A quick note
Back from Lexington; tired, grumpy, ready to eat brains (though I might have to have diet brains because, as always seems to be when I go away for work – and especially to Americky – I’ve put weight on again). More on that another time, perhaps. But I just wanted to say that the Bishop [...]
Here we go again
From BBC News: A prayer group in Washington DC is claiming the credit for the recent sharp drop in the US price of petrol. Rocky Twyman, 59, a veteran community campaigner, started Pray At The Pump meetings at petrol stations in April. So, market forces anyone? Well… Mr Twyman is sceptical that market forces might [...]
So I’m in there with Satanists now am I?
Well, it doesn’t entirely surprise me that someone lumps us atheists into that category, but still. Birmingham City Council has put in place software that blocks people from looking at atheist websites whilst allowing some other belief systems through (link, via Pharyngula: The authority’s Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating [...]
Corners
Graham Binns posted a photo: Three hundred and sixty-odd days of 2008, day 208 I’m not dead. This is Norwich Cathedral, taken on a shockingly sunny Sunday with my new Nikon D300 (woot). And yes, I will fill in all of days 190-207, once I have the time.
On religion
Beautiful quote from Catherine Deveny about religion and National Youth Day (Link, via Pharyngula): I question some of my progressive, believing mates about if they believe in Noah’s ark, the Immaculate Conception, Adam and Eve, the Resurrection, even heaven, and they squirm a little and try to change the subject. They get vague, defensive and [...]
Peace
Graham Binns posted a photo: Three hundred and sixty-odd days of 2008, day 187 I may be an atheist, but I love this image; not for the cross, but for what it ought to represent, even though it is misused the world over.
More Murphy O’Connor
So, it turns out that the story that I blogged about the other day has even more to it than I thought. Rather than try and summarise the matter here – for I don’t fully understand it at the moment; it’s late, I’m tired and I’m busy watching the fantastic An Inconvenient Truth. Instead, I’ll [...]
Now, just a minute…
The headline sounded promising: "‘Respect atheists’, says Cardinal." Unfortunately, and somewhat predictably, the story itself is a little different from what the headline suggests: "I want to encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem because the hidden God is active in their lives as well as in the lives of [...]
On freedom of speech
I am, as you'll be aware, many things. Slayer of Dragons, baker of muffins, programmer, occasional scribbler, amateur photographer, cynic, lover of the weird and wonderful. I'm also, I'd like to think, a reasonably good scientist (Physics was my mistress before Computer Science; we still keep in close contact and send each other nostalgic letters [...]
It gave me a little warm tingly chuckle
Seen on The Reverse Swing Manifesto: I like that we get to be the Mac guy. Although, to be fair, the Mac/PC ads annoy the hell out of me.
A quick one
I haven't been posting much here, I know. I've been posting quite a bit on Flickr, of which more anon, though, so feel free to head over there and take a look (I'm working on integrating my Flickr posts with this blog). In the meantime, I thought I'd share an ad that just tickled me: [...]
Dear lazyweb
I can't be bothered to comment on this story (I'm busy finding new ways to not do things that I should be doing like tidying the office). But it's okay, because Warren Ellis has already done so, and that's far more entertaining.
A godless heathen for Lib Dem leader
Excellent. Short, (enforcedly) honest and to the point: New Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has answered "no" when asked on BBC radio if he believed in God. The rapid-fire question and answer format on 5 Live meant the 40-year-old did not have the chance to elaborate. I know that a politician's religious beliefs are not [...]
To be filed under WTF, part the second
So, as a follow-up to yesterday's post, this just in from the BBC (link): Crowds of people have marched in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to call for UK teacher Gillian Gibbons to be shot. … According to some agencies, some of the protesters chanted: "Shame, shame on the UK", "No tolerance – execution" and "Kill [...]
Make your mark
A friend just posted a link on Facebewk to a petion to the Prime Minister's Office to: … cease the creation of more faith schools, take existing public-funded faith schools from the control of religious bodies and convert them to unbiased schools for all. A worthy cause, I think. Go and sign it, if that [...]
To be filed under WTF
From BBC news (link): A British teacher has been found guilty in Sudan of insulting religion after she allowed her primary school class to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, has been sentenced to 15 days in prison and will then be deported. Which is bad enough. I mean it's a [...]
Do unto others, etc.
From BBC News: Feuding nuns force convent demise: A convent in Italy is being shut down after a fight between its last three remaining nuns. So badly did relations deteriorate between the sisters of Santa Clara in Bari that the Mother Superior ended up in hospital with scratches to her face. The best bit is [...]
The Man Who Sued God
From Religion News Blog (link): Nebraska Democratic State Senator Ernie Chambers has decided to go straight to the top in an effort to stop natural disasters from befalling the world. … The suit asks for a “permanent injunction ordering Defendant to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.” … Chambers also cites [...]
After the dinner
(Posting this in the morning from the conference; my hotel wifi went away last night and I'm damned if I'm going to pay another 10 Euros just to post this…) Dinner's over and, for a conference dinner, it was fantastic. I should have taken photos of the food itself; the omnivore main course – which [...]
In passing
I have much that I want to blog about but I've had less than eight hours sleep in the last two days and it's making things a bit blurry about now. I will get round to the bit about religion and how it can cause problems in conversation. And now I think I'll shut my [...]
Brilliant!
BBC Picture set: Fantasy coffins. The godless heathen in me wants one shaped like this: But maybe that's just me.
A Muslim view on the whole Rushdie thing
Irshad Manji, a self-titled "Muslim Refusenik" gives her reaction to the whole furore that has exploded over the decision to make Salman Rushdie a Knight of the realm over at the Religion News Blog. Salman Rushdie is not the problem. Muslims are: Above all, I am offended that so many other Muslims are not offended [...]
That religion stuff, and what I meant to say about it
It won't have escaped your notice that I started to write a comment piece on this news story but my blog client (which I really do need to write something about in the not-too-distant future since it's something that I've written and could possibly turn out to be quite useful to a fairly small subset of the Open Source community) fell over. Before it retired to that great stack trace in the sky, however, it managed to vomit up the beginnings of my post onto the internets (a fact about which I have filed a bug) and as a result managed to make me look like both a bit of an idiot and a bit of a bigot. I'm used to the idiot part. I don't like looking like a bigot.
Anyway, since it had made it onto my blog (and I never bothered to check that it hadn't, it also ended up propagating across the interwubs to LiveJournal, where a good friend of mine commented:
All of which, plus the fact that it was late and I was tired and lacking in the brain power necessary to sling a sentence together, let alone make a point about religion, left me thinking that I should probably re-write the post, or at least some of the post, and actually make clear my thoughts on the matter, which, exploding blog clients aside, I'd hitherto failed to do.
Jun 08, 2008 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: annoyances, atheism, comments, friends, human rights, in the news, me, opinion, posts that started out differently, religion | Leave A Comment »