Last week I put together a list of twenty questions that, in my experience, atheists either won’t or can’t answer and invited coherent responses.Surely, if atheists won't or can't answer his propositions, it is just outright hypocrisy to then use the rest of the post to list all those that did bother to answer him. Whether or not he accepts these answers as coherent is a matter for, either him to judge his own interpretation of coherence, or for others to do it on his behalf. From my perspective, his judgement is in serious question, so his understanding of coherence is itself, incoherent.
Six Creswell siblings became wards of the state Monday as their parents await trial in connection with the death of their teenage son, who died in December after the couple allegedly chose prayer over medical care for his undisclosed treatable ailment.
Brandi and Russel Bellew face second-degree manslaughter charges in the death of 16-year-old Austin Sprout. But they may continue to care for their remaining children under a state-supervised “in-home safety plan,” Lane County Circuit Juvenile Court Judge Eveleen Henry also ruled in a brief afternoon hearing.I don't think 'evil' is a word that has any functional use outside of theology. That said - with whatever knowledge of theology I have gleaned over the decades - when I look at the actions of some God-fearing people I do not see the virtuous, pious and good, I see evil in the most basic understanding of the term from a theological perspective.
Two Christian guest-house owners who were ordered to pay damages after refusing to allow a gay couple to stay in a double room lost their appeal today.
The challenge by Peter and Hazelmary Bull, who run Chymorvah House in Marazion, Cornwall, was rejected by three judges in the Court of Appeal in London.
They had appealed against a conclusion by a judge at Bristol County Court that they acted unlawfully when they turned away Martyn Hall and his civil partner Steven Preddy in September 2008.
Judge Andrew Rutherford ruled in January last year that the Bulls had breached equality legislation and ordered them to pay the couple a total of £3,600 damages.
The appeal judges heard that the Bulls thought any sex outside marriage was a “sin”, but denied they had discriminated against Mr Hall and Mr Preddy, from Bristol.Tris Stock is a secular atheist, sceptic, pop-philosopher and writer trying very hard to build up a following with a view to one day make an income from doing what he loves. Please follow him on Google+, Twitter and Facebook.
In a forlorn attempt to improve my education, a friend regularly pops round with a pile of back copies of a magazine called New Scientist. They invariably have clever and colourful covers asking things like "Is Time Travel Possible?", "Can we Build a Brontosaurus?" or "Will Man Live Forever?"
Sadly, the answer to all these questions is always an emphatic NO. Sadder still, to reach this conclusion you have to wade through pages of gobbledegook understandable only by the sort of chap who wears sandals and socks and still lives with his mother.
However, it's good to know that people who have difficulty forming relationships have somewhere cosy to discuss quarks, neutrinos and the Higgs Boson Particle. After all, you never see them down the pub.
But this indulgence is rapidly turning to horror as you notice how fascination with the arcane is seeping out from publications like New Scientist into the media as a whole. Coverage of such things as the arts and history – even light entertainment – has been replaced with matters scientific.
Comedy panel shows all must now have a technological bent and every time someone notices something odd happening with a sandwich in the canteen of the Cern large hadron collider it dominates headlines. The schedules are packed and it will be only a matter of time before peak viewing is dominated by Kirstie Allsopp splitting the atom in a folksy, accessible way.
All through, the message comes across clear as "Hey! isn't science interesting? Isn't it fun?" to which the answer again is an definite "No!"
Riding the crest of this assumed wave of interest is a simpering weed called Prof. Brian Cox who obviously took his chair as a result of research into zit cream and having a whining northern accent. He is science's answer to gardening's Alan Titchmarsh and once he has appeared in front of the cameras he is presumably sucked back into the same oily tube from which he was squeezed. On his very debut he joined the Ron Bendell "Don't you want to hit him in the face with a shovel?" hall of fame.
As BBC budgets are trimmed – entailing vast cuts to local radio, regional TV and the rest – Cox is always there, delivering a piece to camera outside an observatory in Chile spouting on about his interest in black holes and the wonders of delving into dark matter.
His preoccupation – and that of the legion of cohorts dragged out from the bowels of laboratories across the world to back him up – always seems to be the origins of us all, the Big Bang and how little gizmos flying around the cosmos affect you, me and the fundamentals of creation.
Once, of course, these things were all left to theologians although that's terribly non-PC these days. Now, exponents of the new beliefs are free to ponder the imponderable and come up with the explanation of life, the universe and everything.
But what, I wonder throughout, has any of this got to do with the price of fish? Yes, bearded men looking at screens may have tracked down the tiny neutrons that enabled the formation of the Crab Nebula but how should that alter my life? Does that knowledge help any of us, at any time, drag ourselves through the day?
All of it, as archbishops, popes and ayatollahs before have found, is irrelevant tosh and does nothing to make the world a better place.
Good science must surely lead to practical good rather that highfalutin conjecture. Do new thoughts about the origins of the Solar System help us provide sewage systems that could save thousands in the slums of India? Do theories about the first few seconds after the creation save millions from malaria?
We already have all the understanding of the basics we need to make a happier, comfier world but instead billions are spent on meaningless research while millions starve – and folk shiver in front of gas fires they can't afford to switch on while their licence fees are spent sending Prof Cox to sit in front of yet another radio telescope. But clearly the nerds have taken over. Our tiny bit of spare cash goes to the new elite and our tiny bit of leisure time is filled by the same people telling us how fascinating it all is. New Scientist should be placed on the top shelf along with other publications of interest to people who need to get a life.
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In Christian theology the atonement refers to the forgiving or pardoning of sin through the death of Jesus Christ by crucifixion.
- Wikipedia
