The God Trial.

This is something that I've been meaning to post about for a while now. I have hesitated though because it's one of those occasions where it's quite difficult to talk you through the British Establishment's thought process without it sounding as if I've gone completely insane.

Back in November 2009 Britain did that thing that people across the world like to laugh at Americans for doing. They put God on trial. What's more you can tell from the subtle way they did it that they were being deadly serious.

The case revolved around a 42 year old, Oxford man called Tim Nicholson. Despite being the perfect image of a clean cut establishment figure Mr Nicholson also describes himself as a passionate environmentalist and proponent of the need to take action on Climate Change. This passion led him to personally finance part of the 2009 film about the dangers of climate change, "The Age of Stupid." Incidentally the films director, Franny Armstrong, was recently splashed across the British media hailing London Mayor, Boris Johnson as a hero after he rescued her from an attempted street mugging in a story that many people have described as being far too good to be true.

Aside from financing controversial films on the subject Mr Nicholson also brought his environmental zeal to his work at Grainger PLC, the UK's largest private landlord. After repeatedly refusing to heed instructions from the directors of the company to stop exploring the total carbon footprint of Grainger's operations Mr Nicholson was dismissed from the company. This prompted him to sue Grainger for unfair dismissal under the 2003 Religion and Beliefs Regulations laid out in Employment Equality Act. Mr Nicholson's argument was that his opinion that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide cause global warming was a deeply held philosophical belief akin to a tenent of religion. Therefore his employer could no more penalise him for it then they could ask a Sikh employee to remove his turban or force a Catholic doctor to perform an abortion. Amazingly the court agreed with Mr Nicholson and on November 4th awarded him damages for unfair dismissal setting the legal precedent that global warming is in fact a religious belief.

Apart from making the debate over global warming look ridiculous by framing it as an abstract debate over philosophy rather then a simple scientific argument this judgement also served another crucial purpose for the British Establishment. You see at it's core Britain is a Monarchy. Therefore according to it's Constitution it must be run by a Monarch who was appointed by God to rule in accordance with signs from God. The problem is that over the last year or so the things that you or I would normally consider to be signs from God such as floods, forest fires, plagues and people's first born sons suddenly being struck down dead seem to be directly contradicting the way the Queen is running the country creating something of a constitutional crisis. The Nicholson Judgement allowed the Queen to re-assure her Loyalists that because environmentalism is a separate religion it has a separate god. Therefore all the signs that contradicted the Queen were in fact sent by a different god from the one they pray to in the Church of England.

Although I'm not a religious scholar I think this means that Britain has just disproved the entire Bible. However the message is quite clear; Britain considers taking action to halt global warming to be an alternative religion that threatens the Queens Divine Right to rule. Therefore it must be opposed regardless of cost or consequence.

Nice to know that their objections are firmly based in science then.