The recent emotionally
charged and challenging comments of Stephen Fry on the possible existence and nature
of God might seem far removed from the horrific actions of ISIS in burning
alive its Jordanian captive and then issuing a sickeningly professional video
of the atrocity, but a worrying thread runs between them: acceptance of a simplistic
understanding of God and a literalist interpretation of ‘sacred texts’.
The attempts of ISIS to
justify its barbarity through a fundamentalist understanding of ‘an eye for an
eye’ is utterly unconvincing. The concept was originally introduced to stop
disproportionate punishment, but it has been twisted into a call for bloody revenge.
Equally disconcerting has been the criticism of ISIS by some Muslim scholars
who have claimed that Islamic law teaches that the perpetrators of the barbaric
act ought to be crucified or ‘have their limbs chopped off’ by way of
punishment. Others have argued that burning by fire is a punishment only God
can apply.
It is this approach to
God and religion that Stephen Fry has embraced as being authentic when he
criticised God for acting like a despot, causing the suffering of innocent
children while demanding cringing obedience and sycophantic worship from his
hapless creation. Stephen Fry is an intelligent man, capable of wrestling with
the intricacies of philosophy and theology; that he should vent his spleen on a
fundamentalist, Sunday-School cardboard cut-out version of God is beneath him.
It is precisely this that Russell Brand identified in his much more expansive
attempt to wrestle with the nature of ultimate reality.
People are, of course,
free to believe whatever they want, but there is real danger in otherwise
thoughtful people, used to taking nuanced views on serious issues, buying into
fundamentalist rhetoric. Some scientists, philosophers, teachers, footballers
and bus-drivers believe in the existence of God; some don’t, but it is
essential that everyone explores concepts of God and ultimate reality that do justice
to the full range of possibilities that exist.
To fail to do this is
to play into the hands of fundamentalists, be they Muslim, Christian or
atheist. An ‘all or nothing’, black or white analysis of reality feeds
extremism, fuels conflict and can even give a spurious veneer of credibility to
crusading maniacs who see themselves as upholding the truth against a sea of
error. Stephen Fry, I am certain, is the last person who would want to give any
succour to those joining the ranks of ISIS, but in adopting a monochrome,
simplistic understanding of God, he is, paradoxically and unintentionally, in
danger of doing precisely that.
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