What’s Williams whinging about?

Anne Wotana Kaye

For once, I agree with the Archbishop of Canterbury. With the exception of Islam, Nu Government regards all religion as the domain of the eccentric. I wrote to Ed Balls asking him why he had a special prayer room for Moslem workers, and why there were no other rooms for other faiths. Eventually I received a reply. Balls stated that beside the Islamic prayer room, in accordance to the Ministry's policy of equality for all, bla bla, there was a room put aside for the use of other faiths. Brilliant! So the Moslems get a room all to themselves, whilst Christians, Jews, Budhists, Rasfatarians, and all the other people of faith must make do with one room. With the best will in the world, when the prayers get going, it must be a veritable Tower of Babel. A true picture of tolerance if all these varied faiths can worship in the same place, doesn't say much for the Moslems though.

David Lindsay

Rowan Williams would meet most people's criteria for categorisation as an eccentric, even an oddity. As a Welsh-speaker, he is also at least arguably a member of an ethnic minority. But he is right. Our Political Class simply assumes that religious belief in general and Christianity in particular are peculiar to foreigners (they treat serious Christianity as for more foreign than Islam), weirdoes and ethnics.

Yet seventy-two per cent of people told the last census that they were Christians, to the surprise of no one who lives in Britain rather than in the strange country inhabited by politicians and their media courtiers. If that really was a reaction against Islam, then that figure will be higher, not lower, next time. All three political traditions derive directly from Christianity, yet all three parties, though especially the Tories, have a particular horror of anyone's mentioning that fact.

Meanwhile, however, there just don't any longer seem to the stories about primary schools refusing to put on Nativity Plays, or councils refusing to put on carol services, or what have you. They were in any case always peculiar to areas odd to the point of virtual foreignness. For example, most non-Catholic village primary schools in the old mining areas are County rather than C of E, but the old Methodist tradition keeps them singing 'Hark, The Herald Angels Sing', a Wesley hymn after all.

The integration of most ethnic minorities required nothing more than giving their children certain stereotypical parts, such as Asian boys as Wise Men, satirised in a sketch on Goodness Gracious Me. But one ethnic minority, by far the bitterest and the most fiercely separatist, was unassimilable. I refer to the secularists. They have not actually been assimilated. Quietly, out in the country at large, they have been defeated. When will the Government, and others such as the BBC, notice?

Olaf Rye

Anna, I think you are being a bit unfair to our Muslim brothers. They also need privacy to plan their 'heroic' terrorist operations against unarmed citizens and those that have paid for them most of their lives as they sponged off the secular nation that they despise so much.

hadrian

I think what Williams is addressing here is the utterly lazy and hypocritical thinking that 'religion' is a bad and dangerous thing. A letter to that effect appeared in one of the tabloids the other day- keep religion from the public square at all costs and as private as possibl, the deep thinking correspondent wrote with secularist evangelical fervour!
Considering the bloody, murderous and genocidal track record of secularist ideologies, streching back to the French Revolution and beyond, that's not just a bit rich but also plainly a downright misleading diagnosis of our trouble. The problem is not 'religion' which is inescapable in one form or another, but human SIN for which only authentic, Protestant, Bible believing Christianity has the answer- Salvation by Grace alone, through Christ.
I don't see the numbers of oddities and eccentrics decreasing as 'religion' decreases! Getting this wrong imperils the very heart of our right to free speech. Gag the right to free argument, lest it 'offend', is to gag freedom in her heartland.

Anne Wotana Kaye

Olaf: I'm really quite inconsiderate, but please dont report me to the PC militia :-)

Merlyn

Aren't we getting our directives through the EU now anyway?
The same unelected governance that has forbidden the Italian schoolchildren to wear crucifixes or have said crucifixes on the walls?
However, they seem somehow blind to State run infant schools teaching Islamic extremism, violence and intolerance towards the other religions.
But hey that is in the Koran so it must be OK.

Fergus Pickering

Didn't the great and good Silvio nail that crucifix stuff. Sound man.

Olaf Rye

I am sorry Anne, but it is off to the gulag for the both of us to undergo ideological re-programming ! I am surprised that Labour has not publicly contemplated the merits of gulags for those of us that do not entertain acceptable thoughts !

Anne Wotana Kaye

Olaf Rye: Oh but they do have Gulags. They call them State schools and nurseries - get them young!

wwdoyle

Dr. Williams's comment expanded on his wish that political leaders would have more to say about the sources of their values. Doing so could dispel some of religion's oddity.

But the most striking comment Williams made was this one: “I think we’ve lost a sense of what we really understand by public virtue,” ... “Character is something that has fallen off the radar for quite a lot of people.”

Olaf Rye

The state schools and nurseries are indeed attempts at creating gulags, but even there, these idiots in the Labour government have not got it right. Parents are still allowed to see the little children and pollute them with noxious ideas concerning liberty and the free-market. I am wondering when we will see denunciations of parents by the children ! Why did we have to choose the Stasi as our model for management and government in the British Isles ?

Anne Wotana Kaye

Olaf: In answer to your question, I will try to reply very quickly. My computer is cracking up and I am getting a new one, which means that I wont be blogging for a few days in the coming week. I think the reason this Nu Labour monstrosity chose the Stasi as a model, is because they felt a natural affinity with the nasty low class, grey, empty souled bureacrats who ran it. They would hardly have chosen Imperial Rome. One can hardly visualise Harriet Hardman or Jacki Smith in Roman dress, although I think Mandelson would have made a superb Caligua and Brown a perfect Nero. We must just be thankful that Nu Labour is so inefficient (the MOD has once again lost confidential data) that they cannot completely succeed with their Gulags for Infants.

Olaf Rye

Well said, Anne. The only impediment to enacting the socialist paradise that these sixth-form common room Marxist revolutionaries fantasise about is their complete incompetence--British management is sneered at throughout the world, because the priority for managers is to be obeyed, not to make money nor to do things properly. Individual responsibility is also anathema to them: everyone wants authority and credit, but will never assume responsibility when something goes awry. The thought of Harriet Harman in a toga makes me shudder ! Even in the dying days of the Roman Empire, their administrative system worked better than anything these troglodyte tossers in Labour have ever achieved. Come to think of it, the chimpanzees at zoos probably administer their lives and their bands better than Labour ...

Snowman

It all depends what his definition of faith is, I reckon. For me, faith, not unlike love, forms an intrinsic part of the make up of each of us. Religion, any religion, is but an institutionalised faith, and as such it lends itself to corruption, or to being moulded or interpreted by those who occupy the ladders of its leadership.

The secularists of whatever hue must also ‘believe’, i.e. have faith in things that extend beyond the reach of rational thinking. It always amazes me to hear Dawkins say: ‘I believe there’s no God’. The verb ‘believe’ itself has no place in a vocabulary of someone who claims to be guided by nothing but pure rational, logical, sagacious thinking, as opposed to pursuing the ‘not-rational’ path of explaining that which we perceive through our senses. It belongs to the domain of the irrational, that which cannot be proven or tested.

Traditional religions, based by and large on the Good books, attract scorn in our enlightened society, the majority of whose members follow (have faith) in science based view of the world e.g. evolution and such like. None of these can fully reach into the irrational and explain or answer everything, and in particular the key question why we are here, or why any living matter exists. The new religionists can speculate, construct theories, but lack the evidence to convince.

Even if the existence of the many forms of the living matter were simply the result of a gradual progression by natural selection, common ancestry and random mutation from the simplest one cell origin into the highly complex and interactive organisms of today how and by what processes did conscious thinking and reasoning come about?

Still, to cut this ranting short, I reckon that Williams is trying to suggest that those of us who subscribe to the old forms of religions are being kicked because of the perceived backwardness of our faith. Unless, of course, we belong to an aggressively assertive religious group that installs real fear, but this is another subject.

David Bouvier

Snowman.

I believe 1+1=2. I don't recall Russell and Whiteheads argument as to precisely why everytime I count.

It is a myth that rationality requires everything to be built up axiomatically. Positivism failed as a method.

Dawkins may not use the word "believe" in the way you think we all should, but his use is not obviously inconsistent with most peoples daily use of the word.

"I believe she could be the one" or "I believe they are coming at 7pm" is about an expectation grounded in evidence not unsupported or a priori faith.

I have no idea where you get the idea that Dawkins et al reject evidence (science) for "pure rational thought". You seem a bit confused.

Trying to define other peoples vocabulary to rule their arguments out of order is a poor substitute for engaging with their point, though a popular approach in apologetics.

Snowman

David Bouvier @ 9.39:

Only a quick response, things to do.

First, I admit too much of bla, bla at the beginning, but I thought of making clear how I see things before drawing any conclusions

Next, where the hell did I say that ‘Dawkins reject evidence for pure rational thought?’ Is it the syntax, or what? Still, you have to bear with me, I’m but poorly educated Slav.

And lastly, Dawkins saying ‘I don’t believe in God’ differs somewhat in the use of the verb from ‘I believe (or don’t believe) they are coming at 7 pm’. You know why?

a foreigner?

Isn't the COE itself a "government initiative about faith"; didn't Henry VIII "assume" Magesterial teaching to be a "problem"?

Fergus Pickering

No English person says, 'I believe they are coming at 7 o'clock.' What we say is 'I think they are coming at 7 o'clock.' However, we DO say, 'I believe in God, the Father Almighty...' Or in the case of poor old Dawkins, 'I believe in Sweet Fanny Adams.' Poor old sod.

David Bouvier

Snowman - I read this as saying it: "It always amazes me to hear Dawkins say: ‘I believe there’s no God’. The verb ‘believe’ itself has no place in a vocabulary of someone who claims to be guided by nothing but pure rational, logical, sagacious thinking, as opposed to pursuing the ‘not-rational’ path of explaining that which we perceive through our senses."

On re-reading I can see what you were trying to say. I took you as contrasting "pure rational, logical, sagacious, thinking" with "the non-rational path of explaining what we perceive through our senses". But I can see that may not be what you meant. Instead, you I think intended to discuss alternative rational or non-rational path either of which seeks to explain our perceptions.

Dawkins does take care formally to say that he sees no reason to believe in a god and considers god vanishingly unlikely, but not to rule out the possibility of in principle of discovering evidence of it.

Fergus - maybe I am a pompous old fool, but there is a spectrum of statements you can use, that convey different kinds and degrees of uncertainty.

"they are coming at 7pm" - recently verified or otherwise very reliable

"they said 7pm" - no communication issue but perhaps a reliability issue

"I think 7pm" - I am having some doubt as to what was communicated or agreed

"I believe 7pm" - distinct lack of clarity as to plans and/or communication - significant uncertainty.

Alexandrovich

David Bouvier: If I used your example "I believe 7pm" I would be expressing self doubt.
That is, "...but I could be wrong."

Barbara

At our local hospital there is a pray room for the public and patients, different religions have it on different days. The Muslims however when it's their day, always come in way before their time, cover the Christian cross and take over. They did this once when I was in, I uncovered the cross and reminded them of the time and to wait. Needless to say being a woman and of the C of E my comments and intervention was not welcome. Well, tough. Establishing my religion and status within the stated time was difficult but it can be done. Yes they seemed threatening, but don't be put off, everyone has rights, some seem to think they are special, they are not. My point is we may have to do this more in the future, and in worse scenorio's. God help us all. Has for the Archbishop well... he's lacked support for the C of E for years yet promoted other religions openly, which for me is unforgiveable.