Melanie Phillips lays into Richard Dawkins

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Read it all Here:

The most famous atheist in the world, biologist Professor Richard Dawkins, poses as the arch-apostle of reason, a scientist who stands for empirical truth in opposition to obscurantism and lies. What follows suggests that in fact he is sloppy and cavalier with both facts and reasoning to a disturbing degree.

Dawkins seems to be more interested in his celebrity status than the truth; I really don’t think he can be in it just for the money, but a combination of cash, fame and glory appear to be what motivates him.

Richard Dawkins: the Elmer Gantry of atheists.

Richard Dawkins: the 4 commandments

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In his book, “River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life” Richard Dawkins maintains:

“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

This is an honest, bleak assessment of a universe without God. Dawkins does not manage to live down to his own belief system, however: in “The God Delusion“, in spite of the absence of good or evil, Dawkins maintains that atheists can be “moral”.

What does it mean to be “moral” in Richard Dawkins’ view? Here, we find the 4 commandments, written in naturally selected primeval  soup, fossilised  and handed personally to Richard by Darwin himself:

Richard Dawkins’s Commandments

1. Enjoy your own sex life (so long as it damages nobody else) and leave others to enjoy theirs in private whatever their inclinations, which are none of your business.

2. Do not discriminate or oppress on the basis of sex, race or (as far as possible) species.

3. Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate science, and how to disagree with you.

4. Value the future of things on a timescale longer than your own.

It would be hard for any belief system to come up with a more bumper-sticker-worthy set of banalities.

Diocese of Niagara: building occupation 101

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Rev. Cheryl Fricker is the rector of St. Aidan’s Oakville; she has also been parachuted into St. Hilda’s as the “priest in charge” at the diocesan Potemkin St. Hilda’s.

At the building sharing hearing, the court gave the diocese access to St. Hilda’s building from 7:00 am – 10:00 am Sunday morning and for a 4 hour afternoon  and 3 hour evening period. The diocese, having no shame whatsoever, has appealed to people attending local parishes to come to their 8:30 a.m. Sunday service. They haven’t had much success. Orthodox Christians who remain in the diocesan parishes have expressed disgust at the diocesan attempts to create a bogus parish.

All this is being done to create the illusion that the diocese needs the building to accommodate the hoards of  people desperate to attend a diocesan service in the sparsely furnished, orange-carpeted, mould-smelling structure at 1258 Rebecca Street, Oakville.

The diocese is so confident  – or perhaps sloppy – that they are not even bothering to conceal the fact they are moving meetings from another parish to St. Hilda’s simply for the reason of occupying it. For example St. Aiden’s brazenly advertises that it has moved its bible study location:

Wednesday Bible Study

St. Aidan’s, Oakville

Our Wednesday Bible Study resumes looking at the resurrection appearances of Jesus in the four Gospels. All are welcome 1:30 to 3:00 at St. Hilda’s Anglican Church Oakville

Cost: no fee

April 29, 2009 – 1:30

There is little hope that anyone in the diocesan administration has enough moral fibre to protest, but, parishioners of St. Aidan’s, you do not need to be a party to the diocese’s contemptible games.

Christian teacher suspended over resisting homosexuality indoctrination

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From here:

A senior teacher has been suspended from his £50,000-a-year job after he complained that a training day for staff was used to promote gay rights.

Kwabena Peat, 54, was one of several Christian staff who walked out of the compulsory session at a North London school after an invited speaker questioned why people thought heterosexuality was natural.

The presentation was given by Sue Sanders, a co-founder of the Schools Out organisation which campaigns for gay equality in education.

According to Mr Peat, Ms Sanders, herself a lesbian, said that staff who did not accept that being gay was normal had ‘issues’ they had to deal with.

She started promoting homosexual lifestyles and suggesting those who had objections should sort out their prejudices. She said, “What makes you all think that to be heterosexual is natural?” It was at that point I walked out.’

By saying “What makes you all think that to be heterosexual is natural” one assumes that Sue Sanders is not about to make the case for heterosexual sex being supernatural; the point she is attempting to make is that, in the view of equality commissars, a homosexual act is no more contrary to nature’s intent than a heterosexual one. Little argument is given for this: we have already moved beyond discussion to enforcement.

Why might homosexual activity not be nature’s norm? The reasons don’t seem to be beyond the reach of common sense:

First, the plumbing is wrong.

Second, for those who believe we are here through natural selection, the homosexual gene – if it exists – is a dead end gene that eventually should be selected out; hardly a case for normality. The fact that it has not been either means we haven’t given it enough time, or we are not here through natural selection.

Third, if there is no homosexual gene, gayness becomes a lifestyle choice; it has no more claim to normality than any other unusual lifestyle choices. Most lifestyle eccentrics are proud of their peculiarities: to canvas for recognition of normality for freely chosen foibles would be self-defeating. No self-respecting eccentric wishes to be reduced to hum-drum, mediocre normality.

Forth, to bring in religion, all major faiths maintain that God’s design is for heterosexual sex within marriage – I am excluding Western Anglicanism since it isn’t a major faith.

Substituting tolerance for truth

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The person who wrote this is retired from a job as hired help for a certain denomination; guess which one (it begins with “A”):

Something far more radical and painfully sacrificial is needed if we are to ever engage meaningfully. We need to bring about a world of mutual, outward-going respect, a warmth that far surpasses mere tolerance. And I think here of kenosis, or self-emptying.

Traditionally the term has been used to denote the process whereby God empties himself of his divinity in order to experience the reality of our humanity. But in eastern orthodoxy and the writing of the mystics it refers more to a fresh spiritual beginning, a cleansing of our negative thought patterns so that we slough off all resentment, mistrust, prejudice and exclusivity, leaving the soul free for divine love to pour in.

The compassion and acceptance generated by this soul-purging would undoubtedly bring to birth a new era in inter-faith relationships. It would enable us to understand that truth is elusive and imprecise, and not the prerogative of any one religion, and it would allow us to see that all bigotry and fanaticism is anti-God.

If you guessed Anglican, you were correct. The writer, David Bryant is a retired Anglican vicar who is obviously uncomfortable with the proposition that Christianity is true while other religions are not: to think in such a way is fanatical and bigoted – just like St. Paul and the other apostles.

With the benefit of 2000 years of Christian thought to draw on, Rev. David Bryant has concluded “that truth is elusive and imprecise”; after all, what is truth?

Heading over the cliff together

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The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada have become increasingly cosy in the last few years.

Fred Hiltz, Anglican Primate and Susan Johnson, Lutheran National Bishop  delivered a joint Christmas message, Lutherans were present at the recent Anglican HOB meeting where lessons on diversity, inclusion, and how to break a moratorium while pretending to adhere to it were given.

Lutherans and Anglicans are considering sharing office space;  in Orillia they are sharing a church, both claim to be gaia green and they worship together.

The true bond, though, has been forged by the Lutheran church’s position on same-sex blessings, a position  which is at a similar stage to that of Anglicans: a determination to push ahead while creating an illusion of holding back.

Just as in the Anglican Church, Lutherans have suffered the consequence of their heresy in lost parishioners and revenue; so much so, that in a desperate bid to boost numbers, a merger with the Anglican Church of Canada is mentioned  in a non-derisory tone.

The question one has to ask is, would the combining of multiple church organisations bent on heresy hasten their demise as an arithmetic or geometric function of the number of joining entities?

One thing is certain, just as the demon possessed Gadarene swine hurtled to their doom, these two sorry excuses for churches will do likewise, all the while congratulating themselves on their prophetic insight as they sink into the abyss.

The skating vicar

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Roger Preece is evidence that the Church of England still has holy rollers.Add an Image

Roger Preece, 44, has been dubbed The Rolling Reverend after skating up and down the aisle of his church in roller blades.

Parishioners at St Mary’s Church, Bowden, near Altrincham, Cheshire, had expected a conventional sermon on the Resurrection.

But midway through his service the Rev Preece slipped on his blades, stepped out of the pulpit and took to the boards.

The one-time investment banker hit upon the roller-blading idea as a way of illustrating the astonishment that would have greeted Christ’s Resurrection.

I doubt that Rev. Roger needed to go to these lengths to astonish his congregation: the mere fact that an Anglican vicar believes in the resurrection is astonishing enough.

The most inane cliché in the galaxy

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The land of mindless, trite clichés is ripe with drivel so meaningless that to dwell there too long can induce a spontaneous lobotomy, rendering the hapless victim fit for nothing other than to be a business executive or, even worse, a bishop.

One of the most irritating is this: “Think Outside the Box”. It made its initial assault on humanity in the 1970s and was rapidly spread by Management Consultants who made a living preying on gullible executives. It is a tribute to its inventor that, just like a cleverly designed computer virus, it spread and multiplied and can still be found today living in the backwater recesses of pedestrian minds everywhere.

It takes an especially vacuous cove to come up with the vapid jumble of nonsense compressed into the following couple of sentences; it would be beyond most, but Michael Bird, bishop of Niagara is up to the task:

What I have absolutely no interest in, however, is a ministry of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  I need your commitment, your willingness to journey and take risks, your capacity to dream and think outside the box, in order to build upon and grow the work and ministry of this diocese in the days to come.

Here we have the jewel of clichés set in a dazzling array of Titanic deckchairs, journeyers, commitment, dreamers, risk takers, builders and growers.

The most potently mind-numbing concoction outside of an Indaba group.