Apres Moi, Le Deluge

[cheers, Dr D]

As expected, London appears to have completely fallen apart in my absence. You've no doubt heard about the snowstorm that paralyzed the city earlier this week. Something like 5-8 inches fell on Sunday and Monday, forcing schools and businesses to close, shutting down service on all but one of the Tube lines, and playing havoc with Heathrow Airport (an airport which, I might add, tends to teeter on the brink of havoc even on good days). As I stare at the several feet of snow piled up outside my Massachusetts apartment, it's difficult not to feel a little amused by the complete inability of the British to handle a snowstorm that would hardly even merit the name in this part of the world. But, as Anne Applebaum points out, it's all about what you're used to. It makes no sense to own a snow shovel in London if it only snows like this once every 18 years.

If you ask me, this snowstorm is God's punishment for all those atheist buses that have been rumbling through London's streets lately. I'm happy to report, however, that the balance is soon to be righted. The Guardian reports today that several Christian groups have begun running counter-adverts refuting the atheists' arguments. With ads claiming "There definitely is a God. So join the Christian Party and enjoy your life," "There IS a God, BELIEVE. Don't worry and enjoy your life," and "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God," these groups are also buying up real estate on the sides of London buses and elsewhere around the city. And I say good for them. It's been a long, long time since Britain has been the scene of any serious religious disputes. In the good old days these disputes were between people convinced that theirs was the one true faith and that their opponents were a bunch of anti-Christian, superstitious savages. They'd hold forth in public parks and streets denouncing the pope or the king or what have you, revelling in lurid, slightly pornographic tales about what supposedly went on in the Catholic confessional or in convents, thrilling their audiences with horror-show tales of the inquisition or the Counterreformation. Sometimes, in the really really old days, they'd even fight wars about these things. A king would get it into his head that he would decide whom he could sleep with and not some fat old fart over in Rome, and that'd provoke a series of crises that would culimnate in the execution of another king some hundred years later. Monasteries would be looted and burned. The Irish would get involved and start throwing bricks and burning Protestants in barns. Angry, hairy Highlanders would come down from the hills and sack villages. France or Holland or Spain would try to invade. Crazy radical fundamentalists would flee the country in rickety boats and sail west until they hit a green patch and make friends with Indians and eat turkey with cranberry sauce while wearing buckles on their shoes.

These religious disputes, in short, were productive of a great many things, and I'm glad to see them reemerging - albeit in a slightly modified form - in this new century. No longer is the argument "My God is better than your God, No he's not, Yes he is, No he's not," but rather "There is no God, Yes there is, No there isn't, Yes there is, No there isn't," but it's heartening all the same. It confirms my calculation, made several years ago, that religious conflict was and would remain a growth industry, and that if I was going to succeed financially and professionally I'd do well to hop on that bus.

Of course, there is one other religious fault line in contemporary Britain. I'm speaking, of course, of the nation's large and growing number of Muslims and the alienation that has grown up between some of them and "mainstream" British society. I wonder what they think about this whole atheist bus fracas. For that matter, I wonder what they think about all the snow.