Monday 21 January 2008

Atheists worse than terrorists?

Following on from the revelation that atheists are as bad as gays and Jews, we learn that: "
Far worse than the threat from international terrorism is the aggressive process of secularisation that has gripped our country, and most of Europe"
That's Peter Mullen, chaplain to the Stock Exchange. His article is amusingly bad tempered and contains some real gems, I'll share a few of his insights:
"it is against the law for state schools to teach the Christian faith as true...This is atheism by decree...

"...the many people who believed that homosexuality should be decriminalised never intended that this should create the proselytising Gay Liberation Movement...now the love which once dare not speak its name, shrieks at us in high camp from decorated floats along the high street.

"...the public was told by its supporters that legalised abortion would abolish the damage to women's health at the hands of the back street abortions...now 200,000 embryos every year are ripped, untimely, from the womb just because people fear that a child would interfere with their lifestyle.

"...the devout Muslim reproaches the secularised for their valueless consumerism and reckless hedonism...What do we reply? “No, thank you. We've got our own values - and if you don't like them we'll fire a salvo of condoms at you.”

"How truly Nietzsche prophesied that, after the death of God, crass utilitarianism would result in “pig philosophy”. "

I don't even understand the Muslim-condom bit, and I'm always annoyed at being accused of being a consumerist hedonist just because I'm an atheist. As the chaplain to the stock exchange you'd think he'd realise that, at least for some, Christianity appears to be (disturbingly) compatible with a selfish and greedy capitalist outlook, indeed this particular branch of evangelical Christianity is supposd to be the one part of the Anglican church that is on the rise - and one need only look over the pond to see it firmly enmeshed in a highly consumerist culture and possessed of real political power.

Conversely, I was always assured by my Gran that university would turn me communist, atheist, vegetarian, and gay - and while not all of those came true there's certainly an affinity between leftist politics and atheism that suggests that atheism is not inextricably connected to consumerism.

Finally I'm not aware of any law preventing Christianity being taught as 'true' (there should be mind you), indeed there is a legal obligation for a daily act of worship of a Christian character (a law fortunately mostly ignored) as well as schools of an explicitly Christian character. Presumably in religious education classes you aren't allowed to teach Christianity as true, just as you can't declare socialism as true in politics classes. The only area I can think he's referring to is science, where you can't teach children that creationism is true, and evolution by natural selection is false, because, you know, there's no scientific evidence for it whatever the Bible says.

3 comments:

jdc324 said...

He calls this alleged atheism by decree ("deprivation of the spiritual") a form of child abuse. I tend to think that, if anything, indoctrinating a child into a religion not of their choosing is bordering on emotional abuse of children. (At the very least, it is extremely unfair to them to restrict their world view by chaining them to a particular world view).

Anonymous said...

Oh for....worse than international terrorism? Last time I checked atheists weren't blowing things- and people- up. Sorry to state the obvious. Agree with jdc324, university is swarming with people who follow a religion because they're parents got 'em started good and young and they've never been able to question it. (They then get married aged 21 so they can have sex and are divorced before they're 30)

pj said...

I'm quite disturbed by his priorities - he seems to think that those horrible gays flaunting their homosexuality right in front of his eyes is worse than people blowing up trains killing hundreds of people.