Cabbages & Kings: Godless morality

“The sub-text is the spume of drama The text is but this spume’s pyjama.”
From Shut Ya Bloomin’ Natya by Bachchoo

Alistair Campbell, spin-doctor to Tony Blair during Britain’s war against Iraq, when asked about the PM’s religious beliefs famously told the press “we don’t do God!” Now David Cameron, the UK’s current PM has decided that he does. He alluded to Britain as a “Christian country”.
This deliberate classification provoked a predictable reaction and this not from the vociferous Islamicists or prestigious TV rabbis, but from the intellectual atheists of the academic and artistic world. Fifty-three of the great and good — who feel that their opinions are in the mainstream of historical significance — signed a published letter in censure.

They expressed the opinion that Britain was no longer a singularly Christian country and had been shaped in the past by many influences. The signatories weren’t saying that Britain is a country of any other religion but that it was a historical amalgam. Apart from the mullahs and rabbis who signed, I suspect that the rest, including writers Terry Pratchett and Phillip Pullman are atheists.

Not being great, good or significant I wasn’t invited to sign. Neither were any other UK Zoroastrians, the most famous of whom was Farokh Balsara also known as Freddie Mercury — but he’s dead. I doubt if he would have had any qualms about Britain being called a Christian country.

Neither do I really. I am I suppose what my fellow Parsis would call a “dhansakh Zoroastrian.” It is the equivalent of calling a Sikh a “tandoori chicken Sardarji” even though that isn’t a description in demotic use. It means that one enjoys and indulges the culinary and celebratory culture of the sect or community without being particularly devout about its rituals and taboos.

Zoroastrianism doesn’t have as many rituals and taboos as other younger religions. Its antiquity and chequered history through two or three periods of imperial Iran and its petrification through its eleven or twelve hundred years in India have left it with, shall we say, less authority about the details of its eschatology, theology, ethics and prescribed ritual practices than Judaism, Christianity or Islam.

We do though have a vague and untenable connection to the atheists who signed the letter because one of the most famous people to declare “God is dead” was Friedrich Nietzsche who put this proclamation in the mouth of Zarathustra.

Some idiot Parsis persist in believing that his philosophical masterpiece entitled Also Sprach Zarathustra is some German interpretation of our Zoroastrian religion. It isn’t. It’s the 19th century’s primary tract renouncing God. Nietzsche put his poem in the mouth of Zarathustra because he believed that the first monotheist ought to retract his doctrine of God the creator.

His Zarathustra goes on to propose some nonsense about humans rising to the task of becoming superhumans and substituting the prime ethical divisions of right and wrong with a cult of power. Because of his denial of a theocentric morality, he was seen by Albert Camus and other Existentialists as the first apostle of the new Godless morality.

That existential debate took place in the latter part of the mid-20th century and lost its literary appeal when it was overshadowed by pop and neo-Marxist fashions of thought. Nietzsche proclaimed what John Lennon after him sang about: “Imagine there’s no heaven, It’s easy if you try” Mr Cameron’s Christian-country statement most prominently evoked a response not from the Jews, Muslims and Hindus of Britain, but from the atheists whose faith doesn’t stop at denial but embraces the ideas of humanism.

There’s always been a philosophical problem about where humanism derives its moral authority. If God didn’t say so then who did and why should anyone care?

In the wake of Mr Cameron’s narrowly politically motivated assertion, there were broad assertions of scholars and pretentious columnists alike about the culture and morality of the West being based on Christianity. Their contentions are undoubtedly true. The art, architecture and poetry, the morality that informed the law and the wars were inspired by some Christian feeling. The architecture of the Al Hambra in Grenada and the mosques of antiquity, as do Hindu temples, testify further to religious inspiration. In fact, the entire argument of the religionists is that civilisation, that which builds monuments and places of worship, that which governs all narrative and gives rise to the directives of law, arises from the revelations and inspirations of, shall we stay to start with, the prophets Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.

I have not as yet read the atheist or humanist reply. As an atheist and humanist myself (Ahura Mazda forgive me! Fingers crossed!) I have appreciations, perceptions, doubts and some possibly contentious questions. We can readily acknowledge that civilised behaviour, art, a great deal of culture and tradition flow from the pronouncements of religions and that most extant religions rely on the words and texts of prophets or in the case of Hinduism on a caste of sages. There need be no dispute about Moses bringing the Ten Commandments to the chosen people, or about Jesus providing the world with the events, the preaching, the life and death chronicled in the New Testament. Neither is there any dispute about Prophet Muhammad bringing the Quran to the believers.

What can be disputed by non-believers is whether Moses spoke to God, whether Jesus was the Son of God and whether the angels dictated the word of God to Muhammad. These are articles of faith beyond the sort of proof that science demands and beyond the cause and effect relationships we take for granted in daily existence.

The ethics that flow from religions have no connection to the miracles that bolster the faith of believers. I, for one, am completely convinced that doing unto others as they would do unto you is a decent doctrine. I don’t need to believe that the person who promulgated it could turn water into wine — even though I’d follow anyone who could.