Archive for the ‘Religion & Politics’ Category

I seem to be writing a lot of open letters these days. It’s mainly for two reasons. The first is that it’s a lot cheaper to write an open letter than one you post in the traditional matter – the cost of a stamp may not seem much but actually I need to buy a book of stamps and a pack of envelopes, I then use one of which and the rest eventually get lost which is a waste not to mention the huge cost of my time for doing all this. The second is of course that Royal Mail would probably lose the letter at the end of all that. But anyway…

Having read the recent BHA e-bulletin, Pepper kindly pointed me in the direction of this Conservative blog post in which David Cameron is quoted as saying

take me to a humanist soup kitchen

Given that David was at the time talking about religiously-inspired volunteering (as opposed to volunteering carried out simply because you have good morals and care about your fellow human being) it seems appropriate to use the Biblical quote “ask and you shall receive.”

As a consequence I would like to extend an invitation to Mr. Cameron to spend an evening with the Humanist Action Group here in Leeds which regularly go out to offer soup and hot drinks to the homeless living on the streets.

Come spend some time helping out – not because your god or your holy book tells you to but purely on the basis that it’s the right thing to do. I’m sure many religious people volunteer for the same motives but the suggestion that volunteering is purely the pursuit of the religious is simply beyond laughable.

Even a quick glance at statistics show that the non-religious give more to the charity than the religious do. But of course that doesn’t even begin to paint an accurate picture because most non-believers don’t give to charity in the name of atheism so the actual higher is much higher.

So come down, spend some time volunteering in Leeds, see how it’s possible to give out a cup of coffee without a verse from a holy book cleverly inscribed on the lid.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Chris Worfolk

In November we hosted an interfaith panel inviting speakers from all major faiths to come down and field questions from an open audience. We had speakers from Buddhism, Baha’i, Humanism, Sikhism, Christianity and Judaism.

I love the environment. I love the planet. I think we need to take action in order to prevent human caused climate change.

But like so many of the causes I support, I hate the people who also support it.

Of course, I don’t actually hate them. I just said that for dramatic effect. I suspect they hate me and I’ll come on to that later. It’s more that they irritate me. Much in the same way as religion they arrogant self righteous actually cause more harm than good and I feel a need to stand up against this.

So, I guess we should start at the beginning.

Global warming, human caused climate change is happening. I should say it’s almost certainly happening to be more accurate, there is always that .1% chance it isn’t, but to the best of our knowledge it is happening, it is having an adverse affect on the planet we’re living on and as we are planning to continue to live her for quite a while we should really do something about it.

But the current climate change movement isn’t helping matters. Indeed they’ve become so dug in to their beliefs that it has almost become a religion. Indeed, it has become a religion – earlier this year a belief in climate change was held up to be in need of the same protection as those afforded to religious beliefs. Of course the fact that these beliefs need such protection is the giveaway.

Much like religious stories, the ideas of the climate change movement are just so crazy and far out there it’s almost “too unbelievable to make up.” Take a minute to consider them. The planet, the whole planet, and the very future of the entire human race is at stake. It’a future rests on you. You can save it – if only you would switch off that light bulb that draws only a 1/200th of the power your kettle draws in that room you are not using.

But it’s gets far, far worse. From this very dubious idea we have an entire world view building up around it which mirrors religion – and in particular Catholicism far closer than anything ever should to the point where you would expect a scandal a decade down the line involving small children and sexual acts which should never have taken place.

It’s the concept of original sin. The idea that you’re born into the bonds of inequity as St Paul put it. That you have some kind of penance to pay to a greater body which you will always be trapped in.

Think about it. You’re a new born baby brought into the world. Into a hospital surrounded by bright lights, of intensive electrical equipment in a city so full of light pollution you can’t even see the stars. You’re already a sinner – using up energy! Do you need that incubuator? Won’t a blanket do?

We live our lives every day using up power, turning lights on, running our computers and it’s all just climate change sin. You can’t escape it – you can’t not use electricity. Or gass. Or paper which is still bad even though it’s a renewal energy source. You’re sinning every minute of every day of your life.

You might think you lead a good life. You’re trying your best – you turn lights off in rooms you’re not using, you turn your TV off rather than putting it on stand by. But honestly, have you recycled everything? Have you scraped the cheese off that pizza box so you could recycle the cardboard? Have you turned the computer off the minute you finished using it? Left a charger plugged even after your phone was fully charged? Have you even just thought about it in your head?

Of course you have. So I have I. Right now I’m running my laptop and my desktop and only using my desktop because I’m going to use my laptop again soon. I also have a light on in my kitchen so I can see where I am going when I go in there to take my dinner out of the oven. And where, where is the global warming jesus character to take this climate sin away from us?

We need to pay penance for our sin, sin which we generate every day by just trying to live our lives because quite frankly the modern world just isn’t stressful enough.

For the love of the god I do not believe in, it’s 2009, the UK is a 1st world country, we shouldn’t be in this situation.

I was at a York Brights meeting last month and there was a discussion going about the real way in which people could control their footprint – by not having another child.

And they’re right. Having a child has a huge environmental impact. Every new human does. It’s probably the number one thing we could do to stem climate change, just stop having kids.

Of course, this is just stupid. I don’t even need to make a reductio ad absurdum argument, because we’re already here. We shouldn’t have to prevent ourselves from having children if we want them, we should be able to leave our computers on all day if we want to, we should be able to light our homes without feeling guilty about it.

What we need of course, is a serious approach to climate change.

Stemming climate change isn’t going to come from stumbling around in the dark or using paper bags even though the productuion methods use almost as much natural resources as just making plastic ones.

It’s going to come from technology and innovation. From human creatively, from pushing back the boundaries of science and engineering, from creating new ways to generate the energy our society needs which don’t damage the world around us. Remember all that stuff? Or are we so dead inside that we have forgotten we are the same people that put man on the moon, split the atom or transformed Planet Earth with civilizations and cultures more advanced than anything we know of?

But it’s blasphemy to say this. It probably offends people’s beliefs for me to express these opinions. Like the religious fundamentalist the idea that I might take a position based on reason and evidence rather than their carefully constructed dogma threatens their fragile world view which can so easily be blown away by the winds of logic.

Well it’s about time people stood up and called them on it. There are ways we can solve these problems – amazing ways. Look at nuclear fusion (not to be confused of course with nuclear technology at the moment which operates on nuclear fission). Here we have the potential to unlock virtually limitless supplies of energy without harming the environment. Why, why are we not literally pouring money into such research?

We should be, we need to be – for our own sake, as well as the planet’s.

Myself and Ian Abbott from Lancashire Secular Humanists at the Ummah Channel studios where we were filming a debate.

I normally pay off all off the full balance of my credit cards via direct debit each month. However when it came to renewing my car insurance last summer I calculated, given the amount they charge you to pay monthly, it was actually cheaper to pay the whole lot upfront on my credit card and pay that off each month than it was to just pay my car insurance monthly.

As such I’ve had a rapidly diminishing but never the less outstanding balance on my Lloyds TSB credit card for the past couple of months.

Bare in mind that this is a credit card which I have held for over three years now and never have they written to me regarding it. Then today I was opening my mail and found a letter announcing that they had increased my credit limit. Actually, according to the letter, they have increased my “credit limit.”

And I know, I know, a corporation is by definition a soulless entity without feelings designed to grab as much money from people as possible by whatever means and I am normally the first to preach about how you can’t really judge such an entity for immortal practices because it is by it’s very nature amoral.

But seriously, we’ve just gone through a global financial meltdown. Indeed one which Lloyds TSB was actually bailed out by the government. And when I say by the government I mean by me, because the government is funded by the huge tax bill I pay every month.

Now I don’t particularly care that they have done this because I’m not going to go out and spend the extra money and struggle to pay it back, I have far higher limits on my other cards anyway. But there must be thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people out there who would go out and dig themselves into even more debt which they would struggle to pay back all because the banks saw another opportunity to take advantage.

Wankers.

I went down to the English Defence League protest and counter-protest on Saturday to see what was going on. There were an amazing amount of police everywhere including loads of mounted police, riot police and an endless series of vans. The Manchester operation cost approximately £200,000 of tax payers money, I expect the Leeds operation cost a similar amount.

The EDL lot were based on city square where the police had them penned off with barriers across the entrances where they were letting people in and out. They had also blocked a number of roads round the area off though they didn’t seem to stop traffic going into the traps – so the most amusing point of the day was when a BMW X5 complete with a very middle class looking family found itself with nowhere to go on the one way system. As such the husband got out of the car, politely moved the cones blocking off the turned off onto Park Row, drove through them and put them back.

It was a bit dead down on the EDL side of things so I headed up to the counter demo outside the art gallery. There was far more of an atmosphere up here though I’m not convinced that drums are generally considered the sound of peace. It was a strange mix of leftist politics as you would expect, for example I’m not sure what the Stop the War Coalition has to do with any of this other than trying to hijack the event for some cheap publicity.

Not longer after I got there Revolution led a march away from the event as they tried to move towards EDL. The police soon had lines across the roads they didn’t want them to go down and they ended up down the financial district.

Having eventually nowhere else to go that would get them closer to EDL things inevitably turned ugly as Revolution charged the police line. They managed to get some people through though there was a second line of mounted officers and several police vans in support so the police eventually forced them back and they eventually gave up and marched back to the art gallery.

Wondering back down to the EDL protest it had really picked up with far more people there and a bit more atmosphere, especially when several coaches turned up bringing EDL reinforcements many of which were carrying banners. Doesn’t speak too highly for the Leeds movement if they have to bus in reinforcements but there you go.

The most enjoyable part of the day was chatting to the other amateur photographers which had turned to cover the event. Many of them had been covering such events for as long as a decade. There were some interesting lessons to be learned too. “I always follow the leftist side at these events,” one of the pro-left photographers explained. “It’s always the left that start the violence.”

Luckily on Saturday there was very little in the way of trouble – the day passed with only five arrests and no major injuries though of the clashes there were with the police I found the attitudes of those involved very disconcerting. “We could have broken through the police lines” one of the leftist supporters said. I replied “Well, I mean surely you shouldn’t do that?” “No, it would have worked, we had the number just not enough people went for it.” “No, I mean, from a moral point of view you shouldn’t be charging the police,” I tried to explain but the concept seemed lost on him.

EDL got approximately 900 people down there while the counter protest managed to get 1,500. Therefore we can conclude that only 38% of the population are in favour of fascism while the other 62% opposite it. Democracy works.

Of course, that isn’t a serious comment. Both sides are actually a bunch of fascists so the real conclusion we can draw from Saturday is that the 95.5% of the population of Leeds that didn’t attend think they are all wankers and wish they would stop wasting our tax money on huge policing operations.

Despite that though I’m glad the event happened. It is a true testament to the free and democractic society we live in when nut job organisations such as EDL, Revolution and UAF are able to speak their mind like this. It is ultimately this type of libertarianism which is so desirable that will ultimately defeat Sharia law, the object of both sides’ protests.

English Defence League crowd on city square.

The police attempt to block Revolution from marching on EDL.

Revolution charge the police line.

More EDL supporters arrive by coach.

On Wednesday I headed down to give Kat some company at Alpha at South Parade Baptist Church. The theme of the night was tough questions and so our group discussions looked at a number of questions, namely why does god allow suffering, what about other religions and are science and religion incompatible.

The general answers where because Jesus took our sins, because Christianity has Jesus who was unique and no because Jesus said so 😀 . Actually those weren’t quite the answers but that was the general theme. I found this session much more engaging to be honest and enjoyed it far more though I did find some real cliched points.

I had to hold myself back at least twice, first when people commented that what really sets Christianity apart was that it had Jesus and his story was unique. Of course his story isn’t unique, it fits brilliantly into the hero pattern and is very, very derivative of previous gods. Secondly the girl opposite me, Charlotte, was no doubt a very nice girl and very friendly – but did bring up the “bad, mad or god” argument and I had to bite my tongue from saying “I dealt with this last time I was here, it doesn’t hold any water.”

All in all though I found the discussions much more engaging than the previous visit so thumbs up.

On Thursday evening I headed round to Rich’s along with George and Jonni for a Question Time pizza party. Between us we got through about five pizzas, as well as several bottles of win and half of Rich’s carton 😀 . This was of course to watch British National Party leader Nick Griffin appear on the programme.

It was at least an entertaining show if nothing else though was mostly just BNP bashing. Not that we should have expected any less of course but I’m not sure it was the most productive thing to do. As Bill points out, it was half way though the show before someone managed to fit an intelligent comment in – that perhaps the failure of the major parties had led to a rise in BNP support.

In the end though it was essentially a witch hunt which didn’t produce the desired result. If a better course of action as Rich pointed out would have been to ask the panel what their policies on health, education and the economy were so they could be compared side by side.

This would have likely done far more damage than the constant barrage of insults that were thrown at Nick and his party which no doubt made us Guardian readers feel good but actually won him a lot of sympathy and support in other social groups. Will the appearance be a good or bad thing for the BNP? I guess we’ll find out soon.

For those of you who haven’t heard of the English Defence League (I hadn’t until today), they bill themselves as “peacefully protesting against militant Islam” so you can fill in the blanks. Anyway I was linked to their website via UAF’s website and had a quick browse around. They don’t have much content but they do have some interesting Google Adwords on their forum registration page 😀 .

Everyone knows that Barack Obama is an atheist.

“And non-believers” may be a small fish in the UK, but in the US even such a small mention is worth something. Not to mention his support of stem cell research and gay rights. So chances are he’s just Christian because you could never get elected president of the United States without being one. If this is the case, it is no suprise he hides his atheism so well – he is smart enough to get himself elected president of the US after all.

This got me thinking – what is George Bush is an atheist? I mean, he got himself elected as president of the United States. Which seemes to leave us with three possibilities:

1. George Bush is really smart, smart enough to be an atheist and smart enough to know that if he wants to be president of the United States he needs to pretend to be Christian.
2. It is possible to be both smart and a Christian, and George Bush is one of these people.
3. You don’t know to be that smart to get yourself elected president of the United States – just lucky and have the right people supporting you.

All three of these I would consider valid possibilities.

It is possible for people to be both smart and a Christian. For them to be scientists and yet when it comes to spiritual matters for them to turn off the logical part of their brain.

It is possible to be president of the United States without being that clever, perhaps. The main reason for thinking this is that George Bush seems to be such an idiot. But also consider how many utter blondes attended your red brick university with you. You think to yourself, “these girls are just so ditzy and blonde, how did they get in here?” Yet they did, and go on to graduate most of the time as well! There are some people who are just naturally really good at something, even academics, or maybe politics, that aren’t overall that smart.

Finally, it could all be an act. This would seem unlikely in George Bush’s case because he on the whole did take a conservative Christian approach when it cames to policy which suggests he did actually want to push these policies through. After all, what would be the point of ataining office only to push the pretence so far as to actually push through all the things you didn’t believe in?

However, if it was anything short of this, I would probably ask the question as to whether George Bush could have been an atheist. It’s no great leap to think that someone could act dumb for his public image when they are actually very clever – take a look at the bumbling Boris Johnson who has now planted himself as mayor of London.

Mulling this over though, it will hopefully make you wonder who else could have potentially been simply religious for political reasons – much like it was suspected that many of the founding fathers of the US were deists because this is as far as they could push it at the time.

Of course, Tony Blair’s secret raging Catholicism adds a whole new dimension to the debate…