For that reason he has to go onto my list of top liberals:

“Peter”,
Shami Chakrabarti,
Craig Murray,
Baroness Williams,
Ros Scott

A late entry for the novelist and New Puritan Nicholas Blincoe?

Now, I may be jumping the gun, but I do not read that as the words of a man desperately trying to conceal a hidden Great Truth. Arrogant in tone, and thus offensive to those disagreeing with him, possibly. But afraid of discovery and exposure as a liar, no.

Or is he playing a devilish double game, and is it far more sinister than I can ever know?

Hat-tip to ColinW for King Alfred. It seems, as per, that any history from pre-1500 is not important in contemporary political discussion. If people stopped to think about that for two seconds they’d realise what a bankrupt notion it was, grumble grumble.

Colin W is an illiberal abusive bigot and a bully. If you condone his behaviour as you do, it speaks very poorly of your credentials as an upholder of liberal values and free debate.

If there is any serious debate going on anywhere on the net about the paranormal, I must have missed it. Where is it?

As it is, all I am seeing from you is abuse and no serious debate. So it is a bit rich to accuse Colin of the same.

Frankly, if you want to believe in the paranormal, go right ahead. But when you want to suggest that somebody else’s disbelief in the paranormal is a stain on their character (which is how this discussion got started), you should not expect to be taken very seriously.

The party is for people like me and and also for for people like you. And everyone in between and either side of us. Provided we all share basic liberal values.

Something I thought all liberals shared was a belief in the value of free open debate without personal insults.

The one thing you will NOT do is engage in a serious debate about the paranormal, because you know you will lose. Far better to hurl abuse and warn those thinking of speaking freely that they face more of the same.

You should go and join the continuing Communist party or an organisation more in in tune with your bigoted, anti-scientific outlook.

You are either:

A. A mediaeval peasant or
B. A nu-age hippy

In either case this nonsense has no place on a ‘serious’ site like this. Or, anywhere else, really, come to think of it.

More seriously, this rejection of evidence-based scientific rationalism & embrace of superstition – evidenced by so many of our MPs signing the EDM backing homeopathy – is disturbing.

It’s as if the enlightenment never happened.

Have I got all day, all week, all year?

Probably not.

So I suggest you go to the link I pasted into my earlier post. That should give you a taster.

There is plenty of evidence out there, if you know where to look. Having cast the thought-spore that I am a peddler of diabolical conspiracies (how very unsubtle), perhaps you should consult the same link again to see how scientific and academic elites have very successfully prevented accurate information about the paranormal reaching the public and have stifled serious scientific research in the subject.

Bridget Fox: “engaging older people in volunteer & community work”

How about engaging older people in PAID work?

One of the most iniquitous decisions of the Blair administration in domestic policy was to cave in to the CBI and remove people over the age of 65 from the protection of the Age Discrimination Directive. The ECJ may well reverse this, but why should we have to rely on the ECJ?

And why are Liberal Democrats not up in arms about it? Oh, sorry. We’ve just got rid of a leader for being “too old”.

I am intrigued by this evidence for the paranormal you speak of. What is it?

I have googled this Zwinge fellow and it turns out to be James Randi, the $1million prize for proof of the paranormal guy.

It is difficult to believe in the existence out there of evidence for the paranormal, without believing in a conspiracy to suppress it. These days that sort of suppression is impossible. Post the experiment on your blog and people can replicate it for themselves.

Anyway, if I had to hazard a guess at Dawkins’ politics, it would be social democratic. So I daresay this is all moot.

I read the book, and individually I would have little problem with most of the policy prescriptions (give ‘em a job, stop ‘em getting divorced, and offer cognitive therapy if they need it would be my summary).

But if you understand liberalism (through the ages) as being about providing a framework in which people pursue their own source/concept of happiness then it is difficult to accept Layard as within the tradition (and he wouldn´t claim it). He is a long way from the liberal view of the individual as essentially autonomous.

Layard’s idea that governments should seek to promote happiness sounds very illiberal on the surface. But he goes on to identify that the key factor in ‘happiness’ is less economic wealth and more about better quality relationships with people and the world about you. The government policies he advocates to that end: investment in cognitive therapy; relationship guidance including work on emotional intelligence; apprenticeships; engaging older people in volunteer & community work; etc are all eminently liberal in that they are about equipping individuals with skills and opportunities to live their own lives better.

No. It makes you ignorant of the truth. In Dawkins’ case, it makes him a liar, because he happens to know what the truth is.

I happen to think the paranormal is bunk too. Does this make me a liar and a Stalinist?

I asked you for some sources, all you seem to have is more invective.

The Jewish lobby comment was idiotic, and he was pilloried for it (do you want references?). This was quite recently, which is a bit odd because the original quote is from the preface to the God Delusion which was published last year.

Quoting: “Unlike Jews, however, who are notoriously one of the most effective political lobbies in the United States, and unlike evangelical Christians who wield even greater political power, atheists and agnostics are not organised and therefore exert almost zero influence.”

Like I said it is fairly idiotic, and dangerous, to identify a lobby by its religion rather than by the politics it is lobbying for. The pro-Israeli lobby for example will claim to represent Jews in general, but that claim is a lie. Dawkins is unfortunately supporting it. A writer of popular science lacks fine political judgement, shock, horror.

Some people who refer to the “Jewish lobby” will be anti-Semitic, and others will not be. It is much like much of what Jenny Tonge says. People tend to call it on the basis of their predisposition towards the person.

Er, why ? We all know there is a ‘Jewish Lobby’ – just look at bollox like the ADL and HonestReporting.com – why should we have to walk on eggshells and be denied free speech because there are some imbeciles who will use the facile response ‘anti-semitic’ when people are nothing of the sort, or simply demonstrat ing perfectly valid anti-zionist arguments ?

If people can’t stand the heat, they should stay out of the kitchen.

Really? It oozes out of his every pore. Read what he writes and hear what he speaks. Those who do not share his opinions he dismisses as idiots. From George W Bush downwards.

Dawkins’ conspicuous pose of intellectual superiority may have something to do with his upbringing in Kenya, where a small white elite dominated a black majority they considered inferior. Some academics have a habit of viewing the common folk from a similar perspective.

Joe Otten further wrote: “As a matter of idle curiosity, what is your source for the Platonist-Stalinist charge?”

Dawkins is Stalinist in his belief that ideology transcends truth. When he says “the paranormal is bunk” Dawkins is a liar, because he has seen the evidence which proves that much of the paranormal is real. One is reminded of Stalin’s rewriting of history. And what a comedown for an elite scientist to appear on a platform in Las Vegas (!!) with the failed kids entertainer turned celebrity “magician”, Mr Randall James Hamilton Zwinge!

Dawkins is Platonist in his belief that the right to vote should depend on the capacity to make choices that Dawkins considers correct rather than abstract entitlement. So he says that 16 and 17 year-olds should not be allowed to vote because their brains are not fit for purpose. A democrat and a liberal would say that 16 and 17 year-olds should be allowed to vote because they are subject to what government does.

Ironically, this is something of a sterile debate from Dawkins’ perspective, since, if the materialist theory of mind is true, there is no free will to make choices in the first place!

By the way, a few weeks ago Dawkins used the words “Jewish lobby”. Yet, as far as I am aware, he has incurred no criticism for so doing. On the other hand, when Archbishop Desmond Tutu employed the very same phrase just days ago, he was smeared as “anti-Semitic” and banned from speaking at the University of Wisconcin. Why has Dawins been let off this particular rap?

(I choose my words about Zwinge with care because I don’t want him to start trolling here.)

Some useful information about Dawkins:
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/New/Mediaskeptics/index.html

We disagree on this one, Bridget. I find it very hard to see the sense in which Layard is a liberal (centrist, yes).