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.

Yo' bro'

Lately I have been feeling very run down. I'm not quite sure why, but for the last few months I've been trying to shake myself out of a funk that just won't go away. It's nothing too serious, but recently it's been quite hard to get motivated - much harder than I've ever found it before. Part of it has been the fairly overwhelming experience of directing the Spring revival of Popular on-stage, with a cast of twenty-six and myself in the role of Cameron. It's a fantastic experience, with a wonderful cast, but I'm really feeling the pressure. Luckily, people have been as great as ever about wanting to come and see the show and it's so gratifying to hear that so many people are already excited about it. It opens in Belvoir on March 15th, by the way, and ends on Saint Patrick's Day. You can reserve tickets by contacting popularbelfast@yahoo.com.

I've been sitting down and thinking about what it is that's causing my bad mood and I think that part of it is a feeling of frustration with effort. I think it finally hit me that I've been making so much effort with work, friendships and relationships over the last year and it just hasn't been reciprocated. Do you ever get that feeling where you're banging your head against a brick wall? By no means do I expect people to make all the effort, but I think meeting people half-way is the very least we can do. If I can be bothered to out in time and commitment on something, then you should be too.

See, I hate with a fiery, burning passion those Facebook statuses that whine on and on about people's lives because they feel their life is somehow cursed. No! If your life is constantly going wrong or becoming too complicated, then it's not because of everybody else around you - it's because of you! If you can't at least acknowledge where and when you've made mistakes, then how do you expect your life to get any better? But, it's also equally frustrating when you can see relationships - personal or professional - where one person is making all the effort. And lately, I've felt like that. I actually wasn't really aware I was feeling that way until I sat down to have a big chat with my friend Adam (he's playing Blake in Popular, guys, and seriously, he's amazing). The more and more I talked it out, the more I realised a sense that I was trying too hard with so many of the things in my life, with little - or no - effort coming back to me.

Since then, I've been working consciously to sort out my mood. The first is that I definitely need to sleep more. The second is that I've decided the new policy in life is "f* it." Rising above it is no longer my style. Yes, admittedly, this new no-nonsense policy towards BS is very much inspired by The Iron Lady. (Oh, Meryl - is there anything you can't do?) But I like to think it's for the best. Thirdly, I'm trying my best to start focusing more on the positive. Last weekend, one of my best friends, Robbie, came home from uni in Manchester to see his cousin's show and to come to our friend Lauren's birthday party. (First of many, actually. Lauren thinks minimalism is for ugly people.) Robbie and I both went to Down High, did a play together over summer and, all things added up, we've spent about 17,000 hours in each others' company. 

At Lauren's, Robbie and I led the charge in the drinking games and he introduced us to the game of Bullshit. Delightful, guys - play it. (Quick note: not with anyone called Claire Handley or Joanne Law, as they will insist that there were elaborate/impossible conspiracies going on to trick them into losing.) And then, somewhere around 1 o'clock in the morning, we settled down for one of the glorious DMCs that come with any party.

One of the things that you can always say about Robbie, hand on heart, is that his loyalty to his mates is one hundred percent. He gets visibly (and vocally) angry when anyone hurts them and he can always be counted upon to have your back in argument. The next day, when he went back to Manchester, I was genuinely upset to see him go. And not just because in any situation, I can always rely on him to eat more than me so I don't seem like Percival the Piggy Pie-man.

That's the really great thing about solid friendships: they can always lift you up. And if you're a good friend, you should be able to do the same for them. 

Ick, is it just me or was that post far too feelingsy?

Sarah P's new music video

Sarah P, whose fantastic single Today, was written for the stage production of Popular, is back with her new music video for Movin' On, filmed in Belfast.

Well done Sarah!

And here's an interview with the lady herself back in summer and a new one will be posted here soon, too!

The Jubilee Begins!

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of when Her Majesty became The Queen. It marks the beginning of many months of festivities in the U.K. to mark the first time a monarch has sat upon the British throne for sixty years since the Queen's great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, who reached this milestone, known as her "Diamond Jubilee," back in 1897. Queen Victoria, who died in 1901, was the longest-ruling monarch in British history. However, if the current Queen remains on the throne until 2016, as we hope she will, then she will have that record. Queen Victoria will be bumped into second place and in third place will be the Queen's great-great-great-great grandfather, King George III, who ruled from 1760 to 1820.

Although today marks the start of the 2012 Jubilee celebrations in Britain, The Queen actually spent it fairly quietly by visiting a primary school and town hall in the pretty village of King's Lynn in northern England. There are no celebrations today, because it is also the anniversary of the death of The Queen's father, King George VI, who lost his battle with lung cancer on this day back in 1952. King George's moving battle with his speech impediment was captured last year in the Oscar-winning movie The King's Speech, with Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham-Carter.

For a post about the King's death on my History blog, click HERE.

"All About Eve" (1950)

"Fasten your seatbelts."

"All About Eve"

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz (won the Oscar)

Running Time: 2 hours,  18 minutes

Random Fact: Gary Merrill and Bette Davis, who marry in the movie, went on to become real-life husband and wife after filming was done. All About Eve was also one of the first major movie roles for Marilyn Monroe.

Based on the short story The Wisdom of Eve by Mary Orr

Cast

Bette Davis .... Margo Channing (Oscar nominated)

Anne Baxter ..... Eve Harrington (Oscar nominated)

George Sanders ..... Addison DeWitt (won the Oscar)

Celeste Holm .... Karen

Marilyn Monroe .... Miss Casswell

 

There are moments when I realise how painfully underdeveloped I am as a writer and that moment is usually when I'm watching All About Eve. This story of rivalry and underhand bitchiness in the theatre world is perhaps one of the most fantastically witty scripts ever produced by Hollywood. All About Eve practically reeks of intelligence and fast-moving quips.

Filmed in 1950, All About Eve is, ironically, really all about Margo. Margo Channing, played by Hollywood legend Bette Davis, is a middle-aged theatre actress who, for years, has been the acknowledged queen bee of Broadway. Every major award, every major role, every sell-out performance, has been hers to command, but the price of fame has been a steep one - although she is rich, successful and respected, Margo has had to sacrifice a good deal of personal happiness to achieve her ambitions and, as she knows, she is still at the mercy of the critics and ambitious young actresses who want the life she has. And it's one critic in particular, the manipulative but superbly well-spoken Addison DeWitt (played by George Sanders, who many may remember as the voice of the velvet-toned Shere Khan in Disney's The Jungle Book) who takes great pleasure in needling Margo and her sense of superiority.

The story of All About Eve begins with what we'd probably call a stalker today. A young, obsessive fan of Margo's, called Eve Harrington (played by Anne Baxter), has been to the theatre every night for the last few weeks to watch Margo in her latest theatrical triumph as a feisty Southern belle. One of Margo's Society friends, Karen, has noticed this poor, bedraggled fan and brings her backstage to meet her idol. Eve tells a heartrending story about having lost her husband in the recent Second World War and how it is only the joy of theatre which allows her to escape her depression. Moved by her story and impressed by her apparent loyalty, Margo hires Eve to be her personal assistant. As the movie unfolds however, Margo begins to suspect that Eve may in fact be out to sabotage her. Eve's new friendship with Addison DeWitt and her cosy conversations with Margo's boyfriend and playwright-friends rile Margo's paranoia and insecurities. What follows is a wonderfully believable depiction of jealousy, cruelty, manipulation and, in one hilarious yet heartbreaking scene, drunkenness.

All About Eve is a brilliantly directed, brilliantly written and brilliantly acted movie. It's hard to imagine a movie so cerebral being made today by a major studio much less attracting the kind of excitement this one did back in 1950. Subtle, dark and elegant, it has some of the best one-liners in cinema history and every time I watch it, I find something new to enjoy. 

Stills from the new Marie-Antoinette movie

A few stills from the new movie about the fall of the French monarchy, starring Diane Kruger as Marie-Antoinette, Virginie Ledoyen as her BFF Gabrielle de Polignac (below; Gabrielle's on the left) and Lea Seydoux as Agatha, a fictional servant in Marie-Antoinette's household. Farewell My Queen will premiere in Belgium on February 9th. I'm a huge fan of the novel by Chantal Thomas and can't wait to see it.

18th-century beffers

 Diane Kruger stars as Marie-Antoinette in a movie which charts the three days when the Queen's life began to turn into a tragedy.

 Virginie Ledoyen as the Duchesse de Polignac totes has her swagger on

The Return of the Prodigal Grandson

At ten minutes past two, on Friday morning, one of my great-uncle Ivans passed away. I had, or have, two uncle Ivans - my father's uncle and my mother's. The Uncle Ivan who passed away on Friday was my father's; the youngest of my late grandfather's five brothers. He was seventy-eight years old and, in keeping with an old Ulster Presbyterian tradition, he was buried from home. 

I would by lying if I said I had been close to Ivan, in anything except genetics. At the time of his death, I hadn't seen him in nearly ten years, since my own grandfather's funeral.  If I'm honest, my memories of the five brothers as a collective are patchy, even before that. All five of the Russell brothers looked so alike that, to a child, when gazing up at them, it was often difficult to tell them apart. But I can remember that my grandmother, May, who I spent most of my  childhood Saturdays with, always spoke of Ivan with great fondness. I think he was her favourite brother-in-law. In fact, I know he was. My grandmother and I are too alike in that respect; we never did bother with hiding our favouritism. Thanks for that little trait, Granny...

The funeral was held in Lurgan, a town about twenty miles south of Belfast. Once upon a time, going to Lurgan was the happiest route of my life, because it meant I was going to my grandparents'. But then, Granny May lost her battle with cancer and, eighteen months later, my grandfather, strong as an ox, fell from the roof of a church he was working on and died later of complications. I was fourteen years old and, with them gone and their house sold, there was less and less reason to come to Lurgan. Unless it was to visit their grave, with the simple words The Lord Is My Shepherd engraved in gold letters at the bottom. Grandpa chose the verse himself.

Driving back into Lurgan on Sunday was therefore a pretty surreal experience. Everything seemed somehow both foreign and achingly familiar. It was in Lurgan that I'd had my only serious personal experience of the Northern Irish Troubles, as a very young child, during an IRA car bomb scare, when I was whisked out of the town centre by my grandfather and deposited in their house, before he dashed back in to try and retrieve my grandmother from the other side of the police line. It was in Lurgan that I had my very first memory - I was walking in Lurgan Park with my grandfather and I apparently ran off to try and walk on the ice that had frozen over the lake. The ice broke under me after a few steps; so my first memory is of my arms outstretched in front of me, trying to clamber back up out of the water, before my grandfather's arms reached in and pulled me out. I don't remember anything else really after that, apart from the fact that he saved me and that the sleeves on my jacket were beige, with a  dark stripe somewhere near the elbow. 

But despite all those memories, I'm not a Lurgan boy. Apart from my  paternal grandparents, I didn't really know anyone there. I grew up elsewhere - in Saintfield, Belfast and County Down. I have no trace of that distinctive Lurgan accent. Like the people of south Belfast and south Down, I tend to emphasise the last syllable of my words; the good folk of Lurgan emphasise the first. Only a few months ago, I remorselessly teased a close friend, who is originally from Lurgan, when he asked me how my I-talian lessons were progressing. It was good natured teasing, though; secretly, I sort of loved hearing it. 

Inside Uncle Ivan's home on Sunday, it was accent role reversal; as soon I began to speak, I suddenly felt very conscious that my accent sounded different to nearly everybody else's in the room, except my mother's. It possibly even sounded affected. God knows, it wasn't helped when I was asked what I was doing with myself for living.  Honestly people, there's just no good way of saying "I'm a writer" without sounding either incredibly pretentious or like an unemployed wastrel. Why didn't I become a lawyer?

As more and more people filed into the small living room where the service was to be conducted, my mother and I sat on a sofa in the far corner, as my dad caught up with old relatives. I looked around, particularly at the men. Many of them were my age, or thereabouts; practically all of them were my close blood relatives and, yet, to all intents and purposes, they were strangers. I didn't know them; they certainly didn't know me.  I don't know how to describe how I felt. Maybe it was a little lonely?

The minister, from a small local Presbyterian church that Uncle Ivan had gone to Sunday school in back during the 1930s and which my grandfather had remained faithful to until the day he died, cleared his throat and announced we would begin. There was an opening prayer - the kind that only a Northern Irish Presbyterian minister is truly capable of. Long, sonorous, much more like a conversation with God than a formal prayer. Then he started on three readings from the Bible - one from the Psalms, one from the gospels and  one from the epistles. They weren't short readings. They were long and had a lot more theology in them than simply offering hope of eternal life to the grieving widow and family. They were all punctuated by prayers and reflections on the nature of God, Heaven and sin.

As I bowed my head for one of the prayers, it struck me how absurdly provincial - backwards, even - this service would have seemed to many of my English and American friends. I began to think that maybe these kind of home-grown services which, as a child, I'd thought of as the closest thing to holiness imaginable, were basically a bit ridiculous once you came back to them as an adult. But then, somewhere around Psalm 23, it all came flooding back to me. I remembered what it was like to be part of this, rather than simply an observer.

I looked around the room and I began to see it properly. I saw the minister, his hands shaking with multiple sclerosis, defiantly leafing through the pages of the Bible and speaking to his makeshift congregation. Not at them. I saw elderly relatives whose names and faces I knew, watching him intently and nodding as he mentioned the mercy of Jesus and the reality of God. There was total certainty on their faces and I remembered what it had been like to feel like that. I watched as everyone rose, dressed to the nines in understated black mourning, and filed out neatly into the street to walk behind the coffin as it was escorted from its last earthly dwelling place. The entire street  where Ivan had lived came to a halt; they drew their curtains as a mark of respect and many came out to stand by the roadside and pay their respects. As the coffin was placed in the hearse and we drove to the graveyard, ordinary men and women on the streets of Lurgan doffed their caps to the coffin as it went by; some crossed themselves. Many bowed their heads.  They didn't know this man; they didn't know whose funeral this was, but they paid their respects anyway. In a really strange way, the whole thing had a kind of weird, sad beauty to it. Like someone had turned the mute button on the hysteria of modern grieving and brought everything back to a more quiet, more dignified, maybe even a more sincere, way of doing things.

At the reception afterwards - tea, coffee, homemade cakes and sandwiches in the local Orange Hall, where an official portrait of The Queen still stands framed by two immaculately-maintained Union Jacks - there was a return to some kind of good humour. Food and, of course, tea was being pressed into my hands by the pushy women of the Orange Order whose mission in life seems to be to magic up industrial-sized quantities of food and drink at a moment's notice. How they do it, I have no idea, but may God in Heaven help you if you don't say yes when they offer you a slice of their homemade chocolate cake. They don't trust a man who doesn't eat. Fact.

I sat next to my great-uncle Jack. He's eighty-eight now. As a child, I thought he was my grandfather's twin. Turns out, Jack was actually three years older. As we sat chatting with him, he told me how he could remember clearly his first day of school - eighty-four years ago. But he struggled to remember what happened last week. Jack had worked all of his life as a builder, in partnership with my grandfather. I'm told that between them they built half the homes in Lurgan; although maybe that's just a family boast. Dad asked him if Grandpa had been a bit of a rascal at school and Uncle Jack shook his head: "No, no. Bobby was good. Bobby was always good." I was about to say something about Grandpa's famous ability to cheat at a game of Lexicon or Scrabble (he'd spell out dubious place names from the Bible and then insist he be given points for them) when Jack spoke again, "I meet your Grandpa every night. Every night I dream that we're back out working together. And then I wake up and forget for a wee minute that he's gone. Bobby was the best man I ever knew. The best man." Mum's eyes filled with tears and I had to bite the inside of my lip until it nearly bled to stop them coming. (A South Down accent is one thing, but crying in public is something I'd never recover from.)

And he was. Since the day Grandpa Bob died, I've met some of the most brilliant and fascinating people from all walks of life, but Uncle Jack is right: wee Bobby is still the best man I ever knew. I was brought up on stories of the family that went right the way back to John de Courcy and the tomb of Saint Patrick. As a child, I was fascinated by the debutantes, rebels, knights and merchants who were said to dot our families' histories. But looking back on it now, my Grandpa Bob was without question the most honourable, the most decent and most genuinely good man I ever met. He was a builder, who worked with his hands every day that God sent him, except Sundays, Christmas, Good Friday and the two weeks a year he took off to go on holiday with my grandmother to the north coast. And he was my hero. Somewhere between Down High and Oxford, New York, Malone, Meredith Harper and the best part of a decade, I think I'd forgotten that just a little. It was nice to remember. The two of them really were absolutely wonderful grandparents.

I'm not a Lurgan boy. I don't really know it now, except in memory form. But going back there on Sunday brought back a lot of memories. It made me remember all the things that my family have done for me and how all the bits of us, the many families and experiences that we all have, make us into who we are. It also made me remember how proud I am to be Bobby's grandson.