The Scottish Atheist

I saw that someone died in a house fire last night – and then realised that I knew him.

Denis McKenna – I worked with him in my first real IT job, at the Blood Transfusion Service based in Law Hospital. Denis was one of the developers there – and had a wicked sense of humour.

He suffered from  a degenerative condition which meant that he used a wheelchair and only worked three days a week (much to the annoyance of the management!). It looks very much like he was trapped in the house, and couldn’t get out.

in coding we often have to make little variables for general purposes – looping through some records, or just keeping a count of something. We used to code in Clipper S87 – a language designed for working with dbase databases, and there were a huge number of reserved words (that you can’t use for variable names, because the system handles them in a special way), which included “count”.

We usually abbreviated it to “cnt” – not Denis. He always abbreviated it to “cunt” – again, much to the annoyance of the management.

he was a real character – and the world is a slightly less interesting place today because he’s no longer here.

I was at a friend’s birthday party at the weekend, and as I intended to enjoy some VERY nice Whisky, we called a taxi for the journey home.

The taxi driver was quite chatty, talking about going for a walk during the day – we made polite chit chat, despite being quite pleasantly gassed… until it took a rather unpleasant turn.

We discussed being up north at the top of Scotland – Dunnet Head, one of the most beautiful parts of the country. He asked if we had ever seen the Northern Lights (I have – it’s a wonderful thing). Then he asked “Have you seen a shooting star?”.

One of our late night expeditions last year was to go and watch the Leonid shower in November – not the best year, but we saw a few… I answered yes, with a sudden sense of where this was going.

Sure enough, he asked “do you know what that is?”.

My hackles went up… and so would anyone else who has ever “debated” with this strange breed of Muslim who considers themselves a “scholar” whilst really doing little more than regurgitating the same old nonsense. Jen asked him “well that depends – most of them are just bits of rock or old space hardware burning up.”

“no, those are demons trying to enter our atmosphere and being hit with a rock”.

It only went downhill from there. He asserted that the quran was flawless and everything in it had been scientifically proven (I insisted that this was absolutely not the case).

He then launched off on another wackjob explanation – again involving “djinns” – before I really had heard too much. I came up with the argument which got him to shut up – which I was quite pleased with considering how much fine Islay malt I had consumed…

Those explanations are obviously just the people of the first and second century trying to explain the world around them in a way that made sense to them. Now that we have tools like science to examine the world, we don’t need books of old myths any more.

He didn’t speak again until we made it home…

Great to see on the BBC News that a new law will open mediums, healers and psychics up to prosecution if they cannot justify their claims.

naturally, they are somewhat upset… why? because they KNOW that it’s a pile of nonsense.

about blooming time!!

One of the key differences between Atheists and Christians is that christians have a ready made support network that they see regularly. I actually think that in a lot of cases, that’s really the sole reason for some people to go to church.

Being an Atheist trying to make a difference can be a fairly lonely pursuit – and that’s here in Scotland, a country where there are a lot of us! We live in an incredibly free environment where Atheism is, if not actually promoted, certainly accepted. Our lot appears to be better than our colleagues in the United States, for instance.

That’s always one of my key reasons for doing this – for being involved in things like godless heathens and so on. I feel a bit of responsibility that I should give something back to the Atheist and Secular community.

It’s kinda cool then, to get a reminder of just how many of us there are – to realise that Atheists are not in any way a small group. The best one I have seen in a long time is the Atheist Blogroll

There are now in excess of 650 blogs listed there, and I have spent a couple of happy hours trawling through just a handful. I’m quite happy that my own little efforts are now included.

Together, we Atheists are strong!

or, to put it another way, how can someone get the situation absolutely correct, and yet miss the point completely?

Blair says Politicians sidestep questions on God because…

And what do you know – he’s right on every point.

Normal people don’t talk to voices in their head, or look for fantastical explanations for everything. When I see some murderer on the news, I don’t think “wow, the devil must have made him do that”.  People like Blair who see god in everything ARE weird, and it’s questionable whether someone who suffers such delusions should be in charge of, oh, nuclear weapons for instance?

There is, indeed, an assumption that these people engage in a cultish interaction with their religion before taking a decision. Otherwise what was all that business about demanding a “free” vote over the Human Fertilisation and Embryo bill for catholic MPs? It was precisely to allow them to have a “cultish” interaction with their religion, so that they could be told how to vote by a priest, rather than the labour whip.

Third, they DO want to impose their religion on others. That’s why Blair allowed people like Vardy to get control of Academy schools for a paltry donation, and push their own religious doctrines. If they didn’t want to impose their religion on others, why do the MPs with “faith” insist that I have to suffer a painful death rather than opting to end my own life with dignity? Why does their religion mean that I cannot choose the health care options that I wish to use?

And of course, the religious DO believe that they are better than everyone else!! witness Hypocrite Cardinal O’Brien, lecturing scientists about basic morality (this from an organisation which presided over the sexual abuse of children, and covered it up). These people believe that their belief in the supernatural gives them a straight line to the moral high ground, when frankly nothing could be farther from the truth.

Finally, and most troubling of all… Blair says that the religious politician can “somehow messianically trying to co-opt God to bestow a divine legitimacy on your politics”.

And of course, Tony, when you prayed with George W Bush for guidance before launching an illegal and ill conceived invasion of Iraq, then tried to justify this on UK television by indicating that you answer to God, not the people, that’s now what you were doing, was it?

Bloody Hypocrite.

Ironically, in trying to rally support for the cause, Blair shows us in the clearest possible terms precisely why we do NOT need more faith in public life.