Bigots, Demons & Delusion

Carl retweeted this from Stephen Fry :

  

Hearing a lot about this deluded woman's influence over Cameron. Ran prayer sessions to 'cure' gay peoplehttp://bit.ly/cghS0I Shiver.

and later this from someone else:

 thewhoami Gordon Brown calls ONE voter a bigot. Press goes MENTAL. #PhilippaStroud calls THOUSANDS of voters demons. Silence. Why? http://is.gd/bRqpJ

Now, one could note that that Guardian article only speaks to people critical of Pippa Stroud, or that the churches the Strouds are linked to are not in fact allied to 'the US evangelical movement' any more than the Anglican church down the road is (New Frontiers being a British thing originally), or that from what I hear the church in Bedford is genuinely doing good stuff to help people in need, or that there are factual innaccuracies in what whoami tweeted.  I'm not annoyed about that though.

I'm annoyed about the double-standards in the reaction.  It's apparently ok to call someone delusional when their view is different from yours, but not ok for them to have a different view anyway.  (any) Faith is by definition trusting in something which cannot be proved, so all faith is equally open to the accusation of being delusional (if people want to use that language), but then so is assuming that there is no God - it cannot be proved, it's a statement of belief, but it seems to be ok to make that one.

whoami should have tweeted :

#PhilippaStroud says thousands may be influenced by demons. @stephenfry implies millions of voters are delusional.  Who's insulting more people?

BTW, I'm most likely voting lib dem, having switched from labour.  I'm always surprised when Christians are conservatives, but hey that's democracy for you.