Those whose sensitivity relates to their faith
Cancer Research and other charities are urging MPs to support the pre-embryonic cell research bill. But that doesn’t mean an end to bullshit.
Alan Johnson told Sky News: “I believe… once we have discussed all these issues and seen all the safeguards in the bill, that there will not be a split. But there will be an accommodation for those who have a particular sensitivity around this, including those whose sensitivity relates to their faith.”
Why? Why should there be an accommodation for ‘particular sensitivity’ about nothing? Suppose some people developed a fixed belief that sewage treatment violated the will of their deity? Should there be an accommodation for that? Why is there all this deference for completely absurd whacked-out meaningless beliefs for whose sake people try to prevent useful medical research?
Because it ‘relates to their faith’; I know. But that’s not a good reason.
Johnson did say the important thing though.
Mr Johnson said the bill tackles deadly and debilitating diseases. “For people out there suffering from Parkinson’s disease and motor neurone disease, this is not a question of some issue about the procedure through the House of Commons,” he told BBC News 24. “This is an issue about whether we can find the drugs that can cure their illnesses. So this is the heart of the matter.”
Yeah it is. Footling nonsense about the dignity of pre-embryonic cells is not.
GT, you left out anesthesia. If god
had intended mankind to be comfortable,
he would not have given us sensory nerves.
As James Watson once said, if we don’t play god, who will?
OB asks: Why should there be an accommodation for ‘particular sensitivity’ about nothing?
Hmph. I think we all know the answer to that. Because people with “particular sensitivities” vote. And politicians who ignore voters’
ridiculous superstitious amoral gibberishsensitivities entirely may find it more difficult to be re-elected.Isn’t he just referring to the fact that a three-line whip might not apply for certain parts of the bill?
But if he is does he have to call it ‘accommodation for those who have a particular sensitivity’? Perhaps he does, but I wish he didn’t.
They’re so obviously proud of themselves, they so obviously think they have finer moral instruments than people who lack this ‘particular sensitivity’ – it seems a shame to encourage them in that thought.
G says: Hmph. I think we all know the answer to that. Because people with “particular sensitivities” vote.
Indeed, thats the annoying thing about democracy. But this is worse.
The Cardinal and co. are not mounting a popular campaign from the pulpit urging catholics to write to their MP, which would be fair enough.
He is urging catholic MPs to ignore however many letters for or against they might get from the people who elected them, as well as expert advice, reasoned debate etc… and instead defer to the higher authority of the church.
Oh, I quite agree with you on the loathsome behavior of the Catholic powers-that-be. I was referring to the slightly less reprehensible and more politically understandable rhetoric from Health Minister Johnson that OB quoted.
The thing that bothers me most is that this doesn’t HAVE to be one of the annoying things about democracy. Thomas Jefferson’s dictum that democracy is impossible without a well-educated citizenry is no less true today than it was when he said it, and the UK’s current policy of encouraging faith schools is exactly opposed to that fundamental truth. Short-sighted vote-pandering equals long-term damage to the very foundations of democracy. *sigh*
“and the UK’s current policy of encouraging faith schools is exactly opposed to that fundamental truth.”
Hmmmmm.
Don’t underestimate:
1. Just how secular the UK is (part of what is irritating about all this stuff is precisely that a large chunk of the UK population views Christianity as fairly barmy – though the rise of Islam does complicate matters);
2. Just how ignorant the general population is quite independently of faith schools (e.g., one third of people think that the sun goes around the earth);
Not that I’m a supporter of faith schools, I should add.
Maya, good point – this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today Programme ended 8.55 with a debate: “Has Gordon Brown made a mistake by paying more regard to the future of bioscience than the religious sensitivities of his MPs?”
Christina Odone and William McShane MP, both Roman Catholics, contributed. Odone led the assault on how both Blair and Brown had let Christians down in that they had not delivered as promised to Christian voters, (e.g. Brown ‘back-peddling on faith schools’). No-one wanted to counter this stupidity with the basic fact that almost no-one in the UK elected them, or any political party, on a religious platform.
Which signified to this angry commuter how far a political system bereft of genuinely useful ideas can now be infected by agents of the church, and how far the BBC is prepared to give their fetid airless opinions oxygen.
Nick,
Ah, but did you catch the “gratuitous Nazi analogy” during (lack of) “Thought for the Day”…
along the lines of “if this had been proposed by scientists conducting experiments in Nazi Germany, we’d all be up in arms about it”…by Indarjit Singh
And old whatserface then referenced it as if it were a reasonable argument when debating the topic 5 minutes later…
Aaarrrghhhh!!!! Still, bit of idiocy-induced-anger helps get the brain into gear when I’m making the kids’ breakfast!
‘I love the sound of irrationality in the morning’
:-)
Andy, yes I did, but I excluded all that on grounds of TftD always being mind-boggling b0llocks broadcast purely by the BBC to make me get into the invigorating white noise of my shower and go to work. They’re nice like that.
Did we all enjoy our Easter holidays, then?
Yes xxx
My Easter egg was chocolate on the outside but contained a bag of nuts. Does that make it a monstrous hybrid?
“The church” has opposed practically every serious medical advance known, ever.”
Penicillin?
Then again, your overblown statement carefully combines a thumping forthright view with a lily-livered qualification.