Walking by on the other side

Michael B

Oh, this'll receive some commentary.

Wilhelm

Its a pincer attack on Christian Europe, on one side you have the islamic bar room brawlers, the other side is the Facist multicultural left and the secular atheist fanatics led by Dicky Dorkins, the BBC and the Islington dinner party set loves Dick, funny how he doesnt slag off Allah or Mohamad, the coward.

And then you have a couple of old twits, Rowan who wants sharia law and Prince Charles who wants to be defender of ALL faiths, isnt that a contradiction. God help the Church of England when it is infested with heretics who dont know anything adout their own religion.

Dee Ranged

Melanie. Absolutely first class. Tony and Cherie Blair are a couple of hypocrites who ought to be ashamed of themselves. Both have trampled Christianity in favour of human, especially, gay rights.

fulcanelli

This is the same PM who was able to spin any lie and piece of propoganda to his own personal advantage, and who has truely screwed this country for many years to come. It was his notion of liberal nonsense that has caused many of the problems, pushed common decency and base Christian values to the side, and promoted a generation of idiots who think it is OK to be rude, disruptive, and profligate. Not to mention the debt and over indulgence that he and Brown promoted in the name of all things cool.

The man should be held fully responsible for all the mess, at least as much as the other idiot currently in No.10.

BlairSupporter

Melanie - I have a lot of time for your writing and for your opinions. But it seems rather facile to dismiss Blair in this way:

"a man who never understood what he was doing to his country while he was Prime Minister now looks upon the ruins – and walks by on the other side."

You didn't complain when he went into Iraq. He was right on that, and so were you. Did you criticise him then as failing to understand?

And you didn't criticize him when he stood almost alone in refusal to criticize Israel over Lebanon, summer 2006.

But yes, I know there are other issues with which you disagree with him strongly. The moral maze is a real maze at times for all of us.

And even I, a strong supporter of his "moral stances" have my doubts on this "secular aggression" statement. Like you, I think the fault is the Left's 'New Theocracy' of The Human Rights Act. But for that it is hardly right to blame Tony Blair. It was never his intention that it be used against us by Shami Chakrabarti and those she supports and defends.

But to say that he is "passing by on the other side" is pushing it. To me, as a former Prime Minister, he is voicing his thoughts more than some might wish, and more than he needs to.

That is NOT to say that I think he is right on this attack on secularists. He has the wrong target.

And I DO wish he or some Labour politician would speak up on the Free Speech denied Geert Wilders.

For me, that is walking by on the other side.

My post on his secularism attack is here:

http://keeptonyblairforpm.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/the-blairs-speak-up-for-christianity-and-down-with-democracy/

Mr Blair has a struggle on if he is starting to lose the trust of BlairSupporter.

Vision Aforethought

Spot on M. I always felt that Blair alone (a consummate liar and profiteer) was responsible for the majority of the ills afflicting this country. Both Mrs. Thatcher and even Brown have been made scapegoats. The buck stops at the top - that's how it works in business anyway, so it should apply to running a nation too. With the Blairs, it was (and is) all about the money, not ethics or what was or is right for the country. I actually think Brown, for all his flaws, is a lot more sincere and has a good heart. He's just not as slick, but that's no bad thing.

Herbert Thornton

Well said, Melanie - and especially so because you put an expression from St Luke's gospel in the New Testament so such effective use.

It is all the more damning because Tony Blair, the man now walking by on the other side, is not a mere passer-by. He is like one of the original robbers who had set upon and robbed the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Blair is not merely indifferent to others' misfortunes, but uncaring that he himself caused them.

I refrain from suggesting who now represents the Good Samaritan - but it is not David Cameron.

James Pawlak

Ir is no wonder that the earlier Isaiah was unpopular.

Jenny

Ah, Blair, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

And boy are we in hell now.

Winston Smith

What can I say but sport on again!

"I hope and believe that stories of people not being allowed to express their Christianity are exceptional or the result of individual ludicrous decisions. My view is that people should be proud of their Christianity and able to express it as they wish."

However, Blair never really thought about what the "Incitement to religious hatred" bill would bring with it did he? Here instead of a law to protect all religions it there to protect only one - Islam. They added insult by taking away all Christian defence - the removal of the Blasphemy law.

Yor final phrase sums it all up:

I hope and believe that stories of people not being allowed to express their Christianity are exceptional or the result of individual ludicrous decisions. My view is that people should be proud of their Christianity and able to express it as they wish.’

There have been many people behind the destruction of the UK amongst others. Firstly Tony Blair brought about the destruction of society with his laws, helped by his wife Cherie with human rights doctrine. Brown destroyed the country financially, Harriet Harman, Hazel blears brought about the feminist destruction of the UK, Mandelson brought in the gay superiority with the hate and equality laws and Blunkett brought in the waves of immigrants and multicultural Britain.

And look at him now, one man destroyed a society that took a thousand years to build in less than ten. In one year alone he earned six times more than ten years as Prime Minister.
Blair destroyed Britain. How very sad.

Joe Strummer

Any sane person who has lived in Northern Ireland or the West of Scotland, where sectarianism between Protestants and Roman Catholics is endemic, would be happy to see more "aggressive secularism " in the public arena, not less.

Only since the emergence in the UK of a strident Islam and its demands for their womenfolk to wear the hajib and other "religious apparel " in schools, places of employment, etc, we have witnessed this silly competition evolve where Christians now also demand " equality" by being allowed to wear a cross or crucifix,etc, in their place of work.

Like the French, we should ban ALL religious symbols, clothing, etc, from public life.

Keep religion personal and private for the respective denominational Sabbaths and out of British public life.

Terry

I wish there was a Margaret Thatcher to save Britain (again).

She faced off leftofascsits like scargill and she would face off islmofascists today. She wasn't PC and she wasn't scared. The only thing she was, was a rarity in British politics.

Last one before Maggie was Winnie.

I heard scargill's wdow interviewed on the bbc last night - she still thinks the miners won!! Show how looney some left wing bigots are.

David

In showing up his hypocrisy and opportunism it would have been useful to mention the brutal oppression and attacks on Christianity perpetrated by the very Gazans and their ilk he so avidly supports.

D. Johnson

Believe in whatever supernatural SkyGod takes your fancy. Just don't force those beliefs down my throat or expect me to respect you for those beliefs.

Religion breeds nothing but intolerance and prejudice. It has no place in 21st Century society.

Meh

Human Rights have achived all of this? Brilliant; you've made my day.

Margaret Muller-Johansson

Tony B-liar should be his name, he was the one who was responsible to let in massive under educated muslim immigrant to Britain, he did not tell the true about the economy, cool Britannia he said we are rich and will always be, yes some people get rich but not me, he talked about multiculturalism and how we get along and that is not true because we don't get along, when he was a prime minister we been terrorised by the worst terrorist on earth the Islamic extremist who was born here, i feel sorry for Great Britain because the mess this man left behind

Mjolnir de Jersiase

Believe in whatever form of empty Atheistic Scientism takes your fancy. Just don't force those beliefs down my throat or expect me to respect you for those beliefs.

Atheism breeds nothing but nihilism and despair. It has no place in 21st Century society.

GaryO

‘I thought at the time all this was a lot of fuss over nothing,’ Mr Blair said.

Tragically, by the time he's realised his error of judgement in this matter, the damage has been done.

Thank you Mr Blair.

Mr Melrose

Jenny - You are not in Hell - Just some sumptuously appointed compound in the backwoods of Minnesota somewhere I would guess.

Hell -if it does exist on earth - is more likely to be found crouching next to your dead parents in a bulldozed building in Gaza, or in a Chad refugee camp for your third year, or beaten senseless in an un-named prison which does not officially exist, don't you think?

Bailey

Tyranny of the Minority

Soon Christians will be able to use it.

What Secularists disconnect from is that Secularism itself becomes a religion. There is a Secular moral code...

Thou shalt not discuss God in my presence!

Thou shalt not display any article of God which might offend mine eyes.

Thou shalt not display any offense at mine behaviour.

ETC...

D. Johnson

Bailey - why should atheists take the delusions of the religious seriously? Religion is medieval superstitious nonsense. I couldn't care less if you're Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Jewish. Your God does not exist. Your 'holy books' are works of fiction. The Universe is utterly indifferent to your presence. Get over it.

Ann

"Believe in whatever form of empty Atheistic Scientism takes your fancy"

You don't actually know the first thing about atheism, do you?

"Just don't force those beliefs down my throat or expect me to respect you for those beliefs.
Atheism breeds nothing but nihilism and despair"

Ignorant, arrogant nonsense.

"It has no place in 21st Century society"

So you are going to force your Christianity, or whatever other fairytale you believe in, down my throat, eh?

iq

D. Johnson - "Religion is medieval superstitious nonsense...Your God does not exist. Your 'holy books' are works of fiction. The Universe is utterly indifferent to your presence."

Please don't preach; keep your beliefs to yourself, in the privacy of your own home, etc. etc.

Steve

'Mr What is important' and 'It is important' subliminal-indoctrination has made a fool of Britain for more than ten years! He won't make one of me!

Bailey

D Johnson,

I am over it, but I am not blind to the fact that many Secularists seem to take on the the very characteristics that they deplore about religions in the first place.

Take yourself for example...I am sure you have no idea that your remarks are quite bigoted and arrogant.

Your faith is that, "Religion is medieval superstitious nonsense. God does not exist. The Universe is utterly indifferent to your presence."

You can no more prove what you believe to be true than religious people can.

I may not be religious, but I am not against religion either...as you are.

iq

(I think this could go on and on…)
"Believe in whatever supernatural SkyGod takes your fancy."
You don't actually know the first thing about religion, do you?
"Just don't force those beliefs down my throat or expect me to respect you for those beliefs. Religion breeds nothing but intolerance and prejudice."
Ignorant, arrogant nonsense.
"It has no place in 21st Century society."
So you are going to force your atheism, or whatever other baseless ideology you believe in, down my throat, eh?
(…and on, like it has for millennia already.)

Steve

Dear Spectator, I find your refusal to publish my first remark so ridiculous and typical of how Blair and his colleagues have so muzzled the media and everyone else in this country and, even more unforgivable, you accept it without saying a word!!

Shame on you!!

Steve

Dee Ranged, above - agree totally!! I actually think he IS deranged!! No doubt that's why you chose the term, and he wants to be President Of Europe!!

OMG!!

Michael B

D. Johnson,

At least to this point you've evidenced the fact you're but one more among the myriads of pious, unreflective pretenders who worships at the altar of facile contempt, philistine incomprehension and an incurious and willful blindness. Applaud yourself for your arms-folded approach as much as you care to indulge, but that's the unholy trinity your condemnations and preachments reflect. Iow, "get over" your own pious nonseriousness, posing as something more than it is, and cease shoving your own intolerance and prejudicial views down others' throats.
(If anyone cares to investigate the subject with a heightened degree of seriousness, the aptly titled The Last Superstition is accessible and ably puts the lie to the pretense of R. Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Hitchens, Sam Harris & Co.'s repackaged "new atheism." It's a contemporary work, demands a disciplined read, but is not overly arcane or abstruse, it is in fact accessible.)

Nick

I'm not sure why it's acceptable to mock atheists. Atheists tend to be intellectually curious. We don't blindly accept whatever platitudes our local Rabbi, or Vicar, or Imam tell us. We seek to understand the workings of the Universe through science and observation. 'Belief' doesn't enter into it. One could no more 'believe' in atheism as one could no more believe in the absence of something that never existed in the first place, such as 'God'.

Michael B

Btw, it may pass notice without an overt mention, but the earlier reference to the "unholy" trinity - of facile contempt, philistine incomprehension and an incurious and willful blindness - is "unholy" vis-a-vis the very best and most rigorous of post-Enlightenment (i.e. rational and transparent) standards, not the pseudo-standards of some strawman, stereotypical, backwards looking fideism.

The deeply telling irony - when it comes to those who evidence little or nothing more than an ability to quote chapter and verse from or otherwise mimic Dawkins & Co. - is that they are seemingly almost comically unaware of just HOW superficial the anti-theistic arguments of those pretenders are. They are functionaries and sophists operating in an ideological/political arena, not serious intellectuals in any more coherent or rigorous sense. And yes, that includes otherwise intelligent people - intelligent, that is, in their respective and narrower fields - Dawkins himself being a prime example, an Oliver Kamm being among the more insistently incurious specimens in blogdom and the pundit class.

And to be clear, I'm referring not to "traditional" atheists whose arguments and positions can variously be appreciated from rational and other perspectives (e.g., normblog - Norm Geras - is someone I respect hugely, yet differ with greatly in this and other areas). Rather, I'm referring to the arch anti-theistic interests of those who are sometimes referred to as "the new atheists," the triumvirate of Dawkins, Dennett and Sam Harris, occasionally including Hitchens and one or two others.

phil

Mr Melrose even the naive note there was no mention of Auswitch -do I detect a little touch of prejudice in your posts?'

Wilhelm

Melrose

Gaza is like a 5 star holiday resort compared to Belsen.

Verity

Jenny, are you seriously suggesting, when you write that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, that Blair was well-intended, rather than driven by malice?

Winston Smith: "However, Blair never really thought about what the "Incitement to religious hatred" bill would bring with it did he?"

He didn't?

Do you believe he's a Christian? Or do you believe he says he's a Christian with an eye on that $15m he has made speaking around the US since leaving office?

Original Tony

Keep and eye on Blair! His fake conversion to Catholocism and the fact that he may be the first President of Europe will have profound repercussions on Israel and the West!

Keep watching!

Ann

"You don't actually know the first thing about religion, do you?"

I grew up in a religious household.

On to the next ignorant nonsense:

"So you are going to force your atheism, or whatever other baseless ideology you believe in, down my throat, eh?"

No. That's what theists do.

iq

Winner of this week's "Missing the Point" award goes to...Ann!

(Try reading all the comments above again and, if you're still none the wiser...well, let's just leave it at that, shall we?)

Michael B

To cacoon and even entomb one's mind in tendentiously conceived definitions and platitudes, likewise imagining that doing so is tantamount to serious inquiry and thought, is the very hallmark of the ideological religionist, to indulge the term in a simple and purely pejorative sense. A Raymond Aron or fellow countryman Jacques Ellul were neither the first nor the last to notice such is the case.

hadrian

This is a bit like poacher turned game-keeper, isn't it?! After all, Blair presided over one of the most ferociously secularist administrations we've had to endure which manifested itself in everything from its faddish lip service to every popular angst of the day, to EU salvation-by-supranational bureaocracy, to contempt for all the ancient parliamentary trappings of state which ARE significant in humbling any office-bearer not inflating their own personal urge for raw power.( I think specifically of his attack on the Lords and his 'modernising' thinning down of the Monarch's attendants at Queen's Speech etc.
At a more profound level however Blair was a crypto-Romanist and as such grossly out of line with historic Biblical Christianity.
Those secularists on here who've been bemoaning the 'sectarian' harmful influences on society at large simply betray their own specious thinking.It's not world views/religion as such that bring misery upon men but mankind's innate fallen nature that does that- and the purest atheists have been pretty damned efficient at wreaking havoc and slaughter in self-righteous fantaticism.

Michael B

Also, a couple of positive examples: 1) within Judaism, Hilary Putnam, in turn commenting upon Buber, Rosenzweig, Levinas and Wittgenstein - and Putnam is a respected philosopher of science, and 2) within a purely rationally conceived theism, a set of Plantinga's theistic arguments.

DaveP

Jenny wrote: And boy are we in hell now.

We are not there yet Jenny. Wait another 30 years and the Muslim population is 20% or 30%, then we will see the effects of unfetterted Muslim immigration. This Labour government has taken part, in what can only be termed as the cultural genocide of Britain. And it has done this in the guise of "good intentions". What really was the case was not good intentions, but that the political elite wanted to feel good about themselves. And they have done so on our backs and on our shilling.

Linda Smith

Hadrian mentioned "mankind's innate fallen nature". Fallen from what exactly?

Ann

"mankind's innate fallen nature that does that"

Only if you are a Christian. It's very telling that you assume everyone accepts this fairytale.

"the purest atheists have been pretty damned efficient at wreaking havoc and slaughter in self-righteous fantaticism"

Not as much as theists have been doing over the past 2000 years.

Kevin

"It's very telling that you assume everyone accepts this [Christian] fairytale [about mankind's fallen nature]".

"Telling" in what way? That he has the confidence to say what he knows to be true the same way evolutionists say that the universe self-exists and that every living thing has inherited its characteristics from an ancestor - except the first one, of course, but "we don't like to talk about him".

"Not as much [slaughter] as theists have been doing over the past 2000 years."

Judging by the time frame, that'll be Catholic theists you are talking about? What part of slaughter indicates a belief in Christ? On the other hand, what objective basis, other than inheritance of traditional Christian morality, does an atheist have for disapproving of abortion and euthanatic homicide (i.e., in both cases, murder)?

This is why Melanie puts "human rights" in inverted commas: because the concept is not grounded in anything objective, hence the failure to defend the "right to life".

Richie Craze

Wilhelm: "funny how he [Dawkins] doesnt slag off Allah or Mohamad, the coward."

Oh yes he does. Frequently. He has the courage to speak out against all fairytales. Don't show your ignorance.

Neil Saunders

I'm an atheist, with no desire to mount an intellectual defence of the ancestral superstitions that constitute ALL of the so-called "great" religions, even if such a thing could be done.

That said, the deliberate downgrading of Judeo-Christian culture (the foundation of our European societies), with the corresponding privileging of Islam, is clearly part of a deliberate assault.

And yes, it is ironic that the militant atheists and secularists in Europe are acting (wittingly or otherwise) as abettors and facilitators of Islamic clerical fascism.

It is imperative that people such as myself - who reject the supernatural claims of religion - nevertheless proclaim a cultural affiliation. Consequently, I am quite happy to term myself a cultural Christian.

Michael B

It seems to have gone unnoticed that in nothing - quite literally nothing - that I, at least, advanced were any "fairy tales" defended. To the contrary, reason qua reason was defended as applied to the subject of theism, atheism and anti-theism singly. Telling, that that fact is elided altogether.

The only fairy tales that were attacked and mocked in a more offensive manner were the fairy tales of non-reason as represented in pseudo-arguments. E.g., simplistic and tendentiously conceived definitions - and accompanying harrumphs, as if to suggest reason itself should not be allowed to offend certain "august" pretensions. And if reason itself is being guarded against, ...