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Posted in Government, Health, Human Rights, Morality, Religion on Feb 9th, 2010
Here’s something. Imagine you live in a community where you are expected to pay into a fund that is used to meet various needs in the community - the upkeep of roads, salaries for nurses and teachers, and community hospitality, for example. Then it transpires that you are about to receive a visit from a [...]
Posted in Existential, Faith, Humanity, Religion on Feb 4th, 2010
In 1968 the sociologist Peter Berger famously predicted that in the 21st century, religious believers would only be likely to be in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture. In 1710 Thomas Woolstan predicted that religion would be gone by 1900. And many other thinkers (Voltaire, Jefferson, Marx, Engels, Freud) have all anticipated [...]
Posted in Faith, Literature, Religion, Science on Jan 25th, 2010
Although it is nearly 24 hours since I watched the first in Channel 4’s new series, The Bible: A History, I still find myself annoyed at the mere memory of it. It ended up being more of the aspirational wishful thinking of a romantic presenter than the history deceptively portrayed in the title.
The first quarter [...]
Posted in Faith, Relationships, Religion on Jan 12th, 2010
When you stand back and think about it, it’s really strange. I mean, it may have some side benefits, but the primary activity is odd.
What got me thinking was a wonderful essay (A Deal-Breaker by Ophelia Benson in 50 Voices of Disbelief) in which the author points out that some of the supposed characteristics of god [...]
Posted in Human Rights, Humanity, Morality, Relationships, Religion on Jan 7th, 2010
There is a sick theme running through all of this - or at least a clear attempt to involve some form of mental illness, and an attempt to bring in the people in white coats - well, at least psychologists if not psychiatrists.
Hey, I really, really don’t want to jump on the bandwagon and pour [...]
Posted in Humanity, Humor, Humour, Religion on Dec 21st, 2009
You had to be there to feel the menace!
I wouldn’t have believed it possible. So much threat packed into such a small package.
It was at my supermarket last Saturday. Ok, I was slightly jaded having just completed a shop almost three times the size of normal (my wife has a large family coming to stay). [...]
Posted in Faith, Health, Human Rights, Religion on Dec 11th, 2009
I have long thought that it seems ridiculous that hospital chaplains should be funded by the NHS - not least because all other NHS care is allowed because of its evidence base and scientific sense, and because the religious bodies should pay the wages of their own staff. I recently wrote a piece expressing [...]
Posted in Faith, Government, Human Rights, Isolation, Law, Morality, Religion, Society on Nov 28th, 2009
Local vicars in Winscombe and Sandford in Somerset have been pressing to have prayers reinstated at the beginning of Parish Council meetings, a month after they were dropped.
The reason why they were dropped is not that the Parish Council wished to stop individuals talking to their imaginary friends in the privacy of their own homes, [...]
Posted in Censorship, Human Rights, Law, Morality, Religion, Society on Nov 13th, 2009
Press Release from the One Law for All Campaign
One Law for All campaign is organising a rally on Saturday 21 November 2009 at 1200pm in London’s Hyde Park. The rally aims to oppose religious laws in Britain and elsewhere, show solidarity with people living under and resisting Sharia, and to defend universal rights and secularism.
Simultaneous [...]
I thought I knew the answers. Well, perhaps I knew that I didn’t really know, because I had never really thought about it (and certainly hadn’t read about it). But when I was a believer, aiming to base my life and theology on what I believed to be the holy book that had somehow (don’t [...]
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