In this issue: more Alpha, more de-converts copying me, and more liberal Anglicans doing the Devil's work. Yes, it's time to close some more browser tabs before Firefox seizes up completely.

Beta

Chat continues over on my previous posting about Channel 4's documentary on the Alpha course. I found Jon Ronson, the documentary maker, had been on Alpha himself back in 2000 and written about it for the Graun. The link comes via Metafilter, where there's some discussion of the article and of Alpha, into which I've dipped my toe.

I de-converted before it was fashionable

Jamie Frost sounds like he had a experience of Christianity at Oxford which was similar to mine at Cambridge (except, of course, the Cambridge one was just better). He went to St Ebbes, which is the Doctrinal Rectitude Trust church in Oxford, as StAG is in Cambridge. He was, and is, a science student. He also left Christianity, and his tale (of struggling to keep the faith, being buoyed up by emotional sermons and then realising he didn't have reasons to believe) sounds awfully familiar. He writes about it in a meaty essay (I think it's even longer than mine), which is worth a read.

The link to Frost's essay came to me via the indefatigable Steven Carr, who helpfully posted it to the Premier Christian Radio discussion forum.

OK, so I've been watching The Wire

Yeah, so after the Templeton boys got lit up in a drive-by by PZ, I heard it was going down over at the Premier Christian Radio discussion forum, so me an' my boy Carr grabbed our nines and mounted up. I done showed that Richard Morgan (who used to be tight with the Ditchkins crew before he snitched to the Christers) how we do it, then I had interesting discussion on epistemology [You seem to have slipped out of character - Ed], and shit. [Better - Ed]

Bishops Gone Wild

Those crazy Anglicans and their schisms: I can barely keep up these days, so I don't usually bother. One thing caught my eye: Ruth Gledhill reports that Bishop Greg Venables, of the Fellowship of Mainstream True Christians Except If You're Gay, had said of the fight against the godless liberals that "We must remember we are not fighting flesh and blood. This is about principalities and powers."

If you weren't a CU Bible Study group leader, you might not be able to complete that quote. It ends "and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms". Yep, liberal Christians are in league with the devil. John Broadhurst, Bishop of Fulham, allegedly said "I now believe Satan is alive and well and he resides at Church House." As Roy Zimmerman would say, "That was out loud, did you know that?"

Jessel, the Tri-felge Putenard, is the subject of part IV of my Bishops Gone Wild series. This means the bishops of the Catholic Church and the Church of England are now neck and neck after a promising start by the C of E: come on Anglicans, put your backs into it!

Jessel was reported as saying that saving humanity from gayness was as important as saving the rain forests. There's no official English translation of his remarks, but a comment on Ruth Gledhill's blog provides a translation from a papal fan-site (yes, really), and the BBC has translated some extracts.

Various postings here on LJ have been saying the media have got the wrong end of the stick, and that the speech didn't mention gays at all. However, Reuters reports that the term "gender" in Italian is "a broad term that includes anyone who doesn’t identify entirely with their assigned sex and can include homosexuals, bisexuals, pansexuals and others." Anyone out there know some Italian?

The rest of the talk about sex in the speech sounds like the usual natural law stuff. Humanae Vitae gets a mention, so you can read that if you want to see an example of the reasoning here, such as it is.

What with this stuff and all that substance/accidents transubstantiation stuff, the church does seem rather wedded to Aquinas and his scholastic friends (although transubstantiation is also What the Bible Says). I hope for some sort of slow reform, whereby they'd gradually change to using more modern incorrect physics: perhaps there's mileage in the idea that prayers are transmitted via the luminiferous aether because God is the Absolute. Or something. I'm hoping to work phlogiston in there too.

andrewducker says that we shouldn't be surprised when theists say the funniest things. Perhaps not, but inasmuch as the Pope has some influence on people's lives, he deserves the storm he's called up.

or Bishops Gone Wild III (the first two parts being the statement that gays cause floods and Rowan Williams's unexpected advocacy of the ideas of Heinlein).

According to the Torygraph, Patrick O'Donoghue, the Catholic Bishop of Lancaster, has said that educated Catholics have let the side down. It seems influential graduate Catholics in politics and the media have been tainted by the dark side of university education, which he helpfully lists as "radical scepticism, positivism, utilitarianism and relativism" (dialectical materialism's good enough for meeeee).

The Bishop has produced a report aiming to make Catholics "better-equipped to challenge the erroneous thinking of their contemporaries". I'd suggest a series of informational films, starting with Catholics, Know Your Limits, which would be a bit like this classic, but adapted for the problem at hand, so:

VOICEOVER: Look at this wretched unfortunate. He went to university. Hard to believe he's under 25. Yes, over-education leads to ugliness, radical scepticism, positivism, utilitarianism, relativism and people mistakenly thinking they can live happy and productive lives without God. UNFORTUNATE: Feck! Girls! Drink! etc.

Poor old Rowan. In an interview and speech characterised, in a very real sense, by his habitual turgid sesquipedalianism, someone managed to find the statement that Sharia law "is unavoidable" in the UK. If you think my ability to provoke religious flamewars is impressive, you should see the BBC's Have Your Say forums (or, you know, don't), or the Graun's Comment is Free, right now.

Unexpectedly, the same bunch who voted in favour of the religious hatred legislation a few years ago suddenly found something wonderful, and opined that they weren't sure public beheadings were such a good idea (though I'm not sure that position is a vote winner: Daily Mail readers would probably be in favour, as long as it wasn't the Muslims doing the chopping).

All of which is beside the point, really, because ++Rowan (that's "1 more than your current Rowan", geeks) wasn't advocating any of that stuff. After struggling through all 8 pages of his grey prose, I can tell you that Rowan's a sci-fi libertarian of the sort you sometimes get in Ken Macleod's books, or maybe Heinlein's, or Neal Stephenson's. What he wants is for people to be able to voluntarily affiliate with a court system for the resolution of some disputes. In an attempt to preserve his right-on lefty image, Rowan claims he's a little nervous about the unpleasant whiff of the free market about this, but I think we all know he's secretly itching to set up ++Rowan's Greater Anglican Communion franchulates all over the world (er, hang on a minute...), strap on a katana and set out on his motorbike for a showdown with Dawkins.

What's less clear is what he wants for Muslims which isn't already available. In an article about Jewish courts in the UK, the BBC says that "English law states that any third party can be agreed by two sides to arbitrate in a dispute". Does anyone know whether there's anything stopping Muslim courts doing something similar to the Jewish ones?

Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, has let us know that the real reason for the floods in the north. It's the gays.

"We are in serious moral trouble because every type of lifestyle is now regarded as legitimate," he said.

"In the Bible, institutional power is referred to as 'the beast', which sets itself up to control people and their morals. Our government has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want," he said, adding that the introduction of recent pro-gay laws highlighted its determination to undermine marriage.

"The sexual orientation regulations [which give greater rights to gays] are part of a general scene of permissiveness. We are in a situation where we are liable for God's judgment, which is intended to call us to repentance."

The non-sequitur in that second paragraph is breathtaking, isn't it? The reference is to Revelation, chapter 13. Revelation has been favoured by loons since it was written (I particularly like this version, myself). The beast is usually thought to be the power of ancient Rome, possibly Emperor Nero himself, whose burnings of Christians and insistence on worship of deified emperors are clearly just like a secular democracy which is trying to give its citizens equality under the law.

Dow is quoted alongside a couple of other evangelical Bishops saying less insane stuff about global warming, with the vague hint that God is telling us off for being nasty to the planet. They're probably wishing they had chosen to speak out at a time when their episcopal colleague wasn't hell-bent on emptying churches throughout the north. Good luck to Dow in his quest, anyhow.

Hassan Butt appears to be one of those people you don't hear about often enough: a Muslim speaking out publicly against terrorism and calling on Muslims in the UK to reform. His article in The Observer is worth a read, as is the one giving Tony Blair's thoughts on British Islam. Both links come from those Drink Soaked Trots, who I commend to you for sensible commentary if, like me, you're a bit of a leftie.

The original drink-soaked trot, Christopher Hitchens, points out in Slate that God also hates women, or at least, those who are slags.