To be honest it really, really pisses me off when clergy style themselves Drs and claim to have PhDs. Surely anyone stupid enough to be convinced of the existence of an omnipotent, omnipresent creator being has no right to any such qualification. I’m sorry if I sound grumpy, but this really does offend me. I was watching the BBC breakfast programme again this morning, and they suddenly had an item about the so-called Arch bishop of Canterbury making some kind of pilgrimage. It was obviously just a stunt to get press attention, but the Beeb had fallen for it. What wound me up, though, was the fact they then had the bishop of Manchester appear on the premises spouting all kinds of nonsense about God. He seemed to think he had the authority of an elected politician or academic. 

I’m afraid to say it made me fly into a rage and I had to turn it off; but the guy seemed so arrogant, so up his own religious arse, that it was insufferable. In any other context, trying to convince people of something as manifestly absurd as the existence of a god would just get someone mocked and ridiculed, so it baffles me that such people are awarded such reverence. I have no idea whether the guy has a PhD or not, but he deserved one as much as Trump deserves the Nobel prize. He just spoke so condescendingly and with such crass superiority, as though he should be treated like some great paternal authority figure simply because he cited a book of Bronze Age myths, that it made my blood instantly boil.

I surely can’t be alone in finding this kind of thing so abhorrent. At the end of the day, such people are trying to tell us what to think and how to act, demanding we believe a set of baseless myths which start to seem ridiculous the moment you actually think about them. If nobody listened to them, if everyone saw this anachronistic cult as the outdated form of social control it is, such authority would instantly evaporate and perhaps they would have to find something more productive to do. Yet they seem to think they have the right to speak down to the rest of us, demanding we remain chained to their belief system; allowing them to talk on TV alongside professionals, politicians and people who have actually earned their authority just plays into their game and reinforces their undeserved status. That’s why I find letting such people appear on news shows so appalling: as a society we really need to outgrow such divisive, oppressive forces, but letting such people appear on the morning news and referring to them as doctors simply allows this perverse, outdated form of social and intellectual domination to continue.