Monday, January 20, 2014

Heartland fruitcake


If one thing is as certain as death and taxes it's that religion eventually inspires otherwise normal, intelligent people to do and say incredibly stupid things. Yesterday I read about a perfect example of this. Henley on Thames UKIP councillor David Silvester (a keen Baptist) thinks that the recent flooding in the UK is because of gay people and the latest UK equality legislation. I suppose that UKIP will now be lobbying for us to quit spending money on meteorology and climate research since their members are able to forecast the weather based on interpreting a bronze age book of Hebrew myths! How long before the Caprinae slaughter begins, we wonder.

Like many others before him Mr Silvester has a habit of allowing ancient religious dogma to cloud his reasoning abilities, he's previously on record as claiming that UK abortion laws are equivalent to the Nazi Holocaust and that homosexuality can be "cured" by prayer. Most reasonable people could easily come up with dozens of reasons why such claims are ludicrous but then if, like Mr Silvester, you don't respect reason then using an evidence based argument doesn't usually make any difference. I suppose in some ways Silvester is doing everyone a favour, i.e. by scratching the surface of organisations like UKIP (and Baptists) and allowing the rest of us to see the true colour of the metal underneath he is allowing voters to make more informed decisions, hopefully marginalising views like his to where they belong, i.e. the past.

1 comment:

Chairman Bill said...

We need to add to God's wrath with gay marriage, bankers and the England cricket team - there should be an optimum mix there we can use as a WMD surely?