Humanism, atheism and other freedoms

Mike Huckabee’s failed bid for the Republican nomination might seem to consign him to the list of also-rans. Yet the fact that he was ever in the running has profound and dark implications for America’s future.

[photopress:huckabee.jpg,full,alignright]At the time of writing, Mike Huckabee’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination looks all but over. Many will breathe a sigh of relief, but that may be premature. The significance of Huckabee’s run for the most powerful job in the world is not that he lost, but that he was taken seriously. That should be a matter of deep concern to anyone who truly values freedom.

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In Japan, interest in Buddhism is waning so fast that not even bar-crawling monks can spark a revival. As with many other religions, people like the ceremony, but aren’t so fussed about the supernatural nonsense that goes with it.

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Who’d have thought Bill Maher would have had such a negative view of the Republican party’s religious nutjobs. Certainly opened my eyes.

The UK’s blasphemy laws are an embarrassing anachronism. It’s time to get rid of them and an amendment to a bill going through Parliament might just achieve that.

If you’re a British voter, go to this site maintained by the British Humanist Association to find out how to contact your MP and make your views known. Time is short, so act now!

Humanity, law and democracy are poor protection against religiously inspired murder. But they are the only means available to us that offer some measure of safety while allowing us to call ourselves civilised.

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London’s Metropolitan Police may soon be operating from large, fortress-style bases to which the public will have no access.
While community support officers may be based in local shop-type premises, where the rest of us will be allowed to enter, the bulk for the Met’s forces will be housed in centralised ‘warehouses’, firmly closed to the public but possibly including jail cells.

This is a dangerous move. Police forces, and the Met in particular, are vulnerable to a kind of elitist, isolationist mindset that can become a sort of siege mentality at times.

Within the force, those officers engaged in community work are often seen as ‘soft’, or not doing ‘real’ policing. The Met is riddled with an atavistic, macho self-image that sees real policing involving hard men doing tough things. And this leads to the other form of isolationism – the habit of police officers to see the world divided into ‘us’ and ‘them’.

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Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee might just be the perfect candidate. With a preference for myth over truth and a willingness to publicly parade his ignorance, he’ll fit right in at the White House.

Standing before a crowd in the small town of Newton, Iowa, Huckabee summed up his election hopes with a familiar quip. “It’s scientifically impossible for the bumblebee to fly,” he said. “But the bumblebee, being unaware of these scientific facts, flies anyway.”

It was the perfect statement for Huckabee, an evangelical christian who is not shy about his dismissal of evolution and his desire to see creationism (in the dishonest disguise of ‘intelligent design’) taught in schools.

It was perfect because it so ably demonstrates Huckabee’s own qualities. For a start, it’s a lie.

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The possibility that the publisher of Richard Dawkin’s ‘The God Delusion’ may be prosecuted in Turkey shows just how religious belief prevents some countries from leaving the dark ages behind.

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Naomi Wolf’s prescient warning…

The police state creeps up on us, step by stealthy step. Every law, every restriction, is invoked for our safety and convenience. But a totalitarian state feeds on laws, twisting them to its own ends.

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