"Without a hitch." Christopher Hitchens

Don’t read Christopher Hitchens’ essays last thing at night. Not that he’s frightening, it’s that he’s like Maltesers – you can’t stop at just one. I spend some night sitting up in bed, reading Arguably, a 2011 collection of essays and columns covering the breadth of his career.

And it is a breadth of subject as well as years. Reading some of the less-informed commentary on his death, you could be forgiven for thinking he had written one book, God is not great and had only one subject, atheism. Hitchens was able to turn his mind to many topics, cultural, historical, political and yes, religious. His writing is elegant, well-informed, witty, intelligent and compelling. I don’t think he ever wrote purely as a provocateur, but he was never afraid to offend nor did he ever curb his opinion to follow a popular line. He knew what he thought, and more importantly why he thought so, and was able to argue it lucidly and entertainingly.

Of course there are areas where I disagree with him. Oddly one day I met someone who knew I was a Catholic, and because of that, was surprised that I liked Hitchens. It was an example of a new intolerance I see creeping in. Just because I disagree with him on God, doesn’t mean I have to reject him and all his work. It’d be astonishly dull to read a writer with whom I agreed on everything anyway. Why bother?

But I was thinking of another topic. In 2002, Martin Amis (who with Clive James and others used to share a regular boozy Friday lunch with Hitchens) wrote Koba the Dread: Laugher and the Twenty Million, an examination of the reign of Stalin and the odd attitude the left wing has taken towards Communism then and now. He related a story where Hitchens told a story at a speech about his days as a Communist, and got a laugh. Amis wondered if Hitchens had related a story about his days as a Blackshirt, whether he would have got the laugh, or even been a working writer in modern Britain.

To me he raised a fair point: why do we still look at the USSR, with the Great Terror, the gulags, the use of famine as a tool of oprression, the twenty million dead (some sources would say more), as somehow all right, well-intentioned, while Nazi Germany is beyond the pale? Why is left wing extremism somehow not so bad, while right wing extremism is the greatest form of evil ever? To put it another way, why are we not as appalled by Stalin’s Socialism within One Country as we are by Hitler’s National Socialism? After all, to quote the political pundit Clint Eastwood, if you go far enough right you meet the same idiots coming from the left.

Hitchens didn’t believe this was so. He accused Amis of coming late to the information about the terrors of the USSR, and assuming no-one else knew about it either. I think Hitchens has made a similar mistake. He knew about it, and so assumed everyone else must know about it. And it still doesn’t explain the laugh – in fact, if they do all know about the horror of Stalin’s reign, the laugh becomes even more sinister.  But I believe there is an enormous double standard in our attitude towards left-wing totalitarianism and right-wing totalitarianism.

In another column, Hitchens supplies an example of this very phenomenon. He is reviewing the third volume of Victor Klemperer’s diaries. Third? Sure there were only two? Yes, two best-selling volumes about life under Nazi Germany, but a third volume, of life under the Communists in Eastern Berlin, could not get a publisher in the US nor as far as I can tell in Australia. And here it is! A book that tells of life under the Communists cannot get a publisher, even though the author had two best sellers! The interest, the market, is not there. We simply don’t take the terror of Communism with the same gravitas as we do for the terror of Nazism. And why that is, is a question of great interest. Hitchens never makes this connection, and so never turns his considerable mind to it.

But disagreements and argument were the stuff Hitchens thrived on. His work is provocative and entertaining. As a writer and as a man, he was courageous. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. Every one is free to write those opinions and get them published if you can (or blog/twitter them). But it is only if you bring the comparable intellect, knowledge, and integrity that you can be as respected as Christopher Hitchens. I suppose he would have thought me a complete idiot, being religious and all.  But I too am sorry I will never again reading something new he has written.

"Oh Godohgodohgodohgod" - Three books on religion.

This has been a long time coming. Largely this is because this is dealing with a large topic. And a topic that seems to have travelled from something you just didn’t talk about to something that people won’t shut up about. And no, it’s not homosexuality.

I refer to religion. When I were a lad, it was one of those topics you didn’t discuss. Largely this was due to social niceties, but also a recognition that religion and belief was a deeply personal issue and perhaps one that defied conversation. Now of course it is the topic of best sellers, TV shows, political rallies and more. This may well be healthy in some ways but it has also unleashed a wave of ignorance, anger and intolerance.  And not all from the religious nutters.

That some Christians fail to live up to their ideals is not new. In fact, it’s one of the central ideas of Christianity, that life is a struggle to live up to those ideals. Of course, some of the failure has been spectacular, deliberate and evil. Christian churches, and others, have been responsible for some awful and distressing activities both as an institution and through actions of individual members.

That some liberals fail to live up to their ideals is less well-recognised. The intolerance, arrogance and plain rudeness of some louder atheists is astonishing, more so for their own failure to recognise it in themselves. They cry ‘hypocrite’ but forget their own. In Baudelaire’s words (via TS Eliot) “You hypocrite reader! My double! My brother!” (My translation but I think it’s right.)

So virtue and faults are on both sides. Sure, atheists haven’t killed nearly as many as believers have but thanks to the Soviet Union and Red China, the Khmer Rouge and many others, they’ve done the the best they can to catch up. A friend of mine suggested they killed believers because of their ideology so they weren’t really atheists. That their ideology was explicity atheist didn’t seem to bother him. On the other hand, it allowed me to develop another theory. No-one who kills someone else for their beliefs can be said to be living up to the example of Christ, so no Christian has ever killed anyone. Phew! That’s a load off my mind.

This is supposed to be a book blog. Here’s some thoughts on books I have read lately.

I’ve long thought that looking for a scientific proof of God is like looking for a mathematical formula for Hamlet. It’s a silly thing to do to start with, and has nothing to say about maths or drama. No-one would dream of looking for a mathematical proof for Hamlet but those who think there should be scientific proof of God include some luminaries as the Fundamentalist churches, Isaac Newton, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Even the intelligent are not immune from stupid ideas. Of course the fundamentalists and Ditchkens (in Terry Eagleton’s phrase) come to rather different conclusions, but it's a question simply not worth asking.

Terry Eagleton is an atheist and a Marxist and his book Reason Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate is a book that will bring comfort to neither atheists of the Ditchkens variety or believers. “Ditchkens” is his expression of views that Dawkins and Hitchens hold in common, just to save himself typing ‘Dawkins and Hitchens’ all the time. He is very careful to note where they vary, most notably of course in the quality of writing. Hitchens, it goes almost without saying, is the better writer. He finds their arguments for atheism shallow and poorly argued, and explains why.

Mind you, he is no less harsh on the Christian churches. The first sentence of the book is “Religion has wrought untold misery in human affairs.” He also recognises the positive role the Church as played, pointing out, for example, that the Church was the only organisation offering education and health care for the people for centuries.  However, he says the Church has betrayed the essentially radical message of Jesus, becoming part of the establishment to which, he maintains, Jesus was opposed, perpetuating the evils Jesus was trying to destroy.

While this book is slim, it holds some big ideas. His discussion of the nature of God is breathtaking. The book can be read with some ease, although some sections do require strong concentration. It is well worth it though, no matter what your beliefs are.

Karen Armstrong is a former nun and former atheist. Her writings on God and religion are dense, well-researched and well-written. However, they are not light reading. In her introduction to The case for God: What religion really means, she replies to those who describe one of her books as “really hard,” with “Of course it was. It was about God.” Her opening sentence is a telling one as well: “We are talking far too much about God these days and what we say is often facile.” Religion and theology is one of those topics that those who have done no reasearch into feel that they can comment on intelligently. It is a topic that deserves more than catchphrases and cheap point scoring, which is too often the way, from both sides.

The main thrust of this book is that we have lost contact with the orignal idea of God and tried to reduce him (or it – it is difficult to know what words to use) to a domestic, human creature that should share our ideals and values. In fact, she said, it is possible for a believer to say God does not exist, not in the sense that you or I exist. God is beyond our words, our minds. The Bible is not to be taken literally and it is only a recent idea that it should be. It is a book that needs to be continually reinterrogated. As a series of books written by multiple authors over the course of centuries, you’d think that would be an obvious thought but too many believers and atheists want to think of it a monograph. It was never meant to read as a novel. Both Jewish and Christian tradition involved the continual discussion of the Bible and its meaning, a tradition sadly lost in mainstream Christianity.

The word, the idea, that she thinks we need to rediscover is apophasia – that God is beyond definition, beyond our language. Instead, God is an idea that we should continually contemplate, question, and meditate upon. A residual of this idea, the contemplation of the ethereal, can be found in the Catholic Mass with its music and rhythmic chants of prayers, moving away from everyday language. Other religions have held on to this idea more strongly and more explicitly. It is an idea that appeals to me strongly I must admit. If there is a God that can create universes, what on earth makes you think you should be able to understand how God thinks?

On a lighter note, (thank God you might be thinking – even you atheists by now) is Peter Manseau’s Rag and Bone: A journey among the world’s holy dead, a combination travelogue and exporation of the world of relics: those bits of the revered dead or their possessions that are still in the hands of their followers and fellow believers. The book is irreverent without being disrespectful, and discusses relics from Christian, Muslim and Buddhist temples, (Judaism has no tradition of relics) that range from preserved bodies to a whisker from a beard. He ponders their provenance, their use and their meaning, both in themselves and what they mean to those that travel to see them or dedicate their lives to protecting them.

Relics are an odd business and always have been. Manseau notes the three skulls of John the Baptist that were doing the rounds for some time, as well as the sheer amount from the foreskin of Jesus (who must have been impressive, if you get my meaning). Mary apparently had the foresight to preserve breast milk for future generations. Other relics are more likely, including those with more recent provenace. But it is an interesting topic and Manseau writes well.

I have been to San Pietro in Vincoli (St Peter in Chains) Church in Rome, and in a glass case there are chains that are said to be the ones that held Peter when he was imprisoned. It’s possible – he was an important figure before he died, he may well have had followers among the jailers or at least people who knew where he had been held, and once the prison was demolished or altered, perhaps the chains were kept. Is is plausible? I don’t know. Does it matter? I suspect not. Go to the church anyway when you go to Rome. Michelangelo’s Moses is there, and well worth seeing. It’s only a stone’s throw from the Colosseum.

Perhaps those that say we should get rid of these things that divide us and have brought much misery hatred division and horror into the world, no matter what good it may do or how well intentioned it may once have been, are right. But politics will always be with us. Man, they say, is a political animal. I think he is a religious animal too.