David Burchell, more secular possum stirring, and the religious wars continue unabated ...

Now where were we again?

Last thing I remember, before deja vu kicked in again, there was some talk about everybody having a happy holey day season, as if somehow we were off to spend our holey dollars in celebration of rampant materialism consumerism of the kind that makes this country great.

But were we any better off when the holey dollar replaced rum as the best and most reliable form of currency in the infant colony of NSW? (Before Federation 1788-1900 Currency Chaos).

I do vaguely remember promising to repay a debt to a Tasmanian. Never fear, the cheque is in the post, and will arrive post haste, thanks to the comrades in the post office returning from their strike to confront a belligerent knee capping management who thought it should be the job of postal workers to train their temporary strike breaking replacements.

Remind me of the bet again? Did I really say that in 2010, the commentariat columnists would at last retreat from their obsessive monomaniacal obsessive compulsive ranting, and arrive in a land of measured rational discourse? Where arguments are considered and weighed, and the public tone resembles the kind of elevated discussion the houyhnhnms managed in Gulliver's Travels, as opposed to the yahoo discourse the commentariat previously favoured?

Golly, I must have been as pissed as a parrot. Because here's good old David Burchell leading us down the garden path and into the new year with Take a cup of tolerance for Auld Lang Syne.

Amongst the sundry splendours of the always blithering Burchell, this one struck me as the neatest:

At a talk in Canberra a couple of years back, the Italian bishop Bruno Forte suggested unbelief ought properly to be seen as another kind of religious journey: "It is a passion for truth that pays a personal price for the bitter courage of not believing."

An unkind punter called the remark fanciful gibberish - I fancy they did so in the spirit of the new year and the joy of giving. Because of course as a theologian Bruno Forte would like nothing better to keep us all on some kind of religious journey, to match the folly of the journey of the papists.

Burchell himself of course is ready to join in the religious wars with vigour. You know, with the same sober spirit the Catholic church approaches gays, women, single mothers, the use of birth control, and so forth and etcetera.

And yet so few of the polemical unbelievers in our contemporary religion wars approach their task in this same sober spirit. Instead they utter specious homilies about the Inquisition (as if they had themselves been its victims), or construct laboured satires on the works of Mother Teresa, or seek to replace the New Testament with The Origin of Species.

In much the same way, dare one say it, that Burchell offers specious homilies about New Year's celebrations, hobbies, football, household pets, mechanical equipment, and Bacchanalian reveries. And constructs laboured satires on the secularist affinity with Caligula and his nihilism (come on down The Big Lebowsky).

Well anyone who thinks they can co-join the thoughts of Charles Lamb and Albert Camus is sure to end up with a heap of twaddle, and I commend you as you embark on your own painful spiritual journey by daring to read Burchell to the end, only to find that ascending the philosophical Himalayas with him will produce not one nugget or whit or jot of insight. But plenty of verbiage.

Not even the evocation of the straw dog of Caligula, with whom all modern secularists have a deep spiritual affinity, and a shared love of horses as most suitable way to find a replacement for Senator Conroy, will offer up much joy ... save the moment you arrive at this at the end of a verbal torture which makes the Inquisition seem like a romp:

Speaking to a group of Dominican friars in 1948, Camus suggested three cardinal principles for unbelieving philosophers such as himself. First, it wasn't his business to reproach Christians for failing to keep higher moral standards than his own. Second, "I should never start from the supposition that Christian truth is illusory, but merely from the fact I cannot accept it."

Well yes indeed, provided what the goose Burchell prescribes for unbelievers is good for the gander believers. Namely, it's not the business of Christians to reproach secularists for failing to keep higher moral standards than his own. Let's see the Pellist and Jensenist heretics choke on that one. And second? Christians should never start from the supposition that secularist truth is illusory, merely from the fact that they cannot accept or believe it.

In that way we might avoid tosh about Charles Lamb thinking that New Year celebrations somehow reflect our common descent from Adam, when of course they represent our common descent from decent caring pagans who just wanted a good time at year's end and year's beginning. (Or change of season, or witch burning, or whatever).

Oh wait, and there's a third issue:

And third, "I shall not try to change anything that I think or anything that you think: the only possible dialogue is between people who remain what they are and speak their minds."

Yippie, no more missionaries, no more trying to change what people might think.

Wait a second. The full import is slowly coming to me. Dialogue with a mad fundamentalist Islamic? Who can remain what he or she is and speak their minds? Jerk the other chain please. You mean like blow you up if they don't happen to like you in a generic way, nor the plane in which you happen to be flying?

Well fuck that possible dialogue between people who remain what they are and speak their minds. The fundamentalists can take their dialogue and shove it wherever they like, but preferably not in my vicinity.

As a breviary of new year's resolutions for our new era of religious wars, it's not a bad start.

No you goose, it's a hopelessly flawed and fundamentally silly place in which to start. Because you see the religious wars, as always, are primarily between the religious believers. They make up the bulk of the loons on the planet, as we're constantly reminded. Any sensible secularist doesn't want any part of a religious war, if only the pious and the righteous would just shut the fuck up.

What sort of dialogue is it that sends a cartoonist into a panic room while a mad slavering axe wielder dances through the house?

Oh dear.

Wouldn't you guess it that a couple of people gave me atheist tomes for the Xmas season. Do I exude that much secularism?

Anyhoo, I've always liked this one, to be found in the aggregation of quotes in The Atheist's Bible:

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Thanks to Stephen Henry Roberts for that, and now Burchell can start his own atheist spiritual religious journey to who knows where.

Wait a tic, I've got it, to the land above the faraway tree dedicated to incoherent blathering. Just include me out on the journey.

Because if not changing what you think is a form of dialogue, then pardon me if I remain what I am and speak my mind. A pox on all mad religious believers who think it their business to send unbelievers to hell while they ascend to heaven and make out with the virgins ... or spend eternity playing golf on a superfine course. Whatever your delusion, keep it to yourself.

Meantime, loon pond has opened strongly, in much the same way as duck hunting is once again the go in Victoria. As we all clutch our breviary of nonsense, it looks like it's going to be a wonderfully loony year ...

(Below: preparing for a secular religious journey, with dire results, unless you think topsy turvy land is the place to be).