Why Dont You Blog?

In an uncharacteristic display of wanton scepticism, the RC Church has rejected a group based around the worship of a pine tree which is claimed to show an image of the Virgin Mary’s face, according to the BBC.

The Family of the Divine Innocence was founded by a jewellery designer from Surbiton after she saw a vision of Mary in a tree. She then started channelling messages from the tree/Mary, such as demand that aborted foetuses be baptised as martyrs. However, the RC Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

was “not convinced” by the “substantial” content of the messages allegedly communicated to Mrs de Menezes.

Blimey, these messages sounded completely legit to me. I mean it’s not as if we don’t know exactly what Mary is supposed to look like, given the wide use of digital photography in the world ca 0 AD. So it would be easy for a holy designer of jewellery to recognise her instantly.

It would naturally be completely unlike the standard Rorschach-style thing every non-holy person does when they look at trees or clouds or bread. (See comment by no more hornets on GI food post here)

All the same the BBC was definitely cheating in the choice of picture on this story. It shows a picture of a Madonna and child icon, with gold leaf and attendant angels or butterflies or somethng. This picture carries the title “The tree is known locally as Our Lady of Surbiton.” Well, no. While I suspect that the tree may be called that beautifully bathetic name, I think you can be pretty confident the tree “image” looks nothing like the picture. You would definitely have to kiss your lifelong atheism goodbye if it turned out that anything looking remotely like a full colour painted medieval icon had magically appeared on a tree.

Anyway, shame on you, RC hierarchy. Once you start setting a lower bar for things to be too ludicrous to accept, who knows where it will end?

This atheist blog will boldly go where your sceptical RC selves fear to tread. Straight to the website of the Divine Innocence of course. You may think the images of El Morya look comically sickly-sweet. I defy anyone to look on this “baby Jesus with lamb” image without retching. You will be begging for the mildly sinister saving grace of the El-Morya Bin Laden visual undertones just for a bit of artistic complexity.

I couldn’t actually read the text right now. There is only so much you can face after a day’s work. So I am reduced to suggesting that if this picture epitomises the artistic flair of the designer, I ‘ll definitely know where not to go if I ever get struck with an uncharacteristic desire for jewellery.

Popularity: 17% [?]

There’s a bit of a UK theme to Pharyngula’s posts recently - what with blogs about a councillor calling for creationism to be taught in Lisburn (NI) schools and a reminder that schools are legally obliged to have a broadly Christian-themed assembly. Talk about making us look at the mote in our own eye.

It’s good to be reminded that religious idiocy is as liable to appear in the self-satisfiedly irreligious UK as in what we can too easily see as the ranting fundamentalist USA.

Most of the UK comments on the post are saying either that UK schools’ obligation to provide a religious assembly is more honoured in the breach than the observance or that having had it made them atheist anyway.

I admit to having been completely confused by a seemingly serious comment by Monado that ended with the odd words:

OTOH, I didn’t do me any harm to proclaim “I pledge allegiance to my flag and to my Queen and country” every morning.

You can say what you like about the enormous variety of forms of “assembly” in UK schools, but one thing that never happens is a “pledge of allegiance.”

I can say this with a strong certainty as my own childhood memory from living on the north American continent for a couple of years was of a 7-year-old’s shock and revulsion at having to salute a flag and repeat a pledge every morning. In fact, I used to intone my own subversive anti-mantra, confident in the knowledge that noone could understand my Bridish accent even if they had heard me.

One commenter pointed out that a much more currently serious matter - given that the effect on belief is either minimal or negative - is the rush to provide even more faith-supported “faith” schools. Ironically, these don’t share the obligation to provide broadly Christian assemblies, which would be a bit of a problem to Islamic schools and would be like telling boiling water to be hot to Catholic and Protestant schools..

I see the spread of Islamic schools as part of a general provcess of ghettoisation.

I live in an area which has recieved huge quantities of EC money for reconstruction. This area has clearly been zoned as Muslim ghetto. Many empty houses have been reclaimed as “sicial housing”. There is now a Muslim family in every one. No new families have moved into the area who are not Muslims. White, black and mixed families are just getting housed elsewhere.

Any refurcished shops have become Muslim grocery stores or callshops or cafes. Muslim community centres have been established. A fair number of the kids wait for special school buses that hint that the madrassa operates at other times than the weekend. A fair number of women in my street are veiled or never appear in the street.

Until recently, there were plenty of Muslim individuals and families in the area. They just mixed with everyone else. It was an area where people from anywhere and of any type or ethinicity could feel reasonably comfortable - at least that they wouldn’t get picked on just for who they were, which is far from the case in the rest of the city. (There were plenty of other causes for trouble. I didn’t say it was paradise. Its name was once well nigh synonymous with urban unrest.)

The chances of this natural integration happening get slimmer by the day. With blanket Muslim residence, the power of the local mosque’s influence gets ever greater.

This is not an accident. There have been deliberate local and national government policies - directed, I assume, at buying the support of “community leaders” - that have made vast amounts of public money available for concentrating muslims in a ghetto. If this boosts the power of the saudi-supplied imams, our politicians seems completely unconcerned.

And now, faith schools are another segregation tactic. I don’t think the politicians are doing this on purpose. They just want to buy a few votes. They think they are meeting the needs of diverse communities. It doesn’t occur to them that this sort of thing is giving up the goal of achieving real integration.

We are indeed “sleepwalking into segregation”, to quote Trevor Philips, if we send UK society down that mad Northern Ireland route of keeping kids from natural contact with other kids who have been taught different beliefs. That faith school worked out so well in Northern Ireland, didn’t it?

Let Muslims and Catholics and Protestants and scientologists or whatever do their indoctrination to their own time and spend their own money on it.

Wrought’s comment on Pharyngula’s post reminded everyone who lives in the UK to sign the anti-faith schools e-petition. I would like to say the same, although the track record of these e-petitions is pretty abysmal.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Good news if you’ve ever felt that your chances of achieving sainthood are slim non-existent, due to the small fact of being an atheist.

Che Guevara is regarded as a saint in part of Bolivia and is the subject of devout prayers, according to the Guardian Online.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Well, it seems that the media furore around the plight of poor, missing, Maddie McCann wont be dying down any day soon. As I have said in the past (more than once) the whole deal around this incident infuriates me. It must be interesting / infuriating / exciting lots of other people as well, because around 1/4 of all traffic to this blog last week was generated by people looking for comments about the McCanns being murderers. Not surprising really, given the massive amounts of media coverage.

First off, I am in complete agreement with the Archbishop of York that, for all intents and purposes Kate and Gerry McCann are innocent until proven guilty of murder in a court of law. Although he never said it, I will be charitable and assume that Dr Sentamu also included all other people charged with any form of crime - because that, basically, is what the law is supposed to uphold. What I may personally think about the McCanns is nothing more than my own opinion - unless by the will of Loki I am called up for Jury duty over their case (although if the Portuguese court calls me up for jury duty it would be bloody good evidence Loki existed…), nothing I think about them really matters.

The oddest thing I find about this whole saga, and I still find it odd even now, is how the presumption of innocence seems so strong towards Kate and Gerry McCann that people will go out of their way to show support for them. Total strangers, who can have had no contact with either of the McCann parents, stormed out of an Irish comedian’s act because he made jokes implying the McCann parents were murders. Foolish Patrick, if only he had stuck to jokes about race, war and so on - they are much more acceptable. People in countries across the world have put up posters “raising awareness” about missing Maddie (so obviously there is an assumption she is the last person on Earth who doesn’t need ten forms of ID to get on a plane…) and ordinary, poor, people have donated a fortune (over £1,000,000 so far) to support the parents in their round the world holiday awareness raising mission.

Not to be outdone, the rich and famous have joined in with this madness. Based on nothing more than Kate McCann’s hearfelt TV appearances (and the outpourings of their professional team of spokespeople…), Richard Branson has donated £100,000 to set up a defence fund to ensure they “have a fair hearing.” This nearly made me choke to death. Last Sunday, the BBC reported:

“Over the last few weeks Richard has been watching events as they have unfolded,” said his spokeswoman.

“There is a whole family involved here. When the McCanns made it known that under no circumstances would they touch the Find Madeleine fund, and discussed selling their house, Richard felt something had to be done.”

Sir Richard is a father himself and the most important thing for him is that a four-year-old girl is missing, the spokeswoman added.

“If he can help a little bit to take the burden off the family and extended family in this small way, then that’s all to the good.”

Wow. I never realised Sir Richard was in the business of funding suspected criminals in their defence - to ensure they get a fair trial. Are we to assume this is purely out of the goodness of his heart, and nothing to do with the fact the McCanns are middle class, Catholic, professional (white) people who have spent the last three months all over the TV and newspapers (often saying how innocent they are, so it must be true…)? If so, there is a long list of other people, the world over, who are at risk of not getting a fair trial because they cant afford £100,000 on legal fees… Where shall I start?

Not to be outdone, Cheshire-based millionaire Brian Kennedy has jumped squarely on the bandwagon as well. This time, saying “he felt compelled to help” the offer reads:

He said he was providing Kate and Gerry McCann, of Rothley, Leics, with the support of his in-house lawyer and their new spokesman, Clarence Mitchell.

Wow. They have a £100,000 defence fund and a top flight lawyer as well as a brand new “family spokesman.” They are sure to get a fair trial now, aren’t they…

Even if you leave aside, again, the issue of what an innocent family need with a “spokesman” the whole deal is madness. These otherwise intelligent and shrewd business geniuses are jumping to support what is basically two people who are suspects in a disappearance - there aren’t even any formal charges yet! - so one has to ask what is going on here.

The cynic in me (and it is a strong cynic) thinks this is nothing more than publicity stunts for the two tycoons - Virgin are going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment and, be honest, who has even heard of Brian Kennedy in the past? I am sure if the McCann’s were not worldwide media personalities now (will they be on Big Brother one day or, more ironically, “I’m a celebrity get me out of here…”?) neither of these two would have given a hoot about their legal status, nor any possible “Unfairness” over a foreign court.

However, I may be wrong. It is entirely possible that these two gentlemen are so “family orientated” that any case involving a missing or dead child, where other family members are suspects, will inspire them to equal acts of generosity. If we look through the recent news we should see boundless cases of parents accused of a crime, claiming they are innocent and then millions being thrown at them to ensure a fair trial. Sadly this is not the case.

Today, the BBC has a short article on a teenage mother who has been remanded to appear before Norwich Crown Court, charged with Causing or Allowing the Death of her daughter. Assuming she pleads innocent, will we expect to see a defence fund in her name set up? Or does Richard Branson think, because she is a teenage mother being tried in the UK, she is not worthy of his support? Will she have to suffice with legal aid because she doesn’t own a house to threaten to sell to cover her costs?

In August, the BBC had a report about a teenage girl who went missing (Natasha Coombs) which led with the heart rending:

An insurance firm manager whose only child went missing nearly a week ago, has spoken of his “unimaginable pain” at her disappearance.

Despite this, there was no fund set up to raise awareness about her status, after she was found dead on the railway line there was no fund set up to help either the family or prevent further deaths - certainly no billionaires stepped in to help and eventually when the mother could take the loss no longer, there is still no public outpouring. Cruel though it may sound, the McCanns still have each other and two other children, Gary Coombs really does have nothing left.

Searching through the news to find similar cases is, sadly, all to easy. Almost daily there is a case where a child goes missing (or dies) and a family member is under suspicion. Unfortunately lots of these are in working class or ethnic minority households. While I am not going to suggest that we, as a nation, have such deep seated double standards that this impacts the perception, it is strange.

The question I would love to ask Sir Richard or Brian is what makes the McCann parents special? Why do they deserve this support when no one else does? If I could ask the public this, I would, but I think the answer would be a lot less coherent.

[tags]Double Standards, Catholic, Catholicism, Church, Murder, Kate McCann, Gerry McCann, Maddie McCann, Sir Richard Branson, Richard Branson, Brian Kennedy, Gary Coombs, Natasha Coombs, Killing, Violence, Society, Culture, Racism, Philosophy, Legal Aid, Trial, Fair Trial, Defence Fund, Patrick Kielty,Portugal, Portuguese police, Law[/tags]

Popularity: 75% [?]

Blackwater being rather topical, I thought I’d find out something about who or what Blackwater is. In the last couple of days, CNN has been bursting with stories about the reported activities of Blackwater employees, with the shooting of Iraqi civilians being only the cherry on a large unsavoury cake.

On 2 August, James Meek, writing in The London Review of Books reviewed “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” by Jeremy Scahill, thus showing an impressive degree of prescience regarding their future news value.

Even in this privatisation-hardened age, even in the United States, the notion that military installations are a monopoly of government remains so ingrained that in 2003, when the Chilean-American arms go-between José Miguel Pizarro Ovalle first saw the real-world mercenary processing centre run by the private firm Blackwater in North Carolina, he had to reach for the imagery of Cubby Broccoli. ‘It’s a private army in the 21st century,’ he gushed to Jeremy Scahill.

The whole tone of the article refers constantly to the fantasy James Bond villain-style of the organistion

It is a private military base, spread over seven thousand acres, near the town of Moyock and the Great Dismal Swamp, with firing ranges, tactical exercise areas and an armoury (containing more than a thousand weapons, according to the Virginian-Pilot, the local newspaper, though there is no law preventing Blackwater stocking as many as it wants)

The book relates how a public sector contractor became a private sector nation-state without (much of) a landmass.

it was the al-Qaida attacks of 11 September 2001, and the subsequent US intervention in Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq, that turned the taxpayer cash flow from a dribble to a high-pressure jet of dollars. It also gave Blackwater the chance to transform itself from a company that trained government employees to shoot into a company that supplied its own, private shooters for service anywhere in the world.

Al-Qaida attacks may have been tough on the victims but they were the perfect business opportunity to Blackwater. It’s an ill wind that blows no good, as the old saying goes.

Someone needs to explain the whole philosophy of privatisation to me again. I naively assumed the general argument is that state-run companies don’t have to compete and so provide inefficient services and so on.

So it must be that the US Government started to feel that its boring old state monopoly army wasn’t customer-focussed enough. Someone thought “What this army needs is some competition.”

What a brilliant idea. Why not carry on and have dozens of customer focussed go-ahead armies, focussed on the bottom line, rather than old concepts like the nation state, which admittedly have hardly distinguished themselves in practice.

And there’s more of a plus. They could compete between themselves to carry out contracts. The cut and thrust of the marketplace needn’t just be a metaphor. They can start shooting it out over who gets to rule the next bit territory. Last company with a surviving chief executive wins. Bidding wars over contracts can become non-metaphorical.

As well as its cutting edge customer-focus, it’s not without a noble historical precedent, either. Every other minor lord could call a few hundred disposable peasants to back them up in medieval times. And they were so peaceful, weren’t they? Hey nonny no.

Companies can send any junior executives without a hope of becoming CEOs to the Middle East to take territory there. There are so many pre-modern echoes here it feels a bit like stepping into a VR Crusades museum.

Actually, I’ve just remembered that some experimental organisations like this have already been established among the civilian populations. I believe they are called gangs.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Sorry. Move to another post if you expect this to be about absurdities that the US military feeds its troops.

The BBC reports that that “High GI foods are associated with liver disease”

Boston-based researchers, writing in the journal Obesity, found mice fed starchy foods developed the disease

With an appropriately slim - nay starved - knowledge of food science, I assume that “starchy” means that carbohydrate-based foods are responsible. But a table on the BBC page shows this list of BAD “starchy” and GOOD, presumably “non-starchy” foods:

High GI foods:
Mashed potato
White bread
Chips
Some breakfast cereals (eg Cornflakes, Rice Krispies, Coco Pops)
Steamed white rice
Moderate GI foods:
Muesli (non-toasted)
Boiled potatoes
Pitta bread
Basmati rice
Honey
Wholemeal bread
Low GI foods:
Roasted salted peanuts
Rye and granary bread
Whole and skimmed milk
Spaghetti
Boiled carrots
Baked beans

These foods are nearly all carbs, apart from milk, peanuts and (possibly) beans. So what distinguishes the groupings and how could you tell where other carbs would fit into the groups? After all, if this is all true, and you want to avoid liver disease, especially for your kids, (it posits fatty liver disease as a serious future danger for today’s kids) you need to know the difference.

But “mashed” and “boiled” potatoes are in separate groups? Has the BBC never cooked food? It has enough food programmes and celeb chefs on its staff. Well let me explain.

Mashed potatoes are boiled potatoes. Mashed up. A bit like the effect of chewing up boiled potatoes. I think you could reasonably assume that a chewed portion of mashed potatoes and a chewed portion of boiled potatoes hit your stomach in the exact same condition. Chips (”French fries” to non-Brits) are slightly different, given the addition of fat, but the carb part of a chip is still pretty much what you’d get if you boiled a potato.

Steamed white rice is different from Basmati white rice? Why? Because it’s less tasty? Because it’s cheaper? Does the steaming make a difference?

Wheat breads and spaghetti are made from the same natural product. Unsurprisingly, that’s wheat. Which is mainly starch, whether or not you take the bran out. It’s certainly just the same starch if you shape it into a standard loaf or pitta shape. It even remains wheat if you throw in a few bits of grit from other grains (granary) or add a bit of semolina (spaghetti).

I can accept that the body may respond to wholemeal flour differently than to refined flour. Wholemal flour has more nutrients and roughage. However, it’s not a completely different substance. It may indeed be the case that semolina and bran and wheatgerm or chunks of other grains change the way that the body absorbs starch, possibly by slowing the rate of absorption. Or maybe by making you eat fewer carbs because you feel full with less carbs in your stomach.

So far, this would suggest that avoiding liver disease means eating fewer carbs and/or eating carb foods closer to their natural condition. These suggestions may or may not be true, but they are at least reasonable and don’t depend on a spurious carb classification.

The GI index is an odd way to categorise foods, which seems to be gaining ever more authority. I looked at these groups and could think of several alternative ways to categorise them. E.g.

Social/cultural: Group one is the carbohydrate food of the urban western poor. Group two contains the diet fillers more likely to be eaten by the better-off. (Just ignore the boiled potatoes nonsense.) Hmm, let me think. Does social class have anything to do with health?

Colour: Group one is mainly white or false-coloured (coco pops). Group 2 is generally a bit darker. Group 3 has some brightly coloured foods, if you ignore milk.

Number of vowels in their names: Gave up there, sorry. I was too idle to count them all. Feel free to take up the slack.

In any case, there’s another question hanging around. Group 2 contains muesli (non-toasted) Would toasting muesli push it up or down the food group chain?

Popularity: 37% [?]

SAN BORJA,
originally uploaded by werdugo.

This is a fantastic example of the good quality pictures HDR processing can produce - sadly, it is not a picture I took!

It captures a wide range of colours and light, making the picture stand out against the normal “digital” photography people have become used to.

The best bit is this picture does this without creating the strange, otherworldly impression that some HDR pictures have. While I am actually a fan of the hyper-real tone mapping effects on HDR pictures, they can be overused. For me, when a photo has lots of vegetation the HDR looks better if it is more natural.

If you have a flickr account, drop by this guy and tell him what you think of his pictures.

[tags]Flickr, HDR, Photos, Pictures, Photographs, Photography, High Dynamic Range, Photoshop, Photomatix, Picture Editing, Digital Photography, Photo Editing[/tags]

Popularity: 55% [?]

Almost a week ago, I mentioned the problems I have been having with BMS and how they keep phoning me every day from 01706713200. In a nutshell, Bury Marketing Sales (BMS) operate a call centre which basically tries to wear down customers of 3 (telephone provider) until they take up the “Offers.”

Reading round various websites (Google helps) and it seemed that the call centre staff had a tendency to be talkative, which was something I had never experienced. Every single time I answered the phone, all I heard was silence (with call centre background chat) and every time I missed the call, they left me a voice mail which was also about 10 - 20 seconds of silence. I found it quite strange.

On Monday, I had my daily call from 01706713200, I wasn’t too busy, so I answered it. Instead of saying “hello” though, I just accepted the call and waited for about five seconds. Instead of the normal silence, a call centre operator started talking and trying to sell me a new contract. Even when I pointed out my contract was pretty new and had 12 months left to run, he didn’t care. He basically wanted me to take out a second contract with them - when I said it made no sense to have two contracts on one phone with one sim card, he started saying about how different calls would be “routed automatically.” In the end, I tried to be a politely firm as possible but said no thanks. He finished with a “we will call you back to see if you’ve changed your mind.” Blimey.

They certainly kept to their word on this. I now get three or four calls a day. Normally about every two hours between 10am and 3pm. This time it is back to the silent treatment. When I answer there is no one there and when I don’t answer I get silent voice mails. It is like having my own pet stalker (without the fear).

Anyway, on the off chance that there is some one reading this who is in anyway related to marketing or sales: This is NOT the way to do it. At the moment, even if they were offering me the best deal in the world I would turn them down now. It has soured my opinion of 3 (who have apparently sold my details to BMS despite me explicitly saying “no” on the forms) beyond repair and there is no way I will renew my 3 contract when it runs out in two months. (I lied about the 12 months).

For those who are interested (and we get a lot of traffic here on this subject), the registered details of BMS (with Companies House) are:

Bury Marketing and Sales Ltd
47 Sefton Street
Bury
LANCASHIRE BL9 6PR
Company No. 05802107

Their contact emails are (sales) sales@bmsltd.org and (Customer Services) info@bmsltd.org - feel free to sell these addresses on…

If you are feeling aggrieved by their behaviour, you can also fax them on 0845 299 1672, but as this is not a free (or cheap rate) number, I would advise against my initial idea of faxing them mountains of crap.

I have read a few places online where people are suggesting legal action against either BMS (harassment) or 3 (breach of contract), so if you are trying either of these I would love to hear how you get on.

[tags]Bad Shop, BMS, 01706713200, Bury Marketing Sales, 3, Three, Telecoms, Cell Phone, Mobile Phone, Hutchinson 3g, Hutchinson, Bad Privacy, Breach of Contract, Privacy, Consent, Marketing, Bury, Telephone Preference Service, TPS, Rochdale, Company Information, Email Addresses, N Bhatti, Society[/tags]

Popularity: 47% [?]

The tragedy of missing Madeleine McCann seems no closer to ending than it did three months ago. During this time the media personification of the parents has alternated between saint and sinner - sometimes seemingly at random. For the most of it, in Portugal, the McCann parents have been looked at as (at best) negligent parents while (again, for most of the time) in the UK the middle class, white, professional, religious status of the parents has ensured they have been seen as saints who are undergoing a terrible ordeal. This changed recently, when for a short period the tabloids smelt more blood and in the wonderful manner of the press changed allegiances, barely stopping short of calling for their execution (mentioned previously). Given the natural order of the universe, the “truth” probably lies somewhere between the two extremes and I certainly have my own personal opinion. I should stress at this stage that my opinion is based on nothing other than gut feeling and the information made available by the press, so I have no intention of going into detail about it.

Before I go on, I would also like to point out that one of the main search terms which is driving traffic here recently is a variation on the words “Kate McCann Guilty Violent Murderer.” Given that this is generating a LOT of traffic, I can only guess at public opinion on the matter.

I digress. Risking eternal disfavour by the Great Antero Vipunen, I actually read the Sun newspaper today. I know. I am sorry. I will try not to do it again. In it, good old Archbishop John Sentamu writes a piece titled: We Must Have Faith For Maddie

Despite the overt religious tones in which the the piece is written, this is a largely secular humanist bit of writing with the basic theme being that the presumption of innocence is the bedrock of the legal system. For example, he relates this parable:

In 359AD a trial took place where a local governor, Numerius of Narbonne, was accused of raiding his own coffers. There was little proof but that didn’t stop the whispers and accusations. Still, the prosecutor was convinced the governor was guilty and said as much to the judge, the Roman Emperor Julian. At his trial, the governor denied the charges and the case was due to be dismissed.

The prosecutor was furious: “Oh, illustrious Caesar,” he raged, “If it is sufficient to deny, what hereafter will become of the guilty?” Emperor Julian’s response has been repeated in countless trials for the past 1600 years: “If it suffices to accuse, what then will become of the innocent?”

And, for once, I find my self in total agreement with the Archbishop of York. Scary.

Sadly, despite the valid comments the Archbish makes and the fact the Sun newspaper of all papers prints it, there are a few things which still make me uncomfortable about it. I agree whole heartedly that as a society we should reinforce the automatic presumption of innocence.

Now, with this in mind, have a flick through the Sun news paper (or any media output over the last, say, day) and see how many examples there are where a person accused of a crime is assumed to be guilty. It is a regular occurrence. Take poor Robert Murat for example - due to his past he was largely assumed to be guilty of anything people wanted to accuse him of. He had no support from the various churches, he had no support from rich idiots. He had to defend himself against the court of public opinion.

Not so for the McCann parents. The cynic in me is screaming this is entirely down to their perceived image as “successful” white professionals - anything which implies this part of our society can harbour evil seems to damage the national psyche. In the same edition of the Sun which calls for the return of innocent until proven guilty, OJ Simpson is pretty much called a murderer several times. Is this hypocrisy?

Anyway, enough ranting about this obvious state of the world. Dr Sentamu concludes his article with something that produced mixed emotions:

Our focus must again be upon the love of the parents for their lost daughter, for their hope that they may one day be reunited with her and for their faith that she is still alive.

These must be our watchwords — faith, hope and love. For as St Paul once wrote, in the end it is these three which remain: Faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Wonderful words, and I too hope she is alive and unharmed. The adult in me is aware that this hope is pretty much doomed to be dashed against the rocks of reality, but I would like it to be so.

Sadly, and again this is cynic in me now, the plight of poor Maddie has shown that despite all the prayer in the world (and the wishes of his representative on Earth, the Pope), the Christian deity will not intervene to save even one life, nor will s/he take action to return a lost child to an apparently grieving family. From this I can only draw one of three conclusions:

1. God exists but is evil or totally uninterested in the human race, with no intention to get involved in any of our affairs.
2. God hates Christians.
3. There is no God.

It is up to you which option you go for, but I know which one I think is true…

[tags]McCann, Madeleine, Kate, Kate McCann, Maddie McCann, Sentamu, Archbishop of York, Society, Law, Rights, Liberties, Philosophy, Robert Murat, Gerry McCann, The Sun, Tabloids, Media, UK, Culture, Civil Rights, Trial, Crime, Murder, Dr John Sentamu, Church of England, Catholics, CofE, Roman Catholic, Pope, Portugal, Police, Atheism, Humanism, Faith, Hope[/tags]

Popularity: 91% [?]

A Times post by Carol Sarler entitled “Enough religion. Stop shoving it down our throats” made the point that, although religious belief and practice have all but died out in the UK,
(”At the moment, there are in Britain more practising anglers than practising Anglicans”) religious issues are constantly in the media. In a context that assumes that we should all respect the faiths of anyone who has one.

Good manners today disallow the questioning of a man’s belief as sternly as they disallow jokes about it and to offend by either means may be, at least, a sacking offence or, at most, a matter of law. It has become a sine qua non of courteous interaction that those of us without a religious bone in our bodies must defer to those who have, and even determined antitheists are to hush our mouths lest we “cause offence” (in vain might we cry of the offence that we often feel).

Another Times blog on the same date (well, OK, it was 13 September, but there’s only so much effort you can put into keeping up with religion blogs and the Times correspondents are all too bloody reasonable to inspire rants) by Ruth Gledhill had the title “Save our Soldiers from Religion”. Talking about a North Korean complaint that religion is spreading like a cancer through its forces, Ruth Gledhill says:

Don’t delude yourself that it couldn’t happen here. Carol Sarler…. is by no means a lone voice in bewailing the manifold sins and wickedness of religion in the UK. Sarler and Dawkins should take note of the apparent truth that nothing propels a religion, in particular Christianity, to success like persecution.

(Ruth Gledhill goes on to print out an anti-religious diatribe from a supposed official North Korean military manual, linking it, in an uncharacteristically bizarre aside, to the McCanns. I am going to ignore that, out of politeness, because it doesn’t make logical sense.*)

I had to follow the link to the Open Doors Prayer Campaign for North Korea.

The goal is to have at least 1,008 prayer warriors, who each pray for ten minutes a week.

This Campaign has a website with a calendar applet that actually lets you choose the day of the week on which you will pray for North Korea. You click on a big time slot to open another set of timeslots so you can zero in on the EXACT ten minutes in which you will pray for North Korea. How modern and convenient. Plus you pick the US state you’ll be praying in. I don’t think that Korea is actually in there.

The theology underlying this is gawp-inducing.

I may have had a few snide words to say in the past about a God who will award success in pseudo-athletic events like World’s Strongest Man or such spiritually-demanding awards as the Oscars to his most fervent sycophants. (And contemptuously reject the prayers of the losers, of course.)

But, blimey, this is a God who will only intervene in the affairs of a whole nation if enough people pick out preset geographically-specific praying time-slots.

Is this a new God I haven’t heard of? It’s not the old Testament God. He’d be smiting the unbelievers and have done with it. Surely the North Koreans themselves would have to offer up their first-born sons? It can’t be the New Testament God because he doesn’t seem to do much except sacrifice his own first-born son. I could name dozens of other deities but none of them seem to have behaved like that.

It’s a new God of the Marketplace who drives a really hard bargain for his interventions. (But, it’s not Mammon or any of the gold-loving gods because this one only gets paid in prayers. )

I just don’t have the imagination to be a theist. I could never come up with the concept of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-wise etc being who would act like a bastard unless you did silly things to appease him all the time.

(*A good comment on Ruth Gledhill’s Times blog took up the point about the spread of extremist religions in other armed forces.

Speaking of soldiers and religion.
There is an ongoing religious war within all layers of the USA military too.
A war being conducted by fundamentalist Christian “true believers” with their binary “certainties” against quite literally, everyone else. Those who arent religious, those who are religious but not Christian, and those who are Christian but much more liberal and ecumenical in their outlook on things altogether.
This war has its approval, and even backing, from within high levels of the Bush administration–perhaps even the prez himself. It is also very much related to the end-time (armageddon) cultural script that mis-informs USA politics in the Middle East and USA politics altogether. The politics (or rather psychosis) of the coming “rapture”.

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