Until as recent as forty years ago, Britain conducted the barbaric practice of transporting its unwanted orphans to the far reaches of the earth-Australia. These children were subjected to institutionalised physical and sexual abuse.

I wouldn't be sounding so self-righteous about my cultural heritage, if I were Mr Condell.

This does not mean I agree with radical Islamic practices, I just can't stand his righteous tone.

Well, Condell clearly states that he disagrees with the ignoring of injustice, which is why he wants britain and Europe to move FORWARD, not replace one bronze-age myth with another. The human rights and standards currently held in Britain and the rest of Europe is by no means a given, like your example shows. Barbary, ignorance, arrogance and cruelty must be resisted wherever, and whenever it shows its ugly face. The fact that we all held barbaric standards in even our recent past, is no excuse to say "hey, go easy on those muslims, let them have their forced marriages, degrading of women, and general distain and disregard for European law. Hell, lets even let them put up special Sharia courts, where barbary from the 5th century can be institutionalized and recieve tax-exemption for mistreating the defenceless, innocent women they "own". No thanks. Human Rights SHOULD be a birthright, and we will fight to the last man to achieve that, and keep it that way, thank you very much.

Switzerland got off scot freekin' free for WW2 if ya ask me.....guess those Jewish ghosts are taking their revenge via suicidal Swiss males nowadays.....Serves em the fuck right.
This guy sounds like a Michael Savage cross the pond.....

Human rights ARE NOT a birthright. The whole american enterprise was built on belief in God, on this kind of protestant culture of community and enterprise, a kind of soft belief but non the less belief.
It says created equal, not born equal. The sad fact is - you need God to keep america running, as it is, which doesn't mean that the end result is good.
Look at Europe, it's turning more and more post-christian, but, the sad fact is, europe is or was christian, christianity was , if not it's essence, then it's brackettes or it's wall. the only way out of christianity is paganism. NOW - rationality and real atheism can exist within paganism, as they did within a christian culture, BUT you can't build a culture or a civlization on rationality and atheism.
FIRSTLY - because it probably wont work
SECONDLY - because if it did work it would be worse than anything ever seen on the face on the planet, a culture made of pure rational addicts, hiperconsumers, a perpetual HELL of rationality. The bedrock of human experience is subconscious, subtle and in the end probably unknowable. HUman experience, life itself, are irrational to a huge degree.


"...for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;..."

I really don't ENJOY any freedom, as MR. Condell states, I bare it, it's a wight, as all real freedom is, and you need to be free from freedom, sometimes, or you go insane.
People are free, or they aint..
and all the rest is sociological taint

I smell fish.

So, would you kill to maintain your birthright of human rights, Bicyclerepairman? You know, cos that's the only solution that Britain and the U.S, have come up with, even in the last 5 years and they're not even defending human rights, just oil rights. The story continues to repeat itself.

I genuinely hope this guy is wrong and over the top. I certainly disagree that even a sizable minority of Muslims were "dancing in the street" over September 11. Most Muslims arent fanatics but they are not doing enough to condemn the extremists. A cartoon of the prophet gets angry protest the world over but where is the outrage at the hijacking of Islam by extremists?

What scares me is that a clear majority (according to recent reputable surveys)of young British Muslims want Sharia law in Britain. No, No, No, Never Ever and once again NO! I'm Sorry but even the thought makes me mad as hell.

SO go all proustian on my ass, fletch and explain...

Here we go again...

To Persephone:
That "righteous tone" that Condell, and most of us anti-theists seem to take on is a result of us being sick and tired of religion, religious "values", and religious practices being shoved down our throats time and time again due to the weakness of politicians and the loud vocal religious constituents that demand these practices be put in place despite their not being the only voice. For some reason it's okay in society today to be passionate about one's religion, but it's not okay to be passionate about one's lack of religion. Explain to me why that is reasonable?

To BlueCliff:
I don't even know where to begin... I'm probably going to let another Sifter who is more eloquent, smarter and more historically savvy than me to expound, because I just can't think straight due to my disgust, but I'll give a short reply. Anyone, feel free to correct me, as I'm on my second glass of Sangria and am very angry.

The United States of America was specifically designed to NOT involve God. The founding fathers, during the Age of Reason, knew better than to involve any sort of theocratic stipulations within the Constitution. Yes, many of the founders were Christian, however many were deists, and many, including Jefferson showed a great deal of doubt about any God at all to the point of at least agnosticism. There was a lot of deliberation on the subject, from what I understand, but in the end, they reasoned that the separation of church and state was beneficial for BOTH the church and the state. And as a result, they created the longest running Republic in the history of the world. It has only been after the creation of the union, and in particular in the 1900's due to the evil threat of "Godless communism" that the religious have gained any sort of foothold and perverted American politics. To say that America can't exist without God, to me, is offensive and an affront to everything that the founding fathers tried to do.

That is why I get so passionate about my atheism. Yes, we have a lot of Protestant "morals" in this country, but most of them are antiquated and childish and based on repression and shame. They mostly serve to hold society, reason, and science back. However removing God from the equation in no way means that we are going to resort to some anarchistic, amoral society.

Condell's whole point of this is that European countries have been becoming more of a free democracy and less of a theocratic state in the last century, while we've gone backwards, and yet for some reason, they are now allowing a new Islamic theocracy to invade their system and allow for crimes that would otherwise be intolerable. And why? Just so that they don't offend that small religious segment? The freedoms that they've gained are too important to lose to another set of religious dogma, whatever the religion may be.

Okay, that was way longer than I intended... With apologies...

You wouldn't "tolerate" inferior, substandard parts on a jet you were to fly in, why would you tolerate inferior cultures on the ground?

If we won't kill all Muslims--which someday too late will be the last-gasp mandate for the West to survive--then at the very least ban all Muslim immigration to Western Countries NOW. The West has no obligation to coddle foreign barbarians with no intentions of assimilating.

Coward politicians aren't going to defend traditional values unless people do.

A virus replicates itself while creating nothing but death for the host. Keep the virus of Islam out of the West.

Michael Savage rules.

Okay... Well... I don't advocate that obviously, but there's certainly a middle ground. Or at least laws should be obeyed and not bent because because any sort of religion is involved.

Personally, I much prefer an educational approach. Teaching people about how the real world actually works does wonders for weening people off of the teat of mythology and superstition.

i'm an atheist, but this guy just seems a bit too eaten up by it all. has he not even contemplated the idea that we should learn to coexist or we'll never achieve anything.

So, would you kill to maintain your birthright of human rights, Bicyclerepairman? You know, cos that's the only solution that Britain and the U.S, have come up with, even in the last 5 years and they're not even defending human rights, just oil rights. The story continues to repeat itself.

Its seems that whenever I write something in CAPITAL LETTERS, its prone to be ignored by my opponents, I said human rights should (this time not capitalized, so you may see it) be a birthright. Would I kill for it? ultimately? Yes. As the first of many possible solutions? No. When someone, or some group has a radically different opinion than me on what consitutes a human right, then my first instinct would be to find out more about why, and debate the issue. We have pretty much agreed on this where I come from, and if someone comes here to enjoy the benefits or take part in the society we have built on those rights, its none of their goddamn business to try to change the rules.

I dont believe in moral relativism, some opinions are just better. Treating women as fellow human beings and not property of their legal husband is one of them. I dont think its a good idea to burn witches or heretics either. We should know better in 2007. We do know better. And the reason we know better is because we understand the world better, and we understand it better because we have been seeking knowledge through science and exploration. religion has never, and will never, help us understand or discover a single new thing. Its whole purpose and definition is the opposite: Dogma.

To Johnald128:

Um. Yeah, I believe that's exactly what he wants! So lets remove religion from the world so that we can take away at least that one huge label that serves to do a damn fine job of separating us into even more tribes than are already apparent. Would we find other reasons to kill each other? Sure we would, whether it be skin color, geography, economics, resources, whatever.

But even so, don't you think it would be worth it to remove inflexible dogma that only serves to make us fight and bicker over ancient stories and mythology just to lessen the number of reasons? It's even more ridiculous when you realize that the major monotheistic religions are really all based on the same God, and even worse that there's so much infighting within each of the religions on how their God should be properly worshiped. Sunni fighting Shia, Catholics fighting Protestants. Enough already!

Remove God(s) from the table and then we can actually get down to the business of getting past our other differences and then maybe we can all coexist.

In the meantime, we should be standing firm to protect people who are horribly victimized because of those ancient dogmas. And right now those people tend to be in radical Islamic areas. Female genital mutilation and circumcision, victims of rape who get murdered afterwards for the crime of having been forced into sex, death for homosexuality, etc. If these Sharia laws are apparently being tolerated in Europe then that is understandably frightening to Condell and many others, I'd imagine. If cultural sensitivity leads us to forgive people for their brutality, then we should rethink whether we should be culturally sensitive.

"Michael Savage rules."

Proof of insanity.