouch where human depravity is concerned. Nobody, but nobody has clean hands on this score. What the whole debate failed to point out is that we are essentially stuck with the human condition, we make of things, contingent upon what we ourselves are, what we aspire to, how we relate to people and events.
Today, as we sit here and debate amongst ourselves, we are confronted with a stark dilemma, half a world away in Iran, sits a madman, surrounded by religious fanatics, who are threatening to plunge the world into darkness. This isn't a passing misunderstanding, this is the path, clearly enumerated by the man himself, on countless occasions. We sit, confounded by our own deliberations, like a lamb waiting for the slaughter. So far our rationality would seem of little use to our security and tranquility; we are resolved to be unresolved, no more: so much for human rational cognizance. The mind of man ain't half as smart as some of us fool ourselves it is. A little more humility and a little less hubris might go a long way to alleviating many of our fractious exchanges.
Religion seeks to help us where human rationality fails us, to guide us in the dark, not always successfully, but we look to it to find meaning in a dull, often meaningless existence. As the speakers opposing the motion of the debate, correctly pointed out, religious belief of one sort or another appears to be hard wired into the human psyche, for throughout history, throughout different ethnic groups, throughout different regions of the earth, man has sought meaning and understanding through transcendental meditation. It would seem that the human yearning to find meaning of something greater than the self is a universal of the human experience, no matter what the secularists say, for look to the causes those self same secularists espouse, to see the commitment to personal belief, that is wired into the human spirit.
Most people, as Roger Scruton and the other two on his team pointed out, turn to religion to guide them on the pathways of their life, seeking solace, meaning, and direction in a dark and confusing world.
When religion turns to power structures, watch out; religion then becomes a tool in the hands of ambitious minds, and consequently, a totally destructive force. That simple statement of fact is born out by events unfolding before our eyes today. The failing of religion is not the religion per say, but the fact that some people take themselves far too seriously, and the rest of us pay the price for letting them do it.
JAR:
Thank you for this excellent comment. It is so well and clearly written. Easily one of your finest comments to date. Again, thank you!
By the way, I stumbled upon this comment only by chance. I don't know why, but it didn't appear in my in-box! It should have.
Yea Mark, Blogger did mumble something about an error in the machine when I went to post it. Like a dumb schmuck, thinking it would be lost in the ether, I went and reposted, hence the deleted entry.
No worries, JAR! No worries!
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