Twenty Years of the God Delusion

I've just read that The God Delusion, the central text of the New Atheist movement...is now twenty years old!

In one way, it's hard to believe. In another, it's easy. The book seems to belong to a very different era now.

I bought it perhaps a year or two after it came out. I was still hovering between agnosticism and faith at that time. As many people have said, the actual arguments in the book are very poor, but the strength of Dawkins's conviction was quite intimidating.

When I started this blog in 2011, it was very much in the atmosphere of the New Atheist moment.

I'm glad that moment has gone, but I did like one aspect of it: the resurgence of Christian apologetics that it spurred. The New Atheists demanded evidence, and Christian apologists were suddenly in demand. As Edward Feser says here, the New Atheist onslaught did have the benefit of making Christians seek rational grounds for their belief.

Times are changed now. Militant atheists like Richard Dawkins have been replaced by respectful atheists such as Alex O'Connor. Flame wars have been replaced by friendly dialogue.  Richard Dawkins has become something of an ally, pushing against woke and defending cultural Christianity. Another New Atheist (though one I was only ever vaguely aware of), Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has become a Catholic. And I get the impression that many of the rank-and-file of the New Atheist movement are now either believers or have at least come to appreciate Christianity. (I've heard plenty of accounts of that journey, though I can't remember where exactly.)

And there are even some hopeful signs that a Christian revival is coming about.

So we have much to be grateful for. But let's hope that the beefing-up of apologetics that came about in the New Atheist era doesn't wither away.

Dead Letters: A Poem

I haven't written poetry in a long time. My spirit was broken by the (non)-reaction to my poetry on Facebook, over years. I'll probably get back to it eventually.

I've just raided my archives looking for a poem. Most of them are poor, in my view. Here's one I wrote in Dublin Airport (of all places) some time early in the millennium. It's not bad, I think.

My entire life, I've had an obsession with memory and oblivion. Is it healthy? I don't know. It makes a poem, anyway.

A sure-nuff archivist has told me that wearing latex gloves is not encouraged in archives as it reduces dexterity. I'd heard that already, although I can't remember if it was before I'd written this poem, or afterward.

Dead Letters

Folded and read and folded so often now–
The fingers that folded it first, the eyes that read
Stopped work last century. In latex gloves
The doctorate student folds it, wonders how
Her days will be replayed when she is dead.
Those hour-long evening phone calls that she loves
Will leave no trace. What will her photos say?
She smiled at weddings, liked to dress in green.
She’s poured her soul through a keyboard now for years
But none of that was ever stored away
In a cardboard box. Her life unrolls on screen;
Each day gets written, sent, and disappears.

What then? The video her sister made
One Halloween? A camera never caught
One motion of the soul. What’s to be seen
In a winter’s evening endlessly replayed?
No trace or what she loved or what she thought–
Life’s glories gone as if they’d never been.

She thought of all that’s tapped out, signalled, said;
An endless thirst for words endlessly fed;
And all will die before these words of the dead.

Favourite Movie Scenes #3: Shaft (1971)

Shaft is one my favourite movies of all time. It's far more than a brilliant soundtrack. It's full of goodies all the way through, especially the slick dialogue. (Such as the gangster who always answers his phone: "Wrong number".)

Yes, it has a lot of racial themes, and race is one my least favourite subjects (because it's been weaponized in the way it has been). But the movie is from the "Black is Beautiful" era, which is at least a positive approach. The film is also gloriously un-PC, even for a time long before PC.

Most of all, I love the look and atmosphere of the film. It's so deliciously seedy, run-down, ramshackle, and streetwise. (The opening montage of Tradings Places is another great evocation of this atmosphere-- which I don't find at all unpleasant or even unpoetic.)

Although there's far more to this film than the famous opening scene, how could I not choose the opening scene? Isaac Hayes's theme might be the greatest opening credits theme of any film ever. And John Shaft's swagger as he makes his way to his office, through a panorama of the American seventies, is beautiful. I've several times listened to this music as I walked into work. (I never use headphones when I'm moving about, so everyone I pass hears it, too.)

For Crying Out Loud

I saw this book in a bookshop today. I have no idea who Jamie Laing is, but the title completely exasperated me.

I'm forty-eight years old. Reader, I have never (ever ever) been told that boys don't cry. Not by a parent. Not by a teacher. Not by a kid in the street. Never, by anyone.

I was never told that boys or men shouldn't have feelings.

I was never told that boys or men shouldn't be vulnerable.

I'm guessing very few boys have been told this in recent decades. If, indeed, they ever were.

But here is what boys have been told for decades now.

That they are somehow complicit (no matter what they do) in something called The Patriarchy which wields absolute power and crushes men, women, children, the environment, and probably dogs and cats under the weight of its iron fist.

That they are vicariously guilty for anything bad that a man has ever done. (It doesn't work the opposite way, strangely-- they don't get any reflected glory for the achievements of Shakespeare, Edison, Tolkien, etc.)

That there is something called toxic masculinity and that they are somehow a part of it.

That their natural desires are "the male gaze", which is something to be ashamed of.

That, no matter how bad their life is or how much they might feel they are at the bottom of the heap, they have something called "male privilege".

And so on. And so on.

Society ladles endless helpings of guilt on boys from their earliest days. But not for crying.

Favourite Movie Scenes #2

Well, it's more a couple of scenes than a single scene, but they go well together. The last few minutes of Zodiac (2007).

I remember a colleague raving about this film when it came out. For whatever reason, I wasn't interested and I didn't go to see it.

Then, more recently, my favourite podcast Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World featured a few episodes about the Zodiac killer, and I found myself searching the film out. I was hugely impressed. Quentin Tarantino has put it in his list of the ten best films of the twenty-first century. High praise indeed. (My favourite film is Groundhog Day, but I think Pulp Fiction is the greatest and most accomplished film ever made.)

As wtih many of my favourite scenes, it's the crackling tension and understated drama between two characters that I love.

The musical choice at the very end of the film is also inspired. I'd never heard "Hurdy Gurdy Man" before, except in the film itself, but it's amazing how such an apparently innocuous song can sound utterly sinister in this context.

Somehow, this film seems to be about much more than a serial killer, or even an investigation into a serial killer, although it's hard to say exactly what that "much more" is.

A Video Worth Watching

For the last week or so, I've been watching (in instalments) the long video below, which traces the family tree of Christian denominations (going right back to the Jewish roots of Christianity, before Jesus). It's fascinating stuff, presented objectively, and rather warmly and sympathetically to each denomination.

I was surprised, almost amazed, at how much I didn't know. There were many denominations I'd never even heard about, such as the intriguing Two-by-Two Church. I expect to rewatch the video several times, and to use it as a springboard to look into the more interesting of the denominations it mentions (as I've already been doing).

The narrator, on several occasions, mentions another YouTube channel, Ready to Harvest, which I expect I'll also be exploring at length. It describes itself as: "Christian Denominations explained in a neutral and concise way."

Love of the Poor

A quick thought: whenever I read the lives of the saints (or Christian holy people), one constant that strikes me is their love of the poor.

Not just a humanitarian desire to make life better for the poor, but a positive love of the poor themselves-- as human beings, not objects of charity.

George Bernard Shaw famously wrote: "For my part I hate the poor and look forward eagerly to their extermination." Obviously, he was being provocative and epigrammatic here: he didn't want to exerminate poor people, but to exterminate poverty. (He also said he wanted to exterminate the other classes.)

I think we all tend to be Shavians today, in this regard. We see nothing good in poverty.

This love of the poor and solidarity with the poor seems an aspect of the Christian tradition that is rather sidelined today, even among Christians.