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.

“We don’t do God” but then maybe we do: Speak Out magazine

(The following short post is an introductory piece that will be included in the next edition of Speak Out magazine due for publication in early June. It will introduce a collection of short pieces about minority religions in Birmingham and a more detailed piece of the British Humanist Association’s recent report into the ‘religion or belief’ equalities strand – click here to read)

The former Labour spin-doctor Alistair Campbell was once famously quoted as saying, “We don’t do God”. In many ways, Campbell may have been speaking on behalf of the British per se: or at least how things might have been because there are signs that some things might be changing.

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:

“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”

The Essex Princess: ‘In the midst of life we are in debt…’

As if perfectly scripted, so the tragicomic death of Jade Goody coincided with the publication of OK! Magazine’s ‘Jade Goody obituary edition’: an obituary edition that was published before she actually died. Surely a ringing endorsement to the media handling of Max Clifford and the ongoing ‘exclusives’ agreed with OK! Magazine and the Living television channel (an irony surely) that these two events blended so seamlessly.

Seamless and choreographed in much the same way that much of ‘The Truman Show’ was (see earlier post here). In the film, the star of the show – Truman Burbank – finally unlocks the door to escape the world created for him and so ridding himself of the constant gaze of the cameras. In many ways, the door is a metaphor between the ‘real’ and ‘un-real’ worlds that we choose to inhabit. For Jade, and unlike Truman, she chose not to open the door. Instead, she chose to firmly lock it from the inside, never wanting to escape nor wanting the cameras to be turned off.