What we’ve all been waiting for: a Muslim-friendly Bible

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If a Muslim gave me a Christian-friendly Koran, I would congratulate him on doubting his faith and hand him a New Testament. Why anyone thinks that this would earn anything but contempt from Muslims is beyond me:

now there is a major controversy developing as the latest altered Bibles are being created by organizations that most would think of as being more conservative and reasonable. At the forefront of the controversy are the Wycliffe Bible Translators, the Summer Institute of Linguistics and Frontiers, all of which are producing Bible translations that remove or modify terms which they have deemed offensive to Muslims.

That’s right: Muslim-friendly Bibles.

Included in the controversial development is the removal of any references to God as “Father,” to Jesus as the “Son” or “the Son of God.” One example of such a change can be seen in an Arabic version of the Gospel of Matthew produced and promoted by Frontiers and SIL. It changes Matthew 28:19 from this:

“baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”

to this:

“cleanse them by water in the name of Allah, his Messiah and his Holy Spirit.”

 

The 39 articles, Readers’ Digest version

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From here:

The Executive Council of the Episcopal Church issued the following message at the conclusion of its three-day meeting in Linthicum Heights, Maryland

A Message from Executive Council
January 29, 2012
Linthicum Heights, Maryland

God is awesome
The Good News is not fair
God always acts first

So there you have it: the Anglican Credo circa 2012, the 39 articles in a shrunken trivial trinity, a tertiary triteness, a bromidic banality, a diabolical dephlegmation.

Or perhaps it’s so profound, I missed the point and should repeat it:

God is awesome
The Good News is not fair
God always acts first

I might set it to music to see if that helps.

The definitive marriage of convenience

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From here:

A gay air steward for the Russian carrier Aeroflot was forced to marry a woman in order to keep his job, campaigners say.

GayRussia.eu reported that campaigners had filed notice of a demonstration after gay employee Maxim Kupreev suffered unusual kind of discrimination by his employer.

When Kupreev, 25, tried to found a gay support network at the airline, he was seemingly ordered to marry.

The gay steward tied the knot with his school friend Sofia Mikhailova so he could keep his job at the end of last year, reportedly to minimise publicity for his attempted LGBT network.

What did Sofia Mikhailova get out of this arranged marriage, one wonders. Airmiles? An upgrade to Aeroflot first class with unlimited inflight borsch soup (I had it almost every day when I was in Russia; it’s not that bad – really)?

I know: free stock in Aeroflot.

 

Canadian understatement of the year

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The Shafia murder trial has tarnished the image of Muslims in Canada.

From here:

TORONTO — The Shafia murder trial has cast a shadow over Canada’s Islamic community, further tarnishing an image that has not yet recovered from the events of 911.

Muslims across the country, however, say the revelations in a Kingston, Ont., courtroom have shone a light on problematic aspects of their culture and illuminated new ways to tackle the issues.

The “issues” are: honour killing – what used to be known as cold-blooded murder; polygamy; misogyny and wife abuse, all of which appear to be inexorably intertwined with Islam.

In the absence of Muslims acknowledging this, what “new ways to tackle the issues” could there possibly be?

Requests to nullify Baptism on the rise

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From here:

An elderly French man is fighting to make a formal break with the Catholic Church, in a case that could have far-reaching effects.

Rene LeBouvier, 71, has taken the church to court over its refusal to let him nullify his baptism after losing his faith in the religion.

Though he was raised in a community where Catholicism dominated every walk of life, Rene changed his views in the 1970s after spending time with ‘free thinkers’.

On first glance this seems plain silly – on second glance too, come to think of it.

After sober reflection, though, it occurred to me that perhaps LeBouvier has a point. I was confirmed by the Diocese of Niagara: I will be applying to be de-confirmed forthwith.

 

Atheists for church burning

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Having no rational argument to support their belief system, atheists in Fort Bragg are resorting to a video that celebrates church and book burning to advertise an atheism festival. Christians, being considerably more civilised, intelligent and emotionally secure are not advocating burning The God Delusion or this in retaliation.

From here:

Atheists are using a music video that celebrates the burning of churches and synagogues to promote an upcoming atheist-themed festival at Fort Bragg.

“Rock Beyond Belief” is scheduled to be held on the parade field at Fort Bragg in March. The event was created in part as a response to a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association event that was held last year.

Here is the video (notice, I didn’t call it a music video):

St. John’s Shaughnessy is like a mausoleum

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Since the Diocese of New Westminster won the court battle for the buildings of parishes that left the diocese and joined ANiC, St. John’s Shaughnessy, once the largest Anglican parish in Canada, has gone downhill a little. Sunday attendance has dropped from 850 to between 3 and 13; the parish is running a deficit of $20,000 per month and in the week, the building, according to the treasurer, is like a mausoleum.

This was discussed is a parish meeting in November 2011.

Here is the mausoleum remark:

And the $20,000 per month deficit:

Who is paying for this deficit, you might be wondering? The well known philanthropist, Bishop Michael Ingham:

You can listen to the whole meeting here:

A triumph of Pyrrhic proportions for Bishop Michael Ingham.

Deifying atheism

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Alain de Botton wants something awe inspiring in his life, something to foster love, friendship, and goodness. Something transcendent one might be tempted to think if it were not for the fact that Botton is an atheist and so is compelled to reach the obtuse conclusion that his longing for transcendence is evidence that it doesn’t exist.

Not to be deterred, he has decided to build a temple to his god: atheism. It purports to be a celebration of life on earth, culminating in the human genome sequence inscribed in binary on the outside walls – a tribute to man’s ego as much as atheism.

Botton’s atheism purports to be a more positive form of atheism than that of Richard Dawkins, but adopting the aesthetics of religion while denying its truth doesn’t seem to me to be much less misguided than rejecting both.

Rev. George Pitcher seems to think it is a good idea – a sure indicator that it isn’t

From here:

Plans to build a £1m “temple for atheists” among the international banks and medieval church spires of the City of London have sparked a clash between two of Britain’s most prominent non-believers.

The philosopher and writer Alain de Botton is proposing to build a 46-metre (151ft) tower to celebrate a “new atheism” as an antidote to what he describes as Professor Richard Dawkins’s “aggressive” and “destructive” approach to non-belief.

Rather than attack religion, De Botton said he wants to borrow the idea of awe-inspiring buildings that give people a better sense of perspective on life.

“Normally a temple is to Jesus, Mary or Buddha, but you can build a temple to anything that’s positive and good,” he said. “That could mean a temple to love, friendship, calm or perspective. Because of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens atheism has become known as a destructive force. But there are lots of people who don’t believe but aren’t aggressive towards religions.”

Is Richard Dawkins intelligently designed?

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I have to admit, the evidence from his own lips suggests not.

From here:

“We still don’t know what exactly happened at the time of the Big Bang, 13.72 billion years ago. Cosmologists and physicists now have good ideas which are yet to be proved definitely, that the whole universe came into being as a quantum event out of literally nothing,” he said, according to the Times of India.

“This leaves religion with nowhere to go. Because however difficult it may be to explain the origin of the cosmos, it would be even more difficult to explain the origin of a designer who made the cosmos.

“So you have absolutely nothing to gain by postulating any kind of intelligent designer, because that simply evades the question we’re trying to solve. If you want to believe in some kind of god, don’t look to science.”

There are three problems with this.

First, it confuses the categories of things that have an origin – like the universe – and things that don’t – like God. God, by definition is a necessary not a contingent being: he does not depend on something else for his existence. To look for a cause for the universe’s coming into being makes sense, to look for a cause for God’s coming into existence has no meaning because, in order to be God, he must have always existed.

Second, saying: “the whole universe came into being as a quantum event out of literally nothing” doesn’t solve the problem of how something that requires a cause for its existence arrived, apparently, without a cause: what caused the “quantum event”?

Third, since Richard Dawkins’ atheism is a presupposition not something that has been demonstrated logically or empirically, it isn’t surprising that science can’t help him find something he is already convinced isn’t there. Scientists who do not start out with a belief that God does not exist see a great deal of evidence for a universe that has been designed.