A N Wilson and Jesus thrash the evil secularists
I don’t read the Daily Mail; I know its reputation, so I avoid even sampling it, because I get enough aggressive stupidity right here at home; but I made an exception for A N Wilson on evil secularism, and I’m quite startled by its frank vulgarity. He’s not a moron, Wilson, at least I thought he wasn’t, but this stuff…
This playground attitude accounts for much of the attitude towards Christianity that you pick up, say, from the alternative comedians, and the casual light blasphemy of jokes on TV or radio. It also lends weight to the fervour of the anti-God fanatics, such as the writer Christopher Hitchens and the geneticist Richard Dawkins, who think all the evil in the world is actually caused by religion. The vast majority of media pundits and intelligentsia in Britain are unbelievers, many of them quite fervent in their hatred of religion itself. The Guardian’s fanatical feminist-in-chief, Polly Toynbee, is one of the most dismissive of religion and Christianity in particular. She is president of the British Humanist Association, an associate of the National Secular Society and openly scornful of the millions of Britons who will quietly proclaim their faith in Church tomorrow.
That’s a lot of dreck packed into a small space. Hitchens and Dawkins don’t (of course) think all the evil in the world is actually caused by religion. Why shouldn’t people be ‘fervent’ in their hatred of religion? Religion is a human institution; we’re allowed to hate human institutions. What’s a ‘fanatical feminist-in-chief’? And then it all comes to a crescendo with the bathetic appeal to the poor victimized millions of Britons who will quietly proclaim their faith, not harming a mouse yet beaten about the head and shoulders by all these slavering geneticists and feminists.
Rather than being cowed by them, I relish the notion that, by asserting a belief in the risen Christ, I am defying all the liberal clever-clogs on the block: cutting-edge novelists such as Martin Amis…
So…it’s wicked to be liberal? And clever? And a novelist? It’s good to defy people who are all three of those by asserting a belief in a magical story? Especially when one is a novelist oneself? I don’t quite follow.
Ah, say the rationalists. But no one can possibly rise again after death, for that is beyond the realm of scientific possibility. And it is true to say that no one can ever prove – nor, indeed, disprove – the existence of an after-life or God, or answer the conundrums of honest doubters (how does a loving God allow an earthquake in Italy?) Easter does not answer such questions by clever-clever logic.
Ah – so now he stoops to sneering at logic itself. Pesky old liberal fanatical sneering cutting-edge Hampstead chattering logic. Logic is for pussies!
Of course, only hard evidence will satisfy the secularists, but over time and after repeated readings of the story, I’ve been convinced without it.
And then gone on to pitch a huge fit at people who commit the crime of refusing to be convinced without it, thus demonstrating the arrogance of atheists and the deep humility of believers. Or something.
Lie down with daily mails and get up with fleas.
‘Materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals. It has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry…’
Wilson must be aware that quite a lot of work continues to be done in that field, so not very honest of him.
Except for his use of “liberal clever-clogs” it’s not a very well-argued article. Doesn’t seem very Christian (in Wilson’s use of the term) to call people names and sneer at them just b/c he disagrees.
Is clever clogs used in other parts of the Anglophone world? I’m going to introduce it to my neighborhood in San Diego. On my block we merely considered ourselves cool and smart, and didn’t know we qualified to call ourselves clever clogs. It’s an upgrade, if you ask me.
Heh – clever clogs is very local to the UK, I think – or perhaps the UK plus the Commonwealth. Definitely not Murkan.
Pussies wear clever clogs.
I buy the Daily Mail, which is a bottomless source of delights, provided by Peter Hitchens -chiefly opposed to the Iraq War because U.S. Marines listened to Queen while launching Cruise Missiles-, Melanie Phillips, and my especial favourite and personal idol, Richard Littlejohn.
A.N. Wilson is queer chap, who, in a recent Mail article, seemed panicked by the prospect of white-coated scientists resurrecting monsters such as Hitler and Stalin via cloning, which is an extraordinarily stupid fear.
Ah, that explains why Richard Dawkins is a geneticist! Because he’s a Bad Man, so he’ll be one of the Bad White-coated Scientists resurrecting Stalin who will stalk the streets until he finds little A N Wilson and EATS HIM UP.
He’s offended by “casual light blasphemy”? There’s always somebody to be offended by something.
Yup, I can’t recall the last time I saw a film where an ethologist unwittingly causes Science to Run Amok, so he must be a geneticist.
A shadow has fallen on a once-proud England. Men women, boys and girls eat at KFC, spit gum on pavements, and stab their bodies with syringes.
To rescue Albion, Rupert (AN Wilson) has to find and slay the Jesusophobes; Jo Brand, a blaspheming comedienne, Jonathan Ross, a slimy foul-mouthed T.V. presenter, Polly Toynbee, the Fanatical Feminist-in-Chief, plus her harpies, and Richard Dawkins, the Evil Scientist, who has to be killed before he reanimates the corpses of Hitler and Stalin.
Very good outline for a film MattR, a bit like Shaun of the Dead.
Tristram Hunt on AN Wilson. “And Wilson approaches postwar politics with a Napier-like focus on personality and place which allows his remarkable capacity for character assassination to shine”
And here he’s at it again with his weasel words-anyone who disagrees with his views is naturally a ‘fanatic’.
Why has AN Wilson, now turning 60, returned to belief in the afterlife “no one can ever prove – nor, indeed, disprove – the existence of an after-life or God”? Maybe it’s a bit of just-in-case marble polishing. After all, no one wants to feel – to quote Rowan Atkinson – ” a real ‘nana'”.
“his remarkable capacity for character assassination”
That’s one of the odd aspects – it’s not remarkable at all, at least in this article; it’s stunningly banal, predictable, stale, unimaginative – it’s all right out of the box labeled ‘atheists & libbruls.’
“a belief in the risen Christ,”
As with all matters of faith, you have to knead it.
He also wrote an astonishingly bad article about this in the New Statesman recently.
A N Wilson has a spectacular genius for character assassination. It is one of the hallmarks of his style.