Okay, I give in. I’ve had a conversion experience. I’ve recognized the error of my ways. All these people who have been telling me what a horrible elitist I am have worn me down. I’m convinced. It’s true, I am an elitist, and that makes me a terrible person, so I have to stop. Okay. I’ll stop. I’ll become a better person. I won’t like anything that is not extremely popular, and I won’t dislike anything that is extremely popular. (God, for instance.) I won’t do anything that lots of people don’t do, and I won’t refrain from doing anything that lots of people do. I’ll become as humble and modest and unassertive as the people who tell me what … Read the rest

Go, Manchester City. Go, Paula Radcliffe.

Update. She went.… Read the rest

Religion again. Or rather, still. It never does go away, does it. Funny how people keep urging us to have more of it when its consequences so often seem so very…unpleasant.

Jonathan Derbyshire has a couple of posts on the subject – one about the fallacy that atheists and materialists lack a sense of wonder or awe and the other a review of what sounds like a very irritating book on atheism. Theists have the most remarkable way of assuming that only they are capable of an enormous range of human qualities and aspirations – morality, imagination, dreams, commitment, wonder, honesty, dedication, kindness, mercy, courage, putting the cap back on the toothpaste, virtue, monogamy, not picking their noses in public. … Read the rest

I find the murder of Theo van Gogh quite disturbing, upsetting, disgusting, infuriating, etc. As I’m meant to, of course; as we all are – all we unrepentent atheists and secularists and women who wander around in the world without asking anyone’s permission. Killing him is meant precisely as a message – to people like him, to people like his co-producer of the film ‘Submission,’ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to people who criticise or resist Islamism in general.

Some of the coverage of the murder is slightly peculiar. It seems somewhat – cowed. Hesitant. Apologetic. It seems to want to say or signal that van Gogh kind of sort of asked for it. That he shouldn’t have said such mean things … Read the rest