Thursday 30 September 2010

Sunday 26 September 2010

The Religion of Love

Numbers:15: Verses:32-36. (King James Version)

 32) And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day.

 33) And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation.

 34) And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him.

 35) And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp.

 36) And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses.

Monday 20 September 2010

A Secularist Manifesto

From an excellent Guardian article by Evan Harris:-

"Secularism is not atheism (lack of belief in God) and nor is it humanism (a nonreligious belief system). It is a political movement seeking specific policy end-points. Many secularists are religious and many religious people – recognising the value of keeping government and religion separate – are secular.

Secularism seeks to defend the absolute freedom of religious and other belief, seeks to maximise freedom of religious and other expression and protect the right to manifest religious belief insofar as it does not impinge disproportionately on the rights and freedoms of others. This is essentially a summary of article 9 of the European convention on human rights. In addition secularism aims to end religious privileges or persecutions and to fully separate the state from religion which is a necessary means to that end."

Read full manifesto here.

Every Catholic should read this . . .

From ex-catholic girl - "A dirty little girl her head hanging in shame"

"The Catholic Church loathes children. Loathes them. To the Church, children are Catholics first and humans second, and the lifelong trauma caused by childhood indoctrination is mere collateral damage in the Church’s battle against the outside world. As is so often the case, the Church unashamedly places their own interests above all other concerns, including the welfare (physical, emotional, and mental) of children. And an organization that despises and preys upon its weakest and most vulnerable members (who haven’t even chosen to be members) is undoubtably a force of great evil in the world."

Sunday 19 September 2010

The Religious Believer

The religious believer is a mental slave to an insubstantial idea, a phantom presence inculcated in a youthful developing mind with the object of control and obedience. It develops with the mind to become a source of mental refuge and comfort, and consequently becomes near impossible to expel. 

To claim to be in communication with this phantom does not provide the claimant any special authority for the issuing of moral and ethical diktats which can deleteriously affect peoples' lives. 

If a cloistered, life-long celibate, 83 year old man, with no experience of sex, marriage, children or grandchildren professes to give advice on such matters as contraception, abortion, sexual relations, we are  entitled to ask for back-up evidence. We are aware of the shortcomings of our own minds, so we are unlikely to be impressed simply with what is going on in his (or his advisors). If he has sincerely-held opinions on these matters, let him set up and fund appropriate research projects in all the relevant disciplines, physiological, psychological, statistical, and, when they are completed, re-present his advice backed-up with credible evidence.

Richard Dawkins at the "Protest the Pope" march



The full speech in Downing Street at the end of the march.
Photos of the march can be seen on this Page.

Friday 17 September 2010

Child abuse in Ireland

 

Wow! Another impassioned speech

Stephen Fry on the Catholic Church



A wonderful, impassioned speech. Surely Stephen's best on this subject. How any catholic possessed of the smallest trace of moral conscience can listen to this and remain in their church is a complete mystery.

Thursday 16 September 2010

Richard Dawkins reacting to the Pope's first speech on British soil.

 The Pope said:- 
"Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29)."

This statement by the pope, on his arrival in Edinburgh, is a despicable outrage. Even if Hitler had been an atheist, his political philosophy was not based upon atheism and had no connection with atheism. Hitler was arguably (and by his own account) a Roman Catholic. In any case he enjoyed the open support of many of the most senior catholic clergy in Germany and the less demonstrative support of Pope Pius XII. Even if Hitler had been an atheist (he certainly was not), the rank and file Germans who carried out the attempted extermination of the Jews were Christians, almost to a man: either Catholic or Lutheran, primed to their anti-Semitism by centuries of Catholic propaganda about 'Christ-killers' and by Martin Luther's own seething hatred of the Jews. To mention Ratzinger's membership of the Hitler Youth might be thought to be fighting dirty, but my feeling is that the gloves are off after this disgraceful paragraph by the pope.

I feel like bombarding every newspaper in Britain with letters of protest.

letters@guardian.co.uk

letters@thetimes.co.uk

letters@independent.co.uk

The trick to getting letters published is to keep them BRIEF as well as literate and correctly punctuated.

I am incandescent with rage at the sycophantic BBC coverage, and the sight of British toadies bowing and scraping to this odious man. I thought he was bad before. This puts the lid on it.

Richard

 Thursday, 16 September 2010 at 1:09 PM 

Tuesday 14 September 2010

InCREDOlous: Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Heb...

InCREDOlous: Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Heb...: "On how conscience stands between us and the void of unbelief or how there's no way I'm going to think I'm just another animal, I'm special, ..."

Saturday 11 September 2010

September 11th


"From the first moment I looked into that horror on September 11th, Into that fireball, into that explosion of horror, I knew it, I recognized an old companion. I recognized religion." ~ Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete.





Friday 10 September 2010

The Eternal Flame of Muslim Outrage | NewsOK.com

The Eternal Flame of Muslim Outrage | NewsOK.com

"When everything from sneakers to stuffed animals to comics to frescos to beauty queens to fast-food packaging to undies serves as dry tinder for Allah's avengers, it's a grand farce to feign concern about the recruitment effect of a few burnt Korans in the hands of a two-bit attention-seeker in Florida. The eternal flame of Muslim outrage was lit a long, long time ago."

Read more: http://www.newsok.com/the-eternal-flame-of-muslim-outrage/article/feed/189754#ixzz0z7VwAnSY

Suffolk Humanists and Secularists

September Newsletter out now | Suffolk Humanists and Secularists
Always a good read.