Sarat's Pad, Home of PANTHER (just call me Schroedinger's cat)

Violins stage left: it's what my grand-parents would have wanted me to do.

Thus an old Labour man speaks to Blair concerning the assault on my spinal fusion and the silencing of publicity thereon.

Violins

My grandfather John Howard, Fabian, socialist, atheist.

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Welcome to Sarat's Pad, or possibly the Website of Cantilip za-fenan. Ninotchka's Place will also do. Ninotchka, you may recall, was a rather anal, uptight little comrade who went to Paris and turned into a human being. You could call me the girl in the red dress, the one that stays up by itself.

'God is love' is an abstract proposition not susceptible of literal interpretation. It also central to the CofE's summary of what it means to be a Christian

I do not believe in a separate entity 'God'. I believe Dante's 'Love that moves the sun and the other stars', the Light attested to by mystics, is a question of physics.

It is not therefore far-fetched to expect the CofE to uphold this proposition.

Nor, for that matter, is it far-fetched, post Sprong and Honest to God, to expect it to be able to speak to people about concepts of God that do not relate to an old guy in the sky.

'This Jesus must die!' Ditching the theology of love

As an abstract proposition it is possible to make up stories around it and indeed one may think that some guys known as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John made up some particularly famous stories to get the point across.

What is not possible unless you have a brain made of stewed ape-shit (and it is an unfortunate facet of the issues at stake here that so many of devout whom we are supposed to revere have exactly that) is to claim that the truth of the proposition 'God is love' rests on the truth of the stories illustrating it, that to doubt the stories is to disprove the proposition.

Self-realization is or is not self-forgetting. Much rests on that. You are not self-forgetting by definition if you are forcing others to obey you.

Self-forgetting is graciousness, as in beauty of manner. Grace is paramountly not forcing oneself on others other than to restrain them from forcing themselves on others.

Manners makyth man

“What is he doing?” asked the Cile
“Frankly, sir,” said Bris, “I haven’t a clue. I only know it’s the other stuff.”
“Perhaps,” said the Cile, “Ciletij should examine a higher plane of consciousness.”
Bris wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
“They keep it so low-key it’s invisible. Except somehow you know it is all that matters.”
Sarat lit the eternal flame.
“OK, guys, this is the shrine.”
The Matter of Kadun (inner and eso): life, death, eternity and Gaia

The crucial thing about the other stuff is that it does NOT impinge on the lives and minds of the mass of people unless they want it to. All that is expected of the citizens of Fidub is that they more or less love one another.

And is what true? and is what true?

To act from principles, for instance loving one's neighbour as oneself, which to you are grounded in beliefs others may find questionable is not to inflict those questionable beliefs on them. People are and have to be free to go wherever they might be going. Society's business is limited to demanding they behave tolerably to each other and ensuring they are free to travel.

If you set a good enough example, you may find they are sufficiently interested in where you're coming from to want to go there too.

'Judge not that ye be not judged'

Liberty is a function of love. Control is a function of self-will. Gentlemen, of your courtesy (they are usually male if not gentlemen), back off. Your behaviour is loutish and uncivil, intellectual thuggery and self-aggrandisement.

1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

1 Corinthians 13 for an Establishment gone mad

We are being fed a reduction of Christianity to fascism, the refusal to acknowledge the polarity in the thought of Christian nations between love and power, the privileging of faith regardless of what that faith entails, contempt for unbelief, regardless of what that unbelief entails. Science and learning are as ever the enemies, for they take us beyond the arbitrary ceilings on thought of dogma to the world of physics, to other readings of Jesus as a Kabbalist, a Sufi, Brahma, the false identification of the enemies of the Church with the enemies of Jesus.

Galatians 5:14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself

I do not strike myself as the first person whose thought tends to the direction that the idea is greater than the dogma - and that love trumps all other commandments. If there is no love, it goes.

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Mark 12:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Jesus understood that people who claim to love God will refuse love to their fellow-humans on the grounds that is the will of God unless they are also clearly instructed that the refusal of love to their fellow-humans isn't on the menu.

The working of love in erasing the incessant demands of the self is entirely clear to most normal people, anyone who has nursed a sick child or an aged relative, forgotten the misdeeds of an erring friend or partner; that which may in certain states of consciousness nag and niggle simply ceases to matter, becomes absent, no longer exists.

How faith achieves this is not similarly clear. What is clear is that what people of faith decide is the will of God may be an enshrining as divine will of those incessant demands, an insistence they alone matter.

Dear Pope Benedict, you wish to destroy Christianity?

[29] After enjoying some time in conversation with Socrates, he went forward with my guide into a grove situated above the thickets where all the sages of antiquity seemed to be tasting sweet repose.

[30] I saw a man of gentle, simple countenance, who seemed to me to be about thirty-five years old. From afar he cast compassionate glances on these piles of whitened bones, across which I had had to pass to reach the sages' abode. I was astonished to find his feet swollen and bleeding, his hands likewise, his side pierced, and his ribs flayed with whip cuts. " Good Heavens! " I said to him, " is it possible for a just man, a sage, to be in this state? I have just seen one who was treated in a very hateful way, but there is no comparison between his torture and yours. Wicked priests and wicked judges poisoned him; is it by priests anhd judges that you have been so cruelly assassinated? "

[31] He answered with much courtesy--"Yes."

[32] "And who were these monsters? "

[33] "They were hypocrites."

[34] "Ah! that says everything; I understand by this single word that they must have condemned you to death. Had you then proved to them, as Socrates did, that the Moon was not a goddess, and that Mercury was not a god? "

[35] "No, these planets were not in question. My compatriots did not know at all what a planet is; they were all arrogant ignoramuses. Their superstitions were quite different from those of the Greeks."

[36] "You wanted to teach them a new religion, then? "

[37] "Not at all; I said to them simply--' Love God with all your heart and your fellow-creature as yourself, for that is man's whole duty.' Judge if this precept is not as old as the universe; judge if I brought them a new religion. I did not stop telling them that I had come not to destroy the law butt to fulfill it; I had observed all their rites; circumcised as they all were, baptized as were the most zealous among them, like them I paid the Corban; I observed the Passover as they did, eating standing up a lamb cooked with lettuces. I and my friends went to pray in the temple; my friends even frequented this temple after my death; in a word, I fulfilled all their laws without a single exception."

[38] "What! these wretches could not even reproach you with serving from their laws? "

[39] "No, without a doubt."

[40] "Why then did they put you in the condition in which I now see you? "

[41] "What do you expect me to say! they were very arrogant and selfish. They saw that I knew them; they knew that I was making the citizens acquainted with them; they were the stronger; they took away my life: and people like them will always do as much, if they can, to whoever does them too much justice.'' . . .

[42] " You therefore contributed in no way by your speeches, badly reported, badly interpreted, to these frightful piles of bones which I saw on my road in coming to consult you? "

[43] "It is with horror only that I have seen those who have made themselves guilty of these murders."

[44] " And these monuments of power and wealth, of pride and avarice, these treasures, these ornaments, these signs of grandeur, which I have seen piled up on the road while I was seeking wisdom, do they come from you? "

[45] "That is impossible; I and my people lived in poverty and meanness: my grandeur was in virtue only."

[46] I was about to beg him to be so good as to tell me just who he was. My guide warned me to do nothing of the sort. He told me that I was not made to understand these sublime mysteries. Only did I conjure him to tell me in what true religion consisted. [47] "Have I not already told you? Love God and your fellow-creature as yourself."

Voltaire and Jesus

1 My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. 2 For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; 3 And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: 4 Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts? 5 Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him? 6 But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats? 7 Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?
8 If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well: 9 But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors. 10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. 11 For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. 13 For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.

14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, 16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? 17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone

James 2

With Paine's Deism (and Paine, like Blake, was, though in a different way, a deeply religious man) Blake had no sympathy. "Orthodox religion," said Paine to Blake, "is a law and a lie to all minds." "The religion of Jesus," replied Blake, "is a perfect law of liberty."

Life of William Blake, p. 48

It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian church sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand: the statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus; the deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints; the Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything; the church became as crowded with one, as the Pantheon had been with the other, and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient Mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.

Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practised was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years before; by the Quakers since; and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.

Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason 1794

If Blake found congenial the Painite denunciation of the repressive institutions of State and Church, it did not follow that humanity’s redemption from this state could be effected by a political reorganisation of these institutions alone. There must be some utopian leap, some human re-birth, from Mystery to renewed imaginative life.

This is not just an account of Paine’s view. It seems to be Thompson’s view too, for he repeats the phrase ‘utopian leap’ in the final paragraph of his book and concludes,

‘To create the New Jerusalem something must be brought in from outside the rationalist system and that something could be found only in the non-rational image of Jesus, in the affirmatives of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love.’

Blake, Marx, Jesus

There is a phalanx of people in this country who attempt to impose slavery, who hate and fear freedom and teach their hate and fear to others, and a further coterie who rush to do Master's bidding. A seedy slave 'respect' agenda abounds among those without honour, self-respect, integrity, principle, Just get on your knees and show 'respect'. Do not bother thinking 'respect' will be shown you in return. You have no right to make up your own mind, no right to opinions and beliefs of your own should they clash with those of your masters and thereby offend.

Thus the slave, chained, thrown prostrate before his master, the sword at his neck, babbles, pleads for mercy and of course recants.

Or of course not.

There are words for the sort of creatures who hold down the intransigent struggling slave to be beaten, tortured, executed.

So far the words are 'lawyers' and 'politicians'. We have a government to whom integrity and conscience are meaningless. To upset hysterical animals incapable of appreciating others have an equal right to their views is to be evil and must be punished.

Labour was not founded on tugging forelocks and deference to entrenched power.

Dill: “Is this what’s called a propaganda war, Dad?”
Mitch: “No, I should not say that. This is what’s called wiping excrement off the sole of one’s boot.” Sarat: Dill

I strongly suspect every human suffused with religiosity of whatever kind should read the followinng at breakfast, lunch and dinner and then again before going to bed, every day, because of course within the framework of 'Jesus died for us', the following is entirely true. If, then...

"The gospel of grace is the end of religion, the final posting of the CLOSED sign on the sweatshop of the human race's perpetual struggle to think well of itself. For that, at bottom, is what religion is: man's well-meant but dim-witted attempt to approve of his unapprovable condition by doing odd jobs he thinks some important Something will thank him for.
Religion, therefore, is a loser, a strictly fallen activity. It has a failed past and a bankrupt future. There was no religion in Eden and there won't be any in heaven; and in the meantime Jesus has died and risen to persuade us to knock it all off right now." - Between Noon and Three, p. 166

"Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion, not of a new religion, or even of the best of all religions. ...If the cross is the sign of anything, it's the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all of the world's problems without requiring a single human being to do a single religious thing. What the cross is actually a sign of is the fact that religion can't do a thing about the world's problems - that it never did work and it never will..." - The Mystery of Christ ... and Why We Don't Get It, p. 62

"Almost all people, inside as well as outside the church, find that the notion of grace stands in contradiction to everything they understand by religion." - Between Noon and Three, p. 136

"For all our protestations to the contrary, we will sooner accept a God we are fed TO than a God we are fed BY."

"However much we hate the law, we are more afraid of grace" - Between Noon and Three

"Christianity is not a religion, it is the announcement of the end of religion. Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshipping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God. About those things, Christianity has only two comments to make. The first is that none of them ever had the least chance of doing the trick: the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins (see the Epistle of Hebrews) and no effort of ours to keep the law of God can ever succeed (see the Epistle of Romans). The second is that everything religion tried (and failed) to do has been perfectly done, once and for all, by Jesus in his death and resurrection. For Christians, then, the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiastical turkeys through two thousand years who have acted as if religion was their stock in trade. The church, instead, is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. It is not here to bring the world the bad news that God will think kindly about us only after we have gone through certain creedal, liturgical, and ethical wickets; it is here to bring the world the Good News that ‘while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.’ It is here, in short, for no religious purpose at all, only to announce the Gospel of free grace." - Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus

"I want you to set aside the notion of the Christian religion, because it's a contradiction in terms. You won't learn anything positive about religion from Christianity, and if you look for Christianity in religion, you'll never find it. To be sure, Christianity uses the forms of religion, and, to be dismally honest, too many of its adherents act as if it were a religion; but it isn't one, and that's that. The church is not in the religion business; it is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. And the gospel is the good news that all man's fuss and feathers over his relationship with God is unnecessary because God, in the mystery of the Word who is Jesus, has gone and fixed it up Himself. So let that pass." - Between Noon and Three, p. 167

"Therefore we are safe. Not safe if... Not safe provided... Add anything - even a single qualifier, even a single hedge - and you lose the gospel of salvation, which is just Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."

"The world is by no means averse to religion. In fact, it is devoted to it with a passion. It will buy any recipe for salvation as long as that formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up salvation firmly in human hands. The world is drowning in religion. But it is scared out of its wits by any mention of the grace that takes the world home gratis."

"God in Jesus didn't prevent sinners from sinning, he went around forgiving them right and left. If we want to represent him, we shouldn't misrepresent his methods. We should instead busy ourselves with the twin jobs of forgiveness and healing — with, in short, the Gospel work of raising the dead by laying down our lives for our friends. The world is not a collection of good listeners waiting for the right advice to come down the track; it's a bunch of corpses totally immune to talk. Its resurrection is not in the least facilitated by a surgeon-general's warning that sin should have been avoided in the first place." - Light Theology & Heavy Cream

"Left-handed power, in other words, is precisely paradoxical power; power that looks for all the world like weakness, intervention that seems indistinguishable from nonintervention. More than that, it is guaranteed to stop no determined evildoers whatsoever. It might, of course, touch and soften their hearts. But then again, it might not. It certainly didn't for Jesus; and if you decide to use it, you should be quite clear that it probably won't for you either. The only thing it does insure is that you will not--even after your chin has been bashed in--have made the mistake of closing any interpersonal doors from your side.
Which may not, at first glance, seem like much of a thing to insure, let alone like an exercise worthy of the name of power. But when you come to think of it, it is power-- so much power, in fact, that it is the only thing in the world that evil can't touch. God in Christ died forgiving. With the dead body of Jesus, he wedged open the door between himself and the world and said, "There! Just try and get me to take that back!" - Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus

"You're worried about permissiveness—about the way the preaching of grace seems to say it's okay to do all kinds of terrible things as long as you just walk in afterward and take the free gift of God's forgiveness... While you and I may be worried about seeming to give permission, Jesus apparently wasn't. He wasn't afraid of giving the prodigal son a kiss instead of a lecture, a party instead of probation; and he proved that by bringing in the elder brother at the end of the story and having him raise pretty much the same objections you do. He's angry about the party. He complains that his father is lowering standards and ignoring virtue—that music, dancing, and a fattened calf are, in effect, just so many permissions to break the law. And to that, Jesus has the father say only one thing: "Cut that out! We're not playing good boys and bad boys anymore. Your brother was dead and he's alive again. The name of the game from now on is resurrection, not bookkeeping." - Between Noon and Three

"There is one effect that cannot be the result of a direct application of force, and that is the maintenance of a relationship between free persons. If my child chooses not to cooperate with me, if my wife chooses not to live with me, there is no right-handed power on earth that can make them toe the line of relationship I have chosen to draw in the sand. I can dock my son’s allowance, for example, or chain him to a radiator; or in anger at my wife, I can punch holes in the Sheetrock or beat her senseless with a shovel. In short, I can use any force that comes to hand or mind, and yet I cannot cause either of them, at the core of their being, to stop their wrongs and conform to my right. The only power I have by which to do that is left-handed power – which for all practical purposes will be indistinguishable from weakness on my part. It is the power of my patience with them, of my letting their wrong be – even if that costs me my rightness or my life – so that they, for whose reconciliation I long, may live for a better day of their own choosing.
My point here is twofold. The power of God that saves the world was revealed in Jesus as left-handed power; and therefore any power that the church may use in its God-given role as the sacrament of Jesus must also be left-handed. Despite the fact that God’s Old Testament forays into the thicket of fallen human nature were decided right-handed (plagues, might acts, stretched-out-arm exercises, and thunderous threats) – and despite Jesus’ occasional use of similar tactics in the Gospels – the final act by which God reconciles the world to himself consists of his simply dropping dead on the cross and shutting up on the subject of sin. He declares the whole power game won by losing, and he invites the world just to believe that absurd proposition." - The Astonished Heart, pp. 62-63

Father Robert Capon quoted at The Christian Heretic

Am re-reading The Conquest of Gaul. The augurs, you feel, the sacred chickens, were for those with time on their hands. The not-at-all-good-but-always-devastating Julius was far too busy moving and shaking to worry about whether the gods thought he should do this or that, and when he snatches victory from the jaws of defeat it's by sheer raw nerve and the capacity to rally the troops, though he does have this to say on the collapse of New Labour: 'The victory of which you boast so arrogantly and the surprisingly long time during which you have escaped punishment are both due to the same cause. When the gods intend to make a man pay for his crimes, they generally allow him to enjoy moments of success and a long period of impunity, so that he may feel his reverse of fortune, when it eventually comes, all the more keenly.'

You do rather have to have a thing about the tribes of Gaul, the Aedui, the Treveri, the Helvetii, to name but a few among a cast of thousands. It might be rather fun to (someone probably has) make a map and move little centurions and Celts around on it. Ah, but has anyone marketed it? I bet there's an interactive Asterix. All the same, do I feel a PhotoShop moment coming on? It's a bit like a modern soap. You can follow the story-line, the key-players, without worrying over-much about who are their friends or and who their enemies, or at any rate some bloke who once bought a round in the Queen Vic, never to be heard of again.

	Irreducible evil (2) by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 31 May 2009, 04:06 PM
	That I, as an Englishwoman and a British subject, should have been regarded by 'Her Majesty's Government' as the slave-girl of the Church of Rome and of Islam, such that my body could be repeatedly assaulted as punishment for the 'sins' of my mind, that 'Her Majesty's Government' accepted the claim to rights over me of these creatures.

You are not self-forgetting by definition if you are forcing others to obey you. Grace is paramountly not forcing oneself on others other than to restrain them from forcing themselves on others. To love one's neighbour as oneself is not to inflict beliefs he or she finds questionable on him or her. People are and have to be free to go wherever they might be going. Society's business is limited to demanding they behave tolerably to each other and ensuring they are free to travel. We do not know.

Gentlemen, of your courtesy (they are usually male if not gentlemen), back off. Your behaviour is loutish and uncivil, intellectual thuggery and self-aggrandisement.

We are being fed a reduction of Christianity to fascism, the refusal to acknowledge the polarity in the thought of Christian nations between love and power, the privileging of faith regardless of what that faith entails, contempt for unbelief, regardless of what that unbelief entails. Science and learning are as ever the enemies, for they take us beyond the arbitrary ceilings on thought of dogma to the world of physics and biology, to other readings of Jesus as a Kabbalist, a Sufi, Brahma, the false identification of the enemies of the Church with the enemies of Jesus. If one does not live in the mental world of the 1st century AD (or indeed the 7th), if one does not submit to these worlds, one is flawed and insensitive; if one does, one is blessed, a superior form of life. Just obey.

This is the Protestant world and has been for some time. That it does not occur to us we want or need Rome to interpret the Bible for us goes deeper than 'modernity', 'liberalism', Marx or the Enlightenment, itself the child of Luther, of people reading the Bible for themselves and deciding the Vatican talked nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that. : everything that has happened to religion and spirituality in the Protestant world is, no matter how utterly opposed to and divorced from his beliefs, the child of Luther not of Rome, just as the entire thrust of Neu Arbeit, hanging on the words of members of spiritual hierarchies and indifferent to what ordinary people think, and particularly the despised adherents of "pick 'n' mix" religion, is anti-Protestant.

This is overlooked, the 'schism' portrayed as trying to agree on the nature of the Host so they can all be one church again.

This site has gone on at inordinate length about the Enlightenment and Marxism but that has missed the point. The thrust of Blair's clerical fascism was actually pre-Reformation. The Vatican was supposed to matter to all of us, not just the members of a minority sect called British Catholics.

Protestants believe that through Christ they have been given direct access to God, just like a priest; thus the doctrine is called the priesthood of all believers. God is equally accessible to all the faithful, and every Christian has equal potential to minister for God. This doctrine stands in opposition to the concept of a spiritual aristocracy or hierarchy within Christianity.

"The Magisterium of the Church

85 "The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ."47 This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.

86 "Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith."48

87 Mindful of Christ's words to his apostles: "He who hears you, hears me",49 the faithful receive with docility the teachings and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.

Wherefore, civil society must acknowledge God as its Founder and Parent, and must obey and reverence His power and authority. justice therefore forbids, and reason itself forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness--namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges. Since, then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone is true, and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic States, because the marks of truth are, as it were, engraven upon it. This religion, therefore, the rulers of the State must preserve and protect, if they would provide--as they should do--with prudence and usefulness for the good of the community. For public authority exists for the welfare of those whom it governs; and, although its proximate end is to lead men to the prosperity found in this life, yet, in so doing, it ought not to diminish, but rather to increase, man's capability of attaining to the supreme good in which his everlasting happiness consists: which never can be attained if religion be disregarded.

22. All this, however, We have explained more fully elsewhere. We now only wish to add the remark that liberty of so false a nature is greatly hurtful to the true liberty of both rulers and their subjects. Religion, of its essence, is wonderfully helpful to the State. For, since it derives the prime origin of all power directly from God Himself, with grave authority it charges rulers to be mindful of their duty, to govern without injustice or severity, to rule their people kindly and with almost paternal charity; it admonishes subjects to be obedient to lawful authority, as to the ministers of God; and it binds them to their rulers, not merely by obedience, but by reverence and affection, forbidding all seditions and venturesome enterprises calculated to disturb public order and tranquillity, and cause greater restrictions to be put upon the liberty of the people. We need not mention how greatly religion conduces to pure morals, and pure morals to liberty. Reason shows, and history confirms the fact, that the higher the morality of States, the greater are the liberty and wealth and power which they enjoy.

23. We must now consider briefly liberty of speech, and liberty of the press. It is hardly necessary to say that there can be no such right as this, if it be not used in moderation, and if it pass beyond the bounds and end of all true liberty. For right is a moral power which--as We have before said and must again and again repeat--it is absurd to suppose that nature has accorded indifferently to truth and falsehood, to justice and injustice. Men have a right freely and prudently to propagate throughout the State what things soever are true and honorable, so that as many as possible may possess them; but Iying opinions, than which no mental plague is greater, and vices which corrupt the heart and moral life should be diligently repressed by public authority, lest they insidiously work the ruin of the State. The excesses of an unbridled intellect, which unfailingly end in the oppression of the untutored multitude, are no less rightly controlled by the authority of the law than are the injuries inflicted by violence upon the weak. And this all the more surely, because by far the greater part of the community is either absolutely unable, or able only with great difficulty, to escape from illusions and deceitful subtleties, especially such as flatter the passions. If unbridled license of speech and of writing be granted to all, nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of natures, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail. Thus, too, license will gain what liberty loses; for liberty will ever be more free and secure in proportion as license is kept in fuller restraint. In regard, however, to all matter of opinion which God leaves to man's free discussion, full liberty of thought and of speech is naturally within the right of everyone; for such liberty never leads men to suppress the truth, but often to discover it and make it known.

Libertas, Leo XIII, 1888

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity,"2 viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;"3 and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."4

Quanta Cura, Pius IX 1864

The social duty of religion and the right to religious freedom

2104 "All men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and his Church, and to embrace it and hold on to it as they come to know it."26 This duty derives from "the very dignity of the human person."27 It does not contradict a "sincere respect" for different religions which frequently "reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men,"28 nor the requirement of charity, which urges Christians "to treat with love, prudence and patience those who are in error or ignorance with regard to the faith."29

2105 The duty of offering God genuine worship concerns man both individually and socially. This is "the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ."30 By constantly evangelizing men, the Church works toward enabling them "to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality and mores, laws and structures of the communities in which [they] live."31 The social duty of Christians is to respect and awaken in each man the love of the true and the good. It requires them to make known the worship of the one true religion which subsists in the Catholic and apostolic Church.32 Christians are called to be the light of the world. Thus, the Church shows forth the kingship of Christ over all creation and in particular over human societies.33

2106 "Nobody may be forced to act against his convictions, nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in association with others, within due limits."34 This right is based on the very nature of the human person, whose dignity enables him freely to assent to the divine truth which transcends the temporal order. For this reason it "continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth and adhering to it."35

2107 "If because of the circumstances of a particular people special civil recognition is given to one religious community in the constitutional organization of a state, the right of all citizens and religious communities to religious freedom must be recognized and respected as well."36

2108 The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error,37 but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty, i.e., immunity, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters by political authorities. This natural right ought to be acknowledged in the juridical order of society in such a way that it constitutes a civil right.38

2109 The right to religious liberty can of itself be neither unlimited nor limited only by a "public order" conceived in a positivist or naturalist manner.39 The "due limits" which are inherent in it must be determined for each social situation by political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good, and ratified by the civil authority in accordance with "legal principles which are in conformity with the objective moral order."40

Catechism of the Catholic Church

Catechism of the Catholic ChurchPriesthood of all believers

First printed Bible, 1486

Up until this time, even books as large as the Bible were still written out by hand. This took a lot of time and effort; in addition, the pages were often very beautifully decorated, so books were very expensive and not easily obtained. (To view an example of these books, please click here or search the British Library for Lindisfarne Gospels.)

However, this was about to change.

By the middle of the 15th century, there were some efforts being made in continental Europe to find a quicker way to produce books. This was stimulated in part by increasing trade with China where books were already being printed by the woodblock technique. The first person to succeed in printing whole books from metal type was Johannes Gutenberg, who was born in Mainz.

It took Gutenberg many years to solve the considerable problems. He had to work out a satisfactory alloy of various metals, so that the type would continue to print clearly and cleanly over a whole print run; he also needed to find a practical mould for the letters, and suitable ink and paper. Developing this process was costly, and he had to borrow quite heavily; as a result, he often appeared in court, and the court records are our main source of information on Gutenberg’s invention.

Gutenberg began by printing several small Latin grammars and materials on single sheets. The Latin Bible was the first work of substantial size to be printed. This vast undertaking occupied him from 1450 to 1456. The investment of effort, time and money does not seem to have made Gutenberg and his partners wealthy, but others soon capitalised on his invention. The new process did not immediately result in more accurate copies. Indeed, it was a long time before a printed book, even a Bible, was as accurately transcribed as a copied one; the printed book was also much less decorative than the copied one. However, a printer could do as much in one day as a copyist could do in a year, so for the first time in Europe it was possible to develop a "mass" market (among the literate) for the printed word.

Luther and the German Bible, AD 1522-34

A number of translations of the Bible into the local (vernacular) languages had appeared in different countries of Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries. For example, a translation of the Bible into German had been made in the middle of the 14th century, and it had even been printed at Strasbourg in 1466, but the language was clumsy and difficult to understand, and it was based (like Wycliffe’s translation into English) on the Vulgate text. By the beginning of the 16th century, some scholars were growing dissatisfied with the Vulgate, and they preferred to base their translations on texts in the original languages. Many church leaders saw this as a challenge to their authority, as the Vulgate text was the accepted Bible of the European church of the day.
A translation of the Bible into German from the original languages played a significant part in Martin Luther’s efforts to reform the church. Luther finished a German translation of the New Testament in 1522 and of the whole Bible in 1534. For the first time in Western Europe since Jerome’s day, a translation into the vernacular had been based, not on a Latin translation (the Vulgate), but on Hebrew and Greek texts. Despite some changes in spelling and punctuation, Luther’s Bible has remained the standard text of German Protestants, and it also had a considerable influence on later English translations.

However, the church authorities feared that trouble might follow if people without education tried to read and understand the Bible for themselves, and they prohibited Bible-reading by any but the clergy. Punishments were sometimes severe.

When the Norman French conquered England in 1066, they also took over the English church, and required the use of the Latin Bible. Over the centuries, the language of the invaders and the Saxon and other languages spoken by the conquered inhabitants of Britain began to blend together, forming the basis of modern English.

One of the first to realise the importance of the new English language was the controversial religious activist, John Wycliffe. Wycliffe organised a band of "poor priests", much as St Francis had, to live simply and to give the message of Christ to the ordinary people in a way that they could understand. These "Lollards", as many called them, travelled all over England preaching in homes, at crossroads, and in fields, and ministering to the spiritual needs of the people.

Wycliffe soon came to realise that people needed a Bible in English, and set out to provide one. With the aid of Nicholas de Hereford and some others, he completed a first translation into English, based on the Latin Vulgate, in 1383. In the following year, immediately after Wycliffe’s death, a revision was made, and circulated through the country by the Lollards. About two hundred manuscripts of the Wycliffite versions still survive, mostly from the early 15th century, which indicates a high level of demand. Although a single copy cost a sum equivalent to the wages of a labourer working for 2000 days, these texts were eagerly sought, even only single pages. One man gave a whole load of hay, which would have given him much of his year’s income, for the few pages containing the Epistle of James. However, the church authorities feared that trouble might follow if people without education tried to read and understand the Bible for themselves, and they prohibited Bible-reading by any but the clergy. Punishments were sometimes severe.

First English Bible, 1383

One day they might grasp that the cause of all their problems is Jesus.

Christianity = religion since its origins polarized between love and power, parts of the New Testament being as radical today as in AD 9.

Roman Catholic Church = self-appointed definer of Christianity repeatedly routed in north-west Europe, now presuming to 'maintain Christian presence' in secular society = take over Christianity and define it solely in its terms. Called a whore because sold out love in return for power. Also called the anti-Christ. I can't think why.

Reformation = bunch of guys who couldn't get the hang of relationship between Jesus and Vatican

Enlightenment = bunch of guys who couldn't get the hang of the relationship between Jesus and being a normal, rational, decent human being and the Vatican

Marxism = bunch of guys who couldn't get the hang of any of it but some of whom got agitated over the possibility that Jesus was the first socialist

Faith = arbitrary ceiling on thought beyond which it may not pass. Also apparently a gift from God, in which case a) it seems unfair to berate those who do not possess it and b) not being thus favoured, we must then be inferior life-forms. This indeed they do not hesitate to tell us.

Prime moral virtue = obedience to the faith as revealed and interpreted by the Roman Catholic Church . Where do you think the Nazis and Stalinists got it from?

Enemies of faith = science and learning, because they take thought beyond the arbitrary boundary of the supposedly 'permissible'.

If absence of faith = evil then faith must be the foundation of society and we must be governed by what men tell us are God's laws.

Submission = obedience to the faith as revealed to Mohammed and interpreted by religious authorities

Short word for bunch of guys plotting to replace the laws of a free and democratic society with rule by God's vice-regents on earth = traitors.

Thus the Hagbard Syndrome. Hagbard, you will recall, had a terrrible tendency to regard as cute what to others were clearly terrifying monsters, in this case the oafish, ignorant, vicious and mindless mob. The intellectual, moral, emotional and spiritual life of the nation is now once more to be at the mercy of the obscene clamourings of the hive-mind. May we expect Prof Dawkins' lab picketed, his home? The witch-burning so far as evil secular society allows it has of course already been conducted by the Pope's pony-women, with the full consent of a government composed in roughly equal parts of other vacant-eyed junkies and unreconstructed Marxists, equally committed to the destruction of 'bourgeois liberty', 'bourgeois democracy', equally determined to make power arbitrary and unaccountable. Thus Church and State equally prize ignorance and irrationality.

'Half of Germany'? Germany is so interesting, isn't it. I suppose one could say it was in four quarters: Protestant East, Protestant West, Catholic East, Catholic West. Wo wohnst du?

18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. 19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. 20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? 22 Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? 23 And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. 24 Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. 25 Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? 26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

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This site began, as did my previous sites, because sundry cowardly pieces of garbage first tried to work me to death when I had been seriously ill and was unable to take it, wrecked the nice little future I had had planned and then pursued me to my next job to have heavy manual labour demanded of me. Since I have had major spinal surgery I couldn't take that either. When I complained I was subjected to gross manual handling hazards and harassed in a number of other ways. Nowadays I don't walk so well. In both instances the perps were our wonderful health professionals.

I reported the first assault to MI5 not really knowing what else to do with it, it being so utterly sordid and sleazy. Daughters of the Marxist Left possessed of a mild curiosity as to precisely what the MI5 archives contain about members of her family do not make a habit of that kind of thing. The second I reported to my then MP, the appalling Jennie Tonge, and to then Secretary of State for Health, the even more appalling Alan Milburn. In both cases nobody said anything. Nobody did anything. Nothing untoward has happened.

The checks and balances of a free and democratic society prevent what has happened to me. All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that they all be ignored.

“These people are such crap!” said Dill.
Mitch looked about to burst with fatherly pride.

Sarat: Dill, Jaizal and a couple of videos

Welcome, therefore, these people are such crap show. There's a lot on this site about how and why they are crap. In the end they're just crap. What makes them significant is that a precedent has been set, courtesy of the crap who govern. The public sector is not required to adhere to the standards of a free and democratic country. Public sector managers are free to knock around those who upset them and of course the monstrous nonsense is maintained that the qualifications obtained by the illiterate and stupid are degrees, and not only degrees but degrees superior to real degrees, entitling the illiterate and stupid to designate those of us who have real degrees as fit only for manual labour. Human resources officers are entitled to be wholly corrupt and protect criminals. Kangaroo courts are the norm, as are threatening letters delivered by hand. Power is all and fact and reason irrelevant. In this world people are supposed to be mindless, wordless and obedient.

They are therefore, if one wishes to be difficult and at this point one wishes to be very difficult indeed, traitors: they are materially working to destroy a free country, adhering to the Queen's enemies within her realm, giving aid and comfort to the Queen's enemies by their flagrant demonstration that freedom and democracy are disposable.

Possibly the worst thing about me is my unspeakable red cred; defenders of the realm do not nowadays fly the red flag. I am:
- the grand-daughter of Labour pioneers (both grandfathers Labour public servants), one side Marxist, one respectable Labour
- the result of people having children late in life; Grandpa Howard was born in 1871 (my father in 1906) making him in line for being one of the founding fathers of This Great Movement of Ours.
- the great-grand-daughter of a master-weaver - just call me Cotton Jenny
- the niece of a Jewish Communist journalist who fought in the International Brigades (two of my father's siblings married Jewish people, resulting in numerous half-Jewish cousins)
- the great-grand-daughter of an Irish tart, with sundry other Irish antecedents.
- a modern languages graduate of the University of London (special subject Voltaire)
- a sometime flower-child into the higher reaches of religion
- much much much brighter than they are (qualified for membership of British Mensa, IQ 155 attained by 1% of the population]

'Arbeit macht frei.' To profile the opposition is to come up with Catholic Nazis who think I must be Jewish because mingling is repulsive to their dirty little souls, to be specific that kind of mingling: one of the sick and sad had an Arab husband, another an Arab boyfriend. For all I know, though I beg leave to doubt it, both these guys were leading lights of the National Secular Society. This is the world where support for Rushdie supposedly qualified one for membership of the BNP. I think a few Muslim Nazis can reasonably be thrown in. It is also a world immune to basic facts, among these being that Jesus was a Jew and that the Roman Catholic Church was thrown out of England in 1688. The Church of England holds that the Archbishop of Canterbury occupies the Chair of St Augustine. England does not require the Roman Catholic Church to articulate such Christianity as it possesses and the English do not regard the Roman Catholic Church as part of the fabric of the nation.

It would seem that some particularly large and preposterous incontinent baboon generally known here as Bobbles beat his chest demandng I be punished for offending the poor baby's religious sensibilities and all the slave-sluts rushed to obey cos religion is good and if you upset religious people, you are a bad person, especially if you upset some screaming psycho loony who thinks he has rights over your mind and body, you are his slave-girl, to be injured at his whim, and as a woman you are incapable of reason and it is inconceivable he use the gift of speech to convey to you what his bloody problem is. So much for the intellectual level of medicine.

There is no head monkey in the sky.

There is light, energy, power, perceived by some as 'God'.

Before this the little primate brain cowers in fear or not as the case may be.

There is no ‘Law’.

Love is Light. Light is energy. Energy is power. Energy is not, however, authority, hierarchy, pushing other people around.

‘The law’ is projection onto that power by the fear-filled unevolved fractured ape-brain of the heterosexual human male of what ‘must be’. What ‘must be’ is not what is.

Transitory states are taken for abiding truths.

Fracture is taken for the Whole.

Agency is introduced where no agency exists.

There are glitches in space and time not sendings and revelations.

Love is what some people label God.

Neither God is Love nor Love is God are susceptible of literal interpretation.

Supposing you're a writer, wanting to get certain key-points across. God is for everyone, the poor and uneducated and the rich and learned alike. Shepherds, definitely shepherds. Shepherds are good. But God is Everyman not a child of privilege. The rich and learned are not commonplace in stables. Lightbulb moment: let's have some travelling scholars.

You want to make it clear God is knowable and approachable.

At the other end of the story you want to make it clear God is not about earthly power.
If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight for it.

You want to make it clear love is stronger than death.

'And is it true? And is it true?' Probably not. what does that have to do with anything that matters?

“We have to be human,” said Mel. “To know we are love. Anyone who doesn’t at some level acknowledge that is intolerable to himself and all around him. “
“Most of the messes people get into are because they think they can extinguish human,” said Hass. “Go around intoning, ‘I do not need’. Fine. Starve to death.”
“’Nothing matters.’ Watch other people starve to death. We seem to have somewhat digressed.”
“They do not understand which part of them is saying these things…What were we talking about!”
The Matter of Kadun (inner and eso): life, death, eternity and Gaia (1)

Cf. Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17: 21)

To say 'the incorruptible must put on corruption' is merely to say what is infinite temporally manifests itself as finite.

Love demands acceptance of the right to be of the most fractured, abject, incomplete, fearful, ludicrous, deluded,, irrational and repulsive of human beings, detachment from their folly. It does not demand submission to it.

‘In a time of the breaking of nations’ all that is fractured, abject, incomplete, fearful, ludicrous, deluded, irrational, repulsive in human beings is to be venerated because of the meme of ‘the sanctity of religion’, in no small part due to the occupancy for ten years of Downing Street by a pair of savages and governance by their hangers-on.

Under threat are the fruits of the species’ long hard struggle towards the conduct of human beings informed by language, logic, liberty and love, not that of hairless apes who flee from being human and understand only that Might is Right, the death-worshippers, for whom death is the culmination and goal of life.

It may be necessary to fight for the right to be human, to live and love as we choose, to think and speak as we choose, to grow and be as we choose, for the sanctity of the individual.

- humans have minds and hearts and are capable of using them
- every human is intellectually, emotionally, morally and spiritually autonomous; slavery has been abolished
- to be fully human is to exercise both heart and mind to their utmost
- the evil of orthodox religion as of Nazism, Stalinism, any other -ism is to demand blind obedience, regard independent thinking as wicked, the sin of self-will, demand reason be subordinate to irrationality and love be subordinate to self-will
- liberty is a function of love, control is a function of self-will. If you love other people as much as you love yourself you are happy for them to be independent and autonomous
- humans live in imagined mind-sets of reality; liberty is essential to pull down sick fantasies about persons of a different gender, race or sexual orientation
- persons who have been taught independence of heart and mind is evil and blindly obey do evil on command
- persons who have taught independence of heart and mind is evil and so have never been taught the use of either are intellectually and emotionally wholly inadequate and incapable of dealing with life in the real world where everyone is not a clone thinking what they think; when they feel threatened by the reality of the existence of independent minds they seek to destroy the supposed threat physically because they are unable to handle it mentally
- Love casts out fear, the fear of what will happen to you emotionally if you do not impose your will on others
- Jesus was a Jewish mystic not the Son of God
- Jesus was cool
- Islam as it presents itself is not alien, but rather all too familiar, being a reworking of the Old Testament
- If the country had any interest in that sort of thing, it would return to the Old Testament
- Wherein are listed many, many 'abominations to the Lord Thy God'. On these the churches are silent while havering about gays.
- this is a Christian country, not one subscribing to an 'Abrahamic faith'.
- the cavemen of Christian religious establishments prefer cosying up to the cavemen of Islam to upholding a theology of love
- it is historically nonsense to haver that free exercise of your religion demands rights over others; were that the case, Christians would still be free to burn witches and heretics; any ideology must cede to reality, specifically the reality of the independent existence and equal rights of other human beings

The central theses here are that after sweet little liberal Anglican educations of course we all became hippies. If the churches had followed Robinson, they'd probably have taken us with them. Instead the cavemen crawled out of the woodwork over female and gay priests and the churches scuttled back to the Stone Age from where they revile us for being somehow lacking by our demonstration of acute disinterest in the view of the universe and the obsession with controlling the conduct of the people in it of desert tribesmen 3000 years ago. Such religion teaches self-will and irrationality, as it teaches there are categories of humanity over the minds and bodies of whom the true believer has rights. The incontinence of the human ape, his need to push others around, is not countered but channelled.

Or go figure what the world would be like if these bastards had been tub-thumping for gender and racial equality for three thousand years.

What many cultures have made of this dodgy business of being human seems to most of us a more valid framework than that God was made man in Palestine and lives again in bread and wine or that God thought oh sugar, I got that right wrong, let me seek out this guy called Mohammed.

What has happened to this society is that Love has supplanted the Law. Some despise it. Some flounder. Some aren't very good at it but try.

After all, as the man said:

5A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it.

6And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture.

7And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it.

8And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Luke 8

This ought to be something the churches understand, something of which they are at the forefront. Abysmally clearly, it is not.

What is being shown up by the C21st is the number of Christian clergy who believe in the Law not Love.

Love in a time of cholera

A false division is consistently made by both sides, that of theist confronting atheist. Concepts of God are myriad, and the behaviour of the religious encompasses the entire spectrum of human conduct. It is really very irrelevant whether people believe in God. What they believe about God is however critical. Nonetheless a sordid alliance of 'people of faith' is touted, as though the mere fact of having faith endowed one with virtue - and of course the mere fact of its absence with vice. Ludicrously, gullible red-faced peasants, such as those who until recently inhabited 10 Downing Street, fall for the line that religion pushes an absolute morality. The Good to the religious is whatever they say God said. It is overwhelmingly secularists who uphold absolutes. Women and gays have equal rights, regardless of the warbling of some tin-faced priest.

- persons in authority are fellow-humans and equals. As such they are fallible and must be challenged. The use of authority must have rational justification; God said is not rational justification. Argument by authority is a fallacy.
- if your loyalties lie with an anti-democratic foreign state, whether the Vatican, Saudi Arabia or Iran, if you obey orders from representatives of such a state and by so doing work to destroy a free and democratic society you are a traitor, even if your name is Tony Blair.
- the meme of 'sanctity of religion' is being used to replace rational, accountable conduct with the supposed word of God
- Labour was not founded on tugging forelocks and deference to entrenched power
- it is nonsense to claim that the qualifications obtained by the demonstrably stupid and illiterate are degrees.
- a degree trains the mind; if you do not believe mind exists, you have no place in a university
- if you believe independence of mind is an evil, you have no place in a university

On the evidence to hand these three propositions exclude both medicine and nursing from the universities; while undoubtedly there are brilliant doctors, the intellect required to qualify as a physician and slime one's way up the greasy pole is not great, my chief problem with the inhabitants of Professor Black's Unit having been their total mindlessness.

If your response to an opposing opinion is wordless, mindless assault you have clearly never been anywhere a real university in the first place.

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