Silvio Berlusconi is an evil bastard

The Sunday papers sometimes prove to be excellent source material for illustrating the insanity and immorality of organised religion. In this story of Eluano Englaro I wish it wasn't the case.

Silvio Berlusconi's rationale to keep Englaro alive is terrifying, claiming that she is "in the condition to have babies".

After 17 years in PVS, it's unlikely that Ms Englaro would be in a physical state to carry a child, and will never regain consciousness to give consent anyway. Berlusconi is favouring rape, and possibly borderline necrophilia.

His position is based on advice from the Vatican, although I wouldn't be surprised if Berlusconi's real objective was to leverage other legislative changes to his benefit as part of a package. Yet Italians keep voting for the evil corrupt twat, and he remains a hero of the right.

Many ignore religion on the assumption that it's harmless and doesn't really effect our lives. The influence of the Vatican on this case, which could see a hurried change in Italian law, shows that the Medieval ethics of the stupid and the ignorant is turning Italy into a theocracy, forcing the dogma of faith on those who don't want it.

The UK is different, yet here religion also constantly vies for influence. Constitutionally religion has power. Bishops sit in the House of Lords and our head of state is ordained by God. Our national anthem is God Save the Queen.

Religionists regularly claim that their religion gives them a moral code. The evil bastards that favour such suffering as inflicted on Eluano Englaro and her family can keep it.

Give me humanity and compassion any day.

Keep thy religion to thyself

George Carlin. Another loss. Fiercely intelligent and challenging. Mercilessly funny. An irreverent foul mouthed funny man, who in the US was also the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine. And he was Rufus in the Bill and Ted movies. Cool.

Here's his breakdown of the Ten Commandments.

Clerical error?

Usually I radge against the clergy when they put their foot in it. In this case, my initial radge-o-meter was turned down to 'mildly irritated' by the furore that the comments of Gordon Mursell, the Bishop of Stafford, has caused. True, the comments don't really help things, with tenuous comparisons of our society's relative inaction over global heating with Austrian nutter Josef Fritzl, but Mursell has unintentionally highlighted the barely rational belief structures of climate change denial.

Whilst those in denial over climate change either choose not to follow the science or cherry-pick their sources, it seems that many have taken his comments very much to heart as a personal attack on their denial ideology. The Bish's language and his position as a cleric confirms the tin-foil hat delusions of many deniers who like to portray climate change as some kind of new age religion, some even going so far as to proudly proclaim themselves as 'heretics'. The comments on the Telegraph thread are clear evidence of this group-think.

Perhaps using such language makes for some fiery pulpit bashing, but using monster á la mode Fritzl just seems like Mursell's trying too hard to stimulate debate. Well, it worked, but I don't think Mursell expected such a Pavlovian response.

If any comparison of deniers or those opposed to action is to be made, the most valid is to the supporters of appeasement before the Second World War. They didn't want to believe the evidence before their eyes, and weren't stirred into action until the bombs started falling.

We have faced similar challenges. Acid rain, ozone layer depletion and particulate emissions. We came up with solutions to them all through agreement and policy, despite opposition. We can do it again, although with climate change, it needs to be a response on a much bigger scale.

Back to the war analogy. Since tackling climate change now needs a war footing response, I wonder if our children and grand children will ask us in the future "What did you do in the war against climate change?"

Sanity prevails

For once, but it highlights the ludicrous legal situation where a respect for a religion has outweighed free speech.

In the Guardian Marina Hyde treats the issue, and Scientology, with the contempt it deserves.

Creepy Cardinal

Mad Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor is at it again. Whinging about how folk don't take enough notice of his barmy rantings and choose to walk away from his criminally insane church. He manages to confuse the meaning of the terms 'atheist' and 'secular', just to show how those pesky atheists and secular folk are a bad lot.

Frankly, who cares? Well, Cormac for one. It's an odd target for him to choose: it's not as if atheism is a movement, has a defining ideology or set of policies like those religions competing with Cormac's. But for some reason, this absence of belief in the supernatural terrifies the religious. It's as if blind faith is a virtue and rational questioning a sin. Indeed, Cormac even suggested that the reason so many people turned away from god is because they were thinking too much about it:

"We spoke too easily about God, we spoke perhaps in the wrong way and we treated God as an idea rather than a living mystery to be approached in silence and prayer rather than in the arguments of the mind."

He also had a go at secularism (just like his chum the Archbish of Canterbury), presumably because he thinks the religious should have more say on what goes on in society (just like his chum the Archbish of Canterbury). As if a church that condemns people to slow deaths knows better.

But it wasn't all bad news for the non religious. To show us just how 'moderate' he really is, Cormac said:

"I want to encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem because the hidden God is active in their lives as well as in the lives of those who believe."

This is despite according to his religion non religious folk will be cast into a fiery pit or be forced to watch Big Brother for eternity.

Bless. Patronising bastard.


Update

Just came across this wisdom from kooky Cormac:

"Danger because, if you go just by reason, I think, without faith, without belief in God, you can imagine, for instance in the last century, some of the faith(less), or supposedly faithless societies - people, whether it's like Hitler or Stalin, bringing up - having a country in which, if you like, a God free zone, a dictatorship ruled by reason, and where does it lead? To terror and oppression"

Let me get this right Cormac - you think reason leads to terror and oppression?

What a fucktard.

Fathers for Medieval justice

Because of the hospital visiting and all the stuff associated with having a relative in hospital, I've been posting less regularly than I would have liked to recently, especially since there's been no shortage of issues to comment on. However, I couldn't let this doosie in the Shields Gazette last week go without a mention.

Reading the article about the three fathers' fears of a genetic moral apocalypse (Clergy speak out against embryo hybrids, Gazette 28th March) you would be forgiven for thinking that we were in the Middle Ages or Iran, certainly not 21st Century Britain.

I support their right object to the Bill. There are genuine ethical issues to debate.

What is insulting is their outrageously arrogant presumption that they and their particluar religion have a right to assert a superior moral authority over us all. They state that "it is the role of the Church to be the moral conscience of the nation", which suggests an organisation with dreams of Sharia-like religious domination over our lives.

Well guys - you certainly don't speak for me.

Their position suggests a paternalistic 'we know better' mindset. A mindset that doesn't belong in a rational and modern liberal society, especially when it's based on a doctrine restricted by the narrow confines of religious teaching - teaching which has no more moral authority than any other philosophy.

The three amigos also make a mistake in confusing morals with ethics. The Anglican Church has no problem appeasing their gay-hating chums in the African congregation, who object to homosexuality on religious moral grounds, apparently blissfully ignorant of the fact that their position is ethically abhorrent and utterly unprincipled. The Catholic Church rejects the use of condoms on moral grounds; in the face of so many lives destroyed by AIDS, ethically, this ranks with condoning mass homicide .

So guys, before you can tell us what motes are moral and what's not, you should examine your own moral beams.

The missionary murder position

In a preface to a typical "atheists are evil heartless bastards etc" rant, Roman Catholic fundamentalist Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor gave us this little gem:

Many of those living with HIV/Aids are now too malnourished to take the drugs they need, though they have them. I asked Sister Margaret McAllen, director of an Aids programme in Harare, what she could do. She replied: "How can we give hope to people in such a desperate situation? Through love. Change comes through love."

What utter wank.

Here's an idea. One thing you could do Cormac, is ask your boss to abandon the Catholic Church's opposition to condoms and sex education. No, let's go further, lets see the Catholic Church make up for it's dogma which has been sentencing people to death through it's ignorance and start funding real world rational programmes to stop the growth of AIDS, instead of this love and beetroot juice bollocks.

Parents would have a hope that their kids would grow up in a world where AIDS has been defeated by science and reason, not by mumbo jumbo and good intentions.

That would be a start.

Until then Cormac, you and your religion, including the good missionary sister, will be complicit in wholesale murder through misinformation.

Free speech 2 : Jeebus 0

March 5th proved a fruitful day for human rights and freedom of speech. First, the House of Lords threw out a petition to appeal brought by religious zealots Christian Voice, who had tried to prosecute the BBC for screening Jerry Springer - The Opera. The appeal was rejected on the grounds that the case did "not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance". Simply put, the law in this case was an ass and irrelevant in a modern liberal society.

Then, in another small victory for reason and common sense, the House of Lords voted 148 to 87 to accept an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill that will abolish the common law of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

However, in a society where religious fundamentalists are never far away, there remains the risk of scary new laws to allow the faith lobby to try and stifle free speech.

The most dangerous man in England

No, not Rowan Williams, but Charles Darwin.

Dangerous. That's how one critic described Darwin after his book On the Origin of the Species was published, which vies for the title of probably the most important book ever written.

Darwin's revolutionary idea of natural selection is beautiful in it's simplicity yet it explains life's remarkable diversity and complexity, and has become the guiding principle of biology. Not only that, as an explanation of the origins of life outside the mythic constructs of religion, his work became a beacon of reason.



Charles Darwin, 12th February 1809, to 19th April 1882