Thanks to Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor we have a new addition to the standard ‘Hitler and Stalin killed people because they were atheists’ line. As always I feel obliged to remind that Hitler wasn’t an atheist, but that’s far from the biggest crime against history here - it’s not just because of their atheism they killed millions of people, it’s because they ruled by REASON!

Danger because, if you go just by reason, I think, without faith, without belief in God, you can imagine, for instance in the last century, some of the faith(less), or supposedly faithless societies - people, whether it’s like Hitler or Stalin, bringing up - having a country in which, if you like, a God free zone, a dictatorship ruled by reason, and where does it lead? To terror and oppression.

Yes! Damn that reason they were so known for! It seems there are those out there who see it as ungracious for atheists to attack a religious figure after he asks people to ‘respect atheists’, but when his speech is laced with reminders that all atheists are just little Hitlers in waiting, I really see no need to be gracious or give the tiniest bit of respect. This statement confuses me a little:

Of claims that faith has no basis in reason, he replied: “To believe in God is not unreasonable.”

Wait, so to believe in God is reasonable… but societies ruled by reason lead to terror and oppression! Well now I don’t know what to think…

I’m a fan of Damian Thompson’s counterknowledge concept (’misinformation packaged to look like fact’) and it’s blog- I’m less of a fan of his Holy Smoke blog, if only because it’s a tad depressing to watch him skim over abuses of facts by Catholics that he’d tear apart as counterknowledge if anyone else had made them.

Case in point: He had a post the other day on the unjust ‘heckling’ of Catholic Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue (who I mentioned last
week) in a select committee. Now I have no idea if it was an unjustly harsh grilling, but personally I think that someone who can say that teaching safe sex is part of a “deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against Aids” and writes policy for sex education in schools probably should be questioned harshly. Now, I’m not really expecting high-ranking church officials to come out against their insane approach to sex education; I do ask that they don’t lie about the facts. Telling people condoms are wrong is one thing, telling them that condoms don’t work or, this can’t be brought up enough, are actually infected with HIV is another thing altogether. Its counterknowledge, pure and simple, being used to scare people who don’t better by people who have no excuse not to know better.

In the article he also venerates Tory MP Douglas Carswell for saying that the bishop had a harsh reception:

Mr Carswell told this week’s Catholic Herald: “I think the bishop was slightly taken aback, and I felt slightly embarrassed. I give people a hard time, but only if they are on the public payroll, a recipient of public money, in the civil service or quangos – they’re fair game. But otherwise, if they’re members of civic society, they’re kind of guests. He wouldn’t have got that sort of treatment if he were an imam.”

Now, I think all people are entitled to a basic amount of respect, but Mr Carswell misses the basic point here: We’re talking about Catholic tax-payer funded schools; he IS a recipient of public money! Why wasn’t Mr Carswell giving him a hard time? Why, because he happens to be a bishop, should he not get held to account?

People who deal in counterknowledge like the ineffectiveness of condoms in preventing STDs should be chased out of anything relating to education policy, and if it were anyone other than a Catholic bishop who’s using counterknowledge to advance a moral view that Thompson happens to agree with, I’m sure he’d be leading the charge.

—

And so I can get all my Catholic Church related anger out in one post (and I blame rhetorically speaking for bringing this to my attention), here’s what Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s response was to the idea of meeting with scientists so they explain their work with hybrid embryos:

” have been approached by MPs and asked by others in the media to consider meeting with leading scientists who are currently involved in this area. I would be only too happy to agree to such a meeting and I am sure other Church representatives and leaders of other faiths would also agree…….In agreeing to such a meeting my only condition would be that the scientists were also willing to accept instruction from our Churches and peoples of faith on basic morality, on what human life really is, on the purpose of our life on earth”

These scientists want to come and meet with the church leaders in the perhaps naive hope that they’re simply ill-informed rather than actively shit-stirring, and their response? Ok, sure, I’d do that; I’m a reasonable man after all! My only condition, and it’s not really a biggie, is that they acknowledge that we’re really the most moralist people EVER and defer to us in all moral judgements from now on. Note the way it’s phrased, it’s these scientists who are willing to come and explain themselves rather than the cardinal, who’s been viciously lying about what their work involves, who lack basic morality!

And to round off with some Daily Mail moralising:

The orchestrated attacks on the Roman Catholic church by ministers, scientists and medical charities have done nothing to advance the debate over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

In sneering language, they have portrayed the Church as rooted in the Dark Ages - wilfully blocking research which could help millions who suffer from such dreadful ailments as Alzheimer’s, muscular dystrophy and Parkinson’s. Bishops and cardinals have been accused by fertility expert Lord Winston of lying to the public, by health minister Ben Bradshaw of being intemperate, emotive and plain wrong, and by other Labour MPs of “scaremongering”.

What, an attack on the Church? Totally unprovoked I might add? And crude as well, pointing out the other side is lying (even if they are) is just unsporting!

Theo Hobson’s annoying me; I’ve quoted him before and doubtless will again because he’s a useful source as a secularist Christian, but today I made the mistake of reading him whilst wearing my atheist hat, not my secularist one. In his Easter piece explaining the story of his faith and I was less than impressed.

An intense bout of undergraduate angst sent me to the father of “existentialist” theology: Kierkegaard. I accepted his idea that despair is the normal modern condition, from which only faith can rescue us.

Ah, so that’s why Christianity is attractive! Life is endless toil and despair, and only God can save you! I was hoping that the message of the article would be that after this self-admitted bout of undergraduate angst, he discovered a deeper reason to believe but sadly not:

So my attraction to Christianity is two-fold. It comes from the sense that without faith there is despair, that the highest form of psychology is faith-based. And it is rooted in the quasi-socialist ideal of the Kingdom of God. Christianity is the true idiom of social hope - and also of psychological realism.

You know, I don’t feel much like despairing - Life seems pretty good most of the time in my godless universe. Maybe I’m just deluding myself here and I only think I’m happy during those times I manage to get through a whole week without crying myself to sleep because of the cruel reality of a life without God. I don’t doubt that his faith genuinely makes him happier and I wish him well with that, but the idea that faith is required for anything other than despair to be possible is patently untrue. You have to suspect some of his bile towards atheists in his other pieces is influenced by this, don’t they know they’re supposed to be miserable?

At the end of the piece he suggests that I should be surprised by his version of Christianity as opposed to what I may learn from Dawkins, whilst I don’t doubt there are plenty of religious folk out there who have other reasons to believe, the idea of religion being something people turned to feel better about life rather than something that has any evidence is true sounds an awful lot like something Dawkins might say. I followed his links to articles where he discussed atheism in more depth and got fairly pissed off; far from being the reasonable Christian alternative to the atheist caricature of a person of faith, Hobson comes over as a bile-filled hypocrite. If we start off with this article:

Atheism is pretentious in the sense of claiming to know more than it does. It claims to know what belief in God entails, and what religion, in all its infinite variety, essentially is. And atheism is muddled because it cannot decide on what grounds it ultimately objects to religion. Does it oppose it on the grounds of its alleged falsity? Or does it oppose it on the grounds of its alleged harmfulness? Both, the atheists will doubtless reply: religion is false and therefore it is harmful. But this is to make an assumption about the relationship between rationality and moral progress that does not stand up. Atheism is the belief that the demise of religion, and the rise of “rationality”, will make the world a better place. Atheism therefore entails an account of history - a story of liberation from a harmful error called “religion”. This narrative is jaw-droppingly naive.

Some will quibble with the above definition. Atheism is just the rejection of God, of any supernatural power, they will say, it entails no necessary belief in historical progress. This is disingenuous. The militant atheists have a moral mission: to improve the world by working towards the eradication of religion.

Let me take a step back, and ask a rather basic question. What is this thing that the atheists hate so much? What is religion? Believe it or not, I don’t know the answer. Indeed it seems to me that anyone who does claim to know is underestimating the complexity of the topic considerably. If the atheist deigns to define religion at all, he is likely to do so briskly and conventionally, as belief in and worship of some species of supernatural power. It’s a terribly inadequate definition. Dictionaries would do better to leave a blank, to admit ignorance.

Atheists HATE! Atheists REJECT! He complains that atheists choose their own version of religion to attack and then does exactly the same thing. Religion might be infinite diversity in infinite combinations but atheists are all exactly the same and all want the same thing: To exterminate religion. The definition of atheist is of course someone who doesn’t believe in the existence of any deities, not someone who knows one is there but rejects them, nor is it a blanket term for hate of religion (as proved by those who actually want to remove religion describing themselves as anti-theist, as atheist alone does not cover it) . I sympathise with the plight of writers like Dawkins and Hitchens because no matter how many pages they devote to a specific branch or belief, they’ll always be told ‘But that’s not us! You’re just focused on a minority!’ Whilst when they stick to generalities, they’re told they obviously don’t understand enough about religion to criticise it. Why on earth do you need to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of cuff-links to tell the emperor he’s not wearing any clothes? This generalisation of atheists also pretends that no atheists have ever experienced faith and hence are criticizing something they’ll never understand, ignoring the fact a great many atheists began their journey inside of faith and know very well what it entails. Let’s take a piece from another article:

Dawkins was asked what he hoped an atheist bloc in the US might achieve, and this is the first part of the answer he gave: “I would free children of being indoctrinated with the religion of their parents or their community.” Is this not amazing? I have seldom read a sentence that has induced such a sharp shiver of revulsion. This man evidently dreams of a state in which it is illegal to take one’s children to a place of worship, or to say prayers with them as one puts them to bed.

As I have tried to explain before, atheism is not neutral, nor is it merely negative, an opting out of religious belief. It is the positive belief that the world would be better off without religion, that religion ought to be eliminated. It is intrinsically self-righteous, for its proponents think that they have the key to the radical improvement of the world. The definition of an atheist, as opposed to an agnostic, is someone who has the chilling arrogance to say that the world would be a better place if I ceased to say bedtime prayers with my children. And Dawkins wonders why such people are disliked. May God save us from such people.

I do admire the sheer balls of someone who can argue with the dictionary, tell me what I and ALL my co-conspirators believe and then call me arrogant! Naturally we also have a complete misrepresentation of the ‘atheist movement’ here. I think our goals (as much as we’re organised enough to be called ‘our’) can be accomplished with a lot less than the complete eradication of religion. I’d be happy when we have a world where a lack of belief in the supernatural isn’t taken as an automatic sign of a moral deviant or a world in which sufficient belief in the supernatural combined with a suitably impressive hat doesn’t automatically qualify someone to comment on every issue under the sun, automatically get them a seat in Parliament or more worryingly, qualify someone to run schools. I have no problem with Christians in the public arena; I just want them to have to play by the same rules as everyone else.

I can’t speak to what Dawkins intended it to mean, but the way I read it is hardly insistence on creating thought police watching for any suspicious sign of a parent talking to a child. We can free children from indoctrination by saying society has a responsibility to children to create a space which is not controlled by their parents. When children go to church with their parents, that’s an education; when children go from home to school every day without the possibility of being exposed to anything that might question their worldview, then that’s indoctrination. I see no problem in parents telling or teaching their children anything they like, good parents will teach their children that although this is what they think and believe there are other ways to go and these, whilst potentially wrong, aren’t on principle evil. However, we don’t build societies on the principle that everyone will be good; society has an obligation to children that their parents’ voices won’t be the only voice they hear.

The comparison of American atheists to both homosexuals and Jews is very interesting. It is tantamount to crying: “Let’s seek influence through posing as a victimised minority!” How Nietzsche would smile at the sight of a man so blatantly trying to foster a sense of resentment. American atheists “have been downtrodden for a very long time” he says, “so I think some sort of political organisation is what they need.”

I hate to burst the self-righteous bubble here, but atheists in American most definitely meet the requirements of a downtrodden victimised minority. Six states still have prohibitions on atheists holding office, atheist children are not allowed to take join the Scouts (who in some cases would rather lose their rent free accommodation than let those filthy gays and non-believers near their young), atheists in schools face problems, A billboard ad by the freedom from religion group was replaced by the company with one stating ‘Why do Atheists hate America?’, atheist parents have been denied the right to raise an adopted child based on their lack of faith, the list just goes on. The murder of an atheist who’s roommate thought he was the devil can be written off as a sad case of mental illness, but the family of the murderer made their opinion of atheists well known, telling the representatives of American Atheists at the court “The one good thing of all of this is that another Atheist is dead and the world is better off for it“. A President only two decades ago felt perfectly fine saying that atheists shouldn’t count as citizens, a recent presidential candidate gave a speech of faith which stated that ‘Freedom requires religion’ and other such phrases giving the very clear message that the un-religious are not truly free and not apparently included in this big-tent speech on faith he was trying to give. I’ve seen repeated accusations of Hillary Clinton being an atheist whilst Barack Obama is accused of the sin of being a Muslim with the implication that
this would be a slur on their character if either of those were true. We’re not talking back of the bus stuff here, but it’s serious and widespread. But no! It’s just posing, right Theo? Pretending to be victims so they can seize power? After all, it’s all just part of their master plan to exterminate religion right? First they stand up for themselves, and then they go for the throat!

ean by “religion”. For example there is surely something religious in the communal ecstasy of a rave, or a pop concert, or a play, or a sporting event, or a political rally. Some would say that these events are quasi-religious, that they echo religious worship, but are distinct from it. But how on earth is one to make the distinction? Is a yoga class “religious”? What about a performance of a requiem? What about Hitchens’ own belief in the saving power of literature? In practice, “religion” cannot really be separated from “culture”.

The atheist will doubtless call these reflections irrelevant. Yes, there is an affinity between religious worship and various secular cultural practices, he may say, but so what? The issue is belief in the supernatural. Religion, in the full and harmful sense, exists when people cringe under the illusion of a celestial being, and when people propagate teachings that are not true. This leads to superstitious ignorance, and to immoral actions, for example the persecution of homosexuals.

It is here that the atheist ought to tread with very great care, but instead he straps on his clown-sized jackboots, and stomps around. The fact is that the relationship between religion, morality and politics is infinitely various and complex. The critic of religious abuses must be specific, particular. He must focus on particular practices, particular institutions, and explain why they have a detrimental effect on society. But the militant atheist cannot humbly limit himself to the realm of the particular; he necessarily lapses into sloppy generalisation. For he has to insist that religion in general is harmful, all of it, always. He has to show that he has the answer: if people shared his total rejection of God, then the world would be a better place. He needs to believe this. For he finds grounds for hope here. If humanity moves away from religion, things will get better. It’s a faith.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get over the irony of Hobson, yet again, lecturing ‘the atheist’ on lapsing into sloppy generalisation. We’re also going back to playing definitional games, If we extent the definition of religion to include culture then it’s by definition impossible to separate religion from culture! Can we divorce the super-natural from culture, even a culture exclusively connected with a religion? Absolutely! The perfect example is Humanistic Judaism, which is quite literally Jewish culture with the references to God and the supernatural removed. It’s not only a theoretical possibility: It’s been done. He doesn’t seem to understand that atheists don’t reject God, we reject the notion of God’s existence; rejecting God himself would be absurd for an atheist because it implies God exists! We don’t hate God at all: we just don’t think he’s there.

He also claims here that critical atheists are never specific and don’t explain themselves: This is quite simply a lie - I prefer to think though extreme ignorance than wilful misdirection but it’s hard to be sure. You can say a lot about books like The God Delusion and God is Not Great, but you can’t say that they don’t take great care to explain and present their case in detail. If we want to venture outside the well known published works, we’d look at blogs like Daylight Atheism which contain many brilliantly written, detailed examinations of various aspects of faith and atheism and makes its case in wonderful detail and clarity and books and sites like these are not the exceptions. Again, it’s not atheists making the nebulous, ignorant statements: It’s Hobson.

The thing that is troublesome for me is that Hobson is a liberal anti-institutional Christian, we have so much common ground and yet he still comes out with such bollocks about atheism. We both hate generalisations, but whilst I go out of my way to avoid them he seems to have no scruples about spreading the most ridiculous generalisations about atheists in the same sentence of accusing them of the same. “Atheists are all god-haters out to exterminate religion” which seems to be a fair paraphrase of some of the above is something I’d expect from a raving paranoid, not someone trying to present themselves as the nice liberal face of Christianity.

The Bishop of Lancaster Patrick O’Donoghue wants to start banning books critical of the faith in Catholic schools.

Asked if that applied to works by authors such as Karl Marx and Albert Camus, he told the Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee: “Suppose you went into a school and found in the library material that said the Holocaust never took place?”

That’s right, he compares books that are critical of the church to Holocaust denial. I’ll add this to my collection of Official Catholic Facts: “The Catholic Church has never done anything wrong ever. I mean if it had, it’d be in one of these books, right kids?”

If that wasn’t enough, he gives us this wisdom:

“So-called” safe sex was based on the “deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against Aids”.

This man is responsible for schools. I don’t think I can say anything snarky enough to take the horror out of that.

The Vatican have updated their list of deadly sins! The New Sins are:

• Polluting
• Genetic engineering
• Being obscenely rich
• Drug Dealing
• Abortion
• Pedophilia
• Causing social injustice

The fact that it exactly doubled is interesting, how likely is it there just happened to be exactly seven more? You suspect that there are some in there just to make up the numbers (Being obscenely rich seems a likely suspect, it seems a lot like ‘greed’) . More concerning, there might be sins out there we are not being told about. I mean, have these always been true and no one told us? I’d find the Bible a lot more convincing if there was a passage along the lines of ‘And lo, you shall discover the means to edit the code of life, a discovery with enormous potential benefits for humanity, but beware, doing so is a MORAL SIN’, as is it’s hard not to think they’re making these up as they go along. But then, he’s got The Hat, who am I to argue?

Is it just me or are these new sins less, well, fun than the old ones? I can’t imagine an ice cream series based around ‘abortion’ and ‘drug dealing’ taking off. I was going to be snipy that drugs that “weaken the mind and obscure intelligence” might rule out communion wine but then I remembered that it magically stops being wine, neatly sidestepping the issue. Then I was going to complain about the Vatican’s own ‘obscene riches’, but I can’t find any evidence that it’s really that wealthy anymore (the best source that didn’t invoke the illuminati was a 1965 Time article) and I really do prefer to have sources. As I can’t have those ones, I’m going to call hypocrisy on these two:

Abortion - You want abortion rates to go down? Stop complaining about contraception.

Pedophilia - It’s nice to hear some that it really is a bad thing, but when there are official records of ordering coverups and accusations that the pope himself was involved (though in the interests of fairness, the Catholic Church contests this), I find it hard to take this seriously.

But don’t forget, all you have to do is confess and you’re off the hook! It’s a fair world after all!

Everyone’s favorite Archbishop thinks that Sharia Law in an inevitability in Britain. Not only that, he wants to help it along. I really couldn’t ask for these stories.

But Dr Williams says the argument that “there’s one law for everybody… I think that’s a bit of a danger”.

Ohhh boy, this isn’t going to be fun. I’ll accept there’s a whole lot more to Sharia law than what we commonly associate it with it, but even if it were the fairest legal system ever created, it shouldn’t be able to bypass the democratic process our laws rely on just because some people like it better. If there are good parts of Sharia law, let’s hear about them! Let them be debated in the House of Commons and MPs pass them into law for everyone to live by. It is very concerning when someone who sits in the House of Lords doesn’t seem to understand why the rule of law backed by the democratic process is preferable to self-appointed courts.

Dr Williams argues that adopting some aspects of Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.

Yes, “One law for them, one law for us” has always been fantastic for social cohesion.

For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

I’m fairly certain if both sides want to a third party to mediate discussions they can ask whoever they like to do it, the only difference here would be making it officially binding. Once it exists officially there’d be much more incentive to use it rather than the rather nice court system the rest of us have to put up with, making it harder for people in these communities who don’t want to use Sharia to opt-out.

“There’s a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law, as we already do with some other aspects of religious law.”

Question One: Does the religious law in question violate existing law?

Question Two: Is it a bad law that should apply to no citizens and should be repelled?

Question Three: If ‘yes’ to the first and ‘no’ to the second, why does this group deserve special treatment?

Dr Williams adds: “What we don’t want either, is I think, a stand-off, where the law squares up to people’s religious consciences.”

You’re allowed to disagree with laws, you’re allowed to campaign to change them, you can even break them and accept the consequences. What you don’t get is special dispensation from the law because your religion says otherwise.

“We don’t either want a situation where, because there’s no way of legally monitoring what communities do… people do what they like in private in such a way that that becomes another way of intensifying oppression inside a community.”

I can’t be reading this right, is he really saying the best way to stop unofficial oppression under Sharia is to officalise it, because then at least we know it’s going on?? See, I’d have thought the best way of intensifying oppression inside a community would be to legitimize it into public law. But then I’m not Archbishop, what would I know?

To sum up: Having different laws for different people is a very bad idea.

Well that seems like a good idea!

I can see a case for independent inspectorates for schools where there is a need for different methods of education because of the special needs of the pupils. It makes sense for schools for the deaf, blind or those with learning disabilities to be vetted independently of the rest of the school system, but I don’t see why this is the case for these faith schools. Children of Muslim or Christian parents do not inherently require a different approach to education in the same way deaf children do, there is no reason faith schools shouldn’t be judged by the same body and held to the same standard as non-faith schools.

Michael Nazir-Ali (the Bishop of Rochester) has launched a vicious attack on the evils of multiculturalism, which as he defined it:

Required that people should be facilitated in living as separate communities, continuing to communicate in their own languages and having minimum need for building healthy relationships with the majority.

Well, when you put it like that, I don’t like it much either. Naturally we then have the backlash and the counter backlash. I’m going to ignore the issue of how bad the problem is or isn’t and hone in on something the Bishop said about the cause:

Much of this has come about because of a “neutral” secularist approach which refuses to privilege any faith. In fact, secularism has its own agenda and it is certainly not neutral. It is perfectly possible for Britain to welcome people on the basis of its Christian heritage.

In the same article, he’s denounced multiculturalism and secularism, missing the point that the approach best to tackle the negative aspects of multi-culturalism IS the secular approach. Far from secularism being the cause of the problem, it’s the best way out.

The idea that Britain is a ‘Christian Country’ is the mindset that makes multiculturalism sound attractive. The desire to keep it that way and yet welcome non-Christian immigrants leads to the idea of separate spaces, that over here we can be Christians and over there you can be Muslims. This is tolerance of you living in Britain, not acceptance that you are British. As long as being a Christian is promoted as being a key part of British identity, creating a workable single culture is impossible.

If we look at the fuss in the US over placing ‘Under God’ in the pledge of allegiance only fifty years ago, we can see that it has ruined the point of the line. ‘One nation, indivisible’ is a strong, secular statement of unity, ‘One nation under God, indivisible’ has created division. We are stronger and more welcoming as a group when we don’t needlessly divide ourselves. As religion remains a core part of many people’s identity, when looking for a national idenity for all it makes sense to take that most divisive question off the table. We want an identity that speaks of inclusion and acceptance instead of separation and tolerance.

A secular basis for society allows us to create a big tent we can all feel comfortable sitting inside. We naturally need our tested foundations such as democracy, the rule of law, freedom of speech, etc to underpin the society. These aren’t simply justifiable because they’re part of our heritage (and it’s worth remembering some of them are quite recent additions) but because they’re fundamentally good ideas. There was a lot in the comments of that article about how Christians wouldn’t be granted the same freedoms in the Middle East that Muslims are granted here. That misses the point: We shouldn’t aspire to be different from countries like Saudi Arabia, we should aspire to be better.

Much as I enjoy watching the Bishop argue with the dictionary, secularism is by definition neutral. If it has an agenda, it is one I hope the Bishop can share: Making it so neither of us has to sacrifice our principles to exist in the same culture in peace.

Everybody run! Fundamentalist atheists are roaming the streets, selling their books and giving lectures! The time for tolerance of this behaviour is over!

The Archbishop of Wales seems concerned about the rise of ‘Atheistic fundamentalism’. For the sake of my sanity I’m going to ignore the repeats of the ‘winterval’ and related myths (how I wish bishops and journalists would do the tiniest bit of research) and just point to Oliver Burkeman’s excellent article on the subject here. Let’s move onto those fun fundamentalist atheists.

The archbishop said “atheistic fundamentalism” was a new phenomenon.

Huh, see the trouble with the idea of fundamentalist atheism is that we have nothing to be fundamental about. I don’t have a holy book to assert is fundamentally true and unlike religious fundamentalists, I know exactly what would change my mind: Evidence.

He said it advocated that religion in general and Christianity in particular have no substance, and that some view the faith as “superstitious nonsense”.

Whilst many atheists might not say it so bluntly out of politeness, atheism is the belief in an absence of gods; by definition we see most of religion as untrue and useless superstition. That’s not being an extremist or militant atheist, that’s just being a normal one.

Dr Morgan’s Christmas message comes after the general director of the Evangelical Alliance, the Rev Joel Edwards, compared militant atheists to King Herod in their intolerance of religious faith.

Dr Morgan said: “All of this is what I would call the new “fundamentalism” of our age. It allows no room for disagreement, for doubt, for debate, for discussion.

But he said “virulent, almost irrational” attacks on it were “dangerous” because they refused to allow any contrary viewpoint and also affected the public perception of religion.

King Herod: Slaughterer of infants. Richard Dawkins: Writes books and gives speeches where he tries to persuade people through rational argument. I can see how the two can be confused.

I’m not quite sure these people quite understand what intolerance is, it is not intolerance to disagree with someone publically (you could even say that’s the definition of ‘debate’). The claim that this wave of atheism is closing down debate and disagreement is just plain wrong, doubt and scepticism are key foundations of current atheist thought. The hypocrisy here is evident, Dr Morgan is complaining about atheists shutting down the debate whilst Rev Edwards compares prominent atheists to mass murderers for writing books. This isn’t an isolated example; the Dean of Southwark compared Richard Dawkins to the July 7^th suicide bombers on much the same ground. That is what intolerance is- I don’t like your ideas so you’re at bad as Stalin! Or Hitler! Or the evil spawn of the two! I would call these ‘virulent, almost irrational’ attacks, yet they seem to be common, used by seemingly respectable people and journalists don’t seem inclined to question them. If atheists are venomously suppressing dissent, we don’t seem to be that good at it.

In the end there is this fundamental point that the act of disagreement isn’t in itself intolerant; two people can disagree yet respect each other’s right to hold those opinions and to continue existing. I feel perfectly comfortable with the Dr Morgan being out there and disagreeing with me, but from this article I get the impression he doesn’t feel the same. He managed to create a definition of fundamental atheism that would apply to all atheists and describes it as inherently intolerant of the Christian faith for disagreeing with it. Seeing as simply holding atheist views is intolerant and the point of the article is that this intolerance is wrong, the logical conclusion of the definition and argument is that public atheism shouldn’t be allowed to exist - I have to say I’m not feeling too tolerated. Moreover, the article demonstrates that any atheists who step up to the public square to give and defend their arguments will be accused of being exactly as evil and extreme as people who kill babies and innocent civilians. Remind me who’s shutting down debate again?

Today the Telegraph published this delightful article entitled “Scrap Christmas, says New Labour think tank” OMG THOSE COMMUNISTS ARE GOING TO BAN CHRISTMAS!

Of course, if you actually read the article you’d end up with a dreadful opinion of whatever sorry excuse for an editor read this story and decided it made sense. The group, of course, make no recommendation of banning Christmas, they merely state that perhaps other religious festivals should be publicly celebrated as well.

If we break it into sections we can see exactly where to disconnect happens:

A group has said that other religious festivals should be marked as well as Christmas.

Then there’s a quote from the group stating this conclusion as well as DIRECTLY stating they don’t want to ban Christmas.

“If we are going to continue to mark Christmas - and it would be very hard to expunge it from our national life even if we wanted to - then public organisations should mark other major religious festivals too.

Now Ann Widdecombe stepped in to tell us that to ban Christmas would not be a popular move. Yes! It would not be a popular move, which besides the fact it’s a stupid idea, is why this report doesn’t say we should. (Also Ann the more you remind people about the established church which doesn’t even represent a plurality of Christians any more let along the country, the more we care about disestablishment).

Then the campaign against political correctness joins the debate by saying that that anyone who wants to ban Christmas is “off their political correct heads”. Yes, quite possibly, thankfully the report recommends no such thing, so we’re all safe from those evil politically correct fairies for another day.

Way to keep journalistic standards high Telegraph! Unfortunately this is but one example of the annual attempt by various hack journalists to tell the masses that Christmas is under attack from political correctness, when no such thing is true. The Labour Humanist did an excellent job here of drawing together the absurdity of this annual myth of the war on Christmas.

I’m sure it’s at least slightly ironic that the last people who actually did ban celebrating Christmas weren’t scary atheists, but Cromwell’s Puritans. As it turns out, the last people to ban Christmas were Christians.

Well this makes me feel appreciated, apparently my lack of faith makes it impossible for me to contribute to society.

Speaking at a conference of Traidcraft, the Christian-based fair trade organisation, Mr Timms said: “There is positive impact when people of faith are involved in the lives of their community, because these people bring valuable qualities in their service which are rare elsewhere and they are qualities modern Britain urgently needs.”

He also said that political and social activism, rooted in faith, has a vital role to play in shaping modern Britain. He told delegates at the conference that they represented an outstanding example of how “effective and influential” faith-based organisations could be.

Timms, who boasts on his website that he is “heavily involved” in the Christian Socialist Movement, added: “In Government we recognise, increasingly, that faith communities are sustaining families, building cohesion, reaching the disadvantaged, communicating positive values the length and breadth of Britain. And we need much more of that, not less.” (emphasis mine)

Because you see, those atheists are cold, cold, unfeeling bastards who don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. Hell, we’re barely human. Sure, I may have worked directly for a charity for a few years and donated and assisted in a smaller way for a number more, but that doesn’t count you see: I need to believe in God to help people.

I’d certainly wouldn’t be petty enough to point out to Mr Timms that as for ‘reaching the disadvantage’, atheist doctors have a better track record. Or that the hall-mark of religious run charity isn’t so much helping the needy as helping the needy who are not living in sin. I can completely understand this, gay people should obviously be denied soup at soup kitchens, they’re ungodly.

As always, the problem isn’t that all religious charities are this bad, but that religious charities are demonstrated over and over again to be no more effective than secular charities from which EVERYONE can benefit. With the amount of money Mother Teresa raised, secular charities wouldn’t have built 500 convents, they would have built hospitals.

But no, government ministers again bring up the amazing argument that groups that have been actively campaigning to maintain their rights to discriminate in provision of services are ‘building cohesion’. Just as Mr Timms is ‘building cohesion’ by telling the 41% of people in this country who have no declared religious faith, who work in hospitals, schools, care homes and charities of every variety that they are incapable of contributing to society as much as people who go to church every Sunday. This is beyond stupid, it’s just plain insulting.

A head-teacher trying to remove the religious requirements placed on all schools has been told that it’s ‘politically impossible’. The UK has this archaic law that schools must take part in a daily act of worship of a ‘mostly Christian’ nature and when they don’t, they lose points with the Ofsted inspectors.

Is God really impressed with compulsory worship? I’m of the opinion it does a disservice to everyone. Prayer is quite literally something sacred for believers and to go through the motions of something believers find of huge importance seems to me to do a huge disservice to them. I don’t believe God exists, I don’t believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection, I deny the existence of miracles - Surely it makes every believer’s prayers hollower when I said ‘amen’?

A spokesman for the Church of England said: ‘If he is arguing for a way for individual schools to opt out of those bits of the act he does not like that is not something we would support. Either overtly or by default, this country is still a Christian one.’

We don’t want to opt out of the act; we want to CHANGE the act. These are schools with no religious charter being forced to worship when there’s no guarantee the schools or parents (let alone the pupils) agree with it, and why? Because this is a ‘Christian’ country. But who’s Christianity? Certainly not the CoE’s anymore, the Catholic Church surpassed them a little while ago. Every single religious group out there is a minority, and whilst Christians together make up 56%, that’s not a case for a ‘Christian’ country. ‘As a group we loosely share a similar set of beliefs, therefore our slim majority gives us the right to set the agenda’, really?

Dr Kelley says it quite well ‘I feel that children have a right to not having a particular point of view, they should not be promoted to a political party, nor should they to a religion. The daily act of worship is, I think, inappropriate at school.’ The political party analogue I’ve always felt is quite apt, there is a difference between learning about the Labour Party and singing ‘The Red Flag’ in assemblies. If the party in government created a law saying schools must venerate its ideals, there’d be outrage but if the established religion does the same, almost no-one seems notice.

For freedom of conscience to be preserved for all our official religion must be no religion. A secular state discriminates against no religious or not-religious group. The more political the church becomes, the better it makes the case for its disestablishment.