Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

[sweetheart]

Militant secularists like Richard Dawkins are taking their revenge on us believers for refusing to stay in the closet

Tobias Jones
Saturday January 6, 2007
The Guardian

There's an aspiring totalitarianism in Britain which is brilliantly disguised. It's disguised because the would-be dictators - and there are many of them - all pretend to be more tolerant than thou. They hide alongside the anti-racists, the anti-homophobes and anti-sexists. But what they are really against is something very different. They - call them secular fundamentalists - are anti-God, and what they really want is the eradication of religion, and all believers, from the face of the earth.

In recent years these unpleasant people have had a strategy of exploiting Britain's innate politeness. They realised that for a decade overly sensitive souls (normally called the PC brigade) had bent over backwards to avoid giving offence. Trying not to give offence was, despite the excesses, a noble courtesy.

But the fundamentalists saw an opening. Because we live in a multiconfessional society, they fostered the falsehood that wearing a crucifix or a veil or a turban was deeply offensive to other faiths. They pretended to be protecting religious sensibilities as a pretext to strip us of all religious expressions. In 2006 Jack Straw and BA fell into the fundamentalists' trap.
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<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1984003,00.html

[Caution]

1. oh woe is me the poor member of the world's largest majority. I'm being repressed

Give me a damned break. Shall we count the amount of books written by atheists who believe that religion should just go away and compare that to the amount of books written about how unbelievers are going to hell?

It's pathetic to watch these theists who simply don't like to see their ridiculous belief system shown to be ridiculous get all upset.

If their faith was as strong as they purport it to be Mr. Dawkins book would pose no threat.

[Afje]

2. Red meat for the sheep

Tell a faithful he's being persecuted and he will rejoice. Stuff like that is music in the ears of the religious yahoos. Fact is that fundies are militant and projecting their own wishes on the rest of us.

[DavidMS]

3. There is no revenge here

Just a reconizition that inerrant belief that a moldy old tome is the revealed word of god has done more harm than good in the last 100+ years.

Fundamentalists are so defensive not because we are intolerant but because the accumulated evidence of the origins of the universe, origin and development of life into all of its many and varied forms was not because of a supernatural intelligence but because the various dials of the universe happened to be set to a Goldilocks zone (could the universe have come into existence another way?) Not because a vengeful deity willed it into existence.

Tobias is arguing that a grown and mature man should be permitted to continue to believe (to his detriment and against all evidence) that Santa Clause comes down the chimney every Christmas eve to delver presents to good children.

The further risk of failing to ridicule the belief that prayer heals, "alternative medicine cures," and (according to http://www.borat.tv/">Borat holding the steering wheel with both hands will cause a Gypsy to pop out of the steering wheel and devour his soul. Is dangerous, in the first two cases because both beliefs can head to failing to obtain medical treatment, delay treatment and raises the burden of disease and in the second case is only dangerous to the career of the hapless driving instructor.

Finally the author is wrong about secularism being Christian. Secularism came about in the west because the Protestants and Catholics agreed that since they couldn't wholly convert or kill each other they would have to coexist. Separation of church and state came about as an additional firewall against religious extremism.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Shame on you. Don't you recognize right-wing fundie BS when you read it?

That crack about "the PC Brigade" is your biggest clue.

[sweetheart]

5. Its written for britain

The writer has got a point. The secular fundamentalists are no different than
their christian brothers.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. What's a secular fundamentalism? Is that someone who believes in ...

separation of Church and State, and REALLY, REALLY, means it? I'm sorry, the "secular fundamentalism" mem is total BS. I heard Fat Tony use this phrase on Diane Rheem's (sp?) show, and called BULLSHIT the second I heard it. Christians have gotten their way in the public arena for centuries and now that people are not giving way to them by default they are whining about the 'unfairness' of it. Cry me a river.

:nopity::nopity::nopity:

[sweetheart]

7. different climate

The BBC has elevated atheism for decades now, so that unlike the USA, which
has been brainwashed the other way, britain is brainwashed to view religion as
primitive. The television public treats it that way, churches are being converted
in to flats up and down the country, and scorn be on being religious or holding
to a value other than the secular state and the new god, BBC 4.

I'm not a christian, but i believe life is magical; sacred even... and holy.
This makes me a crackpot by the new ignorance sold worldwide as what life is about...
secular monoculture and the elevation of the new god, mammon, commercial monetarism as truth
and denial of the presumption of innocence.

Someone must be guilty to feel religious these days... hence your chiding me for
posting an article from the guardian. I must be guilty because you think its ignorance.
The article is not about the USA, the situation is ironically reversed across the pond,
but one thing is the same, fundamentalist authoritarian moralist patriarchs are in power...
and that is indeed a common element.

[eppur_se_muova]

8. Well, I'll take your word for it. It's news to me.

Agree that the government should not be officially atheist, but officially areligious -- that is, it neither favors nor disfavors any particular religion, but protects the religious rights of all, including those with no religion.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. That would be the BBC that broadcasts 'Songs of Praise' every week?

The one that broadcasts a Prayer for the Day, a (religious) Thought for the Day, and a Daily Service, every weekday?

You're wrong. The BBC does not 'elevate' atheism. Please don't mislead the people here who can't actually look at and listen to the BBC's output.

[sweetheart]

11. Doubt is a very subtle religion

Everything is doubt, a grain of salt, the bbc's newsapproach might work indeed
with some forms of thinking, but others no. I see the results of the bbc brainwashing,
the people who are cynical. I normally ask people how many hours of television they
watch when i see the behaviours. Its a sure thing, that if someone watches more than
4 hours of TV a day in britain, they will be exposed to lots of 'knowledge' about
religion and no religion whatsoever.

Its a brain chemistry in the brain stem, opiates released by listening to church muisic,
and there's nothing more too it, church is brainwashing subtly by media diet suggestion,
and in 1 generation, the secular BBC has elevated doubt to the new religion. The new
secularists are more than pleaseed that the churches are gone, they were no good anyways
and are better used as housing.

The social engineering has been impressive. The new secularism is god. The presumption
is that religion is about 'thought', 'thought for the day', is a total misrepresentation
by my account, however deligtful the 'thought'. A british newspaper similarly summed up
hinduism rather ignorantly by describing it as brahma/vishnu/shiva - theologically, missing
that there are very few at all temples to brahma in india, and that shiivite thinking, that
the god of yoga and illusion unmasks all transcends intellectualism.

BBC sells good intellectual secularism, or the churches would not be closing faster than
post offices. You can deny it, or say the author has not expressed the essay in better frames
of how its been done, but the evidence of this social engineering is the direct opposite of
the USA, and most brits i know are proud of thier new religion.

(PS... people who take offnse because somebody wears a cross, are fundamentalists and dangerous.
BA has stirred up a real pot)

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. He has no point whatsoever

It's 'written for Britain', but his main point is that France banned headscarves in schools. Because he can't actually point to 'secular totalitarianism' in Britain.

C of E bishops sit by right in the House of Lords. Various sects get to run schools with taxpayer money. The law says that even non-denominational schools should have a daily act of worship "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character." Religion, especially Christianity, still has real power in Britain. No atheist organisation, or even an organisation promoting secular division of religion and state, does.

[sweetheart]

12. He does indeed have a pint

:hi: Or a point even.

One needs only have read the religion bashing on DU these past years to
see the venom spit by the secular fundamentalists. If i hadn't been
reading their posts for years, i'd perhaps think the article bunk
too, but there is a mountain of evidence for his claim.

There is an angry, disenfranchised, secular fundamentalist out there
waiting to prove they're right, to call everyone a spagetti monster worshipper,
and to take it to the point of insult... without heart, without love,
and without that, devoid of any worth to the human soul. But fundamentalism
is like that, isn't it... raising hatred and division over love and communion.

Divide us all, take away our symbols of faith, make me toss away prayer beads
in public, burn any prayer flags on the fence lest they insult a passer by.
Now that the zealous have been moved by the authoritarian media, they can
be moved en-masse to be threatened by any religion by representing it not
as a religion but a social grouping with 'leaders' who tell us what to think
and believe, as if that were what religious life is at all about.

[toddaa]

13. Name one "secular fundamentalist" arguing in favor of banning religion

Good luck.

[sweetheart]

14. Its more artfully done that that

You can't convince a person of such things directly. Rather you can set up
a dialectic in media that subtly insinuates that religion is daft... and then
religion will just melt away.

Our world does not use direct methods. Like with racism and other attempts
to destroy a group of people, the first efforts are to, in media, discredit
them and get the public to ridicule... then the public will do the job for
you, and nobody will have to 'argue' for banning... it will just happen.

Nobody will have to argue for drowning a billion liberal and poor persons in
every low lying coastal region the world over, the vast majority black persons,
killed by the american military complex's global warming and the sea level rises,
droughts, floods and storms that come with... and its all deniable... we did it,
but we didn't do it, because nobody is arguing for drowning black people.

They don't have to argue, they just do it deniably:


The new secularism in iraq has killed more than the old religion has, why? The
new secularism incorporates the religion of colonialism and the right of white
people to kill nonwhite people anywhere in the world and not have it called 'crime'.

[toddaa]

16. I think that's the most hateful I think I've read on DU

I thought I'd heard every hateful insult hurled at atheists before, but you really take the cake. To equate atheists, who critique religious belief, with death squads in Iraq or an oligarchical administration that lets thousands die in New Orleans is beyond the pale. I know a bigot when I see one and I think I'm looking at one right now. Your attitude is exactly why more atheists need to come out of the closet and demand that their voices be heard. If you equate that with genocide, then I can only surmise that you are the hateful totalitarian scum.

[sweetheart]

17. The hate is in the mind of the reader

I was not tarring atheists there, but what our secular culture actually stands for.

The post merely makes the observation that when they really do exterminations of
people, deniable mass murder's like bush's katrina, bush's iraq, roosevelt's iran,
the apologists are inherently secular.. and even more insideous for it.

If bush came out and said we must invade iraq because God wants it, people would have
rejected that claim rightfully indeed. But rather he framed it in terms that our
secular religion accepts 'WMD's, and with that postuation of a secular god, got the
same result without anyone wondering why they were tricked by their religion.

I bear no hate for atheists, deists, agnostics or whatever... nowhere in my post
does it say that unless you're presuming that i'm making a sweeping indictment of
all nonreligious persons... a false positive that... the post posits no hatred to
atheistic persons, read that in to it at your own leisure.

[toddaa]

19. Do you even know what secular means?

And what "secular" apologists. Name one. One.

[sweetheart]

22. 'totalitarian skum'

I equate religion as a load of presumptions rather than knowledge. Knowledge is empirical, and does not judge if it is lucid, it knows, it loves, it izz. I believe knowledge is wisdom of the intuition, and
very little to do with mental exercises and weightliftings of ratinalization. Intuition is 100% bang
on, it transcends artifice when artifice appears impregnable without occult means. You can tell when you see abuse happening... its something a witness knows directly... because you just *know*.

The woman was working for BA. She's a devotee of jesus, and wears a symbol on her neck that british airways decided was not keeping with their uniform statndards. Its a canard i realize, a dialectic that has been raised by the media out of a million others not elevated, and this one gets us fighting apparently, and as they are burning symbols in a world ruled by idolitry, where people are artless and take sovereign insults from someone's costume; whilst millions are killed in congo for the coltan mining for our mobile telelphones. By our media diet, we are spun around 3 times blindfolded by myths, and only by ceasing to identify with the myths do we abandon fundementalism that any true knowledge can ever not be known, and that our infinite possibility in every moment is sacred, divine, far above insult. You are a sacred being, every reader of DU, i always presume that, i am not talking to you directly, but the sacred reader is god in this moment.

People are taking too much insults because they are all hooked on their egos and their opinions... caged in expectations of appearances set by corporate telemedia where human interaction is zero sum, yards gained, yards lost 4th down.

:-) punt

Take all the opinions in the world and share them with a dog on a long hike. The dog will probably be beyond believing or not believing in god or not a god, or the separate nature of existance even,
but god is a happy dog.

People masqerade knowledge in symbology and systems of order to prevent enchroachment on 'their' knoweldge , and their superiority and betterment. and the mistake is made to claim it as 'ours', a humorous artifice of ego leaving people as permanent pretenders... if it be knowledge, then it is universal and not ours... and the whole principals of ours, theirs, self and other
are denied by knowledge or it is not universal. Being punished for embracing an abstract universal, of any kind, goes hand in hand with knowledge. How we've gotten as a people so far down the track
of corporate de-dimensionalizing of life for the monoculture of zero sum wars between people may be in the interests of the transnational petro-corporate monoculture, it' is the bane of all who consume it.

[toddaa]

24. Po-mo babbling isn't helping the issue

Look, if you want spew out a nonsensical anti-corporate rant, be my guest. But that's not why you started this thread. You specifically linked to an oped in the Guardian that made reference to the fact that atheists were trying to oppress religious people and you specifically charged Richard Dawkins advocating a totalitarian regime that wipes out religious people. I will point out that the article in question has a very long trail of comments nearly unanimous in condemning the ridiculous claim of the author.

So I'm going to ask you again. Do you know what secularism means and can you explain how Richard Dawkins is an apologist for secular totalitarianism that is responsible for Iraq, Iran, and MTV because he advocates for naturalism over supernaturalism.

[independentpiney]

32. Richard Dawkins for one

And if you visit any philosophy-religion forum with alot of UK posters you'll find plenty seriously calling for banning religion.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Being angry, and insulting, makes you a totalitarian, does it?

To you, Victor Meldrew was a totalitarian, was he? And there was me thinking '1984' was an example of totalitarianism in fiction, when I should have been looking at grumpy old men in sitcoms.

I await your answer to toddaa's challenge with interest. Presumably you know of examples of people burning prayer flags on a fence, and forcing people to throw away prayer beads.

On edit: OK, you can't actually name any people trying to ban religion. Doesn't that mean the article is wrong?

[sweetheart]

18. no, it doesn't

anger achieves nothing. A totalitarian is cold as ice, planning phased social change
through mass media brainwashing. The grim world of 1984 and vendetta misses the appeal
of consumer totalitarianism.

Religion is banned by removing the presumption of innocence in public media.
Then cynicism, lust and greed are elevated as the only motivating forces in society and
we become forgetful and brainwashed to accept these new motives as the frame of
social culture. Then that media culture starts wars and murders as ours have, a million
arabs, accepting that cynically, there was no other way.

Nobody has called for the banning of religion, far from it, a religious cult of BBC
secularists has usurped power and achieved a genocide and a set of new american
right narratives have been raised like 'tough on crime': to destroy and ridicule all
religions but thiers. http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/pdfs/chapters/toughcrime.pdf

Society is a religious cult, espeically when its a monoculture around secrets, a sort of fraternity,
one that is threatened by alternative cults with different orders of power... even if they be truth.
By banning the appearance of religion, people just reorient their emotional and mental cultism to
the order of power that is offered. Then people will apply their religious emotions to different icons.
science replaces the cross, romantic love replaces jesus, a car replaces liberation, and a video game
replaces communion. We are being systemically re-ordered as a culture through mass media
brainwashing, and those persons are out to ban religion, subtly and deniably... so deniably,
the editorial decisions taken and the liekly social outcomes are taken secretly, but beholden for
the license fee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJuEmZLJTDk

[toddaa]

20. What in the hell does any of this have to do with Richard Dawkins?

You are one seriously confused person.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. So it's all a shadowy conspiracy, to you

which appears to have nothing to do with the angry, insulting 'secular fundamentalists' you were decrying a few posts ago. You claim secret decisions are made, by someone controlling the BBC, which is brainwashing us all. You throw around words like 'genocide' - how you think a TV corporation is causing genocide, and how you can blame the deaths in Iraq on "the new secularism", when Bush and Blair are both fervent Christians, and Iraqis kill each other on the basis of their sects, is beyond me.

You appear to live in a different world from most of us. Even the definitions of words you use don't match mine, or the ones I find in dictionaries.

[sweetheart]

23. bullshit they are christians

Nobody who's religious seriously believes anyone in that collection are religious. They lie professionally and don't even account themselves responsible for this genocide...entirely bankrupt of any ethical fibre at all... obviously to any intuitive person.

I observed a cult attack and kill a million people based on truths established and apologized for by bliair, bush and the bbc experts. It was an entirely secular case and has resulted in a pretty much genocidal war crimes against iraqi civilians... again. That's how i'm bantering around that rather supportable word: genocide. All those supporters and their entire foundation of knowledge is bankrupt... their cult is laughable. Mammon may be a job, a media living, to pimp for the plantation, but i do not believe at all that government is in any way good. After seeing the deliberate crime of the drugs war against millions with my own eyes, i'm dead sure that every part of the police state is as corrupt and rotten as any single-party military state could be, and i don't gift it, or its agencies any credit for anything. They are all entirely bankrupt and a load of murderers. They keep criminals in charge and wring their hands because they supported the genocide too... complicity has bought silence from the BBC. It should out the war criminals as what they are, and not gift them credibility... but they are not a public agent, they are a press office.

Yes, i believe its entirely a conspiracy. Big corporate interests are out to destroy all nation states to create a perfect climate of international prisons that are digitally perfected that the prisoners will all believe that they are free, yet never be able to exercise any of that freedom actually, including the freedom to reject it all as a lie... all of it, burn the buddha statue and the cross too.

If you believe that human knowledge is thought and transintellectual verbage, you surely have a very different view, that human society is rational... but if i credit it with rationality, then i must presume that global warming is a planned warfare extermination of lowland peoples... so its not rational, its stupid and evil instead.... it is secular mammon, and it reaches out in every media to discredit
anyone and everything that opposes it. You have not seen our secret dossier, you must be a crackpot.

[toddaa]

25. And how does Richard Dawkins fit in?

For crying out loud. Answer the question.

[sweetheart]

26. Richard Dawkins is wrong, that's how

He's stepped in to the public debate to espouse his religion that he thinks is 'more right'.

A quote from him:
Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!

This is a pretentious and gross misrepresentation of religion, he's clutched a myth to support his pogrom, when in fact, in the years since he made this remark, rational scientists dropped their latest explosive and chemical innovations from scientifically perfected aircraft to murder a million iraqis... and he is wrong
as his own society and its endemic religion has done greater harm.

It is not religions, or religious extremism even (when someone rejects mammon).
He is a victem of his own dogmatic representation of religion, spreading his dogma as truth.

[toddaa]

27. I agree with Dawkins

100% agreement. You can't refute his arguments using reason, so you rely on rhetoric and bigotry. A very wise man once said, "Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." That's all Dawkins is trying to do, understand reality. Not with empty sloganeering, but with reasoned study of the wondrous world around us. Dawkins dropped no bomb. He's far more gracious and kind a man than you.

It saddens me that you are so full of hate.

[sweetheart]

28. The statement exemplifies the bigotry

I'm inclined to agree with his statement too, ironically it has proven true... the cult
of war that he apologizes for has turned his statement in to a prophesy.

You read hate in to defending freedom of religion from bigots who would impinge on it.

Dawkins statement is clearly aggressive and keeping in line with the aggressive bullying
of religious persons i've seen over years on DU as well. He's just an example of a million
others who are not comfortable living their own lives, but who feel in necessary to rationalize
a pogrom against others.

[Seldona]

29. Talk about projecting!

Sheesh!

It never ceases to amaze me how the atheist's simple existence seems to violate your rights.

[yellowcanine]

30. The flaw in this ointment is that in the U.S. and U.K. it is not the secularists or the

atheists who have been doing the discriminating or trying to push their beliefs on others in the public square. It is the religionists - usually against other religionists. And for every Richard Dawkins there are a thousand Jerry Falwells trying to foist their intelligent design religion on children in public school districts across the U.S.

[Tyo]

31. They can dish it out, but they are not very good at taking it.

Christians, primarily the right-wingers, make some pretty amazing claims for their god and their religion and a lot of them are not the least bit shy about proselytizing in any way that they can as well as using the power of the state to advance their agenda. Yet they prove to be awfully thin skinned when people challenge their assertions or question their motives. If you ask me, it’s a classic case of either take the heat or get out of the kitchen.