The Digested Twenty-first Century

by John Crace

  I’m going to spend the next 250 pages on a quick trawl of comparative religion from the pre-modern to the present day. It won’t help make the case for God, but it will make me look clever and keep the publishers happy, so let’s hope no one notices!

  The desire to explain the unknowable has always been with us, and the most cursory glance at the cave paintings at Lascaux makes it clear these early Frenchies didn’t intend us to take their drawings literally. Their representations of God are symbolic; their religion a therapy, a sublimation of the self. Something that fat bastard Hitchens should think about.

  Much the same is true of the Bible. Astonishingly, the Eden story is not a historical account, nor is everything else in the Bible true. The Deuteronomists were quick to shift the goalposts of the meaning of the Divine when problems of interpretation and meaning were revealed. So should we be. Rationalism is not antagonistic to religion. Baby Jesus didn’t want us to believe in his divinity. That is a misrepresentation of the Greek pistis. He wanted everyone to give God their best shot and have a singalong Kumbaya.

  We’ll pass over Augustine and Original Sin, because that was a bit of a Christian own goal, and move on to Thomas Aquinas, in whom we can see that God’s best hope is apophatic silence. We can’t say God either exists or doesn’t exist, because he transcends existence. This not knowing is proof of his existence. QED. A leap of faith is in fact a leap of rationality. Obviously.

  Skipping through the Kabbalah, introduced by the Madonna of Lourdes and Mercy (1459–), through Erasmus and Copernicus, we come to the Age of Reason. It was unfortunate that the church rejected Galileo, but that was more of a post-Tridentine Catholic spat than a serious error and it didn’t help that a dim French theologian, Mersenne, conflated the complexities of science with intelligent design, but we’ll skip over that.

  Things came right with Darwin. Many assume he was an atheist; in reality he was an agnostic who, despite being a lot cleverer than Dawkins, could not refute the possibility of a God. Therefore God must exist, or we drift into the terrible nihilism of Sartre where we realise everything is pointless. Especially this book.

  The modern drift to atheism has been balanced by an equally lamentable rise in fundamentalism. Both beliefs are compromised and misconceived. The only logical position is apophatic relativism, as stated in the Jeff Beck (1887–) lyric, ‘You’re everywhere and nowhere, Baby. That’s where you’re at.’

  I haven’t had time to deal with the tricky issues of the after-life that some who believe in God seem to think are fairly important.

  But silence is often the best policy – geddit, Hitchens? And the lesson of my historical overview is that the only tenable religious belief is one where you have the humility to constantly change your mind in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

  God is the desire beyond this desire, who exists because I say so, and the negation of whose existence confirms his transcendence. Or something like that.

  And if you believe this, you’ll believe anything.

  Digested read, digested: The case dismissed.

  Religion for Atheists

  by Alain de Botton (2012)

  The most boring question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true. Manifestly, none are. Yet this should not stop us cherry-picking the bits we like and repackaging them as self-help aphorisms for a liberal middle-class who consider themselves too clever for Paulo Coelho. I was brought up a committed atheist, but even I had a crisis of faithlessness that originated in listening to Bach’s cantatas, was developed by exposure to Zen architecture and became overwhelming on reading my own prose.

  Why then should secular society lose out on the benefits a religion can offer merely because it rejects certain of its catch-phrases? Is there not a middle way where Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins can join hands and teach the world to sing in perfect harmony? My strategy, then, is to take various religious principles completely out of context and apply them as feelgood, quasi-spiritual soundbites to areas such as education, literature and architecture. And if mention is made here of only three of the world’s largest religions – Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism – it is no sign of anxiety that I might get a fatwa if I also rope in Islam.

  One of the losses modern society feels most keenly is that of a sense of community. Religions may have evolved out of a need to enforce social cohesion, but one cannot deny the sense of belonging that going to church confers on the participants. In our atavistic, rationalist world we have lost these connections. While we may surrender up to half our income in taxation, we have no sense of how that money is being spent. How much better it would be if the less fortunate members of the polity were able to congregate in one place to say thank you to me in person while the Monteverdi Choir sings Mozart’s Mass in C Minor.

  A squalid new-build university in north London. Not at all like the university I went to, but one to which the little people can reasonably aspire. Yet what are they being taught? Land reform in 18th-century France? What is the purpose of that? Literature and history are superficial categories. How much greater benefit would there be to student and society alike if universities were to have a Richard and Judy Department for Relationships or a Deepak Chopra Centre for Personal Growth? Imagine also the power of hearing Montaigne’s essays rewritten as versicles and responses with a 100-strong student chorus after every sentence.

  Religion may offer empty promises of a happier afterlife, but we should not overlook its power in helping people to cope with the fact that they are never going to be as rich or as clever as me. Face it, some people are born losers and some aren’t – and the losers need whatever consolation they can find. The orthodoxy of modern science is that we will eventually be able to explain everything in material terms, yet what science ought to be doing is helping us celebrate those things we will never master. Thus we would do well to prostrate ourselves in front of an image of Brian Cox and meditate on the 9.5 trillion kilometres that comprise a single light year.

  One of the great miseries imposed on atheists is the renunciation of ecclesiastical art. Yet what person has not been enriched by the altarpiece by Matthias Grunewald for the Monastery of St Colin in Beckenham? The stations of the cross help the religious in their suffering, yet what is to stop us imposing our own spiritual needs on modern art? What was Christ’s crucifixion but an existential dilemma? Viewed through this perspective, the secular can once more reclaim the Sistine Chapel as a symbol of a male midlife crisis. So let’s do away with the grubby architecture of northern British towns and rebuild a new Jerusalem in north London, a temple to myself and Auguste Comte.

  Digested read, digested: Yet more De Bottonanism.

  Wonders of Life

  by Brian Cox (2013)

  Here’s a photo of me standing on a rock looking wistful. Here’s another photo of me sitting on a bench looking soulful. Here’s yet another photo ... Cut them out. Put them on your wall. Make a calendar. B xxx

  I confess that when we began thinking about Wonders of Life, my first thought was ‘Why me?’ as I gave up biology as an academic subject in 1984. But then I looked in the mirror and I thought: ‘Yeah. That’s amaaazin.’ Evolution, DNA and butterflies. They’re amaaazin, too. I mean, look at this blade of grass. It’s basically made of the same shit as you and me. That’s like, mind-blowin. More so for me than for you. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

  Water. It’s magnificent. Every time a new star is born, a chain of events is set in place, catapulting hydrogen and oxygen atoms on an interstellar journey of billions of miles that ends up in my bath. I find it so hard to get my head around that. Did you know there are two species perfectly adapted for walking on water? One are insects known as gerridae; the other is me.

  Then there’s sunshine. Virtually every living thing on the planet is ultimately powered by sunshine, which is why I started writing this sentence lying down in a field near the South Downs and finished it on a train in Mexico. See my ta
n? That’s what happens when UV photons travel millions of miles to react with the melanin in my skin. Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s OK if you linger on this page. I don’t mind.

  Colours. They are amaaazin and all. Who’d want to do all those drugs when you can just go out into nature and see all these reds and blues and yellows and greens. Wow! And then there’s my eyes. Have you ever seen such a hypnotic brown? Pigment of the gods.

  Now take a look at this picture. Do you notice anything unusual about it? Yes, that’s right. I’m not in it. It’s just a boring shot of cyanobacteria under the microscope. So let’s move on. Air. Weird how something so light can be so heavy to explain. Like when did it first support life? I mean, what is life anyway? Not even Schrödinger knew for sure. So here I am on the Taal volcano in the Phillipines to purr on about the first law of thermodynamics. Are you getting sweaty? I know I am. Try hard and you can measure your desire.

  Now let’s think about photosynthesis and entropy. On second thoughts, let’s not. Let’s just look at some more amaaazin pictures of animals and birds and fish and insects and all sorts. Some of them are really, really big and some of them are really, really small and the totally amaaazin thing is that it’s not a coincidence. We’re all one big family made out of the same molecular compounds. Though some of us are arranged rather more photogenically. And the most amaaazin thing of all is that we are all still evolving, so it’s possible that there will one day be a scientist even lovelier than me.

  There’s so much left to say about carbon and quasars and mitochondria but what really does my head in is that there are over half a trillion galaxies in the observable universe; the idea that there are no other planets out there with webs of life at least as complex as our own seems to me an absurd proposition. Which means that somewhere in a parallel space-time continuum, there is another drop-dead gorgeous rock legend standing on a Pacific atoll as David Attenborough whispers from on high: ‘Verily it is written that you are the chosen one.’

  Digested read, digested: The Life of Brian.

  THRILLERS

  Liberation Day

  by Andy McNab (2002)

  The sub surfaced just off the Algerian coast. ‘Ready?’ I barked to Hubba-Hubba and Lofti. They slung their waterproof bags over their shoulders and nodded. We dived in and headed for the shore. A three-mile swim in icy waters was nothing compared to my training in the Regiment. It was then just a 20km sprint to Zeralda’s compound.

  Lofti lobbed a stun grenade, and Hubba-Hubba and I ran in. ‘It’s a fuck-up,’ shouted Hubba-Hubba. Instead of just Zeralda, there was another man, Greaseball, and a gang of frightened boys. ‘Leave these pervs,’ I yelled. ‘It’s Zeralda we want.’ I tapped him twice in the forehead and sliced his head off.

  ‘I swear I’ve given up all my dirty op work,’ I said to Carrie, back in Boston.

  ‘I know, I love you.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ countered George, Carrie’s father. ‘I could have sworn you had been working for me in Algeria.’

  ‘You bastard, Nick,’ Carrie shouted at me. ‘I’m never talking to you again.’

  ‘You bastard, George,’ I said.

  ‘No hard feelings, Nick, but we need you. Your Algerian job has put the wind up al-Qaida. You took out one of their main hawallada, their money man, and now they are panicking. They’re sending two men to France to collect cash from their three other hawallada. Your job is to kill them and prevent world terrorism.’

  ‘Jesus fuck, Greaseball is our contact,’ I said. ‘But we’ve got a job to do, so let’s do it.’

  Hubba-Hubba, Lofti and I recceed the marina. ‘I’ve spotted the Romeos.’ Lofti replied with two clicks. ‘Preparation is everything,’ I told them. ‘We must leave no traces.’ I sliced off my fingertips, burnt them and drank the ashes with a glass of my urine.

  I slid on to the boat, set the charge, and followed the Romeos to the first meet. I dosed the mark with ketamine, and dumped him into the back of the Megane. One down.

  ‘Fuck, it’s a trap.’ Hubba-Hubba and Lofti bled to death as the lead flew.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said George. ‘Greaseball has double-crossed al-Qaida and stolen their money. So let him go.’

  I thought of Hubba-Hubba and Lofti and of that pervert making off with the dosh. It wasn’t enough to have prevented dozens of major terrorist incidents around the globe. I wanted revenge. I dialled the code into my phone and Greaseball’s boat turned into a fireball.

  Digested read, digested: Nick Stone saves the world again and still nobody can be bothered to thank him.

  Resurrection Men

  by Ian Rankin (2002)

  DI Rebus pulled deeply on his cigarette and eyed up his new colleagues. The Wild Bunch – McCullough, Gray and Ward. All of them known for pushing the law to the limit – too far at times – and who, like him, now found themselves on punishment block at Tulliallan police college for retraining.

  ‘We’ll start with team building,’ said DCI Tennant. ‘Look at the Lomax case. See if there’s anything that got missed.’

  Could this be a coincidence? Did they know that Rebus had been more involved in this case than he had ever admitted? Maybe it was him being set up, rather than the Wild Bunch.

  ‘I’m not happy about this,’ said Rebus. ‘I got myself thrown off the Marber case to help you out here, and I feel like I’m making no progress.’

  ‘Just keep at it,’ soothed the chief constable. ‘We know they took the Bernie Johns money, we just can’t prove it. Go and have a drink.’

  Rebus poured himself a large whisky, put Led Zeppelin on the turntable and settled back into his chair. Somehow he felt that the Weasel, the Diamond Dog and Big Ger would soon be making an appearance. He picked up his phone.

  ‘How’s the Marber case?’ he asked.

  ‘Well. Laura the prostitute’s been killed by Donny Dow, one of Big Ger’s boys and...’ DS Siobhan Clarke’s voice tailed off. She’d been well trained by Rebus. She had a well-stocked record collection and she was learning not to tell anyone anything. With any luck, she would soon be a fully fledged maverick with a book of her own, rather than playing sidekick to Rebus.

  ‘I hear the Diamond Dog turned up dead,’ McCullough taunted Rebus. ‘Bit convenient for you and Big Ger, eh?’

  ‘There’s a warehouse full of drugs being guarded by the police,’ he said to the three of them over several drinks. Do you fancy a piece of the action?’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ they replied.

  ‘Well, you can’t. It’s far too dangerous,’ Rebus responded nervously. Damn, his plan had gone completely wrong.

  ‘I’ve got the feeling that McCullough, Gray and Ward are involved in the Marber case, but I need some help proving it,’ Rebus whispered to Clarke.

  ‘Jesus, sir, you look half dead,’ she said a little while later.

  ‘You should see the others,’ he laughed.

  ‘Well you’ve solved both the Marber and the Lomax cases. How do you do it?’

  ‘Do you think I’d tell you?’

  Digested read, digested: The bodies pile up as fast as the drinks, as Edinburgh’s finest makes his annual appearance.

  Avenger by Frederick Forsyth (2003)

  Freddy put down his copy of the Daily Telegraph and sighed. The stock market hadn’t been kind to the Master Storyteller. He pressed the secret panel of his large oak desk. It was time to bring his trusty Montblanc fountain pen out of retirement.

  * * *

  Anyone watching the 51-year-old wheeze along the New Jersey streets could have been forgiven for not realising they were in the presence of the fittest, cleverest, noblest and most dangerous man in the world.

  Calvin Dexter had been brought up the hard way. He fought in Vietnam and he and his senior officer became the most feared Tunnel Rats in the US army. Their nicknames were Mole and Badger.

  When the war ended Cal put himself through law school and became a brilliant public defender. After his wife and child tragically died he left the
law to disappear into anonymity. Only those who really needed his services would know where to find him.

  * * *

  It had been many years since Ricky Colenso had disappeared in the former Yugoslavia. At last, his grandfather, the Canadian billionaire Steve Edmond, had a lead. A body had been discovered in a slurry pit and the man suspected of the atrocity was Serbian warlord Zoran Zilic.

  ‘I don’t care how much it costs, I want him brought to justice,’ said Edmond.

  It was June 2001.

  * * *

  Cal checked the small ads. He had a job. His superb tracking skills quickly picked up the trail. His aircraft had been spotted in the emirate of al-Fujairah, and from that it was relatively simple to deduce that Zilic was now living in a heavily protected fortress in Surinam.

  It was July 2001.

  * * *

  CIA chief Paul Deveraux leant forward and spoke to his deputy, Kevin McBride. ‘We can’t let anything happen to Zilic,’ he said. ‘We know al-Qaida is about to launch a major attack on the west and Zilic has promised to lead us to Osama bin Laden.’

  It was August 2001.

  * * *

  ‘So,’ thought Cal, ‘the Americans are on to me. Shouldn’t make much difference.’

  Armed only with a penknife, Cal skipped through the inhospitable terrain, waltzed past the private militia, swam through the piranha-infested stream, pirouetted through the dogs and the minefields and boarded Zilic’s private jet.