Wikipedia entry on Prayer

I edited an entry of the Wikipedia for the first time today. I had looked up “prayer” and found the definition to be as follows:

“Prayer is the act of communicating with a god or spirit for the purpose of worship or petition.”

This definition immediately jarred with me since I consider it to commit the “fallacy of many questions” by assuming the existence of a god with whom one can successfully communicate. The existence of such an entity is course by no means a certainty and is even arguably highly unlikely (q.v. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins). I therefore suggested the edit:

“Prayer is the act of attempting to communicate with a god or spirit for the purpose of worship or petition.”

I guess this essentially hinges on one’s understanding of the word “communicate”, but if you review the discussion page for the article you will see that I was unable to make any headway and my edits were removed. One contributor was a devout Christian who even stated that “clarity and simplicity are more important than neutrality”. This was stated despite the two not being mutually exclusive and the article remaining in breach of the Wikipedia’s own guidelines.

If anyone takes the same view as me on this issue they can always join the debate there and try to push the change through (you just need to register and you can edit). But be warned that another believer (or even an appeasing atheist, as I found there) might always come along and alter it again. To me this incident showed that the democratic nature of the Wikipedia is not always enough to ensure adherence even to its own guidelines – least of all where religion is involved.

Interesting quotation

“Men who are elected to office prove only one thing: they are not fit to serve, because the cunning required to achieve power means a corresponding inability to act for the common good.”

- attrib. Plato

Interesting, if perhaps a little too cynical.

The people have spoken

I’m in Florida at the moment so, with the 5 hour time difference, it was easier for me to watch the European election results as they unfolded late into the night in the UK. The Internet should never cease to impress us.

Very pleasurable viewing it was too. It’s not just me, writing my controversial blog (though it is filled with mere statements of fact), loathing the “liberal elite” who are destroying the UK. Thousands upon thousands of people are feeling the same way. They’ve had enough. They want Labour out right now. They have to go now because they are falling apart before our eyes, and Gordon Brown doesn’t even have enough people to replace his resigning ministers. That’s a state of political emergency.

The Tories have done well, though I don’t trust that David Cameron’s policies would be hard or brave enough to sort out the utter mess in the UK. UKiP did very well, gaining a seat (well done!). Labour took a pounding, which was a delight to see. Worryingly, but signalling people’s contempt for what is happening in the UK, the BNP won two seats. In the Netherlands Geert Wilder’s Freedom Party made fantastic advances, gaining 4 seats. It now seems to be the second most popular party in that country and will hopefully soon be the first. That man is a European hero.

A result like this restores one’s faith in the general population – well, at least the voting ones. Despite right wing parties being given little mention by the leftist BBC, and the Dutch government, for example, trying to prosecute Geert Wilders, the people voted that way anyway.

The Labour Party will say “We didn’t get our message out”, “It was about the expenses scandal” etc. etc.  They got their message out loud and clear. We know full well what they stand for and it includes appeasement, valuing the “rights” of criminals above those of victims, cultural relativism, red tape for police and a benefits culture, all delivered with a cocktail of spin, lying and corruption. We’ve been on the receiving end of this insanity for the last 12 years and we’ve rejected it squarely. The Labour government is the walking dead. May those stupid, corrupt, naive, lying leftist fools never darken the doorstep of Downing Street again.

What a great day for democracy, a great election result across Europe. Let’s hope we see this reflected in policies soon, so that the British can once again run their own country and set about the task of repairing it.

Worshipping The Party

I wonder if anyone else notices something decidedly creepy about James Purnell MP’s resignation letter to Gordon Brown. He speaks of the Labour Party as an separate entity, saying of it “We owe it everything and it owes us nothing”. He adds “The Party [note the capital "P"] was here long before us, and we want it to be here long after we have gone. We must do the right by it”.

It strikes me that there’s something distinctly 1984 about all that. An individual sacrificing himself for the good of The Party, worshipping The Party. Buying into an ideology, regardless of what individuals think. What is that ideology, anyway? “This moment … calls for a Government that measures itself by how it treats the poorest in society.” In the case of Labour, then: throw benefits at them, deny them any sense of personal responsibility and sponsor them to have as many children as they like. And put them up in hotels when they decide to start committing crimes.

This Labour government (possibly the whole party) is dead and buried, thank goodness. It’s in its dying throes. There’s nothing Mr Purnell can do about that, nothing Gordon Brown can do about it. This load of politically correct liars and spin doctors, with their catalogue of scandals and countless examples of incompetence, are on their way out – hopefully forever. They were granted their chance (wrongly, in my view). Soon it’ll be time for realists to come in and try to clean up the colossal mess they’ve made. In the meantime we can just enjoy the spectacle of them disintegrating.

Islam is world’s primary threat

Plenty of threats face mankind.  There’s global warming to be concerned about, there’s poverty, there are dangerous diseases and so on.

Two threats particularly concern me, because they directly threaten civilisation. Civilisation is, of course, important to quality of life. It is fragile and it has taken centuries to build. If it goes, a lot of people go with it. These two threats are decadence in the West and rise of Islam.

Islam is a quasi-religious political ideology that would happily address this first problem by converting us all, but the system itself is based upon myth, bad reasoning, suppression of curiosity and primitive notions of morality.

The same may be said of the Bible, of course. Liberals seem to think they are enlightening people like me when they announce this to “combat” my concern over the Qur’an – but the only reason I don’t mention it is that it is old news and largely irrelevant.  They are not observing the big picture. The Bible is indeed based upon the same principles, but Christianity is much further along the curve than is Islam. In many European countries it is now largely ignored. It still (wrongly) has its privileges but it’s just considered a sort of quaint side-show. People dressing weirdly, not getting married, coming out with platitudes – they’re ignored. That’s great – that’s the way it should be.

There’s the radical Christian right in America, but even they don’t have the same relish for death that Muslims have. And another key difference: if one of them kills in the name of their religion you can be sure many others will condemn that. We might even be glad of the Christian right in the medium term, because in many European countries atheism has sadly (and completely unnecessarily) gone hand in hand with apathy and decadence. We might rely on these people – who at least believe in something, and something less dangerous than Islam – to bail us out. Of course I am not excusing their ludicrous superstitious beliefs, merely asserting them to be the lesser of two “evils”.

James Kirchick discusses the difference between the Christian fundamentialists and Islam, saying:

“Speak of the disproportionately violent strain in Islam to a “progressive” person and you’ll be met with sneering recitations of millennia-old Christian crusades or Jewish settlements in the West Bank. As for conservative Christians’ contemporary political endeavors, lobbying to ban the teaching of evolution in schools or forbidding same-sex marriage simply does not threaten society in quite the same way as the genital mutilation of young girls or the bombing of the London transit system.

I happen to support a legal regime that would, in Bill Clinton’s famous words, keep abortion safe, legal and rare. I hold no brief for the religious right, and its views on homosexuality in particular offend (and affect) me personally. But it’s precisely because of my identity that I consider comparisons between so-called Christianists (who seek to limit my rights via the ballot box) and Islamic fundamentalists (who seek to limit my rights via decapitation) to be fatuous.”

The Christians can be dangerous. But it’s written into the Qur’an to convert or kill infidels – and Islam, often characterised in evolutionary terms as at the “stroppy teenager” stage, is spreading fast, getting the rights it demands and threatening the otherwise relatively civilised cultures who willingly act as its hosts.

Christianity was on the decline, at least in the UK. Let’s not see it replaced with this – because if that does happen we’ll find ourselves thrown back into the Dark Ages. And then, believe me, matters such as global warming and the plight of whales will be the last things on your mind. You’ll be more concerned with whether you’re allowed to even think freely.

Geert’s Freedom Party doing well

What a pleasure to wake up to.. [oops, I just had to get up to turn Thought for the Day off  ].

Where was I? What a pleasure to wake up to good news today on the radio instead of the usual politically correct lies. Geert Wilders‘ Freedom Party is doing very well in the exit polls in the European elections! This is great news. I’m very pleased for him.

The people are speaking. It looks like civilisation is going to have a chance after all. Now we need a new Churchill over here too. Go Geert!

Barack Obama’s speech to the Muslim world

President Obama has issued a religion-filled speech in Cairo which either reveals spectacular ignorance or dishonesty and strategy.

Either way, I think it under-estimates the enemy, because a close reading of the Qur’an shows that this book (which must be regarded as the word of God by all Muslims) not only excuses, but demands, violence and imperialism in the name of Islam. That can’t be stepped around, try as leaders might, and Muslims (at least, any who have read the Qur’an) know that.

Obama speaks of “colonialism”. One wonders, does he mean the current colonisation of Europe by Islam, or some other colonisation?

He speaks of some perceiving Islam as hostile to human rights. Even a brief examination of the Qur’an shows this to be so. In fact it is in direct violation of several articles of the European Declaration of Human Rights.

He claims Islam is tolerant. In fact he says it is “proud of a tradition of tolerance.” Did he read the same Qur’an as me? If there is one thing Islam can never be called, it’s tolerant. Of course, no religions are tolerant, but Islam is especially intolerant. Open the Qur’an on any page to see its gross intolerance, most especially of unbelievers, who so often threatened with a lake of fire it becomes tedious reading.

He explains that he has parted ways religiously from a family that included generations of Muslims. This is clearly identified in the Qur’an as the worst possible crime against Islam. It’s just possible that his audience might be aware of that.

He compliments the Muslim world on its achievements over a millennium ago and claims American Muslims still make a powerful contribution in America. I would argue any contributions made are in spite of, not because of, being Muslim.

He speaks of the way America is encouraging the practicing of Islam, the wearing of the hijab, the building of mosques, and he says people should be able to practice religion “as they see fit”. We can only hope these are shallow words of appeasement and not the real thing.

He speaks of extremists when he means fundamentalists: those who are following the fundamentals of the Qur’an, which is what every good Muslim is obliged to do. They are not allowed to pick and choose (who would have the right to pick and choose from the words of God?).

There are good parts to the speech, because Obama is a good speaker, and he points up some of the few good passages in otherwise hate-filled religious books. But there is nothing whatsoever about secularism being a better way forward. He never dares to say that certainty in religious belief is dangerous. Nothing at all to advocate the pursuit of science rather than the building of mosques. He avoids using the word “secular” but uses the word “God” six times.

This is a well-meaning speech and an effort at bringing people together, but I fear it misunderstands the basis of all religion, which is division: the saved and the damned, the right and the wrong, them and us. To me, it showed that America is on the back foot and is adopting a policy of appeasement towards Islam. And if America adopts that policy, there will be nobody left to bail Europe out when it becomes a continent of young and middle-aged Muslims governing an ever aging group of infidels, as the demographic trends now suggest will be the case.

» Interesting Telegraph article, to this same effect, with many excellent comments below it.

Ladette to Lady

Well, since I never watch the TV I was a bit late catching up with this one. Due to the unfortunate state of many women in the UK now (this itself due to a perverted kind of feminism in which equality is confused with identity) there is actually a TV programme called “Ladette to Lady“.

In this programme they try to teach loud, racous, self-centred women how to be ladies, as women used to aspire to being. viz. How to be graceful, refined, polite, considerate, modest – all those things that used to be considered qualities and which I still certainly regard as qualities. Qualities that are extremely rarely encounted today though, unfortunately, especially in cities, what with the ugly “I’m worth it” culture etc.

It’s cheap TV again, to be sure, and indicative of the sorry state of society now. Sad that they have to lure these women into be civilised by offering material prizes too. But I guess it’s a good thing over-all as long as ladylike qualities are not mocked by the makers (as they no doubt will be by the participants).

I would like to see qualities such a grace, honour and humility valued again in society. I guess the fact this programme exists suggests I’m not entirely alone.

BBC appeases yet again

The BBC is making me sick. I just saw this article on “real Islam”. Why can’t people understand that calling black white does not make it white?

If people would only read the Qur’an they would see that it says, very clearly not once but throughout, that all unbelievers are unworthy and due to burn in hell. That is one reason why it is an offensive book, which is especially unwelcome in schools.

The BBC could easily present things as they actually are, but instead, like the government, it chooses the path of constant appeasement. “The appeaser”, said Churchill, “is the one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last”.