"A Man's a Man for all that!" - Rabbie Burns

"Religion? No thanks. I prefer not to outsource my brainwashing."
Trying to get your average Joe creationist to understand the phrase scientific theory is as hard as getting a fish to enjoy mountaineering. Its an unimagined world for them - it requires a complete reversal of their normal modes of thinking and being. The fact that humans could explain the complexities of this world without a creating God is a world view they cannot grasp. It's like asking a tuna if it appreciates the view from the top of Mount Everest.

Oct 7, 2010

Geert Wilders Trial Fitna and Pat Condell

With Geert Wilders currently on trial in Holland for the alleged crime of inciting racial hatred against Muslims I decided I would revisit "Fitna" the film he made that warned about the dangers of Islam and the Islamification of Europe. The film was widely banned and caused great controversy. If you havent seen it I strongly recommend a viewing ( it is available on YouTube)

Fitna is of course a polemic - it presents an argument about the link between the nature of the Quran and the violence around the world that we see perpetrated in the name of Islam. Fitna does not of course address the fact that most Muslims are peaceful. But does that mean that the arguments that it presents are incorrect?

Most Christians didn't join the medieval crusades but that doesn't mean that Christianity in those days was not - in its impact on the world - war like and often barbarous. There may have been Nazis who personally didn't murder Jews but that doesn't mean it wasn't valid to warn of the dangers of Nazism. Most right wing Christian creationists are probably well meaning people but that doesn't mean that their ideology can't be criticised as potentially destructive and backward looking.

We have experienced the strange phenomenon in recent years of liberal left commentators defending one of the most anti-female anti-semitic anti-progressive anti-free speech and homophobic political religious movements that any of us have seen in our lifetimes - political Islam and its violent "revolutionary" vanguard the Islamic Jihadists and fundamentalists.

Left wing socialists have become strange bedfellows with right wing Islamo-fascists as they seek to argue against "Islamophobia" but singularly fail to address the extreme anti-progressive nature of political Islam.

You don't need to agree with Geert Wilders completely to see that his attempts to address these issues stems , in part , from the failure of those who should be flying the flag for progressive thought to address the iniquity within political Islam. Their failure has left a vacuum and that vacuum will be filled dangerously by those on the right unless the left is more sophisticated in its response to Islam. In this case being sophisticated must mean defending individual Muslims against discrimination and hate while robustly challenging the influence of the medieval thinking of Islam on western culture.

One commentator from the left who always gets this right is Pat Condell. I have posted videos of his before and they never fail to be right on the button. He has earned himself much bile from some on the left for his outspoken views but I think much of this reaction is because he invariably exposes the weakness of the current thinking of many on the left on the subject of political Islam.

I came across a video from Pat Condell, which I had seen some time ago, on the subject of Fitna and Islam so I am posting it here so that I have ready access to it.
What do you think about what Condell says here?








10 comments:

John Mark said...

I agree with what you say about Geert Wilders, and I follow his progress with great interest and admiration.

However, to link Christianised servant-soldiers of the Middle Ages and Nazis, who never murdered anyone, with Christians, whose faith and trust in Christ, enables them to recognise the intricate design in nature, is illogical and unreasonable.

There was a time before the Englightenment when most people believed in the Designer, and there will be a time in the future when, once again, most people will believe in the Designer.

Bunc said...

I have to say that I sincerely hope you are wrong John. If you are right about belief in a designer increasing then we will have taken a step backwards a few hundred years.

7:11 PM +00:00

John Mark said...

Bunc, I do empathise with your fear that society could go back a few hundred years if belief in a Designer comes to dominate.

I empathise because it is possible that, if this happens, there will be a rise in religion and, therefore, in intolerance of others by religion. That would be terrible and it would be a step backwards.

I loathe Christianised religion even though I am a man of faith in Christ! I do not want that to return.

However, I do not think that faith in the Designer, who revealed himself as Jesus Christ, necessarily does have to lead to more religion, at least more religion that has intolerant authority and/or unkind social influence.

I can imagine that those with faith in Christ as the Designer will understand the New Testament so much better, with the result that, for example, they will realise that Christ spoke very sympathetically about what is quaintly termed "eunuchs", but who are homosexuals or who are included in this category.

If there is a rise in the number of people believing in the Designer AND it is does not result in an increase in religion of authoritarian nature, then, I suggest to you, that we will not have gone back a hundred years.

Indeed, I think we will have gone forward but I don't have the right to fill you website with my details of this.

Bunc said...

John I welcome comments even if they are "robust" and I dont necessarily agree with them.

Personally I have no belief in any form of designer or religion.

BUT if in the future people continue to believe in such a being then as long as they don't try to undermine things like the progress science or dictate to ethers then I have no problems with people having such beliefs.

I have a regular commenter here - Looney - who is a fundamentalist Christian. We poke and prod each other a bit but we enjoy a good blogging relationship.

You are always welcome to comment here - just be aware that I do bite - but generally not too badly and the teeth marks will always heal quickly.

Looney said...

Are you taking bets on whether or not the multicultural police issue a fatwa on Pat Condell?

Bunc said...

He's had a lot of flack already for his straight talking I believe although he's not achieved a Fatwa yet. Like many he's not so much a critic of multiculturalism per se - just of the form of multiculturalism that fails to firmly defend important core values.

John Mark said...

Bunc, thank you for welcoming me to comment on your website. I am impressed that you reply to someone who comments. This is rare, I find.

I note your warning about teeth and biting! I hope that, if I receive some tooth marks from you, they will have arisen from the content of what you say and not from ad hominem remarks. So far, I every reason to believe that they will come from the former.

I assert (perhaps this is my first bite) that anti-Designists, like yourself, are suppressing the truth about the natural world.

I took part in the Open University blogsite linked to the BBC for some months. During that time, I introduced about six new threads challenging evolutionism. I was not ignored! I had many individuals coming at me in response with long replies sometimes. Even people I had not seen before or since my threads joined in.

However, when I posted a thread called "How Do We Recognize Design When We See It?", it was most thoroughly ignored. If people had clicked in and decided not to respond in writing, that would have been one thing.

But what they did was to read the title and not even click on it, to look at it, to read some or all of it. I had about 30 visits to this thread whereas my other ones were scoring hundreds. Only one person over at least six month's responded in writing.

I concluded that the many hundreds of people visiting that site were suppressing the truth about design. They weren't even prepared to click in to read it. They still could have remained evolutionists and have been unpersuaded by what I had written.

They just didn't want to risk having their belief in anti-Design weakened or undermined or destroyed.

They suppressed the truth in their atheism. This means that they know there is design out there, big design and microscopic design. They know that design means a Designer, who possesses sufficient intelligence to achieve that design. They know all this from their daily lives because they can distinguish between damage and design in items they purchase.

So, you know, on the one hand, that design is there, out there, but, on the other hand, you are suppressing the truth of this, both consciously and unconsciously.

This is, in my opinion, not clever nor wise!

Bunc said...

John,
I try not to do ad hominem if I can avoid it.
Regarding your experience - one of the problems that I think we face in this kind of discussion about design is that the two "sides" don't approach it in the same way.

Most biologists ( atheists or theists) don't accept design because;

a) there is no scientific evidence for it and what we see can be explained without it

b) it is by it's nature a non scientific explanation because it proposes a non materialitic explanation

c) when provided with evidence on these and other matters design proponents have a tendancy to ignore real scientific evidence presented to them.

As a result many people got very weary of addressing the same old canards and misunderstandings time and time and time again.

This is the most likely explanation why people left that thread alone. I haven't completely run out of tolerance on these issues though so debate on these matters does happen here sometimes.


Rather than take this thread too far of course I will make a post for you on the subject of design and you can let loose there - no doubt Looney will wish to join you in trying to establish your case.

Does that seem reasonable?

John Mark said...

Bunc, that is both reasonable and generous, indeed!

rummuser said...

Bunc, I am an unashamed islamophobic. I am however not a Muslimophobic. I endorse Pat Condell one hundred percent as I do Wilders. Our two countries have a massive big problem and in India, the back lash is building up and it does not bode well for Indian Muslims. Pakistan being in the doldrums with the very high possibility of a major refugee problem into India, this is likely to get exacerbated.

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