515: Make mine a Top Totty

Instead of doing something important like sorting out this country's fucked-up libel law, you know like they should be, some MPs, well, one, is engaging herself with something entirely more trivial, and all together more overstepping the mark and impinging on free speech and free enterprise. That was a rambling and overlong sentence I know, but I'm full of petty and futile rage. According to MEN, Metro and BBC News, Labour MP shadow equalities minister Kate Green took offence to a beer called Top Totty being sold at the Westminster pub, The Strangers' Bar. The pump has a cute drawing of a blonde lady in a white bikini and a description of Top Totty, a blonde beer, as a "stunningly seductive, voluptuous variety of hops with a fruity, fresh finish".

Kate Green saw it, was offended, (or perhaps didn't actually see it because the BBC says she was "'disturbed' to hear it was on sale" my italics) and within 90 minutes her actions had somehow lead to Top Totty being withdrawn from sale. This can only be described as a gross misuse of her influence to stifle free speech and free enterprise. No members of the public she represents were offended, she was acting entirely on own whim, and even if it is offencive, so fucking what? Free speech is of paramount importance, even if it causes offence. Being offended by something does not give you the right to remove it from the public domain; it gives you the right to complain and be upset. The right to cause offence should always trump the right to be offended.

What makes this especially disgusting is Kate Green's abuse of her power. Today I walked past the main entrance to the shop I work in. I rarely see in the windows because I enter and leave via a staff entrance on the other side of the building. I noticed a very very large poster advertising underwear and comprising entirely of a photography of a staggeringly sexy model looking sultry in her bra and knickers. Sights like this are common and I am confident in saying that Kate Green sees them as often as we all do. Is she constantly staggering around in a persistent tut of indignant offence? Does she fight against every commercial sexualised image of a semi-clad female? Or is she merely flexing her muscles against Top Totty and The Strangers' Bar because she knows she has some direct influence?

Every single person, or official body, she took her complaint to should have said, "you are entitled to be offended, but you have no right to remove this from sale. It is none of your business; if you don't like it, tough." What I really hate about this whole thing is that the most sensible statement appears to have come from Mike Nattrass, a MEP for horrid populist right-wing party UKIP: "This sort of knee-jerk Puritanism does more damage to the cause of equality than a thousand beer labels. It suggests that to be in favour of equality you must be a dour-faced, insult-searching misery".

As an aside I would like to address anyone who wants to complain about the objectification of women as sexual objects: I would like to suggest that women are sexual objects, as are men; indeed humans are sexual objects. How could we be described as anything else? We are objects who think about sex, have sex, think about sex, have sex, ecsextra, etc, &c... Of course we are so much more than just sexual objects, men and women alike. We are thinkers, workers, friends, scientists, artists, geniuses, idiots, and everything else and in between.

501: Comment

In lieu of a proper post I reproduce here a comment I have just written on the following blog post http://followergerrard.com/2012/01/12/the-atheist-delusion/:

You mention "the Christian belief" repeatedly and then proceed to talk about all Christians as though they all hold the same belief. The Bible, and other sources of Christian theology, not being factual (i.e. evidence based) are all entirely open to personal interpretation. When you claim to be speaking for Christians it seems to me as though you are only speaking for yourself. The reason why scientific method holds so much power and is so much more useful than religion or philosophy as a tool for examining the world is that its conclusions are dictated by the evidence. The conclusions of religion are subject to whim, preference, wish or political dictate. One only need look at the world around us to see there is not one "Christian" outlook.

Science is the act of attempting to find the truth through observation and testing; gradually we get closer and closer to truth as science reduces error margins. Religion, if it does exist outside of the physical or material world, only does so by inhabiting the world of fiction. While science is the most accurate method of observing the real world, theology is at best an archaic, dogmatic and stunted method of fiddling aimlessly with the details of a fictional world. Every claim you make about god applies only to your own interpretation.

Being an atheist isn't an act of faith, it is the lack of an act of faith. Not believing in god came before believing in god, just the same as not being able to drive came before being able to drive; first there was the world, then there were gods and cars. All of your ideas about what god is and what god means and what god does are meaningless to an atheist (or at least this atheist) because they all rest on the unfounded assumption that god exists. The idea of god can and should be viewed as a scientific hypothesis (because it is possible that a universe created, maintained, observed, occasionally interfered with by god is very different from a godless universe). When I hypothesis is not backed up by observation and evidence it is rejected. This is the reason it is safe to assume there is no god. There might be, but given the lack of evidence there is no genuine reason to believe.

On the subject of evolution and what it says about god you conclude "Showing how evolution is the result of physical processes is not, in any way, contrary to this, but simply a description of what was physically resulting from God’s sovereign control." In a sense this is just not true. Evolution is a description of how species can form unguided exactly without "God's sovereign control". I agree that the theory of evolution is not direct evidence against the existence of god, but it does drastically reduce the gap god can safely inhabit.

Often people talk about there being some essential self, a spirit, ghost, soul whatever that exists as a duality with the brain or body. This is often said to have an immortal eternal life after the death of the temporary body. Look at it this way for an illustration of why I consider it inherently ludicrous: The soul (which for arguments sake I will describe as the bit of the brain that feels love, ecstatic reactions to art, music and nature) is a function of brain which can no more exist without that brain than the heart beat can exist without the heartbeat. Were I to suggest that I believe my heart beat (or for that matter my renal function) were to have an eternal life after the death of my body, you would be right to laugh at me.

Although your post contains some interesting ideas it is ruined by your insistence on speaking for all Christians, and by implication knowing what all Christians think. You also make claims to know so much about what your god is and does. When you say "The universe doesn’t“contain”God. God doesn’t“dwell within” the universe or “outside it (whatever that might mean)” it seems to me you are claiming to know so much that you couldn't possibly know. If you get annoyed by comparing belief in god to belief in a teapot in space, because of a semantic game placing god outside of "place", then how about this: Believing in god is like believing in a non-physical teapot that isn't in any place, is outside of space and existence, but still is somehow worth thinking about, discussing and offering praise and prayer to.

Actually the more I think about it your argument seems to be "atheists are wrong not to believe in a god that exists, because that is not the Christian god. The Christian god is actually a god that doesn't exist. So if you are going to be an atheist, at least believe in the non-existing Christian god". This sounds crazy, and indeed is, but that is the reading that comes from your blog.

If god intervenes in the physical world, where is the physical evidence. If god doesn't intervene, what's so amazing about god?

Indeed, this is a conversation between two people who don't speak the same language.

420: A Pain

My back hurt so much on the bus home today that I was one more stop away from lying on the sticky floor crying into a carrier bag. The more it hurt the more I slouched, and the more I slouched the more it hurt, until my top half was almost formed into a tight fist of aches and pains. When I got home I managed to do a small amount of my chores before stretching face down on the bed and attempting to force a few splinters and shards out of my spinal column, by twisting in all sorts of unnatural positions. 

Eventually I was subjected with a much needed sort-of brutal assault / improvised shiatsu massage. It hurt but I was ordered to relax, and my spine cracked loudly, and the weakling child lower back muscles put up a very poor fight before giving up gloriously. Eventually I seemed to be out of pain, and relaxed. A valuable experience, but now I absolutely must be manipulated in such a fashion on a daily basis. In payment for this blog you are reading you are required to come to my home and massage me. Just once, is all I ask; is that too much? You would be doing a public service, but forget about that; I'm not bothered about public services and such crap as that, I just want an ache-free skeletal-muscular system.

Now that's sorted, is there any other business? Nothing today, I'm just half-reading my way through some recent Comment is Free pieces. It's like this blog except its usually (but not always) better written, contributed to by a wide variety of people who are paid for their services, commissioned to give their thoughts on a subject they have some sort of special interest or knowledge about. If I can't think of anything to write, I still have to give it a go, but most of the real-deal stuff in CiF is by people who have given at least a few moments of prior thought before committing words to page. I'm pretty sure they will read through it a few times, and draft and redraft before sending to the editor, and then maybe the editor checks over it a bit too, I don't know. Point is it's a bit more polished. Also since it is The Guardian and not The Telegraph or The Mail it rarely has opinions by anyone desperately stupid, hateful, willfully ignorant, or just plain unpleasant. It does have some crap, but then it wouldn't be worth commenting if it didn't. Psh, I'm even boring myself.

I'm making beef, beer and seasonal root vegetable stew for tea tomorrow. Prepping it before work and sticking it in the slow cooker, on the lowest setting, which will take about 10-12 hours. When we get in from work the flat will smell delicious and there will be a big pot of similarly wonderful tasting stew. I will then eat the stew. I will then lie down and wait for the first of you to turn up and massage me. Happy days