Aha. Natalie Angier and I are on the same page, so to speak.

Among the more irritating consequences of our flagrantly religious society is the special dispensation that mainstream religions receive. We all may talk about religion as a powerful social force, but unlike other similarly powerful institutions, religion is not to be questioned, criticized or mocked. When the singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor ripped apart a photograph of John Paul II to protest what she saw as his overweening power, even the most secular humanists were outraged by her idolatry, and her career has never really recovered.

Not this cookie – I wasn’t outraged. (Well, I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but if I had been, I would have … Read the rest

Good old Iqbal Sacranie. One can see why the BBC and similar are always so eager to ask the MCB for its opinion on matters to do with ‘the Muslim community’.

Sir Iqbal said of civil partnerships: “This is harmful. It does not augur well in building the very foundations of society – stability, family relationships. And it is something we would certainly not, in any form, encourage the community to be involved in.”

Why? Why doesn’t it?

He said he was guided by the teachings of the Muslim faith, adding that other religions such as Christianity and Judaism held the same stance.

Yes, they do. A cardinal was saying so just the other day. So what? Why … Read the rest

No, it’s not particularly astonishing that Deborah Lipstadt doesn’t think Iriving should go to prison. Yes she has every reason to find him extremely irritating, but that doesn’t straightforwardly necessarily translate to thinking he ought to be locked up – and it’s a bit stupid to think or pretend to think it does. Don’t we all find countless throngs of people extremely irritating without thinking (except for the odd passing whim) that they ought to be locked up? I know I do.

Lipstadt has spent years exposing the arguments of Nazi sympathisers. She warns historians must “remain ever vigilant” against those who say the Holocaust was a hoax, “so that the precious tools of our trade and our society

Well, there’s one good thing. Maybe, maybe, maybe, now at last the news media will start calling bribery ‘bribery’ instead of ‘fundraising’ and ‘campaign contributions’. That would help. I don’t know, maybe the Beeb is different, maybe they’ve been calling it bribery at least some of the time all along, but US news media sure haven’t. It’s been driving me stark staring mad for years, hearing NPR reporters blithely referring to fundraising when what they’re talking about is simply solicitation of bribes, and campaign contributions when what they’re talking about is simply monetary payments to powerful elected officials in the expectation of favours in return. The whole incredible shocking disgusting deeply corrupt mess has been treated as normal and … Read the rest

I’ve been reading Judge Jones’s decision. It really is a great read, you know. So I think I will occasionally share selected favourites with you.

Page 25.

The only apparent difference between the argument made by
Paley and the argument for ID, as expressed by defense expert witnesses Behe and
Minnich, is that ID’s “official position” does not acknowledge that the designer is
God. However, as Dr. Haught testified, anyone familiar with Western religious
thought would immediately make the association that the tactically unnamed
designer is God, as the description of the designer in Of Pandas and People
(hereinafter “Pandas”) is a “master intellect,” strongly suggesting a supernatural
deity as opposed to any intelligent actor known to exist in

So there’s this creationist ‘Zoo Farm’ place in Somerset.

A donkey was led in and the presenter traced a marking on its back. Did we know that the domesticated donkey has a dark cross marked on its back, he asked us casually, whereas the wild donkey doesn’t? Did the cross not remind us that the donkey carried Jesus? In retrospect, I was intrigued by my shock at this mild evangelical interjection, a reaction that reflects a more general antipathy towards creationism. Anthony Bush hopes “to give people permission to believe in God”, by disputing the truth of Darwin’s theories. However, the prospect of a religious world-view having any authority fills non-believers with dread.

Well exactly. And that’s not just some … Read the rest