Pope compares Atheism to Nazism

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29).

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Australia outlaws pro-euthanasia TV advert

Australia has outlawed a television advertisement in favour of euthanasia - the first in many years to challenge a legal ban on the practice.

In the advert, a gaunt-looking actor speaks of intolerable suffering and urges the government to listen to those who wanted to die with dignity.

Regulators say it promotes suicide, which is illegal in Australia.

The group behind the campaign, Exit International, told the BBC it would fight for its reinstatement.

In the banned advertisement, an actor plays a man reflecting on his life and of being struck down by a terminal illness, while pleading to be allowed to die with dignity:

"I chose to marry Tina, have two great kids. I chose to always drive a Ford. What I didn't choose was being terminally ill. I didn't choose to starve to death because eating is like swallowing razor blades.

"And I certainly didn't choose to have to watch my family go through it with me. I've made my final choice. I just need the government to listen."

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Societies without God are more benevolent

The pope's visit to Britain has been the perfect excuse for many commentators to traduce secularism

Writing sometime around the 10th century BC, the furious author of Psalm 14 thundered against those who say there is no God. "They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good." If the denunciations of wicked atheists coming from today's apologists for religion are any guide, the spirit of Iron Age Israel is abroad in 21st-century Britain.

In advance of the pope's visit, clergymen and commentators are deploying every variety of bogus argument against those who advocate the superiority of secularism. Edmund Adamus, director of pastoral affairs for the Catholic diocese of Westminster, led the way when he denounced the "wasteland" secularism produced. If he had been condemning the atheist tyrannies of communism and fascism, I would have no complaint. However, Adamus was not objecting to Cuba, China or North Korea, but to the wasteland of secular, democratic Britain "with its ever-increasing commercialisation of sex, not to mention its permissive laws advancing the 'gay' agenda".

Rightwing columnists and, depressingly but predictably in these appeasing times, leftwing journalists have joined the moaning chorus. The arguments of Geoffrey Robertson QC and Professor Richard Dawkins that the cops had grounds to ask the pope to account for his church's failure to stop the rape of children in its care drove them wild. "The hysterical and abusive nature of some of the attacks on the pope will do nothing but discredit secularism," said Andrew Brown in the Guardian. "I accept, of course, that lots of secular humanists are tolerant and reasonable people," says the more restrained and judicious Stephen Glover of the Mail. "But there is a hard core which embraces and promotes atheism with the blind fervour of religious zealots."

Not that I agree with Robertson and Dawkins that the police should arrest the pope. The best way for anyone caught up in religious crimes to make amends is to convert to secularism. The odds are that they will be better people for it.

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Larry King interviews Stephen Halking about the universe

Scientists find evidence discrediting theory Amazon was virtually unlivable

SAN MARTIN DE SAMIRIA, PERU - To the untrained eye, all evidence here in the heart of the Amazon signals virgin forest, untouched by man for time immemorial - from the ubiquitous fruit palms to the cry of howler monkeys, from the air thick with mosquitoes to the unruly tangle of jungle vines.

Archaeologists, many of them Americans, say the opposite is true: This patch of forest, and many others across the Amazon, was instead home to an advanced, even spectacular civilization that managed the forest and enriched infertile soil to feed thousands.

The findings are discrediting a once-bedrock theory of archaeology that long held that the Amazon, unlike much of the Americas, was a historical black hole, its environment too hostile and its earth too poor to have ever sustained big, sedentary societies. Only small and primitive hunter-gatherer tribes, the assumption went, could ever have eked out a living in an unforgiving environment.

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EcoModo - The Best of Treehugger

Geeks Without Borders calls for the help of all golden-hearted geeks, a plant that is dependent on Facebook "Likes" for its survival, Notre Dame hands out iPads to its students instead of textbooks, and more.

Geeks Without Borders Set on Saving Lives With Technology

How one organization will keep those in crisis connected to help — and how you can be part of it.

MIT Creates Self-Assembling Solar Cells That Repair Themselves

MIT researchers believe they've discovered how to use this self-assembly to restore solar cells damaged by the sun.

"Meet Eater" — the Plant That Lives on Social Media

Every time this plant makes a friend on Facebook, an electronic system delivers water and nutrients. No friends, no love? Dead plant. Unhappy Meet Eater.

Is the UK's First Green Cell Phone Rating System Bending the Rules?

The argument is that because a smart phone can take over for multiple other gadgets, they're therefore greener. A valid point, but good enough to call them green over another standard cell phone?

Notre Dame Begins Test Run of iPads With a Paperless Course

The University of Notre Dame is taking the use of e-readers in classrooms seriously, embarking on a one year study of how the devices integrate into classrooms.

HP Competition Winner Has Rooftop Farms, Plugin Units

The HP Skyline 2020 competition "outlined fresh visual imaginations for the skyline discarding preconceived notions" and "allowed students and professionals to partner and elucidate their visions and designs that would change the skyline thereby transforming the city itself."

Urban Arrow: A Reinvented Cargo Bike With An Electric Boost

We have admired Bakfiets, the big Dutch cargo bikes that carry kids around the Netherlands, before; Warren noted that they have a low centre of gravity and are very stable, and probably are a whole lot safer than kids' seats on bikes.

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'Burn a Quran Day' Sparks Protests in Afghanistan, Petraeus Says It Can Endanger Troops

A Florida pastor's plan to burn Qurans at his church on Sept. 11 ignited a protest today by hundreds of Afghans, who burned American flags and shouted "Death to America," and drew a comment from the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan that the preacher could be increasing the threat to his troops.

The crowd in downtown Kabul reached nearly 500 today, with Afghan protesters chanting "Long live Islam " and "Long live the Quran," and burning an effigy of Terry Jones, senior pastor from the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida who is planning the event.

I don't know if there is anything that endangers troops more than putting them in Afghanistan, but pissing off the locals probably isn't going to help.

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Evolution in Action: Lizard Moving From Eggs to Live Birth

Evolution has been caught in the act, according to scientists who are decoding how a species of Australian lizard is abandoning egg-laying in favor of live birth.

Along the warm coastal lowlands of New South Wales (map), the yellow-bellied three-toed skink lays eggs to reproduce. But individuals of the same species living in the state's higher, colder mountains are almost all giving birth to live young.

Only two other modern reptiles—another skink species and a European lizard—use both types of reproduction. (Related: "Virgin Birth Expected at Christmas—By Komodo Dragon.")

Evolutionary records shows that nearly a hundred reptile lineages have independently made the transition from egg-laying to live birth in the past, and today about 20 percent of all living snakes and lizards give birth to live young only.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson - Bad Design

2006 Neil DeGrasse Tyson speaks on bad design in the universe.

Hilarious.

Extract from Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time

"There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle parts. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The answer is that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero. The matter in the universe is made out of positive energy. However, the matter is all attracting itself by gravity. Two pieces of matter that are close to each other have less energy than the same two pieces a long way apart, because you have to expend energy to separate them against the gravitational force that is pulling them together. Thus in a sense, the gravitational field has negative energy. In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero." -Stephen Hawking

Magnificent.

Jason Clay: How big brands can help save biodiversity

Convince just 100 key companies to go sustainable, and WWF's Jason Clay says global markets will shift to protect the planet our consumption has already outgrown. Hear how his extraordinary roundtables are getting big brand rivals to agree on green practices first -- before their products duke it out on store shelves.

About Jason Clay
Jason Clay is a WWF vice-president who works with big corporations to transform the global markets they operate in, so we can produce more with less land, less water and less pollution.

Charles Darwin's ecological experiment on Ascension isle

A lonely island in the middle of the South Atlantic conceals Charles Darwin's best-kept secret.

Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice.

Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical "cloud forest".

What happened in the interim is the amazing story of how the architect of evolution, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem.

By a bizarre twist, this great imperial experiment may hold the key to the future colonisation of Mars.

The tiny tropical island of Ascension is not easy to find. It is incredibly remote, located 1,600km (1,000 miles) from the coast of Africa and 2,250km (1,400 miles) from South America.

Its existence depends entirely on what geologists call the mid-Atlantic ridge. This is a chain of underwater volcanoes formed as the ocean is wrenched apart.

However, because Ascension occupies a "hot spot" on the ridge, its volcano is especially active. A million years ago, molten magma explosively burst above the waves.

A new island was born.

Back in 1836, the young Charles Darwin was coming to the end of his five-year mission to explore strange new worlds and boldly go where no naturalist had gone before.

Aboard HMS Beagle, he called in at Ascension. En route from another remote volcanic island, St Helena, Darwin wasn't expecting much.

"We know we live on a rock, but the poor people of Ascension live on a cinder," the residents of St Helena had joked before his departure.

But arriving on Ascension put an unexpected spring in Darwin's step.

Professor David Catling of the University of Washington, Seattle, is retracing Darwin's travels for a new book. He told the BBC: "Awaiting Darwin on Ascension was a letter from his Cambridge mentor, John Henslow.

"Darwin's voyage of discovery had already caused a huge sensation in London," he explained.

"Henslow assured him that on his return, he would take his place among the great men of science."

At this fantastic news, Darwin bounded forth in ecstasy, the sound of his geological hammer ringing from hill to hill.

Everywhere, bright red volcanic cones and rugged black lava signalled the violent forces that had wrought the island.

Yet, thinks Professor Catling, amid this wild desolation, Darwin began to hatch a plot.

Out of the ashes of the volcano, he would create a green oasis - a "Little England".

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Are we living in a designer universe?

The argument over whether the universe has a creator, and who that might be, is among the oldest in human history. But amid the raging arguments between believers and sceptics, one possibility has been almost ignored – the idea that the universe around us was created by people very much like ourselves, using devices not too dissimilar to those available to scientists today.

As with much else in modern physics, the idea involves particle acceleration, the kind of thing that goes on in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Before the LHC began operating, a few alarmists worried that it might create a black hole which would destroy the world. That was never on the cards: although it is just possible that the device could generate an artificial black hole, it would be too small to swallow an atom, let alone the Earth.

However, to create a new universe would require a machine only slightly more powerful than the LHC – and there is every chance that our own universe may have been manufactured in this way.

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White Fright

Glenn Beck's rally was large, vague, moist, and undirected—the Waterworld of white self-pity.

One crucial element of the American subconscious is about to become salient and explicit and highly volatile. It is the realization that white America is within thinkable distance of a moment when it will no longer be the majority. This awareness already exists in places like New York and Texas and California, and there have even been projections of the time(s) at which it will occur and when different nonwhite populations will collectively outnumber the former white majority. But it also exerts a strong subliminal effect in states like Alaska that have an overwhelming white preponderance.

Until recently, the tendency has been to think of this rather than to speak of it—or to speak of it very delicately, lest the hard-won ideal of diversity be imperiled. But nobody with any feeling for the zeitgeist can avoid noticing the symptoms of white unease and the additionally uneasy forms that its expression is beginning to take.

This summer, then, has been the perfect register of the new anxiety, beginning with the fracas over Arizona's immigration law, gaining in intensity with the proposal by some Republicans to amend the 14th Amendment so as to de-naturalize "anchor babies," cresting with the continuing row over the so-called "Ground Zero" mosque, and culminating, at least symbolically, with a quasi-educated Mormon broadcaster calling for a Christian religious revival from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

At the last "Tea Party" rally I attended, earlier this year at the Washington Monument, some in the crowd made at least an attempt to look fierce and minatory. I stood behind signs that read: "We left our guns at home—this time" and "We invoke the First Amendment today—the Second Amendment tomorrow." But Beck's event was tepid by comparison: a call to sink to the knees rather than rise from them. It was clever of him not to overbill it as a "Million"-type march (though Rep. Michele Bachmann was tempted to claim that magic figure). The numbers were impressive enough on their own, but the overall effect was large, vague, moist, and undirected: the Waterworld of white self-pity.

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Protest the Pope! Be there!

For those of you living in or around London, we bring news of the latest details of the Pope’s visit. I’ve written twice for this blog about the Pope’s disgusting actions (both of which can be found by following this link) and if you share the sentiment that all decent human beings would, then I encourage you to attend as many of these events as possible.


Why “Protest the Pope”?

The diverse groups who support this campaign have many different reasons for not approving of the State Visit to the UK by the Pope in September 2010. They all however share the following view:

• That the Pope, as a citizen of Europe and the leader of a religion with many adherents in the UK, is of course free to enter and tour our country.
• However, as well as a religious leader, the Pope is a head of state and the state and organisation of which he is head has been responsible for:

1. opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of AIDS
2. promoting segregated education
3. denying abortion to even the most vulnerable women
4. opposing equal rights for lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people
5. failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation.
6. rehabilitating the holocaust denier bishop Richard Williamson and the appeaser of Hitler, the war-time Pope, Pius XII.

• The state of which the Pope is the head has also resisted signing many major human rights treaties and has formed its own treaties (‘concordats’) with many states which negatively affect the human rights of citizens of those states.
• As a head of state, the Pope is an unsuitable guest of the UK government and should not be accorded the honour and recognition of a state visit to our country.

If you believe, as we do, that the Pope should not come to the UK without hearing from the millions of people who reject his harsh, intolerant views and the practices and policies of the Vatican State please get involved.

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Leaked Tapes with Catholic Sex Abuse Victim

Make for Sad Reading

Israel rabbi calls for 'plague' on Mahmoud Abbas

A senior rabbi from a party within Israel's coalition government has called for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to "vanish from our world".

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of Shas, spoke out as Middle East talks are poised to begin in Washington.

The United States condemned the remarks as "deeply offensive".

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu distanced himself from the comments with a statement saying that his government wanted peace with the Palestinians.

The attack on Mr Abbas, delivered in the rabbi's weekly sermon, also prompted chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat to condemn the remarks as "an incitement to genocide".

So in short, the state asks for peace, the religulous ask for a plague.

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At Lincoln Memorial, a Call for Religious Rebirth

WASHINGTON — An enormous and impassioned crowd rallied at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial this weekend, summoned by Glenn Beck, a conservative broadcaster who called for a religious rebirth in America at the site where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech exactly 47 years earlier.

“Something that is beyond man is happening,” Mr. Beck told the crowd, in what was part religious revival and part history lecture. “America today begins to turn back to God.”

The rally organized by Mr. Beck, a Fox News broadcaster who has been sharply critical of President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats, had been attacked as dishonoring the memory of Dr. King by being set on the anniversary of his speech. Despite Mr. Beck’s protestations, his event and a much smaller and mainly black counter-rally seemed to underscore the country’s racial and political fissures.

Critics have suggested that Mr. Beck was trying to energize conservatives for the midterm elections in November. Mainstream Republican leaders remain skittish about the group emerging on their right — and the influence it displayed in primary elections Tuesday — and had little to say about the Beck event.

But in an interview aired Sunday, Mr. Beck denied any political motivation — or political aspiration — and shrugged off conservatives’ suggestions that his ability to mobilize so large a crowd made him presidential material.

“There’s nothing we can do that will solve the problems that we have and keep the peace unless we solve it through God,” he told “Fox News Sunday.”

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Sheryl WuDunn: Our century's greatest injustice

Sheryl WuDunn's book "Half the Sky" investigates the oppression of women globally. Her stories shock. Only when women in developing countries have equal access to education and economic opportunity will we be using all our human resources.

About Sheryl WuDunn
Sheryl WuDunn and her husband, Nick Kristof, won a Pulitzer for their New York Times coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Their joint reporting work in China and other developing nations convinced them both that, just as slavery was the moral issue of the 19th century, sex trafficking, gender-based violence and other abuses make women's rights the moral issue of the 21st.
In their book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, WuDunn and Kristof make the case for empowering women as a means of development. Women tend to spend more on education, nutrition and business, the economic engines of growth in a community. And if we can find ways to develop the untapped potential of the millions of women who are now left uneducated, denied basic rights, oppressed and threatened -- we'll turn on a firehose of economic power that could transform the developing world.

NYS Senator Diane Savino speaks on the Marriage Equality bill

Senator Savino speaks on Marriage Equality Albany, NY December 2, 2009

MIT Inventors Create Robot Swarm for Mopping Up Oil Spills

Forget skimmer ships, top kill, and any gibberish that came out of James Cameron's mouth: MIT researchers have invented a super-absorbent robot that can lap up oil faster than you can say Deepwater Horizon.

Crap, where were these guys a few months ago?



Seaswarm, as they call it, basically works like a maxi pad. A patented hydrophobic nanofabric devours as much as 20 times its own weight in oil without collecting water. To capture the oil, the nanofabric's draped over a conveyor belt that's then dispatched on the surface of the ocean like "a rolling carpet," to quote Assaf Biderman, associate director of MIT's Senseable City Lab. The robot's entirely autonomous; it swims along, powered by a pair of solar panels.



Senseable City Lab is unveiling the first prototype at the Venice Architecture Biennale on Saturday. The hope's to produce a whole fleet of Seaswarms that'll be able to attack oil spills like, yes, a swarm of bees.

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Scientists create 'dry water

The substance resembles powdered sugar and could revolutionise the way chemicals are used.

Each particle of dry water contains a water droplet surrounded by a sandy silica coating. In fact, 95 per cent of dry water is ''wet'' water.

Scientists believe dry water could be used to combat global warming by soaking up and trapping the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Tests show that it is more than three times better at absorbing carbon dioxide than ordinary water.

Dry water may also prove useful for storing methane and expanding the energy source potential of the natural gas.

Dr Ben Carter, from the University of Liverpool, presented his research on dry water at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

He said: ''There's nothing else quite like it. Hopefully, we may see dry water making waves in the future.''

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The Movie Christians Don’t Want You to See

NOTE: This post was completely stolen from another blog "Rationalist's Blog".



Agora, directed by Alejandro Amenabar, opened in Spain on October 9, 2009, becoming the highest grossing film for the year in that country, grossing over $32 million in the first three months post-release. Featuring Academy Award winning actress Rachel Weisz, The movie featured at the Cannes Film Festival, and won a Best Original Screenplay in Spain. With the ingredients and the feel of a big budget blockbuster, why has the film been limited to just a few indie outlet screenings within the U.S?

Significantly, Agora found success in these small urban cinemas, and according to Rentrak, which tracks movie ticket data in North America, recording the highest per-theatre-average of any film in the marketplace during the Memorial Holiday weekend this year. Yet no major U.S Distributor believes it to be a worthy punt for wider cinematic release. We must ourselves why? Either the movie is of poor substance, or it’s the substance that causes concern. Judging by the film’s success elsewhere, we can presume the latter.

Set in Alexandria, Egypt during the fourth century (391 A.D) Weisz plays the role of Hypatia, a female mathematician, philosopher and astronomer who investigates the flaws of the geocentric Ptolemaic system and the heliocentric model that challenges it. In lay terms, does the sun revolve around the earth, or the other way around? In the background, the gradual collapse of the Roman Empire, and the violent uprising of Christianity within pagan centers.

Central to the plot is Hypatia’s efforts to preserve the city’s library, a library that Christians seek to destroy because they believe science interferes with the worship of Jesus. Whilst much of the drama is a fictionalized, this narrative is historically correct. In fact, historians refer to the destruction of the Alexandrian library as the end of the first period of enlightenment and the commencement of the Dark Ages.

In the years leading to the period of the film’s setting, the Roman Empire was beginning to implode upon itself; the cracks in the wallpaper were evident to the intellectual elite and to the Roman Emperor Constantine. The empire stretched to the most northern parts of Europe, to the edge of Asia, and down into the African continent. With so many varying societies and cultures under his control, with a myriad of respective religions and gods, Constantine believed a one-god religion could bring stability and unity to all his nations. However, in the shopping aisle of one-god religions, there was only Judaism or Christianity. He chose the latter because the Romans believed the Jewish beliefs to be barbaric and outdated.

In signing the Edict of Milan in 322 A.D, Constantine gave legitimacy to Christianity, a religion whose followers totaled less than 40,000, representing less than 1% of the Jewish population at that time. Mass conversions began. Christianity, unlike paganism and Judaism, is a proselytizing faith, and Agora illustrates the ugly, brutal, and politically motivated origins of America’s favorite religion.

The film leaves you asking many questions i.e. how many centuries earlier would we have discovered the germ theory of disease, thus preventing the premature deaths of billions of people, had Christianity not been forced upon mankind in such a belligerent fashion, as it was in 391 A.D?

CJ Werleman

Author ’God Hates You. Hate Him Back’ (Making Sense of the Bible)

US court halts government funding of stem cell research

WASHINGTON — A US court on Monday ordered a temporary halt to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, which President Barack Obama had authorized, saying it involved the destruction of human embryos.

US District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ruled in favor of a coalition of groups, including several Christian organizations, which had sought a temporary injunction on funding of the research ahead of a planned lawsuit.

"Plaintiffs have demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on the merits," Lamberth said.

The coalition argues that President Obama's March 2009 lifting of a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research violates legislation that prohibits government funding for research in which embryos are discarded or destroyed.

"ESC (embryonic stem cell) research is clearly research in which an embryo is destroyed," Lamberth's ruling said.

Researchers believe that stem cells, so-called because they are the foundation for all human cells, provide two promising avenues for scientists.

First, they can be used for research that cannot be performed inside the body. But scientists believe they can also coax the foundational cells into cardiac, pancreatic or brain cells to replace damaged or infected cells and allow tissue or organs to reconstitute themselves.

In reversing the ban put in place by his predecessor George W. Bush, Obama pointed to the potential breakthroughs the research could yield, and he rejected the "false choice" between sound science and moral values.

But the research is fiercely opposed by religious conservatives, who believe that life begins at conception, because it involves the disposal of embryos.

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Neighbourhood comes together and kicks out religious haters

From Ggskelding's YouTube Channel: This is a group from a church at the end of a street. Apparently they have been grouping in front of a couple's house and reading their bible loudly for the past 7 years. They may have also driven another couple from the area as well by doing the same thing. Tonight most of our neighbours came out and were successful in getting them to leave. The people who go to that church don't even live in our area! Police came by shortly thereafter.



Awe-inspiring stuff.

A Machine That Turns Plastic Back Into Oil

Plastic causes a trifecta of problems. We’re running out of places to dump our non-biodegradable plastic waste and it’s clogging up our oceans. Burning plastic releases tons of CO2 into the atmosphere contributing to global warming. And to make the stuff, it soaks up 7% of our annual petroleum use, an in demand, diminishing resource.

Akinori Ito, the CEO of Blest, a Japanese company, has somewhat of a panacea. If plastic is just oil, why don’t we simply turn it back into what it was, he pondered. So the guy made a machine to do it. His solution is safe, eco-friendly and efficient.



“If we burn the plastic, we generate toxins and a large amount of CO2. If we convert it into oil, we save CO2 and at the same time increase people’s awareness about the value of plastic garbage,” Ito told Our World 2.0.

Blest produces the machines in various sizes suitable for more industrial purposes or simple home use. There are already 60 in use across Japan at farms, fisheries, and small factories with some beginning to ship overseas for the environmentally conscious and curious abroad.

One kilogram of plastic waste produces almost a liter of oil while using about 1 kilowatt of electricity.

“To make a machine that anyone can use is my dream,” Ito says. “The home is the oil field of the future.”

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Richard Dawkins: Faith School Menace?

Aired August 18, 2010 on Channel 4

The number of faith schools in Britain is rising. Around 7,000 publicly funded schools - one in three - now has a religious affiliation.

As the coalition government paves the way for more faith-based education by promoting 'free schools', the renowned atheist and evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins says enough is enough.

In this passionately argued film, Dawkins calls on us to reconsider the consequences of faith education, which, he argues, bamboozles parents and indoctrinates and divides children.

The film features robust exchanges with former Secretary of State for Education Charles Clarke, Head of the Church of England Education Service Reverend Janina Ainsworth, and the Chair of the Association of Muslim Schools, Dr Mohammed Mukadam.

It also features insights from child psychologists and key players in faith education as well as insights from both parents and pupils.

Dawkins also draws on his own personal history as a father, arguing that the government must stop funding new faith schools, and urges society to respect a child's right to freedom of belief.

Watch them all at the links below:
- Part 2
- Part 3
- Part 4

The Prehistory of Prop 8

"Traditional marriage?" Give it a rest!

"Marriage as the union between one man and one woman has been the universally-recognized understanding of marriage not only since America's founding but for millennia.”

—Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, in response to the recent finding that gay people have a fundamental right to form families based upon legal marriage.

Having just co-authored a book where we survey the concept of marriage across many cultures, I’m calling B.S. on Mr. Perkins. He hasn’t got a clue what he’s talking about.

But Perkins isn’t alone in his vehement ignorance. A common refrain among those arguing against allowing same-sex marriage is that doing so would alter a long-standing trans-cultural definition of marriage. Rick Warren, the controversial evangelist Obama invited to speak at his inauguration, told Ann Curry in an NBC interview that, "For five thousand years, every single culture and every single religion has defined marriage as a man and a woman."

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Study measures Atlantic plastic accumulation

A study has measured the amount of plastic debris found in a region of the Atlantic Ocean over a 22-year period.

US researchers, writing in Science, suggest the volume of plastic appeared to have peaked in recent years.

One reason could be tighter marine pollution rules that prevent vessels dumping their waste at sea.

The team said monitoring the free-floating plastic also provided an insight into the behaviour of ocean surface currents.

They found plastic, most pieces measuring no more than a few millimetres, in more than 60% of 6,136 samples collected by dragging fine-meshed nets along the ocean's surface.

The researchers - from the US-based Sea Education Association (Sea), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Hawaii - described plastic as a "major contaminant".

"Their chemically engineered durability and slow rate of biodegradation allow these synthetic polymers to withstand the ocean environment for years to decades or longer."

The impacts caused by the debris include:

• sea animals becoming entangled
• seabirds and other marine creatures eating the plastic
• the debris being used as a "life raft" by some species to reach areas outside their normal distribution range

"While high concentrations of floating plastic debris have been found in the Pacific Ocean, only limited data exist to quantify and explain the geographical range," they said.

"In the Atlantic Ocean, the subject has been all but ignored."

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MIT researchers develop a better way to grow stem cells

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Human pluripotent stem cells, which can become any other kind of body cell, hold great potential to treat a wide range of ailments, including Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries. However, scientists who work with such cells have had trouble growing large enough quantities to perform experiments — in particular, to be used in human studies. Furthermore, most materials now used to grow human stem cells include cells or proteins that come from mice embryos, which help stimulate stem-cell growth but would likely cause an immune reaction if injected into a human patient.

To overcome those issues, MIT chemical engineers, materials scientists and biologists have devised a synthetic surface that includes no foreign animal material and allows stem cells to stay alive and continue reproducing themselves for at least three months. It’s also the first synthetic material that allows single cells to form colonies of identical cells, which is necessary to identify cells with desired traits and has been difficult to achieve with existing materials.

The research team, led by Professors Robert Langer, Rudolf Jaenisch and Daniel G. Anderson, describes the new material in the Aug. 22 issue of Nature Materials. First authors of the paper are postdoctoral associates Ying Mei and Krishanu Saha.

Human stem cells can come from two sources — embryonic cells or body cells that have been reprogrammed to an immature state. That state, known as pluripotency, allows the cells to develop into any kind of specialized body cells.

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George Carlin - Religion is bullshit.

George Carlin
May 12 1937 - June 22 2008
Thank you George Carlin, your insight was of huge importance for the human race, you will be greatly missed by many. You are forever in our thoughts.

Catholic Government

This remarkable film is posted on Pharyngula, where most of the commenters are understandably debating whether it can possibly be genuine. My first thought, too, was that it must be a hoax. Surely nobody could be quite so blatantly arrogant, saying more or less explicitly that 'Nobody should be allowed to vote unless they agree with me!' But this bulletin seems to provide corroborating evidence that Michael Voris is a bona fide Catholic activist, not a satirist lampooning Catholic idiocy and arrogance. -Richard Dawkins.

WOW!

Collision Preview

A preacher and an atheist walk into a bar...

Preview of the first 13 minutes of the forthcoming documentary "Collision".
The film follows renowned author and anti-theist Christopher Hitchens and
Pastor Douglas Wilson as they debate the topic: "Is Christianity Good For
The World?". A Darren Doane film.

The slow, whiny death of British Christianity

And now congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good News. Britain is now the most irreligious country on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. Some 63 percent of us are non-believers, according to an ICM study, while 82 percent say religion is a cause of harmful division. Now, let us stand and sing our new national hymn: Jerusalem was dismantled here/ in England's green and pleasant land.

Now that only six percent of British people regularly attend a religious service, it's only natural that we should dismantle the massive amounts of tax money and state power that are automatically given to the religious to wield over the rest of us. It's a necessary process of building a secular state, where all citizens are free to make up their own minds. Yet the opposition to this sensible shift is becoming increasingly unhinged. The Church of England, bewildered by the British people choosing to leave their pews, has only one explanation: Christians are being "persecuted" and "bullied" by a movement motivated by "Christophobia." George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says Christians are now "second class citizens" and it is only "a small step" to "a religious bar on any employment by Christians".

Really? Let's list some of the ways in which Christians, and other religious groups, are given special privileges every day. Start with the educational system. Every school in Britain is required by law to make its pupils engage every day in "an act of collective worship of a wholly or mainly Christian nature". Yes: Britain is still a nation with enforced prayer. The religious are then handed total control of 36 percent of our state-funded schools, in which to indoctrinate children into their faith alone.

These religious schools, paid for by you and me, are disfiguring Britain. I know one reason I grew up without the prejudices of some of my older relatives was because I went to school with kids from every conceivable ethnic and religious group, and I could see they were just like me. A five year old will make friends with anyone, and he'll be much less likely to believe smears against those friends for the rest of their lives. But in Britain today, that mixing is happening less and less. Increasingly, the children of Christians are sent to one side, Jews to another, Muslims to another still, and they never see each other except from the window of their parents' cars. After the race riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley in 2001, the official investigations found that faith schools were a major cause.

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The War On Brains

If you missed Rachel Maddow’s show last night, you’ll want to catch this clip:

As usual, Maddow and her crew put together a good summary of what currently ails religious and political conservatism in the USA. To the smart political conservatives out there – and I know there are many of you – I reiterate a plea I’ve made before: please purge the Republican party of the wing-nut wing. They’re dragging you down. Tea Partiers, Creationists and their ilk are giving conservatism, which once was a respectable set of social and political ideals, a bad reputation. Tea Partiers, Creationists, etc., aren’t going to listen to people like me. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll listen to fellow conservatives. If not, then hurry up and throw out your trash. The stench is leaking outside the conservative house and it’s nauseating the neighbors.

Catholics don't get to define my marriage — even if I am heterosexual

Some Catholic site is giving advice on how to field questions from Leftists about homosexuality (CLICK HERE). After all, those danged lefties keep bringing up issues of equality and civil rights when gay marriage comes up, and it's awfully hard to talk about restricting gay rights without sounding like a bigot or homophobe, so you've got to have a different set of talking points you can switch to whenever talk about equality and fairness and those other non-Catholic doctrines are brought up. So they've come up with five different tactics Catholic bigots can use to divert attention from their bigotry. They hope. Mainly, though, it diverts attention to the fact that they use really, really bad arguments. Here are the five, reworded from their misleading rhetoric to a blunter description of what they propose.

1. Obfuscate about rights. Redefine rights any old way you want to, endorse equal rights for everyone, but then claim marriage isn't a right because there are restrictions (can't marry your sister, there's an age of consent, you have to pay a fee to get a marriage license), so it's OK to add one more restriction. Never mind that by this reasoning the old miscegenation laws are perfectly valid, and don't really deny anyone a right.
   
   
2. Point out that heterosexuals have damaged marriage. How this helps the Catholic case against gay marriage is a mystery, but they're welcome to make the argument — they're saying that contraception and divorce and artificial fertilization are all also crimes against nature. What a winning strategy!
   
   
3. Lie about how awful homosexual parents are. Kids need both a mother and father, because mothers are nurturing and fathers are brave and disciplined. Yes, right, arguing from sexual stereotypes is OK if you're Catholic, and it also means you get to ignore the fact that a third of all households are headed by single mothers.
   
   
4. Slippery slope! Some guy wanted to marry his horse, there are horrible awful polyamorous relationships, and even if you allow gays to marry, they don't all rush to the altar. This is a pointless argument: it's basically saying that we should only permit traditional 1 man:1 woman marriages because if we allow other possibilities, not all marriages will be between 1 man:1 woman. We also allow marriage between couples of different races, and a Catholic can even marry a Protestant — this has not led to a massive rush to marriages between a man, an oyster, a pelican, and a watermelon.
   
   
5. Lie with statistics. This one is my favorite argument here. Gay marriage will hurt people! Did you know that 31% of lesbian report physical violence with their partner in the last year? (Don't mention the fact that 39% of women in a heterosexual relationship report domestic violence.) Gay men are more likely to be killed by a partner than a stranger! (Don't mention that heterosexual women are five times more likely to be killed by their partner than a stranger.)

Oh, and they do cite sources: most of them seem to be something called the Witherspoon Institute, which made a report…funded by the Templeton Foundation. Don't be surprised. Those rich jerks are pouring money into all kinds of dubious, religiously-motivated projects.

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Our Neandertal Brethren: Why They Were Not a Separate Species

According to the late Harvard University biologist Ernst W. Mayr, the greatest evolutionary theorist since Charles Darwin, “species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.”

Reproductive isolation is the key to understanding how new species form, and many types of barriers can divide a population and split it into two different groups: geographic (such as a mountain range, desert, ocean or river), morphological (a change in coloration, body type or reproductive organs), behavioral (a change in breeding season, mating calls or courtship actions), and others. After isolation, if members of the split populations encounter one another and cannot produce viable offspring that can themselves later successfully interbreed and produce viable offspring (hybrids such as mules are infertile), then these two populations constitute two different species.

Let’s say that a species migrates out of Africa into Europe around 400,000 years ago and becomes reproductively isolated from its ancestral population for the next 320,000 years. It evolves distinctive anatomical features and adaptations for the colder climes. Moreover, even after other descendants of the original ancestral population move into Europe around 80,000 years ago, the skeletons from both groups show no obvious signs of blended characteristics. Modern scientists classify the creatures as two different species.

Then, however, genetic analysis reveals that members of these two species interbred and produced viable offspring that populated Europe and spread eastward as far as China and Papua New Guinea. By Mayr’s definition, these two interbreeding populations are not two species after all, but two sibling subspecies of the original African species. A subspecies has a characteristic appearance and geographic range, Mayr explains, yet he adds this significant qualifier: “It is a unit of convenience for the taxonomist, but not a unit of evolution.”

Thus it is—revealing the identity of my example—that we must reclassify Homo neanderthalensis as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, a subspecies of Homo sapiens. A comprehensive and technically sophisticated study published in the May 7 issue of Science, “A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome,” by Max Planck Institute evolutionary anthropologists Richard E. Green, Svante Pääbo and 54 of their colleagues, demonstrates that “between 1 and 4% of the ge nomes of people in Eurasia are derived from Neandertals” and that “Neandertals are on average closer to individuals in Eurasia than to individuals in Africa.” In fact, the authors note, “a striking observation is that Neandertals are as closely related to a Chinese and Papuan individual as to a French individual.... Thus, the gene flow between Neandertals and modern humans that we detect most likely occurred before the divergence of Europeans, East Asians, and Papuans.” In other words, our anatomically hirsute cousins are actually our genetic brothers.

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Pope Benedict rejects Irish bishop's resignation

Big. Fucking. Surprise.

In a move that has stunned critics Pope Benedict XVI has rejected the resignations of two Dublin auxiliary bishops.

Bishop Raymond Field and Bishop Eamonn Walsh had both tendered their resignations in 2009 in the wake of the Murphy report into clerical child abuse.

Both men had come under intense pressure because they had served as bishops during the period investigated by the Murphy Commission into clerical child sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

The Murphy Commission in Ireland found that sexual abuse was 'endemic' in boys' institutions but that the church hierarchy protected the perpetrators and allowed them to take up new positions teaching other children after their original victims had been sworn to secrecy.

'Following the presentation of their resignations to Pope Benedict, it has been decided that Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field will remain as auxiliary bishops,' Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said in a letter to priests of the Archdiocese reported in The Irish Catholic.

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China zoos in 'barbaric' animal abuse

HONG KONG - Chinese zoos and safari parks treat their animals "barbarically," including abusing them to perform tricks and depriving them of proper food and shelter, an animal welfare group said.

Hong Kong-based Animals Asia Foundation said its investigation of 13 Chinese zoos and safari parks between September 2009 and August 2010 uncovered evidence of animals being beaten with sticks and metal hooks as well as tigers and lions with their teeth and claws removed, causing chronic pain.

The group's 28-page report documents "the barbaric treatment of animals and the poor living conditions they are forced to endure."

"A large number of captive animal establishments in China provide animal performances as a form of entertainment for visitors. The techniques used to force such animals to perform tricks are cruel and abusive," said the report released Monday.

"Showmen frequently engage in negative reinforcement, whipping and striking the animals repeatedly, forcing them to carry out tricks that go against their natural behaviour."

The group said its probe also uncovered evidence of animals housed in "small, barren, concrete enclosures often in darkened rooms at the back of the performance areas away from the visitors."

"The living conditions for performing animals fail to meet their basic welfare needs. Many of the animals have no visible access to water," it said.

The report features photographs of bears being forced to "box" each other and ride motorcycles along a highwire, tigers prodded into jumping through flaming hoops, and elephants "performing uncomfortable and humiliating tricks such as standing on their heads, and spinning on one leg."

All I ask is would they allow the same treatment to their beloved panda?

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Churchgoers, strippers protest one another in Coshocton County

WARSAW, Ohio -- Strip-club owner Tommy George rolled up to the church in his grabber-orange Dodge Challenger, drinking a Mountain Dew at 9 in the morning and smoking a cigarette he had just rolled himself.

Pastor Bill Dunfee stepped out of a tan Nissan Murano, clutching a Bible in one hand and his sermon in the other, a touch of spray holding his perfectly coiffed 'do in place.

Inside the New Beginnings Ministries church, Dunfee's worshippers wore polyester and pearls.

Outside, George's strippers wore bikinis and belly rings.

Both men agree it is classic sinners vs. saints. But George says it is up to America to decide which is which and who is who.

Dunfee says God already has chosen.

"Tom George is a parasite, a man without judgment," Dunfee said. "The word of Jesus Christ says you cannot share territory with the devil."

The battle that has heretofore played out in the parking lot of George's strip club - the Foxhole, a run-down, garage-like building at a Coshocton County crossroads called Newcastle - has shifted 7 miles east to Church Street.

Every weekend for the last four years, Dunfee and members of his ministry have stood watch over George's joint, taking up residence in the right of way with signs, video cameras and bullhorns in hand. They videotape customers' license plates and post them online, and they try to save the souls of anyone who comes and goes.

Now, the dancers have turned the tables, so to speak. Fed up with the tactics of Dunfee and his flock, they say they have finally accepted his constant invitation to come to church.

It's just that they've come wearing see-through shorts and toting Super Soakers.

Alleluia

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Rice yields falling under global warming

Global warming is cutting rice yields in many parts of Asia, according to research, with more declines to come.

Yields have fallen by 10-20% over the last 25 years in some locations.

The group of mainly US-based scientists studied records from 227 farms in six important rice-producing countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, India and China.

This is the latest in a line of studies to suggest that climate change will make it harder to feed the world's growing population by cutting yields.

Climate Change is such an obvious phenomenon now, with so much evidence clearly showing that the climate is changing and that we will have to adapt accordingly, that you have to wonder why people still want to argue.

On the one hand it is all us, we are the ones changing the climate and we should do everything in our power to slow the process down giving us more time to develop solutions that will ensure that ourselves and/or as many species as possible don't become extinct as a direct result of our actions.

Or; if it isn't us and the climate change is instead a direct result of natural changes, ice age cycles, volcanic dust clouds, etc. then surely it makes even more sense for us to start making the necessary changes to our technologies and resource use to ensure that we don't exacerbate these changes with our own man-made causes. Ultimately giving us more time to develop solutions that will ensure that ourselves and/or as many species as possible don't become extinct as a result of our actions.

Sigh.

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For I have sinned...

Allegations of involvement in covering up child abuse have dogged Pope Benedict VXI, and now senior figures in Scotland say there is a criminal case to answer under Scots law. Steven Raeburn investigates whether the Pope could face prosecution when he visits Scotland in September.

Your eyebrows may have been briefly raised during April by a series of press reports claiming that noted anti-theist and proponent of evolutionary theory Richard Dawkins was calling for the arrest of his Holiness Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Britain in September. The reports treated rather hilariously the genuine and serious contention that the incumbent Pontiff may actually have a case to answer arising from his claimed historic knowledge of ritualised paedophilia undertaken by priests under his authority.

After a few follow up comments the story has moved off the agenda and Dawkins -together with colleague Christopher Hitchens - has been largely silent on the subject since then. Both had in fact engaged solicitor Mark Stephens and human rights counsel Geoffrey Robertson QC to shore up their argument, and on the face of it there appears to be a compelling logic to the proposal, which considers factors including jurisdiction, civil and criminal liability, and the question of the Pope's immunity as head of state, a defence which they dismiss on the basis that the Vatican is not recognised as a state under international law.

However, with typical anglocentricity, the coverage totally omitted any reference to Pope Benedict's trip across the Hadrianic divide into our jurisdiction, which not only has a completely different criminal justice system and process, it also has its own priorities which have -post Operation Algebra and the Strachan & Rennie case- set new benchmarks and standards of evidence for securing convictions not only for sex offenders, but for those who assist in conspiring to cover them up. Dawkins, even if he was minded to, couldn't get near the Pope during the English leg of his trip, but the prospect of Strathclyde or Lothian and Borders Police slapping the handcuffs on the Pontiff just as soon as he has kissed the tarmac may yet be such a sufficiently real prospect that the visit may be cancelled. The Crown Office have not ruled out the possibility of a prosecution, and a recent papal excursion to Malta was marred by fresh allegations of his involvement in covering up for paedophile priests. The defining event of his tenure as Pontiff could see Benedict XVI escorted from the tarmac to a Reliance van and into the dock in Glasgow's High Court, and off to Barlinnie thereafter, which would make for quite a photograph.

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Pope Alert

Hopefully not a sign of whats to come when Ratzinger arrives on British shores. ;)


Crude I know, but it made me giggle.

Hitchens on cancer diagnosis: 'Why not me?'

Anderson Cooper
I just flew down to Washington to talk with author Christopher Hitchens. He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in June, and is currently undergoing chemotherapy.

Many people upon receiving a cancer diagnosis would ask "why me?" Hitchens's answer, is "why not me?"

Much of his hair has fallen out, but he seems strong as ever. We discussed whether his diagnosis has in any way altered his well-known opinion of religion and prayer.

Is it a turn off if you find out someone believes in god?

This morning I was reading my usual websites and catching up on a little news, after a weekend of running the City2Surf competition and drinking excessively afterwards, and I came across this little questions on one of my favourite sites and I thought I'd share it with you:

Recently I met a guy online who I liked. We got into a discussion about god and it became pretty obvious that he didn't believe in any kind of higher power. Soon after finding out I do, he stopped replying to my messages. Now I might be completely wrong about why he stopped messaging me, but it made me think: Is it really such a big of a turn off?

I'd be interested to hear of anyones thoughts on the matter. For me personally I think I genuinely could not form a romantic relationship with someone who believed that God was looking out for them. I'm too opinionated and wouldn't be able to let the topic drop, for that is a flaw of mine.

However, there was probably a more reasonable response that I'll also share with you, but I'd love to know your opinion on the subject too.

No, believing in a higher power isn't a turn-off for me. However things like:

• Young-Earth creationism
• Denial of the scientific method as a self-correcting and objective way to ascertain the nature of Reality
• Inability to argue logically
• Inability to entertain a notion without agreeing to it
• Inability to question one's beliefs
• Inability to grant the possibility that one is wrong about the existence or nonexistence of God

Those things are turn-offs for me. I wobbled between being an atheist, a theist, and a deist all while dating a Christian girl. Only broke up because she had trouble not fucking another guy.
I know... I know. I thought that too.

So anyone else have any other thoughts?

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From: BLACK SKEPTICS GROUP - What if?

Black atheist! Do these words mean anything? Certainly not if such a person does not exist.

Everyone knows that black people love Jesus. With tears in our eyes and a bittersweet joy in our hearts, we marvel at the wonder of the divine. With hands raised high we sway to our own celestial rhythm. With a look of transcendent torment upon our faces, we sing His praises. Don’t we love Jesus? Don’t we all love Jesus?

I’ve heard it said that black people have a “Jesus fixation”, a single minded focus on God. From our earliest days we are taught that there is a mysterious and powerful man in the heavens above- enthroned some place between time and space. Omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient- He is God-the-Father. The ethereal embodiment, if you will allow, of benevolence and love. We are taught by parents, grandparents and the preacher that “God is good!”

But, as the lesson of God’s goodness is taught with one breath, we are taught that God is awful with the next. He knows our thoughts, He knows our feelings, He knows what we will do next, and He knows our secrets and the hour of our deaths. This God is not to be trifled with. What fool would question Him- even in the quiet of one’s own mind?

Respecting the God that black Christians serve means not speaking doubt or even thinking it. How could there ever be such a thing as a black Atheist?

You serve the Lord with fear and trembling. You serve Him in perfect submission. You must love Him always. You must never think ill of Him. He is without fault. He is responsible for everything good in your life- not you. You are responsible for everything bad in your life- not Him. Praise the Lord when things go right; beg His forgiveness when they go wrong.

Now, how did we end up with this particular religious system? Well, that’s simple: Slavery. One of the original justifications for slavery was to bring the “heathen” African into contact with Christianity. The earliest enslaved Africans were converted by force before even leaving the slave castles of western Africa. They were now Christian by virtue of the slave trader’s power.

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Vatican does compare child abuse with ordaining women

Apologists for the Vatican have recently claimed that the Catholic Church does not compare sexually abusing a child with attempting to ordain a woman, but that it merely included both crimes in the same document as a procedural matter.

However, this is not true. A Vatican official has explicitly described the crimes contained in this document as being “on the same level” of seriousness. They are the “Delicta Graviora”, the crimes which the Catholic Church considers the most serious of all, and which are reserved to the Holy See for judgment.

In 2007, the Vatican published a pamphlet on Paedophilia and the Priesthood, written by Monsignor Raffaello Martinelli, an official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and member of the editorial commission of the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This pamphlet explicitly states:

“The seriousness with which the Church evaluates and judges acts of pedophilia is shown by the fact that with a new law passed in 2001, the Holy See (and not the local bishops) decided to reserve the right to judge those crimes…

The fact that the Pope wanted to reserve to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — a dicastery of the Holy See — judgment of the acts of pedophilia committed by priests, shows that the Church considers those acts to be very serious, serious crimes on the same level of the other two serious crimes — reserved to the Holy See — that can be committed against two sacraments: the Eucharist and the holiness of confession.”

In 2010, with the updated document Normae de Gravioribus Delictis, the Vatican has now added the attempted ordination of women to this strange list of the most serious crimes of all.

And the direction of the comparison is not that they consider these theological crimes to be as serious as sexually abusing a child, but that they consider sexually abusing a child to be as serious as these theological crimes, to be judged by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which used to be the Congregation of the Inquisition.

For example, sexually abusing a child is listed not as a crime against the child, but as a crime against the Biblical commandment forbidding adultery. And attempting to ordain a woman attracts a more serious punishment than sexually abusing a child. This is the type of morality that results when people put theology ahead of reality.

Ethical issues should be evaluated on the basis of human rights, compassion, well-being and suffering, not on the basis of theological dictates from people who believe they are getting messages from the creator of the universe.

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