Christians want liberty, and by God they're going to fight for it

Sam Webster, in Christian Today, kicks off his New Year by whining about the "persecution" of Christians in the UK.

As Christians living in modern Britain we enjoy precious freedoms that our fellow believers in less open nations could only dream of. These freedoms didn’t fall out of the clear blue sky, they were won for us in past generations by courageous Christians who wrestled for them and passed them on to us.

Now, I was under the impression that the head of state of the United Kingdom was also the head of the Church of England. How much, do you think, have Christians in this country had to fight, over the centuries, to practice their faith? Not a lot, I suspect.

On the other hand, it wasn't until 1753 that the Christian rulers of this country would actually allow Jews to become citizens of the UK. Even then,

on being brought down to the House of Commons, the Tories made a great outcry against this "abandonment of Christianity", as they called it.

When Webster claims

There is not one inch of liberty that isn’t worth fighting for

I wonder how far he intends to go.

He backs up his moaning by providing examples of harassed Christians, such as

Lillian Ladele, the Christian registrar from Islington who was threatened with dismissal unless she performed homosexual civil partnership registrations. The Supreme Court said the case “does not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance”. Miss Ladele is now taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the UK has unlawfully infringed her rights to religious liberty.

Liberty in this case meaning, the right to bring your prejudices against homosexuals to work, and refuse to carry out the job you're paid to do. If Miss Ladele was a bus driver, and refused to allow homosexuals onto her bus, would people like Webster be making a song and dance about it? It's exactly the same principle.

There was good news in April when a case involving a Christian mother and part-time school receptionist was settled without going to court. Jennie Cain had been disciplined by her employers following a dispute about a private prayer email.
Mrs Cain took legal action against her employers for religious discrimination and the matter was settled out of court. Her employers paid out an undisclosed sum of money and agreed that Christians should be treated with “sensitivity and respect” at the school.

What isn't mentioned is that Cain's daughter had been going around informing her classmates that they would go to hell if they didn't believe in Jesus. After the headteacher admonished her daughter, and then reprimanded Cain (since, after all, the child didn't pluck notions of original sin and eternal damnation out of thin air), Cain sent around an email whining about her treatment.

Mr Read defended the school's treatment of the matter and said they encouraged all children to "think independently", but would not condone one child "frightening" another.
He said: "We have 271 children in our school from a diversity of backgrounds.
"We encourage all our children to think independently and discuss their beliefs with their teachers and classmates when it is appropriate to do so.
"What we do not condone is one child frightening a six-year-old with the prospect of 'going to hell' if she does not believe in God.
"We conveyed to her mother, in a perfectly respectful manner, that we do not expect it to happen again."

Webster then cites the case of the homophobic B&B operators, who presumably have no problem with a husband raping his wife in one of their double beds, but can't abide the thought of two gay men having a good night's kip in one.

In the same month, the Christian owners of a Guesthouse appeared in Bristol County Court to defend themselves against a claim of discrimination brought by a homosexual couple. Peter and Hazelmary Bull’s guesthouse restricts double bed accommodation to married couples. The guesthouse is also their home. But civil partners Steven Preddy and Martyn Hall say the policy is unlawful and are suing the Christians for £5,000, including for injuring their feelings. The trial lasted two days and the judge has reserved his decision until after Christmas.

More pathetic whimpering. If you want to provide a service which is open to the public, why do you feel that your beliefs earn you a right to opt out of whatever equality provision you choose?

To sum up, then, Christians want their place in society while taking none of the responsibility. As their book states, they deem themselves special, and demand their prejudices be taken seriously. They want the right to discriminate against whoever they choose, and not to be discriminated against themselves.

It's time they started to stop complaining about their lot in life, and start accepting that in a modern secular society, which is what it is, there's going to be a lot of people who disagree with you.

Anyway, isn't it supposed to be good for you to suffer? And aren't you going to have the last laugh on Judgement Day anyway?

God is love, except when he's hate

Went to see my 4 year old daughter in a church Nativity play. This is the only time of year that I might ever enter a church, she was very cute (she played an angel), no-one tried to make me take part in any form of cannibalistic ritual, all was good.

But, unfortunately, if you attend a service in a church, then you have to listen to a sermon, and this was no exception. This one was all about love - how God loves us, we must love him etc.

It was some kind of New Age Bible translation being used - incidentally, if you have to keep translating the Bible to keep it up to date, does that mean it wasn't accurate in the first place? What does that say for the Word of God? Just a thought.

What the preacher came back to was this - the way to determine if we truly love God is:

1. Do we really love God? (fairly simple)
2. Do we keep his commands?

And that's the problem I have with Christianity. What kind of loving relationship is based on commands? And since when does anyone stop loving somebody else, just because they won't do what they tell you? Who gave you permission to say what's right and what's wrong?

Of course we have to love God, by this twisted logic, because a) he created us, and b) he sent his only son to forgive our sins.

a) is obviously false - no, God didn't create us, we're products of gradual evolution by natural selection. b) - aside from the problematic issue of Jesus' conception, the only reason sin exists is apparently because God set out the laws. You don't get to write the rules, then expect us to be grateful because you forgive us.

Anyway, according to 1 Peter, God isn't just love.

2:17 Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.

Fear God? Honour the king? Weren't we supposed to love him? It's a strange relationship, no doubt about that. I seem to remember a certain book called 1984, in which the central character had a similar relationship to Big Brother.

Grrr. Christians just have to go and ruin a good holiday by bringing religion into it.

Personally, I'd be very ashamed

There's a campaign starting up in the UK called Not Ashamed.

The Not Ashamed campaign provides an opportunity for Christians across the UK to stand together and speak up for the Christian foundation of our nation, motivated by the conviction that Jesus Christ is good news not just for individuals or for the church but for society as a whole. Indeed, He is the only true hope for our nation.

The Not Ashamed campaign is being organised by a group named Christian Concern. Here are some of their values, as quoted from their website.

Abortion

Since the introduction of the Abortion Act 1967, there have been over 7 million abortions in the UK. This is a tragedy. As well as the loss of life it has led to a general disregard for the sanctity of life in society. In addition, there is accumulating evidence of the serious consequences of abortion on mothers including potential damage to their physical and mental health. At Christian Concern we resist abortion and aim to inform women of its dangers.

Choosing not to mention, of course, the millions of foetuses aborted naturally every year:

Between 10% and 50% of pregnancies end in clinically apparent miscarriage, depending upon the age and health of the pregnant woman.^[7] Most miscarriages occur very early in pregnancy, in most cases, they occur so early in the pregnancy that the woman is not even aware that she was pregnant. One study testing hormones for ovulation and pregnancy found that 61.9% of conceptuses were lost prior to 12 weeks, and 91.7% of these losses occurred subclinically, without the knowledge of the once pregnant woman.

Islam

The influence of radical Islam is growing in the UK and as an ideology it seeks to shape our political and social landscape. From the introduction of Sharia law and Islamic finance to the implications on freedom of speech and women’s rights, the presence of Islamism in the UK has great repercussions for all of us.

Oh, and you're not seeking to "shape our political and social landscape" at all?

End of life

At Christian Concern we believe in life, not death. There is currently sustained pressure by a minority of vocal campaigners to weaken the law on assisted suicide and change public opinion on assisted suicide and euthanasia. This would be to the detriment of the whole of society, especially the disabled and terminally ill.

As Bill Hicks pointed out, why aren't these people out barricading the cemetaries? Exactly how are the lives of the terminally ill improved by having their suffering dragged out? And isn't it a good thing for them to die, so they can meet Jebus faster?

And, of course, countless examples of homophobia, pretending that their sky-god is somehow enraged by two, insignificant human beings doing something sexual without his express say-so.

This from their statement of faith:

4. Since the fall, the whole of humankind is sinful and guilty, has been cut off from God spiritually and is subject to physical death and is under God's wrath and condemnation.

You speak for yourself. I'm guilty of nothing, and your concept of "sin" doesn't apply to me. Keep your hateful values to yourself - if I were you, I'd e very ashamed indeed.

What have you got to lose?

Some people just can't understand why people refuse to believe in their god. Andrew Brown, in the Guardian, is effusive in his praise for William James, who he believes

simply annihilates the evidence daleks.

Daleks? Is this a reference to the gang of robotic atheists who go around, monotonously shouting "show-us-the-evidence"? Please. Give us some credit.

Anyway, he reprints some of James' essay The Will To Believe, in the assumption that it's some kind of debate-killer. Far from it.

A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted.

But trust, in the actions of another human being, or group, is not the same as a blind faith in an intangible god. I trust my work colleagues to carry out their tasks because we've all done it hundreds of times before. Evidence! It's nit faith, it's knowledge.

A whole train of passengers (individually brave enough) will be looted by a few highwaymen, simply because the latter can count on one another, while each passenger fears that if he makes a movement of resistance, he will be shot before any one else backs him up. If we believed that the whole car-full would rise at once with us, we should each severally rise, and train-robbing would never even be attempted.

There are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the "lowest kind of immorality" into which a thinking being can fall. Yet such is the logic by which our scientific absolutists pretend to regulate our lives!

That's a bold assumption, that each individual would be brave enough alone to take on a gang of gunmen. But James' assertion that faith is required for a fact to come into being misses the point. Should these imaginary passengers believe that they would all rise as one against their attackers, then that also is a fact - and so a fact gives rise to a fact.

So proceeding, we see, first, that religion offers itself as a momentous option. We are supposed to gain, even now, by our belief, and to lose by our non-belief, a certain vital good. 

Secondly, religion is a forced option, so far as that good goes. We cannot escape the issue by remaining sceptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve.

This sounds remarkably like Pascal's Wager. James accepts the possibility that religion may be incorrect, but decides that it's more prudent to take the chance that it's right, just in case he loses "the good", as he describes it.

And what good does come of faith? Social mores like those expressed in the bible? Child murder, gang rape, ethnic cleansing? What exactly are we gaining? If the entire population of the world suppressed their disbelief and knuckled under to a religious dictatorship, then I suppose we'd have order, if nothing else.

But for religion to succeed in its aims, it has to stifle debate. You can be happy, just our version of happy, they say. Religion is the triumph of an ideology over all others.

It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one else?

Here we go back in time to a land where people didn't cohabit before marriage, and your spouse truly was an unknown quantity. Nowadays, we take the time to get to know each other before we commit to a relationship. Isn't it all more sensible, that we work out whether we want to share our life with a partner, rather than marrying them on the off-chance that they might prove to be an angel?

Scepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error,—that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.

Risk - again Pascal's Wager. Yeah, sure, I risk eternal damnation and hellfire should I cop it, and end up at the pearly gates having to explain my disbelief in god, and my errant assumption that dinosaur bones were real. Yeah, sure, if I just bite the bullet and believe, then I insure myself against that possibility.

But I'd back the hare of evolution and atheism in a race against the tortoise of religion any day. And atheism is a position based on logic and reason, which can adjust itself to accept new realities, unlike religion, which sits perfectly still in its insistence that god exists, has always been there, and will always be there, regardless of new evidence. So it would make sense for the tortoise to be upside down.

Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear?

I think James sounds unsure of himself. Too many references to religion as dupery, and untrue. Better to just get it over with. We don't need god to be good. Come on, embrace atheism! What have you got to lose?

Subtle differences

My last post was about the Sun's anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric, in which the paper printed statements like the following:

What changed? Well, like wannabe martyr Roshonara Choudhry, Shamsudeen was brainwashed by the perverted rantings of fascist madmen like Anwar al-Akwali.

Ooh, perverted rantings! Fascist madmen! Inflammatory, no? How terrible.

On the other hand, a few days ago I posted:

She's now been jailed for life. Because she watched the videos of homicidal maniacs like Anwar al-Awlaki and Sheikh Abdullah Azzam

Homicidal maniacs! Indeed.

The overlap between my position and the Sun's troubled me a little. I've always, always considered the Sun to be the polar opposite of all my politics, all my ideals. Are we really that different?

One difference is... I'm not a huge tabloid newspaper, run by a global billionaire for his own business and ideological ends.

So there's a difference, right there.

The main difference, I realised, is that the Sun is criticising Islam from a distinctly pro-Christian perspective. Search the Sun's site for "Islam", and the top 5 headlines are:

1. From Spider-Man to a web fanatic
2. Silence Them (a leader demanding that al-Awlaki be kept quiet)
3. Enemies of Britain
4. Fanatics protest at MP stab trial
5. Gunmen take Brit hostage

The headlines never tell the whole story of course, but the implication is clear. There's another story on the site about a Catholic school being taken over by a mosque in Manchester. Regardless of how the population may have changed to make this appropriate, it's presented as more evidence of "them" taking over "us".

Search for "Christianity", though, and you get this:

1. Killer in dog collar (about a pastor who became Christian after being convicted of murder)
2. Christmas is back on
3. PM praises Pope's "moving" visit
4. Papal power (another leader on how Christian festivals should remain at the heart of society)
5. Pope: Don't let the PC Brigade wreck Christmas

Now we're getting down to it. You can criticise Islam from a Christian perspective, you can criticise Islam from an atheist perspective, but it's not the same thing. Ultimately, by attacking Islam but saying nothing about the evils of Roman Catholicism, it's a hollow critique.

In any case, the Sun's viewpoint is only informed by religion to the point that it's part of the dominant culture of this country, therefore it chimes with the inherent fears and prejudices of the population, therefore it's going to sell newspapers. There's an argument to be made about whether xenophobia is actually as widespread as some parts of the media would have you believe, or whether the media is what propels that anti-foreigner sentiment in the first place, but that's for another day.

So that's good, I don't have as much in common with Rupert Murdoch's bile-filled mouthpiece as I first thought. That much bile in my mouth would leave a nasty taste, anyway.

No, religion is for those who DENY evidence

According to Christian Today, atheism is becoming the new religion.

Carver Yu, President of the China Graduate School of Theology in Hong Kong, said that “confusing ideologies” were creating emptiness and alienation among people, while indifference to religion was “tightening its grip”.
“Atheism is about to become the new religion,” he said. “Christians must preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ fearlessly because he is the way, the truth and the life. Only he can lead us away from the present state of godlessness.”

No, no, no. Religion is for people who deny evidence in order to cling to the increasingly tattered standard of their outdated faith. Atheism is for people who have looked at the available evidence, and come to the only logical conclusion that there is no god (probably...). Simple enough?

Clearly not for some.

Also taking to the podium was Michael Herbst, researcher in evangelism and church development. He warned that the decline of faith among parents was leading to a whole generation of children in Germany growing up with an “atheist mindset” and the belief that “faith doesn’t matter”.
He noted that the idea of a “singular truth” and monotheism had become unpopular and were widely regarded as dangerous, arrogant and potentially violent.

Good on Germany if it were true, although given Angela Merkel's recent comments on immigration, and the power of the CDU in Germany, methinks you're overegging the pudding a little, Michael. But I do appreciate your thoughts on monotheism, you've hit the nail on the head there, son!

Os Guinness, co-founder of The Trinity Forum, echoed his sentiments. He said that the biblical view of truth had become “obscene to modern minds” and was being taken by many to be exclusive, intolerant and divisive.
“But on a deeper look the biblical view is profound, timely and urgent for the day, even for those who reject it,” he said.

That's exactly how we see it, and a deeper look at the bible only confirms it. It's the ravings of a genocidal lunatic. There are no lessons to be learned there.

He continued: “Shame on those Western Christians who casually neglect or scornfully deny what the scriptures defend and what many brothers and sisters would rather die [for] than deny – that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.”

These people have absolutely no interest in accomodationism. For them, the bible is the literal truth, and anyone who says otherwise is the enemy. They scorn liberal Christians who fail to adhere to their fundamentalist values. You cannot argue with these people. Their minds are made up. And they are dangerous.

Anyone arguing that atheists should tone down their views so as not to offend needs to take a look at what these people really think.