Blog and News Roundup! Part 1
Sep. 2nd, 2009 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philosoraptor42Atheism and Religion News
Morning worship no longer compulsory in Wales (if you're over 16) (BHA)
The British Humanist Association supports the right for children over 16 to be excused from 'morning worship' in Welsh schools. The Archbishop of Wales is not so keen. The BHA are unsurprised by his reaction:
'It is hardly a surprise that an archbishop believes that all young people should have ‘faith’ forced on them from an early age in schools. With so few people ever attending a religious service, schools are seen by the churches and other religious groups as ideal settings in which to inculcate young people in religion.’
‘That position, however, fails to respect the human rights of children and young people to freedom of belief and conscience. Just last year, Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights called for any child of ‘sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding’ to be given the right to withdraw from compulsory religious worship in schools, not only those over 16, given the clear violation of young people’s rights by having compulsory worship in all schools.’
Actually personally I am a little surprised though. Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales, is a supporter of both female and gay bishops and he's even publically admitted that religions, Christianity included, have a long history of denigrating women. Still, I guess I have to recognise that even the most liberal leaders of the Church of England are still going to cling to their legal priveledges in the UK. (That said, he does seem to have bought into the "fundamentalist atheists want to destroy Christmas" nonsense.)
SIDE NOTE: Okay, who ever said that Rowan Williams (previously Archbishop of Wales) was liberal exactly? I'm very very confused...
Mr. Williams, a morning after pill is not an abortion and no, there haven't been any advances in birth survival rates before 24 weeks.
Founder of "Alpha" fails to condemn the practise of 'curing gays'. (The Guardian)
Nicky Gumbel seems unable to bring himself to say that homosexuality is not something which can be 'healed'. While seemingly shocked by the idea that homophobia might be present in his Alpha courses, he cannot seem to personally distance himself from it. This news comes from Adam Rutherford who has recently been writing a series of articles about the "Alpha" course (a course for exploring Christianity used for evangelism purposes) for The Guardian.
Huge Gurdwara built on retail park in town's outskirts despite idiots complaining (Sikhchic)
A massive Sikh Gurdwara built in a retail park, far from being an eyesore, gives a small town character. Damn right!
"Are you a Christian dear?" Lol! (Not Always Right)
You have to read this to the end...
Iran's Ayatollah joins the "end of days" crowd (Religion News Blog)
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called on Muslims around the world to mobilize their troops alongside Iran against Israel and the United States to prepare for the coming of the “Mahdi” seen as “the savior of Islam“.
Christian rocker banned from performing a Finnish venue for conflicting with their Christian policies (MediaWatchWatch)
"The contract which we received from Tampere Areena specifies that no artists may perform there who ‘incite evil and the power of darkness’" Um, yeah btw Alice Cooper is a Christian - duh!
New version of Darwin's "Origin Of Species" published by creationists (The Good Atheist)
Confused? Well don't be. This version contains a long foreword which uses the same BS creationist arguments as ususal to claim that the contents of the book are nonsense. Naturally scientists don't agree with every little detail of what Darwin wrote and yes, like most people in the 19th century, Darwin might well have held racist sentiments, however his theory of evolution has stood up to over a century of scientific research. The intention is that schools will have this version of Darwin's book on their shelves so that schoolchildren are subjected to creationist nonsense the moment they decide to check it out.
Is Atheism a Religion? (The Good Atheist)
Well, my own view is that atheism can be 'religious', but not 'a religion'. What is interesting about this post, however, is its important recognition that faith is about 'trust' not 'belief'. The famous quote from Mark Twain's character Tom Sawyer, "faith is believing what you know ain't true", can be rejected with this definition which takes into account the religious sentiment:
Faith is a misleading word. We tend to confuse the word with belief, even though the two are not necessarily the same. Faith can more easily be understood if we think of the word “trust”. Christians trust that their God is Omnipotent, Omniscient and OmniBenevolent. They may trust this for a variety of reasons. Most grow up being told this is true by various people of authority, and many also come to trust that the Bible is the infallible word of God. This type of trust does not require anything more than the willful surrender of one’s critical faculties, even in the face of glaringly contradictory or improbable elements (like a virgin birth, or a resurrection).
In the end though trusting something to be true requires a good reason. There's no shortage of atheists who do not believe in God because they do not think they have a good enough reason to do so. As such, they may similar fail to accept dragons, unicorns, and the Loch Ness monster (just like many religious believers).
Others, including myself, believe they have a good reason to think there is no God, but that is not trusting something to be true - but is simply an extension of the scepticism regarding things like dragons and unicorns. If I don't think I have any reason to believe in dragons, I might still wonder whether I will see one in the future. When I was younger I certainly felt that way about ghosts. I wasn't particularly expecting to see a ghost, but I'd heard the usual stories and wondered if I would see one in the future. It wasn't until later that I realised that many claims for ghosts were spurious and later than that it occurred to me that many claims for gods were also spurious... Pagan gods like Odin and Zeus weren't something people worshipped because they were idiots, but were considered just as real as Jesus Christ and 'God, the Father' in Christianity. Once you realise that several instances have been ruled out in the past, you feel a greater need for justification for other instances, whether it be claims for ghosts or gods.
For the most part, the vast majority of us do not blindly trust others without at least some proof. If I’m trying to sell you a flying car, you’ll no doubt want to take it for a test drive before buying it. We rarely take anyone’s “word” for it, because we know that blindly trusting others is a bad idea. Trust has to be earned, not given. The same should be true about what we believe, and who we chose to believe. If the methods of arriving at a conclusion are shrouded in mystery (the whole God in the gap argument comes to mind), we haven’t really gained any real knowledge, and we would be wise not to blindly trust any belief that demands the surrender of our critical faculties. Being an atheist doesn’t require me to believe in anything without evidence. Can any Christian truly make the same claim?
Evangelical Christian realises that American evangelism methods are currently counter-productive (The Friendly Atheist)
First read the story of Christian protestors at a Marilyn Manson concert. (Slow…be patient)
In the recent movie from Bill Maher, 'Religulous' (which I finally saw on DVD recently) there were two points I held issue with. First is that he buys into the nonsense from the Zeitgeist movie (there were 'baptisms' in Egyptian religion? - try again...). The other, however, was an interview with an Orthodox Jew who opposed the state of Israel, believing that the creation of a Jewish state was a mistake. As I understood it, the idea was that Israel is meant to be established by a messiah and the messiah Rather than being given the chance to explain why he did not believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an anti-semite (something I'm sure they believed), the interview is very quickly brought to a close.
Here's the information that was missing. The "Neturei Karta" (“guardians of the city”) position is explained as follows:
1. as jews, we believe the messiah will come one day.
2. when he shows up, he will sort everything out and the jewish people will be saved.
3. as part of this process, the jewish people will return to our ancestral homeland in eretz yisrael and universal peace, justice and brotherhood will prevail.
4. as orthodox jews (of all stripes) believe, this return will involve the building of the Third Temple in jerusalem and the restoration of the davidic monarchy.
5. as ultra-orthodox jews believe, the messianic state will be a theocracy and all jews will become religious (and, obviously, ultra-orthodox).
6. as many ultra-orthodox jews believe, the messianic state will be victorious over attempts to prevent its establishment and anyone who stands in the way of the Divine Will is going to come to a very nasty end indeed.
7. therefore, a jewish state established before the arrival of the messiah is pre-emption of the Divine Will and consequently an offence against G!D.
8. therefore, the state of israel is a product of the Evil Inclination (to rebel against G!D) and it’s standing in the way of the messianic return. consequently, to destroy it would be a good thing and anyone who can help in that is consequently doing G!D’s Work.
there are a number of small problems with this, namely the large number of jews in israel that would probably die as the result of the implementation of 8.:
9. oh, well, they’re not really proper jews any more, in fact, NK are the only real jews left because they’re the only ones with the “truth”.
10. once the Messiah comes, in order to build the Third Temple he’ll need to knock down the mosques on the Temple Mount, but that won’t matter, because G!D will neutralise the muslim menace by some Divine means, presumably a plague or mass conversions, or knocking them all off or something.
Eeeek!
Movie news
James Cameron's Avatar and 'Delgo' (Topless Robot)
Avatar appears to have a number of close similarities with animation flop 'Delgo'. Topless Robot finds it amusing that to imagine the owners of "the floppiest flop ever to saunter floppily into flopsville and become Dean Of Failure At Flopsville State University" trying to explain to a judge that James Cameron's Avatar is in any way ripping off their beloved Delgo.
"The Sun" makes sh*t up about Batman (Topless Robot)
Topless Robot is appalled that The Sun can print the spurious rumours that the third Batman movie will star Megan Fox as Catwoman and Eddie Murphy as The Riddler as if these were facts. Unfortunately the rest of us aren't so surprised...
Feminism News
Pole Dancing toy! (Topless Robot)
'Nuff Said
1 in 3 teenage girls has been sexually abused (The Guardian)
Remember that 'sexual abuse' means 'rape'. Let's not make Bill Donohue's mistake. A quarter of girls had suffered physical violence, including being slapped, punched or beaten by their boyfriends. Ugh!
Lesbian parents are now named on their children's birth certificates as a couple (rather than just naming the mother) (The Guardian)
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 granted lesbian couples equal rights as parents. The new regulations on the registration of births and deaths came into force today, although no child covered by the change will have been born yet.
Lord Brett, the Home Office minister, said: "This positive change means that, for the first time, female couples who have a child using fertility treatment have the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts to be shown as parents in the birth registration. It is vital that we afford equality wherever we can in society, especially as family circumstances continue to change. This is an important step forward in that process."
Damn right! Though apparently not everyone agreed with this. The nutcase conservative MP who tried to put tighter limits on abortion rights in the UK had this to say (about 'traditional values' *groan*):
"If we want to build a stable society, a mother and father and children works as the best model," the Conservative MP Nadine Dorries told the BBC. "We should be striving towards repairing and reinforcing marriage. I think this move sends out the exact opposite message."
Oh boo-hoo! :p
Morning worship no longer compulsory in Wales (if you're over 16) (BHA)
The British Humanist Association supports the right for children over 16 to be excused from 'morning worship' in Welsh schools. The Archbishop of Wales is not so keen. The BHA are unsurprised by his reaction:
'It is hardly a surprise that an archbishop believes that all young people should have ‘faith’ forced on them from an early age in schools. With so few people ever attending a religious service, schools are seen by the churches and other religious groups as ideal settings in which to inculcate young people in religion.’
‘That position, however, fails to respect the human rights of children and young people to freedom of belief and conscience. Just last year, Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights called for any child of ‘sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding’ to be given the right to withdraw from compulsory religious worship in schools, not only those over 16, given the clear violation of young people’s rights by having compulsory worship in all schools.’
Actually personally I am a little surprised though. Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales, is a supporter of both female and gay bishops and he's even publically admitted that religions, Christianity included, have a long history of denigrating women. Still, I guess I have to recognise that even the most liberal leaders of the Church of England are still going to cling to their legal priveledges in the UK. (That said, he does seem to have bought into the "fundamentalist atheists want to destroy Christmas" nonsense.)
SIDE NOTE: Okay, who ever said that Rowan Williams (previously Archbishop of Wales) was liberal exactly? I'm very very confused...
Mr. Williams, a morning after pill is not an abortion and no, there haven't been any advances in birth survival rates before 24 weeks.
Founder of "Alpha" fails to condemn the practise of 'curing gays'. (The Guardian)
Nicky Gumbel seems unable to bring himself to say that homosexuality is not something which can be 'healed'. While seemingly shocked by the idea that homophobia might be present in his Alpha courses, he cannot seem to personally distance himself from it. This news comes from Adam Rutherford who has recently been writing a series of articles about the "Alpha" course (a course for exploring Christianity used for evangelism purposes) for The Guardian.
Huge Gurdwara built on retail park in town's outskirts despite idiots complaining (Sikhchic)
A massive Sikh Gurdwara built in a retail park, far from being an eyesore, gives a small town character. Damn right!
"Are you a Christian dear?" Lol! (Not Always Right)
You have to read this to the end...
Iran's Ayatollah joins the "end of days" crowd (Religion News Blog)
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called on Muslims around the world to mobilize their troops alongside Iran against Israel and the United States to prepare for the coming of the “Mahdi” seen as “the savior of Islam“.
Christian rocker banned from performing a Finnish venue for conflicting with their Christian policies (MediaWatchWatch)
"The contract which we received from Tampere Areena specifies that no artists may perform there who ‘incite evil and the power of darkness’" Um, yeah btw Alice Cooper is a Christian - duh!
New version of Darwin's "Origin Of Species" published by creationists (The Good Atheist)
Confused? Well don't be. This version contains a long foreword which uses the same BS creationist arguments as ususal to claim that the contents of the book are nonsense. Naturally scientists don't agree with every little detail of what Darwin wrote and yes, like most people in the 19th century, Darwin might well have held racist sentiments, however his theory of evolution has stood up to over a century of scientific research. The intention is that schools will have this version of Darwin's book on their shelves so that schoolchildren are subjected to creationist nonsense the moment they decide to check it out.
Is Atheism a Religion? (The Good Atheist)
Well, my own view is that atheism can be 'religious', but not 'a religion'. What is interesting about this post, however, is its important recognition that faith is about 'trust' not 'belief'. The famous quote from Mark Twain's character Tom Sawyer, "faith is believing what you know ain't true", can be rejected with this definition which takes into account the religious sentiment:
Faith is a misleading word. We tend to confuse the word with belief, even though the two are not necessarily the same. Faith can more easily be understood if we think of the word “trust”. Christians trust that their God is Omnipotent, Omniscient and OmniBenevolent. They may trust this for a variety of reasons. Most grow up being told this is true by various people of authority, and many also come to trust that the Bible is the infallible word of God. This type of trust does not require anything more than the willful surrender of one’s critical faculties, even in the face of glaringly contradictory or improbable elements (like a virgin birth, or a resurrection).
In the end though trusting something to be true requires a good reason. There's no shortage of atheists who do not believe in God because they do not think they have a good enough reason to do so. As such, they may similar fail to accept dragons, unicorns, and the Loch Ness monster (just like many religious believers).
Others, including myself, believe they have a good reason to think there is no God, but that is not trusting something to be true - but is simply an extension of the scepticism regarding things like dragons and unicorns. If I don't think I have any reason to believe in dragons, I might still wonder whether I will see one in the future. When I was younger I certainly felt that way about ghosts. I wasn't particularly expecting to see a ghost, but I'd heard the usual stories and wondered if I would see one in the future. It wasn't until later that I realised that many claims for ghosts were spurious and later than that it occurred to me that many claims for gods were also spurious... Pagan gods like Odin and Zeus weren't something people worshipped because they were idiots, but were considered just as real as Jesus Christ and 'God, the Father' in Christianity. Once you realise that several instances have been ruled out in the past, you feel a greater need for justification for other instances, whether it be claims for ghosts or gods.
For the most part, the vast majority of us do not blindly trust others without at least some proof. If I’m trying to sell you a flying car, you’ll no doubt want to take it for a test drive before buying it. We rarely take anyone’s “word” for it, because we know that blindly trusting others is a bad idea. Trust has to be earned, not given. The same should be true about what we believe, and who we chose to believe. If the methods of arriving at a conclusion are shrouded in mystery (the whole God in the gap argument comes to mind), we haven’t really gained any real knowledge, and we would be wise not to blindly trust any belief that demands the surrender of our critical faculties. Being an atheist doesn’t require me to believe in anything without evidence. Can any Christian truly make the same claim?
Evangelical Christian realises that American evangelism methods are currently counter-productive (The Friendly Atheist)
Edited version of iMonk's comments below:
Write this down: When the coming evangelical collapse happens, and especially when thousands of our young people bolt for non-believer status, a lot of it will be COMPLETELY DESERVED.
We addressed atheism with the wrong arguments. We didn’t ask ourselves how it looks to a young atheist. We never stopped to notice that if you are a 17 year old with serious questions about evil, miracles, prayer and the Bible you’ve got small chances of getting any help from most of evangelicalism. We’re having too much fun squalling at the President and feeling good about ourselves . By the time you find that book, talk, ministry, etc. that might help, you’re already beginning to suspect that this is the emergency room where doubters are taken for emergency injections of how powerful anti-atheism drugs and then sent back to the “Bless Us Real Good” Game.
You see, evangelicals have made such outrageous assumptions and promises about happiness, healing, everything working out, knowing God, answered prayer, loving one another and so on that proving us to be liars isn’t even a real job. It’s just a matter of tuning in to an increasing number of voices who say “It’s OK to not believe. Give yourself a break. Stop tormenting yourself trying to believe. Stop propping up your belief with more and more complex arguments. Just let go of God."We are the ones who appear to not believe in the God we say is real. We are the ones who seem to be forcing ourselves to believe with bigger shows, bigger celebrities and bigger methods of manipulation.
You can’t understand why some people just say atheism has about it the beauty of simplicity? You don’t see why Occam’s Razor is so powerful, even among students who have no idea what it means?
Pay closer attention. The game has changed.
iMonk hasn't backpedalled on this issue either. Here's a later post on Marilyn Manson:First read the story of Christian protestors at a Marilyn Manson concert. (Slow…be patient)
Then, savor the irony: If you read Manson’s biography, he’s the product of Christian parenting and fundamentalist education.
"Marilyn Manson was born as Brian Hugh Warner in Canton, Ohio, the son of Barb Wyer and Hugh Jack Warner. His father was a Roman Catholic and his mother was an Episcopalian. According to his autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, …He was raised in his mother’s religion. Warner attended Heritage Christian School from first grade to tenth grade."
Instead of owning up to one of the unfortunate possible results of fundamentalism, Christians are protesting and denouncing Manson.
In the recent movie from Bill Maher, 'Religulous' (which I finally saw on DVD recently) there were two points I held issue with. First is that he buys into the nonsense from the Zeitgeist movie (there were 'baptisms' in Egyptian religion? - try again...). The other, however, was an interview with an Orthodox Jew who opposed the state of Israel, believing that the creation of a Jewish state was a mistake. As I understood it, the idea was that Israel is meant to be established by a messiah and the messiah Rather than being given the chance to explain why he did not believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an anti-semite (something I'm sure they believed), the interview is very quickly brought to a close.
Here's the information that was missing. The "Neturei Karta" (“guardians of the city”) position is explained as follows:
1. as jews, we believe the messiah will come one day.
2. when he shows up, he will sort everything out and the jewish people will be saved.
3. as part of this process, the jewish people will return to our ancestral homeland in eretz yisrael and universal peace, justice and brotherhood will prevail.
4. as orthodox jews (of all stripes) believe, this return will involve the building of the Third Temple in jerusalem and the restoration of the davidic monarchy.
5. as ultra-orthodox jews believe, the messianic state will be a theocracy and all jews will become religious (and, obviously, ultra-orthodox).
6. as many ultra-orthodox jews believe, the messianic state will be victorious over attempts to prevent its establishment and anyone who stands in the way of the Divine Will is going to come to a very nasty end indeed.
7. therefore, a jewish state established before the arrival of the messiah is pre-emption of the Divine Will and consequently an offence against G!D.
8. therefore, the state of israel is a product of the Evil Inclination (to rebel against G!D) and it’s standing in the way of the messianic return. consequently, to destroy it would be a good thing and anyone who can help in that is consequently doing G!D’s Work.
there are a number of small problems with this, namely the large number of jews in israel that would probably die as the result of the implementation of 8.:
9. oh, well, they’re not really proper jews any more, in fact, NK are the only real jews left because they’re the only ones with the “truth”.
10. once the Messiah comes, in order to build the Third Temple he’ll need to knock down the mosques on the Temple Mount, but that won’t matter, because G!D will neutralise the muslim menace by some Divine means, presumably a plague or mass conversions, or knocking them all off or something.
Eeeek!
Movie news
James Cameron's Avatar and 'Delgo' (Topless Robot)
Avatar appears to have a number of close similarities with animation flop 'Delgo'. Topless Robot finds it amusing that to imagine the owners of "the floppiest flop ever to saunter floppily into flopsville and become Dean Of Failure At Flopsville State University" trying to explain to a judge that James Cameron's Avatar is in any way ripping off their beloved Delgo.
"The Sun" makes sh*t up about Batman (Topless Robot)
Topless Robot is appalled that The Sun can print the spurious rumours that the third Batman movie will star Megan Fox as Catwoman and Eddie Murphy as The Riddler as if these were facts. Unfortunately the rest of us aren't so surprised...
Feminism News
Pole Dancing toy! (Topless Robot)
'Nuff Said
1 in 3 teenage girls has been sexually abused (The Guardian)
Remember that 'sexual abuse' means 'rape'. Let's not make Bill Donohue's mistake. A quarter of girls had suffered physical violence, including being slapped, punched or beaten by their boyfriends. Ugh!
Lesbian parents are now named on their children's birth certificates as a couple (rather than just naming the mother) (The Guardian)
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 granted lesbian couples equal rights as parents. The new regulations on the registration of births and deaths came into force today, although no child covered by the change will have been born yet.
Lord Brett, the Home Office minister, said: "This positive change means that, for the first time, female couples who have a child using fertility treatment have the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts to be shown as parents in the birth registration. It is vital that we afford equality wherever we can in society, especially as family circumstances continue to change. This is an important step forward in that process."
Damn right! Though apparently not everyone agreed with this. The nutcase conservative MP who tried to put tighter limits on abortion rights in the UK had this to say (about 'traditional values' *groan*):
"If we want to build a stable society, a mother and father and children works as the best model," the Conservative MP Nadine Dorries told the BBC. "We should be striving towards repairing and reinforcing marriage. I think this move sends out the exact opposite message."
Oh boo-hoo! :p
