The Anglican Church of Canada desperately seeking real and deeper meaning

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The Anglican Church of Canada, in the form of Archdeacon Paul Feheley, has waded into the controversy over an Aukland church’s depiction of the Annunciation on a billboard.

From here:

The church has said the billboard is intended to provoke debate, a goal that Archdeacon Paul Feheley, principal secretary to the primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, supports.

“Getting people to think about the real and deeper meaning of these events is a really good thing,” Feheley said. “Will it make some uncomfortable? Of course it will. But any thought-provoking ad does that.

Christians believe that Mary was a virgin, was impregnated by the Holy Spirit and gave birth to Jesus, the Son of God: a virgin gave birth to baby who was 100% human and 100% God. The question I have for Paul Feheley is: “what meaning could he possibly ascribe to the event that would be more ‘real’ or ‘deeper’ than that?”

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Turning the tables on Rowan Williams

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Rowan Williams, having bungled his job as leader of the Anglican communion, now confines most of his bon mots to setting the British government straight. David Cameron, taking his cue from the Archbishop of Canterbury has a few suggestions of his own:

David Cameron last night called on the Archbishop of Canterbury to lead a return to the ‘moral code’ of the Bible.

In a highly personal speech about faith, the Prime Minister accused Dr Rowan Williams of failing to speak ‘to the whole nation’ when he criticised Government austerity policies and expressed sympathy with the summer rioters.

Mr Cameron declared Britain ‘a Christian country’ and said politicians and churchmen should not be afraid to say so.

Will Rowan Williams, after being revived with smelling salts, respond by pointing out that declaring Britain a Christian country is not inclusive enough for the Church of England? Will he repeat his plea to adopt sharia law? Will he point out that, as a Druid, he is free of dogma and any fixed set of beliefs or practices and can’t understand all this “moral code” and “Bible” nonsense.

Or will he give his anti-capitalist inclinations full expression by joining the other dishevelled, bearded man in a Christmas protest at St. Paul’s?

More information than most of us want to know

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From here:

Sharing apps such as Foursquare already let us share where we eat, drink and shop.

Now ‘I Just Made Love’ lets you log and GPS-tag your private life in just the same way – and, bizarrely, some people seem to want to.

The Android app has been downloaded 10,000 times, and rated five stars by dozens of users.

‘Did you just make love? Or just want to check where people near you made love?’ says the app.

‘I just made love lets you do all that and more!’

Reminds me of a song by the incomparable Jake Thackray:

And now for a completely different Annunciation

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From here:

A billboard put up outside an Auckland church has been labelled “weird” and “inappropriate”.

It shows the Virgin Mary clearly shocked as she looks at a positive pregnancy test – but it’s not the first time the church has courted controversy.

It’s supposed to be the Virgin Mary’s moment of epiphany.

“I think it’s really weird,” one person told 3 News. “I don’t think it’s that appropriate to have outside a church.”

“It’s weird, but not really offensive,” said another.

“Well, I obviously don’t agree with it being weird and creepy,” says Glynn Cardy, vicar at of St Matthew-in-the-City, who came up with the idea for the billboard.

“It’s trying to make people think about Christmas and to then think compassionately and kindly about people in a similar situation.”

When Glynn Cardy tells us it should make us think “kindly about people in a similar situation “, he has a point: there are pregnant virgins popping up all over the place these days.

Christopher Hitchens misunderstands totalitarianism

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From here:

I have one consistency, which is [being] against the totalitarian – on the left and on the right. The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes. And the origins of that are theocratic, obviously. The beginning of that is the idea that there is a supreme leader, or infallible pope, or a chief rabbi, or whatever, who can ventriloquise the divine and tell us what to do.

I think Hitchens is correct in defining totalitarianism as the enemy – although, “political enemy” would be more accurate. Where he misses the mark is identifying God as the supreme totalitarian.

In practice, the most evil totalitarians have been godless individuals who, without the restraints that fear of the Divine engenders, cavalierly visited murder and mayhem on their own people.

If the Triune God exists, as I believe he does, far from being a celestial tyrant, he is the creator of human freedom, a freedom which allowed humanity the choice of rebelling against its Creator to the cost of God himself in his atoning sacrifice on the cross.

If God does not exist, if the natural is all there is, the true tyrant is our genetic makeup and the molecules in our brains: they guarantee that no choice we make can ever be free of what they compel us to do.

Gay penguins no longer gay

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From here:

It appears the Toronto Zoo’s famously same-sex pair of penguins have not only gone their separate ways, but are even pursuing female partners.

Buddy and Pedro, a pair of male African penguins whose same-sex bond made worldwide headlines this fall, were separated in November so they could mate with females.

Those who argue that the existence of homosexual behaviour in animals shows that homosexuality is natural in humans, should now be arguing that since homosexual penguins can change their ways, homosexual humans can, too.

I’m not holding my breath, though.

Richard Dawkins is an incompetent atheist

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According to Peter Mullen here:

Richard Dawkins says that David Cameron is “not really a Christian”. The fact is that it is only God to whom all hearts be open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid. So Dawkins has no means of telling whether Cameron is a genuine Christian or not.

We can, however, know that Dawkins is not a proper atheist – that is an intelligent atheist – from his own puerile writing and pathetic attempts at philosophical theology. For example, he writes: “Either God exists or he doesn’t. It is a scientific question. The existence of God is a scientific question, like any other.”

This is idiotic. Science investigates material phenomena, observable entities in the universe. No competent theologians or philosophers – not even the atheist ones – have ever declared that God (if he exists) is an object in his own universe. Perhaps there is no God, and intelligent Christians readily admit that there may be some legitimate doubt. But if the Judaeo-Christian God exists, then he is the maker of the universe and not an entity within it.

That is why science can make legitimate pronouncements on whether bigfoot, fairies, flying spaghetti monsters – and even Greek gods who were believed to be a part of the natural universe – exist, but not God the Creator, whose actuality is independent of his creation.