No Taxation Without Anal Penetration
By KelvinSilly HYS moderators, it’s still 9 days until Christmas. Why have you gone and given every bigot with internet access an early present?
Homosexuals should not be executed. But homosexuality should be recognised for what it is – a perversion of natural sexual relations. Instead in our Godless humanistic society it is almost now being given some sort of protected and elevated status.Homosexual marriage is a travesty and an abomination. As is homosexuals in leadership positions in the church. One sign of a decaying society is the legitimising and the widespread practice of homosexuality.One of the major reasons for the fall of Rome
The Rev Oik, Reading
This is a nice little comment, it’s like a Milk Race of all the standard homophobe’s arguments. Particularly nice is the way “protected and elevated” actually means “equal to everyone else.”
I believe if you asked most “straight” men they would tell you they find homosexual acts abhorrent but you would find few that would advocated executing homosexuals.
We did have legislation in this country but it was removed by parliament.
However I do think it is too much ” in your face” these days ,ably assisted by the BBC – you just have to look at some of their presenters.But I suppose diversity brownie points are the route to promotion
[prettygrumpy]
And that’s the problem with equality, isn’t it. Someone will always game the system. If you can’t take the Konnie Huq route of blacking up with Bisto, and you find wheelchairs too uncomfortable, you can always just chug down a cock or two and sail your way into BBC management.
The basic act of homosexuality may be abhorent to some, but apparently it is not this one act the constitutes homosexuality, as practioners would have you believe it is a cultural/lifestyle thing that is totally in keeping with the 21st century. It is though based solely on this one act, and doesn’t merit “rights”.
The death penalty – no. Just pay more taxes than hetros.The Big Fish, Stockport, United Kingdom
Great idea there, The Big Fish, but what happens when they get sick of taxation without representation and refuse to pay the tariff? It starts with the Boston Bumsex Party, then they’ll have a revolutionary war, then before you know it they’ve gained independence and they’re the major economic superpower on the planet. With fabulous hair to boot.
82 Responses to “No Taxation Without Anal Penetration”
I couldn’t fit it smoothly into the post but I also love how The Big Fish encapsulates “rights” in inverted commas when they apply to groups of which he is not a member. I bet when he has to wait more than five minutes at the Post Office Counter his RIGHT to polite service no matter how much he swears doesn’t come in quotes.
I think that this quote is the real prize-winner. If you, quite logically, assume that “straight” in inverted commas refers to closet cases (after all, why else put it in inverted commas?) then it reads as a wry observation.
Of course, you then have to wonder what he means when he puts “in your face” in inverted commas later on.
[insert joke about "brownie points" here]
Homosexuality caused the fall of Rome? Huge history fail there my dear Reverend. You twat.
Why does [prettygrumpy] put quotemarks around “straight”? Is it because he is “straight” himself (aka so far in the cupboard he’s buried in old shoes)?
A tad off topic(ish) but I loved the line from Gimme Gimme Gimme when talking of a “straight” man;
Ooh blockquote worky time!!
Reeesult.
Yes, THE GAYS should pay more taxes, which can be used to subsidise the schooling of straight-marriage-effluent (’children’) and whatever tax credits Dave decides to give those lucky enough (?) to fall ass-backwards into holy matrimony.
You goit.
I’ve always loved the gays caused the fall of the Roman Empire argument. It’s roughly on a par with claiming that wearing togas caused it.
I suspect its origin lies with some fusty old Classics professor who (somehow) managed to study the Roman Empire in all its fine detail without noticing the many and varied references to bumsex in virtually every Latin poem. Then, one day, as he was perusing a verse of Ovid, it jumped out at him. “Great Scot!” he no doubt exclaimed, “they were all at it!” On reflection, said Prof realised he was none too keen on the art of buggery and thus concluded that it must have been why the empire fell apart.
I think I actually would like to see it happen though, just to see how HMRC words the reminder letters.
“Dear Sir, according to your return you did not engage in any homosexual activity in the year ending March 31st 2010. However CCTV evidence from a toilet in Soho Square clearly shows you poking your willy through a glory hole. Accordingly we have amended your amount owing to include the Closet Surcharge, although we are willing to discount it by 25% under the At Least He Has The Decency To Feel Self-Loathing About It The Morning After Scheme.”
It would certainly make being a Tax Accountant more interesting.
“Giles, we can get you down to 11% this year provided you stick to pitching and make them wear fishnets”
I’m a heterosexual male, and I find homosexual acts offensive.
Unless it’s two (or more) women, in which case it’s just natural healthy fun.
Sadly, the PCBBC has failed to provide me footage of Tasmin Lucia Khan and Zeinab Badawi in anybody’s face, let alone mine.
What a fucking shame, It would be worth passing the law in this country just to see the expression on Thatchell’s face.
Presumably as the Rev Oik is so concerned about the “perversion of natural sexual relations”, he’ll be demanding the death penalty for all pharmacists who dare to sell contraceptives next.
????? Do you need a certificate or degree to be Gay these days? Do we have a Gay Ombudsman to complain to if we find that we have been Gay’d wrongly? Is there a University of Gay where we can gain this qualification? Can I do it on the OU? Is there a Grant for one legged black folk? Will it be offered to school leavers as a vocation?
It already is, isn’t it? I mean, that was why my PE teacher used to offer after-school one on one sessions in it…
I hope you’re not suggesting that “gay” and “paedophile” are somehow synonymous…
You missed off the bit “…removed by Parliament-which is full of Bumders anyway”
Come on prettygrumpy get it together, if you are going to be a bigoted twatbasket, you can’t hold back just because of the moderators. First rule of HYS, get your comment rejected by the gaybbcnuliaborecommunists.
Only if you’re suggesting that “my PE Teacher” and “all gay people” are synonymous.
You could always claim that converting to Christianity caused it – they were doing fine up until that point.
@Philbert, how true bloody Christians, JC hanging around with 12 blokes and loving his brothers, I often thought this whole Mary Magdalene thing was spread about by the religious right wing to throw people off the Gay scent.
“God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Says David Labeja, Gulu, Uganda.
Ha ha. Brilliant. Oh and no he didn’t. You utter cuntbeak. Labeja by name Lacerated Lemur’s Labia by nature.
Thank goodness there are still considered voices of reason like Rob D from Northampton, who is trying very hard not to think about it:
“Homosexuality is not natural. It makes me very uncomfortable when you consider what it involves, although the death penalty is probably a little harsh.
rob d, northampton”
“Probably a little harsh”. Maybe not, but probably. Wise words.
I Am Speak Your Branes, I’m totally the same; ads have no affect on me. But for me it’s because I spend all day on HYS telling strangers about my amazing ability to resist one of the fundamental pillars of capitalism, fuelled purely by my own sense of self-satisfaction.
Hence I never really see any.
Dave, Newcastle
classic….
As soon as anyone says something along the lines of ‘thinking about two gay men having sex make me feel sick’, you KNOW they’re the biggest queen in the closet e-vah, girlfriend.
How many genuinely ’straight’ men – or women – give a moment’s thought to what other people get up to in the bedroom and could give two shits about it when it doesn’t affect them? And why merely think about it when you can buy a pair of binoculars quite cheaply nowadays?
Incidentally, if we’ve got Godwin’s Law for when people spew forth ludicrous Nazi hyperbole, what’s the ‘Law’ for when twatbaskets support extremist views but make it sound all understated, casual and trivial? Stuff like ‘the death penalty is a probably a bit harsh’. Cunt’s Law?
We can call it Spez’s law if you want. After all you’re the one who’s just coined it.
@La Spesh
My nearest neighbours are half a mile away and try as I might I can’t find binoculars that allow me to watch them being gay…
I wonder how many straight men who object to male gay sex enjoy giving their Mrs one up the arse?
Yeah those visigoths were blatant poofs the way they ransacked Rome. Completely off topic- the Xmas no1 debate (that was on a seperate thread I know). Just throwing a third option into the ring-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoRCvxfaCEU
This musical genius is on par with classics like “its Chico time”
I suspect the figure might be quite high.
I hear some of them even buy videos.
My favourite ones are women who claim that they are being progressive by writing bad, anatomically implausible heteronormative gay porn. On the plus side, though, some of it’s hilarious.
VegeMite:
Typo, or Freudian slip?
Couldn’t the BBC give this guy his own witty placename as signature? It’s not his fault that he couldn’t think of anything when he first registered.
I hear lube helps.
But seriously folks, who gives a stuff? What is it about HYSers that they complain about NuLieZanuBour interfering in their private lives to the extent that the bastards stop you doing 90 in a school zone, yet when it comes to what people do with parts of their body, they’re all over it like a bad rash?
I suspect they’ve gone for the sterotypical gays are promiscious and thought “Hey, if I’m not getting any, I’m going to make bloody sure they’re not.”
Ha, it’s made The Guardian now:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/16/bbc-africa-have-your-say?CMP=AFCYAH
It should give the Daily Heil a bit of a dilemma tomorrow: bash the BBC or be a bit pro-gay?
It’s interesting isn’t it? I reckon your average homophobe is so interested in other people’s business because they have serious trouble picturing gay sex between other people. The idea of gayness – or any kind of gender transgression by association – makes them fear enormously for their arse, because they can’t imagine the possibility of two men making love without picturing themselves as a participant. Specifically the participant at the front.
That’s why I hate gays, anyway. I can’t speak for anyone else.
In a nice bit of revisionist panic, the HYS team has slammed the ‘Kill Gays’ thread shut only a few hours after it opened and, mysteriously, it is no longer called
They are now trying to pretend the thread was called…
And they have removed a lot of the hate-posts and put a nice bit of liberal outrage in the top two spots.
Good work mods. Let a load of frenzied hate-mongers mob your threads with sock-puppets (like always) and then make it look like it never happened. Twats.
Dignity eh? Who needs it?
>> They are now trying to pretend the thread was called [...]
Not much better. Still cannot ask if we should be able to call those Ugandans proposing this for what they are – filthy bigots.
Should whoever was responsible be boiled to death in a vat of marmalade?
HEY!
I should point out that I’ve seen gay porn, and although the participants look like they’re having a whale of a time, it just looks like something I’d rather not participate in. A bit like bungee jumping. Although I suppose for a bet….
*serious bit, look away now.
£700m over 10 years the UK are putting into Uganda. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, that’s fuck all, considering how much they give to help India while they’re having an arms race with Pakistan and sending rockets into fucking space.
It’s a real bitch for those of us who’ve supported projects like Katine, because it makes it really difficult to carry on supporting it if you don’t start appreciating what kind of government it’s linked to, largely because the work that’s gone into it might just be completely trashed when Amref leave. And trashed on grounds like these.
How incredibly sad. I mean, shame on the BBC in two respects: first, for debasing the argument to “should we kill gays” and secondly for not having the nous to realise that there’s a whole huge gay vipers’ nest of foreign development aid problems waiting in the wings should this bill pass into law.
I can see this hitting the headlines tomorrow – although as sm says, I wonder what the Daily Mail will make of it? I can imagine Paul Dacre is in his office right now, in a state of total confusion, with his head spinning round just like in the Exorcist
OK Nelson and all, I’m a bit less gleeful now. I’ve just read the last couple of entries here:
http://gayuganda.blogspot.com/
Try not to cry – I did
@Jesus
You’re not wrong though
@ Alec M
Hm, not sure about boiling the BBCers responsible for this un-fucking-bel*IEV*able hoor of a thread in a vat of marmalade. Waste of good marmalade.
Wow, Pete, that is some sobering stuff. I try to stop myself turning into Professor YawnYawn McBoffin on topics like this, as my academic specialities are Gender Development/Gender Theory/Transgenderism, but stuff like the Ugandan evil shit drives me mad. I wish I could set up a Khmer Rouge-esque re-education camp for homophobes where they have to spend a minimum of 10 hours a day with me laboriously explaining foetal gender development to them in terms even a toddler can understand (followed by up to 7 hours of Christopher Hitchens atheistifying them). Sexuality is determined in the womb as the sex of the foetus is initiated, and as all foetuses start off female, if the things that occur to make a foetus homosexual are unnatural, then that makes all men unnatural. Am not looking at any of you lot in particular [cough].
(Dear pedants, I realise the above is hugely simplified)
Sorry that’s not remotely funny, but it’s true. Have tipped from laughter into despair.
BTW, various posters on Mumsnet are linking to this site as a response to outrage on there over this HYS ’should we off poofters and lezzers?’ debate. Does this mean we have ‘arrived’?
I arrived ages ago. I have my passport stamped and everything.
I know serious stuff rarely goes down well here, but…
I was very sobered by the response of the Ugandan MP, and frankly, I’m very worried about the trade-off between helping those in rural communities so they can stop worrying about dying of starvation and start worrying about the gay plague. Whichever one.
I love the “it’s their/our culture arguments”:
I think “Gabs” is Gaborone, Botswana, where homosexuality is still illegal.
Well, if you like your culture so much…
I think I’m entirely convinced by A shocked gay man. I’m currently a shocked straight man, because I found something I agree with on HYS.
Fuck it, this is no more culturally acceptable to legislate against homosexuality than it is to legislate against skin colour (was it just South Africa’s culture? Was it just Zim’s culture?). Christianity is the imported religion and culture, and it’s being thrown about as validation.
So fuck them. We have legislation to protect people, and there’s no legitimate reason why government aid should be able to sidestep that legislation.
That’s not going to work. Hitchens, since he discovered he hated Muslims as much as Mark Steyn, is totally skunked. Exposing anyone to his highly articulate but apparently inexhaustible supply of Daily Heil-style bigotry is every bit as bad as sending your child to a madrassa. Shit, I almost prefer his brother. I don’t care much for the swivel-eyed Dawkins either – arent’t there any non-believers who don’t come across as advertisements for the other side?
since he discovered he hated Muslims as much as Mark Steyn hates Muslims.
At a guess, you probably believe in god, the spread of democracy, and the threat posed by the Iranian bomb. So-called “straight” men probably don’t mind habing their cocks sucked, and if it the act is performed by a whore who doesn’t undress during the episode how do they know that it wasn’t actually a man? As for anal, many men prefer to fuck their wives and/or girlfriends in the ass for a variety of reasons none of which are strictly gay.
In short, the sexual act itself isn’t really a very good way of defining gay. Gay would be more to do with attraction and love, which are probably absent from your ignorant bigot’s view of the world.
As for gay marriage – fuck your religious views your primitive little cunt. Gay marriage is to prevent relatives such as yourself from sieze the possesions of bereaved homosexuals who currently have no right to inherit the possessions they shared with their partners. Marriage is a pre-existing and convenient way of prevent such despicable behaviour using existing and well establish laws without having to bring in new laws specially crafted (and thus singling-out) one section of the community.
@alt-f4 – sadly, the scenario you outline in your last paragraph is happening at the mo to a dear family friend: his partner of over 30 years died before the date of their civil partnership and the deceased’s sisters – despite having cut themselves off from him for coming out 40 yrs ago – are suddenly trying to get their hands on all his cash and belongings, etc, as apparently 30+ years together is not a ‘real’ relationship and his devastated partner doesn’t count as a ‘real’ partner. Thank god he left a will.
(And the bastard vicar doing the funeral referred to him as a ’single man’. CUUUNT!)
Chris is also right, of course – how come gay rights seem to matter less than other human rights when addressing the issue of aid, etc.? When will we get past the ridiculous notion that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice adopted by people who aren’t ‘normal’?
And I hate the presumption that heterosexuals find the thought of gay/lesbian sex abhorrent and abnormal – I couldn’t care less what anyone gets up to sexually and don’t find the thought of same-sex rudeness any weirder than heteroshagging.
Sorry to be so serious.
BTW, @Rotwatcher re: Hitchens – I guess you are right. Dawkins is an arse (am I the only person who thinks he resembles Dramatic Chipmunk?). What about A C Grayling? He’s a lot more dignified and a silver fox to boot, meeeow!
Dawkins = Professor Yaffle.
I’m still a fan, mind.
@spesh
I like what he has to say, and he coms across as a genuinely pleasant human being, but it should be pointed out that you could land a ‘plane on his forehead.
In my experience (and I’ve been out to everyone for many years, so I think I have enough quantitative data to make this statement), straight men who aren’t a) sexually repressed or b) closet cases generally don’t have any views on what I get up to in the bedroom, because their interests lie elsewhere.
The closets, however, are another matter altogether – I would feel pity for them if they weren’t generally so vile towards me and mine. Mind you, when I come across them I do tend to give as good as I get (and no I don’t mean in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink way, because I wouldn’t touch them with someone else’s bargepole, never mind my own… )
Bin Laden has just gone, “Hang on lads I’ve got an idea”……
@Pete
Actually, I’d agree with that.
I’d go so far as to quote a police pal of mine who was convinced every single act of “gay bashing” was repressed sexuality.
Makes sense.
Jeez lads, just grow your hair and come out, we’ll hug you!
May I add one anti-homosexual sentiment though ? Captain Jack Harkness ? WHY ARE YOU NOT STRAIGHT* ??!!
I looooove you!!!
* and of course not fictional.
Balls. He gets painted ‘peevish’ because he politely but insistently criticises stuff you’re not supposed to criticise. He’s cautious, methodical, scientific and 99% of all attacks I’ve ever seen on him are either embarrassingly stupid misunderstandings or else the kind of ad hominem bollocks you’ve just done
The God Delusion’s not his best book though. I mean, I actually thought some bits were vaguely shit, which is not something I’d ever experienced before while reading his consistently brilliant output.
But to answer your question, even though you asked it wrong, Dan Dennett is the fucking daddy. If you find yourself disagreeing with Dan Dennett on anything, ever, then you should probably go away and have another think about it. When people talk about the fallacy of argument from authority they normally add “except Dan Dennett”.
Check “Breaking the Spell” for the best of the currently fashionable “what is religion for?” books. It absolutely fucking SHITS on God Delusion.
But really you should go back 30 years and read everything he’s ever written. It’ll make you smarter, taller, nicer, better looking etc.
Um.. shit. Conversation breaks out. Four injured.
Number 10 petition.
Just in case, you know. You’d like to.
He’s pansexual, isn’t he? I’m sure he’s bi at least.
Have you noticed the stats on the HYS comments? 206 published comments, with 189 rejected. For almost every comment published(including the homophobic ones) they received a comment which couldn’t be published. I think I can guess which side of the argument the unpublished comments came down on.
If Pirate Pete’s Closet Theory is correct, that means the majority of the posts on HYS are from closet homosexuals, which would certainly help to explain the frustrated outpourings of the typical HYSer.
It’s NOT frustration with society, or immigrants, or even NueLiebore that drives them to spew forth their hideous bile; it’s the fact that they’re sexually and emotionally unsatisfied, and subconsciously they realise they are likely to remain so for the remainder of their sad, self-loathing lives.
Almost makes you feel sorry for them.
But not quite.
@Nelson – thanks for pointing me towards Dan Dennett. I particularly liked this from his Wikipedia entry, about his recovery from a serious illness:
having been told by friends and relatives that they had prayed for him, he resisted the urge to ask them, “Did you also sacrifice a goat?”
Anyway, I’m only jealous of Dawkins because he’s married to Lalla Ward.
It’s just because they’re cunts. No psychoanalysis, rooting into childhoods that were, never should have been and never could be, no person centred counselling…
…no Jung, no Freud, no Lacan, no Skinner, no Wolpe, no Milgram, no Rogers and no Beck.
Just plain cunts, too scared and too stupid to be able to say things out loud, and thankfully the internet means they don’t have to be at risk of anyone breaking their nose, cracking their orbits or gouging out their eyes, or worse, laughing at them, because they spewed out some vile, hateful nonsense at the wrong person at the wrong time.
No, no more carrying your nose home in a napkin because the 2m tall skinhead with the tattoos of skulls is actually gay. You have HYS, you have the Guardian, you have the Telegraph and you have numerous other semi-retarded blog outlets so that people can just agree with you, and do it anonymously without fear of reproach.
Yes, that’s the country I grew up in. That sceptred isle, with its mouthy, cunty, minority view cowards acting like they run the fucking place when they couldn’t even run a fucking bath.
Blockquote fail. And I saw it the INSTANT I clicked “submit”.
Bugger (topical oath).
I admit that I’m not reading this in context, but it sounds like this is the sort of thing that puts peoples’ backs up about atheists. My understanding of this situation would be that these friends did this motivated by friendship, and the concern for another person this implies, something which you shouldn’t take for granted but accept in the spirit in which it is meant. To throw it back in their faces with a remark like that (unless it was in a context of longstanding joking on the subject, of course, as I said, I appreciate I don’t know the whole context), however witty the line may be, just sounds pretty fucking petulant, arrogant and ungrateful, frankly, and if he had said it they would have been perfectly justified in calling him a cunt and telling him where to shove his smarmy attitude.
(Having looked at the article the quote comes from… http://edge.org/3rd_culture/dennett06/dennett06_index.html)
OK, I’ll moderate that a bit, but it’s still a bit fucking much – he tells people off for praying for him, but following that logic he ought to “forgive” his friends who sent him a card rather than donating the money to medical research or whatever. They’re all responding to their concern for someone they care about, a concern which they are powerless to act on meaningfully, so why does a Hallmark card mean less to this dude than any other kind of heartfelt, personalized, futile gesture?
When I say “atheists” above, by the way, I mean “professional/media atheists”, not all atheists
I fancied her nearly as much as I fancied K9.
@RT. You’re disagreeing with Dennett. This is because you haven’t thought about it hard enough yet.
@RT – Read it a bit more carefully. He didn’t “ask them”, he “resisted the urge to ask them”.
@Nelson. Woof.
Hi Nelson /La Spesh,
I have been following the “Four Horsemen” for a few years now. I have seen hundreds of their youtube clips. I would agree that Richard Dawkins is not as “shrill” or “strident” as some of his knee-jerk critics make out. Christopher Hitchens probably is though – he sets out to deliberately offend people, sometimes for no discernable reason. He is a superb expositor of the theory of evolution taking into account inheritance, natural selection and genetic drift. I have read “The Selfish Gene”, “The God Delusion”, “The Blind Watchmaker” and “God is not Great” by Christopher Hitchens. I have also read Sam Harris’ “The End of Faith”. All good books which make you think, with arguments that vary in quality. Richard Dawkins produces no ad hominem attacks himself, and is responible for only a few strawmen arguments – Christopher Hitchens is all about them, with a few selected observations from history thrown in. 7 hours of Christopher Hitchens would be exhausting, especially for people who like well constructed arguments, rather than well delivered poor ones…
The Richard Dawkins website (http://richarddawkins.net) is a beacon of light for Reason and argument. To his credit, I think Richard Dawkins could be persuaded to believe in a religion if he was presenteed with sufficient verifiable evidence, although he doubts he will ever find any. I can find no flaw in this reasoning.
Of the four, I know the least about Dan Dennett, although I have ordered Breaking the Spell for festive reading.
As you were.
I meant Richard Dawkins is a superb expositor of the theory of evolution taking into account inheritance, natural selection and genetic drift, not Hitchens.
FAIL.
Aye. The fact that Christopher Hitchens is right about a few things doesn’t stop him being a terrible, arrogant, bigoted dick.
That Four Horsemen doc made me want someone to set fire to Hitchens so I could hear Dawkins + Dennett talk freely about stuff. He kept piping up with semi-related bollocks and didn’t listen to what anyone else was saying. He’s witty and funny, I’ll give him that, but definitely a very “well-educated” journalist rather than an actual thinker.
Don’t really know Sam Harris. At least he had the decency to only pipe up when he had something to add.
Anyone remember when Hitchens got himself waterboarded and then proudly changed his mind and admitted it WAS torture after all? Yeah, well done you self-absorbed fuck.
@Rotwatcher: I took that into account, don’t worry, but thinking more on it, I realised that instead of making a smarmy remark to their faces, he instead decided to wait until later, and then make comments (in a way in which they don’t get to talk back to him) about how stupid they are from a safe distance in a very public way, to prove what a jolly clever chap he is compared to them.
I’m beginning to wonder if that isn’t even worse.
@Nelson: I’d argue I don’t disagree with him on everything he says (although trying to compare religious friends to religious to medical professionals seems a bit ridiculous), just that it seems like using the heartfelt expressions of concern as a stick with which to beat people (let alone friends) seems like a pretty twattish way to act.
Mary Tamm anyone?
This thread is weirdly enjoyable for something spawned from sheer hate.
Nelson,
You could not be more right.
Mary Tamm…. v. lovely as Sigi in “The Odessa File”.
Nah, RT, you’re missing the point.
Like Dawkins he’s simply placing religion in the same category as other ideas and beliefs. We’re so conditioned to exempt religion from scrutiny and criticism that this seems rude, extreme, uncaring etc. But you’d be hard-pushed to explain why it’s any worse than being forthright about the obviously bollocks views and efforts of, say, astrologists or homeopathists. Or HYSers for that matter.
If I was ill and someone offered me some wafty supernatural help I’d do exactly as Dennett did. Thank them sincerely for their good intentions but suggest they channel them into something useful instead.
You arses.
The legendary Terry Eagleton has elegantly despatched the ramblings of your atheist pin-up boys in his recent book. (He thinks Dennett is an idiot, as i recall.)
Go and read it.
Oh, is that the one where he combines Dawkins, Hitchens and Dennett into a composite strawman called “Ditchkins” and then, in his “defence” of Christianity against Science and Rationality, says “But Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place”?
I would bother pointing out the other things that are moronically wrong with the book but fortunately PZ Myers has done it for me. You might want to read through his critique before you come back with the inevitable rejoinder.
@ Jesus Chris
Done. Above links to London Ugandan Embassy contact us page. Just in case, you know. You’d like to. Though their server seems to be having problems at the moment…
Here’s the UHC site, just in case:
http://www.ugandahighcommission.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62:uganda-participates-in-the-world-travel-market-2009&catid=1:high-commission-london
Lots of names of dignitaries for adepts of google fu.
Nelson,
Scathing! I have never read any Eagleton. I suspect I never will. I thought one of the main criticisms of Dawkins, Hitchens et al, was that they criticise strawmen religious figures? Obviously the best way to counter that is to create a straw man yourself
Hey ho. Back to work
I haven’t read Hitchens on religion. Having heard him fail to keep up with Dennett and Dawkins (and worse, failing to realise this) I don’t think I’ll bother.
Dawkins maybe occasionally ends up twatting a straw man. Very occasionally. Maybe.
Dennett doesn’t, as far as I’ve seen.
In fact, Dennett made me think hard about that thing “sophisticated” religious apologists do when pushed of backing away from every explicitly supernatural tenet of their faith, and redefining it all in such general, meaningless terms that you really *do* end up attacking a straw man.
Then, the moment you leave the room, the “God is everything” bit vanishes and they’re back talking to an all-powerful, twinkly-eyed beardy man in the sky.
Religion *is* very complicated but one of the main ideas I took from Dennett’s book is that “Yeah, it’s very complicated and interesting, so let’s examine it properly, rather than assuming it cannot be understood”.
No, I’ve not read any Eagleton either. Seems interesting. Just badly wrong on religion, poor chap.