[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhJQp-q1Y1s]
Pope Benedict XVI on the left, Rowan Williams on the right
2
Monthly Archives: October 2009
Musical torture
Musicians are demanding to know if their music has been used to torture inmates at Guantanamo:
A high-profile coalition of artists — including the members of Pearl Jam, R.E.M. and the Roots — demanded Thursday that the government release the names of all the songs that were blasted since 2002 at prisoners for hours, even days, on end, to try to coerce cooperation or as a method of punishment.
The information has not yet been released, but I can assure the aforementioned that the use of their music for torture has spread far beyond Cuba. It is regularly employed by teenagers with IQ’s numerically lower than their age for tormenting the peace loving inhabitants of my neighbourhood; the bone rattling cacophony emanates from the subwoofers that seem to be concealed in every young person’s car trunk.
I normally respond with a healthy dose of J. S Bach at a similar volume but, alas, the tympana of most of these hearing damaged yahoos can only be stimulated by a full frontal 120 db assault of the raucous bedlam that passes for music in the 21st Century.
A circular argument from Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins frequently posits that the mechanism of evolution has made a world that presents the “illusion of design” and is “dripping with apparent design”. He does it here.
But there is no scientific evidence from which one can deduce that the appearance of design is an illusion created by natural selection – as if it were imbued with the purpose to deceive. It follows from the assumption that there is no God. The (unstated) reasoning is:
God does not exist;
the universe and especially life, presents the appearance of design by an intelligence – God;
since God does not exist the appearance of design is an illusion.
Yet Dawkins stoutly asserts that evolution removes all likelihood of the existence of God (the idea of God “goes out the window”): circular reasoning, since, in declaring the appearance of design a trick of natural selection, he as already made the assumption that God does not exist.
It is no more or less scientific to make the obverse case: God did indeed design life, but he used evolution to create the illusion – for the gullibly obstinate atheist – that life spontaneously developed without any assistance outside of the mechanism of natural selection. And people like Dawkins have fallen for it. Would God do such a seemingly absurd thing? Perhaps, since for those that wish to see, the evidence for his existence permeates the universe; he does allow those who wish to do without him to have their way, though and – Dawkins and his acolytes are having theirs.
The Church of England, heading for oblivion at full throttle
The Roman Catholic church is poaching in Rowan’s Anglican empire. Rowan did not anticipate Rome’s offer to absorb disaffected Anglicans: it came as a shock, had nothing to do with ecumenism and certainly did not have Rowan’s consent.
Of course, Rowan has brought this on himself with weak – make that no – leadership, speeches that remain impenetrable even by Ephraim Radner standards and an ivory tower elitism that has placed his thinking out of reach and beyond the sympathy of the common man.
Combine this with the mayhem in North America and it is clear that the Western Anglican Church is going under. What may have been forgotten is that, in addition to the woes of its spiritual and numerical decline, the clouded vision of the CofE led it to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management. The only individual who stands to benefit from this is hoax magnate and conman extraordinaire, Al Gore who is making money hand over fist.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cCxdT6Trko&feature=related]
So, Western Anglicanism: spiritually and morally bankrupt and soon to be financially bankrupt.
Vengeance is mine; I will repay saith the Lord.
Adelita
By Francisco Tarrega:
Should we legislate morality?
The answer used to be a unequivocal “yes” since the alternative is to legislate amorality; life is no longer so clear-cut:
Lorne Gunter: Prostitution may be immoral, but it shouldn’t be illegal
I have sympathy for the groups lining up in Ontario Superior Court to preserve Canada’s laws against prostitution.
As Derek Bell, a lawyer representing the Christian Legal Fellowship, the Catholic Civil Rights League and REAL Women of Canada told Madame Justice Susan Himel yesterday, “the prohibitions contained in [the Criminal Code] in part were designed to protect public morals and against moral corruption.”
These are important considerations. I don’t want my daughter or yours or any other young girl drawn into prostitution. Like the largely Christian groups asking the court to turn down a constitutional challenge of the ban on prostitution — brought by a dominatrix, a former sex trade worker and a working prostitute — I oppose prostitution on moral grounds.
But I am even more opposed to laws dictating morals between consenting adults. The state has no business proscribing what is right and wrong for people quite capable of making up their own minds. I would not, for instance, overturn laws against statutory rape, child pornography or bestiality; children and animals cannot give informed consent. Nor am I in favour of legalizing murder, assault, rape or robbery, because no one has a right to take another’s life, liberty, wellbeing, dignity or property without their consent.
Such is the argument of the Libertarian. The problem with it is this:
On the one hand, Gunter says prostitution, while immoral, should not be illegal, implying the legality of a thing should rest on something other than morality.
On the other, he asserts that laws that allow the harming of one individual by another must stand; the difference is in the harming of an individual, something which he would view as, well… immoral.
This is not untypical of those who proclaim that we cannot “legislate morality”: the truth is, everyone wants to legislate morality. It’s just that the only moral imperative left in our civilisation is “do what you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone”; but it is still a moral imperative, albeit a narrow and short-sighted one. The Libertarian might make the argument that laws against murder, theft and so on are there merely to maintain order; but that doesn’t further the argument, since it assumes that order in human society is better – more moral – than disorder.
So Lorne, we do legislate morality and prostitution, if immoral, should also be illegal.
The World Council of Churches makes a fool of itself – again
Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, general secretary of the World Council of Churches shaking hands with the devil:
In a recent meeting with a delegation from the World Council of Churches (WCC) visiting Pyongyang, North Korean president Kim Yong-nam said a significant impetus to solving the nuclear weapons stand-off in the region would be for North Korea and the U.S. to meet “face-to-face with each other”.
Kim, the president of the Presidium of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Supreme People’s Assembly, said the region needs to be denuclearized. He alluded to a certain unfairness within the Six Party Talks, saying that the members of the talks are “all nuclear powers or enjoy nuclear protection by the United States” with the sole exception of North Korea.
He also said that the armistice agreement which effectively ended the Korean War but did not bring peace to the region “should be replaced with a peace agreement between North Korea and the United States”.
Kim’s comments were made during his 70-minute meeting with the WCC general secretary, the Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, on Monday afternoon 19 October in Pyongyang.
What is wrong with this picture; well, this for a start:
In the remote north-eastern corner of North Korea, close to the border of Russia and China, is Haengyong. Hidden away in the mountains, this remote town is home to Camp 22 – North Korea’s largest concentration camp, where thousands of men, women and children accused of political crimes are held.
Now, it is claimed, it is also where thousands die each year and where prison guards stamp on the necks of babies born to prisoners to kill them.
Over the past year harrowing first-hand testimonies from North Korean defectors have detailed execution and torture, and now chilling evidence has emerged that the walls of Camp 22 hide an even more evil secret: gas chambers where horrific chemical experiments are conducted on human beings.
Witnesses have described watching entire families being put in glass chambers and gassed. They are left to an agonising death while scientists take notes. The allegations offer the most shocking glimpse so far of Kim Jong-il’s North Korean regime.
And this:
Grandsons are condemned to life-long terms as slave laborers alongside their grandfathers, both equally helpless in the brutal surroundings. Prisoners are arbitrarily murdered by security guards. Women suffer from forced abortions at the hands of unlicensed doctors. Newborn babies are beaten to death. And sons and daughters are publicly executed in front of their mothers.
And this:
WASHINGTON – A woman in her 20s executed by a firing squad after being caught with a Bible. Five Christian church leaders punished by being run over by a steamroller before a crowd of spectators who “cried, screamed out, or fainted when the skulls made a popping sound as they were crushed.”
These and other “horrifying” violations of human rights and religious freedom in North Korea are reported in a new study by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, titled “‘Thank You, Father Kim Il Sung’: Eyewitness Accounts of Severe Violations of Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion in North Korea.”
Sarabande
A Sarabande by J. S. Bach that I found while digging through a pile of old sheet music:
Rowan Williams tries to make the best of it
As the Anglican empire crumbles around him, Rowan Williams wants to “work together” with Rome to assist in its further dismemberment; the good news is that efforts towards “ecumenism” and “ARCIC” can continue unabated – not that anyone really cares.
Hats off to Rowan, though, for being able to say that this move by the Vatican should not “in any sense be seen as a commentary on Anglican problems”; not many could pull that off with a straight face.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itIF0k-nluo]
The Episcopal Church has a promotion
TEC has issued a characteristically vague statement in response to the Vatican’s recent overtures to disaffected Anglicans.
The last sentence struck me as particularly revealing since it unwittingly portrays the confusion of TEC’s view of its mission:
The Episcopal Church is a member of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and works together with other Provinces and with our ecumenical and interfaith partners to promote God’s reign on earth.
God does reign on earth, with or without promotion from TEC. What Jesus asks of TEC is in the Great Commission:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
TEC is too busy promoting its own reign on earth to bother with this.