Oh dear, the poor psychics are worried.

[N]ow psychics must add a few riders before they invoke the voices of the dead, thanks to new consumer laws due to come into force…Promises to raise the dead, secure good fortune or heal through the laying on of hands are all at risk of legal action from disgruntled customers. Spiritualists say they will be forced to issue disclaimers, such as ‘this is a scientific experiment, the results of which cannot be guaranteed’. They claim the new regulations will leave them open to malicious civil action by sceptics.

Uh…yeah; and? If you promise to raise the dead or secure good fortune or heal via magic, why shouldn’t you be at risk of legal action from disgruntled customers? What should you be – immune? Say you promise to raise the dead, five hundred bucks a try. You fail, the customer tries again, you fail again, customer tries again – and this keeps up until the customer has given you her life savings of fifty thousand dollars. To what are we supposed to attribute all these failures? Bad luck? The weather? The collapse of the housing market? Isn’t there something to be said for the idea that you never actually had a workable plan for raising the dead in the first place, and therefore shouldn’t have been charging a non-refundable fee for the service? I would argue there is quite a lot to be said for that idea.

For the past half-century, ‘genuine’ mediums have been protected by the 1951 Fraudulent Mediums Act, under which prosecutors had to prove fraud and dishonest intent to secure a criminal conviction, which was difficult. There have been fewer than 10 convictions in the past 20 years.

That’s quite funny. So everyone had to pretend to believe that ‘mediums’ genuinely believed they could raise the dead in spite of a long history of never actually doing so? In spite in fact of a historical record in which there are no (0) cases of people raised from the dead? Mediums could safely offer (for a fee) to raise the dead as matter-of-factly as a grocer selling a dozen eggs or a bus driver accepting a fare for taking you from Putney to Chelsea, undisturbed by the (one would think troubling) fact that the promised service was never forthcoming?

Didn’t anyone ever notice? Didn’t anyone ever stop and say ‘Wait, though – does this actually work? All those people I know of who’ve died – I haven’t seen a single one of them since. If this worked, wouldn’t someone have paid the fee to bring them back? Why don’t we ever see the ones who return? There’s something fishy here’?

Carole McEntee-Taylor, a spiritualist healer in Essex, said having to stand up and describe the invoking of spirits as an ‘experiment’ was forcing spiritualists to ‘lie and deny our beliefs’. She added: ‘No other religion has to do that.’

True, but they ought to. But also relevant is the fact that other religions don’t charge fees on the same basis – they pass the plate, but they don’t make their services conditional on a fee. But most relevant of all is the fact that you have no right to believe you can raise the dead – not in your line of work. A belief like that in your line of work is equivalent to an oncologist believing she can cure cancer by singing the Ode to Joy. You can’t charge people money for raising the dead merely because you (claim to) believe that you can in fact raise the dead when you never have in fact raised the dead. It’s unethical, to put it very mildly indeed.

I went to a talk by Austin Dacey yesterday to the Secular Students’ Union at the University of Washington. He’s a philosopher, he has a new book out, The Secular Conscience, and he’s a United Nations representative for the Center for Inquiry. It seems quite a good thing that CFI should have a UN representative, especially now. I’m looking forward to reading The Secular Conscience. Austin mentioned during his talk how reliably predictable it was that new students would be moral relativists, and the secular students lived up to the advance billing: all their questions were about how to ground morality. After about the fifth or sixth such question Austin wondered why people expect the answers to such questions to be quick and easy and definite, when we don’t expect that about any other kinds of difficult questions. I suggested that one reason is the desire to be able to match the quick and definite way believers can explain how they ground their morality by saying ‘I know X is wrong because God said so/it’s in the Scripture.’ Austin pointed out that thoughtful believers realize that that doesn’t do them any good (for the Euthyphro reason, which he started with). Yes; how unfortunate it is that there are so many unthoughtful believers.

This is related to my questions about what Blair said at the cathedral. If religion isn’t strange convictions, then what is it? What does religion bring to efforts to end global poverty that secular institutions and ways of thinking can’t bring? What does religion add that nothing else can add, other than the strange convictions? I can’t see anything. I can see lots of common ground, but it’s common ground; it’s as open to secularists as it is to believers.

Liberal believers can ignore the nasty parts of the bible and keep only the good bits – but if they do that, they are doing it for reasons that are independent of the bible and of religion. They are using secular moral judgment to do that – but giving religion the credit. That’s the sneaky part, and it’s why liberal religion is not such a beneficent arrangement as people think. It gives religion more credit for human morality, and it gives human judgment less credit. This means it encourages people to think that morality depends on religion when it really doesn’t, and it encourages them to distrust human moral judgment. That just sets them up to be subject to the authority of clerics, which at best stunts their own ability to think about morality and at worst turns them into arbitrary bullies and meddlers.

After the talk I asked Austin if as CFI’s representative to the UN he’d had a chance to protest the Human Rights Council’s ‘no jokes about religion’ declaration. He said there was no channel for doing that, and that creating one is the top priority. Yeah.

Austin is at the Green Lake library tomorrow at 1, and a lot of places after that. Go if you have a chance.

What’s Blair talking about?

“For religion to be a force for good, it must be rescued not simply from extremism, faith as a means of exclusion; but also from irrelevance, an interesting part of our history but not of our future.” Too many people saw religious faith as stark dogmatism and empty ritual, he added. “Faith is reduced to a system of strange convictions and actions that, to some, can appear far removed from the necessities and anxieties of ordinary life,” Blair said. “It is this face that gives militant secularism an easy target.”

Militant secularism yourself. We’re not the ones who resort to violence when people don’t agree with us, so don’t be so free with your adjectives, not to mention your mindless clichés. But leaving that aside – if religion is not a system of strange convictions, then what is it? I realize it has other attributes, of course (though it’s hard to specify any that universally belong to religion as such), but which ones are inherent in religion and part of its definition? If you remove all the strange convictions from a given religion, what is religious about what is left? I realize there will be something left, but what I don’t see is what is religious about that residue. It seems to me that what is left is simply a lot of stuff that can just as easily be secular, and often is – belonging, meaning, motivation, community. That appears to be the kind of thing Blair has in mind (though who knows for sure, since as always religion gets the benefit of vagueness when we are being told how wonderful it is), but he has no real right to assume that kind of thing is religious and therefore on the credit side of the ledger for religion.

He went on to argue that religion could help to advance humanity and end global poverty. One of his foundation’s aims is to bring people of faith together in pursuit of the UN’s millennium development goals, which include the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, promoting gender equality and combating diseases.

Well sure, religion could do that. But what could it do to do those things that is religious? What is it about what religion could do to help advance humanity and end global poverty that secular or non-theist groups or organizations could not do? What particular, special, irreplaceable quality of religion is Blair talking about here? The article doesn’t say – and I have a strong suspicion that Blair didn’t either.

Thinking of moving to Malaysia?

Malaysia runs parallel sharia and civil legal systems, with sharia courts dealing only with Muslims and mainly in family disputes or in matters such as khalwat or apostasy. It employs religious police to ensure Muslim compliance with Koranic laws. They sometimes patrol parks looking for young unwed couples holding hands, raid nightclubs to catch Muslims drinking alcohol and ensure Muslims observe the fasting month of Ramadan.

Ah does it. But…how do the religious police know who is Muslim? When they go into a park to try to find some evil couples holding hands, how do they know which couples contain Muslims and which don’t? Does everybody in Malaysia wear a large sign or label or a star coloured variously yellow, green, pink, and blue for Other? Do the Muslims have big arrows suspended in the air picking them out for the religious police? Does Allah go with the religious police and tell them who is which? Do all Muslims wear their hair a certain way? Do the religious police just find someone in a hijab and go on from there? Who knows. But at any rate it is interesting to contemplate life in a place where the police can tell you to stop holding hands with someone in a public park, and raid nightclubs to tell you to stop drinking alcohol, and ensure that you follow Ramadan. What do they do, wander around all day and when they find a Muslim (how do they know?) eating a falafel sandwich, snatch it away and fling it into the mud?

Some Muslims feel it is not fair to be punished for moral crimes that non-Muslims can freely commit. But non-Muslims, who make up around 40 percent of Malaysia’s population of 26 million, strongly resist attempts to impose standards of Muslim morality on them, even if these attempts are sometimes mistaken.

In other words some Muslims don’t want to be subject to sharia. No I should think they wouldn’t. But apparently the implication is not that sharia sucks, but that non-Muslims should be subject to the same stupid tyrannical intrusive none of your fucking business laws. Nice thought. We have idiotic clerical laws that make our lives miserable, therefore everyone should have laws like that. (And then there’s that absurd last clause – as if mistaken attempts to impose standards of Muslim morality on non-Muslims are no problem if they’re ‘mistaken.’ Of course they’re mistaken, they’re all mistaken, and that’s why people resist them! Der.)

I re-read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this morning, to confirm that it’s as secular as I remembered. It is. This is crucial.

If you look at the preamble of the UDHR, you will see that there is no mention of any religion. All religions and cultures are assumed to be equal…But in the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (hereafter called the Cairo Declaration), we can detect a completely different tone. Right from the first paragraph of the preamble, the Cairo Declaration confidently asserts the superiority of Islam by referring to the Islamic Ummah as the “best nation”…This is no implication, unlike in the UDHR, that all cultures and religions are equal. Indeed the rest of humanity is supposedly confused and in need of guidance from the “best nation”.

And the guidance tells it that the only rights it can have are those that ‘the Shariah’ allows. Which is not a generous package.

Take note the word “men” instead of “human beings” was used. In Islam, men and women are seen to have different obligations and responsibilities. Men of course can have four wives but women cannot have four husbands. In the UDHR, gender-neutral terms such as “everyone” or “human beings” are always used.

David Littman takes a close look.

Although traditions, cultures and religious background may be different, human nature is universally the same. The aim of those who drafted and approved the UDHR was precisely to affirm this universal human identity, separating it from particular and religious contexts, which introduce and sanctify differences and discriminations. Any attempt to bring in cultural and religious particularisms would simply remove the specifically universal character of the UDHR. Neither the UIDHR nor the CDHRI is universal, because both are conditional on Islamic law which non-Muslims do not accept. The UDHR places social and political norms in a secular framework, separating the political from the religious. In contrast, both the UIDHR and the CDHRI introduce into the political sphere an Islamic religious criterion, which imposes an absolute decisive and divine primacy over the political and legal spheres.

To be continued.

Let’s take another, closer look at the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, focusing on certain aspects of it. This is not a selective excerpt, this is one that pulls out certain words and ideas, so it’s not fair in the sense of quoting a fair sample in context. Be sure to look at the Declaration itself – there is plenty of sensible stuff in it. But it’s startling and interesting what a large amount of non-sensible stuff there is in it – what a lot of Allah there is and what an enormous amount of Shari’ah there is.

Keenly aware of the place of mankind in Islam as vicegerent of Allah…Recognizing the importance of issuing a Document on Human Rights in Islam…Reaffirming the civilizing and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which Allah made as the best community…to affirm his freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with the Islamic Shari’ah…fundamental rights and freedoms according to Islam are an integral part of the Islamic religion…they are binding divine commands, which are contained in the Revealed Books of Allah…

All human beings form one family whose members are united by their subordination to Allah…All human beings are Allah’s subjects…it is prohibited to take away life except for a shari’ah prescribed reason…Safety from bodily harm is a guaranteed right…it is prohibited to breach it without a Shari’ah-prescribed reason…provided they take into consideration the interest and future of the children in accordance with ethical values and the principles of the Shari’ah…The State shall ensure the availability of ways and means to acquire education…so as to enable man to be acquainted with the religion of Islam…Islam is the religion of true unspoiled nature…Human beings are born free…there can be no subjugation but to Allah the Almighty…Every man shall have the right, within the framework of the Shari’ah, to free movement…unless asylum is motivated by committing an act regarded by the Shari’ah as a crime…Everyone shall have the right to enjoy the fruits of his scientific, literary, artistic or technical labour…provided it is not contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah…There shall be no crime or punishment except as provided for in the Shari’ah…Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah. Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right…according to the norms of Islamic Shari’ah. Information…may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets…Everyone shall have the right to…assume public office in accordance with the provisions of Shari’ah…All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari’ah…The Islamic Shari’ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this Declaration.

That’s a human rights document. Human rights human rights human rights – provided it is not contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah. And who decides what is contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah? Ah…that would be telling.

This is immensely depressing.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression will now be required to report on the “abuse” of this most cherished freedom by anyone who, for example, dares speak out against Sharia laws that require women to be stoned to death for adultery or young men to be hanged for being gay, or against the marriage of girls as young as nine, as in Iran.

Good, isn’t it? The Rapporteur was supposed to report on violations of freedom of expression, now she will be required to report on the use of it.

There can no longer be any pretence that the Human Rights Council can defend human rights. The moral leadership of the UN system has moved from the States who created the UN in the aftermath of the Second World War, committed to the concepts of equality, individual freedom and the rule of law, to the Islamic States, whose allegiance is to a narrow, medieval worldview defined exclusively in terms of man’s duties towards Allah, and to their fellow-travellers, the States who see their future economic and political interests as being best served by their alliances with the Islamic States.

Well, adios equality, individual freedom and the rule of law, hello duties towards a tyrannical misogynist invented male deity.

The Sri Lankan delegate explained clearly his reasons for supporting the amendment: “.. if we regulate certain things ‘minimally’ we may be able to prevent them from being enacted violently on the streets of our towns and cities.” In other words: Don’t exercise your right to freedom of expression because your opponents may become violent. For the first time in the 60 year history of UN Human Rights bodies, a fundamental human right has been limited simply because of the possible violent reaction by the enemies of human rights. The violence we have seen played out in reaction to the Danish cartoons is thus excused by the Council – it was the cartoonists whose freedom of expression needed to be regulated. And Theo van Gogh can be deemed responsible for his own death.

That’s just it. ‘Don’t exercise your right to freedom of expression because your opponents may become violent.’ That may in certain circumstances (a bully has a knife at your throat; the Nazis have taken over) be sane prudential advice, but it is never principled advice. It may be a necessary precaution in times of extreme danger, but it should never ever be treated as the moral high ground. Giving bullies what they demand with menaces is not ever the moral high ground.

‘Ayesha’ (not her real name) – get out of there. Get out, and don’t come back. Ever. Get out right now.

Her father died when she was six, and her mother married his very conservative cousin, who hit her hard in the face the first time they met, and went on from there. She was beaten up throughout her childhood. At fifteen she was forcibly engaged to a cousin. She ran away but was tricked into going home for another beating. She told a doctor; he told the social services, who questioned her mother, who denied it all, and Ayesha got the worst beating of her life.

Her stepfather spied on her and one day saw her without the hijab. That evening, she was thrown into the bath and beaten. “My mother told me that if I didn’t start listening to her then my stepfather was going to rape me.” Ayesha confided in a female teacher, but her story was not believed. As preparations for the marriage moved forward, the bride-to-be was locked in a house whose outside walls were now topped with studded nails and barbed wire. Her stepfather spelt it out bluntly. If she tried to run away again, he would find her and kill her.

She phoned Jasvinder Sanghera; she got out of the house and ran; she phoned the police, who almost took her back home, but Sanghera managed to convince them not to. She was safe; she moved to another city, she was about to start a degree course. But then she phoned a relative.

Promises were made. She could come back. All would be forgiven. Four months ago, Ayesha went home. And so resumed her role as victim in an escalating cycle of threats and violence. The family is still insisting that she marry her cousin. She still refuses. A happy ending is not in sight.

Get out, Ayesha. Run, and don’t look back.

Nice.

The country’s powerful Islamic parties and leaders are resisting reform of a law that sanctions lenient punishments for those found guilty of so-called honour killings. Article 111 of the Iraqi penal code – passed in 1969 – allows a lesser punishment for the killing of women if the male defendants are found to have had “honourable motives”…Acting minister of state for women’s affairs Narmin Othman is leading a campaign to change the Ba’ath-era law. She is pushing for parliament to ditch the honour killings statute, so that men accused of such crimes are prosecuted for murder…United Iraqi Alliance MP Qais al-Ameri argued that honour crimes are permitted under sharia, or Islamic law. “Illicit sex is the most dangerous thing in a society, and there should be severe punishments against those who practice it.”…Iraqi Accord Front MP Hashim al-Taee said that he also supported the current honour crimes law because it is based on sharia.

Oh well if it’s allowed under sharia, there’s nothing more to be said. Archbishop of Canterbury please note.

The UN’s human rights resolution has passed.

The top U.N. rights body on Thursday passed a resolution proposed by Islamic countries saying it is deeply concerned about the defamation of religions and urging governments to prohibit it…The document, which was put forward by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, “expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations.” Although the text refers frequently to protecting all religions, the only religion specified as being attacked is Islam, to which eight paragraphs refer…”It is regrettable that there are false translations and interpretations of the freedom of expression,” the Saudi delegation told the council, adding that no culture should incite to religious hatred by attacking sacred teachings…The resolution expresses “grave concern at the serious recent instances of deliberate stereotyping of religions, their adherents and sacred persons in the media.”

No culture should incite to religious hatred by attacking sacred teachings – so therefore all cultures and everyone in them should simply accept ‘sacred teachings’ and that’s that. ‘Sacred teachings’ should be treated as special and inviolable and immune from criticism and disagreement – in spite of the fact that they are based on nothing but long tradition and determined belief. (Or rather, because of that fact.) Well, I just have ‘attacked sacred teachings,’ because I think they are wrong, harmful, and malicious, so I naturally don’t think the UN Human Rights Commission’s new resolution is a good idea. I also don’t think the Organization of the Islamic Conference really gets it about rights. The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam illustrates why.

All human beings form one family whose members are united by their subordination to Allah and descent from Adam…Life is a God-given gift…and it is prohibited to take away life except for a shari’ah prescribed reason…Men and women have the right to marriage, and no restrictions stemming from race, colour or nationality shall prevent them from exercising this right…Woman is equal to man in human dignity, and has her own rights to enjoy as well as duties to perform…It is prohibited to exercise any form of pressure on man or to exploit his poverty or ignorance in order to force him to change his religion to another religion or to atheism…Every man shall have the right, within the framework of the Shari’ah, to free movement…Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah…Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical Values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith.

And so on, and so on. All the rights are qualified by ‘as long as the Shariah doesn’t mind.’ It is prohibited to force people to change religion, but it is not prohibited to force people not to change religion. Restrictions on marriage stemming from religion are quite all right. Woman has her own rights to enjoy, but she doesn’t have just plain rights – and anyway they’re always qualified by having to get the Shariah’s permission. And so on, and so on. Not what people who are not united by their subordination to Allah recognize as rights at all – more like non-rights. So it’s unfortunate that the OIC has so much clout at the UN Human Rights Council.

Ban Ki-moon is chiming in on the anti-rights talk.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday joined Muslim nations in expressing outrage over the film. Ban called Wilders’ film offensive while Iran and Bangladesh warned it could have grave consequences and Pakistan protested to the Dutch ambassador. “I condemn in the strongest terms the airing of Geert Wilders’ offensively anti-Islamic film,” Ban said in a statement. “There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence. The right of free speech is not at stake here.”

Oh really.

Girls yanked around like so much furniture.

Like dozens of other Pakistani-American girls here, Hajra Bibi stopped attending the local public school when she reached puberty, and began studying at home. Her family wanted her to clean and cook for her male relatives, and had also worried that other American children would mock both her Muslim religion and her traditional clothes…About 40 percent of the Pakistani and other Southeast Asian girls of high school age who are enrolled in the district here are home-schooled…Some 80 percent of the city’s 2,500 Muslims are Pakistani, and many are interrelated villagers who try to recreate the conservative social atmosphere back home. A decade ago many girls were simply shipped back to their villages once they reached adolescence…As soon as they finish their schooling, the girls are married off, often to cousins brought in from their families’ old villages.

How nice to know that Lodi has so much in common with Luton.

Aishah Bashir, now an 18-year-old Independent School student, was sent back to Pakistan when she was 12 and stayed till she was 16. She had no education there. Asked about home schooling, she said it was the best choice. But she admitted that the choice was not hers and, asked if she would home-school her own daughter, stared mutely at the floor. Finally she said quietly: “When I have a daughter, I want her to learn more than me. I want her to be more educated.”

Too bad Aishah can’t have what she wants for her daughter. Too bad she can’t be more educated too.

And speaking of sanctimony, there’s nothing like letting a child die miserably while you pray over her instead of going to a doctor.

An 11-year-old girl died after her parents prayed for healing rather than seek medical help for a treatable form of diabetes, police said Tuesday…”She got sicker and sicker until she was dead,” [the police chief] said…[S]he had probably been ill for about 30 days, suffering symptoms like nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness. The girl’s parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, attributed the death to “apparently they didn’t have enough faith,” the police chief said. They believed the key to healing “was it was better to keep praying. Call more people to help pray,” he said.

Which might be understandable if they lived on some other planet, but they lived in a town in Wisconsin, they owned a coffee shop, they had sent their daughter to school. They lived on planet earth and were not cut off from knowledge of what people do when they get sick. They were not cut off from available knowledge of what is the right thing to do when a powerless child gets sick.

But we are told we shouldn’t judge.

It’s important not to be moralistic or pass judgment on parents who think they can heal a child through prayer, said Dr. Norman Fost, professor of bioethics and pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison. “They believe they’re helping their child; they love their child, and they believe prayer has an effect,” Fost said.

How does he know they love their child? Does he know that? Is he just assuming it? Is he just thinking well all parents love their children so even parents who are delusional and reckless enough to let their children suffer and die for lack of medical treatment, must love their children? Probably. Which doesn’t give one much confidence in his powers of reasoning.

David Aaronovitch murmurs a quiet word in the ear of the bishop of Durham.

Sermon continues: “This secular utopianism is based on a belief in an unstoppable human ability to make a better world, while at the same time it believes that we have the right to kill unborn children and surplus old people…” Now, this is as close to a lie as makes no difference. Dr Wright may reply directly to the Times letters page, which, even in this fallen age, generally prints the words of high clergymen, to tell me which significant secularist body, or scientific group, or gaggle of atheists is it that believes “we” have the right “to kill surplus old people”?

Ah, you see, we must allow for episcopal hyperbole, and we must respect the beliefs which prompt them to indulge in such hyperbole. We’re not allowed to tell whoppers like that about them, but when they do it about us, why, they’re…um…following their consciences. Or something.

This almost wanton disregard of fairness was being deployed for the specific purpose of attacking the proposals to allow the creation and use of hybrid embryo tissue in scientific and medical research…[T]he argument about what is actually in the Bill has been sidetracked by the mass complaints about the decision by the Government to put a three-line whip on Labour MPs. This has led, among other miracles, to the call by the Catholic hierarchy for there to be a free vote – a “conscience” vote – on the entirely contradictory basis that, according to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor: “Catholics have got to act according to their Catholic convictions.” But these are not personal convictions, they’re matters of doctrine. Churches constantly change their collective minds about what God says, so what is being asked is that MPs put their Church – not their conscience – above everything else.

Not personal convictions? Matters of doctrine?! That’s blasphemy! It’s insulting! Of course the embryo nonsense is a matter of personal conviction; it’s totally a coincidence that it’s Catholics who have it and who keep saying that as Catholic MPs they – um – well let’s talk about something else now.

Naturally, despite this, just about every editorial in every newspaper lined up, almost languidly, behind the free-vote demand…It is an easy concession to make to the religious lobby…providing that you don’t believe they’ll win. That way the churchy can go back to their bishops and say they’ve done their bit, and the rest of us can have our Bills to ameliorate or improve the human condition. Then, when the Bill becomes law and, over time, the advances save lives, the bishops and their flocks can quietly benefit from the measures they so denigrated, have the operation, swig the medicine and move on, sanctimoniously, to the next bit of opposition.

Sanctimoniously. Just so. That’s what’s so irritating: the preening, self-admiring parade of ‘conscience’ superior to everyone else’s – when they’re putting a handful of cells ahead of the well-being of real humans.

The Bishop of Lichfield explains about embryos.

It’s a very important part of our society and a very important part of the Christian faith that you should have respect for human embryos.

Is it? How does that play out in real life? Where in our society do we see respect for human embryos being performed or exemplified? What does it look like? What does it make happen? Do embryos enroll in school? Do they get promotions? Do they take part in athletic competitions? Do they win prizes? Do they run for office? In what situations do people get an opportunity to show respect for them, and what is it that the respect respects?

And in what sense is that respect a very important part of the Christian faith? Where does that come from? Where is it written? How long has it been the case? What is it based on? Anything? Did Jesus say anything about it? Did (even) Paul? Did Augustine? Tertullian? Aquinas? Luther?

To be blunt, I don’t think that is a very important part of the Christian faith, I think it’s a recently invented rule that some Christians have made an enormous fetish of for the simple reason that there is nothing much else they can make a fetish of because they’ve been superseded. We don’t need Christianity in order to work for human rights or equality or animal rights or justice or peace or benevolence. There is little room left for Christians to exercise moral scrupulosity, so they have to find little neglected corners that are neglected because they are in fact bogus. So the poor sad underemployed Christians trundle around finding embryos and cells to protect, since real people with real needs can be protected by atheists just as well as by theists. It’s sad for them. Soon they’ll be making ethical fusses about molecules and atoms.

If you stop obeying God you start to limit the rights of human beings and this is a case in point.

Oh really. Whereas people who do obey God never limit the rights of human beings, as we see every day. Well done, bishop.

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.

More reckless irresponsible callous pro-disease intervention from Catholic clerics and MPs.

The Government is braced for further criticism today when the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor signals that Catholic MPs should vote against the legislation…“There are some aspects, not all, of this Bill for which I believe there ought to be a free vote because Catholics and others will want to vote according to their conscience.”

Catholics and others will want to vote ‘according to their conscience’ to reject medical research on frivolous willful sanctimonious trivial grounds. ‘According to their conscience’ means pretending to think a pre-embryonic cell is the exact equivalent of a developed human being – and they seem to be proud of this, rather than hotly ashamed, which is what they should be.

Former cabinet minister Stephen Byers:

On some of these issues, like whether we should allow the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos, I remain undecided. There is a strong case that can be made on both sides of the argument: On the one hand the desire to be able to tackle diseases like MS and Alzheimers, on the other hand respect for the dignity and sacredness of all human life.

The second one is not a strong case – it’s an absurdity. You might as well talk about respect for the dignity and sacredness of all human eyelashes, or dandruff, or spit. Does Stephen Byers stage a funeral when his dentist pulls one of his teeth? Does he collect the stuff the dental hygienist scrapes off his teeth and keep it in a little shrine? Dignity and sacredness bullshit – suffering is important, artificial pseudo-reverence for human cells is just self-flattery.

[T]he health minister Ben Bradshaw hit back at the bishops…Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions he said: “If it was about the things the cardinal referred to, creating babies for spare parts or raiding dead people’s tissue then there would be justification for a free vote. But it’s not about those things. He (Cardinal O’Brien) was wrong in fact, and I think rather intemperate and emotive in the way that he criticised this legislation. This is about using pre-embryonic cells to do research that has the potential to ease the suffering of millions of people in this country. The Government has taken a view that this is a good thing. The Government is absolutely right to try to push this through to the potential benefit of many people in this country.”

Suffering. Well you see suffering is not what they care about – what they care about is sacredness.

What was that that Dr. Mark Sawyer said?

“Most of these parents have never seen measles, and don’t realize it could be a bad disease so they turn their concerns to unfounded risks. They do not perceive risk of the disease but perceive risk of the vaccine.”

Yeah. Catholic clerics do something very similar and Catholic MPs follow suit. Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh:

I believe that a greater challenge than that [man, woman, marriage, children – ed] even faces us – the possibility now facing our country is that animal-human embryos be produced with the excuse that perhaps certain diseases might find a cure from these resulting embryos.

The ‘excuse.’ Mark that. The ‘excuse’ that diseases might be cured as a result of embryo research – it’s just an excuse for researchers’ unholy desire to create embryos and then torture them or eat them or have sex with them or wear them as party favours in their hats. Or perhaps not. What does the archbishop think the real reason, as opposed to the excuse, is that researchers want to do research with embryos?

It is difficult to imagine a single piece of legislation which, more comprehensively, attacks the sanctity and dignity of human life than this particular bill. With full might of government endorsement, Gordon Brown is promoting a bill that will allow the creation of animal-human hybrid embryos…He is promoting a bill allowing scientists to create babies whose sole purpose will be to provide, without consent of anyone, parts of their organs or tissues.

No; not babies; of course not babies; obviously not babies; not babies, embryos. Bad archbishop. Tell the truth, archbishop.

This bill represents a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life.

Why? Why? Why? How? Why and how is this research an attack on human rights dignity and life? And what about the real, existing. sentient, conscious people who suffer from horrible diseases that could be cured with this research? Why does the archbishop worry about the insentient unconscious embryos instead of the real people with horrible diseases? He might as well worry about a fingernail clipping; it makes as much sense. Why does the archbishop worry about the wrong thing? Why does the archbishop huff and puff with moral outrage over the wrong thing? What is the matter with him? What is the matter with all of them? Why do they get it so backward, and make such a virtue of it?

Oh, so this is where ‘respect’ for ‘beliefs’ gets you.

While many parents meet deep resistance and even hostility from pediatricians when they choose to delay, space or reject vaccines, they are often able to find doctors who support their choice…“I don’t think it is such a critical public health issue that we should force parents into it,” Dr. Sears said. “I don’t lecture the parents or try to change their mind; if they flat out tell me they understand the risks I feel that I should be very respectful of their decision.”

Why? Why does Dr Sears feel he should be very respectful of parents’ stupid, misinformed, dangerous to their child and other children decision? What exactly is it about a decision of that kind that Dr Sears feels he should respect? Its selfishness? Its irresponsibility? Its lack of evidence? Its ignorance? Its cluelessness? What is there to respect? If the parents told him they let their child rollerskate on the freeway, would he respect that? Why respect a decision not to vaccinate?

In a highly unusual outbreak of measles here last month, 12 children fell ill; nine of them had not been inoculated against the virus because their parents objected…Every state allows medical exemptions, and most permit exemptions based on religious practices. But an increasing number of the vaccine skeptics belong to a different group — those who object to the inoculations because of their personal beliefs, often related to an unproven notion that vaccines are linked to autism and other disorders.

‘Personal beliefs’ that are not religious beliefs (which I don’t think should be ‘respected’ on medical issues anyway) but just plain old beliefs, and wrong ones at that. That’s a stupid reason for an exemption.

“The very success of immunizations has turned out to be an Achilles’ heel,” said Dr. Mark Sawyer, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. “Most of these parents have never seen measles, and don’t realize it could be a bad disease so they turn their concerns to unfounded risks. They do not perceive risk of the disease but perceive risk of the vaccine.”

They ignore the real risk and fret about the bogus one. And Dr Sears feels he should be very respectful of that. Whatever.

Interesting.The producer of ‘Expelled’ interviews Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, and PZ Myers for his movie, having misled all of them into thinking it was a movie about the conflict between ID and science as opposed to a pro-ID movie. Then he throws PZ out of the theatre before a screening of the movie. (He would have thrown Dawkins out too, of course, had he recognized him there in the line with PZ, but he didn’t, which certainly makes a good joke.) First he interviews PZ for the movie, then he expels him from the theater before he has a chance to see the movie he is in. I think Mark Mathis needs to take a refresher course in PR.

There was one school of thought in 2006 that said the Danish cartoons were deliberate provocations, just as there was a school of thought in 1989 that said Salman Rushdie knew perfectly well he was being offensive in The Satanic Verses and more or less deserved whatever he got. Flemming Rose (the Jyllands Posten editor who commissioned the cartoons) says they were not. In reply to Wolf Blitzer’s question ‘Was it your intention when you asked for these 12 cartoons to provoke a response, to incite, if you will, a reaction among Muslims?’ he said

Of course not. I was focused on the question of self- censorship, and I did not pay much attention to the reactions of Muslims. But I recognize that in the aftermath, in this developing story, a lot of Muslims had expressed their grief and anger. And I’m apologizing for that. That was not my intention. But at the same time, I cannot apologize for the publication itself. I apologize for the feelings it has caused. But if I apologize for the publication, I thereby am saying that I have — we did not have the right to do this, that this was wrong. And as you said, we have behaved within the boundaries, both on Danish law and Danish customs, traditions of satire and humor. We did not transcend anything in terms of Danish culture, tradition and law.

Before that Blitzer asked him if, knowing what he knows now, he would do it again.

You know, these cartoons, they grew out of a concrete context. We had a story to cover, five, six cases of self-censorship. And we decided to cover it in an unusual way, by not telling it but showing it. But, in fact, I do not — I do not accept the premise of your question, and I think it is like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short skirt at the discotheque Friday night.

Flemming Rose also wrote an article on the subject in the Washington Post.

Childish. Irresponsible. Hate speech. A provocation just for the sake of provocation. A PR stunt. Critics of 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have not minced their words. They say that freedom of expression does not imply an endorsement of insulting people’s religious feelings.

That was two years ago, but the same charges are still being recycled.

I commissioned the cartoons in response to several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam. And I still believe that this is a topic that we Europeans must confront, challenging moderate Muslims to speak out. The idea wasn’t to provoke gratuitously — and we certainly didn’t intend to trigger violent demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. Our goal was simply to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter.

Is that a legitimate goal, or mere provocation for the sake of provocation? I would say it’s the first.

As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult. This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders.

Well exactly – label any critique an insult and thus illegitimate, and better yet, get compassionate people to take your part, and thus close down disagreement. It’s a good wheeze, and it works a lot more easily and more often than it should.