You see, some atheists don’t believe that they have a worldview. As far as they are they are concerned, religion is a virally transmitted mental disease, and they see it as their God given duty (wait, that can’t be right ...) to cure us of belief.

But Mr. Greg England, the theory of evolution is scientifically proven. You religious people, with your magic man in the sky, and tyrannical God ... blah, blah, blah. You believe that the world was created in six days, and Adam and Eve and the snake ...

Look it’s really simple. You need to face facts. None of us really knows anything. When we first appear in this world, we can’t find our a$$ with our hands. The scientific method allows us to create a cogent model of the physical processes that govern this universe, and hand this knowledge down to future generations. But that’s all it does.

In 1,000 years that’s still all it will be doing. Atheist philosophers like Sartre at least had the decency to admit that life was absurd. But you are in denial. You genuinely believe that the only reason why you don’t understand everything is because a few pieces of the jigsaw are missing, and once you find those pieces ... then what?  What exactly will you understand?

I’ll tell you what you WON’T understand. You will still believe that you have a blank cheque to go around bullying decent, hardworking, ordinary people just because they share a different worldview than you! You will still believe that you are somehow superior to the rest of the human race. If only everyone gave up religion, then everything would be okay. How naive are you?

Do you honestly think that we are that simple that we don’t appreciate how absurd the Bible appears to be?

Of course it’s absurd. It’s not meant to be a scientific text; it’s not even a work of metaphysics. It’s full of contradictions, and clauses that leave us all scratching our heads. The New Testament is the story of some Jewish bloke who claims he’s God, gets nailed to a tree, and God can’t even organise a single documentary account of the whole affair (instead we have to pick our way through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).

What about Cain’s fears of being beaten up when he walks the earth: “Behold, thou has driven me out this day from the face of the earth: and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.” Who will slay you? Abel ... he’s dead. There’s always Mum and Dad, but unless they are living separate lives ... there isn’t anyone else.

The reason why I put my faith in Christ has nothing to do with reason.

But you could never, ever understand that, you don't even want to.

Last night I watched Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” as I thought that it was about time I saw what all the fuss was about. To give Al Gore credit, he communicated his message clearly and in an engaging manner. Some of his points were quite valid as well (e.g. the need to improve fuel economy in our cars).

I’m not a climate scientist (although I am familiar with the scientific method) and so I will not question the science here. However, there are a few points that jar with me that need pointing out:

Scary Movie
The tagline for the film poster is “by far the most terrifying film you will ever see”. Now I don’t know about you, but I think that tagline could only have been written by someone who has never encountered true evil. Not a good start.

Consensus
At one point in the film, Al Gore claims to have surveyed more than 928 scientific papers and not one of them disagreed with the scientific consensus about global warming being man made. Well this is obviously wrong, just search the internet and voila, a paper disagreeing with the consensus.

In any case, it is pretty meaningless to talk about “scientific consensus”. There used to be a scientific consensus about Newtonian physics, and then along came quantum physics and the theory of relativity. Scientific knowledge advances through debate. You only get consensus in a communist regime.

Nuclear Power
If global warming is man-made, and it’s caused by CO₂ emissions, then okay let’s build lots of nuclear power stations. End of debate. You don’t need a documentary to convey that message; you could put it on posters and in 30 second adverts on TV: “Vote for me, and save the planet through nuclear power!”

But the movie is strangely silent on the one technology that could actually make a big difference, both to CO₂ emissions and our future energy security.

And that is scary!

I have recently posted this, but it is worthy of it's own blog:

Liberal Wisdom on the Middle East

Once again the liberals are blaming the West for ALL the problems in the Middle East.

However, if you join all their arguments together into one paragraph you get the following:

Israel is to blame for not allowing Fatah to obtain weapons to fight Hamas, and for supporting Hamas as an alternative to Fatah. The US is to blame for providing Fatah with weapons to fight Hamas (which Hamas now have). The western world is to blame for not supporting the democratically elected Hamas in the first place.

Several cakes are being had and eaten here, aren’t they?

Liberal Wisdom on the environment

Lib: Save the planet by cutting CO2 emissions.
Con: Let’s build some hydroelectric power plants.
Lib: No, that’s bad for rivers and for the people and ...
Con: Let’s build some nuclear power plants.
Lib: You can’t do that. Nuclear power is dangerous.
Con: More dangerous than rising sea levels?
Lib: (ignoring the question) You must conserve energy, cut back on what you use.
Con: How?
Lib: Use energy free light bulbs, and stop flushing the toilet so often.
Con: Sit in the dark, s**t in a bucket?

Even if you call their bluff, and find ways to drastically cut our energy usage, they are still carping on. 

For example, when EasyJet recently unveiled a concept for a low carbon eco-plane, Friends of the Earth were full of praise for the initiative calling it a “sensible initiative that will radically reduce emissions”.

I’m joking of course.

They were quick to criticise, asking for “massive cuts in the anticipated growth in air travel”.

With Friends of the Earth like these ... who needs enemies?

I'm not going to tell you what it is.  You know what country I'm referring to - it's the one that everyone bangs on about ... all the time ...  For the sake of this discussion, let's assume that I'm talking about that country that is the size of Wales.

Anyway, go on ....

Type the phrase "worst country" into www.google.co.uk.

The FIRST hit is a country the size of Wales.
The SIXTH hit is also a country the size of Wales.

Think about this for a moment. There are approximately 193 countries in the world.

Why did Google find a country the size of Wales first?

The chances of this happening purely by chance, all other things being equal, are approximately 0.5%

Imagine for a moment that countries the size of Wales may be guilty as charged of ALL the accusations that are thrown at them. If we are purely talking about landmass and numbers of people involved, it would STILL pale into insignificance alongside Sudan and North Korea.

For some empirical evidence of North Korean misery, you only have to look at the picture taken by Nasa:

www.cojoweb.com/earthlights.html

South Korea is lit up like a Christmas tree.

When you go north, everything goes dark except for Pyongyang.

What can it be like to live there?

Surely a search on "worst country" in Google should recover North Korea before a country the size of Wales.

Yet I have to scroll to hit 25 before I find North Korea mentioned in the search text.

Why is that?

Even if we accept the a priori assumption that countries the size of Wales can be dreadful countries, the fact that they appear so much higher up on the list is proof that undue focus is given to countries the size of Wales.

I therefore deduce that there is an orchestrated hate campaign against countries the size of Wales.

Forget politics, this is what logical analysis demonstrates.

I sadly conclude that it is extremely difficult to have an objective discussion about country the size of Wales and human rights, given that there is a VAST propaganda HATE campaign against countries the size of Wales.

Go Figure …

This started out as a comment on a townhall column. However, I believe the subject is important enough for its own blog, so I have duplicated the comment here:

There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of religious faith that can be made, and should be made. And atheists, more than any other faith group, are in a unique position to make these criticisms.

However, materialism is an intellectually dishonest position for atheists to take. It fails the test of radical empiricism, that is to say it fails to capture the totality of human experience.

For example, it is reasonable to be skeptical about miracles. However, it is unreasonable to be skeptical about more prosaic experiences such as falling in love, or entering a room and sensing a "bad atmosphere".

These experiences are part of the human condition. To rely on a logical positivistic framework when you should be refering to your own personal experiences of life shows just how dehumanised and morally bankrupt the secular left has become.

How is it possible to form a genuine friendship with someone who genuinely believes that you are nothing more than a collection of atoms and molecules; bones and flesh?

Such a nihilistic position is abhorrent. There have been plenty of intellectuals from the secular left who have not stooped to such a level, and whilst they may have had a very anti-religious world view they have provided important insights into the human condition - Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus to name two.

I for one, would rather listen to a diatribe from Christopher Hitchens than any number of cold-fish analyses from Richard Dawkins, because I am more interested in understanding life than in listening to someone elucidate the narrowest of narrow world views.

Reality is more important than ideology.

This website is looking for Christian volunteers to mock, so I thought I’d take a look, and maybe ask a few tricky questions of my own:

- What are the laws of physics made of?

- If Susan Blackmore doesn’t exist, who gets the royalties from her books?

- How many amputees do you actually know, or care about?

Unfortunately, there are the “Rules of Engagement”. These prohibit you from name calling, insults and sarcasm. Restrictions on name calling and insults I can understand. But restrictions on sarcasm?

How can you communicate with liberals without sarcasm?

For example, what are you supposed to say when liberals mock you for believing in “magic man in the sky” and then go on to tell you that the End of the World is Nigh.

- Let there be low energy light bulbs?

You see, I’ve been very patient with liberals to date, really I have. I’ve given that sickly Christian smile when I’ve been told for the umpteenth that religion is a mental illness (as opposed to atheism which is a psychiatric disorder). But all that is over now that Ann Coulter has shown me the way. Hallelujah!

No more cheek turning for me for now is the time to “Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong”. [Joel 3:10].

I’m just kidding of course. Next time you step on my feet you know that I will be the one that apologises to you! The meek really ought to invest in steel toe caps; otherwise there will be a lot of people with sore feet inheriting the earth.

So go on, fit your low energy lightbulbs, put on your wooly hat and hurl that trashcan through that shop window. Burn those cars, why don’t you? Spend your waking hours weighing up whether it is better to buy fair trade to help the poor farmers in the developing world, or buy local produce to reduce the food miles.

Because let’s be honest. If you truly gave a damn about the developing world you would stop making so many lame excuses for the terrorists.

And in the long run that might mean fewer amputees …

Of course the UK government wants to tell us where we can drive, and I want to tell them where to go.