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 An online quiz claims to test the solidity of your belief in God with a series of questions. However, it contains a glaring anomaly. If you agree that there probably isn't a Loch Ness monster due to lack of evidence, you are not allowed to believe that there is a God even if he/she can't be proven by science. Yet the Loch Ness Monster theory claims a physical, terrestrial presence, and the claim of a God does not...
Try it and see. Meanwhile, here's Nessie. Oh, and incidentally 8% of quiz respondents on the atheist network site do believe in her. Not sure what to make of that.
The New Republic reports from Illinois the story of a pastor who grew increasingly unhappy with the happy-clappy developments of his First Baptist church - organ replaced by drum set, dance, etc. So after a spiritual crisis and much research, he turned to the Eastern Orthodox church for classical traditional worship. "I really thought he'd go to Canterbury," says Alan Jacobs, a Wheaton College English professor and Anglican who is friendly with Ellsworth. "But he took a sudden right turn and wound up in Constantinople.
 It is certainly a very beautiful and resonant ritual; here is the UK Archbishop of Thyateira and Great Britain, Gregorios, and an informative website.
 In the exam season there is always joy in children's howlers. Imagine, says this website, that you are a patient nun in an elementary school marking children's test papers and trying to keep a straight face...apart from the Adultery one above, and the belief that Mary gave birth through an Immaculate Contraption, I am especially fond of:
"Lot's wife was a pillar of salt during the day, but a ball of fire during the night" and "The Jews were a proud people and throughout history they had trouble with unsympathetic genitals."
My colleague on Comment Central might enjoy knowing that King David "fought the Finkelsteins, a race of people who lived in Biblical times"
But possibly the best and most poetically mystifying line is "Moses died before he ever reached Canada".
 Sad little story in the Washington Post from Kerala region in India. An ancient Jewish community, once thriving, is dying out and may not exist in ten years because so many emigrated to India. One says mournfully "We couldn't bring ourselves to leave. We are Indians, too. Why should we leave the only place we have known as home?" Jews flourished in India for centuries -- from Biblical times, some scholars say. The country also gave safe haven to Jews during World War II.
Peter Tatchell alerts us to the ongoing viciousness of the campaigns and court cases against gay men in Nigeria; something seemingly approved, if not positively incited, by Christian bishops and Muslim Imams. The raiding of a private party among men (and women) over 18 , followed by charges which may carry the death penalty and by scenes of stone-throwing outside a court, has incensed the campaigning group Changing Attitudes Nigeria (CAN) which deplores the failure of the Nigerian Primate and also the Archbishop of Canterbury to speak out for the men.
 It was the destruction of the vast 6C Bamiyan Buddhas carved into the rock of Afghanistan which first drew large-scale Western attention to the depredations and fanaticism of the Taleban. Now there is rubble; and discussion continues as to what to do next. A good BBC report tells us that some conservation work is under way on the remains, but the director of historic monuments doesn't believe in reconstruction.
"If we reconstruct the Buddha, it is not the real Buddha it was before, If we reconstruct, we destroy the history of the destruction by the Taleban."
Computer reconstructions have been designed.
 This is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, former Chief Rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of the ultra-orthodox party Shas. He has outraged opinion in Israel and worldwide by stating that soldiers who die in action do so because they do not follow their religion properly. "Is it a wonder that soldiers who don't observe the Torah, don't pray every day and don't put on tefilin every day are killed in war? It is no wonder.Soldiers who are believers and who pray, God helps in wars. They are not killed"
Families of the 120 soldiers killed in the second Lebanon war are incandescent; one father tells how his son was killed while actually donning his prayer garment. Defence Minister Ehud Barak has slammed the Rabbi. There are echoes of the fury felt by many Christians when events like the UK floods are blamed on sin; but this is more directly personal.
 In the US, Sikh organizations are protesting against a new ruling that airport security staff may "pat down" search turbans, even if there has been no unexplained alarm from a metal detector. They can now be manually checked for non-metallic weapons. Some Sikhs call this discriminatory and outrageous, though sikhnet has a more measured response, merely protesting that there was no discussion beforehand.
Sikh organizations have only recently completed a publicity campaign to explain the significance of the kirpan, or religious sword, to security officials.
Continue reading "Security and the Sikh turban" »
 Reuters reports that the right-wing governor of Carinthia, Georg Haider, plans to change planning laws to prevent mosques and minarets in the province. "We don't want a clash of cultures and we don't want institutions which are alien to our culture being erected in Western Europe...Muslims have of course the right to practice their religion, but I oppose erecting mosques as centres to advertise the power of Islam".
It does not, says his spokesman, conflict with human rights law : Muslim prayer rooms remain unrestricted. It's just the mosques and minarets.
 It seems from Music Monthly that Christian rock groups are on a roll in the US, and loud 'n lairy with it. One, Showbread, keep being accused of being "Satanic.... clearly in utter rebellion to God's Word" on Christian radio, and get hate mail. Their singer Josh Poter protests "Yeah, we have one song about a Jesus lizard which tries to run across the water and sinks. It's a metaphor about trying to emulate Christ, but we get all these angry letters saying 'How can you call Jesus a lizard? What in the world are you talking about?'" he says. 'We're more outspoken than the average Christian band, but we still get complaints that we don't speak about God enough.' A long way from Kum-ba-Ya. For a directory of UK Christian rock and pop, click here... So far, it appears lizard-free.
Demonstration website...by a Sikh woman.
In 1998 the US, well-meaning, dropped food parcels to Bosnian Muslims which included pork. Now American troops in Afghanistan have been accused of insulting Islam after dropping footballs, a present for the kids, bearing the name of Allah. As one recipient remarked, "To have a verse of the Koran on something you kick with your foot would be an insult in any Muslim country." A wide guide to multicultural good manners is here.
Diana stirs it up, ten years on. The famous 1918 hymn by Sir Cecil Spring Rice  was a favourite of the late Princess of Wales', and will be out again for her memorial service. Which will cause some consternation: only three years ago a bishop called for it to be banned as un-Christian, racist and even Nazi-like in sentiment. This led to an entertainingly harrumphing argument on the Today website, since the accusation that it doesn't mention God is clearly contradicted by the second verse "There's another country I heard of long ago...". However, further researches find that there was another verse before that, which is now universally left out, and which definitely is militaristic in an un-modern way: I heard my country calling, away across the sea,
Across the waste of waters she calls and calls to me.
Her sword is girded at her side, her helmet on her head,
And round her feet are lying the dying and the dead.
I hear the noise of battle, the thunder of her guns,
I haste to thee my mother, a son among thy sons.
Should you wish to sing along, let me recommend cyberhymnal, a site which gives you the words and stirring organ accompaniment to any hymn you fancy. Quite loud, so glance around you in the office before clicking.
In case anyone is getting as overexcited as I am at the reappearance of the sun in the UK, and considering worshipping it, behold some useful links. The sun has been worshipped as Ra   (Ancient Egypt), Helios in Ancient Greece, Mithras, and Vishnu in various cultures; not forgetting by numerous less-known sects and peoples such as the Achts of Vancouver Island; in the Quran 27:22-24 we learn how Sheba was turned away from sun worship; in Britannica there is an improbable claim that the sun gets worshipped in colder regions and the moon in warm ones. Numerous sites claim that sun-worship underlies all religions, and that Christianity, Islam and others have craftily struggled to deny and disguise this; blogger Timothy Youngblood argues that the halo itself is a sinister giveaway..
Interesting post from the US about the least religious countries in the world - note that the UK does not even make the top ten, but France does. Worth reading the argument about the top-ranking Swedes - respondents say that they are "closet religious".
 The revelations that Mother Teresa underwent a crisis of faith have been met with some surprise and even slightly barmy suggestions that she might not now be canonized. But cheerfully complacent non-stop faith has never been seen as a sine qua non of holiness, in Christian tradition. The "dark night of the soul" defined by St John of the Cross four centuries ago in a famous poem about these agonies of doubt is a commonplace in monastic circles. The expression of her doubts is familiar from a hundred other texts - ""Where is my faith?. Even deep down there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. ... If there be a God - please forgive me." It echoes the cry in Mark 9:24 "Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief". The picture is St John of the Cross, just for a change from all the Mother Teresa pictures.
 This site holds an unhealthy fascination. After the camouflage Bibles I mentioned earlier in the week, deeper research finds fishing kit posters with a holy message, and the Cowboy Ten Commandments. Which are, incidentally: 1. Just one God. 2.Honor yer Ma & Pa. 3. No telling tales or gossipin’. 4. Git yourself to Sunday meeting. 5. Put nothin’ before God. 6. No foolin’ around with another fellow’s gal.
7. No killin’. 8. Watch yer mouth 9. Don’t take what ain’t yers 10. Don’t be hankerin’ for yer buddys stuff
If you think the numbers are strange, note here that there have already been numerous different subdivisions of commandments. The numbers you learnt at school may not be relevant...
Christopher Hitchens has been on a book tour with his anti-religion polemic , and senses that people are liking him. He writes in Vanity Fair that "A generation ago the words "American atheist" conjured the image of the slightly cultish and loopy Madalyn Murray O'Hair. But in the last two years there have been five atheist best-sellers".
He is full of anecdotes of his opponents, proving that "you can get away with anything in this country if you can shove the word "Reverend" in front of your name"
His habitually bilious tone, however, might be deplored by Michael Shermer , writing him a gentle open letter to him in Scientific American: he quotes Martin Luther King who said " Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.” If atheists do not want theists to prejudge them in a negative light, then they must not do unto theists the same....Rational atheism values the truths of science and the power of reason, but the principle of freedom stands above both science and religion"
Opponents of UK faith schools often cite the US, where prayers and all religious manifestations in publicly funded schools are banned. However, this story suggests evidence that Muslims are demanding prayer time and getting it. In 2000, Congress passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. This act demanded many religious accommodations to be made on public property. In 1993, a federal court mandated a San Diego district to allow students to have religious activities during lunchtime. Extra recesses are being scheduled to meet the complex Islamic rules of prayer. Meanwhile there are stories of teachers being fired for silently reading a personal Bible during a study hall. It is argued however that Christianity is implicit in public schools from the start - they get Sunday , Easter, Christmas off.
 In this 200th anniversary of abolition, today's UK commemorations for the International Slavery Remembrance Day are led by the new International Slavery Museum in the Albert Dock in LIverpool - a city built on the trade. Only a few yards away are the dry-docks where slave ships were repaired and fitted out. The Merseyside Maritime Museum has built considerable expertise in this area, and now flowers into this specialist museum.
Elsewhere the National Maritime Museum in London has a programme of events; a good piece yesterday by Rachel Campbell Johnston reminds us of other museums; and personally I would recommend getting in the DVD of the marvellous political film "Amazing Grace" about Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano the slave campaigner and John Newton the remorseful slave-ship captain who wrote Amazing Grace. You may remember the rendering of it on Youtube here a few weeks ago...And here is Equiano himself...
 This is a rather fascinating if depressing analysis on an atheist site listing the suppression of women's freedom and talents by traditional religions. The best illustration is from Tennessee, where the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary offers a new, women-only "academic" program in homemaking — it includes courses on how to cook and sew. The purpose is to help women learn proper family and gender roles as defined by the Bible
Coursework will include seven hours of nutrition and meal preparation, seven hours of textile design and "clothing construction," three hours of general homemaking, three hours on "the value of a child," and three hours on the "biblical model for the home and family."
Well, the sewing and cooking could be handy. But let the boys in too, for pity's sake..
 There is always a disgraceful moment of schadenfreude when an 'inspirational author' who has made millions is caught out. Share the shame of Grant Trevithick of Carrolton, Texas, author of "Quantum Spirituality " and "Five Secrets of Self Love" and church lecturer. Now, according to the Dallas News , starting five years in jail for possession of child pornography.
- goes to Christopher Howse in the Telegraph, grumbling about the Archbishop apparently praying for the soul of Diana, Princess of Wales. "It may sound harmless enough, but the teaching of the Church of England always prohibited prayers for the dead. They smacked of the doctrine of Purgatory, condemned by the Thirty-Nine Articles as an invention of Romish priests whose prayers for "the dead to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits".
However, he is closely followed to the title by several of those who comment on the piece!!
 In Nigeria, the Anglican Church is advising couples to take an HIV test before they marry, so as to make "informed choices". The BBC News site claims that some clerics are making it a condition; the Church says however that "If they find out their status and still want to go ahead, we cannot object. Instead, we offer them care and support". There is government anger: "We cannot accept what the church is proposing. Every Nigerian must be allowed to decide on their own whether they want to be tested or not," said Prof Tunde Oshotimehin, who heads Nigeria's state HIV control agency. In Goa a while ago the government backed off making such pre-marital tests compulsory; on this Indian site is a fierce debate, coming down 73% in favour so far. You could argue that marriage is a public, societal commitment; but the idea of its privacy is equally strong.
Click on it. I want one! Pity the moral is diluted by the swipe at the Yankees, but I suppose they're not a religion or a gender...
Douglas Farah in his blog cites the Customs Regulations for Saudi Arabia: published by the national airline. As well as alcohol, pork, narcotics, firearms and pornography "Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam are also prohibited. These may include Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols such as the Star of David, and others.". Farah adds "This is not just a ban on proselytism, and goes far beyond virtually any place on the planet....yet we treat the Saudi government as an entity with whom we are willing to do business". Many Christian websites have anecdotes of personal Bibles being shredded, and this Jerusalem Post article is most recent, with a strong warning.
Perhaps this explains why a gung-ho website in the US called "The Christian Outdoorsman" (of whom more later) does a roaring trade in camouflage Bibles for the muscular Christian hiker. Here are a couple. I am sure there is a sand version somewhere. 
The commentisfree website reports from the still 'secular' Turkish state that a court has ordered the blocking of a blog platform, Wordpress, on the insistence of lawyers for one Haroun Yahya. He is the author (ominously) of such titles as Holocaust Lies; claiming that Jews died of typhus only; and his work is apparently becoming worryingly influential. Wordpress hosted an opponent of his - equally eccentric in views; the author writes that it is a bad omen for the new Turkey: "We have seen too many Muslim dictatorships and monarchies engage in shutting down and arresting bloggers."
 Dr Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales, spent Sunday night chilling out in Dempsey's nightclub by invitation of Solace, a church group that meets there. The subject for discussion was "Is religion bad?". The Archbishop says, mellowly, that a drink helps people relax. Which makes a change from the current moral panic on the subject. Meanwhile a baptism of two circus performers' godchildren has taken  place in a BIg Top in Hove, with the Reverend Roly Bain (an ecclesiastical evangelical clown ) using the ringmaster's top hat as a font. He calls himself the "Holy Fool" and works all over Europe. Good to see the C of E getting out and about.
 As the $ 27 million Creation Museum shows us happy frolicking dinosaurs sharing the planet with homo sapiens, to persuade children that evolution didn't happen, a website satirically promotes the Unicorn Museum and "belief in the Biblical Truth of unicorns, a creature mentioned nine times in the KJV Bible". It claims to be an "act of protest by the Brotherhood of Fantasy Creatures (MiddleEarth Div.157) in response to the injurious actions of the Creation Museum.... We of the BFC feel that this group represents a threat to continued belief in other fantasy creatures". But do admit , it is a lovely billboard. In the spirit of academic rigour and impending RSI that marks Faith Central, here is a link to every mention of unicorns in the Old Testament. My favourite is "Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? Or will he harrow the valleys after thee?"
 A Catholic bishop, the Rt.Rev Michael Evans, has sadly resigned from Amnesty International after 31 years support and membership. The issue, as we reported earlier, is Amnesty's support for abortion rights. The Bishop says - "If Amnesty International becomes an organisation which affirms the right to abortion, even under certain circumstances, it is free democratically to do so. But it cannot expect those of us who are just as passionate about the human rights of the unborn child to feel at ease being part of such an organisation."
 Ten months after he sensationally outed the televangelist Ted Haggard - leader of the 14000-strong New LIfe Church in Colorado - as a gay drug user, the former "male escort" Mike Jones has embarked on a theatrical career. He is starring in a play called Porridge at the Boulder Fringe Festival. He says, apparently, that the acting is "therapeutic" and brushes off the accusation of milking his seedy celebrity. "If you aren't opportunist you don't get anywhere".
The story of their relationship is essentially a sad one; the secretly gay Haggard in denial about himself, and finally confessing; and Mr Jones furious at Haggard's opposition to gay civil partnerships.
 Don't miss a fascinating report by Sean Thomas about the Yezidi or Yazidi sect, who came under such vicious attack in Iraq this week. He has found a group of this hybrid, inbred religion in Germany, and explored their beliefs and practices - "The Yezidi honour sacred trees. Women must not cut their hair. Marriage is forbidden in April. They refuse to eat lettuce, pumpkins, and gazelles. They avoid wearing dark blue because it is "too holy"....they sacrifice bulls like ancient MIthraists, practice baptism like Christians, pray facing the sun like Zoroastrians".
Continue reading "God, the devil and the Yazidi angel" »
Better watch this. ITV's programme tonight on the Muslim idea of Jesus has already caused flak - and none more violent than the splendidly splenetic Christian blog by "Archbishop Cranmer". He says that the programme "is both blasphemous and offensive to Christians the length and breadth of the country, but as long as it’s not blasphemous for Muslims, everything’s alright".
Views welcome here.
A Sunday topic...this blog has been brooding over the grumpy words of the Rt.Reverend Lindsay Unwin, Bishop of Horsham last week when he noted how many parishioners do not kneel down properly to pray "There was a time when 'Let us pray' meant an immediate grabbing for a well used hassock and reassuring shuffle as people settled into a not inappropriate physical discomfort" he says. CS Lewis would agree - in The Screwtape Letters he says "we are animals, and what our bodies do affects our minds", therefore kneeling is better than sitting or lying down, even though prayer may be silent and inward. As a Catholic child I always noticed that in Anglican churches the pews were closer together and made it harder to kneel - the Anglican Crouch was the term used. But now it seems people stay sitting down.
 Assistance is offered by a pastor in Garston, Virginia, Ken Collins,
with this useful diagram of all the traditional praying positions. Other sites are equally rich in instruction. And complaint. Blogger Jimmy Akin says kneeling hurts. This Catholic site explains why kneeling matters. The other references I can find are nearly all from marathon runners who find it hard to give thanks for their success in a kneeling position...
 The National Secular Society is very pleased that its "De-Baptism" certificate has been featured in the Times Diary. Anyone wishing to get removed from the baptismal register can download it and demand that a senior cleric sign it. There are a lot of anguished accounts of how difficult this can be, and how it is even harder to get excommunicated these days.
Meanwhile Italians are getting keener and keener on debaptism, and one site offering certificates observes "We see a spike every time the Pope says something unpopular"
But if you don't think baptism does anything real in the first place, why give it the credibility of struggling to get de-baptised? Like getting de-vaccinated when the vaccine is exposed as a placebo, or renouncing the haircuts your parents gve you as a child...
 This according to the LA Times is Wiley S. Drake, a Buena Park pastor and a former national leader of the Southern Baptist Convention. He looks benevolent enough, but has just called on his followers to pray for the deaths of Joe Conn and Jeremy Leaming, leaders of the movement "Americans United for Separation of Church and State."
Drake says he is "simply doing what God told me to do... to pray imprecatory prayer against people who attack God's church. The Bible says that if anybody attacks God's people, David said this is what will happen to them. . . . Children will become orphans and wives will become widows."
Continue reading "Pastor prays for death of opponents" »
 A woman looking for old crockery in Zell am See, Austria, stumbled on a medieval cross two years ago, liked the look of it and kept it behind her couch. It turns out now to be worth over £ 200,000. Meanwhile at the Museum of London over the same period archaeologists have been puzzling over numerous statuettes and vessels relating to Hindu worship, and at one stage wondered whether the Thames was standing in for the Ganges with Hindus in Britain. Ramesh Kallidai, secretary general of the Hindu Forum of Great Britain, disagrees. It seems that when a household deity is broken, the rule is that it gets buried, burned or immersed in water. And no way does the Thames stand in for the Ganges. It was just convenient, that's all.
For connoisseurs of grumpy militant atheism here’s a ranting Youtube. The Australian filmmaker John Safran got so fed up with Mormons ringing his doorbell early in the morning that he flew to Salt Lake City Utah and knocked on their doors instead, to convert them to atheism. Rude words alert, level 1. But I’m afraid it is very funny...
 It takes religion, and extremism, and social terror to turn the humble headscarf into a divisive symbol. Now a Muslim woman teacher in Germany has failed to persuade a German court that it was allowable to wear a headscarf - the hijab being banned for teachers in class in North Rhine-Westphalia - as long as she wore it in the style of Grace Kelly. WIth her hair showing at the front. The Dusseldorf court disagreed. Grace, they said, only wore it in convertibles - the teacher wears it for religious reasons.
It is difficult to see how one's inner reasons for wearing certain inoffensive items of clothing are the business of any court. Particularly when the streets are full of teenage Goths bedecked with skulls and diabolic symbols, not to mention rude T-shirts.
PS for some great secular scarf pictures, try this. The Queen is there too.
Some Fijian villagers whose ancestors killed and ate the Rev. Thomas Baker in 1871 have offered a formal apology to his descendants. The Wesleyan missionary had offended them, it seems, by taking a comb out of a chief's hair. Touching the head of a chief was taboo.
It was rare - he is the only European to have died this way there - but where would cartoonists have been all these decades without such stories? On this site my favourite is the cannibal reading the packaging and saying happily "He's a low-fat Methodist full of natural goodness".
 With the current concern about drunkenness, crime and general misery, it seems the moment to whirl round some signposts on religious attitudes to drink. Some religious teachers treat it sacramentally, some as the devil's brew. Here's some Bible reference - suggesting that St Paul felt wine to be a good gift of God but that drunkenness is always wrong . In Evangelical Christianity including Methodism there is evidence that attitudes are actually softening; but hardliners argue that whenever "wine" was used by Jesus or praised as a gift of God, it was really grape juice; only when it caused drunkenness was it wine. Thus, they interpret the Bible as asserting that grape juice is good and that alcohol is bad .
Continue reading "Booze and the Good Book" »
 An article from the Chronicle of Higher Education charts the history of intellectuals and philosophers in Russia since Lenin and gives an insightful nod towards the situation in the country since 2003.
[Russia] In a peculiarly Russian way, anticipates the ever-present possibility of chaos in human life. Moreover, it's congenitally unable to separate itself from Orthodox Christian mysticism, except when it swings the opposite way to Western, utopian, scientific reason (which played out in both the liberal humanism of Alexander Herzen and Lenin's ruthless police state). It is always impassioned about ideas, as in Belinsky's famous rebuke of Turgenev, reproduced in Tom Stoppard's play The Coast of Utopia: "We haven't yet solved the problem of God, and you want to eat!"
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An online quiz claims to test the solidity of your belief in God with a series of questions. However, it contains a glaring anomaly. If you agree that there probably isn't a Loch Ness monster due to lack of evidence, you are not allowed to believe that there is a God even if he/she can't be proven by science. Yet the Loch Ness Monster theory claims a physical, terrestrial presence, and the claim of a God does not...
