Bla, bla, bla

I unfortunately caught an interview with the Bishop of Durham this morning on the radio; Dr Wright (62) is leaving his job soon and so radio 4 gave him free reign to blab on about stuff for a couple of minutes. Like most conversations with people of his ilk most of it made no sense to me. At one point he said that when Jesus was asked a question sometimes he gave an answer and sometimes he refused, as if this statement is somehow supposed to be profound? Clearly sometimes Jesus knew the answer (or made it up) and sometimes he didn't, in any case, not particularly impressive for the omniscient creator of the universe. I'd have thought that no question or answer would be a challenge for such a super being, that's kind of the point of omniscience isn't it? But then, as we all know, common sense and logic has little to do with Jedi mind tricks or "theology" as they like to call it.

What did tickle me was the list of things that the good old Bishop reeled off which he implied didn't worry him, like a small child, it was plainly obvious to me that this list represented precisely the issues he *is* worried about; here are the things I distilled from the conversation,

Secularism
Apparently secularism isn't a problem since religiosity is increasing, however the Bishop admits that less people are going to his church; what he failed to mention is that most new followers of religion being born into this world are indoctrinated into the Muslim faith and not the Anglican one, I wonder if he thinks that's a good thing? - he didn't say.

Richard Dawkins
Old Wrighty couldn't resist an Ad Hom pop at Dawkins, calling him "shrill", apparently there is a new definition of this word in the Oxford English dictionary, it now means "anyone that disagrees with you"; I'd think a lot more of the good Bishop if he offered to debate RD to address the actual arguments rather than just calling his opponents names behind their backs?

The relevance of the Church
When challenged about the relevance of the church we had some more (bla bla) Jesus stuff, but then he said that people really appreciate religion when religion gets out into the community and does stuff, like charity, well no shit Sherlock, give starving people food or blankets when they're cold and guess what, they think it's great! What that has to do with Jesus I'm not entirely sure.

The Enlightenment 
Apparently the enlightenment "project" has failed, clearly the Bishop thinks that things in the middle ages were much better, shame people only had half the time they have now to, you know, actually live. The root of his assertion was that there are now more opportunities for "sin", well "sin" is a hypothetical concept that only really exists in the brains of religious people like him, so that's a pointless and circular argument if ever I heard one, what's more interesting is crime but that wasn't mentioned.

From now on I'm going to start calling all Christians like this who disagree with me "shrill".