with the latest phone hacking disclosure in the guardian, i suspect last night  the lawyers in the department of culture media and sport (dcms) were burning the midnight oil. jeremy hunt, the minister is now  in a position that he can only wave through the news international bid for the remaining  shares in sky they do not own.

hunt seems to have cut off any retreat by virtually ruling out re-examining whether the murdoch organisation is a 'fit and proper person' to own sky. it looks as though, unless the d.c.m.s. lawyers come up with something, he will be allowing news international to complete the share purchase in the next couple of months. 

his position is horrible because these hacking disclosures are just going to run and run. any criminal and civil  proceedings are months if not years away, and with each twist, turn and disclosure, it will become clearer and clearer just how unfit and improper news international were to be allowed to take over sky.

' the conflict between science and religion is reducible to a simple fact of human cognition and discourse: either a person has good reasons for what he believes, or he does not. if there were good reasons to believe that jesus was born of a virgin, or that muhammed flew to heaven on a winged horse, these beliefs would necessarily form part of our rational description of the universe. everyone recognizes that to rely on 'faith' to decide specific questions of historical fact is ridiculous-that is,until the conversation turns to the origin of the books like the bible and the koran, to the resurrection of jesus, to muhammed's conversion with the archangel gabriel, or to any other religious dogma. it is time that we admitted faith is nothing more than the license religious people give to one another to keep believing when reasons fail.'

sam harris letter to a christian nation-a challenge to faith pp66-67

i notice here that the christian legal centre has 'more than 50 cases in religious discrimination fight'

i don't want to discourage  lawyers doing pro bono work, but the centre's  strike rake is not very impressive.

before  they start more hopeless cases,  i can point  them  to some free advice.

it comes from one of their many failed litigious efforts- mcfarlane v relate avon ltd 2010. mcfarlane, a christian, was employed by relate. he was dismissed because  he refused to give certain  sexual advice to same sex couples in breach of the agreement with his employer.

former archbishop of canterbury, lord carey of clifton,submitted a witness statement on behalf of mcfarlane.

according to the court, carey's statement containing his concerns was

formulated at such a level of generality that it is hard to know precisely what Lord Carey has in mind.

but the court  was able to extract these bullet points:

• "To the religious adherent religion is the route to salvation."

• "The fear of hell is central to the appellant's religious belief and individuals ought to be informed of the consequences of hell."

• "The proposition of the appellant's religious belief is that sin will have eternal consequences. Those who do not repent will go to hell when they die."

and now comes this withering comment from lord justice laws on carey's statement. it's quoted in full.

1. In a free constitution such as ours there is an important distinction to be drawn between the law's protection of the right to hold and express a belief and the law's protection of that belief's substance or content. The common law and ECHR Article 9 offer vigorous protection of the Christian's right and every other person's right to hold and express his or her beliefs, and so they should. By contrast, they do not, and should not, offer any protection whatever of the substance or content of those beliefs on the ground only that they are based on religious precepts. These are twin conditions of a free society. The first of these conditions is largely uncontentious. I should say a little more, however, about the second. The general law may of course protect a particular social or moral position which is espoused by Christianity, not because of its religious imprimatur, but on the footing that in reason its merits commend themselves. So it is with core provisions of the criminal law, the prohibition of violence and dishonesty. The Judea-Christian tradition, stretching over many centuries, has no doubt exerted a profound influence upon the judgment of law-makers as to the objective merits of this or that social policy, and the liturgy and practice of the established church are to some extent prescribed by law. But the conferment of any legal protection or preference upon a particular substantive moral position on the ground only that it is espoused by the adherents of a particular faith, however long its tradition, however rich its culture, is deeply unprincipled; it imposes compulsory law not to advance the general good on objective grounds, but to give effect to the force of subjective opinion. This must be so, since, in the eye of everyone save the believer, religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence. It may, of course, be true, but the ascertainment of such a truth lies beyond the means by which laws are made in a reasonable society. Therefore it lies only in the heart of the believer who is alone bound by it; no one else is or can be so bound, unless by his own free choice he accepts its claims.

 

The promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified; it is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective, but it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary. We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs. The precepts of any one religion, any belief system, cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other. If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic. The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments. The individual conscience is free to accept such dictated law, but the State, if its people are to be free, has the burdensome duty of thinking for itself.

 

So it is that the law must firmly safeguard the right to hold and express religious beliefs. Equally firmly, it must eschew any protection of such a belief's content in the name only of its religious credentials. Both principles are necessary conditions of a free and rational regime. 

before the  christian legal centre traipse off the court again, i suggest they learn this extract by heart. 

update 4th may. there's more free advice to the centre from joshua rozenberg in the guardian today

last night dr.adam rutherford's two part 'the gene code' finished its run on bbc4. the first part is no longer on the i-player, but the second part, 'unlocking the code' is still there, rather here.

dr. rutherford, combines journalism-he is the editor of the science journal nature- with a degree in evolutionary biology and a phd in genetics, has an engaging manner of presentation. he makes his subject understandable to the interested layman prepared to put in some effort. the effort is worth while. after all, without a basic understanding of the science, it's becoming increasingly difficult to engage in the ethical debate over genetics and the politcal decisions which, as a society, we will have to make.

the graphs below are from the national human genome research institute.

as you can see, with computerisation, the cost of sequencing the genome is falling so rapidly that these decisions will have to be made sooner rather than later.

*moore's law