Canadian youth favour traditional roles for men and women

Or, to put it in Newspeak “old-fashion gender roles”.

From here:

Young Canadians are carrying around some gender stereotypes that seem more in line with what their parents or grandparents might have thought, a new global study suggests.

The report, released Thursday by the development agency Plan International, found 31 per cent of Canadian boys aged 12 to 17 believe a woman’s most important role is feeding her family and taking care of the home.

That compared to 15 per cent of boys in the United Kingdom, but well short of 73 per cent in India and 68 per cent in Rwanda, who answered the same way.

When the question was asked of Canadian adults, 24 per cent agreed that a woman’s primary role should be in the home.

Almost half — 48 per cent — of the Canadian adolescents polled said men should be responsible for earning an income and providing for their families. Among Canadian adults, 43 per cent felt the same way.

[….]

Joan Simalchik, a professor of gender studies at the University of Toronto, also expressed surprise over the results.

“That’s not what we see at universities, and it’s not quite what we see in the real world,” she said of the idea that so many young Canadians are holding out-of-date views on the sexes.

Obviously, the prodigious efforts that schools make at indoctrinating their charges out of “out-of-date views on the sexes” isn’t working too well.

Sometimes I love a backlash.

 

The Anglican Church wants to know what Anglicans think of the Bible

From here:

As part of the Bible in the Life of the Church project we are undertaking a Communion-wide survey of the way Anglicans understand and engage with the Bible. We rightly say the Bible is central to our life together but we also engage with it and interpret it in different ways. What are those differences? Why might there be differences? What can we learn from those who differ from us?

Naturally, instead of the starting position being that the Bible is God’s propositional revelation to man, making it the main way to find out what God is like and what he expects of us, the assumption is that the Bible is to be engaged with – whatever that means.

To that end, the survey asks such engaging questions as whether the following are true:

The Bible contains some human errors

Science shows that some things in the Bible cannot have happened

Christians can learn about God from the writings of other faiths

Some parts of the Bible are more true than others [what does “more true” mean? Is Anglican truth a mark on a sliding scale between Absolutely True and Absolutely False. Perhaps my view of truth has been conditioned by spending too long with computers – I thought true/false was a binary condition]

Jesus rose from the dead in bodily form

Jesus ascended into heaven

If I were an optimist, I would conclude that the survey is a surreptitious attempt to discover how far heretical rot has penetrated into the laity in order that drastic remedial steps could be taken. As it is, I’m not an optimist.

Particles travelling faster than light

From here:

An international team of scientists said on Thursday they had recorded sub-atomic particles traveling faster than light — a finding that could overturn one of Einstein’s long-accepted fundamental laws of the universe.

Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, told Reuters that measurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done.

“We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing,” he said. “We now want colleagues to check them independently.”

Goodbye Einstein, welcome Star Trek warp drive, time travel and really fast Internet speeds.

Science is always changing: some things remain constant:

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him? Ps 8

 

 

At the execution of Troy Davis

Lesbian Unitarian ministers wept, Alec Baldwin called those who disagree with him “blood-thirsty right wing trash” and Michael Moore declared Georgia a “murderous state”, adding:

“I encourage everyone I know to never travel to Georgia, never buy anything made in Georgia, to never do business in Georgia,”

Which is odd, since he has just made plans to travel to Iran which, in 1988, executed 30,000 people without any trial at all – and Iran continues to administer its version of justice with undiminished vigour.

That must be OK because, like Michael Moore, Iran hates America.

So go the arguments against the death penalty.

Richard Dawkins promotes his new devotional

Further evidence that the atheism of Richard Dawkins is a religion: he wants his book to be read as a family devotional.

 

Amongst the condescending smarm, at around 1:42, Dawkins intones this:

Among the myths in several of the chapters, you’ll find the Judeo-Christian myth – not given any special privileged position, but just tucked in there somewhere……

What I want to know is, if some nincompoop invented Christianity, why didn’t he make it easier to be an adherent of it?

After all, the aim of contemporary new age religions is to make everyone just feel good, often with the assistance of the inhalation of illegal substances. Who in his right mind would invent a religion whose incentive to join was imminent death and torture?

 

According to the Diocese of Niagara, God loves Muslims more than ANiC Christians

Until now I had laboured under the impression that God loves everyone equally: sinners, saints, Christians, Muslims – and so on. Not so, according to the Niagara Anglican, the newspaper of the Diocese of Niagara.

Apparently he loves Muslims more than dissenters; and by dissenters, our author is referring to ANiC parishioners who departed the Anglican Church of Canada because it blesses same-sex marriages – although this is merely the tip of the heretical iceberg.

Were it not for the absence of an editorial comment distancing the paper from the remark, one might be tempted to dismiss it as yet another crackpot notion from Michael Burslem, a regular contributor to the paper. As it is, it obviously meets editorial and diocesan standards – and probably approval (the article is not online yet):

I’m equally convinced that God loves Muslims more than dissenters; those who cause bitter dissent and even schism in congregations and dioceses that a portion should up and leave. Since God loves us all, there is nothing that should cause us to love one another less than He does, even such subjects as the same-sex debate. Paul condemned settling matters in court as he did homosexual relations. He preferred all to be celibate as himself. However, Paul is not the Law, any more than the Bible is, and thanks be to God no one is saved by obeying the law, Paul’s the Bible or any other.

 

 

 

St Barnabas, Pierrefonds, Quebec reaches out to the community

The Rev’d Canon Alan T. Perry is the rector at St Barnabas Church, Pierrefonds, Quebec. He tells us that:

We are an active, multi-cultural parish of the Anglican Church of Canada in the Diocese of Montreal, seeking to share the love of Christ in our midst

One of the many ways Alan T. Perry has found to share the love of Christ in our midst is to rent church land to Rogers for them to build a cell tower. Whether the hazards of living close to a cell tower are real or imagined doesn’t make much difference to the fact that those who are unhappy about it feel more radio waves than love emanating from the church.

Love is a part of this, of course: the love of raking some cash into an impecunious diocese.

It’s all part of being a mission shaped church.

Saudi Arabia v.s. Ethical Oil

The Saudi government has hired a law firm to prevent the airing of an advertisement by ethicaloil.org. The advertisement makes the redundantly obvious point that it is better to buy oil from Alberta than an Islamist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic tyranny that would have remained a sand-ridden wasteland populated by antediluvian barbarians had it not been for a Paleozoic accident.

From here:

OTTAWA – Efforts to silence an advertising campaign about Saudi Arabian oil before it re-airs in Canada have succeeded in keeping the ads off of CTV News Channel.

QMI Agency has acquired an e-mail that indicates the broadcaster cancelled a booking for an Ethicaloil.org ad campaign that presents Saudi Arabian oil as an ‘unethical’ energy choice.

“Our position should be that we are in receipt of notice of a legal dispute with respect to this spot and that, accordingly, we will not broadcast the spot until the legal dispute is resolved,” reads the e-mail quoting CTV’s legal department.

The ads have raised the ire of the Saudi government because they equate buying Saudi oil with helping fund a kingdom that oppresses women while presenting Alberta’s oilsands as a more humane alternative.

Sun News Network is still running the ads.

Saudi Arabia’s government has hired a high-powered law firm to get the ads banned. Individual broadcasters have also received warnings not to run the ads.

The Saudis clearly find the advertisement convincing or they would not be exerting themselves to suppress it.

First Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco

Now he’s mislaid his brain in Timbuctoo.

From here:

Legendary singer Tony Bennett has waded into a new controversy by saying America “caused” the attacks on the Twin Towers.

[….]

“But who are the terrorists? Are we the terrorists or are they the terrorists? Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Bennett said talking about the aftermath of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

[….]

“They flew the plane in, but we caused it,” Bennett said. “Because we were bombing them and they told us to stop.”