After life is there more? (And would we want there to be?)

manicstreetpreacher muses on the pros and cons of departing this veil of tears to a big theme park in the sky or to somewhere less pleasant…

I was invited to speak at Liverpool University on 18 November 2009 on an inter-faith discussion panel on the topic of the afterlife, called “Follow My Way 2: Life, Death & Beyond”.  Originally, the discussion was to be on the rights and wrongs of religious tolerance.  I was amazed that the University of Liverpool Atheist Society (ULAS) had asked me whether I wanted to speak following the disastrous public reaction to my outspoken views on religion in March earlier this year, about which you can about in piece, “More Than I Could Chew?”

I have had to up sticks and move to the opposite end of the country in order to find employment in a recession.  To travel to Liverpool and return to my new home would have meant a £100 return train fare and my last two days of paid leave which I had been saving to get home ahead of the Christmas rush.  In case you are new to this blog, speaking out against the parties of God is just about my favourite pastime at present and I leapt at the chance.  If nothing else, it would have been an opportunity to repair some of the damage done at the beginning of the year and learn to keep a cool head against a hostile crowd and potentially baiting opponents.

However, the topic changed overnight, away from the role of religion in the world and to the rather saccharine topic of the afterlife.  With great reluctance, I declined to speak.  I felt that I only had a very limited amount to say on the motion which essentially boiled downed to:

1. I don’t believe in the afterlife.
2. Like telekinesis, Father Christmas and fairies at the bottom of the garden, it would be lovely if we did have a soul separate from our bodies which floats off our brains at the moment of death towards a tunnel of life to be reunited with our loved ones and/ or to wait for our loved ones to join us once their time on Earth is up but there simply isn’t any evidence for it.
3. The consequences of certain people believing in an afterlife can be truly sinister for the rest of us in this life whether we share their beliefs or not.
4. We ought to stop looking forward to our deaths and make the most of the one life we do have.

ULAS have managed to persuade a member of The National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS) to speak and I wish him all the very best of luck.  If I was still living in or closer to Liverpool, I would probably have still spoken despite the change of topic, but it just wasn’t worth the train fare or the holiday time.

However, as is so often the case, the experience of being asked to speak on a topic has made me think deeper about that topic.  I half-regret turning down the opportunity now and present my further thoughts to anyone who cares.

If I was there, I would… apologise for all the offensive things I am going to say

I think it would be best to start off by trying to wash out the bad taste I had left in the mouths of the religious members of the audience after last time by making clear that nothing I say is done deliberately for effect and while I am bound to offend a lot of people in the room, this is not intentional.

I have half a mind to say the most offensive thing I could possibly say right away by quoting Jimmy Carr and saying that it is a shame about all the wounded British soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, but at least we would have a cracking team for the 2012 Paralympics.

There’s a more than 50 percent chance of that one going down like a lead balloon…

It would be wonderful if it were true but…

After the apologies and explanation, the first thing to be said would be that there are loads of things that I wish did exist – such as The Force, lightsabres, telekinesis, telepathy and fairies at the bottom of the garden – but there simply isn’t any evidence for them.  The religious instinct is informed by the same mentality as astrology and tarot reading: the human tendency to see patterns in everyday events and infer some greater meaning to them.

I blogged on this at length following a lecture given by Professor Chris French of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College hosted by the Merseyside Skeptics Society in September 2009.  We are swimming in probabilities; it would be more incredible if these coincidences didn’t happen!   There may be some anecdotal evidence for telepathy and reincarnation, but these studies are flawed by what is known as the “Clustering Illusion”, also known as the “Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy”.   Rather like a marksman emptying his magazine at a barn door and then drawing on the target afterwards, if you repeat the same experiment enough times you are bound to see patterns emerge, but the conclusions drawn from them will be false.

American physicist, Victor J Stenger, touches on the search for a world beyond matter in his 2007 book, God, The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist and describes how the search for a soul, an afterlife, reincarnation and psychic powers has failed miserably.

Professor Susan Blackmore of Plymouth University charts her journey from naïve believer in the paranormal to hardened sceptic after she set out on a mission to prove in the lab that supernatural forces were at work, only to find that the experiments were flawed and the data inconclusive.  The story is told in her book, In Search of the Light: Adventures of a Parapsychologist.  At the time of writing, I hadn’t read Blackmore’s book myself, but she summarises her journey very eloquently in her debate on religion against Christian theologian Alistair McGrath at Bristol University on 13 November 2007.

A few years ago, thirty of the world’s “top” theologians met at the Vatican to discuss what happened to the souls of unbaptised babies after they die and whether St Augustine’s doctrine of limbo was valid.  I am struggling to think of a more intellectually forlorn exercise; did any of those theologians have any actual evidence of what does happen to the souls of said un-baptised babies, or even whether they possess a soul in the first place?

Positing that humans possess a soul separate from our bodies simply commits the philosophical fallacy of begging the question.  When did the soul evolve?  Do non-human animals have a soul?  Why would a deity bother with a mortal life at all and just have the afterlife as the norm so we can all enjoy his or her company straightaway?  How can a soul survive the death of the brain?  In what state is your soul when it leaves your body for good?  It wouldn’t be very enjoyable to be permanently suffering from a stroke for all eternity.

Sounds like hell to me

Most people can’t bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays.  How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?

– Mark Twain

I suppose my ideal version of the afterlife would be to live in a temple of knowledge and philosophical discussion with a library where you could read any book you chose for as long as you wanted and have discussions with the greatest thinkers of all time from Plato to Hume to Spinoza to Jefferson, one-to-one or in an auditorium.  But again, there’s just no evidence for it.

I have to say though that the Christian version of the afterlife sounds absolutely ghastly, as Mr Twain summarises so beautifully above.  I’m sorry, but did I miss something?  Spending all eternity singing the praises of your maker?  And you thought I was going to go for one blog post without quoting Christopher Hitchens, but it sounds like hell to me!

In 2000, Hitchens travelled to North Korea under his guise as a university professor and reported on the abject serfdom endured by the wretched population who are expected to wake up in the morning praising the Great Leader, Kim Ill Sung and his son the Dear Leader, Kim Jung Ill, only to wake up again in the morning and begin the process all over again.

Kim Ill Sung became President of North Korea in 1949, the same year as George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty Four.  It is almost as though someone lent the Great Leader a copy of the book challenging him to put it into practice and he gleefully accepted.

According to Hitchens, you will not open a newspaper, turn on a television set or watch a theatrical production, that is not dedicated to worshipping the cult of Fat Man and Little Boy.  However, Kim Jung Ill is only the head of the party and the army.  The head of state is still his father; surprisingly, since the guy has been dead since 1994.  Hitchens dubs the government a “necrocracy”, or a “mauselocracy” or a “thanatocracy”.  Indeed, the son is said to be a reincarnation of his father.  This should strike a chord with the Christian apologist on the night.  It’s just one short of a Trinity.

But at least you can die and get out of North Korea.  Under Christianity and Islam at least, it’s only when you’re dead that the real fun begins.  Who would want this to be true?

Silly souls

Atheists constantly have the charge levelled against them that they cannot justify why they are moral and altruistic.  If we all end up the same way and there is no final judgement for our lives’ deeds, then why should we care what happens in this life?  Leaving aside for a moment my stock retorts about the intrinsic satisfaction of doing one of your fellow mammals a good turn without expecting reward or avoiding punishment, the theistic worldview hardly settles matters more satisfactorily.

Perhaps it is too cheap a shot to ask why religious people don’t just commit suicide rather than bothering with this veil of tears.  But the question still remains frustratingly unanswered: if there is going to be an in-gathering, if there is going to be a magical place where all tears will be dried and all injustices put right, then why do the religious care so much about what happens in this life?  Why do they want to control what people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms?

It would appear that at least Mahatma Ghandi pre-empted my challenge.   Ghandi was undoubtedly the twentieth century’s most influential pacifist with his devastating policy of non-cooperation against India’s colonial masters, which sealed independence for the Jewel in the Crown in 1947.

However, it must be remembered firstly that Ghandi’s command to turn the other cheek only worked because the British Empire had by then been crippled by two World Wars in the space of 25 years and secondly, his ideals took a much more sinister side.   Ghandi’s remedy for the Holocaust was for the Jews to commit mass suicide because this “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler’s violence.”

Even if we grant Ghandi’s religious dogma of karma and rebirth, is the suffering and agony of millions of people in this world an acceptable price to secure their happiness and freedom in the next?  Ghandi’s world was one where millions of people would have died in order for the German people to doubt the goodness of their Thousand Year Reich.  How would a world full of pacifists respond once they became “aroused” to the evil of Nazism; commit suicide as well?

The concern for human souls seems to have trumped the care for human beings when you consider the Bush administration’s denial of funding at the Federal level for potentially ground-breaking stem cell research.  Apparently a middle-aged father succumbing to Parkinson’s Disease or a young girl suffering from third degree burns are less important than the souls of three day old human embryos in a petri dish comprising no more than 150 cells.  If you think that still sounds like a large number of cells, there are over 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly.  You inflict far more pain and suffering every time you swat a household insect than if you use a three day old human embryo potentially to save another human being’s life.

You lot may be looking forward to checking out, but don’t demand the rest of us to come with you

Opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of the American population believe that Christ will return to Earth someday to judge the human race for 2,000 years of sexual indiscretion.  At least 20% think that this event will happen within their lifetimes.

To an atheist, this might seem like a ridiculous belief – particularly when you consider that we have waited long enough following Jesus’ promise to return to Earth within the lifetime of his followers at Matthew 16 among several other instances – but it does not appear to be a potentially harmful preachment.   Until you consider that there are fundamentalist American Christians hard at work in the Holy Land to this day attempting to incite the already warring religious factions into nuclear Armageddon.

Ronald Reagan brought in Hal Lindsay and Jerry Falwell – a pair of religious lunatics of the first, second, third and fourth orders – to advise the Pentagon on biblical prophesy regarding the end of the world when it looked like he was going to turn the Cold War hot.  Falwell in particular worked hard at inciting the worst and most fanatical elements among Jewish settlers on the West Bank in Israel and was even awarded the Jabotinsky Centennial Medal in 1980 by Menachem Begin.

A former Archbishop of Canterbury (!), Dr Geoffrey Fisher throughout the 1950s and 1960s consistently refused to condemn the apocalyptic madness of Russia and the West during the Cold War.  When some observers were proposing all-out surrender to the Soviets in order to avoid doomsday, sheepish Dr Fisher wrote a tract that could have been produced by Ahmadinejad in the present day:

I am convinced that it is never right to settle any policy simply out of fear of the consequences…  For all I know it is within the providence of God that the human race should destroy itself in this manner.

There is no evidence that the human race is to last forever and plenty in Scripture to the contrary effect.  Though, as you say, the suffering entailed by nuclear war would be ghastly in its scale, one must remember that each person can only suffer so much; and I do not know that the men and women affected would suffer more than those do who day by day are involved in some appalling disaster.  There is no aggregate measure of pain. Anyhow, policy must not be based simply on fear of pain.

I am not being unfeeling. Christ in His Crucifixion showed us how to suffer creatively.  He did not claim to end suffering, nor did He bid His disciples to avoid suffering.  So I repeat, I cannot establish any policy merely on whether or not it will save the human race from a period of suffering or from extinction.

In a later interview, Fisher commented that “the very worst it could do would be to sweep a vast number of people at one moment from this world into the other and more vital world, into which anyhow they must pass at one time.”

As Sam Harris comments in Letter to a Christian Nation:

According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry here on Earth.  It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen – the return of Christ.  It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves – socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically.  Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the US government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious.  The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.

I don’t even want to get started on radical Islam’s commitment to Jihad, martyrdom, and three score and a dozen nubiles in paradise, so I’ll again defer to a man who is blessed with a far more eloquent turn of phrase:

The irony here is almost a miracle in its own right: the most sexually repressed people found in the world today – people who are stirred to a killing rage by reruns of Baywatch – are lured to martyrdom by a conception of paradise that resembles nothing so much as an al fresco bordello.

Apart from the terrible ethical consequences that follow from this otherworldliness, we should observe how deeply implausible the Koranic paradise is.  For a seventh-century prophet to say that paradise is a garden, complete with rivers of milk and honey, is rather like a twenty-first century prophet saying that it is a gleaming city where every soul drive a new Lexus.  A moment’s reflection should reveal that such pronouncements suggest nothing at all about the afterlife and much indeed about the limits of human imagination.

– Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and The Future of Reason

A rather less pleasant place

I could not finish a piece on this topic without a reference to the dark side of an afterlife: that of eternal punishment.  This is an utterly evil concept that has surely ruined the lives and peace of mind of many children and which some have said is a worse form of abuse than the mildest forms of physical and sexual abuse.

Before the first “Follow My Way” in March 2009, I had read extracts of the Koran as quoted by others, namely Sam Harris in The End of Faith and the excellent treatment by prolific secularist and anti-fascist blogger Edmund Standing on Butterflies and Wheels.

I had also purchased my own copy of Arthur J Arberry’s English translation of the Koran, but I had not read it in full.  I have now done so, cover-to-cover, and it was an appalling experience.  I am currently in the middle of writing my own opinion on the Koran for this blog, but I can’t bring myself to complete the piece, because the prospect of re-reading the central text in greater detail is utterly unpalatable.

Every time I now see someone wearing traditional Muslim dress or facial hair, I can’t stop myself from wondering, “What do you really think about me as an unbeliever, an infidel, a kuffar?  What do you really believe is going to happen to me after I depart this life?  Given that it says on practically every page of your holy book – which you claim is a miracle explained only if it were authored by an omnipotent deity – that I as unbeliever will face a painful chastisement in hell, fire or Gehenna for all eternity?”

I have not had the chance to ask this question of a believing Muslim myself yet, but I would certainly ask it of the Muslim apologist were I speaking on the night.

For the one life we do have

How’s this for an ending?

We’re all doomed.  One way or another we all end up dead.  The party will go on without us and we won’t be able to look down on it from on high.  The human race will go extinct one day.  Maybe at its own hands.  Certainly if the religious fanatics attempting to acquire apocalyptic nuclear weaponry while I write get their way.

But if we don’t finish each other off, then disease, famine or tempest ought to do the trick.  And our goose will be well and truly cooked in about half a billion years time when our sun runs out of hydrogen and swells up into a red giant and consumes half the solar system.  And if there’s anything left of us after all that, then the Andromeda Galaxy, which you can see now in the night sky on a direct collision course with the Milky Way and will be upon us in [theatrical glance at wrist watch] ooooh… four billion years time.

If that doesn’t do it for us, then maybe I’m wrong and there is a God!

We have but a few short precious years of consciousness.  But try to make it count.   Try to enjoy the time you have.  And above all, try to help other people enjoy their time as well.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.  Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.  The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.  Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton.  We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people.  In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

– Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and The Appetite for Wonder

Hitchens and Fry versus the Catholic Church: Post Mortem

manicstreetpreacher witnesses first-hand a rhetorical massacre of Vatican hench(wo)men by the cream of British intellectualism.

On Monday, 19 October 2009 I attended a debate at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, London featuring “New Atheist” and author of God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens and actor, writer and broadcaster, Stephen Fry, to argue against the motion “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world” with Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Conservative MP, Ann Widdecombe proposing.

The debate was filmed by BBC TV cameras and the debate moderator, Zeinab Badawi, told us that it would be broadcast to 70 million people throughout the world on 7 and 8 November 2009.   The full video of the debate can be viewed below:

Each of the four speakers were allowed 15 minutes for an opening statement, then there was about 30 minutes of the audience’s questions and comments and then the panel were given a final five minutes to sum up.  The whole event lasted a shade under two hours from 7:00 – 9:00pm.  The only disappointment is that Hitchens wasn’t signing books afterwards, but apart from that it was very well put together by the organisers, Intelligence Squared.

Exactly as I predicted before the event, this was an utterly one-sided affair.  Hitch and Fry wiped the floor with their papist opponents.  It was an embarrassment for the parties of God.  The two men had everything on their side.  They had the arguments, they had the historical facts, they had the present day facts, they had the rhetoric, they had the wit and most importantly they had the audience, although it has to be said that most of them were dead against the motion from the start.

Blow-by-blow: Archbishop John Onaiyekan

Archbishop John Onaiyekan opened the motion for the proposition.  He seemed an amiable enough fellow; I’m sure you’d like to have him round for dinner.  Unfortunately he was encumbered with a thick Nigerian accent, which made it difficult to understand what he was saying.  Not that it would have made too much difference.  From what I could pick up, his opening statement was a wishy-washy apologia that cited few factual examples and even less ideology.

The Archbishop said that from his Catholic upbringing to the present day as a 65 year old adult, he had no regrets and devoutly believed in the motion, otherwise he would not be a member of the Catholic Church in the first place.  The Church has stood the test of time over the last two thousand years ranging from the good ordinary folk of the world to the leaders of the world.  He cited the 2008 papal encyclical, Caritas In Veritate, “Charity in Truth”, as a good example of what the Church stood for.

Noises were made about the Church’s syllabus of errors, but the Archbishop stressed the need to keep perspective and be careful when judging others.  After all, the late pontiff, John Paul II apologised for many of the Church’s “misjudgements” throughout history.

The Archbishop argued that true good of the Catholic Church can be attested by its 1.2 billion members and we really ought to go and speak to some of them to realise that the world needs more people linking arms and striving for a future of justice.  The Archbishop also stated that the Church has a hand in setting up many schools and hospitals and contrary to the public perception of its stance on condom use, had worked closely with the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS.

It was a well-meaning and consolatory opening.  The Archbishop finished with plenty of his allotted time to spare and asked with a dash of irony whether there now could be anyone in the audience who didn’t think that the Catholic Church was a force for good.  Bless him, he must have hoped that his two opponents would be willing to search for common ground.

What planet has he been living on?

The Hitch

OK, let’s face it.  This is why the majority of the audience paid their admissions fee.  To witness arguably the world’s most outspoken atheist and opponent of religion take aim at the easiest target he could have wished for.  We were not disappointed.

After the usual warm-up quips about the moderator admiring his shirt, Hitch went at the Holy See like a rabid dog.

WHAM!  The statement delivered by Pope John Paul II’s spokesmen on 12 March 2000 apologising for everything from the Crusades, to the Inquisition, to the oppression of women (who after all comprise half the human race), to the forced conversion of the indigenous peoples of South America by the Conquistadors.

BLAM!  The 94 public recognitions of the Church’s crimes against humanity from apologising for the African slave trade in 1995 to the admission in 1992 that Galileo was actually right when he said that the sun was the centre of our solar system and the earth and the other planets were in orbit around it.

KA-ZAAM!!!  Hitchens’ demanded that apologies were long overdue for the crimes of the Croatian Utashe lead by Ante Pavelić in the Second World War which received the full blessing of the clergy, to the rape and torture and cover-up of children in Catholic schools and care homes from “Ireland to Australia”, to the hideous preaching of Augustine’s doctrine of limbo which had countless parents in agony over the destination of the souls of their un-baptised children.

BIFF!  There were a few more sins for the Holy See to atone for: the 1933 Reich Concordat with Nazi Germany which dissolved the Catholic Centre Party and removed all opposition to the rise of Hitler while ensuring that the Church maintained control of state education.  Come to think of it, wasn’t the first treaty that Mussolini put his name to the 1929 Lateran Treaty with the Vatican.  Wasn’t Jozef Tiso, the despot who governed Slovakia an ordained priest?   Wasn’t every other fascist dictator from Franco to Salazar raised as a Catholic with the public blessing of St Peter’s Basilica?  Wasn’t Adolf Hitler’s birthday celebrated from the pulpits every year right up until his death?

NO MORE, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!!!!

Well alright, then perhaps a little bit more.  This is getting kinda fun.

THWACK!!!  Hitch declared that none of this could be laughed off with gestures to the charitable.  After all, didn’t Pope Ratzinger qualify the apology to the South American Indians by saying while on a visit to Brazil in 2007 that they were “silently longing” for the arrival of Christianity?  The sex abuse scandal culminating in the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, Massachusetts, only for the same Cardinal to show up at the 2005 conclave to elect the new pontiff doesn’t exactly enhance the Vatican’s claim to moral superiority either.  Neither does the doctrine of anti-Semitism for the Jews’ complicity for the death of Christ preached until 1964, nearly 20 years after the judgment of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.

POW!!!   Hitch then proceeded to tear the moral relativism that has engulfed the Church in recent years  (and would certainly engulf the arguments of its apologists this night) a new one.  He stated that the rape and torture of children is something that cannot be relativised.  It cannot be shrugged off as something that would not happen if “queers had not been allowed into the Church.”   If any “normal” person were accused of child rape, they would want to die.  If they were found guilty, they would commit suicide.

ZAP!!!  More suggested topics to apologise for?  How about the re-inauguration of Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson, who effectively said, “Genocide?  No.  Deicide? Yes!”?  Ratzinger invited Williamson back into the fold because Church unity was more important than moral integrity.  And how about the genocide in Rwanda, the most Catholic country in Africa where priests and nuns were guilty of inciting the massacres and indeed, many are now standing trial for taking part in it themselves.  No proper apology has ever been issued.

Hitch then stood up for his friend, Stephen Fry, who is “not like other girls” and cannot be a member of the Church for being a “fag”.  The Church’s condescending stance to “hate the sin, love the sinner” means that a substantial portion of the world’s population is excluded from the sacraments.

Hitch ended by saying that he did not wish harm on anybody, but he looked forward to the death of Ratzinger for one reason and one reason only.  In the intervening weeks and months between one pope dying and another being elected by the College of Cardinals, there is a period when no one on earth claims to be infallible.  Our species must be rid of its faith the certainty from above if it is to progress.

The crowd loved every minute of it.  Hitch’s address was punctuated by applause and cheers several times.  The biggest cheer came when he faced the Archbishop and asked him for a public apology for the Church’s policy of delivering false information about the effectiveness of condom use, effectively saying that “AIDS is bad, but condoms are worse”.

In case you couldn’t tell, Hitchens is a personal hero of mine.  I’m well on the way to having read all of his books.  I’ve seen him lecture and debate as many times as I’ve been able to find on YouTube.  I’ve referenced him more times than I care to remember on this blog and in my appearances on Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable? and I have come in for some stick from commenters and listeners for being a mouthpiece for the Four Horsemen in general and Hitchens in particular.  This was the first time that I have seen him speak live and it was worth 10 times the admission price.

It was orgasmic!

Widdecombe

The Conservative MP and Catholic convert was announced to have left the Church of England in 1992 when it decided to ordain women priests.  In answer to a question from the audience, she explained that a woman can be an MP because it is a profession, but there is no theological basis for a woman to be a priest because they cannot lead the confession before Christ.  Apparently a woman can no more stand in for JC than a man for the Virgin Mary.  Right.

Out of the two papists, it has to be said that Widdecombe put up by far the better fight.  She raised rapturous applause from the Catholic supporters in the audience (all five of them) by starting off demanding that Hitchens give an apology for the caricature he had presented of the Church’s history, saying that members of the Waffen SS had to renounce their Christianity before entering the organisation, and Ratzinger made Bishop Richard Williamson renounce his views on the Holocaust before once again granting him the sacraments.  She also tried to deflect his remarks saying that he had to delve into history and go back to the Crusades and the Inquisition for the core of his arguments.

I was in dire need of a sick bucket at one point when Widdecombe indulged in the worst kind of relativism in defending the Church’s stance on slavery since it was simply in line with the opinions of the rest of the world!  Hitchens later pointed out that if slavery had to be considered in context, what could be more relative than that?  What happened; did God change his mind?

As if slavery wasn’t bad enough, Widdecombe went on to say that it has only been in recent years that the courts and the Samaritans have tackled the problem of child sex abuse and there has been a Sex Offenders Register.

Special pleading and calls for clemency do not convincing arguments make, Miss Widdecombe.

The worst offence Widdecombe committed was recommending the work of historian Michael Burleigh who, along with Martin Gilbert, has praised the efforts of the wartime pope, Pius XII, in rescuing many thousands of Jews from the Holocaust by giving them refuge in Castel Gandolfo. I wonder how many people realised that in fact Burleigh re-prints a bogus statement purporting to be from Albert Einstein praising the Church’s response to Hitler in his 2006 book Sacred Causes, the questionable authenticity of which Hitchens debunks in God Is Not Great.

While Hitch didn’t nail her for that point in his closing remarks, he did stand by his views on the Church preaching the doctrine of deicide against the Jewish people as likely to have provided a well of anti-Semitism throughout Europe which facilitated the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

It wasn’t all bad, however.  Widdecombe at least pointed out that the Church does much in the way of charitable giving and as a politician, she relied on them as much local government.

The address finished off with a call for the Church’s offer of hope and salvation, which the two nasty heretics at the other side of the table simply could not offer.  Hitch’s retort in the closing section was to agree whole heartedly that absolution was not forthcoming from him and Fry, but Catholics still had to live with their conscience and good luck to them.

Fry

As good as Hitchens was, the revelation of the evening was Stephen Fry.  Here was a man who I previously did not think capable of saying boo to a goose coming out (if you’ll excuse the pun) in full force against the forces of theocratic sexual repression.

Fry started off quoting Gwendolyn in The Importance of Being Earnest, saying that speaking one’s mind was quite often not just a moral duty, but a pleasure!  This was a subject he felt strongly about, not because he objected to people being religious, but because he felt passionately about the Enlightenment, which the Church has never tired of attacking.  Straightaway, Fry sarcastically rubbished Widdecombe’s dismissal of history, saying that history “quivers down all of us”.

Fry then went on to attack the appalling doctrine of purgatory and the hideous idea that a soul needs to be prayed for by us mortals here on earth in order to “take the first left when getting on the plane and getting a first class seat to heaven.”  He lambasted the tradition of people giving money to ensure the safe delivery of the soul and questioned why it should be a privilege that only men could enjoy.

The next target was the Church’s exploitation of poor people, citing Thomas More who burned people at the stake for reading English translations of the Bible during the Reformation yet was made the patron saint of politicians by Pope John Paul II!  Then there was the disgraceful joint statement on contraception with Saudi Arabia (!) in 2003 that began, “On behalf of the revealed religions of the world…”

However, the real meat came with Fry’s attacks on the Church’s stance on homosexuality.  As a gay man, Fry could not possibly be a member of an institution that thought him evil.  On the contrary, Fry announced that he was a man who was full of love and certainly had no need of the pope’s permission to tell him to practise it.  Fry compared sex to food.  It’s jolly and it’s fun.  But frankly, the Catholic Church is anorexic.

Fry has made a series of TV documentaries about HIV in Africa, HIV and Me, and attacked the Church’s stance on preaching misinformation about contraception.  “Yes, abstinence and being faithful help prevent the spread of AIDS, BUT SO DO CONDOMS!!!”  It was not the last time the mild-mannered British comic would raise his voice.

This wonderful opening speech was topped off by speculation as to what Jesus would think.  Fry is clearly one of those atheists who at least think that Christ was a great moral teacher (unlike Hitchens who questions both the man’s existence as well as his morality), and asked what the Nazarene would think of the opulence of St Peters and the male-dominated hierarchy.  Of course he would be horrified and would be the last person to become a member of his own church!

In his closing statement, Fry answered Widdecombe’s protests that he just had to bring up condoms and sexuality was rather like a criminal in the dock saying to the judge, “Do you have to bring up that burglary?”!  The second time he raised his voice was in reply again to Widdecombe’s relativist defence of the Church not condemning slavery because it was a socially acceptable normal with, “WELL, WHAT ARE YOU FOR?!”  Magic.

Democracy in action

After the main speeches, the debate moved to comments and questions from the house.  The atheists were in full force in both numbers and words.  The moderator eventually had to ask for Catholic supporters to ask questions to balance things out!

Several gay men and women took the mikes and made their feelings known on the Church’s interference with what they do behind their bedroom doors.  One man asked the Archbishop what current policy of the Church he was most ashamed of!

Hitchens answered supporters’ objections to the Church’s charitable work and fundraising with his stock reply that Hamas do much of the same in Gaza, but is anyone going to say a word in defence of them for that reason?  He also showed his feminist colours by attacking the Ten Commandments as suppressing women and that the one proven way of bringing a society off its knees was to bring about the emancipation and the empowerment of women as opposed to having them as field hands, pack horses and baby producers.

Hitch also quite happily admitted to being sexually obsessed after Widdecombe accused Fry in her closing remarks of saying the evening’s only piece of “unpleasantness” by mocking the Archbishop’s vow of celibacy.  Hitch’s retort to this piece of prudishness was that from the day he first discovered that his God-given male member would give him no peace, he decided to give it no rest in return.  He also pronounced that homosexuality was not just a form of sex, it was a form of love.  Stephen Fry was a good friend of his and he would allow him to baby-sit his children any day of the week.  If, on the other hand, a clergyman showed up to look after his children, he would first call a taxi and then call the police!

The audience polls before and after the debate said it all:

Before the debate:

For the motion: 678
Against: 1102
Don’t know: 346

After the debate:

For: 268
Against: 1876
Don’t know: 34

Therefore, the number of people in the audience who opposed the motion increased by 774.

Ouch!

Andrew M Brown, on his Daily Telegraph blog, summed up the problem for the parties of God rather well:

The problem (from the Catholic point of view) was that the speakers arguing for the Church as a force for good were hopelessly outclassed by two hugely popular, professional performers.  The archbishop had obviously decided that it would work best if he stuck to facts and figures and presented the Church as a sort of vast charitable or “social welfare” organisation.  He emphasised how many Catholics there were in the world, and that even included “heads of state”, he said, as if that was a clincher.  But he said virtually nothing of a religious or spiritual nature as far as I could tell, and non-Catholics would have been none the wiser about what you might call the transcendent aspects of the Church. Then later when challenged he became painfully hesitant. In the end he mumbled and spluttered and retreated into embarrassing excuses and evasions. He repeatedly got Ann Widdecombe’s name wrong.  The hostility of both the audience and his opponents seemed to have discomfited him…

Even if you didn’t agree with him you’d have to concede Hitchens especially was spectacular and hyper-articulate…  Hitchens drank bottled water mostly, and plenty of it, though from time to time when he was sitting down he raised a glass of amber fluid from out of sight, down on the floor somewhere, and took a slug from that.  I don’t know why he kept a drink under the table like that, perhaps because the debate was filmed for broadcast.  He sweated profusely and dabbed his shiny forehead, eyes and cheeks with a handkerchief. But his diction was clear and he was in control, like a revivalist tent preacher, building the volume to a crescendo at the end, to applause and roars from the audience.

Amen to that, brother.

In conclusion – more and more are wearing their scarlet letter with pride

Aside from the superb showing by Stephen Fry and the utter annihilation of the apologists at the hands of the heretics, the evening was notable for one other reason: the number of people willing to announce their atheist colours with pride and make their feelings known about what they really feel about the most oppressive, hypocritical institution that our mammalian primate species has ever concocted.

The books by the “New Atheists”: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and of course, Christopher Hitchens have instilled the non-believers around the world with the motivation and the confidence to speak out.  This is no mere flash in the pan.  As Winston Churchill had it, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Sorry to all the bishops, priests, nuns and mullahs, but we are not going away in a hurry.  All we need now is the confidence not to pick on such a soft target next time and debate whether Islam is a force for good in the world…

Albert Einstein’s ‘support’ for the Church in the face of Hitler is bogus

manicstreetpreacher shows that a statement by the exiled pantheist scientist praising the Church in Nazi Germany falls down on closer examination.

Religious-types seem to think that massaging the words of prominent non-believers into concessions to faith approximates an argument for the truth or usefulness of religion.  I have long grown tired of this bogus and dishonest tactic.  If a theist told me Richard Dawkins’ or Charles Darwin’s take on the colour of an orange, I would scrutinise the primary source carefully.

Apologists are often desperate to claim that the Jewish-born, agnostic scientist, Albert Einstein was a theist.  Continuing in this tradition, you will hear and read the following statement attributed to the atomic scientist trotted out by those eager to defend the reprehensible (in)actions of the Catholic Church in the face of Nazism:

Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced.  Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks…

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth.  I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom.  I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.

The statement first appeared in an article entitled “German Martyrs” which was published in Time magazine on 23 December 1940.  You will find it posted on many religious websites and repeated by clergymen.  Christian historian, Michael Burleigh, quotes it point-blank in his study of religion and politics in the 20^th century, Sacred Causes, before rambling into a highly selective and ultimately, disingenuous defence of the Church during the Second World War.

Nevertheless, a superb piece by the analyst, William Waterhouse, first published in Skeptic (Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2005), has exposed the statement as an exaggeration at best and a fabrication at worst by those eager to abuse Einstein’s prestigious reputation rather than convey his real opinions.

For starters, the statement appeared without any source or attribution when it was first published in Time.  It is not known whether the reporter personally heard Einstein say it.  The statement does not appear in the definitive collection of Einstein’s sayings, The Expanded Quotable Einstein.  Any reference to the treatment of Europe’s Jews is also conspicuously absent.

In addition, the language is too flamboyant compared to Einstein’s usual style, with its reference to “great editors” and “flaming editorials”.  The statement is also unlikely to have come from a scientist, stating as it does that Einstein “despised” something immediately after saying that he “never had any special interest” in it.

For comparison, here is a statement that Einstein definitely made in response to Nazism in 1933:

I hope that healthy conditions will soon supervene in Germany and that in future her great men like Kant and Goethe will not merely be commemorated from time to time but that the principle which they taught will also prevail in public life and in the general consciousness.

As Waterhouse points out, Einstein (like most German Jews) hoped for support not from Christianity as such, but from the German Enlightenment tradition.

Waterhouse’s enquiries with the Einstein Archives in Jerusalem lead to the discovery of a letter written by Einstein in 1947 stating that in the early years of Hitler’s regime he had casually mentioned to a journalist that hardly any German intellectuals except a few churchmen were supporting individual rights and intellectual freedom.  He added that this statement had subsequently been drastically exaggerated beyond anything that he could recognise as his own.

As Christopher Hitchens writes in God Is Not Great, “Those who seek to misrepresent the man who gave us an alternative theory of the cosmos (as well as those who remained silent or worse while his fellow Jews were being deported and destroyed) betray the prickings of their bad consciences.”

A Selection of Quotes from the Linguistic Genius of Christopher Hitchens

The clue is in the title.

www.buildupthatwall.com

On the importance of reaching agreement

I’m not looking for consensus, baby, I’m just not in the mood.

On the Church of England

It not only calls itself a flock, it looks very sheep-like.

On Mother Teresa

I would describe Mother Teresa as a fraud, a fanatic and a fundamentalist.

Everything everybody thinks they know about her is false.  Not just most of the things; all the things.  It must be the single most successful emotional con-job of the 20^th century.  She was corrupt, nasty, cynical and cruel.

I would say it was a certainty that millions of people died because of her work and millions more were made poorer, stupider, more sick, more diseased, more fearful and more ignorant.

When Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, few people had the poor taste to ask what she had ever done, or even claimed to do for the cause of peace.

What’s motherly about her by the way?  Hideous virgin and fraud and fanatic and fundamentalist.  Shrivelled old bat.  As far from the nurture of motherhood as a woman could decently get!

MT was not a friend of the poor.  She was a friend of poverty.

On which side bears the burden of evidence

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.

On fairness of the ad hominem argument

A man once accused me of trying to assassinate his character.  I said, “No, your character committed suicide a long time ago”.

On the intrinsic value of religious debate

Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.

On the death of controversial American televangelist, Jerry Falwell

I think it’s a pity there isn’t a hell for him to go to.

The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing.  That you can get away with the most extraordinary offences to morality and to truth in this country, if you’ll just yourself called ‘reverend’.”

He woke up every morning, pinching his chubby little flanks, thinking ‘I’ve got away with it again’.

From his wobbly base of opportunist fund raising and degree-mill money-spinning in Lynchburg, Va., he set out to puddle his sausage-sized fingers into the intimate arrangements of people who had done no harm.

If you gave Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox.

On religious faith as a guide to morality

My mother’s Jewish ancestors are told that until they got to Sinai, they’d been dragging themselves around the desert under the impression that adultery, murder, theft and perjury were all fine, and got to Mount Sinai only to be told it’s not kosher after all.

The Hitchens Challenge on whether there is a divine source to human morality

Name a moral statement or action, uttered or performed by a religious person that could not have been uttered or performed by an unbeliever.  I am still waiting for a response to this.  It carries an incidental corollary: think of a wicked action or statement that derived directly from religious faith, and you know what?  There is no tongue-tied silence at THAT point.  Everybody can instantly think of an example.

On the Bishop of Carlisle’s remarks that the 2007 floods in England were divine punishment for society’s acceptance of homosexuality

If there was a connection between metrology and morality, and religion has very often argued that there is, I don’t see why the floods hit northern Yorkshire.  I can think of some parts of London where they would have done a lot more good.

On his need for a soapbox

It’s the old demagogue in me.  I need the pulpit.  I need the podium.  And if I can’t be erect, then at least I can be upright.

On the Church’s co-operation with Fascism throughout the 1930s and 40s

Up to 50% of the Waffen-SS were confessing Catholics; none of them was ever excommunicated, even threatened with it, for taking part in the Final Solution.  But Joseph Goebbels was excommunicated.  For… marrying a Protestant!  You see, we do have our standards!

On Dubya’s contribution to the evolution –v- creationism/ intelligent design debate to “teach the argument” to school children

There isn’t an argument.  You don’t hear people saying, ‘Well children, chemistry class is over and then we’ll have a break and then there’ll be the alchemy period.’  ‘After we’ve done our astronomy, darlings, it’ll be the astrology class.’  You don’t get that and it would be ludicrous and hateful if it were.  But under the cover of religion, there is no stupidity that can’t be advocated.  But if that’s going to be the case and we’re going to teach the argument: then any church that gets a tax break or any church that gets any subsidy from the Faith Based Initiative, has to teach Darwin in Sunday school.  Is the President aware of this implication?  I take leave to doubt it.

On incitement to religious hatred law

Somebody said that anti-Semitism and Kristallnacht in Germany was the result of ten years of Jew bating.  Ten years?!  You must be joking!   It’s the result of 2,000 years of Christianity, based on one verse of one chapter of St. John’s Gospel, which led to a pogrom after every Easter sermon every year for hundreds of years. Because it claims that the Jews demanded the blood of Christ be on the heads of themselves and all their children to the remotest generation.

On the human condition

Our problem is this: our prefrontal lobes are too small.  And our adrenaline glands are too big.  And our thumb/ finger opposition isn’t all that it might be.  And we’re afraid of the dark, and we’re afraid to die, and we believe in the truths of holy books that are so stupid and so fabricated that a child can – and all children do, as you can tell by their questions – see through them.

On the Koran

It makes quite large claims for itself, doesn’t it?  It says it’s the final revelation.  It says that god spoke to one illiterate businessman in the Arabian peninsula three times through an archangel, and the resulting material – which as you can see when you read it – is largely plagiarised from the Old and the New Testament.   Almost all of it actually plagurised, ineptly – from the Old and the New Testament – is to be accepted as a divine revelation and as the final and unalterable one and those who do not accept this revelation are fit to be treated as cattle, infidels, potential chattel, slaves and victims.

Well I tell you what, I don’t think Mohammad ever heard those voices.  I don’t believe it.  And the likelihood that I’m right, as opposed to the likelihood that a businessman who couldn’t read, had bits of the Old and the New Testament re-dictated to him by an archangel, I think puts me much more near the position of being objectively correct.

On the Bible

Look anywhere you like in the world for slavery, for the subjection of women as chattel, for the burning and flogging of homosexuals, for ethnic cleansing, for anti-Semitism, for all of this, you look no further than a famous book that’s on every pulpit in this city.

On people’s expectations of other people

If you hear the Pope saying he believes in God, you think, well, the Pope is doing his job again today.  If you hear the Pope saying he’s really begun to doubt the existence of God, you begin to think he might be on to something.

On the importance of having your views challenged

How do I know that I know this, except that I’ve always been taught this and never heard anything else?  How sure am I of my own views?  Don’t take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think you’re bound to be OK, because you’re in the safely moral majority.

On being well-travelled

I’ve been to all three Axis of Evil countries…

On endearing oneself to an audience in the Deep South

You know what they think about you people where I come from in the north.  You know what they think.  They think you’re just living in a wasteland of piety and prohibition, snake-handling, punctuated only by offences against chastity with domestic animals.  You and I know better.  We know that quite a lot of that’s not true.

On the Catholic Church’s policy of relocating priests guilty of paedophilia

In the very recent past, we have seen the Church of Rome befouled by its complicity with the unpardonable sin of child rape, or, as it might be phrased in Latin form, “no child’s behind left”.

On the fundamental element of telling good porkie pies

A good liar must have a good memory.  Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.

On religious faith as a source of consolation

I shall simply say that those who offer false consolation are false friends.

On the value of blind faith

Faith is the surrender of the mind; it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals.  It’s our need to believe, and to surrender our scepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me.  Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.

On the appeal of Michael Moore

Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on.  And they’ve taken as their own, as their representative American, someone who actually embodies all of those qualities.

On divine intervention

Miracles do not occur.  Dead people do not cure living people of disease.  It doesn’t happen, it’s a scandal.  There’s no tooth-fairy either.  There’s no Santa Claus.  I have to keep on breaking this stuff to people and every time they say, “Well, are you sure?”  And I say yes, absolutely I am.

On being a tad inebriated live on air

The woman is dead: D-E-A-D, it’s a four letter word.  There’s another four letter word.   All her biological and medical lines are flat: F-L-A-T.  She is the ex W-F-I-E of the wretched, luckless Michael Schiavo who has had to put up with great deal of innuendo and abuse also from your guests.

On freedom in religion

I don’t think it’s any more optional than Abraham saying to his son, “Do you want to come for a long and gloomy walk?”

On the Catholic Church’s moral equivalence of contraception with abortion

Aquinas believed that every single sperm contained a micro-embryo inside it and thus if you like – I hope I don’t offend anyone – hand jobs are genocide.  As for blow jobs; don’t start.

On the meaning of life

Well, I can only answer for myself.  What cheers me up?  I suppose mainly gloating over the misfortunes of other people.  I guess that has to be it, yeah, mainly crowing over the miseries of others.  It doesn’t always work, but it never completely fails.  And then there’s irony.  There’s irony, which is the gin in the Campari; the cream in the coffee.  Sex can have diminishing returns, but it’s amaaaazing.  No, that’s pretty much it and then it’s a clear run to the grave.

On the Archbishop of Canterbury

Dr Rowan Williams – who does the most perfect impersonation of a Welsh sheep I have ever seen – can go love his own fucking enemies; I don’t want him loving mine.

On the virgin birth

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this wise.  When his mother, Mary, was espoused with Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.’  Yes, and the Greek demigod Perseus was born when the god Jupiter visited the virgin Danaë as a shower of gold and got her with child.  The god Buddha was born through an opening in his mother’s flank.  Catilus the serpent-skirted caught a little ball of feathers from the sky and hid it in her bosom and the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli was thus conceived.  The virgin Nana took a pomegranate from the tree watered by the blood of the slain Agdesteris, and laid it in her bosom, and gave birth to the god Attis.  The virgin daughter of a Mongol king awoke one night and found herself bathed in a great light, which caused her to give birth to Genghis Khan.  Krishna was born of the virgin Deveka.  Horus was born of the virgin Isis.  Mercury was born of the virgin Maia.  Romulus was born of the virgin Rhea Sylvia.”

Even the Koran agrees that the Virgin Mary was born by an immaculate conception.  By the way, the Koran says that Jesus was not crucified at all, the Jews crucified someone else in his place and he never died.

There’s no end to the way that this kind of thing can be fabricated, but those who say you just tell by the potency and pungency of the story, for the memorability of it, that there must be something true about it, are simply inviting you to rely, not on your thinking faculties, or your intellectual capacity at all, but on straight-out credulity and on the repeated manufacture of things that appear to be part of the hard and soft wiring of legend in our mammalian primate history.

Apparently if you want to have a prophet, it’s better if his mother is a virgin.  Want to fabricate another one, that’s what will happen.

Actually, Joseph Smith [founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons], as far as I know, never made that claim.  But I think Mrs Smith was well enough known to the local newspaper reporters of the greater New York area, in which you can read up the whole history of that family, to make it rather unlikely that that thing could be sold.

On brotherly love

It’s awful to hear a member of the Hitchens family sounding like Harold Pinter on a bad day.

On credit where credit’s due

That was terrible, Dinesh.

[Ten minutes later, when D’Souza has sat through a humiliating rebuttal of the historical reliability of the New Testament and has had a second go in an attempt to repair the damage…]

Ok, so it goes on getting worse…

On the only safe way of getting oneself excommunicated by the Vatican

Pius Ncube goes.  The Vatican says, “That’s it, you’re no longer the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo.  You have to go, you’ve gone too far.”

Robert Mugabe, the communicant, the daily Catholic communicant, who thanks God for his electoral victory, which you may have seen, recently, celebrated so warmly by his people has not been forbidden the sacraments, hasn’t been excommunicated.

Now, Pius Ncube, the Bishop of Bulawayo, had an affair with his housekeeper.  Robert Mugabe has subjected his entire country to torture, famine, theft, expropriation, death, death squads and the rest of it, but it seems to me there is nothing he can do to get himself outside the church.  He’d probably have to recommend condoms or abortions at the rate he’s going before anything would be said about him, any condemnation would be thundered from the pulpit.

On choosing your words carefully

The phrase “mind-torched whack-jobs” that’s in the introduction to the paper this evening naturally upset me very much; I hate to be offensive or see religion lampooned, that’s why I didn’t call my book on Mother Teresa “Sacred Cow”, though something in me will always feel sorry that I didn’t do that.

On receiving the news that a screaming rabbi once held a chair at Oxford

I am bound to say that it seems there’s been a bit of a collapse of standards at my old university…

On Thomas Jefferson’s take on the Good Book

You can buy at any Unitarian book store to this day the Jefferson Bible which was what he found was left if he took a pair of scissors and cut out everything in the Bible that could not by any intelligent person believed be believed.  Makes for a slender, convenient read; I recommend it.

On the Torah as a moral guide

It’s true that genocide isn’t recommended in Genesis.  You have to read several books on before you are commanded to leave not one child of the Amalekites behind…  There are learned debates between rabbis in Israel, including rabbis of the Israeli defence force, on whether or not that commandment is still extant.  In other words whether the fact that there are no more Amalekites means that the commandment doesn’t work any more and learned commentaries are published on the possible applicability of this genocidal commandment to present-day conditions.  To know this is to tremble at the effects of religion on a people who are not supposed to have a reputation for bovine stupidity, let alone for racism, let alone for superstition.

On the inner-workings of Der Führer

I personally think I probably could overthrow the arguments for National Socialism in a fairly short time.  I would have great difficulty persuading myself that its founder and leader was a rational person.  I wouldn’t have declared war on the Soviet Union, the British Empire and the United States on the same year myself hoping to have a Thousand Year Reich; wouldn’t be the right way to go about it.

On Stephen Hawking overcoming physical impairment

There’s no secular case to be made for eugenics.  The whole point about our side is that we revere the brain.  If Hawking had no limbs at all and only a brain we’d like him the better for it.  But we would have something to ask perhaps about the person who designed him like that.

On the glory of god’s creation

I notice when people say, “Look at all we have to be thankful for,” or, “Look at what’s so wonderful,” they mean when the baby falls out of the window and bounced on the soft roof of a car, don’t they?  They say, “Oh, God had it his hand.”  They’ve nothing to say when the ditches are full of dead babies and no one did a thing.

Look at the beauty of the design of the plague vassilis or the incredible eagerness and hunger and ruthlessness and beauty of the cancer cell or the cobra.  Who created all this, is what I want to know?  If someone wants to take credit for this creation, let them take credit for the whole thing and for all the despair, misery that goes with it.  For all the babies that are born without brains at all, or with cancer, or with no chance of living beyond a day.  Who’s responsible for that?  In what mysterious ways does the divinity move when this occurs?

Wouldn’t you rather think, harsh as it is that at least it was all random?  But no, the solipsism must go on.

On his dream job

I’ve never wanted a political job, but if I was to be given grace and favour by the president, it would be the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco.

On the impossibility to excuse child rape

The rape and torture of children is not something to be relativised.  It’s not something to be excused as a few bad priests.  It’s certainly not be excused by the hideously false claim made by some Catholic conservatives that this wouldn’t have happened if queers hadn’t been allowed in the Church.   Sorry to say that queerdom in the Church is an old story too.  And it’s worse; it’s much worse than pornography and it’s much worse than bad language on TV.  And it’s the crime that cries out for punishment.  It’s the thing that if we were accused of on this side of the house we would die rather than admit.  And if we were guilty of it we would kill ourselves.  And it’s the one thing the Church has decided to excuse itself for under this papacy.

On the historicity of Matthew 27: 25 –v- the Final Solution

[Bishop Richard] Williamson… has long been a believer that – I’ll put this shortly – that the Holocaust did not occur, but the Jews did kill Christ.  In word others, “Genocide?  No.  Deicide?  Yes!”

On batting for the other side

For condemning my friend, Stephen Fry, for his nature.  For saying, “You couldn’t be a member of our Church, you’re born in sin.”  There’s a revolting piece of casuistry that’s sometimes offered on this point.  “Yeah, we hate the sin only.  We love the sinner”.  Stephen is, I’m sorry to say, not quite like other girls.  It’s his nature.  Actually, he is like other girls, in that he’s, when I last checked, absolutely boy-mad.  He’s not being condemned for what he does, he’s being condemned for who he is.  You’re a child made in the image of God.  Oh no you’re not, you’re faggot!  And you can’t join our Church and you can’t go to heaven.  This is disgraceful, it’s inhuman, it’s obscene, and it comes from a clutch of hysterical, sinister virgins who have already betrayed their charge in the children of their own Church.

On the only reason why he would like to see the Pope dead

I don’t wish any ill on any fellow primate or mammal of mine, even if this primate or mammal claims to be a primate in possession of a secret that is denied to me…  So I don’t at all look forward to the death of Joseph Ratzinger, I don’t.  Or any other Pope, not really.  Except for one tiny reason which I ought to confess and share with you.

When he dies, there’s quite a long interval till the conclave can meet to pick another Pope.  Sometimes it goes on for months till they get the white smoke.  And for that whole time, that whole interval – it’s a delicious, lucid interlude – there isn’t anyone on Earth who claims to be infallible.  Isn’t that nice?

All I want to propose in closing is this.  If the human species is to rise to the full height that’s demanded by its dignity and by its intelligence, we must all of us move to a state of affairs where that condition is permanent.  And I think we should get on with it.

On his primal urges

Those who ask confessions from other people should be willing to make one oneself.  I am obsessed with sex.  Ever since I discovered that my God-given male member was going to give me no peace, I decided to give it no rest in return.  Seems fair to me.

On the cure for world poverty

There is only one cure for world poverty that has ever been found or ever will and it’s very simple.  And it could be phrased very simply too.    It’s called the empowerment of women.  Go to Bangladesh or Bolivia – I have to ask you to hold your applause though I love you – go to Bangladesh or Bolivia, give women control over their reproduce cycle, throw in a handful of corn if you can, make them not just the beasts of burden and the beasts of childbearing that they’ve become and the floor will rise, it just will.  It never fails anywhere.  Against this one solution, the Catholic Church has set its face.  The efforts of the missionary Church in the Third World mean more people die, not less.  It’s as simple as that.  More famine, more disease, more ignorance, more random and avoidable death.

On the sort of person he would let near his children

I say that homosexuality is not just a form of sex; it’s a form of love and it deserves our respect for that reason.  In fact, when my children were young, I’d have been proud to have Stephen [Fry] as their babysitter and I’d tell them they were lucky.  And if anyone came to my door as a babysitter wearing holy orders, I’d first call a cab and then the police.

On the right to his own opinion

I don’t need a seconder.  My own opinion is enough for me and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time.  And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.

More Than I Could Chew?

Reflections on Follow My Way

The manicstreetpreacher licks his wounds after a gruelling public encounter with a bunch of religious fundamentalists.  The other panel members weren’t all that rational either…

Right now I don’t want to go out; I don’t want to make any friends.  All I want to do is make enemies.  I’ve never felt this much contempt for everyone and everything in my entire fucking life.  I don’t feel the need for anyone to like me anymore.  Jesus, it’s hard enough to like myself.

– Nicky Wire (1994)

On Thursday, 12 March 2009 at 7:00pm I attended Science Lecture Theatre A, Lecture Theatre Building at Liverpool University and debated a panel of what sounded like the beginnings of an exceptionally poor barroom joke:

Hamza Tzortzis, a Muslim[i]

Rabbi Y Y Rubinstein, a Jew[ii]

James Harding, a Christian and Anglican Chaplain of Liverpool’s three main universities[iii]

Without giving a blow-by-blow account, by the end of what had been an utterly gruelling evening I had felt as if my friends, work colleagues and fellow members of Liverpool Humanist Group would never speak to me again.

What’s more I felt as if I was the extremist, I was the ranter, I was the one trying to indoctrinate members of the audience and far more shrill, far more strident and far more intolerant than those believers against whom I lay the same charge.

It was the first time I had debated a Muslim and the first time I had debated in front of a predominantly Muslim audience.  A few quick points that atheist speakers in the same novel situation ought to be aware:

1. If the event is organised by an Islamic society, expect arcane absurdities which do the religion no favours in the inclusiveness stakes, such as demanding that unmarried, unrelated men and women sit apart in the audience;
2. The Muslim apologist will be given special treatment to cut off the other speakers whilst they are at the lectern trying to respond during their two precious minutes;
3. If you intend to raise the issue of Wahhabi extremists brainwashing their children to become suicide bombers, don’t expect a positive reaction from the crowd.

After a very good reaction to my 10 minute opening address, which gave a whistle stop tour of atheism, anti-theism, secularism and the ills of religion on the world and humanist morality, throwing in a lambasting of the University Vice Chancellor, Sir Howard Newby, for his recent move to shut the philosophy, politics, statistics and communication studies departments, the crowd was firmly against me.

I found myself decrying miracles, the morality of the Holy Scriptures and Mother Teresa.  And then there was the small matter as set out in point three above, which nearly had me booed, jeered and hissed out of the hall.  My Christian opponent subsequently provoked the biggest cheer of the night, condemning me for saying “some really offensive things”.  Cheers and whistles which I myself added to.

It was actually Christopher Hitchens’ question on the usefulness of religion about whether you would prefer a child born tonight in Pakistan to grow up either as an atheist or a Wahhabi Muslim brainwashed into becoming a suicide bomber.[iv]

In retrospect, perhaps I ought to have pointed to the moral beacons of secular Scandinavia in front of a hijab-wearing audience, but I don’t regret it and I certainly don’t withdraw it, particularly, since the question was never actually answered and the topic was speedily moved to Blair and Bush’s adventures in Iraq.

The audience reaction was not so much indicative of any deliberate attempt to upset and provoke on my part (there was none) but the automatic respect accorded to religious faith in conversation.  Were the debate about Marxism, I very much doubt whether I would have received a similar response had I brought up the awkward fact of Joseph Stalin.

I certainly had my wish after my debate three weeks prior against Christian apologist Peter S Williams to come up against tougher opponents.  It wasn’t that my three antagonists had better arguments; it was that they were able to marshal an audience which was clearly on their side from the beginning.

Thus, when I raised the issue of lack of archaeological evidence for the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan, all Rabbi Rubinstein had to do was butt in from his chair by the main microphone and raise laughter and applause with an ad hominem against my bibliography.

“Oh, he reads the serious Jewish school now, does he?”  The flock loved it.

I tried to fight back with the doubtful location of Mount Sinai and the absence of any tombs for Moses, Solomon and David.  It didn’t matter; I had lost both the point and the crowd.  I have to resort to setting the record straight after the event when it’s too late with an open letter to the Rabbi.[v]

The audience were behind Hamza in particular.  He was given a roving microphone and cut me off several times during my precious two-minute slots at the lectern following questions from the audience.  He places a great of emphasis on the Argument from First Cause aka “Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?”  He will not accept any rebuttals which impinge on other arguments, such as design or fine-tuning.  He also thinks that the Qu’ran is a book of such extraordinary power that it could only have been the product of a divine miracle.

I hope we have another live debate soon so I can expose these vacuous claims for what they are and in a more decisive manner than I was able to on this occasion.

Before the night, I had rather hoped that if it was going to turn nasty, it would be a squabble between the three apologists over who has the best imaginary friend, with me being the cool and reasonable one.  Alas, it was not be and I was reduced to fire fighting from all quarters.

The problem with Islam

A full castigation of the Qu’ran will have to wait for another paper, but having read the text myself,[vi] together the excellent executive summaries of Sam Harris[vii] and also my new best friend, Edmund Standing,[viii] I can safely conclude that anyone who says that this book is of such mind-blowing brilliance and so prescient of society’s universal and timeless needs is either deluded, dishonest, demagogic or a combination of all three.

The assertion that “Islam is a religion of peace which has been hijacked by extremists” is a claim utterly falsified by reading the Qu’ran.   Anyone who says that there could be nothing in the book that could possibly have mandated the atrocities of 9/11 or 7/7 doesn’t know what they’re talking about:

And fight in the way of Allah with those who fight with you, and do not exceed the limits, surely Allah does not love those who exceed the limits.

And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.

But if they desist, then surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

And fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for Allah, but if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors.

The Sacred month for the sacred month and all sacred things are (under the law of) retaliation; whoever then acts aggressively against you, inflict injury on him according to the injury he has inflicted on you and be careful (of your duty) to Allah and know that Allah is with those who guard (against evil) (2.190-4).

Ditto anyone who swallows the line that Islam says “there shall be no compulsion in religion”:

Allah will bring disgrace to the unbelievers (9.2).

O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them; and their abode is hell, and evil is the destination (9.73).

Meanwhile, the applicability of the Prophet’s family values in today’s ever-shifting moral Zeitgeist are questionable to say the least:

Narrated ‘Ursa:

The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with ‘Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).

– Hadith collection of Imam al-Bukhari

While it is always a relief to hear religious people do not take their texts literally and read the Holy Scriptures as authorising genocide and jihad, there can be little doubt that many people do take such passages literally.  If you’re still not convinced, perhaps they would care to read Osama Bin Laden’s Letter to America:

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,

“Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who are fought against, because they have been wronged and surely, Allah is Able to give them (believers) victory.” [Qu’ran 22:39]

“Those who believe, fight in the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve, fight in the cause of Taghut (anything worshipped other than Allah e.g. Satan). So fight you against the friends of Satan; ever feeble is indeed the plot of Satan.” [Qu’ran 4:76][ix]

The latest polling data should alarming levels of fundamentalism among British Muslims.  The Centre for Social Cohesion produced a report in 2008 entitled Islam on Campus: A survey of UK student opinion.[x] The study, based on a poll of 1,400 students as well as field work and interviews, revealed of British Muslim students that:

• 32% said killing in the name of religion can be justified;

• 60% of active members of campus Islamic societies said killing in the name of religion can be justified;

• 50% would be unsupportive of a friend’s decision to leave Islam;

• 24% do not feel that men and women are fully equal in the eyes of Allah;

• 28% said Islam was incompatible with secularism;

• 40% said that they thought that it was unacceptable for Muslim men and women to mix freely;

• 25% said they had not very much or no respect at all for homosexuals, as opposed to 4% of non-Muslim students.

A 2007 poll of 1,000 of the wider Muslim population in Britain conducted by the think tank Policy Exchange found that:

• 86% of Muslims feel that religion is the most important thing in their life;

• 36% of 16 to 24-year-olds believe if a Muslim converts to another religion they should be punished by death;

• 74% of 16 to 24-year-olds would prefer Muslim women to choose to wear the veil;

• 58% believe that “many of the problems in the world today are a result of arrogant Western attitudes”;

• Only 37% accept that ‘one of the benefits of modern society is the freedom to criticise other people’s religious or political views, even when it causes offence’.[xi]

A 2006 Populus poll for The Times found that 37% of British Muslims believe that “the Jewish community in Britain is a legitimate target as part of the ongoing struggle for justice in the Middle East”.[xii]A 2005 Daily Telegraph poll found that 32% of British Muslims agreed with the notion that “Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end”. [xiii]

During a coda in a Muslim restaurant after the debate with my two remaining antagonists (Rabbi Rubinstein had to leave at 9pm while the debate was still ongoing) and members of the Islamic Society, I spoke further with Hamza and Muslim students.

The question of 1.3 million deaths in Iraq/ 3 million deaths in Vietnam/ 150,000 deaths at Hiroshima –v- 3,000 deaths on 9/11 arose as it had done so earlier that evening.

I am not going to write one word in defence of US foreign policy since World War II.  America has much to answer for and the body count arising from its activities abroad doesn’t even bear thinking about.

However, unlike the sloppy moral equivalence of Noam Chomsky in comparing Bill Clinton’s 1998 rocketing of the Sudanese Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant, which purportedly lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent Sudanese from preventable diseases with 9/11, the body count is, bizarrely of secondly importance.

It can be demonstrated with this rather morbid thought experiment.  Which would you prefer; that your father was the bombardier on the Enola Gay that dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima which killed tens of thousands of women and children, or that he was in the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War and killed 20 women and children at the point of a bayonet?

It’s a massive moral paradox, but I think most people would go for option 1!

One of the few statements of Henry Kissinger I have agreed with is that statesmen very often have to choose between evils.  (For the record, I don’t agree with the second part of that statement, that normal rules of morality cannot apply to them.  I think certain liberals have mounted a very convincing case to bring Kissinger to an International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes along with the like of Milosevic and Karadzic.[xiv])

But the question remains, would we like it if the situation is reversed?  Would we like America to switch military support from Israel to Hamas?  Would we trust the governments of Saudi Arabia and Iran by selling them nuclear weapons?  If the Iraqi National guard had invaded Washington, would they take any notice of the US employing human shields?  Would the US even use human shields?

Again, I don’t support the Iraq War, but I don’t point-blank reject its motives and its results either.  It is still possible to establish a first principle; there is still an argument for self-preservation, as there was for the fire-bombing of Dresden and the destruction of Hiroshima.  We wouldn’t be in Iraq if it wasn’t for 9/11.  The World changed beyond recognition for all time that day.

Also, anyone who says “Well ok, Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, but…” should educate themselves as to the extent of the man’s atrocities against the Kuwaitis, the Kurds and his own people.  Whatever happens to Iraq now, it has been an enormously costly exercise; that I cannot deny.  But I just have a hunch that in 10 years time it won’t be looked upon quite the same negative light as Vietnam.

The comparative sense of tribalism between me and Hamza and the Muslim students was astonishing.  Whilst I do not support America’s misadventures abroad, I do not feel the desire to take up arms and avenge the suffering visited upon them by innocent citizens of the perpetrators’ countries, or sympathise with those who do.  I hope I stand to be corrected in this, but I had the impression that Hamza and some of the other students do.

They repeatedly attempted to justify suicide attacks, play down religion’s role and play up that of secular politics.  The moderator of the debate, kindly gave me a lift home after the meal and pointed out that suicide bombing had only arisen in the last 20 years or so and was devised by the Tamil Tigers, whose motives are political, even if their religious views are Hindu, (as opposed to the common misperception that they are atheists).

I said to him that Jains and Tibetan Buddhists do not practice suicide bombing.   Tibetan Buddhists in particular are extremely oppressed.  If mistreatment by a foreign army occupying your country is sufficient to cause the requisite level of despair, Tibetan Buddhists ought to be blowing themselves up on Chinese public transportation.  But they do not do this, because their religion does not mandate in any way, shape or form.  This is a problem with Islam.

The problem with atheism

My opponents had a big advantage to me on the night.  They were advocating something positive, something inspiring, something that can provide hope.  Whether any of it was true or not was apparently of no concern whatsoever to the flock before them.

All I can say in reply to that is those who provide false consolation are false friends.  However, this still left me as the underdog.  I was essentially advancing a negative position.  I was speaking against their offers of hope and salvation.  I was the nasty teenager going around telling all the toddlers that there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.

The Christian chaplain had a wonderfully inspiring story of how he was seriously injured in a car accident as a child.  He spent months in hospital in intensive care whilst everyday his parents were told by the doctors to expect him to die.  However, the power of prayer apparently saved him.   In response to that, I said that we should consider all the children who didn’t make it, who died every single day the chaplain was in hospital, who were seemingly less ill than he was and the prayers of whose parents were not answered by the Almighty.

When people talk about miracles they mean when a baby falls out of a top storey window and bounces harmlessly on a pile of grass cuttings.  People to hold their hands aloft and thanks heaven for this wonderful salvation.  They have nothing to say when in the Congo and Cambodia and Rwanda there were ditches filled with dead babies and no one did a thing.

The truth may set you free, but it sure can leave a bitter aftertaste.

At the Atheist Alliance International Conference 2007, Sam Harris argued controversially that actually the “atheist” brand was doing the anti-religious cause few favours.[xv] Atheism is a term that we do need, in very much the same way that we do not have terms like “non-astrologer” or “non-racist”.  People, whether they believe in God or, what Dan Dennett describes as, “believe in belief in God” see atheists speaking out against religion as a cranky, intolerant, sub-cult.

Atheists seemingly never have to stop answering the bogus “Hitler/ Stalin/ Mao = the endgame of atheism” card.   “This meme is not going away,” commented Harris.  I felt that my knowledge of history and philosophy far outstripped any of my opponents.  Nevertheless, all Rabbi Rubinstein had to do was mention the crimes of Hitler and Stalin being caused by them allegedly being atheists to gain a murmur of approval from the crowd and was then up to me to cut into my own time at the next visit to the microphone to refute it.

That night I had first-hand experience of Harris’ dilemma.  My three opponents appeared so happy, so content living their lies.  They had something to offer the crowd which I simply could not.  On the other hand, I must have come across as miserable, angry, intolerant and trying desperately to indoctrinate people into my way of thinking.

Faith seems to trump evidence at every turn.  I could have lectured to them extensively on the historical unreliability of the Gospels, but they wouldn’t have taken any notice.  The idea that someone died to wash away their sins obviously appeals to their deepest hopes and fears and no amount of evidence would dissuade them of it.  Any claim, no matter how ridiculous, is irrefutable as long as it is dressed in faith.  The onus suddenly switches to the non-believer to disprove it, which is often an impossible task.  Apparently, no qualifications whatsoever are required in order to believe, but conversely no qualifications are sufficient in order to criticise.

Right now, my head is filled with visions of celestial teapots and self-propelled spaghetti monsters…

How to re-brand the atheist mark?  Can it ever be a positive?  I contend that atheism is a by-product of an enquiring mind that is forever asking questions and will not accept easy answers.  There is some empirical data which suggests that religious people are happy and healthier than non-believers and I can easily accept this.  Who would have wanted to be me that night?

When faced with such terrible ideas, what can I do – attempt to refute them or let them go unanswered and keep on plugging the “use what’s up here” card?  It’s frustrating, but I simply cannot provide an alternative manifesto at this time.  The best I can do is to refute the idea that an atheist has no reason to save someone else’s life as I did in my opening statement:

Quite simply an atheist does not need to refer his or her problems upwards.  We view them for what they are, on their own terms.  There is fulfilment in performing a good deed for its own sake, as opposed to doing it because invisible Big Brother in sky wants you to do it.   If we were endangered we would hope someone else would do the same thing for us.

Similarly, an atheist can easily abhor pain and suffering for its own sake.  We object to the Holocaust because we would not like the same thing to happen to us.  If we saw it happening in front of our eyes we would act to stop it.  Or if we witnessed the aftermath, we would try to alleviate its effects.

When the Asian tsunami struck on Boxing Day 2004, it was exactly these kinds of sentiments that took people of all faiths and none at all to the other side of the world to help ease the suffering of perfect strangers.

It’s amazing how far a little human solidity will get you and equally amazing how permission from the divine is unnecessary.

A humanist is, after all, someone who can be good when no-one is watching.

I am a straight-talker and I always have been.  If it looks like a spade, and it feels like a spade, and it digs like a spade, then I will frame it in explicitly shovel-esque language.  I have been loathed for it at every stage of my life, but then again I have always garnered a certain level of respect from what I term a “sincere minority”.

In conclusion – this glorious struggle continues

When the debate itself was all over, at about 9:45pm, I felt absolutely awful!  I was sure that I would be banned from speaking again at the University for good.  One or two of my friends who had come along congratulated me, but others left for their cars and their beds straightaway without a word.

Members of the University of Liverpool Atheist Society were incredulous to put it mildly.  The chair said I was welcome to come to Tuesday night drinks at the society as usual.  I detected more than a hint of polite insincerity in her tone.

However, one gentleman came up to me, smiled and shook my hand and said, “Brilliant.  Your arguing was just brilliant”.  A member of the City Christian Union gave me his phone number and asked to meet up some time as there were “a few things he wanted to talk about”.  At the restaurant afterwards, James Harding said I deserve respect for going into the lion’s den like Daniel.

Members of Liverpool Humanist Group emailed the next day saying how well I had stood up to it all and promoted the cause of humanism.  I had a few positive comments posted on my blog from audience members who wanted me to elaborate on certain issues.

In work the next day, colleagues who had been present said how well I had done and I ought to re-train as a barrister.  One solicitor who had missed the event due to a personal commitment said after the reports from the other she was definitely coming for the next one.

And then there was the small matter of receiving a Facebook message the Sunday after the event from the Islamic Society… inviting me back to Follow My Way Part II scheduled to be held at the University after Easter.

This news could almost make me believe in God.  Surely it must fulfil David Hume’s criteria for a miracle?  I have asked myself whether I am under a misapprehension, or I am deluded, or hallucinating, but apparently not.

However, the more naturalistic explanation for my invitation is, I postulate, that no matter how much your views are disagreed with, a substantial number of people always respect you for having the courage to speak your mind without consideration for what the reaction will be.

Is the heading quote from Manic Street Preachers’ skinny bassist an accurate summation of how I’m feeling right now?  Only in so far as I’m not doing this to make any new friends.  Indeed, I am filled with a wonderful sensation of “me against the world”.  Very Manic-esque.

Is the title to this essay an accurate description of what happened to me on the night?  Well, I was certainly left feeling rather full and had a few crumbs round my mouth and down my front.

But it wasn’t about overfilling my tummy.  It was about finally getting my trousers off.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to friends, workmates and Liverpool Humanist Group members who came along for all their support before, during and after.  I won’t incriminate you here; you know who you are.

Special thanks to Edmund Standing (a qualified theologian with a first class honours in the subject and several other very impressive letters after his name), for giving some helpful advice to a fellow atheist crusader he has never met before in his life:

http://edmundstanding.blogspot.com/

http://www.jewcy.com/user/3956/edmund_standing

http://www.hurryupharry.org/

http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/

Extra special thanks to Liverpool University Islamic Society for having me to speak, for a wonderful meal afterwards and risking the University’s buildings and contents insurance by inviting me back for a second time.

---

[i] www.hamzatzortzis.com.

[ii] http://www.rabbiyy.com/.

[iii] www.faithexpress.net.

[iv] Among other occasions, the question was posed in by Hitchens in his debate against Dinesh D’Souza, “What’s So Great About God? Atheism –v- Religion” at Macky Auditorium, CU Boulder, January 26, 2009 and can be viewed at: http://richarddawkins.net/article,3623,Debate-Christopher-Hitchens-and-Dinesh-DSouza,Thomas-Center.

[v] https://edthemanicstreetpreacher.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/open-letter-rabbi-y-y/.

[vi] For what it’s worth, my version of the sacred text is translated and with an introduction by Arthur J Arberry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), but I’m sure it’s full of mistranslations and passages taken out of context.

[vii] The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason (London: Simon & Schuster, 2006).

[viii] Edmund Standing, “A Critical Examination of the Qu’ran”, Butterflies and Wheels, 6 February 2009,

Part 1: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=384,

Part 2: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=385,

Part 3: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=386,

Part 4: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=387.

[ix] “Full text: bin Laden’s ‘letter to America’”, The Guardian, 24 November 2002: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver.

[x] Full report: http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/files/1231525079_1.pdf.  Executive summary: http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/files/1231525079_2.pdf.

[xi] “British Muslims poll: Key points”, BBC News, 29 January 2007: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6309983.stm.

[xii] Peter Riddell, “Poll shows voters believe press is right not to publish cartoons”, The Times, 7 February 2006: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article727952.ece.

[xiii] Anthony King, “One in four Muslims sympathises with motives of terrorists”, The Daily Telegraph, 23 July 2005: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1494648/One-in-four-Muslims-sympathises-with-motives-of-terrorists.html.

[xiv] For a superb exposition of Kissinger’s war crimes, see Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (London: Verso, 2002) and its accompanying documentary, The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002) which contains Kissinger’s statement about statesmen having to choose between evils and can be viewed at: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-2411718527195635002&ei=bEO9Se-IBoiGqwL3zcA-&q=trials+of+henry+kissinger+hitchens&hl=en.

[xv] The video of Harris’ speech on 28 September 2007 can be viewed at:

http://richarddawkins.net/article,1805,Sam-Harris-at-AAI-07,RichardDawkinsnet.  An edited transcript is at http://richarddawkins.net/article,1702,The-Problem-with-Atheism,Sam-Harris.

All web-based resources retrieved 15 March 2009.

Follow My Way: An Inter-Faith Dialogue at Liverpool University, 12 March 2009, 6:45pm

For those of you who missed my debating début at Liverpool Uni last week, fear not!   I have received my first invitation to speak at Liverpool University’s Inter-Faith Dialogue to advocate the atheist cause on Thursday 12 March 2009 at 6:45pm held at the Science Lecture Theatre.

I’ll be on a panel with a Christian, a Jew and a Muslim.

We’ll have 10 minutes to make a statement at the lectern and then it will be thrown open to the floor.

SPEAKERS:

Hamza Tzortzis

Edward Turner

Rabbi Y Y Rubinstein

Chaplain James Harding

University Science Lecture Theatre Building, Lecture Theatre A

http://www.liv.ac.uk/maps/liverpool-university-campus-map.pdf

Building 221 on the map

Parking is available outside the building or behind the Guild.

Popular landmarks around the building:

1) It is opposite the Veterinary Sciences Building just off Crown Street.

2) Behind Barclays Bank and Spar.

3) Two mins walk from Blackwells bookshop on campus.