About

This is the personal website of Gavin Orland. I was born in England in 1973 have lived in mostly in London since 1991.

I have long been interested in the process of rational analysis and in ethics – this led me to read Philosophy at the University of Durham in 1994. Prior to this I had studied advertising and design in West London.

I come from a happy family and am not motivated solely by money.

I’m a Humanist and care about the state of the society I see around me and often reflect upon it here on this site. I’m a conservative Humanist, if anything, and as such I find myself in a minority among non-believers.

I am on the whole proud of the achievements of the West and somewhat tired of hearing that we need to apologise about everything. I’m pleased the United States is the world’s number one superpower and hope it is not supplanted by China or North Korea (then the more left-inclined among us really would have something to worry about).

I was motivated to start this blog I suppose largely by the atmosphere of political correctness promoted by the Labour Party during its rule of England from 1997 – 2010. I felt considerable relief when they were removed from power and could do no further damage to the country.

I am against political correctness and believe it is important to defend reason and compassion against superstition and faith. While I’m completely open minded to evidence, I’m against any kind of superstition, from tetraphobia to feng shui, ghosts, rain dances, ionized bracelets, astrology, lucky charms, magic spells and religion. There’s extremely strong evidence that these are all completely unfounded.

I used to be unconditionally opposed to all kinds of religious belief – often quoting the likes of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris on the topic. I’m still opposed to religious belief on the principle that it does not have sufficient respect for evidence, however reading writers such as Theodore Dalrymple and Peter Hitchens and noticing the nihilism and moral relativism of many liberal atheists has led me to re-consider the useful functional role religion can play for many Type 1 believers.

Certainly fanatical religious belief is often dangerous, religious belief that adheres to its texts literally is stultifying, but its reverse – moral abandon and relativism -  can be equally, if not more, dangerous. I believe that hand in hand, these two opposed ideologies currently pose the primary threats to Western civilisation. In plain English, my position is that if it takes religion in order for some people to be good (those who are unable to reason their way to the good life by themselves), it may not be such a bad thing (though this is regrettable and says nothing at all about its veracity).

Sometimes I make my own music. Other things I enjoy include:

• Science
• Keeping fit (I go spinning & lift weights at least four times a week)
• Cinema
• Travel
• History
• Classical art
• Current affairs

After a further year’s weight-training I intend to take up Taekwondo too.

My writing on this site is essentially humanist in nature but does tend to make uncomfortable reading for naive liberals or socialists who have been mind-washed by political correctness or for fervently religious people. I edit what I write whenever I like – revisiting, honing and improving. I do not publish comments on my articles unless they are of a sufficiently high intellectual standard and are politely written. I hope you find my articles an interesting read!