Daily Archives: Sun, 17 June, 2007

Believing in Unbelievers

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The latest entry from the Department of Missing the Point Completely is by Fr. Robert J. Carr and titled “Making Fool’s For Satan.” (Big hat tip to the Friendly Atheist)

In a nutshell, Father Carr has decided to rant against the Blasphemy Challenge but obviously has not been guided by his invisible friend as he does so. As a result, he not only misses the point about the challenge, but seems to get a bit confused over the whole issue of belief and what the Christian church teaches (or at least did when I went to school). Friendly Atheist has done an excellent job of fisking the (ahem) article so I wont do that here, but there are a couple of points I want to pick up on. Continue reading →

Landlords – Public Enemy Number 1

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Again, this is a long, non-Atheist, rant. If you are reading on the magnificent Planet Atheism, or have come to the blog looking for philosophical insights into religion, please feel free to skip.

Depending on which sections of the UK media you have access to, you could be mistaken for thinking that, recently, buy to let landlords are the Earthly incarnation of evil itself and that any day now George Bush will declare war on them. As always, this is especially prevalent in the “left” media (what remains of it) but it has echoes all over. An example, is this weeks “Guardian Money” pages which has a massive spread about the evils of Buy-To-Let, along with a page of letters from readers who also think landlords are the definition of scum. The joys of the internet mean you can now read this online.

Highrise StockholmPersonally, I think it is all nonsense. I am pleased about this, as I have noticed a slight left-wing tendency in my previous posts, so hopefully this will bring me back to the centre 😀 .

Blocks of Flats in StockholmThe basic premise, in this article anyway, is that buy-to-let landlords have little regard for the local “community” and allow their properties to fall into disrepair. The secondary premise, and the main reason people hate buy-to-let-landlords in general, is that people who can afford to buy multiple houses are pushing house prices up, beyond the reach of any first time buyer. This is (sort of) supported by the data which shows the average UK house price is now around seven to nine times the average UK salary.

Before I attack some of the nonsense in these premises, I must declare an interest. I own a house which is rented out. I bought the house knowing I was unlikely to live in it for many a year and I still don’t live in it. I don’t even live in the same country the house is in. As a result, I do worry that legislation which affects buy to let landlords will affect me, and this gives me a fairly strong opinion – I may not be fully objective…

Continue reading →

Judge a book by its cover?

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Thanks to Nullifidian’s tumblelog for this link. The Zeitgeist movie is a piece of video linking religious myths to their sources in astrology. It’s mostly brilliant and thought-provoking.

Also, by way of a comment on Nullifidian’s recent very well-observed post about the different US and UK dust jackets on the same atheist books (somehow, I can’t even find a commenting facility any more), there must also be some mileage in the choice of font/typeface – serif in the UK, non-serif in the US.

I could start rambling on about what this suggests the jacket designers are implying about the books’ content- measured and authoritative classical philosophy in the UK serif book jackets; punchy no-nonsense debunking in the US sans serif.

Instead, I will just take off my conceptual hat to someone who actually reads serious philosophical works on public transport (i.e. Nullifidian) rather than listening to the same worn-out mp3 playlist ad infinitum and reading the free bus paper or escapist sci-fi pulp (i.e. me).

[tags]astrology, book, nullifidian, rationalist, zeitgeist, philosophy, society, raves, God Delusion[/tags]