The Guardian: Britain’s new cultural divide

In today’s The Guardian, Stuart Jeffries has an article ‘reporting’ on the vicious and uncompromising battle between believers and non-believers.

His opening commentary comes in the form of a quote from one Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark (whatever that is):

“We are witnessing a social phenomenon that is about fundamentalism,” says Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark. “Atheists like the Richard Dawkins of this world are just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs on the tube, the hardline settlers on the West Bank and the anti-gay bigots of the Church of England. Most of them would regard each other as destined to fry in hell.

“You have a triangle with fundamentalist secularists in one corner, fundamentalist faith people in another, and then the intelligent, thinking liberals of Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, baptism, methodism, other faiths – and, indeed, thinking atheists – in the other corner. ” says Slee. Why does he think the other two groups are so vociferous? “When there was a cold war, we knew who the enemy was. Now it could be anybody. From this feeling of vulnerability comes hysteria.”

Slee, you ignorant prick:

1) when was the last time that you saw an atheist i) blow up the tube, ii) settle into a “holy” land on principle, or iii) attempt to stop somebody else doing something on the basis of their sexual orientation?

2) consider how many atheists would think that theists are destined to fry in hell — hint: atheist’s don’t believe in a hell.

3) what exactly is this “fundamentalism” that you accuse us of? What is this infallible dogma that we must follow? What principles am I obviously failing to follow? Where’s my damned “holy” book with all the rules and regulations that I must, to be an atheist, adhere to?

4) most of the atheists that you are lumping in as the “fundamentalist atheists” are the thinking atheists — we’ve considered the evidence and found it completely lacking. The atheists who haven’t fully investigated the claims of religion and rejected it are the unthinking ones.

5) the threat to atheists is that of theocratic attitudes, and this comes from one quarter: theists. It’s simple when you know how.

I don’t know what this man does as “Dean of Southwark” but I’ll bet a pork dinner that it doesn’t have anything to do with considering reality.

And you, Jeffries: you call yourself a journalist? FFS, you didn’t even have the gumption to contact Dawkins yourself for a quote? A poor excuse for a “reporter” you are. I half expected to look up and see The Daily Mail’s masthead.

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