Brights News Feed

Amid heightened, “critical” level terror alerts across the UK, the Daily Mail (which the Brights News Feed does not necessarily condone as a good source of objective news) today carries an article (“I was a fanatic, I know their thinking”) with a self-proclaimed “former extremist recruiter”, Hassan Butt.

I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this “Blair’s bombs” line did our propaganda work for us.

More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

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Philosopher A. C. Grayling famously believes that the current upsurge in religious news coverage, protest, and renewed political assertion, is a symptom of decline: religion is in its “death throes”.

This week he twisted the knife, exploring the responses to the recent wave of successful secularist publishing (”Tome truths“). Basically, he makes a fairly convincing case that the backlash of protest doth protest too loudly.

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Peter Hitchens today “reviewed” (Hitchens vs Hitchens) his brother Christopher Hitchen’s new book, God is Not Great, which is currently riding high on the secularist publishing wave.

The “review” barely focuses on the book, which he “enjoyed” and recommends “to anybody who is interested in the subject. Like everything Christopher writes, it is often elegant, frequently witty and never stupid or boring.” Despite this, “I also think it is wrong”.

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Richard Dawkins, Enthusiastic Bright, author of The God Delusion and now of Richard Dawkins Foundation fame has a guest contributor spot in the Times of London today.

Objectively judged, the language of The God Delusion is less shrill than we regularly hear from political commentators or from theatre, art, book or restaurant critics. The illusion of intemperance flows from the unspoken convention that faith is uniquely privileged: off limits to attack. In a criticism of religion, even clarity ceases to be a virtue and begins to sound like aggressive hostility.

More here: “How dare you call me a fundamentalist“

A local constituency of Brights in North County, California, made the local newspapers last week, with a fairly long article discussing their group, the movement as a whole, and issues affecting Brights. The story is at North County Times (via the Brights Net Forum). As the Forum Administrator Maike said, “I should add that I think this is the type of newspaper article that there need to be more of - in the US and elsewhere. Great job, Dwain and co-members!”

Like many Brights Local Constituencies, the San Diego North County Brights’ group can be found at brights.meetup.com.

The Telegraph (London UK) reports today on Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’s new book, Tokens of Trust. The leader of the Anglican Communion apparently gives much credence to the place of angels within the Anglican Creed. He says angels “can be at least a powerful symbol for all those dimensions of the universe about which we have no real idea”, which nearly implies that the holy beings may only be symbolic and not literal angels. But the book is also quoted as reciting that, “a human form appears to give a message from God and something in the event tells the people involved that this is a moment of terror and truth, and they recognise that they have met an angel in disguise”, which may imply a more literal understanding of the winged creatures.

The commentator for the Telegraph, Christopher Howse, apparently agrees with the Archbishop about the veracity of angels, even warning against dismissing their existence out of hand:

Belief in angels is far more respectable [than belief in Muslim djinn’s or related creatures of folklore]. Why should there not be pure intellects, with no admixture of matter, who are located wherever they act, are of immense intelligence and power, and vary greatly from individual to individual? They remain servants of God.

In the 17th century the danger was to attempt to use angels for magical purposes; the contrary danger in our own day is to assert the impossibility of their existence, as if we were the only creatures in the universe that counted.

A few weeks ago, when Anglican archbishops backed Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor over the issue of Catholic adoption agencies, I wrote in jest: “The Anglican leadership temporarily un-schismed with the Catholic Church, last night…” Now it seems the idea is actually not so far from the truth.

Yesterday The Times (UK) broke the story that — in response to the teetering fragility of the Anglican Communion over the issue of gay clergy and women bishops — the Church really is considering how a reunion with Papal authority might be established (”Churches back plan to unite with the Pope“).

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A budding editor at Clare College, Cambridge (UK) has faced harsh disciplinary action over re-publishing a Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoon in his college newspaper, Clareification. The cartoon was used to illustrate a special issue on religious satire. The National Secular Society respond:

We are shocked that the staff and even the students union at this supposedly liberal college have joined the attack on this student because he had the temerity to poke fun at religion. Free expression is such a precious commodity and is under such ferocious attack at present from religious interests that it is disgraceful that no-one is standing up for this young man’s right to be rude about religion – even about Islam.

(Also see MediaWatchWatch.) GagWatch also points out that from France there is some:

good news. The state prosecutor has called for the dismissal of the court case brought by two French Muslim groups against satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, saying that the cartoons denounce terrorists’ use of the Muslim faith but do not damage Islam. A verdict was expected March 15.

Stonehenge has long been a symbol of anything. To some it is a work of secular awe, a scientific instrument for connecting to the calendar of the cosmos. For others it is a work of pagan veneration, born of a religious impulse for a mystic beyond. For yet others it is some big stones that don’t even have a roof.

Now, achaeologists have announced the discovery and excavation of a village, of possibly many dozens of houses, a short distance from the site. The settlement dates from the time of stonehenge’s construction, around 4,600 years ago. The interpretation of this new finding parallels the symbolic ambiguity of the monument itself, this time with the divide falling along national borders.

For the British, the BBC reports the discovery of “Stonehenge builders’ houses“. For the Americans, the LA Times reports the unearthing of a “religious complex“. And for the Australians, The Australian reports the discovery of a “party village“.

The Sunday Times (UK) this morning, cited “several Israeli military sources” as revealing that Israel has been training two airforce squadrons for specific nuclear missions. (Sunday Times: “Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran“.) The missions would target three out of four “critical” Iranian sites south of Tehran, all associated with the country’s nuclear program; in Natanz, near Isfahan, and at Arak. In the first attack:

conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

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