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The Commentary

Diana, the Olympic flame and the human condition

In the last few weeks the six-month inquest into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, in a car crash in Paris back in 1997 finally came to an end.

The jury decided that they were unlawfully killed, laying the blame at the feet of the chauffeur, Henri Paul, who had been drinking, and the paparazzi who had recklessly pursued the princess’s car in the quest for photographs. The coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, said that there was ‘not a shred of evidence’ in support of Mr. Mohamed Al Fayed’s conspiracy theory that the princess and his son were actually murdered as part of an Establishment plot. But, despite the verdict of the jury, Mr. Fayed subsequently promised that his campaign to prove an under cover MI6 assassination would continue.

Obsessive ideas

While we have sympathy with a father who has lost a beloved son in tragic circumstances, Mr. Fayed has become a classic example of someone who believes what he wants to believe despite repeated investigations and in the face of all the evidence. He is obsessed with an idea (which resonates with his pride and prejudices?) and is unable to let it go.

Yet in our contemporary world there are many people who say, in effect, ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts, I know what I believe’. And often it is not Christians who are like this, but secularists. In April, as the Olympic torch was paraded through the streets of London, Paris and San Francisco, there were vociferous protests because of the Games being in China. The Olympic organisation tries to use the Games to promote the humanistic idea of a world in harmony, where all people are of goodwill and come together in happy competition. This was reflected in the comments of the former swimming champion, Duncan Goodhew, concerning the protests: ‘The Olympic Games is about inspiring young people, human excellence and fair play’. But many who watched the journey of the torch saw this as a sham. Why were the Games ever given to an oppressive regime like China? Where is the fair play in Tibet? Where is the human excellence in a totalitarian state where human rights are denied?

We should also remind ourselves, from recent news, of the great lengths that Olympic athletics has to go to in order to try to eliminate the use of performance-enhancing drugs by cheats, or of Mr. Robert Mugabe’s suppression of the election results in Zimbabwe, where the vote evidently went against him.

Yet, despite the evidence that human beings are deeply flawed and often brazenly corrupt, secular humanism continues to promote the idea that mankind is fundamentally good and it just needs a little extra education and Olympian inspiration and all will be well. Like Mr. Al Fayed, they are obsessed with an idea which flies in the face of the facts.

Fallen creatures

Many thoughtful observers, even those who are not openly Christians, see a different reality. Writing in his recent book Our Culture, What’s Left of It, former prison doctor and psychiatrist, Theodore Dalrymple, said: ‘The loss of the religious understanding of the human condition — that man is a fallen creature for whom virtue is necessary but never fully attainable — is a loss, not a gain, in true sophistication. The secular substitute — the belief in the perfection of life on earth by the endless extension of a choice of pleasures — is not merely callow by comparison but much less realistic in its understanding of human nature.’

John Benton