For The Record: My Stance On Islam & Terrorism

Early this morning there was a terrorist attack on Muslims attending to a collapsed man near the Finsbury Park mosque. As of now I'm not sure if the driver managed to kill anyone, but there are a number of injured. The man was detained by the people he tried to kill, who did not allow some people wanting to kill the man to get near him. They showed remarkable compassion for the degenerate, given the circumstances. That said there are people who are pointing to the man's protectors and saying "Look... Islam is a religion of peace!" whilst ignoring the fact that there were Muslims there who wanted to stomp him to death. Some Muslims are peaceful, some aren't. That's the truth of all religious groups, and all other groups in which it is possible to hold extremist elements. Most Trump supporters don't really think Latinos and Muslims are rapists and murderers, despite what Trump says about gangs and immigrants. Some do, and they try to assault, or even kill them. On the basis of the numbers Trump supporters are on the whole peaceful people, but Trumpism is not peaceful. This is how it is with Islam. I feel the same way about other religions too, but this post isn't about them, so don't think you're being clever if you try to counter this post with "what about Christianity" or any other such guff. In Islam, the book they start off with advocates, and in many verses actually instructs "true believers" to lie to, harrass, exile, murder, enslave and forcibly convert non-Muslims. That is the basic foundation from which they start. Most Muslims think this book is the word of Allah (their imaginary friend) speaking through the caucasian, war-mongering, fucktard Mohammed the Prophet. The further away the Muslim gets from following the letter of this book the more peaceful they are. As luck would have it, the majority of Muslims, by a heck of a long way, are not literalists and stay away from acts of oppression, although most of these still make sure their women know their place. In the Russian Doll of Islam it goes something like this: Core doll: Murdering, hardcore, racist, mysogynist, hatefilled cunts. Second doll: Political jihadists who think political action and propaganda is all that is necessary to achieve a global Islamic State. Third Doll: Muslims who support either terrorist jihad, or political jihad, but themselves wouldnt get actively involved. Fourth Doll: Muslims who think the Islamic rules only apply to Muslims, but support actively trying to convert people to Islam. Fifth Doll: Muslims who think Islamic rules apply to Muslims only, and have the opinion that people ought to convert of their own volition. Outer Doll: Muslims who keep themselves to themselves and think people ought to live and let live. Clearly, the murdering fucktards are in the minority, but they are at the core of the religion for a reason. Each doll is painted the sane, as with all examples of Russian Dolls, but in the case of Islam, the further out you go the fainter the colours are, until the outer one has a very faint image of the core design. This is Islam according to anyone with the objectivity to see it as it is. Islam is NOT a religion of peace, but we have to acknowledge that the vast majority of Muslims are not involved in violence, or terrorism... yet, by their adherence to the religion they protect those who do!

The Uncomfortable Truth

When I was a young boy I had a horrible and haunting experience. It was a few days after my seventh birthday, and I was awoken by the sound of my Grandad calling my Nan from the bottom of the stairs. I ran to see what I could do. 

He was stood there with blood all down his lips, neck and chest. To my innocent eyes it looked like a very bad nosebleed. I ran to tell my Nan about the nosebleed, and it was this fact which she took at face value. Grandad was having a nosebleed. The tissues were in the kitchen. I should go off to tell him. She would follow on in a bit. No big deal.

A few minutes later I was kneeling on the blood-soaked floor of the kitchen, cradling my beloved Grandad, as he died. His eyes were begging me to help him. There was nothing I could do but hold him.

I finally came to terms with this in my late thirties.

When I was 19, I met with a psychologist who explained how my tendency to run the incident through in my mind could have been shut off by grief therapy, had it existed when I was seven. Later still, another counsellor asked me to honestly ask myself what a seven-year-old me could have done... really? The honest answer was nothing, but that fact took a while to sink in.

You see, the problem is that as I got older, and studied more about first aid, First Response & pre-hospital emergency care, in these increasing levels of complexity, I saw that incident from a more and more informed perspective. I lost sight of the fact that I was only a seven year old kid, with none of the knowledge I gained as I grew up.

This 'Grandad's Death Apologism' ultimately led me to have some serious delusions about how his demise was my fault, because I didn't perform some, now, routine actions which may have saved him. Such as recognizing that it wasn't an epistaxis for starters!

An astute reader will already know where this story is headed. This is a blog about religions and their follies after all. So, where do we usually find events recorded by ill-informed, scientifically ignorant authors whose stories are later retold from more modern and complex perspectives as more information becomes available?

Yes... The Holy Bible.

The job of the Christian Apologist is to deny the actual words of the authors, the stories within the text as seen through primitive eyes, and make up new ideas to explain what they meant, and why the stories actually meant something other than what they say.

Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a text by Aaronid "Priestly" scribes of the 6-5th centuries BCE, writing around the time of or just after the Jewish exile in Babylon, whose Yahweh speaks everything into being from some pre-existing materials, such as space, water and soil. Meanwhile, Gen 2:4b-Gen 3:24 is a text two hundred years older, written by Elohists who were following their tradition of Yahweh moulding humans, animals and plants out of the earth, clearly more from an agricultural perspective.

These texts actually have messages all of their own, but modern Creationists cannot bear to accept that these are from two traditions, which if taken at face value, clearly demonstrate that Yahweh is a human literary construction, used as 'Priestly Propaganda'! Instead, they have to find a way to construct a narrative that explains how the second, older story is a clarification of a period within the first, younger story, and tells us that they are both, in fact, telling a single story.

They are rewriting the story from a point of view of having both an agenda and a new set of data. Just as I did with my Grandad's death.

When you fail to take a story, or an account of an event, at face value, and forget the knowledge level of its author(s), or participants, you diminish your ability to objectively analyse the truth of it. If you're not 100% honest in your dealing with Bible texts, you relinquish any claim you have of understanding some 'arcane knowledge' or 'hidden truths' held within the text.

I didn't know about pulmonary pathologies, traumatic cardiac events, haemostatic techniques, CPR, or Stroke management when I was seven. I had to be honest about that before I could recognize the truth of my Grandad's death. If you're honest about the Creation myths of the Bible, you must accept that they inadvertently undermine the veracity of your god claim... in short, they explain the circumstances in which you can be certain your god isn't real... and never was. 

This is the uncomfortable truth!

Brexit - a short comment

I don't intend for this blog to become a political one. This is about religion, not politics. However, there comes a time when political bullshit gets too much and I have to comment. Brexit is the UK's suicide note, and clearly Brexiteers failed to understand what that note said, or why they were signing it. The first thing we have to note, and I say 'have to' because it is critical to this whole process, is that the referendum was not legally binding. The government were under no obligation, as an omitted instruction in the legislation acts as a note in itself, to follow "the will of the people" on this issue. Case in point... 52% of those who turned out to vote, 37% of the voting public and 25% of all the citizens in the U.K., voted to leave the EU. 70% of the people want an end to compulsory collective worship in schools. So, why should the government take this referendum as being more important than any other poll... because that is what it is, a poll! Brexiteers, or clowns as I like to think of them, voted primarily on the grounds of regaining Parliamentary Sovereignty. When the High Court recently decided that Parliament is Sovereign they went nuts. "You can't defy the 'will of the people'!" they shout... whilst misunderstanding the weight they carry in this debate. They don't get that the very thing they said they were voting for is now what the Court has ensured they have. 100,000 people led by Clown-in-Chief, Nigel Farage (which he states, unhelpfully, rhymes with 'garage') are set to march on Parliament today to complain that they are being ignored. They are. Their part in the process is over. The Government take it from here. We have a PM with no mandate to govern us and she cannot be allowed to arbitrarily set the rules... or did the Brexit clowns forget why they were against the EU running the show? So, the High Court has declared that Parliament as a whole must vote in order for the process to be truly democratic. So, why are the Brexit clowns really throwing their toys out of the pram? It's because of one thing. They aren't interested in democracy at all. They haven't taught themselves what it is, they don't want to know what it is and more importantly they don't want it... they only want their way! What each of these clowns is actually demanding is fascism, and they can't have it. That is why they are upset, and that's why this Brexit process must be thrown out before it's too late.

Stuff Happens

Let me tell you about something which just happened to me:

Yesterday I left my house, got in my car and drove away. I had no reason to do so. I had nowhere I needed to be. I just got in the car and got going; completely unconsciously, and without purpose. When I left my road I could of course have turned left or right, but my choice was automatic, and absolutley without any obvious reason. A few hundred yards further on I reach a crossroads with three possible choices. I just drove straight ahead. Again, for no reason I could fathom. At this point I was just out for a drive and no longer cared why, or where I went.

Moments later I watched John*, a man who suffers from Altzheimers', pitch backwards out of his Motability scooter onto the pavement. So, for reasons beyond my ken I found myself able to stop and help this man get back on the scooter and see him safely back home again.

Now... there are some readers who will state, without any possible evidence, that a deity saw what was about to happen, inform me of the need to get in my car and drive down that particular road and be on the spot to help this man, and that furthermore, his accident was designed to either teach him (or me) something, or prevent a further, more tragic occurrence later on.

This, they will argue is the result of "divine will", "divine interaction" or synchronicity. Being placed, for whatever mysterious purpose, at a specific location at a time where your help, guidance, or merely presence is required. Invariably the proponents of this idea point to incidents like mine, where a person with a certain set of skills (pre-hospital care in my case) is made to be on hand to use those skills... help an accident victim.

Synchronicity is the paranormal concept described by Carl Jung as "meaningful coincidences"; events which occur without any obvious causal relationship that are nonetheless meaningfully related. My sudden decision to leave the house, my decision to travel by car, my twice choosing a direction at a junction at random, and the accident occurring at a time when I could be there to witness it and help out. I did not cause myself to leave the house, nor did I choose for a sick man to leave his house, travel a quarter of a mile up the road and then accidentally pitch out of a motor scooter. However, both funnelled towards a single point in time.

Divine will is often given the credit for driving synchronicity, and it is very hard, when it happens to you, to deny that there is something else going on than mere coincidence. As an atheist I obviously don't believe in gods, or divine intervention, though events like these happen to me a lot. I have found myself at a few accident scenes where vehicle passengers require rescuing and/or treating... once I watched a man thrown from his motor-cycle on the motorway right in front of me because of a sudden mechanical malfunction, and in another case I was a few seconds behind a car which drove underneath an articulated lorry, killing the driver. I have also found myself in places where my experience of martial arts has been required to defend someone from an attack, or theft, or help a police officer who was struggling, and failing, to make an arrest.  After this event happened today I decided to attach a reason to my journey by going to the school uniform store to buy my son a new polo-shirt and arrived at the store to find that a shirt of his exact size was lying on the top of the pile. Clearly there MUST be a deity driving all this, right?

Of course... not!

With thousands of people in each town, with a multitude of talents between them, many with very similar training, experience, or skills, it is impossible to think that when an incident occurs there will be nobody there to help at all. I know many people of a variety of backgrounds who have taken first aid courses at work, or at school, or with care organizations. Roughly 60% of my close friends and associates could have been in my stead today to help this man. I just happened to be there. Though I wasn't alone. A local librarian also stopped to help, who by her own admission had no first aid skills to put into the pot, nor did she know how the scooter worked, or how to repair it. So, what purpose was served by sending her to the scene? To give her something to talk about during lunch?

People stop to help others out. I've never stopped at an incident and been the only person who did so. I've stopped to help at a few accidents where the next person who happened along was a doctor, a nurse, police officer, or paramedic. I had another incident where my own car caught fire underneath and my friend stepped out of his house to see it in time to tell me to get out, a few seconds later the car was engulfed by the fire, utterly destroying it; I had no clue what was about to happen and his fortuitous arrival on the scene probably saved my life.

On another more recent occasion I was parked at a roundabout in position to capture a minor fender-bender occur in sight of my dashcam. I have been able to send the victim a copy of the incident to help with his insurance claim. Of course this must be divine intervention, since I drive over 50,000 miles a year and my dashcam is on permanently when I'm operating the vehicle, over many hundreds of hours of driving time. If I didn't, at least once, capture an incident on film I would consider THAT to be bizarre!

Stuff happens! And it happens all the time.

It's not driven by anything. There are no guiding forces. These are just cognitive placeholders some people insert into the mess of things because it is too bizarre to believe that these incidents just randomly occur when they happen to be around to help, or to witness them.

If someone lacks the facility to explain an event, it is part of human programming to find a reason, or a rationale, and add it to the thing to help come to terms with it. There has to be a purpose for everything, otherwise we might have to face the reality that there is no purpose behind anything... especially not a divine one. Yet, that is exactly what's happening here. Stuff just rolls from event to event with no external guiding principles. For instance, there is a tale of a man who, upon surviving the Hiroshima bombing, went to stay with his friend in Nagasaki. Stuff most definitely happened to him! I know someone who was rescued from a cruise ship which sank, by a ship that also ran aground and sank with her still on board!

I bet every single one of us can reel off a number of incidents and events which have happened to them, or colleagues, or friends, which seem unusually connected, or synchronistic. 

As Jung wrote: "Acausal events may be expected most readily where, on closer reflection, a causal connection appears to be inconceivable." and "Therefore it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity."

He's telling us that he believes an event is more likely to occur when there is no reason that we can perceive behind it, and that there is a funnelling of time and space which occurs in order to make two or more people coincide.

Or... Stuff happens, but for a reason!

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Carl Jung's work. I think his genius is obvious, and he is clearly one of the most vivid and dynamic thinkers of all time. He is the probably the other dreamer John Lennon speculated about. But, this whole idea of synchronicity is just baffling when you consider the truly magnificently gigantic number of minute instances which fill each moment of our lives. We focus heavily on each instance of coincidence whilst totally ignoring the billions of others which have zero interest to us. 

Just think of that time when you were thinking about someone and just happened to walk around a corner and bump into them. Now remember all the times you thought of someone and nothing of significance happened at all. It's harder than you think isn't it? You're programmed to recognise agency in your life. That's why god-belief is so prevalent. 

How many times have you thought: 'This thing happened because it was part of a greater plan' or 'my life is clearly being guided towards a greater purpose'? It's lovely to think like this isn't it? Yes, clearly the idea of a guiding force, or divine plan, or will, is hard to put to one side, but it has to be, because ultimately the same thinking which brings this innocuous belief of paranormal event-steering to mind is the exact same thinking which causes Islamic fundamentalists to blow themselves up in market places and schools.

You might not be able to join those dots, but it is exactly the same thing. Believing that you, the believer, the true believer, of the one true version of the religion which seeks to bring the truth to the world of the one true god, whose character and whims only your faith group is privy to, brings with it a great many bags of arrogance and elitism. Thinking that you are being guided, or led by the nose, to some glorious goal, or higher purpose, through instances of being in the right place, at the right time, to help, or advise, is ultimately dangerous. Stuff happens folks. No reason. No guiding forces. Just coincidence and happenstance.

Get used to it. 

An Open Letter

I recently received the following letter from the head of education at the British Humanist Association. It speaks for itself, but I'm more than happy to respond to it... enjoy:

  

Dear Sir

Thank you for attending our school speakers training event in Cardiff and for completing the post-course task.

I am writing to say that, with regret, we will not be accrediting you as a BHA School Speaker.

It is of vital importance to the BHA that we are completely confident that our school speakers understand that their role in schools is to raise young people's awareness and understanding of Humanism, and that they are not there to be critical of religion. This is essential to ensure we are invited back for repeat visits and therefore for the success of the programme.

On the training course, some of the things you said made us worried that you may on occasions feel a temptation to be critical of religions or religious beliefs and that this might occasionally override the need to show respect. It was felt by myself and a number of other people on the course that occasionally your tone crossed from respectful disagreement to less tolerant criticism, a tone that could prove unhelpful in the school environment and the situations our speakers often find themselves in. I hope you do not feel this is a criticism of your views; it is simply that we need to be 100% sure that all our speakers present an appropriate message in the classroom.

We have therefore decided not to accredit you.

We appreciate your commitment to Humanism and there are many other ways in which you can support us, which we hope you will investigate on our website.

If you would like to talk about this in more detail on the phone, I would be happy to speak to you.

Kind regards

Luke Donnellan

Head of Education, British Humanist Association

I'm going to point out to start with that I'm in no way bothered about not being offered accreditation. Accreditation by the BHA is not a statutory requirement for speaking about Humanism in schools. It merely adds an additional layer of credibility and authority, and ensures that there is a forum for the school to report on the conduct of the speaker, and content of the talk given to the children. During the course my enthusiasm for the project was destroyed, by another course attendee, who pointed out the near impossibility of getting SACRE* groups to agree to schools booking Humanist speakers. I wonder which is of more importance in this context... a person occasionally making comments against established religious ideas, or someone utterly undermining the entire project with tales of being blocked and blacklisted by the SACRE he actually belongs to?

I do have antitheistic views. That much is obvious to anyone who meets me, however, this letter directly attacks my professionalism and that is something I will not allow to go unchallenged. Nobody on the course knew me well enough to judge my approach to Humanism, or have any knowledge at all of my ability to address the subject under different conditions. 

The course was attended by a fairly substantial group, including the leader of the Swansea Humanists, and its Secretary, and the Director of the Wales Humanists (WH), a group which has just over 600 members... about 200 fewer people than who follow me on Twitter!

Another person in attendance, who is a teacher and member of the board of the WH and an ex-girlfriend of mine who visibly turned sour-faced when she realised who I was. I have no doubt that her hatred of me, spanning almost two decades, drove her to poison the well and speak ill of me (not putting lies out of the picture you understand); imagining that this wasn't a significant occurrence is a little naïve. 

I wonder how you get from seeing how a person behaves in a room full of his peers, and many much older, to translating that into how a person, who is a school governor and PTA treasurer, would act in a school? I have teachers in my family, and I know that talk in the staff room is often highly critical of parents and students, yet somehow that never seems to spill out past the staff room door. Why? Could it be that teachers are professional educators who can put their personal views to one side as and when required? Just like me!

Luke Donnelly is an ex-headmaster. He of all people should appreciate that educators are able to compartmentalise their private views away from the set spiel they deliver in the classroom, to remain 'on message'. I was an actor for almost 25 years. If anyone can play the part of the perfect Humanist school visitor, it's me.

Whether Luke reads this or not, I don't care. I'm busy with my new projects, like the Llanelli Humanists, which is an online group for the moment. It is intentionally independent, because we feel that the BHA and National Secular Society are just talking-shops in Wales, with very little presence. There are no billboards, bus posters, leaflets, wall posters, TV or radio adverts explaining what Humanism is, or what it means to be a part of a group. Everyone I've ever spoken to, outside of the movement, has asked me to explain what Humanism is... Oh, and in doing so, I've NEVER denigrated any other religions! I don't need to, because I'm explaining what something is, not comparing it to other beliefs. There is a difference that I recognise, because I'm not the blithering idiot Luke seems to think I am!

The loss is the BHA's not mine. Schools aren't going to be welcoming in strangers to talk about Humanism, when the SACREs just instruct them to send their RE teachers on courses which they direct and script. Not in this decade, or the next! The money invested in this project would be better spent addressing the need for educating parents about their rights to withdraw their children from Collective Worship, and raising the profile of WH. You can teach the kids all you want, but the legal power to remove children from the indoctrination process rests with the parents. It is they who urgently need to learn about Humanism. 

There Was No Resurrection

There are a number of reasons why the "Resurrection of Jesus Christ" is a fiction, but I just want to center on just one aspect often ignored by believers and non-believers alike.

At the time of the BCE/CE crossover, Judea was a Roman annexe. It's political control was shared between the Romans and the Jewish Sanhedrin, or high council. This was a period of relative calm  in what was mostly a turbulent situation. In 70CE the Romans sacked Jerusalem because of a Jewish uprising, which had been brewing for almost a century. Control by force was always on the cards and everyone knew it.

This is why the idea that a person would be allowed to get away with escaping their execution is ridiculous.

We have no evidence that the Romans executed Jesus outside of the New Testament and subsequent texts which used it as their core, however, even if we had a signed arrest document we could be assured that no resurrection took place.

Look at the situation from the Roman perspective. You are a Roman governor, whose reputation relies on your strict control over your men, your servants, your land and its people. Rome's laws and commands are sacred, and your word is law.

You have commanded a Jewish upstart to die by crucifixion. You send a soldier to verify that the man has died, because he seemingly did so much sooner than anyone expected him to. The soldier is commanded to break Jesus' legs, but does not do it because he decides for himself that the man is already dead, despite having no legitimate means of doing so. You then execute the soldier for not obeying your direct orders.

One of the Jews who ordered the man killed (the suspiciously named Joseph of Arimathea) comes to you to ask that this criminal's body be laid to rest, rather than hang on the cross as was traditional to serve as a warning to others not to cross (ahem) you. You reluctantly agree and the man is whisked off to a crypt. Sensing that this might have all been a scam you send two soldiers to guard the tomb overnight.

The next morning the tomb is empty. Your guards are apparently oblivious to the night's events. You consider killing them too, but you need all the help you can get now. You have been tricked!

For some reason, probably to undermine the threat of capital punishment, the Jewish council used you to "execute" a man they claimed to hate, only to bribe a guard (perhaps three or four) to help orchestrate a plan to rescue him right from under your nose. This man must be found!

So, you immediately mobilize all your men to start the search. You hastily write orders to all the garrisons outside the city to be on the lookout for the convict and his helpers. You double the pay for soldiers involved in the search as an incentive and offer a reward for information leading to his capture. Notices are put up around the region, every tavern, every farm, every stable is abuzz with word of the man who couldn't be killed. Too late, you realize this response was what the Jews were hoping for. They have recorded every detail of your incompetence for posterity. They spread rumours about the man's appearances dotted around the region. To one, two, three... heck even five hundred people!

You have been played.

This is what would have happened had a man really been able to escape crucifixion, regardless of how he did it, or who he was. There would be records of this manhunt on both sides. The Roman and the Jewish records would show strong evidence of these events. Letters sent to and from Rome itself would have been found, as would notices kept by garrisons whose ledgers and files we still have today.

The fact that no such manhunt was ever conducted can only mean one thing. 

The Resurrection NEVER happened.

Why Does It Matter If I'm Racist?

I'd like to start by clarifying something.

I am not, nor have I ever been racist. In fact the whole point of this post is to explain a fundamental point about how these 'isms' work, and why we can't differentiate between them to suit our own prejudices.

The so-called 'Regressive Left' defend atrocities committed by Muslims, (including recent immigrants) such as rapes, sexual assaults, female genital mutilation, paedophilia, gender segregation, knife attacks, acid attacks, bombings and gay bashing, as "just part of their culture". This "cultural differences" argument in morality is fine, when applied equally, but otherwise it is a crock of shit.

I come from an iron mining town, sandwiched between the two largest coal towns in South-East Wales. It was the 70s and racism and sexism was very much part of our culture, and still is in large parts of 'The Valleys.'

Someone I know from a generation above mine, who is a liberal aptheist, still occasionally comes out with comments like "A local man just married an Asian girl, she's from Vietnam, but she's very kind". "But?" Why? Is it at all unusual for a Vietnamese lady to be kind?

He doesn't mean anything by it. It's just our culture. He's no more a racist than anyone else I could mention, but the Regressives would be all over him like a rash, because he's a white man.

The question I have for these Regressives is: Why are you upset that people, who come from a culture in which race, gender and sexuality are targets for oppression (and in a few cases serious bullying and violent attacks), are racist, sexist, or homophobic? Surely that's "just their culture" isn't it? 

When the BNP rally and want to be racist, why is this a problem for you? The British, as tolerant as we are as a whole, have always harboured a distrust, and dislike, of 'Johnny Foreigner.' It's a cultural thing for us.

Yet, according to you, Mr & Miss Regressive (the subject of the worst of the Mr Men and Little Miss books) we are not allowed to express our culture. When we are disgusted at seeing videos of Muslim men and women shitting in public, or we hear of Muslim men beating their wives, gang-raping children, hanging gay people, or sexually assaulting white and Sikh girls, (because they are taught this is what they must do,) we are the ones accused of intolerance - and our outrage is lambasted as "deep-seated hatred of", or "intolerable racism towards" Muslims.

You cannot have it both ways dear Lefties. Either these Muslims have to come to terms with our culture, and start behaving themselves, or the racists get to continue being expressive of their hatred.

Which is it to be?