The casting was superb, which made everything else work. Darren Boyd in particular was spot on as John Cleese. Liberties were taken with events, people were stereotyped, but it all worked because it was all treated like a Monty Python production with all the post-modern breaking of the fourth wall that involves.

The show featured a couple of characters with speech impediments (always a feature of Python) and all the main female parts were played by men so it was absolutely in the Python spirit.

It was also good to be reminded just how far we have progressed in the last 30 years. I can remember that there really was that much fuss about what is, in reality, a very inoffensive film. OK, so we still have unelected bishops as part of our parliament and huge chunks of our taxes going to faith schools to prop up the churches, but at least there is debate about that now and you can complain about it without being seen as trying to bring about the end of civilisation.

It all made me feel like watching Brian again.

Regardless of intentions it is a poor idea for several reasons, as others have pointed out. We have all sorts of web filters on at work, so I have seen first-hand what the drawbacks are, with perfectly fine sites being blocked (false positives) and then a false sense of security leading you to getting truly astonished when something you weren’t expecting pops up on the screen – a colleague was searching for information on the GIMP image editing program with hilarious consequences, for example.

If you are really worried about what kids might see on a computer then why not try parenting instead of delegating that job to machines? We are not yet at a stage where all human problems have a technological solution.

More worrying is knowing that some of the sites deemed unsuitable will be sites giving advice on sexual health, abortions and similar. I imagine that if you are growing up in the house of the sort of person pushing these measures then the internet is about the only place you would be able to get such information. And that is just the foot in the door. How long before the paramaters are widened to include sites of political extremists: something that is very much a matter of subjective opinion.

But still I am inspired by the whole thing because it has given me an idea. Why not say OK, but only if religious sites are included as well? If the argument is going to be used that children are vulnerable and should be protected from brainwashing into thinking that certain things are acceptable before they are old enough to make up their own minds I can’t think of a better example of that than religion.

If that fails then let’s just make sure the Daily Mail website with its dozens of photos of semi-naked almost-celebrities gets included in the net.

Since then my mind has been wandering.  How would a christian respond to that?  Would they think it was some primitive mumbo-jumbo?  If so, would they have enough self-awareness to realise that is exactly how us atheists view their mumbo-jumbo?

A common criticism made of atheists is that they/we have it in for christianity or only ever bother to criticise christianity because of a sense of PC-gone-mad combined with fear of upsetting certain fatwa-happy religions.  I can’t speak for other heathens, but personally I think it is more because none of the sikhs, muslims, hindus or pagans I have known has ever assumed I should agree with them nor tried to make me agree with them.  Respect cuts both ways and while I try to respect other people’s faith no matter how ridiculous I find it, I have a lot less trouble doing that when they respect my own (lack of) faith enough to not try and convert me.

In future I think I shall counter all offers of prayer for whatever reason with a counter-offer to slaughter a goat and defile a virgin in their honour and see what happens.

This being the Argus, he gets a right shoeing in the comments. This is my favourite:

Christianity! COME ON!

The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a ‘rib-woman’ was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree… yeah, makes perfect sense. It is this sort of belief that will make us all Americans if we are not careful!

Apparently it is the tallest parish church in Britain and possibly in Europe.  From the outside it is a very austere building with a rectangular footprint and no spire or tower.  The pitched roof is the only thing stopping it from being a giant box.  In some ways it reminds me of St. Swithuns in Hither Green, which I used to live opposite, but on a much larger scale – both are C of E churches but very ‘high church’ with masses and confession boxes.

All of which put me in the right frame of mind for the evening – Christ on a Bike at the Komedia, which is the show Richard Herring touring this year.

The show is a re-working of his 2001 show.  I like Herring and share his atheistic views so I knew I was going to enjoy it, though I can understand how and why some people wouldn’t.  The show has two major set pieces.  In the first half is a critique of the ten commandments, and in the second half is the tour de force which is a demolition of the first page of the bok of Matthew, wherein Herring recites the entire list of ‘begats’ in that gospel only to finish by demonstrating the irrelevence of it.

I had seen that routine before on Youtube and when he did it at the Lyric during one of the Sunday comedy nights but it is still funny and impressive.

Those highlights and a few lesser set pieces are bookended by a conceit about a fantasy cycle race between Herring and Jesus, which is where the show has more plot than laughs and probably loses more non-fans.I suspect that is why Chrystal was less than impressed by the evening.  I think she prefers more straightforward comedy like we went to before.

Frankie was like a pig in shit though.  He loved it and was dead chuffed to get his programme signed afterwards.  What I didn’t know was that, after I gave him a DVD of Herring’s Hitler Moustache show at christmas, he emailed him about something or other and got a reply.   I keep meaning to get around to writing something about people who ‘get’ the internet rather than just use it because they think you have to and Richard Herring is one of the top examples I had been thinking of – this just reinforces that view.

The Komedia is a strange place though.  I have been there three times now and each time it was in a different room.  The first time was to see the mighty Jerry Sadowitz who was performing in the downstairs bar at the back.  The second time was for a regular comedy evening and that was in a much larger room downstairs which I thought was the proper room.  This time round we were upstairs in an even bigger room – well one with a higher ceiling anyway.

I assume I’ve seen it all now but part of me wouldn’t be surprised to find that, if I went again, there turned out to be yet another performance space in there.  I was a bit relieved to see the size of the room we were in actually.  I had seen adverts for music at the Komedia – Metallica tribute bands, Steve Hackett, and so on, and was having trouble imagining them playin in the basement room with a one-foot high stage and hardly any headroom.

To top it all off nicely, we found that the Gourmet Burger Kitchen was still open after the show, so we filled our faces before going home.   I messed with the kids’ heads a bit by ordering the chicken satay burger without the bun.

At first I was a bit worried. Wearing varifocals means that everything in even slightly peripheral vision was odd. I kept thinking I saw something but it was an effect of the glasses, then I was worried that I might not see the real thing because it might not be exactly where I was looking – even from the confines of our garden the sky is pretty big.

And then the first one flew across so brightly I realised I was being silly: no way I could have missed that.

I only saw a few, but even the normal sky was impressive enough.  I don’t look up very often and had fogotten just how brilliant the night sky can be.  I am no astronomer.  All the stars are just stars to me, but even so I just felt so small looking up there and thinking how big all those points of light really are.  It was awesome enough as it was and the meteors were just the icing on the cake.

While I was looking up I could totally understand how primitive or uneducated people can feel the need to invent a god to explain it all. How must it all look if you have never had any sort of street lighting and can always see the stars clearly?  And then one night its different: there are dozens of stars moving or one that looks brigher then normal.

Also surprised how bloody cold it was considering it is supposed to be the height of summer.

Remembering how awkward it can feel to go into some of these places for the first time I jumped at the chance to get hold of a book called Do I Kneel or Do I Bow? through Amazon’s Vine programme.  I remember that the members’ lounge at Crawley town hall had a small library of reference books: if it doesn’t include a copy of this book then it should. Here is a short review of the book:

I wish I had a copy of this book to hand the first time I went to a mosque, a gurdwara or a hindu temple!

These days you don’t have to be religious to find yourself inside a church, synagogue or temple of some sort, as more of us find ourselves making friends of differing beliefs and getting invited to weddings or other celebrations. When that happens this book tells you all you need to know to avoid making an idiot of yourself.

The book covers eight major religions and is written in a way that does not assume any previous knowledge of any of them: it is not written just as a guide for christians to understand other religions, but is equally applicable to Sikhs invited to a catholic wedding or a muslim going to a protestant christening.

Each section gives a very high level overview of a particular religion’s beliefs, some details of the main festivals or celebrations, and information about behaviour in the relevent places of worship and what is expected of visitors.

It could be read straight through as a sort of beginners’ guide to religion as the chapters do give a decent, but brief, introductory description, but it is better suited to being a reference book to be pulled out when needed.

I have not read the book all the way through, but I sampled the chapter on Sikhism, having visited the local gurdwara a few times in the last couple of years. Everything in there about behaviour and what happens during ceremonies was accurate as far as my experience goes so I am assuming the other sections provide similarly practical advice and information.

I’m now looking forward to getting invited to a jewish or buddhist event so I can try out some of the other chapters.

For the first time in my life I wish I was a catholic – so I could resign.

While evangelical christians only form approximately 3% of the Conservative party, the Campaign for Social Justice within the party, led by Catholic Iain Duncan Smith, claims to have crafted a full 70 Conservative policies.

They have 70 policies?  It goes on to say:

The question for christian voters is whether this will make a difference to a future conservative government.  Leader David Cameron is known to be a ‘modernising liberal’ whose stance on Europe, climate change, bio-ethics and sexuality is very different to the  Conservative Home outlook.  Indeed significant numbers of christians are pro-Europe and man-made climate change – so would they be happier if Cameron was able to ignore his grassroots?

Not sure they really meant to imply that those christians are in favour of man-made climate change, by the way.  I suspect it means they accept that climate change is man-made.

For some idea of what sorts of policies this paper is thinking about when it talks about Cameron ignoring the Tory grassroots, you have to turn to page three.  Here there are concerns about the Children, Schools and Families Bill and the idea of civil partnerships.  The concerns are slightly hysterical and hilarious:

It is seen as threatening the vulnerability of our children and grandchildren as well as infringing the freedom of parenthood, because it plans to override parents’ wishes by introducing children to the concept of ‘sex and relationships’ from the age of five.  This means young children could be told exactly how to be homosexual.

Really?  I can’t imagine any school telling children “exactly how to be homosexual”.  How would that lesson work?  And what a clumsy phrase “threatening the vulnerability” is.  If all this is supposed to be the lord’s word then the lord needs to buy a copy of Fowler’s!

The whole thing can be found here.  It would be funny if it was not so scary.  Especially the letters page, which suggests where we should lay the blame for the bad weather this winter:

Unbeknown to us, some christians in the UK had been praying for us in Copenhagen and reading Psalm147:15-17 (“He gives snow like wool, he scatters the frost like like ashes”), they asked the Lord to do just that.  As 25,000 delegates left COP15 the whole northern hemisphere was gripped in the coldest winter for decades.

So my recycling wasn’t picked up for seven weeks because a group of people were praying, and all this time I was blaming Crawley council!

I have to say that I am a fairly laid-back and moderate atheist.  I do not go along with the Dawkins militant atheism thing.  I think  a lot of the policies that christians are likely to come up with are probably very laudable – relating to poverty, overseas aid and the like.  If the idea is good I don’t care where it came from.

Unfortunately the more extreme christians will attach strings to such things, for example by putting in conditions about contraception to humitarian aid.

So I am not worried if christians are trying to get humanitarian aspects into Tory policy, but I do worry if it is all tied up with promoting their own moral agenda to get it forced on the rest of us.

I don’t even blame the christians. In many cases they can’t help it – they are the way they are because when they were young themselves there was no equivalent to the Children, Schools and Families Bill and other policies designed to protect children against being brainwashed during their formative years.

Another worry is that this brainwashing publication is left around the community centre.  The centre is owned by the churches of Broadfield, but supposed to be run by them and the community for the benefit of the whole community – with the support of grants from local authorities.

I don’t think this should include putting their propaganda in all the public areas.  If this is what happens in a facility they only part run you have to wonder what goes on the faith schools that they are in complete charge of – and that the rest of us are subsidising.

As an atheist and Labour member I may well not personally like what they do with it, but as a supporter of the Creative Commons principle I don’t think I should stop them.