Comments by WSteG

Comment #124458 by WSteG on February 9, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Queasus ... isn't he some religious person?

Comment #124456 by WSteG on February 9, 2008 at 2:32 pm

Haven't read every post since c.150 because life is short, so please forgive any unwonted repetition here. I remember lodging for a while in the 1960s in the Bourneville area of Birmingham (England). There wasn't a pub to be found for miles because the Cadburys were religious teetotallers of some stripe (quakers?) and their writ ran throughout the area. Maybe it still does.

By itself, this is of no great moment (unless you're a lush) but it is really only a small step from that to the Bishop of Rochester's "no-go areas" and then on to a situation where sharia is more powerful than the law of the land in the ghettoes that we always said we didn't want. Jiten asks several times (posts 106, 108, 112 etc) "How will it affect you if you're not muslim?" Not to put too fine a point on it, islam is set on world domination. Today Southall, tomorrow south London, next week the home counties. If I live in a society or a world where being an infidel (which is to say, not a muslim) is a capital offence, I think I will justifiably feel that the rise of sharia has affected me more than somewhat. Jiten also reckons that "religion is on its way out" (post 136) so I suspect he/she lives in that land called fools' paradise.

Next week is general synod. Someone from high in the anglican church must be monitoring this site, it being always one's duty to keep an informed eye on the enemy (serious lefties take the FT and the WSJ). That spy should encourage synod to tell Cantab that unless he can fully answer Ultraviolet G's dazzling point (post 62), he should resign.

3. Ad 'likely to offend gay people'

Comment #123628 by WSteG on February 7, 2008 at 12:14 pm

Hey, Cartomancer, can't you post a pic that isn't out of focus? I have a suspicion that you're hot. Sorry, that's off topic. Oh wait: no it isn't.

4. Ad 'likely to offend gay people'

Comment #123609 by WSteG on February 7, 2008 at 11:59 am

weavehole, my old mucker (Jeez, you're a long way up the thread): I spotted and altered the comma [,] in the link within SECONDS of promulgating it so either you were onto it like a ravening wolf or what I see on my screen is different from what others see on theirs (but I'm old, Father William, and nothing on the internet surprises me any more). Circs are circumstances (but I suspect you knew that).

5. Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable'

Comment #123586 by WSteG on February 7, 2008 at 11:22 am

I rather suspect that Rowan Williams is fundamentally a decent and caring man (and far from stupid) but he doesn't appear to comprehend the aspiration of Islam to control the whole planet. Here's a refinement of his proposal that would leave him with less egg in his beard and, at the same time, would demonstrate vividly where Islam stands. Let Williams propose that all Islamic nations reciprocate and allow non-Muslims and (especially perhaps) apostates to bend to arrangements other than those prescribed by Sharia. I have no expectation that any Islamic nation would subscribe to such an arrangement but, if I were wrong, it would constitute a major breakthrough.

6. Ad 'likely to offend gay people'

Comment #123139 by WSteG on February 6, 2008 at 1:54 pm

Steve Zara writes: "Apparently homosexuality is such fun that straight people can be easily 'converted' and become addicted".

After many years of "practice", I can report that this is indeed happily true. And if the deluded don't like it, they can "just say no".

PS: Hello, weavehole (nice name in the circs). Delighted to translate for you. It says "W Stephen Gilbert" (why, that's me!) and the avatar is the cover of my unputdownable book, Common Sense, which may be downloaded free of charge from http://commonsense.memebot.com

7. Ad 'likely to offend gay people'

Comment #123015 by WSteG on February 6, 2008 at 11:14 am

Now, here's a funny thing. Virtually all gay people are brought up in families. So if we did indeed wish to "abolish the family" - and, speaking for myself, the only thing I'd wish to abolish would be bigotry and all that flows from it - perhaps it might be because so many of us found the straight family an oppressive institution in which to be reared.

8. Good God! A politician who doesn't believe...

Comment #102196 by WSteG on December 22, 2007 at 1:41 am

flying goose has usefully crapped on us all from a great height. He/she/it is absolutely on the money (sorry about the promiscuity with metaphor) but unfortunately the genie is now out of the box (ditto). I withdraw my earlier objection about asking politicians about the god thing. Of course it's unusually germane and it's a very different kind of question from asking about dope-smoking, same-sex experiences etc. The more resonant point fg has made is illustrated all over this site: the supernaturalists are inevitably fighting back (see for instance the comments on fleas and their proliferation). I'm girding up to open a thread about what we do about radical Islam (if there isn't one here already).

Oh, and no, I'm sure it wasn't his view on The Delusion that cost Kinnock his ticket to Downing Street. You can never overstate the (rarely publicly expressed) turn-off that being Welsh is in the vastly larger electoral area of England.

9. Good God! A politician who doesn't believe...

Comment #102124 by WSteG on December 21, 2007 at 3:56 pm

Radesq's rebuff is so exquisite, it hardly requires further comment. But ... there's a thread elsewhere on this site pursuing the not entirely respectable question of whether Prof Dawkins' wife is a rationalist. The question of your partner's positions is one thing, how you bring up your offspring quite another. Why has Clegg ceded his children's intellectual and indeed emotional development to his wife? Because he is so busy being an ambitious politician? Because Catholicism is so much better at annexing territory than whatever position he occupies (agnosticism or can't-be-bothered atheism or intellectually rigorous rationalism)?

Meanwhile, at the risk of derailing: why do you want to know personal stuff about your MP? If she smoked dope in her youth, are you going to withhold your support, even though you agree with her on most of her policies? Do you not think even politicians deserve to keep some aspects of their lives to themselves? Of course if a candidate parades his missus and beaming kids in his campaign literature, his employment of a mistress or rent boy is a legitimate target for the press. But I'd rather have a political leader who prosecuted enlightened policies with vigour while being a flawed character than a bumbling reactionary who leads a blameless life.

10. Good God! A politician who doesn't believe...

Comment #102077 by WSteG on December 21, 2007 at 2:16 pm

perkyjay says:

Give Clegg's children a little time to make up their own minds !

How can they do that? They're being brought up Catholic.

Clegg is just another opportunist politician saying, in his 'clarification', what he thinks is ingratiating rather than what he means (which he accidentally let slip when asked the question). He knows that it will take a miracle to get a rationalist politician elected to the highest office in the land in the UK or (even more so) the US. But it's true that unprincipled journalists shouldn't be asking questions like that or the next one (which Clegg ducked): "have you ever taken drugs?" Where is this going? "Have you ever broken the law?" "Have you ever cheated on your partner?" "Have you ever had a same sex experience?" "How big is your willie?" ...

11. Tony Blair: Mention God and you're a 'nutter'

Comment #94632 by WSteG on December 6, 2007 at 5:39 am

Northern Bright (in her first posting here) remarked that:

"in the UK it would be considered unseemly for a politician to bang on about his or her faith".

But consider this: how many party leaders in Britain have made it clear that they were Rationalists. The only two I can think of – Foot and Kinnock – weren't elected. The Jewish Michael Howard didn't make it to No 10 either. In the US, it is perfectly clear that no Rationalist will reach the White House in the foreseeable future. In Britain, it is (of course) more subtle but the prejudice remains. Which politician will declare that she stands with us and still expects to become prime minister? Who's up for it?

12. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #92512 by WSteG on November 30, 2007 at 4:45 pm

– Yes, good interview. The reason why is always the same: not the goodness of the interviewee (we take that as a given here) but the goodness of the interviewer. A bad interviewer can make Jonathan Miller seem dull, a good one George W Bush seem smart.

– The chances against our being here are pretty long. If the amoeba had divided in the primeval sludge a few seconds earlier or later, NONE of us would have made it.

– Finally, I have one major beef with RD and I can see it ain't going to go away. It's that final loss of nerve – I nearly wrote of faith – that is in the book and appears again here, expressed as the existence of god being "very, very improbable indeed". No, sir: not improbable but impossible. Let's keep to it being delusional and not let the supernaturalists see the makings of a wedge called very, very improbable indeed. We really don't need to give them that.

See my blog entry 'Let Miss Gibbons Go or the Bear Gets It' at wstegcommonsense.blogspot.com

13. Pupil defends teacher in Muhammad teddy furore

Comment #91713 by WSteG on November 29, 2007 at 3:39 am

Comment: The Sudanese should be profoundly grateful to have a woman from England generously and bravely volunteering to teach their children. How many more teachers with an enlightened western background do they think will be willing to follow her example? Another step back to the stone age, Islam.

Question: If I say to a boy or man (or world-famous boxer) called Muhammad "Muhammad, you are an idiot", have I just insulted the prophet? It might be useful to know the answer in case any of us ever falls among bigoted Muslims.

See my blog entry Let Miss Gibbons Go or The Bear Gets it at
http://wstegcommonsense.blogspot.com