Magic Statistics

Guardian columnist Theo Hobson argues that too many secularists cling to simplistic presuppositions in preference to the complex reality of religious belief and practice.  If the important public debate over the role of religion in Western society is to prove useful, however, dogmatic secularists must get a grip on the real world.

The dogmatic secularist . . . asserts that faith is incompatible with full independence of mind. This must be the case, he says, for religion teaches that one story is supreme over all others, and this story warns against individualism and innovation; it proclaims an authority who must be obeyed. Again this sounds plausible on paper. But again the thesis falls apart when it meets real life. For the average religious believer is not a brainwashed automaton; he or she is likely to be just as independent of mind as a secularist. In a sense the secularist is more of a conformist these days. The claim that believers must be timid conformists, fearful of intellectual freedom, has a certain plausibility in the abstract, but is disproved by real life.
. . .
We need to be clear that dogmatic secularism really is a form of fundamentalism. It has a fixed idea, and it is hostile to evidence that challenges this idea. The crass simplifications that it makes about the nature of religious faith do severe damage to the quality of the debate.

Mr Hobson hopes for an “intelligent secularism” that is able to differentiate between extremist religious ideologies and religion as it is actually practiced by the vast majority of believers in Western countries.  Failing to make this distinction has the additional disadvantage of failing to take seriously genuine religious extremism.  Secularist fundamentalism thus impedes the struggle against Islamism.

Increasingly in the West, religious groups and sects of widely varying and frequently conflicting beliefs and practices are coming into contact with each other.  It is therefore essential to be able to discriminate between harmful religion and benign religion.  Dogmatic secularism, by its very nature, is incapable of doing so.

h/t: Faith-Science News

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The man in charge of India’s investigation into the Mumbai train bombings that killed almost 200 people last July is pointing the finger at Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.

A.N. Roy, the police commissioner of Bombay, said the attack was planned by Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's military spy agency, and then carried out by a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), assisted by the Students Islamic Movement of India, a banned Islamic group.

A high-ranking Pakistani official angrily denies the accusation.

Tariq Azim Khan, Pakistan's minister of state for information, rejected the allegations.

"We are still studying the Indian statement. Needless to say, this is once again baseless allegations - yet another attempt by India to malign Pakistan," he told the BBC.

"Both the president and the prime minister condemned this terrorist attack on the train when it happened. But India also must look at home for reasons for this growing insurgency at home," he said.

Pakistan’s dedication to the fight against terrorism has been questioned in recent days.  So, now we have Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf claiming that his country’s assistance is indispensable if the West is to endure.

"If we were not with you, you won't manage anything," said President Pervez Musharraf in a BBC Radio 4 interview.
. . .
"You'll be brought down to your knees if Pakistan doesn't co-operate with you. That is all that I would like to say. Pakistan is the main ally. If we were not with you, you won't manage anything," he said.

"Let that be clear. And if ISI is not with you, you will fail."

I can’t see the West being “brought to its knees” if Pakistan goes over to the dark side.  But, even if that were to occur, well before the West suffers any ill effects, Gen Musharraf would have long since been removed from the scene.

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