Purple Clouds

The Death of Politics?

Tue, 27 Mar 07 14:56:00 UT

The Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens (I mentioned him in my recent diatribe about drug policy) was on TV last night, presenting a short documentary entitled Cameron; Toff at the Top.

Hitchens argues that David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party in Britain, is little more than an opportunistic showman, a Blair-wannabe, who believes in nothing and who will say anything if it furthers his quest to become the next prime minister.

Hitchens holds views that I strongly oppose. Political differences aside, however, I find his dissections of politicians like Blair and Cameron entertainingly effective (his obsession with the shadowy "liberal elite" notwithstanding). He skewered Michael Gove several times in Toff at the Top, letting Gove verbally squirm and wriggle in his denials of Cameron's inconsistency.

I have a grudging admiration for Hitchens's individuality, too. Heâs well-aware of how unfashionable and unpopular his "moral and cultural conservatism" is. He's unapologetic, though, because he really believes in his puritanical vision. Hitchens is neither a stupid or ignorant man; I guess that religious faith alone subverts his reason and informs his ideology. I almost envy his apparent conviction at times. At least, unlike Dave Cameron, he believes in something beyond his own narrow self-interest.

Hitchens is also right about one important issue: the death of choice in politics.

In Britain we have three main political parties that are practically indistinguishable from each other. The ideological differences between them, if such differences even exist, are minimal. They each fight over the same speck of centre-ground, and the resulting choice we're left with is over which leader has the best personality/looks - or maybe which colour badge we like best. Tens of thousands of voters, on both the left and right, are left without any meaningful representation in Parliament.

The reasons behind our current situation, including the slow death of democracy, are explored by Adam Curtis in The Trap: What Happened to our Dreams of Freedom? I mentioned this excellent and thought-provoking series a while ago.

In the West, a utopian vision called market democracy has risen up to replace the old idea that we can use politics to change society and make a better world.

In the new prevailing vision, free markets do a better job of giving free individuals what they truly want; soâ¦ the market is a superior democratic system to democracy itself.

This strange ideal is built upon a simplistic economic model of human beings as perfectly rational and almost robotic businessmen who'll act only to further their own material self-interest.

The economic model of human behaviour can be traced back to (among other influences) game theory, a system developed to deal with the terrifying uncertainties of the Cold War. It was later developed by the genius John Nash to encompass all human interactions. The Nash equilibrium showed, logically, how a society based entirely upon the self-seeking of free individuals need not break down into chaos. Instead it would create stability and order. In fact, altruism was unpredictable and more likely to lead to dangerous outcomes.

Yet Nash, having recovered from paranoid schizophrenia, now says that game theory principles might be unsound because they overemphasize computer-like rationality and pure selfishness. This realization, he says, has been his enlightenment.

He is not alone. Studies have shown that only two groups of people conform to the game theory model of behaviour in all experimental situations:

Economistsâ¦ and psychopaths.

Curtis also discusses the theories of Isaiah Berlin, a tremendously influential thinker who has done more than most to underpin our current conceptions of freedom.

At Oxford University in 1958, Berlin gave a lecture that he called Two Concepts of Liberty. In the lecture, Berlin argued that there are two distinct kinds of freedom. He termed these "positive liberty" and "negative liberty".

Positive liberty stems from idealistic dreams of creating a better world, usually through politics and/or revolution. It is a dream of transforming people and freeing them from themselves, making them into better human beings. Often, in this worldview, people are seen as having become passive zombies, trapped in a narrow and false idea of freedom by the pressures and norms of bourgeois society. But we can break free from this false idea and change society for the better.

Negative liberty, by contrast, is nothing more than the freedom of individuals to acquire whatever they want without restraint. This concept of freedom deliberately avoids any higher ideals of how society should be ordered, even on questions of social equality.

Berlin believed that positive liberty would always lead inexorably to tyranny and horror - witness Stalin's Russia and Pol Pot's Cambodia.

In all such revolutionary/utopian visions it is the leaders who define the ideal kind of society and ideal free individual. The masses, unaware of the true nature of freedom, have to be shown how to be free, and coerced to be free if necessary.

If you think that you have one final answer that will lead all of humanity into true freedom and bliss, no sacrifice will be too great in order to achieve it, even if it means killing millions of people. The temptation will always be there to force people to be free.

When Pol Pot tried to construct his utopia, he began by simply slaughtering the whole of bourgeois society. In his visionary fervour he killed hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps as many as a million, mostly the middle-classes and intellectuals who might possibly dissent against his strict vision. To put this in perspective, it is sometimes estimated that he oversaw the killing of a third of the entire population of Cambodia.

Negative liberty, alternatively, might be a narrow and empty kind of freedom but it is always safer than Positive Liberty, according to the theory.

As a word of caution, Isaiah Berlin warned that people advocating negative liberty must never come to believe that it is a final answer, because this would again lead to coercion and force, the worst aspects of positive liberty.

Half a century laterâ¦

Negative liberty has come to triumph in the West, and we are now trapped in its narrow and limiting worldviewâ¦ and yet Berlinâs cautionary warnings have gone unheeded.

We now have the strangest of all worlds. Men like George Bush apply revolutionary methods and military power for the spreading of negative liberty. Britain's and America's crusade to "spread freedom" negates the main virtue of negative liberty: that it is supposed to be safer than positive liberty, not leading to coercion or force. America has become the very thing that negative liberty was meant to prevent.

Meanwhile, market democracy has not led to any kind of utopia. It has led to corruption on an enormous scale and severe inequality.

Most of the world's wealth is held by a tiny 1% of the population. But in the poorest sections of our global society we see a deadly rise of child slavery, extreme poverty and even death from malnutrition and preventable diseases. The attitude of the ultra-rich 1% mirrors the attitude of Marie Antoinette before the French Revolution.

We now have the worst aspects of both positive liberty and negative liberty. We have a narrow and unfulfilling version of freedom that has led to drastic inequality and increasingly controlling systems of conformity. We are becoming passive zombies, consumers, who only exist for the purpose of buying things to keep the rich in bathtubs to fill with money. And now this mutant idea of freedom has itself become a utopian ideal, and we are actually starting to force others to accept it, invading any country we deem to lack sufficient freedom.

As for the staggeringly obscene levels social injustice that have arisen, the very tenets of negative liberty and market democracy prevent us from using politics in an idealistic way to create a fairer world.

As Adam Curtis concludes: "If we ever want to escape from this limited worldview, we will have to rediscover the progressive, positive ideas of freedom, and realize that Isaiah Berlin was wrong. Not all attempts to change the world for the better lead to tyranny."

Drugs and Democracy

Thu, 15 Mar 07 14:44:00 UT

The RSA recently published a report about the British governmentâs drugs policy. The report concluded that our policy is not fit for purpose, that cigarettes and alcohol are more destructive than some illegal drugs, and that the whole approach to drugs in this country is driven by moral panic instead of reason.

As to the latter point, I donât believe that the politicians are driven by their own moral panic. Theyâre driven by the sensibilities of the voters. The policy will never change until the attitudes of the public change.

The British public are a reactionary lot. There is a reason, after all, why the Daily Mail newspaper is the most popular tabloid in the country. The Daily Mail is the voice of perpetually-outraged Britain. It is an ideological newspaper that appeals to a certain set of negative emotional responses to a number of key issues, particularly Asylum Seekers and Richard Dawkins. The typical Daily Mail fan spends a lot of time sneering and tutting, but less time thinking.

I find the popularity of the Daily Mail and its attitudes difficult to fathom. Much of what it preaches would appeal to members of the Christian Right in America, and yet this country is supposed to be one of the most secular and rational countries in the world. Columnists like Peter Hitchens preach that the theory of evolution is a sham, that single mothers and sex-education are evilâ¦ and the Mail on Sunday readers lap it up.

I must confess that I enjoy reading Peter Hitchens, if only to see who or what he might bitterly attack next. It amazes me that this pious conservative is the brother of the atheist and antitheist Christopher Hitchens, who gave us the following brilliant line: âwhat can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.â

The Daily Mail, sadly, is a tremendously influential newspaper. There are actually people who consider it to be an authoritative source on the subject of drugs and much else besides.

Iâm not a fan of recreational drugs, personally. I donât consider all drug-use inherently sinful or immoral in a scientologist kind of way, but narcotics and LSD are unlikely to be great for your health.

Having said that, Sam Harris once pointed out the following instructive statistic from America: âWhile adverse reactions to drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen account for an estimated 7,000 deaths (and 76,000 hospitalizations) each year in the United States alone, marijuana kills no one.â

My main reason for criticizing our governmentâs drug policy is simple: the policy has failed. Worse, it creates a range of appalling social problems and knock-on effects that we could eradicate easily with a rational policy.

Drugs prohibition in Britain is as effective as alcohol prohibition was in Chicago when Al Capone was making his fortune. Drugs are readily available to anyone and everyone who wants them. Prohibition is not making the slightest difference to either the supply or demand of these substances. What it is doing is making multi-millionaires of drug-barons, fuelling gang warfare, and criminalizing eccentric old ladies who consume tiny amounts of cannabis to help with arthritis pain.

If the government controlled and regulated these drugs, dealers would go out of business overnight and addicts could be weaned off the drugs instead of being thrown in jail to rot â an especially stupid move since our prisons are known to be full of illegal drugs!

Our prisons, incidentally, are a national disgrace. Theyâre storage containers full of the dregs of our society. Something like 1 in 3 prisoners in our jails are mentally ill. Because thereâre no treatment places for the mentally ill, whenever they inevitably foul-up theyâre sent to rot in prison again. Now thereâs a crisis with our prisons being full up. The proposed solution to this shambles is to build yet more prisons and lock up yet more drug addicts and mentally ill people.

We also send prostitutes to jail in a futile attempt to stamp out the worldâs oldest profession. The illegality of prostitution is excellent news for both the pimps and the drug-pushers. Pimps rake in the cash by effectively keeping women as slaves, strung out on crack and heroin. The women can only get their next fix if they obey their pimps and work the streets for them.

Opening legalized brothels would put these pimps out of business. The women could then receive help to get off the drugs, which are why many of them are prostitutes to begin with. Once off the drugs, they would be free to seek their own pathway in life.

There was a proposal made a while ago for licensed brothels, with the additional safeguard that only two women could work from any particular address at any time. Proposals are fine, but action is required to tackle the daily misery and exploitation that is a logical result of misguided government policy.

Prisons should be there for pimps and gangsters in the first place, not for their victims.

How much money does our government waste trying to enforce laws that are helping to ruin lives instead of having any positive benefit? Millions? Billions? With rational policies, the money saved could be funnelled into health and drug rehabilitation programs, and education. Drugs could be taxed in the same manner as tobacco, to create more funds to funnel into healthcare and weaning people off the drugs.

Iâm pessimistic about seeing any change to our failed policies on drugs and prostitution. Daily Mail values are deeply entrenched in this country, and our politicians must appease them. Donât blame the politicians, though, blame the public. Democracy is an ideal system of government whenever there are fewest idiots.

Note: I can't access my comments at the moment because I can't de-activate the pop-up blocker on this library computer. Sorry for whoever might be waiting for a reply on something.

Theotechism

Thu, 15 Mar 07 14:40:00 UT

Transcript from Late Nights with Andrew Barker, broadcast at 00:00, 13 March, 2007 on Celsius AM Radio (5.22 kHZ):

-Ehâ¦ Master Terry, as you like to be known, Iâd like to welcome you to my award-winning radio show, Late Nights with Andrew Barker.

-Thanks, Andrew. Whoa. Itâs good to be here.

-I understand that you want to talk about a new craze called Theotechism. Could you explain for the listeners at home what Theotechism is all about?

-Certainly, Andrew. Yes, so, Theotechism is a new mass-movement that is based upon my writings, particularly those in my new book Master Terry Introduces Theotechism. It is a revolutionary movement that has many of our politicians and sections of our media in a panic. There are already over a million people here in the United States involved in activism for our cause, with another million, at least, spread across Europe. We advocate widespread changes to our entire political system and society. We advocate a world-government based upon the tenets of Theotechism, and massive social change.

-Some of our listeners may find some of the tenets you speak aboutâ¦ well, strange and unfamiliar. For example, I understand that you and your followers have a very low opinion of elephants. Is this true?

-Whoa. Are you joking? Yes, of course itâs true. Though if youâd read my book youâd know that itâs mostly the African elephants that we have a problem with.

-What could you possibly have against African elephants?

-What? Surely that is self-explanatory, especially if youâd read my book. The African elephant is a disgusting freak of nature. Africa is a dark land with dark-minded people and dark creatures. These elephants must be eradicated before we can seriously progress as a society.

-Come on now. Isnât that just a bunch of racist pseudo-science, demonizing a majestic animal simply because it originates in Africa?

-No, this is all scientific fact, as I clearly demonstrate in my writings. Look, elephants are quite obviously a bad influence on all of us, anyway. Have you ever seen those long grey penis things that sprout from their faces? They corrupt any who look on them. Theyâre unclean and ungodly.

-I assume that the âpenis-thingâ you refer to is the elephantâs trunk. The trunk works like an arm and a hand, able to grasp and manipulate objects in the world. It has no special sexual use, except maybe if it were to touch the genitals of another elephant. You also call elephants âungodlyââ¦ but didnât you write that âThe Oneâ created all living things?

-Thatâs not strictly true. Youâre probably thinking of the profane Genesis storyâ¦ whereas I always point to the Creation Story in Master Terry Introduces Theotechism. The God of Theotechism created all original things, but there have since been creatures created by the original creations themselves. A central tenet of Theotechism is that elephants, particularly African elephants, were created by the sly ones.

-Sly ones? Who or what are these?

-The sly ones appear as âpeopleâ who have excessively long fingers. They were created by The One as a challenge to the real humans, his chosen people. I am the leader of the chosen ones. God created the various sly races to be a demonic influence. They are here to test us. God has challenged us to wipe them all out, without mercy.

-Most of this will seem like crazed nonsense to many of my listeners, but I understand that your theories have become quite popular.

-Oh yes. Many are flocking to the new Way. What I offer is the most honest pathway to heaven itself, which is an eternal paradise. In heaven, all desires are fulfilled and nothing is left out, and sheer holy energy will radiate out from what I call the Sacrificed Heart. Youâll love it. Thatâs for the listeners at home, I mean. The different levels of paradise are all mapped out in my book for easy reference. The book is available now.

-Still, some of my regular listeners may find all of this rather difficult to swallow. Iâm sure a few listeners might conclude that your teachings are simply the ravings of a disturbed individual who has built a thriving cult around himself by force of personality. Apparently youâve even created a ranking-system, offering status and wealth to anyone who can convert the most people to Theotechism. Some people might view your belief-system as a kind of nightmare that is rapidly spiralling out of control.

-Whoa. Youâre exposing your own prejudice and biases there, Andrew. Remember that one of my main teachings is that there is no such thing as reason. No, no. They said Einstein was crazy. And look what happened to him, even though he had the mind of a gnat compared to my mind now. And my soul is vast. Your snide comments wonât work on me, and your words havenât gone unnoticed. Youâll be punished. But you have forgotten that Theotechism requires Pure Faith or Higher Faith, and these are concepts unique to Theotechism. Those who have the real capacity for Pure Faith or Higher Faith will always know the Truth of my words. They feel the Truth within their souls, alwaysâ¦ alwaysâ¦

-The rhetoric in your book seems to promote violent hostility to members of other religions and also to non-religious people. Is that a fair assessment?

-Oh yes. Listen to me now and let me look at you as I say this. There is no point in beating around the bush here and pretending that blasphemy is a joking matter. Iâm quite explicit in my book about what will happen to blasphemers. All other religions are flat wrong. About everything. But they are also blasphemous. And every member of every fake religion is an affront to the True God. I want members of all fake religions to wake up and smell the calcium. I say that these heathens have a simple choice to make: they either get out of their fake religion, orâ¦ or the true Brothers and Sisters will kill them. Weâll hack them to death, massacre them without qualm or restraint. And we cannot fail because we have the True God guiding our actions and strategies. As for the atheists and agnostics and all the restâ¦ these poor fools are people who still think that reason exists. They couldnât be more wrong! Weâll flay and torture them alive before killing them: jubilation for their singular foolishness.

-That all sounds rather intolerant.

-As I saidâ¦ why beat around the bush when we are dealing with absolutes, with sin and virtue? TRUTH guides me. TRUTH. TRUTH. TRUTH. Say it with me, now: TRUTH!

-Iâd rather not.

-Itâs your soul. I am warning you.

-Ah. Let me return to a previous point for a moment. Earlier you said that the sly ones, as you call long-fingered people, invented elephants in order to corrupt the âchosenâ people. Have you any evidence for this extraordinary claim?

-Weâre still working on that, âAndrewâ. We believe that, as elephant DNA is examined in greater and greater detail, we shall find clear molecular signatures that prove beyond any doubt that one of the sly tribes engineered these vile beasts.

-And if no such evidence is found?

-If we cannot actually find the proof, it will mean that there are limits to how deeply we can probe such things. Science does have its limits, including practical limits on how finely we can probe. And reason itself does not exist, as I keep reminding you, so proofs are not that important anyway.

-Thatâs convenient.

-In Master Terry Introduces Theotechism, I prophesized that we might eventually find some proof, so thereâs hope. It was actually a Power Prophecy, and I have written that Power Prophecies can never fail. Regardless, my faithful followers arenât as empty or cynical as all you who havenât been touched in your soul by Master Terry. I can only really touch you in your soul if you read my book, so please buy a copy today and allow me to enter inside you.

-Master Terry, why are you so sure that long-fingered people are demons, created by your God to test short-fingered people? What are your outlandish theories based upon?

-Itâs obvious from studying the sly ones. Theyâre wicked and perverted. They constantly rape everyone without anyone knowing. Theyâre dim-witted and uncontrollable. Theyâreâ¦

-Dim-witted? A moment ago you said that they genetically-engineered elephants into existence.

-Yes?

-Are you saying that a dim-wit could genetically engineer an elephant from scratch?

-Wellâ¦ come on. Remember, they have an innate cunning, despite being so stupid. And they have dark powers at their disposal. And they can hide their stupidity. Some of them might talk in a fancy way, but their souls are withered and impoverished.

-Ah.

-They must be rooted out.

-As youâve already proposed. So this is your solution to the delusion youâve created, is it? Ethnic cleansing? Genocide?

-Whoa. Youâre speaking as if they were human.

-Well, yes. Remember, listeners, Master Terry is talking about people with long fingers. And it may not even be that simple. In your book you wrote the following passageâ¦ Ah, here it isâ¦ âAs to the length of finger involved, this may be a subjective judgement to an extent, and yet the Holy Presence of The One will be inside you. No matter how constricted you are, He will be deep within you, guiding you with Divine inspiration. The Spirit will bloom inside you and reveal the truth. Thus you may decide, on the basis of finger length or not, whether the struggling person in front of you is truly a sly one or otherwiseâ¦â So, identifying these demons is subjective and arbitrary. Theyâre just innocent humans, caught up in a delusional belief-system you have created and promoted to others with all the zeal of Saint Paul.

-No. I repeat: no. My followers and I know that the sly ones are not human. They walk among us and trick us.

-Why are you glaring at me like that?

-Obviously, when we begin to get rid of the sly onesâ¦ people like you will have to go, too.

-So Iâm not human either? Even though my fingers appear shorter than yours?

-As you pointed out a moment ago, finger-length is not always the final arbiter. Youâre obviously a lover of the sly ones, whatever the case. Maybe you even ARE a sly one. Iâm sure you follow my logic. I recently theorized that the sly ones develop technologies to reduce finger-length in order to blend in with us.

-You and your followers are beyond any vestige of sanity. How do you propose to âget ridâ of all these lurking sly ones, who may look no different from everyone else?

-Iâve made this very clear in my manifesto, Master Terry Introduces Theotechism. Once we have taken over the government, we shall systematically exterminate the sly ones. All of them. All across the world. With hammers.

-Hammers?!

-You see, this is an important moral lesson. It is not enough to simply get rid of them in some abstract and clinical way. No, we must crush them. It must be visceral. We must beat them to death with hammers. Every true human being must take part in the cleansing. We must smash and batter their faces in with hammers, not only to instil the moral teaching into the very fabric of our souls, but also to make sure they never come back.

-So you want to turn every man, woman, and child into a blood-crazed killer or a murder victim?

-Again, you are misconstruing what I am trying to achieve here. Slaying demons is not the same as murder. The sly ones are insidious. They lurk near children. They rape the elderly when nobody is looking. They oppose the God of Theotechism. They need to go.

-Thereâs one thing I donât understand. Why arenât you locked up in a medical facility?

-What do you mean?

-You are deluded, ravingâ¦ psychotic even. Iâm not sure that youâre sane enough to be considered evil, as such, but youâre a menace to society, whether it is your fault or not.

-Whoa. Your views are typical of the liberal elite that long-ago ruined our communities with pre-heaven pornography. Now youâre trying to attack my beliefs. How low is that? By attacking me you attack my children, my Brothers and Sisters, who believe in my words. You attack what I call the Fabric of Truth. Just because my teachings are not based on some kind of reason, you attack me as being a barbaric thug or a âmentally illâ person. Iâve heard it all before.

-I bet you have. Goodnight Master Terryâ¦ Phew, this has been the strangest and most disturbing interview of my career, without a doubt. While somebody escorts Master Terry from the building, Iâll open up the phone-lines to everyone who wants to comment on this frightening Theotechism craze that weâve heard about tonight. Give us a call. The number, once again, isâ¦â¦.

Far-fetched and silly, indeed. See "Yakub" for a taste of what large numbers of humans are capable of believing...

Escaping the Trap

Mon, 12 Mar 07 12:32:00 UT

In an age where simplistic dross tends to fill our television schedules, the work of the film-maker Adam Curtis is a welcome tonic. Curtisâs documentaries aim to shake us out of various complacent assumptions that lie at the heart of contemporary society, and to look critically at the strange world that we have created or fallen into.

I first became aware of Curtis when I saw his three-part documentary, The Power of Nightmares. In that film, Curtis argued that the menace of Islamic terrorism was largely a mass-delusion, whipped up and encouraged in the aftermath of 9/11 by ambitious politicians who saw fear as a potent force to boost their own authority. Our growing fear and paranoia also afforded our leaders a new role. In a time when politicians had become little more than managers, they could now assume the part of being our protectors, defending us from sinister forces that only they could properly understand.

The documentary was well-researched and convincingly argued, but the main premise now seems discredited and wrong-headed. The threat of Islamic extremism is real and will likely be with us for generations, though I do agree with Curtis that seeking protection in our current political leaders is a complete folly, since their actions exacerbate the problem instead of diminishing it.

Whatever its failings, much within Curtisâs exhilarating thesis still stands up to scrutiny. For instance, he revealed key similarities in the thinking of Leo Strauss (the man who provided the philosophical basis for American neo-conservatism) and Sayyid Qutb (Osama bin Ladenâs favourite philosopher, and a chief inspiration for modern militant Islamism). Both men saw human beings as basically savage creatures. Humans would only behave like people instead of beasts if properly controlled.

Qutbâs predictable solution for controlling humanity was extreme Islam and global Islamic revolution. A single world government based upon Islam would move us away from what he perceived as our baser natures, towards piety and repression.

The ideas of Leo Strauss and the neo-conservatives were somewhat more sophisticated and also very cynical.

In Straussâs view, people should be conditioned to see the world in terms of a titanic struggle between forces of absolute Good and absolute Evil. The USA itself was to be recast as mythic force for pure Good, whereas Evil enemies could be made of whoever the emerging neo-conservatives decided to demonize at any given time.

Strauss also believed that people should be encouraged to embrace religion (Christianity, this time) as part of the new worldview. It is important to note that he only advocated this worldview for the mass consumption. The new elite themselves didnât need to believe in the myths that everyone else did. Strauss believed in the âPlatonic lieâ, whereby it is morally acceptable for enlightened and noble leaders to tell lies to the barbaric and unenlightened masses, as a way to control them.

To create a sense of shared purpose and to keep people cowed by fear, Strauss believed that it was important for America to always have menacing enemies for the public to be preoccupied with. Global struggles were to be portrayed as struggles between the supernatural forces of Good and Evil, as seen through the prism of Christian supernaturalism. For pragmatists like Strauss and his neo-con disciples, Christianity wasnât necessarily true; it was simply a useful tool for controlling people, to stop them degenerating into savage beasts. Strauss was both a pragmatist and a deeply pessimistic cynic.

The aims of Strauss and Qutb (consequently, the aims of the neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists) were convergent. The neo-cons built up Al Qaeda as a vast power, a convenient force of supernatural Evil to unite Americans against. This, in turn, helped the cause of the militant Islamists. By portraying Al Qaeda as a vastly powerful organization, and by creating a worldview of Christianity poised against the Evil of Islam, America helped to radicalize many Muslims and drive them into the arms of the Islamist terrorist groups. And, the more successful Al Qaeda became in the execution of its atrocities, the more the neo-cons could use this for their own propaganda.

So, the neo-cons and Al Qaeda were allies in creating a world saturated in fear and the idea of a cosmic clash of Good and Evil. To Muslims, the Christian infidels are the Evil power. To the Christians, the great Evil is the Muslims.

The destructive theories of Qutb and Strauss were based upon a paranoid view of human beings. In the eyes of Qutb and Strauss, humans were barely-suppressed monsters who needed to be controlled and dominated for their own good. Otherwise, society would collapse in bloody chaos as humans reverted to the savage beasts behind the veneer of civilization.

Now Adam Cutis turns to a related theme with a new three part documentary, The Trap. The first instalment went out yesterday on BBC 2.

In his new film, Curtis explores the idea of individual freedom. The spread of liberty and freedom is held to be the ultimate political aim of our age. But if we step back and look at what has resulted, Curtis argues, it is a strange kind of freedom. Everything that was meant to free us from bureaucracy and control has actually led to an increasingly controlling form of management, driven by numbers and targets. Old systems of control have simply been replaced by new and more insidious ones, and a government committed to creating freedom of choice in all areas has led us to a greater degree of inequality. What began as an effort to sweep aside old elites and class hierarchy, has done the opposite, creating another new hierarchy based upon wealth and privilege. What we have today, Curtis argues, is a very narrow and peculiar idea of freedom that was born out of the paranoia of the Cold War era.

Is he right? Iâll reserve judgement until Iâve seen the whole documentary. With the Power of Nightmares, Curtis had me convinced for a while that the Islamist threat was exaggerated, such is his ability to construct a compelling argument. But then we had the 7/7 London attacks and various other Islamic terrorist atrocities all over the world. My idealistic desire to doubt the scale of Islamic terror took a deserved blow.

Typically fascinating, the new documentary traces our ideas of freedom back to thinkers such as Friedrich von Hayek and the mathematical genius John Nash. The influence of Nash and his emphasis on the paranoid âGame Theoryâ particularly stands out. Game Theory was developed to deal with nuclear-warfare strategy during the Cold War era, and it encompassed the idea that safety and equilibrium could only be achieved if all âplayersâ in the âgameâ behaved in a way that was both perfectly rational and perfectly selfish.

But thinkers like Nash later came to see Game Theory as a system that could be applied to the whole of society and all human interactions. If everyone behaved like a player in Game Theory, perfectly self-interested, isolated, constantly strategizing against everyone else, society would fall into a state of natural equilibrium, requiring little State or bureaucratic control.

If this all sounds a bit crazy, it might be worth bearing in mind that Nash, despite being a Nobel Prize winning genius, was severely mentally ill. He was a paranoid schizophrenic who heard voices in his head, thought that people around him were part of vast conspiracies, and thought that he was part of a secret organization that could save the world.

Yet despite all of this, Nashâs ideas became increasingly powerful and popular, influencing politicians, economists, and even psychiatrists. Game Theory and other related ideas were used to criticize bureaucracies and anyone claiming to be interested in the common good. All were self-serving hypocrisies, and they were attacked by both the Left and the Right of the political spectrum.

The new alternative vision was a vision of paramount individual freedom in place of all such bureaucracies, but the type of freedom on offer was based upon an extremely negative view of human beings. The underlying assumption is that all people are cold and calculating creatures who will only serve their own interests. Thereâs no altruism, and people must constantly watch and snoop and strategize against each other. In other words, we are people as seen by the paranoid schizophrenic John Nash.

Apparently the next part of Curtisâs documentary describes how we have been conditioned to behave like the vision of people dreamed up by men like John Nash, and how we have found ourselves trapped inside a narrow and empty world as a result of all this.

The world Curtis describes does have a ring of truth to it. If, like me, you find yourself disinterested in striving and plotting against others to acquire âmust-haveâ items of material junk such as I-Pods and phones, the society we live in can seem vacuous. We labour and toil to create junk, then we create an entire industry called advertising to convince ourselves that we want this junk, then we get into debt from buying this junk, and we work and toil some more to pay off the debts, and then buy more junk, and again persuade ourselves that we want some more of this junk. Isnât there something better we could be doing with our time?

I wonderâ¦ is there a way for us to break out of all of this vacuity and negativity and mutual distrust?

A return to the Sixties values of flower power and free love, perhaps? Or a society based upon humanism, intellectual striving, empathy and mutual respect? A society where you would buy a starving person some food before buying yourself a new car or a holiday to the Maldives?

Lead the wayâ¦

The P-Word: Our Ultimate Taboo

Fri, 9 Mar 07 15:03:00 UT

Our public discourse regarding pedophilia (or paedophilia, as it is usually rendered in England) is saturated in myth, hysteria, and unchecked irrationality. Media coverage of pedophiles is notoriously unprofessional, sometimes even farcical, and a perfect target for parody.

The brilliant satirist Chris Morris took a shot at this with his Brass Eye pedophilia special. Morris manages to dupe various celebrities into earnestly telling us that, for instance, pedophiles can control a childâs computer keyboard via the internet, causing it to release mind-altering gasses, and that pedophiles have âmore DNA in common with crabs than humansâ. All the celebrities in question, some of them respected household names at the time, believed they were taking part in a serious documentary and that the surreal nonsense being peddled was worthy of serious consideration.

Thereâs another scene in which Morris, posing as a Paxman-like interviewer, sternly places a magazine cut-out of a child up on a blank board. In another corner of the board is a separate cut-out of a penis. Morris moves the cut-out penis progressively closer to the cut-out child, and an âexpertâ is asked to say at what point this becomes illegal child porn. I think it was somewhere around three inches away.

At one point in the show, a pedophile activist (played by Simon Pegg of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead) is brought into the Brass Eye studio to have his say. But thereâs one condition placed upon his appearance: he has to go onto the show locked into a set of stocks! Morrisâs character brings in a schoolboy to stand a few yards in front of Pegg â a boy supposed to be the son of the Brass Eye anchorman himself. He then asks the pedophile activist if he fancies the boy. âNo,â Pegg replies. Outraged, Morris asks: âWhy not? Whatâs wrong with him?â Peggâs reply: âHeâs just not my type.â This only annoys the news anchorman even more: heâs indignant that his son would not be attractive to a pedophile.

Morrisâs pertinent and hilarious satire obviously touched a nerve, because this particular episode of Brass Eye remains one of the most complained-about TV shows ever in England. The show provoked exactly the kind of automatic vitriol and panic that he was satirizing.

To illustrate how far this can go, one poor paediatrician in Wales had his house firebombed by a crazed mob of locals convinced that paediatrics was synonymous with pedophilia.

Letâs try to introduce some rationality to the subject. Take a moment to consider the definition of the word âpedophileâ. A pedophile is an adult (legally speaking) who is primarily sexually attracted to children (again a legal category, though thereâs some debate over the exact ages we should be talking about). This uneasy mishmash of law and pop-psychology is confusing and problematic, but at least we have some idea of what weâre discussing.

Pedophilia is a state of being sexually attracted to children rather than other adults. Nothing more or less.

One obvious problem with our media coverage, then, is the overuse and misuse of the term âpedophileâ itself to refer to people convicted of any sex-related crime in which children are involved. This contradicts criminological evidence showing that most incidents of rape against children are committed by opportunistic situational offenders, usually family-members, whoâre not even pedophiles by definition.

When the BBC News refers to a âconvicted pedophileâ (its favourite label for sex-offenders), the chances are that the criminal in question is not a pedophile at all. Heâs a convicted child-rapist. Why not simply report that heâs a convicted child-rapist, then?

In truth, thereâs no such thing as a âconvicted pedophileâ, because one cannot be convicted of being a pedophile. You can only be convicted of a specific offence, not of your sexual inclinations. If a type of sexual attraction was a criminal offence, then it would be a different matter.

Decades ago in Britain, homosexuality was considered a grave sin. Oscar Wilde, one of our best ever writers, was sentenced to several years of hard labour for the crime of buggery. This form of so-called justice ruined Wildeâs health and left him a shadow of his former self. But even during those unenlightened days, homosexuality itself was not a crime. Wilde couldnât have been convicted of having gay daydreams or looking at pictures of naked men. Only Nazi Germany and certain Islamic countries have ever gone that far.

Criminalizing a personâs attractions or inner fantasies would make George Orwellâs notion of thought crimes a deadly reality. In Orwellâs novel 1984, thought crimes were part of the backdrop of an imagined world of perfected totalitarianism. We donât yet live under a despotic rule, but some laws come close to making thought-criminals of us.

A friend of mine used to write stories about sexual relationships between adults and children. These narratives were crafted to be provocative as well as somewhat titillating. Can you imagine how our media would portray her today? By the current standards of our discourse, she would be branded a pedophile and a maker of child pornography who ought to be locked up or shot.

This is a problem because, although my friend has committed no criminal (or indeed ethical) offence, she could be lumped together with various child-rapists and psychopaths in the perception of the nodding multitudes. Has she ever expressed any sexual desire for children? No. Is she a pedophile, therefore? No. Her offence, in the eyes of wannabe book-burners, is to put certain words together and to let others read those words.

A few years back, the author and sexologist Judith Levine published a book called Harmful to Minors. Writing in thoughtful and cautious prose, Levine dares to question whether our obsession with protecting kids from sex, at all costs, is healthy or sane.

In her book she recounts that she had a sexual experience as a child, with an adult. She questions whether such experiences are always harmful, as is widely assumed. After all, her experience seemed fairly positive and non-threatening to her, and she is now a successful/well-balanced woman with no particular issues about it.

Levineâs book was not as polemical as the kind of book I might have chosen to write on the subject, but it ignited a firestorm of controversy and fierce criticism from all sides. The bitterness and hysteria aroused in Levineâs critics was out of all proportion, especially given the considered tone of her writing. She was accused of producing a âchild-rapistâs charterâ and, basically, of being a closet pedophile.

The swivel-eyed detractors had nothing particularly meaningful to say about Levineâs thesis, other thanâ¦ they didnât like it. The opposition was based not on rational debate but on ideology. Shouting âpedophile!â at an opponent is always an effective means of attack wherever reason fails.

The widespread condemnation of Levineâs book was a small victory for fervent irrationality and conservatism, but her arguments remain lucid and sensible. I recommend Harmful to Minors, if you can find a copy that hasnât been burned; youâll be enlightened.

Caution is recommended. A lack of blind panic and rage over this issue can be dangerous for your reputation. You may soon hear the words

You pedophile! You are a pedophile!

That word has a resonance of fear and vicious mob-hatred about it... theyâre coming to get you, whether you did it or not! I wince whenever I hear or read it. But the p-word is so overused, and it is applied to so many different types of behaviour, that it has virtually lost all meaning. It has mutated into a general term of abuse to hurl against anyone who treads on a particular taboo in our culture. And, as taboos go, children and sex come together to create the greatest of them all.

Why is this? Why is sex itself still such a taboo, before children are even mentioned? Even nudity is still a taboo, as youâll soon discover if you strip off and go for a stroll around the suburbs.

We seem to be the only species on earth simultaneously so obsessed with sex and so neurotic about it, and I donât pretend that Iâm less uptight than anyone else. Dolphins and bonobos may have a healthier attitude to life. They might seem to have dodgy family values, but in both cases communities of dolphins or apes get involved in the rearing of the kids. We see something similar in polyamorous set-ups in human society, although people are attacking the growing trend of polyamory in America as either being the same as polygamy (it isnât) or being associated with hippies. As for the majority of humans, the standard way is monogamy and a large dose of sexual inhibition in most situations. Iâm not arguing that this is wrong, only that it is highly unusual. It seems so normal to us because weâve known nothing else since birth. In the context of all other animals on earth, weâre the anomaly. So, how did human society come to be like this?

From the Darwinian viewpoint, monogamy might have become the social norm initially due to it being an effective strategy for propagating DNA and ensuring that each genetic investment was nurtured to become a successful breeding adult. Excess promiscuity could result in more offspring, but perhaps the offspring were less successful than those raised by a monogamous couple. At some point, religion also took up the cause, and monogamy became a kind of dogma that shouldnât be transgressed upon.

Of course, there may be an even better strategy for gene-propagation than strict monogamy, which is to get the best of both worlds â be generally monogamous and raise your kids, but have secret liaisons with others on the side. And this behaviour is precisely what we see in society: monogamy as the norm but with soaring rates of affairs and subsequent divorces. We have over-ridden our genetic directives to propagate DNA by developing contraception, but our underlying instincts seem to be the same.

Inhibitions about sex and nudity are a separate matter from monogamy, and for a change I donât think we can lay all the blame at Abrahamâs door, though his influence hasnât helped. No, the culprit seems to be older than Abraham, and it is probably something pretty innocuous: â¦yes, it may have begun with clothing, of all things.

Itâs probably far more complicated than the following account, but one obvious theory is that, when we began wearing clothes regularly, we also began to develop inhibitions about nudity and sex (and all manner of related issues) simply because these issues were literally covered-up and unseen for so much of the time. Our inhibitions gradually ossified into social customs and taboos. If anyone broke the developing customs, they could be punished with violence. Some social conventions became wrapped-up with religion, but most of these taboos cut across all cultures and societies.

There have always been dissenters. In England we have a few militant nudists whoâll walk round public areas, naked of course, to strike a blow for nudism. Persistent offenders against fashion can be given terms in prison. Naturism isnât my cup of tea, but I find it bewildering to see how offended some people can get at the sight of some naked skin or some genitals. I find it even more bewildering that people could be thrown in jail for stripping off in public.

Anti-nudist zealots claim that children (here we go) might see some genitals or boobs and be offended or scared, or even be scarred for life! By that logic, breastfeeding should be outlawed immediately, and so should infant siblings bathing together. In fact, a boy should be kept permanently clothed to stop him ever catching a glimpse of his own penis. And donât even think of sharing a bath with your child, you repugnant pedophile.

No, the objections are based on something other than sense or reason.

Dissent against anti-nudism is easy. You wonât be hounded and besieged for it, in general. But, as mentioned, there are some brave dissenters to the moral panic surrounding pedophiles, too, whatever people mean by the p-word at any given moment.

Of course, nobody argues that we should defend convicted child-rapists, or any rapists. That dead-end is an attempt to muddy the waters and prevent debate.

But there are those of us who say that law-abiding pedophiles, who are unfortunate enough to be saddled with a forbidden sexual attraction, should be able to live in peace without being rooted out like the witches of the fourteenth century.

Whether we like it or not, law-abiding pedophiles also have the same rights to free speech as you and I do, and we should never deny these rights. Pedophiles can argue for changes in the law, if they want to, as everyone else can. We cannot impose our views by physically bullying lawful people into silence or taking their basic rights away. Not unless we want to wake up in the Fourth Reich or Orwellâs 1984, anyway. And then we might be silenced next.

I feel lucky that my attractions, on the purely physical level anyway, are generally limited to the human, the adult, and the feminine. Itâs possible but unlikely that Iâll fall for a ravishingly gorgeous transsexual, since Iâve never even met any transsexuals at all. Iâd like to, but I donât even get out that much. Being somewhat conventional in terms of sexuality puts me out of the firing line of most phobic bigots. Iâve been abused and bullied before for other reasons, but Iâve never had humiliating homophobic insults during my adult life, for example.

I donât know how pedophiles face the daily grind at all. Imagine knowing that your only sexual attraction is a desire so utterly forbidden in our culture. Any kind of sex-life is impossible, and you spend each day listening to the media telling you that youâre the scum of the earth, deserving death or chemical-castration. You are completely fair-game for anyone who wants to attack you, on TV or on the street. You are the only acceptable scapegoat that society has left, and society will gleefully wallow in sadistic delight at your situation.

Do vitriolic anti-pedophile campaigners realize how theyâll be perceived in a few hundred years time? How do we now perceive the attitudes of Alf Garnet as he rants and spews hatred about the âC00NSâ? And how long ago were such attitudes universally popular in Britain? 50? 60 years ago?

Is it right for an entire society to systematically demonize one tiny minority, even if you do consider their inclinations to be a mental illness? Would it be right for an entire civilization to methodically demonize and abuse people with schizophrenia or Alzheimerâs?

Remember, Iâm talking here about people who have never committed a crime but who are just wired a certain way. How are they to blame for their own internal wiring? Show some empathy and some sympathy, please. What goes around has a nasty habit of coming around.

Next: an uncanny essay about the ingenious Adam Curtis, I think... :)

Iraq: the Future

Tue, 6 Mar 07 15:32:00 UT

In the middle of my last entry I made a rather stupid error that some readers may have noticed. Writing about pre-invasion Iraq, I mentioned that the relative secularism in the country was reflected in the fact that women could vote and wear whatever they liked, in contrast with many predominantly Muslim societies.

Technically, what I wrote was true. Women were indeed able to vote in âelectionsâ in Saddam Husseinâs Iraq. Unfortunately, regardless of whether they voted for Hussein or not, he always managed to get 100 percent of the vote. Iraq was a dictatorship with sham elections.

Iâm willing to admit to rhetorical blunders of this sort, if only to be as un-Blairlike as possible. Imagine a world in which that man showed a grain of humility or contrition. The Prophet Mohammed flying to up heaven on a winged horse is more likely.

What I meant to write, and what I should have written, is that women were able to obtain an education and a career under Saddam Husseinâs rein, as well as choose their style of dress. Such things we take for granted, but much of the Islamic world is characterized by women shuffling around wrapped in black cloth, deprived of education.

Iâve now corrected my error.

I wonât defend the record of a tyrant like Saddam Hussein. He wasnât a nice man. I will say, however, that his rule was nowhere near as insanely violent as what we have put in his place.

Shia death-squads regularly torture and murder members of the Sunni minority they manage to kidnap. The kidnappings and killings occur at a rate that Saddam Hussein wouldâve been jealous of. The Shia militias trying to kill U.S. and British troops are supplied with weapons smuggled across the border from Iran. The Iranians have an interest in furthering the Shia cause and bringing about a Shia theocracy like their own.

On the other side, we have Sunni terrorists letting off numerous car-bombs every day, either in reprisal for the excesses of the Shia death-squads, or because they too are vying for power as they see the spectre of Shia theocracy looming.

Al Qaeda are also active in the country, killing as many U.S. troops as they can, and mostly siding with Sunni terrorists (Al Qaeda is a Sunni group itself).

There are also ex-Baâthists trying to stir things up, though it is unlikely they will ever regain any power in Iraq.

What does the future have in store for Iraq, now that we've unleashed the genie of extreme religious fervour in that troubled country? If the violence can be brought under control, Iraq may end up splitting into two halves, as we have with Ireland. In Ireland we have Protestants in the north and Catholics in the south. In Iraq weâll likely have a Shia theocracy in the east and a Sunni theocracy in the west.

By the way, the only difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims is what each faction believes about the succession of Islamic rule since the death of Mohammed. A trifling matter, you may think, but many people are willing to commit mass-murder due these slight differences in the interpretation of Islam.

As the probability of eventual theocracy looms, the wisest of the educated civilians are trying to flee Iraq, well aware that life under the rule of Islamic clerics is no kind of future, particularly for women and girls. Good luck to them, I say. I donât blame them for wanting out of the situation weâve handed to thousands of sensible and peaceable Iraqis.

Once the clerics have all the power, decadent things like music and dancing are likely to be banned. Perhaps, as in the Iranian model, weâll see religious morality-police (something like modern-day Inquisitors) forcing people to pray at the mosques, carrying out random virginity-tests on unmarried women, putting women to death for adultery, and all the rest. The economy will stagnate, as weâve seen in Iran, but piety will rein supreme. Young men will leave Islamic universities, where theyâll learn about Islam and Mohammed all day, and enter the infidel lands of Europe to spread Godâs revolution.

Perhaps this vision of the future is too pessimistic, and some sanity will remain. I wouldnât be too sure about that, though. Weâre all likely to live with direct and indirect consequences of Bushâs and Blairâs wonderful legacy for decades to come.

Yes, lining the pockets of Western oil-barons does come at a high cost for the rest of humanity.

Conspiracy Theories

Fri, 2 Mar 07 15:11:00 UT

Conspiracy theories are very much in vogue at the moment. Lately, every time I turn on the TV or open a newspaper Iâm greeted with another scary hypothesis concerning a particular disaster or historical event, inevitably involving deep intrigue and malevolent plotting by dark men in the shadows.

Good conspiracy theories, those that are difficult to dismiss with a few words, appeal to the imagination and speak to the paranoid streak in all of us. Many of us suspect that our leaders are constantly lying to us. They probably are.

In Britain the overuse of âspinâ and skilful media-manipulation by politicians has made millions of us distrustful of those who govern us. I remember one cynical and callous attempt at media-management in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 atrocities, when an aide to the British politician Stephen Byers sent an email out to her colleagues, suggesting that the terrorist outrage provided an ideal opportunity to âbury bad newsââ¦ everyone would be too engrossed in the horrific 9/11 story to notice! This âopportunityâ, we can assume, was one of her first thoughts as she watched those planes crashing into the towers. At times we are led to wonder about the kind of people who have authority over us. General distrust of this sort is fertile breeding-ground for conspiracy theories.

The 9/11 attacks are themselves the subject of one of the most controversial conspiracy theories of modern times. The exact accusations vary, but the general idea is that a group of extremist Islamist hijackers could not have executed a plan as audacious and ambitious as what unfolded on that momentous day in September, 2001.

Some theorists claim that the United States government knew in advance about the attacks, but allowed the planes to get through to their targets so that the neo-cons in the Whitehouse would have a pretext for invading oil-rich Muslim lands. Other theorists go even further, claiming that 9/11 was an inside job, orchestrated by an intelligence agency such as the CIA, with the full backing of men like George Bush and Dick Cheney.

A popular 9/11-related video called Loose Change is currently making the rounds on the internet. Though put together by an amateur documentary-maker on a lap-top computer in his bedroom, it has already been watched by millions worldwide.

While work like Loose Change may be meticulously researched by well-meaning individuals, genuinely convinced that men like the neo-cons in the Whitehouse are a bunch of sociopaths, I still find their conclusions unconvincing.

The main premise behind these theories is that a bunch of fanatical Muslims, armed only with knives and plastic box-cutters, could never carry out an attack on the scale of 9/11. But why couldnât they? Do we want to dismiss established features of that awful day because they make us so uncomfortable? After all, itâs more disturbing to think that a handful of unhinged Islamists, armed only with blades and strong faith, could bring such devastation and carnage to the worldâs number 1 superpower. Our minds cry out that there must be more to it. Itâs too terrible to think that we could be so vulnerable to a gang of anonymous religious warriors wandering in from the streets. But it appears that this is exactly what happened.

I agree that many of the neo-cons are callous people indeed. I recall Donald Rumsfeld declaring that the situation in Iraq, during a peak of bloody sectarian chaos unleashed by our invasion, was not as bad as people were saying; after all, he had flown over the country and had seen with his own eyes that some parts of Iraq were not on fire! These are clearly the remarks of a sociopath, indifferent to all human suffering except the suffering of his own ego when asked impertinent questions.

I also concede that 9/11 was used as a pretext to invade a totally unrelated country. George W Bush and his pals saw an opportunity to grab some of Iraqâs black gold, and they took it. For George, there was also the added allure of the prestige he imagined he would get for finishing off what his âdaddyâ couldnât.

While there was a clear rationale for invading Afghanistan as a response to the terrorist attacks (Osama bin Ladenâ¦ Talibanâ¦ Al Qaedaâ¦), there was no valid reason whatsoever for an invasion of Iraq. This was (and is) war for profit.

First we were told that Saddam Hussein had been involved in 9/11 somehow. What? Saddam Hussein was the man Osama bin Laden referred to as an âinfidel dogâ. Iraq, although no lover of America, was perhaps the most secular country in the Middle East. The degree of secularism could be seen by the fact that women could be educated and were able to wear whatever they liked, within reason (this may be soon to change now we have released the Islamist genie in that country). Saddamâs government expended much effort in ruthlessly crushing militant Islamists, particularly Iranian-backed Shia fanatics. Al Qaedaâs members were, until recently, smart enough to stay well away. No, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were anything but collaborators.

When it became obvious that nobody believed Saddam was involved in 9/11, Britain and America concocted a dramatic and scary story about Iraq having âWeapons of Mass Destructionâ that could be deployed against us in 45 minutes. There were no such weapons, of course, and even if there had been, Iraq lacked any long-range missile capability.

Tony Blair and George Bush got the war they wanted, regardless. I agree that their actions show them as men of very low character. In light of Blairâs crimes, I find it amusing to hear him constantly preaching against âanti-social behaviourâ and âhoodiesâ who smash up bus-shelters. You canât get much more anti-social than smashing up an entire country and slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians in the process.

Neither will I defend the neo-cons who have used 9/11 to launch a seemingly open-ended Crusade into Muslim countries.

However, this dishonourable opportunism has all taken place after the event of 9/11. A conspiracy? The idea that the Whitehouse/CIA planned and carried out these attacks, while managing to keep it all quiet afterwards (just think how many people would have been involved!) is too far-fetched to be plausible.

Various Islamist websites have their own popular versions of the 9/11 conspiracy theory, also. They rage in the forums of these websites, and in the imaginations of those who log on seeking scapegoats for the notoriety surrounding 9/11 and militant Islamism. The most widely supported theory is that the attacks were planned and carried out by âthe Jewsâ. What a surprise.

9/11 is just one source for fevered speculation regarding sinister plots, however. There are many other fanciful conspiracy theories thriving around the internet and elsewhere.

Take Princess Dianaâs death, for example. One silly hypothesis is that the Royal Family had Diana murdered because she was making them look so bad in the media on a regular basis. But the Monarchy is a powerless institution, its members there to do and say whatever their government paymasters tell them to. The Queen is a figurehead, a puppet of whatever government happens to be in power at the time. I doubt that the Royals have the power to order assassinations with impunity.

Another recent theory, known mostly to people in Britain, revolves around the deceased weapons inspector David Kelly. An expert on chemical and biological weapons, one of the people trying to ensure Iraq remained WMD-free before our invasion, David Kelly was the man who later told a British journalist that Tony Blairâs government had probably âmade upâ the 45-minute claim regarding Saddamâs fictitious WMDs.

Made into a scapegoat and apparently hounded to the point of suicide, David Kelly was later found dead in the woods with an artery cut in his wrist and with drugs in his system. But some people dismiss the official account that he had taken his own life.

One of the most prominent of the sceptics is the Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker. He has given up his seat on the front bench of Parliament in order to devote his energies to uncovering the âtruthâ about David Kellyâs death. He and other critics point out several holes in the official version.

For example, the method of alleged suicide, the cutting of a particularly unusual artery in his wrist, was so bizarre that only one person in the UK had killed himself in this manner in the year of his death: David Kelly himself.

Two paramedics noticed a distinct lack of blood at the scene of the alleged suicide, fuelling speculation that he may have been killed elsewhere and dumped in the woods afterwards. The paramedics felt so strongly that they held a press-conference to report their worries to the public.

Some experts have claimed that the drugs in David Kellyâs system wouldnât have been anything like a lethal dose. Others have asserted that the type of wound on his wrist would have caused insufficient blood-loss to kill him.

On the day of his demise, mere hours before he died, Kelly apparently sent out emails in which he said he planned to return to Iraq. Hardly, some argue, the behaviour of a man who intended to kill himself.

Norman Baker points out that the official Hutton Inquiry into Kellyâs death did not have any of the powers of a formal inquest. For example, Lord Hutton did not have the power to legally require witnesses to come forward to answer his questions. But a formal inquest was never held.

Furthermore, since beginning his investigation, Baker claims that his mail and emails have been intercepted and tampered with, sometimes crudely. Emails to his collaborators have also allegedly been accessed by mystery hackers.

All of this makes for a compelling conspiracy theory, certainly more difficult to dismiss out of hand than dark mutterings about the CIA and 9/11. Ultimately, though, Norman Baker and his colleagues need to prove their case that David Kellyâs death was a murder rather than suicide.

Whichever way David Kelly died, he was treated disgracefully. This is one more example of Tony Blairâs criminally heartless and egocentric behaviour. He feels threatened and so lashes out, ordering a witch-hunt against a blameless scientist. Even if the scientistâs death was a suicide, Blair has blood on his hands. Our Prime Minister is a morally vacuous excuse for a human being.

The last conspiracy I want to mention concerns religious, rather than political, authority.

As youâve probably guessed, Iâm referring to the controversial theories of the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, made a into popular talking point by the author Dan Brown with his novel, The Da Vinci Code.

The basic hypothesis is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a family with her, a bloodline that may continue to this day. Far from being a marginal character, she was given a position of authority by Jesus and told to carry on as the leader of his religion after he died.

The male-dominated and misogynistic Catholic Church took a dim view of this fact because it implied that women were equal to men and could have an active part in religion. So, at the Council of Nicea, they edited out any of the Gospels in which Mary was a prominent figure, and added a myth that she was a lowly prostitute. Many scrolls were conveniently âlostâ for centuries while the Catholic Church set about subjugating women, justifying their attitude by recourse to the selective theology they had adopted as official doctrine.

The Catholic Church has long distrusted women, as the witch-hunts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries attest. Women have, for centuries, been lumped together with pagans and intellectuals as dangerous and subversive influences to be kept down. The following aside combines all three (femininity, paganism, and intellectualism) in a single incident: Hypatia of Alexandria, the Platonic philosopher, mathematician and astronomer was murdered due to being pagan, too clever by half, and a woman. Her suspected involvement in a dispute between the Church and government was enough for a group of monks to beat her to death, mutilate her body with broken tiles, and burn her.

True, there is scant evidence for Jesus marrying Mary. But it is no more implausible than myths Catholics have readily believed in over the years, such as Jesusâs mother flying off into space instead of dying, or the dogma that un-christened babies who die are doomed to an eternity in Limbo.

If Jesus had been unmarried, it would have been a fairly scandalous state of affairs during the times in which he lived. He lived within a strict and conservative Jewish culture, where adult men were expected to marry... or else. For a charismatic 35 year old celebrity of the time to remain unwed wouldâve been shocking to his peers. Nowhere in the Bible is there any mention of Jesus being single or celibate, which is odd because it would have been more than noteworthy.

Gospels not included in the Bible, such as the Gospel of Philip, contain hints that the âofficialâ Gospels may have been a bit of a whitewash. Here is an interesting passage from Philip:

âAnd the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her on the [scroll damaged and undecipherable]. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, âWhy do you love her more than us?ââ

This is a charming passage. Teasingly, there is a small gap in the scroll, the result of wear and damage over time, and in a vital place. So we have the line âChrist loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her on the [???]â.

For the kiss to make the other disciples jealous, we can guess (among wilder possibilities) that Jesus used to kiss Mary on the mouthâ¦ but weâll never know.

With breathtaking hypocrisy, though, some conventionally religious conservatives say that the story of Jesus marrying Mary is âabsurdâ and there is no evidence to support it. Jesus walking on water or returning from the dead is also highly incredible, and thereâs no evidence for these things either. The only âproofâ for any miracles is scripture itself.

Here, we fall into a trap of circular logic:

-Why do you trust the scriptures?

-Because they are the word of God.

-But how do you know they are the word of God?

-Because the scriptures say so.

Nevertheless, many people believe that scriptural evidence is enough to justify their faith. The only evidence we have for Christâs divinity is scripture, backed up by conjecture. The only evidence we have that Mary was Christâs âmost loved companionâ is also scripture, again backed up by conjecture.

Some of my readers who are Christian may sorely want to believe in the story of Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene. The story humanizes Jesus and it introduces some much-needed sacred-femininity into Christian doctrine. Well, since you have already accepted faith as a valid reason for holding onto amazing beliefs, here is what I suggest you could doâ¦

Adopt the marriage of Jesus and Mary as an article of faith. Commission a new Bible that, for a start, re-includes the Gnostic Gospels. In your new Bible, correct the lines accusing Mary Magdalene of being a prostitute; either omit them or change the word âprostituteâ or âwhoreâ to, simply, âwomanâ. This will be consistent and uncontroversial, since thereâs little doubt that Mary (if she existed) was a woman.

As for references to Jesusâs mother Mary as the âvirginâ, your new Bible could be the first to officially recognize that this was a mistranslation of the Hebrew word meaning âyoung womanâ. The emphasis on âvirginityâ results from the Gospel authors being unable to read Hebrew properly. It is the âyoung womanâ Mary, mother of Jesus â not the virgin-Mary, mother of God.

Found your own break-away Church based upon the new Bible, with your re-introduced aspects of the Sacred Feminine. Sit back and watch as people leave the stale and chauvinistic old Church and flock to join your new and vibrant branch of the religion. And if those infidels attack you, subjugate and kill them (just kidding).

Other Christians may hypocritically accuse you of holding beliefs for which there is absolutely no evidence. You can reply that your only evidence is scriptural, as is theirs. Faith does the rest.

Actually, even though Iâm being light-hearted here, such a progressive schism in the Church might not be a bad thing, at least in the short term. Your new (or, perhaps, ancient and original) formulation of the faith can be no worse than the neurotic and dehumanizing Church doctrines we have currently. If anyone seriously wants to take on this task, I wish you luck.

The inevitable âbutâ: â¦before getting too excited, it may be wiser to remember that thereâs a less dangerous and irrational anomaly than faith â one that is just as compatible with a quest for spiritual experience.

Reason.

Bible Studies and my Spiritual Wish-List

Mon, 26 Feb 07 15:22:00 UT

Iâm an atheist (or possibly a pantheist in the Einsteinian mould), but I dearly wish that more people would read the Bible.

âWhat? Why?â I hear you cry, possibly alarmed and baffled.

The majority of humans on this planet claim to be theists. Of all the theists, those who self-identify as Christians make up the largest group. Christians, you may realize, are supposed to look to the Bible as the inspired word of God.

Bizarrely, though, it appears that most of the people who claim the Bible to be the word of Godâ¦ have never actually read it! This, I suspect, has a lot to do with their opinion on the matter, because the Bible may be the strangest collection of sickeningly barbaric drivel and psychotic nonsense in the history of fiction.

Study of the Bible reveals that Abraham, the ultimate founder of all three âgreatâ monotheistic religions, was a volatile lunatic, willing to slaughter his own son on the say-so of strange dreams and voices in his head. Anyone behaving like Abraham today would be confined to a padded cell for his own safety and for the safety of others.

Abrahamâs ideas were not even original. Strict monotheism, notions of absolute good/evil, and ideas about free-will already existed in Zoroastrianism, an older religion that was clearly borrowed from by later prophets.

Although followers of Judaism do not generally proselytize, followers of its off-shoots, Christianity and Islam, certainly do â sometimes using ultra-violence and mass-murder to this end. Where Abrahamic religion really excelled, then, was in evangelical proselytizing. Abrahamic faith thus came to dominate much of the world, a position that it still enjoys to this day. This is why, even in an age of supposed rationality and reason, books like the Bible are held to be of singular importance, divinely inspired, containing the Word of God himself.

Some people even claim to derive their morality from the Bible. They cite examples such as the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from a mountain, to show that the Bible instils ethics and moral values.

Moses, with his tablet of stone, is a particularly terrible example for anyone to mention, regarding morality. Those who cite Moses as a potential role-model have obviously never read about him or about the kind of man he was.

Here is one telling example, straight from the Bible. The book of Numbers details how Moses and his tribe conquered the unfortunate Midianite people who had dared get in their wayâ¦

âAnd they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.â (Numbers 31:7) âAnd the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.â (Numbers 31:9)

You might find that savage enough, but Moses soon discovered that his men had been unduly merciful during the massacre of the poor Midianites. That is, the behaviour of Mosesâs men had not been barbaric enough for his liking.

So this is what Godâs favourite prophet ordered his men to do:

âNow therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.â (Numbers 31:17-19)

In the view of Moses (and, presumably, his Lord too), it is perfectly acceptable to kill male children and rape female children, at least in the aftermath of a war. Myra Hindley, Ian Brady, and Adolf Hitler would all be equally fine role-models.

Jews and Christians may argue that, even if Moses appears to be a blood-soaked psychopath in the above passage and elsewhere (do the research yourself, by all means), the actual commandments of the Bible still make for a good moral guide, and they are a foundation of the law itself.

Really?

Imagine for a moment that your young son or daughter returns home from school one day, saying: âMummy! Daddy! We learned about Hinduism in Religious Studies today - it was fun! I love Hinduism. We should become Hindus and worship Shiva and Vishnu. Can we?â

According to the book of Deuteronomy in the Bible, God has something very specific in mind for such occasions.

âIf your brother, the son of your father or of your mother, or your son or daughter, or the spouse whom you embrace, or your most intimate friend, tries to seduce you, saying, âLet us go and serve other gods,â unknown to you or your ancestors before you, gods of the peoples surrounding you, whether near you or far away, anywhere in the world, you must not consent, you must not listen to him; you must show him no pity, you must not spare him or conceal his guilt. No, you must kill him. Your hand must strike the first blow in putting him to death, and the hands of the rest of the people following. You must stone him to death, since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God.â (Deuteronomy 13:7-11)

You wonât hear many Jewish or Christian moderates arguing for a symbolic reading of this sort of passage. Anyway, in this case such contortions are explicitly forbidden by God himself in Deuteronomy 13:1 âWhatever I am now commanding you, you must keep and observe, adding nothing to it, taking nothing away.â

There seems no escape. If your friend or family member tries to âseduce youâ into following a different god, you must savagely stone him or her to death, even if the poor victim is your own child. If, that is, you still honestly believe the Bible to be the word of God.

If such behaviour conjures up images of the Taliban butchering women in the dirt for crimes such as âblasphemyâ, perhaps you should bear in mind that most of the Bible was composed by similar swivel-eyed peasants whose daily lives were ruled by insane superstition, and little besides.

Youâll probably want to argue that nobody stones children to death for heresy nowadays. Not even Bible-waving fundamentalists go that far. Theyâd go to jail if they tried.

But isnât that the whole point? It is only by ignoring reams and reams of life-destroying gibberish in the Bible that any of us can live sanely in the modern world. The Bible is supposed to be the Divine word of God, but only by ignoring most of it can we live truly ethical lives.

Stoning kids to death for heresy may seem harsh, but the above quote from Deuteronomy is not an isolated example. Death is a standard Biblical punishment for many crimes and minor misdemeanours.

Any idea what the Biblical punishment is for taking the Lordâs name in vain? No? It is death (Leviticus 24:16). What is the punishment for working on the Sabbath? It is also death (Exodus 31:15). What is the punishment for cheeking your parents? Death again (Exodus 21:17). What is the punishment for adultery? Take a wild guess (Leviticus 20:10).

No civilized society would base its laws on the Bible. Any country that attempted to do so would soon find itself condemned by the UN and the international community.

What about theology, then? What does the Bible ârevealâ about the God of Abraham and Moses? What is God like? Unfortunately, as it turns out, God isnât very nice. Heâs often rather creepy, in fact. And for plain horrible weirdness, little can beat the Bible.

The book of Numbers contains a bizarre little yarn about discontentment in the camp of Moses. Numbers, Chapter 11, tells how these people were weary and hungry, and not too sure why they had left Egypt. In the midst of their unhappiness they unwisely decided to complainâ¦ to Moses or to God, or both.

Godâs initial response to this complaining was to burn some of the people alive.

âAnd when the people complained, it displeased the LORD: and the LORD heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the LORD burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp.â (Numbers 11:1)

However, the people were evidently still hungry and still somewhat peeved, so they kept on moaning, saying âWho shall give us flesh to eat?â If they were starving, as the text seems to imply, you can hardly blame them.

Moses, unsure how to handle the situation, decided to put in a request with his God for some âfleshâ to feed all the hungry mouths â some six hundred thousand of them, according to the story.

God was not exactly sympathetic to the plight of all these people. This is what he told Moses:

âYe shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days; But even a whole month, until it come out of your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you: because that ye have despised the LORD which is among you, and have wept before him, saying, Why came we forth out of Egypt?â (Numbers 11:19-21)

Why indeed. If this is how God treats his followers, why would anyone be mad enough to follow him? Force-feeding his own chosen people with âfleshâ until it comes out of their nostrils is very strange behaviour for a deity.

As it transpires, though, even this mad punishment was not harsh enough for God. Numbers 11:33 further tells us that âwhile the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague.â

Does God seem a bitâ¦ unhinged? This is nothing. God has much sicker ideas than this to fall back on.

Leviticus 26:16-45 is a tediously long and rambling list of what God will do to all those who wonât obey him, wonât listen to him, and who wonât repent for the crime of disobeying him.

To summarize with a few examplesâ¦ God will curse you with terror and a âburning agueâ that will eat your eyeballs. He will send wild beasts to eat you and your children. He will allow rival armies to come and massacre your people. He will attack you with pestilence and ruin the land so that you starve to deathâ¦ On and on it goes, page after page, each punishment more deranged and brutal than the last.

Suddenly, in the middle of this list of insanity, you notice a punishment that is sick and revolting even by the standards of God and his Bible:

âAnd ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.â (Leviticus 26:29)

So. If you dare to cross God, if you donât repent quickly enough, there will come a point where he forces you to cannibalize your own children.

Whoever wrote âGod is goodâ had a strange conception of omni-benevolence. Benevolent? The God of Abraham acts like an out-of-control delinquent, abusing every power that he has available to him. Heâs like one of those young sociopaths you read about who spend all their time in the backyard, torturing insects and small animals. He has power over them, so he will indulge every sadistic whim. Richard Dawkins has accurately referred to this fictional monster as a âmisogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bullyâ; any reasonable person reading the Old Testament would be inclined to agree with him.

Some Christians, well aware of just how barbarous and weird the Old Testament is, attempt to distance themselves from it. Their attitude is that, however incoherent and sinister the first half of the Bible, Jesus comes along in the New Testament and undoes all the damage.

However, while Jesus puts a far greater emphasis on turning the other cheek (heâs nothing like the slavering butcher, Moses, for instance), he doesnât âundoâ anything in the Old Testament. He often refers back to the OT, and in every case he indicates that he believed it to be the historically-accurate word of God.

See Matthew 5:17-19, Luke 24:27, and John 5:39 among many examples of Jesus defending the Old Testament. Christians who try to distance themselves from taking the Old Testament seriously seem to be going against the unequivocal words of Jesus himself.

Jesus, though, is certainly the best source for morality within the Bible. Many atheists will acknowledge this fact. There is even an organization called Atheists for Jesus, proving that you donât need to be superstitious to admire the man depicted in the Gospels. He is such an improvement upon monsters like Moses and Abraham because he broke with tradition and preached the Golden Rule, a tenet that can be found in many religions, and even pre-Christian pagan religions. The Golden Rule can be summed up as: âTreat others as you would like to be treated.â

By sanctioning the Old Testament, however, Jesus condemns those who believe in his divinity to also look up to the holy thug who stalks the pages of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and all the rest. Or the cosmic halfwit of Genesis who canât go from chapter 1 to chapter 3 without contradicting himself several times. Even for people who think faith is a valid reason for holding onto strange beliefs about the nature of the universe this must be intellectually and morally corrosive.

As for New Testament theology, we have Saint Paulâs creepy little theory of atonement for Original Sin, whereby God had himself incarnated as a man (Jesus) so that he could be tortured and murdered to rid the world of the Original Sin of Adam and Eve.

Sophisticated/moderate Christians no longer believe in the literal story of Genesis with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, of course. The Original Sin can be taken as an allegorical story. There was no Adam. The story was only ever meant to be symbolic.

As Richard Dawkins mused in his TV documentary on religion: "Symbolic? So Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a nonexistent individual? Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any verdict other than barking mad."

Even if you did believe in Abrahamâs God and Adam and the Original Sin (fundamentalists take note), the theory would still be barking mad. If God wanted to wipe away all of our sins, why not just wipe them away with a flick of the old magic wand? Heâs meant to be omnipotent, after all. Why does he need to get himself hideously tortured and killed by some Romans centurions in order to do it? Does this strike you as the kind of stunt the God of Leviticus or Numbers would pull? The same God who will melt your eyeballs and force you to eat your own offspring if you donât act like a sycophant around him? Where did the sudden personality bypass come in?

Yes, Saint Paulâs theory is utterly nonsensical and absurd, and yet widely accepted without question or criticism. Like the most of the Bible, then.

Here, to round this blog entry off, are a few of the things on my religious wish-list:

1. I wish that âChristiansâ whoâve never read the Bible would read itâ¦ no, study it, with a critical eye. How can you be indifferent to the book if you think the creator of the universe wrote it? Many such Christians, already on their way to atheism due to rejecting 99.9% of the gods that people have ever believed in, will probably end up ditching one further god and becoming atheists and agnostics themselves. You wonât know how confused and self-contradictory the Bible is until youâve read it!

2. I wish that more atheists, particularly in America, would come out of the closet. American atheists are browbeaten into thinking they are a tiny minority, liable to be rounded up if the Christian majority ever sniff them out. However, it is estimated that there must be as many as 30 million atheists in America. Thatâs more than all the Jews worldwide, and yet the Jewish lobby is the more notoriously effective political force in America. If secular rationalists could assemble themselves into an equivalent lobby-group in America, the possibilities would be endless. Thereâs no strength in silence. Seek out like-minded people, form freethinking communities, and take America back to the secular values of the Founding Fathers. 30 million people make an extremely significant minority. The more people of reason that come out of the closet, the easier it will be for others to follow. You may even become the majority some day. Please.

3. I wish that some militant atheists would stop arguing that we censor the Bible or get rid of it. The Bible is one of the best pieces of literature we have for combating faith-based religion. It is so absurd and so barbarous that it is one of the best tools available to any rationalist trying to argue about the dangers of unquestioning faith.

4. I wish that we could hasten the death of the Abrahamic religions. It is a sad and perverse fact that the religions to have the worst impact upon societies are the most popular religions. Christianity and Islam are responsible for centuries of bloodshed, war and persecution. Christianity is the reason Galileo was locked away for the crime of revolutionizing our view of cosmology, and yet Catholic Adolf Hitler was never even excommunicated. Islam is the reason women can be hung from cranes in modern-day Iran for the crime of being raped. Socially, these religions continue to breed ignorance, backwardness, sexual repression, sexual neurosis, misogyny, fear, homophobia, the love of illiberalism, and suspicion towards any/all progressive thought. What are the main barriers that prevent us from progressing as a species? What eats our time and resources, what causes us to expend so much effort on trying to bring about ancient prophecies while waging wars upon private sin? Christianity and Islam.

5. I hope we can discover a new spiritual tradition to replace Christianity and Islam. When comparing these faiths to philosophies like Buddhism, we find that members of the Abrahamic religions are spiritual pygmies. This I put down to the emphasis in Abrahamic religion upon incurious faith itself. Buddhism is philosophical and, to a degree, investigative. Practitioners use tried and tested methods in their quest for enlightenment, seeking to vanquish the ego and recognize the illusory nature of the self, for instance. Buddhism promotes a worldview based upon empathy rather than condemnation. Jainism is another religion promoting love and peace rather than the subjugation of infidels. Compared to Christianity and Islam, it is a beautiful and non-violent religion. However, even Buddhism and Jainism are saddled with areas of pseudo-science, requiring some credulity, which may get in the way and discourage people of reason. Iâm currently involved in a project trying to develop a spiritual tradition that we can use to fill the space left by the dying Abrahamic religions. This will take a long time, but stay tuned.

6. Lastly, I wish all of you health and happiness. If you value reason and science, go forth and multiply. You have a moral duty to lift your fellow man out of the abyss of ignorance. If youâre trapped in a belief-system containing spiralling mazes of circular logic, you owe it to yourself to step outside and taste a fine breath of fresh air. Peace and good fortune to you all.

A quick note: interested parties should check out the Skeptic's Annotated Bible. This is a useful (and sometimes very funny) resource that could save you a near lifetime of wasted time and misery in venerating such a silly text. While it misses one or two glaring contradictions (they come thick and fast in Genesis, for example) it picks up on enough silliness to establish the point it is trying to make. You can also find the Skeptic's Annotated Qur'an and the Skeptic's Annotated Book of Mormon on the same website.

Have fun!

Anti-Religion Polemics

Fri, 16 Feb 07 12:30:00 UT

There seems to have been a recent surge in polemical attacks on religion by various influential commentators and authors. I mentioned quite a while ago that the author Sam Harris had penned a fierce attack on faith-based religion in The End of Faith. A while later he released another slim volume entitled Letter to a Christian Nation, in which he deals with criticisms raised by many of his countrymen about his first book. He also goes on to point out some fairly amazing and disturbing facts and figures about belief in America. For instance, nearly half the population of the U.S. apparently think that the universe began less than 10,000 years ago, some time after the domestication of the dog, a while after the ancient Babylonians learned to brew beer.

The religiosity and willful ignorance of 135 million Americans (some 45% of the population) shocks many people in Western Europe, and many more are just oblivious to what a hotbed of Bible-waving fundamentalism parts of the country are.

The well-known biologist Richard Dawkins recently released his own attack on organized superstition in his book The God Delusion. Like Harris, he has an excellent writing style that is as lucid and penetrating as his intellect. In The God Delusion he systematically dismantles all the major philosophical arguments in favour of belief in a deity (argument from First Cause, argument from Design, etc...) before bringing to bear an argument of his own that demonstrates why "God almost certainly does not exist".

In Dawkins's view, impartial agnosticism implies that we can say almost nothing about the likelihood of gods existing. However, as Bertrand Russell showed decades ago, we cannot actually disprove the existence of celestial teapots and other strange fancies like hobgoblins, but that does not mean we have to take seriously the likelihood of hobgoblins and flying teapots. Yet, even to this day, there are people who find the mere inability to disprove God's existence to be a convincing argument that he must exist.

The God Delusion draws somewhat on a two-part television documentary by Dawkins called The Root of all Evil? If you have a broadband connection, you can watch the documentary for free at the following website:

The Root of all Evil?

It is streaming video, so if you are relying on a dial-up connection to the internet, forget about it - you'd end up tearing your hair out as it stops and starts and sputters.

If you prefer, you could download the video at the following location instead:

Part 1 ... Part 2

Again, with dial-up, it will probably take about a week to download, so begin at your peril...

Both Harris and Dawkins stress that it is impossible to understand the actions of people like the 9/11 hijackers or the 7/7 London bombers without understanding what they specifically believe about the universe and their place in it. Religion is the elephant in the room that nobody ever mentions, due to the taboo of criticizing what people hold as their highest ideals (one of which is martyrdom for heavenly rewards, in this case).

Another recent book on the theme, although less strident in tone than Dawkins's book, this time by the philosopher Daniel Dennett, is Breaking the Spell. Dennett is another author with a meticulous and lucid style of writing, although, on balance, I prefer the rapier wit of Professor Dawkins.

And, finally, I see that veteran author and journalist Christopher Hitchens has a book in the pipeline with the intentionally controversial title God is not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything.

Christopher Hitchens is responsible for one of my favourite quotes, one that neatly sums up what many people are unable or unwilling to grasp in our discourse about religion:

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

In other words, if you assert that Poseidon exists, you cannot expect to be taken seriously unless you have compelling evidence. And if you don't have any evidence, remember that it is not the job of the infidel/nonbeliever to somehow disprove Poseidon's reality and divinity. It is impossible to absolutely disprove anything that can be asserted. This doesn't mean that every assertion is true.

The above applies as much to Poseidon as it does to Allah or the mysterious 1-in-3/3-in-1, or Jehovah or Yahweh.

As Sam Harris points out, one of the biggest problems facing our world is that the majority of human beings on this planet think that the creator of the universe wrote a book. And unfortunately, each major faith has a different book and a tenet that all other faiths are, at best, misguided; at worst, heretical enough to justify holy violence.

Of course, this means I am arrogantly suggesting that billions of my fellow human beings are deluding themselves and keeping our species in a state of backwardness that nourishes intolerance.

Well, yes. 100% of humans once firmly believed the world to be flat. They were deluded and backward without realizing it. Everyone once believed in witches, and burned a good many of them in accordance with this belief. What makes anyone think that the popularity of a belief makes it any more likely to be true?

More and more notable commentators seem to be coming to the conclusion that the worlds of reason and faith are at war, and that reason must win this war for humanity to have much of a future.

Time will tell which side will win the war of words.

PS,

Hello to everyone I haven't contacted for a long time.

Be peaceful and happy.

Oh why, ye gods?

Thu, 31 Aug 06 13:04:00 UT

Iâve finally seen the trailer for the American re-make of one of my favourite films, The Wicker Man.

I posted a review of the original 1973 version here, and I described many of the things I love about the movie.

The new version of The Wicker Man is apparently set in an American neo-pagan community (located in Maine, I think) and stars Nicholas Cage in the Edward Woodward/Sgt. Howie role.

My hopes for this re-make have been low ever since I heard sketchy rumours about the project years ago. The trailers Iâve now seen appear to confirm a few of my specific expectations.

Hollywood, for all its obvious strengths, is not exactly renowned for making subtle and intelligent thrillers like Anthony Shafferâs original cult classic. Instead, what Hollywood IS known for is making a fair number of good-versus-evil clichÃ©-fests that appeal to a large demographic and have plenty of special-effects wizardry to pad them out.

For startersâ¦: I fear that this remake of a much-loved film is going to be an exercise in Christian propaganda (the demonizing of a rival religion) dressed up as film entertainment. A crude and simplistic approach to horror films where Christian âgood-guysâ face off against witches/vampires/Satanists/warped-scientists, typified by a great many British Hammer Horror films of the 1960s, is the very thing the first Wicker Man film was trying to get away from. Despite the famous ending, this film never portrayed any symbolic struggle between âforces of good and evilâ.

The tensions in the original film relate to a fundamental clash of cultures; a collision of diametrically-opposing beliefs. The film passes judgement on neither side and treats all in an even-handed manner.

The puritanical Sgt Howie is likable and compassionate, but he certainly has his faults â chiefly his hypocritical dismissal of a religion that is far older and no less rational than his own Christianity.

Similarly, the islanders are also likeable but flawed characters. Their culture is shown in a positive light, I think (it almost makes me want to become a pagan â they certainly have more fun than their Christian neighbours), but still their implacable faith leads to something quite awesome and terrible in this instance. In other words, strong faith surely has its benefits for the devout believer â but sometimes these benefits come at a hefty cost.

Can we expect a similar balanced treatment of Nicholas Cageâs character and his neo-pagan friends in this new film?

NC often plays quintessential âgood guyâ characters. He has one of those faces, I suppose, and a kind of Jimmy Stewart way about him. After seeing the trailer for the new WM film, Iâd like to bet heâs going to come across as a typical saintly figure in this role, strong and virtuous in the beginning, then all teary-eyed and hopeless in the face of injustice.

In stark contrast, it appears that the neo-pagan community will be portrayed as sadistic fiends, relishing every torment NC goes through, delighting in his agony for its own sake.

There is a bizarre scene in the theatrical trailer where NC is wearing a mask filled with bees, screaming as they all sting his face. Why are the islanders torturing him like this? What does this strange act have to do with any pagan beliefs?

In the original movie, the only motive behind the fate set up for Howie is that the crops are failing on the island. The merry dance the islanders lead him on throughout the film is playful and darkly comic, but hardly sadistic. Once they confront him with his fate, they treat him with the kind of reverence reserved for a Christian martyr. They anoint him. Lord Summerisle even attempts to soothe Howie by describing a wonderful afterlife where Howie will sit with the saints in heaven. The motivation of the islanders has nothing to do with sadism at all â they just want a better harvest of apples in the coming year.

But then here comes Hollywood with its interpretation. A black & white patchwork of clichÃ©s about good and evil is as much as they think their target audience could appreciate or understand. So they turn a cult-classic film into a tacky B-movie with none of the subtlety of its inspiration.

Christianity: good. Neo-paganism: evil. Anyone with a decent grasp of history can see that Christianity is the more blood-soaked religion of the two, but youâre supposed to forget all that because neo-paganism is all âspookyâ.

I wonder what real neo-pagans in America and Britain will make of this film. Can you imagine if somebody made a horror film demonizing Jews or Hindus as evil sadists? The original Wicker Man related to an obscure pantheon of gods and goddesses no longer widely worshipped (if at all) and the film did not portray anyone as âevilâ. But neo-paganism is an active religion (or a category of religions) followed by many people alive today. Depicting these people as sadistic fiends is surely questionable, to say the least, from a moral standpoint.

There are other strange anomalies I noticed in the trailers. Are the islanders in this new film all dressed in frumpy, old-fashioned clothing harking back to the days of the pioneers? If soâ¦ why? These are supposed to be neo-pagans, not Christian puritans.

A fun thing about the original (and something that also rang true) was that the pagans were more like hippies with a free-love ethic, contrasting with Howieâs uptight personality and appearance. Their colourful religion involved phallic symbols, fertility rites, jumping naked over bonfires â their liberal attitude towards nudity and sexuality is one of the very things that enrages Howieâs strict Christian take on morality.

But nobody at all was walking around in a buttoned-up pioneer outfit in the 1973 film. What were the makers of this new Wicker Man thinking of?

I wonder if the new version will have the same kind of atmospheric soundtrack or any of the songs from the original. Iâm sceptical. The makers probably opted for some dark mood-music that explicitly tells us âthis is a scary bit of the film â now here comes another scary bit of the film.â And this sums up my pessimism about the whole venture â this is likely to be a dreary and overtly dark/gory 2D cartoon (possibly a tacky propaganda piece) with none of the fun or creativity of the old version. Weâll see.

After seeing a few clips, accompanied by a gravely voice warning me of the evils of neo-paganism, my expectations for this project are now just about nil. Iâm sure it will appeal to Pastor Ted Haggard and his congregation, but for everyone else it will be so-so â a bog-standard horror flick.

If anything good can come out of it, maybe itâll inspire a few people who havenât seen the 1973 film to check out the restored 99 min version on DVD - with all its magical spirit still intact.

---

Btw, I owe a few of you emails and things. Lisa, Lo, everyone else I owe - I'll email you all next time I'm on.

Peace and love and all that good stuff,

Matt