Friday, May 27, 2016

The Darkside vs.The Lightside.

Atheist Christopher Hitchens and Christian Larry Taunton: An unlikely friendship? Did Hitchens convert? After all, Darth Vader managed it!

The June edition of Premier Christianity magazine carries a question and answer session with evangelical Christian Larry Taunton. Taunton had a friendship with evangelical atheist Christopher Hitchens and he has since written a book on this friendship entitled "The Faith of Christopher Hitchens".  I have no intention of reading this book and so will have to make do with the article in Christianity. In this article Taunton says this about Hitchens' book "God Is Not Great": 

He (Hitchens) wasn't the man I expected from reading "God is Not Great". That book was a rant and I expected him to match the book. But away from audiences and the cameras, Christopher was a very different individual. 

Further in regard to Hitchens' stage persona Taunton states:

Christopher  would give the impression on stage that he hated religious people. But after our debate in Montana he crossed the stage. shook my hand  and said "You were quite good tonight, Are we having dinner?"

It is well known that Hitchens said that any concession to faith he might make near his death would likely be because his cancer had gone to his brain. On this subject Taunton says:

I was talking to him [Hitchens] on the phone and I said 'What's up with: "If I convert the cancer has gone to my brain"?' He seemed a little embarrassed by it.

Taunton is apparently making no claim that Hitchens had a deathbed conversion, but on Hitchen's "faith", if such it can be called, Taunton claims:

Christopher recognized that atheism in itself is nothing. He was searching for that thing that might ultimately sustain and give meaning to his life. ..... Toward the end of his life, Christopher began exploring the Christian faith. After the publication of "God Is Not Great", he began engaging evangelicals. He would make a show of asking these questions [supposedly] for investigative reasons, but I think he was personally investigating  questions he had about the validity of the Bible and what it is that makes evangelicals tick. 

Christopher and I took lengthy road trips after his cancer diagnosis, and during those trips we studied the Gospel of John for three or four hours. ......he sought me out and sought out these kinds of engagement.

It is quite possible that Hitchens' uncompromising stand against religion was part of his professional act, an act which demanded a formidable stage presence; in effect it was a polemical technique which didn't necessarily mean he would then bring the same attitudes to bear in interpersonal relations. I remember once seeing Mohammed Ali the boxer being interviewed by a talk show host; gone was the blustering braggart to be replaced by a much more unassuming man. It was all just an act and Ali was both a skilled showman and consummate boxer! However, be that as it may, what are we to make of Taunton's claims about Hitchens apparently seeking something, perhaps even seeking God himself? It's difficult to be sure: I have to be frank and say that in my experience of evangelicals I have observed that they often show the very human twin weaknesses of confirmation bias and being prone to seeing what they would like to see; that is, reading the wrong things between the lines. In this connection notice that Taunton's conclusions about Hitchens are all constructions of varying plausibility which he has placed upon Hitchens behavior. In actual fact it is difficult to know what Hitchens was up to, although I suppose it is just possible that impending finality and the sense of vulnerability that mortality brings lead him to take out a small stake in the hereafter!

OK let's now turn to evangelical atheist PZ Myers who has also commented on this Taunton-Hitchens friendship and on Taunton's book. It's not too surprising that Myers is absolutely livid and opens with:

Another Christian has written a book to lie about Christopher Hitchens. This one is claiming that he and Hitchens were great good buddies, that Hitchens was sympathetic to Christianity, and that he may have converted on his deathbed (he doesn’t know for sure — he wasn’t there — but he’s going to sell a book with that claim).

Here Myers is even casting doubt on Taunton's claim to being a good friend of Hitchens as well as making out that the even merest hint of the possibility of a death bed conversion is the height of presumption; Myers wants to hang Taunton for something! Myers thinks Taunton, whom he calls a "ghoul", is taking advantage of a dead man by publishing lies about him for monetary gain - a very serious charge!  Myers finishes with this:


Larry Alex Taunton is a contemptible liar. But isn’t it amazing how contemptible liars can just put on their loving Christian mask and fool the gullible?

No! I doubt Taunton is a barefaced liar! But the problem I have with evangelicals of all varieties, whether they are calling other people liars or not, is that sometimes they are gullible enough to be fooled by their own spin.

On the subject of a deathbed conversion Myers quotes Taunton as follows:

I discovered Christopher is not defined by his atheism. Atheism is a negative and you can’t build a philosophy around a negative. Christopher was searching for a unifying system of thought. They’re accusing me of saying he converted. I make no such claim. It’s not my claim that Christopher converted, it’s that Christopher was contemplating conversion. I think I substantiate it in the book.

Myers says that that is an untestable claim. But is it untestable? Yes and no. What went on between Taunton and Hitches prior to Hitchens death is difficult to test, but testing, which in its weaker form really entails gathering evidence, is not impossible. Part of gathering that evidence would require getting to know Taunton to see if he is the barefaced lying type that Myers claims him to be (Which I personally doubt). I suppose we really need to get scientific about it and endeavor to put personal likes and dislikes on one side, if such is possible (Which it probably isn't!). Let's also remember that Hitchens brother, Peter converted from the extreme left to a fairly conservative right of centre version of Christianity; moreover, Hitchens himself also moved rightwards during the course of his carreer. Perhaps Taunton could sense a kindred spirit in the Hitchens family and that Hitchens and Taunton, both of whom presumably have evangelical personalities, are different sides to a similar coin.

Note:
On the subject of evidence: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/evidence-guide-lines-but-not-tram-lines.html

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

A God of Hell and Hamnation


Horror movie: Execution by mega tsunami; Islamic State would love it!

The video above is the proud production of the fundamentalist ministry Answers in Genesis. It shows the destruction of Noachian communities by a huge continent enveloping tidal wave. But even taking the Genesis flood story literally it hardly conjures up a picture of a miles high tsunami. Rather, the Biblical impression is of waters rising and inundating. The meaning of the references to the "fountains of the deep" is unclear but it is interesting to note that AiG have filled in the ambiguity here with images true to their psyche. We are, after all, dealing with the imagination of personalities that have no inhibitions about imputing wickedness to those outside their community, a wickedness that, in their view, thoroughly deserves horrifying punishments and even eternal torture. What drives this taste for retribution and judgement seems to be a combination of group paranoia and narcissism. The paranoia sees malign agents and machinations behind the scenes (and provides a fertile ground for conspiracy theorism)  and the narcissism finds utmost personal offence in the slighting implicit in the rejection of fundamentalist teaching and, needless the say, the mocking they bring upon themselves.

The fundamentalist trait of projecting their sense of offence and vindictiveness on to God who then dishes out the most extreme forms of vengeance and punishment has, of course, been a big theme of this blog. Just a couple of references:


Fundamentalism, by definition, attracts personalities whose imagination doesn't bulk at thinking of God as the agent of extreme chastisement. But others will find in this depiction of God extreme repugnance. Interesting in this connection is the atheist reaction to the above video showing a divine orgy of destruction of men, women and their families. Here's how evangelical atheist PZ Myers sees Ken Ham and the vision of God he portrays:

Ken Ham’s ark is not going to be a happy story about cute baby animals. He really likes to play up the horror…….It’s the same story in the Creation “Museum”. When I went through it, I was rather repelled by the portrayal of what they imagined happened in their mythical flood: they almost gleefully show all the damned souls drowning and begging to get on the big boat, and they also show this heartwarming little video of what they think happened. Notice the innocent, happy people just living their lives when the giant wall of water sweeps over their village? They all died, and deservedly so, because God decreed it.
So no, Ham doesn’t sugar-coat the murder of innocents by his god, he revels in his righteousness, the sick fuck.
Also, think about what that video shows: a tsunami that sends a wave that is miles high, and that is so immense it crashes all the way to the center of the continent.
And his little wooden boat rides it out, no problem.

PZ Myers also published a YouTube by fellow evangelical atheist Rebecca Watson who Myers quotes as saying (My emphases):

For the record: I agree with Ken Ham. The Christian God is a horrible monster.
Ham is not in any way trying to contradict this reading of the Bible, and in fact the Ark is going to have an entire exhibit debunking the “dangerous” image of Noah as a happy old man surrounded by cute animals and rainbows. Ham wants people to know that it is not a happy children’s story — it is a horror film in which God literally commits mass murder, and he believes that it’s dangerous for kids to grow up thinking otherwise.

Given the modern existential crisis it ought to be no surprise that Myers and Watson think of faith as something akin to fairies at the bottom of the Garden. But perhaps that's just a little better than the idea that faith is about malevolent monsters at the bottom of the garden! All faith is a turn-off for the likes of Myers and Watson, but some faith puts them off more than others. Of  "Ken Ham's Scary Ass Ark Park" Watson says:

May be the Ark Park will be an atheist recruiting tool!

May be indeed! But let's get this straight: Watson and Myers are not evil and wicked people; In fact they are by human standards very moral people; only paranoiac fundamentalist narcissists can read their mocking of very human (and very flawed) expressions of faith as wickedness. Myers and Watson are no doubt subject to the standard human lot of annoying traits, failings and foibles we all have, but they no more deserve eternal torture than Ken Ham himself.  But for extreme fundamentalists like Ham it is not considered spiritually sufficient to break the implicit soteriological impasse here by turning to Christ in repentance and receiving God's forgiveness. For according to Ham whether they profess faith in God's grace or not, those who do not accept the divine authority of Ham's opinions have at best an inferior faith and at worst are in danger of being damned. See for example:


***
For myself I have a very different view of scriptural inspiration to the fundamentalists and of how the divine sovereign management of oral and written tradition works*: It is likely the Genesis flood story is a creative account (along with many other such stories, world wide) based on real events which made themselves felt over a very wide region of the Earth; may be it was the oral memory of the inundation at the end of the ice age, who knows. Since the ancient peoples who carried the oral tradition are not likely to have had a clear concept of a spherical Earth the limits of the flooding were unknown. These stories of flooding were then embellished with creative elements consistent with the spiritual world view and interests of the story tellers/writers; in particular a dominant theme in Genesis is, of course, of a severe judgmental God - a concept that connects with personalities like Ken Ham and readily finds a home in his stentorian psyche. The inspired spiritual and social lessons are, however, found at a different level: Those lessons tell us about disaster narratives conceived by a spiritually, epistemically and materially insecure mankind who without God or, more usually, with a false/inadequate conception of God and sometimes with a bad conscience has an innate sense of impending apocalypse and/or judgement. This existential anxiety, often dressed with Freudian mythical encryptions, has dogged humanity for time immemorial. We need to take note and make our peace with God.


Footnote:
* It is probably my views on this subject which disqualify me from the appellation "evangelical".