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Obama's budget: the view from the street
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How much does it cost to be Politically Correct?
In the case of a head teacher in Woking UK, it cost taxpayers £400,000 to compensate her for the fact that the local education authority allowed a couple of obdurate Muslims to bully her into obsequious tolerance.
But she fought back:
A head teacher whose health and career were ruined by false accusations of racism and religious discrimination at a primary school dominated by Muslims has won £400,000 in damages.
Erica Connor was forced into early retirement through stress after governors at New Monument School in Woking turned her into a scapegoat by claiming she was Islamophobic.
But the local education authority failed to help her as its “excessively tolerant” officers were more worried about complaints to the race equality watchdog than her suffering.
The court heard that in 1998 Mrs Connor took over the school – where up to 85 per cent of pupils were Muslim and 90 per cent spoke English as a second language – and test results improved “very considerably” for the first few years.
However in 2003 two new members – Paul Martin, a parent governor, and Mumtaz Saleem, a nominee of the local education authority – joined its governing body and tried to take it over.
The judge, Mr John Leighton-Williams, QC, said: “I am satisfied that they sought to monopolise governors body meetings with a view to imposing their own agenda and were prepared to do so regardless of the interests of the school and anyone who resisted that agenda.”
It’s easy to imagine the reaction that similar tactics by two Christians on the governing body would have provoked.
The Pope must be doing something right
Because he has managed to upset the UN, Planned Parenthood, the Times, the Telegraph – actually every major newspaper – with his remarks about the ineffectiveness of using condoms to combat Aids.
Is his contention that fidelity and abstinence are the only effective ways to combat Aids true?
Using a condom correctly reduces the risk of contracting Aids by 80%.
So, if we take 100 HIV infected, sexually active people, consistently using condoms correctly, who have sex once a month with a new person, who in turn do the same, at the end of one year we would end up with 100 x 1.2^11 = 743 people infected with HIV. In 10 years, we would have 264,000,000,000. I admit, all the people involved would have to be somewhat energetic and enterprising, and I am using a 100% infection rate for the 20% condom failure possibility, not to mention the fact that we run out of candidates worldwide at 6,706,993,152; but using the Pope’s method, after 10 years we would still have only about 100 people infected with HIV.
To bring it down to a more personal level, with an 80% reduction in the chance of being infected, would you have sex, using a condom, with an HIV infected person?
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The new theme song of the Diocese of Niagara
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An atheist wants to be de-baptised
Is this a convincing argument against infant baptism?
An atheist is trying to get himself “de-baptised” from the Church of England because he believes he was accepted into the religion without his consent.
John Hunt, a nurse, is one of a growing number of people around the world who want their former involvement with faith groups to be struck from official records.Now 56, he was baptised at the parish church of St Jude with St Aidan in Thornton Heath, south London, when he was just a baby.
But as a schoolboy he decided he did not believe in God and stopped going to Sunday school aged 11.
More recently he asked Southwark diocese to remove his name from the baptismal roll, because he believes he was too young to agree to the ceremony taking place.
It is one thing to be removed from a church’s baptismal records, but how does one become de-baptised in the spiritual sense? Join the Anglican Church of Canada, perhaps.
If this catches on in Judaism, it will open up a new industry in re-attachment surgery.
Part of the Obama stimulus package
Change in America doesn’t start from the top down. It starts from the bottom up.
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The Pope, Aids and Planned Parenthood
This is what Pope Benedict said about the Aids epidemic:
“Aids cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”
Echoing words spoken frequently by Pope John Paul II, Benedict declared that the “traditional teaching of the Church” on chastity outside marriage and fidelity within it had proved to be “the only sure way of preventing the spread of HIV and Aids”.
And here is a response from Planned Parenthood:
Kevin Osborne, HIV adviser at the International Planned Parenthood Federation, said: “All the evidence is that preaching sexual abstinence and fidelity will not solve the problems. We need to work with the reality of where people are, especially in countries he is visiting such as Angola, which is hard-hit by the epidemic.
“The Pope’s message will alienate everybody. It is scary. It spreads stigma and creates a fertile breeding ground for the spread of HIV.”
I’m not a Roman Catholic and I’m not against birth control, but it is easy to spot the diversionary tactic employed in this response by Planned Parenthood. Obviously it’s not the preaching alone that would prevent the spread of Aids, but the preaching and practising of fidelity and abstinence. And there is evidence to suggest that it does work:
Uganda Winning the Battle Against AIDS – Using Abstinence
Uganda may be on its way to wiping out AIDS by using the Biblical values of chastity and fidelity, a new Harvard University study finds. According to the study, abstinence education has shown significant effectiveness in reducing AIDS in Uganda, with the HIV infection rate dropping 50 percent between the years 1992 and 2000.
A consistent atheist
Peter Singer is a bioethicist at Princeton University; he favours infanticide, euthanasia and animal rights:
Singer is a mild-mannered fellow who speaks calmly and lucidly. Yet you wouldn’t have to read his work too long to find his extreme positions. He cheerfully advocates infanticide and euthanasia and, in almost the same breath, favors animal rights. Even most liberals would have qualms about third-trimester abortions; Singer does not hesitate to advocate what may be termed fourth-trimester abortions, i.e., the killing of infants after they are born.
Singer writes, “My colleague Helga Kuhse and I suggest that a period of 28 days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others.” Singer argues that even pigs, chickens, and fish have more signs of consciousness and rationality-and, consequently, a greater claim to rights-than do fetuses, newborn infants, and people with mental disabilities. “Rats are indisputably more aware of their surroundings, and more able to respond in purposeful and complex ways to things they like or dislike, than a fetus at 10- or even 32-weeks gestation. … The calf, the pig, and the much-derided chicken come out well ahead of the fetus at any stage of pregnancy.”
To his credit, Singer does exhibit more consistency than other popular atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens, both of whom wish to largely retain the ethical framework of Christianity while denying its truth.
Of course, Singer is still holding back somewhat since he isn’t yet advocating the use of discarded humanity for food; I expect that is coming.
Cuddly atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens are determined to demonstrate that there is no God; it is ironic, then, that one of their number has gone a long way to proving that there is a devil.
To improve decorum, hospice chaplain is not allowed to use the word "God"
A chaplain at Hospice by the Sea in Boca Raton has resigned because she is not allowed to use the word ‘God’. Not a nurse or a doctor, a chaplain:
A chaplain at Hospice by the Sea in Boca Raton has resigned, she says, over a ban on use of the words “God” or “Lord” in public settings.
Chaplains still speak freely of the Almighty in private sessions with patients or families but, the Rev. Mirta Signorelli said: “I can’t do chaplain’s work if I can’t say ‘God’ – if I’m scripted.”
Hospice CEO Paula Alderson said the ban on religious references applies only to the inspirational messages that chaplains deliver in staff meetings. The hospice remains fully comfortable with ministers, priests and rabbis offering religious counsel to the dying and grieving.
“I was sensitive to the fact that we don’t impose religion on our staff, and that it is not appropriate in the context of a staff meeting to use certain phrases or ‘God’ or ‘Holy Father,’ because some of our staff don’t believe at all,” Alderson said.
Signorelli said that she and other chaplains were told Feb. 23 to “cease and desist from using God in prayers.”
Signorelli said her supervisor recently singled her out for delivering a spiritual reflection in the chapel that included the word “Lord” and had “a Christian connotation.”
“But that was the 23rd Psalm,” Signorelli said – not, strictly speaking, Christian, as it appears in the Old Testament.
“And I am well aware that there were people from the Jewish tradition in attendance. I didn’t say Jesus or Allah or Jehovah. I used ‘Lord’ and ‘God,’ which I think are politically correct. I think that’s as generic as you can get.”
Signorelli resigned Feb. 25.
None of the six other chaplains objected to the ban on God’s name, she said.
Alderson said she was surprised by Signorelli’s reaction to what she characterized as a minor administrative directive aimed solely at improving the decorum of monthly staff meetings, where the desired tone from a chaplain should be motivational, not religious.
Alderson said it started after she asked a chaplain – not Signorelli – to say something “inspirational” and “thought-provoking” at a staff meeting. The remarks did not strike the secular tone she wanted, Alderson said. So, “I issued some guidelines.”
The obvious question that comes to mind is, why does the hospice employ chaplains if they don’t want them to talk about God? Asking a chaplain to motivate people, but refusing to allow her to refer to that which motivates her, is like asking Richard Dawkins to explain evolution without mentioning Darwin.
The New Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
The 21st Century’s Inquisition at work:
Science minister won’t confirm belief in evolution.
Researchers aghast that key figure in funding controversy invokes religion in science discussion.
Canada’s science minister, the man at the centre of the controversy over federal funding cuts to researchers, won’t say if he believes in evolution.
“I’m not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don’t think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate,” Gary Goodyear, the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
A funding crunch, exacerbated by cuts in the January budget, has left many senior researchers across the county scrambling to find the money to continue their experiments.
Some have expressed concern that Mr. Goodyear, a chiropractor from Cambridge, Ont., is suspicious of science, perhaps because he is a creationist.
The interesting part of all this is that the headline in the Globe shrieks its outrage that Goodyear won’t confirm his belief in evolution. Obviously if evolution is a simple empirically verifiable fact, it wouldn’t be necessary to pull out Mr. Goodyear’s fingernails to extract a statement of belief: it would be impossible for him to deny it. For example, it is highly unlikely that Mr. Goodyear would cling to the potentially suicidal notion that he is immune to gravity and is capable of stepping off a high story building without hurtling to his death.
The truth is, evolution is a theory that describes the mechanism behind how species change; it does not explain life’s origin or its purpose. It has no way of determining whether the emergence of mankind was supernaturally guided or accidental; clearly a Christian would not believe it to be accidental. The rhetoric of scientism would deny the possibility of supernatural intervention, but that denial is an act of faith not of science, since the supernatural is outside the realm of science’s competence.
Now, back to pouring molten lead into Mr. Goodyear’s nostrils:
Jim Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, said he was flabbergasted that the minister would invoke his religion when asked about evolution.
Jim Turk needs to do a little self-examination. For many scientists, evolution is a religion.