The comment from Mr Smith that I have reproduced below is in response to the Times article, "A time for Tolerence". Most of us tend to move on and become more accepting of others despite our backgrounds. My parents were racist but went out of their way to help my friend at infant school who was in the foster home and of South American descent. My father didn't like gays but the two transvestites who grew up in the local hardened community of terraced back to backs(Imagine Quentin Crisp) were revered and 'protected by the local 'mafia' and could go anywhere in relative safety. The locals were offered a new pub to name that was part of a housing development and wanted to call it after 'Brenda' one of the transvestites but the brewery vetoed it and it became the 'Firey Fred after Freddie Trueman, the Yorkshireman and cricketer.

Confusing times. I lived in London for many years and developed my own likes and dislikes, noticed cultural trends and had conversations with people from many cultures and faiths. I even spent a while living on the Broadwater Farm Estate after the riots.

Anyway, I digress. Christian faith does indeed appear to be eating itself from the inside, without any help from us militant atheists.

Derek Smith wrote:

I was born directly after WWII into a country where morals were, to a great
extent, dictated by various religions. We were taught that Jews were sinners
because – well they never said why. Gays were beyond all hope because they loved
people. Blacks were all right in their place and the same with Germans. But
there was a lot of resentment against those living together or, much more worthy
of condemnation, children of such couples. Special contempt was reserved for
those who were stripped of their loved ones by the war before they could marry,
especially if they had a child.

I was treated with care by some parents
as I was allowed to play with Tommy, whose mother wasn’t married. That would
have been bad enough but his father was an American GI. And, just to make things
much worse, was an African. I found out later that he had been from South
America but not being white was enough.

As religion lost its influence
so tolerance has become more widespread. My children have little comprehension
of differences in the way I was taught. My daughter didn’t think to tell me that
one of her friends was overtly gay before she introduced me to him. It didn’t
concern her so why should it concern me? ‘You’ll like him.’ she told us. And we
do.

This country has moved on tremendously in my 60 years. It would have
gone much further had it not been for religion. Most people I know are
bewildered by the church’s problems with gays and women. As my daughter said
about women priests: ‘They should keep up at the back. We’re not waiting for
them.’

We’ve just had an international rugby player ‘come out’ as
homosexual and most of my non-religious, and rugby fan friends wonder what all
the fuss is about.

Don’t look for tolerance in religions. But it is
blossoming everywhere else.

Dear Professor Nutt

Dear Professor Nutt

In previous correspondence with you the Government has highlighted the value that we place on receiving high quality scientific advice from the ACMD.

It is precisely for this reason that we asked you to find evidence in support of a pre-determined Government policy that was acceptable to readers of the tabloid press. Your total failure in this regard raises doubts about your independence as a scientific advisor.

Not only have you singularly failed to produce the requested evidence, you have not even attempted to distort existing evidence. There has been no massaging of the statistics, no exaggeration of the significance of minor studies and anecdotal testimony, no attempt to suppress embarrassing data. All contrary to established Government practise. Indeed, I am left wondering what qualifications you have to fulfil this high profile role or whether you have any proper understanding of the role of science in informing policy decisions.

You may wish to take a leaf out of Sir John Scarlett's book. Sir John was given the far more demanding task of finding evidence of WMDs in Iraq, a task that he performed masterfully, working closely with such distinguished professionals as the Prime Minister's press secretary. The resultant dossier was widely regarded as the definitive statement of the threat posed by the then Iraqi regime, and doubted only by some dodgy journalists and one rather eccentric weapons expert, both of whom were soon disposed of. You will note that Sir John's career has blossomed thanks to this fine tradition of public service.

Your recent remarks have highlighted comparable risks among legal drugs and sporting activities. This is totally unacceptable. It is not your role to go around informing people about things and giving them facts. It completely undermines government policy. All of the evidence must be presented to the public through trusted, Right Honourable statesmen, such as myself.

It is for these reasons that I have lost all confidence in your ability to provide me with the evidence that the Government would like to see. Nor do I trust you to keep your trap shut about the true state of affairs.

I would therefore ask you to step down from the council with immediate effect.

Regards

Alan.
See it in context here.
Thanks to Platitude of the Day

No more kosher lifts

It has been decided that lifts and escalators can no longer be used on the sabbath. Lifts used to have a 'sabbath' mode that allowed them to stop on every floor so that no-one had to do any work by summoning the lift or pressing a floor button. Article here.

This is important stuff. Doesn't it say in the bible that anyone who works on the sabbeth should be killed?

Poo and the Bible

Try taking the quiz here to find out how well up you are on biblical references to poo. Seems like God had a thing about poo as well as first born children.

7 reasons why religion is a form of mental illness

Article by Sweet Tea
The Southern Skeptic Fairy

I would like to propose that religious beliefs be placed in the DSM as a category of mental illness for the following reasons:

(1) Hallucinations - the person has invisible friends who (s)he insists are real, and to whom (s)he speaks daily, even though nobody can actually see or hear
these friends.

(2) Delusions - the patient believes that the invisible friends have magical powers to make them rich, cure cancer, bring about world peace, and will do so eventually if asked.

(3) Denial/Inability to learn - though the requests for world peace remain unanswered, even after hundreds of years, the patients persist with the praying behaviour, each time expecting different results.

(4) Inability to distinguish fantasy from reality - the beliefs are contingent upon ancient mythology being accepted as historical fact.

(5) Paranoia - the belief that anyone who does not share their supernatural concept of reality is "evil," "the devil," "an agent of Satan".

(6) Emotional abuse - ­ religious concepts such as sin, hell, cause feelings of guilt, shame, fear, and other types of emotional "baggage" which can scar the
psyche for life.

(7) Violence - many patients insist that others should share in their delusions, even to the extent of using violence.

What is Atheism?

Atheism is, simply, the lack of belief in a god. There are no tenets, no dogma, no rituals, no common socio-political beliefs, no agendas, no ethical code, no "holier than..." or "better than" — there's nothing within atheism that could support your claims. We get told that atheism is responsible for the genocidal regeimes of Stalin and Hitler but those tyrants and murderers didn't kill people "in the name of atheism" and atheism wasn't the cause of their actions. It may have been that they has moustashes!

However lets consider all the people killed by direct intervention from Yehoba, including all the first-born that he seemed to particularly favour.

Exodus 13:2 Sanctify unto me all the firstborn, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast: it is mine.
Exodus 22:29 Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me.

Add to that, the many wars based on religion, the inquisition and the witchhunts. You say that was men and not god but henious crimes have been committed in the name of god and by your god.

Do we need to believe in a deity to have morals? No we don't. Supporting each other for the common good favours our evolution. I am told that there are more christians in prison than not (as a percentage of the population). Much evil has been carried out in the name of god. Please don't insult me by saying satan makes people do bad things. Remember free will?

The infidel Bush was allegedly a christian yet he reigned over the killings of thousands of innocent people just to satisfy his own twisted ideals. And he had the audacity to tell us that god told him it was ok. There is blood on the hands of every American who voted Republican.

Some things are clear cut, black and white, yin and yang. Others less so. I say live and let live but there are those who want to dictate to me how I live my life because they want their god to be top dog.

God and the big bang

Lets reflect for a moment, god is omnipotent. He creates the universe. What is the point if there is only life on Earth? He could have heated it with a 3-bar electric fire provided it was big enough and there was a cosmic socket to plug it in to. Did he create all the other stars and galaxies as a dot-to-dot passtime for our ancestors?


Just think of all those billions of years when there was no life and no one to worship god. What was he doing in all that time. After all he had created time. Why did he make us out of things that can go wrong? Why put us on a planet that has volcanic eruptions and quakes, the majority of which is covered by water? Consider how many people have died as a result of the design of our planet.


Maybe he just added a few ingredients and sat back, knowing that he will do better next time but needing to see the outcomes of his experiment so that he can improve.
Follow the debate by clicking below.

Banana Man fights back

I love the way that Zomgitschris says it as it is. I can't get enough.

The best riff ever ever

It took me months to track down the band responsible. The first album wasn't even released. They have since had a soundtrack for Mazda and I don't understand how they never 'broke'. I saw them at the Leadmill back in January 2005 and have followed them ever since. The infadels - Give yourself to me.

Asteroids Galaxy tour - Awesome!

Thanks to Maconie and Radcliffe for featuring this on Radio 2. Scandanavian perfection on a stick.

Back to Church Sunday

It's back to church Sunday this Sunday. I heard mention of it on daytime Radio 2 much to my annoyance. I have already complained about the godspot on Wogan and now this. I'm tempted to pop along and see what welcome I get after sitting there glaring at the vicar and not budging to stand and sing or kneel and pray. I don't suppose it's the done thing either to interject my own opinion into the sermon. Perhaps I should clarify at the beginning wether to ask questions during or save them until the end. That should set the tone.

I have found out that the poap is coming in September next year. Apparrantly it got leaked and the papal lot aren't very happy. And because my government asked them, we foot the bill! It cost the Americans £1.2 million per day. Read about it here.

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, said: “We
intend to bring together all those groups that the Pope has insulted or
threatened over the years – gays, women’s groups, those affected by HIV, those
damaged by the Catholic Church’s cover-up of child abuse. We want to let the
pontiff know in no uncertain terms that his intransigence and fundamentalism are
damaging real people.”

Mr Sanderson continued: “The horrific Vatican cover up of large-scale child abuse by priests is enough to invalidate any state reception for this man. Instead, Britain celebrates and fetes him. But we will ensure that the other side of the story is put as the wrong-doing of the Catholic Church is once more, inexplicably, swept under the red carpet and conveniently forgotten for the duration”

We must protest.

I must need faith

I get accused of making posts in christian forums that reflect my atheist stance because I'm really there looking for god. That my attacking their ridiculous beliefs is really down to my unmet need for god's love. The dialoge below is lifted from a blog that I set up on a really well laid out faith site which only seems to have a handful of posters, however they really don't like me but seem to be letting me hang out there in the hope of converting me.

Why do I feel the need to make posts in opposition camps about the stupidity of religion? I'm not sure. It started with a letter to my local paper when I was 15 about the requirement for schools to hold a religious assembly every day, something I believe they are still required to do. Some replies were, "One only has to look at the flowers and the trees to know there is a god" and another reader blamed my lack of belief on "All the shameful sex and violence we see on TV".

The internet has really opened up the debate and is bringing atheists together and channeling the evidence in ways that were not possible before. Organised faith has its wealth, heirachy, media spin and hype. Religion is big business. Look at the catholic church. What about the "please donate now" pastors?

So why do I challenge their comfort zones? Possibly because I want to develop my challenging skills, to get them to look at things from a different angle, I'm not sure.

It scares me that there are adults out there who believe in Adam, Eve and a talking snake, that a God made everything and listens to our prayers before deciding to ignore them.

Comments on Adam and Eve

Re: Hmmmmm
Submitted by Timothy Luke on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 12:13.

It is interesting that people can curse God for letting us choose the serpent,
and then tell people to run to the serpent because God must be worse than the
serpent because he did not stop us from choosing the serpent..... If that sounds
confusing, it is because it IS confusion.
We are serving one or the other.
You cannot run from God without running to the serpent. I wouldn't tell a person
to embrace a poisonous snake under any circumstance...

No. Jesus prophesied these
Submitted by Timothy Luke on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 19:10.

No. Jesus prophesied these things would happen. He did not tell his disciples to
do so. In fact, we are commanded "thou shalt not tempt (test) the Lord thy God."
In Acts, Paul was putting wood in a fire and a viper attached to his hand. The
natives said, "see the man is cursed and god has taken his life...." Paul came
away unharmed, though the serpent had attached itself and hung off his arm. They
then believed in Jesus Christ.
If in the course of preaching and proclaiming
we come in contact with such things, they shall in no wise harm us, if we
believe.
You sure took a strange turn in the conversation! :-) You are also
showing how little you know of the basis of this discussion board. Please read
your Bible for yourself in the fulness of its context and you will find you are
laboring under many false ideas. I am not saying this in a mean spirited way. It
is simply that we discuss the Bible here and if you know the source of our
conversations you will better be able to add substance to the discussion.

Mark 16:18 They shall take up
Submitted by Yiggoto on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 17:35.

Mark 16:18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it
shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
Jesus tells people to take up serpents and drink poison as a test of faith.
As for serving either or - How about serving neither!

Hmmmmm
Submitted by jesseedavis on Sun, 09/13/2009 - 22:46.

I will say, I have seen some pretty clever retakes of this story, but this one
by far outdoes the rest. Lord help this man...

Adam and Eve. Like babies off a cliff

This story is like setting your two little babies near the edge of a cliff, telling them “don’t crawl off or you’ll die”, and then leaving them alone.After saying this you just watch, silent and out of sight, while one of your older and more knowledgeable children goads them into crawling off the edge of the cliff one at a time and falling to their deaths.

This would be an easy task since the babies couldn’t possibly understand the meaning of your words.Once they’ve both fallen, then you go down to see their shattered bodies on the rocks beneath and you say “You stupid babies, I told you this would happen! Now that you finally understand what I already knew, I won’t let you live even though I could save you. In fact, I will make you suffer before I let you die. Better yet, I’ll make every living thing in the world suffer and die, and I’ll blame it all on you. Now go away.”You create Adam, you create the Garden of Eden, and then you create “the tree of knowledge of good and evil”. You stick the tree right in the middle of the garden, and then you tell naive Adam (who can not yet know the meaning of good and evil) not to eat from that one tree or he will die.

Ignoring the fact that Adam could not have comprehended death in this deathless world, and the fact that he could not have understood the “evil” of disobeying your command, what possible reason could you have for putting this tree in the garden!? It could have gone outside of the garden, and it would never be a problem, or it could simply not exist, but you chose to put it there.The only reasonable explanation for this is that you knew exactly what would happen, you intended Adam and Eve to eat the fruit, and you are as guilty of instigating this mess as a police officer entrapping a mentally challenged child. You knew what would happen, and you set up the circumstances to allow it to happen, and you never stepped in to prevent this outcome when the serpent tempted Eve.

Being omniscient and omnipresent you must have seen it, and being omnipotent you could have stopped it or at least reminded them not to eat the fruit, but you just sat there and watched them destroy the world with a bite of fruit.You didn’t stop Eve when she put the fruit to her lips, and you didn’t stop Adam when she offered it to him. You didn’t forgive them or repair the damage, you became afraid of them and you set us all on the endless trail of horrible suffering and death that still plagues the world to this day, just because you were angry and afraid. Not only did you punish the entire world forever for the mistakes of Adam and Eve, you set the whole thing up knowing exactly what would happen. If anyone is responsible for “the fall of man”, it is you.

Reply to Our place ...

even a small house cann't be
Submitted by sann on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 18:57.

even a small house cann't be formed of it's own. We have to built it. If so how
such things can be formed on it's own. That to so perfect. sun's light in the
morning and moon's light at night, rotation of earth by itself and around sun,
perfect temp,pressure to live........ Even many times i wonder what a perfect
body we have, eyes to see, nose to breath,....beautiful digestive n productive
system, can this things be formed just by physics,chem n bio.? Where does this
physics, chemistry,biology come from?

My reply
Enough time
Submitted by Yiggoto on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 19:27.
I refer you to my blog entry,

"Our universe is 13.7 billion years old, which is another number so large the
human mind can’t comprehend it. What’s more interesting to me is that Sol, our
local star, is only 4.57 billion years old. It’s a third generation star, which
means that it and the rest of our solar system is made up of material from a
star that sat in this same spot and then died, twice".
We can explain pretty
much everything from the first few milliseconds of the big bang. Then there was
a long, long time befire the first living cell appeared 3 billion years ago.
That is all it would take. Everything could have originated from that one living
cell. As I see it, God had two things to do, light the touchpaper to start the
big bang (having put the laws of physics in place first) and then reappear 10
billion years later to breathe life into the primeval soup. Everything else can
be explained scientifically.
I agree, the chances of all of this happening
are infantesimally small but then the universe is infantesimally big. The more I
understand all the things that needed to happen for me to be here, the more I
value life and the more special I feel.
You see beautiful things but don't
forget the parasites and viruses that have killed and caused suffering to
millions. The humble mosquito has embarked on a killing campaign better than any
despot has ever achieved.
Saying God did it just causes another set of
questions. Should we stop research and asking questions aboout what we do not
yet know because you have your truth?

Our place in the scheme of things

In our galaxy alone there are over a hundred-billion stars. There are over a hundred-billion galaxies in the known universe. In comparison to the grand scheme of things, I can’t even begin to comprehend exactly how small I am. Anytime I think about these things, I am put into a state of awe. I am impassioned by the majesty of the natural world. The Earth itself is so diverse and amazing that it can keep me up at night thinking about how ecosystems and genetic diversity play out and have played out for the last three or four billion years.

Our universe is 13.7 billion years old, which is another number so large the human mind can’t comprehend it. What’s more interesting to me is that Sol, our local star, is only 4.57 billion years old. It’s a third generation star, which means that it and the rest of our solar system is made up of material from a star that sat in this same spot and then died, twice. I often wonder if life had managed to evolve on a planet rotating around the first or second generation Sol. Maybe that life had reached the stars and colonized this whole galaxy, only to eventually die out in the billions of years that have passed since their first sentient thought.

This seems like a lot of rambling but my point is this: the universe is exorbitantly large and remarkably old. Our entire civilization, whether we leave Earth or not, will be more than lucky to even last a blinks worth of time to this universe. I think that one of the most repugnant things about most organized religion is the kind of self centered id they have about our place in this world. The whole universe was created so that our puny planet could come forth nine billion years later, and we puny humans could come about in another four billion years after that? That is a kind of egocentrism and arrogance that even an atheist could never have. I find all of that incredibly unlikely. However, I do feel fortunate to have been able to witness as much as I have so far, and I can only hope to see more of the wonders the natural world has to offer.

Much better Now

Things are finally moving towards some plateau of stability where we can look ahead instead of falling into arguements or criticism. The past is becoming less of an issue and there could well be a future.

More on moods

This was part of the email I got from Bridge this morning'

If you want to change and make things work...it's your call. but don't
leave it too late, because I really ain't gonna hang around for too much longer.
Believe me, at the moment, it wouldn't take much if someone were to come and
rescue me, so if you want my loyalty, you'd better do something to deserve
it....

So that's telling me to seriously get my act together!

More Moods

It was beginnning to settle down after a difficult week but I decided to have a strop about Harry's access to Rice Krispies for his supper. I'd just got back from playing snooker and had perhaps had a tad too much alcohol (they do a 3 for 2) which may have affected things a little,. so I ended up going to sleep on my own having upset Bridge, again.