Secular Fundalmentalists are the new Totalitarians

Article by Tobias Jone for the Guardian - Printed Saturday 6th January 2007

There's an aspiring totalitarianism in Britain which is brilliantly disguised. It's disguised because the would-be dictators - and there are many of them - all pretend to be more tolerant than thou. They hide alongside the anti-racists, the anti-homophobes and anti-sexists. But what they are really against is something very different. They - call them secular fundamentalists - are anti-God, and what they really want is the eradication of religion, and all believers, from the face of the earth.


In recent years these unpleasant people have had a strategy of exploiting Britain's innate politeness. They realised that for a decade overly sensitive souls (normally called the PC brigade) had bent over backwards to avoid giving offence. Trying not to give offence was, despite the excesses, a noble courtesy.

But the fundamentalists saw an opening. Because we live in a multiconfessional society, they fostered the falsehood that wearing a crucifix or a veil or a turban was deeply offensive to other faiths. They pretended to be protecting religious sensibilities as a pretext to strip us of all religious expressions. In 2006 Jack Straw and BA fell into the fundamentalists' trap.

But Britons are actually laissez-faire about such things. And so the fundamentalists deployed an opposite tactic. Instead of pretending to protect religious sensibilities, they went on the offensive and sought to give offence. The subsequent reactions to the play Behzti in Birmingham, to Jerry Springer the Opera and to the Danish cartoons were wheeled out as examples of why religious groups are unable to live with our cherished freedom and tolerance.

In recent years the nastier side of this totalitarianism has become blatantly apparent. It emerged with the hijab issue in France. With the hijab ban in French schools, a state was banishing religion not only from its corridors, but also from its citizens.

It was an assertion that after centuries of the naked public square (denuded of religion referents) the public now too had to go naked. The former had been true tolerance, something exceptional and laudable. It allowed everyone to bring their own cosmic testimony to the square. But this new form of "tolerance" changed things. From everyone being welcome, it had become everyone but.

There's a background to all this. Since 2001, lazy intellectuals have been allowed to get away with repeating the nonsense that terrorism and war are the consequences of belief in God. Believers are ridiculed for being, in contrast to the stupendously brainy atheists, very dim. Listen to Richard Dawkins' comment on Nadia Eweida (the BA employee who refused to take off her cross): "she had one of the most stupid faces I've ever seen." Nice.

There's also the fact that we live in a cultural milieu dominated by postmodernism. Broadly speaking, it attempts to deconstruct power and its narratives. It tries to rescue the marginalised. A noble intent, but because it doesn't believe in truth, anything goes. The tyranny of orthodoxy has been replaced by the tyranny of relativism. You're supposed to believe in nothing, and hence nihilists and atheists are suddenly rather chic. Postmodernism has taken tolerance to the extremes, where extremists thrive. It's a dangerous form of appeasement.

The greatest appeasers, however, have been the believers. Until recently many hid their religion in the closet. They conceded that it was something private. Until a few years ago religion was similar to soft drugs: a blind eye was turned to private use but woe betide you if you were caught dealing. Only recently have believers realised that religion is certainly personal, but it can never be private.

The reasons for that "outing" of believers are complex. But what is certain is that wise agnostics pleaded with believers to take a public lead again, because the point about believers is that they are obeying (and disobeying) all sorts of commandments that the state doesn't see or understand. Because they are able to differentiate sin from crime, they have a moral register more nuanced than most. Even a wise atheist (and I've met a few of them in church, as they desperately try to get their kids into the local C of E school) knows that believers can deal with social anarchy much better than the state ever can.

That is why these fundamentalists are so in evidence. They're not only needled by their own hypocrisy; they are also furious that believers have broken the old pact to stay out of public debate. Witness, for example, Mary Riddell's astonishing sentence in the Observer last month (try replacing "religion" with "homosexuality" to get the point): "secularists do not wish to harm religion or deny its great cultural influence. They simply want it to know its place." In other words: get back in the closet.

Christians feel particularly aggrieved because we believe that Jesus invented secularism. Jesus's teachings desacralised the state: no authority, not even Caesar's, was comparable to God's. As Nick Spencer writes in Doing God, "the secular was Christianity's gift to the world, denoting a public space in which authorities should be respected, but could be legitimately challenged and could never accord to themselves absolute or ultimate significance". Christianity, far from creating an absolutist state, initiated dissent from state absolutism.

And so for centuries a combination of British agnosticism and pragmatism meant that believers were judged not by the causes of their belief, but by its consequences. Everyone could taste the fruits, even those who couldn't believe in a sustaining, invisible root. These new militants, however, believe themselves to be the only arbiters of taste; they want to eradicate the root and cause. They will dictate what you can wear and what you can say. That, after all, is what totalitarians do.

· Tobias Jones is the author of The Dark Heart of Italy; his new book, Utopian Dreams, is published this month

The Religion versus Atheism Argument

The great argument and my mind is going around in circles!!

Why can we just not tolerate each other??

Criticism of Religion

Criticism of Atheism

Now I am most decidedly a Christian and proud of it, and I am not here to defend my beliefs, I do not need to. I am secure enough in my faith that I can listen to extremist points of views from both angles and not be swayed in my beliefs.

I am just not into fundamentalism and intolerance whether it be religious or atheist

I give you two quotes of extreme points of view:

Still, even the most admirable of atheists is nothing more than a moral parasite, living his life based on borrowed ethics. This is why, when pressed, the atheist will often attempt to hide his lack of conviction in his own beliefs behind some poorly formulated utilitarianism, or argue that he acts out of altruistic self-interest. But this is only post-facto rationalization, not reason or rational behavior. -Vox Day

Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea.

If I am so secure in my beliefs, then why am I even presenting this as a point of interest? It is through a very human emotion ... that of anger. Two people with whom I am in contact with through Facebook are not just atheists, but are avowed critics and haters of religion. It is something that seems to consume them. And quite frankly, it is sort of beginning to offend me. Do I continue to sit quietly by or do I get up onto my high horse, which is probably what they want?

Now the one chap who is more of an acquaintance than a friend is far more tolerant. He and I have both agreed to disagree and see it as a sign of maturity that we can  have other common interests but  differ on this one point of view.

The other person affects me more personally. he is my ex fiancee. Now he has always  been of a new age / philosophical point of view. He come from a family that is Christian by tradition but has never practised. He has experimented over the years with Christian Fundamentalism, Wicca,  etc.
The fact is that he is someone who is searching and is not finding. He feels he has finally found his place in the atheist movement and calls himself a philosopher.

Whilst we were together he always openly stated that he found no reason to believe and always quoted that the fundamentalists in the Church he had joined had  poisoned him against religion. But he never tried to deter me from going to Church or mingling with my Christian friends. In fact he always encouraged me!

In our last conversation he had wanted to go to a show that was quite expensive. He was unemployed and had been supported by his parents and me. I took a stand and said that I could not pay for this show. He then said that he would ask his mother for the money. My response was that I could not in all good moral conscience allow her or anyone else to pay for this show when we had so many other debts and things that needed to be paid for.

Now please note I said in all good "moral" conscience. not in all good "Christian" conscience, because I know the difference, that not all Christians are as moral as they should be and that Christians are not the only people who have morals.

Well this just opened a floodgate of hatred towards me and bitter condemnation of  mine and other religions. It is since this and  our break up that he has become fanatical and full of hatred for Christians, Muslims, Jews etc.

A common theme throughout his ranting seems to be this thing of "morals" so I can only believe that my use of this word in denying him what he wanted tipped him over the edge.

I have no problem with him or anyone else thinking or believing differently to me, but with fanaticism of any kind there is no debate , no rationale, just an enforcing of your point of view on other people.

The very people  who use the excuse of religious proselytizing as the reason for their anger, are themselves becoming intolerant proselytizers of the first water!

Why? Is it simplistic of me to think that these fanatical atheists / critics of religion must have some core part of them  that has either not been answered by religion or has been hurt by religion. Why are they so angry.

Are people who are atheists through a sheer process of growing and learning more calm about their beliefs and are they more tolerant?

I don't know, and I don't want to be angry ( I almost entered a "like them" here - how human of me)

I am just puzzled as to why it has to be an argument and not a debate?

WHY CAN WE NOT ALL BE MORE TOLERANT? WHAT A WONDERFUL WORld THIS WOULD BE THEN HHHHHMMMMM?

I would like to end with an old poem that my grandmother used to quote which I think says it all...

If all good people were clever

And all clever people were good,

The world would be better than ever

We thought that it possible could.

 

But somehow it's seldom or never

The two get along as they should.

The good are so harsh to the clever,

The clever so rude to the good.

BITCHBOOK

Now here is a novel concept...

A site where one can go to moan and complain about any situation, called bitchbook.

It is still under construction, but I am eager to see if people respond to the site.

I would add sub-categories though such as:

• Bitching about bosses
• Bitching about family
• Bitching about Taxi Drivers ( South African Thang)
• Bitching about boyfriends and husbands (would think they would need an extra server just to deal with this one!!!)

I once had a lovely cartoon poster on a wall at work which read something like this

LIST OF PEOPLE THAT HAVE PISSED ME OFF

TODAY ..............................................
               ..............................................
               ..............................................
               ..............................................
               ..............................................

THIS WEEK ..............................................
                       ..............................................
                       ..............................................
                       ..............................................
                       ..............................................
                       ..............................................
                       ..............................................
                       ..............................................
THIS MONTH

THIS YEAR

THIS LIFETIME

The idea being that for each lengthier time period , the list got longer and longer!!!
( you get the idea???)

The reactions I got were quite amusing as I used to fill in all sorts of names