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I would never stop people going to Church. I wish they did not stop me going to Marks & Spencer

NHS Blog Doctor, The definite article

All things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot.

Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom.
He made their horrid wings.

All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.

Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid--
Who made the spikey urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did!

All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.

Lyrics: Eric Idle

the government’s decision to abandon the ‘aggressive rhetoric’ of the so-called war on terror, the guide tells civil servants not to use terms such as Islamist extremism or jihadi-fundamentalist but instead to refer to violent extremism and criminal murderers or thugs to avoid any implication that there is an explicit link between Islam and terrorism.

Heaven forbid anyone might draw a link between Islamism and terrorism. Read Melanie Phillips, Slouching towards dhimmocracy.

That’s my vote lost, then. Whom do I vote for now?

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, urged the Polish community to do more to learn English and integrate into local parishes, claiming the Catholic Church in the UK was in danger of dividing along ethnic lines as the number of Polish-speaking churches rose.

And the response of Polish community representatives?

Leading Polish community figures said they felt “violated” and “spiritually raped” by his words and called for talks on the issue.

The Telegraph, Catholic leader claims Poles could split Church

Now, Poles new to the UK may argue there’s no requirement for them to speak English and join local Catholic churches; that there’s no need for them to do that; that it’s not advisable for them; that they are trying because it would be a good idea but it’s difficult. But to describe the Cardinal’s suggestion in the language of a sexual attack – ‘violated’, ‘raped’ – is overheated, histrionic and fails entirely to get to grips with the argument.

I do hope that the ‘community leaders’ of Polish Catholics won’t turn out to be like the community leaders of the Muslim population of Britain. Self-appointed, self-serving and unrepresentative.

Gavin wondered if anyone had predicted that an Orwellian, totalitarian state might come in a religious guise.

Well the answer’s yes, of course. Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale describes a totalitarian theocracy that specifically (for this is Atwood) oppresses women. She just picked the wrong religion.

Atwood’s novel doesn’t really take on the broader theme of totalitarianism, in the manner of 1984 and other dystopian nightmares, or of theocracy, except in their specific impact on women. She has a particular, feminist, fish to fry; but it’s interesting to hear that before she, perhaps unconvincingly, decided on Christianity as the theocracy of choice, she did consider Islam, in the context of Iran and the then recent Iranian revolution.

Surely the iconography and condition of women in The Handmaid’s Tale are directly read from Islam? In Atwood’s story, women have no property rights, they don’t study, they don’t wear make-up. Sexual expression is tightly regulated and homsexuals are hanged.

Where in the world does this sound like? The USA, the last surviving Enlightenment revolution where freedoms are constitutionally guaranteed, and religion and state rigourously separated? Or, Say Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or the Sudan?

The tendency in recent times by some on the Left to make common cause against the USA with theocratic fascists has coloured my re-reading of Atwood’s book. The Handmaid’s Tale wasn’t intended to be a prediction, and the theocracy was, if you like, a dark satire of Atwood’s projections of American, right-wing, fundamentalist Christianity. I can’t help but feel some irritation at the bien-pensants of the West continually, and safely, kicking out minor and temporary problems whilst before them lies a whole ocean of the traditional Islamic repression of women.

Gill Lusk, the associate editor of Africa Confidential and a specialist on Sudan, says the incident will have offended many in the country. As Sudan is a place where religion is never mocked or satirised, it’s “unthinkable” that a toy or pet could be given a religious name.

The BBC, What can’t be named Muhammad?

Sudan is a place where religion is never mocked? So over in Darfur, in Western Sudan the Sudanese military and Jajaweed militia, Arab, Muslims, are not mocking Islam when they kill 200,000, displace 2.5 million:

Independent observers noted that the tactics, which include dismemberment and killing of noncombatants and even young children and babies, are more akin to the ethnic cleansing used in the Yugoslav Wars

A Cambridge College’s student newspaper has caused a bit of fuss recently. One of the troubling suggestions to emerge is that publishing the statement, ‘I hate Islam‘ might be a criminal offence in the UK…

Harry’s Place publishes a fuller description of the offending issue but in the discussion on the matter, the contributer says,

The view of a criminal barrister to whom I have shown the edition is that there would be sufficient evidence to consider a charge for a public order offence, where there was a religiously aggrievating element. The statement “I hate Islam” is a relevant factor. Treating the Gopel of St Mark flippantly, and the joke about “Christ’s pieces” might also form the basis of a prosecution: although this is less likely. The relevant offences, in any event, are very broadly drafted, and cover merely “insulting” behaviour which would cause a person “distress”.

I think I want to emigrate. Could I claim asylum from a country which has dismissed traditional liberties quite so much?

According to a campaigning group, staff at the Grand Canyon are not allowed to officially comment on the of the geological feature Apparently, the reason is that the geologic age is way in excess of the apparently 6000 year old age of the planet according to Creationists. Not sure I believe the story, and will look into it further…

Tom Coates, Links for 2006-12-30

That never sounded a plausible story and now we know for sure it’s nonsense. Actually, I already knew it was nonsense. When I visited the Grand Canyon there was no end of information about its age and wonder at the fact of its relatively recent emergence – recent in geological terms, that is.

The Grand Canyon, quite old when I last visited

So how come Mr Coates even bothered to publish a silly rumour, even if he did promise to check it (I wonder how that checking of his is coming along). I think the answer lies in the mea culpa on the Skeptic website which publishes the facts of the matter after conducting some real research, rather than vapour research.

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, explains the orgin of the hoax, how he discovered it was a lie, and why he thinks he was taken in. He writes,

Unfortunately, in our eagerness to find additional examples of the inappropriate intrusion of religion in American public life … we accepted this claim by PEER without calling the National Park Service (NPS) or the Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) to check it.

Coincidentally, the highly recommended podcast The Skeptics Guide To The Universe from The New England Skeptical Society just this week offered some advice on not being taken in by conspiracy theories, including the wise suggestion to be extra wary if the hypothesis just happened to coincide with your political beliefs or was convenient to your world view. That’s what happened with Michael Shermer, he says as much, and it’s what happened with Tom Coates – although he doesn’t say as much.

Coates has history in his dislike of religion:

Sir Elton John would like to ban all organised religion It’s a sentiment with which I find myself sympathetic to [sic]

and in a willingness to overlook homegrown stupidity when there’s a chance to moan about the US right:

In the meantime, sir [sic], you should know that half of America doesn’t believe in evolution

he said, apparently missing the BBC poll indicating that less than half of Britons accept the theory of evolution as the best description for the development of life, according to an opinion poll.

The facts of this Grand Canyon matter weren’t difficult to find. A real life Park Ranger blogged about it and another Grand Canyon park interpreter said, of the hoax, something that could explain why Tom Coates was so ready to repeat the idiocy:

o insinuate a conspiratorial link between the NPS and organized religion are misguided and founded in fervent anti-Christian opposition, not reason or the law.

When Blair was challenged about the faith school in the North-East of England, Emmanuel College, which happily supported fundamentalist evangelicals and young-earth creationists, he said that diversity was necessary in education. That’s such a dumbfounding response that it’s difficult to understand that Blair really did seem to be supporting the teaching of nonsense (that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old) as if stupidity and sense needed equal curriculum time.

He’s now said, The Koran is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. Blair himself is an Anglo-Catholic and is married to a Catholic. So here’s my question, to Muslims or Christians: how is your faith not superstition?

Hume argued that superstition and fanaticism are the sources, or causes, of religion. Time for a definition.

Superstition:

a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, in or of the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, proceeding, or the like.

a system or collection of such beliefs.

a custom or act based on such a belief.

irrational fear of what is unknown or mysterious, esp. in connection with religion.

any blindly accepted belief or notion.

Surely, religion is superstition, especially to someone who’s not of a particular religion. As Blair isn’t a Muslim, how can he say Islam abhors superstition? According to the dictionary definition, for a Christian any other faith is just superstition.

The media-savvy Archbishop of York – the most senior cleric in the CofE after the Archbishop of Canterbury – has had a go at the BBC:

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has accused the BBC of bias against Christianity and says the broadcaster fears a terrorist backlash if it is critical of Islam.

The archbishop, the second most senior figure in the Church of England’s hierarchy, said Christians took “more knocks” than other faiths at the hands of the BBC.

“They can do to us what they dare not do to the Muslims,” he said. “We are fair game because they can get away with it. We don’t go down there and say, ‘We are going to bomb your place.’ That is not in our nature.

Daiy Telegraph, BBC frightened of criticising Islam, says archbishop

Now, I’m no fan of religions in general or Christianity in particular; but I would suggest that Dr Sentamu’s missing a point here, that mainstream Christians aren’t fair game because the rest of us can get away with it but rather that mainstream Christianity is mature enough to accept the need to engage in reasoned debate in our essentially secular society, rather than demand a right to be taken seriously just by making preposterous assertions.

Some people, though, who might be expected to understand very well the nature of freedom and diversity in a liberal society, display a irresponsible lack of toleration that’s quite staggering. For Tom Coates for example:

Sir Elton John would like to ban all organised religion It’s a sentiment with which I find myself sympathetic to (sic)

Tom Coates, plasticbag

Don’t like it? Ban it.