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Book Review, 14 June 2007 A jaundiced catalogue of scandals
God is not great: the case against religion Christopher Hitchens is one of the most formidable polemicists writing in English today. But, for the most part, this attempt to refute religion reminds me of a tired old prizefighter throwing weary punches at an inert punch-bag while the true champ he'd like to duff up is absent from the gym. The chapter headings announce some grand themes: "The Metaphysical Claims of Religion", "The Evil of the New Testament", "The Resistance of the Rational", "The Case Against Secularism". Much is promised but there is scant delivery. Hence, on the validity of metaphysical philosophy, Hitchens cheekily appeals to an early Church Father to dismantle the notion of faith: "‘I believe because it is absurd', as Tertullian put it ... If one must have faith in order to believe something, or believe in something, then the likelihood of that something having any truth or value is considerably diminished." Meanwhile, Hitchens has studied the New Testament and found that it lacks consistency; therefore he thinks he has exploded claims for "revelation". In defence of atheism he appeals to Occam's razor, which cuts through any expectation "that God should owe [one] an explanation", although he does not pause to consider what an "explanation" from God might be, or look like. He cites my book, Hitler's Pope, to substantiate his claim that since Pius XII was pro-Nazi "there could be no clearer or more vivid proof that holy institutions are man-made". Pius XII, I was at pains to point out repeatedly in my book, was never pro-Nazi, nor pro-Hitler (whatever his occasional diplomatic tactics). His mistake, like that of his predecessor, according to my historical argument, was to initiate an excess of centralisation of church authority that weakened the capacity of German Catholics to resist the Nazis. In that sense Pius XII was an ideal Pope for Hitler's purposes. As for Hitchens' great discovery that popes can be fallible in politics, as well as other worldly matters, I would have expected him to have done more homework on what Catholics actually mean when they speak of "papal infallibility". Where Hitchens' arguments have force, however, is in his appeal to the Gospel principle: "By their fruits you shall know them", in a chapter entitled "Does Religion Make People Behave?" He makes much of the history of the wickedness perpetrated by religionists - from the crusades to the massacres in Rwanda in 1994. But his special scorn and outrage are reserved for paedophile priests in a chapter entitled "Is Religion Child Abuse?" Hitchens' disparagement of these priests serves only to demonstrate the depths and long-term consequences of the scandal - not only for the victims, but for all those who have been profoundly scandalised. At the heart of the book, driving home the point of his entire case, Hitchens invokes Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov; in particular the conversation between Ivan, the atheist, and Alyosha, his deeply religious younger brother, on the subject of child abuse by religionists. Ivan challenges Alyosha to acknowledge the depravity of such scandals; which Alyosha proceeds to do, "softly". "Our reply", continues Hitchens, "to the repellent original offer of the defenceless boy Isaac on the pyre, right up to the current abuses and repressions, must be the same, only not delivered so softly." There is significant irony in this appeal to The Brothers Karamazov, for Dostoevsky uses his complex masterpiece to explore the challenge posed by Ivan (and now by Hitchens): how could a good God create a world in which adults, and religious adults at that, are allowed to abuse children? Ivan, however, is not Dostoevsky, although Hitchens is inclined to think that the author and his creation are entirely of one mind. Because Hitchens' strongest argument is based, to my mind, on a misreading of Dostoevsky, an appropriate response requires a detailed corrective. Dostoevsky knew tragedy and suffering, including a spell in a Russian labour camp. In his forties he tried to make sense of that experience in the light of influential ideas from the West: the English Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, Utopian Marxism and Social Darwinism. Ivan is a convinced atheist, who voices many of the intellectual difficulties that assailed Dostoevsky. Above all, Ivan's scepticism, like that of Hitchens, was in consequence of the "human tears with which the earth is saturated from its crust to its centre". Convinced that God makes no sense, he has become isolated and egoistic, and severely judges his fellow human beings and all accounts and apologias for God. Ivan does not indict God for natural disasters in the world, for he can accept that these trials, should God exist, might have a divine purpose - to test the human race. What he cannot stomach is a God who has given adult humans the freedom to inflict suffering on children. He is not so much saying: take away God and everything is permitted. He is saying that he knows that God does not exist, and that is why everything is permitted, above all abuse of children. To illustrate his argument, Ivan recites a catalogue of atrocities, similar to those collected by Hitchens, including the true story of a child locked all night in an outside toilet in a Russian winter by her religious parents for wetting the bed. Any attempt, Ivan goes on, to justify God's creation of this freedom to abuse is an insult to these innocent victims. Dostoevsky's counter-argument is not in the form of a reasoned verbalised apologia by the deeply religious Alyosha. The novelist's case against atheism is exemplified in the whole of Alyosha's life, by example. Under the tutelage of the Elder, Fr Zossima, Alyosha's life inclines to non-judgemental, communal love. As the novel progresses, Alyosha does not glean stories of depravities against children; he seeks out actual abused children, identifying with them in practice, attempting to cope with the problem of evil and suffering in the world through action rather than argument. Alyosha's life does not amount to a rebuttal of the tough questions raised by Ivan, nor does Alyosha attempt to belittle or seek to dismiss Ivan's moral outrage. Yet the spiritual, intellectual and moral dimensions of The Brothers Karamazov are hardly embraced by Ivan's view of God and the world, any more than the complex, multilayered beneficence of the world's religions is encompassed by Hitchens' jaundiced survey in God is Not Great.  |
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