Two pictures speak a thousand words

Here is a cartoon published by the atheist Martin Rowson in The Guardian. Interesting to compare it with the reality. But then one can rarely accuse atheists of letting the truth get in the way of their propaganda. Rowson is unsurprisingly a supporter of the National Secular Society and the British Humanist Society. Enough Said!





Here is the reality. Two hundred thousand people greet the Pope with enthusiasm as he makes his way towards Hyde Park. Add to that the eighty thousand people awaiting his arrival in Hyde Park. The few thousand atheist protestors were swept away by a sea of joy.

What the Fool says (4)

A message from Claire Rayner on The National Secular Society website extols visitors to join the society and 'be on the side of all humanity, the side of intelligence, rationality and decency.' According to Rayner, who is also Vice-President of the British Humanist Association and an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Association:

'I do hope you’ll join the Society, because its work helps keep alight the torch of clear rational thought and plain common sense in a world that is beset by confusion, superstition and very muddled thinking'.

Here is a recent example of the sort of 'clear rational thought and plain common sense' that Rayner espouses:

'I have no language with which to adequately describe Joseph Alois Ratzinger, AKA the Pope. In all my years as a campaigner I have never felt such animus against any individual as I do against this creature. His views are so disgusting, so repellent and so hugely damaging to the rest of us, that the only thing to do is to get rid of him.'

So much for humanity and intelligence, rationality and decency! Little wonder that The National Secular Society is struggling.

An organisation in terminal decline?

The National Secular Society that organisation which claims to represent the majority population of Great Britain is struggling.

From Gavin Drake's blog:

'In the year to 2009, the Society’s income from membership subscriptions and donations totalled just £158,890. If you divide this by the basic membership fee of £29 then at most there can be just 5,479 members.

But the Society has different membership categories with differing fees; and the figure quoted also includes donations. I would estimate that the Society only has between 3,000 and 3,500 members. And yet they accuse the churches of being irrelevant on the basis of numbers.'

These pathetic numbers explain why the atheist NSS refuses to publicise details of its membership. It would be interesting to see what the makeup of their membership is: geographic distribution, class, ethnic make-up, etc. As Damian Thompson pointed out in his excellent blog concerning the no popery demonstration in London last Saturday:

'And look at what a thin demographic sliver of the population they represented: mostly white, middle-class, metropolitan. (Needless to say, none of them could be bothered to make the trek up to Birmingham: the Pope may be the atheists’ Antichrist, but you mustn’t let your principles get in the way of a lazy Sunday morning cappuccino.)'

The fact is that very few people, even atheists, want to be aligned with this weak-minded and hysterical bunch of extremists.

Another atheist deception

The influential American Constitution Society for Law and Policy has recently published a pamphlet containing the texts of the US Constitution, the American Declaration of Independence, and Lincoln's Gettysburg address.

According to this pamphlet Lincoln said, 'It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us ... that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.'

Of course what he famously said (as all the contemporaneous witness accounts testify) was in fact, 'that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom'.

It is amazing how openly dishonest atheists and their secularist friends can be, and get away with it. It's reminiscent of the criminal rewriting of history one always finds in atheist states. Perhaps I should send a copy of George Orwell's 1984 to my learned friends in the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.

A.C. Grayling's Careful Logic

The philosopher A.C. Grayling has written a special piece for Dawkins' website prompted by the much publicised judgment by Cherie Booth (aka Mrs Blair) in which she is reported as letting a man off with a suspended sentence for an assault because he was religious. In the piece which was posted last Thursday Grayling boasts he will 'pick through the logic of Mrs. Blair’s view carefully':

'[Cherie Booth's] remarks to the jaw-breaking ‘devout Muslim’ (so the newspapers described him) Shamso Miah imply that she thinks that religious people have a greater tendency to be good than non-religious people. What justifies this assumption? Is it the fact that self-avowed non-religious people commit atrocities against other all other people, religious and non-religious alike, explicitly in the name of their non-religion, indeed driven to such actions in service of their non-religion? Of course not. So on what basis other than prejudice and religious sentiment can Mrs. Blair claim, in a judgment made in a British courtroom, that someone ought to be more leniently treated because he is religious? The wrong done to non-religious people of good character by this judgment, and the perversity of the judgment in itself, make it right that the National Secular Society (NSS) has lodged a complaint against Mrs. Blair.'

Grayling's judgement of Booth is unremitting:

'The point that emerges from this unedifying matter is that Mrs. Blair has proved herself unfit for the bench, and a vigorous reassertion of judicial impartiality and inclusiveness is needed. It ought to come as a corollary to a disciplinary action against Mrs. Blair, her removal from the bench, and a commitment to having better reasons for keeping violent people out of prison than that they believe in ancient pre-scientific superstitions.'

But Grayling's non sequitur has come under fire from a legally minded fellow atheist who, to his credit, points out that a defendant is allowed to put to the judge whatever mitigation they see fit to establish good character, which could be a wide variety of things. From the fact that Cherie Booth in this particular case accepted the religious observance of the defendant to be an indication of good character, it does not follow that she considers it to be a necessary condition of good character. Nor does it mean that this was the only factor she took into consideration in reaching her decision. So much for Grayling's careful logic.

Having failed to demonstrate that Booth discriminated against atheists, by showing some leniency to a religious believer, Humanists are now trying to make out that the 'real story' is not discrimination, but whether religious belief should be accepted at all as an indicator of good character. Some people never know when to give up.

Sour Grapes ?

Tomorrow the National Secular Society's Irwin Prize for Secularist of the Year 2010 award will be given to an 'individual who has contributed significantly to the cause of secularism'. One of those nominated for the award is Peter Hearty for his 'hilarious and telling' blog, Platitude of the Day, which is a parody of the Thought for the Day early morning slot on BBC Radio 4. The problem with Hearty's attempted parody is that everyone who contributes to Thought for the Day is 'satirised', no matter what they say. The indiscriminate nature of this makes Hearty's agenda seem more like petty spite than biting satire. Now, one need not be a fan of the Thought for the Day programme to wonder why something which attempts to provide some brief edification among the daily horror of news stories and political events would be targeted at all (aside from the simple fact that it has religious content, of course). One might be forgiven for concluding that this is petty revenge for the fact that the secularist/humanist/atheist cabal were unsuccessful in their attempt to hijack the programme for their own ends. Looks to me like a nasty case of sour grapes.

Physician Heal Thyself

You've got to hand it to those jolly souls at the National Secular Society who are flogging the notion of 'de-baptism' and a 'de-baptism' certificate to go with it. The certificate, they suggest, in true comedic form, should be displayed in the 'hallway (porch, loo, lean-to, etc.) as an outward sign of the inner rationality that inspires your being'. Their website exhorts the baptised: 'Liberate yourself from the Original Mumbo-Jumbo that liberated you from the Original Sin you never had!' Given that, according to the NSS, 'the concept of baptism is a complete fantasy that has no meaning outside the heads of the religious', its members seem to be peculiarly exercised by it. Followers are urged to make their 'de-baptism' official by insisting that their names be removed from baptismal registers and church records which, if the letters to the website are to be believed, involves going to extraordinary lengths to achieve. According to Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society:

'They simply don’t want to be part of the statistics that are used by the churches to demand more privileges. They don’t want to have any formal connection with institutions that they perceive to be counterproductive to peace, harmony and common sense.'

But, the attempt to undo historical records has an Orwellian ring which makes Sanderson's commitment to 'common sense' look a bit shaky. His fondness for 'peace' and 'harmony' looks equally loosely based given his opinion expressed elsewhere on the site:

'The growing amount of interest in the concept of de-baptism indicates that people are not just indifferent to religion – which has been the traditional British approach – but are actually becoming quite hostile to it.'

Perhaps someone should point out to Sanderson that the 'traditional British approach' is one of tolerance. Sanderson clearly relishes the growing hostility that he and other secularists are promoting towards the religious, and the claim that this is all intended as 'irreverent' and 'lighthearted fun' sits uneasily with Sanderson's unmistakable intentions. But then secularists and atheists seem to have a predilection for this way of proceeding: on the one hand proudly proclaiming themselves as the very epitome of reasonable and rational behaviour while all the time excoriating, insulting, and openly encouraging animosity towards those who they accuse of failing to make full use of their reason, simply because they don't reach the same conclusions as they do. But then I expect it would infuriate secularists to be taken to task for failing to abide by the maxim: physician heal thyself.