Richard Dawkins and the God Delusion

In the world of celebrities, there is no-one who is more beloved by pseudo-intellectuals and angry men everywhere than Richard Dawkins. For those of you who don't know who he is, Richard Dawkins is vice-president of the British Humanist Society and the former Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. He is also the author of the bestselling book The God Delusion, which has sold over 2 million copies since it was first published in 2006. The book's two central arguments is that religious belief is akin to a mental virus and that religion has been responsible, in one way or the other, for almost all the terrible events in humanity's history. 

Leaving aside the fact that at least half of The God Delusion reads like a rant against a god that Dawkins supposedly doesn't believe in, what riles me about this self-appointed prophet to the unbelieving is that for someone who is so apparently well-educated, quite a lot of what he writes is astonishingly and unforgivably stupid. People have quite rightly pointed out that despite his scientific genius, Professor Dawkins' knowledge of world history is about as sophisticated as GCSE student's and his grasp of theology is even worse. When the bodies of the Russian royal family were discovered in a Siberian forest back in the 1990s, where they had been hidden after their gruesome murder by Communist terrorists in 1918, scientists and observers all over the world quite rightly mocked those members of the Russian Orthodox Church who refused to accept that the skeletons were the remains of the Tsar and his family. Some members of that church believe that the bodies of true saints remain incorrupt - meaning that God proves they are saints by ensuring their bodies don't rot after death. Since Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and their five children had all been declared holy martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1981, many devout Russian monarchists point-blank refused to accept that the mud-stained and bullet-pierced bones discovered in the forest could be the remains of the saint-royals. They persisted in this belief, even though facial reconstruction, pathologists and geneticists all proved beyond any form of doubt that the bodies discovered were related to Grand Duke George (Nicholas II's brother, whose body was removed from its grave in Saint Petersburg) and our own Queen's husband, Prince Philip, who was related to the Romanovs on his mother's side. As one scientist sniped, "I'd like to know how many other relatives of Prince Philip the church think could be buried in that forest!"

By refusing to accept the benefits and methods of science, fundamentalist Christians - of whatever denomination - open themselves up to being queried and mocked. And quite rightly, too, I think. If you believe in a god, you should do so because of the facts, not despite them. Ignoring the facts to help your own argument, or prejudices, is never acceptable in an intellectual environment. Yet, throughout The God Delusion, Dawkins repeatedly ignores historical events that anyone with access to Wikipedia, let alone an Oxford degree, should know about. He claims that no atheist regime has ever instituted religious persecution - ignoring the millions executed by the League of the Militant Godless in the Soviet Union, or under Maoist China, Communist Vietnam, Khmer Rouge Cambodia and even, in its relations with the free Lutheran churches, Nazi Germany. He attributes authorship of various books of the Bible to Saint Paul, when the last time anyone actually thought Saint Paul wrote most of the books at the end of the New Testament was in the early eighteenth century, before the work of the great theologian Dom Augustin Calambret suggested otherwise. He quotes Biblical and Koranic verses out of context; he doesn't seem to know anything, really, about the Reformation, the Crusades or the Inquisition; he misuses the term "Immaculate Conception" (again, Wiki it; it's not what you think, Dawkins) and whilst he rants merrily away on Christianity's (frankly horrific) track record when it comes to homosexuality, he doesn't seem to know that it was only in the sixth and twelfth centuries that the church formally began to codify the idea that homosexuality was wrong and worthy of persecution. If you're going to make such sweeping claims, then the very least you can do is the proper research.

Above all, what I can't stand about Dawkins are his historical-social nuggets of pez-dispensed size quotability and his smug, bile-filled intolerance. He enables every idiot with a passing knowledge of the injustices of our history to point the finger at organised religion and claim it's the fault of a god that doesn't exist and the morons who believe in him. What Dawkins doesn't seem to realise, or at least won't admit, is that human history is a vast, complex tapestries of horrors, mistakes and cruelty, but also kindness, hope and resilience. It's no good trying to blame any one institution and say that's the one that did all the damage. The sad fact of the matter is that it's not religion's "fault" that human history has often been so appalling; it's ours. It's humanity's. There's a great line in the play The Lion in Winter, where the character of Eleanor says, "Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's force, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for."

By standing up and declaring that religious faith makes someone intellectually inadequate and even complicit in the many crimes of religion, Dawkins, to me anyway, resembles the worst kind of Christian evangelist. You know the type I mean - the Bible-thumping zealot, devoid of the ability to understand or appreciate any argument but his own, who, by his words, increases the divisions in society, not heals them. Some of the best people I know are atheists, some of the best, and worst, people I know are Christians. Religion has caused racism, sexism, homophobia and misery the world over; it has been responsible for some of the most archaic, barbaric and illogical policies in human history. It has also offered billions hope and comfort in their darkest hours, it has inspired men to great acts of heroism and kindness, it has brought out the best and the worst throughout human history.  There is much, at times, that we should praise about religion and be grateful for. Equally, religion can and should, at times, be criticised, but it deserves a far better treatment by a far better thinker than Richard Dawkins.

Hilarious, Clever and Very Naughty

Article by Emerald Fennell (right)

School is hard. The itchy uniforms, the exams, the awkward snogging and the acne, all make for a pretty rough few years. But it could be worse: you could go to school with Meredith Harper.

I’m glad I didn’t. There is not a chance I could have slipped past her, aged fifteen, with my backpack sensibly perched on both shoulders and my multi-coloured train-track braces without suffering some hideous put down, and I’m almost certain that she would have made me cry on a regular basis. Meredith is terrifying. She is Regina George on speed, or Blair Waldorf with a hangover. But like all good villainesses, she is also completely impossible to resist.

When Gareth gave me the first draft of Popular, I was in the middle of my university exams and supposed to be reading Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, a grim task that I had already been putting off for months. I told myself that I would quickly read the first chapter of Gareth’s book and then get down to some serious study. That serious study never happened. I was completely gripped, and read the whole thing in one sitting, laughing like a lunatic and compulsively turning the pages. My degree almost certainly suffered, but unfortunately Chaucer didn’t stand a chance in the fight against Meredith and her friends: they kicked him in the crotch, called him a smelly peasant and sent him hobbling back to the fourteenth century.

It’s not every day that one of your friends writes a book. Unless that friend is Gareth, in which case, he will have written a novel, a play, a film, and a short biography of Marie Antoinette before the cocktail hour has struck. This is a man who sauntered off stage during the intermission of the play he was starring in to sit a finals exam at Oxford. While the rest of us sweated and toiled in the library Gareth was quickly dashing off a play about the ancien regime with a gin and tonic in one hand, and while we stayed up all night cramming Shakespeare quotes into our frazzled brains, Gareth wrote Popular.

Popular is hilarious, clever and very naughty, just like its author. I’m only sad that I have to wait until next year for the next one! 

Starlet Express

The Daily Mail profiles five talented young British actresses - Downton Abbey's Jessica Brown-Findlay, Any Human Heart's Emerald Fennell, No Strings Attached's Ophelia Lovibond, Being Human's Lenora Crichlow and singer/actress Abi Phillips, currently appearing in the soap opera Hollyoaks.

I loved the article and whilst I'd like to say I read it because of my commendable interest in like, the arts and stuff, I read it because Emerald and I use to dress up in eighteenth century garb together at Oxford. Those were the good times.

It is actually a very good article though and I think I may be in love with Ophelia Lovibond's name.

For the full article, click HERE.

"Marie Antoinette" (1938)

"Perhaps the great loves come with great tears."

"Marie-Antoinette"

Director: W.S. Van Dyke

Running Time: 2 hours, 29 minutes

Random Fact: The great novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, helped with part of the script

Based on the biography Marie-Antoinette by Stefan Zweig (1933)

Cast

Norma Shearer .... Queen Marie-Antoinette (Oscar nominated)

Robert Morley ..... King Louis the Sixteenth (Oscar nominated)

Tyrone Power ..... Count Axel von Fersen

John Barrymore .... King Louis the Fifteenth

Joseph Schildkraut .... The Duke of Orleans

I thought I'd blog a bit about some of my favourite movies and, still suffering from an OCD about such things thanks to two History degrees, I decided to post them in the order in which the movies were produced, beginning with Marie Antoinette from 1938.

Marie Antoinette covers the life of the Austrian princess who married the future King of France from her arranged marriage at the age of fourteen in 1770 until her execution during the French Revolution, twenty-three years later. One of Hollywood's greatest and highest-paid actresses of the 1930s, Norma Shearer, the so-called "Queen of MGM," signed on to play the title role, in a performance which many (included Norma herself) regarded as the greatest of her career. She narrowly, and controversially, lost out on the Oscar to Bette Davis for her performance in Jezebel.

Despite its age, Marie Antoinette is a beautiful movie to look at and it captures the decadence and glamour of upper class life before the Revolution perfectly. When showing Marie-Antoinette's late teens and early twenties, when she was Europe's ultimate socialite, the movie's costume designer, Adrian, spared no expense and no detail to try and accurately bring to life haute couture from the 1770s.

However, unlike the 2006 version of her life, starring Kirsten Dunst, 1938's Marie Antoinette is not simply a fun and colourful look at the life of the original "girl who has everything." It's also a proper, good old-fashioned historical epic and its final quarter, chronicling Marie-Antoinette's imprisonment during the French Revolution, is tough to watch. The scene in which she and her two children have their last meal with her husband, Louis, before he is taken for his execution on the following morning is incredibly moving, mainly because it is so understated. Norma Shearer's face as she watches her on-screen husband say grace before the meal, knowing that tomorrow he will be dead, is a wonderful example of saying more by doing less in one's acting. A warning though, the following scene, in which the queen's eight year-old son, Louis-Charles, is ripped from her arms to be placed in solitary confinement by their republican jailers is absolutely harrowing to watch. Norma Shearer pulls no punches with her performance and her screams as they try to separate her from her child take a long time to forget. It's made all the worse to watch when you know that it's almost word-for-word historically accurate.

Marie Antoinette is also a great example of how a movie can be historically accurate, without being a documentary. No movie or play or novel based on history will ever be truly accurate; it can't be. Nor should it be. It's supposed to entertain and playwrights and authors are supposed to cut the dull, confusing and messy bits out of life. They have to give life a storyline and so in historical movies, I think it's okay for many details (time line, the number of characters, etc.) to be ditched or fudged (within reason), in order to make the production flow together as a story. However, that doesn't mean you have to change or misrepresent the people you're portraying. I'm of the opinion that they were people, too, and if you're making money out of their life story, the least you can do is to try and get their personalities right. Marie Antoinette certainly does this. Yes, it has been criticised for some for being slightly too harsh on her rival, Madame du Barry, and for portraying her husband, King Louis, as much more simplistic than he actually was. However, in fairness, a lot of that comes from the biography the movie is based on and Louis's dignity and honesty is shown in full detail, particularly in the final half of the movie. And with its leading lady, Marie Antoinette gives by far the most accurate and honest dramatisation of Marie-Antoinette yet seen on screen. As a young woman, she is certainly frivolous, extravagant and "terrified of boredom," but she is also warm-hearted, friendly, honest and kind. Most importantly, Marie Antoinette captures what more modern versions of her life have failed to show - that as she grew up, she possessed a dignity and regal self-assurance that even her enemies commented upon. Given that Norma Shearer manages to convincingly play Marie-Antoinette from a naive but well-intentioned teenager to an heroic but heartbroken widow, it's easy to see why so many people praised the performance.

If you enjoy period dramas or anything from "the Golden Age of Hollywood," try and find a copy of Marie Antoinette. Just be warned: prepare to weep. I watched it one night in our student house in Oxford, because my housemate Beth loves old movies and I thought it would cheer her up after the bad day she had. Unfortunately, when I turned the lights on I found that Beth's mascara had reached her chin and tears were pouring off her face. Turns out, she had been quietly sobbing for the last forty-five minutes. 

"Didn't cheer you up... did it?" I asked, nervously.

"Those filthy, murdering bastards!" she roared, before shaking her head and blowing her nose. "Look what they did to her! I'm a lot angrier with the world than we started watching this. Why did you think that would cheer me up? WHY!"

Like the movie says, all the great stories come with great tears!

"The Other Boleyn Girl" (review)

In 2008, my housemate Beth returned to our house in Oxford late one evening from a trip to see the new movie, The Other Boleyn Girl. I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to see it, and wasn’t even sure I was going to – I’d read the book and that was traumatic enough. I could still remember the perfectly-arched eyebrow of savage incredulity which my high school friend Patricia reserved for anyone who suggested she read it... Anyway, Beth knocked on my bedroom door and I opened expecting to see her with her customary can of hairspray in her hands, maniacally spraying all around her. (It was the only way we had figured out how to repel the nuclear-sized spiders which seemed to inexplicably infest our college house.) As I opened the door, I was greeted by a shell-shocked Beth. Naturally, I assumed that we were once again under siege from Arachneus, King of the Spiders, and his eight-legged army and I quickly reached for my deodorant. This time, however, I was wrong. “Oh it’s bad...," she said, "The Other Boleyn Girl... it’s so, so bad... it’s.... it’s bad, Gareth. It’s just really bad. I can't even... I'm never getting those two hours back.”

A breathlessly gleeful phone-call from my friend Emerald a few days later confirmed Beth's review: “Gaz, you’ve got to get down to the nearest cinema and see it immediately. It’s the worst thing in the history of cinema! It’s the most gloriously stupid thing you’ll ever see! I mean, it’s just... no, I mean, oh my god, you have got to see it!” When I did go to see it, with another friend, Emily, it was reassuringly every bit as ghastly as I had been promised. Half-way through, Emily leant over to me and whispered, both confused and contemptuous: “Is this a joke?”

Sadly, Emily, no, it wasn’t. Or, at least, it wasn’t an intentional one.

Hidden Jewels and Gin

It has been delicately pointed out to me that I haven't been updating this blog as regularly as I had originally planned and so the age of snippets of life columns is upon us. This week, I was very very excited to read Liz Hoggard's interview in the Evening Standard with one of my favourite people in the world, Emerald Fennell (above), who recently completed playing Lady Lottie, the first wife of the main character in Channel 4's four part television drama Any Human Heart, based on the novel by William Boyd. Emmy and I did a lot of drama together at Oxford and I'm still at the stage where seeing her on television or in the newspapers makes me achieve kid-going-to-Disneyland levels of hyper-excitement. Ultimately my plan is to acquire a sort of Simon Cowell-Dean Martin levels of louche sophistication about the whole thing, but that is still some way off! I'll provide a link at the bottom to read the full interview and also earlier blog posts about Any Human Heart.

Anyway, the last couple of weeks have been ones of triumph and humiliation. (I refer you to my earlier article, "Embarrassing much, ice?" for my humiliation.) The triumph came in the form of finally being able to figure out what Skype is, after several years of pretending I understood it (i.e. nodding wisely when it was mentioned, much like when I decided to use the phrase "credit crunch" and "recession" at random points in conversation) and generally assuming that Skype was some weird sort of thing you did on MSN chat. Either that or a type of phone I couldn't seem to find in shops. The push over the edge came when my friend Joel said "We should Skype," to which I initially gave the usual BS about what a great idea that was and let's do it some time next week. 

And that's when I realised that Joel has a horrifying tendency to figure out when I'm lying and then wait until we're surrounded by mutual friends to announce it and point out in excruciating detail how I managed to embarrass myself. (National Anthem-gate being high on the list of examples.) This raised the stakes and I knew I had to figure out what Skype actually was. Luckily, after a mere 57 minutes in which she was forced to resort to sending me articles from Google, Wikipedia and finally to telling a parable, Alexa managed to explain the entire thing to me and it turns out that Skype is not only a delightful invention, but also one astonishingly easy to use. So, to all those friends over the years who I promised to Skype with but didn't because I was lying, I sort of apologise. Sorry Lucas, Will, Coco, Kitty, Sophie, Noah, Alexa, Amy, Tom, Matthew, Andrew ... etc.

Another high was attained when I shimmied round to my friend Natalie's for a quiet evening gin. Natalie (left) is one of my favourite drinking partners, if for no other reason than she and her mother have taken to serving me gin in some sort of novelty pint glass and Natalie thinks regular measuring cups are "for dwarves." We managed to discuss all the important things - how she had decided to insure her Chloé handbag for far more than she ever would her boyfriend, how for some reason The X Factor isn't that exciting this year and why is it that so many people are so ugly? Also, Queen's University students who flounce around the city centre wearing a glorified version of your pyjamas - you disgust us! Wash you hair, clean your clothes and remember that, right now, there are some well-heeled dogs in Malone who are better groomed than you are. Sort it out.

I also want to talk about last night when I went back to my old high school, Down High, to see their annual school play - this year a production of the musical The Sound of Music. I was back in Down High about two months ago to do an after-school talk about Popular and I got to meet some of the drama students there, all of whom seemed really nice and it was great chatting to them afterwards. My old drama teacher, Pamela Mills, (we plan to make her part of my celebrity posse) sent me two tickets to come and see The Sound of Music on its closing night. Thank you, Pamille. 

I invited my friend Aisleagh to come along as my plus one. Aisleagh is only back in Northern Ireland at the weekends for the next six months, because she flies over to London during the week to be a high-powered lawyer. Very useful to keep Aisleagh on side, considering I will almost certainly need one of those before I turn thirty. Which will be happening in about fifteen years, give or take. Aisleagh was a big participant in Drama in our days at Down High, both curricular and social, and she also loved music, so I thought she was a sure bet for TSOM. Plus, I haven't seen her properly in ages and we used to share a flat together in Oxford, so it would be good to catch up and revisit La Mills.

However, half-way to Downpatrick, Aisleagh turned to me in the car and said in her most dread voice, "Just so you know - and I'm just putting it out there - there is no musical in the world I hate more than The Sound of Music." 

I glanced at her, in shock and fear, "Seriously? How do you hate it? Which songs do you hate the least? Climb Every Mountain?" 

"If I told you I didn't like any of them, would that make it clearer?!"

Part of me was mortified, but the other half quietly pleased, because there is literally no-one in the world more fun to sit next to than Aisleagh when you're watching a movie, play, show or production that she hates. She is hilariously vicious.

We arrive at the school and things don't get off to a great start when the people collecting tickets at the door are my old Biology and Maths teachers, neither of whom exactly saw me at my academic best. I still live in fear that the Maths department will one day figure out that Sarah-Jane and I are not cousins and we did not therefore share a permanently ailing grandmother, who conveniently relapsed every time our coursework was due. 

Aisleagh and I swanned in and chatted with Miss Mills, before curtain-up and I have to say that both Aisleagh and I were pleasantly surprised. I was a bit worried that having met and liked so many of the drama students back in October that they wouldn't actually be amazing on stage, which is always really upsetting, I think, when someone is nice to talk to but doesn't measure up in the talent stakes. Aisleagh, naturally, had settled into a mood of merry bile, prepared to hate everything except the sight of her own name on the board of old Deputy Head Girls and her cunning plan for us to storm the stage half-way through and launch into our monologues from our final school production of The Canterbury Tales. I don't exactly remember mine, but that's OK - I didn't remember it when I did it the first time round, either. Luckily, as the sick grandmother shows, improv was not something I ever had a problem with. 

The show was sensational and half-way through, Aisleagh clutched my hand, tears in her eyes and sighed, "How could I ever have hated this? It's the cutest thing I've ever seen!!"

Firstly, a word of praise for the girl who played Maria: I've never met Poppy, but she was so, so good! She's only a Year 10 (i.e. about 14) and I hope that doesn't sound too patronising, because she was sensational, both as an actress and as a singer. Also I was literally staring open-mouthed at how good the Reverend Mother's singing was. Wow. The entire cast was really excellent and whilst I may have queried the dramatic decision that led to several of the junior school being dressed as machine gun-carrying Nazis, the whole thing was superb. I really, really enjoyed myself and I'm so glad we went. Aisleagh, needless to say, had some sort of spiritual conversion half-way through and was actually singing along to Edelweiss at the end, a euphoric expression on her face.

So, anyway, huge congratulations to Miss Mills and Mr O'Hara and to all those involved and especially those I met when I spoke at Down High and who were in The Sound of Music - Ruth, Michael, Lydia, Charlotte, Louis and Robbie - thanks so much for a great show and I hope the cast party was riotously inappropriate. 

GR

For the full interview with Emerald Fennell, click here and for this blog's post about Any Human Heart, click here. 

For last week's less than delightful ice-capade, click here. 

"Any Human Heart" trailer

I'm so excited to be able to post a link to Channel 4's new television series, Any Human Heart, an adaptation of the bestselling novel by William Boyd. The novel is published by Penguin (naturally!) and you can order it here. And the new television version of it has one of my favourite people, Emerald Fennell, amongst its glitteringly delightful cast. Very exciting. 

Emerald and I first met at Oxford just before Christmas of 2006, when I was directing my second student play  there (glamorous, I know) and she auditioned on the second day of auditions, as one of 83 girls competing for the three main roles in my favourite play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams.

 

We got to speak properly for the first time at the call-backs, when I accidentally scheduled the next auditionee an hour after Emerald's audition was due to end. So, she kept me company and  we chatted for a while, during which time a beautiful friendship was born. I was very relieved that, at last, someone agreed with me that my fear of flying was more than justified. It's not how often it happens, but how bad it will be when it happens. (Even worse if the plane nose dives, then rights itself, and you're the person who wet yourself mid-plummet and have to live with that shame for the rest of the flight.)  Or unbuckled some aged granny next to you and tried to use her as a human shield, then have to explain to her why you did that when the plane doesn't actually crash... Food for thought.

 

Perhaps some of my favourite memories of our time in Oxford include us, bedraggled and exhausted sitting, without shame, with various 18th century costumes and props slung over our arms as we waited for a post-rehearsal supper table to open up at the Chiang Mai restaurant. Good times. Less endearingly, on my part, there was an incident during a rehearsal for Dangerous Liaisons in a music room at Worcester College, when I - very tired and stressed with the dress-rehearsal approaching - was interrupted by someone banging away on a defunct drum kit behind me. For some reason, I assumed it was my friend Johnny Rhodes, so I spun round in high fury and snapped, "Johnny, for f***'s sake! What are you doing?" Only to discover that it was Emerald on said drums; at which point, my demeanour changed entirely and I beamed, "Oh, it's you, Emmy. Well done!"  I may even have applauded her slightly. Johnny meanwhile, from the far corner of the room, glowered with seething fury from behind his butler's outfit, as Emerald gave me an encore performance.

 

Anyway, Any Human Heart is a fantastic book with a wonderful cast for the adaptation, which was written by William Boyd. A great idea, I think. It will be broadcast later this year by Channel 4 over four weeks.  So do look out for it! Amongst the cast are Oscar winner Jim Broadbent, Pirates of the Caribbean 4's Sam Claflin, Pride and Prejudice's Matthew McFayden, Hayley Atwell, Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall, Tom Hollander as Edward VIII, Gillian Anderson as Wallis Simpson and The West Wing's Richard Schiff. 

I'm obviously hugely excited about this, especially since it seems absolutely no time at all since I was directing Emerald in a student production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Dangerous Liaisons. And giving her the first ever three chapters of Popular which I had written, to see if she thought they were any good. I'm obviously pretty grateful for the feedback I received right after she had finished reading them. She was also the first ever person to read aloud the role of Imogen, when I wanted to hear how everything sounded. Massively enjoyable day.

 

Drummer Johnny, on the other hand, failed to read them at all and got away with saying, "Yeah, yeah, I loved the party in Chapter ...." And inserted any number he could think of. A clever strategy which worked until he accidentally hit upon the one chapter in the book sans party.

It's incredibly exciting that Any Human Heart is finished and I can't wait to see it.

The trailer for Any Human Heart can be watched here.