Heresiarch

Heresiarch

83p

763 comments posted · 1 followers · following 0

10 years ago @ Heresy Corner - So what is Paul Dacre ... · 0 replies · +1 points

Interesting timing.

10 years ago @ Heresy Corner - Invisible Girl · 0 replies · +8 points

That sort of melodrama is inherent in VISs, yes, the idea presumably being that the more tear-jerking the victim's statement and tougher the sentence is likely to be. I've never liked them in principle or practice. It turns the law into a mawkish arms-race. A criminal sentence shouldn't be influenced by the emotional articulacy of the victim.

The fact that the daughter feels there hasn't been an impact is more relevant than her mother's wailings in an assessment of what the damage actually was.

10 years ago @ Heresy Corner - Invisible Girl · 1 reply · +3 points

You're being subjective.

10 years ago @ Heresy Corner - Invisible Girl · 1 reply · +5 points

No, I set that up myself. I don't want any nonsense on here. Subjectively, the law may be an ass. Objectively, it exists for a good reason.

10 years ago @ Heresy Corner - Permissive Britain is ... · 1 reply · +8 points

I do actually see some plausibility in this, especially if you interpret "feminised" as meaning "not hyper-masculinised and oppressive of women". I think there is a subgroup of disenfranchised male youth, some of whom get in trouble with the law, who find in Islam's perceived strict gender norms a vindication of their manhood. Note the words of one of the Woolwich killers that "I apologise women had to see this". I detect in this a view of himself as a noble warrior who sees himself as a protector of women etc.

But yes, going back to the bad old days is neither a solution nor an option; but rather infinitely worse than the odd exceedingly rare terror attack.

10 years ago @ Heresy Corner - Dawkins and the Flying... · 0 replies · +1 points

That's a shame.

10 years ago @ Heresy Corner - Explaining the peace p... · 2 replies · +3 points

It's a long term trend over the centuries, I'd agree with that, but how would you account for the huge rise in recorded violent crime since the Fifties? One possibility, of course, is that most violent incidents simply weren't counted in the crime figures. People has fights, even stabbed each other, and there was also a lot of domestic violence, but the police didn't usually become involved.

10 years ago @ Heresy Corner - Explaining the peace p... · 11 replies · +1 points

I quite agree. The homicide rate is very low in this country and hasn't really changed much over the past several decades. That's why I ignored it.

10 years ago @ Heresy Corner - Dawkins and the Flying... · 0 replies · +3 points

Ther are various different interpretations of the moon-splitting story. Collective hallucinations are certainly possible, though - people at Fatima seeing the Sun dance, for example. If people did see the moon apparently split in two at Mohammed's command, though, it was presumably only people in Mecca who saw it. There are no records from China, say, of such a thing occurring at that time?

10 years ago @ Heresy Corner - Dawkins and the Flying... · 1 reply · +2 points

It would certainly be strange if the two of them, for all their differences, shared such a crudely materialist misunderstanding of religious experience, I agree. But given Hasan's latest Tweet, I somewhat doubt it.

What I think may be going on is that because of the status of scientific materialism in our culture some religious people have come to share the suspicion that visions and so on are mere delusions, therefore not "real", so that to admit that the Night Journey was a vision would in their minds be tantamount to saying that it was a delusion, that it didn't really happen, or whatever. And perhaps Hasan didn't want to hand Dawkins such an easy apparent victory.