Today’s Guardian has articles at both extremes of the bell-shaped curve of sense. First, the great Charlie Brooker, scoring a goal for the good guys, in a brilliant and passionate TV guide (yes, you read that right) piece about Iraq.
However, “nature knows balance”, as people say. In the Review part of the Guardian, John Gray writes tosh on “The atheist delusion”. The introductory subhead hints at the content with “John Gray on why the ‘secular fundamentalists’ have got it all wrong”
Do I need to read on. Secular fundamentalists? Will there be reference to Dawkins as the Pope of Atheism next? I can barely bear to read this stuff to find out. But I’ll try.
(This blog is being served to you in real time.)
No. I’ve read it now. There is no point in even addressing it.
To give you a flavour, “The new evangelism mirrors the faith it rejects” is the picture caption, taken from a lazy assertion in the text.
These are the same tired old arguments based on the idea that finding a flaw in some irrelevant Dawkins’ metaphor somehow disproves everything anyone says about the non-existence of the god and about the minus value of the impact of organised religion.
For once, in this type of work, he hasn’t actually SAID Dawkins is the “Pope of Atheism” but he’s taken it for granted. He had to throw in the standard Stalin and Hitler nonsense, which certainly doesn’t bear discussion, being so dumb and mistaken, an’ all.
As an example of his arguments, it turns out, according to Gray, that
In today’s anxiety about religion, it has been forgotten that most of the faith-based violence of the past century was secular in nature”
What? It was faith-based but it was really secular? 😀 Don’t ask me what that is supposed to mean. Unless, of course, he’s veering dangerously close to the views of those of us who see religion as a tool for manipulating people for material ends…..
Read Charlie Brooker instead. Justified anger, true intelligence and a tv review all in one short column. What more could you want?
See, your problem, Heather, is that you don’t realize that Christians have the god-given right to change the meanings of English words whenever they feel like it. So faith-based = secular and dangerously ignorant = blessed.
I hadn’t realised that ideas of free will put forward by classical Greek philosophers were biblical in origin. It just goes to show how forward thinking the ancient Greeks were.
You may also be interested in: http://newhumanist.org.uk/1423
Exterminator
Ah. I understand what Gray means now. Bless him.
Alun
It’s amazing that Gray can define everything in western culture as “really” Christian isn’t it?
That link was indeed really interesting.
With regard to the Christian right to redefine English words – we must remember that Jesus himself spoke in King James English. If it was good enough for him, it should be good enough for us. If he leads us to create new meanings for established terms, who are we to question the divine prerogative?
Amen.
🙂