Introduction

I found "The God Delusion" a challenging and interesting 'book', and not one for which I was able to make a lazy or easy mental rebuttal. I put 'book' in inverted commas because I actually listened to the audio book (although I own the book itself, circumstances conspired to make listening to it viable whilst reading it was not). Therefore this comes with the caveat that some of the criticisms I make, because they are of the audio book version, might not hold true for the paper book. Where possible I will give specific references with book page numbers, but there might be errors of assumed omission (where I criticise Dawkins for not saying something, but he did say it in the full book, but it didn't make it to the audio book). Although I condemn Dawkins for using anecdotal evidence a lot, I use it myself. That is mainly because I'm writing a short review of the book, whereas Dawkins is writing a whole book. I don't feel the need to prove any theories of my own with extensive evidence, just disprove some of his and pick holes in his own, stacked evidence.

The book itself is split into two parts. The first part is philosophical, and seeks to provide a logical rebuttal to the idea that God exists. The second part of the book is evidence for the evils caused by religion. Not being a philosopher myself - or familiar with philosophical schools of thought - my criticism and comment of the first section is limited. In addition, where specific ideas are criticised, they are criticised assuming that Dawkins describes them accurately. It is quite probable that some nuances of the generally accepted theory for whatever is under discussion are lost, because Dawkins doesn't highlight it. The second section deals with subject matter I am more familiar with, and so is a lot more thorough.

Page numbers are denoted simply by a number in curved brackets, e.g. (4). The paper version is the 2006 hardback published by Bantam Press. All quotes, unless noted otherwise in the quote box, are from this book.


"The God Hypothesis"

Dawkins defines 'God' for the purposes of this book as a "personal God", using as the foundation for his argument something that he terms "the God hypothesis". The hypothesis is that: I felt that it was a very good way to anchor his argument - even as a notionally religious person I find the hypothesis a fair description of what I perceive the consensus on 'God' to be, and it prevents people trying to weasel out of the debate by changing the God-goalpost.

His alternative hypothesis is that: This does make the assumption that because we have only observed Darwinian evolution, that Darwinian evolution is the only method via which life can exist and reach any given state (it also assumes that our universe is the first, or that nothing could have survived the destruction of any previous universe - something I will talk about more when I get to the "anthropic theory" of creation).

I am inclined to agree with Dawkins regarding the general silliness of "intelligent design", although should scientists create an animal genetically engineered to be, say, half cow and half pig, I'm not sure that one could describe such a tasty monstrosity as the product of evolution. The continuation of this particular line of thought ("if we can make animals, surely God can make us") is somewhat addressed by the section on 'Irreducible Complexity' (119-125).

'Irreducible complexity' is the term for some aspect of a creature which could not have evolved in parts (and therefore is taken to mean that the creature in question is the product of design and not evolution). I imagine that the term "unnatural selection" could become popular as gene-splicing gets more advanced and successful. But, ultimately, life made through genetic engineering isn't going to have evolved, and it will have been - at least to some extent - designed.

Presumably any creature you want a lot of will come with breeding ability, at which point one would imagine that natural selection would take over from the artificial. It would have been nice to see Dawkins touch on this area, especially as it is one that is attracting a lot of interest in scientific fields and research funding body morals and ethics boards. It is not an argument for the existence of God, of course (at least not the God in Dawkins' hypothesis) but it is a plausible way that a creature can come into being via methods other than natural selection.

Dawkins does waste an awful lot of time making points irrelevant to his case. For example, he spends several pages attacking Pascal's Wager - which is a device not intended to be taken seriously. He even admits that - but instead of simply excising his arguments after he concludes that he's hitting a straw man, he keeps them (103-105).


Dawkins' 'Why'

Dawkins attempts to answer one question that theologists also seek to answer - "why are we here?" - with the 'anthropic principle' (134-157). This whole section of book vacillates between self-congratulatory (Dawkins delights in mentioning the times he has beaten theologians in debate), general contempt for theology (he doesn't consider it a field of knowledge at all, or deserving of the '-ology' prefix), and also I found it rather unsatisfactory. The anthropic approach does not provide an answer to the question, "why are we here?"

Just as the answer, "because God made us" opens up more questions ("why is there a God?") - as Dawkins says it does - the anthropic principle also opens up more questions. Why are there planets? Well, because of the <insert favoured 'scientific' theory of universe starting here>. For example, there are planets because matter has mass, and after the 'Big Bang' bits of mass accumulated over vast timescales and eventually gained enough mass to become planets, and some of them were in the right zone around planets and had the right minerals to allow life to start. It's a matter of probability. That argument is fine as far as it extends - but it does not extend far enough to answer the ultimate "why?" Why are the laws of the universe such that matter has mass and mass creates gravity? Why is there matter at all? Why was there a 'Big Bang' instead of stability, or a void? Why is there even a void? The anthropic principle also commits a cardinal sin - it is not falsifiable. "We're here because we're thinking about why we're here" (which is what it boils down to) is not a useful viewpoint.

In fact, Dawkins - whilst pointing out that chance is overplayed by critics of natural selection - seems to rely heavily on probability as his mechanism for answering "why?" questions. A basic summary of his arguments is that the chance of finding the universe exactly as it is, is small. Therefore the chance of it having been designed that way is small. In addition, for it to have been the product of design, you need a designer - and the chance of the designer having the power and inclination to create the universe is also remote. Therefore the probability of the universe existing as it does and being designed, is far less than the probability of the universe simply existing.

This argument hinges upon two suppositions: firstly, that probability is an appropriate and accurate method for answering the question of why the universe exists; and secondly, that it would be multiplicative in the way that he implies. Dawkins calls this the "Ultimate 747 argument" (151). The trouble with this argument is that probability doesn't work quite like Dawkins is implying.

Take the computer you are reading this blog post on, for example. There is a very small chance that 'you' (whatever you believe 'you' consist of) would be reading this particular post, written by me, at this particular time. Let alone the small chance that I (whatever 'I' consist of) should have been in a position and have the inclination to write this post. But what are the chances that The God Delusion would spontaneously appear in audio CD form, if there were not creatures around to make them? They are so remote that I won't even try to make an attempt to quantify them. The simple fact that life has evolved has increased dramatically the range of possible outcomes and the chances of any given occurrence. In this part of his book, Dawkins appears to be implying that things are determined probabilistically from the moment of creation. Earlier, he denounced 'chance' (creature survival is subject to chance, and therefore which aspect of natural selection is favoured can be determined by chance, but natural selection itself is not random) but in the "Ultimate 747 argument" and his use of the anthropic principle, Dawkins appears to be arguing for chance. Once the point of improbability is passed (the appearance of life) then life itself will alter probabilities. The probability of you reading this post in this way, decided at the start of Time, would have been very small. However, once life started evolving and natural selection commenced, the chance would have increased with each cell reproduction. Therefore I would contend that Dawkins' use of multiplicative probability is not an appropriate proof for the non-existence of a creator God. Likewise, Dawkins' contention that a created universe would differ fundamentally from an evolved universe is technically true - however, he has no proof that the differences could be observed.


Dawkins on the Evils of Religion

The attacks on religious scripture are made at great length. Dawkins goes to great effort to attack those who translate scriptures literally, but avoids going into great detail about those who take the stories symbolically. I found this disappointing and lacking in imagination - if you want to attack a book written over a thousand years ago on the basis of what passes for modern morality, you're not really setting yourself a hard target. For example, Dawkins mentions the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of his son with characteristic vigour (242).

Firstly, there are more than three monotheistic religions, but of the three to which Dawkins is presumably referring, two are offshoots of the other, therefore it is unsurprising that the foundational myth is shared. Secondly, and more importantly, Dawkins here demonstrates that he himself either wants the Bible to be taken literally (easier to attack?) or has the lack of imagination he so condemns in others in his section on 'Irreducible Complexity'. An example of the way this particular story can be interpreted is made in a science fiction story - Hyperion by Dan Simmons - and it is the focus of a lot of angst for one of the central characters, a Jew who finds himself undergoing a similar situation (he is losing a child during the course of the narrative). Eventually the character 'realises the truth' - the sacrifice of Isaac was not a test of Abraham's worthiness to worship God; it was a test that Abraham set God to see if he was worthy of worship and would spare Abraham's child. The myth is neatly turned on its head and (ignoring the accusation of 'child abuse', a thoughtcrime the definition of which expands with every year) the meaning is changed totally. If a science fiction author can come up with such an interpretation, then a dedicated theologian could probably come up with many more.

Dawkins does not simply restrict himself to claiming that religion is the source of many (by implication of the book, most) of the world's wrongs. He also goes to great lengths to say that it isn't responsible for many, if any, good things. Dawkins terms this the "argument from beauty", but his rebuttal is weak. Firstly, what is to say that, without an organisation as monolithic as the Roman Catholic Church of the Renaissance, there would have been such a concentration of wealth (and such a desire to spend it on something created as an act of homage to the beauty of 'Creation') as was required to build and then decorate the Sistine Chapel? The merchant houses of Italy certainly engaged in extravagant projects and status competitions, but they may have baulked at the spending the Church was able to engage in. Secondly, the one officially godless society I can think of off-hand - the USSR - created buildings I find hideously ugly (even the ones built for status rather than practicality). A journey through Moscow, or the northern outskirts of Saint Petersburg, will reveal an endless succession of hideous buildings - even the ones that were intended as being dramatic. Indeed, the Moscow State University building is the only building that I found even slightly attractive. It's not that Slavs or Russian Orthodox people are lacking artistry - Catherine's Palace, the Hermitage, the Kremlin and some of its contents are all exquisite. But a Communist society which was more than happy to engage in status-wars with its capitalist enemies, spectacularly failed to produce anything particularly artistic. Perhaps I am guilty once again of failing to understand the beauty of concrete (curse you, WAS!)

The worst examples of factual error come from Dawkins' desire to cast religion as the root of all evil in Northern Ireland. He makes much of the fact that Catholicism and Protestantism is the cause of conflict in Northern Ireland ... and he's wrong. As a rule of thumb, splitting the conflict on religious grounds is likely to be true, but it is a correlation and not necessarily a cause. The true terms would be 'Loyalists' (those loyal to the Crown, and who want to remain part of the United Kingdom) and 'Republicans' (those who want Northern Ireland to split from the United Kingdom and merge with the Republic of Ireland). The Protestants in Northern Ireland are descended from staunch Protestant (often Presbyterian or Calvinist) settlers moved from Scotland into northern Ireland after Cromwell's conquest of Ireland, in particular to cities such as Londonderry (a city built with funds given as donations by citizens of London, and referred to as simply 'Derry' by Republicans). The 'natives' of Ireland were Catholic.

One of the fathers of Irish revolution, Theobold Wolfe Tone, was a Protestant. The 'Society of United Irishmen' was a Protestant organisation. In Northern Ireland, Protestants vote for Republican parties such as the SDLP, and Catholics vote for loyalist parties such as the UUP. I've been to Northern Ireland on a conflict resolution trip (guided by Malcolm Sutton) and talked to assorted people from the RUC, the decommissioning body, and the political parties. They see it as a political, and not a religious, divide (although most are frank and open about the religious symptoms of the divide). Republican gunmen have killed Catholics (for example, Robert McCartney) and Loyalist gunmen have killed Protestants. Dawkins writes (or says condescendingly, in the audio version): Ethnic groups are not always based on skin colour, and - although it doesn't seem to occur to Dawkins - white people can be of different ethnicities just as much as black people.

Dawkins states that This statement is wrong. He has taken the risk of moving beyond philosophy and into the realm of facts to make his point, and sadly he has let his desire to vilify religion blind him to the necessities of doing actual research rather than reporting hearsay. There are mixed schools in Northern Ireland. I've visited one, and it was exactly like an English school. Only one of the pupils that I spoke to even acknowledged religious difficulties, although most would talk in terms of Sinn Fein versus the Loyalists. But I'm starting to follow for Dawkins' bad example, here, and substitute anecdotal evidence for real evidence.

There is mention of in-group/out-group psychology as being the root of the cause (256). Dawkins mentions that religion causes segregated education. In the East End of London, there has been much concern that schools are starting to segregate. Not on religious grounds, but on skin colour grounds. Certain schools (presumably due to clustered immigration) now have catchment areas which mean they have almost exclusively black children. You can condemn this, or the attitude that this is necessarily a problem and therefore worth reporting, but in-groups and out-groups are useful. Dawkins happily uses them - the 'educated elites' (see below) are his 'in group'. Evil religious people are his 'out group'. If we managed to eliminate in-groups and out-groups, what would we have? Presumably a society wholly incapable of discriminating between people (and discrimination is a good thing - it's useful to be able to discriminate between, say, a murderer and a person with an unfortunate facial tic) would be either utterly dysfunctional or completely heterogenous. Dawkins favours the latter (again, see below). For the moment, though, I think it suffices to say that trying to get rid of in-group and out-group concepts is futile and almost certainly unlikely to be beneficial. Amusingly, even Dawkins' own fanclub is happy to live the in-group/out-group mentality. The 'Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason' (link) had numerous posts revelling in the death of Jerry Falwell (to the credit of the moderator of those forums, they appear to have been mostly removed, with a couple of exceptions).

Other examples of falsifiable evidence that Dawkins uses are his avowal that the Bush administration bans stem-cell research (294) (actually, it merely suspended government funding for stem-cell research) and that suicide bombing is illogical and religious (303-305). Pape, in Dying To Win: the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism analyses data from suicide bombings and conclude that not only are they inherently logical (and effective) but also that they are motivated almost exclusively by nationalism. Muslim adherents may take to suicide bombing more than anyone else (thanks to the life-after-death paradise idea) but suicide bombers are not exclusively Islamic. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam are the most frequent users of suicide terrorism, and they are an ethnic grouping with a variety of religions. True, some bombers do it so their families receive money from religious organisations or social status, and some do it for purely religious reasons - but that does not mean that the act is not logical in a strictly materialistic and utilitarian way.

Lastly, Dawkins refers to the Phelps family of the United States as an example of the hatred the evangelical right holds for homosexuals (290-291). A little research, perhaps at the Southern Poverty Law Center, would have shown that the Phelps family uses "fag" as a condemnation because it's short, photogenic, and likely to lure the people they want to attack them to do so (self-righteous liberals who want everyone to think/act like they do). The Phelps family actually use "fag" to refer to all manner of sins, not just homosexuality - people who get abortions, people who have sex before marriage, etcetera. The idea is that people will be driven to physical violence upon a Phelps and then sued (Phelps and many of his children are lawyers). It's a business plan. Dawkins' failure to highlight this, and just lump it into a "religious people hate homosexuals! Religion is evil!" point again demonstrates his descent from reason into polemic.

There is the traditional defence of atheism's links to violence - "Stalin didn't kill people because he was an Atheist, he just happened to be one." Communism happened to be the in-group, and non-Communists the out-group. Oh, and Jews. And non-Slavs. The officially godless USSR ethnically cleansed huge numbers of people in terms of forced population movement, let alone executions and people being sent to the gulags. The point, of course, is not that Stalin killed for atheism. He killed despite of it. He killed the out-groups, and there were plenty of them. Likewise, Dawkins ignores the growth of eco-terrorism (ALF and ELF) and the hijacking of science by Environmentalism - a religion that seems to gel well with his moralistic outpourings.


Dawkins in Society

Dawkins goes to some effort to emphasise how atheists are victims of a hostile, unfeeling religion. Like the female, the Jew, the homosexual, and the Muslim, the Atheist (so it seems) is a Victim Of White-Anglo Saxon Protestant Society (WASPs). I cannot help but find myself immediately hostile towards the claim of victimhood - it is made too often, occasionally with very little reason, and it universally condemns the society which makes it possible. Perhaps, as someone who is WAS (I never quite go from WAS to WASP), I have a cultural bias to dislike attacks on the culture in which I have been brought up. However, the predominantly-Protestant and overwhelmingly Christian Western societies seem to receive huge amounts of condemnation for societal ills. Slavery is one example, with slave descendants seeming to want repeated apologies several hundred years after its abolition (but Britain was one of the first countries to outlaw slavery, and the United States fought a bloody and protracted civil war with that as the prime issue, albeit as a tertiary motivation). If the WASP culture was as evil as all these victims would like to make it out, then how come the 'victim card' is used so effectively, and repeatedly, against it? A truly evil civilisation - as one grounded in religion is, Dawkins seems to imply - should be far less vulnerable to victimanipulation. Dawkins himself plays out the role that Western liberal society gives him.

A great deal is made of 'the changing moral zeitgeist'. He links this to Sadly, Dawkins is confusing his much-hated WASP society and liberal democracy with the whole world. However, the inability of the European powers and the United States to push human rights legislation through the United Nations underscores the different values that different cultures place on individual and community rights (for example, the 1993 Bangkok Declaration). Some of those countries have very high standards of education (for example, Japan).

It seems that Dawkins also suggests that parents should be forbidden from giving their children a religious education, because children are not capable of deciding if they want to follow in their parents beliefs. He gives the example of the Amish, where society "sacrifices" children so that it can something interesting to look at (329-331), and cultural diversity. He implies that removing children from the care of religious parents so that they can be properly educated is the best thing to do. He does not seem interested in whether the children of Amish parents are happy or not with their lifestyle, just desperate to ensure that SCIENCE gets to mould their early lives.


Dawkins on the personal level

One thing that I found particularly jarring - perhaps because it is so unusual - is the use of the term 'elite' by Dawkins as an implied complement (4). This word is almost exclusively used as derogatory - at least in the socio-political literature I read.

Even more annoying was this (as Dawkins thanks his wife for reading the book aloud to him during the writing stage): Dawkins' wife played one of the companions in Doctor Who. Her voice throughout the audiobook alternated between self-congratulatory (when talking about scientists) and condescending (when talking about religions people and beliefs). At one point, discussing a creationist, Dawkins writes (and Sarah Ward reads, in the most supercilious voice I have ever heard) Douglas Adams (who introduced Dawkins to his wife, Sarah Ward) gets the book's dedication (at great length, in the audio version), a quote in which he references Dawkins, and several other luvvie references - for example, a reference to Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials (130). Pullman wrote a very complementary comment for the jacket of The God Delusion.

Indeed, Dawkins is more than happy to let his readers know who they can congratulate for goodthink:

However, Dawkins himself seems more than happy to strew anecdotal evidence around. 'Bradford' as a contemporary reference implies a strong link to Islam, with it being densely settled by Muslim immigrants from Pakistan/Kashmir to the point where a number of television and documentary programmes have been made regarding the fact. Likewise, he says that a nurse he knows who works in an old person's home says that religious people are the most afraid of death (357-358). Female Genital Mutilation is an ethno-cultural artefact, not a religious one. There is a movement within Islam to make it explicitly forbidden, and it is not part of Islamic teaching (link). Even the results (reducing sexual pleasure) are open for debate, with assorted and often contradictory findings by anthropologists. In short, much like honour killing, female genital mutilation is a cultural artefact and not a religious one - it crosses religious lines.


Conclusion

I found The God Delusion an interesting and fascinating book to read. The philosophical aspects were challenging, for me at least. But as soon as Dawkins strayed into justifications for his "why religion is evil" the book went from provocative to polemical. His evidence frequently floundered. He spent a lot of time condemning the United States (according to statistics, a country which is growing more religious, but nevertheless which has an outstanding record of promoting human rights) and too little time in condemning religions that seem far more antithetical to his own beliefs (such as Islam). I do not know if this was my own personal bias, an artefact of the translation from book to audio CD, or an actual flaw with his written work.

For example, he condemns the sentencing to death for apostasy in Afghanistan of Abdul Rahman, in 2006 (287), and the Taliban method of executing someone for adultery in 2002 (burial alive, with a wall then pushed onto the guilty). However he then says: Dawkins also mentions Alan Turing:

So, three quarters of a century ago, someone received nine months hard labour. In the middle of the last century, someone else was treated as an ordinary citizen (despite their contributions to a war effort) instead of having special favouritism shown to them, for engaging in what was - at the time - a crime. Why does Dawkins feel the need to bring these up when comparing them to the moral horrors of parts of the modern world? I can only imagine that either he is scared of being labelled a 'racist' for condemning cultures of which he is not a part and the consequences of such or, more likely, that he is so blinded by loathing for the WASP factory that spawned him that he thinks the two comparisons bear merit.

Likewise, religious Christians in the United States and the United Kingdom may have the sheer audacity to send their children to faith schools, but at least they're not blowing up schools for girls like people are in Pakistan and Iraq. Ah well.

I may have considered my opinion swayed on the matter of whether God is worth worshipping, had the rant that followed not filled me with contempt and suspicion for some of Dawkins' scholarly works. This suspicion translated itself to a more hostile reception of his initial, philosophical points.

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I've been reading up on memes lately. And not so lately. I get distracted easily, it seems. I'm currently finishing "Virus of the Mind", a book I would really like to revile. I would like to revile it because it's very 'American' (in this context, I mean - self-promoting, name-dropping, full of "I'm great, me," sentiments). I suppose I should stop using 'American' as a denigratory adjective, given I like the United States. Ho hum.

Anyhow, one of the more interesting points of the book - for me - was that things I would consider 'bad' have strong memes. The inexorable spread of government into more and more aspects of civil society, for example. Constant interference by politicians. Why are they strong memes? Well, the spread of government is strong because it spreads in order to address problems. A government elected to address problems will need to be seen to act on those problems - and government action will have a tendency to involve the spread of government reach and government power. Politicians interfere for the same reason - they constantly listen to people presenting them with problems, they act on these problems in order to be seen as effective, and then they get voted in.

Assuming the above is correct (I'd have to think about it in more detail - obviously, excessive government interference may count as a problem and so get addressed, a la Margaret Thatcher) then I find myself needing to justify some of my own 'beliefs'. If governments act to address problems, and addressing problems is a good thing, then what's the big issue with big government?

The first problem is success. How often go governments actually succeed in fixing problems they attempt to address? It would be quite easy here to throw out lots of cliches about even supposedly-successful governments ("Churchill won the war but lost the Empire," etc). Taking a look at Britain's own government of the past ten years, (New) Labour, we can readily see a number of policies that have backfired.

Spend money on NHS to improve services -> money spent but services not improved -> more money spent trying to introduce administrators to find out why the money wasn't being effective -> doctors see huge amounts of money in the NHS, but none coming to them, and threaten to move overseas if they aren't paid more -> more money spent on people's salaries without increasing NHS capacity. Net result? Huge amounts are spent on the NHS, but standards continue to be lower than they should be (in terms of hospital cleanliness, waiting lists, range of treatments offered, available beds per head of populace).

Spend money on education to improve standards -> government concentrates on higher grades rather than better education (the 'symptom' is created but not the cause) -> lowering of standards to achieve grades -> bad education system -> foreign high-standard universities raising the entrance requirements for applicants with British grades -> business community complains about lack of literacy amongst UK graduates.

But would things have gone better without interference? Grammar schools, where they still exist, tend to produce very high standards of education (ignoring grades, the fact that house prices rise above the average in areas serviced by grammar schools is a good indicator). They accept government funds but are also selective and so get a better standard of pupils. On the one hand, it's said that putting stupid kids in classes with bright kids raises the education potential of the stupid kids. On the other hand, it's also been said to lower the potential of the intelligent kids (due to disruption). Creation of 'set' classes by ability seems to negate the so-called advantage of mixed-potential schools in the first place. Teaching is probably the most stressful job I can think of that the 'average' person might decide to do - I don't know if it used to be that way, but when I was at school the chance of a pupil pulling a knife on a teacher was infinetessimal. So maybe there are social factors to blame for an overall drop in educational standards, rather than the government's education policy ... but much like the NHS, they appear to have spent more energy on formulating targets and plans than on actually trying to raise educational standards.

But before this turns into a political diatribe against one party, laissez-faire governments have also had trouble. Thatcher's government left lots of people below the poverty line: that is less the case these days. Although, again, this could be due to increased efficiency in production of food/luxury goods both at home and abroad. It would be silly to let the Labour government (or any government) claim that it was due to their time in power that 3 out of 4 households have a TV and 1 in 3 have a PC (or whatever the numbers are). That's simply due to the improved economics of tried-and-tested technology.

No, I think the best way of gauging a government's success is not so much intra-country as inter-country. How has Britain compared to other countries in Europe? Well, at one point, Britain was reduced to begging from the IMF (1976). This was, incidentally, the last time we had a Labour government with a bloated spending policy. We've come a long way since then, and for some measures our economy is doing better than ever. But in some ways, it's doing worse ('house prices crash', the bogeyman around the corner) and it's fragile. It has yet to be seen whether (New) Labour will be voted out before they can fuck the economy again. Likewise, it has yet to be seen whether Cameron's BluLabour will do exactly the same. But the fact Cameron is occupying the 'center ground' brings me back to where I started - memes.

Potential environmental problems? Precautionary principle. "We will do something." Activity implies effectiveness. Strong stance implies leadership. Whether global warming is a chimaera, whether it's real but humans have little impact, or whether anthropogenic global warming really is a threat to life as we know it ... it pays (in vote terms) to take a stand. And taking a stand means intrusive policies. Taxing waste, rather than tax-breaking it. Cutting down the availability of cheap flights to those people who need them.

Islamic terrorists? Political parties found a way to address the problem ("it's not all Muslims, just the bad ones!") without discriminating against a religion. This has been a double-edged sword for both the US and the UK. It has allowed them to woo Islamic countries and stay tenuously on the right side of politically-correct, white-guilt Western society ... but at the cost of effectiveness. 'Terror' is a tactic, you can't make war on it. Islamism is the problem - not Muslims, necessarily, but traditional church-is-state Islam - but whilst this is something that governments won't say, it's something that they can't fight. This means they bought short-term popularity with an almost-guarantee of long-term failure. But they did it, perhaps not because they wanted to, but because that's what society's governing memes forced them to do. Anti-discrimination memes, for example.

What does that mean, to have an anti-discrimination meme? Say 'discrimination' and people will tend to think it's bad (I assume, I know my instant reaction is "uhoh, have I discriminated? Am I in trouble?"). But discrimination is the process via which we tell <x> from <y>. Trying to reduce it because there is a certain type of discrimination you don't like (racial discrimination) might well result in an inability to discriminate in other areas. If people insist on telling me what's right and what's wrong, will I lose the ability to discriminate between two moral choices? If I'm not allowed to discriminate against 'black' people, does it follow I have to think they're the same as white people? What if they're not? Am I allowed to culturally discriminate between a Belarussian (thieving Slav) and a Pole (hard-working Slav)? The work ethics in the two countries are different, the people I've met from each country are different, but I have to believe they're the same?

The six Imams on the aeroplane in the United States, who were removed after they were seen praying and talking excitedly in Arabic as the plane prepared to take off, are suing US Airways for removing them. They were reported by other passengers. They're suing for discrimination, and it's true - because of their appearance (towels on heads, big beards, robes) and their actions (talking in a language incomprehensible to other passengers) they were removed. A white Christian group praying loudly and doing some 'Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!' may not have been removed. But is that necessarily bad discrimination? In the climate on the US planes, with Sky Marshals carrying live firearms, you'd have to be pretty stupid or obtuse to think that talking in Arabic and being overtly Islamic on a plane wouldn't disturb other passengers. Worse than suing the airline, the Imams (backed by CAIR) are suing the passengers who reported them. If they win, the lesson will be - "you can't discriminate, even when discriminating may save your life."

I think the death of the 'anti-discrimination' meme is inevitable. Eventually it will be taken advantage of in such a bad way that more votes will be available to politicians who promise to make the 'discrimination' meme viable and legal than those who keep trying to deny it. Likewise, governments will reach the point (like the Callaghan government) where they have to keep spending to get elected, and beggar their countries, resulting in economic crashes and a temporary purge of the 'big spend' meme.

So what's the way out?

"Here, fix this," we said, handing 'John' a plastic hair-clip from a Christmas Cracker. The hair-clip had just been disassembled by someone waiting for their main course. "It says it's made in China." 'John' is a high-ranking military officer in the People's Liberation Army, the largest land-army in the world. In a few years, he'll be a General. Earlier in the year, we were taught to identify personality types. 'John' is a completer-finisher, which means he's doomed to try to achieve perfection. I'm not sure how long he spent trying to re-create the hair-clip, because I was distracted by raucous screeching from an Indian officer of heavy cavalry. "He wants to be your slave," someone said to the long-suffering waitress. "My slaves have to lick my feet," she replied. After that I talk briefly to someone about New Years in Africa. It represents a celebration of survival for them - anyone alive has made it through another year. Not wanting to feel left out of this potential feelgood, I added - "they celebrate New Years a lot in Scotland. To celebrate surviving most of the harsh winter." "Is winter that harsh in the UK?" I am asked. I take a look at my Icelandic and Swiss colleagues. "Not any more," I reply.

The naval officer is drunk. I'd like to blame a single shot of vodka in our hot apple and cinnamon drink, but I don't think he was sober when he got here. We do have an interesting talk about politics and the competition in the job market which is dominated by ex-1 stars. Sadly, my corner position doesn't allow me a lot of freedom. I've got some interesting neighbours, but the Nigerian has already taken umbrage when someone else mocked him for wearing a baseball cap and fleece to table because it was too cold for him. Not wanting to bandwagon - especially onto a wagon that's already been derailed - I find my options limited. It's too loud to talk to people more than a few feet away. The Libyan is clearly wasted, all he's doing is staring at the breasts of the youngest waitress whenever she walks by. Quite soon, she stops coming into the room to serve. Another victory for diplomacy.

The restaurant itself is very quaint, and slightly too small for the number of people. It has wooden beams, steps that lead down to the entrance from the street, and crooked windows. It looks cold outside, and I see an old man wearing shorts walk down the street. I am thankful that I am not old or senile. I have to get a taxi home, so I get a number off the waitress, pay for my drinks, and leave. I want to be heartened by the fact that important people are like me, but with lower alcohol tolerances and less self-control. But I'm not.

"Don't worry," the U.N. Peacekeeper said, "the medicine convoy is on its way."

These simple words of hope were lost on the weeping woman, as she clutched the desicated corpse of her child to her chest. The reason they were lost were because the peacekeeper was speaking Dutch, and the woman could only speak Tongolese.

It's just one of the ironies of life out here in <unimportant backwater area of poverty-stricken country>. The truly tragic thing is, only I can see these ironies and write about them. It's probably because these people are so incredibly ignorant that they cannot appreciate the bitter-sweet tragedy that is their life.

The other day, Ngngngng Omabongobong, the tribal elder, came to our medical dispensing station. With great humility, he refused the Coca-Cola I offered him. After he had done so, it dawned on me why: he was refusing to participate in the evils of Western globalisation. Seeing this valiant stance, I immediately gathered all of the Coca-cola from our aid station's fridges and poured it into the unforgiving grasslands. Take that, capitalists! Amongst these Tongolese I am learning what freedom really is! That's right. Although these people live in dirt and squalor, beset by AIDs and malaria, I can see that their culture celebrates what is truly important: loyalty to one's roots. I can only support them in this fight, as any well-educated son of the West can see the depravity endemic in our own society. With our technology and medicine, we could surely wipe all the problems that beset these primitives from the map! But do we? NO. We are too busy trying to spread our culture through our economic power. The creation of a fat-cat elite caste of Western industrialists now runs the world, and it's disgusting! And the Western governments are too scared to send their militaries out here to try and enforce proper law and order!

Just last week, the tribe we are with - the Donutacar - were attacked by the tribe from the other end of the valley, the No'bo'kon. Luckily, the No'bo'kon know better than to attack an aid station, but nevertheless we were subjected to the unpleasant spectacle of Ngngngng Omabongobong's wife being gang-raped by the No'bo'kon as part of some tribal initiation ceremony. Thank goodness for the fact the Donutacar built our station from stone and we had a metal door and bullet-proof glass added! Of course, I was first out of the door once the raid left trying to heal the poor woman. She'll never be the same again!

Luckily, thanks to the magnaminosity of Bill Gates, I was able to give her a couple of malaria vaccinations. She may be bleeding from the fact that the wall between her urethra and vagina is ripped, but at least she won't get malaria.

Anyway, that's it for now. I've got my copy of the Holy Qur'an ready (enough with the Bible already! It's just an obvious attempt to promote Imperialist Christianity and its crusader's agenda!) and I'm going to go and try show the natives the True Path to Allah's Glory. After all, if I can ditch the Bible, they surely can! I'm going to pay special attention to the rites of cleansing after which sexual intercourse is forbidden for a while. That Mohammad, what a smart man! Islam is the religion of science, and the cleansing rites do their bit to ensure no sex is had at the point when a woman is most likely to give birth to a girl. Smart stuff, they need more men here to go hunting and help build up that extra wing to the aid station we need.

Well, it's that time of the year where I take on way too much work for myself and spend a lot of money on the forums. Ho hum. Having had a lot of trouble with this Blog thing, the very word of which I detest, I think it's time to try it out.

Oh, yea.

/emo

/whine

/goth

I have never forgiven my <relative> for committing <term of abuse/crime> upon <relative/myself> and I will tell the world about this because I think they care.

In other news, <girl's name> is really <complementary adjective> but because I <spend all day blogging/the Universe hates me> I will never talk to her about it.

Yay for first blog.