Tag Archives: tolerance

Respect

Posted on by
1

Even before the events in Israel and Gaza, there were numerous recent examples of the term Islamophobia being used to suppress freedom of expression or shield wrongdoing.

A recent report by an all party group of UK MPs.

I’ve been told before that I should respect people’s religious beliefs. We all should apparently.

I can’t, I confess, summon respect for patent nonsense, nor for those who subscribe to it. I’m not even going to try.

There have, I admit, been a few believers I’ve met in life for whom I have had respect and even admiration, but this has been for the kind of person they were, not because of their religious beliefs per se. And no; their religion is not what made them admirable people. They were admirable irrespective of, or even despite, their irrational beliefs. I still hold to the theory of my own making, that religious conviction is like alcohol: both accentuate the existing characteristics of the individual, making them more of the person they already were, for better or for worse.

Equally, I’ve met many non-believers (I hate it that we have to describe ourselves as what we are not), LGBT people (for many religionists, the antithesis of admirable) and individuals whose views and outlook on life I haven’t necessarily agreed with, for whom I have also had respect and admiration.

It comes down to the old cliche, a truism nonetheless, that respect has to be earned. Just because someone believes in the supernatural or that Jesus died for our sins or that their deity or prophet trumps all others doesn’t mean I have to respect such views, or indeed those who hold them.

But this is where we’re headed, it seems. We’re expected to respect any old make-believe so long as it comes under the banner of religion and still more that doesn’t. It’s becoming ‘hateful’ to criticise religious belief and those who practise it. Because their views are sincerely held, the thinking goes, they merit protected status.

I commented some time ago on a Christian site (something I rarely do except when incensed) that was insisting ‘sodomites’ would burn in hell, because… the Bible. I countered that gay people were not going to hell because, in fact, no-one was. As well as the subsequent ‘loving’ comments from Christians, I was taken to task by a gay person telling me I was disrespecting the original poster’s Christian convictions.

Likewise when I suggest that we should be more wary of Muslim beliefs I’m told I’m being profoundly unfair, racist and Islamophobic, towards a minority – as a minority of one myself – and I should show more respect for an ancient and sacred tradition as well as those who subscribe to it.

I can’t do it. I can’t respect religious belief. It is no more worthy of respect than astrology, palm reading and spiritualism. It flies in the face of rationality. Not only is it insupportable, it is dangerous, a threat to hard-earned freedoms and rights.

Who Decides What A Culture’s Values Are?

Posted on by
2

Did you decide? Would you prefer to live in culture based on Christian, Islamic or Marxist values? According to some Internet Christians, these are the only choices available. Of course anyone with an ounce of sense and a modicum of honesty knows they’re not.

I choose to live in a society that is not dominated by cherry-picked Christian values, or indeed ‘values’ derived from any religion. I reject the claims of them all, including their demonstrably false notion that I and my fellow citizens cannot behave ourselves unless controlled by a morality imposed by an imaginary deity. Likewise, I don’t care to live in a culture determined by an extreme political ideology that serves only one part of society: usually the elites who devise the ideology in question.

Instead I choose, or rather was fortunate enough to be born into, a relatively liberal democracy, capable of determining its own values. These are largely secular and humanistic and include, amongst others, the rule of law, tolerance, and freedom of speech and movement. Of course the UK has never fully realised these aspirations but there has always been a sense, since the 1960s, that we were moving towards them. Perhaps I’m naive to think this, given the turbulence of the Thatcher years and President Blair’s mania for regulation, but overall it used to feel that we were moving gradually towards a fairer, more reasonable society.

It doesn’t now. The elites have embraced a wokeness that benefits a limited few and have redefined terms – ‘woman’, ‘crime’, ‘offence’, ‘hatred’ and ‘phobia’ among them – which has impacted negatively on personal rights and freedoms. They have reinterpreted the law so that it benefits vocal minorities while side-lining the majority. They have repeatedly reneged on promises and over-reacted to the crises of recent years – Covid in particular – by granting themselves greater powers to manage their own over-reaction; powers which, once each crisis has passed, they have declined to relinquish. The values of Britain today, as imposed by the governing classes, are overly woke and authoritarian. In my 68 years, I have never felt as micro-managed in my personal life as I do today.

So, I do understand why there are those who call for the return to what they perceive as Christian values or a cultural Christianity of church bells and hymn singing. I understand too the fear of some that the waning of Christian influence will see extreme Islamic values fill the vacuum. This seems to me to be a real possibility and one that would prove seriously detrimental and damaging to British society. However, attempting to resurrect nebulous ‘Christian values’ in order to prevent more intolerant ones from being imposed is no solution.

We need to be clear about our values and assert those we aspire to: tolerance, liberalism, democracy, freedom of speech, rights for all, equality under the law and, I would add, truthfulness, honesty, fairness, consideration and reasonableness. For a time, this may very well involve being intolerant of intolerance, whether derived from Christianity, Islam, wokeism or political ideology. In particular, we need to stop conceding ground to Islam and resisting the demands of Muslim activists when they conflict with the values and aspirations of the majority.

Perhaps none of this will matter to me, given I’m not going to be around for many more decades (if that). But I would like the Britain my grandchildren grow up in to be one that reflects humane, secular values. I fear for them that it might instead operate on the basis of oppressive, intolerant religious ones.

 

 

free speech

Why We Can’t Return To Christian Values

Posted on by
6

There has been a spate of articles recently advocating for a return to Christian values in the UK. Some, like that by Madeline Grant, don’t specify which values they have in mind. Nonetheless, Ms Grant worries about these unspecified values being replaced by the ‘terrible new gods’ of wokeism, while Douglas Murray – an agnostic commentator I admire and enjoy a great deal – argues for the revival of Christian forgiveness. Elsewhere, Richard Dawkins repeats his call for the preservation of ‘cultural Christianity’ in the face of less ‘decent’ religions like Islam.

I’m sure there are good arguments to be made for exercising more forgiveness both in our personal and national lives, though the idea is not without its difficulties. Dawkins too is right to express concerns that the vacuum that may be left as Christianity declines might be filled with more unsavoury and less charitable values.

But what are the Christian values that these writers see less of in modern life? For Dawkins it’s the chiming of church bells and rousing hymns, which, as pleasant as these are (I would not like them to disappear either) do not have any bearing on our morals and values.

According to Total People, our values in the UK are Democracy, the Rule of Law, Respect & Tolerance and Personal Liberty. Certainly the UK has long regarded itself as a tolerant country – though those on the receiving end of intolerance in the past (early immigrants, gay people for example) might disagree – and we have always aspired to show respect without necessarily achieving it. Our morals on the other hand, especially with regard to sex (and Christians invariably mean sex when they talk about moral decline) have changed over the last 30 or so years, becoming more tolerant of, for example, same-sex relationships and less accepting of adulterous or abusive ones.

The question is, however, do we owe our values and morals to Christianity? I’ve argued before that we don’t. I’ve also tried to demonstrate that there is no time in the past we could pinpoint and say, ‘here’s where the country demonstrably and consistently upheld Biblical principles, showing us just how far we’ve fallen since.’ I applied this criterion to the USA when Don Camp suggested there was a now lost Christian golden age, taking random points in US history and demonstrating there never was a time when Christian values prevailed. Any such golden age is a myth, in the States, the UK and anywhere else. It always has been so; read Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth to see how far even early cultists fell short of his ideals. Christians themselves don’t and never have demonstrated the high standards the bible demands.

Why is this? Because Christian morals and values are impossible. Even those who think they live with the Holy Spirit in them fail, and frequently fail dramatically, to practise what they preach. They don’t love their enemies, a ridiculous expectation of Jesus’s that certainly can’t be extended to nations. Many of the righteous don’t demonstrate love for their neighbours (other than bombarding them with the gospel) and frequently showing an appalling lack of empathy for fellow-believers (take a look at the abuse that goes on in the church at large.) They don’t, in the main, sell all they have and give the proceeds to the poor; give to anyone and everyone who asks and give away their shirt as well as their jacket when it’s demanded of them. They do judge others but don’t – sorry, Douglas – forgive fellow-believers seventy times seven, let alone those of us they regard as the great unwashed. Perhaps it’s as well; what would a culture be like that repeatedly forgave its criminals, abusers and bullies?

The frequently ignored Golden Rule of ‘do onto others as you would have them do unto you’ predates Jesus by centuries, while the more realistic, secular version of it, tolerance and respect, likewise doesn’t derive from the Bible, Jesus or the church. This Holy Trinity of terrors demonstrate a marked absence of tolerance and respect for any positions other than their own and ‘personal liberty’ is not a concept known to them. Didn’t Jesus insist his followers become his slaves? His Father, meanwhile, is intolerant of everything human beings do and everything they are.

A Christian who commented on Grant’s article asked those who disputed her premise – that we need to return to Christian values – whether they would prefer to live in a country dominated by Christian, Islamic or Marxist values. I’ll leave his question with you – answers on a postcard please – and return to it next time.

.

Who is the Pope to judge?

Posted on by
1

CoverSnip2I hope all you gay people out there are feeling mighty grateful to Pope Francis who this week had this to say about you:

“They say they exist. If someone is gay, who searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?” he added. “The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalized because of this (orientation) but that they must be integrated into society.”

His words were widely reported as reflecting a new found tolerance of gay people by the Catholic church, the world’s largest cult. Nonsense; what his words reflect is the same old intolerance, this time with a smile on its face. The Pope’s words are disingenuous (“they say they exist”), condescending and conditional (‘happy to have you around  – but only so long as you’re interested in the same superstition as me’).

What the media generally failed to report was that Frankie also ‘reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are a sin.’ Nor did most of it find it necessary to mention that ‘the official position of the Catholic Church on the issue is that while homosexual desires or attractions are not in themselves sinful, the physical acts are.’

This view, which is held by other Christians too, that gay people should forego all sexual fulfilment in their lives and deny themselves loving relationships, simply because these would, of necessity, be with a person of the same sex is not treating people as Christians themselves would like to be treated (Matthew 7.12). Would Christians be happy with an ‘acceptance’ that allowed them to believe whatever they wanted, provided they didn’t act upon it – church attendance, worship, hymn singing, prayer meetings and overt expressions of faith all disallowed?

I’m guessing not. And it is far more extreme to deny individuals something as integral to their identity as their sexuality, than it is to suppress the expression of a set of spurious beliefs.

What the Pope was actually trotting out yesterday was the same old ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ line. And there’s nothing remotely loving – or even biblical – about that. We are our behaviour, all of us, and are entitled to be loved (or not) for what we are, not in spite of it. If you can’t do that for another person, or group of people, then you’re not demonstrating love, whatever else you may be doing.

So, thanks Frankie, but no thanks. Until the Church you lead finds it in its heart to demonstrate real, unconditional love, your ‘tolerance’ is nothing more than an insulting irrelevance.