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And Another Thing

Paul Johnson

Wednesday, 9th July 2008

The truth little Red Rum can teach those clever dons

This combined attempt by two of the leading academic ‘disciplines’ to banish not only metaphysics and religion but any form of spirituality or psychological truth from human activities will ultimately destroy all progress. It teaches that human beings are not essentially different from the lowest form of life, nor from a puff of dust or a lump of rock. The only thing which exists is matter, in various forms, subject to irresistible laws which determine existence or extinction. But existence has no purpose and extinction no significance.

In the 20th century the Jesuit Karl Rahner used to teach that if belief in God disappeared so that not even its memory had a place in human hearts and minds, our race would become no more than very clever animals and its ultimate fate would be too horrible to imagine. I used to think Rahner was being too pessimistic. But if it is true that modern atheism is just another form of fatalism, capable in the long run of destroying all progress, then Rahner was right, and we will become just ingenious brutes, though not so clever as little Red Rum.

The truth is the reverse of what the materialistic fatalists, be they biologists or philosophers, teach. It is not that human beings have no more significance than pieces of rock. On the contrary, rock and soil acquire significance from the loving hand of nature. Wordsworth saw in the Lake District the supreme masterpiece of this process, from the origins of the earth through all subsequent changes, latterly assisted by the intervention of humans as farmers and sheep-breeders. The co-existence of natural, animal and human significance is the central theme of Wordsworth’s great poem The Prelude, and especially of its Twelfth Book. If the human race is to continue, and progress, we must recover our belief in significance, as expressed throughout creation, inanimate, living and human.

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Cogito Ergosum

July 10th, 2008 3:31pm

This article typifies the inchoate rage of the religious mind against the idea that science is the key to understanding our world and our place therein; and that the results of science from the steam engine to the jet plane and modern medicine have liberated the more thoughtful humans from the fatalism he abhors.

Egg

July 10th, 2008 4:35pm

Of course science is the key to understanding the material elements of the universe; but when it comes to matters like telepathy, poltergeists and religious experience, for which there is ample evidence but which does not fit in with a materialistic view of the world, some scientists (the more honourable ones in my view) accept that they have no explanation for them, while others (the fundamentalist and often militant atheists to whom Paul Johnson refers - I name no names) simply refuse to consider the evidence. I'm afraid that in my view simply makes them bad scientists.

Vernon Howell

July 10th, 2008 8:36pm

Er... how has the jet plane liberated humans from fatalism precisely? Liberated them from a certain amount of gravity perhaps, but fatalism I think not. On the contrary there is a new strand of fatalism which holds that flight is destroying the planet and we are all doomed. Your technological-rationalist optimism is so 19th century, my friend.

Cogito Ergosum

July 11th, 2008 6:01pm

To Egg 1635/10/7/2008:

It is science rather than religion which is more likely to accept that currently there is no explanation for some phenomenon. Some puzzles do take a long while to crack. In the examples you quote, however, there is historic justification for considering in at least some cases the possibility of human fallibility, ranging from wishful thinking to outright cheating.

To Vernon Howell 2036/10/7/2008:

The jet plane and other modern machines make travel much easier and quicker. Travel broadens the mind, at least for the more thoughtful humans.

Vernon Howell

July 11th, 2008 8:08pm

Yes for some people travel broadens the mind, but not necessarily in an atheistic or materialist direction, unless your definition of 'thoughtful' is atheistic. Also, I point out that many travellers spend a lot of their time visiting ancient sacred spaces (temples etc), or museums which are full of sacred art. Finally, back on the fatalism theme, there are many secular fatalisms- whether socio-economic or biological- deterministic. So 'liberation' from belief rarely if ever entails the kind of existential liberation I think you are making claims for.