The events of a few nights ago came about as a result of countless infinitesimal occurrences (as, presumably, all events do) and a few other, more macroscopic, ones that I am consciously aware of and will, briefly, recount.
At the age of 11 or 12, I learnt of the word agnostic
and was taught a little of what it meant. This was in an R.E. (religious education
) class at my state school, a class, incidentally, that was taught by a conspicuously Christian man, but which gave its pupils an overview of several prominent religions and religious positions. I immediately recognised agnosticism as being the position I felt most sympathetic towards, simply because neither the theistic nor the atheistic arguments I had encountered were entirely convincing to me (though they were, on the whole, thought-provoking).
A couple of days ago, I began reading Agnosticism: contemporary responses to Spencer and Huxley (Pyle, ed., pub. Thoemmes: 1995), in an effort to begin to distinguish more clearly, in my mind, the numerous range of positions that exist between orthodox theism and committed atheism. Andrew Pyle’s introduction has excellent clarity, which drew me in, and the range of primary source extracts – of which the rest of the volume consists – struck me as being apposite and concise.
But this is not a book review. One assertion of Pyle’s struck me particularly: Both [David Hume and Immanuel Kant] … would have vigorously rejected the label of
I was familiar with hearing Hume called an atheist, and although I had never felt entirely comfortable with that labelling, I had not yet, I realised, seriously challenged it. Pyle’s claim prompted me to investigate further, and although Hume appears to have been willing to be considered outside the jurisdiction of the Church – to prevent his being charged with heresy – he was also willing to defend himself, in writing, against accusations of atheism. He was, if not agnostic (for that word was not yet coined), then sceptical or irreligious – but almost certainly not what I would call a committed atheist.atheist
.
Some months ago, I saw a few minutes of an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks which featured a comedienne who I hadn’t heard of previously, Josie Long. Long warmed the cockles of my wintry heart when she asked Stephen Fry – who was trying to hum a song to her at the time – if he would adopt her. I, too, rather like the idea of having Stephen Fry as an adoptive father. I decided then that I’d very much like to see one of Long’s stand-up shows.
Many months later, I saw Ben Goldacre give a talk in Cambridge. At the end of his talk, he mentioned he would be on the line-up at an event in December. I booked myself a ticket to that event after reflecting that:
- I liked several other people on the bill (yay, Josie Long!)
- seeing any one of those performers would normally cost at least a third as much as the ticket for the December gig
- my time for booking tickets and travelling to shows is limited, so the more performances I get to see in one evening, the better
- there would be lots of performers at the December show.
So there I was, a couple of nights ago, sitting in row Z at the Apollo, applauding as Long took the stage, when she said, almost as her opening line, Now, David Hume, he was an atheist…
Oh no, I thought, as my lungs filled, I’ve been waiting to see her perform for ages and now I’m going to heckle her from the back row. I bit my tongue, but it resisted. No, he wasn’t!
I bellowed. On stage she paused, perhaps unsure if the audience was suddenly angling for panto. Yes he was, wasn’t he?
she asked, Wait, was he agnostic, then?
It’s not easy to have a nuanced dialogue across a packed 3,632 seat auditorium, especially when only one of the people in the dialogue has the microphone and she’s the one the other 3,631 people want to hear. I reflected hastily upon what to reply and settled, simply, for Yes.
It was anachronistic, but in the sense that Hume was neither a committed atheist nor traditionally theistic, but following his reason as far as it would take him (to paraphrase Huxley’s positive agnostic principle), it was at least approximately accurate. A few people in the audience groaned, and someone a few rows in front of me hissed to his neighbour, Hume was an atheist,
but I was relieved to have set the record straighter. Long didn’t let it spoil her joke, which turned out to be a riff on the story about Samuel Johnson and Adam Smith arguing over Hume’s equanimity in the face of death (for more on which, see, for instance, Leslie Stephen’s Samuel Johnson, chap. IV). In retrospect, my reply should have been, It’s a bit more complicated than that.
Fortunately, thanks to the wonderful Mark Thomas, who was also on the bill, and who is interested in my work (Darwin is my day job), I was able to go to the bar, where I had an opportunity to meet her, after the show. This gave me an opportunity to explain myself and to show her the Pyle book, which I happened to have with me. She was lovely about the whole thing, and now I find myself wondering if I mightn’t have ended up being inadvertently patronising.
You see, I must confess, that Long seemed so youthful to me – the fact that she mentioned she was studying for a maths A-level only added to this confusion – that I assumed she really was much younger than in fact she is. I forgot entirely that she had been to Oxford, and instead it entered my head, completely wrongly, that perhaps she had had only a secondary school – rather than a university – education. In mitigation, I can only plead that I was at least a little bit star-struck.
More humbling for me still is the fact that after all this, when we ended up sharing a late cab back to North London (together with the double bassist from the orchestra, whose instrument protruded nearly the length of the vehicle), she subsidised my fare rather than have me pay by card.
So, Josie, for that, and for being such a terrific sport, I owe you. I must confess, though, that the cynic in me is starting to wonder whether, if it provides financial compensation, I couldn’t become a career heckler in scholarly comedy circles. But wait, that’s pretty much what being an academic is, isn’t it? 
Well done, Sam. A joy to have discovered you yet again, which is to say in blog form.