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Vol 2 No 14 – April 23, 2007

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Theodicy

Klop liefs by wetenskap aan vir antwoorde
The Virginia Tech massacre drew attention yet again to that obscure branch of theology: theodicy – the futile attempt at defending God's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil. I present here an article, originally prepared for By, weekly insert to Die Burger, on the 2004 tsunami… it was never published.

Vol 2 No 13 – April 16, 2007

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Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

Guide me, o they great Jehovah
Professor Russel Botman was inaugurated last week as Rector of the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Botman is a theologian.
Should a theologian lead a university in the 21st century?
The one thing a university should represent above all else, is the fact that humans have only each other against the terror of existence. Any deviation from this code represents disaster.
Someone who sees fairies in the garden when none are evident should not lead young minds into the future.

Vol 2 No 12 – April 2, 2007

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Menswaardigheid in die NG Kerk

Menswaardigheid in die NG Kerk
Kan dit wees dat die NGK se doodsteek juis sy miskenning van menswaardigheid is? Is daar ‘n rol vir ‘n “kerk” wat menswaardigheid misken?

Vol 2 No 11 – March 26, 2007

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Disgust

Disgust
I am disgusted by God. And even more by the poor sods who tolerate God’s churlish tantrums for attention and praise.
The little old lady who shared my car briefly…
I am not disgusted by her. I have vast empathy with her. I am disgusted by the pathetic ideology that delivered her, with sore joints and feet, after a brief ride in my car, at the local Checkers, “where there aren’t so many blacks, you know… not that I’m a racist or anything”. Browbeaten by the abnormality of someone who regards not God, helping her for kindness’ sake.

Vol 2 No 10 - March 19, 2007

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JC… PC through the ages!

A Picture Essay: Hail the arts… how JC remained PC over the ages
"At the heart of the Christian religion stands a Semite - Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was not a Christian. He never heard of Christianity, and was never involved with Christianity, which formed slowly and falteringly over the four centuries after his death. Contemporary English-speaking Christians are not always aware that they talk of Jesus by extruding him from his original historical, ecological, political and religious context. Invariably, they refer to him with two anglicized Greek names, 'Jesus' and 'Christ', and thereby obscure the reality that he was a Galilean worshipper of Yahweh, the God of the Israelites. His original name was Yeshua, an Aramaic word meaning 'Yahweh saves'. Jesus was a Yahweh-proclaimer, not a Church-creator.”

Vol2 No9 - March 12, 2007

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Change!

“Everywhere we look today, powerful new forces are reshaping the world that we thought we knew…”

Thus reflects International Marketing Strategist Rowan Gibson.[1]

Exclaims the renowned management infotainer Tom Peters: “Revolution? The word is not too strong. And it’s not the same thing as change. Change? Change! Yes, we’ve almost all, finally, embraced the notion that ‘change is the only constant.’ Well, sorry. Forget change! The word is feeble. Keep saying ‘revolution.’ If it doesn’t roll easily off your tongue, then I suggest you have a perception problem – and, more to the point, a business or a career problem. What we do. What we make. How we work. Each is the subject of nothing less than revolution.”[2]

Management guru Peter Drucker may have gone even further: “Every organisation has to prepare for the abandonment of everything it does.” Note “abandon”, not “change”!

In his essay, Rethinking Business, Gibson is fearless: “The organisation of the 21^st century cannot be changed through continuous improvement. It can only be created through radical change.”[3]

Distinguished Business Administration academic and presidential and governmental advisor Warren Bennis speaks regularly of successful leaders being “leaders of leaders” – individuals creating opportunity out of discontinuity. Professor of Strategic and International Management Gary Hamel speaks of a “hierarchy of imagination” – people who have “the future in their bones” according to Bennis.

Tomorrow, in deference to Gibson, will always be a moving target. And that means that, when we’ve finished rethinking the future, we have to start all over again.

The virus that is religion feeds on tradition. What is called for is a paradigm shift, not re-interpretation!

Dead Sea Scrolls expert James Charlesworth reflects: “Dogmatics has been important in Christian history to clarify and defend the faith. That should be acknowledged, but it does not mean that what was defined as Christian faith for St. Augustine must be operative and constricting for us today. I am convinced that Augustine would have been opposed to such a move. It is now clear that we have insights into Jesus’ time which Augustine did not know about, and that this new information, as well as the cultural climate at the end of the second millennium, necessitates finding new ways of expressing our understanding of Christian faith. Augustine struggled to shape faith – rather, the art of believing – for his time. Do we not have the same responsibility?”

“Fixing” won’t do. What is required of 21^st century religious leaders is a new start… perhaps the analogy of the risen Christ may be the object of reflection for church leaders and theologians and Bible scientists with a view to kill in order to re-create?

I am inspired by the history of the electronics giant Nokia – the mobile telephone manufacturer, among others:

From 1865-1917 Nokia was in the paper and power business. From 1918-1966 it was a cable company. In 1967 it entered the rubber industry – until 1991… and in 1992 it became the electronics, IT and telecommunications leader it is today.

Change? No way! Revolution!

“Forget change! The word is feeble. Keep saying ‘revolution.’ If it doesn’t roll easily off your tongue, then I suggest you have a perception problem – and, more to the point, a business or a career problem. What we do. What we make. How we work. Each is the subject of nothing less than revolution.”

Can theology rise to the challenge?

Or… do we not hear the Bible such at this time?

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[1] Rowan Gibson, ed. 1997. Rethinking the Future. Nicholas Brearley Publishing. London.

[2] Tom Peters. 1994. The Tom Peters Seminar. Crazy times call for crazy organizations. Random House. New York. 8.

[3] 1997. 1-14.

Vol 2 No 8 - March 5, 2007

I’m done talking.[1] I’ll be speaking[2] from now on.[3]

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I have often said – in fact, it is the marrow of my argument – that the rational achieves little, if anything, by engaging believers, but to afford a undeserving credibility to the God conjecture… and the God conjecture is not a legitimate alternative weltanschauung worthy of consideration and respect! It simply is not.

Without reconciliation with science religion is doomed to irrelevance by its pre-scientific origin. The politic pope John Paul II recognized this conundrum and indeed did reconcile religion and evolution in 1996 – quoting an “ontological discontinuity”.

Whenever a rational person engages a believer on equal terms, John Paul’s futile endeavour, as is clearly indicated by the efforts of Benedict XVI to undo the “merger”, is afforded credibility it does not deserve.

I’m done talking to godiots.

Godiots?

Yes. Godiots: Individuals convinced beyond a velleity of doubt that a supernatural deity controls human destiny, a conviction based on nothing more compelling than pre-historic oracles recorded in pre-scientific times.

I’ll be speaking from now on. Godiots may either listen, or they may choose not to listen. But I’m done talking!

I’m done talking to godiots. I’m done giving credibility to their invalid weltanschauung by engaging them on equal terms.

I’m done talking to godiots. I’ll be speaking from now on.

Arrogant?

Probably!

But not as arrogant as the believer who gazes at the night sky and declares her complete understanding of the origin of life and the universe and woman’s destiny within this maatschappy – in the face of progressive scientific explanation, in the face of the “deep and sacred”[4] pursuit of the voussoir of evolving insight…

Science does not have all the answers. But this fact does not indicate that religion has any answers at all. In deference to Darwin, it has often and confidently been asserted that man’s origin, for instance, can never be known… but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. It is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.[5]

Human perspective was irrevocably translated when Darwin made it possible for intelligent people not to be religious. This dynamic was matured by Richard Dawkins who made it impossible for intelligent people to be religious.

Once chemistry was established as a discipline, alchemy was simply no longer an “alternative”. Once astronomy was established as a discipline, astrology was simply no longer an “alternative”. Once neurology was established as a discipline, phrenology was simply no longer an “alternative”. After Copernicus certainly a flat earth ceased to be an “alternative”.

Once Darwinism finally explained the redundancy of God, God was no longer an alternative. Darwinism represents, with deference to Sam Harris, a wholesale exchange of ignorance, at its most rococo, for genuine knowledge.

Says Richard Dawkins, “There has probably never been a more devastating rout of popular belief by clever reasoning than Charles Darwin’s destruction of the argument from design.”[6]

Darwin provided explanations of our existence that completely rejected supernatural agents.[7] Verily, verily, I say unto thee, whomsoever considers “God” as an “alternative” perspective on life and the universe, shall be cast into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.[8]

Shall we pussy-foot around the lunacy that is “belief in God”?

I, for one, will not!

When University of Texas, Austin, cosmologist Steven Weinberg recently admitted (to enthusiastic applause, even from his scientist audience) that he would miss religion once it was gone, Richard Dawkins hastened to indicate that Weinberg was inexplicably conciliatory and "scraping the barrel" to have something nice to say about religion. "I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing upon religion," Dawkins told the assembly. [9]

I completely concur.

What can possibly be discussed with millions upon millions of believers who still regard homosexuality a “sin” – a sin! – in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence that homosexuality is a biological given?

What can possibly be discussed with believers who content that spirits – both good and bad spirits – are all around us an influence people, even “possess” individuals?

What ludicrous folly is religion!

I, for one, do no longer talk to people who accept the God conjecture as a legitimate alternative weltanschauung worthy of consideration and respect. I’ll speak. People may either listen, or they may choose not to listen. But I’m done talking!

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[1] An exchange of ideas via conversation.

[2] The utterance of intelligible speech; delivering an address.

[3] View Richard Dawkins speaking to the challenge of undermining the power of influence through harsh words.

[4] With deference to Michael Shermer: “What can be more soul shaking than peering through a 100-inch telescope at a distant galaxy, holding a 100-million-year-old fossil or a 500,000-year-old stone tool in one’s hand, standing before the immense chasm of space and time that is the Grand Canyon, or listening to a scientists who gazed upon the face of the universe’s creation and did not blink? That is deep and sacred science.”

[5] Charles Darwin. 1871. The Descent of Man (2^nd edition)

[6] Dawkins. Richard. 2006. The God Delusion. London. Bantam Press. 79.

[7] Suskind, Leonard. 2006. The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design. New York. Little, Brown. 17 (Quoted in Dawkins. 2006:118).

[8] Based broadly, quite incredulously broadly, I should say, on Mathew 25.xxx

[9] Michael Brooks and Helen Phillips. 18 November 2006. Beyond belief: In place of God. New Scientist. 2578: 8-11. Reporting on a symposium entitled "Beyond belief: Science, religion, reason and survival" ( in La Jolla, early November 2006) hosted by the Science Network, a science-promoting coalition of scientists and media professionals convening at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Vol 2 No 7 - February 26, 2007

Acetifying an innocuous idea

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Me nearest and dearest often describe me as being “music intolerant”.

Although I am certainly intolerant of people advocating a flat earth, phrenology, palmistry, astrology, magic and a sweet potato cure for AIDS, I am concerned about this ariose accusal… was it not I, on my way to restructure my student loan, in the early 80’s, who abandoned my pecuniary purpose of the day to see Pink Floyd’s The Wall? And see it again – four times that first day, and again, four times the next?

Music intolerant. Pur-leaze.

O, and I am also, of course, certainly, intolerant of people advocating the God-hypothesis as a legitimate alternative weltanschauung worthy of consideration and respect.

I warm too, to a “nice tune”, and to indicate my ability to rise above mere platitude on the topic of music, I hasten to add that I am able to prize philharmonic prestidigitation.

However… given half a chance I’ll slip Steve Hofmeyr’s Pampoen into the car stereo (I seldom, if ever, simply listen to music without also engaging in some other activity, such as driving) and I have been known to favour – to the absolute horror of my teenage daughters – a show (poorly attended, truth be known) by Lance James[1] at last year’s KKNK, to one my family enjoyed, at exponentially higher cost, by some character named after The Christ and a small lizard.[2]

But when my daughters introduced me to Bok van Blerk’s De la Rey late last year, I was hooked. Right away.

I have little affinity for Elizabeth’s islet and her people. To the best of my knowledge, such as I have, courtesy of a Broederbond high school history teacher with a career curtailed by his abject inability to wield ‘Liza’s lingo, the Kakies slipped glass slivers into the porridge in concentration camps they used to defeat the Boers in what ranks, to this day, as one of the most unfair wars on the regrettable report card of humankind.

But I did not, and I do not, need a rousing song to muster my ill feeling for the British – their regular trouncings on the rugby fields and cricket pitches of the world humours me sufficiently.

No, what grabbed me about De la Rey, was the catchy tune and the metre, the cadence, of “De la Rey De la Rey, sal jy die Boere kom lei, De la Rey De la Rey…”

It could, for all I care, jab at the idiocy of the KKK, or whatever… I like the tune and I love the round sound of “De la Rey De la Rey – lei – De la Rey De la Rey.”

I am inevitably reminded of one of my all-time favourite Monty Python skits – The Cheese Shop:

Customer: … I thought to myself, "a little fermented curd will do the trick", so, I curtailed my Walpoling activities, sallied forth, and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles!

Owner: Come again?

Customer: I want to buy some cheese.

Owner: Oh, I thought you were complaining about the bazouki player!

Customer: Oh, heaven forbid: I am one who delights in all manifestations of the Terpsichorean muse!

Owner: Sorry?

Customer: 'Ooo, Ah lahk a nice tuune, 'yer forced too!

Owner: So he can go on playing, can he?

Customer: Most certainly!

I suspected from the outset, and Van Blerk and his cadre confirmed as much, that it is all about a catchy tune – play it backwards even, and no message about the wholesale slaughter of political unpopular fellow nationals can be heard.

Says Sean Else, co-owner of the record company that produces Van Blerk, “It could have been about De Wet or De la Rey. Any of the great generals.”[3]

Adds partner Johan Vorster, “For me it’s about the melody. You can’t make Kemp rhyme. You can’t make Beyers rhyme. Much less some other surnames.”

“De la Rey – lei – De la Rey.”

Kemp, Schkemp; Beyers, Schmeyers – it simply can’t be done.

Asked Carte Blanche anchor Ruda Landman: “But you (Bok van Blerk) would go to a Boeremag[4] audience?”

Van Blerk: “If they pay me, yes. Why not?”

Why not, indeed?

A catchy tune. Money to be made. Publicity money cannot buy… a smiling, nay laughing artist, all the way to the bank.

And for me, personally – Steve Hofmeyr has competition… Pampoen and Die Blou Bul Liedjie[5] may never regain the prime spot on my car stereo: “De la Rey De la Rey, sal jy die Boere kom lei, De la Rey De la Rey…”

So, it’s all right then?

No. I’m afraid not. It’s not all right.

There are various socio-political arguments that acetify this innocuous song into something noxious. It is somewhat impossible to page through an Afrikaans publication at present and not see some opinion on “Bok van Blerk’s De la Rey.”[6]

I do not purport to contribute to this debate. I am almost completely ad idem (almost surely) with leading South African social commentator Max du Preez on De la Rey.

I think – and yes, I do realise that this was a somewhat long introduction to what is a rather concise point – that De la Rey is a compelling analogy on the presence of “God” in society at large.

“God” is a rather harmless idea in the minds of simple people who mostly can be convinced of just about anything: that the earth and the universe is but 6000 years old; that the dead somehow live forever after their initial demise… and so on and so forth.

But this “God” idea, in the minds of some believers, is manifested in war and oppression on an unprecedented scale – this selfsame insipid “God” can, and does, spurn the most horrible deeds.

It would be better to do away with this God hypothesis altogether – the loss of that warm fuzzy feeling of belonging a small price to pay for the eradication of all manner of atrocity perpetrated in the name of “God”. It’s a no-brainer, really. But, of course, it is never that easy, is it now?

“God” can not be undone. But “God” must be kept in check. Or rather, the people who harbour “God” in their minds should be kept in check.

“God” must go.

Although we can hardly hope for a society in which God is rejected (some 53% of Americans have recently indicated that they would not vote for an atheist presidential candidate[7]), we can at least stop behaving as if the God hypothesis is worthy of our collective respect.[8]

Ditto De la Rey.

Enjoy it. Hum it. Be entertained.

But be vigilant. Keep those baloney detectors switched on and calibrated.

De la Rey is a rousing popular Afrikaans song by a hitherto unknown artist that is seen by some to rally White against Black.

Who was Koos de la Rey?

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[1] Rumoured to be the father of Country music in South Africa… certainly the senior Country statesman.

[2] Exceptionally talented South African artist Chris Chameleon.

[3] 18 February 2007. Carte Blanche. (South African Dstv actuality program.) Producer : A2 Productions. Presenter : Ruda Landman. Researcher : Wynand Grobler.

[4] A political right wing motley of aggrieved Whites shaking lilliputian fists at the colossal Black democratically elected African National Congress government.

[5] Songs by South African superstar Steve Hofmeyr, the latter a rousing song in honour of Hofmeyr’s beloved Rugby Franchise, The Blue Bulls of Pretoria.

[6] Even the renowned South African business weekly, Financial Mail, carried comment, by Rapport (the world’s largest Afrikaans weekly) editor Tim du Plessis – De la Rey rides again … looking at the emergence of a new Afrikaner.

[7] Charles Smith. February 25, 2007. Hilary, Obama se sepie. Rapport. 23.

[8] With acknowledgement to A.N. Wilson, Against Religion.

Vol.2 No.6 - February 19, 2007

Like a thief in the night…

In writing this article, I am availing myself of the great liberty of eisegesis.

I recall my obfuscation, befuddlement and discombobulation, although I had not at the time the vocabulary to identify my youthful confusion and incomprehension in quite such definitive terms, when first my Afrikaans Language high school teacher, Broederbond membership card all but pinned to this beige safari suit lapel, announced that one may read into a text something not intended to be portrayed by an author… something even contrary to an author’s purport.

Mused the Apostle Peter in his second epistle (chapter three, and verse ten… although authorship is hotly contested): “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”

Written, of course, before he became the Vicar of Christ and the founding champion of the Stool that to this very day carries his illustrious name and is occupied, currently, by one Josef Ratzinger – very much not a Semite. Before, too, he took up office as Keeper of the Pearly Gates.

Methinks this “thief in the night” analogy apposite to the beguiling banter employed by the faithful in desperate attempts to muster even a valeity of support and credibility, incredulous as it may be, for religious tenets.

Man, I’m having fun with this!

A former, Apartheid regime, South African Minister of Foreign Affairs, Roelof “Pik” Botha, had the misfortune this last Saturday, to have an article on “creationism and evolution” published in a leading Afrikaans magazine, By, the week-end edition insert to the daily Die Burger. Entitled Wees ons onkundigheid genadig (Have mercy on our ignorance), Botha suffered the ignominy of stating “The theory of evolution bestows on God infinitely more power than does creationism… and should there be a form of continued existence after death, I should look forward to it, for my life here on earth was pleasant.”

My initial reaction was one of incredulity and mystification. My tashe quivered with amusement as I read and I broke into a gentle chuckle.[1]

My subsequent reaction was one of botheration. What was it that irked me so?

Eventually I was piqued. So I called a senior journalist friend and suggested that the editor of By be drawn and quartered at midday, Monday, upon Church Square in Cape Town. My friend stilled me and suggested that the editor of By was in fact an extremely competent journalist and…

I know. Of course I know. Liza Albrecht has my complete respect as an editor. I think she represents the future of (Afrikaans) journalism.

What vexed me about Botha’s article? And was it even important enough to merit indignation?

I turned to the Internet. As I am wont to do. I posted Ondermynende joernalistiek (Undermining Journalism) on Kletskerk – a thread that attracted some 300 hits to date, and some 40 responses.

I am discomfited, huffy even, probably incensed, because Botha, either by design or unwittingly, sneaked in one for “The King”. Like… a thief in the night: surreptitiously, furtively; sneakily.

I think it irresponsible and frankly, disrespectful to readers, for an editor to publish an article by a renowned and widely respected, iconic even, individual from a nostalgic recent past, suggesting – even only suggesting – the possibility of divine intervention in the origin and development of life and the universe, and the possibility of eternal life beyond the grave.

It is, I maintain, as irresponsible as would be the publication of an article suggesting that a sweet potato diet could possibly – even only “possibly” – cure AIDS… Even if such AIDS article strongly addressed the magnitude of the pandemic and the absolute need for continued research and vigilance to counter and obliterate the disease.

“The average By reader” – religious to at least the extent of squirming at the idea of the nullity of “God” will doubtlessly have her conviction that the God conjecture is a quite legitimate alternative weltanschauung worthy of consideration and respect, fortified by the article. It simply is not a legitimate alternative![2]

Botha’s underhanded remarks remind me of a parable by Douglas Adams, as retold by Richard Dawkins in Lament for Douglas: “A man didn’t understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box. manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained to him about high frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, about transmitters and receivers, about amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, about scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man listened to the engineer with careful attention, nodding his head at every step of the argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He really did now understand how televisions work. ‘But I expect there are just a few little men in there, aren’t there?’"

It is unacceptable for a leading secular newspaper to have the God hypotheses and eternal life promoted in its pages.

It is demeaning. It is pseudoscientific. It is derisory. It is opprobrious.

It must be opposed by sentient people rising to the challenge of incessantly indicating the irrationality of the God hypothesis; calling foul without fail when its mendacious head shows above the trench of wanton otherworldliness.[3]

I am ad idem with Richard Dawkins: "I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing upon religion."[4]

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[1] A reaction shared with Baron Gruner, the Austrian murderer who killed his wife in the Splugen Pass and came to the attention of Sherlock Holmes in one of Dr Watson’s renderings entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client. (As I have mentioned before, I am too having fun!)

[2] See Irreducible idiocy, TART Remarks, January 29, 2007.

[3] January 29, 2007.

[4] Michael Brooks and Helen Phillips. 18 November 2006. Beyond belief: In place of God. New Scientist. 2578: 8-11, reporting on a November 2006 La Jolla, California, symposium entitled "Beyond belief: Science, religion, reason and survival", hosted by the Science Network, a science-promoting coalition of scientists and media professionals convening at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.