Some Reason From Richard Dawkins
Not happy with Pope Ratzinger’s Thought for the Day? Try Richard Dawkins’:
Was it for this that I broke the habit of years and accepted the Guardian’s invitation to listen to Thought for the Day? Was it for this that the BBC, including the director general himself, no less, spent months negotiating with the Vatican? What on earth were they negotiating about,if all that emerged was the damp, faltering squib we have just strained our ears to hear?
We’ve already had what little apology we are going to get (none in most cases) for the raped children, the Aids-sufferers in Africa, the centuries spent attacking Jews, science, women and “heretics”, the indulgences and more modern (and tax-deductible) methods of fleecing the gullible to build the Vatican’s vast fortune. So, no surprise that these weren’t mentioned. But there’s something else for which the pope should go to confession, and it’s arguably the nastiest of all. I refer to the main doctrine of Christian theology itself, which was the centrepiece of what Ratzinger actually did say in his Thought for the Day.
“Christ destroyed death forever and restored life by means of his shameful death on the Cross.”
More shameful than the death itself is the Christian theory that it was necessary. It was necessary because all humans are born in sin. Every tiny baby, too young to have a deed or a thought, is riddled with sin: original sin. Here’s Thomas Aquinas:
“. . . the original sin of all men was in Adam indeed, as in its principal cause, according to the words of the Apostle(Romans 5:12): “In whom all have sinned“: whereas it is in the bodily semen, as in its instrumental cause, since it is by the active power of the semen that original sin together with human nature is transmitted to the child.”
Adam (who never existed) bequeathed his “sin” in his bodily semen (charming notion) to all of humanity. That sin, with which every newborn baby is hideously stained (another charming notion), was so terrible that it could be forgiven only through the blood sacrifice of a scapegoat. But no ordinary scapegoat would do. The sin of humanity was so great that the only adequate sacrificial victim was God himself.
That’s right. The creator of the universe, sublime inventor of mathematics, of relativistic space-time, of quarks and quanta, of life itself, Almighty God, who reads our every thought and hears our every prayer, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God couldn’t think of a better way to forgive us than to have himself tortured and executed. For heaven’s sake, if he wanted to forgive us, why didn’t he just forgive us? Who, after all, needed to be impressed by the blood and the agony? Nobody but himself.
Ratzinger has much to confess in his own conduct, as cardinal and pope. But he is also guilty of promoting one of the most repugnant ideas ever to occur to a human mind: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22).
Christians ‘Not Ashamed’ to be Homophobic
The closer we get to Christmas, the old, familiar Christian whining about persecution once again rears its ugly head:
Christians who believe their faith is “under attack” in Britain are launching a campaign to defend it.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey will launch “Not Ashamed Day” outside the House of Lords.
Campaigners say a mounting number of cases of workers being disciplined over their beliefs show Christianity is being “airbrushed” from UK society.
The National Secular Society said “zealots” were wrong to claim the faith was being deliberately undermined.
The day, organised by Christian Concern, will kick off a campaign to urge Christians to “wear their faith with pride.”
Wearing their faith with pride eh? Their faith is ‘under attack’? Does he think the public doesn’t know he and other bishops have seats in the House of Lords and have a say over legislation which affects us all? Does he believe that the Queen, our head of state, has suddenly given up being Supreme Governor of the Church of England? Just how does this leave Christians in a position where they need to launch a campaign (on World AIDS Day of all days) to defend it?
“Yet what many people don’t realise is that it is the Christian faith that underpins these great strengths and that has enriched our nation in so many other ways.
“This rich legacy is under attack. In spite of having contributed so much to our civilisation and providing its foundation, the Christian faith is in danger of being stealthily and subtly brushed aside.”
What the delightful former Archbishop wants you to believe as well is that any positive social legacy Christianity might have is being attacked without cause. Can I mention faith schools? New Labour and the Tories alike are perfectly comfortable with academy schools teaching children that there was a worldwide flood and that the world is no more than 6,000 years old – how is this an example of the Christian faith being ‘stealthily brushed aside’? Carey and zealots like him are quite simply stamping their feet about no longer having the right to discriminate arbitrarily against minorities they don’t like. They particularly don’t like all their court losses in their attempts to impose their bigotry on gay people, and don’t understand that the reason why people really aren’t going to church anymore is because they’re fed up with them.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey is to launch a campaign that will encourage Christians to “wear their faith with pride” after many Christians expressed concerns that they are being treated with the same sort of contempt they normally reserve for homosexuals.
Lord Carey will launch a leaflet in which he says, “I am proud of our tradition of tolerance towards straight people and our historic commitment to welcoming perfectly heterosexual strangers.”
“Obviously it goes without saying that any strangers would have to complete a questionnaire to ascertain their sexual preference before we start rolling out the red carpet.”
“You should also read nothing into the fact that I’m launching this campaign on World Gay Plague Day – sorry, World AIDS Day.”
Christian Activists Can Only Make a Case by Lying
by Terry Sanderson, reposted from the National Secular Society
We have reported on Newsline many cases of Christian activists trying to use the law to gain special privileges in the workplace for their beliefs. Examples include Nadia Eweida, the BA worker who was supposedly denied the right to wear a crucifix over her uniform, and Lillian Ladele, the Islington registrar who didn’t want to perform civil partnerships. There seem to have been dozens of these people coming forward claiming religious discrimination.
Self-appointed “defenders of religious freedom”
The Daily Mail and the Telegraph have provided a wide platform for these moans, and helped groups like the Christian Institute and Christian Concern for Our Nation to create in the public mind a whole mythology about the ‘persecution of Christians in the UK’. A couple of weeks ago I witnessed Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, regurgitating it in an Intelligence Squared debate at the Royal Geographical Society.
Such cases tend to come to grief when the full facts are uncovered in court. Freed from the distortions of the right-wing press, these cases nearly always turn out to be nothing more than religious activism posing as discrimination.
The latest case, thrown out of an industrial tribunal this week, involved paediatrician Sheila Matthews, who claims she was “forced out” of her position on the Northamptonshire County Council Adoption Panel because she would not recommend gay couples as adopters, however suitable they might be, because it is against her religion. Tellingly, she was represented at the tribunal by the usual suspects in these cases: barrister Paul Diamond and the Christian Legal Centre.
But once under scrutiny in the court, the carefully edited version of events that had been given to us by the Christian agitators was shown up for what it was – a lot of disingenuous rubbish.
The Head of Children’s Services at the Council, Martin Pratt, stated in a letter to Dr Matthews: “There are three concerns that I have: that we have to comply with the law, that we attract the widest possible range of suitable adopters and that we comply with our own policies. I believe that we could not allow a panel member to continue to participate in the process who is unable to consider, on the merits of the application alone, applications to adopt.” Dr Matthews said she did not think that gay couples should ever adopt.
The judge in the case — John MacMillan —said Matthews had no case against the Council. He said: “The complaints of religious discrimination fail and are dismissed. This case fails fairly and squarely on its facts. In our judgment, at least from the time of the pre-hearing review, the continuation of these proceedings was plainly misconceived… they were doomed to fail. There is simply no factual basis for the claims.”
Mr MacMillan said there was no evidence that Dr Matthews was treated differently from any other panel member who might request to abstain from voting, or that she was specifically discriminated against on the basis of her Christianity. He said the issue “transcended the boundaries of all religions” and ruled that Dr Matthews should pay the Council’s legal costs. And yet still Dr Matthews says she intends to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
The ear-bashing that she got from the judge was well-deserved, but you will notice from theDaily Mail’s account of the case that there is no mention of what he said about the futility and emptiness of Dr Matthew’s legal challenges – but the paper reproduces a lot of her homophobic opinion.
And this is precisely how the mythology of Christian persecution has been created, by partial reporting and gross exaggeration. When the case first comes to public notice those on the other side — usually local authorities or other public bodies — are bound by confidentiality not to give their side of the story until it reaches court. This allows the Christians to have a field day with the facts, carefully editing the tale for their own advantage.
It seems these self-appointed defenders of religious freedom cannot win their cases by telling it like it is (case after case that has reached court has failed) and so have to depend on sympathetic journalists to spread their propaganda for them.
Another Christian Zealot Denied Right to Discriminate
We’ve had marriage registrars, marriage counsellors, and now an anti-gay adoption adviser, who has, following her removal from an adoption panel, after refusing to rule on cases involving same-sex parents, sued for religious discrimination:
She [Dr Sheila Matthews] said: “I understand that legislation permits same sex couples to adopt and they are positively encouraged to apply, but I have professional concerns, based on educational and psychological evidence, of the influences on children growing up in homosexual households and I feel this is not the best possible option for a child.
“I do not consider myself to be homophobic, however I believe that children do best in families with a father and mother playing different roles in a child’s upbringing and committed to each other in a lifelong relationship.”
She added: “My view arose from both a professional one from my reading of the literature, and an historical Christian perspective of relationships, based on the Bible, an authority which our court system still uses today to swear in those giving evidence and juries, based on its authority.”
Of course the homophobia is built in to the second paragraph, but Dr Matthews’ problem, as with the previous instances of Christian soldiers trying to get opt-outs in law to discriminate based entirely on the basis of their crazy belief, is that she was in breach of her contract, as well as of the law. Her view isn’t a medical one (or even a factual one if you want to broaden the argument) which can be substantiated at all, and no doubt she’ll keep insisting it is, but noone has suggested she not be allowed to believe this bigoted garbage – she just can’t act on it in a professional capacity. Although gay and religious rights have clashed here again (and will continue to do so), the reason why her ‘religious rights’ have been placed second is clear:
The employment tribunal, sitting in Leicester, dismissed the claim.
Concluding a two-day hearing, regional employment judge John MacMillan said she had no case against the council.
He said: “The complaints of religious discrimination fail and are dismissed.
“This case fails fairly and squarely on its facts.”
He added: “In our judgment, at least from the time of the pre-hearing review, the continuation of these proceedings was plainly misconceived… they were doomed to fail.
“There is simply no factual basis for the claims.”
Mr MacMillan said there was no evidence that Dr Matthews was treated differently from any other panel member who might request to abstain from voting, or that she was specifically discriminated against on the basis of her Christianity.
He said the issue “transcended the boundaries of all religions” and ruled that Dr Matthews should pay the council’s legal costs.
Message to the legions of Christian soldiers yet to come: your right to practice and believe in your religion do not (in the world of work and service provision) give you the right under the law to discriminate against people for their sexual orientation. So quit it.
Out Gay Bishop Retires Early
Well you fundies, you’ve done it. You’ve edged Bishop Gene Robinson out before his time:
An openly gay bishop whose appointment split the Anglican church is to resign, saying the last seven years had “taken their toll” on him, his family and his flock.
The Right Rev Gene Robinson, of New Hampshire, revealed his plans yesterday, at at annual diocesan meeting. He will be 65 when he steps down, seven years below the retirement age.
He told the convention that being in the eye of the storm had proved too much.
He said: “Death threats, and the now-worldwide controversy surrounding your election of me as bishop, have been a constant strain, not just on me, but on my beloved husband, Mark, who has faithfully stood with me every minute of the last seven years, and in some ways, you.
“While I believe that these attitudes, mostly outside the diocese, have not distracted me from my service to you, I would be less than honest if I didn’t say that they have certainly added a burden and certain anxiety to my episcopate.”
Terrible news. Gene Robinson is a great man, who I’ve had the pleasure to listen to in conversation. I will never in my life be a religious individual but what he said two years ago made fantastic sense:
This is the God I know in my life – who loves me, interacts with me, teaches and summons me closer and closer to God’s truth. This God is alive and well and active in the church – not locked up in scripture 2,000 years ago, having said everything that needed to be said, but rather still interacting with us, calling us to love one another as he loves us. It is the brilliance of Anglicanism that we first and foremost read scripture, and then interpret it in light of church tradition and human reason.
It’s appalling that this voice of reason should be edged out of mainstream Christianity at this point in its history. Its choice is after all compassion:
or intolerance and hatred:
Hopefully equally loud voices from within will take up his mantle, as he continues his work from outside the Church.
Britain’s Own War on Christmas
I love Marcus Brigstocke:
The Christian bullies can indeed stop their incessant whining about how the BBC society country entire population isn’t Christmassy enough enough like them now. Sublime.
(via Marc Hall)
Zealots Claiming Gay Rights Eroding Christianity
It’s the normal garbage you hear from modern day Christian soldiers (read ‘bigots’), determined to try to retain any legal right to discriminate against gay people. And of course it’s presented by the Daily HateMail:
Gay rights laws are eroding Christianity and stifling free speech, Church of England bishops warned yesterday.
Senior clerics, including former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, spoke out ahead of a High Court ‘clash of rights’ hearing over whether Christians are fit to foster or adopt children.
The test case starting today involves a couple who say they have been barred from fostering because they refuse to give up their religious belief that homosexuality is unacceptable.
Unacceptable to bigots maybe, but it’s a spurious argument to suggest that this is about whether or not Christians are fit to foster or adopt children. If they’re Christian bigots of course they shouldn’t; if they are determined to break equalities legislation because ‘God’ told them to do so then of course they shouldn’t, but this isn’t a secular/Christian argument – there are plenty of Christians who don’t oppose gay people or gay rights. That’s not what senior Bishops would have you think though:
The [open] letter is signed by Lord Carey, the Bishop of Winchester Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, the Bishop of Chester Rt Rev Peter Forster, and Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester.
They wrote: ‘The High Court is to be asked to rule on whether Christians are “fit people” to adopt or foster children – or whether they will be excluded, regardless of the needs of children, from doing so because of the requirements of homosexual rights.
‘Research clearly establishes that children flourish best in a family with both a mother and father in a committed relationship.
‘The supporters of homosexual rights cannot be allowed to suppress all disagreement or disapproval, and “coerce silence”.’
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better case for removing these bigoted liars from the House of Lords. Research of course doesn’t prove anything of the sort, and supporters of gay rights aren’t remotely interested in ‘suppressing’ disagreement in this matter. It’s a question of equality before the law – of course they’re right in acknowledging that there will be times (many of which I’ve blogged about before) where rights are in conflict with each other and decisions will have to be made in court which should win out. But this is pretty clear – they are allowed to practice their religion, as are Owen and Eunice Johns, but noone is allowed to discriminate against gay people in areas codified by law, and rightly so.
It’s a real pity that these Men of God, who demand their beliefs be unconditionally respected, can’t even back their own argument up without resorting to lies. Still though, that’s theists for you. A repugnant case, which I hope the High Court will see sense on.
Creationists are Just Plain Stupid
As many of you know, Joe Cienkowski is quite possibly the stupidest of all the stupid creationists on the Internet. For reasons known only to him (and them) he seems desperate to prove that evolutionary biologist Prof Richard Dawkins actually supports their outrageous, baseless philosophy. Of course that’s nonsense. Let’s start a rebuttal by showing what Dawkins thinks of creationists:
Of creationists he says: ‘a mind like that…it seems to me is…well…a disgrace to the human species’. Hmm. That doesn’t sound very supportive of intelligent design or creationism. For that matter, have a watch of Jim (@movingtomontana) Gardner’s video (at about 2:47), showing Dawkins himself utterly and completely refuting any vague hint of belief in intelligent design in any way:
Given Dawkins’ own comments it would be pointless to attack Joe’s petulant footstamping line by line. Instead I’m going to offer you a smattering of viewpoints utterly breaking the preposterous notion of design. First we have Neil deGrasse Tyson, reflecting on the stupidity of ‘design’:
Then there’s Randolph Nesse (with Dawkins) showing yet again how the eye could not possibly have been ‘intelligently’ designed, and how evolution is instead at work:
And lastly for now, Dawkins himself explains how the illusion of deliberate design seems to happen (but doesn’t). It starts at about 4:15:
More creationist nonsense, easily dismissed by the…evidence! Your move, Joe (and creationism in general really).
Dear Creationist Joe Cienkowski
I’ve spoken to Joe Cienkowski (@JoeCienkowski) for some months on Twitter. Most recently he blocked me for warning him that releasing a video claiming to prove evolution definitively false, the earth no more than 6,000 years old and God conclusively real would see him mocked across the Internet. And as he himself points out in his video ‘Grand Reality’ he considers himself the ultimate spokesman for creationism, and professes to have the proof in this video that the world can’t be more than 6,000 years old, and that his God definitely exists. I’ll leave you to watch (and guffaw), and then I’ll comment below:
I’m going to keep this relatively short, because I think Joe (@Joe4Jesus now?) might just want to read it, so if it’s too intricate a deconstruction he’ll stop reading; too academic an approach and he’ll never understand it. With that in mind I’ll address the issues (as he’s nagged me to do) right here, right now:
Joe and people like him haven’t the slightest idea of what science is, what evidence means or how to try to prove their case honestly. Firstly here’s a video to show you what creationism is up to. It’s pretty long, but well worth a watch:
Then enjoy this cartoon, which simplifies the creationist perspective on the world, showing how problematic arguing with them is:
So let’s look at the conclusions that Joe starts with and tries to retrofit reality around:
Joe says evolution isn’t possible, that humans and apes don’t have a common ancestor
We know this isn’t true. Here’s a quick introduction:
Joe says that the human body is an incredibly crafted machine
We know evolution is responsible for it. Here’s a good starting point for understanding the eye:
And here’s another video (albeit a little lengthy) explaining the complete flaw in creationism’s design argument:
Joe says that humans will always produce humans
What he means is the Creationist meme that ‘kind only produces kind’. Check this out:
Joe says that the theory of evolution is religious in nature
It would mean no intermediate fossils (as he says), but here’s Dawkins with yet another lesson:
Let’s not forget the ‘religious’ element. Let’s look at the definition:
Religion is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or a set of beliefs concerning the origin and purpose of the universe.[1] It is commonly regarded as consisting of a person’s relation to God, gods, or spirits.[2] Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditionsand sacred histories associated with their deity or deities, that are intended to give meaning to life. They tend to derive morality, ethics,religious laws or a preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature.
The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with faith or belief system, but religion differs from private belief in that it has a public aspect. Most religions have organized behaviors, including congregations for prayer, priestly hierarchies, holy places, and/or scriptures.
Calling evolution a ‘religion’ is just plain stupid. There’s no other way of looking at it. Why? Because it simply isn’t connected to the definition in any way. Creationists think evolution needs to be believed in order to be true. They on the other hand choose to ignore the evidence because with their wonky worldview it would debunk God ‘Him’self. How amusing.
Oh and as far as the ‘revolutionary’ population argument goes, it’s thoroughly refuted here, although Joe will no doubt fail to understand it. (Thanks to Marc Hall)
Joe I’ll be delighted to take your appallingly ignorant arguments apart on YouTube in the next few days too, you’re that deserving. In the meantime watch what I’ve put up here because you could learn from it. History says that you (as other creationists) will just stick your fingers in your ears, say ‘lalala the atheist’s making it all up’. But wouldn’t that just make you look even more stupid than you already do?
If Atheists Ruled the World
They allege that every word is taken literally from Christian fundamentalist forums. Having spoken at great length to wingnuts like @JoeCienkowski, I’m more than ready to accept that. Listen, laugh and worry.
(via atheistineden)
The Creationist Menace in Scotland
Creationism has been running rampant in America for decades, with its literal interpretation of the Bible, insistence that the earth is no more than 6,000 years old and insistence that science is somehow on their side. Now it’s being exported to Scotland:
A new creationist group that preaches the “scientific” theory of intelligent design has set up in Glasgow with the stated aim of promoting its beliefs to schools and colleges.
The Centre for Intelligent Design, headed by a Northern Irish professor of genetics, a vice-president of the Royal College of Physicians and a former school inspector, has already prepared the ground for a clash with authorities.
The group’s director, Dr Alastair Noble, told the Sunday Herald it was “inevitable” the debate would make its way into schools – even though the Scottish Government says teachers should not regard intelligent design as science.
“We are definitely not targeting schools, but that doesn’t mean to say we may not produce resources that go to schools,” Dr Noble said, adding that he had already been asked to speak in Scottish schools, and agreed to do so.
The C4ID, as it calls itself online, insists its views are purely scientific, but critics have pointed to the leaders’ fundamentalist Christian backgrounds and the leaps of faith inherent in their logic.
Now Noble is basically implying that he intends to target schools, and considering creationism and ‘intelligent’ design represent wilful renunciations of reason and an evidence based approach, I think the philosophy behind his centre needs to be exposed. So…
Intervention1: ‘purely scientific’:
The terms used in design theory are not defined. “Design”, in design theory, has nothing to do with “design” as it is normally understood. Design is defined in terms of an agent purposely arranging something, but such a concept appears nowhere in the process of distinguishing design in the sense of “intelligent design.” Dembski defined design in terms of what it is not (known regularity and chance), making intelligent design an argument from incredulity; he never said what design is.
A solution to a problem must address the parameters of the problem, or it is just irrelevant hand waving. Any theory about design must somehow address the agent and purpose, or it is not really about design. No intelligent design theorist has ever included agent or purpose in any attempt at a scientific theory of design, and some explicitly say they cannot be included (Dembski 2002, 313). Thus, even if intelligent design theory were able to prove design, it would mean practically nothing; it would certainly say nothing whatsoever about design in the usual sense.
‘Critics’ have mountains of 100% conclusive evidence on their side to disprove creationism & ‘intelligent’ design in a heartbeat. No more than 6,000 years old? Erm radiometric dating proves that’s bogus. Adam and Eve were real? Erm we have an entire fossil record that proves that bogus and demonstrates evolution beyond any doubt whatsoever. Humanity was designed by an intelligent hand? We know that’s a complete load of garbage too:
Richard Dawkins, never a man inclined to say nice things about creationism or ‘intelligent’ design, doesn’t just break creationism apart with hard science, he does so by framing the way in which creationists approach the very idea of evidence (also in the cartoon below):
Its [president, Professor Norman Nevin OBE – a geneticist at Queen’s University in Belfast – told a meeting in the city earlier this year he believed Adam was “a real historical person”. He also said: “Genesis chapter 1-11, which indeed many Darwinists and evolutionists say is myth or legend, I believe is historical, and it is cited 107 times in the New Testament, and Jesus refers himself to the early chapters of Genesis at least 25 times.” In these books of the Bible, the universe is created in six days, God makes Eve out of Adam’s rib, and Noah saves the Earth by building an ark.
Folks this is a geneticist saying God makes a woman out of a man's rib. Cloning? In Bronze Age times? By a supernatural 'creator' for whose existence there has never been one iota's evidence? It's utterly appalling, but look at his MO:
Professor Norman Nevin, [who was part of our panel on last week's Sunday Sequence,] is one of twelve academics to have written to the Prime Minister and Education Secretary in support of Truth in Science’s controversial schools initiative. Truth in Science believe that children and youth people should be exposed to alternatives to Darwinism and evolutionary theory, and, particularly, to Intelligent Design Theory, and have sent teaching packs to every school in the country.
Take a look at Nevin’s hinted ‘evidence’ – circular logic, insisting that one event referred to in the Bible did happen because it was prophesied elsewhere in the same book. It’s kind of telling that he says he’s not ‘targeting’ schools, yet his history has been to target schools. But he’s not the only scientist coming out with this:
Dr Alastair Noble is a Glasgow University graduate who became a teacher and later HM inspector of schools. He is currently education officer for CARE, a Christian charity which campaigns for more faith teaching in schools.
Dr David Galloway, C4ID’s vice- president, is also vice-president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a member of the Lennox Evangelical Church in Dumbarton.
C4ID has now set up a base in Glasgow and runs a website. The group is financially based in Guernsey, and apparently funded solely by backers in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland.
Dr Noble denied the theory of intelligent design – that a universal engineer, or god, created the initial spark of life then used physical laws and natural selection to develop it – was religious.
How can a front for creationism not be religious? Preposterous nonsense – these people are the vanguard of those who try to recast science to prove anything they like, when that’s not what science (in this reality at least) does. Talk Origins goes further in proving creationists’ religious agenda, by letting the words of ‘intelligent’ design’s founders and leaders speak for themselves:
The ID movement is motivated by and inseparable from a narrow religious viewpoint. In the words of its founders and leaders:
There’s a difference of opinion about how important this debate [advocating intelligent design] is. What I always say is that it’s not just scientific theory. The question is best understood as: Is God real or imaginary? (Phillip Johnson, “The Search for Intelligent Design in the Universe”,
“We are taking an intuition most people have [the belief in God] and making it a scientific and academic enterprise. We are removing the most important cultural roadblock to accepting the role of God as creator. (Phillip Johnson, “Enlisting Science to Find the Fingerprints of a Creator”,
Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools (P. Johnson 2003).
If Noble is right and ID/creationism does make it into schools then we have a problem. It would be teaching superstition as science, legitimising the misrepresentation of all sorts of fields such as geology and biology and championing ignorance over knowledge. And it’s another example of creationists using ‘established’ scientists to legitimise their fundamentalist nonsense.
“I think people are afraid of this debate because they sense it’s religion from the back door. They see it as an invasion of science with religion, but it most certainly is not that,” he said.
However, critics dismissed intelligent design as “a front for creationism”.
Paul Braterman, an emeritus professor of chemistry, now at Glasgow University, and a founder of the British Centre for Science Education, a campaign to keep religion out of science classes, said intelligent design was simply using God to plug the gaps that science has yet to answer.
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, called on the Government to “keep a close eye on this organisation to ensure it doesn’t manage to wheedle its way into schools”.
James Gray, of the British Humanist Association, said the C4ID had a right to say what it liked, but guidelines were needed to “ensure this pseudoscience never finds its way into science classes”.
They should indeed be allowed to say what they like. But observe the resulting problem of what happens when literalist nonsense makes it into schools:
[Teacher] Erfana Bora [disagrees]. In her view, after learning both science and religion “Pupils then do, literally, make their own minds up as to what they believe”. She says pupils in her science class ask her all kinds of questions, such as “Do humans really share a common ancestor with apes?”. But, interestingly, she doesn’t say how she answers such questions. Does she tell them that, yes, humans almost certainly share a common ancestor with apes, or does she say that while scientists argue that this is so, the Qur’an says that it is not? This is important, because if it’s the latter then it’s a classic case of “teach the controversy”, even where there isn’t one. The implication that education is about allowing children to make their own minds up may sound honourable, but it is misleading.
Sure it is, and it’s an extension of the literalist crap littering the American public sphere too. FOX News for example will transmit the most outrageous lies under the auspices of ‘being fair and balanced’, yet what they do is act in a ‘fair and balanced’ way with arguments with no merit (often with no truth). As I’ve said on this blog many times, just because there are two sides to an argument, it doesn’t make them of equal validity. The same is very much true with Biblical literalism – teaching the controversy legitimises superstitious nonsense by equating it with scientific fact.
In 2007 the BHA successfully lobbied the UK Government to publish guidance on how teachers should deal with creationism south of the Border, but no such policy exists in Scotland.
Ann Ballinger, of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, urged ministers here to clarify the situation, while the EIS union said authorities should ensure teachers knew their position regarding intelligent design in the classroom.
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said ministers would be against any moves to teach intelligent design in science classes, stating “we do not recognise the teaching of intelligent design in a scientific context”.
However, teaching unions and councils said they were aware of no formal guidance on the subject.
It should indeed be prevented, but considering it’s already de-facto taking place in schools which are quite happily afforded the freedom to do so, I don’t exactly know how. It seems unlikely that a creationist centre will find itself hindered in any way when successive governments are so keen to promote the idea of faith schools. We’re on a slippery slope here, kids. Faith is being given weight in society disproportionate to its weight. By all means we should be concerned by C4ID, but we should see it in context too.
To Regulate Homosexuality?
Now I’ve seen absurd commentary like this before by far-right evangelicals before, but never really had the chance to refute it in blog form. So here goes (I’ll comment on his abuse of statistics as I go):
Homosexual/bi-sexual individuals are seven times more likely to contemplate or commit suicide. Oooh, that doesn’t sound very healthy.
It isn’t, and if true would be a serious reflection on self-esteem issues directly resulting from the homophobia of people like…Barton himself. So he takes great delight in setting up homophobic hatred, finding people actually respond to others’ hatred in physical, not just internalised ways, and them blaming them for it. Not only is that not Christian, it’s the textbook definition of abuse. If gay and bi- people really are that much more likely to kill themselves than straight people (I’d love to see where that’s definitively cited), surely as a society we should be asking the question why, rather than condemning people for the self-hatred they feel.
Homosexuals die decades earlier than heterosexuals. That doesn’t sound healthy.
Decades eh? Well that’s probably true in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia where there’s a legal penalty for loving and having sexual relations with members of the same sex, but I’ll bet Barton would be hard pressed to prove it’s ‘decades’ throughout the developed West. Matthew Shepard of course died decades earlier but he was murdered for being gay. It may have been true in the 80′s/90′s as well, given the HIV/AIDS-related death rate, but with the improvements in combination therapies, and the massive increase in heterosexuals living with the disease, I’ll be shocked if that statement can be backed up by referring to HIV/AIDS. How do we die decades earlier, Barton? Oh maybe like with other evangelicals you’re lying.
Nearly one-half of practicing homosexuals admit to five hundred or more sex partners and nearly one-third admit to a thousand or more sex partners in a lifetime.
Nearly a half of which practising homosexuals? I don’t know anyone who’s anywhere near that number and a) I know a lot of gay men (why isn’t he talking about women, or is he?) and b) I know a few promiscuous gay men. I don’t believe the numbers for a start, but even if either of them is true, I’m confused: what would the essential problem be? I’ve tried throughout the period I’ve been sexually active, to be as considerate and honest to my sexual partners as humanly possible. I’ve never passed on an STI and have had around 100 sexual partners in my life. I don’t know many gay people who’ve had experience anywhere near that amount, nor many who want to. Pretty much all are looking for love at the end of the day.
Homosexuals have an HIV prevalence sixty times higher than the general population.
Homosexuals have Hepatitis B virus five to six times more often and Hepatitis C virus infections about two times more often than the regular population.
Sixty eh? We’ll have to have a look at that number a little later on, but I suspect the number’s more like ten at the most.
Homosexuals are less than three percent of the population but they account for sixty-four percent of the syphilis cases.
I mean, you go through all this stuff, sounds to me like that’s not very healthy. Why don’t we regulate homosexuality?
This is the clearest demonstration of the games these monsters play with statistics. Less than three percent of the population according to extremely flawed polls, for a start, but he then willfully conflates that number with 64%, but 64% of whom? Of the entire population? How could a small proportion of less than 3% of the population then account for 64% of the syphilis cases of the entire population? Answer: they can’t, but Barton’s reaching out to a tabloid mentality, whose participants are unable or unwilling to see through these lies. Having repeatedly cited the Center for Disease Control, in a vain attempt to justify his bigotry, what he really doesn’t want you to read is this:
Stigma and homophobia may have a profound impact on the lives of MSM, especially their mental and sexual health. Internalized homophobia may impact men’s ability to make healthy choices, including decisions around sex and substance use. Stigma and homophobia may limit the willingness of MSM to access HIV prevention and care, isolate them from family and community support, and create cultural barriers that inhibit integration into social networks.
Racism, poverty, and lack of access to health care are barriers to HIV prevention services, particularly for MSM from racial or ethnic minority communities. A recent CDC study found a strong link between socioeconomic status and HIV among MSM: prevalence increased as education and income decreased, and awareness of HIV status was higher among MSM with greater education and income.
And it’s clear why not. The HIV and other STI infection rates for gay people remain depressingly high, but they remain steadfastly that way for clear reasons, and chief amongst those reasons are the hateful views of people like Barton. He wants to blame gay people for the homophobia that they react to, but the truth couldn’t be more compelling: he and his filth are the problem, and one which needs to be addressed urgently. Let me show you how easy it is to play their game of abuse. Just say (because who’s going to check?) 95% of murderers are white men who believe in God. Almost all child abuse is conducted by white heterosexual men with a vehement belief in God. Every war in recent human history has been started by a white man who attended Church on a regular basis. Why don’t we ban religion and keep white men who are prone to belief in superstition under indefinite house arrest? Noone would seek to regulate religion because of such a ridiculous argument against it, and Barton and friends should be universally condemned for theirs against gay people.
The Christian Fascists Are Growing Stronger
Tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, have begun to dismantle the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment. They are creating a theocratic state based on “biblical law,” and shutting out all those they define as the enemy. This movement, veering closer and closer to traditional fascism, seeks to force a recalcitrant world to submit before an imperial America. It champions the eradication of social deviants, beginning with homosexuals, and moving on to immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims and those they dismiss as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace their perverted and heretical interpretation of the Bible. Those who defy the mass movement are condemned as posing a threat to the health and hygiene of the country and the family. All will be purged.
The followers of deviant faiths, from Judaism to Islam, must be converted or repressed. The deviant media, the deviant public schools, the deviant entertainment industry, the deviant secular humanist government and judiciary and the deviant churches will be reformed or closed. There will be a relentless promotion of Christian “values,” already under way on Christian radio and television and in Christian schools, as information and facts are replaced with overt forms of indoctrination. The march toward this terrifying dystopia has begun. It is taking place on the streets of Arizona, on cable news channels, at tea party rallies, in the Texas public schools, among militia members and within a Republican Party that is being hijacked by this lunatic fringe.
Elizabeth Dilling, who wrote “The Red Network” and was a Nazi sympathizer, is touted as required reading by trash-talk television hosts like Glenn Beck. Thomas Jefferson, who favored separation of church and state, is ignored in Christian schools and soon will be ignored in Texas public school textbooks. The Christian right hails the “significant contributions” of the Confederacy. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, has been rehabilitated, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is defined as part of the worldwide battle against Islamic terror. Legislation like the new Jim Crow laws of Arizona is being considered by 17 other states.
The rise of this Christian fascism, a rise we ignore at our peril, is being fueled by an ineffectual and bankrupt liberal class that has proved to be unable to roll back surging unemployment, protect us from speculators on Wall Street, or save our dispossessed working class from foreclosures, bankruptcies and misery. The liberal class has proved useless in combating the largest environmental disaster in our history, ending costly and futile imperial wars or stopping the corporate plundering of the nation. And the gutlessness of the liberal class has left it, and the values it represents, reviled and hated.
The Democrats have refused to repeal the gross violations of international and domestic law codified by the Bush administration. This means that Christian fascists who achieve power will have the “legal” tools to spy on, arrest, deny habeas corpus to, and torture or assassinate American citizens—as does the Obama administration.
Those who remain in a reality-based world often dismiss these malcontents as buffoons and simpletons. They do not take seriously those, like Beck, who pander to the primitive yearnings for vengeance, new glory and moral renewal. Critics of the movement continue to employ the tools of reason, research and fact to challenge the absurdities propagated by creationists who think they will float naked into the heavens when Jesus returns to Earth. The magical thinking, the flagrant distortion in interpreting the Bible, the contradictions that abound within the movement’s belief system and the laughable pseudoscience, however, are impervious to reason. We cannot convince those in the movement to wake up. It is we who are asleep.
Those who embrace this movement see life as an epic battle against forces of evil and Satanism. The world is black and white. They need to feel, even if they are not, that they are victims surrounded by dark and sinister groups bent on their destruction. They need to believe they know the will of God and can fulfill it, especially through violence. They need to sanctify their rage, a rage that lies at the core of the ideology. They seek total cultural and political domination. They are using the space within the open society to destroy it. These movements work within the confining rules of the secular state because they have no choice. The intolerance they promote is muted in the public assurances of their slickest operators. Given enough power, and they are working hard to get it, any such cooperation will vanish. The demand for total control and for a Christian nation and the refusal to permit any dissent are on display within their inner sanctums. These pastors have established within their churches tiny, despotic fiefdoms, and they seek to replicate these little tyrannies on a larger scale.
Many of the tens of millions within the Christian right live on the edge of poverty. The Bible, interpreted for them by pastors whose connection with God means they cannot be questioned, is their handbook for daily life. The rigidity and simplicity of their belief are potent weapons in the fight against their own demons and the struggle to keep their lives on track. The reality-based world, one where Satan, miracles, destiny, angels and magic did not exist, battered them like driftwood. It took their jobs and destroyed their future. It rotted their communities. It flooded their lives with alcohol, drugs, physical violence, deprivation and despair. And then they discovered that God has a plan for them. God will save them. God intervenes in their lives to promote and protect them. The emotional distance they have traveled from the real world to the world of Christian fantasy is immense. And the rational, secular forces, those that speak in the language of fact and evidence, are hated and ultimately feared, for they seek to pull believers back into “the culture of death” that nearly destroyed them.
There are wild contradictions within this belief system. Personal independence is celebrated alongside an abject subservience to leaders who claim to speak for God. The movement says it defends the sanctity of life and advocates the death penalty, militarism, war and righteous genocide. It speaks of love and promotes fear of damnation and hate. There is a terrifying cognitive dissonance in every word they utter.
The movement is, for many, an emotional life raft. It is all that holds them together. But the ideology, while it regiments and orders lives, is merciless. Those who deviate from the ideology, including “backsliders” who leave these church organizations, are branded as heretics and subjected to little inquisitions, which are the natural outgrowth of messianic movements. If the Christian right seizes the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, these little inquisitions will become big inquisitions.
The cult of masculinity pervades the movement. Feminism and homosexuality, believers are told, have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus, for the Christian right, is a muscular man of action, casting out demons, battling the Antichrist, attacking hypocrites and castigating the corrupt. This cult of masculinity, with its glorification of violence, is deeply appealing to those who feel disempowered and humiliated. It vents the rage that drove many people into the arms of the movement. It encourages them to lash back at those who, they are told, seek to destroy them. The paranoia about the outside world is stoked through bizarre conspiracy theories, many championed in books such as Pat Robertson’s “The New World Order,”a xenophobic rant that includes attacks on liberals and democratic institutions.
The obsession with violence pervades the popular novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. In their apocalyptic novel, “Glorious Appearing,”based on LaHaye’s interpretation of biblical prophecies about the Second Coming, Christ returns and eviscerates the flesh of millions of nonbelievers with the sound of his voice. There are long descriptions of horror and blood, of how “the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin.” Eyes disintegrate. Tongues melt. Flesh dissolves. The Left Behind series, of which this novel is a part, contains the best-selling adult novels in the country.
Violence must be used to cleanse the world. These Christian fascists are called to a perpetual state of war. “Any teaching of peace prior to [Christ’s] return is heresy…” says televangelist James Robinson.
Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, instability in Israel and even the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen as glorious signposts. The war in Iraq is predicted, believers insist, in the ninth chapter of the Book of Revelations, where four angels “which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of men.” The march is inevitable and irreversible and requires everyone to be ready to fight, kill and perhaps die. Global war, even nuclear war, is not to be feared, but welcomed as the harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms hundreds of millions of apostates to a horrible and gruesome death.
The Christian right, while embracing a form of primitivism, seeks the imprint of law and science to legitimate its absurd mythologies. Its members seek this imprint because, despite their protestations to the contrary, they are a distinctly modern, totalitarian movement. They seek to co-opt the pillars of the Enlightenment in order to abolish the Enlightenment. Creationism, or “intelligent design,” like eugenics for the Nazis or “Soviet” science for Stalin, must be introduced into the mainstream as a valid scientific discipline—hence the rewriting of textbooks. The Christian right defends itself in the legal and scientific jargon of modernity. Facts and opinions, once they are used “scientifically” to support the irrational, become interchangeable. Reality is no longer based on the gathering of facts and evidence. It is based on ideology. Facts are altered. Lies become true. Hannah Arendtcalled it “nihilistic relativism,” although a better phrase might be collective insanity.
The Christian right has, for this reason, its own creationist “scientists” who use the language of science to promote anti-science. It has fought successfully to have creationist books sold in national park bookstores at the Grand Canyon and taught in public schools in states such as Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas. Creationism shapes the worldview of hundreds of thousands of students in Christian schools and colleges. This pseudoscience claims to have proved that all animal species, or at least their progenitors, fit on Noah’s ark. It challenges research in AIDS and pregnancy prevention. It corrupts and discredits the disciplines of biology, astronomy, geology, paleontology and physics.
Once creationists can argue on the same platform as geologists, asserting that the Grand Canyon was not created 6 billion years ago but 6,000 years ago by the great flood that lifted up Noah’s ark, we have lost. The acceptance of mythology as a legitimate alternative to reality is a body blow to the rational, secular state. The destruction of rational and empirically based belief systems is fundamental to the creation of all totalitarian ideologies. Certitude, for those who could not cope with the uncertainty of life, is one of the most powerful appeals of the movement. Dispassionate intellectual inquiry, with its constant readjustments and demand for evidence, threatens certitude. For this reason incertitude must be abolished.
“What convinces masses are not facts,” Arendt wrote in “Origins of Totalitarianism,” “and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system which they are presumably part. Repetition, somewhat overrated in importance because of the common belief in the masses’ inferior capacity to grasp and remember, is important because it convinces them of consistency in time.”
Augustine defined the grace of love as Volo ut sis—I want you to be. There is, he wrote, an affirmation of the mystery of the other in relationships based on love, an affirmation of unexplained and unfathomable differences. Relationships based on love recognize that others have a right to be. These relationships accept the sacredness of difference. This acceptance means that no one individual or belief system captures or espouses an absolute truth. All struggle, in their own way, some outside of religious systems and some within them, to interpret mystery and transcendence.
The sacredness of the other is anathema for the Christian right, which cannot acknowledge the legitimacy of other ways of being and believing. If other belief systems, including atheism, have moral validity, the infallibility of the movement’s doctrine, which constitutes its chief appeal, is shattered. There can be no alternative ways to think or to be. All alternatives must be crushed.
Ideological, theological and political debates are useless with the Christian right. It does not respond to a dialogue. It is impervious to rational thought and discussion. The naive attempts to placate a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to it that we too have “values,” only strengthens its legitimacy and weakness our own. If we do not have a right to be, if our very existence is not legitimate in the eyes of God, there can be no dialogue. At this point it is a fight for survival.
Those gathered into the arms of this Christian fascist movement are desperately struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile environment. We failed them; we owe them more: This is their response. The financial dislocations, the struggles with domestic and sexual abuse, the battle against addictions, the poverty and the despair that many in the movement endure are tragic, painful and real. They have a right to their rage and alienation. But they are also being used and manipulated by forces that seek to dismantle what is left of our democracy and abolish the pluralism that was once the hallmark of our society.
The spark that could set this conflagration ablaze could be lying in the hands of a small Islamic terrorist cell. It could be in the hands of greedy Wall Street speculators who gamble with taxpayer money in the elaborate global system of casino capitalism. The next catastrophic attack, or the next economic meltdown, could be our Reichstag fire. It could be the excuse used by these totalitarian forces, this Christian fascism, to extinguish what remains of our open society.
Let us not stand meekly at the open gates of the city waiting passively for the barbarians. They are coming. They are slouching toward Bethlehem. Let us shake off our complacency and cynicism. Let us openly defy the liberal establishment, which will not save us, to demand and fight for economic reparations for our working class. Let us reincorporate these dispossessed into our economy. Let us give them a reality-based hope for the future. Time is running out. If we do not act, American fascists, clutching Christian crosses, waving American flags and orchestrating mass recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance, will use this rage to snuff us out.
Chris Hedges, who writes a column every Monday for Truthdig and who graduated from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” He was a reporter for many years with The New York Times. His latest book is “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.”
Get Lost, Papal Apologists!
Michael White, oddly enough, seems to be at it too:
Not that Dawkins, attention-seeking Stephen Fry or even my revered colleague Polly Toynbee, do much better on the heroism front. It is far safer to attack reactionary abuses and intolerance by Rome than the far worse excesses of Islamic fundamentalism, torture, rape, car bombing, systemic corruption, the oppression of women, the murder of dissent.
Mainstream Islamic states are not beacons of progress either, but are too often allowed to get away it because the left accords them third world victim status, their version of Cardinal Kasper’s racist myopia. The lack of interest in Turkey’s important constitutional referendum among progressives in the west says it all.
This attempt at relativism is quite bizarre. It’s entirely consistent to attack Catholicism and the Pope in particular for their abuses, without having to attack Islam in the same breath. I don’t even know what point White is trying to make here – so Dawkins is infuriated by Ratzinger’s historical protection of paedophile priests, so what? Why should being offended by and wanting to hold accountable a man who is guilty of serious criminal offences be wrong just because he’s the spiritual head of the Catholic Church? I just don’t get it. He goes on:
Where I part company with Polly Toynbee – see last weekend’s column – and the rest of what Rome calls secular fundamentalism is in its reluctance to concede that, by and large, irreligious societies – think Hitler, Stalin and Mao for starters, then cast a flick back to Robespierre – have been even beastlier than religious tyrannies in the scale of their ambition and bloodshed.
Sorry, but I do not think the abolition of religion will solve the eternal problems of human imperfection or – as Polly put it – of sex and death.
Well he’s wrong about Hitler for a start – he had all sorts of crazy, Christian-creationist ideas. Amazing the number of people who think Hitler had an atheistic thing going on – he didn’t. According to Wikipedia:
Historian Joachim Fest wrote, “Hitler knew, through the constant invocation of the God the Lord (German: Herrgott) or of providence (German: Vorsehung), to make the impression of a godly way of thought.”[8] He used his “ability to simulate, even to potentially critical Church leaders, an image of a leader keen to uphold and protect Christianity,” according to biographerIan Kershaw. Kershaw adds that Hitler’s ability also succeeded in appeasing possible Church resistance to anti-Christian Nazi Party radicals.[9] For example, on March 23, 1933, he addressed the Reichstag: “The National Government regards the two Christian confessions (i.e. Catholicism and Protestantism) as factors essential to the soul of the German people. … We hold the spiritual forces of Christianity to be indispensable elements in the moral uplift of most of the German people.”[10]
According to Hitler’s chief architect Albert Speer, Hitler remained a formal member of the Catholic Church until his death, although it was Speer’s opinion that “he had no real attachment to it.”[11] According to biographer John Toland, Hitler was still “a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of God. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of God—so long as it was done impersonally, without cruelty.”[12] However Hitler’s own words from Mein Kampf seem to conflict with the idea that his antisemitism was religiously motivated.
And while we’re all berating one another for attacking the man who said ordaining women was as bad as paedophilia, and who is resolutely opposed to gay equality, he has the unmitigated gall to get reactionary in his initial speech:
I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29).
So even Ratzinger tries to tie atheism to Nazism. Except Nick Cohen shows secular societies are less intolerant:
the notion that in free countries atheism promotes intolerance and immorality is demonstrably false. Last year, Californian sociologist Phil Zuckerman responded with facts rather than witless abuse to claims from Christian psychologists and theologians that atheists were “selfish and pusillanimous curmudgeons”, “unnatural” or “just damn angry”. He pulled together the available evidence and found that the more atheists or agnostics a free society has the more moral it becomes.
Predictably, atheists were far more likely to be tolerant supporters of women’s rights and gay rights than believers. The pope, like militant Islamists, orthodox Jews and the ultras in every faith cannot see that struggles for female and homosexual emancipation are among the most moral causes of our age. But as believers in a sternly misogynist and homophobic god, they must want to be tough on crime.
If so, they should welcome the contribution that atheists make to promoting law and order. A study in the 1990s found that a meagre 0.2% of the US prison population were atheists. In America, the states with the highest murder rates tend to be highly religious, such as Louisiana and Alabama, but the states with the lowest murder rates are among the least religious in the country, such as Vermont and Oregon.
Yet Ratzinger continued:
Today, the United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society. In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate. Let it not obscure the Christian foundation that underpins its freedoms; and may that patrimony, which has always served the nation well, constantly inform the example your Government and people set before the two billion members of the Commonwealth and the great family of English-speaking nations throughout the world.
Tim Minchin replied on twitter to the Pope’s arrogant opening salvo, putting it perhaps better than anyone else so far:
timminchin #timlogic Pope believes Jesus invented morals. My 1 year old shares his toys. My son is Jesus. I am God. God thinks the Pope is a dick.
You can check out Tim’s ‘The Pope Song’ here.
