The bullying of Christians

The bullying of Christians is being taken to a new low in some quarters. The dismissal of Olive Jones from her job as a supply teacher for offering to pray for a sick pupil is not only ridiculous but doesn't make sense on a number of levels. Mrs Jones is a regular churchgoer who attends her local Church of England church most Sundays. In what sense can the offer of prayer, by a member of the Church of England, be interpreted as a sackable offence when the Church of England is the established church of the land and when British citizens are regularly entreated by the state to ask God to 'save our Queen' in the national anthem which is itself written in the form of a prayer. Paddy and Stephanie Lynch claimed their daughter was left 'distressed' and 'traumatised' by Mrs Jones' conversation. Perhaps Olive Jones was less than tactful, and their teenage daughter frightened by her illness, but however difficult the personal circumstances of the Lynch's, one would have to be overly sensitive, and lets face it pretty mean minded, to report the teacher to the local authority for offering them the comfort and support that many people in similar circumstances would be grateful for. Their complaint lead to the perfunctory sacking of the teacher after a lifetime of public service when Olive Jones' managers agreed that offering to pray for someone 'could be perceived as bullying'. It is, to put it mildly, a pretty perverted world view that tries to construe someone offering to do another person a kindness as bullying them. Any sane person would have no option but to judge that it is Mrs Jones who is being bullied here.

Why is Dawkins afraid to debate with William Lane Craig?

It is common knowledge that Richard Dawkins has avoided debating with the philosopher, William Lane Craig. You can see his excuse here.

Dawkins says he won't debate with William Lane Craig because he is a professional debater and creationist.

In fact, Craig is a well-known professional philosopher, who is sceptical of what he calls Neo-Darwinism (which is a philosophical, rather than scientific, worldview generally propounded by people like Dawkins, who are not professional philosophers). The term 'creationist' used to refer to someone who believed in the literal truth of the Genesis 1 account, and rejected any compatibility with a theory of evolution. In Dawkins' world of equivocation, it appears to mean anyone who thinks God has anything to do with the origins of the universe. This of course would mean that a large number of the world's greatest scientists were/are creationists.

A clear-thinking oasis?

If anyone should doubt the rabid idiocy of the atheists, they only need to look at the official Richard Dawkins website, RichardDawkins.net.

Here is a less offensive example of the kind of thing that qualifies as clear thinking in the perverted world of Dawkins and his minions:

Re: Gordon Brown invites Pope Benedict to Britain

Postby oneeyednarn » Tue Feb 24, 2009 12:36 am
Any chance you could plant a bomb and take out both of them?

The phrase 'both of them' refers to Gordon Brown and Pope Benedict.

Thought Police

There is something bizarre about the decision to prosecute two Christian hoteliers, Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang, because they had a heated argument with a Muslim woman, Ericka Tazi, at breakfast one morning in the boarding house which is effectively their own home. Merseyside's Police Hate Crime unit had at least six police officers working to bring this case of 'religious harassment' against the couple. Inconsistencies in Ericka Tazi's testimony in court led the judge to dismiss the case. Despite being cleared the case has had a damaging effect on the livelihood of the two accused. But what remains possibly the most worrying aspect of this case is what was going on in the heads of the police and the crown prosecution service that made, and given the following statement from the latter, continues to make this sort of state sponsored police harassment of Christians legitimate. Sharon King, a spokesman for the Crown Prosecution said: 'I think we would pursue a case like this again if a similar incident was to arise in the future. It is in the public interest that incidents like this are properly investigated. We felt there was sufficient evidence in this instance to support a prosecution.' The actions of the police and crime prosecution service in bringing this case gives a lie to the claim, so favoured by atheists, that a person's religion can and should be confined to the private sphere of their own home. It seems that even here, just as in the public sphere, those of a tyrannical mindset will, if given the chance, seek to exercise control over what others, with whom they disagree, may think and say.

Funding scientism

There is little doubt that the current fashionability of atheism is connected with an admiration for science and the scientific method, which is believed (erroneously) by some to remove the need for God. The practitioners of the scientific method are hailed as heroes for truth in the war against ignorance. Here is an amusing insight from a comment on Mark Shea's blog by John J. Simmins, which punctures the image of such scientism.

This is how the funding process works:
1. You determine what the latest ‘hot’ topic is (global warming, ceramic superconductivity, stealth technology).
2. You write your proposal to fund the work you’ve been doing for years in your area but you slant it towards the hot topic.
3. You almost “prove” that the above hot topic is effected in a way that is positive toward your research.
4. You write a follow-on proposal where you state that the really big break-through will occur in the next funding cycle.
5. Oh, and you try to partner with entities that always get government funding.

It works like this: You study frogs in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Nobody wants to fund the study of frogs. Why would they? So in the early 80’s you write your proposal to study the effect of the hole in the ozone layer on the frogs. The mid 80’s your try to figure out how to write a proposal on frogs and missile defense but give up. In the 90’s you write proposals on how frog pee can help certain forms of cancer. You partner with NIH on this because they are getting lots of funding, being the ‘hot’ agency. You both know that the results are useless from the get go but you do it anyway. In the late 90’s you write proposals on how frogs from South Dakota can be used to detect nerve gas as part of the Global War on Terrorism. You routinely reject papers to the Journal of Herpetology that claim that five lined skinks can detect nerve gas by their tails falling off. In the 2000’s you are awarded grants to study the decline of frog populations in the Black Hills due to global warming, despite the fact the frogs were there through the last dozen ice ages and that they’ve survived eight periods since the last ice age where the temperature was much warmer than now. You know that the frog population is declining because the government is leasing the land to cattle ranchers and the cows are crapping in the water but you don’t really care because you’re now just a few years away from retirement and you don’t want to work at Burger King.

Christian child

Oh dear, what an irony. It turns out that the two children who feature on the billboard posters of Richard Dawkins' atheist campaign and were picked by the British Humanist Association because they looked so joyful and carefree are the children of devout Christian parents. You have to laugh. The British Humanist's education director Andrew Copson tried to wriggle out of this embarrassing revelation by suggesting that the fact that the children were Christian didn't undermine the atheist campaign because it was never their intention to suggest the children of Christians were unhappy. What! A word of advice to Mr. Copson: when you're in a hole, stop digging.

What the Fool says (1)

From Amanda Donohoe, star of stage, screen and Emmerdale, concerning her part in Ken Russell's hilariously bad film, Lair of the White Worm, in which she spits on a crucifix:
"I'm an atheist, so it was actually a joy. Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can't embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages. And that persecution still goes on today all over the world."

Try being a Christian in an atheist state if you want to know about persecution!

Religious rights doublethink

European establishment voices have been united in anger and indignation at the Swiss ban on new minarets. Talk has been of the Swiss breaching religious freedom as set out in the European Human Rights Convention and of taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. The secretary general of The Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland, has suggested that a case may be made to seek a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights condemning Switzerland for violating freedom of expression, freedom of religion and prohibition of discrimination. Did I miss something? This is the same European Court of Human Rights which only last month ruled that crucifixes should be removed from classrooms in Italy. Not only was there no talk then among the European political class of breaching the religious freedom of expression of the Italian people, the European Court ruled decisively against their right to it. This blatant and dangerous case of doublethink by Europe's ruling elite shows that the only rights to 'religious freedom' they see fit to defend are those which seek to directly attack Europe's Christian heritage or are in line with their agenda to eradicate Christian culture in Europe.