Philosophy - My view on Religion

Is religion true?

No. Well, almost certainly not. There is a small possibility that there is something beyond this life and this reality, but I don't think it is accurate to any of our religions today, let alone accurate to a certain book or books written down by humans. This is statistically unlikely for a start. Asserting a fundamental belief in a religion is goes against all odds in the hope that you're particular society happened to have chosen the one particular God that exists.

Furthermore, there is no good evidence to suggest any alternate reality at all. There are a few arguments for the existence of god but they are all flawed in my opinion. Carl Sgan said  "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and yet religion says that we should take it entirely on faith. However, they then undermine that very same claim by providing what they consider to be good evidence:
 - NDEs (experiences that occur in all societies, usually true to the religion of the person. These seem to be something that can happen when the brain shuts down, but are certainly not sufficient evidence)
 - Philosophical arguments
      - Cosmological (The first cause could be The Big Bang. It does not prove any particular religion.)
      - Teleological (Evolution explains this. Life is probably not uncommon. Multi-verse?)
      - Ontological (A circular reasoning argument.)
 - Miracles*

*The idea of an intervening God that will occasionally break the laws of physics to save one life is absolutely absurd. A little bit of Hume rejects the idea of miracles as evidence.
Weigh up the chances that the laws of physics have been violated in your favour or that a mistake has been made somewhere down the line. Or exaggeration. Or deception. Or fabrication. Furthermore, every miracle in favour of one religion has to be cancelled out against a miracle in favour of another religion.
Why would God create laws of physics and create incredible suffering, if every now again he feels the need to save on child or cure one person's cancer? The idea is absurd.

I also find that the problem of evil is a very valid criticism of god, that also counters the teleological argument. You cannot look in awe at a mountain and say 'God did that', without looking at cancer in children and the horror that is virtually all of human history and explaining how an omni-benevolent, omnipotent God could create this.

If you grant truth to any aspect of religion, a thousand questions are raised that must be tackled. If you say it is all false, everything is explained.

Is religion useful?

I think it can cause much evil. Although I would not say things like "Religion is the cause of all evil" or "Religion poisons everything". Religion can provide some good in people's lives. However, I do not think that it is in any way necessary.

Religion also gives people an excuse to commit evils that would not be otherwise accepted. To get good people to do wicked things you need something akin to religion in order to give them a reason.

What annoys me is when people argue that atheism means you cannot have morals.
Ethics can come from a sort of relativism or consequentialism - these are not evil, but sensible. I don't need absolute rules such as the 10 commandments. It seems obvious to me that morality comes from some kind of consequential maximisation of happiness, virtue, well-being, flourishing etc. It does not need to come from God. Furthermore, there is no evidence that religious people are more or less moral.

The argument that the evils of the 20th Century was caused by an outbreak of secularism just does not stand. Religious people point to societies that eliminated religion and did great evils. They have the facts all wrong.
 - Hitler was raised a Catholic and says in Mein Kampf "I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator... fighting for the work of the Lord".
 - Stalin trained to be a Priest and reintroduced religion when the Soviet Union went to war, setting himself up as the second coming of Christ.
The problem with these dictatorships is that they turned political ideologies into man-made religions. (Are the words "man-made" necessary before the word "religion". They surely go hand-in-hand). They gave themselves and their ideologies a God-like status. They often removed orthodox religion because it stood in the way of setting themselves up as God. But, we can see that when they wanted to, they were not afraid to use religion as a weapon. What better way to make someone behave immorally, than if they believe God is on their side?


This has been a general religion summary. My own unique ideas will come in later posts.

Philosophy - Nothing is true? Or is mankind stupid?

first philosophical blog post. And it starts with an intellectual crisis.

The human race has a remarkable ability to be wrong. This is a recent realisation I had which sent me through a fascinating mental journey, that is unfinished and took me into areas of thought I had never entered before.)

It is extraordinary how often mankind is wrong. This mainly originates from my study of philosophy, where I have not found a single philosopher who cannot be criticised or disputed in any way. It is also true of many other subjects: we have had many scientific assumptions that have been proven false, as well as mathematical ones; literature is so subjective that there are no definite rights and wrongs at all.

My instinct was that mankind is just more stupid than we realise, but I see so much intelligence and genius, and didn't think that could be right. Therefore, I began to consider various post-modernist ideas that all knowledge is subjective and unique to the individual. What if there were no truths, and everybody had their own world in their head where what they thought was true? Somebody recently said to me that they believed that your afterlife is dependent on your beliefs. i.e. The atheist is annihilated whilst the Christian goes to heaven or hell depending on their morality. Hardly fair!

Of course, I immediately rejected this for the reasons I am an atheist rather than a post-modernist in the first place. A world with no objective truths makes absolutely no sense at all. It couldn't work, unless you think that all reality is a mental construct. And if that's the case, how do you account for what we see a mental thought? Are there degrees of mental construction? I'm not one to follow Okham's Razor, but this idea seems ludicrous.

I eventually realised what I knew all along. Mankind does not know everything, but it wants to know everything, and so it asserts certain things as truth, even though they are only theories. We are getting closer and closer to the truth in terms of how our universe works, what is moral etc. We just haven't got there yet. Or maybe we are all just a bit stupid.


[Edit]
A book I'm reading (Everything is Obvious) brought to light the distinction between common sense and reason. The book was talking more generally about the unreliability of common sense but it reminded me of this post. Perhaps many people use common sense, and the job of the philosopher and seeker of truth is to use reason to work out which common sensical truths are actually true. I have to examine views that may seem obvious to me or others. I believe that I have done this with some questions such as religion and ethics but must continue to re-evaluate and not rely on common sense, which is perhaps what many are doing.

Dr Faustus

This play took over a large period of my life. Not only was I studying the text in English, but I played Faustus in a school production. It is frankly genius.

Many people say it is not good quality at times, but I think this is largely because people compare it with Shakespeare (Marlowe's contemporary), and of course its not at his level. One of the things I love about it is the themes. I'm a sucker for things that tackles theological worlds and issues from a slightly unusual standpoint. Whilst some have said it is entirely Christian in nature, others say that Marlowe was an atheist who aimed to criticise Christianity but was restricted by censorship. I see that because the play shows a fundamental Christian view of what will happen to you if you turn away from God, it reveals the evils of medieval Christianity. I don't know if this was intentional on Marlowe's part or not.

Faustus is an intellectual genius. He has learnt virtually everything there is to learn. The problem is that he is not content with this. And quite right too! He can't be expected to just sit and appreciate his past achievements. He has an incredible brain but just wants more. the only way for him to gain this knowledge is through necromancy. He sells his soul to the devil because there is no other way for him to learn. God, however, seems to hate intelligence. He punishes Adam for eating from the Tree of Knowledge. He therefore sends Faustus to hell for all eternity, a punishment he does not deserve.

However, the character is more complex than this. He has a fatal flaw like all tragic heroes: pride. This is another cause of his turn to necromancy. there are other desires, such as power, money and lust that drive him. This adds a whole new element to the character and suddenly makes you think he does deserve punishment. There are issues of Calvinism and the nature of hell. 

Mephistopheles is also a fantastic character. Our production had him as a young boy filled with immense sadness and mental torture, whereas others show off his power or impish charm and manipulation.

The production I was in was described as the greatest play our school has put on. We did it in the round with minimal set. All three nights were one of my greatest achievements in their own way. First night: no mistakes, really proud of myself. Second night: tripped over my cape and tore a ligament on stage, nearly fainted, 10 minute break in the show, carried on to the end with a slowly swelling hand. Third night: Had to do it with a splint on my hand, made some scenes slightly awkward, but managed to get through fine. Loved every minute of it, and fought through my injury. 

I also saw a production at The Globe, with Arthur Darvill as Mephistopheles. Moments of this were fantastic, but other moments were weak. It did everything it could to make the play accessible to many but having cool magic special effects, lavish devil costumes and toilet humour.  Personally, I prefer a more philosophical approach.

Dr Faustus quickly became one of my favourite plays. One of the main reasons is because of the themes behind it. I don't believe in Christianity, but I love the story it tells. If the Bible was just a piece of fiction, it would be my favourite novel ever. This is why I love Dr Faustus: because it places a new character into that world and says "What would God say if...?"

---

"Che Sera Sera"

"Here Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity."

White Fang by Jack London

I discovered this just by chance, flicking through Amazon list of Kindle books, and I started reading. I absolutely loved it. White Fang is a wolf. The novel is in 3rd person, but we always see what he is thinking about events. Cue lots of not understanding and instinctive animal emotions. Very interesting stuff.

For example, the humans present throughout are described as "gods". Philosophical point: the desire to ascribe that which we do not understand to something that we cannot understand.

The first section is slightly separate from the rest, but it was my favourite section. It told the story of two men being hunted by wolves (one of which was to be the mother of White Fang). It really got across the power of nature over man and a long drawn out struggle where man was reduced to animal. 

We then saw White Fang's life. The brutality of mankind in their treatment of animals is described. white Fang becomes the greatest fighting wolf the world has seen. He is put into dog fights and is deadly. However, one man takes pity on White Fang and tames him. They all live happily ever after.

I found White Fang to be a really fascinating book. It was written remarkably well and has a very interesting twist, of seeing a wolf's story.

Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Another post I should have put up a while back. I went to the Edinburgh Fringe!! It was Awesome!! So many shows in only a few days. It was definitely an experience I plan to repeat.

Oedipus by Steven Berkoff
An experimental piece of serious theatre to start off.
Great to see a piece actually put on by Berkoff, even if I'm not a massive fan of his style.

The Little Prince
Friend's amateur production of a French modern fairy tale. Very clever use of the round.

Josh Widdicombe
Brilliant stand up comedian in a very small venue. Hilarious.

All of Greek Mythology in 99 Minutes or Less
Lived up to its name, but was a weak, amateur American high school production. Interesting idea that did not really live up to expectations, although I guess was enjoyable overall.

The Trial by Steven Berkoff
Kafka's The Trial, written by Berkoff, in his style. High quality amateur production.
I now need to read more Kafka

Rose
Fantastic piece of theatre - true emotion tackling relevant topics
It was performed by an actual father and daughter, an idea that could have been a positive or negative: turned out to have a slight symbolic impact and did not hurt the performance.

Chris Martin
Another excellent stand up comedian in a small venue

Shakespeare for Breakfast
Hilarious adaptation of Macbeth, set in a school, with croissants
"Is this a croissant I see before me?"

Phillipa and Will Are Now in a Relationship
Engaging piece made up entirely of Facebook posts, spoken aloud.
Succeeded in being very funny and emotional at the same time.

The Cagebirds
Experimental, they all played birds in a cage with their own individual mannerisms and obsessions

Out of the Blue
A capella music group from Oxford that do covers in an often amusing way
Very enjoyable - although they have one song that they used as their closing piece that is miles better than any others.

Othello?
Attempted to make Othello a dark comedy but was not particularly successful, although generally well performed.
Problem with babies crying in front row and it was the full length of Othello - we only went to the first half.
Still useful as I am now studying Othello.

Silence in Court
Very interesting idea of making the audience the jury at a court case so that we had to make up our minds whether defendant was guilty of rape.
Unsure whether they had a set guilty or not guilty, or whether they always made the jury get it wrong. I hope it was the first.

Acting and Creating a Character
Workshop exploring Stanislavsky's ideas of thinking the thoughts of a character whilst on stage

Phill Jupitus Quartet - 'Made Up'
Hilarious improvisational comedy - a great comedian doing high level comedy, on the spot, with 3 others.

Cambridge Footlights in 'Pretty Little Panic'
Sketch comedy. Absolutely hilarious - I'll be watching for these people in the future.
Very slick performance.

Ed Bryne
Comedy in a large stadium. On another level. Genius.

One Thousand Paper Cranes
Emotional two-women play about a child after the Hiroshima attack
They did have many paper cranes - I hope there were exactly 1000.

Julian Sands in a Celebration of Harold Pinter
Insight into Harold Pinter and his poetry - Sands is an excellent public speaker, giving me an insight into a writer I know very little about.
"This is a beat... This is a pause... ... ... and this ........................................ is a silence"

The Government Inspector

This should have been up a while ago.

I went to see Gobol's The Government Inspector, a production that was completely bizarre. The play lends itself t a degree of absurdness, but this was completely ludicrous. When we first entered the theatre, we took a path that went through the stage, with various characters on stage. For example, an old Russian woman carving potatoes whilst singing... terribly.

One of my main reasons for going was because of the actor Julian Barratt. As a massive fan of The Mighty Boosh, I was anticipation seeing him on stage, and this is the exact type of play he would be a part of: a bizarre Russian comedy. Unfortunately, he was slightly disappointing. He was fine, but nothing amazing. The first dream sequence with the rats was hilarious, but beyond that, his performance was one-dimensional. The actor playing the fake 'inspector' (Kyle Soller) stole the show. He was absolutely incredible, despite taking a little getting used to. Ridiculous amounts of energy. Bizarre mannerisms. (I need to stop using the word bizarre but it just sums up this play so well!!)

Heart of Darkness

Overall, I enjoyed Heart of Darkness; Joseph Conrad is a fantastic writer. The plot was fairly engaging and I definitely got a feel of the location.

Plot overview:
Heart of Darkness centres around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. As he travels to Africa and then up the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations. The native inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Company’s service, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill treatment at the hands of the Company’s agents.

The pessimism was interesting when compared to other modernists such as Evelyn Waugh. We see the true, dark motives of a barbaric civilisation. It plays upon the idea of 'darkness' as a symbol for evil or immorality.
The direct criticism is the hypocrisy of imperialism, but there is a larger criticism of mankind as a whole.

The most interesting thing about Heart of Darkness is the narrative style - a story within a story. This is exactly the type of thing a modernist would do, as it added a layer of complexity and messes with the style and structure. I love these sorts of experiments, where something is unconventional. We even get something of an unreliable narrator, which has always been one of my favourite ideas in literature.

"We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness."