Blag

Judging by the actions of the NSW government, Catholics are so thin skinned that they need extra police protection. Police have been granted special powers to deal with people who confront attendees of the WYD with ideas the Pope doesn’t agree with. According to some observers, wearing slogans or handing out condoms at WYD could get you in trouble. Group Think will probably be OK.

Thank God the media is on the case.

From the Age : http://news.theage.com.au/national/youth-day-protesters-to-offer-condoms-20080701-2zlj.html

Powers approved by the NSW government allow for people who continually annoy or inconvenience pilgrims during the event, to be staged in Sydney from July 15 to 20, to be arrested and possibly fined $5,500.

From the ABC : http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/01/2290617.htm

Draconian, repugnant and unnecessary. These are just a few of the criticisms of special regulations coming into force for the upcoming Catholic World Youth Day event in Sydney.

Civil libertarians and legal experts say the regulations could see situations such as someone deemed to be wearing an offensive T-shirt being arrested and given a hefty fine.

New South Wales Police say the measures are designed simply to ensure that World Youth Day is a peaceful and happy event.

From the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7482696.stm

Lawyers in Australia say that police powers introduced for a major gathering of young Roman Catholics later this month will undermine free speech. Under the powers, police will be able to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance or inconvenience” to participants in World Youth Day.

From News.News.News.News.com: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23951245-5016937,00.html

NSW POLICE have been given extraordinary new powers for World Youth Day, including being able to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance” to participants and conduct partial strip searches.

....

Critics say the new powers have the potential to make wearing a T-shirt with a slogan, a protest like handing out condoms or a Chaser-style stunt a crime, while civil libertarians believe the powers are more extreme and than those used during last year’s APEC summit.

( From here )

I’ve discovered YouTube play lists, so I put together a bunch of clips from Sam Harris. Sam is the author of End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation.

Title says it all. Read the sad details here. Like the previous post about this except the parents are being charged.

It’s amazing that Faith is seen as a positive trait for people to have. “I don’t need evidence, I’ve got Faith!”. Resolving conflict when one side has “Faith” is difficult or impossible because they don’t care about rational argument. That’s the point of faith – belief with out proof. Or more cynically, belief despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary.

Interesting survey by the Economist on various topics. One section shows that 80% of Americans believe in god, but when it comes to who should get a tax break, 35% believe the middle-income families deserve it compared to 20% for the poor. Compare this with 40% believe in god in the UK and 40% of people believing the poor should get the tax cuts. Seems that being devout has little correlation to being charitable or having concern for those less well off.

These people should be charged. I wonder what would happen if someone let their children die because Zeus didn’t answer the parent’s prays?

I’m in an emailing mode lately.

Hi There,

While watching tonight’s story on the Lord’s Resistance Army on World News Australia, I’m curious as to why you would label their leader a “Mystic” – he is a self proclaimed Christian. Why would your well respected news desk make this error?

Cheers,
Dan Milne

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_Resistance_Army

—
Dan Milne d@nmilne.com
http://da.nmilne.com/
http://booko.com.au/

Looks like fewer people are wasting their lives in servitude to their religious beliefs. Sure, some of you are going to say that’s a bit harsh, but really. It’s the 21st century, enough already.

If you want to know what religious conversations sound like to an atheist, I thought of an interesting mental experiment you can try. Whenever you hear the name of a god you don’t believe in ( God, Jesus, Allah, Yahweh etc) substitute it with “Zeus”, and when you hear the name of a place you go when you die, replace it with “Valhalla”. It probably works better for a god you don’t believe in – the mental jump between a god you don’t believe in, and Zeus is no doubt much easier to jump.

Apparently, family values are being threatened!

THE State Government is indulging in social engineering in giving lesbians and single women access to fertility treatment, giving lesbian partners legal recognition as parents and allowing surrogate mothers, the leader of a Jewish, Christian and Muslim committee said yesterday.

Heaven’s above! Whatever shall we do! Who’s responsible for this degradation of the moral fabric of our time?

Rabbi Shimon Cowen said planned changes announced by Attorney-General Rob Hulls before Christmas showed that secularists had hijacked fundamental values and were changing accepted morals.

Bloody secularists. Next thing they’ll be telling us that owning slaves is “wrong” and that “gays” should be allowed to walk the street with you and me.

This is a text book example of religion retarding the advancement of society. A bunch of old men who’ve climbed the “holier than thou” ladder of internal church politics presume to tell us that we’re not living by the standards of their sacred books.

From the Daily Mail :

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

Hahaha. I was sure that was a joke when I first read it.

The Rudd team isn’t all bad apparently – along with getting on board Kyoto, religion will hopefully have a smaller role in our new government:

The Rudd team is not only younger than the Howard ministries of recent years. Despite Rudd’s acclaimed commitment to Christianity, the Godless of Labor’s front bench outweighs the God-fearing if a propensity to take an affirmation rather than an oath is a guide. Only 19 of the team, including Rudd, held the Bible, while the other 23 opted to affirm their loyalty. The Howard folk were Bible-bearers almost to a person.

Perhaps they’ll drop ludicrous ideas like School Chaplains.

Reuters and the The Age report that the Infallible head of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict says that atheism is responsible for injustice and cruelty. Lenin and Marx are mentioned in reference to atrocities committed in the name of Marxism.

This is a common argument you hear from time to time. “If you want to live in an Atheist society, move to North Korea” is an old favourite. However, in societies such as North Korea, religion is replaced by a cult of personality and their own system of belief. These belief systems have the hallmarks of Religion including being idealistic, utopian & dogmatic.

One thing they don’t have, is people doing evil things “In the Name of Atheism”. The argument is old and busted.

Atheism encourages rational inquiry over superstition and it can hardly be said that societies such as North Korea or Nazism or people like Lenin or Stalin or Chairman Mao were suffering from an excess of rationalism.

Aside from being incorrect, it’s typically hypocritical. This is the organisation which protected child molesters from discovery and prosecution, the organisation which facilitates the spread of AIDS throughout Africa and other devout but poor countries by banning the use of condoms. This same organisation criticises Amnesty International for supporting the victims of rape during war who choose abortion. And that’s only in the last 15 years!

On the same front page of The Age, we get this, another example of what happens when you mix ignorance and faith. It should remind us of what the Dark Ages might have been like.

You might well say not all ( or even most ) religious people behave in this way. But this is exactly what “Faith” enables – people believing nonsense ( in this case, that their god would be offended that a teacher allowed children to name a teddy bear Mohammed, the most common name in the Islamic world ) with such fervour that they’ll call for the killing of a teacher. It allows people to fly planes into buildings and murder doctors specialising in abortion and believe that they’ll go to heaven for doing God’s work. You cannot argue with them, because their beliefs are not rational, it’s their interpretation of their holy book.

I saw this and thought it was funny:

Then I saw this, and also thought it was funny: