Why Dont You Blog?

Flattered (not to mention amused at having become one composite blog being) by getting included on the Exterminator’s ten favourite blogs, we thought we’d turn it into a meme. Without all the meme stuff of having to tag x people and name your favourite band or say who’s your most admired atheist celeb.

Our favourites are mainly atheist blogs, although we aren’t very devout atheist bloggers. I mean there’s only so much you can say about not believing in something that doesn’t exist. So, we’ve picked sites that are all-round enjoyable & wise and say more than “I’m an atheist.” Mainly, they are just really funny.

Being human, we’ve tended to pick sites that we usually agree with. Or can at least have enjoyable rational disagreement with and can learn from.

We tried to stick to ten. They are partly randomly selected, on the basis that these are the blogs that we’ve recently remembered to visit regularly. Old favourites that haven’t been brought to mind, because their little names haven’t popped up on the atheist blogroll or planet atheism or planet humanism have just got ignored. By accident. So apologies in advance if we’ve missed off some brilliant blog we just didn’t think of today. When we have come up with ten more favourites there’ll be another post. It was going to be in alphabetic order, but that seemed boring…

No More Hornets did this first, so the Exterminator is getting mentioned first. Great blog. Among his many charms, he has been consistently dryly funny on atheist silliness. Long objecting to the search for an atheist logo, he has still managed to come up with one of his own, which at least has the merit of saying Atheist.

I’M an Atheist. YOU can be one, too!
Send for your free badge NOW.

He recently ran a “student” post in an avowed attempt to match Pharyngula’s prodigious output. A fair percentage of the commenters assumed these were real kids. Some comments managed to sound so much like the atheist blogs he’d parodied a couple of weeks before that it was hard to believe these weren’t parodies too.

It is annoying to read something that is crying out for a blog and then to find that it’s been done so much better by the Exterminator.

The next one here (though the order isn’t going to imply anything) is my This-Week’s-Favourite blog, Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes. Some of Bing’s writing is so good it would make you want to amputate your own hands to stop you trying to communicate with words. I am going to resist the temptation to quote things, as it’s all in the context. All the same, I’m going to quote a use of graphics instead. Railing against Rush Limbaugh, he says:

Let me express myself in stick figure form:

A bit further on, he says

But you haven’t established the facts yet…I mean you just said so! I now need to express myself in mountain goat form:

Bah. This post is seemingly going on for ever. I’ll try to be more concise.

Black Sun Journal is intimidatingly authoritative on subjects like climate change. Magisterial, even. It feels like every word has been chosen with a magnifying glass and scalpel. Even his diagrams are brilliant. If Black Sun has written a post on some topic, there’s probably nothing left for unascended mortals to say.

Clioaudio is the same, He posts on “Ancient History, Archaeology and Archaeoastronomy through a Skeptic’s Eyes.” You can find endless surprising and fascinating things here. His writing style is very light. The words just ooze subtly over you, so sometimes you have to think again about what he’s just said.

Archaeology Magazine are running an interesting poll at the moment:
“The tombs of so many of history’s great leaders are lost.
Which other ruler would you most like to see discovered?”
That’s an easy one to answer I know which unseen tomb I’d like to find. It’s more difficult if you specify that the leader should already be dead, but I think I have an answer for that too.

I’m doing really poorly with this whole “being concise” thing. And I’m running out of ways to say “great blog, love it.” The next few are long-term favourites. I think I need a Flickr style trophy logo from now on, so I don’t need to use as many words. Here it is:

Look at the sites and you’ll see how good they are.

Hell’s Handmaiden’s blog has lots of brief enraged and completely-to-the-point rants, like this one on torture.

Spanish Inquisition doesn’t just have a great top logo - although it does - but it also has some excellent posts, like this one on Things I’m getting tired of hearing.

I’m still not making these fit in. I am going to have to start running them together and put some more detail in future blogs. Picking “ten” favourites was a demented choice. I am so much regretting it.

Skepticum , Evolutionary Middleman, Deep Thoughts are also great.

Having a quick scan for a post to feature here, I just realised that Evo-mid, like many of the blogs on this list, seems to have decided to adopt the No More Hornets Atheist logo. I hope the Exterminator doesn’t start selling atheist breakfast cereal, because that shape just wont translate well to a corn and wheat format.

Sorry, I squashed the last three up to make room for a last word for our atheist (no)godparent Nullifidian. Sadly, he’s not posting as often as he used to, he even disappeared altogether for a good while. But, when he blogs, you can bet that it’s going to be really funny, with either a unique subject or a unique personal take on something.

Popularity: 29% [?]

It gives me no pleasure to report that Channel 4 are investigating the qualifications of its TV nanny, according to Guardian.. Well, OK. I lied. Yes it does. It gives me huge pleasure.

This woman has been on television giving horrific instructions to parents about leaving babies to cry and limiting cuddle time to ten minutes a day. And so on. Fashions change drastically in how to relate to your children. The 1930s “Truby King” style neglect is the most pernicious parenting fashion ever.

New parents are scared and open to any outside influences that claim to have the answer to their difficulties. TV experts that seem to have a simple answer are an obvious resource for people who may not have friends or family who can help. Sadly, these answers are s^ite. It is dog-training for humans.

So. Wahay. It’s great to see yet another spurious telly “expert” on life have the basis of their expertise challenged. (Cf Gillian McKeith, et al.) Let’s see the TV nanny sent to her room, please.

Popularity: 14% [?]

By Belatu-Cadros, the fools at WingNut WorldNetDaily make it easy for people to ridicule them. It is like the Gods themselves have decided that the things (for want of a better word, they certainly are not people) who write for WND need to publicly humiliate themselves on a regular basis. If it were any other website, I would have assumed good faith and decided it was a massive outpouring of irony and satire. Sadly, this is WND. These raving lunatics actually believe what they write.

Today, I braved the wrath of Ambisagrus and visited the wingnuts (no, I wont link to them, sorry). Blimey, I certainly wasn’t disappointed.

In a post titled “Norris endorses, surge follows : Huckabee sees spike in online donations after column” we get a wonderful example of why people attribute mysterious effects to routine things.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a GOP presidential candidate, is experiencing a surge in campaign cash just days after Chuck Norris wrote a column in WND endorsing him.

Well, isn’t cause and effect a wonderful thing. I prayed over and over to Toutatis that this was just a jokingly ironic post, but I can’t find any evidence of it. Obviously this is why wing nuts in general struggle to appreciate what science and experiment tells them, and from this evidence it seems trying to get them to learn about (for example) evolution is a definite non-starter.

If you look through WingNutDaily, (Sorry, cracked and linked) there are numerous times that good old Chuck has endorsed him and none of these resulted in a sudden upsurge. The fact the upsurge took place a random length of time after the endorsement may be taken to imply the endorsement was irrelevant to it. That would be for normal people though, not our wing nuts.

Obviously the whole article is nothing more than a thinly veiled shill for how great Chuck really is. I suspect he may be in the process of negotiating a pay rise or something (well, its not like he has a film career to fall back on) because there is a whole list of “jokes” such as:

• “Chuck Norris has already been to Mars; that’s why there are no signs of life there.”
• “They wanted to put Chuck Norris on Mount Rushmore, but the granite wasn’t tough enough for Chuck’s beard.”
• “Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink.”
• “Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming that ‘Law & Order’ are the names of his left and right legs.”
• “Chuck Norris sleeps with a night-light because the dark is afraid of him.”
• “Superman owns a pair of Chuck Norris pajamas.”
• “There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.”
• “When Chuck Norris does push-ups, he doesn’t push himself up. He pushes the Earth down.”
• “When the boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.”

Yeah, I cant see what is funny about them either - other than how pathetic they are for an adult to be proud that 12 year olds are saying things like this about them… (When I was a lad it was similar things about people like Mr T… We grew up though).

The next post which caught my eye was a priceless (as in of no value) gem entitled “Now, God banished from Washington Monument.” This bit of idiotic nonsense begins:

The National Park Service has banished God from a key display of America’s Christian heritage in Washington, and a California pastor who regularly leads teams of visitors to see markers of the nation’s religious history wants Him restored.

First off, all I can say to this is BRILLIANT! Now we know how to banish God from places we don’t want him, we can go about getting rid of all the earthquakes, floods, droughts etc that he is supposed to be sending us. Who would have thought it would have been so trivial to banish an omnipotent, omniscient deity - all you need to do is remove an engraving. Amazing.

On further reading it seems even more trivial to get rid of the sulky, grumpy, attention seeking deity that so many nutters Christians fall down on their knees before. Some all powerful being this is, Anextiomarus would kick his ass any day of the week - and beat old Chucky baby for good measure.

It seems that all you need to do to Banish God is to move a monument with the words LAUS DEO on slightly so it is harder to read.

That is it.

It really is that simple.

What are you waiting for! With a few hours effort we can force the Christian god into a small cave somewhere and Nerull can finish him off for good. Great eh?

If you doubt me about how trivial this is:

“I could barely make out some etching looking down from that bird’s eye view, but there was simply no way I would have known what it said unless I already knew the saying was there – ‘Laus Deo,’” [Pastor Tood] DuBord [of the Lake Almanor Community Church] said.

From this pathetic start, WND continues to whine on for what seems like an eternity. They interview national parks staff to find out why this monument has been moved (pretty inconclusive but they dont let that stop them) and eventually finish with this tear jerker from Pastor Todd:

“Because there is no longer any way for the public to learn about ‘Laus Deo’ at the Washington Monument, and so as to preserve its history for future generations, I am respectfully requesting the National Park Service to do either 1, 2, or 3,…(1) Pull out the replica from the wall far enough for it to be seen on all sides; (2) Place the replica on a pole that turns, so that the public can spin it and see each side, within its glass container; (3) Place a mirror behind the replica and lean it so that people can be encouraged to see the 4th side inscription which is now hid. AND… please add some wording back on the descriptive display at its base or on the wall behind it that interprets and explains ‘Laus Deo’ so the public can both see it and understand what it means,” he wrote.

You see, failing to teach people Latin is the real reason God is banished - obviously we wont go into the centuries in which Latin was a language spoken by pagans who had never even heard of this particular god. Would Pastor Todd be so obsessive about an inscription which read Praise Saturn? (And this doesn’t even begin to open the can of worms which is the arbitrary dates the Christians have chosen for their festivals…)

I doubt it. Send Chuck round to the National Parks and he can kill everyone until they move the stone back…

By the way - if you are interested Pastor Todd is a proper nutter.

Popularity: 12% [?]

The prime suspect. (Image from 4Halloween costumes.) (Messed about with a bit. Please don’t complain it’s free advertising)

From the Diana inquest - which Marina Hyde so memorably described as being about “a conspiracy so fiendishly clever it could have been foiled by the wearing of a seatbelt” - comes a bizarre “revelation”

Spies apparently bent on murder do not just specifically pick a time and place for their skullduggery when the world’s paparazzi is on the spot and primed for some momentous event. They also make themselves inconspicuous by dressing in a style that would raise an eyebrow at a fancy dress parade.

… in the Alma tunnel Jacques Morel trod on the foot of a man wearing pointy western boots. He says he spoke to Mohammed Al Fayed hours after the crash and when he told him this, the Harrods owner said: “I knew they were there. They’re the bastards that did it, the secret service.”
For many in the court it was the first time they had learnt you could tell a spy by his boots, though Mr Al Fayed was supplied with other descriptive details.
The suspected agent with sore toes was muscular and had a moustache like Salvador Dali’s, or a beer drinker in Ireland. (from the BBC website)

I was going to be uncharitable about Mohammed Al Fayed’s grasp on reality but the BBC report says that he himself has ‘no memory’ of this telephone conversation.

This bizarre nonsense comes straight from a Mr Morel. Surprisingly, ahem, he has written a book about the deaths…. (This book is reportedly ‘based in part on a secret “explosive” dossier,’ according to the BBC again.)

Oh yes, and…

He fears for his family’s safety because of what he knows. He wants to move to a Caribbean island

Well, don’t we all? I myself can provide the real answer to the entire Diana death “mystery” so easily. I am, naturally, waiting for the Caribbean hideaway to materialise before I divulge the whole cunning plot.

But , just to whet the appetite of the big publishers - Basically, a secret cabal of evil clowns were in one of those circus cars that dozens of people can fit in. They jumped out in the tunnel, sprayed alcohol into the face of the driver from their comedy flowers then pulled off the steering wheel and the car turned into incoming traffic. The assassin clowns all got back in their circus car and disappeared in a puff of red smoke.

One was too slow, because his comedy boots got stood on by Mr Morel (isn’t that a mushroom?) so he got spotted but he managed to grab a trapeze that had been rigged in the tunnel roof for the getaway and swung out of the tunnel just before the flashbulbs popped.

Pretty convincing hey? Beats the crap out of any of the popular conspiracy theories anyway.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Sky High Chimpanzee,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

Just keeping to my word, previously, and trying to lighten up the blog with pictures.

I know this is also in the photostream to the right here, but I don’t think many people click on those images.

Generally, I have quite mixed opinions about Zoos. I agree they can provide a wonderful service and maintain populations of animals which may otherwise go extinct, and more importantly they open access to the wonders of the animal kingdom to people who would, otherwise, never get to see them.

However, I often think the animals in the zoo never seem really happy. (I am aware this is a massive anthropomorphication, but so what.)

Popularity: 10% [?]

This is just a quick aside to follow up my previous post, I have read a few more comments on Simon Jenkins’ article and they are so painfully stupid - yet worryingly representative of public thought - that I am going to have to blog about them again soon. If you don’t believe me about the idiots, read the times online article.

Popularity: 10% [?]

At the risk of being seen as a Times Online Groupie, I find myself wanting to comment (and draw attention) to yet another excellent post there. In an excellent article titled “The biggest threat to the West lies within itself, not with Islam,” Simon Jenkins examines some of the myths and stupid arguments being thrown around in international relations today.

In a nutshell, Mr Jenkins takes the current ideas about “Islam” being out to destroy the West to task and exposes some of the nonsense being thrown around the corridors of power (and regurgitated by people to stupid to know any better, and sadly by people who do know better but are too bad to do better). Mr Jenkins contrasts the recent letter to the Pope by 138 Muslim leaders with correspondence in the 9th century, before the fall of Byzantium. Quite rightly, he points out that this letter is not the ideal peace offering that some try to make it out to be, but in reality is an acceptance of the false war between Christianity and Islam - a war which only really exists in the minds of the insane fundamentalists on both sides trying to bring around the end of the world. For example, Mr Jenkins comments on the implication that if Islam and Christiantity do not stand together there will be war:

Such an implication is grandiose, dangerous and wrong. It implies that the Muslim world has a politico-military power that is in some sense equal and opposite to that of Christianity. This elevates the so-called jihadist tendency within Islam to a status that it does not have and should never think it has. It suggests Islam has sufficient power to confront and possibly undermine the West. It implies a balance of power parallel with a balance of theological interpretation.

Such an implication feeds a no less dangerous paranoia in the West. By stating that the “survival of the world” might turn on a struggle between Islam and Christianity, the letter reinforces the militarist fantasies of neoconservatives who see the world as just such a struggle. It is a paranoia which, since 9/11, has driven the “war on terror” and fomented the tension and antagonism to the West to which the scholars’ letter is so vacuous a response.

It is worrying that the idea there is an Islamic war against the “west” is so prevalent in modern society. People have, through fault or design, conflated the idea that buildings are western civilisation and that “our” society is so fragile the loss of lives and property will see the end of it. It defies any amount of understanding I possess, that people who are so wedded to western society they would happily bomb other nations back into the stone age to defend it are so unaware of what a society is that they will equally dismantle every positive aspect of it at the same time.

Unfortunately this is a collective madness which seems to have overcome the entire western world. The neocons and hawks in various administrations have successfully convinced the public that “Islam” is trying to destroy the west and make our “free, democratic nations” into scared, theocracies with no civil liberties. The real act of evil madness comes in the chosen method with which people defend said “free democracies.” We seem to defend our freedom by removing it. We protect our liberties by sacrificing them.

Madness.

Simon continues:

The chief threat to world security at present lies in the capacity of tiny groups of political Islamists to goad the West into a rolling military retaliation. Extremists on each side feed off the others’ frenzied scenarios so as to garner money and political support for their respective armies of the night. Each sees the other as a cosmic menace and abandons communal tolerance and peaceful diplomacy to counter it. The authors of this letter would be better employed vetting their own blood-curdling mullahs and madrasahs than in writing platitudes to the Pope.

Again, spot on. There is no denying the fact that there are evil, hate filled Islamic religious leaders who seek to destroy what they see as decadent western civilisation. The fact is, they can not destroy it. Freedom and democracy are stronger forces than hatred. People may die, but surely the concept and the liberty will live on. If killing people were enough to stifle a democracy, then the United States would still be part of the British Empire. Even if the minority of radical mullahs were able to kill a hundred people each, “western civilisation” would remain unscathed. The ideas born in the French and American revolutions, in the renaissance and in the subsequent years are robust enough to live on. They are attractive enough that people will gravitate towards them - to such an extent that it requires government oppression to prevent this happening.

Sadly, the extremists in the west are supplying that government oppression. Islam can never destroy the west, but the west can.

Simon Jenkins’ article is so well written and (IMHO) correct, I could end up quoting every paragraph here - and I dont want to do that, because I need to save space to savage some of the comments. I will restrain myself to one more quote from the original:

There may be young Muslims and their teachers with a vested interest in talking up such a war. There are those in the West with the same interest, such as the booming armaments and security industries with their think tanks and lobbyists.

Such vested interests need to be exposed as such. To portray Islam as a whole as a concerted threat to western security, and to imply that the West’s democratic institutions and freedoms are not proof against that threat, is absurd and close to treason. Then to demand that western freedoms be dismantled and stored away for the duration of a “war on terror” is to wave the flag of surrender.

This defeatism led the American Congress to allow its president to authorise torture and detention without trial in what Senator Robert Byrd called “the slow unravelling of the people’s liberties”. It enabled a British Home Office to curb free speech and habeas corpus. It arms police, fortifies buildings and impedes the free movement of citizens. It makes every Christian suspicious of every Muslim.

…

When Thomas Paine told America that “we have it in our power to begin the world over again”, he meant by example, not military conquest. His utopianism was a brave, confident and open-hearted one. That of his successors is sinking into the opposite, a fearful, besieged, security-obsessed wimpishness, in which Muslims rightly feel threatened by the arbitrary violence of the American right.

That, to me, sums it up perfectly. Now I can move on to the entertainment and the idiocy which lives in the comments (it is interesting how so many people in New Zealand or Australia feel qualified to pass comment on the effects of recent immigration policies in western Europe. Either they are recent expats which makes it very hypocritical or they are simply feeding off media lies and confusion…). I will begin with this bit of confused nonsense:

You ar wrong Mr Chui.[a previous commenter] Not conservative perversity, but liberal ineptitude of its perception of human rights. People of colour can do no wrong. Its the white man with their skills and their willingness to develop the world that are the monsters. The tragedy of Africa, notably Zimbabwe, is the product of its near non existent morals on human freedoms. Liberalism is so ensconced with its directionless policies on fundamental human rights to the point that it even denies the right of the parent to raise his/her family in the manner she/he deems fit.!! Same applies to religious bodies. The London Tube bombings are the direct result of this so called liberal ineptitude. There is no democracy . They pass laws dictating to me how to run and manage my tiny little country pub in the heart of the British country side. That’s Liberal democracy which we are forced to accept. Bruce B, Sutton, UK

This typifies “middle Englands” attitudes towards human rights - a term often spat out with hatred and the implication that it means the persons rights are being downtrodden. This is, of course, nonsense but it remains a popular idea. Sadly, few people spend more than a moment following their own ideas to their logical conclusions and, as a result, end up with (for example) the idea that a parent’s rights outweigh the rights of anyone else in their family. Bruce obviously has issues with legislation on how he can run his pub so I can only assume he wants to put his staff and customers health and safety at risk.

American readers are always a good source of religious nonsense:

Mr. Jenkins is half correct in a walking backwards sort of way. The threat to the West is twofold, first multiculturalism and run amok secularism has destroyed the nourishing root of Judeo-Christian morality from whence the West draws its strength. So once weakened Islam like an opportunistic infection can bring down this once mighty oak. It is delusional to look at the empty husk of our dying Democracies and think they are anything as robust as they were even 50 years ago. Too many writers like Oriana Fallacia, Robert Spencer and a host of others have been crying for the West to wake up, while men like Mr. Jenkins sing lullabies. Paul T, Phoenix, USA Arizona

It is sad that Paul T has such a poor understanding about what “democracy” means. It has nothing to do with Judeo-Christian morality and it certainly can not be “weakened” by secularism. The only threat to democracy in the west is the rampant violation of civil liberties and the massive growth of a “policed state.” Paul T obviously skipped what ever lessons Americans teach politics, philosophy and social studies in.

Next up is a lesson in logical fallacies. This is a comment which is nothing more than ad hominem attacks and a false appeal to ridicule:

There’s always some nitwit, some appeaser around to say “We’re not really involved in a global conflict.” We had Jimmie Carter to refer to the West’s “inordinate fear of Communism,” and now we have Simon Jenkins to pour his fatuous platitudes all over the Moslem jihad. That proves how cosmopolitan, how broadminded he is — he never takes offense when visiously attacked. I guess there’s no need to worry about Islam. “Jihad” is a peaceful word that just means “struggle” — just like “Mein Kampf.” Larry Eubank, Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A.

There isn’t any point in me addressing the points made here - because there aren’t any. Larry is simply wrong and poorly educated.

If you have the time, and can stand the idiocy, read the comments on Simon Jenkins’ post. They show how people can be very, very wrong. If you are short on time, just read Simon’s post - it shows how sometimes someone can get it very, very right.

Popularity: 16% [?]

In an amazing piece of pseudo-history, Worldnet daily is bizarrely claiming the Ku Klux Klan as an invention of the Democrats, set up to target Republicans, no less. (With an implicit suggestion that this is where Democratic politics really lead, in sharp contrast to Republicans’ tolerance and diversity.) Snurfle. Choke on your coffee. You think I’m joking?

I am going to quote WND. (Sorry.) Richard Barton is the author of:

….”Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White,” which … that not only did the Democrats work hand-in-glove with the Ku Klux Klan for generations, they started the KKK and endorsed its mayhem.
“Of all forms of violent intimidation, lynchings were by far the most effective,” Barton said in his book. “Republicans often led the efforts to pass federal anti-lynching laws and their platforms consistently called for a ban on lynching. Democrats successfully blocked those bills and their platforms never did condemn lynchings.”

Now, I am pretty certain that enough Democrats were implicated in the activities of the KKK. However, there is something that could politely be called “disingenuous” in the WND attempt to whitewash the Republican’s major role. Indeed to present the Republicans a dogged fighters against the KKK hamstrung by Democratic opposition. (It could less politely be called lots of things, such as “barking mad”, “lying” and so on. For any WND readers who’ve strayed here by the grace of Google, I’ll have to admit “Yes, that is in fact what I mean. I was using the word disingenuous, because I was pretty sure you wouldn’t know what it meant.”)

All the same, I do recognise there has been something of great leap forward in the US. At least, the actions of the KKK must now be recognised as so universally repellent that you can really harm your political opponents by making spurious attributions of relation to them.

I found some interesting observations on Christian Ethics Today about Nicholas Barton whose spreading this crap.

Barton has become the guru of Religious Right antiseparationism.

(referring to the separation of church and state)

A careful look at that material, however, shows that “Mythbuilders” would describe it more accurately than “Wallbuilders,” for the essence of his message rests on eight historical fallacies regarding the Constitution

Basically, they are politely saying he’s a far-right nutjob and that Wallbuilders is a pseudo history site with anti-separation of church and state agenda…. This point of view is put rather more forcefully on Right Wing Watch blog, where a Sept 19 post said

A Right-Wing Three-Fer
Right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton will be addressing the Regent Law School chapter of the Federalist Society….

In fact, now I’ve got to Right Wing Watch, I see that there’s an much more elegant deconstruction of this ludicrous David Barton story than I can manage. (Because I’m too busy laughing at the effrontery of it)

Popularity: 12% [?]

In the times recently, there was a piece on the boss of the army, General Dannatt claiming more should be done to equip soldiers for a life after death:

“In my business, asking people to risk their lives is part of the job, but doing so without giving them the chance to understand that there is a life after death is something of a betrayal,” he said.

Now, it goes without saying that, while soldiers who think death will give them a wonderful afterlife (where have I heard this before) may well fight better, it is worrying that the Chief of the General Staff is becoming concerned about the soldiers’ afterlives. Does he anticipate lots of them dying? Is he revving up for a jihad holy war in Iran? Is he trying to soften the blow when hundreds of body bags come home - at least the families can think their loved ones are in a better place (along with all the goldfish, cats, dogs, budgies, etc…)?

Personally, I hope not and I do actually think this is just an example of how evangelical Christians are fundamentally idiots. Dannatt continues:

“I think there is very much an obligation on . . . a Christian leader to include a spiritual dimension into his people’s preparations for operations, and the general conduct of their lives,” he said. “Qualities and core values are fine as a universally acceptable moral baseline for leadership, but the unique life, death, resurrection and promises of Christ provide that spiritual opportunity that I believe takes the privilege of leadership to another level.”

Which pretty much proves my point. Well spoken idiocy is still idiocy. Moving on from his witterings though, the comments are where the real stupid burns away. As you can imagine, the words of a rightwing, Christian soldier appeal to all the baser instincts of the Times’ readership. This leads to comments like:

Would that we have a world free of all violence: until then, our armed forces serve to protect US. Forget the rights and wrongs of Afghanistan or Iraq: our forces are there whether they like it or not and so THEY at least deserve our full support. Why should not a general offer spiritual support and advice? Oh, and does God exist? Or can anyone here prove that they exist rather than being a figment of my imagination? Paul R. Kent

Would that I could meet Paul R from Kent and see if his imagination makes his nose hurt. I agree 100% that our forces deserve our full support, but I have to question what value support they are getting from being told that death is great and a wonderful afterlife awaits them as long as they adhere to Creed X.

Gen Dannat is not a war Monger, nor a fanatic, If he were he’d be keeping our Boys out there instead he’s going against Govt Policy & trying to get them back home to their families And trying to get them better equipped and paid so if there is a need to fight they are More likely to survive than they are now. As for his Christianity, look around you…this country could certainly do with getting back to it’s traditional British Christian based Family Roots. Adrian Peirson, Bedford, Awakening Britain

Wow. It is that special kind of history again. “This country” (assuming Mr Peirson means the Great Britain) has no “traditional British Christian based Family Roots.” Giving them capital letters doesn’t change anything. Traditionally the British peoples are worshippers of dead religions with a family and social structure unrecognisable today. If he means that weird form of “traditional” which has an arbitrary start date then when is it? Does he mean the Catholic traditions, Anglican traditions? Both? Neither?

When people write idiotic things like this, they tend to mean the Victorian traditions which are far from traditional (yet have captured the public imagination as “real history” - especially in Scotland, Wales and Ireland). Any one who harks for a return to “Victorian” values is certifiably insane.

True, religion (or rather our response to God) is a personal matter, but it is clearly not a private matter, as Jesus clearly demonstrated by his final words to the disciples to ” go and make disciples of all nations… ” So, General Dannet’s comments are entirely understandable. Jesus requires a very personal decision from every single one of us to either believe what He said or choose not to believe what He said. General Dannet is simply wanting to ensure that each soldier does infact know what Jesus said so they can make that very personal choice for themselves prior to going into battle because after death, if Jesus’ words are true ,as in His parable of the rich man amd lazarus ..it will definitely be too late to change ones mind. rebecca pluke, hemingford grey,

Hmm. I assume Rebecca thinks every soldier in Britain managed to avoid the compulsory religious education lessons and a quick chat from Gen Dannatt will rectify their ignorance. Hmmm. Still, her nonsense is mild compared to this bit of drivel:

The Victorian British Army would have understood where General Dannatt was coming from. The British nation and it’s great army then was a God fearing nation who honoured Jesus Christ and respected the Bible. God’s favour on England from the reformation to the second world war is obvious, God made us great. Now we have turned away from christianity and become weaker and embraced other religions and no religion. Queen Victoria said….The secret of Britain’s greatness is the Holy Bible. Only the blood of Jesus Christ can wash away sin and make us fit for heaven. Nothing else has the power to do this. Therefore British soldiers and us dying outside of Christ have no hope. Philip, Dorset, England

The only positive thing I can take from this is that is proves my point about how people (idiots) think anything Victorian is traditional and good. For those outside the UK, Dorset is very rural with all that implies about peoples intelligence. Philip has obviously been reading too many novels about Sharpe et al., to realise that the “God Fearing” nation under Queen Victoria was very dissimilar to what he describes here. The whole “Gods Favour” thing is so stupid it burns. Philip also seems to assume Queen Victoria was so knowledgeable that everything she says has divine authority - Tutatis forbid she say something stupid or proven wrong… As for the blood of Jesus Christ… Does this mean that EVERYONE who died before Jesus went to hell? What sort of sacrifice was it for Jesus to make when he was actually giving up the mortal realm to go home? It is a bit like me claiming leaving work at the end of the day is the ultimate sacrifice (the opposite is true).

The stupid, painful as it is, continues:

Jesus, the author of the Christian Faith said “Except a man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God”. Dying on the battlefield does not guarantee a place in heaven. Obeying Jesus’ commandments does. Brian Pennington, Launceston, Tasmania

Actually, I would have thought the killing part of being on a battlefield makes it hard to obey Jesus. Did he have some sort of get out clause which allows a secular authority to override his dads main commandments? Is the override only allowed for killing (which could explain why homosexuals are still persecuted)? Also, more obviously, where can I find this book called “the Christian Faith” which Jesus wrote? I mean, he didn’t even have the courtesy to write the bible…

From the depths of idiocy came this nonsense: (emphasis mine)

At one time it was gays who had to stay in the closet - now it’s anyone with a faith that is serious enough that they want others to think about the big issues of life too. But good for General Sir Richard Dannatt in raising his head above the parapet by daring to suggest that believers have as much right to speak about their faith as atheists do about theirs. The snipers will no doubt attack him for what they will dub his outrageous involvement of personal views in a public office, for they always manage to think that their atheistic, secular worldviews are soemhow neutral in a way that the General’s aren’t. But never mind the snipers, Sir Richard. Thank God for a man who faces up to the realities of life and death! Mike Beaumont, Oxford, UK

Blimey. Since when have the bloody “faithful” shut up talking about their belief? All the major newspapers have religious correspondents. All have daily references to God and the Christian faith. The rest of the imagined oppression (a Christian speciality…) is pure drivel. A secular worldview is, almost by definition, more neutral than Dannatts….

Fortunately it is not all bad - and I have had my fill of nutters, if you want to read more go to the Times article itself - for balance (does this count as “Both Sides?”) we have:

Soldiers beware - your military leader believes there is something good waiting for you after death! Let’s hope operational planning is not based on this delusion. ken Jones, Dundee, UK

and

It’s bad enough having religious nutters on the other side let alone your own. TomS, Essex, UK

Strikes me, as that says it all.

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The science shows that culling badgers would spread, not limit the spread of cattle TB, according to Roy Hattersley, writing in the Guardian today

.. the assumption that culling will reduce the incidence of the disease is wrong. Indeed, unless we brush aside the work of Britain’s most distinguished conservation scientists, we have to conclude that the sort of cull proposed by Sir David King, the government’s chief scientific adviser, will do more harm than good.

Well said, Roy. He points out that killing badgers will only placate the influential National Farmers’ Union leaders who have either no rational idea what to do or who see more effective responses as too costly.

The argument is that limited killing of badgers would be counter-productive. David McDonald of Oxford University calculated that a cull in Cornwall - the central focus - would cut the TB incidence there by 20% but increase the level outside the cull area by 27%.

An unlimited culling of badgers would surely be an environmental crime of immense proprtions. No government needs to placate farmers that badly. Can’t we just pay them to leave the badgers alone or to vaccinate their cattle?

Roy Hattersley, points out that, even if the government doesn’t follow the simple moral path and refuse the cull, there would be a serious political fallout.

there is no doubt that, should ministers decide to follow his (the chief scientist’s) advice, they would unleash a countrywide campaign that would make the pro-hunting protesters seem half-hearted.

Well, I’m not holding my breath on the government’s taking an ethical stance on this. However, as a distinguished old-Labour politician, Hattersley is probably pretty shrewd when it comes to judging what might have influence on the Department of the Environment. Let’s hope that a government keen to paint itself as green doesn’t miss his message.

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