Rant

Facebook – social networking ‘n all that. I have indulged in its delights for a few months now, and found it to be quite amusing. I am a tad sick of “add 20 friends” and then we will give you xxx. The various applications vary from useful to stupid. The “Owned” application is distinctly odd and I am not totally sure how I feel about being ‘owned’ by anyone other than my wife! It seems harmless so I will leave it to run along. Some people do not seem to work out that there are other things you can do with your time – perhaps I am one of them, but I don’t think I am addicted to it just yet.

Monaco GP was fun – usual carnage, but what do you expect for a wet race run on very small roads in a small town. Wentworth PGA Masters also provided a good amount of entertainment for the weekend.

Tuesday:

Driving round here is a thoroughly un-enjoyable experience. The key points of note are these:

jabberjaws – the elderly driver whose lower jaw hangs slack and is fundamentally incapable of making any decision at a roundabout / traffic light.
40miles an hour – seems to be a fixed speed for a lot of local drivers – no more , and crucially, no less. Highly irritating.
roundabout indecision – this slows the traffic no end. This probably makes me a most hated person at a roundabout. They really should try living somewhere where action needs to be taken or your journey will take forever e.g. the south east of England

Dispatches last week – how apt that it should look at the very real issue of “fundamentalist Christianity”. This is, I firmly believe, every reason why religion is in general decline in the UK. Fundamentalism is, to me, about as attractive as Communism or Fascism. These extremists are not interested in loving others, merely creating a culture of hate and difference. They are no better than the BNP. In fact the BNP is probably more benign. We should be looking to show what we are “for” and stop presenting a negative image which plays directly into the hands of the creeping atheist/rationalist agenda. They (the fundamentalists) simply “love” the weak and vulnerable merely because they are the most open to suggestibility. These fundamentalist extremists are themselves chronically incapable of reasonable thought and are completely unprepared to look at other sides. This is because they will probably find that their views are in fact, at best, misguided and at worst, harmful. There is so much that is good in the message of the gospel that their perversion of it threatens to swamp it. This is not to say that I agree with all the issues with which the fundamentalists disagree. I actually am in concordance with some of their ideals, but find their ideology distasteful.

In fact… They miss a great deal in their rather selective reading. For instance they totally subvert the preaching of the fruits of the spirit. I see none of these in their diatribes: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and SELF CONTROL. They ought to learn some of the latter. Now I would say that I have few of these, if any, but I’d like to think I can move on and move more in that direction. To move towards religious bigotry would take me further away from them. They are not the people of God; they are the false prophets we should all be on the lookout for. We should seek to help them out of their foolish ways. They need it. They are just as much in need as the godless sinner. They are as racist as the person who outwardly declares hatred based on the colour of a persons skin or their different religious conviction.

As I said above I do not disagree with all they say. They have some useful points. They are worried about the creep towards Islam in the UK. I also think we could be sleepwalking our way to an Islamic society in the UK. However in some ways this could be better than the society we currently have. Islamic cultures in other parts of the world generally have very ordered societies. Take the UAE for example. We might stand a chance of bringing order to the chaos in which we already find ourselves. We have been a nominally Christian society for so long and a fat lot of good it has done us. Perhaps actually standing firm for some principles as a nation would do us all some good.

We must ask the question “Are the Christian fundamentalists any less dangerous than the Islamic ones”. I think the answer is “no”, but for different reasons. What are these fundamentalists scared of? Perhaps they are scared that they would not be able to freely peddle their rather nasty form of rhetoric – point one in favour of change I think. Perhaps they are scared they may be “persecuted” – point two in favour of change. Perhaps they are scared that the whole nation would turn away from Christianity and look towards Mecca – If these guys believe this, then they don’t even understand what they are doing now.

We are so nominal as a Christian nation, that I severely doubt anyone’s ability to turn this nation Islamic or Christian. Witness the debacle over the Human fertilisation and embryology bill – Frankenstein science at its worst given a free reign – truly jolly frightening. If you can’t stop that, you can’t stop anything. Apathy rules OK.

We are more likely to end up like Turkey – in a state of religious and political deadlock. Perhaps this may lead to the realisation that the populace should actually engage in the political situation. If all else fails the Daily Mail will spout some crap and we will all be OK in the end. Long live mediocrity.

Perhaps if we became Islamic we could stop putting ourselves through the annual horror that is the Eurovision song contest. We had a perfectly good song, but it has become increasingly apparent that voting is not about the song, and is actually about the political bias. Ridiculous.

We could also break our “special relationship” with the USA. What is so special about the USA? We are obsessed with McDonalds and Disney. It is sick making. The might of the Christian right in the USA is what is driving this world toward destruction – dangerous. The fundamentalists of the UK seek their inspiration, not from God but from a bunch of nuts in the deep south of the USA. Everyone who thinks the USA is a voice of reason in a terror based world, ought to read the interchange of letters between George Bush and President Ahmedinejad of Iran. The Iranian guy wins hands down for intelligence. The one who comes out looking dodgy is Bush.

Got to stop – I think I have got it off my chest now.