British Right-Wing Pundits

“We live in an increasingly godless society, where Christians are marginalised, sacked and even prosecuted for upholding their beliefs, yet we are urged to ‘Pray 4 Muamba’” sighed Richard Littlejohn of The Daily Mail. “With a dwindling number of people attending church, millions have taken to worshipping footballers and celebrities instead. In the words of G. K. Chesterton: ‘When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything.’”

otm, man. otm.

pray 4 muamba not pray 2 muamba, surely?

God I'm sick of that Chesterton quote.

i believe he added 2+2 together, not an uncommon littlejohn trait- tho i understand that it's quite unusual for him not to get 5

The Daily Mail, well known for its lofty disdain for footballers and celebrities.

hang on is Littlejohn claiming to be a christian? cos i have questions

shoot

piers morgan claims to be a christian too so i guess anything is possible

if christ were alive today he would smite young black millionaires too, i guess, i dunno

He'd put a stop to all this 'compassionate lefty' business, fako!

God I'm sick of that Chesterton quote.

Have it in my head it's a fake or messed-up one? Could be wrong, cba checking – it does have that authentic Chesterton "a-ha" quality that gets up my nose, esp when he does it four times in a paragraph.

believing in 'anything' isn't qualitatively different from believing in god, at least some of the 'anything' might be true

well said, Fizzles -- the Chesterton line, real or not, is an irritating smug thing that people say but that is not apparently true.

I have never believed in a god, and I don't believe in 'anything' either, supposing that 'anything' here might mean, say (as I think it does when people spout that line): mysticism, tarot, astrology, alternative medicine and other 'superstitions', or even supposing it means (eg) worshipping the royal family or celebrities.

and the same probably goes for most atheists.

ts: "I believe in nothing" vs "I don't believe in nothing"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSpCXUhp2uA

Wikiquote agrees with you: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Misattributed

That Littlejohn quote is nuts - as Stevie says, it's praying FOR Muamba, not TO him. I mean, I have problems with the fact that people are suggesting prayers instead of, you know, trained medical assistance, but FFS Littlejohn, you are an ass.

xposts - and yes, the falsely attributed quote is stupid anyway, it's not even attempting to make its conclusion follow logically on from its premises, it's just a piece of dogma.

xps (ty emil.y)

turns out i could be arsed. Not Chesterton, but a critic's paraphrase of this from one of his Father Brown stories:

‘It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there’s a good deal in it, extends itself indefinitely like a vista in a nightmare. And a dog is an omen, and a cat is a mystery, and a pig is a mascot, and a beetle is a scarab, calling up all the menagerie of polytheism from Egypt and old India; Dog Anubis and great green-eyed Pasht and all the holy howling Bulls of Bashan; reeling back to the bestial gods of the beginning, escaping into elephants and snakes and crocodiles; and all because you are frightened of four words: ‘He was made Man’.’

Less snappy that.

‘He was made Man’.’

http://www.thehollywoodnews.com/wp-content/uploads/joe_pesci-237x300.jpg

no, he was not made man, that was problem

It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are

amazing, tbh

what a daft, virtually incomprehensible quotation

the lameness and falsehood of it curiously seems to undermine the 'believe in anything' BS even more than I thought it had already been undermined.

d-Mac correct also.

not to be Cap'n Save-a-Chesterton but i wonder to what extent the outspoken antichristians of his era were on a theosophical tip, you could argue he's tilting at the New Age tendency of redirected faith rather than yr cold hard logical atheists. either way polytheism is way more fun and fulfilling than monotheism, obv

not believing in one thing != being willing to believe in anything. Even Littlejohn should be able to understand that. It's like he doesn't actually believe what he writes, and simply does it for the large wads of cash and to provoke a reaction.

re. Chesterton, he was a fervent Cathlic wasn't he. I would suspect he'd have had problems with any non-Catholic forms of Christianity, let alone Theosophy etc.

Chesterton was a convert iirc which is worse, even. but the Father Brown doesn't feel aimed at atheism in toto

The Man Who Was Thursday is not too keen on "anarchists", and can allegedly be seen as a Christian allegory. As much about the politics of the Edwardian age as religion, though.

The Man Who Was Thursday was pre-conversion iirc? And the Father Brown stories, esp the first two volumes are really good. I'm a fan! I ever quite like his Apologetic book on converting to Catholicism, Orthodoxy. But that 'a-ha!' quality woof mentioned is f'ing annoying - esp. in his journalistic essays, where it's almost a tic.

yeah i like Chesterton's work which is why it feels unfair comparing him to Littlejohn because i'm pretty sure GKC was, at the least, sincere.

it's one thing banging out outrageous opinions for money but if Liljon has read literally anything at all about this and concluded that 'pray 4 Muamba' means that people are treating him as some sort of deity then I can't even

xpost - And yes, NV otm about the tilting at redirected faith against theosophical and New Age stuff, or, say, faith in lie-detecting machines or that violent books make children violent - he's a good defender of the metaphysical against obtuse materialism.

xps

yeah, he came quite a long way round. Think the family was unitarian, so v familiar with a rational sort of christianity, off the rails for a while then Anglican for a long time, then rome.

in the story he's talking to a young 'heathen humanitarian', & just preceeding the bit quoted there's a line about 'It’s drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.' So I think he thinks spiritualism/theosophy – 'arbitrary without being authoritative' to quote the story again – is a necessary consequence of unCatholicism/rationalism?

modern right-wing pundits - suspect Damian Thompson's attacks on pseudo-science something like a modern equivalent to this?

sorry 'spiritualism/theosophy & superstition generally'

Hanging is too good for him IMO
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18350615

pretty sure I'll experience acute and genuine pleasure when Rod Liddle dies just fyi

Next-level:

http://melaniephillips.com/america-goes-into-the-darkness

Iran can now be sure that it will be able to complete its infernal construction of a genocide bomb to use against the Jews and the west

A GENOCIDE BOMB

The World Turned Upside Down
By Melanie Phillips.
Now in paperback with a new foreword by David Mamet

do not want

It was Christianity and the Hebrew Bible that gave us our concepts of reason, progress and an orderly world

(citation needed)

I read that whole thing in the voice of Geoff Workman.

tbf to Melanie it was Christians who destroyed the library at Alexandria so she may not have heard of classical Greece

i'll admit i'm down with the great blood-letting, not metaphorically tho

if the blood-letting involves those who take the Dacre shilling, I'm all for it too.

jfc liddle

bad form to drop my mask on ilx but jfc liddle

He's vile

What rodent would you say he most resembles physically

I don't feel all that strongly about most rodents and he's far too fatfaced and smug looking to pass for a rat so idk

What mask? Always been a confirmed omnisceptic - a thoroughly defensible position

only if you knew my backstory tbh but this is about the breathtaking rod liddle

link