National Secular Society - Catholic Education Service is abusing its authority in state schools
"The CES must withdraw this letter and undertake never again to use schools for ideological campaigning. Children go to school to be educated, not to be taught how to be bigots. According to recent research, most Catholics do not support the Church's stance on equal marriage - were they consulted before this was foisted on their children?"
Thursday, 26 April 2012
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
Sunday, 22 April 2012
Saturday, 21 April 2012
Friday, 20 April 2012
Thursday, 19 April 2012
How religion survives . . .
Religion is a highly evolved idea that mimics the "Virus." It cannot survive on its own; it needs a host. It cannot replicate or perpetuate itself without this host and without taking control of the host. It infects the mind specifically and is so effective that it causes the host to defend it rather than reject it.
It then gives psychological appeasement as it gestates and buries itself deep in the prefrontal cortex where it eventually builds a wall around itself with logical fallacies. It continues to barricade itself from any logic the host may try to use to uproot it until it is the core of its every thought; no thought will enter or leave the mind without the approval or refusal of the "viral idea."
The prefrontal cortex is the seat of logic... so it destroys the very part of the brain that would be able to act as a "mental immune system." It is so effective at this that often times the host will make the declaration that it would rather sacrifice its life before sacrificing the ideology when confronted with evidence. It literally causes the host to defend it as its own invention; its own idea.
Save your children from this psychological, predatory, self-defeating mental virus. Think of a prion; we do not know how to classify them on the scale of the living but the basic operation is understood - so is religion: perpetual by preying on weak minds. ~ Brandon Wiseman
Sunday, 15 April 2012
Something more for the creationists . . .
Geological timescales compared with the Biblical assuming the world was created in 4004 BC.
See also: "Something for the creationists"
Friday, 13 April 2012
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Monday, 9 April 2012
The World of Religion
Time for a little light relief after the weekend's arduous church-going. . . .
Sunday, 8 April 2012
Saturday, 7 April 2012
Richard Dawkins' "Thought for the Day"
Or, even more childish and self-indulgent: “Thank you God for the traffic jam that made me miss that plane.” (But what about all the unfortunate people who didn’t miss the plane?)
The same kind of infantile regression tempts us when we try to understand the natural world.
“Poems are made by fools like me . . . But only God can make a tree.”
A pretty song, but an infantile explanation. It’s too easy. Lazy. The moment we put a little effort into thinking about it, we realise that God the creator is no explanation at all. He constitutes a bigger question than he answers.
Once, we couldn’t do any better. Humanity was still an infant. But now we understand what makes earthquakes; we understand what made trees. Not just trees like oaks and redwoods, with their underground root system like a huge, upside-down tree.
The arteries that leave the heart branch and branch again like a tree. There are about 50 miles of blood vessels in a human body.
Nerve cells, too, branch like trees. They are so numerous in the teeming forest of your brain that, if you stretched them end to end they would reach right round the world 25 times.
In the face of such wonders, do you fall back, like a child, on God? “It’s so wonderful, so complicated, only God could have done it.”
It’s tempting, isn’t it. But it’s not a real explanation. Not the kind of explanation that actually explains anything. And it’s nowhere near as poetic as the true explanation.
Because the beauty is that humanity has grown up. We now know the true explanation. It’s gloriously simple once you get it, and more wonderful than our forefathers could ever have imagined. It makes use of yet another tree. The family tree of life. It began with something smaller than a bacterium, and it branched and branched to give all the species that have ever lived, whether extinct like the dinosaurs, or still hanging on like our own. Evolution really explains all of life, and it needs no supernatural intervention of any kind.
The adult response is to rejoice in the amazing privilege we enjoy. We have been born, and we are going to die. But before we die we have time to understand why we were ever born in the first place. Time to understand the universe into which we have been born. And with that understanding, we finally grow up and realise that there is no help for us outside our own efforts.
Humanity can leave the crybaby phase, and finally come of age.
Now there’s a thought for more than just a day!"
Broadcast on 14 August 2002 but not in the TftD, 7.45am, slot. The BBC obviously feared creating an irresistible precedent.
"Thought for the Day" poll.
"Thought for the Day" poll.
Friday, 6 April 2012
"Thought for the Day" poll.
In an article in 'Radio Times' BBC presenter and atheist Evan Davis argues that it is time to open up the 'Thought for the Day' to non-believers.
At the end of the article there is a poll to allow readers to express their own opinions.
I think that seems to send the BBC a fairly clear message . . . .
Thursday, 5 April 2012
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Monday, 2 April 2012
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