Pron!

http://www.catholic.net/index.php?option=zenit&id=28996

PORN!

Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about porn, the latest thing to be blamed by the Catholic Church for their problems.

“"That Catholic priests and members of religious orders are among the worst abusers fills all Catholics, including myself, with horror and disgust," he said.

The prelate pointed out that "it is not just a Church problem, here or overseas."

He explained, "The relentless pornification of parts of the culture, and the push for sexual 'liberation,' which at its extremes wants pedophilia accepted as just another sexual preference, are also part of the problem.”

I’m sure if you were to talk to the average consumer of adult entertainment, of which I’m positive there are many. You’d find strong condemnation for all forms of pedophilia. In this Cardinal’s world however, the desire for some people to explore their sexuality in a safe manner is what causes priests to rape children. What a jack-off.

Defending Our Position

http://www.philosophynow.org/issue78/78antony.htm

Michael Antony argues against atheism:

“The question I wish to ask is this: How can the New Atheists employ evidentialist principles to argue that religious belief is irrational if they are unwilling to apply those same principles to atheism? If the New Atheists’ atheism is not evidence-based, as Hitchens implies in the above quotation, doesn’t evidentialism entail that atheism is itself irrational or epistemically unjustified? The answer is ‘Yes’; at least if evidentialism is interpreted in the standard way. So it appears that the New Atheists need some fix for evidentialism – a kind of ‘theoretical plug-in’ – which legitimizes their atheism in the absence of evidence.”

This is a response to Hitchens statement that “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” While this statement does simplify the issue it does have an air of truth to it. Atheists are constantly asked to give evidence to disprove god but often aren’t given arguments outside of “The Bible says so”. Sure there are better thought out arguments at which point presenting evidence or lack thereof becomes necessary. Atheism is “not evidence-based” in the sense that we base our lack of belief on the absence of evidence.

He wants to put the burden of proof in the lap of the atheists. I wonder exactly how we are supposed to prove our disbelief in something non-existent.

Person 1: I don’t believe in pink elephants because of a lack of evidence
Person 2: Prove that this lack of evidence exists, otherwise you are being irrational
Person 1: *Puzzled stare*

Now you see the problem with this idea that atheists have to prove their disbelief in god. Theists however, need to prove their god exists. Let’s look at Antony’s arguments one by one:

“While the word ‘atheism’ has been used in something like this sense (see for example Antony Flew’s article ‘The Presumption of Atheism’), it is a highly non-standard use. So understood, atheism would include agnosticism, since agnostics are also not theists. However, on the common understanding of atheism – no divine reality of any kind exists – atheism and agnosticism are mutually exclusive. Some insist that this non-standard sense of ‘atheism’ is the only possible sense, because a-theism means without theism. But if that were a good argument, the Space Shuttle would be an automobile, since it moves on its own (mobile=move, auto=by itself). Ditto for dogs and cats.

Yet none of that really matters, for even the non-standard sense of ‘atheism’ does nothing to neutralize evidentialism’s demand for evidence. As we saw, evidentialism applies to all ‘doxastic’ attitudes toward a proposition P: believing P, believing not-P, suspending judgment about P, etc. Therefore evidentialism says, with respect to the proposition God exists, that any attitude toward it will be rational or justified if and only if it fits one’s evidence. Now it is true that if one had no position whatever regarding the proposition God exists (perhaps because one has never entertained the thought), no evidence would be required for that non-position. But the New Atheists all believe that (probably) no God or other divine reality exists. And that belief must be evidence-based if it is to be rationally held, according to evidentialism. So insisting that atheism isn’t a belief doesn’t help.”

This is a rather lengthy mischaracterization of the atheist position. As mentioned above the position is based on absence of evidence not evidence of absence as Antony would prefer to have it. Atheists don’t hold evidence for the absence of god. Whereas the theist believes in something that they claim to have evidence for yet that evidence is absent.

“Another common claim of the New Atheists is that you ‘can’t prove a negative’ – where what is typically meant is a negative existence claim of the form ‘X does not exist’. Rhetorically, this claim functions to legitimize the idea that evidence needn’t be provided for God’s nonexistence. After all, if evidence cannot be provided for a proposition it would be irrational to expect one to provide some, and so reasonable to believe that evidence isn’t needed. But the claim that you can’t prove a negative cannot help the atheist. That is because, on each of two possible ways of interpreting what it means to ‘prove’ something, it is generally false that you can’t prove a negative (and often true that you can’t prove a positive).
Consider first, proofs which deliver certainty, as in mathematics or logic. Such proofs are sometimes possible for negative existence claims, such as the claim that there is no greatest prime number. One can also prove with certainty that there are no Xs whenever the concept X can be shown to be incoherent (like the concepts round square, or 3pm on the sun). Of course, it is true that many negative existence claims cannot be proved with absolute certainty, but the same holds for positive existence claims, for example, from science or common sense, such as that there are electrons or tables and chairs. So there’s nothing special here about negative existence claims.

Turn next to proofs which aim to establish only the probable truth of their conclusions. These are the sorts of proofs which result from successful scientific and other empirical investigations. In this sense of ‘proof’, it is easy to prove the non-existence of many things: for example, that there is no pomegranate in my hand, or no snow-capped mountains in the Sahara Desert. And while it may be difficult or impossible to even in this weaker sense prove the non-existence of many things – goblins, sombreros in the Sombrero Galaxy – the same goes for many positive existence claims – that Aristotle sneezed on his 20th birthday; that there is a transcendent deity; that there is a sombrero somewhere in the Sombrero Galaxy. So, again, there is nothing unique about negative existence claims. The unfortunate saying that one can’t prove a negative should be dropped.”

The whole of the argument here is that it may be possible to prove god. Ok, but is it been proven? No. Just because we can’t prove it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Of course, this is an argument that is neither for nor against the possibility of the existence of god. Here we get to the burden of proof argument I discussed earlier:

“The concept of ‘burden of proof’ (Latin, onus probandi) originally goes back to classical Roman law, and it remains important in legal theory. Who has the burden of proof, and what it consists of, is determined by a judge or by established rules which vary across legal systems. The same is true of formal debates which occur in a variety of formats. The idea of ‘burden of proof’ also has application in non-formal settings; for example, in academic disputes or public controversies. However, without a judge or rules to determine who has the burden and how it is to be discharged, it becomes unclear how the concept is to be applied, or even whether it has clear application.

“Yet although the concept of burden of proof in informal settings is ill-understood, that does not stop many from confidently proclaiming how the burden of proof should be assigned. The most egregious mistake is to think that it is a matter of logic. Rather, the burden of proof is a methodological or procedural concept. It is, in Nicolas Rescher’s words, “a regulative principle of rationality in the context of argumentation, a ground rule, as it were, of the process of rational controversy” (Dialectics, 1977). Another error is to presume that the burden falls on whoever is making the grammatically positive statement. However, positive statements can often be translated reasonably faithfully into negative statements, and vice versa: the statement ‘everything happens for a reason’ can be expressed as ‘there are no coincidences’, and ‘there is nothing supernatural’ can be restated as ‘reality is wholly natural’. A third problem is that to be taken seriously many negative statements – ‘there are no atoms’, ‘there are no coincidences’ – require evidence, whereas the corresponding positive statements do not.”

He wants to start off by arguing over the definition itself. Fair enough, I’ve been doing that in regards to how he seems to define atheism.

A quick Google search will reveal there are two definitions of the burden of proof: one legal and the other philosophic. Antony for his part appears to be going with the legal definition, which is irrelevant to the god question. If we look at the philosophic version we see that:

“This burden of proof is often asymmetrical and typically falls more heavily on the party that makes either an ontologically positive claim, or makes a claim more "extraordinary” (Marcello Truzzi).

Antony’s arguments have so far been based more on disagreements over definitions of atheists and how to define the arguments.

“No. The trouble is that Ockham’s Razor is of little use in disputes over whether some entity X exists. That is because it is typically an open question in such disputes whether everything that needs explaining can in fact be explained without X. Theists believe, or at least suspect, that there are features of reality which are inexplicable without appeal to a divine being: the existence of a contingent universe, the fine-tuning of physical constants, etc. We need not decide here whether a divine being is needed to explain these things: what is important is just that the Razor itself cannot decide such matters. It comes into play only assuming that a complete explanation of the relevant phenomena is possible without X; at which point it licenses us to eliminate X from our ontology. But theists will not accept that a complete explanation of reality is possible without appeal to a divine being, so long as no compelling case for that claim has been made. So Ockham’s Razor can have no persuasive force in this debate.”

The second last sentence of this argument sums up the problem with this argument. If theists will not accept that a complete explanation of reality is possible without appeal to a divine being than we have an irreconcilable difference in views. Antony does add that it’s possible for that position to change if evidence can be given to explain reality without god. Ladies and gentleman I give you the god of gaps argument. Atheists are simply saying with Ockham’s Razor that we can’t explain this but don’t automatically assume it’s god. Furthermore, we aren’t saying that god doesn’t exist because of that.

His next argument is deals with absence of evidence being evidence of absence. As mentioned I don’t necessarily think the two have to be intertwined. No absence of evidence for god does not disprove god but it doesn’t prove him either. Antony does give a lengthy argument that deals with this issue along with attempts to refute the tooth-fairy argument though it doesn’t seem like a wise investment of time when the issue here is how we are defining the atheist position in the first place. He does bring up arguments of fine tuning and religious experience as “weak evidence” for the existence of a god. This argument gets into the debate of whether the universe is fine tuned and the validity of religious experiences.

You will hear theists say that their position is misrepresented by the fundamentalists, no doubt. The more radical positions are not held by all believers. However, the same can be said about atheists. A point Antony misses throughout his argument.

Colorado and Prayer

http://www.thedenverdailynews.com/article.php?aID=8151
Atheists in Colorado are suing the governor after he issued National Day of Prayer proclamations:

“A Wisconsin-based group of atheists and agnostics that won a lawsuit last week in which a federal judge ruled that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional is hoping that the decision will assist in a similar lawsuit filed against the governor in Colorado.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is suing Gov. Bill Ritter for showing “governmental preference for religion” by issuing National Day of Prayer proclamations in Colorado. The lawsuit — first filed in 2008 in Denver District Court and is awaiting summary judgment that is expected in early May — charges that Ritter violated the state constitution by issuing proclamations on the National Day of Prayer in 2007 and then again in 2008.

Ritter’s proclamation in 2007 was based on a belief that the prayer day is “intended as a day for Americans to celebrate rights purportedly endowed by their Creator,” according to the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The group points out that Ritter participated in a prayer day event at the Capitol in 2007 and again in 2008. In 2008, he read a proclamation with a theme from Psalm 28:7, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts Him and I am helped.”

The Colorado Springs-based National Day of Prayer Task Force, chaired by Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson, assists in crafting prayer day proclamations such as the ones read by Ritter. The Freedom From Religious Foundation’s lawsuit alleges that Ritter has aligned both himself and the state with the National Day of Prayer Task Force. They believe reading such proclamations gives official “recognition to the endorsement of religion” and “turns nonbelievers into ‘political outsiders.’”

“The whole message is public officials telling constituents to pray,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “What we argued is that they have no such right under our constitution — Colorado State or U.S. — and that it’s an affront and a violation of our freedom of conscience, you can’t get much more of an affront to someone who’s an atheist or an agnostic than being told by their president they’re supposed to be religious and pray.”

Wisconisin U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled last week that the National Day of Prayer “goes beyond mere ‘acknowledgement’ of religion because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that served no secular function in this context.”

She ruled that the national prayer day violates the First Amendment, which bans the creation of a “law respecting an establishment of religion” by the federal government.

This year’s National Day of Prayer is scheduled for May 6. The White House said last week in a Tweet that regardless of the ruling, Obama “intends to recognize a National Day of Prayer.” Crabb’s ruling does not prohibit the president from issuing an official presidential prayer proclamation. But the National Day of Prayer Task Force is still calling on Obama to appeal the decision.

A spokesman for Ritter’s office was unable to tell the Denver Daily News yesterday whether the governor intends to issue an official proclamation on this year’s National Day of Prayer. Several attempts to get on-the-record comment from the governor’s office failed.

Gaylor fully expects Ritter to issue an official proclamation, especially given the fact that he’s “under the gun” from the separate lawsuit in Colorado, she said. But she expects her group to win the lawsuit, especially given the momentum from last week’s federal ruling.

Four Coloradans are named on the lawsuit as plaintiffs. One of the plaintiffs, David Habecker, gained national and local recognition as an atheist for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance after he was elected as an Estes Park town trustee. In 2005, voters recalled Habecker from the town board for his decision not to recite the pledge.

Habecker claimed at the time and maintains his opinion today that saying the phrase “under God” in the pledge violated separation of church and state.

“You can’t have a National Day of Prayer, an official day of prayer, coming from our federal government,” said Habecker. “We’re supposed to not be intertwined with religion, and I don’t know of anybody that’s non-religious that prays; non-religious people usually don’t have some imaginary person in the sky that they pray to.”
In a statement released last week following the ruling in Wisconsin, Shirley Dobson said she believes the National Day of Prayer is something that would be supported by the nation’s Founding Fathers.

“Since the days of our Founding Fathers, the government has protected and encouraged public prayer and other expressions of dependence on the Almighty,” said Dobson. “This is a concerted effort by a small but determined number of people who have tried to prohibit all references to the Creator in the public square, whether it be the Ten Commandments, the Pledge of Allegiance, or the simple act of corporate prayer — this is unconscionable for a free society.”

Congressman Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, agrees with Dobson and her supporters. He also points out that the prayer day is completely voluntary.

“It in no way requires Americans to participate in prayer,” he said in a statement last week. “Unfortunately, some in our country are seeking freedom from religion, rather than freedom of religion.”

But Habecker points out that when politicians issue proclamations designating a day of prayer, non-believers feel like they’re doing something wrong by not participating.

“I am an atheist, which is in many parts of the world, and many parts of this country, that’s considered normal,” he said. “I’m not an oddball, I’m a normal person. I don’t believe in mythical, invisible people in the sky and zombies and other things.””

Guess Who's Back?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/20/politics/main6415666.shtml

In the world of, “Why can’t they just go away?” Rick Santorum is back and he has some things to say about evolution:

“Asked about his position on evolution, Santorum requested a definition of the term more than once; he then suggested that the question actually concerned "Darwinism."

"Look, I believe that we were created by God," Santorum said. "That we have a soul. Now, if you can square that with evolution, fine. I don't know. I'm not an expert in evolution. What I can say is that I believe that we are created in the image and likeness of God, that we have a soul, and that we are not just a mistake. A mutation. I think we are something that God put on this earth, and have a divine spark, as Abraham Lincoln said."

"My feeling is the bottom line is I think it's important for society to understand that we are not just animals," he added. "…if we are just animals, and we're no different than any other animal out there, then the world is a very different place. And our expectations of others are very different. And I don't think it's true. And I don't think it's healthy."”

Santorum should explain what he means by Darwinism. Is he talking about some sort of religion?

We are just animals, it does change things but not in the negative way that Santorum describes. When we as a species come to accept that we are just animals who are part of the web of life we realize that it is necessary for our survival.

Anti-evolutionist Atheist

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm/2010/04/cupp_skips_the_facts_in_arguin.html

S.E. Cupp has a new book attacking evolution. Joshua Rosenau responding to a request from Steven Levingston does a wonderful job tearing it apart:

“have chosen Chapter Four – Thou Shalt Evolve. In this chapter, Cupp sums up her take on evolution like this: “The debate over the legitimacy of evolution isn’t really about a battle between fact and fiction. It’s about Christianity, and the liberal media’s attempt to eradicate it from all corners of society.”

As I don’t have the credentials to assess Cupp’s understanding of evolution, I have called on an expert in the field. I asked Joshua Rosenau to weigh in on Cupp’s scholarship. Rosenau is public information project director at the National Center for Science Education, which is a not-for-profit organization devoted to the teaching of evolution in public schools. Among its 4,000 members are scientists, teachers, clergy, and people holding a variety of religious beliefs.
Here is Rosenau’s response to Cupp’s chapter on evolution.

By Joshua Rosenau

S.E. Cupp's handling of science and religion misrepresents the nature of evolution, obscures the science of biology, and dismisses the deeply-held religious views of most Christians outside of the fundamentalist subculture. This is the sort of misrepresentation which leads her to concoct an anti-Christian conspiracy on the part of reporters, and – bizarrely – to say that Darwin is "quite literally the Anti Christ" for liberals.

Cupp presents creationism as "a counter-argument" to evolution, yet never provides a clear account of what evolution is, nor what she thinks creationism means.
Creationism is certainly not a scientific argument of any sort. Scientists, teachers, federal courts, and reporters all recognize that creationism is a religious argument that abuses specific sciences and science as an enterprise. In addition to evolution – the foundation of modern biology – many young earth creationists reject conventional plate tectonics (the basis of modern geology), and the basic physics behind radioisotopic dating methods. Conservation of mass and energy, not to mention basic thermodynamics, go out the window to concoct scenarios by which a global flood could transpire. All this abuses science as a way of testing claims about the world, twisting it to allow supernatural religious claims to supersede empirical science.

Cupp presents evolution -- and science more generally -- as the enemy of religion. Reporters' "propping up of science," she writes, is an "attack on Christianity." If anything, it is Cupp's approach which insults Christians. Research detailed in Elaine Ecklund's forthcoming "Science vs. Religion," shows that many scientists are religious themselves and do not generally regard science and religion as enemies.
Nor do Christian non-scientists, as illustrated by a string of powerful statements from the leadership of Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian denominations, among others. Their views were put eloquently in a letter signed by more than 12,000 Christian clergy: "We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. … [T]he theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth…. To reject this truth or to treat it as 'one theory among others' is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance … We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. … We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth."

Cupp's deepest offense against science comes in treating opinion polls as measures of scientific validity. Creationism belongs in science classes, she claims, because it is "not a conspiracy theory," and "half the American population believes it." The former claim is dubious at best, and the latter is simply irrelevant.

Scientific truth is universal, and Cupp wrongly focuses only on American polls. A 2006 analysis found that America was the second-least accepting of evolution among 35 industrialized nations, ahead of Turkey but behind scientific powerhouses like Cyprus, not to mention religious nations like Italy, Poland, and Ireland.

Regardless of polling, a scientific theory is measured by its ability to make testable and correct predictions, and to be accepted by scientists as a useful tool. Evolution is the foundation of modern biology, biotechnology, and medicine, and a vital component of agriculture, engineering, and other sciences crucial to American economic competitiveness, and polls cannot change the truth.

Cupp might have done her readers a service by even glancingly noting the scientific basis for evolution's nearly uniform acceptance among practicing biologists, or at least looked to the more meaningful surveys of scientists' opinion.

Cupp claims that statements about evolution's support among scientists are themselves "another way of saying faith and science are incompatible and believers are on the losing side of the argument." This argument insults the many Christians – scientists and non-scientists – who accept evolution and find science and religion compatible.

On top of misrepresenting the nature of science and the nature of religion, Cupp's coverage does violence not just to the science of evolution, but to the public's expectations of science journalists and science teachers. She misreports recent history and legal proceedings. She twists math itself to claim that 44 percent is "not a minority."

She concludes by complaining that "the liberal media is not interested in acknowledging our nation as a deeply religious one," and repeats her claim that evolution is a weapon used to attack Christians.

In fact, Cupp is the one who seems uninterested in acknowledging the nature of American religious faith. Many Americans find that evolution deepens and informs their faith, and reject the anti-science stance Cupp (an avowed atheist) attributes to religion. That many Americans do find evolution contrary to their religion does not, in any event, change the scientific truth of the matter.

Whether our nation is or isn't "deeply religious" does not change what science is or how it works, and does not change the century and a half of meticulous research which has convinced scientists that evolution is essential to biology and biology education.”

I was taken aback when I read that Cupp is an atheist but apparently it is true. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.E._Cupp). Atheist doesn’t always equal rational and acceptance of evolution and non-belief, as pointed about by Rosenau don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand.

The Evolution of Heaven

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/faith/heaven-a-fools-paradise-1949399.html

Johann Hari provides a history lesson on the idea of heaven. As with all religious ideas it’s changed over the years:

“John Lennon urged us: "Imagine there's no heaven/It's easy if you try/No hell below us/Above us only sky." Yet the religious aren't turning to Lennonism any faster than Leninism. Today, according to a new book by Lisa Miller, Newsweek's religion correspondent, 81 per cent of Americans and 51 per cent of Brits say they believe in heaven – an increase of 10 per cent since a decade ago. Of those, 71 per cent say it is "an actual place". Indeed, 43 per cent believe their pets – cats, rats, and snakes – are headed into the hereafter with them to be stroked for eternity. So why can't humans get over the Pearly Gates?

In reality, the heaven you think you're headed to – a reunion with your relatives in the light – is a very recent invention, only a little older than Goldman Sachs. Most of the believers in heaven across history would find it unrecognisable. Miller's book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, teases out the strange history of heaven – and shows it's not what you think.

Heaven is constantly shifting shape because it is a history of subconscious human longings. Show me your heaven, and I'll show you what's lacking in your life. The desert-dwellers who wrote the Bible and the Koran lived in thirst – so their heavens were forever running with rivers and fountains and springs. African-American slaves believed they were headed for a heaven where "the first would be last, and the last would be first" – so they would be the free men dominating white slaves. Today's Islamist suicide-bombers live in a society starved of sex, so their heaven is a 72-virgin gang-bang. Emily Dickinson wrote: " 'Heaven' – is what I cannot Reach!/The Apple on the Tree/Provided it do hopeless – hang/That – 'Heaven' is – to Me!"
We know precisely when this story of projecting our lack into the sky began: 165BC, patented by the ancient Jews. Until then, heaven – shamayim – was the home of God and his angels. Occasionally God descended from it to give orders and indulge in a little light smiting, but there was a strict no-dead-people door policy. Humans didn't get in, and they didn't expect to. The best you could hope for was for your bones to be buried with your people in a shared tomb and for your story to carry on through your descendants. It was a realistic, humanistic approach to death. You go, but your people live on.

So how did the idea of heaven – as a perfect place where God lives and where you end up if you live right – rupture this reality? The different components had been floating around "in the atmosphere of Jerusalem, looking for a home", as Miller puts it, for a while. The Greeks believed there was an eternal soul that ascended when you die. The Zoroastrians believed you would be judged in the end-time for your actions on earth. The Jews believed in an almighty Yahweh.

But it took a big bloody bang to fuse them. In the run up to heaven's invention, the Jews were engaged in a long civil war over whether to open up to the Greeks and their commerce or to remain sealed away, insular and pure. With no winner in sight, King Antiochus got fed up. He invaded and tried to wipe out the Jewish religion entirely, replacing it with worship of Zeus. The Jews saw all that was most sacred to them shattered: they were ordered to sacrifice swine before a statue of Zeus that now dominated their Temple. The Jews who refused were hacked down in the streets.
Many young men fled into the hills of Palestine to stage a guerrilla assault – now remembered as the Hanukkah story. The old Jewish tale about how you continue after you die was itself dying: your bones couldn't be gathered by your ancestors anymore with so many Jews scattered and on the run. So suddenly death took on a new terror. Was this it? Were all these lives ending forever, for nothing? One of the young fighters – known to history only as Daniel – announced that the martyred Jews would receive a great reward. "Many of those who sleep in the dust shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt," he wrote and launched us on the road to the best-selling 1990s trash 90 Minutes in Heaven. Daniel's idea was wildly successful. Within a century, most Jews believed in heaven, and the idea has never died.

But while the key components of heaven were in place, it was not the kumbaya holiday camp it has become today. It was a place where you and God and the angels sat – but Jesus warned "there is no marriage in heaven". You didn't join your relatives. It was you and God and eternal prayer. It was paradise, but not as we know it.
Even some atheists regard heaven as one of the least-harmful religious ideas: a soothing blanket to press onto the brow of the bereaved. But its primary function for centuries was as a tool of control and intimidation. The Vatican, for example, declared it had a monopoly on St Peter's VIP list – and only those who obeyed their every command and paid them vast sums for Get-Out-of-Hell-Free cards would get them and their children onto it. The afterlife was a means of tyrannising people in this life. This use of heaven as a bludgeon long outlasted the Protestant Reformation. Miller points out that in Puritan New England, heaven was not primarily a comfort but rather "a way to impose discipline in this life."

It continues. Look at Margaret Toscano, a sixth-generation Mormon who was a fanatical follower of Joseph Smith in her youth. Then she studied feminism at university. She came back to her community and argued that women ought to be allowed to become priests. The Mormon authorities – the people who denied black people had souls until 1976 – ordered her to recant, and said if she didn't, she wouldn't go to heaven with the rest of her family. She refused. Now her devastated sisters believe they won't see her in the afterlife.

Worse still, the promise of heaven is used as an incentive for people to commit atrocities. I have seen this in practice: I've interviewed wannabe suicide bombers from London to Gaza to Syria, and they all launched into reveries about the orgy they will embark on in the clouds. Similarly, I was once sent – as my own personal purgatory – undercover on the Christian Coalition Solidarity tour of Israel. As we stood at Megido, the site described in the Book of Revelation as the launchpad for the apocalypse, they bragged that hundreds of thousands of Arabs would soon be slaughtered there while George Bush and his friends are raptured to heaven as a reward for leading the Arabs to their deaths. Heaven can be an inducement to horror.
Yet there is an unthinking "respect" automatically accorded to religious ideas that throttles our ability to think clearly about these questions. Miller's book – after being a useful exposition of these ideas – swiftly turns itself into a depressing illustration of this. She describes herself as a "professional sceptic", but she is, in fact, professionally credulous. Instead of trying to tease out what these fantasies of an afterlife reveal about her interviewees, she quizzes everyone about their heaven as if she is planning to write a Lonely Planet guide to the area, demanding more and more intricate details. She only just stops short of demanding to know what the carpeting will be like. But she never asks the most basic questions: where's your evidence? Where are you getting these ideas from? These questions are considered obvious when we are asking about any set of ideas, except when it comes to religion, when they are considered to be a slap in the face.

Of course there's plenty of proof that the idea of heaven can be comforting, or beautiful – but that doesn't make it true. The difference between wishful thinking and fact-seeking is something most six-year-olds can grasp, yet Miller – and, it seems, the heaven-believing majority – refuse it here. Yes, I would like to see my dead friends and relatives again. I also would like there to be world peace, a million dollars in my current account, and for Matt Damon to ask me to marry him. If I took my longing as proof they were going to happen, you'd think I was deranged.
"Rationalist questions are not helpful," announces one of her interviewees – a professor at Harvard, no less. This seems to be Miller's view too. She stresses that to believe in heaven you have to make "a leap of faith" – but in what other field in life do we abandon all need for evidence? Why do it in one so crucial to your whole sense of existence? And if you are going to "leap" beyond proof, why leap to the Christian heaven? Why not convince yourself you are going to live after death in Narnia, or Middle Earth, for which there is as much evidence? She doesn't explain: her arguments dissolve into a feel-good New Age drizzle.

True, Miller does cast a quick eye over the only "evidence" that believers in heaven offer – the testimonies of people who have had near-death experiences. According to the medical journal The Lancet, between 9 per cent and 18 per cent of people who have been near death report entering a tunnel, seeing a bright light, and so on. Dinesh D'Souza, in his preposterous book Life After Death, presents this as "proof" for heaven. But in fact there are clear scientific explanations. As the brain shuts down, it is the peripheral vision that goes first, giving the impression of a tunnel. The centre of your vision is what remains, giving the impression of a bright light. Indeed, as Miller concedes: "Virtually all the features of [a near-death experience] – the sense of moving through a tunnel, an 'out of body' feeling, spiritual awe, visual hallucinations, and intense memories – can be reproduced with a stiff dose of ketamine, a horse tranquilliser frequently used as a party drug." Is a stoner teenager in a K-hole in contact with God and on a day-trip to heaven? Should the religious be dropping horse dope on Sundays? But Miller soon runs scared from the sceptical implications of this, offering the false balance of finding one very odd scientist who says that these experiences could point beyond life – without any proof at all.

But even if you set aside the absence of even the tiniest thread of evidence, there is a great conceptual hole at the heart of heaven – one that has gnawed at even its fondest believers. After a while, wouldn't it be excruciatingly dull? When you live in the desert, a spring seems like paradise. But when you have had the spring for a thousand years, won't you be sick of it? Heaven is, in George Orwell's words, an attempt to "produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary". Take away the contrast, and heaven becomes hell.

And yet, and yet ... of course I understand why so many people want to believe in heaven, even now, even in the face of all the evidence, and all reason. It is a way – however futilely – of trying to escape the awful emptiness of death. As Philip Larkin put it: "Not to be here/Not to be anywhere/And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true". To die. To rot. To be nothing. We wouldn't be sane if we didn't seek a way to leap off this conveyor-belt heading towards a cliff.

So yes, there is pain in seeing the truth about Heaven – but there is also a liberation in seeing beyond the childhood myths of our species. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, written in Babylon 4,000 years ago, the eponymous hero travels into the gardens of the gods in an attempt to discover the secret of eternal life. His guide tells him the secret – there is no secret. This is it. This is all we're going to get. This life. This time. Once. "Enjoy your life," the goddess Siduri tells him. "Love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace." It's Lennon's dream, four millennia ahead of schedule: above us, only sky. Gilgamesh returns to the world and lives more intensely and truly and deeply than before, knowing there is no celestial after-party and no forever. After all this time, can't we finally follow Gilgamesh to a world beyond heaven?”

In short: live and love life in the here and now. Don’t waste time day dreaming about what will never come.

God is Angry with Europe

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=dujour&div=214

I’m sure no one is surprised by this:

“Eruption of the Iceland volcano is a display of God's wrath, the Association of Orthodox Experts believes.

"Is it possible that Europe further abandoning its Christian heritage does not to see that eruption of the Iceland volcano with its ash cloud that paralyzed life of the "most progressive" society is a menacing sign of God?" the Association's activists said in their statement conveyed to Interfax-Religion.

They noted that Iceland "has recently become a center of European neo-paganism of Aryan occult kind, which has Nazi character" as Iceland has headquartered the Association of European Ethnic Religions that has recently worked out a draft of merger between the World Pagan Assembly and International Pagan Alliance.

The authors of the statement remind that PACE at its April session plans to discuss rights of various minorities, especially sexual, and that "major part of European deputies propose that all states of the Council of Europe should introduce a subject on peculiarities of homosexual behavior in the school curriculum."

"Is it possible that once Christian Europe has forgotten the Holy Scripture and the destiny of Sodom and Gomorrah?" the experts wonder urging deputies of Russia, Ukraine and other Orthodox states to oppose such attempts.”

At its worst the eruption caused a great level of inconvenience to travelers, hardly the sort of punishment you’d expect from an all-powerful god. Given that the religious are even capable of believing such a thing, we shouldn’t give credits to their beliefs regarding how children should be educated on social issues.

Peter Singer on Ethics

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2010/04/21/2878921.htm

Peter Singer on being good without god:

“I would say one of the keys is putting yourself in the position of others and seeing how you would feel if this were done to you," he continues, "of course, that is something that is in The Bible but that's just an example of the fact that the Judeo-Christian scriptures, like other traditions, have come up with things that are pretty basic.
…
"whether you're religious or not... you still have to have a coherent intellectual position on what's right or wrong and you can't just take it by reading the scriptures or direct revelation of what God wants."”

Who's this Creator You Speak of?

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/04/sarah-palin-christian-nation-god-founding-fathers/1

Wingnut Sarah Palin would like to remind Americans that God belongs in their country:

“God truly has shed his grace on thee -- on this country. He's blessed us, and we better not blow it...

...Lest anyone try to convince you that God should be separated from the state, our founding fathers, they were believers. And George Washington, he saw faith in God as basic to life."”

Sarah Palin lives in the crazy fundamentalist world where Creator=Christian God. Fortunately, she has been called out on this:

“Paul Fidalgo, swinging from left. The communications manager for the Secular Coalition for America, reminds people:

Our Constitution established a secular government and has no mention of Jesus, Christianity, or a god of any kind, despite the false message spread by figures such as Sarah Palin who claim that America was founded as a Christian nation.”

You see? Palin is wrong. Jesus isn’t the Creator. It was the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Theocracy of Florida II

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/21/1590111/florida-republicans-throw-support.html

Religion is trying to creep back into Florida schools and Republicans are there to help:

“Republican senators sat aghast Tuesday as Pace High School Principal Frank Lay described the religious ban at his public school in the Florida Panhandle.
"They stopped wearing crosses," he said of the faculty. "They put their Bibles away."
Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, urged action. "We can lose our freedoms in America very fast," he warned.

Beset by tales of sectarian conflict and censored teachers, Republican legislators are behind several efforts to expand religion's role in the education system this legislative session.

Under a measure sponsored by Wise, teachers would be allowed to pray with children, behavior long frowned upon by opponents who say mixing faith and public schools marginalizes minority students.

The legislation passed unanimously Tuesday in the Senate's Education PreK-12 committee, with proponents defending it as a necessary protection of free speech. Versions of the bill (SB1580/HB31) have sailed through other committees in both the Senate and House.

Republican lawmakers are also behind a measure that would repeal the state's century-old ban on funneling public dollars to religious groups. The proposed constitutional amendment could greatly expand Florida's controversial private school voucher program.”

I said in a previous post that Florida was looking more and more like a theocracy. The proposal to allow teachers to pray with children and funding public (taxpayer) dollars to religious groups confirms that the theocracy is closer to becoming reality.

Fundies Angry at National Prayer Day Ruling

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/clay-naff/rather-than-a-national-da_b_542514.html

Clay Farris Naff exposes the (predictable) anger among the right for the recent decision to rule the National Day of Prayer and gives another suggestion for America could use that day:

“It's not often I follow the lead of a hate-spouting, flame-snorting rightwing ding-a-ling, but today will be an exception. Over the weekend, U.S. District Judge Barbara B. Crabb ruled, quite rightly in my view, that a "National Day of Payer" serves no secular purpose and unconstitutionally harnesses the power of the state to call on citizens to engage in the religious ritual of prayer.

This has, predictably, uncorked yet another volcano of rage from the right. For instance, I give you the Rev. David Stokes (hmmm ... Is that a a proper noun or an active verb?). "The mind fairly boggles," writes Rev. Stokes, "at the arrogant absurdity of a court in this land ruling the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional."

Okay, I'm sure the Rev. has a well reasoned argument to back up that assertion. Let's give him a hearing.

Point One: He despises the people who filed the suit: "the radical anti-theist group (read: atheists on steroids), 'Freedom From Religion.'" (And, indeed, shouldn't the justice of a cause always be judged by how we feel about the person bringing the case?)

Point Two: He admires President George W. Bush. "I know it's fashionable these days to bash Bush, blaming the man and his administration for all the ills our current leaders find to be overwhelming and resistant to their heady scheme-dreams, but our 43rd president is a man of passionate faith."

Point Three: President George W. Bush admires him. They admire each other. "I had the privilege the other day of receiving a nice note from Mr. Bush. He had received a copy of my new book."

Point Four: (We are getting back to prayer, I promise you.) President George W. Bush appreciated Rev. Stokes putting in a good word or two with The Man Upstairs. "'During our time in the White House,'" Stokes quotes GWB as writing," 'Laura and I were ... sustained by your prayers and encouragement.'"
Here, the argument runs, which has been gelling so nicely, into a little difficulty. It seems that Rev. Stokes had been praying for President Bush without congressional authorization. "Certainly, I understand that he (Bush) was talking about personal prayers, not necessarily public ones, and that there is nothing in the current court ruling banning private prayer. Duh. I get that." (Oh, okay then. On with the argument.)

Point Five: Obama is a Marxist Muslim and worse. "I would appeal to President Barack Hussein Obama today, to reach back beyond his Muslim, Marxist, and Liberation Theology (which is to real Christianity as anthrax is to sugar) roots and try to connect with his 'inner-Lincoln.'" (How can you be a Marxist Muslim Liberation Theologist? Doesn't that mean being an atheist Allah-worshiping Catholic? I know Obama's a smart guy, but can even he manage that hat-trick of deviousness?)

Point Six: In 1863 Lincoln (who, by the way, was about as religious as Obama), declared a kind of super-duper Day of Prayer. "As the Civil War raged, Mr. Lincoln proclaimed a National Day of Prayer--only he didn't quite call it that. It was actually called, are you ready for this? 'A Day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.' Now, that would make any liberal 'living-constitution' judge's head spin all the way around today, don't you think?" (Amen to that. You'd have to call in the Congressional Exorcist to cure her.)
And there you have it. I don't usually succumb to appeals to authority, but in this case I so admire Lincoln that I'm ready to give it a whirl. Surely, reasonable people -- that is, people who are ready to tune out the hate talk for a few minutes and think for themselves -- can agree on the following: You don't need an act of Congress to get Americans to pray. You should not use government to coerce people into being religious. (Especially not if you think religion is important: look at how well state-sponsored Christianity has fared in Europe.) Last but not least, it would be great if we could all come together in unity and aspiration for better times on at least one day a year.
Let's face it: we are a nation united by certain mostly secular ideas: that governments rule by the consent of the governed, that freedom to pursue happiness is a fundamental principle of society, and that all people have certain inalienable rights endowed by their Creator (yes, that's a religious insertion, but one with some latitude for interpretation -- as the Deist Jefferson would have been the first to say).

Let's also face this: Most Americans are Christian. Most, but not all. And among Christians there is a wide diversity of views. Simply imposing a "National Day of Prayer" over this diversity is not a step toward unity, but a step back into another "wedge issue." Suppose, instead, we adapt President Lincoln's wisdom to our times. How about a "National Day of Humility"? For those who find prayer the best expression of humility, let it be so. For those who achieve humility through quiet contemplation, or unanswered acts of kindness, or reaching out to one's enemies, or simply a reflection on one's one shortcomings and limitations, let it be so. In short, through humility, let freedom ring. Thank you, Rev. Stokes, for the suggestion.”

Hastings College Christian Club

http://www.montanakaimin.com/index.php/articles/article/religious_beliefs_do_not_justify_discrimination/1122

Laura L. Lundquist on Christian Legal Society club at Hastings College of Law barring homosexuals from being full members they have had their funding revoked and the case has gone to court on the basis of discrimination.

“Our nation is becoming more splintered. Groups battle harder against opposing groups and, as a result, the political pendulum seems to be careening in greater and ever-more-abrupt arcs. But now it appears the struggle is occasionally verging on the nonsensical. It is like we have slipped through some celestial rabbit hole into Wonderland where logic is turned on its head.

When one group claims discrimination for not being allowed to discriminate, it seems like we are listening to some bizarre pronouncement by the Queen of Hearts. But that’s what the Christian Legal Society is claiming in its case against Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. For some reason, one or two members of the U.S. Supreme Court appear to be buying it, to the chagrin of those who have worked for equality. And unlike Alice, they have no way of waking up from this nightmare.
Hastings College, part of the University of California system, has a published policy that student groups receive university funds and privileges as long as all students are allowed to participate. What could be more appropriate for a university where students from many backgrounds and beliefs come together?

No student group had issues with the rule.

Until the Christian Legal Society barred homosexuals from being full members in 2004. With that, Hastings College revoked the group’s privileges.

According to the Citizen, an evangelical publication, the society merely “required voting members to adhere to Christian beliefs.” But it was much more than that because Christian homosexuals still weren’t allowed to be members. The society believes that homosexuality is a choice in spite of an increasing number of studies that show a biological basis for it.

This policy was out-and-out discrimination.

The University of Montana Law School agrees, because it refused funds for the local chapter of the society for the same reason. In June 2009, a federal judge upheld the Law School’s stand.

The society at Hastings College sued the college, claiming that its rights to freedom of assembly, free speech and free exercise of religion were violated. Although the case was thrown out by both district and appeals courts, the Supreme Court agreed to hear it.

Justice Antonin Scalia, like a hooka-smoking caterpillar, asked philosophical questions Monday that had little to do with justice.

“It is so weird … to require this Christian society to allow atheists not just to join, but to conduct Bible classes, right?” Scalia said.

Not that an atheist would bother, but what would be wrong with that? Isn’t that what religions want: to convert people? Is there anything to prevent atheists from walking into most church services or volunteering to read a verse? No.

But that’s not the point. The point is that a college has to allow access for all when funds are provided by all. If a group wants to be exclusive, it can do so with its own funds.

There was no violation of the society members’ right to assemble or practice their religion. The college did not say the group could not meet on campus. It treated the society no differently than any other group, so there was no anti-religious bias.
The society’s attorney argued that groups should be able to exclude based not upon status or race, but on belief. The problem is that beliefs can be anything. Any random passage in a religious text can justify whatever people want to believe, which is why so many religions splinter. Kind of like the nation.

Fortunately, most of the justices are baffled by this absurd case. The Supreme Court’s own blog, SCOTUSblog, said justices were frustrated by the lack of clear facts in the case.

“When (Justice) Kennedy is followed by several colleagues voicing deep doubts about what the facts are, the case begins to look very much like a waste of judicial time,” SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Dennison wrote.

As the Duchess told Alice, “Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”
The moral here is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
If the Christian Legal Society wants to be included in college privileges, then they should include all who are interested.”

The group is receiving funds from the college. Odds are that money is coming from the student body. Therefore, the club is acting on behalf of the students of Hastings College. They have no right to discriminate against fellow students. If the group were privately funded then they would have every right to discriminate but that is not the case.

South Park Attacks Religion: Receives Threats

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/douglasmurray/100035575/the-death-threats-come-in-for-south-park-they-will-probably-end-up-like-theo-van-gogh/

South Park recently ran their 200th episode which criticized religion. Guess who’s not so happy about that:

“The website Revolutionmuslim.com has put up a video on their site as well as on Youtube juxtaposing images of the two men who are behind South Park alongside pictures of Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who still lives with permanent security protection) and the dead body of her own film-making partner Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh was murdered in an Amsterdam street by an Islamist in 2004 for the “crime” of making a film about the abuse of women within some Islamic communities.

To a backing-track of iihadi preachers, the Revolutionmuslim post reads that: “We have to warn Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”

All of which of course just confirms the point that the South Park boys were making. The anniversary show figured the inventors of all the major world religions. They showed Buddha snorting drugs. They did not even show Mohammed, as their broadcast network wouldn’t allow them to. Noticeably, no death threats have emanated from Buddhists for showing their founder as a drug-addict. But for not even showing Mohammed, and for pointedly demonstrating that they could not, an extremist Muslim group has threatened them.

I’d have said that was point proved. South Park 1: Islamists 0.”
The fundamentalists always make it too easy.

Pullman's Latest

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2010/04/19/f-philip-pullman-jesus-christ.html

The CBC has an article on Phillip Pullman author of “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ”;

“Philip Pullman is a fair man, despite what his critics might say. He wants it to be known that not all of his detractors want him to burn in an eternal hellfire.
“Some are quite helpful,” he says over the phone from his home in Oxford, England. “Some write me very kind letters directing me to biblical verses that will help me understand the error of my ways.”

The irony here is that although the 63-year-old author is one of Britain’s most famous atheists (along with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens), Pullman doesn’t need anyone’s assistance navigating the Bible. The grandson of an Anglican vicar and an admirer of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom he describes as “an unprejudiced man of great intelligence and learning”), Pullman isn’t your ordinary non-believer.

Despite its gasoline-on-the-flame title, his latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, is a compassionate meditation on the nature of faith. To write it, Pullman spent months poring over religious texts and kept three translations of the Bible, as well as the works of Jesus scholar Geza Vermes, by his side. At this point, Pullman is probably better versed in the scriptures than most believers.
“I wrote the book with a great deal of respect towards the Christian story,” he says. Pullman’s tale is part of Canongate Books’ Myths series, which has commissioned writers like Margaret Atwood to revisit famous legends. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, which comes with the caveat “this is a story” emblazoned on its back cover, retells the chronicle of Jesus’s life, imagining him as the bigger, cooler twin to a nebbishy, weaker brother named Christ.

While Jesus attracts a following for his good deeds and speeches against bigotry, Christ trails in his wake, recording the events for posterity and exaggerating Jesus’s run-of-the-mill acts of kindness into divine interventions. The loaves and fishes thing? Turns out Jesus just told the crowd to share whatever meager offerings they brought with them. But in Christ’s jazzed-up version, a miracle was born.
“My Christ is a storyteller,” Pullman says, “and all storytellers are scoundrels, no doubt about it. We’re interested in the shape of narrative, not out of any concern for the characters, but because we like the shape it makes. This is a real moral failing on our part.”

Christ justifies his fabrications with the belief that a humourless idealist like his brother needs a bigger platform for his message – perhaps a holy book and a religious institution. According to Pullman, that’s where the trouble always starts.
Reflecting on the current child sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, Pullman says that whenever anyone is put in the role of religious authority, that influence is twisted into something ugly. “Look at any church of any faith: Control over it is claimed to have been given directly from God. The people who make that claim are in a position of unparalleled power over their fellow human beings. When that happens, corruption inevitably follows.”

This is a subject that Pullman first tackled in his young adult fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, a brilliant coming-of-age saga and an anti-Narnia take on the corrosive power of organized religion. The best-selling novels have the distinction of being multiple award winners and among the world’s most banned children’s books.
In The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, it’s Jesus himself who is outraged at the thought that his teachings might become the basis of a religious organization. Most poignantly, he loses his faith altogether shortly before the crucifixion that would become the centerpiece of the Christian faith.

“Jesus expected the kingdom to come any minute,” Pullman says. “He’s like those deluded cult leaders telling everyone the Armageddon is coming on Tuesday. And when it doesn’t come, he’s disillusioned, and his only release from that is his death.”
When Jesus rails against a god he no longer believes exists, Pullman says he’s speaking for his own younger self, a religious child who became an atheist in adolescence. “I was angry at God for not being there and angry at myself for being taken in. I gave some of my emotions to Jesus in that passage.”

Even now, Pullman says he sympathizes with the pull towards religion. “People need stories, myths and miracles. They need the impossible to happen. It might be regrettable, but it’s true.”

He adds that perhaps Jesus – “who was a man, and only a man,” he stresses – understood this, too. “At first, I identified more with the Christ character because he was a writer and he was my invention. But as I researched the book, I had an increased respect and admiration for the historical character of Jesus and his superb gift for storytelling and for creating parables.”

I thoroughly enjoyed “His Dark Materials” trilogy. I hope this book proves to be just as entertaining and even more thought provoking.

It's not about Religion

http://www.gairrhydd.com/comment/opinion/920/thou-shalt-not-touch-kids

Jack Parker, on the foolish notion that the campaign against the Vatican is motivated by a desire to bring down religion and the campaign to arrest the Pope:

“Arrest may be too far, but the Papal office must be held to account
Catholic priests being accused of sexually abusing children is not a rare occurrence. A report commissioned by the church in 2004 concluded that over 4,000 US Catholic priests had received allegations in the last 50 years, involving over 10,000 children. The recent media attention, however, surrounds the additional allegation that the current Pope, Benedict XVI, failed to act on sexual abuse cases when he previously led the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith – whose role it is to try and combat such issues.

Among exaggerated claims that the Pope should consider resigning, a group of British Human Rights lawyers are investigating the possibility of taking the decision out of The Vatican’s hands by arresting him during his journey to Britain in September. They justify this arrest attempt under allegations of the Pontiff ‘aiding and abetting sex with minors’ – which on a large scale becomes a crime against humanity, recognised by the International Criminal Court.

A particularly interesting development is the public support of this campaign by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, two of the world’s most prominent atheists. Those backing the Pope have retaliated by accusing atheists of using the recent media attention as an excuse to attack religion. This is absolutely absurd. Believe it or not, we atheists have a level of morals comparable to those of any other human being and at the concept of abused children, the disgusted majority of us think primarily of the fight for justice rather than the possibility of an anti-theist rant. This is also true for the louder and less tolerant Mr. Dawkins.
It is these morals that stimulate me in wanting some real changes to the Catholic Church, to prevent these allegations from recurring. Realistically, the Pope is not going to be doing laps of the exercise yard at your local prison any time soon; the implications of such an arrest are culturally and politically volatile, with some suggesting that it would significantly alienate British Catholics, insinuating that their leader and therefore their views are not welcome.

A more likely hindrance is the legal implications; much debate concerns whether The Vatican is considered to be a state by international law – if it is, then the Pope, as head of state, is given diplomatic immunity.

My personal view of the Catholic Church is rarely pleasant. Its views on homosexuality and life-saving contraceptives are enough for me to hang my head in shame at our species, but arresting the leader of one of the world’s most prominent religions is not going to solve the problem. At the end of the day, the Church gains its power from its worldwide support of millions of members. More than anything, these members – along with the rest of the public, regardless of religion – should retaliate in disgust at the actions of both the responsible priests and their respective leaders. I’m sure many do, but there are still those who view his actions as being taken out of proportion and resort to denouncing Richard Dawkins rather than their own religious leaders.

Vitally, we need to pursue truth and justice with the firm mindset that the Pope is a man. It is perhaps all too easy for an atheist to sit here and argue with the views of an established religion, but we must accept that he is capable of making mistakes, regardless of any ties with God that he may or may not have. No amount of religious or political power is justification for sexually abusing children. It’s as simple as that.”

Dawkins has already he said that he doesn’t expect the Pope to end up in jail anytime soon. The point is the message the campaign sends: no one is above the law.

Nick Clegg: Non-Believer

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/adrianmichaels/100035538/nick-cleggs-atheism-would-rule-him-out-of-office-in-america-iran/

There’s an election going on in the UK right now. Turns out that one of the candidates is an atheist, or maybe he’s agnostic. He’s not too sure.

“It’s hard to think of too many similarities between the US and Iran, but expressed belief in a supreme being is pretty much a pre-requisite for campaigning for public office in both countries. Not so in the UK, where Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats and current darling of the campaign, has said that he does not believe in God.

Mr Clegg is actually working hard on toning down any offence he may be causing to believers. His atheism has been swapped for agnosticism – best defined as “I don’t believe in God but in case I’m wrong I’m really really sorry” – and he is spending some high-profile time in church.

Religious belief, so the spin would have it, has an awful lot in common with Lib Dem philosophy, even if it is not espoused by the party leader. Try getting away with that in Alabama or Tehran.”

I do long for the day when religion isn’t a prerequisite to hold office in the North American political system.

Prayer Or Silence? How about both or neither?

http://blog.al.com/jkennedy/2010/04/joey_kennedy_upset_about_praye.html

Joey Kennedy a board member of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty asks:

“We get too silly with these arguments. There's nothing wrong with prayer before a council meeting. Or with "In God We Trust" on our coins and currency. Or in acknowledging a higher power and hoping that power will offer grace to each of us, every one. Or a moment of silence.
What do you think?”

The origins of “In God We Trust” date back to the 1800s. However, its use was not made mandatory until 1955 as part of the reaction to red scare (In God We Trust, U.S. Department of the Treasury, July 11, 1955, http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/fun_facts/index.cfm?action=fun_facts5, retrieved 2009-02-08). Last time I had checked, the Cold War was over. Why America would insist on using a motto that became mandatory due to a threat that no longer exists “godless communism” is beyond me. The threats facing America today are motivated by anything but godlessness.

A moment of silence would actually be preferable. Prayer does not have to be eliminated outright if a moment of silence is rotated in though Kennedy is proposing an “or” rather than an “either” scenario. In which case I say: neither.

Opposing Religious Confirmation Ceremonies

http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/04/19/danish-atheists-target-schools/

Atheists in Denmark are petitioning against religious confirmation ceremonies in the country’s schools:

“Schools in Denmark are being petitioned by an atheist organisation encouraging students into dropping religious confirmation ceremonies.

The Atheist Society has distributed information leaflets to around 2,200 schools across Denmark in a bid to provide a wider range of options for children approaching confirmation. The information leaflets have been sent to the respective schools’ managements who can then decide whether to distribute them amongst their students.
“The point is, that if and when management hand out material from the local priest then they could hand this out as well, so the young people can consider if they want the one or the other,” said chairman for the Atheist Society, Jesper Vind.

The leaflets addresses topics including freedom of religion and and also questions whether people who refuse to join the Danish Lutheran Church can be buried or married in a church ceremony.

The Copenhagen Post reports that Vind claims the pamphlet is not meant to be a recruitment tool but rather aims to promote choice and discussion among confirmation-age students.

The brochure has already been rejected by at least one institution, Hjorring’s Lorslev School, in North Jutland. ”It’s not the school’s responsibility to send that kind of material around. We also get sent leaflets from Scientologists and Jehovah’s Witnesses which we throw out,” said a school spokeswomanperson.”

On the Battle against Creationism

http://ncse.com/news/2010/04/antievolution-bill-kentucky-dies-005447

Victory in Kentucky, an anti-evolution bill won’t be passed.

“When the Kentucky legislature adjourned sine die on April 15, 2010, House Bill 397, the Kentucky Science Education and Intellectual Freedom Act, died in committee. Modeled on the Louisiana Science Education Act (Louisiana Revised Statutes 17:285.1), HB 397 would, if enacted, have allowed teachers to "use, as permitted by the local school board, other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner, including but not limited to the study of evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning." A minor novelty in the bill was the phrase "advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories," a variation on the familiar "strengths and weaknesses" and "evidence for and evidence against" rhetoric. Kentucky is apparently unique in having a statute…on the books that authorizes teachers to teach "the theory of creation as presented in the Bible" and to "read such passages in the Bible as are deemed necessary for instruction on the theory of creation."

Gay Marriage is Wrong, an old book said so

http://www.nwfdailynews.com/opinion/marriage-28090-gay-people.html

Courtesy of Travis Douma:

“Ten reasons why gay marriage is wrong:

Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester and air conditioning.

Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all — women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites and divorce is still illegal.

Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage is allowed; the sanctity of Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

Gay parents will raise gay children. Straight parents raise only straight children.
Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.
Children can never succeed without male and female role models at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just as we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy and longer life spans.”

I’ll add one: gay marriage is wrong because a book written thousands of years ago said so.

I hope the disclaimer pointing out the satire of this post isn’t actually necessary and you will have picked up on the joke a while back.

Yes: I hate the Catholic Church.

http://ozcatholicleague.com/wordpress/?p=198&cpage=1

Why do people hate the Catholic Church you ask? Well the author gives us the answer right here:

“The Church has always made a habit of supporting what is unpopular, and this is another stream of where Anti-Catholicism originates. It is the Church that condemns contraception in Africa, The Church that condemns gay marriage and The Church that still maintains its staunch opposition against abortion and euthanasia. The Church understands that people disagree on these issues, but it is the Church’s job to profess what is true and what is right. And no amount of whining or protest will change what is true.”

The unwavering support for anti-contraception views leading to the further spread of AIDS, the opposition of the right of human beings who love one another to marry, opposing the right of women to choose and supporting the suffering of a human rather than letting him or her choose to end the suffering. All while maintaining that these are the right things to do and that it is the truth is what creates the animosity towards this backwards institution. The delusion that the Church has a monopoly on the truth is what leads to the protest. In time, those ideas will be thrown into the waste bin of irrelevance.

Lesson in how to use irrelevant information to attack your opponent

http://www.catholic.net/index.php?option=zenit&id=28914

Apparently Edward Pentin’s best explanation as to why Christopher Hitchens wants to arrest the Pope is to dig into his personal life. It’s nothing more than a pointless attack that has no relevance to the matter at hand. A curious tactic considering that before he begins the attack on Hitchens he gives a rather solid legal argument for why the Pope cannot be arrested. Here’s what he has to say on Hitchens:

“But few people have questioned why he holds such strong views against the Church and religious belief in general. A look at his past, however, offers some clues.

Hitchens is a former Leninist who describes himself as an atheist, an -- "antitheist" -- and a believer in the philosophical views of the Enlightenment. As a child, he says he was a "navy brat," the son of Royal Navy Commander, who rebelled against his father's conservative attitudes. His mother was of Polish-Jewish descent, a woman of a more liberal and cosmopolitan mind, to whom he was closer.

From the age of seven his parents sent him away to various boarding schools, and from the ages of 13 and 17 he attended a Methodist boarding school in Cambridge. Religion seemed to figure very little, except in a perceived negative sense of obligation and discipline. He went to Oxford University to study philosophy, ending up with a third class degree.

During school and university, Hitchens, a child of the 60s, experienced a life of decadence and immoral behavior, which he struggled to abandon. In a soon-to-be-published autobiography, excerpted recently in the London Times, he describes in some detail what he calls the "sadomasochism" he experienced at school, participation in lewd encounters at a young age with fellow pupils of the same sex, further homosexual encounters at university, and his attraction to Trotskyism.

But perhaps his loathing for Christianity can also be partly attributed to his close relationship with his mother (he was her eldest and, according to him, favored son) and tragic events in 1973.

Aged 24 and working for the New Statesman, a left-wing English magazine, Hitchens discovered that his mother had been having an affair with a "defrocked" Anglican vicar. After hiding the affair for sometime, Yvonne Hitchens suddenly disappeared with her lover without telling her husband. A couple of days later, Hitchens read media reports that she had been found dead in an Athens hotel room along with her lover. The two, it transpired, had died in a suicide pact. The Anglican vicar of Athens conducted their funeral, "making no attempt to disguise his distaste at burying a suicide," according to a May 2008 interview in Prospect magazine.

Hitchens maintains his mother's death hasn't shaped him, nor played a larger significant role in the way he has developed his beliefs and attitudes.

Elsewhere he has spoken of his own "innate" dissenting character, and his aversion to becoming a "party-liner" -- something he learned from his Trotsky days. His polemical writings partly derive from a quote of George Orwell, a favorite author of his, that the prime responsibility of a writer is "being able to tell people what they did not wish to hear."”

Leave it to a writer for a Catholic website to present an interest in the left and flirtations with homosexuality as possible motives for a hatred of religion. Losing a mother to suicide would be devastating though that alone wouldn’t make a man wake up one day and decide that religion is irrational.

“Yet it helps if the polemics don't backfire. Hitchens was an outspoken advocate of the 2003 Iraq War, which some international lawyers deemed illegal. A case could arguably be made, therefore, to have himself brought to the ICC for war crimes on the grounds of being a leading cheerleader for an illegal war. After all, he now seems to be a keen proselytizer for international law, at least when it suits his ideological goals.”

Hitchens early support for the Iraq War was misplaced and foolish. However, to arrest someone for being a vocal supporter of the war would be a violation of free speech in the highest degree. We’d have to throw the entire cast of Fox News any politician who voiced support for it as well (even if they didn’t have a plan in handling it) along with all of those American patriots who believe it is America’s duty to invade a non-threatening country.

No one wants him

http://www.theportugalnews.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?id=1057-19

Atheists in Portugal don’t want the Pope to visit the country, at least for the time being:

“The Portuguese Atheist Association (AAP) has this week asked the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference to postpone next month’s visit by Pope Benedict XVI to permit “full clarification” of his involvement in alleged cover-ups of widespread child sex abuse by Catholic priests.

The AAP told Portugal’s Catholic leadership the Pope’s May 11-14 visit should be postponed indefinitely due to the Pontiff’s purported involvement in a cover-up to protect priests who abused minors in various countries.”

Perhaps they should threaten to arrest him while they are at it.

National Day of Prayer Ruled Unconstitutional

http://www.superiortelegram.com/event/article/id/41600/

The National Day of Prayer has been ruled unconstitutional:

“A federal judge in Wisconsin has ruled that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional.

The Madison-based Freedom from Religion Foundation initially sued President Bush over the observance in 2008. Upon taking office, President Obama inherited the lawsuit. It claims the Day of Prayer violates the separation of church and state. U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled in favor of the Foundation's position.

Annie Laurie-Gaylor, the group's co-president, says the Foundation is very pleased that they had a judge who made a decision based on the merits of their argument and not on public opinion. She says been a huge fight, and is the most time consuming lawsuit that her organization ever been involved in.

Gaylor says the Obama Administration is expected to appeal the ruling.

Congress enacted the National Day of Prayer in 1952, and in 1988, it was officially set as the first Thursday in May.”

It’s refreshing to see that some in the judicial system do understand what separation church and state means. Sorry to sound like Rush Limbaugh but, I hope the Obama Administration’s appeal fails.

Creationist Fail

http://www.journal-news.com/opinion/i-was-created-by-the-great-designer-648397.html
I just had to laugh at this:

“Almighty God could have done the whole creation in one hour if he wanted to, but where’s the joy in that? ... I know I was created by the great designer, as was everything in the universe.

As a Christian, I do not feel threatened by evolution at all. It’s a joke. There is not one reliable shred of evidence or any proof for evolution. All the claims have been proven to be hoaxes.

Science is based on facts, not theories. If the Earth was billions of years old, according to the scientific law of decay, the Earth would be dust today.
The Almighty is not amused by mankind’s prideful, know-it-all, so-called knowledge.”

A short article really can make for a pile of creationist trash.

Here’s the response I left in the comments section:

“I have no idea how to address this, it's nothing more than a rant by a fundamentalist who seems to know nothing about the arguments for evolution. Rather than actually giving examples of "hoaxes" this person has simply chosen to dismiss any idea that does not fit into a creationist worldview. Do you honestly believe the law of decay has anything to do with the idea that everything must break down?”

Better to Keep Them Ignorant

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehumancondition/archive/2010/04/14/a-new-reason-not-to-teach-evolution-to-kids-it-s-philosophically-unsatisfactory.aspx

Mark Tangarone, a teacher at Weston Intermediate School would rather have children remain ignorant of the facts than encourage discussion of evolution. Mary Carmichael writes:

“Here is a vignette from a small newspaper that will sound familiar to Southerners like me who were taught creationism in school:
Mark Tangarone, who teaches third, fourth, and fifth grade students in the Talented and Gifted (TAG) program at Weston Intermediate School, said he is retiring at the end of the current school year because of a clash with the school administration over the teaching of evolution . . . In an e-mail to Mr. Tangarone dated Sept. 8, 2008, [the school superintendent] rejected the basic program, citing for the most part the teaching of evolution: "While evolution is a robust scientific theory, it is a philosophically unsatisfactory explanation for the diversity of life. I could anticipate that a number of our parents might object to this topic as part of a TAG project . . . The TAG topics need to be altered this year to eliminate the teaching of Darwin's work and the theory of evolution."



And here is something that makes this story a bit less familiar: it took place in Connecticut.


A few months ago, I wrote about parents and school administrators who shy away from teaching young children about natural selection even as they encourage them to explore the world that evolution has given us. Their reasons are not always religious. Sometimes parents believe that children can't hoist in the complexity of evolutionary theory (which is actually elegant and simple if it's taught well, but that's another blog post). Sometimes they are worried that their children's teachers can't comprehend or accurately convey that same complexity. Sometimes they want to shield the very young from brute facts, or what one of my sources called "a theory where an awful lot of organisms have to die for things to work."

And sometimes, as in the Connecticut case—best as I can tell—there seems to be an odd, uneasy fusion of all three problems, as well as the religious issue, in play. The superintendent of the Weston school goes on in his e-mail to note that "evolution touches on a core belief—Do we share common ancestry with other living organisms? What does it mean to be a human being? I don't believe that this core belief is one in which you want to debate with children or their parents, and I know personally that I would be challenged in leading a 10-year-old through this sort of discussion while maintaining the appropriate sensitivity to a family's religious beliefs or traditions." But in the subsequent newspaper article, the superintendent backpedals from all that, saying that Tangarone, the teacher, is leaving merely because he is "a 'disgruntled employee' who is 'unhappy with being supervised.' "

You know what? I’d be disgruntled, too, if my supervisor told me he was scared to offend people by suggesting that we "share common ancestry with other living organisms"—or that I wasn't allowed to do my job because he found scientific facts to be "philosophically unsatisfactory." Surely the most philosophically unsatisfactory action one could take is to deny the truth.”

Won't They Just Go Away? No?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-zimmerman/danger-of-creationism_b_538367.html

Wouldn’t be nice if we could just ignore the creationists and they would all go away? Left to wallow in their own delusions. Michael Zimmerman doesn’t think so:
“Last week I wrote about the problems the Discovery Institute had with my article arguing that the evolution/creation controversy was a battle between different religious worldviews rather than a struggle between religion and science.
Now I find myself writing about yet another major creationist organization's criticisms of my work for The Huffington Post. This time the attack is coming from Answers in Genesis, the people behind the $27 million creation museum-cum-theme-park just outside Cincinnati. You know who I mean -- they're the folks who show dinosaurs and humans comfortably cavorting and who declare that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

There are two issues I need to address.

The first, why the criticism leveled by Answers in Genesis is meaningless nonsense, is rather trivial. The second, however, why any of us should care in the least about what creationist organizations have to say, is far from trivial. Indeed, I'd argue that it may well be one of the more important issues of our time.

Let me dispense with the trivial point first. Last month I discussed why social Darwinism was both a misnomer and a terrible idea, both scientifically and socially. Not surprisingly, Answers in Genesis disagreed. They simply repeated their argument that social Darwinism is a "logical ... conclusion of Darwinian scientific theory" and then, grotesquely, pointed to the existence of serial killers to support their absurd contention.

Such behavior is nothing new for Answers in Genesis and their founder, Ken Ham. Two outrageous but all-too-typical examples will make my point. Back in 1987 Ham published an article entitled "Creationism: Cure for AIDS?" in which he concluded that "the spread of AIDS can be stopped -- by simply rejecting false evolution." In an even more extreme move, Ham and Answers in Genesis opted to commemorate the fifth anniversary of 9/11 by running ads in the Cincinnati Inquirer and in Christianity Today laying the attack at the feet of evolution.

Ham and his lot are clearly extremists, so why should we care what they do or say? Wouldn't we be better off simply ignoring them?

I wish it were so, but, as amazing as it might seem, Answers in Genesis and the Discovery Institute have the ability to shape public policy in frightening ways. Unless many of us keep pointing out what they're all about, they may well succeed in reshaping America and redefining science in a manner that will do irreparable damage.
And make no mistake about it, Answers in Genesis and the Discovery Institute are close cousins, even though they present different personas. Yes, the Discovery Institute is slicker -- with many more lawyers, better suits, and a bevy of political operatives -- than the young-earth- and fire-and-brimstone-preaching contingent that makes up the core of Answers in Genesis.

But, most importantly, both groups want the country recast as a Christian fundamentalist nation. And they both abhor the concept of evolution and want science redefined.

Am I being too extreme? You be the judge.

As I pointed out last week, Howard Ahmanson, Jr., one of the Discovery Institute's biggest donors, has expressed radical views about the role religion should play in America. And that's putting it mildly, since he's said, "My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives."

Take a look at the The Wedge, the Discovery Institute's original planning document, and cringe when you read that their goal is "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies."

Or listen to Ken Ham's 2010 "State of the Nation" speech (yes, he thinks he's important enough to deliver a speech with that name!) and hear him call for a country based on "God's word" rather than "man's word."

Both organizations, apparently suffering from a bad case of science envy, are desperately calling for science to be redefined to include the supernatural. Yes, you read that correctly. Both think that science is too limited in its present form and that it needs to be expanded beyond its present search for natural explanations. Observation, experimentation, data collection, analysis, indeed, the entire scientific method, be damned; bring in supernatural explanations.

This would all be funny if groups of this sort weren't able to influence politicians, primarily at the local school board level and in state legislatures around the country. However, anti-evolution bills or pro-creationism actions persistently crop up, under various names, in state after state and town after town.

What may be saddest of all about this is that natural allies, people who care about high quality science instruction and respect for others, are being manipulated into attacking one another. Religion and fundamentalism are not synonymous and I've come to realize that deeply religious people are usually respectful of others with different beliefs. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, are typically intolerant of the slightest deviation from their own views. Which brings me back to my original point: the controversy is not between religion and science.

Whatever you may think of religion, the fact is that the majority of religions, including a majority of Christian denominations, view evolution as being fully compatible with their faith. When religion as a social construct is attacked because of the extreme pronouncements of people like Ken Ham, intolerance abounds and ignorance wins.”

There are those that say we should let people believe what they want and not let it concern us. I say that our silence will pave way for fundamentalists to spread their influence across the land until their narrow and extreme views become the law. Respect is not necessary when the views being attacked are dangerous to begin with.

Success in Campaign Against Pope Unlikely

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article7096516.ece

Julian B. Knowles explains why the campaign to arrest the Pope is unlikely to succeed:

“Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain in September has prompted the atheist Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to announce that they will apply for an arrest warrant over the sex abuse scandals involving priests.
Those who are serious about procuring an arrest generally do not announce their intentions months ahead but this case follows the recent trend of activists using warrants as a publicity stunt.

So what are Dawkins and Hitchens’ chances of getting their warrant ?
The first problem is that the Pope is a head of state and is entitled to complete criminal and civil immunity under customary international law and the State Immunity Act 1978. Hitchens and Dawkins and their lawyers have suggested that the Vatican is not a state under international law, but their view is not supported by
When international law began to grow among the states, the Pope was the monarch of one of those states — the Papal states. In 1870 Italy annexed the Papal states and it had to create a position for the Pope and the Holy See (that is, the episcopal jurisdiction of the Church in Rome) that reflected the Pope’s importance as head of the Catholic Church.

In 1871 the Law of Guarantees was enacted by the Italian parliament, which explicitly recognised the Pope’s person to be sacred and inviolable, and that any insult or injury to the Pope was to be regarded as an insult or injury to a king’s person. The international position of the Holy See was clarified by the Lateran Treaty in 1929. In it Italy acknowledged the sovereignty of the Holy See in international matters and recognised the statehood of the Vatican City under the sovereignty of the Pope. Oppenheim’s International Law (8th edn, p327-328) comments that the Lateran Treaty marked the Holy See’s formal membership in the society of states. The authors conclude that the Vatican City and the Holy See constitute a state possessing the formal requirements of statehood constituting an international person recognised as such by other states.

The second problem facing the pair is the absence of any crime that would be justiciable in the English courts. They have been noticeably coy about specifying any offence that the Pope may have committed that a court in the UK could try, which tends to suggest that there isn’t one. With certain limited exceptions the English criminal law concerns itself only with matters occurring in the UK, and so far no one has identified any offence over which the criminal courts here would have jurisdiction.

Thus while Dawkins and Hitchens have succeeded in generating interest for their agenda, it is highly unlikely that their application for a warrant will meet with similar success. “

Personally, I would never expect an attempt to arrest the Pope to work no matter what the crime, that the idea has been considered at all is what’s amazing. It sends a strong message that there are those will not idle by while a man remains immune from his own actions due to his title.

Atheist Turned Deist has died

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-antony-flew15-2010apr15,0,4059881.story

Antony Flew atheist turned deist has died. He was 87:
“Antony Flew, an academic philosopher who expounded atheism for most of his life but made a late conversion to belief in a creator, has died in England. He was 87.

Flew died April 8 after a long illness, according to a notice his family placed in the Times of London.

The son of a Methodist minister, Flew abandoned belief as a teenager because of the problem of evil.

"It just seemed flatly inconsistent to say that the universe was created by an omnipotent and perfectly good being. Yet there were evils in abundance which could not be put down to a consequence of human sin," he was quoted as saying in a 2004 interview with the Sunday Times.

In the last decade of his life, scientific discoveries about the complexity of DNA led him to believe there was an intelligent creator.

Flew's belief was in deism, involving a remote creator who takes no interest in human affairs.

Flew said he was impressed by the work of Gerald Schroeder, a physicist and Jewish theologian who wrote "The Hidden Face of God," published in 2001.

"He pointed out the improbable statistics involved and the pure chances that have to occur. It's simply not on to think this could occur simply by chance," the Sunday Times quoted Flew as saying.

Flew was born Feb. 11, 1923, in London. During World War II he served with the Royal Air Force intelligence unit, then studied philosophy at Oxford University. He participated in C.S. Lewis' weekly Socratic Club meetings, and a paper he presented to the group in 1950, "Theology and Falsification," became a much-quoted argument against the existence of God.

Flew's academic career included stints at universities in Aberdeen, Scotland; and in Keele and Reading, England. He was author or coauthor of more than 30 books, including "God & Philosophy" (1966), revised as "God: a Philosophical Critique" in 1984; "The Presumption of Atheism" (1976); "Social Life and Moral Judgment" (2003) and "There Is a God" (2007).

He is survived by his wife and two daughters.

"I don't want a future life," Flew told the Sunday Times. "I want to be dead when I'm dead and that's an end to it. I don't want an unending life. I don't want anything without end."”
I post this not because I agree with Flew. He’s way off when it comes to mentioning “improbable statistics”. No, the purpose of this is to ask a question. Do you know of any atheists who have converted?