Pax Christi Protest

It is gratifying to see that a tiny minority of Catholics are willing to protest against the latest bloodstained devil to have converted to their faith being invited by Archbishop Murphy O’Connor to preach in Westminster Cathedral. Stewart Hemsley, of Pax Christi, the Catholic peace group, was reported in The Catholic Herald as explaining:

We’ve organised the vigil because we are very unhappy that Mr Blair should be preaching from the pulpit of Westminster Cathedral when he hasn’t shown any sign of repentance for going to war in Iraq illegally. He has brought horror and devastation to that country and we think it would have been appropriate if he had at least expressed sorrow and sadness and that needs to be done publicly because the act of going to war was a very public act. If I was in the Cardinal’s place I would want to know that Mr Blair had expressed his sorrow and admitted that he was wrong in taking the decision to go to war especially because the late John Paul II had made it abundantly clear that war was not the answer.
I think it would have been more appropriate for the cardinal to follow John Paul II’s lead in this matter. The domestic Church in this country was strangely quiet on this issue and did not follow the lead given by Pope John Paul and the Vatican.

A demand by five million more Catholics for the excommunication of this monster might impress critics of Christianity that it is escaping its bloodstained past. I prophesy it will never happen.

Einstein and His God

Einstein was not religious in the conventional sense, but it will come as a surprise to some, aware of his statements such as that God does not play dice, to learn that Einstein clearly identified himself as an atheist and as an agnostic.

Thus I came—despite the fact I was the son of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents—to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived… Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude… which has never left me.

Albert Einstein

Boston’s Cardinal O’Connel attacked Einstein and the General Theory of Relativity and warned the youth that the theory “cloaked the ghastly apparition of atheism” and “befogged speculation, producing universal doubt about God and His creation.” On April 24, 1929, Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of New York cabled Einstein to ask:

Do you believe in God?

Einstein’s return message is the famous statement:

I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.

From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist… I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being.

The Life and Times, by the professional biographer Ronald W Clark (1971), contains one of the best summaries on Einstein’s God:

However, Einstein’s God was not the God of most men. When he wrote of religion, as he often did in middle and later life, he tended to… clothe with different names what to many ordinary mortals—and to most Jews—looked like a variant of simple agnosticism… This was belief enough. It grew early and rooted deep. Only later was it dignified by the title of cosmic religion, a phrase which gave plausible respectability to the views of a man who did not believe in a life after death and who felt that if virtue paid off in the earthly one, then this was the result of cause and effect rather than celestial reward. Einstein’s God thus stood for an orderly system obeying rules which could be discovered by those who had the courage, the imagination, and the persistence to go on searching for them.

A Cynic Parody: Ecclesiasticus Gadget—Sample

When the sactimonious redeemer pontificates usually, then some deceit beyond incomprehension negotiates an agreement with another greened resurrection. Another biblical scholar earns justified criticism, and Pontius Pilate ponders deceitfully; but, it is that the infrequent emotion upholds the force of mental exertion. God the deceit prophesied Garden of Eden, and Isaiah prophesied eschatology; yet, always the infernal presence prays. Saith Yehouah: Because the daughters of lie are complicated and walk with ponderous necks and consuming eyes, therefore Yehouah will smite with the just enigma or paradox or member of the humblest flock, and the Lord will lay bare a feverish diagnosis. And, not that Peter is immoral exploiting Satan by failing to give full value for the miserly end of evil. Yet, often a gentile, the abject punishment for the wicked, and the ontological shekinah of the Lord are what made the avowal of faith next to the prognosis and the mark of the seven avenging angels!

Herod annoyingly vanishes. When some fatness is ontological, the commitment or purpose caricatures a sealed book inside the false prophetic vision. Saith I: Woe is me for I am underhanded because I am a man of a cup of wine, for mine eyes have seen Mary Magdalene, the Lord of hosts. God’s retribution on Mary Magdalene killing Daniel was morally wrong and incompatible with Jesus. The accidental gesture in the marketplace is transcendental. Pontius Pilate and metaphor shall be the overwhelming clergyman because they are sordid. Never put a pollution or the money lender related to Isaiah over a pustule or ontological angelic favour. Where an unstable allegory gratifyingly has a change of heart about the tattered sad disjuncture, then Mary the Virgin always dies. But, then again, the truth procrastinates often. Judas suffering from the true insanity yet god they called Yehouah should have the choice of being put painlessly to death.

Rise up, the Lord said to Isaiah: Go forth inexorably to meet Mary Jashub at the profound feeling of inferiority in God, and say: Let us go up and steal kudos from it against Lord Jesus to have a bit of evidence and epiphany. Only by going back to the hefty day can we hope to teach the final age. Smugness enslaves: Christians have hardly ever been foreign, and poorly consume and imbibe with the twisted sinner. The people conquer the ostensible master or they hurl vituperation on the avowal of faith. Unless a righteous one cries in shame again, why should anyone imagine Lord Jesus absconds?

So check out gadgets at AskWhy! Google Gadgets

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The Principle of Falsification

The Rev Dr Paul Sheppy of Reading objects to the claim that, while science determines truth from falsehood by experiment and maths by self consistency, there is no basis for determining theology’s assertions. In a letter to the press, he said it is “the sort of knock-down argument that the average first year student of philosophy of religion should be able to demolish in fairly short order”. His reason is that the “verification” or “falsification” principle is itself incapable of verification or falsification and is in it own terms, therefore, meaningless. He continues to say that Wittgenstein showed many universes of discourse exist, each with its own grammar, syntax and logic, and rules cannot sensibly be moved from one such universe to another. So:

the application of the rules of the natural sciences is unlikely to work with disciplines that make extensive use of metaphor. “Bill’s a brick” is not a scientific statement. As science, it is either untrue or meaningless. But Bill is a brick, and very fine member of my congregation. Moreover, I see the truth of what he believes by my experience and observation of him!

The reverend doctor needs to go back to school and study a little more, preferably in a universe that demonstrably makes sense. The principles of scientific method—including the falsification principle—have indeed been verified because they are subject to constant falsification, and have not yet been thus falsified. The criterion is simple, and, indeed, biblical (Dt 18:22). God explained how a false prophet could be discriminated from a true one. The prophecies of the false prophet were not true. They were not verified in practice. It is the same as the principle he attempts to lambast, and, incidentally, on this God given criterion, the Christian god, Christ, is a false prophet.

Science validates itself by selecting hypotheses that can be demonstrated not to be false—they work in practice. It is a criterion that was good enough for God but is not good enough for his theologians whose true vocation is obfuscation and mysticism to keep themselves employed by gullibles who cannot discriminate fact from fiction.

As for “Bill is a brick” not being scientific, we must concur, but there is no reason at all why it should not be. Science is a part of human thought, and each of us builds it up from infancy as a succession of increasingly complex metaphors based on our experience. Science consists of these metaphors, concepts like magnitude as height, understanding as grasping, time as a journey or a landscape, and so on. There is no fundamental reason why “Bill is a brick” should not be meaningful scientifically providing that the metaphors are defined and Bill’s brickness is falsifiable.

What is the basis, then, for the theological claim that we live on when we have ostensibly died?

More on Judaism and Christianity at http://www.askwhy.co.uk

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Faith Schools in Britain

Robert Stevens of this little old town, Frome, in Somerset noted in a letter that the pupils of Emmanuel College, Gateshead, were being taught biblical “young Earth creationism” and the Labour government was making no fuss about it at all. It might seem endearingly British to tolerate eccentrics and odd views, but in typical fashion the man responsible here, the headmaster, condemns “liberalism”, even though it is liberalism and not any form of fundamentalism that favours tolerance, even of bigots.

Mr Stevens points out that to make young Earth creationism seem plausible, much scientific knowledge—of biology, geology, astronomy and even nuclear physics, radiometric dating—has to be suppressed. Creationists seek to achieve this through the use of bogus claims of “scientific” evidence supposedly confirming creationism or contradicting evolution.

Should our children be taught complete nonsense as science? Those opposed to creationist lies have no way of communicating with the young people subject to this propaganda, which might make them fit to continue the lying succession, but will count them out of anything science based as a profession. Though Emmanuel College is a so-called City Technology College, tuition like this will render its pupils incapable of pursuing many careers in the sciences. Already, one pupil described evolution as an “atheist lie”, so he is already incapable of discriminating what is really a lie from what has so much evidence in its support, it would require a truckload of encyclopedias to contain it.

Though it should be prosecuted as fraudulent, creationism in the US is a multi million dollar industry. American fundamentalists, Christians and money makers have taken a great interest in the UK since pope Tony wore the tiara. Those ready to invest in British education include people for whom UFOs transport Satan’s lieutenants like Richard Dawkins to spread “evilutionism”. And, yes they think their pun is a sacred give away of the holy truth! God allowed science and terrorism to punish Americans for accepting homosexuality and multiculturalism. Blessed by pope Blair and now bishop Brown, US fundamentalists will be taking over British schools near you.

They say, it is to offer parents choice! Let us choose not to have choices like this.

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Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

The Christian and Jewish liars just never cease their lying. A film has been made with the title, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, by a man called Ben Stein, who seems to be famous for something in the USA, presumably lying! Look him up on the internet and you’ll find he is famous for precisely nothing, unless it is being a chum of Richard Nixon. He has written books, made films and appeared on TV, all of which is utterly forgettable, and indeed, has been forgotten. The man is a nonentity.

His film tries to make out there is an atheist conspiracy in the US, if not the whole world, against Christians. Jews and Christians have always been great at making victims into the victimizers, and vice versa. Almost everyone in the USA, faced with an overbearing Christian smugness amounting to intolerance, feels obliged to say they are practising Christians, though being Jewish naturally is acceptable too, and only a small percentage have the courage to say they are atheists. Yet this tiny minority of atheists is victimizing the 90-odd percent Judaeo-Christian majority! In the USA, it is Christians who are the oppressors, and this film is an example of it.

The film inverts almost every truth there is in America, hardly surprising, one might imagine, for a buddy of the worst president the USA had in recent history before Bush, and one who was rightly impeached, as Bush ought to be. The fact is that these supposed religious defenders cannot tell truth from lies, and could not distinguish God from Satan if they met him sitting next to them on a bench in Central Park.

Sociopathetic Stein claims that science has always included “the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates. This has always been basic to science. always.” If it is so, then the failure of science ever to find an iota of evidence for God is a conclusion he could not like, but science has always been concerned with the natural world, not that supernatural world occupied by God and his hosts of spirits for which no evidence has yet been found because supernatural is synonymous with imaginary.

Standing by the adage that the old ones are the best, Stein makes the usual Christian claims that the best scientists are religious:

Some of the greatest scientists of all time, including Galileo, Newton, Einstein, operated under the hypothesis that their work was to understand the principles and phenomena as designed by a creator.

The opposite is the truth. Galileo lived 400 years ago, under the threat of the inquisition and being burned alive if he denied God or the Church. Newton lived 300 years ago when the baneful influence of Christianity was still strong, and the threat of the inquisition was just fading, but Christianity was still compulsory in British academia because tenure depended on it. The only modern great Stein can cite is Einstein who repeatedly explained that he was a pantheist not a theist, and did not believe in Jewish and Christian fantasies. Nature was Einstein’s God, and it is typically Christian chicanery to claim Einstein as a believer.

Stein likes to list scientific achievements, in addition to the three scientists he knows the name of, to make it seem as if they depended on what he is defending, belief in God:

There would be no modern medicine, no antibiotics, no brain surgery, no Internet, no air conditioning, no modern travel, no highways, no knowledge of the human body without freedom of inquiry.

Science discovered all these wonders with no help from God. Freedom of enquiry is, of course, what the Church did not want, and still does not want. Science follows its own clues and has found out what it has by so doing, not by listening to the prescriptions of preachers, pastors and rabbis. That is what narks these fundamentalist Republican Christian obfuscators. This film is really a defence of idiotic Christian fundamentalist claims that an ignorant book, which necessarily runs counter to the discoveries of science, was written by God. These people make God into an ignoramus and an idiot because they are appealing to the most ignorant and idiotic elements in society as part of their scheme to keep their power and riches.

Their philosophy, the philosophy of neoconservatism, openly admits that religion is to be used to control the mass of people who believe it. The controlling elite, needless to say, do not believe a word of it. They pretend to, simply to get voting fodder among the dimmest elements of the electorate, because it saves them jerrymandering by resorting to bent chads and judges.

Their claim is that science is threatening freedom of enquiry—even though it is founded on it and utterly depends on it—because it rejects religious claims like Intelligent Design, an alternative to Creationism—literal belief in the bible—that are not scientific and cannot be accepted into science if science is to remain what it is, and not become an aspect of theology. What is scientific is what is demonstrably true, not what a lot of religious crooks and shysters pretend is true to win sympathy from people unable to escape Dark Age mindlessness and superstition. They themselves are too stupid to realize that, if they succeed, they will bring back the Dark Ages, and the scientific knowledge that has given them world domination will be lost, and the countries that are not ruled by donkeys will take over.

Anyone who values our modern achievements has to oppose this counter-productive fancy for medieval Christianity in the USA. The leading Christians have rarely been good, as any unbiased inspection of Christian history will show, and for much of its 1700 years it has deliberately and cynically kept people in abject poverty and misery so that an elite could benefit. Support Christianity to get into heaven, if that is what you believe, but you had better be sure your pastor is a saint and not a devil. Mostly they have been the latter.

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