http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10781259/Attorney-General-Rise-of-fundamentalism-is-damaging-Christianity.html
Note the bias present in the sub-headline:
"The rise of religious fundamentalists with a 'deep intolerance' to other people's views has made Christians reluctant to express their beliefs, Dominic Grieve warns"
Religious fundamentalists are here separated from Christians, as if fundamentalism could never include Christianity. However, one look at Right Wing Watch http://www.rightwingwatch.org/ disproves this little false dichotomy of a rhetorical device. You may argue that this is not the case in the UK, that we don't have the same problem with the religious right, but that is frankly irrelevant. The US situation is a window into what we would inevitably expect to see here if we go down the path of "expounding our Christian faith" as Cameron, Grieve et al propose. OK, so later on he admits there are Christian fundies too, but really this is just an inevitable result of religious thought.
“(Religious fundamentalism...) It encourages people to say I'm not interested, [it encourages] an unwillingness to express commitment."
Um, what is religious fundamentalism if not "expressing commitment"? To say that this is what is stopping "softer" religious people speaking out is ridiculous. It's like saying thin people are scared of declaring their thinness because of the existence of fat people.
"Dominic Grieve said that atheists who claim that Britain is no longer a Christian nation are “deluding themselves” and must accept that faith has shaped this country’s laws and ethics"
Grieve obviously has some very strange and frankly irrational opinions about atheism and has here set up a clear straw man argument. Our position is not that faith has not shaped UK laws and ethics. Think how stupid a position that would be. Over the past 1000 years, Christianity was always the prevalent religion, believed by most people, so I'd like to know how it could not have influenced almost everything, seeing as it was everywhere.
Instead, our position is merely that Christianity is on the decline and becoming more irrelevant to people in their everyday lives. We now have other, better and more refined methods for determining what is right, moral or ethical than the Bible. We can be good people without needing to be Christians. Thinking otherwise seems pretty intolerant to me. Explain to me exactly what is wrong with taking the "good" bits of our "laws and ethics" from Christianity's heritage and abandoning the bad ones?
The problem of course is that many bad things like slavery, imperialism and oppression of women are also very much part of our cultural heritage. Grieve doesn't see fit to point out that teasing these things away from the pervasive grasp of Christianity is also a seemingly impossible task. Seeing as the Bible was used at one time or another to justify them.
Iain Duncan Smith, another budding religious apologist then goes on: “It is arguably our Christian heritage, with its innate tolerance and inclusivity, that has ensured the freedom of all voices – religious or non-religious – to be heard and to be valued.”
Firstly, the fact that he uses the word "arguably" gives away his own doubt in his assertion. As I discussed in my previous post, the idea that tolerance is innate to Christianity is absurd, and in fact it's exposure to secular ideas that gives Christianity most of the tolerance it may exhibit. Additionally, inclusivity is an attribute more relevant to Anglicanism rather than other Christian offshoots like Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses, and so is not applicable to Christianity as a whole.
Grieve continues: "The evidence in this country is overwhelming that most people in this country by a very substantial margin have religious belief in the supernatural or a deity."
This is just an argument ad-populum and, as such, is pretty irrelevant. Since when did a committee of non-experts determine the truth by non-scientific means? I could have just as well said, several hundred years ago:
"The evidence in this country is overwhelming that most people in this country by a very substantial margin have belief in a flat and not a round Earth."
As Matt Dillahunty likes to say, "So what?"
Grieve then claims: “To that extent atheism doesn't appear to have made much progress in this country at all, which is probably why the people that wrote this letter are so exercised about it.”
Seriously? We've made loads of progress, seeing as we don't know for sure that atheism is the correct conclusion, and that the idea is to raise doubt in fervent religious beliefs, thus liberalising populations rather than "converting" them. People have to "convert" themselves, if and when they want to. Grieve is setting up another straw man for atheist "progress" when the truth is, he really doesn't understand atheism at all.
We wrote the letter because, bold and unqualified statements like "this is a Christian country" are misleading. If all we cared about was what-once-long-ago formed the basis of our laws and ethics, then this would always be a Christian country, even if the entire population was atheist. Therefore, we've got a problem, seeing that the statement has no bearing in current evolving reality, or relevance to it.
The Very Rev Dr John Hall, the Dean of Westminster, is likewise confused. He claims humanist campaigners are guilty of a “shameful” and even “dishonest” attempt to “eradicate” recognition of faith in shaping British culture.
He's a fine one to talk, seeing as secularism is one of the main things differentiating today from back when the Founding Fathers of the US left these shores. Why on Earth would we try and re-write the history books? Such a folly is the territory of religion. Of course faith shaped British culture. It gave it good things and bad things. And it wasn't the only influence, so stop pretending it was.
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IDS is nicely satirised here:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/atheists-are-delusional-says-conservative-partys-chief-satanist-2014042385916
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The BHA responded to Greive's inane comments, pretty well:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/23/humanists-christian-country-debate-dominic-grieve-deluded?CMP=twt_gu
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Might I point out at this juncture the problems with some of the core tenets of Christianity, like the afterlife?
Just see here and here and here for an outline of the issues with it, from some prominent faces. Scratching the surface, the issues seem to include that there's no good reason to think that consciousness would continue after death; and that supposed NDEs are very parochial to the subject's culture and virtually impossible to "timestamp" against the state of the body at the time of the NDE. Proponents of the soul have long tried to research the afterlife, and yet, no credible studies have so far supported it. And make no mistake - if there's no afterlife, there's no intellectually honest reason to be a Christian, or in fact religious, at all.
So it's us atheists who are intolerant. OK. Discriminated against for thousands of years, under threat of death in many places even today, and it's OK to tell us that we must believe in God, and if not we must leave the country. All religions do this to some extent. Sure, Christians are persecuted too, and note who by: other religions.
But it's us who are showing the really damaging kind of intolerance, you know, the kind where we don't cause physical harm but point out facts to people who appear to be blissfully unaware of their own ignorance. Because having your own faith exposed for being not-so-rational-after-all is something which can never be entertained.
Since when did the right of religious people to feel 100% comfortable with their own seemingly ridiculous beliefs, trump anyone else's right to point out facts? And yet Grieve insists it's us who are deluded.
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