Rick Perry

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” – Matthew 7:12

“And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” – Luke 6:31

“Don’t be a cunt.” - Me

Rick Perry’s latest campaign advert, “Strong”, has gathered some rather negative criticism since being posted to Youtube yesterday. It is easy to see why:

Why should it matter what the sexuality of someone is? Doesn’t the Republican party want people to just get on with their lives with less government intervention?

It is appalling that Perry can think he can run for “pressedent” based on such mindless homophobia. But he goes on – not only are teh gayz ruining the country, but those godless liberals are too. And who else is behind it other than the biggest Muslim, Non-American, Godless, <insert populist bogeyman adjective here> of them all, Barack Hussein Obama. That’s right, the openly-Christian incumbent President is waging a war on religion.

These words sound to me like the last desperate cries of a man whose campaign is about to go up in smoke. How Rick Perry can still advertise himself as a “man of faith” on the same video, whilst promoting homophobia and xenophobia all through a soft-focused lens and reconcile all this in his head as a Good Thing ^TM is beyond my comprehension.

The Republican Party needs to ditch this bunch of losers who have somehow made it to the big time fast – and America can demonstrate this by not voting Republican, by throwing them out of every singly office they still somehow cling hold of.

It’s Political Correctness Gone Sensible!

The Daily Mail likes to target the BBC. They are too left-wing, they waste taxpayer’s money. Now I believe the BBC do try to be more inclusive and remain balanced. I accept they do get this wrong from time to time – and sometimes very wrong. Mistakes are made. Live TV, editorial pressures and personal prejudice affect the ability to remain balanced; but they try. It is much easier to maintain an ideological position and, in the words of Richard Littlejohn, “throw bottles”. This is what the Daily Mail does.

Sometimes, the target is because of a perceived editorial stance, or some decision (such as cancelling Last of the Summer Wine). Other times, they simple make stuff up.

Yesterday, the Daily Mail ran with the following front page (cached online version here):

A follow-up to the original article (cached again here) bleated:

“Andrew Marr says he will ignore BBC diktat to stop use of BC and AD.”

Take note of the language. The BBC has apparently forced its staff to stop using the AD/BC date format in favour of the secular terms CE/BCE – “to avoid offending non-Christians”. The articles contain some quotes from religious figures (the Christians say they are offended at the removal, the others say they aren’t offended by AD/BC) as well as the typical Tory rent-a-gobshites. Given that the Daily Mail is a horrendously Islamophobic newspaper – by non-Christians, they mean Muslims. They are again using the ‘them and us’ rhetoric, that implicitly racist position that other religions are coming here and imposing their values on us, to stir up a shitstorm.

For those not familiar with the way the Daily Mail writes articles, allow me to give you a tip. Don’t read the headline; just read the last paragraph. Let’s do that now, as it contains a quote from the BBC on the matter:

“Both AD and BC, and CE and BCE are widely accepted date systems and the decision on which term to use lies with individual production and editorial teams.”

Oh. That matches the headline, doesn’t it?! There is a whole can of worms relating to this writing technique, and how the PCC refuses to regulate this kind of article, where the headline is deliberately contradictory and incorrect. It is a disgrace to journalism and insulting to the readers. To me, it is like saying ‘we are going to lie through our teeth whilst obfuscating the truth to scrape through the regulatory procedure.’

Does the BBC quote say they have ‘turned their backs’? No. Did they issue a “diktat”? No. This is simply made up drivel.

The regular munch bunch of Peter Hitchens, Melanie Phillips and James Delingpole are quick to point out the liberal elite Marxist conspiracy at work here, eroding the rights of the Christians. Get real. If there really is a liberal elite ruling us (not in the economic sense, obviously) – then I suggest they should go and do some investigative journalism and find some stuff out, rather relying on made up shit to justify their incoherent, albeit well-remunerated rants.

This ‘attack on Christianity’ leads me right into another narrative. Political correctness gone mad! The use of politically-correct language, very often meaning secular language, is used as to not cause offense. We don’t say ‘nigger’, ‘paki’, ‘faggot’, ‘pikey’ or ‘spasticated’ – they are deeply offensive terms. Privilege is a bad thing – especially when based on illogical and ideological grounds. Whites, men, heterosexuals and abled people are still more privileged than their counterparts. Why is this the case? Why should any group feel a sense of entitlement, and have it reinforced through dogma, bigotry and stereotypes? Politically-correct language is aimed at a common, neutral ground. It is an attempt at showing an understanding of our differences. Secularism is about ensuring no religion has any privilege over any other religion, or over no religion at all.

In America (a country built upon wave-upon-wave of immigration) it is customary to say ‘Happy Holidays’ rather than ‘Merry Christmas’. Dates too, have cultural significance. We all know of 9/11, but that’s not how a British person would format that date. There are loads of well-documented cultural differences regarding the passage of time. Why should we continue to use a religious convention, when we have a perfectly good secular system? We don’t even know if Christ was born in the year the AD/BC system implies!*

if you believe, truly believe, that your privileges should be reinforced in our culture in favour of others, please leave a comment and say why. I genuinely want to know.

* For more fun on the year 0 and its implications – see Wikipedia.

Rapture

Ooh, look, another guy screaming “the end of the world is nigh!” and gaining worldwide media attention. Well, as I write this it is currently half-ten in the pm in the UK. So that means Australia and Japan are already well into May 22nd and guess what? No Rapture.

I personally think the concept of The Rapture is entirely disgusting and in fact unchristian. How can floating into the sky and watching everyone who doesn’t follow the same religion burn fit with love thy neighbour? It demonstrates how some are compelled to think terrible things about others; just because of what they believe in.

This end of the world stunt will be laughed off in the media for the next few days. It’s already started:

Doomsday-declarers will simply move on to the next prophesised judgement day, and never speak of this again. But if we look beyond the surface of this stunt, it gets truly depressing. Like always, these come with a human cost.

I don’t blame people for believing this stuff. That’s what faith is about, isn’t it? Why not be on winning side of Pascal’s Wager, just in case? It doesn’t make any sense, but we have stupid monkey brains whose prime instinct is for survival. People who believe this aren’t dumb – they’re misled.

Religion means something very personal to people, for whatever reason that may be. This belief is used and abused by people around the world to push their own self-interests into the public eye. The true meaning of what a religion stands for is distorted beyond belief, even so that it is contradictory to the fundamental pillars of that religion. But at what cost? There’s always a human cost. People go broke, people get ill, family connections are shattered beyond repair. People die. We’ll do good to remember that.

Religion

As it’s the time of a large number of festivals (but don’t say Winterval!), people have been talking about the whole religion business, so let's get it out of the way.

I have a problem with religion:

1. There is no evidence to support their beliefs; so why should I believe?
   
2. A religion builds itself on claims of moral authority, and with promise of enlightenment imposes it on others in society. (*)

You cannot ignore everything that is done under the name of a particular religion, or assume that removing religion would solve all of the world’s problems. We’re much more grown up than that. What I am saying is that I am not prepared to suspend rational thought without good reason. Unsubstantiated claims of enlightenment aren’t good enough. If I suspend rational thought, that is a vulnerability that can be exploited. Hitchens says that religion makes good people do bad things, pointing to (somewhat humorously) genital mutilation - maybe that's the exploitation of the vulnerability in practise?

I will always use Occam’s Razor. The simplest claim that is reinforced by evidence is probably right. Notice the word probably. I use this when I say that there is probably no God. I can never prove otherwise (and it is a religion’s responsibility to back up their claims!). However, we have a whole load of evidence (~) to show we arose not out of Creationism, but as a process of evolution via natural selection. Until the Heabenly Jebus comes down from his Sky Palace with a portable laboratory and conclusively proves that a god exists, then I’m gonna go with what evidence we have.

Pascal’s Wager (that you should believe on the off chance god exists, then if the god doesn’t, you’ve lost nothing) is not a criticism of this stance, as it implies the suspension of rational thought. It’s also a fairly biased wager. I prefer the following:

There is probably no God.

• If I die and there isn’t – I’ve lost nothing, and also wasted nothing!
  
• If I die and there is – then I will simply say “sorry, you didn’t give me enough evidence to believe in you”. If I’m eternally damned from this stance, then this god is a right self-centred bastard and I would have been disgusted in my belief in that deity.

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Footnotes

* Interestingly, these claims have no evidence, relating back to point one.

~ I don't normally take evidence from Wikipedia - but the article is very good, and most likely because it's heavily moderated by a very highly regarded set of professionals and Wikipedians alike. Read this for a more detailed look.