The Policy Blender

So then, hard working people that don't feel the need to reproduce or are simply too busy being intelligent and successful to develop the sort of relationship that should lead to procreation are failures?

The dominant species on this planet will surely soon consist of ignoramus' who's only real tallent is the ability to have unprotected sex! Matt, perhaps it's time for that plan to be put into action.... you sure I can't persuade you to lower the IQ limit of the 'super intelligent controllers' to 110? I don't want to be addicted to smack :'(

You realise I now have to explain my master plan for making everyone with an IQ below 120 my slave by fueling drug addiction among the stupid and harvesting their children? I mean, is there anything wrong with enslaving people between the age of 10 and 20 (once they have demonstrated their stupidity) and then forcing them to breed and feeding them sedatives, and finally killing them once they are no longer fertile (immediately for those who weren't fertile in the first place)? I mean, I don't want to come across as anti-stupidic.

And yes, of course people who are too busy to breed are a Darwinian failure - they haven't passed on their genes, so it doesn't matter how good they were at being alive, they have no effect on the next generation. It doesn't mean they're a failure from every point of view. For example - Stephen Hawking is a sporting failure, Tony Blair is a rock failure, The Pope is a Darwinian failure, Gandhi is a boxing failure. It's all much of a muchness really.

George Bush is a political success, a Darwinian success, a Christian success, a financial success (personally, and probably nationally, in time) but a scientific failure.

Oh dear.

Religion and politics again. Will Mr Bush ever learn?

One of the chief underlying causes of the current threat from Islamic militants is that there is no explicit separation of Church, Law and State under Islam. In fact, it is claimed that Islam is a unique nationality and a legal system, as well as a belief structure. This causes tremendous problems with assimilation and integration.

US politics has long since gone hand in hand with Christianity. Despite the constitutional distinction between church and state, the Founding Fathers basically set up a country that was to be run along liberal Christian lines.

So what's the problem? Well, religion is subject to interpretation, which - if you boil it down - really is all that religion is at a sociological level. Interpretations can differ, as we see with Creationists and those that have managed to settle the broader ideological doctrine of the Holy Book with Darwinism.

The general consensus of religious interpretation evolves over time, and Christianity achieved a form of dogmatic enlightenment throughout the Renaissance period. This is accepted as a point in history at which the general 'fire and brimstone' / glorious crusades type of Christianity was left behind for the more peaceable variety that is prevalent today.

Islam, on the other hand, has managed to convert from a primarily peaceable doctrine, to one that can be interpreted by extremists as a call for permanent war against unbelievers. Before 622, Mohammed taught peace and spiritual togetherness. After 622, he rampaged; murdering unbelievers and spreading terror in his wake.

There's nothing to say that Islam is not capable of being an entirely peaceful religion. Indeed, it is built on entirely peaceable foundations. The problem is that given 'the Prophet's' latter barbaric exploits, the rule of abrogation indicates that they supersede his earlier peaceful teachings.

Most Muslims can reconcile this. Many cannot, and they are the ones that are complicit in the bombings, beheadings and barbarity that is carried out in the name of Islam around the world. They may not be directly responsible, but they are culpable just the same. In particular we can point to the Saudi ruling class, who use Wahhabism as a means of maintaining their plutocracy over the masses, and extend the regressive philosophy to Europe and Asia by funding hard-line Wahhabi schools and Mosques.

The call for 'Intelligent Design' to form part of the curricula alongside Darwinism and Maths and IT does not represent the extremity of some of the Palestinian schools - where the 'glories of martyrdom' are compulsory learning for children of eight and nine, for example. But it does sit in the same boat.

In the UK, we have skirted quite neatly around the whole conflict between Church and state (bar a beheading on 30 January, 1649) by putting the Church in the protectorate of the monarch and granting parliament independence from the throne. As soldiers, our men are sent by parliament to fight for the monarch. Religious education in British schools consists of dreary lessons learning about the world's religions and their various symbols and icons. Religious instruction in school barely exists anymore, aside from schools that are funded by particular religious groups. It is pupils in these schools that are in danger from religious extremism.

Democracy and religious extremism are mutually exclusive. That's not to say that secularism and Democracy cannot co-exist - it can, but mixing politics and religion does represent the thin end of a very dangerous wedge. Bush should know that, he's not as stupid as he's made out to be.

he he