The UK Government wants to change the law to allow religious organisations to discriminate in the workplace
Once again the worst of humanity is surfacing during a terrible crisis. Pat Robertson claims that the disaster struck because the people of Haiti made a pact with the devil, or is it perhaps because there is a major fault line between tecktonic plates that runs right through port o prince, and the city has been built with no architectural consideration for earthquakes? No it couldn't be, that's far too simple an explanation, after all, bad things happen to bad people and good things happend to good people right?
Once again the worst of humanity is surfacing during a terrible crisis. Pat Robertson claims that the disaster struck because the people of Haiti made a pact with the devil, or is it perhaps because there is a major fault line between tecktonic plates that runs right through port o prince, and the city has been built with no architectural consideration for earthquakes? No it couldn't be, that's far too simple an explanation, after all, bad things happen to bad people and good things happend to good people right?
The fate of Haiti has moved us all, and now there is a way of donating money to aid organisations that don't confuse faith with compassion.
Being 'spiritual' is automatically seen as a good thing, even though it is a vague term. I'd rather celebrate being human
Who knew? I certainly didn’t. And, I’ll make mention now that it’s christian OEC, not YEC. As if that makes it much better, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.
God Sues Researchers for DNA Piracy
Patent Office Discovers 17-Billion-Year-Old Filing in Archives
It’s kind of amusing, but not a patch on the quality exhibited by the likes of The Onion. I’ll give them a B+ for effort, though.
This one, by the same author, isn’t so clever… Are strawmen funny?
No, not the Ripley from Alien, but the other one, the one of weird shit fame.
Forget Ripley’s Believe It Or Not; instead we now have Mohammed’s Believe It Or Else! (PDF)
Here’s a sample of the insanity…
/hattip to Mark D in a comment over at Unreasonable Faith.
I watched one of the best episodes of Fringe I've seen last night. It was an "Unaired" episode I found. It was called Unearthed, and should have been shown as part of Season 1 last year.
So I wondered, as no doubt so are you now, why wasn't it shown? There was never talk of it being canned like so many other wonderful sci-fi series last year. Having watched it for about ten minutes or so, I started to hazard a guess as to why it hadn't been shown. ten minutes before the end I knew for certain!
The story is about a girl that is pronounced brain dead. The mother decides to switch off the life support, and the girl promptly dies. During the surgery to remove her organs, the girl wakes up, spouting an alpha-numeric code. Standard Fringe plot so far. As we'd expect, the team get assigned to investigate the phenomenon at hand.
Without listing any spoilers, as it's well worth a watch, I will reveal why I believe this episode wasn't aired. Being an atheist ("No, I'm shocked!" you cry) I noticed straight away the last rights being performed on the girl before the life support was switched off. The mother was Catholic. As the plot progressed as I have already described, the mother protested to the team's help with her traumatised daughter and their investigation. In true suspicious style, often seen in people of faith protecting their children (or at least that's what they think they're doing) the woman asks "Are you a religious woman, Agent Denham?", she replies "No.". "Then I imagine that you sit in judgement of those of us who rely on faith to guide our decisions about what's best for our loved ones". I was in complete shock! No more than people with faith sit in judgement of us, believe me!!
In moving on the plot prompts discussions of faith and leans slightly towards advocating scepticism (given we are dealing with a series primarily based upon the ties between one world and a parallel one, not really shocking!), a questioning of scientific methods, and an outright accusation of being false, when the scientist suggests a paranormal theory THAT IS BASED ON THE EVIDENCE AT HAND (in Fringe world anyway!).
Obviously the challenging of religious folk in not something that Fox are willing to stomach in their series. It is common, these days that we witness such cowardice in religious discussion. I fear that one of the main reasons for this is companies such as Fox being unwilling to start the discussion off in the first place, just in case some fundamentalist gets offended and switches off their TV. I am all for tolerance of beliefs, but not for tiptoe-ing around them, especially when a majority belief system such as Atheism, or Humanism depending on your preference of term, is frequently side-lined and undermined by those organisations whose power is simply a nostalgic nod to what once was so important.
GG
I watched one of the best episodes of Fringe I've seen last night. It was an "Unaired" episode I found. It was called Unearthed, and should have been shown as part of Season 1 last year.
So I wondered, as no doubt so are you now, why wasn't it shown? There was never talk of it being canned like so many other wonderful sci-fi series last year. Having watched it for about ten minutes or so, I started to hazard a guess as to why it hadn't been shown. ten minutes before the end I knew for certain!
The story is about a girl that is pronounced brain dead. The mother decides to switch off the life support, and the girl promptly dies. During the surgery to remove her organs, the girl wakes up, spouting an alpha-numeric code. Standard Fringe plot so far. As we'd expect, the team get assigned to investigate the phenomenon at hand.
Without listing any spoilers, as it's well worth a watch, I will reveal why I believe this episode wasn't aired. Being an atheist ("No, I'm shocked!" you cry) I noticed straight away the last rights being performed on the girl before the life support was switched off. The mother was Catholic. As the plot progressed as I have already described, the mother protested to the team's help with her traumatised daughter and their investigation. In true suspicious style, often seen in people of faith protecting their children (or at least that's what they think they're doing) the woman asks "Are you a religious woman, Agent Denham?", she replies "No.". "Then I imagine that you sit in judgement of those of us who rely on faith to guide our decisions about what's best for our loved ones". I was in complete shock! No more than people with faith sit in judgement of us, believe me!!
In moving on the plot prompts discussions of faith and leans slightly towards advocating scepticism (given we are dealing with a series primarily based upon the ties between one world and a parallel one, not really shocking!), a questioning of scientific methods, and an outright accusation of being false, when the scientist suggests a paranormal theory THAT IS BASED ON THE EVIDENCE AT HAND (in Fringe world anyway!).
Obviously the challenging of religious folk in not something that Fox are willing to stomach in their series. It is common, these days that we witness such cowardice in religious discussion. I fear that one of the main reasons for this is companies such as Fox being unwilling to start the discussion off in the first place, just in case some fundamentalist gets offended and switches off their TV. I am all for tolerance of beliefs, but not for tiptoe-ing around them, especially when a majority belief system such as Atheism, or Humanism depending on your preference of term, is frequently side-lined and undermined by those organisations whose power is simply a nostalgic nod to what once was so important.
GG
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