When a book comes with recommendations from Penny Mawdsley and David Boulton, a member of the SOF Network is bound to take it seriously. Unfortunately I was unable to attend Geoff Crocker’s workshop at this year’s Conference. I think we might have had an interesting discussion. I am a humanist celebrant conducting between 20 and 30 funerals each year. I think humanist celebrants as a group have a claim to be pioneers of atheist spirituality, although I know some of my colleagues would be uneasy about the word ‘spirituality’.
Mr Crocker’s subtitle, Can an Atheist Believe Anything? may have been ill-advised because it prompts the answer: ‘Of course they can’. Atheists have been Marxists and a very few were Nazis even though Himmler wouldn’t have them in the SS because he believed, correctly, that they couldn’t swear a valid oath. The South Place Ethical Society has been pursuing the matter of non-theistic human values since the middle of the 19th century, as the British Humanist Association and the International Humanist and Ethical Union do today. Geoff Crocker ignores their work completely.
To attempt a synthesis between recognition of meaningful metaphysics in philosophy with a recognition of the power of myth in religion in 117 pages is an ambitious undertaking. His survey of religious, philosophical and scientific thinking to form a ‘holistic history of humanity’ is inevitably a bit broad brush and breathless. I am not sure it’s true that the period following the decline of the Roman Empire was really ‘a long period of dark and middle ages when the light seemed to have gone out’; not when one thinks of Viking exploration, Saxon poetry, the Book of Kells and the Lindesfarne Gospels, to give just a few examples.
He contends that two of the Enlightenment’s great concepts – cause and choice – are actually incompatible. His exploration of the limits on human freedom of choice is interesting and illuminating.
Maybe he will be able to discuss it more fully in a future publication It will be interesting to see how much of his ‘paradigm of postmodern society’ with its emphasis on celebrity and consumption stands up to the present economic crisis.
We can already see the effect of the decline in rampant consumerism on people’s livelihoods.
Perhaps one of the great challenges of the future will be to find worthwhile work, paying a living wage, that isn’t fuelled by ever growing consumerism.
Something the SOF Network may be discussing at our 2012 Conference.
I was interested to discover that the Greek and Hebrew words translated 500 times in the Bible as ‘righteousness’ actually mean ‘justice’, a translation used only 140 times. Certainly the force and meaning of many well-known passages changes significantly if ‘justice’ is substituted for ‘righteousness’. Perhaps only the Methodist Church has come close to understanding the centrality of justice for Christianity.
Using a Hindu story, that of Rama and Sita and the demon king Ravana, Geoff Crocker illustrates how the power of the great stories is diminished by being taken literally and specifically. Literalism cheapens them and can make them dangerous. In this instance it led to the burning of the only mosque in Ayodhya, the city with the most Hindu temples in India, in 1992. Geoff Crocker does acknowledge that not all the great stories need come from religious sources. Secular literature, art and music can provide us with equal and sometimes greater sustenance.
In seeking a host for his new synthesis, Geoff Crocker looks to the Churches, even though he has been quite critical of them and almost apologises for being so. Even he is not hopeful, admitting that ‘today’s church would have to change its emphasis and preconditions substantially’ to fulfil this role. Perhaps the synthesis doesn’t need a ‘host’. After all feminism has never had one. Maybe the power of ‘an idea whose time has come’ will be enough. We might carry it along on the Sea of Faith.
I did enjoy this book. I was arguing with Mr Crocker all the time I was reading it and I very much look forward to exploring the extensive bibliography.
Barbara Burfoot is a humanist celebrant and Secretary to the SOF Board of Trustees. reviews 25 Sofia 102 Christmas December 2011 Sebastian Barker reviews A Thorn in the Flesh: