David Miliband is still hogging all of the airwaves.  In a constructive article, he essentially slapped Brown in the face and declared himself to be ready to lead a regicidal coup in the Labour party.  I wrote about my Miliband hypothesis this morning, but refained from further comment throughout the day because I was aware of the fast-changing nature of the narrative.  Things look slightly clearer in tomorrow’s papers, and I am of the opinion that Harriet Harman could well be feeling pretty happy with herself.

During the day, it became clear that David Miliband had hastily cancelled a trip to India in a few weeks’ time.  To begin with, it looked as if he was clearing his diary for a leadership race through Conference season.  Then we were told that he would be using that time for meetings with Cabinet colleagues.  Tomorrow’s Times has “David Miliband ordered to cancel trip as Gordon Brown seeks to restore authority“.  In other words, Mr Miliband will probably no longer be the Foreign Secretary by the end of the month.

At this point, it is worth suggesting that Brown’s salvage strategy might not be disastrous.  Our esteemed Chancellor is almost as dreadful as his next-door neighbour, and Miliband cannot be demoted.  We can probably expect Miliband to be given the poisoned chalice of Number 11, while the Foreign Office brief could perhaps be returned to Jack Straw to shut him up for a while.  Who can say?  One thing is certain: if the Labour party heads into the Conference with some fresh blood in its main arteries, some life could be pumped back into the party machine.  It is not entirely inconceivable that, if policy-heavy speeches from promoted ministers with fresh brief go down well, Brown could use his keynote speech to tell his party to prepare for an election.  Vitality and bravery, stemming the loss of seats.  The Tories are still not prepared for office, and they have not earned their place in the opinion polls.  Miliband would keep clean, and try for leadership once the dust of defeat had settled.  Brown’s (5th? 6th?) fightback attempt might just be the most sensible strategy for the moment.

This hypothesising is good fun, but otherwise worthless.  Recent history suggests that Gordon Brown’s strategy, with his apparent decades of honing his political acumen, is less robust than my rambling thoughts.  Let us deal instead, then, with what we can be reasonably certain of.  Gordon Brown will not last beyond spring 2010, and a leadership race will occur some time in the next 18 months as a result.  David Miliband doubtless knows that he stands in a strong place to win, and has this week essentially begun his campaign.  But there will be “I’m not Miliband” candidates, and there will be “anyone but Miliband” voters.  James Forsyth, on the Spectator’s Coffee House blog, has suggested that Harriet Harman appears to be everything Miliband is not.  It could be Harriet by September, he argues: a sobering thought indeed.  As one D. Miliband would say “in six months’ time, people will be saying ‘I don’t like Harman, let’s have that Brown back’” - he’s prescient like that.

Harriet Harman will be sitting pretty tonight.  She knows that she emerged from recent speculation about leadership ambitions far more positively than Miliband is managing.  She also knows that she can win the support of the Labour Party, and has her useful husband as a strong tie to the Unions.  Miliband has never been tested by a national party election process, and is comfortably distant from the Unions.  What is more, Harriet Harman is seen as a bit of a joke - a loose cannon; a bit of an embarrassment.  Should she try for leadership and lose, she would benefit from the fact that few people take her seriously to begin with.  But she has proved that she is a force to be reckoned with.

Quentin Letts had a sketch in the Daily Mail today outlining his view of a Harman premiership.  In it, he disgracefully employs every mysogonistic quip about women in government and parodies Harman as a total lightweight.  He paints a picture of Harman as a disgusting man-hating feminist, who has Andy Burnam as the only man in her cabinet because of his nice eyelashes.  It is a truly horrendous piece.  But it plays right into Harriet’s hands.  Remember her awful trying-to-be-a-joke-but-even-the-row-of-allies-on-the-front-bench-were-cringing comment at PMQs the other week?  Asked to consider herself as prime minister, her reaction was some misplaced jibe about there not being enough airports in the country for all of the men who would emigrate.  A perfect opportunity to allow the pubic the opportunity to picture her as PM and she tells them how men hate her because she is a feminist.  This is the image she wants to be portrayed!  He colleagues cringe because gender warfare, like the class warfare of Crewe and Nantwich, has no place in modern politics.  But she wants to bring it back with a vengeance, and she hopes that the grassroots Labour party will support her aims to resurrect it in the coming leadership contest.

Miliband is looking to government; to policy, strategy, and legislating.  Harman is looking to get herself elected leader.  One strategy can yield short-term gain, but spells long-term disaster (for a recent historical reference, consult Mr. G. Brown).  The other is a thoughtful, sensible and wise approach to party leadership: not just getting there, but doing something valuable with it.  It was Brown’s downfall, and it is guaranteed to be Harman’s.  She might be smiling now, like Brown was in summer last year, but six months into her leadership and the wheels will be well and truly off the Labour Party’s ailing wagon.

David Miliband’s article in the Guardian yesterday was a reasonable attempt to get the Labour party off the back foot. Since October last year, the narrative has been all Tory ascendancy and Labour distress. Miliband is of the gang of ministers ready to take New Labour - a ’90s philosophy - into the second decade of the 21st century. He honestly believes in what he proposes, and honestly disapproves of Conservative policy.

One senses a mild feeling of frustration from Miliband. Here he is, cometh the hour, etc, and Brown is sending Labour’s last chance for electoral success down the drain. Gordon Brown cannot talk about the future. He can tell us how he is “getting on with the job”, and is the “right man to get us through these difficult times”. He portrays himself as the man of the hour, forgetting, perhaps, that he created the circumstances he now believes he should get us out of. Miliband, on the other hand, has been largely untainted by back-room squabbles under both Blair’s leadership and Brown’s. Indeed, the mere fact that commentators are asking whether the Foreign Secretary has enough experience for the Premiership is evidence enough that he gets his head down and gets on with the job. Who was David Cameron before 2005? Miliband is no lightweight.

What interests me most, though, is that Miliband has tried to critique the Tories. He is confident that, in a genuine battle of ideas, Labour would win. For denying the opportunity to have such a battle, Gordon Brown is to blame. David Miliband is careful to spell out Labour’s future, but is right to contrast it with that of the Conservatives. Just read from his much-discussed but little-read article yesterday:

The Tories overclaim for what they are against because they don’t know what they are for. I disagreed with Margaret Thatcher, but at least it was clear what she stood for. She sat uncomfortably within the Tory party because she was a radical, not a conservative. She wanted change and was prepared to take unpopular decisions to achieve it.

The problem with David Cameron is the reverse. His problem is he is a conservative, not a radical. He doesn’t share a restlessness for change. He may be likable and sometimes hard to disagree with, but he is empty. He is a politician of the status quo — even a status quo he consistently voted against — not change.

Find me a floating voter who does not agree with that. Miliband took some stick for writing an article about Labour’s future, but somebody had to start discussing it before it is too late. If the Labour party wants to salvage itself, policy strategists like Miliband should be ready to discuss policy strategy! Brown is as childish as he is selfish. If he will not resign, he should be deposed.

So, I ask, should the Tories be afraid of Miliband? If he were to become leader this autumn, and call a General Election within the month, he would send shockwaves through Westminster. But in the intense media storm of a snap election and new leader, he could push his policy and methods of government strongly. The Tories would be caught off-guard, and their flimsy policy would be open to as stringent study as is possible. Miliband would lose, certainly, but by small enough a margin to keep his role of leader for the coming Parliament, in which he would be a strong opponant to the limited Tory majority government. The Tory dream of a comfortable decade in power would be gone: they would be struggling five years down the line. The Tories should be very scared of this scenario. All that stands in its way is the fickleness of Gordon Brown’s unstable character.

Some mainstream media blogs are usually worth reading.  I like the Telegraph’s blog network - the content is thick and fast, but posts are always refreshingly short.  A good balance.  Until this kind of rubbish finds its way onto their webspace.

I am sure Melissa Kite is a journalist of merit (although I can’t say I have every been overwhelmed by one of her articles), but her comment on David Cameron’s suggestions of alcohol leave a lot to be desired.  In an informal atmosphere, Cameron was hypothesising on the role of alcohol in the home - namely that if people drink sensibly in the home, they tend not to drink stupidly outdoors.  The continental model.  It is a common line of thought, and deserves consideration.  To rubbish it as a principle because some deliberately silly hypothetical central government project to promote drinking at home would clearly not work is shoddy journalism.  It is no way to make an argument, even if it is via a blog.

The longer the media take the attitude “I wouldn’t write this for the print media, but it’s fine for the blog”, the longer it will take for them to catch up with the wider blogosphere.

For what it’s worth, I think the cultural attitude to alcohol goes much deeper than whether or not people drink small quantities at home from a reasonably young age, but this is a reasonable approach to take with one’s own kids.  One things I can agree with Melissa Kite on, despite her chronic approach to argument, is that any state attempt to encourage this sensible behaviour would be impossible and equally undesirable.

A ComRes poll has Labour on its lowest ever rating.  John Rentoul’s comment is always worth a read.

More interesting, though, is that the Green party’s ratings are specifically listed.  They are currently on 5% - grabbing voters from the declining share held by each of the major parties.  The Green vote is constantly in flux, but this is a very revealing trend.  Far from the Cameron ascendancy, should the Westminster journalists actually be following the rise of the Greens?  Once they have a leader, a coherent image can be deployed and this trend might just break them into the mainstream.

Or, at the very least, have them classed in the same category as the LibDems, not bundled unfairly into the “others”.

Just a thought.

Gordon Brown’s Chancellorship was built on “prudence”. He was the boring Chancellor: the steady helmsman with both hands and even his glass eye trained fixatedly on the rudder of the British economy. His obsessiveness yielded rewards. Apart from one or two mishaps (such as announcing that he would sell gold when the price was at its lowest, just to ensure that it dropped further still), he was a reasonably good Chancellor. He inherited a rallying economy, but must be credited for not screwing it up.

Unsportsmanlike: Gordon Brown

I am not pretending that Brown was a saint of any sort. He has largely deceived the population with dodgy statistics and misplaced promises about his “rules”. He has borrowed far more than he says he has, but shifts figures by counting that debt as separate to national debt. A crass comparison can be made to Hitler’s employment figures: take Jews, the disabled, women and conscripted soldiers out of the equation and Hitler was a master at slashing unemployment! Moreover, the Tory charge that the government has failed to prepare for the coming downturn is entirely fair: Brown promising to build thousands of new homes when construction firms are feeling the pinch is too little too late. When the going is good, we should enjoy it. But we should also recognise that the downturn will not be a particularly pleasant experience.

The last thing people want in times of economic slowdown is increased tax. Brown knows that his fiddling with tax cost him dearly in local and by-elections recently. Any increase in tax would be suicide. But an increase in borrowing is a worse scenario: it harms the economy for a very long time to come. It is, in short, irresponsible.

But worse, it is unsportsmanlike. The recovery from the recession in the early 1990s was a natural response to the economic situation, albeit politically motivated. Brown’s current policy of spending at will with an IOU is wholly irresponsible. It is thoroughly unfair to lose a duel and then kneecap your opponent as you leave the arena. By denying the Tories the chance to govern as they wish (low tax, low spend) he has dictated the economic course for the next few years (high tax, low spend, debt repayments). The simple problem with government borrowing is that it does not yield a good return for the taxpayer: they pay for yesterday’s welfare at tomorrow’s prices. To strap the Tories into paying for his spending, he has effectively sounded the death-knell to solid welfare provision for the next decade.

I object to this addiction to borrowing, therefore, for two simple reasons. Firstly, that it denies the next government from governing as their manifesto states. This is surely an abuse of office? Secondly, when the Tories see public spending targets as “what’s the least we can get away with and still win elections?” it is shocking that a Labour prime minister would steal their spending power and waste it before they get into office. If Brown seriously thinks that welfare is worth having, he should be trying to protect it by keeping government debt as low as possible now. By his current actions, it looks as if he uses it simply to win elections, then hopes the Tories will slash it so he can win the election after that. It is unsportsmanlike, and illogical in the long-term. The Tories will doubtless crow about this U-Turn, and blame it for years to come, but the loudest dissenters must surely come from the Left.

I do not know quite what to make of Richard Dawkins. He knows a lot about that field of science which explains how organisms develop over time, which was born with Darwin’s study and publication of On The Origin of Species. Dawkins has made it his life’s work to persuade people of the “facts” of science, not the “fiction” of faith. In so doing, he has strayed well into physics, psychology, astrology, philosophy, and, of course, theology. I do not know what to make of him, because I do not know quite what he wants to be. I do not criticise his field of work: to the contrary, as I hope to explain, it is extremely valuable for atheist, theist and agnostic alike. I am all in favour of a multi-disciplined approach to science, and am far more likely to read a science book that is about religion than one just about science – I am interested in religion over science. It is perhaps a surprise, then, that I have only just read a book by Richard Dawkins.

Good Writing, Poor Argument: Richard Dawkins

From the excerpts of this and other works, I had formed the opinion that Dawkins is a very good writer, but that his argument is flaky. I will admit to being wary of reading The God Delusion, especially because its aim is to “disprove” religion as a concept in a way that religion cannot “prove” itself. I know Christians who are divided on the issue of whether we should ignore the likes of Dawkins, or should fight fire with fire. My view has been that it is impossible to fight fire with fire, because religion is in a field of study so divorced from science that scientific process and argument cannot possibly be used to defend or promote it. In this, I think Dawkins and I agree – Christianity, or any of the other religions he despises, cannot advance a coherent scientific proof of the existance of God (or the resurrection of Christ, or the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, etc.) in the same way that Dawkins can prove the age of the universe and theorise on its conception. We agree, too, on the utter nonsence of the so-called “Intelligent Design” theories that attempt, by word games and feebly inaccurate logic puzzles that scientific evidence of a “creator” exists, and can be proven. I suspect that “Intelligent Design” theory is like a particularly good dream for Richard Dawkins, as Christians attempt with woefully misplaced confidence that they have found scientific proof of God. They try to fight fire with fire, and fail. They try to out-science the scientists, and fail. Quelle surprise.

On occasions where I have heard Christians discussing Richard Dawkins, I felt myself getting annoyed at their approach. He was a threat – the “militant atheist” monster trying to destroy religion. Why couldn’t he just understand faith? We must guard ourselves against him. If you read The God Delusion, make sure to take an antidote. (Several theologians and religious theorists have produced mass-market editions directly questioning The God Delusion.) These books are very useful entries to the debate*, but they have been poorly deployed by Christians. Church bookstalls and Christian bookshops proudly display multiple copies, but Dawkins’ original is conspicuously absent. It is not for me to suggest what people sell, but I would like to see The God Delusion met as a challenge of ideas, and a genuine debate to take place in the minds of the pew-fodder rolling through Churches each week. For anyone to take anything Dawkins writes at face value is a huge mistake, but it is equally stupid to foster prejudiced views of Richard Dawkins. Yes, Dawkins delights in the quasi-argument, the semi-assertion, and the half-truth, but there is no excuse for taking his rebutters at face value either! If Dawkins’ chief argument is that religion blinds by complacency in ignorance, one can only prove his point by harbouring false views about his books! I see “organised religion” as a necessary (and biblical) part of Christianity, but I firmly believe that nobody should ever take what is said from the pulpit at face value. We should all be theologians in our own ways, arriving at biblical interpretation or personal commitments because of an independent thought process that delivers that interpretation. In other words, fully-formed beliefs should not be parachuted into our minds by professional religious leaders: they should challlenge us and equip us to genuinely seek the answers for ourselves. In this, then, I think Christians should be encouraged to examine Richard Dawkins and his theory of delusion as well as being encouraged to read those who have challenged him in print.

It was impossible to begin reading The God Delusion without reminding myself of my faith. I did not read the book seeking conversion to atheism, and nor did I begin it determined to finish with my religion more firmly entrenched than before. I read it as a genuine attempt to understand why Richard Dawkins thinks relgion is bad – which is, after all, what the book is about. I am a firm believer that religious faith is meaningless if one is too scared to approach a book that seeks to undermine it, and also that religious people do the world a great disservice if they fail to engage in a genuine debate on such subjects as the psychology of religion. As I have tried to explain, I think fighting Dawkins-esque science with an embarrasingly childish pseudo-scientific response is a flawed plan. Dawkins loves to dwell on evidence, and a favourite maxim is that we should be taught how to think, not what to think. It is unclear whether he would have people taught the possibility of psychological or philisophical thought, but one can only speculate.

Given his love of fact and evidence, then, it is amazing to see the regularity with which Dawkins gives his reader semi-facts. It does not take an Oxford professor to see why courts of law ensure witnesses give “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. Half-truths can be pursuasive, but they are no way to win an argument. Very rarely in The God Delusion does Dawkins outline differences in opinion in the theological field. He expects his readers to take his understanding of theology at face value: sure, some theologians would agree with him on each individual point, but it is no way to present an argument. One comical example is his argument that, to paraphrase, nobody understands the Trinity. Another, clearly inserted for laughs but actually revealing much about Dawkins’ attitude to the Bible, is that Adam and Eve were banished from Eden and mankind cursed for all subsequent generations because they were caught “scrumping”. In the same section, he elaborates that they had been told about the danger of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, stating simply that the Knowledge turned out to be that they were naked. Such flagrant disregard of scholarly debate on theological matters is commonplace.

Where The God Delusion makes reference to theological debate, Dawkins tends to rubbish one position, then praise a “more sophisticated” or “more advanced” argument. It is Dawkins’ prerogative to decide what is more or less advanced, but I reason it intolerably arrogant to make such distinctions in what remains a thoroughly theoretical field. Dawkins bases his academic study on the fact that religion has no “evidence”, but deals with philosophy and theology as if it is transparent which side of each debate is reasonable. I wonder what a more “advanced” theory of theology actually is to Dawkins – is it one which is closer to his point of view, or one which has more theoretical evidence behind it, or one which more people agree with? I have come to conclusions on many theological issues, have decided to remain actively seized of other matters, and have yet to encounter more. In each case, I do not demean the opposing positions – they may turn out to be right after all. Dawkins cannot get over his belief that a scientific approach can be taken towards every academic field: theoretical fields simply cannot be ransacked with declarations of “more sophisticated” like that!

Many examples can also be cited where Dawkins deliberately reduces some Biblical issue to a comical nonsense, and then bats it aside with the reader in full agreement. When he portrays the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, he conscieously turns the tale into parody in order to make moral judgements of God. Abraham was variously “cooking” and “barbequing” his son. From Dawkins’ point of view, a sacrifice has no significant difference in practice to a murder, but to the religious mind there is a very big difference. To Dawkins, God was engaging in some elaborate comic-book jape in asking for Isaac’s charcoaled flesh, and then turning around to say “only joking!”. If Dawkins’ interpretation of events was accurate, God is to be decried in sing-song playground tone as a great big meanie. If the story is taken seriously by someone of religious conviction (all three major monotheistic religious do, as Dawkins hurries to point out, take it seriously) then it is a thoroughly revealing test of faith. God, let’s not forget, never intended Abraham to butcher his own son, but did intend to have him believe that he would. Again, we can all sympathise with Dawkins if we take his worldview. He could sympathise with Abraham there if he wanted to, by taking a religious worldview. This divide between Dawkins’ mind and that of the religious reader is striking – and, I think, has nothing to do with science.

A chapter of The God Delusion claims that we do not get our morals from religious texts. Here, a two-fold process of argument is at work. First, that Yahweh, Jesus et al are evil and generally pretty poor moral teachers. Second, that the argument “yes, but we don’t think like that any more” is evidence that we have taken our morals from somewhere else. Atheists have moral codes too, don’t you know, but they are not grounded in the Bible. The trouble with the first part of the argument is that Dawkins is attempting to judge morality from his point of view, which is surely a mistake? A couple of tweaks to his thinking would fundamentally change his view of the relative morality of God. He decries God for being “jealous and proud of it”, but if Dawkins had made the world one might expect a touch of gloating! Here, morality is relativised because God’s jealousy is squared with his supremacy. To God, it is immoral to attribute glory to things which he made, not to the maker. As such, idols are prohibited and we should instead love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, minds, souls, etc. God’s violent jealosy is misplaced and immoral if he is not God, but is perfectly justified if he is. Thus Dawkins’ argument is redundant before he begins because he begins with the (I believe false) belief that God is not, in fact, God. If you judge God’s morality from a position which rejects God, you will find the character of the Bible unpleasant at times. If you see him as God, though, he is the purest picture of morality because, after all, he invented it. (For what it’s worth, Dawkins fails to understand that few people believe we should take God’s view of the world as our own: he is only moral because he is God, and we would be acting very immorally if we were to behave like God.) The second part of the argument – that the “we don’t think like that any more” argument is evidence that our morals come from elsewhere – is illogical in light of the dissection of the first. What Dawkins sees as the “picking and choosing” of what Biblical morals we now follow, another would see as distinguishing between the sort of thing God should be dealing with and the sort of thing we should be worried about.

The chapter of The God Delusion that I found most interesting dealt with the reasons why atheism does not automatically make amoral people. Hitler and Stalin are often cited as examples of atheism gone wrong, but as Dawkins rightly says their religious conviction is irrelevant to the deeds they committed. It matters not whether Stalin was an atheist – lots of Christians are bad people, too, and lots of atheists are good. Quite why, then, Dawkins felt the need to explain, in several pages, that Hitler was probably a confessing Catholic at least into the War is beyond me. This red-herring aside, Dawkins must be credited with providing a very good answer to the problem of religious belief in dictators. Many have professed their desire to do God’s will, but many have not. The common theme here is dictatorship, not religion or lack thereof. When Dawkins argues that a lack of faith does not lead people to do evil things, but greed might, he strikes gold. Morality in this sense is not the preserve of religion – right and wrong, on a sliding scale of evilness, is usually commonly accepted when we are looking at things from the same position. Thus we can call Hitler evil without expecting a huge backlash: evidence does rather support the assertion.

Antagonistic: The God Delusion

It becomes more difficult to reach agreement on relative morality when not looking at things from the same position. Dawkins uses the example of a survey of Israeli children, asking whether the actions of Joshua were justified. Overwhemingly, Joshua was vindicated in the eyes of the Israeli children. But if the passage of scripture is replaced with an identical story, just using a different name for the protagonist and cities ransacked, the actions are judged immoral. Dawkins argues that this is because Israeli children have been brainwashed into seeing Judaism and its teachings as perfect, while having an otherwise standard view of morality on examples outside the Bible. Once again, just one leap of faith separates this from being illogical nonsense to perfectly reasonable – if God exists. Dawkins says he doesn’t, so his argument holds. If one were to imagine God existing, the Israeli children have actually made the logical moral judgement. Everything Dawkins decries as nonsensical is, in fact, perfectly reasonable if only you believe in God. Asking “How can you believe in God when it is backed by this kind of broken thinking?” is a bit of a misnomer. If one believes in God, the thinking is very joined-up indeed.

The book, therefore, rests on the presumption that God is a false idea. If he is real, every argument advanced becomes redundant. Dawkins’ whole theory in dissecting the myth of God rests on the understanding that he does not exist. If one believes he does exist, none of Dawkins’ arguments stand. God is not lessened, the extent of his reach not truncated, by any of Dawkins’ theory because his theory presumes that God does not exist at all. Any religious person can condifently read The God Delusion and know that if they are right – that God does exist – then Dawkins has done nothing to limit his scope. The whole book does not prove God’s non-existance, but rather presumes it and then tries to explain why. The religious person’s argument that “God exists, therefore…” is an unconvincing start to evangelism. Dawkins is guilty of the same. There remains a fundamental difference of vision between the theist and the atheist, and Richard Dawkins fails to transcend that. In this, the evangelist has a harder job than Dawkins: the evangelist attempts to break across this boundry of belief/unbelief, as we are all born in unbelief. Dawkins hates that children are taught religion from a young age, but no mature Christian faith is based on indoctrination. Instead, the believing Christian or Jew or Muslim or Hindu has crossed from unbelief into belief in a way Dawkins fails to reverse. If Dawkins aims to pursuade the religious of the error of their ways, he needs to combat the problem that they have the very faith Dawkins’ arguments require to be absent in order to work.

For what it is worth, I feel the need to raise what I think is the most glaring problem in Dawkins’ theory. He sees religion as “filling a necessary gap” - a neat phrase, but, of course, meaninless – as a sort of response to some earlier human emotion. He thinks religious belief is a manifestation of an in-built need to have psychological reassurance, using the example of a child’s imaginary friend. This must have had some use in times gone by, but is now “misfiring” to cause religious conviction: blind faith. It is, therefore, seen as a wholly irrational figment of the imagination. If religious conviction is genetic, and is useless, why does it continue to perpetuate? More fundamentally, though, if religion is built into genetics, why should we fight it? To put things in Dawkins’ own terms, to argue vociferously against religion is like the giraffe stretching its neck – worthwhile perhaps for the individual, but of no use to its children. Dawkins sees the harm caused by religion as affecting only those alive today, so there is no genetic reason for this gene/meme to mutate into non-existance. Genetic theory might explain why religion came into being, but is unable to envisage a reason how or when it might dissipate in the future. For Dawkins, then, our brains tell us to be religious but it is an irrational desire that we should fight. Each generation is cursed with a genetic code leading us into the psychological safety-net that Dawkins argues is dangerous! Dawkins’ decision to use the phrase “fills a necessary gap” is possibly the most notable thing he got perfectly right – he argues that religion is invented by genetics to do good, but it actually does harm, but genetics will not rid us of the desire to follow religion, so each generation should actively fight against their subconscious desire to believe in the unbelievable, which their brain tells them is for their own good, for their own good! In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins believes he has found the source of religion, but cannot envisage a time where it will be no longer. We must, he effectively argues, fight against our own judgement to through out any faith that our brain might tell us is preferable because it is irrational. Our genetics are misleading us, pulling us into a cycle of religious nuttery. Dawkins believes that the Human brain has evolved to such a stage that it safeguards against psychological harm by causing it.

I’ll stick with God, thanks.

- - -
*I own a couple of these books. I like to see a genuine debate on these issues, and it is refreshing to see some adequate attempts to challenge Dawkins on issues where some balance is required. I thoroughly recommend reading The God Delusion and an antidote or two, if only for the sake of educated balance.

This is just too wonderful. That image of Obama riding a unicorn will, I hope, last like “Dave the Chameleon” did.

(via PlayPolitical)

I have a secret love. It is marketed for middle-aged parents who want to enjoy watching Saturday evening television with their children. It costs about £1,000,000 for each 45 minute installment. It is possibly the best thing on TV at the moment, but its latest run has just ended. Dr Who is one of the best defenses of the License Fee I can think of*.

TV these days leaves a lot to be desired. Entertainment is usually nothing of the sort: drumbeat-filled minutes before some nonentity is announced as the next big forgotten sat-that-could-have-been; gaudy sets masking vacuous presenters; plotlines so deliberately nonsensical that reality actually seems preferable again. Children’s’ TV is charitably described as patronising. Children watch post-watershed programmes, and anybody thinking that school films of you average school playground at lunchtime could be shown before 9pm need to emerge themselves in modern childhood. Children’s TV is no longer relevant to children, and yet parents do not want to accept adult TV as standard fare for their offspring.

Step in Dr Who. Nothing is quite like it. Deliberately pitched at the adult as much as the child, the resurrected TV classic has breathed new life into television. Just when MySpace looked like it could tear kids away from BBC1’s latest dramatised children’s novel, Dr Who came out all guns blazing. There is something here for everyone.

It appeals to the child in everyone. The hero arrives somewhere unknown at the beginning of each episode, and when it’s planet Earth he still has the task of figuring out just when. The Doctor emerges from his phonebox in an ancient Roman market, and we have just about clocked where and when by the time the Doctor declares “we’re in Vesuvius – and it’s volcano day!”. He knows nothing of the challenge he faces in the next three quarters of an hour, but he will learn just one second quicker than we will – always cleverer than the viewer, but not such that we can’t think we can get ahead once in a while.

Adults remember Dr Who from its old incarnations, with its shaky sets and whisk-clad dustbin monsters. Now they can indulge in their favourite activity of reliving their childhood through their children in a way their children appreciate. Dr Who is socially acceptable. Playground talk can divert from sex, drugs and knives to matters of televisual entertainment with a seamlessness not possible with soaps or CSI – simply because Dr Who is about neither drugs or sex or knives. The Doctor never carries weapons, and he refuses to fall in love because he will outlive any suitor. As for drugs, who needs them when the entire universe and several parallel ones are at their fingertips?

Dr Who delves deeper, too. Everybody has a tortured soul trying to break out, and the Doctor is the ultimate focal point for character association. Because he refuses to love, yet cares deeply, his life is somehow eternally unfulfilled. Sure, he can charge throughout time and space stopping intergalactic wars and freeing races of cloned slave creatures, but he will never catch every atrocity or stop every death. Dr Who teaches that some things are right, some are wrong, and that some things are just meant to be whatever morality dictates. He let a Roman township burn alive in AD79 for the sake of saving the rest of the world: an unpreventable crisis, but one in which the alternative was too dire to contemplate.

A less personal morality is rampantly pushed through the programme, not so much searching souls as ravaging them. To the Doctor, every species matters. Daleks are as important to him as Ood, although he clearly has a soft spot for humans. In Saturday’s stunning series finale, Davros finds his world collapsing around him, and laughs manically in the knowledge that the Doctor caused the destruction of an entire race. His final victory was condemning the Time Lord for a brutal genocide: “you are the destroyer of worlds”. The programme-makers, of course, were unable to fully apportion blame to our Doctor but the sentiment remains. Death is the Doctor’s worst nightmare, and death at his own hands is an impossible burden to bear.

One burden is more challenging still, though. In the finale to the current series, “the Doctor’s soul was revealed”. He is challenged for not carrying weapons, but making weapons out of bystanders. He survives because of the self-sacrifice of those around him. Davros again heaps on the morality: “How many more? How many have died in your name?” Cue montage of character deaths from the last four series, and a bleak-looking David Tennant suddenly realising that the weight of the world rests not on his shoulders, but on the trust others put in him. This latest series has promoted him from demi-god to quasi-messiah, as the Doctor watches the end of the universe approach from the safety of a forcefield on a Dalek spaceship. His loyal followers (not quite twelve of them, and no betrayer) unite to save the universe from the pure evil of Davros and his satanic breed Dalek demons.

The average tweenage viewer may not appreciate the subtle moral indoctrination here, but they soon know right from wrong. Some of the more powerful philosphical arguments might pass unnoticed, but that is no reason to keep them away. The programme is good, clean TV – no blood or gore or swearing. In fact, Gordon Ramsey’s effing souffle looks rather trivial compared to the Doctor’s c-word free end of the world scenes. Week in, week out, he watches peril the likes of which Ramsey’s kitchen staff could only imagine, yet he keeps his mouth clean and his head straight. Realistic it may not be, but it gives parents the sense of safety they so desire. This is TV that parents actively want their children to see: high drama, intelligent, and above all clean.

Of course, Dr Who is tacky – the poor man’s sci-fi. The plots rarely make sense, and there is a constant annoyance of major advances in the narrative being made by some thought process or memory the viewer is not party to. This is a great shame, as even the most intelligent and alert viewers are left reeling from sudden jerks to the narrative. But the joy does not come from following the story. It comes from watching a man in a blue box zip about time and fix things, with all of the drama that entails. With, of course, a meaningful dollop of morality thrown in for good measure. We are, of course, talking of that ultimate hero, the quasi-messiah, the tortured soul, “The Doctor – the man who keeps running, never looking back because he dare not… for shame.”

Dr Who is perfect TV because the Doctor is the perfect hero – the guy you are tempted to want to be, but eventually decide is probably better left being himself. He is an enigma, sure, and one we would love to delve into. He seeks to make content people, but he is not a content man. Ultimately, it is the Doctor’s eternal lonliness that keeps the viewer happy. Davros, again, articulates it well: “who have you got? All those friends of yours?”. The Doctor’s response satisfies anybody tempted to think of filling his shoes: “they’ve all got someone else”.

For logical storylines, look elsewhere. For good, wholesome entertainment for all the family which delves into deep emotions and jiggles with your sense of morality, there is nothing better on TV. If Dr Who can keep advancing and not slip into a self-parody of its former self, I hope it is here to stay for many series to come.

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*BBC 4 being the other big one.

As regular readers will know, we at Scribo Ergo Sum have taken the time to consider some of the potential future leaders of the Labour Party. David Milliband, of course, is often mooted as a strong candidate: he knows policy-making inside-out, and has an air of competence about him. I am of the opinion that James Purnell would be very good as a party leader: he has confidence and passion, but also an air of naturalness that makes him seem like a normal person, not a Westminster monster.

But, given recent headlines, what of Harriet Harman? She seems to have been conducting surveys of local party associations, and has been very well spoken of by colleagues. She was not really expected to win the deputy leadership contest (probably because she was Brown’s choice…) but she came through convincingly. She was denied a DPM job, but given at least half a dozen other responsibilities that have given her a hand in many different areas. She is Leader of the Commons, Minister for Women and Equality, Lord privy Seal, as well as being Labour’s deputy leader and party chair. Credit must be given where it is due - she has been reasonably successful in cementing her position and shaking off ridicule when necessary. She has proven herself in a recent election within the Labour Party - something Gordon Brown ensured he did not need to do.

Harriet Harman could conceivably be the next leader of the Labour Party. It seems as if she is planning for the opportunity, and is ready to jump when it emerges. She cannot be written off as punching above her weight: her position has strengthened since she became the holder of Labour’s highest elected position. Let’s not forget that Labour will choose its next leader, not the electorate.

To ask whether she would be any good, we must distinguish between Harman as the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition and Harman as First Lord of the Treasury.

Harman would be brilliant for Labour in opposition. A leader of the party base to try to gather the pieces from a humiliating defeat, and begin the road to recovery swiftly. A leader to challenge the new Tory administration without looking sour. A leader who never tried to become Prime Minister, but instead stood up to take the party forward in its first stint out of office for a dozen years. A leader who specialises in flimsy policy of the politically-correct sort that knocks the Tories off their feet. In four years, she could do what William Hague failed to do for the Tories and stem the bleeding from her beleaguered party. In 2010, when Brown loses the election, it is very difficult to see him returning to Parliament to ask questions of Cameron on a Wednesday afternoon: if he resigns his position immediately, and Harman becomes acting leader, she will be given the publicity to push her leadership bid like no other candidate. Milliband, Purnell et al can wait until government looks likely again: that is what they specialise in.

But Harriet Harman as Prime Minister? I cannot imagine a candidate I would less like to run the legislative agenda. She believes in “positive” discrimination, the the point of wanting all-woman shortlists for Parliamentary seats. She wants every citizen of the United Kingdom to own an identity card, to use them for traveling, purchasing goods and even for voting. She is the most big-government interventionist the Labour party has to offer: the last thing the country needs. She talks at the electorate, not with them, and has no idea what issues people actually feel are important. She has such a deep-rooted hatred of the Conservative party that any cross-party consensus would go out of the window. She does not debate her own policy, but slurs the Tories and misrepresents theirs. Of every possible candidate to take Number 10 from Brown, she is the single most loathsome choice. And it is a matter of deep concern that she seems a likely choice should the position become available.

In 2010, Harman is the dream choice for the Labour Party. Before then, she is this nation’s worst nightmare.

I’m not one for crowing, and regular readers will know that I have been ready to defend Boris Johnson at times.  But today, it is clear that Johnson’s political nous is vacant.

He talked up Lewis - a “deputy mayor”, no less, despite the agreed definition of the title.  He leaped to his defence at the first sight of trouble.  Now the headlines read “Deputy Mayor resigns” and “Right-Hand man lied”.  Johnson’s judgement was flawed.

For the first time, Johnson can justly be criticised by his many opponants for active stupidity.  Ignorance has been the order of the day so far: now Johnson has bound himself strongly to a marked man.  Lewis’ resignation ruins his own reputation beyond repair, but also leaves Johnson somewhat tarnished.

On this issue, Johnson deserves all the criticism he gets.

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Should it be significant, although I strongly hope it will not, it is worth noting Alan Sugar’s position.  If he does dare to stand in 2012, he cannot use Lewis against Johnson - he hired his apprentice knowing that he had lied on his CV!  The difference, of course, is that Lee McQueen had not been punished by the Church and questioned by police on several occasions for separate incidents.  And he lied about a degree, not, ironically, about being a Magistrate.