Britain's pagan police

Osred

Mr Pandy has too much time on his hands. Presumably the more numerous Jedis have already got an 'association'.

Peter A

I had to check my diary to make sure that today was not April 1st and then I realised that it is simply that the whole world has gone mad.Check out this website: http://www.paganpolicegroupuk.co.uk/#/home/4534248376

Pete

Yes it is.

Well spotted.

Well, at least the Festival of the Lactating Sheep sounds more pleasant than Muslim Festivals of the Slowly Ex-sanguinated Cow!

EC

"... officers will be drinking mead and dancing naked to celebrate the coming harvest."

Well it would make a change from officers furtively poncing about in leather aprons behind closed doors at lodge meetings!

David, Thailand

Mad and getting madder.

Nick

I fail to see why Paganism is any more or less ridiculous than Islam, Christianity or Judaism. I assume that there are Muslim and Jewish Police Associations in the UK. Which is the one true Sky Fairy?

Dee Ranged

.

Oh Melanie!

Let's fly the pagan flag.

.

David Bouvier

A friend of ours whimsically put "Pagan" when filling in his sons religion on a form sent by his boarding school, later receiving a concerned call from the school asking what this meant in terms holy days, and so on.

To which he replied that his son would need 4-5 days off over the year, but the timing was all very complex and based on the moon and other natural cycles, so that his son would let them know a few days in advance.

His son considered him quite a cool dad for some time thereafter.

Andre

Nick
Read the New Testament.
Use a modern translation - the New International Version
Then see

ben

Nick:

exactly.

Oink

Animal Farm in real life.

Osred

There should be 'associations' within the police except those whose purpose is to emphasise the role of the Police in maintaining the law of the land without fear or favour. No association should be allowed to exist which aims to further any ideas contrary to parliamentray democracy and the Law, nor promote alternative interpretations of the Law.

Lord Monkington-Smythe

At least the pagans seem to combine religion with having a bit of fun... prancing around getting drunk and naked sounds like quite a good weekend to me.

C Solberg

Oh, terrible isn't it? And to think they've only been around for what? 1000s of years? Shame on them!

Mr. Mabutoh Afunfa

Isn't diversity wonderful? I don't know but after reading this i am laughing so hard my tummy hurts.

Ray

It's enough to make you want to suck on a ewe's teat.

Nick

Andre; if I wanted to read a work of fiction I'd stick to Harry Potter.

Oflife

Surely that should read "co-founder PC Andy Pandy", no? Either way, we're all victims now...

charlene hale

And things will only get worse, much worse if Libs do a deal with Labour and other minority parties to keep Mr Cameron out of number 10. No wonder we are in such a fiscal, social mess.

wonderer

Such manifestations of multi-culturalism are not novel. A few years ago a naval technician was authorised by his Captain after consultation with the ship's chaplain to practise satanism on HMS Cumberland with the acquiescence - I hesitate to say blessing - of the MoD and to the dismay of Ann Widdecombe. This was fully reported at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article498640.ece

Sam ARMSTRONG

Getting quite scary now, is old Blighty.

The PC madness was at one time comical. But Pagan Police?

Maybe Harriet "sexually explicit pictures if kids should only be investigated if there is obvious harm done" Harman approved this one.

After all, Pagans like sex with kids don't they?

TH

It seems no odder than, say, shaking a tumerous lemon and palm leaves around to bless the fields, or waving a chicken over your head to transfer your sins to it.

Andre

Nick
So read the new testament - I don't think you dare

Dominic L-R

Nick:

Well said! Let's see if anyone can take up your challenge, and explain just why the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition is more plausible than any of the other Gods that we now (rightly) treat as mythology.

EDDIE

How about an Association of Spotted Police?- we don't see all that many of them these days

AllanS

Nick,

I choose to believe in an absolutely good God. The alternatives (no God, or a nasty God) both lead to despair because they are ultimately hope-less. Since God's existence (or non-existence) cannot possibly be proved, the only sane thing to do is to follow hope.

Jesus is a God-candidate who is rooted both in myth and history, who claimed to be God's revelation, and who forgave his enemies even as they nailed him down. Emmanuel, God-with-us, dying in torment to save his enemies.

Martin Kelly

What's really annoying is that us humanists/aheists haven't got any god days we can have off.
Perhaps the birthdays of Darwin, Einstein, Newton, et al could be set aside for us. In fact, there are so many great scientists and mathematicians who were humanists, we need hardly turn up for work.

James G. Wiles

Maybe Ron Liddle (of whom I'm a fan by the way) can become a police auxiliary of this fine organization...Dancing naked while full of mead seems right up his alley.

-Jim Wiles (USA)

Verity

Dominic LR - What mean spirit is it that you have embedded, and nurture, that drives you to try to deny faith to others?

That the universe works on such a grand pattern would lead most curious people to believe their is a guiding hand.

If you do not so believe, why are you so viciously, greedily, eager to destroy the faith of others? You can't, of course, but your eagerness is bizarre. Why not just ignore the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews instead of taking four major fights upon your hands?

Why are you so cross?

Why don't I care, other than idle curiosity?

Dixon

Actually, this isnt "diversity", but, many would argue, a reclaiming of the bedrock of our Northern European heritage, before all that Christianity and subsequent imported twaddle began the slow turning of our culture into the formless, spineless quagmire of kitsch, pap and pusillanimity that it is today.

No Im not a Pagan meself. But the occasional "Wicker Man" would be a prospect to warm the soul. I guess your Pagan copper is not going to volunteer to step into the shoes of Edward Woodwards Christian copper but Im sure we could find some substitutes, at westminster maybe. A small sacrifice to make, possibly quite necessary, even inevotable, in the long run.

Dixon

"May 10th, 2010 3:17pm
Well, at least the Festival of the Lactating Sheep sounds more pleasant than Muslim Festivals of the Slowly Ex-sanguinated Cow!"

Or more recently, the Halal butchered Belgian shopkeeper.

Dixon

"AllanS
May 10th, 2010 11:08pm
Nick,

I choose to believe in an absolutely good God. The alternatives (no God, or a nasty God) both lead to despair because they are ultimately hope-less. Since God's existence (or non-existence) cannot possibly be proved, the only sane thing to do is to follow hope. "

Is it sane to believe in that which every scrap of evidence contradicts? There is only one conceivable face of God which tallies with the facts. It is a face which in its sheer dreadfulness, like that of the Gorgon can petrify whoever beholds it.

The Creator is that which is evil beyond comprehension. We are caught in its hellish device like insects being tormented by an unimaginably sadistic child.

This is what I find so disgusting about religion. You choose to hope and to kow tow to such a vile deity because...as your own words imply...you recognise that the truth is too awful for you to admit and you hope that your grovelling will somehow save you from the attentions of the omnipotent tormentor of all Mankind.

Religion is degrading and cowardly.

Mark (mk1) not to confused with other marks

'As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve foreigners in a land that is not yours.' The LORD said to Jeremiah:

?

William Boyd

Isn't Mel wonderful?

I turn in desperation to her blog, last bastion of the moral high ground left in British politics, to get an angle on what's going on after the McBroon bombshell and what do I see?

A picture of a goat's head stuck on some plonker's shoulders.

Blimey Mel give over!

Harold

Dixon,
There you are! You seem very willing to dish it out, but not so keen to take it. I thought you had maybe gone on holiday, but no...

blue_&_white_avenger

Naturally, I expect paganism to now feature on ALL schools' curricula as a mandatory subject to which due time needs to be dedicated & for which expert teachers must be recruited, by law.
Naturally, also, marriage registrars must sanction pagan "relationships" and pagans must have the right, as equals in society, to marry with due rites honoured, in church or wherever else they might deign to bless their relationship/partnership

Baron

Dominic L-R:

It matters not whether one’s God sits higher up than another, even though some followers of a creed may believe it to be true. What matters is that sit there He does. Faith, not unlike hope, love and stuff, is a part and parcel of being human, i.e. of being capable of both thinking and feelings. Religions are but a man’s made constructs for assembling those of the same faith. Even if we could explain absolutely everything, faith would have unlikely vanished. To many it would continue to provide more than an explanation of things, but the reason for their being here.

Dominic L-R

Verity:

I merely asked people to explain why the Judeo-Christian God is more plausible than other Gods that we now treat as mythology.

Does this really qualify as "viciously, greedily eager to destroy the faith of others"?

I hope the other commentators here don't share your hysterical reaction to a perfectly reasonable question.

Ronnie

Sam Armstrong.

Not sure you are making a very strong point given the current problems in the Catholic Church.

Graeme

Will a future conservative Govt, if we have one, proscribe all these sectarian groups like this pagan group and all the other silly groups like the Black Asian and gay and lesbian groups and then sack them for being political in an organisation, which should politically non-partisan of the highest order.

AllanS

Dixon
May 11th, 2010 3:08am

"Is it sane to believe in that which every scrap of evidence contradicts? There is only one conceivable face of God which tallies with the facts. It is a face which in its sheer dreadfulness, like that of the Gorgon can petrify whoever beholds it.

The Creator is that which is evil beyond comprehension. We are caught in its hellish device like insects being tormented by an unimaginably sadistic child.

This is what I find so disgusting about religion. You choose to hope and to kow tow to such a vile deity because...as your own words imply...you recognise that the truth is too awful for you to admit and you hope that your grovelling will somehow save you from the attentions of the omnipotent tormentor of all Mankind.

Religion is degrading and cowardly."

The fact that you so deeply (and rightly) loathe an evil God is powerful evidence for the existence of a good God.

Where did your loathing come from, and is it valid? One problem with Atheism (apart from it being ultimately hopeless) is that it drains all meaning from words like "evil", hellish", "sadistic", "disgusting", "vile", "degrading" and "cowardly".

If there is no God, there is no objective truth and no objective morality. But clearly, you believe you are expressing objective truth in your reply, and that you are morally right to do so...

You seem quite oblivious to the fact that you borrow Judeo-Christian beliefs in order to justify your unbelief.

Dixon

Allan...I am reluctant to arhue with you because I have no wish to sow despair where you say you feel hope. But for answers consider the "tyger", burning bright. Who formed his fearful symmetry?

Though Blake was a Christian he was not the wishy-washy luvvy-God variety. He recognised in the tiger a sickening predator. We choose to see the animal...every bit the monster of any horror movie...as a pretty pussycat. Its the power of self-deception and unwillingness to recognise the reality of the Creation for what it is. Sick, pestilential, an environment in which Mankind has survived only in spite of Gods provisions, not thanks to them. Mankind itself being another of Gods sickeningly perverse creations. But the only one with the capacity for questioning His creation.

...oh, theres that Harold, the one who doesnt actually bother to read the things people write before responding with a torrent of patronising guff.

EC

Nick; "Which is the one true Sky Fairy?"

Adam Boulton?

Harold

Dixon,
I'm hurt. I was trying to help you. I very thoughtfully explained to you what you had failed to understand (again) in another's comment - and you ran away!

Harold

Dixon,
I wonder if you recall the conversation you ran away from?

I noticed that you had reduced your interlocutor to exasperation:
"Dixon,
How is it possible to put so much effort over so many years into trying to get an education and yet at the end of it all still retain the faults of the autodidact, convinced of your perspicuity yet purblind, argumentative yet innocent of the rules and constraints of right reasoning, with the rapier wit of a blustering blunderbuss?"

I stepped in to help. I tried to explain to you one of the points you were missing (if you see that you are missing the point in one instance, it may make you more careful in others): "I think the reference to Hobbes might have been made to suggest that your "caricature" is very like his thought experiment or fiction of what the "state of nature" would be like before the advent of government. Good government and the rule of law keep us from approaching such a state; bad government ("tribal" government, if you wish) brings us uncomfortably close for many people. That, at least, is how I interpret the comment."

I appear to have failed: your responses remain bumptiously overconfident in your own wisdom.

Neil Craig

Who wants all those old fashioned religions about lactating sheep. I want to have an extra weeks holiday to worship Fineline the God of Engineering.

Its my right.

Nonvexatious

Of course a belief that there's a big man with a white beard up in the sky is more credible than a belief in animism and nature spirits - not! It's always struck me that Melanie doesn't have an ounce of spirituality in her and that her religion is a convenient set of rules with which to denigrate all of us 'non-normatives'

Zeus

When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Steph

Yes well said Melanie, diversity is indeed wonderful! We should pride ourselves on being the forward-thinking and democratic nation that we have developed into, and who would have thought it after centuries of living in the Dark Ages where anyone who dared to suggest that the world was perhaps not made in 7 days was socially ostracised?

Rob-NY

The last one out of Britian, turn the lights off please.

Harry

Mel, So, I guess that you don't believe in Thor and Odin? Just one more god to go and you can call yourself an atheist.

BlairSupporter

Another harmless ideology to add to the rest?

Melanie - just to let you know that I have trancribed one of your videos in your talk on Millenariasm:

http://keeptonyblairforpm.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/phillips-on-millenarianists-greens-atheists-secularists-anti-jews-anti-west-anti-usa/

Very persuasive. Only a few areas where I disagree with you.