My friend Claire went to Denver and she saw something very nice there.

Ruth Gledhill in The Times tells us that

The civil servant in charge of the Pope’s visit to Britain has been suspended and is to be investigated for misconduct after a memo lampooning the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church was leaked to the press.

All the staff involved in producing the memo are to be sent on “urgent diversity training”

Urgent diversity training? Meaning what? They’ll be trained not to have contempt for contemptible beliefs? How will that be accomplished, exactly? Heavy drugging? Waterboarding?

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “As we have made clear publicly, it was a foolish document that did not in any way reflect FCO views. Although it was intended only for internal use, it was ill-judged, naive and disrespectful of some key tenets of the Catholic faith. It has caused great offence…

Why do key tenets of the Catholic faith have to be respected? They are false after all – and the ones that were mocked in the memo are also harmful – so respect should not be mandated. I do realize it’s not the Foreign Office’s job to make the Catholic church a better institution, but it also shouldn’t be its job to lick Ratzinger’s boots.

The FCO very much regrets this incident and is deeply sorry for the offence which it has caused. We strongly value the close and productive relationship between the UK Government and the Holy See and look forward to deepening this further with the visit of Pope Benedict to the UK later this year.

Does it? Why? Why does the Foreign Office strongly value the close and productive relationship between the UK Government and the Holy See? What is there to value in that? The “Holy See” is a horrible secretive coercive all-male obscurantist organization that shields fugitives from justice (Cardinal Bernard Law) and conceals decade upon decade of child rape until the last rag has been stripped away. The “Holy See” tells Africans not to use condoms during an Aids epidemic, it tells everyone everywhere not to use any birth control at all, it works tirelessly to prevent women from getting abortions and thus to deprive all women of childbearing age of a secure sense that they own their own lives. The “Holy See” stinks – it is repulsive to see the Foreign Office crawling to it in this slavish way.

A pretty story.

Three sisters have suffered serious facial burns after two unidentified men on a motorbike threw acid at them in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. The sisters, aged between 14 and 20 years old, were attacked as they walked from Kalat city to Pandarani village…The police named the girls as Fatima Bibi, 20, Saima Bibi, 16 and Sakina Bibi, 14…Two weeks ago, an unknown group – the Baloch Ghairatmand Group (the Honourable Baloch Group) – claimed responsibility for a similar attack on two women in a market in Dalbandin city. The group had warned women to wear the hijab, the traditional Muslim headscarf, and not to visit markets unaccompanied by men from their families.

So in other words these three girls had acid thrown in their faces because they existed, because they were girls, because they went outside, because they went somewhere, because they were visible, because they walked and talked and breathed, because there were three of them. They had acid thrown in their faces because nothing. They had acid thrown in their faces because two thugs felt like throwing acid on some women, and the Bibi sisters were there. “Honourable” indeed – give me a fucking break.

Lord Justice Laws said

The precepts of any one religion – any belief system – cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other.

If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens, and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic.

The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments.

Beautiful. Compare the ruling in FREEDOM FROM RELIGION FOUNDATION v OBAMA:

However, religious expression by the government that is inspirational and comforting to a believer may seem exclusionary or even threatening to someone who does not share those beliefs. This is not simply a matter of being “too sensitive” or wanting to suppress the religious expression of others. Rather, as explained in a recent book by the Provost of Princeton University and the Dean of the University of Texas School of Law, it is a
consequence of the unique danger that religious conduct by the government poses for creating “in” groups and “out” groups:

Then quoting:

Religious affiliation typically implicates an expansive web-of-belief and conduct, and individuals often feel and are seen as “in” or “out” of such webs. In a variety of ways the perceived and actual stakes of being within or without these webs of belief and membership can be very high: being fulfilled and redeemed or eternally damned; being welcomed as a member of the community or shunned. Moreover, it is in the nature of religion that persons outside a given faith will on occasion fail to understand or appreciate matters internal to that faith, and so will be inappropriately indifferent, suspicious, or even repelled and hostile to beliefs and practices central to that faith. These are matters of sociological fact, and they justify distinct constitutional concern that governmental conduct will valorize some beliefs at the cost of disparaging others, and further, that in the course of such conduct, government will valorize some citizens at the cost of disparaging others.

Christopher L. Eisgruber and Lawrence G. Sager, Religious Freedom and the Constitution, 61-62.

The Supremes will throw it out, of course, but it’s a great ruling all the same.

I love the new place. (Take a bow, Josh and Cam.) I love the search engine. I was looking for something a few minutes ago, something to do with the Motoons and reactions in Denmark; I searched with “Motoons,” which produced a lot of items but not the right one, so I tried “Denmark” which brought it right up – along with a surprising array of other stuff just on the first page. I wouldn’t have guessed I mention Denmark that often! But I do – not always because of the Motoons. It just gave a nice sense of a rich resource…It’s a beautiful search engine.

I didn’t say anything about “boobquake” because although I thought it was quite funny and a good riposte to ridiculous clerical misogyny, I also have reservations about women joining in with laddism – plus I hate the word “boobs.” They’re tits, dammit! Like the birds.

But Miranda Hale said anything and Jerry Coyne said anything, and then they got some rather strong reactions, so I thought I would say anything.

A commenter at Why Evolution is True made the point succinctly:

There’s a big difference between paying attention to what women are saying and paying attention to their breasts. If women want attention to be paid to what they have to say, they should stop trying to get it with their cleavage.

Exactly; not least because the cleavage distracts attention from the saying. Does this really have to be said? Doesn’t everybody know this? Isn’t that in fact the point?

I think of it as The Cuddy Effect. What do you think of when you see Cuddy? She’s so brilliant, she’s such a great doctor-administrator? I don’t think so. I don’t think you’re supposed to, and I don’t think you do.

In a perfect world we could have both – we could revel in everything all at the same time and nothing would distract from anything else. But we don’t live in that world. We can’t drive and text at the same time, and we can’t not be distracted by sexual signaling.

This fact disadvantages women a lot more than it does men. Women are always already seen (by men, and men do still set the rules – for how tv shows like House get made, for instance) as primarily for and about sex, whether yes or no (yes she’s a hotty, no she’s repulsive). We have to fight to be seen as for and about anything else. The more we play up tits and ass, the more we lose that fight.

This isn’t fair, obviously, but it’s true.

Carey turns purple in the face and insists that yes religious believers do too so have a right to treat people badly just because their religion says to.

The former archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey today accused judges of moving towards a new “secular state” that would downgrade the rights of religious believers. Attacking a “deeply worrying” court ruling, Carey claimed the judiciary was now tipping the legal balance against believers in “a deeply unedifying collision of human rights”.

The new secular state would downgrade the rights of religious believers to say no ew ick I won’t serve/marry/advise/cut the hair of gay people because I don’t want to because I think they’re gross and god thinks so too. Those rights. Those time-honored rights to hate certain kinds of people for random meaningless ick-based reasons, and in addition to hating them, treat them as a thing apart, and when times get tough, go the rest of the way and kill them.

Those are the rights that Carey is demanding that the state make extra-special room for. If he lived in another country, it would be child witches, or Tutsis, or Bosnians, or untouchables, or Armenians. It’s strange and terrible that he doesn’t have the brains to figure that out.

Carey reacted angrily to a judge who sharply criticised him for previously appealing for a court of hand-picked judges to determine religious rights cases. Carey had also warned of civil unrest over decisions he claimed could lead to Christians being barred from jobs.

Carey wants a theocracy, and he can’t have one. Tough.

Nigeria’s Senator Ahmad Sani Yerima assures us that he has done nothing wrong. What a relief.

Ahmad Sani Yerima, 49, told the BBC that his fourth wife was not 13, but would not say how old she was.

He denied breaking the law but said he would not respect any law that contradicted his religious beliefs.

Ah good; how noble, how pious, how devout, how holy. If any pesky law contradicts his “religious belief” that he is allowed to fuck a girl who is too young to give her life away and too small through the pelvis to bear a child safely, why then he will bravely and nobly ignore that law in favour of the “religious belief” that lets men of 49 fuck girls of 13.

The Nigerian senate ordered an investigation after complaints from women’s groups but the senator said he did not care what the groups thought.

Mr Sani was the governor of Zamfara state, where he oversaw the introduction of Sharia law – for the first time in a northern state – in 1999.

Well, that’s the kind of guy who doesn’t care what women’s groups think all right.

The senator said he had followed “standard rules for marriage in Islam”.

“I don’t care about the issue of age since I have not violated any rule as far as Islam is concerned,” he said.

“History tells us that Prophet Muhammad did marry a young girl as well. Therefore I have not contravened any law. Even if she is 13, as it is being falsely peddled around.

“If I state the age, they will still use it to smear Islam,” he said.

Thus revealing that the age is still much too low to be marrying a brutal callous goat of 49.

But, much more, also revealing that most of the point of all this “introduction of Sharia” crap is to strip women of rights and enable men to fuck more and younger women as well as getting rid of the older ones they don’t want to fuck any more. Also revealing that this selfish greedy moron thinks that the fact that Mohammed married a child makes it perfectly all right for him to marry a child and that his doing so is a way of standing up for Islam.

The women’s groups want Mr Sani to be taken to court, to face a fine and a jail sentence.

They say he has contravened the Child Rights Act of 2003 which, although not ratified by all Nigeria’s 36 states, is law in the capital where he lives and his marriage is believed to have taken place.

“As a Muslim, as I always say, I consider God’s law and that of his prophet above any other law,” Mr Sani said.

“I will not respect any law that contradicts that and whoever wants to sanction me for that is free to do that.”

That’s exactly why the very idea of “God’s law” is so dangerous.

Omigod omigod omigod somebody insulted the Catholic church!! And even the pope!!! Omigod omigod.

The memorandum, apparently written by staff planning events for the four-day visit by Pope Benedict XVI, suggested he might like to start a helpline for abused children, sack “dodgy” bishops, open an abortion ward, launch his own brand of condoms, preside at a civil partnership, perform forward rolls with children, apologise for the Spanish armada and sing a song with the Queen.

But it’s all right, the somebody’s bosses apologized and apologized and apologized.

Jim Murphy, the cabinet minister overseeing the visit and a practising Catholic, failed to see the funny side of it, describing the memo as “absolutely despicable. It’s vile, it’s insulting, it’s an embarrassment”.

You bet! It’s just beyond words terrible and appalling and evil that some young whippersnappers suggested that the pope should do some decent reasonable generous things.

The ludicrous nature of some of the memo’s suggestions did not prevent some within the Catholic church demanding apologies for a disrespectful slur rather more urgently than senior Vatican officials have offered apologies over children abused in church care.

Quite so.

Kenan Malik points out that fundamentalism is an idea, not a biology.

Secularism and fundamentalism are not ideas stitched into people’s DNA. They are not born so. Secularist ideas and religious beliefs are like any values: people absorb them, accept them, reject them. A generation ago there were strong secular movements within Muslim communities and fundamentalism was a marginal force. Today secularism is much weaker, and Islamism much stronger. This shift has been propelled not by demographic trends but by political developments. And political developments can also help reverse the shift.

Kaufmann doesn’t deny any of this. But, he insists, nothing can stop the inevitable demographic triumph of the fundamentalists. Why? Because ‘we inhabit a period of ideological exhaustion’. The ‘great secular religions have lost their allure.’ In their place we have ‘relativism and managerialism’, outlooks that ‘cannot inspire a commitment to generations past and sacrifices for those yet to come.’

This gets us to the heart of the problem. For the real issue at stake is not demography but politics. I do not accept the secular ideologies amount to ‘religions’. But Kaufmann is right to suggest that in our post-ideological age, secularists find it much more difficult to inspire a sense of purpose and collective direction.

Yes, and ironically, fundamentalism itself fills the gap – fundamentalism does a brilliant job of reminding secularists why secularism is worth having and defending.

Not just the obsession with demography but the very fear of Islam expresses the lack of conviction in a progressive, secular, humanist project. The spectre of ‘Eurabia’ is really an admission that the critics of Islam lack the wherewithal to challenge the fundamentalists. Or, as Kaufmann puts it, ‘Dry atheism… can never compete with the rich emotions evoked by religion.’

I’m not so sure about that…But if it is right, then that’s another way “New” atheists are not such a bad thing after all. Part of what the Be Quieters hate about us is precisely our lack of dryness – our energy, our enthusiasm (in the older sense, the one that Hume and Mill senior were so wary of), our heat, our zeal. I can understand all that – enthusiasm and zeal are of course one short step away from more sinister qualities, or to put it another way, like so many things (respect, tolerance, liberty), they are only as good as they are: used for the right purposes they are good but used for bad ones they are a nightmare.

But all the same – I think in fact the current revival (so to speak) of atheism really is useful for altering the perception and perhaps the reality that atheism is dry while religion is full of rich emotions. I think we are doing at least a little to make it clear that atheism is not dry; that it too can evoke rich emotions. Atheism – at least in a context where the alternative is so visible and ambitious and competitive – is not just a negation, not just a no-god shrug. It is a liberation. It is the rejection of authority, tyranny, patriarchy, of bossdom of all kinds. It is the repudiation of the idea that there is a Superbig male Boss squatting at the top of everything and that we have to obey and worship and grovel to it. Freedom from that idea brings a lot of good things with it. Kenan indicates why.

The irony is that, for all their poisonous hostility towards Islam, the Eurabists express considerable admiration for Islamist arguments. Melanie Phillips is militantly opposed to what she sees as the ‘Islamic takeover of the West’ and ‘the drift towards social suicide’ that supposedly comes with accepting Muslim immigration. Yet she is deeply sympathetic to the Islamist rejection of secular humanism, which she thinks has created ‘a debauched and disorderly culture of instant gratification, with disintegrating families, feral children and violence, squalor and vulgarity on the streets.’

Phillips is talking idiotic nonsense. What does she think the culture was like before? What does she think 19th century culture was like? Or 16th century, or 11th century? What does she think life was like when the vast majority of people were dirt poor and illiterate and without rights? Does she think the whole world was a drawing room out of Jane Austen? This debauched and disorderly culture is one that is capable of improvement over time, and fairly short time at that; it is flawed but reparable; it comes with freedoms and rights and responsibilities that used to be reserved for one or five or ten percent of the population. Secularism is a big part of the reason for that; secularism makes belief in progress (not perfection, John Gray please note, but progress) more tenable and realistic.

There is nothing like a vivid sense of the alternative for making secularism and atheism seem about as dry as Niagra Falls.

Grayling’s reply to Gray is a much better read.

Anxious to appear original while in fact pushing a familiar counter-Enlightenment line, Gray has often entertained us with his assaults on logic and historical fact, each time repeating the two tenets of his faith, one acquired from Isaiah Berlin and the other from his Sunday school, namely, that we are condemned to live with the conflict between irreconcilable goods, and that we owe everything of significance in human achievement (not, he gloomily adds, that there has been much) to religion.

Concise, sly, cutting, and funny – also accurate. Gray is extraordinarily repetitive and predictable. I knew what his “review” would say before I read it. “Gray has often entertained us” reminds me irresistibly of Mr Bennett’s “You have delighted us long enough” to his middle daughter when she had bored everyone rigid with her relentless piano playing singing.

That Gray endlessly wears his own two old hats does not get in his way here. But I don’t mind this. What I mind is his attributing to me the idea that the scientific and social advances of the post-sixteenth century Western world are the road to perfection, and that if only we could be reasonable, accept pluralism, respect human rights, defend the rule of law, and apply the findings of science to the improvement of mankind’s lot, we would realize Utopia. No: though I do and always will champion these things (“shrilly” and “peevishly,” with “adamantine certainty” and “high-minded silliness” Gray shrilly, peevishly and high-mindedly complains), I don’t confuse Meliorism with Perfectibilism as Gray persists in doing, though I have before now, in print, tried to help him understand the difference.

That’s important. Gray is risible, but he’s also sinister. The idea that we should not be reasonable, accept pluralism, respect human rights, defend the rule of law, and apply the findings of science to the improvement of mankind’s lot is no joke, and Gray’s endless flirtation with it is a lot more repellent and more dangerous than conformity in Hampstead.

If nevertheless it is high-minded silliness to champion the cause of trying to conduct our affairs sensibly, and to free our minds and lives to the greatest extent conformable with our being social animals who owe one another moral regard, I embrace it with enthusiasm. Gray, with his shallow and rather aimless hostility to this view, is the least likely fellow to talk me out of it.

You have delighted us long enough, John Gray.

John Gray makes a familiar point.

SEEING THEMSELVES as fiercely independent thinkers, bien-pensants are remarkable chiefly for the fervor with which they propagate the prevailing beliefs of their time.

Prevailing where? Prevailing among whom?

Bertrand Russell, John Stuart Mill’s godson and a scion of one of England’s great political dynasties, exemplified this contradiction throughout most of his life. British philosopher A. C. Grayling can now be counted amongst his number.

Okay – he means “prevailing among people who think similar things” – which is a tautology. He’s pointing out that independent thinkers (fierce or otherwise) are not usually so very independent that they think things that no one else anywhere thinks. Right. Well we knew that, actually. If you’re such an independent thinker that no one on the entire planet agrees with you about anything, you’re a paranoid schizophrenic.

He’s letting us know that independent thinkers too form clumps, or groups, at least in the sense that one can point out ideas that they have in common. Yes – that’s true – but who thought it wasn’t?

His point perhaps is that you can’t claim to be an independent thinker if you have ideas in common with other self-proclaimed independent thinkers, because ideas-in-common rules out independent-thinking.

It doesn’t though, because the ideas could be in common and also independent in the sense of examined, thought about, questioned, critically considered, analyzed.

There’s another thing: I don’t actually know anyone who goes around saying “I am a fiercely independent thinker.” How does John Gray know that’s how bien pensants see themselves? I don’t think he does know; I think it’s his interpretation. There may be some truth in it, but his flat-footed announcement is a trifle smug, especially for the purposes of deriding the putative smugness and bien pensantness of other people.

His real point, stated more neutrally and clearly than he managed, is that people can pride themselves on being independent thinkers while still in fact conforming closely to the norms of their own social group. True. It is possible to be critical and skeptical in one direction and conformist and credulous in another, or the former in some directions and the latter in others. It’s as well to be aware of that.

But then again, it’s also as well not to get too hung up about it. Being an independent thinker isn’t the only good, or an absolute good, or the highest good. There are some parts of the bien pensant Book of Rules that are worth conforming to. Sometimes conformity is better than independent thinking. Traffic is one example – but equality is another. That’s at the heart of Gray’s sneer, I think – the terrible bien pensant herds of Hampstead all think alike on the subject of equality; they are all sheeplike in their aversion to racism and sexism and homphobia. Well, good. Independent thinking that takes the form of belief in social subordination is no loss.