Being Nasty to Christians

Via DK I see that the Archbishop of Canterbury – a bearded prig who is the defender of an ancient fairytale in this country – has launched an attack on freedom of speech. Because of all those nasty-wasty people being all mean and pooey to him and his fellow god botherers. Awww, the poor baby. Give the poor baby a big, fat hug.

Anyhoo, I’m not going to attack Williams too much – both DK and Harry Haddock do this with considerable aplomb. But there is an interesting implication to Williams’ gripe.

See, I thought if you had faith in Christianity, then you had faith in it. It would take a lot more than the evil, nasty atheists dissing your religion to get you to change your mind. Take Mike Huckabee over in the US. His faith isn’t shaken or altered by anything – be it common sense, scientific fact, actual events or political expediency. It doesn’t say a great deal for the religious convictions of Williams that he feels his religion should be placed on a pedestal over every other belief in the country, religious or otherwise.

Yeah, there is also the argument that if there are a whole host of people in the country dissing Christianity then it might be difficult for Williams et al to indoctrinate – sorry, convert – new recruits to the cult of the "sky fairy", to borrow Harry’s wonderful phrase. But again I say this – if Christianity is good enough, if Christianity is still relevant to the modern age, then they should have no problem winning new people to their cause. The godbotherers in the US seem to have no problem with this. But if the Christians in the UK cannot do that in this modern day and age, then maybe it is time to let Christianity go. Let it fade into the history books, like the belief the world is flat, or that the heavens are ruled by some dude called Jupiter.

The joy of having freedom of speech is that you can test your views, and see if they can stand up to the arguments of your fiercest detractors. All Williams stance says to me is that he doesn’t feel his arguments can stand up to debate.

However, he does say one thing that I can agree with:

"And behind this is the nagging problem of what happens to a culture in which, systematically, nothing is sacred."

Yep, it is a problem if nothing is sacred in society. But instead of making a deeply unconvincing story based on a third hand ancient text sacred in society, why not make something else sacred? Something more useful?

Why not make freedom of speech sacred?