The village atheist as the village idiot

Chesterton described Thomas Hardy’s work as “The village atheist talking to the village idiot.” Stephen Fry, a comedian, author, left-wing activist, and CELEBRITY, proves that the two personages can co-exist in the same breast.

He’s not the only one. Even men considerably brighter than Fry begin to sound idiotic the moment they spout arguments, never mind diatribes, against God. It’s as if God punishes aggressive atheists by turning their minds to ordure.

Fry’s diatribe came on Irish TV, where he was asked what he’d say if confronted by God. The poor chap got excited and began to sputter spittle:

“How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?… Bone cancer in children? What’s that about?”

It’s worth mentioning that Fry has largely built his public persona by purveying two assumptions: 1) that his manic depression makes him interesting and 2) his facile cleverness propped up by a good memory for quiz trivia makes him not just a CELEBRITY but also a THINKER.

That the two canards are readily swallowed by the public says more about our time than about Fry, who’s entitled to make a living as best he knows. But he ought to control his girlish emotiveness if he expects to be taken seriously by people a notch above his TV audiences.

Irish police are currently investigating Fry for blasphemy under the Defamation Act. If tried and convicted, he could be sentenced to a €25,000 fine, a derisory sum for a CELEBRITY.

But another charge, that of stupidity, has already been filed. Fry has been tried and convicted on the evidence of the above hysterical harangue.

Intelligent atheists – and this description approaches an oxymoron – know that trying to argue the toss will make them sound silly. That’s why they tend to hedge their bets by claiming to be agnostics, rather than atheists.

We just don’t know, they say. Neither the existence nor nonexistence of God can be proved, so it’s best not to talk about it. Naturally to this lot ‘proved’ means empirically proved: atheists can’t accept the existence of any other than empirical knowledge.

That by itself is a puny, not to mention self-refuting, position: denied thereby is the possibility of any knowledge obtained not only by grace or intuition but even by rationalisation, which is the tool they claim to be using. If empirical knowledge is the be all and end all of cognition, then not only philosophy but even natural science is impossible. Most great discoveries have been made not by rationalisation but by the post-rationalisation of intuitive knowledge.

But at least such men shy away from illogical attacks on God, who according to them doesn’t exist. Thus they prove that, though somewhat wanting in the area of high intelligence, they aren’t devoid of common sense.

Fry has neither. If he had some of the latter, he’d have answered the interviewer’s question by saying that he couldn’t possibly say anything to God because God doesn’t exist.

A theologian, incidentally, would agree: God indeed doesn’t exist, in the usual sense of the word. It’s because of God that everything exists. However, since TV hacks aren’t known for their command of philosophical subtleties, the reply Fry didn’t proffer would have ended the subject: “Next question, Stephen. How’s your husband these days?”

That way Fry would have stayed in his own world, one inhabited by CELEBRITIES and other luvvies. However, by implicitly accepting that God, however awful he might be, does exist, he entered a different world, one with its own philosophical system, language and corpus of knowledge.

In that world even an average theology student would be able to tear Fry’s hysterical harangue to shreds by arguing from basic theodicy.

He’d explain to Fry the concept of original sin corrupting both man and the natural world. He might even quote Russia’s first philosopher Pyotr Chaadayev, who said: “Our concern should be not combatting natural disasters but trying not to deserve them.”

The youngster could also point out that God is outside time and space, and therefore outside man’s notions of what is or isn’t just. A higher system can know all about a lower one, but not the other way around. Hence it’s not only possible but certain that divine justice differs from the human version.

If Fry chooses to operate within the world into which he barged without wiping dung off his shoe soles, he should accept the concept of life eternal, within which life in earth is but a passing instant. In earth, dying of bone cancer at 10 is more tragic than doing so at 90, but compared to eternity the difference isn’t just small but nonexistent.

It’s also worth mentioning that a man with artistic pretensions is singularly unobservant if all he sees in the world is misery, evil and cancerous children. God not only created man but continues to delight him with endless variety of flora and fauna, melancholy rivers and rowdy seas teeming with fish, craggy mountains, wild forests and gentle hills alive with birds and beasts.

My advice to Fry is to shut up on such subjects and stick to milking his bipolar disorder and homoactivism for what they’re worth. He’d still sound no less pathetic but considerably less stupid. And Stephen? Take on Mohammed next, see how you get on. You won’t get away with a fine, I can tell you that.