Archive for the ‘Religion & Politics’ Category

I was only four years old when Margaret Thatcher stepped down as Prime Minister. But to say that I, or any of us in my peer group where after Thatcher’s time is naive – we were born to a generation entangled with Thatcherism and grew up in a landscape that had been radically altered by her eleven years in the post.

My interest in the debate is greater provoked by the outpouring of vile and hatred that has spewed forth since Baroness Thatcher’s passing. This is of course different from the calm and rational discourse surrounding her policies and impact that should, indeed must be had.

But if you are unable to separate a discussion on ideas, from a personal attack designed only to draw offense, I am going to treat you with the same contempt that the simple minded religious bigot deserves. In fact, I’m going to argue against you, to take up arms I don’t even believe in, to provide Devil’s Advocacy against your arguments.

As Norm points out, it seems you are refused permission to have a balanced argument on Thatcher. You must hate her with every cell in your body, or prostrate your unworthy self at her feet in admiration – god help you if you were to think some of the things she did were good and some of the things she did were bad.

This black and white vision of reality, insisting she is the Devil himself in female form (by the way, we had a female head of government 34 years ago, is nobody else proud of that?) has no place intelligent conversation. A debate on the evils (or otherwise) of the 1980’s Conservative government however, is very much welcome.

Gijsbert has published a new video based on his latest research findings.

For better, or for worse, she will never be forgotten. Still Britain’s only female prime minister, and the most successful prime minster of the twentieth century.

One of my friends recently started a new blog on the origins of Islam. It challenges the claim that is sometimes made by Islam itself that its origins are factual – as the blog goes on to explain, this simply isn’t the case. Read all about it.

When we ran events at the University of Leeds, everyone was welcome. But, as they were our events, we insisted on white people sitting at the front, and black people sitting at the back.

That isn’t true.

But imagine if it was – how shocking! How outrageous! To be clear, given I’m known for my sarcastic nature, I am being entirely serious here – obviously it would be completely unacceptable. I genuinely do mean unacceptable – people would not accept it. The good people of Leeds would rise up against me and say “No! We’re not going to tolerate your bigoted views!”

As I said, we hold no such views. But imagine if you replaced the term “we” with “Islamic Society” and the racial segregation with a segregation based on how many X chromosomes you have – another property that, like skin colour, you have absolutely no control of. That is exactly what you get happening up and down the country.

I haven’t been to an Islamic Society run event at Leeds, so I can’t comment on their events, but I have been to Nottingham Trent where they had separate entrances for men and women, Richard Dawkins regularly tweets about segregation at UCL and last time Bob went to Bradford University he ended up making a protest about the whole thing when he refused to move after inadvertently sitting down in a row designated for women – these aren’t one-off incidents, they are happening all over the country.

Firstly, just segregation is just as bad as racial segregation – those who implement such systems are bigots. Yet the irony is that when we call these bigots on their bigoted views, they then try and say we’re racist for not respecting their bigoted religion.

Secondly though, were are the masses standing up against this kind of behaviour?

I’m proud that we have freedom of expression in this country. This means that Nick Griffin can stand up and say he doesn’t like gays – which is undesirable – but at least when he does, a million people stand up and tell him how wrong he is! That is why freedom of expression works, because everyone gets a voice and when bigots stand up and shout, we shout louder than they do.

But when one of the bigoted leaders of Islam stands up and demands segregation, where are the voices that cry out in defiance? They seem to fall silent.

Is it that all Islamists are bigots? I doubt it. None of my Islamist friends are bad people – otherwise I wouldn’t be friends with them. I think it says more about the evils of religion, than it does about the people following it.

Religion brainwashes people. There is no other word for it. It gets them to do things that typical human beings would not agree to, whether it is murdering abortion doctors, blowing yourself up, or supporting segregation whether it be racial, gender or down any other lines.

If Islamists want to convince people that their religion is one of peace and harmony, perhaps they should start by calling out their leaders on the hurtful, bigoted views they spread in university lecture halls up and down the country.

Today, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, better known as Pope Benedict XVI, will step down as Pope. I for one, am very disappointed.

As an atheist, I thought having a former member of the Hitler Youth, who personally covered up child abuse during his career at the Catholic Church, made an excellent elected leader for their organisation. As the infallible representative of God here on Earth, it makes it much more difficult for them to sweep such endemic abuse problems under the carpet as a few nutters gone astray (a tactic that has so far worked very well for the Islamists).

So it is with regret that I see Ratzinger quit the post that most people keep for life – and nobody is implying such tradition once again draws the line between religion and cult into question, so lets lay that one to bed right now. I didn’t think the man known as Hitler’s Other Pope would let anything get in his way.

I wonder what kind of retirement package you get as Pope. They probably haven’t put too much thought into this given it hasn’t happened in 600 years, but presumably he is still going to need security and other considerations, above that of the level of a Cardinal.

Also, at what point does he stop being infallible? Is that today? I hope he has squeezed out all the knowledge he can while we still has the chance.

Still, what is done is done. He had a great run – pissing off all the gays, women, non-believers, Anglicans, health workers and many other groups along the way. I only hope that their next leader is such an apt representative of an organisation that is brought an unparalleled amount of evil into the world^{[1][2][3][4][5]}.

Recently, Bill Gates delivered the 2013 Richard Dimbleby Lecture, in which he discussed the struggle to eradicate polio from the world.

The good news is, that it is now only endemic in three countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.

This in itself is no small achievement – polio is a disease that takes weeks to diagnose, which means the percentage of the population you need to immunise is higher, in this case 95%.

Take a country like India, with over a billion people – 75,000 new babies are born every day, and each of them requires several rounds of immunisation. That means that you need 200,000 vaccines per day, that need to be taken to rural communities, while being refrigerated, often that need to be carried for miles on foot by health workers. No wonder it took a staggering 2,000,000 people working on the programme – but they did it!

Unfortunately, you can’t stop fighting it until it’s eradicated, but with only three countries to go, the plan is to read that milestone by 2018. But more than being about one single disease, Gates points out…

Polio eradication is a proving ground, a test. It will reveal what human beings are capable of, and suggest how ambitious we can be about the future.

Together, we can achieve great things.

Chris Ward tweeted this picture.

Back in July, I wrote about how it might be time for the United States to re-think their attitude to guns in the wake of the Batman cinema massacre, that left 12 people dead.

Then, just as that incidient faces from our memories, or at least those of us who weren’t personally affected, a fresh gunman walks into yet another high school, this time in Newtown, and massacres 26 people, including 20 children.

The US gun lobby was quick to explain how the situation could be resolved – armed guards at the entrance to every school, and maybe even teachers with guns too, that way they can return fire and stop it before it turns into a massacre. Guns are always the answer!

The more civilised portions of society spoke out about the tragedy.

I have to say, however, that I don’t think tragedy is the correct term. To me, the term tragedy suggests a degree of chance or unpredictability – 100,000 people die per day, but it isn’t a tragedy (it probably should be – but that is another discussion) because most of them die of old age. A busload of children going off a cliff though – that is tragedy. It is an unfortunate and unlucky event.

The reality is that there is nothing unlucky about someone walking into a school in the United States, and shooting the place up.

Rather than calling it a tragedy, they need to face up to the truth. They have a simple choice. Choice A is to maintain the freedoms they enjoy, namely, being able to bear arms and not contribute to the cost of providing health care to others and accept that from time to time, some of their children are going to get massacred.

Choice B is to restrict the freedoms to own weapons designed to kill, and contribute to the cost of providing mental health care to those who need it. The advantage to which though is that you get to life in a society where you know your child isn’t going to be shot in the head by a gun-toting young person in need of psychatric care.

Much like providing freedom of expression has the unfortunate consequence of meaning you have to provide nutters like Nick Griffin a platform to spout their views, if you want to live in a society that loves guns and hates universal healthcare, you have to accept the consequences of your actions.

The reality is, that the United States chooses to have these massacres on a regular basis. That is the true tragedy of the situation.

This man has a tattoo of Leviticus 18:22.

The verse is as follows.

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

Unfortunately, he apparently got that before reading any further. For example, Leviticus 19:28 says the following.

Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you

In short: no tattoos.