Maclean's Interview With Julian Barnes

This week's Maclean's (Nov 10th issue) features an interview with Julian Barnes, author of Nothing to be Frightened of, a memoir/essay about death without God. In the interview, Kenneth Whyte asks Barnes about his atheism, among other things. Unfortunately, the interview isn't available online (yet?), but I've transcribed some of the relevant parts below:

Q: Your first line is, "I don't believe in God, but I miss him."

A: That's right, yes. I just found myself saying that when I was on some public stage and someone said, "Do you believe in God?" and that was my instant response, and it was one that on reflection I thought was true. I grew up in a family where, probably from the point when my grandmother lost her Methodist faith and became a Communist - or socialist - nearly, oh, 90 years ago, there hasn't been anything that you would call faith in the family, let alone church attendance. But, you know, when a great story ends I think we all miss it, and it was a great story. There were aspects of it that leave a sense of want. One is that if life is a mere prelude or preparation for something else, then life becomes both more trivial and more important, and if not then we can grow to our full height but that height is comparatively dwarfish. If this is all there is and this is all we are then it's a bit disappointing.

Q: You do talk about various writers and friends contemplating death and contemplating heaven and I can't recall one depiction of heaven being the least appealing.

A: Well, you sound a bit like my brother. I regard myself as a rationalist, but my brother - who's spent his life teaching ancient philosophy - is a super-rationalist and makes me seem sloppy and barely reasonable, and so part of the book is a friendly fraternal argument with my brother. He says, "I'd hate to have to spend eternity in the presence of saints and martyrs," and I say, "Well, actually, saints weren't just pious, boring fellows. They were often at the cutting edge of social change and they had often very interesting deaths, as well. And in medieval times they're probably some of the most intelligent, sophisticated people on earth. After all, Dom Pérignon - after whom the champagne is named - was a monk." I don't see why you should think that heaven must be infinitely boring.

Q: You write elsewhere that we have replaced our traditional ideas of heaven with a secular, modern heaven of self-fulfillment, where it all comes down to development of the personality and having a high-status job and pursuing material goods, which sounds, relative to what you've described, rather grim.

A: I think as modern society has become more secular we sell ourselves a sort of junior version of paradise. We too often need someone else to define what it is that we want, and in the old days religion did that for us, and nowadays it's multinational corporations trying to sell us stuff, or tone our bodies, or make us forget about death, so I don't think it's a substantial improvement.

Q: You quote somebody - I think it might have been Robespierre - on atheism being...

A: Aristocratic. Yes, that's Robespierre. I find that the hardline atheist's dismissal of people's religious beliefs as merely stupid and primitive is arrogant. And, you know, I agree with them that this life is all we have in all probability, but I don't believe that people who have a religious faith are necessarily either bigots or idiots. What I'm saying is that I find the spiritual or religious impulse in people to be natural and to be respected, even if the doings in the name of churches are often nefarious and oppressive.

Q: There seems to be most certainty about atheism in the U.K., when in a lot of the rest of the world we're seeing something of a revival in religious fervour.

A: Yes. The Brits, after all, gave Darwin to the world. I think in Europe the retreat of the traditional religions is strong. The collapse of religion in Ireland, for example, and France, and to a lesser extent Italy has been quite spectacular.

Q: America being one grand exception.

A: America is one grand exception indeed. America manages to combine extreme materialism with extreme religiosity, and it is a bizarre thought that in this presidential cycle, we could have had a woman in the White House, we might have a black man in the White House, but if either of them had said they were atheists neither of them would have had a hope in hell, all too literally.

[...]

I found Barnes' thought process interesting, so I'll try to get a hold of his book as soon as possible, and hopefully, I'll be able to update this post with a link to the whole interview. He's a good antidote to Hitchens' kind of atheism, so I definitely look forward to hearing more from him in the near future.

Quebec's Atheist-Headed Bloc Quebecois And The Catholic Vote

(This is a repost of a topic I started on the Friendly Atheist forum)

I read an interesting article this week in Maclean's (a Canadian political magazine) talking about the overwhelming Catholic Quebecois support for the province's sovereigntist party, the Bloc Québécois, despite the fact that the Bloc's leader, Gilles Duceppe, is a pro-choice, pro-eutanasia, pro-gay rights atheist, all positions (atheist translates into the party's secularist position) also espoused by the party.

From the article "Ungodly Union":

Notions to the contrary aside, Talin says, religion is alive, well, and politically active in Quebec. Even stranger: despite the Conservatives' family-oriented platform designed to attract churchgoing folk, it's the Bloc Québécois — a left-wing party whose leader is a former Communist and avowed pro-choice atheist who often rails against the Church's encroachment in public affairs — that does surprisingly well with the faithful.

In 2000, Talin concluded, roughly 50 per cent of Quebec's practising Catholics voted for the Bloc. Though much has changed in eight years, notably the formation of the Conservative party and its recognition of la nation Québécoise, that support has remained relatively stable.

What I find interesting, having read so many American secularists' concerns that religion sometimes becomes the number one issue in an election, is that the Quebecois are placing their national identity and separatist views on a much higher level than their religious views.

I think that, from a historian's point of view, this is somewhat explainable. The period between 1945 and 1959 in Quebecois history is known as la Grande Noirceur, the Great Darkness or Dark Ages, during which Quebec's Prime Minister Maurice Duplessis strongly opposed education and industrial development. The Catholic Church had a real vice-grip on public life at this point, controlling everything from education and hospitals to the printing press and what was deemed "acceptable" in the arts. In the 1960s, a new intellectual and cultural movement emerged in Quebec society. It is called la Revolution tranquille, the Quiet Revolution. It is a rejection of the traditional values, mainly through literary art, but also in the media, the political institutions, education, women's rights, etc. It is during this period that Quebecois society became heavily secularized and religion was ejected from public institutions.

However, Catholisism is in no way unimportant to the Quebecois society today and the separatist movement has been on the decline recently. In fact, in their latest election platform, the Bloc Québécois don't mention sovereignty as a current political issue. The Conservatives have been making headway into Quebec, traditionally a Bloc and Liberals stronghold, in this election, but the Bloc is still relevant to the Quebecois, despite recent criticisms stating the contrary.

Anyways, I just thought this would be interesting to share and I wanted to write down my thoughts on it since the Great Darkness and Quiet Revolution periods have always fascinated me. If you ever get the chance, do read some novels from that period - they are well worth it. One of the best (I should know; I wrote my Extended Essay thesis on it) is A Season in the Life of Emmanuel by Marie-Claire Blais. Good stuff and a text that really made me reflect critically on religion in my life during the period when I affirmed my atheism and feminism.