Forever Jung

In one of my earlier blog posts (Jan 2009) I talked about my sudden fascination with Myers Briggs Personality Tests (MBTI) and how this would probably be a characteristically short lived fad for me. Well in this case, my interest in Jungian Type Theory has not been short lived and over the past year I have grown to be a fully fledged MBTI bore, expanding my collection of books which now include Jung for Beginners, The Essential Jung, The Undiscovered Self by Carl Gustav Jung, Gifts Differing by Isabel Briggs Myers, Please Understand Me II by David Kiersey (who developed the Kiersey Temperament Sorter), Type Talk: The 16 Personality Types and the latest addition to my library, Personality Type: An Owner’s Manual by Lenore Thomson, a former editor of the Jungian journal Quadrant and in my opinion the best book on personality type that I have read. Some of my fellow Humanists will be sceptical about Jungian psychology. Richard Dawkins has been scathing about Jung’s questionable pseudoscientific ideas, claiming in the God Delusion that Jung believed that books would spontaneously fly off his bookshelf. I gave an impromptu talk about the New Atheists on Monday in York when a planned presentation of YouTube comedy clips was scuppered by a dodgy internet connection. I put up a slide showing Dawkins’ 7 point scale of belief, with 7 being someone who is certain that there is no God and 1 being someone who knows that there is. Dawkins gave Carl Jung as an example of this type 1 certainty about God, quoting an interview given shortly before Jung’s death in with he said “I don’t need to believe in God, I know”. I am sceptical that Jung was claiming to believe in the God of traditional theism but that is a moot point. I think Jung was a more insightful thinker than Dawkins gives credit for. He may have had questionable beliefs in astrology and synchronicity but his ideas about personality type seem to ring true to me. Or maybe I am still a sucker for psychobabble.

At the time of my last blog post on MBTI I consistently tested as INTJ – the Mastermind, to use Kiersey’s terminology. I have since become convinced that I correspond much more readily with the INTP personality type – the Architect.

Good Morning Humberside

I have been invited back on to the BBC Radio Humberside equivalent of the BBC Radio Four Thought for the Day, on Andy Comfort’s breakfast show which is a 2 minute slot called Pause for Thought at a quarter to eight each morning (for a week in April). Yes, I know, I have a face for Radio. I am the first Humanist to be involved with this in our region, though other local stations have Humanists doing the same. Hopefully I will be the first of many. I did the week before Christmas – which was a bit of a surprise and took the opportunity to refute the old chestnut about atheists trying to ban Christmas. I pre-recorded all five sessions the week before, the day after our office Christmas party and was feeling a bit hung-over. Hopefully that didn’t come across in the recording. A friend suggested that I was a bit didactic, but being a bit platitudinous goes with the territory. It’s hard to sound natural when you are reading from a script but at least you can re-record if you mess up, which is not an option if you are going out live. A work colleague suggested I try a more light hearted approach, but that’s not really me. I am quite a serious person when it comes to my Humanist beliefs and I want to at least try to say something pensive without sounding as if I am stood in a pulpit. The British Humanist Association has been running a long campaign to have Humanists included in the rota of speakers on the national Thought for the Day slot on Radio Four. They allowed Richard Dawkins and Ariane Sherine (of Atheist Bus Campaign fame, above) to do a one off each but they have yet to agree to regular Humanist speakers. I had the pleasure of meeting the glamorous and intelligent Ariane Sherine the same day my first broadcast went out as she was giving a very funny talk at the North Yorkshire Humanist Group in York, which was excellent. I explained to Ariane that I was so impressed by her Thought for the day that I typed out what she had said and tried to pass it off as my own work to my wife, who proceeded to tell me that I had definitely not written it “... because you’ve got no feelings”. A bit harsh I thought. What I eventually came up with owed more to the popular Humanist philosopher A.C. Grayling. I now have to come up with another five ideas, any suggestions anyone?

Godless Vicars?

It is 30 years since the classic British situational comedy “Yes Minister” first aired. This much loved show ran for 3 seasons of 7 episodes followed by the sequel, “Yes, Prime Minister” between 1986-88. One of my favourite episodes was “Bishop’s Gambit” in which the now Prime Minister Jim Hacker had to choose one of the candidates put up by the Crown Appointments Commission for a vacant Bishopric in the Church of England. This episode parodies the realities of our state church which to this day is split between conservative evangelicals and catholics who are very religious in the sense usually understood, with conservative views on abortion, euthanasia, drug use, gay rights, etc, and who take the Bible and orthodox Christianity very seriously, and on the other hand liberal, left of centre, “modernists” who seem to come rather close to being atheists. It was often said that this was Margaret Thatcher’s favourite TV show and it was around this time in the 1980s that she vetoed the appointment of James Lawton Thompson as Bishop of Birmingham for his liberal or leftish views. Also around the time of “Yes, Prime Minister”, David Jenkins controversially became the Bishop of Durham and was hounded for his alleged disbelief if not for his left wing political views. Around this time I was a confirmed member of the Church of England and I could perhaps have cynically stayed the course as a non-believing Anglican as some others seem to have done. However, I would have found it impossible to square my own views with what I know to be the faith once delivered to the saints. I am a believer of sorts, just not in Christianity (or at least what I take to be Christianity) and so I have chosen to pursue what I perceive to be the right path, that of Humanism.

Non-Overlapping Magisteria

I have just finished watching the Howard Jacobson programme on the Bible on Channel 4. I wish he would replace the phrase “fundamentalist atheist” with “reactionary atheist” or something similar – to claim that Dawkins’ atheism is “fundamentalist” is wilfully misleading. He also talked about people being certain in their doubt - it doesn’t make sense, since doubt precludes certainty. When I gave a talk in Leeds a couple of weeks ago I put up a slide showing Dawkins’ 7 point scale of belief. Out of a room of 19 people, 3 claimed to be a 7 on the scale – they “knew that there was no God” – this is an attempt to prove a negative which none of the “New Atheists” would have any truck with. This is just a mirror image of religious fundamentalism, an attempt to feel more emotionally secure in whatever you believe by claiming that your beliefs are 100% certain. Of course, being sure that something is the case does not imply absolute certainty. Following Bertrand Russell, I do not believe there is a china teapot in orbit around the sun between Earth and Mars, though I can’t prove there isn’t.
I was also irritated by Jacobson’s defence of the non-literal truth of ancient scriptures. In truth, the only reason that some, more sophisticated, religious people have not continued to believe in the literal truth of scripture has been the constant chipping away at their certainties by scientists and philosophers like Richard Dawkins and his intellectual predecessors stretching back to the enlightenment. The idea of NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria) which was proposed by the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould in his book Rocks of Ages and which Jacobson was advocating is a position that is adopted to offer religious believers an opportunity to continue with their religious beliefs without undermining science education – but this is to ignore what many religious people really believe as was shown in the documentary. If any real evidence for God or the supernatural was discovered by science, we can be sure that these NOMA people would drop it in an instant. It isn’t Dawkins and Grayling who are failing to undercover the truth of the matter – it is weak apologists like Howard Jacobson and Karen Armstrong who want to have their cake and eat it.

Touched by His Noodley Appendage

I gave a talk at the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire in Leeds on Thursday evening, which appears to have been well received, though I went on a bit longer than I should have. Titled The New Atheists it was an opportunity to reflect on the end of the first decade of the new millennium which I suggested would be remembered for the rise of the new atheism or what some people would call “militant atheism". In the audience was Chris Worfolk of Leeds Atheist Society who I had met for the first time earlier in the week when he gave a talk to the North Yorkshire Humanist Group in York. I have been looking at some of the stuff Chris has been involved with on his website (see www.chrisworfolk.com) and on the Leeds Atheist website (see leeds.atheistsoc.org) and I have to say that for a young guy in his early twenties who has only recently finished university, he has achieved a great deal to promote Atheism and Humanism in the UK, going so far as to set up his own Foundation and organising a conference with big name speakers such as A.C. Grayling. Chris seems to be walking his talk, living out the Humanist mantra of living this one life to the full. Life is not a dress rehearsal for eternity, this is it and that it will never come again is what makes life so sweet. The great Humanist Carl Sagan was once asked what the meaning of life was. He answered “Do something meaningful”. Too many people are content to be spectators in the game of life, waiting for others to provide ready-made social institutions and belief systems. That’s too easy. The Humanist way is to seek happiness through self-fulfilment, daring to make your own decisions about the best way to achieve that happiness. Self-fulfilment does not imply a solipsistic, narcissistic self-obsession. The nineteenth century freethinker Robert Ingersoll thought that the way to be happy was to seek first the happiness of others. He was not wrong. Sometimes the best way to be self-fulfilled is through a commitment to activities which involve other people and most importantly, to ideas that are themselves more important than you are. Humanist ideas such as the open society, secularism, democracy, and free scientific enquiry fit the bill. I suppose all this sounds a bit austere and serious. One of the great strengths of the younger generation of atheists is a capacity to have a good time as can be seen from this clip of the Leeds Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster with the Revd. Chris Worfolk officiating.

Suspension of Disbelief

This Christmas saw the last episode of the classic BBC children’s Sci-Fi drama Dr Who to feature the actor David Tennant in the lead role. Tennant has proved to be one of the most popular of the eleven actors to play the role. It might feel awkward for some adults to admit to liking this long running and immensely popular show, mainly because of an association between science fiction and nerdy socially inadequate adolescent boys. I’m sure the cap fitted in my case and I was always interested in Science Fiction as a child. I used to read Isaac Asimov, who wrote The Foundation Trilogy. Asimov’s books The Bicentennial Man and I Robot were later made into movies and the eagerly awaited Foundation movie is currently being made. I also enjoyed watching the original series of Star Trek on a Saturday morning, another indicator of developing geekishness. At the time I was unaware of the close link between Science Fiction and the Humanist beliefs I adopted later in life. Isaac Asimov was a former president of the American Humanist Association, as was the science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut and more influentially Gene Rodenberry who was the creator of Star Trek - remember that there were no priests and no God on board the Enterprise in the far future! In fact the vision of the future presented in the Star Trek universe, a United Federation of Planets (with a logo almost identical to that of the United Nations) and a racially and culturally diverse humanity working together to explore space probably did a lot to lodge Humanist ideas in the developing minds of children everywhere, though they were almost certainly unaware of the word Humanist. The idea of a perfected logical and rational Spock, devoid of emotion clouding his judgement seems a bit naïve but Star Trek was way ahead of its time. On this side of the pond, the development of Dr Who was influenced by Douglas Adams who was a Humanist and an early writer on the series, also a close friend of Richard Dawkins who’s wife, Lalla Ward was one of the Doctors companions during the Tom Baker years. Dawkins even appeared in Dr Who himself in a recent episode. Arthur C. Clarke, writer of 2001 A Space Odyssey was another writer who was closely associated with the Humanist movement.
Whilst sat enjoying the Christmas episode of Dr Who, it’s hard not to start thinking of the absurdities of the Dr Who narrative, especially about the paradoxes of time travel, but enjoying science fiction is all about suspension of disbelief. I think that this enjoyment of magical thinking is healthy. The narratives associated with traditional religious beliefs are every bit as absurd as a Dr Who plot line. They only really become worthy of ridicule when someone chooses to take religious stories as corresponding to historical reality.

Dour atheistic Calvinists?

I have seen the annual recurrence of the debates within Humanism over the celebration of Christmas in the Think Humanism online discussion forum. Some, rather odd people in my opinion, are vexed over the issue of whether joining in with Christmas is a sell out to the still dominant religion that they have chosen to turn their back on. I lived in Edinburgh during my time at university and the Scots make a bigger deal of New Year (Hogmanay) than Christmas - indeed the English celebrations have a definite Scottish flavour . I saw in the New Year eating haggis, dancing to I would walk 500 miles and Donald where’s your troosers, not to mention the obligatory rendition of Auld Lang Syne, what’s more Scottish than that? Does joining in with Hogmanay suggest I am impersonating a Scotsman? Perhaps if I donned a kilt (as some do in England) I would be going too far. I think that there is an irony in that the reason the Scots focus on Hogmanay for their drunken revelries rather than Christmas is not that they are less religious (I think they are more so - or at least they were) but that the pious and puritan Christians of 16th century Scotland effectively banned the traditional Christmas to impose a more Christian version of it. The truth is that the cultural milieu we find ourselves in is not of our making but traditions gradually change and eventually new traditions will be invented that future generations will imagine to have existed since time immemorial. We all play our part in the formation of that future culture but I doubt if many of us will be around to see it arrive. Our Christmas probably owes more to Prince Albert and Charles Dickens than to the synoptic gospels and if you want to abolish it, perhaps you have more in common with those dour Scottish Calvinists than with the spirit of Humanism.