Telegraph: Pastor seeks to take over “gay loving” Microsoft
I’m just flabbergasted. Go and read it for yourself.
Revoke UK blasphemy laws (petition)
UK citizens: if you haven’t done so, why not take a couple of moments out of your day to sign the Number 10 petition to get rid of the UK’s blasphemy laws (deadline to sign up by: 8 March 2008).
Further reading: Appendix 3 of the First Report of the Select Committee on Religious Offences in England and Wales.
Citizens of the world: Please post this on your own blog so that we can get a wider exposure for this. 70 signatories is a poor show for a modern secular nation.
Forgive us when we cock things up
From the “You couldn’t make this shit up” department:
This story from the Romford Recorder is just too precious retarded:
A PEARLY Queen’s Cockey slang version of the Lord’s Prayer recited during a formal council meeting has sparked an official complaint.
The modern interpretation of the prayer was brought to the Town Hall by the Pearly Queen of The Old Kent Road, Doreen Golding, who was invited by Havering Mayor Georgina Galpin.
The Pearly Queen, dressed in her traditional outfit, joined the 52 members of Havering Council and several officers and opened the Full Council Meeting on Wednesday, October 17, with her cockney rhyming slang-ridden version of the Lord’s Prayer.
The prayer, recited daily by thousands of Christians, was converted to include the phrases “ave a butchers” (look), and “give us some Uncle Fred” (bread), colloquial terms and abbreviated words.
What the story fails to report is to whether it was up-their-own-arse christians, non-christian theists or non-theists who made the complaint. It it was made by christians, I would then ask them if they would make the same complaint if it were made in, say, Latin? Somehow, I doubt that they’d be so black-affronted if it were. Or would it be that they might imagine that their god is offended by supplications ululated in anything other than King James’ English?
Not that I advocate any kind of special religious representation in government, even local government, but while it’s allowed (or at least tolerated) in the UK, then at least give each their own chance to chant their respective mumbo-jumbo in their own way, and then get down to the business of reality.
The full story, and full version of the prayer, are available in this week’s Recorder, which I don’t have a copy of and am not in a position to pop to the newsagent’s to get, although I do know plenty of people in that neck of the woods, so I’ll put the feelers out to see if one of them could ‘ave a butchers on my behalf.
Lahverly.
Where would we be if the dark ages hadn’t happened?
I’m not convinced by the scale of this graph, but it makes a valid point nonetheless.
Thanks Jesus followers!
(via StumbleUpon)
BBC: I’m Jesus, Fly Me!
A Catholic worker at Manchester Airport was suspended after hanging an image of Jesus on a staff room wall.
Gareth Langmead, 40, was sent home from his job as a car parks supervisor after a complaint from a Muslim colleague.
He was off work for three days while an investigation was carried out and later reinstated with a clean record.
Union officials accused the airport of overreacting and said Mr Langmead was upset by the incident, but the airport said he had not complained.
The airport worker, from Atherton, Greater Manchester, found the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as he was clearing out a desk drawer.
As he felt unable to throw it away, Mr Langmead hung it on a wall in the staff rest room, prompting a complaint it had been put up as “an act of provocation”.
[H]e felt unable to throw it away
? So the optimum solution, rather than taking it home and putting it on one’s own wall, is to decorate one’s (shared) workplace? I disagree with the muslim’s complaint of it being an act of provocation
(you know how sensitive ’some people’ can be).
Perhaps we should be grateful that muslims, although they can bitch about christians hanging up their sectarian propoganda everywhere, are unlikely to start fly-posting tableaux of Mohammed all over the shop.
Langmead has since been reinstated without prejudice. I expect the airport authorities got rid of the picture, or perhaps told him to take it home, where it belongs.
Kent Hovind is (still) barking
Now he thinks he’s got a hotline to “Satan” too.
Someone really should medicate this man.
Termites and Caananites
Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Reality and Love Biblically-Justified Genocide.
Christian CADRE (Colligation of Apologetics Debate Research & Evangelism) (sic) show us that old fashioned good-time fire and brimstone love of their old testament god:
Knowing full well that some atheist will accuse me of justifying genocide… they accuse Christians of being the ones who are unable to see nuances in positions, a total disregard of the reasoning that the destruction of entire groupings of people may be morally acceptable when taking all factors into account shows a lack of careful thought that it is appalling.
I just love that [k]nowing full well that some atheist will accuse me of justifying genocide
bit.
Well, yes one likely will, because you are. It’s exactly this sort of rationalisation that gives religious terrorists the impetus and perceived justification for them to do what they do (or attempt to do).
Here’s the meat (after a bunch of scripture and some making shit up to justify it all):
Thus, contrary to the assertion of skeptics, the destruction of the Caananites was not an evil. It was the Canaanites who were evil, and it was the judgment of God through the Israelites on the Caananites in those cities were led to their destruction. We can be confident that the people destroyed were irredeemably wicked and unrighteous. We can be confident that there were no righteous people among those destroyed.
Can’t you just feel the certainty, the absolutism that his chosen scripture is such a perfect record of history? There’s no doubt in this idiot’s mind that he might be wrong for taking that dreaded tome as a literal record, nor one shred of compassion, nary a jot of humanity for the victims of this genocide (whether it actually happened or not).
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I despise magical thinking.
/hattip to Steven Carr in his comment on Debunking Christianity.
Theos whines over less priests in hospitals
On today’s BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme, christian “think tank” Theos complained about the NHS’s lessening support for chaplaincy in healthcare, although specifically from a religious angle.
Aside from the show’s usual confused conflation of “religion” and “ethics”, the question on the table was should public money should be used to fund NHS chaplaincy?
It’s worth a listen.
Meanwhile, over on the Theos web site, researcher Paul Bickley, writes:
Cue secularist delight, with something like the following logic. “The NHS exists to provide clinical care. The NHS necessarily subsists on a limited budget. NHS funds, therefore, should not pay for anything but clinical care.” In the words of Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society:
“We want nurses and doctors in our hospitals in sufficient numbers to take care of our health properly … if you want a chaplain and can’t afford it, the church [here a lazy cipher for the many traditions, including humanism, represented in healthcare chaplaincy] should pick up the tab, not the taxpayer.”
I doubt anyone will ever convince Terry Sanderson otherwise. But those who share his views should consider the services that chaplains provide before they campaign for, or celebrate, their removal. Healthcare chaplains exist to meet the pastoral needs of all patients, relatives or members of hospital staff who request it. They do not primarily exist to deliver services that are, in some way, narrowly ‘religious’, such as prayers or communion. Rather, they are there, to answer needs that are simply human: coping with the death of a loved one, the suffering of a child, the fear that comes with injury or sickness.
[S]ecularist delight
? A very poor straw-man. As far as I can tell, Sanderson isn’t advocating the removal of the rôle of chaplains, he’s saying that if they’re required, and to be of a particular faith tradition, then that church should pay for them.
Bickley continues:
The chaplain’s role is less that of a cleric and more of someone who has time, experience and wisdom; who is willing to sit with the needy, listen to their stories, and share their burdens; who will act as an advocate for those who lack a strong voice.
So, if such a chaplain’s rôle is not clerical, then why the need for it to be fulfilled by clerics? Surely such services could be provided by anyone who is experienced in providing the kind of personal support that chaplaincy supposedly entails, regardless of their particular faith bias. What particular quality does a priest bring that is unavailable to a support worker or other personal advocate? The only one I can think of is vapid platitudes of the “little Timmy’s with god now” variety.
Where chaplaincy provision is removed it is not replaced by secular pastoral support - assuming “You are only a ‘lumbering robot’ programmed by your genes so you shouldn’t fear an eternity of non-existence,” qualifies as pastoral support. Instead, it is simply lost to those most in need.
My emphasis.
I will agree that some kind of support service could be required by some, but Bickley seems to presume, by setting up another completely ridiculous straw-man, that a bona fide and worthwhile support service can only be provided by the religious faithful.
This, of course, is complete bollocks.
Anyone who has ever attended a secular funeral knows that there is plenty of humanity in evidence, and one doesn’t need religion to find it. To claim that humanity can only be expressed as a reflection in the mirror of “faith” merely devalues any humanity that these people lay claim to providing.
I can see the value of chaplaincy, and I can see how it might help those that need it, but if the religious sects are going to claim to provide such a service and promote their own dogma, then they can pay for it themselves - the state shouldn’t be bolstering any kind of sectarian proselytism, even if all sects are equally supported. If spreading dogma is not the point, the there’s no need for people who provide this service to be religious.
BBC: Scientist/priest says teachers are scared to teach evolution
Professor Michael Reiss, scientist, priest and head of science at London’s Institute of Education, has written a new book aimed at encouraging teachers, who it seems are avoiding the teaching of evolution in schools for fear of the “controversy” and not wanting to dismiss creationist pupils’ beliefs out of hand.
This could leave pupils with gaps in their scientific knowledge, he says.
Prof Reiss says the rise of creationism is partly down to the large increase in Muslim pupils in UK schools.
He said: “The number of Muslim students has grown considerably in the last 10 to 20 years and a higher proportion of Muslim families do not accept evolutionary theory compared with Christian families.
“That’s one reason why it’s more of an issue in schools.”
The days have long gone when science teachers could ignore creationism when teaching about origins
said Reiss.
Reiss’s book, Teaching About Scientific Origins: Taking Account of Creationism, argues that there is an educational value in comparing creationist ideas with scientific theories like Darwin’s theory of evolution because they demonstrate how science, unlike religious beliefs, can be tested.
(BBC)
While I admire Reiss’s efforts to help get science where it belongs, I wonder if he also thinks that these other ideas should be considered in science lessons, so that they can be summarily dismissed also:
- the “stork” hypothesis of reproduction
- the “intelligent falling” hypothesis of gravity
- the “to test our faith” hypothesis of palaeontology
- the “pirates” hypothesis of global climate change
There’s just as much evidence for these as there are for creationism (i.e. none whatsoever).
Read the full article over at the BBC.
Telegraph: Attenborough lambastes Dutch fundies
I wasn’t able to blog about this when it first came out, but Tuesday’s The Telegraph has an article about naturalist and broadcaster Richard Attenborough’s complaint to the BBC over a Dutch evangelical christian fundamentalist broadcaster’s “editing” (read ripping to shreds) of a series television programmes, The Life of Mammals, that he has presented for the BBC.
The world’s best known wildlife broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough, has called on the BBC to stop Christian fundamentalists from deleting references to evolution from his documentaries.
Censored versions of Sir David’s award winning programmes have been broadcast in Holland without any references to evolution, speciation, descent and timescales of millions of years, after being censored by Christian creationists who are opposed to Charles Darwin’s ideas.
“Instead of saying “70 million years ago, something happens,” they say “a very long time ago something happens”. They also omit paragraphs such as: “This is inherited from my warm-blooded ancestors,”" Sir David told the Telegraph. “I would much rather they kept to the letter, as far as that is possible, of what I said.”
I don’t think I need to point out the obvious, but I will anyway: these people are lying by removing parts of these programmes, that have scientific evidence (i.e. reality) to back them up, simply to try to convince themselves, and brainwash others, into thinking that their scripture has some kind of literal significance that trumps how the universe really is. Note to fundies: it doesn’t.
If I had heroes, Attenborough would be one of them. Thank you, Sir David, for standing up for reality, and defying these liars.
P.S. Is it just me, or do other people hear Attenborough’s silken tones drift through their inner monologue when reading nature books or articles?
Belief-based politics (UK edition)
I was just watching the BBC News 24’s morning report on the Conservative party conference before I headed off for work, and what do I spy on the little graphical ticket at the foot of the tv screen?
[David] Cameron wants “politics based on belief”.
No. Nonono.
NONONONONONO.
We want politics based on reality, but let’s assume for a second that the quote has a wider context.
After a brief perusal of the BBC News web site:
“It wasn’t just that we have heard it all before - literally heard it all before - simplistic short-term pledges rehashed and reannounced, with absolutely no indication of how they would be delivered.
“It wasn’t just the cynicism of announcing things that Gordon Brown himself must know he can’t deliver.
“It was the carefully calculated pitch to the 4% of voters in the middle who might switch this way or that.”
He will say the Conservatives “had to do better than that” and reach out to disaffected ex-voters who “don’t believe a word of it any more”.
“We have to inspire them. We have to change from the old politics of easy promises and disappointment to politics you can believe in.
“That means politics based on belief.”
Politics you can believe in = politics based on belief?
NO!
I hope that this was just an equivocal faux pas from Cameron, but the fact that it can be so obviously soundbited (soundbitten?) makes me wonder if the statement wasn’t a deliberate non sequitur which he can, at some later point, use to appease either faithful voters, or turn it around and be equivocal for those of us who think he’s being an asshat.
Coming from an avowed highly political active christian, this concerns me mightily.
Either way, it was either a very clever, or very stupid, thing to say. I sincerely hope it was the latter.
Jesus: £3 per Mb or £6 for the book
I have no idea what the BBC are up to, but this BBC “news” article is simply a waste of bits in the form of a blatant christian advertisement.
The news from Wales must be very quiet at the moment.
Ecumen, a company that provides ringtones (many of which are derived from popular or contemporary Christian music or worship songs), wallpapers, screensavers and other graphics with Christian themes or motifs, family friendly games and daily Bible readings
, describes itself as:
… provid[ing] mobile content with a reassurance that we will not act in any way that is unethical. We aim to enable Christians to express and develop their faith, whilst giving our customers the confidence that the material we provide is family friendly and free from offensive content.
One of the mobile ‘phone wallpapers (in fact, the very first one) is this image of “Abraham and Isaac” which is all very lovely and cartoony. What it fails to do is mention the barbaric human sacrifice story behind it.
Family friendly? An injunction to kill your son and a willingness to do so? Seriously?
The company web site lists how much they charge for their family friendly
content:
Your service provider may also make a charge for the data you download (this includes data downloaded to browse WAPsites). Sample prices as of February 2007 are:
Vodafone UK Pay Monthly: £2 per Mb - Typical Video(300kb): 60p
Pre-Pay: £7.30 per Mb -Typical Ringtone(300kb): £2.20
Orange UK Pay Monthly: £2 per Mb - Typical Ringtone(300kb): 60p
T-Mobile UK Pay Monthly: £7.50 per Mb - Typical Ringtone(300kb): £2.26
O2 UK Pay Monthly: £3 per Mb - Typical Ringtone(300kb): 90p
3 UK Browsing is Free
Apparently praying isn’t an acceptable form of payment. And one receives stuff by SMS, rather than the usual voices, visions or feely-good-niceness method of delivery.
I guess the christian god hasn’t yet embraced modern science-based technology as eagerly as its cheerleaders have.
I’m In An Open Relationship With The Lord
It all started when I was 16 and first asked Jesus to enter my heart. It was incredible. He filled me up with His love. I’d never been redeemed before, but with Jesus it felt so right, as if the sins of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. For a while there, we were communing via the sacraments several times a week! And every night we spent what seemed like hours in long, mutually satisfying sessions of prayer. I worshipped Him.
Soon the honeymoon period ended, however. Whenever I spoke to Him, He seemed distracted and distant—sometimes I wondered if He was listening at all. Daily devotionals felt like we were just going through the motions of repetitive, meaningless dogma. A few months later, I made a potentially disastrous discovery: I found out I wasn’t the only one He was sanctifying.
I’m In An Open Relationship With The Lord
The qualities of the faithful
At a recent christian fair trade conference, Labour MP and government minister Stephen Timms made the following comment:
There is positive impact when people of faith are involved in the lives of their community, because these people bring valuable qualities in their service which are rare elsewhere and they are qualities modern Britain urgently needs.
It’s not reported by Ekklesia as to what Timms thinks are these valuable qualities
actually are, nor if indeed these qualities are actually valuable, but from reading some of his speeches from his web site, he seems to think that simply having “faith” is enough of a virtue in itself.
Inexplicably, I’m not convinced. Like all socially progressive activities claimed exclusively by the religious, there’s no reason why these things can’t be both motivated and achieved without resorting to superstition.
I’ve never heard of Timms before, but apparently he’s the Labour Party’s “vice-chair with special responsibility for faith communities”, whatever that is.
On his web site, Timms writes on christian socialism:
It is clear from the Bible that Jesus was not only a man who empathised with people’s problems, but was a man who took action to change them. It is my hope for this generation that people who are committed to following the lifestyle of Jesus will seek to engage in politics and with the political authorities, as Jesus himself regularly did.
From my own reading of that same book, I remember an episode whereby the Jesus character also told people that they should sell all of their belongings and give the proceeds to the poor. I wonder if Timms is willing to go that extra mile for his biblical convictions, seeing as he’s so adamant that it’s the basis for social responsibility.
Somehow, I think not.
Letters/The Independent: Dodging the issue
From the Letters page of The Independent on 22nd December:
Sir: This Christian is left amused and astonished that Johann Hari (Opinion, 21 December) can be so theologically ignorant.
Christianity anti-materialistic? On the contrary, as William Temple observed, it is the most materialistic of all religions, celebrating not only the physical world from quarks to quasars, but also creaturely embodiment, indeed - precisely at Christmas - the enfleshed humanity of God.
Christianity anti-science? On the contrary, as historians of ideas have observed, it was precisely the Christian desacralisation of nature, granting time and space its own integrity, that allowed the natural sciences to flourish.
Christianity barbaric? After all, it has a God who “feeds small children to bears”. Never mind the Sermon on the Mount, no, go for an Old Testament folk tale as the basis of a critique of biblical ethics. Such a hermeneutic would make a first-year religious studies student blush.
It is not that Mr Hari gives a bad name to Christianity, for he torches a straw man. Rather, he gives a bad name to atheism itself: Nietzsche, Marx and Freud would wince at his accusations.
THE REVD KIM FABRICIUS
Fabricus seems to suffer from that common theistic affliction of selective interpretation, also known as “cherry picking“.
Christianity anti-materialistic? On the contrary, as William Temple observed, it is the most materialistic of all religions, celebrating not only the physical world from quarks to quasars, but also creaturely embodiment, indeed - precisely at Christmas - the enfleshed humanity of God.
As Temple mentions, this comes through in the ritual of the eucharist (the cannibalistic ritual of eating and drinking the flesh of the christ). I don’t recall any mention of either quarks nor quasars concerned with this. Neither do I find any mention of these within the christian scriptures. Perhaps I haven’t read it thoroughly enough.
It’s also well established that christmas has next to nothing to do with the Christ of the christian faith. q.v. Saturnalia, Yule, Mithras.
Christianity anti-science? On the contrary, as historians of ideas have observed, it was precisely the Christian desacralisation of nature, granting time and space its own integrity, that allowed the natural sciences to flourish.
Christianity is anti-science, there’s not really any way to get around this. Truth claims are made by christian scripture: Bats are birds, the universe created in six days, a god exists, etc. Rituals that invoke magical, supernatural intervention: the eucharist, prayer. Pseudoscience: ID/creationism, holy water, crying madonnas. All of these can, are and have been tested by science, and found wanting.
Christianity barbaric? After all, it has a God who “feeds small children to bears”. Never mind the Sermon on the Mount, no, go for an Old Testament folk tale as the basis of a critique of biblical ethics. Such a hermeneutic would make a first-year religious studies student blush.
Way to dodge the issue! Never mind the Sermon on the Mount
Now, that’s a really neat application of a red-herring fallacy. [G]o for an Old Testament folk tale as the basis of a critique of biblical ethics
Sweet! By saying this (argumentum ad novitatem vs argumentum ad antiquitatem), you can now safely ignore any ethical (or otherwise) claim or imperative made in the old testament, say, like the ten commandments. Such a hermeneutic would make a first-year religious studies student blush
Whoa! Let’s look at some of the other things from the old testament that can be creatively interpreted as the christian god being a barabarous scumbag: Genesis 6:7, Genesis 15:9-10, Genesis 22:2-13, Genesis 38:8-10, Exodus 11… you get the picture. I won’t even bother to mention the appeal to the every schoolboy knows fallacy.
It is not that Mr Hari gives a bad name to Christianity, for he torches a straw man. Rather, he gives a bad name to atheism itself: Nietzsche, Marx and Freud would wince at his accusations.
And here we have the coup de grâce: while not only denouncing Hari as having created a strawman, Fabricus simultaniously manages projection of his/her own strawman and has an appeal to authority by invoking the names of Freud, Marx and Nietzsche - who are obviously everybody’s atheist benchmarks. Well done, I applaude you!
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