Is religion the main cause of war?

Atheism, Evil / September 24, 2016 / by The Bigot

If you’ve ever visited an atheist website or read any of the best-selling pop atheist books of the last decade or so, you’ll have come across the assertion that “religion is the main cause of war”. In fact, this hymn is sung so often, and with such gusto, that people now accept it as fact. But does it stand up to scrutiny?

If you press an atheist on why they believe this, they’ll usually say the Crusades, the Inquisition, and 9/11. It’s true that religion was a motivator in those events, but are they enough to support the claim that religion is the main cause of war?

Poisoning the well

The first point to address is that the statement “religion is the main cause of war” lacks the distinctions needed to be a meaningful point. It’s like blaming every musician for Mumford and Sons. It poisons the well. Sure, some musicians make awful hipster music, but that’s not true for all musicians. The reasoning doesn’t follow. The irony being, of course, that those who use this argument are the ones who claim to have reason on their side.

Furthermore, saying “religion is the main cause of war” – even if true – is not adequate to disprove any one religious claim. Scientology could be the cause of every single war in history, but that does not make its claims false; ideas need to be challenged on their own merits. Such statements tell you nothing about the truths and falsehoods of a particular religious claim, like Jesus being the messiah or the existence of God. Alas, this doesn’t stop people from being persuaded by them.

The second – and most important – point is that it’s simply not true. Not even close. It’s a quantifiable and demonstrable fact that religion is not the main cause of war. Anyone who claims otherwise does not know history. The Crusades were a holy war – a Christian response to Muslim persecution in the Middle East – as were the Inquisition and 9/11. However, the numbers killed in these examples are infinitesimally small compared to the death and destruction achieved by secular warfare. That’s not to condone those religious conflicts, but remember the charge here: religion is the main cause of war.

What are the facts?

Anyone interested in actual facts should get acquainted with the three-volume peer-reviewed book “Encyclopedia of Wars”. It’s a seminal work that documents over five thousand years of warfare, totalling 1763 wars. Of these, only 123 are deemed to have a religious cause, which is about 7% (3% if you subtract Islam). A second scholarly source, the “Encyclopedia of War“ (not to be confused with the Encyclopedia of Wars), confirms this by putting the total at 6%. Thirdly, this report from 2014 found that “Corruption, economic inequality and political instability have a greater impact on countries’ likelihood of conflict than religious differences.”

World War One and Two, for example, both responsible for a staggering amount of deaths, had no religious animus. (Atheists often claim that Hitler was a Catholic, but he was scathing of Christianity in his private writings. Christianity to Hitler was one of the great “scourges” of history. And even if he was a Catholic, it doesn’t matter because his motivations were non-religious.)

Then there’s the invasion of South Korea by North Korea. Was that religious? Nope. What about Vietnam? Nope. There have since been wars in the Middle East, but you’d be hard-pressed to say they were caused solely by religion. If religion was to disappear overnight, the land and oil claims wouldn’t just go away. So certainly from the first World War up until Vietnam – the timeframe that saw the vast majority of deaths (millions upon millions), none of the wars were religious in nature or cause.

The unholy trinity

But it gets worse for atheists.

Three of the worst mass murderers from recent history, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, between them responsible for 100million plus deaths, did not adhere to any religion. They were communists, materialists, and avowed atheists. To put that into perspective, the 3,000 people killed during the entirety of the Inquisition is about the same number killed by Stalin on an average Tuesday afternoon. Again, I’m not exonerating the Inquisition; I’m just putting the facts on the table.

That doesn’t mean every atheist will murder millions, but it does mean that ideas have consequences. If you’re a materialist who runs the biggest government around, there is none greater than you. If there is no cosmic bench to stand before and give an account, you can do whatever you want. To be clear, atheism doesn’t dictate this behaviour, but it certainly allows it.

Without a doubt, religion can cause war, but it’s far from the main cause. In fact, a cursory look through human history shows that the countries that tried to drive out religion with state-sponsored atheism were the ones that produced, by far, the most death and misery. The next time you hear a sceptic say “religion is the main cause of war,” tell them they’re not being sceptical enough.

No, Joe Lindsay, disagreeing with homosexuality doesn’t make you a homophobe

LGBTQIA / August 4, 2016 / by The Bigot

I stumbled across this article-cum-sermon by the BBC’s Joe Lindsay, confirming what I have suspected for a few years: the “live and let live” approach promoted by the gay lobby and its allies is a sham. What they really want, as evidenced in Lindsay’s article, is complete agreement and obedience, or you’re an enemy. All right then, enemy it is.

His article starts benignly enough – encouraging people to be fabulous and to support Gay Pride – before he throws a wobbler and starts calling everyone who disagrees with him a hate-filled homophobe.

Ah, the reasoned voice of tolerance and acceptance.

And there’s no shortage of people like Joe Lindsay calling for tolerance and diversity. They present themselves as white knights of inclusivity and equality until, that is, you disagree with them. When that happens, you’re branded a narrow-minded Bible-basher, the hideous ideological love child of Fred Phelps and Mel Gibson. Or, as Mr Lindsay poignantly puts it: the “monumentally stupid and boring”. Indeed.

I’ve never understood the mind of the homophobe, I really don’t get it. I’ve had a few (thankfully a few) conversations with people whom you would describe as homophobes over the years, but I’ve walked away none the wiser after it.

One thing I have gleaned from it though, is that homophobia attracts the monumentally stupid and boring.

Lindsay never bothers to define what exactly he means by “homophobe,” so we can only assume he means anyone who deviates ever so slightly from the established leftist orthodoxy on gay sex. And so, in lieu of anything resembling a principled argument in favour of his position, he simply calls his opponents names.

Of course, there are many valid reasons why someone might object to, or at least be concerned about, homosexuality. Like, for instance, the gay scene’s rampant drug use, promiscuity, the sky-high risk of catching a disease, or the disproportionally high levels of violence amongst lesbians. But people like Lindsay aren’t interested in hearing those arguments, because HOMOPHOBE!

Personally, I don’t care what people do with their winkies and doots, it’s none of my business, nor is it anyone else’s, but showing support for the LGBT community is everyone’s business. Consider it a duty.

Again, he’s light on explanation here, but I’m guessing, like most people living in a civilised part of the world, he does care what people do with their winkies and doots. Even the most liberal governments care about what people do with their genitalia. Even the staunchly gay-affirming Green Party care – and they’re up for all sorts of stuff.

Also, if it’s nobody’s business what people do with their landing gear, why parade around the streets dancing and gyrating up and down poles to the sensual beats of George Michael in a bid to tell the whole world exactly what you do with your winkies and doots?

The God-fearers fail to note that, assuming the Invisible Sky Wizard exists, he/she made all of us.

Yes, he really did use the term “Invisible Sky Wizard”. It’s almost like he suddenly forgot he was writing for a professional news outlet, and instead thought he was posting on the GCSE philosophy section of an atheist youth forum. He couldn’t even muster the charity to use the word ‘God’ – even in the abstract sense – because this isn’t just a screed against people who disagree with homosexuality, but against anyone who believes in God. That veil of tolerance didn’t take long to fall off now, did it?

But he’s correct on one thing: God did make all of us, even people who do things He disapproves of (including me). But this line of argument begs the question: what about those who enjoy the types of sex Joe Lindsay disagrees with? Would it satisfy him to say that their behaviour is OK because God made them? No, of course not. It’s funny how quickly these pro-homosexual arguments dissolve when the object of desire is something they disagree with. The hate-filled incestophobes.

Hate doesn’t do that. Hate brings misery and violence and pain, all the things we don’t need. It drives us apart and keeps us apart.

The world doesn’t really work in opposites but in the case of love, it brings the opposite.

And love is even easier, but greater, than hate.

Preach it, brother! Another feature of the gay agenda is its overly simplistic, fortune cookie-understanding of love and hate. When they say “love,” they mean “whatever feels good”. When they say “hate,” they mean “whatever I disagree with”. In actual fact, they have little idea what either truly means.

The lifespan of the average gay man is about twenty years shorter than the lifespan of the average heterosexual man. With consequences this grave, if you truly love someone, you would try and steer them away from such a lifestyle. To do otherwise would be to hate them.

So this Saturday, get out into the streets and show the love.

Make no mistake, this is an order, not a suggestion. Being tolerant of the LGBTQIAPK community (try explaining the ‘K’ to your granny) is not good enough. You must get out there and celebrate all things gay. You must worship at the gay altar. Failure to do so will get you sent to an Equality Commission-run tolerance camp, where they’ll make you bake gay cakes and watch re-runs of Glee for days on end until you finally break and repent at their feet, begging for forgiveness.

That said, I did attend a Gay Pride festival once, albeit because I got stuck there trying to return a faulty Dirt Devil back to Argos. While I am a fan of cheeky floats and discotheques, I don’t overly care for swathes of scantily-clad people gyrating and thrusting within close proximity of children and families.

So, no. This Gay Pride I’ll be with all the other stupid and boring hate-filled homophobes; in church, wearing my favourite plum cardigan, worshipping an Invisible Sky Wizard until a woman brings me a nice cup of tea and a tray bake.

Pro-life rally meets pro-choice rally: five observations

Abortion, Pro-choice, Pro-life / July 12, 2016 / by The Bigot

This was interesting. On 2nd July 2016, Belfast city centre hosted both a pro-life rally and a pro-choice rally. This has never happened before – not in my lifetime anyway – but I’m glad it did, because it gave us a unique insight into how both sides espouse their views.
As expected, thousands turned up (approx. 1,000 pro-choice, 2,000 pro-life), proving that this is an issue people are passionate about. So, for those undecided on the abortion issue, seeing both rallies side by side, might help clear some things up. Here are five observations worth considering.

1. More people are pro-life than the media lets on

A common abortion-choice mantra is that a majority of young people, particularly women, are in favour of abortion, and that the pro-life movement was the invention of religious old men and crusty politicians, whose only purpose for a woman is to sweep the fireplace and clip their cigars.
But then you look at this year’s Rally for Life — or any pro-life gathering —and it was jam-packed with hundreds of vibrant, happy, young people, especially women. In fact, the whole pro-life movement is fuelled by women. Yet the media portrayal is strangely the complete opposite.

2. Pro-choicers are the real science-deniers

It is an established scientific fact that human life begins at conception. This fact is the rock that the pro-life cause is built on. In response, the pro-choicer has two options: accept the humanity of the unborn but continue to support abortion anyway (like this honest pro-choice activist ), or simply ignore the science. If the pro-choice placards on display were anything to go by, it’s the latter.
As one anti-science placard poetically put it: ‘Not every ejaculation needs a name’. Yeah, no. Somebody wasn’t paying attention during biology class. Sperm cells are not human beings; they are gametes. No pro-lifer argues that sperm is sacred and worthy of rights (or a name). Sperm is a byproduct of a larger human entity – it is not in itself a human life.

By contrast, the unborn — from embryo to nine months — are distinct and whole living human beings. Taking the life of a distinct and whole human being is a radically different action from not naming your sperm. Besides, if you name one sperm, you would have to name them all. And that could take all weekend.

3. Pro-choice campaigners have a thing for scary symbols and murderous idelogies

One much-photographed banner at the pro-choice rally featured the hammer and sickle. Another one extolled the virtues of anarchism, while another said: “Making feminism a threat again” beside a big picture of some knuckle dusters.
Maybe I’m missing something but if your campaign claims to be about freedom, fairness and equality for women, why would you align yourself with symbols of violence, chaos, and— in the case of the hammer and sickle — an ideology responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of innocent people? It’s not like abortion has ever… oh, wait… abortion has killed millions. Carry on.

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If anything can bring the politically disparate communities of communism and anarchism together, abortion can. Beautiful.

The official Rally for Choice poster displayed some interesting design choices, too; an angry fist against an ominous black and white background, with the silhouette of what looks like a baying mob. It looks more like an advert for a Leni Riefenstahl film than a call to do something good and meaningful.

The Rally for Life poster, on the other hand, couldn’t be more different; smiling young people, bright colours, and a clear message – choose life.

4. The pro-choice rally had very few children in attendance

One of the most striking aspects of the pro-life rally was the amount of children present. I mean, there was scores and scores of them. They seemed to be having a great time, too, getting their faces painted and blowing up balloons. It was a proper family-friendly affair.
In stark contrast, the pro-choice rally looked like a scene from a Mad Max film. Any child who had the misfortune of being there looked either lost and bewildered or terrified. Of course, they’re not to blame, they’re just kids, but it is telling. What child wants to hang around with humourless communists stomping around with their clenched fists and knuckle dusters on a Saturday afternoon? And not to mention the overtly sexual placards.

A baby worriedly looks on, grateful that she's already been born.

A nervous baby politely reminds an abortion-hungry protestor that he has already been born.

5. Abortion sets the stage for every other cultural battle

As the large turnout showed, abortion is one of the biggest defining issues in our society, because it gets right down to the very core of who you are and what you believe.
A person’s position on abortion informs and guides every other position they take on every other subject. This is why one side had militant artwork, anarchists and communists — symbols of death and misery — and the other side had joy, positivity, bright colours, and a hopeful message. If we cannot first establish that life matters, then nothing else matters. Anarchy, in other words.
Make no mistake, juxtaposing a pro-life cause with a pro-choice cause was extremely helpful, because it highlighted just how much the world needs us to be pro-life. People need to know that all human life has intrinsic value. This is the pro-life position. And it’s the right position.

Angry from County Atheism writes…

Atheism / June 28, 2016 / by The Bigot

I received this comment from a guy – perhaps going by a fake name and email address – who took umbrage with my article ‘Can atheists be good without God?’ Which is grand. But since his objections were more of a rant-cum-screed than a comment, I will answer it this way. Underneath his vitriol and emotion, he actually raises some important questions so this may be of interest to anyone wrestling with the God question:

“You ridiculous, semi-literate, bog-trotting, moron.You think that one can only be ‘good’ because of an imaginary ‘man in the sky’? You absolute t*t! You believe in a so-called ‘God’, because your deficient ‘mammy and daddy’ told you to. NO OTHER REASON! They also told you about Santa, and the f*cking fairies. I’m not even going to waste my time with the ‘Big Bang Theory’, the fact that ‘Creationism’ MUST have ‘created’ parasitical wasps, the AIDS virus, and cancer. In addition, your imaginary ‘God’ ‘created’ the world, (not the universe surely?) around the time of The Agricultural Revolution.

Then there’s the Magdalene Laundries, paedophile priests, and of course, Nazi empathy. “GOOD”????? What separates human beings from animals, is intellect, NOT GOD FFS! And DON’T ‘DEBATE’ WITH THE LATE, GREAT HITCHENS VIA THIS MEDIUM, YOU SPINELESS TWAT! What I find laughable, is that you’re ‘grounding’ your morality in fairy tails, NOT facts! That’s after you’ve unnecessarily, and somewhat pompously ‘explained’ ‘ontology’. Of course ‘man’ is a byproduct! Our ‘Sun’ WILL eventually swallow the Earth, no doubt whatsoever! Did God ‘design’ that too?

Dawkins is correct. It’s as obvious as ‘night and day’! Unfortunately it’s not as romantic as wrapping it up in fairy tails, which is basically your argument.

I‘ve had enough of this nonsense! IF YOU ARE GOOD BECAUSE OF A FAIRY TAIL ‘GOD’, THEN YOU’RE NOT GOOD OF YOUR OWN VOLITION, HENCE YOU’RE NOT GOOD AT ALL! If it’s a ‘man in the sky’ that stops you murdering and raping etc, then you’re a f*cking psychopath! It wasn’t badly written, (although it’s VERY easy to tell that this was rewritten many times, and in the planning stage for weeks -lmfao!), but the substance is non-existent!”

I don’t know about anyone else, but people write things every day on the Internet that I disagree with. Not once, however, has it ever occurred to me to hurl abuse at them. We all have our hobbies, I suppose. Maybe this guy should take up disco dancing or something; this level of anger can’t be good for him.

Anyway, let’s look at some of his arguments:

– You ridiculous, semi-literate, bog-trotting, moron! You think that one can only be ‘good’ because of an imaginary ‘man in the sky’? You absolute t*t! You believe in a so-called ‘God’, because your deficient ‘mammy and daddy’ told you to. NO OTHER REASON!

When somebody starts off by calling you names, you can guarantee it’s because they’re not confident in their arguments. Remember that bully in school? The one that cut his tie really short and typed rude words into calculators? He never had anything substantive to say, so he called you names. That’s what we see here.

Firstly, my “mammy and daddy” had nothing to do with my belief in God. They’re both non-believers. Secondly, even if they had, that would not disprove the existence of God. C.S Lewis called this the ‘fallacy of Bulverism‘, whereby a person merely assumes a person’s belief is wrong, then tries to explain why they believe it: “You only believe in God because your parents are Christian!” Well, this argument cuts both ways: “You’re only an atheist because your parents are humanists!” See how silly this type of argument is? It’s a genetic fallacy, not to mention dodgy amateur psychology.

– I’m not even going to waste my time with the ‘Big Bang Theory’, the fact that ‘Creationism’ MUST have ‘created’ parasitical wasps, the AIDS virus, and cancer.

I think he means here that the Big Bang somehow disproves God. This is false. If the universe has a single point of origin – as a big bang would imply – then what started it? How can something come from nothing? It can’t. A Big Bang needs a Big Banger.

In fact, the Big Bang theory – developed by Catholic priest Georges Lemaître – lends itself well to Christian theology, with several bible verses (Colossians 1:15-17, 1 Peter 1:20, Proverbs 8:22-31) proclaiming that the universe began in a single creation event. Evidence for a big bang is exactly what you would expect to find if God exists.

He does, however, raise a valid point regarding the existence of AIDS, cancer, and nasty insects. In other words, the existence of things he thinks are “evil”.

The first step to addressing evil is to ask: what exactly is “evil”? If God created everything, and evil is a thing, then God – as this guy implies – must have created evil. This is a fair assumption. If the premise is true (God created everything), then the conclusion would also be true (God created a thing called “evil”).

The problem here, though, is that evil is not a thing, in the same way that “cold” or “dark” are not things. Cold and dark are merely the absence of heat and light. Likewise, “evil” is the absence of “good”. When God created the universe, he created everything good, after which something happened that reduced the good in the world. That loss of good is called “evil”.

Of course, as Richard Dawkins proclaims, the universe is without “good” and “evil,” so an atheist doesn’t get to call anything “evil” – except when referring to personal dislikes. To acknowledge “evil” is to acknowledge “good,” which is to acknowledge something transcendent.

– Then there’s the Magdalene Laundries, paedophile priests, and of course, Nazi empathy. “GOOD”?????

Nowhere in my article did I claim that Christians don’t do bad things. They do. Christians are sinners. The difference with Christians, however, is that they have an objective moral standard by which their behaviour can be judged. Any Christian who does something terrible does so in direct violation of Christ’s teachings. This is a wonderful thing.

But no such standard exists for atheists. In fact, the Nazis (since he brought them up) were just speeding up the evolutionary process in search of the perfect race. Is that wrong? Says who? The universe doesn’t care. In fact, the universe might even approve. (By the way, read up on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Corrie ten Boom if you want to know how Christians responded to Nazism).

– What separates human beings from animals, is intellect, NOT GOD FFS!

This is in response to my claim that, on atheism, human life is no more valuable than any other living creature (a mosquito was the example I used in the article). This is a logically sound position given that all humans, according to Richard Dawkins, are nothing but flesh-machines that propagate DNA. As such, on atheism, the human brain is hardwired for survival; it does not care for intellect (or truth or reason).

Therefore, elevating intellect to the status of a value-giving property is completely arbitrary. Well, I happen to think mosquitos are more valuable than humans because mosquitos can hover above the ground. Shove your intellect. Hovering is where it’s at.

Also, if human value is determined by intellect, does a person with an IQ of 140 have more value than a person with an IQ of 80? Are pigs more valuable than newborn humans? Atheist philosopher Peter Singer thinks so. Determining value on a sliding scale according to intellect is a dangerous idea. Only in the bearing of a Creator’s image can human beings have intrinsic value. If there’s no Creator, and therefore no ultimate purpose, then humans don’t have intrinsic value.

– And DON’T ‘DEBATE’ WITH THE LATE, GREAT HITCHENS VIA THIS MEDIUM, YOU SPINELESS TWAT!

CAPS LOCK! He’s serious now. Never blaspheme against a high-priest of atheism or you will suffer the wrath of CAPS LOCK. Of course, the discerning reader will have noticed that I wasn’t debating Hitchens; I was merely responding to his challenge. If you want to see somebody debate Hitchens – and beat him soundly – check out this debate with William Lane Craig or this one with John Lennox.

***– What I find laughable, is that you’re ‘grounding’ your morality in fairy tails* (sic)*, NOT facts!***

No. My morality is grounded in the fact that a moral law exists. Murdering babies for fun will always be wrong, even if society one day thinks it’s OK. This is a universal moral law. Everyone knows this. But a moral law can only exist if a moral lawgiver exists. This is not a fairy tale, this is a reasonable philosophical position. It could be wrong, but it’s reasonable.

***– I’ve had enough of this nonsense! IF YOU ARE GOOD BECAUSE OF A FAIRY TAIL* (sic) *‘GOD’, THEN YOU’RE NOT GOOD OF YOUR OWN VOLITION, HENCE YOU’RE NOT GOOD AT ALL!***

Notice the repeated use of the word “good”, even though he later agrees (with Dawkins) that “good” and “evil” don’t exist. On one hand, he acknowledges the existence of “good,” then, on the other hand, dismisses it altogether. This is how quickly atheism becomes absurd.

But, yet again, as I explained in the initial article, this is a common misunderstanding of a basic theistic position. I have lost count of the number of times that atheists have got this confused. The issue is not about the motivations behind Christian behaviour; it’s about whether or not “good” and “evil” are objective features of reality (and they are; that’s why people react to them). If so, how? A moral lawgiver – God – is the most reasonable answer.

– It wasn’t badly written, (although it’s VERY easy to tell that this was rewritten many times, and in the planning stage for weeks -lmfao!), but the substance is non-existent!

Cheers! I’ll take the compliments wherever I can find them. Hopefully, this response provides you with more substance – LMFAO.

Same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland: a bigot’s guide

LGBTQIA, Marriage equality / June 2, 2016 / by The Bigot

With the Ashers case continuing to circle the media drain, it got me thinking about the nature of what has become the Western world’s fastest-growing dogma – same-sex marriage. In fact, it’s so fast-growing that the thought of two people of the same sex getting married has gone from bizarro world to infallible orthodoxy in about the same amount of time – roughly five to ten years – that it takes the DOE to fill a pothole.

And it boasts many impassioned and powerful proponents, too – from A-list celebrities and US presidents, to huge corporations like Apple, Starbucks, and Google – all backed by a tireless media-driven campaign that has successfully turned same-sex marriage into the biggest cause célèbre of our day, where those who accept it are righteous and holy, and those who oppose it are nasty homophobic scumbags akin to slave traders or Nazis, deserving of being dragged through the courts and hounded from their jobs.

As a homophobic scumbag watching all of this unfold, then, it has given me cause to provide my fellow bigots, and others who are interested, with some thoughtful answers and insights on the subject. So here they are. Careful where you share them.

Is it “same-sex marriage” or “gay marriage”?

It’s important, as Voltaire once said, to define our terms. Good idea. First, this is about same-sex marriage, not gay marriage. This might sound pedantic, but it’s actually an important distinction. The government does not care one iota about sexual preference; it only cares about gender.

Every person of age in Northern Ireland – gay or straight (or other) – can get married. A gay man could marry a lesbian tomorrow and not a single pastor, priest or politician would bat an eyelid. Calling it “gay marriage” incorrectly gives the impression that this is about sexual preference. It’s not. It’s about gender.

And the reason why it’s about gender is simple: opposite-sex unions serve a very specific and unique role in sustaining the human species, therefore the government is uniquely interested in them. The state has no obligation to give every human coupling (of which there are many) recognition.

For example, under current NI marriage law, if I, a heterosexual male, wanted to marry my equally heterosexual male best friend (like these two dudes) and express our love for each other by eating pizza and playing Call of Duty till death do us part, the state wouldn’t recognise that union either. Why? Because bro-unions™, although meaningful to the people involved, are not conducive to populating society. Marriage, as traditionally endorsed by the state, is about opposite-sex couples giving society the next generation of people; it is not a government registry of friendships.

Yes! I mean, no. Yes!... I've no idea. Words have no meaning anymore!

Yes! I mean, no! Yes! No! … Actually, I’ve no idea. Words have no meaning anymore.

Secondly, the battle for same-sex marriage is not about rights, it’s about recognition. No personal liberty is being denied to gay people. Same-sex couples within a civil partnership are already free to do everything – literally everything – that opposite-sex couples can do; buy a house, commit for life, express their sexuality, receive every applicable benefit, adopt, browse Netflix for an hour before giving up and going to bed, etc., etc. These rights and restrictions apply to all people, equally.

You may also not marry a close blood relative, a child, or someone who is already married – despite the disappointment this brings to the incest, pedophile, and polygamy communities. It’s not about discrimination, it’s about the nature of marriage.

What proponents of same-sex marriage really want, then, is an exception, not a right. They want full acknowledgement and validation of their particular lifestyle. Of course, they’re absolutely free to pursue these things, and, for the sake of argument, they could be correct, but validation is not a right, and opposing it or raising objections does not a homophobe make.

Love is love! Isn’t that what marriage is all about?

Love doesn’t define marriage. If it did, then billions of people in the world today would not be married. In fact, most of the world’s marriages are arranged. They are still marriages. The term “loveless marriage” exists for a reason.

Consider this: when was the last time you filled in a benefits / mortgage / insurance form and had to tick a box that asked: “Do you love your spouse?” Never. The government doesn’t care. No proof of passion is ever required when filling in a joint Jobseeker’s application (mercifully). Love may motivate two individuals to get married – and that’s a good thing – but it’s not the reason why cultures sanction marriage. Cultures sanction marriage because opposite-sex sex makes babies. And cultures need babies.

Of course, it’s true that not all marriages – either by choice or circumstance – produce children. But this proves nothing. Pointing to exceptional cases doesn’t negate the general rule.

There you have it: your love for Jaffa Cakes is the same as your love for your mother, which is the same as the love you have for your wife... no wait, forget that. Cntrl+alt+del, CNTRL+ALT+DEL!!!

There you have it: the love you have for Jaffa Cakes is equal to the love you have for your mother, which is equal to the love you have for your wife … no, wait, I didn’t think that through! CNTRL+ALT+DEL!!!

“Gay couples can’t marry just like interracial couples once couldn’t marry.”

I’ve heard this a few times. It’s powerful and emotive rhetoric; if you don’t support same-sex marriage, you’re basically a racist. But it doesn’t withstand scrutiny. Two things are only comparable if the circumstances are the same. They aren’t. Same-sex marriage and interracial marriage have nothing in common. Different skin colours are irrelevant to marriage, different genders are relevant to creating and raising the next generation of people.

And where does this objection go when proponents of marriage equality – and I’m talking here about proper, consistent marriage equality – start arguing for polygamous, polyamorous, polyandrous, or incestuous marriage? What racial struggles from history are these types of marriage analogous with?

Where does it go from here?

In the blink of an eye, largely in part to the media elites – like our very own BBC Radio Ulster presenters, who excel at imposing new narratives, – the idea of same-sex marriage has become normal. In the UK and America, it went from being the brainchild of a few activists to law in under a decade. So it’ll eventually come to NI, whether society wants it or not.

And when it does, anyone who continues to disagree with it, or attempts to make any sort of gender distinction as dictated by biology and reality, will fall foul of the law. As Ashers and others were quick to find out, the gay lobby is a litigation ninja; nobody has mastered the art of whispering in the ear of power to silence and punish opponents better than they. Gay agenda? What gay agenda?

Family and parenthood will be redefined, too. We already have third-party procreation, whereby a child’s natural right to a biological mother and a father is intentionally violated to satisfy the emotional desires of adults. (A process that differs radically from adoption, a virtuous enterprise that seeks to make good by replacing a broken heterosexual union with one that works. Conversely, third-party procreation brings a child into the world with the sole purpose of giving it away.)

It’s a big social experiment. And it’ll backfire, because – after decades of research – it just so happens that, quelle surprise, children do best with one mother and one father. Who would’ve thought that nature and reality could be so homophobic, eh?

“You know, they say breastfeeding is excell… I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t realise.”

Finally, with the collapse of each remaining societal taboo, the definition of marriage will expand. This is happening already with certain liberal outlets campaigning for an even broader definition of marriage, and giving a sympathetic platform to paedophiles. After all, if marriage can be redefined to mean one thing, why not redefine it to mean something else? Who says words have to have meaning anyway?

So perhaps society needs to spend more than five fabulous minutes thinking about this. The rapid approval of same-sex marriage, with literally everyone falling in line behind it, has nothing to do with tolerance, but rather the polar opposite: a radical form of intolerance dressed up in civil rights language that demands nothing less than complete submission and the icing of cakes – or else.

Liberal Christians say the darnedest things – a response to Rev. Lesley Carroll’s comments on abortion

Abortion, Pro-choice / April 21, 2016 / by The Bigot

By Dinosaur Dave.

In light of the recent abortion pill court case – brought against an unnamed women who bought drugs on the Internet to procure her own abortion, then left the resulting body in a bin – you would think that the spotlight would have been shone upon the guilty party. Like, you know, what normally happens when human remains are found in a bin.

However, as society continues to sink into subjective moral madness, even some Christians are confused. Instead of standing up for the weakest and most defenceless members of the human race, as Christians are called to do, some Christians – media darlings of the liberal kind – are stepping off the bench to bat for Team Abortion. The media darling, in this case, happens to be Rev. Lesley Carroll, styled by the newspapers as a “senior Presbyterian cleric”.

As part of the research carried out by the Belfast Feminist Network, Rev. Carroll said:

“While I am not in favour of a blanket extension of the 1967 Act, I do think there needs to be more discussion with an emphasis again on choice and on the fact that we can draw lines where we want them to [sic].”

When pressed by the News Letter on her beliefs regarding whether life begins at conception, Rev. Carroll replied:

“These are very technical debates, but we are already in a situation where women can go and get the morning-after pill. So we’ve already made that judgement, if you like. Society has already made that judgement even by allowing the morning-after pill.”

Now, I know I’m a regressive old dinosaur (a Theolosaurus Rex, to be exact), but I happen to know that science establishes human life begins at conception (more on that later). It matters not what society judges. And her views, despite what some liberals will have you believe, are at complete odds with Christianity in general. Indeed the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, Rev. Carroll’s own denomination, was moved to issue this statement on the following Monday morning, reaffirming:

“[T]he Presbyterian Church in Ireland holds a strongly pro-life position. We believe that the current law attempts to protect both the life of the mother and the unborn child.”

There are numerous reasons why the vast majority of churches take this stance, namely the compelling scientific and philosophical arguments in favour of the pro-life position, but since Rev. Carroll claims to be speaking for Christianity, let’s look at what the Bible says. Now, I know Rev. Carroll prefers to go by what society says, and society, mostly, couldn’t give two crusty fossils about what the Bible says, but I’m going to quote from it anyway:

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

– Psalm 139:14-16

In addition, the New Testament writers believed that the unborn were fully human and valuable. The birth of Jesus and John the Baptist were examples of this (Matthew 1 and Luke 1).

But if Rev. Carroll isn’t persuaded by the biblical arguments, she should take a look at what cold, hard science has to offer. Hymie Gordon (BSci, BM, BSurg, MD, FRCP), professor emeritus of Medical Genetics at the world-renowned Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, said this at a US congressional hearing on individual life:

“But now we can say, unequivocally, that the question of when life begins is no longer a question for theological or philosophical dispute. It is an established scientific fact. Theologians and philosophers may go on to debate the meaning of life or the purpose of life, but it is an established fact that all life, including human life, begins at the moment of conception.”

And in the stages after conception, even leading abortionists admit that abortion kills a human being. Dr. Warren Hern, author of Abortion Practice – the medical text that teaches abortion procedures (!) – told a Planned Parenthood conference:

“We have reached a point in this particular technology [D&E abortion] where there is no possibility of denying an act of destruction. It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.”

The science is crystal clear, even for a regressive old dinosaur like me. Science has placed a window into the womb and given us indisputable evidence for the humanity of the unborn. It is a fact that a fertilised human ovum is wholly human, because, from the very moment of fertilisation, all genetic information needed for an individual human being is present. It is also a fact that abortion ends that human life. The abortionist who informs all other abortionists says so.

So, for the Christian, Psalm 139 is no glib quotation of Scripture – science backs it up. The words of Psalm 139 are an old-fashioned way of confirming that the frame of our body, our characteristics, our being is all contained in the secret place of the womb, under the sight of God – the God that Rev. Carroll claims to believe in.

For the good of human life, then, the spotlight must swing back from abortion-choice to pro-life. If it is wrong to take the life of a born human being in the name of ‘choice’, then it follows that it’s wrong to take the life of an unborn human being in the name of choice. A human being’s geographical location (the womb) is irrelevant. Human value is not determined by location (or any other arbitrary criteria), it is determined by humanness.

But Rev. Carroll disagrees. She thinks that society gets to decide. She claims that the question of when life begins is a “very technical debate”, despite what science and scripture says. She believes there should be “more discussion with an emphasis again on choice”. In Rev. Carroll’s book (which I don’t think is the Bible), human life is not necessarily fearfully and wonderfully made.

The only thing that Rev. Carroll seems to believe is truly fearfully and wonderfully made is her own opinion. I don’t know about you, but this dinosaur thinks she’s scientifically and, crucially, biblically wrong.

If you find human remains in your bin, should you call the police?

Abortion / April 7, 2016 / by The Bigot

In today’s postmodern world, nothing is black and white. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ are manmade categories, and truth is not absolute. It’s understandable, then, that when a body was found in a bin, Northern Ireland was thrown into a state of moral conflict and confusion. Some believe that reporting the body to police was the right thing to do, others think it was the worst thing imaginable to do.

So what should someone do if they find human remains in a bin? Go to the police. Just kidding, only a woman-hating religious fundamentalist tyrant would do that. We live in a tolerant and progressive society now. The answer is campaign relentlessly – using half-truths and made-up non-medical terms like “fatal foetal abnormality” – to change the law so that professionals can throw the body in a bin for you.

Sure, some people will say, “there’s nothing wrong with a law that stops you from taking an innocent human life and throwing it in a bin”. Well, you can tell those people to shut their oppressive faces. Firstly, that “law” dates back to 1861. Secondly, it was probably written by a man. Any tolerant person knows that a law predating Twitter and / or written by a man is obviously wrong. (Except the laws against rape and child labour, which were also written ages ago and by men).

The same regressive nut jobs will also claim that the body found in the bin belonged to a person, but of course us enlightened people know better; it was a foetus, not a person. The unenlightened might say that that’s a fallacy known as ‘making a distinction without a difference’ – a bit like saying, “jogging isn’t exercise, it’s physical exertion” – but don’t listen to their silly rhetoric. If they accuse you of poor logic and Newspeak, ridicule them by calling them a dogmatic dinosaur on social media.

Besides, you don’t need to appeal to science; the difference between a foetus and a person is blatantly obvious. Foetuses are not alive and they’re not human persons. Well, they’re kind of human and sort of alive, but they’re not persons. We know this to be a fact because some highly-educated, scientifically-minded freethinkers invented a special category for humans that aren’t persons called “Lebensunwertes Leben”. If you look up the meaning of this phrase, you’ll find it describes the foetus perfectly.

Now, I know some of you are concerned about the reports that this particular foetus had features and limbs consistent with what most sane people would consider to be an actual human being. That’s just lies from the mouths of our patriarchal dinosaur overlords. How can a blob of cells have limbs and facial features?! It’s absurd! And you can definitely ignore the claims that the foetus was male. These days, ‘sex’ is something that gets assigned at birth. How can it have a sex if it hadn’t even been born yet!

Most important of all, if there’s only one thing you take away from reading this, make it this: you need to ignore the fact that procuring your own abortion and dumping the corpse in a bin is illegal in backwards Northern Ireland. If you know someone who breaks this law, even if you are the one who discovers the human debris in the bin, don’t ever inform the police. And if someone does tell the police, you must hold them responsible instead of the person who broke the law.

So, no, if you release yourself from the bonds of coherency, science, logic, truth, and the law, you don’t need to tell the police that you found a body in your bin.

Can atheists be good without God?

Atheism, Humanism / April 5, 2016 / by The Bigot

The journalist and atheism populariser Christopher Hitchens once stated that atheists are as good as Christians, going so far as to challenge believers to name one good deed they can do that an atheist can’t. Indeed, the atheists I know say similar things, and some atheist organisations in America even put up billboards to make sure everyone knows it.

And they’re not wrong; it is perfectly possible to be good without God. It is demonstrably true that there are many virtuous and loving and kind atheists in the world. No thoughtful theist would say otherwise.

But that’s not the argument. There’s a much deeper issue at play here – the grounding issue. And this is where Hitchens and the billboards fail in their understanding of a rather basic theist argument.

Nobody is saying you can’t be. How much did this thing cost?

The theist is primarily concerned with the ontology of morality – that is, the nature and existence of morality – not whether theists are nicer than atheists (because they’re not). In other words, theists want to know how atheists can ground morality given that the universe has no particular thing guiding the designation of what behaviour is good and what is bad.

On atheism, humans are nothing more than the accidental byproduct of time plus chance plus matter, skin-sacks of recently-evolved atoms fizzing around a tiny speck of cosmic debris called Earth. Some humans fizz violently, some fizz peacefully – all of them destined to be cooked alive at some point by global warming/climate change or something. So, within this framework, it’s hard to think how anything can be objectively good. Why is human flourishing more of a good than mosquito flourishing? With atheism, it can’t be.

Atheism, then, when taken to its logical conclusion, has a crisis of value. In other words, human beings are just animals – no more or less valuable than any other living thing – and animals have no moral obligations. We don’t arrest cats when the mutilated corpse of a mouse turns up on our doorstep. Cats kill mice, they don’t murder them. There is no moral dimension to animal behaviour.

In response, an atheist might say that certain actions such as murdering babies for fun and incest may not be biologically and socially advantageous, and so over the course of human evolution have become ‘not good’. Fair enough. But that tells us nothing about the actual wrongness of these acts, it only tells us that cultural opinions change over time – and could change again (if incest apologists like this guy have their way).

So when atheists use the word ‘good’ to describe themselves, they beg the question: what do you mean by ‘good’? If the term ‘good’ is a manmade social convention to aid survival, then the categories that make up good are also manmade. But here’s the thing: different people have different ideas about what is good and what is bad. In some cultures they love each other, in other cultures, they eat each other. Which do you prefer?

So, yes, an atheist can mimic all the behaviours of what their particular time and culture calls ‘good’ – and they can do it rather well. But if atheism is true and there’s no God to ground morals to begin with, then – just like like the rest of the animal kingdom – human beings have no objective moral duties. Judging an action based on ‘good’ or ‘evil’ would be like expressing a preference for what type of Danish pastry is the more superior (maple and pecan plait, obviously).

Therefore, on atheism, the word ‘good’ has no meaning. Or, as the captain of Team Atheism Richard Dawkins eloquently put it: “There is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

Answering five common pro-choice arguments

Abortion, Pro-choice / February 17, 2016 / by The Bigot

Let me start by saying that there are no good arguments for elective abortion. It’s true that there are some emotionally and rhetorically strong ones that, when delivered with force and confidence, can steamroller a pro-lifer into submission.

However, force and emotion do not a good argument make. In fact, when unpacked and properly assesed many abortion-choice arguments are so bad and so absurd that it’s sometimes hard to know if they’re serious or not — but serious they are.

So, from ‘gay’ fetuses to cleansing the world of poor people, here are some responses to five common pro-choice arguments.

1 – “Don’t like abortion, don’t have one!”

This argument attempts to shift the emphasis from abortion being an act that is objectively wrong to an act that is merely about personal taste – like so: “Don’t like pineapples, don’t eat pineapples”. This, of course, is ethical tomfoolery; there is no moral dimension to eating a pineapple (unless you stole it). Abortion, conversely, is a moral minefield, because it involves the intentional taking of human life. To take the logic of this argument out for a test drive, consider the following statements:

“Don’t like slavery? Don’t own a slave.”

“Don’t like wife-beating? Don’t beat your wife.”

“Don’t like child abuse? Don’t abuse children”.

When you reduce something that is objectively wrong to something that is a matter of personal taste, you completely miss the point as to why people disagree with those things in the first place.

Completely missing the point here, lads.

Abortion – like wife-beating, slavery, and child abuse – has nothing to do with personal taste. When a person says “abortion is wrong” they are making an objective moral claim, not a subjective one. Abortion is wrong because it takes the life of an intrinsically valuable human being. Whether someone likes it or not is irrelevant.

2 – Abortion reduces crime rates.

This argument is reminiscent of the plot of the Steven Spielberg film, Minority Report. Set in the future, Minority Report tells the story of a guy on the run from “PreCrime,” a specialised police department that can arrest future criminals based on foreknowledge provided by special psychics.
And that’s pretty much exactly how this argument works, too. The unborn may become criminals in the future, therefore abortion can be a force for good in apprehending them. The only differences here being that crimes committed by the unborn are based on mere conjecture, and instead of being jailed the unborn get the death penalty.
Ironically, the people making this argument are often the ones who oppose the death penalty. Yet, here they are calling for it before a crime has even been committed. Spare the convicted rapist-killer, execute the might-be-convicted-in-20-years-time unborn girl. Yup. Welcome to our new rational and ethical future, people.

3 – May the fetus you save be gay!

The idea here is to call out religious people who oppose abortion and (possibly) homosexuality on religious grounds. The reasoning goes like this: “Hey, wouldn’t it serve those religious pro-life crazies right if a fetus they saved grew up to be gay? That’ll teach ’em! Bet they wish she’d been aborted now!”
This argument has several critical flaws. Firstly, it’s a genetic fallacy – that is, it attacks a perceived flaw in the origin of a person’s claim, then uses it to discredit the claim itself, like so:

Most pro-lifers are religious.
I think religion is wrong.
Therefore, pro-lifers are wrong.

The fallacy of this argument is clear; a person’s religious beliefs have no more to do with the morality of abortion than they do about the morality of, say, human trafficking or racism or torturing the elderly for fun.

There’s a market for abortion merchandise. Who knew?

Secondly, this argument completely ignores the ever-growing amount of secular pro-life movements. Like this one, this one, and this one. David Silverman, the former president of American Atheists, famously conceded that secular arguments against abortion exist and aren’t going away. Even the revered atheist Christopher Hitchens leaned pro-life.
Worst of all, though, is its rancid hypocrisy. Each year, abortion kills hundreds of thousands of developing human beings that would have grown up to be gay. It seems the abortion-choice movement has no problem killing the LGBT community so as it’s before birth. It is the pro-life position, however, that argues from philosophy and science that all human life should be respected, regardless of age, gender, race, social standing, and sexual orientation.

4 – “Abortion is compassionate. You can’t condemn a child to a life of poverty!”

For several long, torturous years I lived on a street full of hard-partying students. Words can’t describe their awfulness. If only I had thought of this argument to justify getting rid of them. Here’s how the chat would go between me and my community police officer:

Me: “Yunno, those insufferable students are a real inconvenience. They pee in the entry and leave half-eaten curry chips on my window ledge. I’m going to kill them all.”

Police Officer: “You can’t do that! They’re whole and distinct human beings! Science confirms it!”

Me: “Well, that’s debatable. But think about it; I’m actually doing them a favour. They’re only going to spend their days living in poverty and squalor anyway. A diet of Cornflakes and Tennents Lager is no way to live.”

Police officer: “Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. Here, use my gun.”

This argument is terrible and scary because it assumes that certain human beings are somehow less worthy of life than other human beings simply because of their circumstances. This is full-on eugenics. Hardly surprising, though, given that the abortion industry was built upon such ideology. Just ask Margaret Sanger.

5 – My body, my choice!

If there’s one thing the pro-abortion lobby has succeeded at, it’s in hijacking the word “choice”. Let’s dispel the myth now: pro-lifers are not “anti-choice”. They respect the right to choose. They believe, without exception, that a person should be free to choose their own partner, who to vote for, their own job, their own religion (or none), etc., etc.
However, choice has limitations. You cannot choose to skin dogs for personal pleasure, abuse children or shoot students. The very nature of those choices is abhorrent. You have no right to choose them. Nobody – bar tyrants and the criminally insane – believes they can choose to take the life of another human being with impunity.

Moody black and white doesn’t make it true.

To “choose” abortion, then, begs the question and assumes something about the nature of the unborn. Are the unborn somehow different, less valuable, and off our moral radar? Can we just kill and dispose of them because their geographical location is different? Or because they’re smaller and less developed? Scientifically and philosophically, the answer to all of those is ‘no’.
And there are two bodies involved, not one. We know this because of embryology and ultrasound technology. Each human being has a unique set of DNA. Embryos have a unique set of DNA. Therefore, two human beings. Then, further along in development, the unborn can develop body parts and substances that a pregnant woman doesn’t have – like a penis or a different blood type. How is this possible if only one body is involved?

Progressive discrimination

It’s funny that pro-lifers are continuously charged with discrimination. They “discriminate” against women. They “discriminate” against doctors. They “discriminate” against a tolerant society. But actually, to be truly pro-choice – to support complete bodily autonomy – involves embracing pretty much every kind of discrimination. Abortion because it’s a girl? Sexist. Abortion because it has Down’s? Disability discrimination. Abortion at 22 weeks but not at 25 weeks? Ageist. Abortion because a mixed-race child wouldn’t be acceptable? Racist. Abortion because the gay gene has been discovered and some parents don’t want a gay fetus? Homophobic.
If this is what liberals mean by “progressive,” God help us all.

Can Secular Humanism save Northern Ireland (and the world)?

Atheism, Humanism / February 4, 2016 / by The Bigot

The words of John Lennon’s Imagine are often rolled out in times of religious violence. The Paris attacks, for example. Putting aside the fact that Lennon was a wife-beating philanderer who mocked disabled people, it’s easy to understand why – religion has caused much pain and suffering. As the song (more or less) goes: imagine there’s no religion, no heaven, no hell – just everyone living in peace.

It’s hard to imagine a time of no religion, given how humans have been religious one way or another since the beginning, and it’s even harder to imagine everyone living in peace because, well: politics, oil, greed, corruption, power, money, sex, self-aggrandisement, land, race, alien invasions, and – sometimes – religion.

That hasn’t stopped humanists like Stephen Fry from imagining, though. They imagine Humanism to be the gold standard of worldviews, the gateway to rationality, tolerance and everlasting peace. Can I get an amen?

So what exactly is Humanism? Well, the name says it all. Humanism is the philosophy that all human beings, in and of themselves, have value (what’s known as ‘intrinsic’ value), deserving of respect and equality – but secular (from the Latin meaning ‘this world’), so God is not needed. We see this in all their writings and manifestos (I don’t know why, but for a movement that rejects dogma and authority, they love their manifestos).

Humanism – like the Hyundai badge only with a big dot.

Humanism (at least of the secular variety) is also, at its core, the positive face of atheism. Whereas atheism says: “No. I am not for anything. I am a mere lack of belief”, Humanism says: “Yes. Come join us. We’re for something. We’re for humans. We’re for a secular utopia with no religion (worth speaking of), no heaven, no hell – just everyone living in happy Humanist harmony”.

Fair play to them. ~~God~~ The cold, dark universe loves a trier.

To a certain extent, though, I agree with them; if us humans don’t get the human-beings-have-intrinsic-value thing right, nothing else matters.

But, can Humanism even account for – let alone achieve – intrinsic human value, given its atheistic framework? Well, to paraphrase C.S Lewis, an atheist telling someone else how things ought to be, is a bit like a puddle of milk telling another puddle of milk that it ought to have been spilt differently. Where are they getting the ought from? Both puddles of milk are nothing but smelly, sour accidents. There is no ought.

So here’s the deal-breaking flaw of Humanism: when you dig deeper into its atheistic philosophy and examine their evidence for what human purpose actually is, it cuts off the very branch it sits on. Humanists say over and over in their manifestos that human beings have objective purpose and value, yet you read the writings of Richard Dawkins, who neatly sums up the purpose of humanity as being, “Machines for propagating DNA”.

Wait a minute! What? I’m pretty sure the kipper I just ate for brunch was also a DNA machine. Does a DNA machine really have intrinsic value?

Think of it like this: have you ever looked in the mirror, clean-shaven and smelling of freshly-applied Brut and said: “Hey! You are one smooth DNA propagating machine”? No, me neither. Plus, I’m a Cool Water man. How about looking into the face of a newborn and saying, “Ahh, wee DNA propagator”. Unless you’re a Terminator, nobody talks like that.

“Must. Destroy. DNA. Propagators.”

So, on the one hand, Humanism wants to affirm intrinsic human value, but on the other hand, it jettisons the only viable source for intrinsic human value – God – and in doing so pulls the rug out from beneath itself, lands awkwardly on its ankle and limps off teary-eyed hoping no-one noticed.

For those who did notice, however, why should human beings have more value than cats just because human meat computers happen to be more advanced than cat meat computers? Says who? Unless there’s an ontic referent, Humanism is just a form speciesism; that is to say, Humanism is the arbitrary privileging of one species over millions of other species. And speciesism is bigoted, man.

A meat computer.

The best Humanism can strive for is extrinsic value, not intrinsic value. The difference is crucial. Extrinsic value is the value we humans put on things, and this is precisely what we see coming from Humanism. They’ll say: “Sure, the unborn are human beings, but they’re not persons so we can take their lives and call it a choice”. (Idea: maybe Humanism should rebrand itself as ‘Personism’ since being a person is what really matters). And, of course, a hundred-odd years ago, humanist heroes of the Enlightenment like Immanuel Kant placed similar extrinsic value on black people:

The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the trifling. Mr. Hume challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere from their countries, although many of them have even been set free, still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality.

Notice how Kant assumes black people are not fully human. This is what happens when you take Humanism to its logical conclusion. This is what happens when humans get to ascribe value. We saw it then with black people, we see it today with the unborn.

Intrinsic value, on the other hand, is the idea that every member of the human species is valuable, regardless of his or her individual characteristics and abilities (including those with Down’s syndrome, Mr Dawkins) because every human being shares the same valuable human nature. This is a universal quality, not something handed down by an organisation, government, or judge.

So, no, Humanism cannot save Northern Ireland, or anywhere else for that matter. If man is the measure of all things, as Humanism preaches, we’re in trouble. Deep trouble. History has proven this fact countless times. Objective, intrinsic human value – true human value – has to be fixed, immutable, and given. It has to be grounded in the character and nature of God.