Thinking about the ignorant, angry atheists who infest the Guardian’s comment pages I realised one thing they have in common with scriptural fundamentalists: they have no idea of history. They live in an eternally dazzling present and they can’t imagine that there is anything outside it. Oh, sure, they have legends — the inquisition, the crusades, the middle ages — but within these legends the actors move, as they do in renaissance paintings, entirely in contemporary dress. There is no sense of the strangeness and difficulty of the past; no sense that many things have been tried and failed; no sense that words once meant things entirely different and possibly inexpressible now.

This is how the British intelligentsia used smugly to describe Americans as distinct from Europeans. But it is now a general vaseline across the lens of British thought.

So when our readers claim that atheists never persecute believers, this is in part an absolute ignorance of some of the basic facts of twentieth century history — what did they think was happening in Poland up until 1989? — an in part a simple reluctance to believe that history is about other people. I haven’t shot any priests, and nor has anyone I know. Ergo, atheists never persecute.

It reminds me horribly of the fundies I talked to at the Lambeth Conference in 1998, for whom the miracles of the Bible could have happened just down the road. They, too, had no sense of the intervening history, nor of any growth of knowledge in the last 2000 years. The modern atheists know, of course that there has been such a growth. But they couldn’t — outside science — give any examples at all. And even when I write “science” I may be overstating the case. How many know any chemistry or geology?

And to complete the breakdown of western civilisation, the autofocus on my camera has bust, while the manual focus has not recovered from my replacement of the focussing screen. I suppose I had better do some work instead.

is, I think what the FT has done to its site this week. What used to be a compact, elegant and clear display of a great deal of information for grownups is now like a mobile phone designed for the learning disabled. The number of stories and even of words visible at any time has dropped by about 80% but at the same time the screen has actually grown more cluttered because the new fonts are so large and the design so sprawling that there is nowhere to rest the eye.

It is even bigger and uglier than the Janet and John style of the Telegraph and the Telegraph can make two excuses: it was ugly before, which the FT’s old look was not; and it is is aimed at Telegraph readers who these days are split between the cataract disabled and the learning disabled.

The Financial Times, however, is aimed at the same audience as the Economist and the Wall Street Journal: literate grown-ups capable of processing a lot of information quickly. Hell, the average FT reader probably now owns a phone which could display as many stories and words from the old design as now can be fitted on my 19” monitor at home. To cap it all, the new site seems to load mores slowly than the old one.

There is only one consolation. Up till now the FT, almost alone among newspapers, has been able successfully to charge for access to its website, so that there is now one more practical way of expressing disgust than compulsively filling in the reader surveys they offer with their new pages. For the first time in my life I am gong to be able to write to a web site and cancel my subscription.

I noticed over the weekend a gloomy post I had made back in August saying that Obama would certainly lose because of racism. I hoped no one else would notice. But then, this morning, I spotted the voting figures referenced on A Tiny Revolution which suggest that white racism was a huge factor: it was just outweighed by non-white racism. 43% of American whites voted for Obama; one per cent up on Gore’s figures eight years ago. But the non-white vote as grown, and was emphatically non-Republican, too.

I think we can take it as conclusive proof that God really does have a purpose for Sarah Palin. Without her, Obama might still have lost.

I suppose I would have been less shocked and disappointed if Obama had lost than when Kerry did because I could not, still cannot, imagine how anyone could have regarded Bush as even minimally competent by November 2004. But still it was extraordinary to wake at ten past four this morning, and switch on the kitchen radio in the middle of McCain’s concession speech. It was the best news since 1989. I don’t really suppose that Obama can rescue America but what gives me hope is the fantastic volunteer effort that got him elected. It’s impossible to imagine that kind of popular movement in this country, even for donkey welfare.

One other point: Tim Bray, in his comments, was lamenting the absence of a credible conservative voice in American politics. But as far as I can hear, this is exactly the voice they have elected. Just as Kerry was an Eisenhower Republican, Obama seems to me to be exactly the kind of conservative who understands when change is inevitable. The great question is he will prove enough of a statesman to manage things so that everything changes in order for everything to stay the same. Whatever else he is, he’s not a destructive revolutionary, far less so than Bush was in his blundering way.

I have been starting a site at the Guardian, and just too busy to post here, or even to think. I have never in my life had anything like the quantity and virulence of hatemail that I’m getting there. I think the most egregious example was this, sent to me personally at my graun address.:

your book on Sweden and (allegedly) fly fishing.

What a depressing piece of badly written rubbish! Were you not a journo, you would never have had it published. I’m pleased to say I read it AFTER a delightful few weeks in that happy, cheerful country – it went in the bin of course, and I almost feel sorry for you in your clearly depressive state.
Iain Wilson.

This is not much compared to the hatred poured out on that site at Christians, or women. It’s not just upsetting, but really odd. Where does all this bile and self-righteousness come from? (in the quoted case, it comes from a vanity domain, icwilson.com) After a long day reading that kind of crap I feel as some people did after the 7/7 bombings, as if complete strangers might explode beside me in the tube; except instead of semtex, they would just burst from the force of their own corrosive intestinal festerings. It’s probably related to the Ross/ Brand kind of bullying, too.

Ah well, tomorrow I am in Oxford for most of the day, and working on trains when I am not lecturing. But I will try to keep this site going. I like the comments here, for one thing.

From the comments received at Third Way magazine on their interview with Peter Akinola.

Archdeacon Dennis Onyekuru Owerri: In all times God provides for Himself a representative, a mouth piece. This is to show the world His sovereignty, that He is ever present, all powerful and so on. The entire world is ever grateful to Archbishop, His Grace Most Rev Peter Akinola for making himself available for this. He is expressing our minds to a decaying world whether they will hear or not the truth it is better said than keeping silent.

Why is this man only an archdeacon, when his talents clearly fit him for a place very close to the archiepiscopal chair, if not immediately beneath it?

I seem to have picked up another fan. A C Grayling, in comments to one of my Guardian blog pieces, says:

Andrew; perhaps meditating what tendentiousness you could muster in response to the extraordinary courage of some dozens of people there who had chosen to think for themselves and free themselves from the superstitions that oppress so many of their ex-coreligionists - and at considerable personal risk to themselves. You are a perfect example of a person whose zeal to defend fairy stories makes you dishonest and mean-minded. Once upon a time your sort did to those who think for themselves what the mullahs would like to do to the brave men and women at that conference: confined now to snideries, your essential poverty of outlook is on magnificent display here.

Now, obviously I thought about retaliating in kind, but I am above such things.¹ But there is an instructive point, too: what seems to have driven Grayling into this frenzy was that I committed two offences very like blasphemy and apostasy. I went to this meeting and failed to see in it what he saw. What’s more, his tribe was treated – in the Guardian of all places – without much respect. For him the meeting was a celebration of almost unimaginably brave people who had escaped from a terrible tyranny, and should be reported as if we had gathered in 1943 to hear speeches from members of the French Resistance. For me, the audience was a bunch of old-fashioned lefty freethinkers who were on some deep level confused as to whether America or Iran was a greater threat to civilisation, while the panel was also divided and not going anywhere much. I don’t think I was anything like that rude in my piece and it would have been wrong to do so but to see the meeting as I did was something like seeing the Eucharistic Host is “just a cracker”: Grayling and I don’t actually disagree much about the accidents of the meeting² but I deny the real presence of enlightenment there.

So much for blasphemy.

The apostasy comes because this appeared in the Guardian, written by a self-proclaimed atheist, or certainly someone who doesn’t believe in the truth of the Creeds, the divine inspiration of the Qur’an or anything else along those lines. I don’t know if he was expecting news coverage for the meeting – but I presume there was an assumption that all the paper’s comment would be respectful.

The interesting point, of course, is that all this excitement strengthens a secular, psychologising analysis of religion. It suggests that some of the cognitive and emotional reactions of believers are indeed deeply emotionally rooted and quite unsusceptible to rational argument. Unfortunately for the National Secular Society, it doesn’t do anything to map irrational group think neatly onto theological or supernaturalist belief.

1. Right.

2. Yes, the ex-Muslims were a small minority of the audience; yes there was a disagreement about Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Yes, the audience was about 300. There is videotape of all this, anyway. This does matter a bit, because if there had been 30 long-standing members of the BHA in an audience of 300 ex-Muslims, it would have been a very different story.

Hey, what’s that?. Generates a panoramic view with a crib from anywhere in the continental US, and possibly outside it. Awe-inspiring.

It turns out that modern graphics cards are so powerful that they can be used to crack the passwords which secure wireless networks more or less in real time. So the unassuming Russian gent playing with his laptop in the car park outside a merchant bank is having more fun than you can possibly imagine.

On Friday I put up a piece on the Guardian’s Comment is Free about the hideous philistinism of Andy Burnham, the minister for “Culture, Media and Sport” who wants to turn libraries into community centres, with coffee bars, music, mobile phones, and so on. It got a lot of comments cheering it on on general principle, and one or two from librarians saying that Burnham wasn’t proposing anything new, but merely driving on what is already happening. The saddest of these came from a commentator signing herself Mswoman. Here is an excerpt.

The city centre library where I’ve worked for the last 5 or so years already allows mobile phones, hot drinks, snacks, and all the other philistine anti-learning activities that Andrew Brown references in this piece. Staff are not allowed to ask customers to keep the noise down, and they’re not allowed to eject people from the premises except in very exceptional circumstances (and by that I mean you’d practically have to start a riot before any of us would be allowed to do anything about your anti-social behaviour). Oh yes, and we play dvds all day long on a large plasma screen near the library entrance, with the sound on, to help advertise our dvd collection…..and to keep the kids entertained.

The library was deliberately designed and built with no specific quiet/study area, and there is no separate reference section – all the reference books are inter-shelved with the lending stock. Having a quiet area and/or a reference section was deemed to be too elitist and contrary to the ethos of inclusiveness the authority wanted to promote.

However, and this is the bit that will annoy everyone here. The library is a huge success. It’s the busiest library in the country, and while other libraries are experiencing falling visitor numbers and falling loans, our figures have been going up year on year. I suspect we’ve set the standard, and other authorities, along with Andy Burnham, are looking at ways to replicate that success across the board. Sorry about that folks!

Predictably my authority plays down the downside of all this, and only boasts of their successes, so you don’t get to hear about the hordes of teenagers making everyone’s lives, both staff and customers alike, a complete misery, or the fact that, having decided uniformed staff were intimidating and not the image the library wanted to present to the world, and thus redeploying our security staff to other roles, the authority has now been forced to employ the services of a private security company to keep staff and customers safe on Saturdays and during the evenings, as well as debt collectors to chase down missing stock and unpaid fines.

You don’t get to hear about the punch ups, the anti-social behaviour, the ever-present handbag thieves, the customer who didn’t want to give up his computer when he needed the loo and who resorted to peeing into an empty coffee cup while he remained seated at his desk, the couple I caught engaged in oral sex in the children’s toilets, the pensioner who kicked a 2 year old who was lying on the floor having a tantrum, and who was banned for 6 months but not reported to the police for assault, or any of the other incidents that occur on an almost daily basis. Or of the staff who are too intimidated to speak out, and who are so worn down from being told it’s all their own fault ‘cos they just don’t understand young people and they need to learn to be more tolerant, that they can’t be bothered trying to do anything about these things anymore.

I would almost rather have libraries censored by Sarah Palin if they were orderly. I suspect that kind of reasoning will increase as the slump takes hold. There is a reason for the popularity of authoritarianism at some times, and it is not just the personality defects of authoritarians.