onsdag 24 december 2008

Is Polly Toybee a Jesuit invention?

Should I believe in Polly Toybee? I have never met her. I know her only through what she has written in the Guardian. The opinions she expresses are consistent, usually almost to the point of being predictably stereotypical. Occasionally she comes out with something especially perceptive and sometimes there are touches of brilliance. More usually I find her irritating.

But for all I know she could be a nom-de-plume for a group of journalists who take turns to write the pieces. Or even a textbot. I have no evidence to the contrary, even though I have seen advertisements announcing meetings to be addressed by someone purporting to be a "Polly Toynbee".

On Sundays I go to church. It is a Catholic church and I am expected to believe that when the priest carries out certain actions and pronounces certain words, ordinary bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, that is, God.

Her Christmas message, in the Guardian on 23 December, is "There's probably no God". Speaking out of personal experience, I have more evidence for the existence of God than "Polly Tonybee", so I am agnostic on the subject of the latter.

"Her" arguments for agnosticsm ("she" doesn't seem to do full-blooded atheism) as so poor that they sound like "straw man" stuff. My parish priest can do better than that. I am wondering if "Polly Toynbee" is not just a Jesuit plot, devised with the aim of making atheism seem ridiculous.

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