The Chant of the Barbie Dolls

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/14/sex-death-poisoned-heart-religion

In general, Polly Toynbee and I can't find much to agree on, but in her role as head of the British Humanist society, we are on safe mutually compatible ground.

Take this article for example, which has a number of excellent points:

"All atheists now tend to be called "militant", yet we seek to silence none, to burn no books, to stop no masses or Friday prayers, impose no laws, asking only free choice over sex and death"(I would add education to that as well)
"Women's bodies are the common battleground, symbols of all religions' authority and identity. Cover them up with veil or burka, keep them from the altar, shave their heads, give them ritual baths, church them, make them walk a step behind, subject them to men's authority, keep priests celibately free of women, unclean and unworthy. Eve is the cause of all temptation in Abrahamic faiths. Only by suppressing women can priests and imams hold down the power of sex, the flesh and the devil"
"Wherever male cultural leaders hold absolute and unscrutinised power, women and children will be abused. In western secular life this has at last been recognised: in schools, prisons, care homes and within families, wherever the powerless are unseen and unheard, horrors will happen without checks and transparency. Abusers gravitate towards closed organisations, and absolute power turns people into abusers"

All good points and true. Most of the reader comments on the article are pretty much in agreement, which is an astonishing thing with the Guardian, where trolls seem to abound......but there's always this canard (it's barely even that), that always surfaces:

"Funny isn't it, that Polly pontificates from on high, the High Priestess of her own little cult..."

I've been struggling for some time with this type of "argument", both to understand it, and to formulate some sort of response. 

I find it difficult to respond to this because it isn't even an argument - when asked Chomsky says the same of the question "do you support the troops" - I mean what does that mean, it's like asking do you support the people of Berkshire - it's quite a difficult thing to make sense of. 

"Atheism is it's own religion/cult, Dawkins, Toynbee, Dennett they are the high priests of their own cult, with followers blindly believing every word and hanging on every utterance". Is that the implication (imprecation)?

I mean: that doesn't constitute a proper argumentative statement of defence or attack on any proposition does it? If that depiction ("cult/high priests/blind followers") is supposed to belittle the idea or invalidate the arguments of atheism by characterising it as what RELIGION IS, then that invalidates all religions as consisting of equally blind followers, and therefore not to be taken seriously, or useless somehow, doesn't it?

If on the other hand that depiction is supposed invalidate the essential argument of what atheism is, then it's a complete and utter failure too, because it doesn't at all address any of the arguments for atheism, it's merely an ad hoc attack on those who espouse the idea - it must be a stupid idea because it's followers are stupid, somehow. Or perhaps the idea is that atheism seeks to rid the world of religion, yet in doing so seeks to replace religion with religion by another name, and therefore is self-defeating? Or is it - even people that profess not to believe in a god end up opting for blind faith, hence it must be a good idea, so let's just stick to good old timey religion in the first place?

Sorry, I know this is unutterably tedious. Am I missing something - this progresses nothing, it helps nothing, it means nothing.

I mean who is making this argument, and from what point of view? Certainly atheists are unlikely to make this kind of argument.

Anyone that believes in fairy stories or religion SHOULDN'T make this argument, as detailed above - in most cases it weakens their position even more.

Is it supposed to be a wry twinkle in the eye, agnostic (as opposed to religious, as if there were such a thing) witticism, along the "a plague on both your houses" lines? Or, is it supposed to mean: "inevitably, you atheists, in attempting to decry and invalidate and attack religion, you end up replacing it with a 'religion' of your own, which you call atheism - ahaha?" There's no rationality to this point. Clearly atheism isn't religion - it's the antithesis. This is possibly the only point of view form which this might make sense - agnosticism. Unfortunately for the agnostic the contention that we can't know one way or another if supernatural beings exist also applies to the flying spaghetti monster (blessed be his meatballs) and the invisible green mushroom people living at the bottom of my garden that have revealed themselves only to me and through me to the rest of the world. At which point we come to realise we CAN know something, pretty much, about the world after all, although it is always a good idea to keep an open mind when new evidence arises, and we can tidily discard agnosticism to the litter bin of ideas from whence it should never have been rummaged.

I mean: is the idea that atheism is a religion and people like Dawkins have "cult followings" supposed to be paradoxical? Is that it? Calling atheists "cult followers" of e.g. Dawkins is clearly just a dysphemism for "people who agree with your point of view". It's an attempt to dismiss the fact that Dawkins isn't the only atheist in the world, an attempt to imply that the only people that agree with him are hapless blind idiots who just believe what he says because he's the one saying it! Sound familiar church-goers?

In fact, after Christianity, "no religion" is the highest single grouping in the last UK Census (Christians 70% allegedly, non believers 15% - the next largest is something like Muslims around 2-3%). 

Are people who happen to think the same way as Dawkins, Dennett et al, or have the same or just vaguely similar views about religion and the probable non-existence of god, are they all supposed to NOT believe in supernatural deities in their own unique individual way, like it was some kind of personalised non-belief in something that doesn't exist?

The other thing I struggle with is this ad hominem attack - "Dawkins is very arrogant". It dumbfounds me - who cares? Why does anyone care? Maybe he's a nice guy, maybe he's a petty tyrant, I don't know and I don't care - it's got nothing to do with the quality of his arguments, which are pretty much impeccable as far as I can see. I certainly haven't seen it in all the stuff I've ever read or viewed, or when I've seen him speak in person, and yet it's constantly bleated by anyone and everyone and yet no one can give me an example of it (and few can even supply the dictionary definition of arrogant either). 

So what? Even if he is the most arrogant person alive: he's not beating down your door - you don't have to listen to him, and it says nothing about his arguments. If you want to understand his point of view, without listening to how presumptuous, overbearing, over confident in his abilities he is, to you personally, for some reason, there are plenty of other prominent and even not so prominent people you can listen to or read with similar views and arguments, that maybe, poor baby, awwwww, tickums, that you can listen to dat wont huwt your iddy biddy feewings or make you feew siwwy.......

I mean you can even go to a priest, imam or rabbi and THEY can tell you what the atheist arguments are if you like, probably.......Or is it that inherently people know they are so insecure in their "belief systems" that any questioning or arguments against them, because they are so weak, will destroy them, so by definition, the atheist is arguing from a position of strength, which must therefore be interpreted as a personal affront, as arrogance, and therefore invalid, otherwise the whole house of cards comes tumbling down?

Look at this: this is the sad reality of the world. If you trade in glib, meaningless propaganda, you can get away with making ludicrous, utterly meaningless statements that nobody even thinks about. If you want to make a rational argument, you have to spend time deconstructing it, analysing it, and building up some sort of logical framework against what are essentially illogical non-sequiteurs. Proj John Abrahams has shown how laborious a task it can be to prove and debunk even the most egregious of lies of a known charlatan like Chris (aka Lord) Monckton. Unfortunately it seems that it's precisely the likes of the latter that are given the lion's share of the mainstream print and airwaves.

Even plain refuting this kind of nonsense about "militant" atheism, or "cult atheist followers" takes more time than anyone would ever be given in a TV studio to explain, never mind actually constructing a decent logical framework or basis for discussion and argument.

On a wet windy november morning, when normally I'd be hauling my ass up Crouch Hill on my bike, I ended up public-transporting it to work.

There were massive queues for the bus to Finsbury Park, so I decided to walk to Haringey mainline railway station (there's my first big mistake right there). However crowded the bus stop or the busses might have been, at least they are regular, and eventually the crowd dissipates. Two trains came without so much as room to stuff a small rolled up plastic bag into. Some woman started losing the rag with all the people on the train - she was screaming at people standing to move down the train. To be fair, people not moving down is a pet hate of mine too - right alongside New York taxi drivers that habitually lean on their car horns for very little purpose, reason or effect. If you've ever wondered why people "go postal" in the US so often, it's the leaning on the horns. Oh yeah.

No one was moving down of course, but to be fair, it wouldn't have made a lot of difference. She left in disgust. I thought it was quite amusing - like seeing someone trying to beat back the tide. I left the train station in pursuit of "alternative means of reaching my destination" in a damp, if wistfully philosophical mood, which is about as good as anyone can ask for on a day like that.

I let the 2 trains go like that then decided to walk to Manor House at about 08:30, so I got drenched in the walk up to it past Finsbury Park....

In the train station there was a repeating announcement: "The 08:02 to Moorgate is delayed because of adverse weather conditions". It was raining. Since when is "rain" adverse weather?

They seem to like playing a little game. At 08:10 they said "The 08:02 will be approximately 15 minutes late". Then at 08:17 an automated announcement said "The 08:02 will be approximately 18 minutes late". Then at 08:20 is said "The 08:02 will be approximately 20 minutes late". I thought maybe there was some mathematical significance to the asymptotic nature of the estimated times of arrival of the train. I began to feel quite excited by the impending proximity of the 08:02, driven, apparently, by Zeno of ancient Grecian paradox fame.

I went to the ticket office to see if I could get my oyster card unresolved journey, un-unresolved. A guy in the queue ahead of me asked the guy at the counter, "Is there some problem with the trains?".

"Yeah", I said, "40 yeas of chronic under funding and systemic withholding of infrastructure investment".

To top it all off, I'm sitting at work in my runners - I forgot to bring my shoes. That's what happens when you mess with your routine.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ghost-estates-and-broken-lives-the-human-cost-of-the-irish-crash-2136104.html