In January 1984, a 12-year-old was shipped off to Catholic boarding school by his parents to begin his secondary education in Vryheid, northern KwaZulu-Natal.
That young man was yours truly. Innocent and idealistic, I joined 200-odd other young people aged between 10 and about 20 years old at Inkamana High School. One of my mentors was one Mrs Lesala, who instructed our grade-eight class in English and history.
Despite the fact that she was one of only two black teachers in a sea of German, British and American instructors in the school, I didn’t particularly like her. She seemed to me unnecessarily abrasive. That was 23 years ago, but the lingering memory of Mrs Lesala in my mind is that of a perpetually short-tempered woman.
Until one glorious Monday mid-morning in February, that is. We had an English double period from about 10am onwards. As usual for that morning slot, I was dreading Mrs Lesala’s appearance to give us grief about our atrocious spelling, synonyms, passive voice etc.
That morning she walked on to the creaking wooden floorboards of our classroom with more spring in her step than we had ever witnessed. She seemed … (was it possible?) … rather jovial. She was actually whistling. Sprightly. Making eye contact with our snotty-nosed selves. She even shared a joke with one troublesome fellow, Poka from Barberton. They had never got along before.
And then abruptly, she put down the English grammar book, stepped up to the blackboard and started writing what looked like a poem. Ten minutes later our classroom and the adjoining corridor was filled with the melodic sounds of our innocent, sweet voices rising to the skies in unison. Mrs Lesala had just abandoned our English lesson to teach us a hymn we had never heard before.
No explanation. No reason advanced. I still remember the melody like it was yesterday. The words are a little bit fuzzy.
“Oh my Redeemer
What a friend Thou art to me
Oh Thou my refuge
I have found in Thee
When the way was dreary
And my heart was so oppressed
‘Twas Thy voice that lulled me
To a calm sweet rest
Chorus:
Nearer draw nearer
Till my soul was lost in Thee
Nearer draw nearer
Blessed Lord to Thee”
Five days later, Mrs Lesala perished in a horrific car accident on one of the province’s roads. She used to commute to Pietermaritzburg, about 250km south-east of Vryheid, to spend her weekends with her husband who was an attorney with a practice in that town, if my memory serves me well.
The news of her death was broken to us around dinner time on the Monday following her accident by our head boy, a chap we called Javas (a senior Department of Education official these days). A stunned silence descended upon the room.
Northern KwaZulu-Natal is notorious for its violent thunderstorms at that time of year. A vicious storm was raging outside. The lights went off and, after a few minutes, someone had lit some candles. And then in the dim, listless candlelight Javas started singing the first notes of the Nearer Draw Nearer hymn, in a quivering voice. He could not have been more than 18 at the time, yet his voice had a deep, rich maturity.
We buried her the following weekend. At some point, the church was flooded with angelic voices singing Nearer Draw Nearer in hushed tones. By that time I had learned that she had been teaching other grades the same hymn. It was the first of a few dozen moments in my life when I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that God exists.
Jarred Cinman recently wrote an intellectually sound, compelling piece on these very pages entitled, “Why atheists are just plain right”.
I guess I could go on a pseudo-intellectual rant and try to use my story to poke holes in Jarred’s rationale. I could point out that atheism is an ideology that attempts to prove the impossible; the non-existence of a God. And I could point out that atheism cannot exist in the absence of the existence of the concept of a God — which, paradoxically, serves as further proof of the existence of God and how atheists are smoking some really strong shit.
I could point out that applying one’s intellect in an attempt to understand matters of the spirit is a bit like switching on the microwave oven in order to catch up on some SABC news. Wrong appliance.
But I won’t go down that low road. All I have is a song. And I’m willing to put my pragmatic, cynical Thought Leading reputation on the line by sharing this irrational, superstitious side of me.
Eat your heart out, Jarred Sin Man.
“Nearer draw nearer Blessed Lord to Thee”
Ndumiso Ngcobo is the author of the recently released book Some of My Best Friends Are White. (Two Dogs, ISBN 978-1-92013-718-2)
silwanekanjila@gmail.com
As usual, and not to be unkind, this piece takes the schmaltzy, cuddly, warm and fuzzy, personal experience route to try and counter the rational arguments I presented. We are meant to read through this nicely written, evocative personal account and sigh and say “Wow, this guy is so lucky to be so in tune and happy and contented, he must have the truth”.
Eat your heart out Jarred Sin Man. Condescending and smug, the believer’s retort to the atheist’s arrogance and intellectualism.
Let me deal, quickly, with your “pseudo-intellectual” contribution to a rational argument against atheism:
1. “atheism is an ideology that attempts to prove the impossible; the non-existence of a God.”
This is, in a way, a fair comment, although only in a way. The fact is that the onus of proof is on YOU sir. Atheism is not non-theism. It’s a refusal to take on a belief state in favour of your god. No atheist spends time actively PROVING there is no god. Rather, we spend our time disproving religious claims, knocking down arguments FOR him. That’s all we have to do. We never came up with this nonsense in the first place.
2. “atheism cannot exist in the absence of the existence of the concept of a God — which, paradoxically, serves as further proof of the existence of God and how atheists are smoking some really strong shit.”
This argument is so weak it beggars belief. It’s like a reverse ontological argument, but doesn’t even have any of the charm of the original. You’re actually USING atheism to PROVE god exists? Ok so if I don’t believe in Santa Claus, then Santa Claus exists?
I don’t believe in Santa Claus! Whew, a lot of kids out there are going to be seriously chuffed this Christmas.
Listen, the argument that you feel better because you believe in God is no argument at all. I’m happy for you, really I am. That feeling of awe and wonder you experience, sense of purpose, it’s indeed enviable.
However, and this is the crux, that contributes exactly nothing to the debate. You “knew” god existed?? No, you BELIEVED god existed. You cannot assert knowledge via belief, surely you realise that.
You, like all your fellow believers, are making FACT claims about the universe. You want me and others to accept that it’s a fact that there is a god, that he created the world, that he listens to our prayers. This is not a personal thing. It’s something you are stating about my world and yours.
For that, your own poetic life experiences are not only insufficient evidence, they’re no evidence at all.
Just don’t die on us now Silwane, we don’t know the hymn yet…
I believed in Adam and Eve and the dinosaurs, simultaneously, until I was 13.
Thats powerful my Chief!! “nearer to thee oh Lord we come”..God is real!!
Musa – Back off! It’s my life I can die if I want to.
Sarah – you and me both. Leprechauns too.
Jarred, Jarred, Jarred.
[Fistfight on Thought Leader! Fistfight![
It was bound to happen. Sigh!
How do I even begin to respond to your complete misinterpretation of my piece without being ‘unkind’ to the point where it sounds like I’m suggesting that your suffer from hallucinations?
In your overzealous clamour towards intellectual posturing you seem to be missing a pretty elementary detail. And I feel kinda stupid pointing this out but; my piece is precisely what you ‘accuse’ it of being: “ a schmaltzy, cuddly, warm and fuzzy, personal experience..”. I said as much in the piece itself.
And then your hallucination kicks in. The purpose of the piece was never to counter anything you wrote. Your post was a well-written, rational and intellectual piece on new atheism and mine was a …well, everything you accuse it to be. A personal account of what I believe.
I have personally no interest in engaging people on a serious level on anything (hence the light-hearted, oft-hallucinatory note of my posts). In the 35 years I’ve been alive, I have learned that debate, discourse and intellectual engagement very rarely yields the desired effect. People hardly ever emerge from a debate thinking, “you know, Jarred is right and I’m an idiot’.
But, to quote Michael Corleone, “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
In your piece, you make a very compelling argument that untold suffering has been unleashed on the world in the name of religion. But a HUGE gaping hole is the link that allows you to make this giant quantum leap in logic:
“Untold evil has been unleashed on the world by religious people = God does not exist.”
Help me out. When I was 21 years old, I also immersed myself in atheism. It’s a healthy thing – for people that age. I was never able to make a rational link between the evils of organized religion and the non-existence of God. Fill the gap for me.
What a lot of atheist seem to miss is that they do exactly what they accuse religious people of. Atheism ends up being a religion itself. The possibility of the existence of a God becomes such a scary prospect it drives atheist up the hocus pocus path they pin on believers. There is no empirical test one can perform to prove the existence/non-existence of God, therefore we are all shooting in the dark. In the end it is about belief for atheists/believers alike. To quote a much smarter person: –
“In order to be certain that God doesn’t exist, you have to possess a godlike mental capacity – the ability to be 100% certain. A human can’t be 100% certain about anything. Our brains aren’t that reliable. Therefore, to be a true atheist, you have to believe you are the very thing that you argue doesn’t exist: God.”
I look forward to what you hallucinate me to be saying again.
By the way; is anyone keeping score?
Round 1: Sin Man
Round 2: Irrational believer
Somebody take over the calling of the rounds.
I chose agnosticism precisely so I did not have to keep score.
Excellent.
*Pulls up a chair, opens a packet of Sweet Chutney chips and cracks a six pack*
This is better than the World Cup rugby guys. in the face of the Almighty or the almighty (depending on which side of the debate you’re on) we’re all underdogs.
Will happily be the Third Umpire and make the marginal calls. I smell a reality TV show in the offing.
Oh and Ndumiso, at the risk of revealing the contents of our private correspondence, you are on record as referring to Barry Manilow as God. Interested to see how that squares up with your argument. If it’s true, am looking forward to Easter.
*Backs off before getting involved in the debate*
Methought it was “Gods” life, he can take it when he/she wants to. Like he did with your beloved teacher. Its confusing , I know. I just hope he doesn’t take it before your book reading session tomorrow in Rosebank, that would be sad but we’d sing the hymn people, the hymn…
Sarah – you are clearly my intellectual superior. Agnosticism is, by far, the most rational approach to god or God.
Atheists and religious people alike are both hallucinatory believers in hocus pocus based on a ‘feeling’. In the absence of an empirical God test, agnosticism rules.
Tony – slap a beard and flowing robes on Barry Manilow and you have the Second Coming.
Musa – thanks for reminding me of the Rosebank thingy where I’ll be figure skating on the strength of my excellent scrumming skills.
[Ndumiso closes his eyes and starts humming and chanting, "No bathwater! No bathwater!" 100X]
I’ll be watching you tomorrow Mr Ngcobo…
By the way, at least you’re not blonde and pale like me. When I feel self-conscious whilst speaking to an audience, I blush. Like a beetroot.
Manto would be so pleased.
Sarah, do not come within 20m of me. Even though the missus will be there, I can’t really control my powers.
I’m a deeply attractive specimen of Zulu manhood. On that note, let’s all take a moment of silence in meditation;
“Nearer draw nearer…”
Ha ha, you are very funny! You realise of course that there will be lots of lovely female 20-something LSM 8-10 listeners there, and they will be closer than 20 metres to your wondrous powers?
Atheists like Jarred Cinman, George Claassen and Richard Dawkins promotes their atheism more fervantly than Kent Hovind does Creationism. Its kinda sad, actually.
I have to confess that uyinja Silwane ntwana.They must just leave you alone. You don’t need them. You don’t need anyone. UYINJA!
I go out of town for one weekend and find this debate has turned into an incomprehensible set of personal chatter. Sheesh!
To try and pull things back in line, let me respond to Ndumiso’s lengthy reply to my lengthy reply.
You believers are a tough lot to please, and a slippery bunch at that.
First, you pick at me for trying to lift the debate into the rational. You want to leave things in the poetic, and sound offended that I would even try and tackle you.
Now that’s just plain bad sportsmanship. Why did you call your piece “an irrational believer in god responds to jarred sin man”, with the deliberate, judgemental and slightly amusing pun, if you weren’t pitching into the debate?
Either this is an interesting discussion, or its no discussion at all.
And this is my central frustration with believers. They won’t weigh in. They make a big noise about how their side is as valid as ours, but there’s never any real substance there. Let me say this then, loud and clear: your personal experiences are a boring addition to the debate. They add nothing. If you don’t want to debate then I respectfully ask you not to title and orient your writing in pseudo-debate style.
I feel like Adam in the garden. Don’t eat the tree, but then make it impossible for me not to. If you’re going to launch an attack, expect a reply.
You then offer two slight variations on your initial arguments (the only really useful bits of anything you’ve written thus far). To these I can respond.
To you, and everyone else here, who somehow admires agnosticism and denounces atheism, I say: get real. There is no practical difference between these two things in this context.
Why? Because for someone to say to a believer: well, I don’t know if your god exists or not, is EXACTLY the same as saying what I have: the burden of proof is yours. I consider myself a 99% atheist. In other words, I leave the 1% open to the idea that I could be wrong.
Yes! I COULD BE WRONG. And I have no shame in admitting that, because atheism is NOT a religion. It’s a position based on scientific hypothesis and Occam’s razor. Unlike you, I am not actually committed beyond all reason to a single position. If some force could be shown to exist that’s is consistent with belief in god, I’ll be at the front of the queue to accept that as a replacement theory to my current ones.
However that kind of evidence has not, to my knowledge, ever meaningfully been presented. It most certainly has not on Thought Leader. Where are all the fervent Jews and Christians and Muslims rushing to defend their precious gods?
Lastly, when you want to split religion, religious folk and god from each other, you are straying into the realm of deism. Yes, religious people might be wrong. And yes, religion itself might be wrong. But GOD still exists.
I am forced to say it again: prove it. You cannot seriously expect to hold up, as the core of your argument, that I cannot prove it doesn’t. I cannot prove anything doesn’t. So along with your god, then, we must allow into the world, with exactly equal status, all the Roman and Greek gods. Fairies, gnomes, elves, ghosts, and every other conceivable (conceivable, mind) entity.
Is that your big flourish, you passionate faithful? I can’t prove the opposite, so I’m the bigot?
Just give me something, I’m begging you, something we can actually spend some real energy on. If you don’t want to debate, fair enough. Another believer runs for the hills when called to account. Maybe someone else will answer the challenge?
Occam’s Razor?
R O F L M A O
Er…this is funny because?
Jarred, I must apologize for the frivolous chatter on the hallowed grounds of this intellectual battleground. Tony, Sarah, Musa – SIT!
Wow, Jarred! You have a serious boner for believers, don’t you? I’m personally flattered. I will try and flesh out what I think are central points of your 600-word retort to my 500-word response to your 700-word invective.
1. “You want to leave things in the poetic, and sound offended that I would even try and tackle you.”
Guilty as charged, once again. I can understand your pathetically transparent ploy of trying to draw me into an intellectual duel over a self-admitted ‘irrational’ belief in God. What seems to irk you is that fact that I am taking the wind out of the only weapon atheists have against believers in God i.e. belief in God is irrational.
2. “…your personal experiences are a boring addition to the debate…”
My personal experience is NOT an addition to the debate. I am so surprised that what was meant to be an innocuous swipe at atheists along the lines of “I feel the spirit of God move inside me, what do you have?” has wound you up to this level of rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth frenzy. My puppet master skills must be more advanced than I imagined. I think I now know how Pavlov must have felt.
I’ve often made the observation that atheists suffer from cognitive dissonance levels only found in the religious right, but you take the cake. Seriously. You are so ultra-sensitive it’s actually quite funny. I must confess that I had hoped to slightly irritate you but this is just …wow.
3. “To you, and everyone else here, who somehow admires agnosticism and denounces atheism, I say: get real. There is no practical difference between these two things in this context.”
4. “I consider myself a 99% atheist. In other words, I leave the 1% open to the idea that I could be wrong.”
These statements are just plain embarrassing in their incongruence – and exhibit a lack of understanding of that which you purport to be.
Agnostics believe humans are not equipped to be certain about truth. That there is no evidence of a God or any evidence that can disprove the existence of God.
Atheists exist for the sole purpose of disproving the existence of God and goading believers to prove what they, themselves are unable to disprove. By far the most rational stance of the lot is that of the agnostic.
By saying that you are a 99% atheist, you are sliding down the slippery slope towards very murky intellectual waters. You are simply trying to have your cake and eat it too by stealing the most powerful feature of agnosticism (i.e. uncertainty) and using it as a tool to defend your irrational, evidenceless assertion that God does not exist. The very least you can do is to pay the agnostics some royalties. The only useful distinguisher between atheists and agnostics is the certainty factor. By trying to position yourself as some kind of ‘reasonable’ atheist, you are essentially saying, “God does not exist. Believers are a hallucinatory bunch who believe in voodoo … but I could be wrong.” It’s pathetic. Pick one and then come back to try and smoke me out of my defensive, irrational hole.
“99% atheist” just doesn’t cut it. It’s a weak, weasely BS tag.
5. “I am forced to say it again: prove it.”
Even for an irrational atheist of your calibre, you cannot, CANNOT surely be seriously asking me to prove the existence of that which exists only in the spiritual realm using empirical, scientific methodology. Surely you can see the ridiculousness of this request? Please say it ain’t so.
True atheists (which you claim not to be) will only accept empirical evidence as proof of the existence of God. True believers can only provide evidence that is anecdotal and spiritual in nature. That is, I believe the essence, of the word ‘believer’. We are not ‘knowers’, only believers.
You are trying to get me to offer you evidence (which will, by definition, be anything but empirical) so that you and your atheist buddies can have a group hug and chuckle.
Atheists and believers exist in entirely different paradigms. Asking me to ‘prove it’ is a bit like a shark asking a cheetah to prove that he is faster than he is by swimming in the ocean.
It’s an intellectually weak request. I could as well turn around and ask you to show me where it says God doesn’t exist in the Bible.
Let’s not be ridiculous.
Because you sound like a first year philosophy student.
You know what? There’s one thing you’re absolutely correct about — I’ve spent too long contributing long posts to a discussion that’s doomed to go nowhere.
I should have just taken you at face value up-front when you said you don’t want to have a discussion or a debate. You want to say your bit, tell everyone how cool it is to be a believer, and then be left to go your merry way. Oh, and left to pity me.
And that, I must humbly allow you to go off and do. The reason for what you perceive to be rabidness on my part is simply a hunger for a real exchange on this subject, something uncluttered with hocus pocus of the “spiritual”.
Suddenly you’re a “believer”, not a “knower”. “It was the first of a few dozen moments in my life when I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that God exists.” Those are your words, not mine.
I apologise for wading into this with such fervour, when all that was really necessary was simply for me to smile at your nice turn of phrase, and yawn.
Oh, and John, to the best of my knowledge both first years and masters students of maths are known to use pi and even integers when the occasion demands.
For your information, I have a pretty decent degree in philosophy, and even we post-graduates are known to employ Occam, Descartes and, what the heck, even Aristotle, at the risk of suffering the indignity of having learnt about them in first year.
Ndumiso, I think this battle of the wits will go on and on and on and on and on and on and on … Neither can “win” this battle and nobody can lose. Its simply that we all have our own different interpretations of what is. I enjoyed the “match” of the “intellectuals” (is that what you called it – who is the smartest in the land?) – but lets move on to the next one. Hopefully it will just be as interesting – maybe even a few pouches of mud towards us peace loving folk??
To his defence Ndumiso did say his belief is irrational, how then can we have a debate with irratinal believers?Impossible.There is absolutely no point to argue futher, such believers cannot prove that God exist. We could still hold hands and sing the hymn, get a warm fuzzy feeling in our hearts and believe….
Jarred – at the risk of going down the cop-out ‘let’s agree to disagree’ road, I concur.
The only way we could have a meaningful discussion here would be if we had ‘talks about talks’ to agree the rules of engagement beforehand.
As long as I am speaking from a ‘hocus pocus spiritual’ paradigm and you from a pseudo-scientific realm, we’ll always be talking apples and oranges.
“Keep your hands up and protect yourselves at all times.”
Oupoot – thanks for the ‘can’t we all get along’ comment. Duly noted.
Moving right along.
Jared, Ndumiso…please live God alone, guys. He has too much to deal with, I mean look, Manto, Zille, Jacob (again), Jared, you name them (it).
Just get nearer to thee.
Nearer to thee.
Great Stuff!
In The Qur’an, Allah says that,”true belief in Him is for those who think deeply”
You all, should read this book.
And in his book, Christoper Hitchens says “Religion poisons everything”. You should read that book.
This kind of pointless appeal to authority takes the discussion nowhere, as I’m sure you know.
Nobody “knows” whether God exists…
A belief in God is a choice we must all make for ourselves… and there will always be an element of faith in the choice we make – athiest or believer.
There certainly is evidence though for a belief in God… as there is evidence against a belief in God
Jarred – would you not describe this world as being ordered and organised and generally well designed. Like an infinitely complex, stupendously brilliant, overwhelmingly amazing clock. The laws of physics and nature all combine to create a framework within which galaxies twirl, planets spin and conscious life walks the face of the earth.
If there is one thing science undoutably points out – it is that that we are part of a universe that has order. Everything that happens in the universe has an explanation and reason behind it…
Its pretty darn amazing.
I can say that for myself – i think the order and beauty we see in the universe is quite compelling evidence that whatever it is that started it all in the beginning (call it God, call it Allah, call it Martha if you like) also possesses some of these qualities.
Just as a painting reflects some of the qualities of a painter – does this universe not reflect the qualities of a possible God?
I put this forward as meek comment in a debate that in my experience never really produces anything fruitful. It is too stained by mistaken conceptions of God from the past – and it is too emotive for either side to seriously consider the other sides view.
Its a pity – because i think we can all agree that if we look at the state of the world as it is now – a God somewhere would be a wonderful thing to have in our corner…
Ariel, the argument from design which you present here (somewhat naively in my opinion) has not only been thoroughly discredited, but on so many occasions that I’m not even going to take the golden opportunity here to restate it.
You can Wikipedia it if you want to brush up, or for a more extensive rebuttal, read Richard Dawkins’ “The Blind Watchmaker”.
Rest assured that the apparent orderliness of the universe is of no help to you in establishing the existence of god.
People, it doesn’t matter if God exists or not, but one thing for sure everyone has a GOOd reason for believing in Whatever they believe in. So DO NOT JUDGE, lets not be haters instead
draw nearer…..hey!!!!
This article is more than that. It appeals to what, I believe, society has lost sight of- hope and faith in something/someone beyond “earthly measures”. It is not about judging one’s beliefs or religion, but it rather prompts us to have a belief and praise something other than how much money we will make at the end of the year.
It does matter if God exists or not, because what essentially what are we here for then?
Draw nearer to your faith!!
Is cool, you feel it.
I think your article is a nice illustration of the way religious language could go. You obviously try to share an experience you had – and that experience must be true for you. You don’t seem to be trying to force it onto others or to derive a proof for the existence of God from it, that would be senseless. Religious dialogue is at its best when we do this, share our experiences, not get tangled up in deductive attempts at proving the sublime. It’s more of poetry than of science.
I don’t see why you should be attacked. No-one could disprove your experience.
Thanks Bertus.
Not that proof is a necessary ingredient where God is concerned. That’s like trying to prove that Jarred was more than just slightly irritated by this article. It cannot be ‘proved’ but he wanted to strangle me.
Anger, irritration, love, hatred etc fall in the sane category. Proof is impossible.
Hi Ndumiso, I happen to be a niece of Mrs Lesala and I was staying with her at Inkamana Mission at the time of her untimely death – The true facts are :
1. Her husband was overseas at the time of the accident.
2. The accident happened in Hazyview (Nelspruit) in Mpumalanga not in KZN.