The Freethinker tells us of “thousands of Irish Catholic eedjits [who] have flocked to a County Limerick church to pray at the stump of a recently cut willow tree”.
And why? Well, it “allegedly bears a resemblance to She Who Was Once Knocked Up by the Almighty”, that’s why.
So it’s a case of here we go again. Ever looked at a cloud and seen a shape you recognise, perhaps the face of someone you know? Chances are that, if you asked the person next to you what she saw in the same cloud, she’d say something totally different.
The brain wants to make sense of random swirls. Psychologists use an ink-blot test to see what the subject’s brain comes up with. We recently had Jesus’s face in the lid of a Marmite jar.
And the so-called Virgin Mary was seen in a griddle.
Now here’s a nice little video for you. I was waiting for an opportunity to use it. It’s worth a look – and a laugh.
Monday, 13 July 2009
Sunday, 12 July 2009
How well do you know your Bible?
Bible knowledge is on the decline in Britain. Fewer than one in twenty are able to name all of the Ten Commandments, and a number of youngsters thought the Bible “old-fashioned”.
Well, it is, I suppose. It’s been around for quite a while now.
A survey, according to the Reuters story linked to above, says that 40 per cent “did not know that the tradition of exchanging Christmas presents originated from the story of the Wise Men bringing gifts for the infant Jesus, while 60 per cent could not name anything about the Good Samaritan, the Durham University study found”.
Not sure about that: gift giving on special occasions is as old as the hills, but let’s let it go. It could be right.
The story continues:
I’m only half celebrating here. Although I’m a nontheist, I find that so many phrases, aphorisms, adages, maxims and mottos crop up in other literature, including Shakespeare, that a knowledge of where they came from adds to the enjoyment of the place we’re now finding them.
Rational-minded people tend to eschew the Bible as a source of useful fact, yes, but it’s nonetheless a collection of writings that make interesting reading, just as those from any religious tradition might make interesting reading to those who care to study them – theists or not.
The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, likewise, make interesting reading and often have morals embedded, but no one is going to pretend that Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White, the Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel or the Frog Prince existed in real life.
It’s a pity that it can’t be taught as part of literature lessons, without all the need to believe in the God stuff. As it is, it’s pushed down kids’ throats as part of boring old RE, which many older pupils opt for because it’s an easier ride than, say, Eng. lit. or physics, and younger ones have no choice in the matter, anyway.
If it were taught in a way that makes it interesting, makes the words enjoyable in themselves, perhaps more people would have a reasonable knowledge of it.
It’s hard to believe, too, that there are people walking about probably aware, vaguely, of the phrases “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal”, without knowing they’re two of the Ten Commandments (the shortest two, as it happens).
Or that the oft-used phrases “graven image” and “sins of the fathers” are be found in the second Commandment; or “honour thy father and they mother” in the fifth (in the Anglican tradition, anyway).
And that’s only about the Commandments.
And there’s nothing to make us think that a lack of knowledge of the Bible denotes a movement away from religion in all cases, because so many people follow like sheep and know jack shit about what lies behind their blind faith. They perhaps can’t quote a Commandment or tell you whether Exodus is the first, second or third book of which testament (assuming they know it’s split into testaments), but they’ll be out there demanding special privileges for religion – specifically their religion.
That said, the idea of cramming, as happens in madrassas, where kids are force-fed the Koran and made to memorise it, is just pisspottery. They end up able to quote it – uselessly – but that in itself doesn’t make them any better able to understand what lies behind it.
It’s ironic, I suppose, that many secularists and nontheists know more about the Bible than many professing Christians do. I have a brother who, while admitting knowing less about the Bible than I do (and that’s not a lot), professes Christianity; and, if I’d thought of it when he declaimed it in a conversation a few years ago with the words “Well, I’m a Christian”, I’d have said, “How do you know?”
Ah l’esprit d’escalier, eh?
Well, it is, I suppose. It’s been around for quite a while now.
A survey, according to the Reuters story linked to above, says that 40 per cent “did not know that the tradition of exchanging Christmas presents originated from the story of the Wise Men bringing gifts for the infant Jesus, while 60 per cent could not name anything about the Good Samaritan, the Durham University study found”.
Not sure about that: gift giving on special occasions is as old as the hills, but let’s let it go. It could be right.
The story continues:
Atheists, however, were not unduly worried about the decline in the Bible’s popularity.
“It shows really that religion is becoming less important to people,” said Pepper Harow, campaigns officer at the British Humanist Association.
“The fact that people have little knowledge of the Bible perhaps suggests that it’s becoming less and less relevant to people in the 21st century,” she said.
Despite the lack of enthusiasm about the Bible among the 900 respondents, three-quarters said they owned one and almost a third said it was significant in their lives
I’m only half celebrating here. Although I’m a nontheist, I find that so many phrases, aphorisms, adages, maxims and mottos crop up in other literature, including Shakespeare, that a knowledge of where they came from adds to the enjoyment of the place we’re now finding them.
Rational-minded people tend to eschew the Bible as a source of useful fact, yes, but it’s nonetheless a collection of writings that make interesting reading, just as those from any religious tradition might make interesting reading to those who care to study them – theists or not.
The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, likewise, make interesting reading and often have morals embedded, but no one is going to pretend that Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White, the Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel or the Frog Prince existed in real life.
It’s a pity that it can’t be taught as part of literature lessons, without all the need to believe in the God stuff. As it is, it’s pushed down kids’ throats as part of boring old RE, which many older pupils opt for because it’s an easier ride than, say, Eng. lit. or physics, and younger ones have no choice in the matter, anyway.
If it were taught in a way that makes it interesting, makes the words enjoyable in themselves, perhaps more people would have a reasonable knowledge of it.
It’s hard to believe, too, that there are people walking about probably aware, vaguely, of the phrases “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal”, without knowing they’re two of the Ten Commandments (the shortest two, as it happens).
Or that the oft-used phrases “graven image” and “sins of the fathers” are be found in the second Commandment; or “honour thy father and they mother” in the fifth (in the Anglican tradition, anyway).
And that’s only about the Commandments.
And there’s nothing to make us think that a lack of knowledge of the Bible denotes a movement away from religion in all cases, because so many people follow like sheep and know jack shit about what lies behind their blind faith. They perhaps can’t quote a Commandment or tell you whether Exodus is the first, second or third book of which testament (assuming they know it’s split into testaments), but they’ll be out there demanding special privileges for religion – specifically their religion.
That said, the idea of cramming, as happens in madrassas, where kids are force-fed the Koran and made to memorise it, is just pisspottery. They end up able to quote it – uselessly – but that in itself doesn’t make them any better able to understand what lies behind it.
It’s ironic, I suppose, that many secularists and nontheists know more about the Bible than many professing Christians do. I have a brother who, while admitting knowing less about the Bible than I do (and that’s not a lot), professes Christianity; and, if I’d thought of it when he declaimed it in a conversation a few years ago with the words “Well, I’m a Christian”, I’d have said, “How do you know?”
Ah l’esprit d’escalier, eh?
Saturday, 11 July 2009
Judge jails hate Muzzo and defends Freedom of Expression shock!
Ali Beheshti (above) poses with gun.He admitted to conspiring to endanger life.
We are all used to Muslim extremists being given the red carpet treatment by our self-serving legal profession (as well as free housing, £30,000 a year to live on and endless benefits for relatives on the scrounge), but in an unusual case of legal common sense this week , a judge told three Muslim fanatics: "If you choose to live in this country, you live by its rules. There is no such thing as 'a la carte citizenship' and, in your case, there is no such thing as 'a la carte obedience' to the law."Quite so. Well said!
It is Mrs Justice Rafferty whom we have to thank for this clarity of purpose, common sense and decency - remarkable in an age when feeble liberal-left politicians and greedy "human rights" lawyers bend over backwards to soft-soap and indulge any religious extremist that comes their way.
Ali Beheshti, 41, a fanatic who once paraded his 18-month old baby in an "I love Al Qaeda" hat during the notorious "cartoons" protest of 2006, was jailed for four and a half years at the Royal Courts of Justice, for firebombing the home of a publisher who was preparing to publish a supposedly disrespectful novel about the prophet Mohammed. Beheshti is known to be a follower of the hate cleric, Abu Hamza.
The book, called The Jewel of Medina, by author Sherry Jones, is a fictional account of the prophet's child bride.
Departing from the notorious Regents Park Mosque, Beheshti and his accomplices (also jailed), used diesel as an accelerant, causing fire damage to the front door of the publisher's house. However, unbeknown to the Muslim gang, police had been tracking them in an intelligence-led operation and were able to seize the religious arsonists as they fled the scene.
Andrew Hall QC, the lawyer acting for Beheshti, claimed, in the fanatic's defence, that the arson was: "an act of protest born of the publication of a book felt by him and other Muslims to be disrespectful, provocative and offensive". In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of the "human rights" brigade, it seems that setting fire to somebody's house isn't any of those things.
The publisher, Mr Martin Rynja, of Gibson Square Books, was praised by Mrs Justice Rafferty as a "principled man" who had exercised critical judgement on a literary work and was prepared to stand up and be counted, knowing that publishing it put him at risk. He had bought the rights to the book after the faint-hearted, but prescient, Random House publishing company dropped plans to publish it, fearing it might "incite acts of violence".
The author, Sherry Jones, said that The Jewel of Medina is, in fact, respectful to Islam. The publisher, Martin Rynja, said last October that he felt its publication was part of a liberal democracy.
How refreshing that, for once, freedom of expression has been stoutly defended in the courts and three Muslim fanatics have been sent down with a judge's condemnation ringing in their ears!
__________
Related link:
Jail for fanatics who wanted to dictate our reading habits
Friday, 10 July 2009
Barmy swami
Psst! Wanna be cured of being a poofter? Easy-peasy. Just get into the lotus position, take some deep breaths, let them out slowly (remember to breathe in again after each exhalation, though, or you might go blue in the face).Hey presto! Before you can say Bhagavad Gita, you’re straight.
Well, that’s what this barmpot thinks who’s featured in a Pink News story I read yesterday.
Swami Baba Ramdev (pictured), a yoga guru, has filed a challenge to a Delhi High Court judgment from earlier this week that said homosexuality should be decriminalised.
He filed the challenge saying homosexuality was a “disease” and could be cured by yoga.
According to the Indian Express, he said: “It can be treated like any other congenital defect. Such tendencies can be treated by yoga, pranayama (breathing exercises) and other meditation techniques.”
So now you know. Just like other religionists, this guy thinks a bit of body bending and breathing is a cure.
What he’s done is to give yoga a bad name. In and of itself, stripped of any required belief system, it’s good therapy, both physical and mental. No one can doubt that good breathing is important, as is body suppleness. An ability to meditate and empty the mind of “noise” must also be a good thing.
But to say it’s a “cure” for homosexuality is akin to saying it can “cure” maleness or having a palm on your hand.
Talking of which, I’ve just thought of the best way to experience the clapping of one hand. You use the one hand to slap the face of Swami Baba bloody Ramdev.
Thursday, 9 July 2009
Where are all the feminists?
Where are the feminists when you need them? Why are they not asserting themselves over the question of the burqa, and how it dehumanises women?
Pat Condell asks just that question in his entertaining video embedded below. Enjoy!
Pat Condell asks just that question in his entertaining video embedded below. Enjoy!
Jail for fanatics who wanted to dictate our reading habits
Religious fanatics have been jailed for an attack on the UK home of a publisher. His “crime”? He dared to want to publish a novel about Aisha, the child bride of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad.
Now, according to The Times, among others, three Islamic fundamentalists have been banged up “for an arson attack on a London publisher who planned to print an ‘offensive’ book about the Prophet Muhammad”.
The attack was on the home of Martin Rynja, and “has been compared to the campaign against the publication of Salmon Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses”.
You can see from the links below just what a fuss was made by these and other morons, who believe that historical figures don’t belong to all, and if we wish to write fiction based on them, draw cartoons of them, make sculptures of them or paint them, we should be allowed to do so.
__________
Related links:
How Muslims rule what we read
Aisha author should be compensated, says Rushdie’s QC
Cowardice condemned
Now, according to The Times, among others, three Islamic fundamentalists have been banged up “for an arson attack on a London publisher who planned to print an ‘offensive’ book about the Prophet Muhammad”.
The attack was on the home of Martin Rynja, and “has been compared to the campaign against the publication of Salmon Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses”.
You can see from the links below just what a fuss was made by these and other morons, who believe that historical figures don’t belong to all, and if we wish to write fiction based on them, draw cartoons of them, make sculptures of them or paint them, we should be allowed to do so.
__________
Related links:
How Muslims rule what we read
Aisha author should be compensated, says Rushdie’s QC
Cowardice condemned
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
Let’s ban gay music
Here’s a little something to brighten up an otherwise dull Wednesday. It’s a video I came across on the Atheist Nexus site (well worth signing up to), and it’s all about why homosexuals should not be allowed to write songs.
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
One sends one’s good wishes
Not only have a bunch of atrocious individuals formed an evil cohort with what seems the sole intent of telling queers how vile they are, but our dear sovereign lady the Queen has seen fit to wish them well in their dastardly deeds!
Damn woman! (Oops! Can she have me sent to the Tower for saying that?)
The leading light in this spawn of the Devil known creepily as the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, whom I got a bit miffed about on this blog the other day.
These people can’t bear the fact that the Anglican Church is largely populated with gays (it would probably fall apart but for the gay clergy, so I’ve heard said).
So now they’ve formed this breakaway movement and Betty Windsor goes and sends them cheery little letters telling them what a jolly good band of people they are.
I suppose to be fair I should report that sources have, according to the Telegraph story linked to above, said the Queen was not endorsing this gang of Christian thugs, and pointed out that she corresponds with a great number of organisations.
It still sends out the entirely wrong message, though – and a huge number of palace staff won’t be too pleased about it.
Damn woman! (Oops! Can she have me sent to the Tower for saying that?)
The leading light in this spawn of the Devil known creepily as the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, whom I got a bit miffed about on this blog the other day.
These people can’t bear the fact that the Anglican Church is largely populated with gays (it would probably fall apart but for the gay clergy, so I’ve heard said).
So now they’ve formed this breakaway movement and Betty Windsor goes and sends them cheery little letters telling them what a jolly good band of people they are.
I suppose to be fair I should report that sources have, according to the Telegraph story linked to above, said the Queen was not endorsing this gang of Christian thugs, and pointed out that she corresponds with a great number of organisations.
It still sends out the entirely wrong message, though – and a huge number of palace staff won’t be too pleased about it.
Monday, 6 July 2009
Homophobic bullying? Start with religion, Mr Balls!
The UK’s Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, is to crack down on homophobic bullying among pupils.
Perhaps he ought to begin with the General Teaching Council for England, which last week watered down its code of conduct to appease “faith” groups.
A section of the code designed to tackle discrimination was changed from “promoting equality and diversity” to “demonstrating respect for equality and diversity”.
Gutless!
And then Balls might try Catholic schools, which will be allowed to tell gay kids they’re less than OK when it comes to compulsory sex education.
He might cut down on some bullying if he looked at these crazy superstitionists and their pathological hatred of gay people, which can only encourage bullies to take it out on gay kids trying to come to terms with their sexuality.
Perhaps he ought to begin with the General Teaching Council for England, which last week watered down its code of conduct to appease “faith” groups.
A section of the code designed to tackle discrimination was changed from “promoting equality and diversity” to “demonstrating respect for equality and diversity”.
Gutless!
And then Balls might try Catholic schools, which will be allowed to tell gay kids they’re less than OK when it comes to compulsory sex education.
He might cut down on some bullying if he looked at these crazy superstitionists and their pathological hatred of gay people, which can only encourage bullies to take it out on gay kids trying to come to terms with their sexuality.
“Preposterous”
Further to Andy’s blog entry earlier today, copied below is the press release I issued in my capacity as secretary of the Pink Triangle Trust.
Gay Humanist charity slams Christian positions on homosexuality as: “Preposterous”
Commenting on Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester’s call on homosexuals to repent and “be changed”, George Broadhead, secretary of the gay Humanist charity the Pink Triangle Trust, said: “The Bishop’s homophobic outburst is hardly surprising given that he has repeatedly spoken and voted against gay human rights in the House of Lords, defending homophobic laws like the unequal age of consent, criticising civil partnership legislation and opposing IVF fertility treatment for lesbian couples.
“Predictably, the bishop defended his view by referring to the deity saying: ‘We believe that God has revealed his purpose about how we are made. People who depart from this don’t share the same faith. They are acting in a way that is not normative according to what God has revealed in the Bible.’ Equally predicable is the view of Christian apologists for homosexuality like the Revd Dr Giles Fraser, the president of the Inclusive Church, who said: ‘Homosexuality is not a sin. It is the way many people love each other and is a gift from God.’
“Of course these positions can’t both be right, and in any case they are preposterous since neither protagonist can prove that the deity exists, let alone what he/she/it thinks about homosexuality.
“What is really reprehensible, however, is that ghastly homophobes like the Bishop of Rochester are permitted to sit, as of right, in the House of Lords and influence our legislation.”
Michael Nastier Ali
A new organisation of lunatic bigots gets under way today, after its leading light said gay people should “repent and be changed”.
This is arch homophobe Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, UK.
Change into what? A nice skimpy low-cut number with sequins? And repent for what? For not keeping you out of the country when you immigrated here from Pakistan?
Nazir-Ali spoke as tens of thousands of people, including Sarah Brown, the Prime Minister’s wife, joined the annual Gay Pride march in London.
A new coalition of evangelical and Anglo-Catholic bigots today begins the Devil’s work of hating poofs. Sorry, they love the sinner, don’t they, and hate the sin? I was forgetting. Since within this context the result is the same, it hardly matters.
This is what this disturbed individual tells the Sunday Telegraph in the story linked to above:
“We want to uphold the traditional teaching of the Bible. We believe that God has revealed his purpose about how we are made.”
And how do you know? You can’t possibly prove it. But I interrupted you. Do continue, you blithering loon.
“People who depart from this don’t share the same faith. They are acting in a way that is not normative according to what God has revealed in the Bible.”
God revealed nothing. It was all made up. But do continue, you raving twassock.
“The Bible’s teaching shows that marriage is between a man and a woman. That is the way to express our sexual nature.”
Bollocks!
“We welcome homosexuals, we don’t want to exclude people, but we want them to repent and be changed.”
Oh, go to hell, you bloody waste of space!
This is arch homophobe Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, UK.
Change into what? A nice skimpy low-cut number with sequins? And repent for what? For not keeping you out of the country when you immigrated here from Pakistan?
Nazir-Ali spoke as tens of thousands of people, including Sarah Brown, the Prime Minister’s wife, joined the annual Gay Pride march in London.
A new coalition of evangelical and Anglo-Catholic bigots today begins the Devil’s work of hating poofs. Sorry, they love the sinner, don’t they, and hate the sin? I was forgetting. Since within this context the result is the same, it hardly matters.
This is what this disturbed individual tells the Sunday Telegraph in the story linked to above:
“We want to uphold the traditional teaching of the Bible. We believe that God has revealed his purpose about how we are made.”
And how do you know? You can’t possibly prove it. But I interrupted you. Do continue, you blithering loon.
“People who depart from this don’t share the same faith. They are acting in a way that is not normative according to what God has revealed in the Bible.”
God revealed nothing. It was all made up. But do continue, you raving twassock.
“The Bible’s teaching shows that marriage is between a man and a woman. That is the way to express our sexual nature.”
Bollocks!
“We welcome homosexuals, we don’t want to exclude people, but we want them to repent and be changed.”
Oh, go to hell, you bloody waste of space!
Sunday, 5 July 2009
Islam damned
Quite a damning analysis of Islam is made in Europe News under the headline The Silent Holocaust: Why Humanity Must Achieve Victory over Islam. Here’s just a short extract:
Strong stuff. And it doesn't let up any. It makes for compelling reading.
Essentially, Islam is a set of beliefs and rules that militate against human prosperity, happiness, welfare, freedom, equality and knowledge. Islam and a full human life are contradictory concepts, opposed to each other. Islam under any kind of interpretation is and always has been a strong force against secularism, modernism, egalitarianism and women’s rights. Political Islam, however, is a political movement that has come to the fore against secular and progressive movements for liberation, and against cultural and intellectual advances. Violence and disregard for human dignity are inherent in the manifestos of political Islamic groups.
Strong stuff. And it doesn't let up any. It makes for compelling reading.
Saturday, 4 July 2009
Coming out of two closets
Which is the worse: coming out as gay or coming out as an atheist.
There was an interesting piece in the US paper the Examiner a few days ago on this very subject – and the writer reckons it’s often harder to come out as atheist.
She relates an old joke:
That’s in the States, of course, where religion plays a bigger part in people’s lives. Here in the UK, it’s probably seen as cool to be an atheist. Certainly, I never encounter any antipathy on the few occasions I’m in a conversation with someone and say I’m a nonbeliever. Often, the other person is, too.
There was an interesting piece in the US paper the Examiner a few days ago on this very subject – and the writer reckons it’s often harder to come out as atheist.
She relates an old joke:
If you’re afraid to tell your parents that you’re an atheist, just tell them you’re gay and after they are done flipping out say, “Don’t worry, I’m not gay, I’m only an atheist.” The interesting thing is that coming out atheist can be much harder than coming out gay.
That’s in the States, of course, where religion plays a bigger part in people’s lives. Here in the UK, it’s probably seen as cool to be an atheist. Certainly, I never encounter any antipathy on the few occasions I’m in a conversation with someone and say I’m a nonbeliever. Often, the other person is, too.
Friday, 3 July 2009
Church’s investment in slave labour
How’s the Church of England going to get out of this one?
The Christian think tank Ekklesia reports today that the church has got its sticky fingers into all sorts of ethically unsound pies.
We knew as much, anyway. Is there really such a thing as a clean investment, unless you know every single thing about the company you’ve put your money into?
Ekklesia singles out Tesco to begin with, because the supermarket giant is about to celebrate the fact that it’s making billions off the backs of slave labour.
Well, it wouldn’t exactly put it like that, but the chain has come under fire for its 7p-per-hour garment workers in Bangladesh.
Shareholders are rubbing their hands – and so must be the Church of England, which has an investment of £27.5 million in Tesco.
Ekklesia goes on:
No doubt it will gloss over all of this by using the same bullshit it uses to convince us that there is a sky fairy who loves us all. I’m just waiting for the “. . . er, stutter, er, stammer, er, well, it’s like this . . . er . . .”
But no: just like politicians and big business, it’ll have some slick PR wallah to make it all sound glossy and we’ll all go home and watch EastEnders and forget all about it.
Ekklesia quotes Simon McRae, senior campaigns officer at War on Want, who says, “While Tesco has smashed all records with more than £3 billion profits, it is also breaking promises to ensure a living wage and decent conditions for its garment workers. Tesco cannot be trusted to keep its word. The British government must act to stop this abuse.”
So this is the sort of company the Church of England is investing large sums of money in. Unlike an individual shopper, it can’t even say it invests only in Tesco Value Krispie Kokonut Splodge and not its clothes. When you invest in a company, you invest in all it does.
The Christian think tank Ekklesia reports today that the church has got its sticky fingers into all sorts of ethically unsound pies.
We knew as much, anyway. Is there really such a thing as a clean investment, unless you know every single thing about the company you’ve put your money into?
Ekklesia singles out Tesco to begin with, because the supermarket giant is about to celebrate the fact that it’s making billions off the backs of slave labour.
Well, it wouldn’t exactly put it like that, but the chain has come under fire for its 7p-per-hour garment workers in Bangladesh.
Shareholders are rubbing their hands – and so must be the Church of England, which has an investment of £27.5 million in Tesco.
Ekklesia goes on:
The news comes as the third uncomfortable revelation for the Church in four days.
Yesterday, the Guardian newspaper revealed that Exxon Mobil, in which the Church of England has a shareholding valued at £17.2 million, is continuing to fund lobby groups which question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial. On Tuesday, campaigners announced that the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) would be the subject of a legal action after it was linked to climate change and human rights violations. The Church has a £8.4 million stake in RBS.
Now the charity War on Want has cited research revealing that employees work up to 80 hours a week making Tesco clothes in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka for as little as 1663 taka (£14) a month.
No doubt it will gloss over all of this by using the same bullshit it uses to convince us that there is a sky fairy who loves us all. I’m just waiting for the “. . . er, stutter, er, stammer, er, well, it’s like this . . . er . . .”
But no: just like politicians and big business, it’ll have some slick PR wallah to make it all sound glossy and we’ll all go home and watch EastEnders and forget all about it.
Ekklesia quotes Simon McRae, senior campaigns officer at War on Want, who says, “While Tesco has smashed all records with more than £3 billion profits, it is also breaking promises to ensure a living wage and decent conditions for its garment workers. Tesco cannot be trusted to keep its word. The British government must act to stop this abuse.”
So this is the sort of company the Church of England is investing large sums of money in. Unlike an individual shopper, it can’t even say it invests only in Tesco Value Krispie Kokonut Splodge and not its clothes. When you invest in a company, you invest in all it does.
Teachers crumble under superstitionists’ pressure
A bit of spineless kowtowing to religion seems to have affected England’s teachers – or some of them.
Pink News carries a story about how the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE) has “been accused of rewording a teachers’ code of conduct after faith groups complained they would have to ‘promote’ homosexuality under the code”.
It continues:
The story quotes Sarah Stephens, director of policy at the GTCE, who says the wording has been changed to relate only to teachers’ actions, and not their values or beliefs.
But isn’t it their actions that are going to screw up kids’ minds if they’re gay and find that any equality and diversity for their kind is merely encouraged while the same for another group is promoted?
It’s not the first time the great and the good – be it among government or other organisations – have licked the boots of demanding and whingeing religions.
A few weeks ago, gay organisations showed how pissed off they were over government plans to allow “faith” schools to teach sex education in line with their superstitions.
Pink News deals with this in the same story:
It then goes on to quote our own George Broadhead of the Pink Triangle Trust, who wrote to the Schools Secretary Ed Balls, saying, “It is surely unacceptable that a large proportion of our schools should be allowed to tell pupils (in line with the teaching in their holy books) that homosexual relationships are morally wrong, with the inevitable consequence that anti-gay bullying will increase.”
__________
Related link:
Today, children, we’re going to tell you how evil you are
Good morning, children: some of you are morally evil
Pink News carries a story about how the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE) has “been accused of rewording a teachers’ code of conduct after faith groups complained they would have to ‘promote’ homosexuality under the code”.
It continues:
According to the Guardian, a section of the code designed to tackle discrimination has been changed from “promoting equality and diversity” to “demonstrating respect for equality and diversity”.
A briefing document revealed the changes had been made after hundreds of objections from faith groups, who felt the code would require Christian teachers to “promote beliefs and lifestyles at odds with their faith”.
The story quotes Sarah Stephens, director of policy at the GTCE, who says the wording has been changed to relate only to teachers’ actions, and not their values or beliefs.
But isn’t it their actions that are going to screw up kids’ minds if they’re gay and find that any equality and diversity for their kind is merely encouraged while the same for another group is promoted?
It’s not the first time the great and the good – be it among government or other organisations – have licked the boots of demanding and whingeing religions.
A few weeks ago, gay organisations showed how pissed off they were over government plans to allow “faith” schools to teach sex education in line with their superstitions.
Pink News deals with this in the same story:
Under the recommendations of the review, “all schools will be forced to teach sex education. However, faith schools will be allowed to present lessons in line with their own “context, values and ethos”.
This will allow them to tell pupils that homosexuality, sex outside marriage or using contraception is wrong.
It then goes on to quote our own George Broadhead of the Pink Triangle Trust, who wrote to the Schools Secretary Ed Balls, saying, “It is surely unacceptable that a large proportion of our schools should be allowed to tell pupils (in line with the teaching in their holy books) that homosexual relationships are morally wrong, with the inevitable consequence that anti-gay bullying will increase.”
__________
Related link:
Today, children, we’re going to tell you how evil you are
Good morning, children: some of you are morally evil
The sham and shambles of shameful sharia
Apart from being seen as unfair, sharia law is also arbitrary and a total shambles, if this article in the Guardian is anything to go by.
The writer, Zeinab Huq, has been on the receiving end, and she says some rulings are carried out by no more than an imam on the end of a phone.
She cites in instance of how she and her sister had to make do with far less of her father’s estate:
And, of course, the thing would not be contested, because the womenfolk were too afraid to question it. If it were questioned outside this primitive belief system with its Dark Ages “law”, the machinery of probate would ensure that the estate would be divvied up according to law – proper law, not “law” taken from some holy book.
She also says that sharia law “isn’t even written down and most Muslims will dip in and out of it when it suits them”.
And yet we’re allowing some of these decisions to be ratified under the Arbitration Act in the United Kingdom, instead of insisting that every dispute both begin and end within a properly constituted system.
If Muslims were then found to have ruled on something that has a legal status and should have been ruled on under law, they’d he hauled up before a court for it. A proper court.
__________
Related links:
How do you solve a problem like sharia?
Creeping ever closer! When will they ever learn?
Sharia in the workplace
Sharia – the disturbing story continues
The danger of sharia courts
Sharia – a waste of time
The shame of sharia
Sharia Law: Islamic Justice
The writer, Zeinab Huq, has been on the receiving end, and she says some rulings are carried out by no more than an imam on the end of a phone.
She cites in instance of how she and her sister had to make do with far less of her father’s estate:
When my father died, my mother decided that, although under British law she was entitled to everything, she wanted to settle things according to Islamic law so she could “die with a clear conscience”. She asked my brother to call an imam. The imam said my brothers would get twice the share of my sister and I and so on. On learning that my father had a son by a previous marriage, the imam said my half brother must also have a share in my dad’s estate. So, a man who is a stranger to us tells us that another man who is a stranger to us is entitled to a stake in our family home, where we have lived for 25 years and he has never set foot in.
And, of course, the thing would not be contested, because the womenfolk were too afraid to question it. If it were questioned outside this primitive belief system with its Dark Ages “law”, the machinery of probate would ensure that the estate would be divvied up according to law – proper law, not “law” taken from some holy book.
She also says that sharia law “isn’t even written down and most Muslims will dip in and out of it when it suits them”.
And yet we’re allowing some of these decisions to be ratified under the Arbitration Act in the United Kingdom, instead of insisting that every dispute both begin and end within a properly constituted system.
If Muslims were then found to have ruled on something that has a legal status and should have been ruled on under law, they’d he hauled up before a court for it. A proper court.
__________
Related links:
How do you solve a problem like sharia?
Creeping ever closer! When will they ever learn?
Sharia in the workplace
Sharia – the disturbing story continues
The danger of sharia courts
Sharia – a waste of time
The shame of sharia
Sharia Law: Islamic Justice
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Bedside manner
The National Secular Society reports that “doctors have voted down a Christian motion at the BMA [British Medical Association] conference that would have given carte blanche for religious medical practitioners to ‘share their faith’ without restraint”.
The NSS’s president, Terry Sanderson, is quoted as saying, “The BMA conference has been very sensible in refusing to give this unfettered permission to religious doctors to offer prayers to patients. The restrictions are there for a very important reason – to protect patients from embarrassment, irritation and possible conflict with their doctor.
“If patients want to raise the issue with their doctor or nurse, that is a different matter, but the initiative should rest entirely with the patient.”
And that is the point. I might feel a bit miffed if a nurse or doctor came up to me while I was nursing my terminal galloping lurgy and offered to pray.
A good bedside manner means, among other things, being a good listener, and, if a patient were to mention that she prayed once a day or missed going to church, it would be appropriate for the medic to use whatever means available to comfort the patient.
That might mean his saying, merely, “Do you get comfort from prayers?”, thus leading the patient to say more, and that could be followed by, “If you like, I can arrange for the chaplain to come and see you.”
Hey presto! The medic is seen as understanding while remaining neutral on the subject of religion, leaving the patient to lead the situation.
While a patient’s possibly weakest moment is not a time to impose unwanted sky-fairy notions on her, it is not a time, either, to refuse to acknowledge that she might find religion comforting – albeit that it would, in the nonreligious person’s eyes, be a placebo.
Whether there should be such creatures as hospital chaplains is, of course, another issue, and one that has been hotly debated.
The NSS’s president, Terry Sanderson, is quoted as saying, “The BMA conference has been very sensible in refusing to give this unfettered permission to religious doctors to offer prayers to patients. The restrictions are there for a very important reason – to protect patients from embarrassment, irritation and possible conflict with their doctor.
“If patients want to raise the issue with their doctor or nurse, that is a different matter, but the initiative should rest entirely with the patient.”
And that is the point. I might feel a bit miffed if a nurse or doctor came up to me while I was nursing my terminal galloping lurgy and offered to pray.
A good bedside manner means, among other things, being a good listener, and, if a patient were to mention that she prayed once a day or missed going to church, it would be appropriate for the medic to use whatever means available to comfort the patient.
That might mean his saying, merely, “Do you get comfort from prayers?”, thus leading the patient to say more, and that could be followed by, “If you like, I can arrange for the chaplain to come and see you.”
Hey presto! The medic is seen as understanding while remaining neutral on the subject of religion, leaving the patient to lead the situation.
While a patient’s possibly weakest moment is not a time to impose unwanted sky-fairy notions on her, it is not a time, either, to refuse to acknowledge that she might find religion comforting – albeit that it would, in the nonreligious person’s eyes, be a placebo.
Whether there should be such creatures as hospital chaplains is, of course, another issue, and one that has been hotly debated.
Very naughty Brian lives on
Brian keeps coming back. Not the Messiah, but that “very naughty boy”.
His eponymous film, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, was banned in nearly forty towns and cities when it came out nearly three decades ago.
It’s so hard to believe that anyone could have objected to it even back then, let alone now. But they’re still protesting, and did so in Glasgow this week when city councillors decided to grant it a licence.
It’s such an anachronism that local worthies – many of whom wouldn’t know a good piece of cinema if it hit them between the eyes – can sit in judgement. It’s bad enough that the British Board of Film Classification still does so, but you might just console yourself – a little – that it’s made up of people who are supposed to know what they’re talking about.
Anyway, Brian gets its showing, according to a story in the Scotsman, in September (hard to believe that’s only the month after next!) at the Glasgow Film Theatre.
The paper says:
And that is often the case. It happened in the Mid Wales town of Aberystwyth when the mayor – who played the part of Judith Iscariot in the film – wanted to get it shown. It was shown, and you can read about that in the links below. But there was an objection from at least one person who had not seen it.
And – wouldn’t you just know it! – Stephen “Birdshit” Green was invited by the paper to put his four penn’orth in:
I don’t know whether Green has seen the film, but, if he has, he has obviously missed out on the fact that it actually treats the Jesus figure respectfully. It’s a jokey film with a jokey premise set against a historical backdrop. Had it been set against the historical backdrop of, say, Henry VIII, as Carry On Henry (1971) was, there would not have been a peep of protest.
But there’s no accounting for how the brains of religious nutjobs work.
__________
Related links:
Bring on Brian
Brian is back
About Brian
His eponymous film, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, was banned in nearly forty towns and cities when it came out nearly three decades ago.
It’s so hard to believe that anyone could have objected to it even back then, let alone now. But they’re still protesting, and did so in Glasgow this week when city councillors decided to grant it a licence.
It’s such an anachronism that local worthies – many of whom wouldn’t know a good piece of cinema if it hit them between the eyes – can sit in judgement. It’s bad enough that the British Board of Film Classification still does so, but you might just console yourself – a little – that it’s made up of people who are supposed to know what they’re talking about.
Anyway, Brian gets its showing, according to a story in the Scotsman, in September (hard to believe that’s only the month after next!) at the Glasgow Film Theatre.
The paper says:
But Christian groups said the decision to grant the film a 15 certificate was a reflection of declining standards in society, and called it a “sad day”. The Biblical satire, about a Jewish man accidentally mistaken for the Messiah and crucified, was turned down for an AA certificate – the equivalent of the current 15 rating – in February 1980.
Dozens of protesters gathered outside a Sauchiehall Street cinema, where councillors were attending a private screening.
The late Pastor Jack Glass, who spearheaded the protest, famously said the film “crucified Christ afresh” and thrust three nails at the committee chairman, John Chatham. However, the pastor admitted he had not seen the film and was basing his views on a script.
And that is often the case. It happened in the Mid Wales town of Aberystwyth when the mayor – who played the part of Judith Iscariot in the film – wanted to get it shown. It was shown, and you can read about that in the links below. But there was an objection from at least one person who had not seen it.
And – wouldn’t you just know it! – Stephen “Birdshit” Green was invited by the paper to put his four penn’orth in:
But Stephen Green, director of the radical campaign group Christian Voice, which has organised protests against shows such as Jerry Springer: The Opera, said: “We know Glasgow was the last place in the country to keep the ban in place, as the only other area, Aberystwyth, had a screening a couple of months ago. It is a bit of a shame it’s now been granted a licence in Glasgow, but it shows how much we have let standards slip.”
I don’t know whether Green has seen the film, but, if he has, he has obviously missed out on the fact that it actually treats the Jesus figure respectfully. It’s a jokey film with a jokey premise set against a historical backdrop. Had it been set against the historical backdrop of, say, Henry VIII, as Carry On Henry (1971) was, there would not have been a peep of protest.
But there’s no accounting for how the brains of religious nutjobs work.
__________
Related links:
Bring on Brian
Brian is back
About Brian
“Maareke giry”
Further to my blog post on Tuesday regarding the Sharia Law: Islamic Justice video, I see that someone going by the name of “Anonymous” has posted the following comment:
Click here for the source of this information, which includes some of the photographs – here and here. Unfortunately, the seventh and eighth photographs referred to by “Anonymous” in the quote above, are not included. Furthermore, on visiting Peykeiran.com, I’ve been unable to clarify whether or not the website does indeed include these two photographs as it is not in English.
“Magic act” or not, these images are disturbing, but I’d welcome clarification from anyone who can supply it.
[T]he young boy whose arm was run over was not being punished for a crime. He was part of a “Maareke giry” or street magic act and allegedly performed the stunt for money (note the gentleman speaking into a microphone in image #1). The seventh and eighth pictures in the series, which appear to show the child shaken but otherwise unharmed after the ordeal, were omitted from the email flier but can still be viewed on Peykeiran.com (where all the images are attributed to photographer Siamak Yari).
Click here for the source of this information, which includes some of the photographs – here and here. Unfortunately, the seventh and eighth photographs referred to by “Anonymous” in the quote above, are not included. Furthermore, on visiting Peykeiran.com, I’ve been unable to clarify whether or not the website does indeed include these two photographs as it is not in English.
“Magic act” or not, these images are disturbing, but I’d welcome clarification from anyone who can supply it.
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
A Pop Star Has Died. Boo hoo.
Yes, I know. I'm being unforgivably flippant about the sad demise of Michael Jackson – and yes – I do have several of his songs on my i-Pod, including his eloquent plea for racial harmony Black Or White (that rare thing, an uplifting message song that is also a successful piece of danceable pop). He was indeed a pop genius, flawed like most geniuses, but now his name will forever be uttered in the same breath as those other 20th century superstars, Chaplin, Presley and Lennon. How tragic that a handsome and talented black man should end up ravaged by too much plastic surgery, looking like a cross between Max Wall and Edvard Munch's painting, The Scream. I'm truly sorry he is dead, but – on the plus side – at least there'll never be another Earth Song.
However, the purpose of this post is not to discuss Michael Jackson, but to muse upon public displays of grief and mourning from a non-religious (and gay) perspective.
At the end of 2006, I remember going to see the film Evita, starring Madonna, and contemplating the public scenes of mourning that greeted the death of President Peron's wife in 1952, a woman who had somehow connected with – and engaged the loyalty and affections of – the ordinary people of Argentina. What event, I wondered, might cause a similar public outpouring of grief among my own disparate and apparently indifferent fellow countrymen, here in Britain? Just 8 months later, that question was unequivocally answered when the former Princess of Wales, Diana, met an untimely end in a Paris road tunnel.
Back in 1997, public displays of anything – beyond the beery disappointment of the England cup squad failing to achieve anything on the football field – belonged to an almost folkloric era, long past. John Lennon's death, at the hands of a disillusioned gun-toting fan in 1980, had perhaps provided a foretaste of the kind of seismic shock of a cultural icon cut down unexpectedly, but in England at that time, popular music didn't mean that much to the generation that had its controlling hands on the levers of our national media, so without the immediacy of the internet and real-time satellite link-ups, the tragedy was filtered down to us mainly via newspapers still suspicious of rock 'n' roll and the BBC's avuncular Nationwide programme (who can forget Frank Bough posing the idiotic question to one of Lennon's former associates "Presumably this puts paid to any hope of a Beatles reunion?")?
Even in 1980, Churchill's funeral and lying-in-state was a dim and distant memory to many of us, and anyway, he died after living a full life. Things are rather different in America, of course, where Elvis Presley's death in 1977 and the assassinations of the Kennedys were truly momentous events, sutured into the very fabric of American culture. The difference with Jackson's death, of course, is that we now have a tried and tested media formula for such events, a formula that has been shaped by President Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Elvis Presley's death in 1977 as well as Princess Diana's death in 1997. Already we have those iconic aerial shots of Jackson's shrouded body being wheeled into the hospital on a trolley (let's hope that no strange photo-synthesis took place, resulting in the King of Pop's image being transferred onto the sheet – one Turin Shroud is quite enough!).
Back in 1997, in the immediate wake of Diana's death, the British media were ill-prepared for the tsunami of public grief and shock that swept the British Isles and beyond. We had no real precedent for it, certainly not with the immediate global reach of the new media technologies. To those who say it was all just an embarrassing display of emotional incontinence, whipped up by cynical media professionals, all I can say is that, for those first few days, at least, the shock and sense of grief was real and palpable. At the time, I worked for an outside broadcast engineering company that was involved in preparing for the televised funeral. And for the whole of that week, our predominantly male, chippy and "hairy-arsed" workforce toiled in a very subdued atmosphere of contemplative sadness. Tears were not unknown either.
In the last couple of years before her death, Diana had won almost universal admiration and respect for the pioneering humanitarian work she undertook, particularly against land mines (much to the annoyance of old school Tories) and her continued work on behalf of people with HIV&AIDS (to the evident irritation of the Queen, who asked why Diana couldn't limit herself to working with "nice charities"). Sympathy also played a part, as we witnessed the shabby way she was treated by the Royal Family and an ex-husband, who, as the journalist Julie Burchill famously commented, was "stiff, in all the wrong places."
What was truly interesting, though, was the emergence, or re-emergence, of ritualised communal mourning in an increasingly privatised and fragmented society. On the day of Diana's funeral, I went down to Kensington Palace Gardens and experienced that rare thing in London – a feeling of togetherness, remarkable for both its diversity and civility. The Metropolitan Police were unusually friendly and helpful, people gave up their seats on the bus to people less able to stand than themselves. Polite conversations were struck up, effortlessly crossing lines of age, race and class. It was a proud moment for Londoners, showing us how, sometimes, good things can proceed from bad in this big bad city of ours.
The challenge for secular and non-religious people, though, is how we respond to this re-emergence of public mourning in the "information age" of global communications. If you doubt that this re-emergence of public mourning and remembrance is happening, just consider how the death of 8 young Manchester United footballers - the so-called "Busby Babes" - in the Munich plane crash of 1958, was actually marked by more people on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 2008, than it was at the time (thanks to the recent globalisation of both the media and the legendary "brand" of Manchester United Football Club Plc). Our War Memorials are also being restored after years of neglect, with renewed appreciation of the sacrifices made in the Great War and WW2, together with some long overdue respect for our soldier heroes fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting the modern day evils of despotic and Islamic extremism.
In an increasingly de facto secular society, such as ours, what is remarkable is the way that so many people, particularly young people, feel the need to participate in these mass grieving rituals (not least, those held for their peers who fall prey to knife crime). This cuts right across the prevailing trends of rampant individualism and the kind of "privatisation" epitomised by drinking at home, rather than at the pub, or watching a film on your home cinema system, rather than at the local Odeon (if, indeed, your local Odeon still exists). Dead celebrity idols, royals and those tragedies in which large numbers of innocents die (e.g. Dunblane, 7/7, Hillsborough), somehow awaken an elemental force in us that makes us want to share in the experience, to own a part of the tragedy, even to share in the conspiracy theories. Leave your tribute on the GMTV website, tie a rose or football scarf to the railings, buy the hastily-released CD single (surely, the modern day equivalent of a holy relic). You might also want to make a "pilgrimmage" to the site of the catastrophe.
Perhaps it is this "irrational" elemental force that makes it so difficult for the non-religious to participate in this collective phenomenon. In spite of going to Kensington Palace on the evening of Diana's funeral and in spite of having queued for hours to file past the Queen Mother's coffin when she was lying in state, after her death in 2002, I still felt like an outsider. My chief motivation, I suppose, was anthropological curiosity. I wanted to observe my fellow citizens at a moment of shared public feeling, unknown since my grandparents' day. Of course, I also admired Diana and the Queen Mother as well. What set me apart, besides this curiosity, however, was the religious and quasi-religious trappings that invariably accompany these public outpourings. In spite of our de facto secularism, in such moments, most people still reach for religious symbols and paraphernalia as a means of expressing their feelings. Even if they eschew actual hymns, prayers and religious leaders, there are the inevitable candle-lit vigils, one-minute silences, cruciform floral wreaths and so on. These seem appropriate, but also sit uncomfortably with anyone who is a casual atheist, like me, let alone a committed atheist.
Moreover, when we grieve for someone we never actually knew, or even met, be they a princess or a pop star, what are we actually mourning? Rationally speaking, unless we knew the person intimately, we are actually mourning a "media construct" a two-dimensional "icon" (note the religious connotation, once again). According to those who actually knew Michael Jackson, the "little-boy-lost" image and voice was an affectation - an affectation that quickly evaporated if you got on the wrong side of him, or got fired by him. His inappropriate behaviour toward young boys, even if it was asexual, seems to be all too easily ignored by his legions of devoted followers. And then there are the questionnable links to the Nation of Islam "mafia" group, notorious for its racism and shady business activities. But, hey, the guy recorded Thriller! (so that's all right then). This is just the first reason why the rational atheist/ humanist/ freethinker is actively distanced from public grieving rituals. An icon is not a real person and mourning an icon is not rational. What you are really mourning is what the icon meant within the realm of your own personal fantasy life, not the person themselves.
Secondly, the untimely death of a celebrity, or of innocents in an accident or terrorist outrage, invariably leads to the strange voodoo of conspiracy theories. The CIA blew up the twin towers with the connivance of the Israeli secret service, Mossad, some would have you believe. MI6 murdered Princess Diana because she had fallen pregnant to a Muslim whom she planned to marry. And so on and so forth. As rational, non-religious people prefer evidence-based, factual analysis – however pedestrian that may seem – we are further alienated by this secondary tier of unreality and hysteria. Unfortunately, gay people are unusually susceptible to all this nonsense, partly because they often enjoy the melodrama – a celeb fighting for life as they are rushed, by ambulance, to the nearest hospital – and partly because, they too, often feel "much misunderstood" and hard done by. The more effeminate the homosexual, the more likely he is to retreat into the private fantasy world of iconographic celebrity and fall prey to it's trashy death rituals and the quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo surrounding them.
As already mentioned, when Princess Diana died, the modern British media had no tried and tested formula for dealing with such an event. The wave of public shock and sadness soon passed, but the journalist johnny-come-latelies who had initially failed to anticipate the public mood in September 1997, more than made up for it over the next ten years, endlessly raking over the events of what may or may not have happened in the Pont de l'Alma Tunnel, the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital and at the French post mortem (the word "French" being a newspaper euphemism for "dodgy", of course). In Britain, Michael Jackson's death on June 25th 2009, probably means a lot less than Princess Diana's death, even within the black community, but this time, one gets the distinct impression the media are leading the public mourning, not following it – imposing a kind of mourning-by-numbers ritual on a public which has, by and large, got over the sad demise of Michael Jackson now that Andy Murray has reached the quarter finals of Wimbledon. It is in America where the already tedious Michael Jackson story may have some deeper cultural significance, not here.
But to return to the question of death rituals, why do non-believers often feel so excluded? Part of this is undoubtedly our society's reticence and awkwardness surrounding death, per se. We jibber-jabber endlessly about every sexual proclivity under the sun, but if you mention that your mother has just passed away, everyone looks at their shoes and feels embarrassed. In this regard, we have done a 180 degree turn since Victorian times, when no middle class Sunday afternoon was complete without a family sight-seeing tour of the local cemetery. Yet this reticence often leaves us non-believers unprepared for anything funereal and I feel sad when I see atheist and agnostic friends buried or cremated with Christian paraphernalia I know they would not have chosen, because no one had the wit or foresight to arrange an appropriate secular alternative. And secular alternatives do exist. The best funerals I have been to have been humanist ones, simply because the "dearly departed" is the focus of the event, rather than Jesus Christ who would otherwise muscle-in on the departed's gig. Recorded, or live music, readings, poetry, personal reminiscences and a celebration of the departed's life are not just more fitting and meaningful, they seem much more comforting to those left behind too.
For public remembrances and mourning, which all too often get hijacked by the religious and quasi-religious, perhaps the gay community's response to AIDS points the way forward for secular, non-religious people. The AIDS quilt was a stroke of genius, far more so than even the recent Atheist Bus Campaign. A quilt is not a religious symbol, yet it is ubiquitous and individual at the same time. Many of those who sadly succumbed to AIDS will have contracted the virus in bed, beneath a quilt, and ended their lives in bed, beneath another quilt, perhaps even the same quilt. Each quilt, decorated with pictures and words unique to the individual remembered, then sewn into a single giant patchwork quilt, makes the several AIDS quilts now in existence very moving, eloquent and above all, secular, public memorials. They celebrate humanity, its diversity, its tragedy and its desire to heal with love. This imaginative response is something the gay community can be genuinely proud of.
Alas, such imagination is all too rare. In July 2005, shortly after the July 7th bombings, I found myself in Kings Cross and took a walk around the makeshift public memorial garden that had sprung up outside the station. Inevitably, this had taken the form of numerous "shrines" with all manner of religious sentiment and paraphernalia, as people from all walks of life, understandably saddened and wanting to pay their respects, groped for something with enough meaning and resonance to express how they felt (hence numerous images of Jesus, the Pope, Ganesh, Buddha, as well as candles, crucifixes, New Age crystals and so on). The curse of multiculturalism was also much in evidence, with one Union Flag emblazoned with the words "Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Jew - London United" (what, no Atheists?). Evidently, the irony that it was religion that had caused 4 Muslim youths to detonate their chapati-bombs on three Tube trains and a bus, was completely lost on these well-meaning, if inept, mourners. As far as I could see, not a single atheist or secular contribution was present. Why not? Surely, the National Secular Society (NSS) had prepared for such an eventuality and could stretch to a wreath? But apparently not. In despair, I bought some card and a marker pen from WH Smith's and wrote out a few lines from John Lennon's secular "hymn" that seemed perfectly suited:
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
RIP all victims of religious terror.
We secularists/atheists/humanists/freethinkers are only just beginning to assert ourselves in the arena of public and private mourning rituals, but these are at least as important as things like "de-baptism" and civil partnerships. Rational rituals are part of our claim to freedom of expression.
__________
Related link:
National ceremonies for all
However, the purpose of this post is not to discuss Michael Jackson, but to muse upon public displays of grief and mourning from a non-religious (and gay) perspective.
At the end of 2006, I remember going to see the film Evita, starring Madonna, and contemplating the public scenes of mourning that greeted the death of President Peron's wife in 1952, a woman who had somehow connected with – and engaged the loyalty and affections of – the ordinary people of Argentina. What event, I wondered, might cause a similar public outpouring of grief among my own disparate and apparently indifferent fellow countrymen, here in Britain? Just 8 months later, that question was unequivocally answered when the former Princess of Wales, Diana, met an untimely end in a Paris road tunnel.
Back in 1997, public displays of anything – beyond the beery disappointment of the England cup squad failing to achieve anything on the football field – belonged to an almost folkloric era, long past. John Lennon's death, at the hands of a disillusioned gun-toting fan in 1980, had perhaps provided a foretaste of the kind of seismic shock of a cultural icon cut down unexpectedly, but in England at that time, popular music didn't mean that much to the generation that had its controlling hands on the levers of our national media, so without the immediacy of the internet and real-time satellite link-ups, the tragedy was filtered down to us mainly via newspapers still suspicious of rock 'n' roll and the BBC's avuncular Nationwide programme (who can forget Frank Bough posing the idiotic question to one of Lennon's former associates "Presumably this puts paid to any hope of a Beatles reunion?")?
Even in 1980, Churchill's funeral and lying-in-state was a dim and distant memory to many of us, and anyway, he died after living a full life. Things are rather different in America, of course, where Elvis Presley's death in 1977 and the assassinations of the Kennedys were truly momentous events, sutured into the very fabric of American culture. The difference with Jackson's death, of course, is that we now have a tried and tested media formula for such events, a formula that has been shaped by President Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Elvis Presley's death in 1977 as well as Princess Diana's death in 1997. Already we have those iconic aerial shots of Jackson's shrouded body being wheeled into the hospital on a trolley (let's hope that no strange photo-synthesis took place, resulting in the King of Pop's image being transferred onto the sheet – one Turin Shroud is quite enough!).
Back in 1997, in the immediate wake of Diana's death, the British media were ill-prepared for the tsunami of public grief and shock that swept the British Isles and beyond. We had no real precedent for it, certainly not with the immediate global reach of the new media technologies. To those who say it was all just an embarrassing display of emotional incontinence, whipped up by cynical media professionals, all I can say is that, for those first few days, at least, the shock and sense of grief was real and palpable. At the time, I worked for an outside broadcast engineering company that was involved in preparing for the televised funeral. And for the whole of that week, our predominantly male, chippy and "hairy-arsed" workforce toiled in a very subdued atmosphere of contemplative sadness. Tears were not unknown either.
In the last couple of years before her death, Diana had won almost universal admiration and respect for the pioneering humanitarian work she undertook, particularly against land mines (much to the annoyance of old school Tories) and her continued work on behalf of people with HIV&AIDS (to the evident irritation of the Queen, who asked why Diana couldn't limit herself to working with "nice charities"). Sympathy also played a part, as we witnessed the shabby way she was treated by the Royal Family and an ex-husband, who, as the journalist Julie Burchill famously commented, was "stiff, in all the wrong places."
What was truly interesting, though, was the emergence, or re-emergence, of ritualised communal mourning in an increasingly privatised and fragmented society. On the day of Diana's funeral, I went down to Kensington Palace Gardens and experienced that rare thing in London – a feeling of togetherness, remarkable for both its diversity and civility. The Metropolitan Police were unusually friendly and helpful, people gave up their seats on the bus to people less able to stand than themselves. Polite conversations were struck up, effortlessly crossing lines of age, race and class. It was a proud moment for Londoners, showing us how, sometimes, good things can proceed from bad in this big bad city of ours.
The challenge for secular and non-religious people, though, is how we respond to this re-emergence of public mourning in the "information age" of global communications. If you doubt that this re-emergence of public mourning and remembrance is happening, just consider how the death of 8 young Manchester United footballers - the so-called "Busby Babes" - in the Munich plane crash of 1958, was actually marked by more people on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 2008, than it was at the time (thanks to the recent globalisation of both the media and the legendary "brand" of Manchester United Football Club Plc). Our War Memorials are also being restored after years of neglect, with renewed appreciation of the sacrifices made in the Great War and WW2, together with some long overdue respect for our soldier heroes fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting the modern day evils of despotic and Islamic extremism.
In an increasingly de facto secular society, such as ours, what is remarkable is the way that so many people, particularly young people, feel the need to participate in these mass grieving rituals (not least, those held for their peers who fall prey to knife crime). This cuts right across the prevailing trends of rampant individualism and the kind of "privatisation" epitomised by drinking at home, rather than at the pub, or watching a film on your home cinema system, rather than at the local Odeon (if, indeed, your local Odeon still exists). Dead celebrity idols, royals and those tragedies in which large numbers of innocents die (e.g. Dunblane, 7/7, Hillsborough), somehow awaken an elemental force in us that makes us want to share in the experience, to own a part of the tragedy, even to share in the conspiracy theories. Leave your tribute on the GMTV website, tie a rose or football scarf to the railings, buy the hastily-released CD single (surely, the modern day equivalent of a holy relic). You might also want to make a "pilgrimmage" to the site of the catastrophe.
Perhaps it is this "irrational" elemental force that makes it so difficult for the non-religious to participate in this collective phenomenon. In spite of going to Kensington Palace on the evening of Diana's funeral and in spite of having queued for hours to file past the Queen Mother's coffin when she was lying in state, after her death in 2002, I still felt like an outsider. My chief motivation, I suppose, was anthropological curiosity. I wanted to observe my fellow citizens at a moment of shared public feeling, unknown since my grandparents' day. Of course, I also admired Diana and the Queen Mother as well. What set me apart, besides this curiosity, however, was the religious and quasi-religious trappings that invariably accompany these public outpourings. In spite of our de facto secularism, in such moments, most people still reach for religious symbols and paraphernalia as a means of expressing their feelings. Even if they eschew actual hymns, prayers and religious leaders, there are the inevitable candle-lit vigils, one-minute silences, cruciform floral wreaths and so on. These seem appropriate, but also sit uncomfortably with anyone who is a casual atheist, like me, let alone a committed atheist.
Moreover, when we grieve for someone we never actually knew, or even met, be they a princess or a pop star, what are we actually mourning? Rationally speaking, unless we knew the person intimately, we are actually mourning a "media construct" a two-dimensional "icon" (note the religious connotation, once again). According to those who actually knew Michael Jackson, the "little-boy-lost" image and voice was an affectation - an affectation that quickly evaporated if you got on the wrong side of him, or got fired by him. His inappropriate behaviour toward young boys, even if it was asexual, seems to be all too easily ignored by his legions of devoted followers. And then there are the questionnable links to the Nation of Islam "mafia" group, notorious for its racism and shady business activities. But, hey, the guy recorded Thriller! (so that's all right then). This is just the first reason why the rational atheist/ humanist/ freethinker is actively distanced from public grieving rituals. An icon is not a real person and mourning an icon is not rational. What you are really mourning is what the icon meant within the realm of your own personal fantasy life, not the person themselves.
Secondly, the untimely death of a celebrity, or of innocents in an accident or terrorist outrage, invariably leads to the strange voodoo of conspiracy theories. The CIA blew up the twin towers with the connivance of the Israeli secret service, Mossad, some would have you believe. MI6 murdered Princess Diana because she had fallen pregnant to a Muslim whom she planned to marry. And so on and so forth. As rational, non-religious people prefer evidence-based, factual analysis – however pedestrian that may seem – we are further alienated by this secondary tier of unreality and hysteria. Unfortunately, gay people are unusually susceptible to all this nonsense, partly because they often enjoy the melodrama – a celeb fighting for life as they are rushed, by ambulance, to the nearest hospital – and partly because, they too, often feel "much misunderstood" and hard done by. The more effeminate the homosexual, the more likely he is to retreat into the private fantasy world of iconographic celebrity and fall prey to it's trashy death rituals and the quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo surrounding them.
As already mentioned, when Princess Diana died, the modern British media had no tried and tested formula for dealing with such an event. The wave of public shock and sadness soon passed, but the journalist johnny-come-latelies who had initially failed to anticipate the public mood in September 1997, more than made up for it over the next ten years, endlessly raking over the events of what may or may not have happened in the Pont de l'Alma Tunnel, the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital and at the French post mortem (the word "French" being a newspaper euphemism for "dodgy", of course). In Britain, Michael Jackson's death on June 25th 2009, probably means a lot less than Princess Diana's death, even within the black community, but this time, one gets the distinct impression the media are leading the public mourning, not following it – imposing a kind of mourning-by-numbers ritual on a public which has, by and large, got over the sad demise of Michael Jackson now that Andy Murray has reached the quarter finals of Wimbledon. It is in America where the already tedious Michael Jackson story may have some deeper cultural significance, not here.
But to return to the question of death rituals, why do non-believers often feel so excluded? Part of this is undoubtedly our society's reticence and awkwardness surrounding death, per se. We jibber-jabber endlessly about every sexual proclivity under the sun, but if you mention that your mother has just passed away, everyone looks at their shoes and feels embarrassed. In this regard, we have done a 180 degree turn since Victorian times, when no middle class Sunday afternoon was complete without a family sight-seeing tour of the local cemetery. Yet this reticence often leaves us non-believers unprepared for anything funereal and I feel sad when I see atheist and agnostic friends buried or cremated with Christian paraphernalia I know they would not have chosen, because no one had the wit or foresight to arrange an appropriate secular alternative. And secular alternatives do exist. The best funerals I have been to have been humanist ones, simply because the "dearly departed" is the focus of the event, rather than Jesus Christ who would otherwise muscle-in on the departed's gig. Recorded, or live music, readings, poetry, personal reminiscences and a celebration of the departed's life are not just more fitting and meaningful, they seem much more comforting to those left behind too.
For public remembrances and mourning, which all too often get hijacked by the religious and quasi-religious, perhaps the gay community's response to AIDS points the way forward for secular, non-religious people. The AIDS quilt was a stroke of genius, far more so than even the recent Atheist Bus Campaign. A quilt is not a religious symbol, yet it is ubiquitous and individual at the same time. Many of those who sadly succumbed to AIDS will have contracted the virus in bed, beneath a quilt, and ended their lives in bed, beneath another quilt, perhaps even the same quilt. Each quilt, decorated with pictures and words unique to the individual remembered, then sewn into a single giant patchwork quilt, makes the several AIDS quilts now in existence very moving, eloquent and above all, secular, public memorials. They celebrate humanity, its diversity, its tragedy and its desire to heal with love. This imaginative response is something the gay community can be genuinely proud of.
Alas, such imagination is all too rare. In July 2005, shortly after the July 7th bombings, I found myself in Kings Cross and took a walk around the makeshift public memorial garden that had sprung up outside the station. Inevitably, this had taken the form of numerous "shrines" with all manner of religious sentiment and paraphernalia, as people from all walks of life, understandably saddened and wanting to pay their respects, groped for something with enough meaning and resonance to express how they felt (hence numerous images of Jesus, the Pope, Ganesh, Buddha, as well as candles, crucifixes, New Age crystals and so on). The curse of multiculturalism was also much in evidence, with one Union Flag emblazoned with the words "Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Jew - London United" (what, no Atheists?). Evidently, the irony that it was religion that had caused 4 Muslim youths to detonate their chapati-bombs on three Tube trains and a bus, was completely lost on these well-meaning, if inept, mourners. As far as I could see, not a single atheist or secular contribution was present. Why not? Surely, the National Secular Society (NSS) had prepared for such an eventuality and could stretch to a wreath? But apparently not. In despair, I bought some card and a marker pen from WH Smith's and wrote out a few lines from John Lennon's secular "hymn" that seemed perfectly suited:
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
RIP all victims of religious terror.
We secularists/atheists/humanists/freethinkers are only just beginning to assert ourselves in the arena of public and private mourning rituals, but these are at least as important as things like "de-baptism" and civil partnerships. Rational rituals are part of our claim to freedom of expression.
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