The security update was released 12 hours ago, and is now in use on this site. Thanks to Mark, once again, for the Changed Files ZIP. 🙂

If you follow this blog regularly, you’ll remember that on Thursday, I told you that I was going to post a question about religion over at Yahoo Answers. It was a sort of follow-up to this post, but with a slightly bigger, more sensitive topic.

I asked:

What is religion? A choice, a calling, or something else?

Is religion is a choice, in the same way that other beliefs are choices? For example, if I chose to subscribe to the moral belief that removing one’s clothes was wrong, I wouldn’t expect the Chippendales to make any special dispensation for me should I choose to work for them. Similarly, if religion is a choice, I wouldn’t expect any special dispensation for wearing religious icons which do not conform to a company’s uniform policy. I either have to give up my religion of choice, or work somewhere else.

Or is religion is more of a psychological and visceral calling? If, for example, I was blind, I would expect employers to do everything in their power to adapt to me. I could not stop being blind. Is religion more similar to this – You can’t ‘physically’ stop believing?

Or is it the latter, but still fine to discriminate, just I would be discriminated against if I had an unshakeable belief that all women were evil?

Or is it something else altogether?

Well, I asked, and you answered. In your droves. In fact, not only did you answer in your droves on the Yahoo site, when the post was picked up by Pickled Politics (an excellent blog, by the way) you answered there, too. And even though I closed the comments on the original post, you even went to the trouble of emailing me directly with your answers. I’ve read over 80 comments on the subject in less than a week – and I thank everyone for contributing.

It’s not practical for me to reproduce everybody’s comments on the subject here on the blog, but I’ve selected some of the answers and comments that stood out for me:

Religion is the coward’s version of hope.

– Kismet Hardy on Pickled Politics

Unless one is thoroughly brainwashed in a particular religion, they choose their belief. If it were not a choice, why would there be a need for so many different religions? They choose the one that makes them feel the most important, often at the expense of their fellow humans.

– jaycubb on Yahoo Answers

I’m interested by this comparison with other types of choice. When I come to pnder this political position or that one, there is usually one that is, to my mind, more persuasive than another. I don’t feel I am “choosing” a political belief or position, in the same way that I choose whether to eat a banana or an apple. My conscience dicates only one option. The political position “chooses” me, just like the answer to 2 + 2 finds its way to me too.

Of course, politics is much harder, and the answer less obvious, than mathematics. New writing from new sources might weaken and eventually reverse that choice. Part of religion – at least the fundamentalist brand – seems to be the deliberate ignoring of new perspectives.

Either way, if ‘finding’ a political position can happen, I imagine it is even more likely to happen with religion. Although you can change your religion, I would be very surprised at people who say that it was a definite choice, not a calling. Indeed, when we see celebrities such as Madonna changing their religion like it is a diet fad, we criticise them for it!

– Robert on Pickled Politics

In the case of Christianity, it is a gift. A gift of grace, pure unmerited favor from God. Even the faith we have is a gift of God.

– Father K on Yahoo Answers

If choice is defined broadly, then I guess religion defined narrowly is a choice.

– Arif on Pickled Politics

A mental illness.

– Gazoo on Yahoo Answers

Religion is, amongst other things, a way of programming(re-programming if you’re a convert) your head in order to experience reality in a different way, and as such adherence to a fixed set of rules and rituals is essential.

– Anas on Pickled Politics

Religions is a man-made placebo for humans.

– Alan on Yahoo Answers

Religion, like sexuality, is a constrained choice. Everyone has options, but that doesn’t mean everyone has the same options.

– Soru on Pickled Politics

All of the above.

For many it is a psychological need to believe in something bigger than oneself. It helps to make sense of things and to give one a sense of peace and ease.

It can also be a calling. If you are not brainwashed into believing a certain way and have formed your own opinion and beliefs…and one day you discover a path which has already been laid out, but follows the same beliefs that you already had….that’s a calling. To choose to continue to follow that path or to follow a path that is not the same as the one you were raise with, is a choice.

Some form an opinion all their own which has nothing to do with the religion they were raised with and just go from there. It is based on reasoning, deduction and an open mind.

– OranjTulip on Yahoo Answers

Religion SHOULD be a individual’s OWN personal choice – but unfortunately all too often it is something that is “chosen for them” by members of their family or community – often through intimidation.

For example, how many so called followers of Islam are there who aren’t “genuine” believers? (i.e, they would be prepared to sneak down to the pub for a quick pint if they thought they wouldn’t get found out).

I bet there is a fair few such people – who claim to subscribe to a certain religion because “that is what is expected of them” rather than because that is what they genuinely believe.

A most unfortunate state of affairs, I think.

– Gibs on Pickled Politics

Religion is an expression of a deep yearning for a certainty which can never exist in the real Universe.

– Los on Yahoo Answers

Religion is a man-made comforter, imperfectly describing what we are learning about the universe.

Religion is all about intimidation and power and Hollywood.

Go to any Spanish country for Good Friday and watch the street theatre with the sinners doing penance, walking the streets by torchlight, behind statues of Jesus and Mary, dressed in Klu-Klux-Klan outfits, bare-foot, the chains around their ankles dragging across the cobblestones, and you will see the frightening symbolism religion must have had in the days before Hollywood.

Religious symbolism is amateur dramatics and Hollywood.

Mix this up with our imperfect understanding of how our brains work – and that we are not well taught to question our perceptions – and we can see why we end up believing in fairytales and monsters rather than in the solidity of earth and the open space of the skies. In the west we live too much in our heads.

Inside our heads, depending on our mood at the time, we ricochet between our lower ancient reptilian brain (where we get fears of monsters from) and our more evolved, expansive, kinder, generous, socially-aware higher brain (heaven, angels, light, “enlightenment”, our good side, our better nature).

Religious stories are a useful metaphorical soap opera to motivate us to do the real work of disciplining ourselves to be more socially aware and responsible for each other.

Greed and competitiveness puts the old defensive reptilian brain in charge.

Altruism brings the more evolved “other side” to come to the fore.

Metaphorical “stories” can sometimes help us to keep going.

But let the user beware. Here be dragons! Keep your feet on the ground.

– Susanna via Email

I feel I should add a note at this point to say that if you’re unhappy with your answer being featured here, please feel free to get in touch and I’ll remove it.

For the sake of completeness, I guess I have to include the definitive answer to the question, as voted for by the Yahoo Answers community:

Religion is a choice. Your job is a calling. And you are something else.

– Fish on Yahoo Answers

Please please go ahead and read all of the comments that have been made on this subject. You can read all of the Yahoo Answers comments here, and the debate is still rumbling over at Pickled Politics. If you want to leave your own thoughts, feel free to do so using the comments facility right here on sjhoward.co.uk.

So now I’ve received all of these answers to my question, you are perhaps wondering if I’ve managed to form my own opinion on the subject. I’m sorry to report that I’m just as confused as I was when I posed the question.

The exercise has shown, clear as day, that few agree on the nature of religion. How can we hope to have a sensible debate on religion, religious laws, and religious extremist if we can’t even agree on the nature of religion itself?

For once, I’m not going to claim to have even an idea of the answer. For today at least, I’m happy to be the one posing the questions, in the hope that it will spark some consideration. I hope it has for you.

This is the story of a cartoonist’s battle with breast cancer, told through her cartoons. It appeared in the Guardian’s Weekend magazine a week ago, but has now appeared in a more extended form on The First Post.

It’s well worth reading, and very highly recommended.

sjhoward.co.uk has never run a ‘picture of the day’ segment. But if I did, there’d be no competition today.

It’s Tony Blair attacking Linda Gilroy, MP for Plymouth South. I don’t think she particularly enjoyed it, from the look on her face.

Read Guardian Unlimited users’ captions here.

I do hope you didn’t stumble across this while eating… But perhaps it shows that he’s finally lost his marbles.

Five Chinese Crackers has a great analysis (exposé?) of one of the Daily Mail’s endless ‘political correctness gone mad’ articles. Well worth reading… and pretty hilarious. Click!

This is just a quick ‘heads-up’ to say that I have posted a comprehensive question over at Yahoo Answers about religion, which may or may not interest some of my readers and may or may not form the basis of a future post. If you think you might be interested, head on over there.

It’s at times like this when I begin to wonder why we bother with the Home Office.

After a series of Home Office blunders and Home Secretary resignations, the incoming John Reid said the Home Office was ‘not fit for purpose’. He gives himself 100 days to fix the problem, and proudly announces ‘job done’. Then, as if by magic, yet another abject failure on the part of the Home Office is revealed.

The hugely complicated bureaucratic beast that is the outsourced Criminal Records Bureau is shown once again to be less than perfect, as if anyone had committed a crime abroad then it would not show up on their record. Mainly because no-one knew they’d committed it, police included, since the information sent by foreign officials had laid undiscovered in a file somewhere in Whitehall.

Ministers deny all knowledge, then it emerges that they were sent a letter last year about the problem. Presumably it was filed in the same place as the criminal records. So what excuse will be given for this mess? Probably that the letter sent acknowledging receipt of the first acknowledged merely that the letter had been received, not read. Or some such bollocks.

But at the end of the day, what does it matter? Even if the junior ministers get fired, in Blair’s jobs-for-all government they’ll be paid off and then rehired a few months later. It’s just another example of the ‘pretty straight’ ‘whiter-than-white’ Prime Minister and his incentivised dirty government.

The obvious solution is a wholesale review and redesign of the Home Office, possibly splitting it up into several smaller departments. David Cameron’s suggestion of a separate Terrorism Office is faintly ridiculous as it leaves bodies such as the Police with two governmental masters with different priorities, but the department could be split into several more manageable chunks. But it never will be, because that would involve a wholesale spending review, and that would never do at a bloated over-funded Home Office.

It would be nice to see some true accountability for these blunders, though. But introducing a system of proper accountability is not in the interest of any MP, so that’s certainly never going to happen – whatever party leaders might want us to believe.

Let’s sack the lot of ’em!

For those who missed Sunday’s show, here’s how it ended:

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/dealornodeal.flv” title=”Deal or No Deal (Channel 4)” /]

Now, Laura, if you’re reading this, and you’re looking to support a penniless student blogger, I’ve got just the thing.

Update 23/01/07 – I’ve now altered this post to run on the new flash player, and so need to directly credit its creator, jamesb1919. The original broadcaster was, of course, Channel 4.

Yesterday, I posted that someone was having a bad day. Well, as it turned out, that someone appeared to be my email server. So I unreservedly apologise to all who use the site’s ‘Subscribe by Email’ or comment notification features. I know these went a little nuts yesterday, and sent out four or five copies of emails. As I say, I can only apologise, and state in my defence that this hasn’t happened before, and I’ll endeavour to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And heck, it was probably worse for me than it was for you – my inbox was bursting!

On the sunnier side, the site is now running the all-new WordPress 2.0.6. WordPress is still the best blogging tool about for an awful lot of people, and I highly recommend both the downloadable version (wordpress.org) for experienced users, and the free hosted version (wordpress.com) for beginners. You should check them out. And thanks go, as always, to Mark – your Changed Files ZIP makes life an awful lot quicker and easier.

In the event that the first paragraph of this post didn’t apply to you, and you didn’t care about or understand the second, here’s something to make you glad you’ve just wasted a few minutes. Or not.