NEW HUMANIST The Q u a rte r ly J o u rn a l of the R a t io n a lis t P re s s A s s o c ia t io n Volume 102 No 3 September, 1987 CONTENTS Quarterly diary 4 Jim Herrick Rationally speaking 5 Nicolas Walter Islamic fundamentalism 6 Denis MacEoin The final experiment 7 Alec Lea Reason and romance: Mary Wollstonecraft 8 Janet Sheriton The movie vandals 13 Roger Manvell The rise and decline of ethicism 14 David Tribe M. N. Roy and the myth of Indian spirituality 20 Brian Morris The practice of New Humanism 21 M. N. Roy Writers who voiced my scepticism 23 Benny Green Book reviews by Beverly Halstead, Madeleine Simms, Ron Scott, T. F. Evans, Diesel Balaam/Sukie de la Croix, Jim Herrick 24 Letters 30 Cover illustration: Christopher Findlay Editor: Jim Herrick Published by the Rationalist Press Association Ltd Views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the RPA
Editorial and Publishing Offices: 88 ISLINGTON HIGH STREET, LONDON NI 8EW 01-226 7251 ISSN 0306-512X Second class postage paid at New York Office, NY © Rationalist Press Association 1987
We Believe in God is the title of a recent report by the Doctrine Commission of the General Synod of the Church of England. The writers might well have added to the title the words — “ Just About” . Another recent Church of England report Changing Britain: Social Diversity and Moral Unity is, according to the Preface by the Archbishop of York, intended to concentrate on values and “ to give some guidance towards appropriate responses” to changes in our society and to be “ accessible to people of different religious convictions and none” .
The report on belief in God concedes so much ground to centuries of rationalist criticism of the Bible and of Christian concepts of the deity that it is hard to see why its compilers retain belief in God at all—except for the fact that they are all committed, professional Christians. The report claims knowledge of God comes from three sources: from Scripture, from the use of reason, and from the accumulated experiences of Christians. They suggest that the Bible must be understood in its historical context, its contradictions, and its metaphorical aspects. Yet they still cling to the idea that it is a “ unique revelation” .
The writers of the report make a curious analogy between the models used by scientists to build up hypotheses about the nature of the world and different models which can be devised to understand God. They are pleased to think that the analogy brings science and religion closer together. They pursue the analogy between beliefs about God and scientific accounts of the universe by saying that they are both “ provisional, corrigible and incomplete” . They fail to grasp an essential difference: the models and hypotheses of science are corrected by persistent testing in a way that is quite impossible with beliefs about God.
It is very hard to conclude what kind of God the report’s writers believe in. They write of analogies again: a sovereign, a fatherfigure, a clockmaker, an artist. They attempt a solution to the problem of human suffering by suggesting that God perhaps suffers too: and thus give central place to the resurrection, as an image of renewal after suffering, without attempting to come to grips with whether any actual resurrection of a body could ever take place.
The report quotes from Salman Rushdie’s brilliant novel Midnight’s Children a description of a man who “ was knocked forever into the middle place, unable to worship a God in whose existence he could not wholly disbelieve” . The report hangs uncomfortably in this middle ground. Perhaps the most revealing sentence is an admission of ignorance: “ Despite some strong claims to the contrary, it is not true that we now know for certain that God has no reality independent of ourselves, and that the talk of ‘God’ is consequendy no more than a way of encouraging ourselves to live more responsibly, more hopefully, more lovingly in the world.”
The second report on social change and human values looks at ways of living more responsibly and hopefully in a world whose changes often seem bewildering and threatening. It concentrates not on particular social problems but on the need for shared moral values as a stabilising principle in society. For a Christian report values should presumably be underpinned by belief in God, but this report makes little connection between values and God, arguing the thoroughly humanist view that values arise from a concept of “ the dignity of the human person” and that society is held together by the “ need to embrace notions of fairness and justice, honesty and dependability, protection of freedom of belief and speech, reputation and possession, all in the pursuit of what has been called ‘human flourishing’” .
The report is very conscious of the “ deep social divisions and the sense of injustice felt by those who have been marginalised by their lack of skill, lack of work, or simply by living in the wrong place or by suffering from other general disability” . It seeks “ a message of hope in the face of failure, cynicism and despair” . Humanists share this hope with Christians, even if they cannot share—or understand—their belief in God.
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