Chris Marsh, 23/12/07

Socialists can surely agree with TB on World in Common that since ‘the fight to establish socialism [is] a practical fight, [w]e need people who understand the basics of why capitalism is damaging, who have the vision to think that a better society is possible and who have the “fire” within them to want to do their best to effect changes to get us there – whether by propagating ideas or by showing by example what can be done.’ This is the crux of TB’s argument that ‘socialists can be/should be in a dialogue with and/or work with people with religious beliefs,’ and her argument is persuasive. However, if atheist socialists just give a supercilious nod to this, and continue to feel superior to people who hold religious beliefs, we shall not be cooperating in the right spirit, and the splits and factions which have haunted the world change movement will continue, and capitalism will carry on to its bitter end.

Atheism needs to be taken down a peg. Its most vocal champion, Richard Dawkins, helps by being so arrogant and egotistical: compare his rant against religious belief in The God Delusion (London: Black Swan, 2007) with the erudite review of that by Terry Eagleton (‘Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching’, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html, 19/10/06 [accessed 19 December 2007]). Dawkins cannot be erudite on the subject of religion because he cannot step outside his own box and consider dispassionately any argument for or against religion. The root cause of this is that atheism is a religion, or rather it is the dregs of the religion from which it derives.

Socialist atheism has two lumps of religion at its root. One is the belief in Progress towards a better world, by stages according to a ‘Materialist Conception of History’, whose religious roots are explained in John Gray’s Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (London: Allen Lane, 2007), which discusses and demolishes ‘Marxist teleology’.

The other lump of religion is the belief in reason, in ‘laws’ governing the material world machine. This conception derives from the Age of Reason, when regularities in nature were supposed to derive from, and demonstrate the existence of, the rational Mind of a Divine Creator. In the Age of Enlightenment these ideas were discussed and challenged, but only the Creator was dismissed by some men, but the notion of reason, laws and mechanisms in nature was retained. The idea of laws being fundamental, and the science and technology to manipulate and exploit an inanimate material world, were essential underpinnings and tools of the bourgeois capitalist system that developed in the Age of Revolutions and the Industrial Revolution which followed.

It is fascinating to contemplate the tweak of human reasoning which resulted in the dismissal of a personal God, but hung on to his material, mechanical creation, and his laws, which reside, presumably, in the same transcendent, eternal realm God had vacated. David Hume is taken to be a prime mover in this selective pruning, and in particular to have debunked the ‘Argument from Design’ which had been supposed to prove the existence of a rational Creator God. (David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (New York: Hafner, 1948))

Hume has been called an atheist, and it seems that, like other atheists, he was obsessed with religion, at a time when interest in religion was dwindling. Reading the Dialogues recently, I was intrigued by a section in which Hume says the world is more like a vegetable or an animal than like a machine governed by a human-like mind, so might not vegetation or generation be a better model? (Hume, pp.47-51) This reminds me of Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance, of an universe which grows and evolves, which I find more likely and lively than the materialists’ model, and if we’re going to admit that we’re all inclined to be religious, then it is all a matter of taste rather than truth.

Hume is a delight to read, but for this discussion it is interesting to think about his life as much as his work. As one would expect, he was a man of privilege, but not of great wealth. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/#LifWor [accessed 23 December 2007]) His life of the mind was sustained by servants, by cultivators, artisans and builders, by wind, water and animal power, by merchants and sailors. And this is what we need to bear in mind when considering our future. The 19th Century socialist dream is over. Technology has destroyed our future.

[E]ven ‘free energy’ – were it a reality – would not change the fundamental issue that humans are up against: the earth has a carrying capacity, and we have used up the super-abundant resource, oil, over the last 150 years to systematically deplete virtually every other resource: top soil, fresh water, forests, biodiversity and minerals. This is why we will not just be quietly slipping back to the 1700s but will be more likely to go straight back to the Stone Age. For example, pre-industrial societies mined copper from ores with 30-50% metal. Nowadays, a typical copper mine averages less than 0.8% copper which can only be extracted using large amounts of energy. No oil, no copper and no anything else that we take for granted in the modern world. (Graham Strouts, Review of The Oil Age is Over, Matt Savinar (J.D. Morris, 2004), in Permaculture Magazine, Issue No.43 ( East Meon, Hampshire: Permanent Publications, 2005), p.56)

Given that climate change and peak oil are perceived as the most serious threats to human life, the latest idea is ‘climate-safe energy’, with some ‘breakthrough in micro-technology’ which is supposedly going to be the fix, which was going to be announced at a £1000-£50,000 per-head shindig in London for the rich and famous, including Al Gore, reported in the Independent (http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article3191512.ece) It has been suggested that the breakthrough is some aspect of nanotechnology, perhaps nanohorn fuel cells, to store hydrogen produced using the energy from a millennium’s worth of oil shale beneath America, and carbon sequestration to avoid the climate damage from that. But it’s what we’ve done with the cheap and easy fossil fuels that is as much a concern, if not more, than the problem with carbon released from burning them. Also, aspects of the damage we’ve done keep coming up which ratchet up the seriousness, a recent one being acidification of the oceans so they are losing their capacity as a carbon sink. (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1513135 [accessed 23 December 2007])

Embarking recently on the long-postponed indexing of my library, I came across two books I’d forgotten I own. One is Kenneth Mellanby, Can Britain Feed Itself? (London: Merlin, 1975). As well as making a bibliography, I had decided to make a few notes on each book. On this one I wrote: ‘Britain could produce enough food to give 100 million people a basic diet. At time of writing, we were importing nearly half our food. Our population would be perfectly well fed if we produced much less meat. Cattle and sheep will continue to feature in our diet because they eat grass which we cannot use ourselves. We need a rational livestock policy.’ The other is Andrew O’Hagan, The End of British Farming (London: Profile & LRB, 2001), on which I noted: ‘Written around the time of the foot and mouth outbreak the author travelled around Britain and witnessed “the death of farming”.’ So, just as we are waking up to the fact that we shall need to grow our food locally, we are confronted with the awful fact that the people who knew how to do that until very recently have been forced to give up.

We have no time to waste on arguing the merits of one religion or ideology over another. We have to learn how to live together, get rid of capitalism, close down the supermarkets, find out how to survive.

Afterthought

There is a problem with religion, as such, which atheism is free of, and that is reverence: the obligation to tiptoe around people’s religious beliefs as if they are fragile and sensitive, plus a growing tendency to expect people in public life to confess religious beliefs, which supposedly makes them more trustworthy, more moral, and more respectful of such things as family values and cultural traditions. This is not a good thing, and atheists enjoy saying so. My feeling is that this is better addressed through understanding than by debunking, and fiction is the way to do that. Many novels could be valuable in this way, and I offer two to start with, one about Christianity, the other about Islam.

James Robertson, The Testament of Gideon Mack ( London: Penguin, 2007)

Nadeem Aslam, Maps for Lost Lovers ( London: Faber and Faber, 2004)

Both these books show how religion affects people from the inside, and questions religion with sensitivity.

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