On Sunday I was bringing together women of different religions who had been divided by religion in the first place. We all agreed that religion, any religion, was a really good thing.
Then we learned about the bomber. Thankfully, we knew at once that no true Muslim would try to blow up whatever it was he was trying to blow up. Then we learned he was a Christian. Although we were from two different religions, we all agreed that no true Christian was likely to try to blow up whatever it was he was trying to blow up either.
If only less enlightened individuals could see that no true religious person of any religion would ever try to blow up anything. A brief glance at history will reveal that it’s simply never happened.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k8UqN5N9YCMu2PVIjuTqwqklaQfetmwI/view?usp=sharing
Platitude of the Day 
To a class of children, this TFTD would have been, er, nice. But an adult audience should expect more than naïve fluff.
In an effort to protect ‘Religion’ from being associated with violence, our Julie would haplessly bring about the Streisand Effect except that most people already accept what she’s trying to deny.
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The less we hear of this confused and confusing convert to Muslim mutation the better. She has to be mistaken about diversity being anywhere in the Quran and what does she do about the former disparaging of the Jews which is part of Islam if she was meeting with them at the weekend. She is the most vulgar spokesperson for multicultural muddle I have ever heard and I react to what she does to the faith rather than her personality.
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The No True Scotsman fallacy in a nutshell – always, always the go-to after a terror attack by the devout.
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There is an element of truth in the NTS argument though, albeit that the ultimate conclusion wouldn’t appeal to the user. That is that religiousness is such a nebulous concept that it can incorporate both terrorists and providers of coffee mornings. This comes about because there is no objective foundation to religion (unlike Scottishness), so anyone and everyone is completely free to define it as whatever they feel.
The problem with using this argument is that it makes the term “religious” meaningless. If it can encompass such wide diversity of thought and action, it becomes virtually synonymous with “human”. This causes a problem for anyone wanting to claim a special position for their religion. It is clear that making this claim and then trying to exclude the nutters is hypocritical.
It reminds me of the death of Jimmy Savile. Bear in mind that when he died, JS was still a lovely chap who ran marathons for charity. One of the RC commenters on TFTD tried to claim that all this loveliness was a consequence of his Catholicism. A year later, when the truth was known, we had a sort-of apology from the same speaker (“I just didn’t know”), but no acknowledgement of the deeper problem with the argument – that if you claim his character came from his religion, you now have to accept that all of his character came from his religion.
I am also reminded of a discussion in the Guardian about whether a vegan could eat organic veg, given that all organic veg is fertilised with farm-collected manure. In the comments, someone pointed out that since veganism is a self-defined choice, literally anything is allowed. Veganism + bacon – no problem. You made the rules, the only person who has to follow them is you.
I think what I am trying to say is that every religious person effectively makes their own rules, or at least chooses which to follow from a list (the ones they agree with) and which to ignore (the ones they don’t). They might retrospectively try to claim that they are only doing such-and-such because their book told them to, but that isn’t true. They do what they want to do and hide behind the religion later, when they aren’t brave enough to stand up for their own ideas.
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It now appears that the would-be bomber had failed to be granted asylum twice, and was trying to game the system by pretending to be a Christian convert, which he thought would get him onto the fast track. Not that this lets Julie Siddiqi and her ecumenical tea-party off the hook.
In other news, the General Synod has been lamenting the continued decline in Anglican churchgoing. The AB of York went as far as to say: “We want the Church of England to grow and even if it doesn’t – then let our death be a grand operatic death, let it be fantastic and let’s not crawl in a corner”. Pass the popcorn!
PS: while trying to find the source of this quote, I came across the text of the joint address by the two ABs: https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/speaking-writing/speeches/general-synod-joint-presidential-address-archbishops Anyone in any doubt why the CofE is going round in ever-decreasing circles will find part of the answer in this incoherent mishmash of half-thoughts and non-sequiturs.
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Yes without turning everything into a slanging match let me say that the death knell is sounding for Anglicanism and Roman Cattholicism as purveyors of Christian authenticity. People have already observed that the practice of faith will not last beyond the next generation if that and there will certainly be none of it left if stays the football of people who either have no idea of genuine Islam or on the other hand think they should listen to people who want to convert to Christianity simply because they want to legitimise their flight from faraway countries. Christianity was once about grace now in the eyes of even its highest leaders it has become race. The child Jesus may well have fled into Egypt but the record also says that when the times were safer He went back to His own land. The Jews were told to welcome strangers and slaughter the inhabitants of the Promised Land when they reached it. The racial myth now sustaining their religion and nation serves only themselves as they settle anew the Holy Land. Modern theology undoes the record with constant talk of slavery as the pivotal event when the faith was made on far more spiritual foundations. As said if modern preoccupations override these there will be nothing left and we will.believe in silly myths and fable and certainly another Jesus.
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“The child Jesus may well have fled into Egypt”
Although he almost certainly didn’t.
“the faith was made on far more spiritual foundations”
It’s curious how often this desire to return to a purer form of an ideology seems to crop up. Islamists proclaim it constantly, as does a certain brand of Catholic. But it’s not limited to the religious. There are still left wingers who are convinced that Communism would be great if only it was done properly, and we’re starting to see devotees of the One True Brexit starting to appear now as well.
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If Jesus never fled to Egypt as you assert then the advocates of refugees rights as the point of religion have even less of a leg to stand on. Should the presence of Israelites in Egypt suffering as slaves be disproved then the central doctrine of liberation from slavery in Judaism and Christianity can be dismissed as worthless. I still hold to my view and possibly yours that myths and legends will do us no good and will characterise the substance of far too much present day justification for faith and belief. What is mind no matter. What is matter never mind.Silly used to be a synonym for spiritual and the dancers to Northern Soul music used the saying Keep the Faith.
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The story of the family fleeing to Egypt appears only in Matthew, and is a deliberate imitation of the story of the Israelites’ Exodus and return (which didn’t happen either). In these days of humdrum translations of the newer bit of the BBoMS, we overlook the extent to which it is a rehash of cherry-picked stuff from the ‘Hebrew Scriptures’.
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That is one theory following Matthews habit of seeing everything in the Infancy narrative as a mirror of what happened in the Old Testament. Maybe the wise men only appear in the account as some kind of replay of the Psalms about the kings of Seba…if it didnt happen then delving into prophecies would be doubly useless. When Matthew says Jesus would be called a Nazarene which he was the prophecy about this has never been located and in addition the ptophecy about the Virgin conceiving uses an ambigious term for the pregnant girl and ends by giving a name to the offspring which was used neither by an angel or by the parents when Jesus was named. The prophecy here may not have referred to Jesus at all but Christians since the technique of Matthew have believed it to be so. I have already said that the entire slavery legend upon which Judaism is based certainly is not evident in archaeology or in records of the time. The Red Sea was the Sea of Reeds and there was no contingent of Hebrews around ever to construct the pyramids and Moses whoever he was cannot have written about his own demise or received the Commandments in differing places. To cut the long story short religions are based on no amount of myths which may or may not have happened. How much we can demythologise Jesus has to be faced with thr growing realisation that the God of the Old Testament is not the one proclaimed by Jesus in the New and what is understood by Muslims in the Quran about Jesus Issa snd the Patriarchs cannot be correct as it does not say the same things about them. Mary does not give birth to Jesus in the same way in the Quran as the Bible say and her baby speaks at a premature age. Also the Muslims actively deny that their God can have a Son and what is more they say that Jesus never died on the Cross and that He will return to eliminate the influence of the Jews. I must end by saying that people who think one can merge religions into a formless mixture in order to preserve the unity of humanity dont know what they are proposing and the plain fact that Judaism is a creed of racial supremacy based upon material gain as the point of existence and as such it excludes the rest of the world from its Gods favour and awaits a messiah who will allow this situation to go on. Goyim or Gentile is probably the lowest term used for anyone who isnt a Jew and its virtually as bad as dog. Now Christianity if it exists at all as the preaching of Jesus went firmly against this primordial racism first carried on by the Jews but rather than extend this further than I ought I have to register that the original message of Jesus has long vanished and the voices that are now destroying the witness are as racist and unbearably exclusivist as anything dreamt up by Jews and Judaisers. Finally Islam had its whack at undoing the Chosen People myth but it made the mistake of oppressing women and converting people through violence and coercion and enslaving and taxing anyone outside the religious pale. The idea that you can kill innocent people in the name of religious struggle is the most dsngerous development in this religion and people who stress rapprochement with Islam seem blissfully unaware of its being part of the religions teaching. End of my rant and sorry to have been so long with it.
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