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Twaddle Decoded

A Humanist perspective on items of twaddle that have come to our notice since June 2003

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The Beginning of Things, according to Melvyn Bragg

What is Conscience? asks John Humphrys

The Big Questions
by Alan Bookbinder, the head of BBC religion and ethics department.

Gay Relationships: Oxford Bishop’s Illusion

Sikh Says: Dealing with Fear is Central to Religion

“God is Love”

Bishop of Durham Rewrites History

Islamic Web Site on What it Calls “The Sexual Deviancy which is Homosexuality”

Inscrutable Scruton Fakes It

Nature Can’t be Fixed, Even by God says the Rev. Angela Tilby

Angela Tilby Confirms that Her God is Subject to Chance

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Angela Tilby Confirms that Her God is Subject to Chance

Addressing a BBC audience on Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’ on 22 December 2005 the Rev. Angela Tilby said:-

“Chance is blind, but because it’s blind it ensures that surprises happen; it makes this universe a place of genuine creativity. This should be a cause for wonder because it shows us something about the kind of God God is. He is not a deity who designs perfect little models and then sets them on earth to run along like clockwork toys. He’s more like an artist, who labours over his work, taking risks and making room for the creation to respond. More a parent than a mechanic. In such a creation it is not entirely surprising that God should be found, not outside pulling the strings, but as the Christmas story tells us, right inside it, sharing the risks and chances of mortal life with the sheep and the ox and the ass, for us and for our salvation, in the cradle of Bethlehem”.

The Rev. Angela Tilby is clearly not a Christian as her god is like those of the ancient Greeks, subject to external forces they cannot control, such as chance. The will of her god can be thwarted so he / she / it is not all powerful, all knowing, or even all loving as chance can destroy love. An artist may take risks but risk is not the same thing as chance. How can a work created by chance by an artist be called art? The Rev Tilby does not tell us. She just uses words to confuse listeners into accepting her absurd religion and gets paid by the public to do so.

Posted: January 2006.

Nature Can’t be Fixed, Even by God says the Rev. Angela Tilby

Using one of her regular ‘Thought For The Day’ slots on BBC Radio 4, the Rev. Angela Tilby said on 27th June 2005 that, “It’s certainly hard to live with the knowledge that nature can’t be fixed. It can’t be fixed because it has no heart, it has no will and it runs on its own laws and not on ours.

Many parts of nature have been ‘fixed’ to the satisfaction of human beings. Food and water can be purified and diseases eradicated, so to some extent nature can be tamed or ‘fixed’. Nature has many areas still untamed, but is this a good reason for giving up on problems, and declaring nothing can be done?

She continued, “God can only save us by giving us himself - and when we want safety rather than God we run the risk of ending up with neither.

If God cannot save us from natural disasters, he is not all powerful. If he has to give himself to achieve something he is subject to laws which he cannot control. How can he be described properly then as a god?

She ended her ‘Thought’ by saying that frightened human beings and hostile nature are simply held in the presence of eternity, a mystery we cannot hope to fathom because it is where we’ve come from.

This piece of twaddle says that nature is “hostile”. Only seconds before the Rev. Tilby had said that nature had “no heart” and “no will” and “runs on its own laws”. It can hardly be hostile then, only neutral. Eternity, if it exists, can hardly be described as a mystery, rather something hard for the human mind to grasp like a number such as a billion.

Posted: July 2005.

Inscrutable Scruton Fakes It

Writing in the [London] Times on 10 July 2004, Roger Scruton, a former professor of philosophy at Birbeck College, London, wrote: “You have a nervous system like mine; you behave as I do; you describe yourself as suffering. But why does that prove you feel pain? That is a philosophical and not a scientific question. The answer is to be found by reflecting on what we mean by “pain”, and on how we would justify the use of this word, in describing other people as well as ourselves. .... There is no answer”.

Professor Scruton here destroys the proofs of science. He destroys pleasure as well as pain and shows he has not learned from the ancient Greek Epicurean philosophers who unmasked the sophists of their time who “destroyed our lives” by “making it impossible to live”, and destroyed philosophy at the same time, by maintaining, like Roger Scruton, that the obvious is not true. At least he has proved that people can still earn money by retelling fake old arguments.

Posted: July 2004

ISLAMIC WEB SITE ON WHAT IT CALLS
“THE SEXUAL DEVIANCY WHICH IS HOMOSEXUALITY”

On its web site Al-Muhajiroun has posted a press release which says that as followers of Ahl Al Sunnah wa’l Jammah (an Islamic sect based throughout the Muslim and the non-Muslim world), “With respect to sexually deviant groups in society it is the duty of Muslims to seek to clarify the Islamic position on the disease of Homosexuality to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and to call for its abandonment and the uptake of Islam”.

Homosexuality can no more be accurately described as a disease than can the belief and practice of religion. Both occur widely throughout the world.

Our message to homosexuals is to realise that they have been created by the one true God, Allah, the Creator of Man Life and the Universe (and all that is in between).

All scientific knowledge about physics and evolution by natural selection is disregarded here in preference for the Qur’an, a primitive book of superstitious myth about a god called Allah.

To know that the Resurrection on the Day of Judgement is true, and that Retribution and Hell fire are real, and that all Man’s deeds and sayings are recorded.

These threats from Allah simply repeat those contained in the earlier ‘holy’ books from other primitive people in the Middle East collected to form the Holy Bible.

Know that one of the most sinful acts known to humankind is what is termed homosexuality. Have you ever seen an animal exhibit homosexual behaviour? The answer is an emphatic NO! Because Allah has not given animals any Free-will and so they are subservient to his order in accordance with their natural disposition (i.e. Fitrah), whereas he gave us Free-will and we disobey him? In this is a sign for those who think.

Ignorance of biology may have led to this twaddle. Homosexual behaviour has been observed in more than 300 species of vertebrates that have sex with the same gender - from sheep to lizards, according to Joan Roughgarden in her book ‘Evolution’s Rainbow - Diversity, Gender and Sexuality in Nature and People’, published by the University of California Press.

This kind of sexual activity between men was not known on Earth since creation until the time of the people of Lot. They were the people whose men began this practice amongst themselves, instead of having normal
relations with women. The Prophet Lot was sent to this nation to warn them of their actions and show them the path of Allah. "Indeed! You commit such abomination as none has ever committed before you. You
approach the males, and you obstruct passers by, and you commit evil in your assemblies." [Explanation of the Meaning of the Qur’an, Chapter 29: verses 28-29].

This is an example of the errors in the Qur’an. Long before the supposed time of Lot, ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’ was written, and has been found on clay tablets in the palace of Assurbanipal, the king of Assyria. The story of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, relates his love for Enkidu, the man of the forest.

The AIDS virus claims millions of lives every year and this kind of sexual deviance is among its main causes.

AIDS is an actual disease and is not caused by behaviour, but may spread as a result of behaviour, such as not using condoms.

Posted: July 2004

The Beginning of Things, according to Melvyn Bragg

Melvyn Bragg, broadcaster and author, wrote in The Times [of London] on 25th August 2003, "There are two or three things that matter in religion. One is to do with the beginning of things".

Melvyn Bragg ignores our common knowledge that philosophy and science deal with "the beginning of things" too.

The argument over the past few years particularly has been rehearsed to bits, but if you believe there was a creator then you have to believe that there's a force out there, a guiding intelligence of a certain sort, out of which we all come.

If you believe in a creator, you do have to believe that was "a force out there" to do the creating but why does it still have to be out there today and of "a certain sort"?

If you believe there's a creator then you have to believe that what follows is designed by that creator.

On the contrary, if the blue touch paper was lit it does not follow that the creator knew all the subsequent stages and they were determined. Why do "you have to believe" that everything is determined? But, if you do, free will is impossible.

And again, the more that's found out, the more you see . . . asteroids and eggshells are intimately related to each other: how they're structured, how they're formed. All these things have a deep and profound similarity, and that would accord with a religious idea.

It might "accord with a religious idea" but it does not have to do so. Evolution by natural selection is an alternative.

And then - and this is a difficult one, I think - not only is there a creator and a design but there is a creator who has a design on us, on humankind, and his design is to give us free will so that we can eventually achieve a moral perfection.

Melvyn Bragg here assumes a great deal. He assumes that humankind was specially designed. That part of that design was free will and that the creator did it for the purpose that "we can eventually achieve a moral perfection". There is no evidence for any of these arbitrary value judgements. Determinism allows for prophesy but rules out free will.

That's the hardest one to accept. It does seem to me, though, that occasionally coming into the planet - rather like that asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago - are certain people so radically different in what they say that they do seem to bring messages.

Here he denigrates the work of those "messagers", whoever they are, by giving the supposed "creator" the credit. No creator is necessary. It is all the fancy of Lord Bragg.

Posted: September 2003

What is Conscience?

John Humphrys, Broadcaster, wrote in The Times [of London] on 25th August 2003, "I didn't ever say "I do not believe in God", because I'm not that certain. I am the most appalling, wishy-washy agnostic you will ever meet. I find it terribly difficult . . . but if there is absolutely nothing, no guiding force, no moral guiding force or immoral guiding force for that matter, what is conscience? Why do we alone among species have this thing called conscience, and why do some of us make a reasonable living out of beating old ladies over the head and nicking their handbags and some of us don't?

Other species may have a moral conscience. Some act in selfless ways which can be interpreted as resulting from such a conscience. It seems arrogant to assume that homo sapiens sapiens has a developed 'conscience' and all other species have none at all. For Humanists the basis of ethics is pain and pleasure. Other animals experience these.

It's not just for the survival of the species, is it? Loads of species survive and they do dreadful things to each other all the time, not just occasionally.

It depends on the species, John. Animals that live in groups all their lives, rather than separately, need rules of behaviour for the group. Caring for the young is just one example. Accepting the dominant bull elephant in the herd may be another.

We do dreadful things occasionally, of course, like the Holocaust, but other species survive and make a habit of eating each other routinely.

We also do things, like rescuing Holocaust victims. Why is a "moral guiding force" necessary for such moral actions when it might be done out of personal individual love, friendship or gratitude? At least John Humphrys recognises that a 'guiding force' might be an "immoral one". That's a start, and shows that the notion of a 'moral guiding force', acting after hundreds of millions of years on just one species on this planet, gets us nowhere.

Posted: September 2003

The Big Questions

Alan Bookbinder, the head of the BBC’s religion and ethics department, has called on the churches to use the airwaves to “address the big questions of morality and mortality that are the very stuff of religion”.

The big questions are, in fact, the stuff not of religion, but of moral philosophy. Religion does not centre so much on “morality and mortality”, but more on “rules and salvation”. The two concepts are different things altogether, but perhaps these comments explain the BBC’s neglect of secular ethical traditions.

Posted: July 2003

Gay Relationships: Oxford Bishop's Illusion

Speaking about the "great furore over the gay issue", the Rt. Rev. Richard Harries, the Bishop of Oxford, asked on the BBC, "But how is scripture to be interpreted? Reading involves selection and prioritising - particularly with such a diverse collection of writings. What is the key which will unlock this door into the mind and purpose of God?"

As this is not a new problem the Bishop obviously rejects the key used by Christians for generations. However, whatever method he adopts for "selection and prioritising" he cannot select teachings from the scriptures which approve and sanction same sex physical relationships, because there is not a single one in the "whole collection of writings". As a Bishop he should know this. Unless he sees what is not there - an illusion of his own making.

The Bishop said he was "reading scripture in the light of those ... who feel themselves blessed" in their gay relationships. Many terrorists, murderers and pedophiles would say they feel their actions are blessed by his god.

If we had plain speaking, instead of twaddle from Bishop Harries, he would honestly admit that the Bible is not a factual book, but largely a work of fiction. Humanists have said this for years.
Gay people might then suffer less discrimination which flows from this book, and the religions built on it.

Posted: July 2003.

Sikh Says: Dealing with Fear is Central to Religion.

"Dealing with fear is central to religion", Dr. Jeevan Singh Deol said on the BBC 'Thought for the Day' sermon slot embedded in the 'Today' programme on Radio 4. He continued, "Faith teaches us how to understand, cope with and sometimes even contain our fears and how to live our lives despite them".

In reality the Sikh religion like the other 'world religions' creates bogus fears and then offers escape through Faith. They either offer us escape from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, like the Sikh view, or salvation from damnation in Hell, like the Judaic, Christian, Muslim and Mormon religions.

There is no such nonsense in the Humanist ethical tradition. Philodemus expressed our view as:
Nothing to fear in God,
Nothing to feel in Death.
Good can be attained.
Evil can be endured.

Posted: July 2003.

“God is love”

In the London Times on 19 June 2003 Dr. Jeffrey John is reported to have told their correspondent Ruth Gledhill, "That mystery of love is in the end the mystery of giving yourself away. This week we are celebrating the Feast of the Trinity, which is all about God himself existing as a relationship of love in his own nature. God is love. Love between persons who are individual and yet given completely to the other, is a mystery that reflects God's own nature".

Many Christians assert that the Trinity consists of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit being one in three indivisible. This is not like a reflection of two individuals joined in love. The parts of the Trinity cannot be seen as the love of another if they are not separate. It could only be self love. If the Trinity is "a relationship of love in his own nature", it is incompatible with the belief about the 'Father' giving the 'Son' to be crucified, and then forsaking him on the cross.

Dr. John is often described as 'intelligent'. He cannot be described as 'intelligible'.

Posted: July 2003.

Dr. Jeffrey John

Bishop of Durham Rewrites History

Writing in the [London] Times on 24th December 2003 Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, asked "why is it so important to insist that Christianity is simply paganism with a self-righteous smile?"

The answer is, of course, because that is what it is - while Christians continually insist it is not, and that it is unique.

His answer to is own question is that the Judaists "claimed that their God had made the world, rather than being part of it: they therefore refused to worship other gods, not least those of the main pagan empires. Likewise Christians believed that Jesus was in the world ..."

In fact whatever god they worshiped, believers claimed that the world was divinely created. This was not why Judaists and Christians "refused to worship other gods". To this day the Judaists claim that their god is the only true God and that all other gods are false gods, while the Christians go further and say that the other gods are actually demons in disguise. Even if the Bishop himself does not believe in demons, Jesus certainly did according to the gospels.

The pagans of classical times did not believe in endless repeated cycles of time as the Bishop claims. That was the Maya. He believes "history is going somewhere" so like the classical pagans he believes in determinism.

The classical holy stories are full of accounts of gods taking on human form. Jesus was the latest in a long line. The others came first, but the Bishop, claiming to speak as the early Christians, asserts that "Jesus is the original" and the other gods "lifeless copies". Jesus was no original.

Christmas is not as the Bishop claims, the "start of a subversive story" - it's an excuse for a knees-up, and always has been!

Tom Wright, Bishop of Diurham

Posted: December 2003

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