Atheists: No God, just whining

I don’t normally reproduce articles in full from other sources but I came across this on the Guardian website and agreed with it entirely. Obviously it must have something to do with the author being another ‘C Allen’ (Charlotte rather than Chris). To read it in its original location, click here. If not, just read on:

Atheists: No God, just whining

Charlotte Allen, Friday 29th May 2009

I can’t stand atheists – but it’s not because they don’t believe in God. It’s because they’re crashing bores.

Christians versus Humanists: follow-up to the BHA report

A few weeks ago I posted about the report that the British Humanist Association (BHA) commissioned BRAP to research (click here). Below is an article by Damian Thompson that appeared in The Telegraph on the 30th April 2009 where he strongly criticises not only the report but also the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) for funding it.

The article is entitled, ‘Christians: this is how your taxes are being spent in the middle of a recession’:

Pick’n'Mix: the 21st century approach to religious affiliation

In Steve Bruce’s 1995 book, ‘Religion in modern Britain: from cathedral to cult’, he wrote about how the British were not becoming any less ‘religious’ but were instead moving to a place where they picked and choosed the parts of ‘religion’ that appealed to them most. Dubbed the pick’n'mix approach to religiosity, it was seen to herald a move away from institutionalised forms of religion to those that were more diversified and increasingly privatised.

Others have since picked up on this shift. Jeremy Hardy for instance in The Guardian back in 2001 offered a more cynical reading:

If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them: De-Baptism Certificates and the National Secular Society

Liberate yourself from the Original Mumbo-Jumbo that liberated you from the Original Sin you never had!

Is the header being used by the National Secular Society (NSS) on its website selling ‘official’ De-Baptism certificates. For a while, the NSS has been asking the Church of England (and no doubt the Catholic Church too) to devise a formal procedure for cancelling baptisms, subsequently making a change in any baptismal roll as part of it. In the face of resistance, the NSS has come up with a document of its own.

The “Certificate of Debaptism” is designed to have a deliberately ‘home-made look complete with mock-official decoration and quasi-official language’. It reads:

I ________ having been subjected to the Rite of Christian Baptism in infancy (before reaching an age of consent), hereby publicly revoke any implications of that Rite and renounce the Church that carried it out. In the name of human reason, I reject all its Creeds and all other such superstition in particular, the perfidious belief that any baby needs to be cleansed by Baptism of alleged ORIGINAL SIN, and the evil power of supposed demons. I wish to be excluded henceforth from enhanced claims of church membership numbers based on past baptismal statistics used, for example, for the purpose of securing legislative privilege.

“We Love Jews”: The BNP’s Euro Election Campaign

For a party routinely and regularly villified as anti-Semitic, the British National Party (BNP) have gone above and beyond the call of duty this week to try and convince British voters that they have parted company with their old ways.

To get people to vote for them in the European elections on Thursday June 4th, the BNP have this week unveiled a series of billboard posters featuring the world’s best known – and probably best loved – Jew: Jesus.

Alongside an image of Jesus, the poster quotes a part of a verse from John’s Gospel (15:20) in which Jesus says:

“If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you”