1. Letter from Sir Richard Roberts asking Reiss to step down

Comment #248135 by Julius Morche on September 15, 2008 at 5:52 pm

Ian H Spedding FCD writes:

If the Royal Society really believes that Professor Reiss has behaved that badly then it should fire him but I have to say that, having read what he has said and written recently, it doesn't have a leg to stand on.

I couldn't agree more. Given that this is a forum on a website advocating „reason", I strongly recommend to all those previous commentators who have demanded Prof. Reiss's sacking (and in some cases added some rather unreasonable and unjustified insults) to actually go and READ his Guardian article (blog-post) and listen to the interview. Here is the link one more time:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2008/sep/11/michael.reiss.creationism

Judging by his letter, it seems that Prof. Roberts is among those who clearly haven't done so.

We gather Professor Reiss is a clergyman, which in itself is very worrisome. Who on earth thought that he would be an appropriate Director of Education, who could be expected to answer questions about the differences between science and religion in a scientific, reasoned way?

Since it is unlikely that Richard Roberts participates in this forum, maybe somebody else here can explain to me why we should be worried about a clergyman doing the job of Director of Education at the RS. As far as I know, Michael Reiss is the first holder of this position and has been appointed in recognition of his outstanding academic merits as a science educator. Why should a clergyman, if qualified, not hold such a position and/ or not be able to "answer questions about the differences between science and religion in a scientific, reasoned way?"

2. Pat Condell: Anthology DVD available now!

Comment #172933 by Julius Morche on April 30, 2008 at 7:24 am

Comment #172916 by Steve Zara on April 30, 2008 at 7:03 am

Very obvious ones too, which is why I don't see the point.

Well, they might be obvious to you and me. The trouble is that many people don't see the obvious. All of R. Dawkins's main points in TGD were obvious to me; the problem is that there a folks out there to whom it's not obvious at all.

I, for instance, am very fond of what Condell says about Wilders's Fitna movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxbYBIlT6VE

This is also obvious to me, but unfortunately it does not reflect mainstream reporting in the European media, which instead concluded that Wilders is a "racist", an "islamophobe" a "right-wing populist", a "rabble-rouser" and a "xenophobe" who should be "on trial". We live in a world in which a guy who dares to have an opinion on something lives in prison (Wilders de facto is in prison, requiring the toughest form of 24/7 protection) while the criminals who threaten him walk around freely. It is high time someone talks about that.

3. Pat Condell: Anthology DVD available now!

Comment #172914 by Julius Morche on April 30, 2008 at 7:00 am

@ MPhil:
Rether is not a good satirist, regardless of how many funny lines he may have written in the past, for the simple reason that he has not adopted Tucholsky's important commandment that EVERYTHING should be subject to satirical treatment. It is certainly to be welcomed that he pokes fun at the pope, but the only reason he does it is because the Catholic Church is not protected by PC; not because he has a genuine point to make. He knows that treating Muslim bigotry the same way he treats Catholic peculiarities would cause him quite some trouble, so he keeps quiet about it and even tries to suck up to the very people who would deserve his satirical contempt much more than the pope. That is cowardice par excellence, and since H. Rether has mastered this attitude like no other representative of "POLITISCHES KABARETT" I can possibly think of, I don't believe he has any right to call himself a satirist at all. He should shut up for a good while and only return to stage once he has learned his lessons from the Danish Cartoon Crisis (I'm sure REAL political satirists, like Philippe Val, will be happy to help him with that).
Btw, it's nice to see the German community at RD.net growing...

@ Steve Z.:
Condell makes some very SERIOUS and IMPORTANT points. It doesn't really matter whether he is funny or not. He is certainly very eloquent and has a good sense of irony; granted, some of what he says is "simplistic", as you put it, but it does lie in the nature if ironic statements to simplify things. If you believe George Carlin is not being "simplistic" in what he says, you are fooling yourself (Brigstocke certainly is, to a far greater degree than Condell).
If you really want to know how necessary his rants against Islam really are, just listen to the response-videos posted on YouTube by some radical representatives of the religion of peace.
And just as a little disclaimer: I am neither "racist" nor "islamophobic" - I've got nothing against Islam* and I don't mind having mosques around. I just don't see the point of exempting Islam from satire.


*the kind of Islam practised by people like Ed Hussein or Bassam Tibi.

4. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #161277 by Julius Morche on April 15, 2008 at 5:23 am

207. Comment #160130 by Stephen Maxwell

Julius, I apologise if you've answered already but since you attend Catholic mass...

Do you kneel?

Yes, I do. I kneel down before the altar for purely customary reasons, and the participation in a ritual order that has grown over two millennia inspires in me a sense of wonder, similar to the one I get from listening to musical masterpieces, from my academic studies, or from strolling through the National Gallery. And that's perfectly in order, as long as one does not derive irrational claims from these experiences, but instead is conscious of the fact that human emotions are a product of evolution. Sam Harris, by the way, makes a similar point about "mysticism" in "The End of Faith" and his (for most parts) utterly brilliant talk at the AAI conference a few months ago.

The day I receive my knighthood, I will also kneel down before the Queen and not spoil it by telling her that we are both the product of evolution, that her ancestors most likely never received their sceptre from the hands of God, and that the social hierarchy which separates us cannot be justified on rational grounds. Instead, I will accept the order of the ritual, knowing that culture evolves the same way life does: with no aims and goals, no direction and no sense. It's all just fun.

5. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #160120 by Julius Morche on April 13, 2008 at 4:49 pm

Geoff

I guess you are right. My apathy results from my conviction that the Catholic Church will have officially abandoned its belief system within a few decades. By then, all Catholics will be cultural Catholics anyway. Many Catholics already are today.

But of course it's always good to make your concerns heard where you have them.

6. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #159954 by Julius Morche on April 13, 2008 at 1:15 pm

197. Comment #159941 by Noodly

I'll try it one last time. A church service can be two things:
a) an expression of belief
b) a cultural institution

Since I am not a believer, it is only a cultural institution to me. Accidentally, you are not asked about your beliefs before entering a church, so I don't even have to pretend being a believer. I don't say prayers in silence, and the common prayers I recite the way I would recite a poem. Most of the common prayers of the Catholic rite actually ARE great poems. You can perfectly listen to a priest performing the rite of transubstantiation without actually believing that he is "apparently transforming bread into flesh". You can just enjoy it as a beautiful ritual that is 2000 years old. It's fiction, for god's sake (literally)!

You still haven't explained why you're worried about people like me - how do we impinge on your freedom to enjoy the trappings of religion?

I'm worried about you for your own sake, not because you are threatening me or anything. I just don't understand why people would renounce such a precious part of their cultural heritage for no good reason at all. And the fact that you are equally ignorant of all other existing religious traditions does not mean that you not impartial.

7. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #159840 by Julius Morche on April 13, 2008 at 8:24 am

161. Comment #159801 by black wolf

black wolf,

That wasn't exactly my point. Your figures may be right, but the German Catholic Church is not a charity and I didn't claim it was. I said its expenses are overwhelmingly supportable by rational people. I wouldn't want my Church contribution to be used for anything vicious, such as school lessons where children get taught about hell. And you will have a hard time finding such a thing in Germany and possibly Europe as a whole if you focus on the Catholic Church and not on crazy evangelical movements. Having said that, there may be a few items on the German Catholic Church's balance sheet that I would object to. That's why I said "overwhelmingly supportable", not "generally supportable."


162. Comment #159802 by Noodly

You haven't understood the concept of Catholic Atheism at all. My point is precisely that there SHOULDN'T be any indoctrination. If you want to fight indoctrination, I am your brother in arms. The point of Catholic Atheism is to preserve the cultural elements of religion WITHOUT ANY DOGMAS and irrational claims. If the Church held "back the advancement of civilisation" in the past, that was down to dogmatism, certainly not to processions, singing, organ playing and the wearing of robes. These things are just artefacts and thus part of the very essence of civilisation (please don't get back to me, like a previous poster did, by saying that these things will "crowds out the rational part of the brain" or simply re-enforce the belief system- no they won't, if one is rational and intellectually honest).

I assume you must be from Bavaria or a similar Catholic dominated society where it's so endemic that it's difficult to stand back and look at the absurdity of it all. I'm not saying that members of such societies are stupid in any way - simply victims of a vicious meme.

Thanks for you worries, but I'm actually just fine and not from Bavaria. I'm simply an open-minded guy with a lot of historical and cultural interest, whereas you seem to have embraced some weird kind of dogmatism yourself, one that prevents you from looking at history and cultural artefacts with impartiality, and I evidently lack the persuasion skills to convince you of that.

8. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #159790 by Julius Morche on April 13, 2008 at 6:53 am

155. Comment #159772 by esuther

But if it's the frisson of being part of a major spectacle that turns you on, you should consider making the pilgrimage to Mecca. Just imagine what goes through the mind of a man who is circling the Kabba stone shoulder to shoulder with ten thousand other believers. If he had the slightest shred of doubt before coming, he will lose it then.
My point is that the thrill of spectacle is a dangerous thing. It ramps up the emotions and crowds out the rational part of the brain. (In my personal case, when I hear the final measures of the Hallelujah Chorus, my atheism gets locked in a closet for a few moments.

Why don't you just go more often to the opera? I would suggest Tosca for starters.

For goodness' sake are you being serious? I go to Church because I am European living in Europe. If I were a Middle-Easterner living in the Middle East, yes, I would probably go to Mosque and every now and then even to Mecca. What the heck is your point? In any case, I would still be an Atheist, and my atheism never gets "locked in a closet for a few moments" regardless of what splendid cultural artefact I am allowed to experience. That's because I possess the intellectual honesty to distinguish between human emotions and supernatural fantasies. With all due respect, if Haendel's Messiah "crowds out the rational part" of your brain, you should seek professional help.

I see no reason to imagine "what goes through the mind of a man who is circling the Kabba stone shoulder to shoulder with ten thousand other believers" because I AM NOT A BELIEVER, and if I were to go to Mecca, it wouldn't be for any kind of belief, but for cultural interest.

And thanks, I actually enjoy going to the opera and have seen Tosca (not one of my favourites). I hope I don't need to point out to you that religious liturgy is ONE element of cultural heritage out of many. And I enjoy all of them: music, literature, drama & film, architecture, gastronomy - you name it.

9. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #159768 by Julius Morche on April 13, 2008 at 4:44 am

151. Comment #159755 by Corylus

Dear Corylus,

Thanks for your interest.
Actually the amount of money the churches collect at these occasions is rather negligible. These offerings are symbolic rather than real. I usually hope that the coins that I throw into the collection plate (if I have any on me, I wouldn't sacrifice a note) are going to be used for historic building conservation, sensible charitable activities and stuff like that, not for anything like exorcisms. Although I'm currently living in London, I pay my church contributions in Germany and I know that the expenses of the German Catholic Church are to an overwhelming extent sensible and supportable by any rational person.

I am far from claiming that all Catholics are Catholic in my sense, which is essentially Catholic Atheism. There are a lot of developments within the Catholic Church that trouble me, but the liturgy is surely not one of them. And since I only indulge in liturgy, not in exorcisms etc., it is not my job to worry about these things.

OK, not my idea of enjoyment. I would rather have a lay in on a Sunday morning. Going to church would involve waking up early, putting and on my best clothes, going to a big building, listening to man droning on etc... only to fall back asleep again! . Personally, I would rather just roll over, start snoring again and save myself the whole effort :)

Of course, if you want to appreciate a Catholic service on the cultural level, you need to look at it through the eyes of the historian (musicologist, cultural anthropologist etc.). In order to do that, you need to acquire some prior knowledge about the historical background of the rites, the prayers, ecclesiastical architecture, the whole order. Once you read up on that, you will find it exciting. I'm not saying you have to; but walking into a Church Service without prior knowledge will be as fruitful as attending an academic lecture on a topic which you have never studied.

Lastly, I have to warn you that not all Catholic services are as splendid as they should be. Many priests don't have a sense of the historical either and mess it up completely. That's why I rarely actually go to church, only if I know it will be worthwhile. Some churches are also extremely ugly. If you happen to be London-based, I can recommend the services in St. Philip Neri in South Kensington (ok, the Church architecture is a little fake, it's a nineteenth century attempt to imitate eighteenth century Italian style, but if you turn a blind eye on that, it won't bother you). Especially their Easter Vigil is pretty impressive (you just missed it, maybe next year?).

10. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #159742 by Julius Morche on April 13, 2008 at 2:55 am

123. Comment #159671 by Teratornis

I'm curious to know where you rank this particular worry on your personal hierarchy of worries. For example, would you rank this worry about the preservation of religious tradition above or below each of the following worries:

1. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism

2. The rise of the Christian right in the U.S.

3. Peak oil and its immediate consequence, the worsening global food crisis, which is unfolding before us right now, along with the potential worst-case scenario, the collapse of industrial civilization, which might occur in just 10 to 20 years

4. Global warming, which in the worst case might render Earth uninhabitable by humans, perhaps in 30 to 100 years (this assumes civilization gets through peak oil and manages to keep burning through the remaining fossil fuels at the projected rates)

Don't be silly. Apart from the second point, which I haven't studied and therefore can't tell how seriously a problem it actually is, all of those are crucial issues and most likely more pressing than anything cultural. That said, cultural issues are also important, and many of the problems you mentioned are linked to things cultural and cultural research can contribute to their solution. One of the most deplorable actions of the Islamist Taliban regime was the demolishing of the Buddhas of Bamyan. Needless to say, this loss ranks behind the loss of human life caused by these thugs, but do I really have to organise a minute of silence for the children of Africa or donate 100 Euros to Mr Gore's campaign before I'm allowed to get pissed-off because someone just broke into my apartment? Your arguments sound dangerously like the conversation between two student girls I once witnessed in Paris. One of them, apparently an intern at UNESCO, was confronted by her interlocutor with this mind-bogging nonsense: "Surely the UNESCO is an incredible waste of resources. How much good could be done with all that money?"
I hope you would wish to distance yourself from such stupidity.

If you had been raised by football fans, and then if you lost your interest in football, how much would you care about preserving football, and why?

Do you see religion as more important than any other form of entertainment, and if so, why?

Religions routinely go extinct just like many other cultural constructs go extinct.

I've heard of a few people getting exercised over languages going extinct. I have a really hard time understanding the problem. Linguistic diversity, as far as I can tell, has an extremely poor ratio of benefits to costs.

I like football (soccer to you), but there is an enormous qualitative difference between football and any of what I was talking about, since football is not historically grown to the extent religious traditions are and doesn't reveal that much about the past and human nature in general as religious traditions do. There is an enormous difference between the appreciation of cultural artefacts and entertainment even. Go and look it up yourself.
Regarding the language thing, you just sound like someone who has never seriously studied a foreign language, let alone and ancient one. Hence you cannot expect me to find any value in your argument, since you are talking about things you know nothing about. Our linguistic diversity is one of the wonders of humanity and its benefits by far outweigh the "cost" to study it. In fact, we wouldn't be talking to each other if it hadn't been for my curiosity to learn other languages, including English. If I travel to a country whose language I don't yet speak, I don't think "what a pity these people do not speak English", instead I understand that the language is the key to comprehend anything about the environment I find myself in. If you can't see that, go and ask your kindergarten teacher for help

But what ancient religious tradition has any practical value? Which of our pressing problems can we attack any more efficiently by studying religious entertainments?

Historians can get excited about whatever they like. You may notice there aren't a lot of historians.

Yes there are, and fortunately there are also many non-historians whose sense for the historical is more developed than yours.

One does, however, have to adhere to a bit of irrationality to imagine that everyone should share one particular taste in entertainment.

I don't see where I am being irrational when I say that some cultural and historical knowledge should be considered part of general education. Richard Dawkins makes this point in "The God Delusion" (chapter 9) and he ought to be commended for that.
And you didn't manage to bring up that silly football thing yet another time in this paragraph, did you?

A reasonable appreciation of reality leads us to conclude that religions are a form of entertainment. Entertainments come and go. A few eccentrics might try to carry on classical entertainment traditions that the vast majority of people care nothing about, and I don't see a problem if that's what they want to pursue.

No. That is relativism, which I strongly resent. The same applies to your point about music. We have very good criteria to determine why Bach's St. Matthew passion is of a higher cultural value than the latest Britney Spears album. And while I still believe that there is a difference between entertainment and art, I can nevertheless make the point that even if you consider operas and Shakespeare plays just one form of entertainment, you will have to admit that there are qualitative differences between its different modifications. Religious liturgy in particular has always been a form of "entertainment" for the elite, which is why not any random Joe was allowed to participate in Cathedral services in previous centuries. The claim that liturgy is a declining phenomenon that was once universally practised is just false. "The Oxford Diocesan Visitation for 1738 report that in thirty parishes in Oxfordshire, fewer than 5 percent of the total population had taken communion in that particular year. Other visitation reports yield similarly low rates of taking communion over the remainder of the eighteenth century" (Stark 2007).

The cathedrals are less objectively impressive than the Egyptian pyramids, which were earlier and even more stupidly expensive attempts at immortality through piling up rocks. Do you equally support the maintenance of ancient Egyptian tradition?

A fair number of eccentrics do take an interest in Egyptology, but I haven't heard many Egyptologists insisting that we should all share their interest. Maybe some do, I suppose.

I support the preservation of our knowledge about "ancient Egyptian traditions" and further research into the matter, if it's that what you mean. And the cathedrals are not the result of stupid attempts, but of incredible architectural and artistic skill. Again, go and study the subject before you talk about it.

Sure, and almost always this will be at taxpayer expense, because the result is unlikely to lead to any product which sells.

Anthropologists don't work cheaply. They have to get funded and paid. The private sector doesn't tend to support anthropological studies of religion because these studies add nothing which markets can find a way to value.

Well, most of the world's great universities are in fact private organisations and fortunately their opinion on the matter differs from yours quite significantly. Many areas of research, including most science, will probably never be applied to anything "which sells". We atheists know that there is no purpose in LIFE even, apart from the purpose that we ourselves assign to it. And research in ANY academic field is always a wonderful purpose.

11. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #159658 by Julius Morche on April 12, 2008 at 6:18 pm

116. Comment #159656 by Dr Benway

Julius Morche, you missed the word "if." Dawkins said, "If that's what Collins believes then..."

Thanks, but his words are actually "He does? In that case he goes right down in my estimation: he's not a bright guy"

Now, English is not my first language, but this is pretty plain isn't it? In my understanding, "in that case" is not the same as "if", but rather a phrase signalling acceptance of what was said before.

12. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #159621 by Julius Morche on April 12, 2008 at 4:31 pm

101. Comment #159573 by Noodly

Having been brought up as a cultural Catholic I can't see any value in religious traditions whatsoever. After all, they only exist to reinforce the belief systems espoused by the religion in the first place.

I think the attitude you display here is - if you permit - exactly the kind of problematic ignorance that so worries me. I was raised a Catholic myself and, while I reject the notion that a man once came back alive after having been brutally tortured and killed by nailing to a piece of wood, I don't allow my atheism to thwart my sense of the historical.

Your comments are particularly disappointing for someone who was raised a Catholic. To me, a Catholic mass is a splendid synthesis of many branches of the arts, including architecture, drama, music, and literature. Anyone who has witnessed a Catholic rite in a building like St. Peter in Rome must be convinced of this [Yes I know, there are a lot of bad services in ugly church buildings - I don't go there, as I am a cultural Catholic, not a Christian believer]. The Catholic rite, with its Latin prayers, its robes, its historically grown order, is one of the few elements of (late) Ancient Roman culture that we still posses today IN LIVING FORM. To sum this up, the Catholic Church as an institution is as exciting for historians as the discovery of a living prehistoric animal would be for zoologists.

One absolutely doesn't need to adhere to a belief in the supernatural in order to appreciate these extraordinary cultural traditions. To claim, however, as you do, that they aren't worth bothering about is beyond a reasonable appreciation of reality. Religions are secondary cultures, hence ALL the traditions they purport are usually "incorporated". No religion has invented music, yet there is a lot of awe-striking religious music. Christianity hasn't invented architecture, yet there are the cathedrals. Most of the religious rituals can be studied anthropologically and even the outdated religious BELIEF SYSTEMS often are acculturations of prior religious traditions. Your challenge

name one purely religious tradition that isn't stupid

cannot be met simply because a "purely religious tradition" does not exist. And the traditions that I just mentioned to you surely are not "stupid". Instead, they are both historically interesting and culturally enriching.

Yes, "Atheism" is the only intellectually honest mentality that human beings in the 21st century can adhere to. But your atheism should never stand in the way of your appreciation of cultural traditions. That is why I find what Mr Maher has to say about religion extremely childish and short-sighted, in contrast to the more sophisticated approaches of people like Richard Dawkins, Gerd Luedemann, Sam Harris and many others.

13. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #159547 by Julius Morche on April 12, 2008 at 1:13 pm

77. Comment #159504 by Geoff

Why should it? The only thing atheists have in common is a lack of belief in gods. There's no reason to suppose that this lack of belief automatically means reasoning in other subjects.

That's exactly the point I was trying to make. And I was pointing out that Mr Maher is an extremely unreasonable person, someone who is too lazy to even use the tiny bit of intellect that he was bestowed with.

Richard calls himself a "cultural christian", he's addressing those who actually believe in their religion, not people like yourself.

I have seen Prof. Dawkins referring to himself as a "cultural Christian", and one of the parts I enjoyed most in "The God Delusion" was the bit where he talks about the cultural values of religion. I know very well that he is not one of those stupid non-sensical religion bashers. That's why I wasn't attacking him, but Mr Maher.

Richard originally says that he doesn't think Collins believes in the talking snake. He accepts Maher's story, perhaps out of politeness to his host?

Why the heck should one be polite to someone who is talking rubbish? An appropriate reply to Mr Maher's comments would have been "oh, well, don't know" instead of "I take it all back, he is not a bright guy". No, I really don't think the good professor was doing himself a favour here. Not least because his appearance looked dangerously like an endorsement of Mr Maher's silly non-comical attempts to ridicule religion. In order to be truly comical with respect to religion, one needs to have at least a slight grasp of what one is talking about, which Mr Maher clearly doesn't. In contrast, one of the funniest comedic religion-bashers is the one and only Stephen Colbert. And he is a cultural Catholic.

14. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #159492 by Julius Morche on April 12, 2008 at 9:59 am

@ IPV4

Based on good evidence but does not list any.spoken like a true republican.

I did not have the time to quote the evidence for Mr Maher's idiocy. That's why I invited you to look into the evidence yourself. A good start is the Real Time episode where Christopher Hitchens shuts him up entirely (and his silly studio audience).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HECI4QK_mXA&feature=related

The full version is also available somewhere on youtube.

And for the record: I'm not a Republican, I'm a London-based European. I've got nothing to do with your party politics over there!

15. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #159450 by Julius Morche on April 12, 2008 at 8:12 am

Prof. Dawkins,

With all due respect, I think your appearance on this programme was a big own goal. Beside the fact that insulting fellow scientists on third-rate talk shows is unlikely to improve your standing with the people you are trying to convince, it is particularly unfortunate to have made such comments in the company of Bill Maher. This man is the best example that being an atheist does not automatically make you a reasonable person. His childish equating of "religion" with "belief" is not only extremely silly, it is also rather disturbing to people like me, who do not believe in anything supernatural but nevertheless value the religious traditions they grew up with for purely cultural reasons.

Regardless of how intellectually dishonest Dr Collins may be, he certainly does not believe in a "talking snake"* for he is an evolutionists and a fellow combatant in the fight against creationism and ID. A belief in a "talking snake", in contrast, requires a literal understanding of scripture.

You have taught us not to believe anything based on bad evidence, for which you ought to be commended. Unfortunately, you have just done something much worse. You have INSULTED someone (to me, dismissing a respected scientist as "not a bright guy" on national television is an insult) based on very bad evidence, namely the ill-informed comments made by an attention-seeking, third-class talk-show host and wannabe-comedian. As a fellow "Atheist" (like Sam Harris, I can't stand this term) and as a deep admirer of your work, I advise you to make future TV appearances only on programmes that allow you to demonstrate your high level of sophistication, not on shallow talk-shows that put you on one scale with unintelligent blithering idiots like Mr Maher.**


*brilliant, supposedly funny over-simplification copyrighted by Bill Maher
** my insults to Mr Maher are based on very good evidence: just listen to what the guy says on literally any topic, i.e. religion, Europe, Iraq, his hero George Galloway etc.