Express “Fisk”: George Pell is talking nonsense again…

My timetable for the week has messed up my sleep cycle. I can’t sleep. I need something or someone utterly boring to help me nod off.

Fortunately AV has brought it to my attention that George Pell has been pontificating about democracy and atheists again. Two things he really ought to brush up on (as an inquisitor and a religious man, it’s not so hard to accept that he’s not the most qualified to talk on these two topics).

So lets have a look and see if we can’t spot the rubbish Pell is banging on about these days.

“Authors such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, among others, are very angry about it. Our atheist friends evince any number of reasons to be angry with religion, and particularly with Christianity, but there is a disproportion to it all that makes one wary.”

Richard Dawkins isn’t angry at religion, he’s bemused by its persistence. Christopher Hitchens. I’ll be charitable to Pell and conceed that it is entirely possible that Hitchens is angry at religion. Of course, Hitchens seems pretty much angry about everything so it’s not really reasonable to state that it’s his atheism or secular nature that makes him angry.

“Why be angry at an absence? It leads me to wonder if some atheists are angry with God precisely because, by their lights, he does not exist. It is, after all, not unheard of for children to grow up angry at a father who is remote, absent, or unknown.”

Oh geez. This is the worst piece of rhetoric I’ve seen Pell EVER produce. At least in terms of credulity. It’s a false analogy.

Children can infer the existence of their own material father from their own material existence using pretty some accessible primary school level science. Theists can’t even infer a supernatural God with science, accessible or not (not that I personally want theists to use scientific epistemologies for all of their knowledge claims).

Asking for atheists of all people, to lend credulity to the idea of a supernatural God just so they could be angry at him is just obtuse, and just so that Pell could fantasise that they are angry with God is obscene!

George needs to stop living in a narcissistic fantasy. The issue that the likes of Hitchens and Dawkins take with religion is not with some entity they don’t believe in, it’s with people like Pell (and theists much worse than). “They aren’t criticising what I do! They just have a petulant attitude towards God!” If I were a theist of the Christian persuasion, I’d seriously wonder what St Peter would say about someone who used God as a red herring for the sake of their own ego.

Maybe if there is a hell (which I don’t for a moment seriously entertain) I will gain some degree of amelioration from the suffering by way of Mr Pell’s company.

“And the alternatives are creative intelligence – that is, God – or blind chance.”

Wrong. False dichotomy. Complex systems can evolve. That’s a third option. Your own Church even acknowledges this Georgy. So with evolution on one hand, and the anthropic principle on the other, this line of reasoning of Pell’s has already gone down the toilet. Sploonk! I hope George wiped after he wrote this.

“Triumphalism is not in keeping with Christianity…”

Not for all Christians, no. But there was this one Catholic Priest in the SMH who was banging on about a fantasy where Dawkins was angry at God… Oh… I’m being a tad redundant now aren’t I?

“What does this mean for our ideas of secular democracy? I do not think this is a problem for most Australians.”

Well of course you don’t George. You’ve railed against secular democracy for a while now. Threats specific to secular democracy don’t seem like problems to you probably because you make a lot of those threats yourself. But if an anti-Catholic group of theists ground down that wall between Church and state, oh how I think you would turn.

“The Greens, some Democrats and largely silent minority elements in the two main parties, as well as a larger percentage in the media, would like to exclude religious considerations from public discussion, but this overlooks that Australians, often unlike Europeans and Americans, are pragmatic rather than ideological about the relationship between religion and democracy.”

Here’s one Hall and Oates prepaired earlier. Part of the secular agenda is to promote tolerance amongst religions and that requires no religion, regardless of size, to gain special status. That my friend is a religious consideration that secularists don’t want excluded from public discussion. Why else would they themselves raise it?

Incidentally, Pell, what is your Normative Democracy if not a call to enshrine ideology within the Australian Constitution? Pot. Kettle. Black.

“The separation of church and state is sometimes invoked as a principle when politicians or others disagree with what church leaders or agencies have said on social justice, government policy, or moral issues, but when they agree with church statements this principle is not mentioned.”

George, I don’t want you stepping across the secular line and invoking church doctrine to criticise WorkChoices which I also don’t particularly like. Much less do I want you to threaten to refuse communion to Tony Abbott for supporting it’s passage through parliament, just so you can bend the state to the will of the Church. I’ve thought about bringing this up before, but you never really gave me reason. Thanks! Too easy!

Incidentally, I also recall a number of MPs in parliament telling you to but your nose out even when they were considering, or would have voted the way you insisted. Oh ye of little memory.

“Although Australian life has been marred by sectarianism in the past, the idea that religion is irrational and must be excluded from public affairs is not a native Australian plant.”

Secularists don’t want to see religion enshrined in the state, not because they think it irrational, but because it involves giving preference to one religious group while discriminating against others. A bit more research is in order Mr Pell. Fibbing about what your opponents say is not an acceptable practice in public debate, at least as far as I’m concerned it’s not. Again, what would St Peter say (assuming he’s real)?

“Some of those who are not particularly religious also think it is important to have a critical mass of active religious believers in the community, partly because of the so-called social usefulness of religion, particularly in picking up the pieces of social and personal dysfunction.”

Weasel words. I’m sure some do think this, but I suspect it’s a view held more strongly by particularly religious people.

“Values don’t create and renew themselves. Many people are worried that our egalitarian ethos is being eroded by the scramble to succeed.”

No they don’t create and renew themselves. People do this. Religious people and non-religious people. I am and have always been an atheist and you don’t see me eroding Australia’s egalitarian ethos. Heck, I pro-actively and thinkingly support egalitarianism and my introduction to these values in no way involved the church!

You need people to promote these values. People are essential (preferably reasonable ones). Religion isn’t.

“…most Australians expect the churches to help pass on to young people the values that are essential for a decent, prosperous and stable society.”

Yes perhaps. But do they really expect that the Church needs to interfere with the state and discriminate against other religions, denominations and philosophies, for the sole reason that that they don’t match a privileged orthodox in order to do it? I doubt it.

“The key public task facing all Christians today is to make the case for Western civilisation and to replenish the sources from which it takes life and strength.”

Secularism has done wonders to free us of the horrors visited upon peoples of the west by the likes of the Roundheads. Secularism is essential to democracy because it protects religious liberty as a democracy should. Is Mr Pell changing his tune? Or by “life and strength”, is he being less pragmatic and instead disturbingly sub-Wagnerian?

“In the midst of unprecedented prosperity and opportunity, we have more and more evidence of the instability of our families, diminishing trust and safety within our communities, and growing fears about the future.”

I agree, but how is this an endorsement for abandoning the secular and needing the religious, specifically a particular religious following? George, you haven’t made the link yet. You haven’t demonstrated how religion can be essential if a secular atheist such as myself, and other secular atheists, view this above statement as true.

Heck, I’m pretty sure that I know the character of Dawkins and even “angry-man” Hitchens well enough to say that they share these concerns about the future as well. Religion is only essential in addressing these concerns if there is no other avenue, but clearly that isn’t the case.

What makes you think the non-religious can’t care about these things Pell? Are you admitting that if someone took your God away and made you like me, you would become a raging sociopath? Or perhaps you don’t believe this at all. Perhaps you are just de-humanising atheists.

Dehumaniser or confessed sociopathic tendencies. Which is it?

“Christianity’s role in democracy, and in particular Catholicism’s role in Australia, is to help turn this situation around.”

Good as a mission statement! Excellent! More power to you! But again, why is any religion essential to this if the non-religious can aim for this goal as well? More importantly, why does Christianity or any other religion need to subvert the state in order to contribute to the attainment of these goals?

Or to borrow from Pell’s possibly sub-Wagnerian terms for the objective, why does Australia need to chuck away a functional, practical, democratic tenet in order to give the nation “life and strength”? Godwin forgive me but it sounds less 2007 Sydney Institute and more 1930s Nuremberg to me.

~ Bruce

PS. Well this worked a treat. I’m tired now. To* tired to finish proof reading.

* Yes, that is a pun. Forgive me. I’m tired.