This is the follow up to last weeks article on the Trojan Horse situation. In it I argue that our fundamentalist atheists are so blind and irrational in their hatred of Christianity that they are prepared to get rid of the best bulwark against militant Islam, in order to get rid of us. It is a foolish and short sighted approach. Who in their right mind could think that the answer to Islamic fundamentalism is to get rid of C of E schools?!
And I thought this song summarises rather well the new fundamentalist atheist approach to education –
There is no fundamentals of atheism. There is no book of atheism dogma to follow.
Also, most atheists that I know aren’t fans of Islam either. Both Islam and Christianity are full of dangerous ideas.
GC – it is your claim that there are no fundamentals of atheism. Explain what a belief in the non-existance of th monotheistic Abrahamic God is if that is not a fundamental.
You made the claim that Christianity and Islam are full of dangerous ideas. What evidence can you provide for this and what can you say to be convincing that atheism is not “dangerous”.
If all we are are just blobs of carbon, that is a dangerous belief to have.
Hello Adam. I started to type up a response, but it was insanely long so I created a post addressing it. You can find it by following the link I’ll provide if you’re still interested. I welcome any questions you may have:
http://godlesscranium.com/2014/06/20/the-fundamentally-dangerous-atheist/
“they are prepared to get rid of the best bulwark against militant Islam, in order to get rid of us”
I feel genuinely sorry for the majority of peaceful, well-rounded, integrated & hard-working Muslims who have become an integral part in Scottish & British society.
When I lived in one part of Glasgow I was served by a Sikh family run store. The old man ran it, but his kids who were much more Glaswegian than me working along side him – and they were an amazing part of the local community.
Where I am just now, 2 Muslim owned shops are where I get my daily newspaper and so on, and they are again wonderful assets to the local area.
One of them knows I’m a Christian believer, and he approaches the subject of faith quite often. I ask him about his own beliefs and practices, and I tell him about mine! Sometimes, there’s a few of them in the shop together, and we end up talking about all sorts and “putting the world to rights” so to speak! It is very analogous to how my father would meet locals in the Post Office as a hub of the community.
But perhaps one area which i try and learn from them from is the political set up of the Middle East. The extremism of the House of Saudi Arabia isn’t for them, and they despise the terrible inequality of that society, and how much it is in hock with the USA. Why should they be concerned about the USA? Well, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, like the Royal fake “Shah” of Iran, were Western backed, installed and funded dictators. Infact, the first ever democratically elected leader in the Middle East was in Iran – Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh saw how the Americans and British were literally plundering Iran’s oil resources for pennies (Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), the forerunner company that is now BP) in return, so his government decided to Nationalise Iran’s oil industry to make the oil revenues benefit the actual Iranian people. “Democratic” America and Britain repaid him by organising the coup to topple his democratic Iranian government (the 1st ever democratic in the Middle East), and the USA and UK installed the dictator Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) – a made up Royal who would keep the oil pumping for pennies just as before democratic Mosaddegh. (As an aside, the BBC World Service Radio equivalent of the day actually broadcast the coded signal to commence with the Coup). This is the root of the Iranian Islamic Revolution – getting rid of the Western-backed dictator and regaining control of their country. Unfortunately, their legendary democratic achievement of the 1950’s was never recovered after the West’s chocking it at birth. Modern Iran is a direct consequence of this history.
Outside Iran and Iraq, the CIA’s most expensive operation in the 1980’s was the terror campaign against the Democratic Afghan People’s government. The CIA funded and trained the most violent and fundamentalist Islamic extremists in the region in order to bring down this Afghan government – which was having the temerity to try and liberate women and children – so that unveiled women could become teachers and doctors and get any education they wished, and that children would attend school freely and not be consigned to work in fields and neglect their education. This CIA terror campaign basically created what is known today as Al Qaeda – with the prominent terrorist Osama Bin laden being hailed as a freedom fighter in the American Press! Perhaps fatefully (although they had no real choice), the Afghan government sought the assistance of the Soviet Union to try and repel these Islamic extremist terrorists. In the West this was spun as “Soviet imperialism”, but in truth these young 20 year old Russian soldiers were protecting the rights of women and children to a dignified life.
When Pakistan’s Malala, shot by Taliban, addressed the UN, she was rightly lauded as a hero, and she chose her words carefully. Had she pointed out that the people who shot her for going to school were in fact the direct product of American interference in the region, i suspect her noble speech would not have found a wide audience through Western corporate media.
So did the West just keep dictators like Saddam Hussein in power, and leave them to it? A couple of years ago i had the complete honour of meeting 2 Iraqis who were in the underground resistance against Saddam Hussein in Iraq during the 1970s-90’s. They were members of the Iraqi Communist party, who not only operated hospitals and schools for the persecuted Kurds in the North, but they also maintained a fightback against the USA-backed dictator. One of the men i spoke to had only one eye and one functioning lung – he had been gassed (Western supplied chemical weapons of course) by Saddam’s forces. Perhaps unbelievably, in the 1980’s the CIA sent, via the US Embassy in Bagdad, the names of actual and suspected members of the Iraqi Communist Party – and Saddam had them all executed immediately!
The fact is – in the 1970’s and 80’s there were massive numbers of secular Muslim progressives – Western policy was that they should be wiped out if they didn’t dance to our tune! Is it any wonder, especially given the billions of dollars of support we gave to the most violent and reactionary fundamentalists, that they exert so much influence today in a secular vacuum?
The memory of attempting democracy is still in the Middle East, but the historic lesson is that if you vote for someone against the West’s interest’s, then you can expect nothing but misery and trouble.
If i were a young Muslim and discovering some of this history for the first time, not to mention Palestine and the horrendous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the past decade or so, I can only imagine that the temptation to radicalism is quite great! I would much rather that they discover the noble legacy of Muslim secular and progressive history – but I don’t think that we have left any of it left for them to aspire to!?
It’s the white man’s fault, basically the Soviets invaded Afghanistan to help them out, you can’t really blame them for wanting to blow everyone up, it’s the white man’s fault, etc, etc.
I’d stick to chewing the fat with the local imams over your teacakes and Irn-Bru, if I was you.
I find your fear of secular education interesting. I don’t understand where you get your idea that a secular education will diminish the moral education that you want to give your children.
Secular education should inform all children in a class about all of the worlds faith and belief systems. Much more than is done just now – it is tragic that children believe Easter is a celebration of the invention of the chocolate egg. Children in Scotland should be taught about the various moral positions each faith and belief group takes on any given topic. Secular education would not say which faith of belief system is the best – just that they exist.
Most of the topics I guess you would want to have your moral position can actually be taught in a neutral, secular way where facts are taught and then morals are added by those who feel that they need a greater moral aspect. This is what families and family communities are for. I am always sceptical of those who look to the education system to provide a complete and universal moral framework for their children.
For example, sex education. I get that you and I would have very different views on this. Sex education is two different things – the biological act and the context in which that biological act is performed. Unless you want to ban biology classes then sex is going to be taught in school. Schools can teach the human biology and some universal contexts (that the sex act has to be consensual – I assume that should be universally accepted?). Facts about contraception can also be taught in a neutral manner (that they exist and how they function). However, if you or others then want to add your own moral contexts (in marriage only, no contraception etc.) then that is an addition to the secular factual teaching.
On abortion, again this can be taught in a secular way – that it exists, the various historical & moral contexts that have and continue to exist around it. Again though, you and I would have different moral teachings for our children. I would want to deal with that moral conversation, not pass the buck to a teacher.
On science, on history, social change and most other topics there are facts to be taught and a moral contexts for those facts. Why do you want schools to present one moral context (yours) over anyone elses? I dont want to teach your kids my moral positions – that is for you to do and for them to develop as they grow and become adults (I know your kids are older and have followed your moral positions – I have no problem with that).
What is it that would be taught or is currently taught in an exclusively Christian way that you want schools to continue doing or should do in the future?
Hi Douglas
I find a lot of your points here very interesting, and as you will see on another comment I wrote to LinearC on another thread, they sound reasonably consistent with the plural public square I would personally support.
My own personal concern is that when you visit a secular forum, much of what we read is not of the same tone as you write above, and in fact much of secularism appears to be strongly anti-religion.
I have heard many comments from lecture theatres and classrooms where strongly secular views don’t present religious views as alternatives to their own, but rather are mocked as ridiculous. I’ve felt very uncomfortable in many a science classroom where a neutral stance was not taken.
I do, of course, accept that this has often happened in certain contexts with fundamental religion, which I also disagree with. My concern is that we substitute one form of fundamentalism (where it exists) with another.
MM