And creationism fits the bill nicely. Luckily, Scientific American has a convenient 15 point rebuttal to their rubbish. Hurrah.

Rather than be accused of 'secularising' Christmas, I'd like to suggest we take it take to the roots of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the festival of the birth of the unconquered sun, and celebrate the birth of (among others) Mithras.

Not only does the good Mithras have a lot in common with a certain superstar, but there remains the [ruins of] a temple in London - how handy is that?

In this dismal time when the museums and galleries are closed and the shops are temples of commercialism it's good to know that the Romans had it sussed. Such a shame the Christians had to lead it away from its roots.

Sigh. More reviews for “The God Delusion”, this time from the usually reputable Independent: a beautiful example of fine writing, polite debate and apalling reasoning:

For the umpteenth time, get “The Selfish Gene” out of the library. It's good, it's very readable, and if you don't suddenly think 'ah' and watch your idea of evolution fall into place while reading it then you should probably read it again. Then we have a lovely chestnut:

Er... last I checked the laws of biology were a simplification of the laws of chemistry, which are a simplification of physics. Further, even if we accepted that God were outside of 'reality' (a definition possibly devoid of any but semantic meaning) it still becomes a victim of Occam's Razor - there are more simple solutions.

And on Russell's lovely Teapot he really goes off the rails:

On this basis, Judaism wins and Christianity has the task of explaining why it is a better solution. Further, under these rules those who don't believe in the various myths - dragons, the undead, Atlantis: all of which which predate Christianity - must disprove them. But of course this is ridiculous: one doesn't assume dragons exist because of tradition, one instead looks at the evidence and notes the causes of the myth. And so one must approach religion - look at the evidence, both for the literal interpretation and for a factually false but useful social construct, and the evidence lies clearly on one side.

The remainder is marked by similar arguments - full of assertions without evidence and dubious logic. Surely the religious side can do better than this? Or, if not, why just not admit it's irrational but that you don't care? - it's entirely possible that admission would stump us and you'd get a bit of peace.

I am vexed. Why? I have recently finished reading “The God Delusion”, the latest effort from Richard Dawkins. And it's a good book - perhaps a bit simplistic in its arguments, it covers too much ground in too little space and is written with Dawkins's characteristic certainty. This is not a bad thing, and given the basis of his argument, almost certainly justifiable, but nevertheless we all know how people respond to what they see as a brutal treatment of their beliefs.

But what has vexed me is the arguments against, not just the book but atheism. Even the brightest minds in the religious arena (and I'm sure no one will dispute there are some superb intelligence who whole-heartedly belief in some form of Abrahamic God) seem to either make arguments in which subtle holes abound, or to fall back to the 'God is outside science' argument.

Prospect Magazine's review is a good example. It makes many elementary mistakes: confusing ideology with a lack of belief in God, the old Stalin and Hitler argument. On the same basis we could [incorrectly] argue the only nation to use atomic weapons was a Christian one and therefore this means Christianity is evil. He calls Dawkins dogmatic, despite that by definition any scientific argument can be traced back to first principles and repeated; unlike dogma, which relies on immovable points of reference. (It's interesting that this lack of certainties and openness to questioning is also derided by many attackers of rationalism.) But worst of all, near the start of the interview it is nicely demonstrated that the reviewer has a lax attitude to rational thought:

This persistence is what any scientific attack on religion must explain—and this one doesn't. Dawkins mentions lots of modern atheist scientists who have tried to explain the puzzle: Robert Hinde, Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, DS Wilson, Daniel Dennett, all of them worth reading. But he cannot accept the obvious conclusion to draw from their works, which is that thoroughgoing atheism is unnatural and will never be popular.

Firstly, many efforts have been made and continue to be made to explain this. Memetics explains it very nicely, however we lack evidence to state this cause with certainly. And yet from this he jumps to an unreasonable conclusion. On the basis on this lazy reasoning we could have assumed around 1800 that since slavery was universal (and the Bible was rather in favour of it) that slavery will always be so. Yet there are few in western civilisation who would argue for such now.

The second piece that has vexed me somewhat is Dennis Prager vs. Sam Harris. Sam Harris is an atheist with an open mind on spirituality - although I'd argue that most atheists are open to such, but seek to explain such things rather than merely marvel at them.

Prager places a lot of weight on Francis Collins's belief in God, while blaming the data showing that as scientific knowledge rises belief in God decreases on a lack of wisdom. This peculiar redefinition of wisdom - that it draws from faith rather than from a search for knowledge - is nothing but semantics and really proves nothing more than his ability to say a minimal amount in the maximum possible space. Further he somehow leaps from noting that western society has grown out of a Judeo-Christain tradition to an assertion that belief in a Judeo-Christian God is essential for the existence of humanity. This is almost on par with his claim that comparing belief-in-Zeus to belief-in-Yahweh is unworthy of a serious atheist. Honestly, if this level of poor reasoning is the best the religious establishment can offer it becomes even more of a wonder that people fall for it.

He ends with what he appears to believe to be a truism:

And with that goal in mind, I will end with my re-wording of a superb summary of the argument for belief in God that was made by Rabbi Milton Steinberg (1903–1950), a rationalist (and non-Orthodox) rabbi: “The believer in God has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for the existence of everything else.”

This is just as lax. The believer in God has also to account for the existence of God, and hence everything else. And yet they spend their time dodging the question. I leave it to the reader to decide just what this evasion reveals.

It is somewhat ironic that the Pope has got himself in the ever simmering water of Muslim public opinion by trying to link religion and reason, two things that are the definition of mutual exclusion. Any reasonable examination of religion is bound to fail, for no religion answers the big question of live, the universe and everything - they merely push the question further out. Any solution that proposes a god or similar being but fails to answer (or even question) where this being came from is quite clearly not a complete explanation. And any rational thinker who settles for a partial explanation when better exist is clearly not using rigourous standards of rationality.

Of course this issue also nicely revitalises the lack of tolerance of free speech in much of the Islamic world, last seen after the Danes got their pencils out. And this is where the real problem lies - the rather grandstanding 'class of civilisations'. How can a society where free speech, secular government and religious freedom communicate with one that limits the freedoms of its citizens, frowns on secularism (with the notable exception of Turkey, thanks to the good Ataturk) and indeed despises the godlessness of the West?

There's no easy answer. Imperialism won't help - no occupied people welcome their conquering, no matter how good their intentions, and our actions are easily perverted into a seeming crusade against Islam. Nor can we hold our heads too high - while the Islamic world was making great strides in science and gave religious freedoms to those in their cities the West was busy with religious persecution and crawling step by step from the Dark Ages. Further, it has taken us centuries to rise from theocracies to representative government, and as the US proves irrational religion still has an immense effect on government.

And so we have the problem of our age. Can our society survive and prosper as international boundaries fall and immigration fills our cities with not only those who seek a new life and are willing to join and contribute, but those who bring their own prejudices and standards and attempt to build their own citadels amongst us? As John Reid was told the other day (in a lovely example of proving someone's point for them): “How dare you come into a Muslim area?” The point of multi-cultarism was never to ghettoise a country; it was celebrate difference while remaining a whole. And if people believe it's more important to be Muslim than to be British then we have a rift that cannot be healed, for how can a society survive when some of its members let its laws and conventions be but a secondary interest?

I've been undecided on Tony Blair for a while. After all, he did some rather smashing things for Britain. Incomes went up, the economies just kept going and Britain is a much more prosperous place than ten years ago. On the downside, we went to war in Iraq for the wrong reasons, he's played Bush's lap-dog and gotten nothing in return and he's obsessed with power, almost costing Labour the last election.

But the last few days have tipped the matter. First his statement about God judging him on Iraq. If that's the best he can offer then the man is going quickly senile. If he's not even prepared to stand up and say why he believes it was right and instead just promises a mythological judgement post-mortem then what possible claim does he have to be able to lead a country?

Secondly, his whole Academy concept. Great idea - let keen rich business people invest in education. After all, everyone wins in the end. But instead we've fundamentalists running schools in Middlesbrough and Doncaster which teach that creationism is an equal theory with evolution. Fair enough if these academies were optional: everyone's entitled to their opinion, no matter how daft. But all children in the catchment area have no choice but to go to these schools and get these harmful views forced upon them. So now: targetted religious education at state schools - smashing. Fundamentalists target scientific advancement and blow themselves up on trains and we react by letting them run schools.

And no - I don't believe there's a difference between violent Islamic and political Christain fundamentalism (or evangelicals if you prefer) - both seek to replace the rationalism of the secular state with authoritarian dogma. And as history shows, the only people to benefit from such are those in power. Not the people, certainly not minorities and generally not women. So why do we let them anywhere near our youth?

I, for one, will welcome our new lizard masters...

While the radical hordes rage those tea-swiping tax-evading Bostonians point out that this is no time to be apologetic. Meanwhile one idiot sees some sense.

And so the Islamic community is pissy because someone printed cartoons of Mohammed. And there's no delay in seeing the cause of the situation: we have a long history of being able to point out what a load of rubbish Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism etc. are and yet we for some reason have to treat Islam with kid gloves. Thus we now have entire counties threatening '7/7 is coming' (incidentally, great way to get the British public on your side) because it was belatedly pointed out that Islam is no better than the rest.

So in the end why should Islam be treated differently? Bollocks to that. I'm gutted that the British press have been too cowardly to print these and applaud the Dominion Post in Wellington for doing so. Good work chaps.

And of course another reason to thank our lucky stars that the idiot Blair didn't get his 'religious hatred' bill though or such things could have been illegal... ah, what a wonderful world.

Ah, the fun of ITV. Richard Dawkins (a smashing chap in my opinion) lets go at religion in a 2-part series, The Root of All Evil?. And after all, it's about time some rational views got aired in this debate. The government is always telling us how it corresponds with faith groups when deciding policy and what-have-you. Yet that group which is generally classified as secular follows Christianity to sit in 2nd. place as a classification of beliefs (or lack of, in this case) in the UK. And we get ignored. Bitter? You bet. The government's answer? Make highlighting the flaws of religion a crime.

The double standards here are funny. If I believed in a giant rabbit that watches over me then I'd get locked up for my own good (and possibly the rabbit's). If I believe the rabbit is, in fact, a large misogynistic father figure in the sky then I get consulted about government policy. Likewise, were I to fleece large numbers of people of cash in return for a promise of life-after-death thanks to a handy super-drug I'd be convicted of fraud and probably let free as gaols are overcrowded. Were I to involve religion then I'd get to move to Salt Lake City. Hallelujah.

The standard reply from the religious chaps is that 'Hitler, Stalin and Mao were nasty chaps'. Firstly, there's no evidence Hitler was an atheist (he was Christian in the 1920s and certainly theistic to the end), not to mention that the shameful actions of that bastion of moral righteousness the Catholic Church during the war make it clear that the church cared more about Catholics in Germany than Jews in concentration camps. But that's playing with dodging the bullet anyway - the fallacy is that atheism was somehow to blame for their crimes. The problem here is that atheism requires that we take responsibility for ourselves and our actions, while Christianity offers a mix of threats and opium - God will spank you silly if you're bad, but if you're good you get life eternal. Spiffing. Atheism doesn't require empty threats, but I would argue offers implicit morality - if there's no after-life you'd better do the best with what you have. The morals tend to come out the same, but whereas one is dogma, which requires no analysis, the other requires thought (which in turn requires education, always a danger to religious control).

And if we must fight fire with fire, the Christians were pretty implicit in the slave trade, which dwarfs the Holocaust as genocide. Likewise with the culls of the Aborigines in Australia. The Indians in Puritan America. Plenty of Christians got their hands dirty in the Holocaust. And you know what, plenty of Christians spoke out against these things and fought to stop them. They existed on both sides - just like Atheists. Obviously the word of God isn't as unifying as they'd like us to think.