Damned if you do, ...

The Christian Right must be in a quandary today. There's a news item (The London Times has it) that British scientists have found a very old copy of the Koran and carbon dated it. Apparently it was written before the prophet Mohammed founded Islam. That would be an interesting discovery, but that's not what I find amusing. The Christian Right would no doubt love to promote this story. They could use it to claim that Islam is a sham. BUT they also hate Carbon Dating, because it proves that the world was not created by God waving his hand in 4004 BC, as they all want to believe. So accept Carbon Dating, damn Islam, but have to row back from Creationism? Or bury the whole story? I wonder what they will decide? PS: Fox News, known to be somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, is carrying it.....

God says ...

I am God and I created you.

I created you with original sin.

Because you sinned, I decided that you had to be put to death.

To save you from death, I impregnated a woman and was born as myself so that I could die and atone to myself for the sins I gave you.

I am God and I am infallible.

Just not very sensible.

Religious bigotry backfires!

The "Good People" (for which read, religious zealots) of Indiana, USA, have just passed something called the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) ".  Their objective was to allow businesses and individuals to deny services to gays on religious grounds - a classic piece of legal bigotry that could only have been allowed in the USA.

But their hastily constructed legislation has a flaw.  And that flaw has been exploited.  By the "First Church of Cannabis Inc." - an organisation which 'believes' that smoking pot is part of its religion.  Smoking pot is illegal in Indiana, but under the new law that can be overridden in the case of a religious observance.

So while attempting to legalise discrimination against gays, the zealots have actually opened the door to legal pot smoking.

Cool!

Read the full story here: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/whoops-indianas-anti-gay-religious-freedom-act-opens-the-door-for-the-first-church-of-cannabis/#.VRilUGzjKdI.reddit

Religion gets in the way

On Friday 3rd April a cruise ship is visiting St. Helena. Normally all the shops would be open to meet the tourists' demand for souvenirs. Moonbeams Shop certainly would have been.  But not this time, because Friday 3rd April is Good Friday, and therefore a Public Holiday, and the Public Holidays Ordinance says that all "shops, offices, workshops and factories" must be closed.

The Governor could, under the Public Holidays Ordinance, have moved the date on which Good Friday was celebrated.  The Ordinance explicitly mentions him doing so for "ship visits".  But he decided not to, presumably because of the outcry from the Church that would have resulted.

So once again, religion is standing in the way of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.

I hope the tourists enjoy their souvenir-free day.  Those who are Christians may understand - the Muslims, Jews, Atheists, etc. may feel somewhat hard done by, being forced to observe a religious rite that is not their own.  No wonder Christianity is held with such suspicion by all non-Christians.

Presbyterian Church (USA) changes its constitution to include gay marriage

The Presbyterian Church (USA), the largest body of Presbyterians in the country, approved a change in the wording of its constitution to allow gay and lesbian weddings within the church.

http://www.standard.net/Faith/2015/03/21/Presbyterian-Church-USA-changes-its-constitution-to-include-gay-marriage

A small gleam of intelligence in an otherwise dim religious world?

The nation’s largest denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church and most evangelical churches, recognize marriage only as between a man and a woman. The Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Church of Christ allow same-sex marriage. The debate has roiled the United Methodist Church, another mainline denomination. Property disputes and litigation that have occupied the Episcopal Church in the past decade are now taking place among some Presbyterian churches.

"The Christmas story is a fact"

This weekend I spent some time working with a recording taken of the last five hours of Radio St. Helena.  I was editing it down for use on http://sainthelenaisland.info/radiosthelena.htm if it matters, which it doesn't really, except that it meant I ended up listening to an address by the "Lord Bishop" {stupid title - Bishops don't get to sit in the House of Lords, or at least, ours doesn't, I'm sure - but I digress.} Specifically I was listening to Bishop Fenwick's 2012 Christmas Address.

It's not something I would normally bother with. I try to avoid all official messages from any type of church leaders because they usually make me cross.  But this one made me laugh.  Out loud.  I woke up my son, Harry - he was not best pleased.  And what was the reason for this early morning hilarity?  It was the sentence "the Christmas story is a fact".

Yes, he really did say that - I rewound it and checked.

Now if he'd said "The Christmas story is a beautiful tale" I would not have batted an eyelid.  It is, after all, a fairly charming bit of nonsense.  But a fact?  Literally true.  All of it?  What, I found myself thinking, is this guy on?

So I listened a bit more and discovered that our Bishop professes to believe - and therefore probably does - that the events told in the Christmas story actually happened, exactly as described in the New Testament. Incredible!

I should say immediately that I have nothing against Bishop Fenwick as a person.  He seems to be a charming man.  It’s his beliefs I’m questioning.  And they wouldn't bother me if it wasn't for the fact [NB the verifiable fact] that the church here is allowed special privileges and is involved in the running of Government.  One of the vicars is, for example, on the Board that runs the 'Extractor', our Government-funded fishing boat which hasn't actually done any fishing for about six months because of a dispute between said Board and the fishermen who were supposed to crew it. I'm not sure why a churchman should be on this board. He has never, to my knowledge, been a fisherman, or maybe never even been fishing.  Maybe it's because Jesus is claimed to have said "I will make you fishers of men"?

My point is: do we really need people who believe the Christmas myth to be literal fact involved in running the island?  What next - mediums and astrologers? Didn't do the Romans much good, that didn't!

Still I suppose maybe it explains, at least partially, why our Government is in the mess it's in.

Newtonmass

Did you celebrate Christmas?  I didn't.  I celebrated Newtonmass. 

Isaac Newton, whose work on mechanics is still in use nearly 300 years after his death, was born on 25th December 1642.  He is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), first published in 1687, laid the foundations for classical mechanics. Newton made seminal contributions to optics, and he shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus.

And the best thing is - he really WAS born on 25th December, unlike the other chap whose birth date is not truly known and whose birth is celebrated on 25th December simply because the early church took over an existing Pagan festival on the same(ish) date.