The Christchurch Gay Quake Hoax

by

A website has appeared that has sent portions of the media (and for that matter the blog-sphere) into a feeding frenzy. It claims that Christchurch’s devastating earthquake was an act of God triggered by the tolerance of homosexual behaviour in the city. Sound familiar? perhaps so, because it has a sort of “westboro baptist church” … Read more

Beautiful science

by

The BBC has an Audio slide show you might like to check out. Colourful and visually stunning – but also important in our understanding of scientific advances – the winners of this year’s Wellcome Image Awards range from a close up look at a bloody sticking-plaster, to the striking shades of a ruby-tailed wasp viewed … Read more

Intelligent Design examined – Peer Review

by

There is a thriving sub-culture of folks out there who dismiss evolution and instead promote an alternative known as, “Intelligent Design”. At the forefront of this movement is the Discovery Institute. Often when I hear such claims, I dismiss them with the observation that they have no actual evidence, hence its not science.

As a response to this observation, they have a list of claimed Peer-review articles that are supposed to be credible. The link to the list on their site is here, so lets take a look.

Read more

Is freedom a religious or secular idea?

by

Paula Kirby has written a fabulous and thought provoking article in Today’s Washington Post. Paula, like myself, is a former Christian, so she can view this from all sides. Here is how it starts …

Is freedom a religious idea? As John McEnroe would have said, “You cannot be serious.”

If you value freedom, you should flee from religion as the antelope flees the lion. Religion is the very antithesis of freedom, insisting on our complete subjugation to the unachievable demands of an invisible but supremely powerful overlord. Think of Islam, whose very name means ‘submission’! Think of Christianity, which claims it is disobedience that brought original sin into the world, with all that entails in terms of suffering and injustice and even earthquakes and tsunamis. Imagine! To claim that human obedience is so imperative that the purposes of an omnipotent deity and the very fabric of the planet, if not the whole universe, depend upon it and can be catastrophically disrupted at the first whiff of rebellion – and then to claim that such a religion is the source of human freedom!

Read more

Exit mobile version