eChurch Christian Blog

Previous post here.

Cross-post by Polycarp:-

The King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, has signed a bill into law legalizing abortion on demand for the first fourteen weeks of pregnancy.

The law, which was recently passed by the Spanish Congress and Senate, also declares abortion as a “right,” allows minors as young as 16 to obtain abortions without their parents’ consent, and requires abortionist and homosexualist education in the nation’s schools.

The king, a professed Catholic, ignored pleas from a number of theologians and pro-life activists to withhold his signature from the bill, which would have prevented it from being promulgated and applied

via the totally unbiased LifeSiteNews.com: ‘Catholic’ King of Spain Signs Abortion Bill into Law.

Internet link from the Catholic News Agency:-

Nearly one million Spaniards marched in cities across the country on March 7 defending the right to life of the unborn and demanding that the government revoke Spain’s new law on abortion recently passed by the Senate and signed by King Juan Carlos.

Before you read this one, do have a quick look at this link from a very recent post, in which it is proffered that there is no good evidence that education leads to secularisation, in fact, the opposite may be true.

Opposing Views – by American Atheists

A study claiming that liberals and Atheists are “more intelligent” than religious believers is causing a buzz in the news media and academic circles.

Authored by Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics, the study claims that “more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism…) than less intelligent individuals.”

Fellow academics are saying that Kanazawa’s research and conclusions are flawed.

And now, some Atheists agree and are speaking out.

Dr. Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists, said that “intelligence” — especially as reflected by so-called IQ tests — can be difficult to define and quantify. “There are often cultural, ethnic, and even sexual biases at work here, and a good case can be made that there are actually many different kinds of intelligence,” said Buckner. “Something like ‘intelligence’ has to be understood in a very broad context, and Dr. Kanazawa seems not to have given that sufficient consideration.”

“We have never said that Atheists or other non-believers are inherently ’superior’ or ’smarter’ than religious people, even though we do assert that logic and evidence are on our side regarding our conclusions.

Questions about religious beliefs and whether ‘god’ exists should be discussed and argued based on the best evidence.”

Buckner also noted that members of American Atheists vary considerably regarding political philosophies, saying that “liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and other (less orthodox) categories can all be found among our members and leaders.” He added that a Catholic or Muslim with an IQ score higher than a random non-believer, for instance, does not constitute any special evidence regarding claims any of them might make.

“And we’re totally against Atheists suddenly telling the world, ‘Hey, look at us, we’re right because we’re bright!’ ”

Kathleen Johnson, Vice President for American Atheists, said that she prefers to suggest that all or at least most Americans can, with sufficient reasoning, understand the need to question religion.

“There are all kinds of Atheists, just as there are all kinds of believers,” said Johnson. “We advocate a polite, courteous, and ’spirited’ exchange of views, and we encourage everyone — Atheist and religious alike — to exercise their First Amendment rights by expressing their opinions in a constitutional manner in the public square. We can win in the marketplace of ideas without invidious comparisons or pointless insults aimed at those with whom we differ.”

Oftentimes we receive comments on this blog that correlate intelligence with faith in God, and I don’t mean in a positive way.

Today I came across a very interesting article in which it is proffered that there is no good evidence that education leads to secularisation, in fact, the opposite may be true.

New Scientist:-

HERE’s a fact to flatter the unbelievers among you: the bright young things at the University of Oxford are among the most godless groups ever studied in the UK. Of 728 students surveyed in 2007, 48.9 per cent claimed not to believe in any god, with 49.6 per cent claiming no religious affiliation. And while a very small number of Britons typically label themselves as “atheist” or “agnostic” (most surveys put it at about 5 per cent), an astonishing 57.3 per cent of the Oxford sample did.

This may come as no surprise. After all, atheism is the natural stance of the educated and the informed, is it not? It is only to be expected that Oxford students should be wise to what their own professor Richard Dawkins calls “self-indulgent, thought-denying skyhookery” – and others call “faith”. The old Enlightenment caricature, it seems, is true after all: where Reason reigns, God retires.

Of course, things are never quite that simple. Within the sample, for instance, the postgraduates (that is, the even-better educated) were notably more religious than the undergraduates, in terms of both belief in God and self-description. Although the greater number of non-Europeans in the postgraduate population is almost certainly a significant factor here, evidence from elsewhere backs the idea that there is no straightforward relationship between atheism and education.

Let’s look at some results from the World Values Survey, an international attempt to assess the global state of socio-cultural, moral, religious and political values. The 2005 results show that while there is a clear positive correlation between education and lack of belief in God, the effect is slightly weaker, not stronger, among those with a university education (14.8 per cent were non-believers) compared with those whose highest attainment was secondary level (17.2 per cent).

What is more, the survey shows a far stronger correlation between education and certain “irrational” beliefs: for example, only 29.6 per cent of those without even an elementary education believe in telepathy, compared with 51.8 per cent of people with degree-level education.

Closer to home, an analysis of the 2008 British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey by David Voas of the University of Manchester reveals that the historical correlation between being educated and being “non-religious” has not only weakened but reversed. Looking at white British people, for example, the findings show that only around 25 per cent of men aged between 25 and 34 claiming “no religion” have degrees, compared with around 40 per cent of those describing themselves as religious. For women in the same age group, the difference is less marked but the trend is the same. The picture is more complicated across different ethnic groups, although the overall trend remains the same.

It appears that Enlightenment assumptions about the decline of religion as the population becomes more educated will no longer do – at least, not without considerable qualification. Why is it that, despite the long history of the study of religion, the picture seems to be getting more and not less confused about what it means to believe in God? We, and the scholars who gathered in December last year for a conference at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, think we may have the answer. The problems stem from a long-term, collective blind spot in research: atheism itself.

This oversight might seem remarkable (or remarkably obtuse on the part of the social scientists) but it is one with deep historical roots. Many of social science’s 19th-century founders, including Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Auguste Comte and Max Weber, were unbelievers, or “religiously unmusical”, as Weber memorably put it. For them, religion was the great explicandum: how, they wondered, could so many people believe in something so absurd? What they failed to recognise was that their own, taken-for-granted, “lack” of belief might itself be amenable to inquiry.

Ironically, sociologists, psychologists, economists and, particularly, cognitive anthropologists have become so skilled at explaining why humans seem to have such a widespread bias towards theistic beliefs that a new question readily presents itself: if religion comes so naturally to us, why are so many people, especially in western Europe, apparently resistant to it? In the UK, for example, a sizeable 43 per cent said they had “no religion” in the 2008 BSA survey.

Moreover, social scientists themselves consistently rank as the most atheistic of all academics: see a recent study by Neil Gross at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and Solon Simmons of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia (Sociology of Religion, in press).

What we need now is a scientific study not of the theistic, but the atheistic mind. We need to discover why some people do not “get” the supernatural agency many cognitive scientists argue comes automatically to our brains. Is this capacity non-existent in the non-religious, or is it rerouted, undermined or overwritten – and under what conditions?

Continue Reading

For anyone interested the Social Science Research Council have released a report on the top 100 religious blogs. I haven’t read the report yet, however, the 63 page PDF can be found on this link:-

The New Landscape of the Religion Blogosphere PDF

I do intend to read the report and will report back anything of particular interest.

In the meantime here is some blurb from the academics who compiled the report with some handy links:-

Blogs have given occasion to a whole new set of conversations about religion in public life. They represent a tremendous opportunity for publication, discussion, cross-fertilization, and critique of a kind never seen before. In principle, at least, the Internet offers an opportunity to break down old barriers and engender new communities. While the promise is vast, the actuality is only what those taking part happen to make of it.

This report surveys nearly 100 of the most influential blogs that contribute to an online discussion about religion in the public sphere and the academy. It places this religion blogosphere in the context of the blogosphere as a whole, maps out its contours, and presents the voices of some of the bloggers themselves. For those new to the world of blogs, there is an overview of what blogging is and represents (section 1). The already-initiated can proceed directly to the in-depth analyses of academic blogging (section 2), where religion blogs stand now, and where they may go in the future (sections 3 and 4).

The purpose at hand is to foster a more self-reflective, collaborative, and mutually-aware religion blogosphere. Ideally, this report will spark discussion among religion bloggers that will take their work further, while also inviting new voices from outside existing networks to join in and take part.

Contents

1. Why bother with blogs?
2. Blogging and academia
3. The shape of the religion blogosphere
4. Religion bloggers on blogging
Appendix I: Bibliography
Appendix II: Religion blogs

As the Director of Public Prosecutions has just released the long anticipated new guidelines on assisted suicide, I anticipate quite a bit of interesting analysis, so I’ll post links here.

As I was musing over the the stark differences between the Christian community’s view of euthanasia and many non-believers, I suddenly realised that many non-believers tend to view humans as no different than animals. On this blog we frequently receive pro-euthanasia comments from non-believers, that simply ask why should we not have “mercy” on humans as we do dogs and “put them out of their misery”.

Anyway, here are the first of the Internet links:-

I’m putting George Pitcher from the Telegraph first, because he has been on particularly fine form.

Geroge Pitcher Telegraph – Rejoice! DPP deals severe blow to Dignity in Dying’s hopes for assisted suicide

Church of England – Response to the Director of Public Prosecutions’ Policy for Prosecutors in Respect of Cases of Encouraging or Assisting Suicide

Telegraph – Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, set out a list of factors for prosecutors to consider when deciding whether to charge someone who had assisted a suicide. There are six that will sway decision against prosecution.

Lee Rayfield Guardian – Let’s not take the path of assisted dying – Arguments in favour of assisted dying play on our sense of compassion – but they should be resisted

The Christian Institute – Pro-lifers have voiced their concern over new assisted suicide guidelines, published today, which say prosecutions are unlikely if the act was “motivated by compassion”.

CPS – Assisted Suidce Guidelines

Telegraph – Relatives who profit from assisted suicide may not be charged – People who assist another person commit suicide and then make a financial gain from the death can still escape charges under new prosecution guidelines.

Telegraph – The new policy on prosecuting assisted suicides, published yesterday by Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, might make those who campaign for legalised euthanasia in Britain wish they had been more careful about what they asked for.

CCFON – The Department of Public Prosecutions must uphold Parliament’s view that assisting suicide is a serious crime and not necessarily an act of mercy, says Professor John Keown.

Church Times – THE CHURCH of England has commended changes to policy for prosecutors on assisted suicide, published on Thursday by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer QC.

LifeSite – Despite urgent warnings from the British pro-life movement and shouts of triumph from euthanasia campaigners, a statement from the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales has “welcomed” newly published legal guidelines on the prosecution of assisted suicide cases, saying they have given “greater protection” to vulnerable people.

Catholic News Agency – Vulnerable better protected by new assisted suicide prosecution policy, says Archbishop Smith

I can’t help myself, I think that George Pitcher over at the Telegraph is on sizzling form:-

Telegraph:-

Prime Minister Gordon Brown writes in the Telegraph today that assisted suicide must never be legalised. And he makes the very strong point that the Director of Public Prosecutions’ guidelines on when someone assisting a suicide may expect not to be prosecuted, published tomorrow, make the case for a change in the law on euthanasia becomes much weaker, because all the acceptable compassionate circumstances surrounding an assisted death will be clear and accountable – and those not meeting them can expect up to 14 years in jail under the Suicide Act if they don’t satisfy all of them.

I bet the pro-euthanasia lobbyists at Dignity in Dying didn’t think of that – it has always been their intention to progress to legalised euthanasia by increments.

Continue Reading

I loathe abortion, but this from US State Delegate Bob Marshall is just wicked:-

Cross-post Polycarp:-

The GOP does not speak for God or THIS Christian

The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children. In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest. – State Delegate Bob Marshall (here)

No, Delegate Marshall, God’s doesn’t work that way. Read John 9 and Romans 2.

Let me restate his theological idea: Disabled children are God’s punishment.

Unsurprisingly, P Z Myers has also picked up on this.

It’s 3.53am GMT and I’m having trouble sleeping. It doesn’t help that I have been poorly for a while (man flu?) and sleeping in the day.

I woke up with sickness and death on my mind, which is not conducive to getting back to sleep.

Not so many years ago I was working a Friday night shift as a nurse in a local hospital and we had an unusually young female patient on the ward, in her early twenties.

As usual I was advised of this patients status in the “hand over” period from the afternoon shift and learnt that she had a meeting with Social Services on the Monday, to ascertain who would take care of her very young daughter when she died.

Around midnight, she pressed the buzzer to call a nurse and I found her quite distressed as she was vomiting black bile (this was probably caused as a by-product of the medication) and so I assisted and cleaned her up.

As I was leaving her room she said to me; “Why is this happening to me?” Guess what, I didn’t have an answer and I still don’t have an answer.

It might of been feasible to trot out some droll theological answer, but how inappropriate and insensitive would that have been?

I wish to God I could have provided an answer that would have furnished some comfort to her, but I couldn’t. I simply told her that I didn’t know, apologised and left the room.

This incident has plagued me since, but I know I couldn’t have done any better and the reason is, that as a human and a Christian I simply don’t have all of the answers.

Original Source: If Global Warming Is Real Then Why Is It Cold?

Check out Vee’s post on “The Deniers” today over at Living Journey.

I confess that I thoroughly enjoyed this little article from American Thinker:-

If discussing politics and religion should be avoided at all costs, then science must join the list. Much of today’s “scientific consensus” is actually religion in its purest sense. The scientific faithful are proselytizing, pronouncing woe to anyone who questions their doctrine.

Too many scientists are High Priests in the First Assembled Reformation Church of Environmentalism, or FARCE for short. They and their followers defend their god — the environment — with the same zeal with which fanatical Muslims defend Mohammad.

Actually, to grant church status is a bit kind; FARCE is a cult. Nonbelievers can have rational discussions with religious persons. But sensible debate is impossible with cult followers. Fact, history, and common sense don’t matter to the cultist. Thus they don’t matter to the FARCE adherent.

The slightest questioning of a FARCE tenet labels one a heretic. Denounce man-made climate change — FARCE’s core belief — and you’re a global warming denier. Blind obedience, sans individual thought and reason, is required.

For example, if you watch a flat-screen television, then you’re destroying the planet. Your light bulb must have a FARCE priest’s sacred blessing. And your automobile must appear on the FARCE’s list of doctrinally acceptable vehicles.

Cults also demand absolute compliance. Within faiths and religions, there are divergent opinions known as denominations. Denominations hold to basic principles even while disagreeing about specific doctrines. Not so with cults.

Environmentalists allow no disagreement. Green activists ignore any evidence or argument that contradicts their beliefs. Dissent is sacrilege to be ignored or condemned. Let’s look at the evidence.

Continue Reading

It’s funny because it’s true and if you think I exaggerate, then remember it was not all that long ago that the UK department of health seriously considered calling for a cull of Britain’s sheep and cow stocks to combat climate change, because of the environmental dangers of livestock flatulence!

Coincidentally, Vee over at the Living Journey blog has put together a rather good post on Anthropogenic Climate Change, which is well worth a look.

AGW — Just some things to consider…

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Telegraph:-

Assisted suicide: law to be decriminalised ‘by back door’ from next week – Assisted suicide will be effectively decriminalised by the back door in landmark guidance to be published next week.

Final rules set out by the Crown Prosecution Service will make it clear that those who help others end their lives are unlikely to face court if they acted out of compassion.

However the factors against prosecution are likely to be altered from existing draft guidance, after it was claimed that they would leave the most vulnerable members of society at greater risk while providing immunity to spouses regardless of their motives.

It marks a legal milestone as the law against assisting suicide is in effect being changed without the involvement of Parliament, on the orders of the Law Lords.

It is also unprecedented for prosecutors to set out in such detail the ways in which people can commit a particular crime yet avoid being charged.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Dying Well said the guidelines “could have the unintended effect of leading potential law-breakers to believe they will secure immunity from prosecution if they assist suicides in certain prescribed ways or circumstances”.

Aiding or abetting another to end their life is punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment under the 1961 Suicide Act.

Continue Reading

And this from Bish Naz today.

Telegraph:-

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali: Promoting life rather than death – It is absolutely right for us to feel compassion for those who have a terminal or an incurable illness and for their near and dear ones who wish to relieve them of this burden, even if this means the death of the one who is ill.

Hard cases, however, make bad law. We should be very wary of changing the legal tradition of the Western world, based as it is on the Judaeo-Christian view of the human person, because of extreme situations which have been given massive media publicity and because there may be a few people in a coma from which a return to conscious life seems impossible.

It is natural for a person to feel helpless and hopeless when a terminal or incurable condition is first diagnosed but, given the right support by family, friends and the medical community, it is quite possible lto come through this phase and to enjoy some quality of life and even its enrichment. As Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the Hospice movement, has said, ” Our last days are not necessarily lost days “. Not only can they be used to recapture the past and to strengthen relationships but also for contemplation and preparation. Again and again, people have told me how much they have learned about themselves and others at this time in their lives.

It is simply a mistake to emphasise the autonomy of the individual, especially at this point. It is relatedness that matters. Rather than seeing themselves as unwanted and alone, people, at this stage of life, should feel themselves drawn into a circle of love and care where they will be made as comfortable as possible and valued for who they are. It is not necessary always to be independent. Human beings depend upon one another at every stage of life and this one is no different. “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ”, says St.Paul and this is exactly what the Hospice movement has shown us can be done in the care of the terminally and incurably ill. Thank God for all the wonderful people involved in this work.

Another valuable lesson which this movement has taught us is that it is nearly always possible to manage pain and to make sure that patients do not suffer unnecessarily. Palliative medicine is now highly developed and, whether in hospices or in pain clinics in hospitals, it tries to make sure that science is made to serve the care of people who are seriously ill and relieve them of as much pain as possible. Such relief may, in fact, lengthen the life-span but even if it has the effect of hastening death, this is quite different from an intervention that intends the death of the patient.

One fear that people often have is that they will be ‘officiously kept alive’ rather than allowed to die peacefully. It should be clear that opposition to assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia is not about keeping people alive at all costs. It is right to respect people’s wishes about not wanting medical treatment the outcomes of which may be uncertain and which may be highly intrusive and uncomfortable. Indeed, in certain cases, competent medical authorities may decide that it is inappropriate to provide medical treatment, though, I believe, that hydration and feeding should continue unless the means of doing this are judged to be disproportioniate to any outcome.

We need to remember that those seeking assisted suicide are very few compared to the hundreds of thousands who die each year cared for by their loved ones, with the help of hospices, pain clinics and others in the caring professions. There is, indeed, a slippery slope. It has been found, for instance, that the withdrawal of treatment in even the most extreme cases of coma, where the prospect of recovery is very remote, has led to such withdrawal when the situation is not so extreme. The Netherlands has not been notable for its success in confining the category of so-called ‘eligible’ cases for voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.

In other words, there is ‘creep’ from terminal and incurable illness to serious disease and, then, perhaps, to ennui or depression, when a person no longer wants to live.

Continue Reading

Cross-post by Michael Cook over at Mercator.

This article makes reference to the recent BBC report on the so called “mercy killing” allegedly perpetrated by Ray Gosling on his partner. Click here to view the previous blog post on this incident.

“There will be casualties” – Michael Cook – Mercator

Australian euthanasia activist Dr Philip Nitschke loves publicity. But whenever he opens his mouth, even the most progressive journalists avert their eyes in squeamish embarrassment. This week’s gaffe was to defend his barely legal promotion of a suicide drug for the elderly and terminally ill. It turns out that nearly two-thirds of the Australians who died after quaffing Nembutal – at least 51 over the past 10 years — were under 60, and quite a few were in the 20s and 30s. This suggests that mental illness or depression, not unbearable pain, was the reason for the suicide. So how did Nitschke respond?

”There will be some casualties,” he said with the tenderness of General Haig sending troops over the top at the Somme, “but this has to be balanced with the growing pool of older people who feel immense well-being from having access to this information,” [about suicide drugs].

The notion that young people are just collateral damage in a war to defend their grandparents’ inalienable right to make a quick getaway outraged many Australians. There were calls for Dr Nitschke to hauled into a court for putting lives at risk.

But after tracking the increasingly outrageous suggestions from advocates for assisted suicide and euthanasia, I feel that jail is not the place for people like Nitschke. They belong in a straitjacket. It is becoming increasingly clear that euthanasia advocacy is an illness characterised by an unwillingness to take responsibility for one’s actions, an inability to empathise with normal people, and a morbid desire to help others die. Like mad cow disease, it lies dormant for years. Its victims look normal, but eventually the spongy degeneration of the brain becomes evident.

Nitschke is a classical case. An intelligent man with a PhD in physics and a qualified doctor, he entered the public debate by decrying the cruelty of forcing the terminally ill to die in excruciating pain. Autonomous adults should have the right to die at a time and place of their choosing, surrounded by their loved one, he argued. It sounded vaguely plausible to the media and to his doddering but increasingly numerous groupies, it was a new gospel. But bit by bit, it became clear that his goal was death-on-demand, even for troubled teenagers. He seems incapable of grasping that most of us want teenagers to stick around for a few more years rather than kill themselves over a cruel Facebook post.

In England, the latest case of euthanasia madness is a 70-year-old veteran BBC broadcaster and gay rights campaigner, Ray Gosling. He confessed in the middle of a TV show that he had smothered an unnamed gay lover suffering from AIDS some 20 years ago.

“In a hospital one hot afternoon, the doctor said ‘There’s nothing we can do’, and he was in terrible, terrible pain. I said to the doctor ‘Leave me just for a bit’ and he went away. I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead. The doctor came back and I said ‘He’s gone’. Nothing more was ever said.”

Mr Gosling sobbed a bit, but was adamant that killing someone and concealing the murder was the right thing. “If there’s a heaven and he’s looking down, he’d be proud of me,” he told the BBC. He was oblivious to all the safeguards promised by euthanasia advocates. A right to smother someone, anywhere, anytime, without consulting doctors, without notifying the police, without proving your disinterestedness, and without even consulting the victim raises questions in most sane minds about the possibility of widespread collateral damage. Perhaps only BBC journalists would be allowed to do mercy killings, but some sane people might even object to that.

In the Netherlands euthanasia loopiness has become epidemic. It is legal there and every year about 2,500 acknowledged cases of doctor-administered death take place.

But amongst the numerous Dutch victims of spongy-brained euthanasia syndrome some are more affected than others. Recently a distinguished group called “Out of Free Will” has complained that there are too many restrictions on euthanasia in the Netherlands. Even in the mercy-killing heartland, people are required to have some sort of terminal illness. But the new lobby group wants the right for to anyone sane over the age of 70 to die with a professionally-trained expert’s assistance. They have already begun collecting signatures to lobby for improvements to the legislation.

Part of their scheme is a completely new profession: specialist suicide assistants. These people will need to pass a “Completed Life” training program and to join a professional association which will maintain standards of professional, transparent and safe conduct.

The age limit of 70 is arbitrary. “Whether it should be 65 or 90 is a good question,” says legal scholar Eugene Sutorius. “We think that once someone has reached old age, he has proved abilities at living. He can then choose to leave this life in a procedural, medicalised manner.”

Three spokesmen told the NRC Handelsblad that collateral damage by “angels of death” in nursing homes – rogue doctors and nurses who enjoy killing people — was unlikely to be a problem, especially in view of the country’s positive experience with euthanasia. “It was thought to be the first step on a slippery slope that would lead the medical profession to lose its integrity,” says Mr Sutorius. “But I have seen nothing of the kind happen.”

That last sentence is a tell-tale symptom of spongy-brain euthanasia disease. Before euthanasia was legalised, Dutch doctors were already doing it enthusiastically. It was legalised for consenting adults in pain from a terminal condition, and now it is permitted for non-consenting infants. Dutch doctors routinely lie on their official reports. If they are squeamish about lethal injections, they kill patients through the lingering death of terminal sedation – which is not counted as euthanasia. All these facts are well known. Yet Mr Sutorius sees no slippery slope, no loss of medical integrity. Mr Sutorius belongs in a straitjacket, not in a comfy chair giving interviews. (If you speak Dutch, he explains his position here in a YouTube video.)

What is happening here? How can intelligent, well-educated people be so obtuse about the dangers of legalising the killing of innocent, infirm human beings? Perhaps the conviction that some killing is permissible is so morally corrupting that it infects the intellect and distorts reality. And arguing with them is futile. As Chesterton wrote:

If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgement. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

Unusual one this, cheered me up though:-

Click here to view full size at the Hubble Website.

WorldNetDaily

Is this incredible thing in heavens a sign from God?

Some people are seeing a flying cross, or perhaps a Star of David.

Others say it resembles a ninja-style throwing blade or even a science-fiction spaceship from such Hollywood creations as “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” “Babylon 5″ or “The Last Starfighter.”

While scientists don’t think it’s a comet, they’re not exactly sure of the precise origin of the incredible object soaring some 90 million miles from Earth, snapped just a few weeks ago by the Hubble Space Telescope.

“I’ve seen thousands of astronomical images over my career, but this is one of the few absolute jaw-droppers: A flying X-pattern with trailing streamers,” said Ray Villard, a contributing writer to Discovery News. “Whatever it is, nothing quite like it has ever before been seen in the heavens.”

Even the experts who study celestial phenomena seem somewhat perplexed.

“We’re still trying to really figure out what it is,” University of Arizona planetary scientist Jim Scotti told National Geographic. Scotti is on a team observing the object from the Kitt Peak National Observatory outside Tucson.

“The truth is, we’re still struggling to understand what this means,” comet expert David Jewitt at UCLA told Britain’s Daily Mail. “It’s most likely the result of a recent collision between two asteroids.”

If it is indeed the result of such a collision, it would be the first time astronomers have gazed upon the immediate result of such a crash.

Continue Reading

Science and Religion Today:-

From Tom Rees of Epiphenom: You might have seen news reports about a recent study showing that religious people are no healthier than nonreligious people. The cynical among you might be wondering what on earth is going on here, given that other studies have shown the opposite! A classic example of scientists proving whatever they want to, perhaps?

Well, no. There’s a good reason that this study has found something different, and that’s because it’s not asking quite the same question.

You see, working out the relationship between religion and health is actually quite complicated. If you take the straightforward approach, the answer is clear: Religious people are unhealthier and die younger than the nonreligious.

The reason for that is obvious. Religious people tend to be poorer and less well educated. As a result, most studies try to work out whether religious people are healthier after adjusting for these differences.

So the key question boils down to this: Which differences should you adjust for? Your decision will affect the answer you get.

Most studies adjust for basic demographic factors. Older people and women are more likely to be religious, and both these factors affect your chances of heart attacks. Most studies also adjust for education and income level.

The rationale is our old friend, the arrow of causality. While being older might cause you to be more religious, being religious doesn’t cause you to be older! But there are also a host of lifestyle factors that make heart disease more likely (smoking, lack of exercise, overeating). Here’s where it starts to get more difficult because religion could definitely cause you to be a nonsmoker.

Many studies adjust for these lifestyle factors. But you can go a step further—and that’s what they did in this study.

Continue Reading

Firstly this from Biased BBC:-

Ray Gosling – BBC Hero

I see that BBC presenter Ray Gosling has been talking about how he smothered his gay lover who was dying from Aids. The BBC is enthusiastic about supporting “mercy killings” and this story is simply an extension of this narrative. I do not doubt the pain Mr Gosling and his lover went through but in the final analysis, smothering another human to death is a crime and it is a disgrace that the BBC chooses to portray this in the most sympathetic manner possible. What is your view?

And now this from Cranmer:-

Ray Gosling must be arrested for murder

The BBC reports that veteran broadcaster Ray Gosling has confessed to the murder of another man in a hospital.

With no regret or remorse, the Nottingham-based film-maker said: “I killed someone once… He’d been my lover and he got Aids.”

It was done, he said, after doctors told him that there was ‘nothing further that could be done for him’.

He suggests that the doctors knew what he had done, but ‘nothing more was said’.

Well, it’s time to lift the lid. Either ‘mercy killing’ is legal or it isn’t. Either ‘mercy killing’ is murder or it isn’t.

Lovely piece by the neurosurgeon and scientist Dr. Charley Gordon over at The BioLogos Foundation:-

[.....]

My question is this—what else are we missing? As a medical student learning about how the body works, I thought it fascinating to understand how we fight off disease, how the brain responds to stress and how we reproduce, how we perceive vision and memory—the list goes on and on. These, too, are miracles in plain sight. Regardless of how you believe these everyday miracles came about, they speak to an underlying order and bedrock physical principles that we can only contribute to an eloquent genius. Without the predictable, physical laws that order our universe, none of these miracles could happen. In fact, we would not happen. But how soon we forget the mystery of beauty and the joy of being able to breathe and to think! Like the thousands of people hustling by the “Young Archer” for decades, we scurry past God’s most wondrous creations on display every day. And in doing so, all too often we miss the miracle hidden in plain sight.

God, the Artist

In Romans 1:20, we are told, “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal purpose and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse.” In other words, God’s invisible qualities show up in the visible universe. This is really amazing when you think about it. We can learn about God by studying nature? Yes, it is true and biblical. The more we learn about our universe, the more examples we find of physical laws that mirror spiritual laws. There are these consistent physical laws and principles that allow us to exist, all of which are orderly and consistent. The Bible teaches us that the spiritual world and the natural world are inter-related, and as we learn more about the natural world, we better understand its Creator.

Read All

Regular readers will know that I view “man-made climate change” as akin to a religion. Some may even know that I am not a great fan of Christian Aid and so the following article which was emailed to me (thanks Rajan), cynically meshes very well for me personally.

Rajan

Climate Change Policy of Christian Aid: Nothing inherently Christian about it!

Small acts, Big Impact’ is an animation  video produced by SEEDS, a Christian Aid partner in India as part of an educational programme that is targeted to reach 10,000 schools all over the country. Watch it here.

If each school is assumed to have student strength of 1,000, then this programme could easily reach a whooping 10 million school children. This is apart from their teachers, parents and siblings. That’s how large this programme is designed to reach.

The storyline is simple enough. A camel in the desert is shown shivering while an equally bewildered yak on top of a mountain demands to know why the snow has melted. Both phenomena are blamed on humans and the remedy is to embrace solar and wind energy!

The Morphing of Christianity to the Religion of Climate Change

All Creation Mourning (2007), a climate policy document of Christian Aid admits that Climate Change is neither mentioned in the Bible nor has it been an integral part of contemporary systematic theology. Consequently, Christian Aid needed to evolve an approach to climate change that is rooted in the ‘wider theology’ and ‘ethics of development’ to frame climate change as their policy.

Interesting as this video reflects the offspring of such a marriage. The climate change theme is kept largely secular but cleverly laced with Christian religious nuances – ‘planting seeds, harvest, mission, save the world, let’s make God happy‘. Christian Aid as their name suggests, is supposedly one of the most influential development arms of the Protestant Church in both Britain and Europe.  So the use of Christian nuances may not be startling from this sense.

But don’t get fooled. At the core is nature worship and not Christ. The late Michael Crichton, internationally renowned science fiction writer, was of the opinion that certain social structures remain the same irrespective if society changes; religion being one of them.  Not known very well was Crichton as an anthropologist by academic training. Providing insight to the climate change ideology in his book, State of Fear, he opined:  ‘It’s a holistic ideology; shot through with religious sentiment…it is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.’

In the UK, all religions are experiencing a downswing in terms of  active membership. and practice. Though the 2001 Census, found 71% of the population had categorized themselves as Christians (with around 16% atheists), a research by another UK Christian charity, Tearfund revealed that between 1979 and 2005, half of all Christians stopped going to church. Attendance of Sunday church services plunged well below 10% – a trend that aligns tightly with the continued secularization of British society that nevertheless is in line with other countries in mainland Europe.

Among the earlier strategies used by the Church to stem this membership drift was the popularization of Liberation Theology that was strongly moulded by a Marxist-Trotskyist philosophy.  This somewhat worked for some time but after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, they found that they needed a new adhesive. They found one through the re-invention of environmentalism as Climate Change, based on a theology that addressed a secular issue with Christian religious trappings.

Seen within this context, religious nuances in the video then becomes a mere tool deliberately employed by Christian Aid to stem the drift away by sizeable sections of their original core constituency. The wrap up line of the video is designed to create the impression with whatever Christian Aid exhorts children to do in the name of Climate Change  ‘God will be happy‘. But God in this case becomes a proxy for Nature at the sub-conscious level  The effect is created by skillfully blurring the distinction between the two – God and Nature The video’s basic plot blame humans for climate changes (sin) and in order to save the Planet they needed to act. The concept of sin is further equated to carbon indulgence.  However Christian Aid disguises all this in a complex web of theological rhetoric:

“If climate change crisis is to be addressed, the concept of structural sin urgently needs to be highlighted. In relational terms, while individual seeks to heal……the relationship between society as a whole and the natural world must be urgently addressed.”

This edifice of the borrowed ‘wider theology’ is no different from those followed by typical environmental groups such as Greenpeace whose founding meeting incidentally also took place at the basement of an Unitarian Church in Vancouver.  Jonah Goldberg in a paper called this the birth of Church of Green and further elaborated its significance:

‘Environmentalism’s most renewable resources are fear, guilt and moral bullying. Its worldview casts man as a sinful creature who, through the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, abandoned our Edenic past. Salvation comes from shedding our sins, rejecting our addictions (to oil, consumerism, etc.) and demonstrating an all-encompassing love of Mother Earth. Quoth Al Gore: “The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity‘

Michael Crichton commented in a similar vein:

‘There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe. Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday–these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs.’

The chapter on Sin: The Breakdown of Relationships in Christian Aid’s Climate Change policy document, All Creation Mourning, takes to quoting from the Al Gore book, ‘Inconvenient Truth’ clearly indicating that its climate change policy has less to do with the Bible but with Goreism – the wider theology from which Christian Aid seek inspiration from. Though the Bible propounds that while ‘Christ came into this world to give life abundantly‘, this leading development arm of Protestant Church in Britain has chosen to preach the Gospel of Global Doom! From a Christian institution that is expected to reflect hope to all humanity, Christian Aid morphed into an entity peddling hopelessness as illustrated by the title of its policy document: All Creation Moaning - quoting the Bible out of context. What a fall!  It led one Christian theologian to observe: “It has always been a temptation for the Christian Church to slavishly copy the latest trends of the day. While there is a place to present an unchanging message in new forms and expressions, it  becomes a tragedy when it comes at the expense of truth and good doctrine.”

However, a significant bulk of Christian Aid’s funding, even today still comes from a small minority of Church going Christians, many of who are aware that Climate Change is not even mentioned in the Bible. Christian Aid’s climate change policy documents acknowledge that these sections view environmentalism, leave alone, climate change,  with a certain degree of suspicion. They are the types that reason if Earth and its climate system is the product of a Creator, the Perfect Designer, a minuscule change in atmospheric chemistry should not lead to catastrophic climate changes. They even mock the thought that mankind can induce significant parametric changes to the Earth; dismissing it as ridiculous as ole (Viking) King Canute attempts to control the tide.  With all advances in knowledge and technology today, these sections feel that man remain totally helpless in trying to either trigger or stop a Tsunami, earthquake, snow storm or a cyclone.

The more Bible read among these sections remember the commandment in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 – ‘Test all things, hold fast what is good‘ a clear call for Christians to display skepticism as a way of life.  Such a world view inherently put them at odds with Christian Aid’s Climate Change policy which the recent skeptic surge could amplify only further. To these sections, the deliberate insertion of Christian religious nuances in Christian Aid’s videos then becomes an instrument to camouflage the true character of their climate policies.

Continue Reading

It is frustrating that the term “creationism” has come to be exclusively tied to the literal 6/24 creation paradigm. I’m assuming this is what is being referred to in the following article from Ekklesia. The reality of course, is that there are a plethora of Biblical and theological interpretations and understanding, relating to the “creation” issue.

Notice this comment in particular:-

“And one thing that we will make absolutely clear is that you can not have schools that are set up which teach people things which are clearly at variance with what we know to be scientific fact”.

Is theistic evolution or intelligent design at variance with what we know to be scientific fact? Obviously many of the most vocal scientists will answer a resounding yes, but let’s not forget that many scientists would not. It must surely also be remembered that science has not yet reached a perfect conclusion on all things and is an ongoing investigation into the “how” of our world and so what may be considered “scientific fact” today, may well be considered a defunct scientific paradigm tomorrow.

It would seem to me that Science tends to focus in on observable material, therefore, is it not likely to always come to a material conclusion, negating its own ability to study the “why” of our world.

Ekklesia:-

Tories would close down creationist schools

A Conservative government would not allow schools that teach creationism, the shadow schools secretary has said.

Michael Gove MP told BBC1’s Andrew Marr programme ths morning (14 February) that ‘fundamentalist groups’ who taught in a way that undermined ‘democratic values’ would be challenged, and if necessary closed down.

He said the inspection regime would be crucial in challenging them.

“To my mind you cannot have a school which teaches creationism” he said. “And one thing that we will make absolutely clear is that you can not have schools that are set up which teach people things which are clearly at varience with what we know to be scientific fact.

“But critically inspection is key here” he continued. “We do have some schools at the moment – independent schools – that have been set up by religious groups. You mentioned Islamic groups. Let’s be clear, there are other fundamentalist groups as well which have schools in the private sctor. If those schools are properly regulated and inspected then we can ensure that anyone who teaches in a way that undermines our democratic values can be brought to public light, challenged, and if necessary closed down.”

Religious Education specialists point out that while creationism is strong in many areas of the US and has been growing among fundamentalist believers in parts of Europe and elsewhere, it is opposed by the official teaching of mainline churches and by theological specialists.

But a global opinion survey in October last year showed that the British public continued to be confused about how evolutionary science should be taught in school classrooms and whether opposing non-scientific views should be included.

I came across both of these today and felt like throwing them together in a post.

First from Science and Religion Today:-

Second from Polycarp:-

The creation of the Universe is described in order to establish that the Universe is a lawful, harmonious product of the will of a transcendent God who put it into motion.

The creation of Man is explored in order to enlighten us as to the peculiarities of the human condition – being a part of the natural world yet capable of transcending our natural drives, possessing biological instincts as well as an intellect, struggling both with our environments and within ourselves. Unlike the elegance and harmony reflected in the cosmos, the human realm is messily complicated, and the challenges that face Man, with his unique combination of heavenly and earthly characteristics, are daunting.

As I have seen news of this study looking at the relationship between religion and morality, I thought I’d link to it for anyone that’s interested.

This is the link to the study

Most of the headlines I have seen have been trumpeting the fact that the non-religious also have the capacity for morality, we’ll I’ll be, what a surprise. Here’s one from the Telegraph today:-

Atheists are the first to throw this fact at the religious world, as if all Christians believe that non-Christians are utterly incapable of morality. Of course this is nonsense, however, I would still maintain that a sense of morality is hard-wired in the human heart, by the designer, as a ‘restraining grace’ in all folks, regardless of belief. It is of course possible to deaden this sense of morality, by repeated acts of immorality, but in general and given the propensity for humans to perpetrate evil, this ‘restraining grace’ of morality is needed to stop the world degenerating into chaos and anarchy.

This is how Science and Religion Today introduce the study:-

Did morality appear before religion?

Marc Hauser of Harvard University and Ilkka Pyysiäinen of the University of Helsinki have published an opinion piece in Trends in Cognitive Sciences that looks at the link between morality and religion.

They point out that several psychological studies (many conducted using the Moral Sense Test) have shown that when it comes to unfamiliar moral dilemmas, atheists and those with a religious background show no difference in their moral judgments—suggesting that our intuitive judgments of right and wrong operate independently from our religious beliefs. Experiments did show that people with a religious background were more likely to sacrifice their own lives to save the greatest number of others, but the researchers argue that “religious pressures might lead people to offer this judgment because they believe it is the morally appropriate answer. What religion can do, and what political and legal institutions can do as well, is alter local and highly specific cases. And yet, they appear to have no influence at all on the intuitive system that operates more generally, and for unfamiliar cases.”

Here’s a good example to illustrate the point:

In a wide variety of studies, using different methods and populations, subjects consistently judge actions that cause harm as worse than omissions causing the same harm—a distinction referred to as the omission bias. In some studies, and in some populations, specific examples might not reveal the omission bias, but rarely does one observe a reversal such that omissions are judged more harshly than actions. For example, although the Netherlands passed a bill in 2001 making both active euthanasia (administering an overdose to an individual who is suffering) and passive euthanasia (allowing to die by terminating life support) legally permissible, the Dutch show as strong an omission bias as American subjects, despite the fact that in the USA, active euthanasia is illegal. This reveals that the law, as a formal moral system, can only provide specific guidelines for specific actions, but such knowledge fails to penetrate or alter our folk moral intuitions. According to this view, and as noted above, explicit religious commitment seems to be comparable to law, providing specific guidelines for specific actions, but dissociated from the system that mediates moral intuitions.

The authors hope we can use their paper as a jumping-off point to further explore the complex relationship between religion and morality, concluding:

It seems that in many cultures religious concepts and beliefs have become the standard way of conceptualizing moral intuitions. Although, as we have discussed, this link is not a necessary one, many people have become so accustomed to using it, that criticism targeted at religion is experienced as a fundamental threat to our moral existence.