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Post by dodger on Aug 16, 2013 8:54:03 GMT
The Conway Hall in London, home of the South Place Ethical Society and centre of free speech, celebrated its 75th birthday this autumn in style - with trenchant attacks on Blunkett's attempt to introduce a law banning 'religious hatred'...
What's so sacrosanct about religion?
WORKERS, NOV 2004 ISSUE
The opening of Conway Hall in London's Red Lion Square, where free speech has been exercised for 75 years, was celebrated there in a fitting manner with a meeting tackling the current wave of assaults upon free speech. The Communist Party of Britain, having the tradition of holding May Day meetings in the main hall for over 30 years, was represented amongst the guests at this special celebration.
The evening took the form of a very lively meeting with four speakers and contributions from the floor of the hall. The speeches had great practical import and urgency with fire directed at the Home Secretary's renewed attempt to introduce a law on religious hatred.
The first speaker of the evening was Barbara Smoker from the South Place Ethical Society (SPES), which moved its base to Conway Hall when it opened. The Society was founded in 1793, and Barbara gave a very entertaining account of how it came from being a dissenting religious group to the non-religious ethical society it is today, after a decision in 1869 to reject the idea of a personal God. When in 1887 the Society abolished evensong as it moved away from its religious root, the members substituted chamber music instead, a tradition which continues unbroken to the present day. This explains why, when it moved to Conway Hall, the Society insisted on a hall with excellent acoustics.
Just an ideology
After the historical introduction, Barbara Smoker turned her fire on the proposed incitement to religious hatred legislation. The key point, she said, is that religious ideology is no different to any other ideology. Why could it not be challenged, criticised, indeed ridiculed? The cartoonist Martin Rowson spoke further on this theme and also showed some of the best of his cartoons on a screen. He described them as part of the rich vein of British culture which uses humour to challenge and provoke thought and dialogue. The audience rocked with laughter at his famous strip cartoon, called the Failure of Intelligence, depicting Bush and Blair as personally suffering a series of intelligence failures in their decision-making on Iraq. Just because the cartoonist had described one of the phases of intelligence failure as "religious mania" he had been subject to several letters of complaint.
In addition to the unifying theme of the meeting, all the speakers had one other thing in common - they had all been on the receiving end of copious hate mail for daring to challenge religious ideas and they had all been accused of being racist. Polly Toynbee, another of the speakers, has received both hate mail and death threats since an out-of-context extract from an article she wrote in a national newspaper challenging the concept of Islamophobia, has been placed on an Islamist website.
Richard Dawkins, the scientist, was the fourth speaker of the evening. He discussed his work in both Britain and the United States. He pointed out that the common mantra is that we must "respect" religion. Why? Why should we respect ideas which cannot stand scrutiny, was his challenge.
Evolution and atheism
He pointed out that no politician in the United States, whether at local or national level, could admit to being an atheist and still stand any chance of being elected. He pointed out that his American scientific colleagues constantly ask him to hang back and not admit out loud that an understanding of evolution and scientific thought might lead someone to question the existence of a higher being. In order to allow the science of evolution to at least get an airing, they urge him to say that the teaching of evolution is entirely compatible with Christianity.
All the speakers asked the audience to reject the political correctness, which stifles the challenge to religious ideology. As one speaker from the floor pointed out, the BBC in the post-Hutton era has already succumbed and lost its way. On the very same day as the Conway Hall meeting, the BBC had cancelled a new series called Popetown for fear of causing offence to the Catholic Church - with cowardly actions like that, David Blunkett hardly needs a new law.
Speaking out
Fortunately many are already speaking out, including the comedian Rowan Atkinson who has pointed out that the whole Blackadder series would have been suppressed had this law been in place.
Many people, however, seem to have forgotten that this is the Blair government's second attempt to bring in a law of incitement to religious hatred. The last attempt fell because the House of Lords said that religious discrimination was "too complicated" and refused to back it. The audience was given a stark challenge: If we do not have the courage to challenge fundamentalist religious ideas, then we have actively connived in allowing "organised unreason to get its hands on the levers of power"
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Post by dodger on Aug 16, 2013 16:17:21 GMT
Excellent study of the secular basis of ethics, 26 Jun 2008
This Will Podmore review is from: Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life (Hardcover)
Austin Dacey is an American philosopher and a representative at the United Nations of the Center for Inquiry, which promotes the secular, scientific outlook. He is also on the editorial staff of Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry.
In this brilliant and original book, Dacey advocates a public, objective and secular ethics. He argues that matters of conscience are fit subjects for public discussion guided by shared evaluative standards, evidence and experience.
Conscience must be free from coercion, but not free from judgement. Conscience is protected so that we can pursue the vital questions of meaning, truth and value in public dialogue and forums.
But the Roman Catholic Church has decreed, "Freedom of thought or expression ... cannot imply a right to offend the religious sentiments of believers." But this would end freedom of expression, because any criticism of religious doctrines could `offend the religious sentiments of believers'.
The assertion, `I'm right, you're wrong' is not intolerant; it is the nature of thought, as is then moving forward to saying, `and these are the reasons why you should change your mind'. This is not imposing one's opinion on others: persuasion is the opposite of coercion.
To defend one's point of view by saying, "I'm entitled to my opinion" is to refuse debate. The only opinions worth respect are those derived from investigation and debate.
The basis of ethics is independence of mind, with which we can evaluate all ideas and ideologies in the light of reason. Dacey argues that "the secular conscience stands prior to and independent of all religions." Religion is unnecessary to ethics: if God approves an act because it is good, then God is superfluous: if an act is good because God approves it, then there is no ethics, just assertion of authority.
As Dacey writes, "The real sceptics about ethics are those who think that human beings are incapable of fairness, responsibility, care, and compassion without divine enforcement." These sceptics privilege religion at the expense of ethics, faith at the expense of reason, and dogma at the expense of people.
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Post by dodger on Aug 17, 2013 3:06:23 GMT
www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/15/women-forced-marriage-spoon-underwearThe above link exposes a dark corner of British life. Our young should not be allowed to be vexed in this manner, to this degree.Women who fear being forced to marry abroad told to hide spoon in underwearCharity advises women and young girls to set off airport metal detectors to give them more time to seek help from authorities
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Post by dodger on Aug 18, 2013 12:52:24 GMT
ex-muslim.org.uk/members/uk/Islamophobia,,? Check this crowd out. The place is full to the rafters with it. They offer friendship, fellowship and support, each to the other. Debate over matters large and small. They even invited that nice Mr Dawkins to have lunch with them. Proud to hear that owning The God Delusion in Sudan is a jailable offence. Yes Islamophobia increases, do some still wonder why? A quick taster then:
"It's such a bitter sweet experience going through the testimonials of the members on this forum, i feel im not alone in this struggle against these draconian dogmas which have not only ripped us apart from our families and loved ones but turned them against us to the point where we fear harm and malice from people we once relied on. Hopefully one day our future generations will not have to go through what we have/are going through."
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Post by dodger on Aug 23, 2013 15:47:54 GMT
Britain's centuries-old tradition of rational thinking is under attack from a new breed of bigots and fundamentalists – headed by the Labour government...
Away with all our superstitions!
WORKERS, JUNE 2006 ISSUE
This article is an edited version of a talk given at a Workers/CPBML public meeting held in London in February.
The British version of the Communist anthem the Internationale is unique. The original French simply says "Make a clean sweep of the past", and so, more or less, do other versions. The fight against superstition, against unreason, is more deeply rooted in Britain and its history than in any other country.
We see examples of superstitions all around us, most of it harmless. But a lot is far from harmless, linked to an attack on industry and science.
Many of the world's finest scientists were people with religious belief – Galileo, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, for example. But like all proper scientists they didn't let their beliefs get in the way of their science, and they didn't let religion stop them.
Religion is an organised, structured hierarchy that seeks control. Given free rein, religions want to control everything: what you read, what you say, when and what you eat and drink; and they want even more to control your children.
Look what happened to John Wycliffe, who committed the unpardonable sin of translating the Bible into English, the language of the people, so that they could read it and have it read to them. He said that the Bible, rather than the Church, was the sole authority on what was right and what was wrong. Worse, he did it during the period of intense class antagonism that followed on from the Black Death and culminated in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
A year after the suppression of the revolt, the Church declared his theories heretical, leading to a ban on his translated Bible – which had been hand copied by an army of Oxford scholars, 16 copies, an extraordinary venture of organised resistance to orthodoxy.
Wycliffe died in 1384, but the Church gnawed and fretted over his influence. In 1428, with the Archbishop of Canterbury looking on, his bones were exhumed, then burnt, then thrown into a river.
The next translator of the Bible into English, William Tyndale, wisely did it from the Continent, but paid with his life anyway in Belgium, after he had translated the New Testament into glorious English, the St James version. But change was in the air.
When Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509, the Catholic Church held a central place in the governance of England, with bishops chosen by the Pope, its own courts, control of the entire education system, such as it was, and occupying the centre of much legal and social life, especially in the countryside.
By the end of the 1500s, a lot had changed. The monasteries were swept away, and along with them swathes of corruption and vice. The church was no longer ruled from a foreign country. Public schools were set up to be outside the control of the monasteries, hence public. And a Bible in English meant that now you didn't have to know Latin in order to read it – and criticise it.
Five hundred years ago, we dealt with our own home grown mullahs. By the way, what's so wrong with Islamophobia? Hating people for their religion is wrong, but what's wrong about hating a religion, or all religions? What's wrong with hating an idea? It's not atheists who go round stoning people or burning them at the stake.
Church attendance
Where are we 500 years after Henry VIII? We started the 21st century with a census which, for the first time, required people to state what their religion was. 71.6% of the population describe themselves as Christian. The next largest section is "No religion" 15.5% , 7.3% refused to answer, 2.7% said they were Muslim, 1% Hindu, 0.6% Sikh, 0.5% Jewish.
A major opinion poll in 2000, however, found two-thirds people between 18 and 24 said they had no religious affiliation – and all of them would, by law, have been subjected to a "daily act of worship" at school – introduced by the Thatcher government and maintained by this one. A 2004 poll found that 44% of UK citizens believe in God, while 35% don't – presumably the rest are not sure.
The disparity between the census and the poll data has been put down to what's called "cultural Christianity", whereby many who don't believe in God still identify with the religion they were brought up in. Britain is one of the least religious countries in the world. An avowed atheist can be elected to union posts, a council, or parliament. Nobody cares.
We also started the century with an attempt to outlaw criticism of religion. So why, given our past and our present, are religions and superstition making a comeback? Why have we just had an education secretary who belongs to Opus Dei and a prime minister who prays with George Bush?
The superstition that religion is somehow nice needs to be laid to rest. Just a glance at the Bible or the Koran reveals grisly calls for slaughter and oppression of women.
Consider the opposite of religion – science. The development of trade and industry that led to the industrial revolution changed thought to a staggering degree, and in turn was changed by thought. It couldn't be anything other. In feudal agriculture, success or failure was often in the hands of inanimate forces – climate, pests, disease. But when you are making a wheel, or a barrel, or a sword, rational thought is in control. That combination of industry and rational thought equalled a unique contribution to science in the 17th century.
Britain's first great scientist was Francis Bacon, born in 1561, ten years after the law about compulsory church attendance. Bacon invented scientific observation. It had two parts: first, the mind must be freed of superstition and prejudice, the idols, he called them. Then the constructive side: record what's there, to what degree, and what isn't. Bacon became Lord Chancellor. Compare this with Italy, where around the same time Galileo was forced to recant his scientific observation and spend the last ten years of his life under house arrest.
Back to Britain. In the 17th century British science really took off: Newton, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle – all of them described scientific laws that are still used today. And the British scientists started to get organised. At first informally, and then, in 1660, a dozen of them got together after a lecture by Christopher Wren and formed the Royal Society. Five years later they started the Philosophical Transactions, now the world's oldest scientific journal in continuous publi-cation. The Royal Society is still a powerful voice against superstition.
The materialist tradition in Britain was strong by then, and grew stronger with the Industrial Revolution.
Image of witchcraft – swap a few things around and it's not too far from
the green fundamentalist view of science!
Lunar Society
The best example of the link between science and industry is the think tank of the industrial revolution, the Birmingham Lunar society. In the 1770s, Erasmus Darwin helped set up this social club for the great scientists and industrialists of the day. The society met at full moon, supposedly so that they could find their way home afterwards. They called themselves lunatics, but they were far from mad.
Members of the society included Joseph Priestley (the discoverer of oxygen and inventor of the indiarubber eraser and carbonated water), Matthew Boulton ("the creator of Birmingham") and a number of other eminent inventors and engineers.
In Britain today, our scientific heritage, our way of looking at the world, is under threat from four distinct but often allied fronts. The religious bigots, who seek to run our education system and mould the minds of our children; the straight anti-science bigots, green fundamentalists and the animal rights extremists, who think that science is evil and progress is bad; the anti-medicine freaks, who are so anti-vaccine that they have caused a measles epidemic in Britain and, finally, from deindustrialisation.
Education is a vital area for the churches. They believe that they can control how people think, which is an illusion. They know that they can force people into church by tying admissions criteria to church attendance. And there are so many different churches, sects, mosques, synagogues, all trying to use the education system to get their claws into the country's children. Blair and Kelly have encouraged this, through the new sponsored academies.
The great split between Catholic and Protestant was of enormous significance in the liberation of thought that took place from the 16th century on. However, the Bible itself became a new form of dogmatism – for those who held that it represented the only truth. That negative aspect has never gone away and it is there in the Bible belt of the US, where Protestant fundamentalists are waging their war against science.
That same fundamentalism has found an echo in the fringe remnants of Protestantism in Britain, and in the cults imported from Africa – like the one that nearly killed the 8-year-old girl from Angola who was thought to be a witch. It has found an echo also in Islam, when in February some Muslim medical students at Guy's Hospital circulated leaflets dismissing Darwin's theories as false. You have to hope they don't end up as your doctor.
Anti-science
One of the saddest aspects of this anti-science drive is that Britain has fewer aspiring scientists. In the six years leading up to December 2004, 79 science and engineering departments were closed. Just a day after Newcastle was named "city of science" by Gordon Brown, its university said it was closing its pure physics course. Sussex University is trying to close its famous chemistry department in a move being opposed by its students and academics internal and external.
But the universities are under pressure. Science is expensive, and the pool of potential scientists is drying up alarmingly. Last year the Royal Society gave evidence to the government that A level entries in 2004 were, relative to 1991, 16% lower in Chemistry, and 22% lower in Mathematics and 34% down for Physics. In January the Royal Society of Chemistry warned of the threat to Scottish science due to a lack of chemistry teachers.
Part of the anti-science movement is not related to religion, at least, not formally: the green fundamentalists who think progress is a bad thing. They have fanned out into quasi-sect-like bodies that attack any kind of vaccine. Vaccines have eliminated smallpox from the world, and are about to eliminate polio. How can that be a bad thing?
They also attack GM crops with a quasi religious mania, matched only by the Animal Liberation Front. In their attack they feed off ignorance. Eating GM crops means eating DNA! Well, it does, of course. You eat genes every time you eat a carrot, organic or GM. Or anything that once had life.
There are huge commercial interests behind GM, but given that rural women in sub-Saharan Africa spend 80 per cent of their waking lives weeding, perhaps crops manipulated to be resistant to pesticides might not, in principle, be a bad idea. The problem with the green fundamentalists is that to them all progress is bad. Most of them don't listen, and don't debate. Yet they have tremendous power. Look at what happened to Shell when it tried to dispose of a disused oil platform, Brent Spar, in the north-east Atlantic in 1995. It got crucified.
And then it turned out that Greenpeace had got its figures wrong, claiming there were 5,500 tonnes of oil still in the platform. Shell said there were 50 tonnes, and no one believed them. An independent survey proved the real figure was between 75 and 100 tonnes, or less than 2% of the Greenpeace estimate.
But Shell was forced by worldwide boycotts into an alternative disposal that was far more environmentally hazardous than its original plan.
Many of the green fundamentalists persist in their opposition to nuclear power, saying instead that "alternative energy sources" will do the trick, which is patently nonsense. Even the green guru and founder of the Gaia movement, James Lovelock, recognises this. Patrick Moore, the American, not the astronomer but one of the founders of Greenpeace, told a US congressional subcommittee in April last year: "Some of the features of this environmental extremism are: environmental extremists tend to be anti-human. Humans are characterised as a cancer on the earth."
Chemicals
Anything chemical is bad, we are told, although we ourselves are built on chemicals. When Rachel Carson wrote her classic book Silent Spring in 1962, it led to a worldwide ban on DDT, despite the lack of evidence then or since that DDT properly applied was damaging human or bird health. Yet the worldwide ban on it has led to the unnecessary death, from malaria, of at least a million children in India alone.
The fourth and final attack – perhaps the most significant – on our scientific heritage and our tradition of rational thought is from the deindustrialisation of Britain.
One of the great capitalist superstitions is the idea that the City "creates wealth". It doesn't create anything. It lives off wealth created elsewhere.
Are we changing from a nation that made its living through making things, through interaction with material reality, to a nation that makes its living through financial wheeler-dealing, where fortunes are made from speculation and futures, money out of crops that have never been sown, ores that have never been mined? From a nation that needed science and rationalism to survive and grow to one whose economy is sinking, and which will drag us back to superstition?
As communists, we call on people to see life as it really is, not clouded by superstition. Reclaim our heritage. Away with all your superstitions!
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Post by dodger on Aug 30, 2013 6:36:41 GMT
Very useful exploration of atheism's implications, 16 July 2008
This Will Podmore review is from: The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy) (Paperback)
This is a very thought-provoking collection of essays, edited by Michael Martin, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Boston University. Eighteen leading scholars, mostly from the USA, discuss aspects of atheism and its implications for philosophy, religion, law, anthropology, sociology, psychology, biology and physics.
Sociologist Phil Zuckerman estimates that there are about 500-750 million atheists, agnostics and unbelievers, which is 58 times the number of Mormons, 41 times the number of Jews, 35 times the number of Sikhs, and twice the number of Buddhists. Atheists, agnostics and unbelievers are the fourth largest group, after Christians (two billion), Muslims (1.2 billion) and Hindus (900 million).
Daniel Dennett examines the relationship between atheism and evolution. He shows how matter has evolved to produce mind, rather than matter being produced by an originating mind.
Philosopher David Brink discusses the need for a secular ethics based on objective standards. He notes that in ethical subjectivism, ethics depends on the beliefs of an appraiser, but God is an appraiser too. So religion brings subjectivity into ethics. Also, if ethics depends on God's will, then it is relative to God's will, so religion brings relativism into ethics.
Again, if God commands an action because it is good, then God and his commands are unnecessary. If an action is good because God commands it, then ethics is unnecessary and obedience to God is the only virtue. So religion, which supposedly sets ethics on an objective basis, with independent values and standards, in fact reduces ethics to subjective opinions, with no independent values or standards.
Also religion compromises morality. When eternal bliss is the reward for goodness, then selfish considerations cannot but intrude, inevitably corrupting goodness. Belief in God becomes an insurance policy.
Philosopher Andrea Weisberger writes, "The existence of evil is the most fundamental threat to the traditional Western concept of an all-good, all-powerful God." If we are morally obliged to reduce evil, then God must also be obliged. If he is all-powerful, why doesn't he prevent unnecessary suffering? Those who argue that God uses evil for some greater good are saying that God immorally uses people and their suffering as means to ends.
Philosopher Patrick Grim shows that God's traditional attributes - omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection - are all intrinsically impossible, self-contradictory idealist fantasies.
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Post by dodger on Aug 30, 2013 6:50:29 GMT
Brilliant critique of biblical studies, 16 May 2008
This review is from: The End of Biblical Studies (Hardcover)
Hector Avalos, associate professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University, has written a brilliant and original critique of biblical studies from within. He argues that biblical studies should end, because it is just religious apologetics, not an academic discipline or a branch of scholarship.
Most biblical studies academics think the bible is worth keeping and studying and most are members of `faith communities'. But Avalos shows that the bible is irrelevant, the product of an ancient and very different culture whose values and beliefs about the origin, nature and purpose of the world are not useful or ethical. Religion is a fifth wheel, superfluous to life, a hindrance to all intellectual and scientific advances. It is an illegitimate claim to extra power for foolish arguments. We should not rely on any authority, especially not on a single ancient text.
He investigates biblical studies' various sub-disciplines. He shows that the translations of the bible are largely bowdlerised. Textual criticism has found no original texts or manuscripts, and Jesus spoke in Aramaic, not Hebrew or Greek, so there can be no original, pristine word of God.
Avalos shows how history and archaeology have disproved `biblical history'. He notes that centuries of Jesus studies have not found a historical Jesus: he has no verifiable words or deeds, and there are no contemporary eye-witness accounts. Literary criticism has not shown that the bible is better literature than other ancient works, and the excessive attention paid to this one text has meant that thousands of ancient Mesopotamian texts have never been translated.
Avalos examines the USA-based Society of Biblical Literature, with its 7,000 self-serving members, and shows how it has nothing useful or original to offer. Theology has found no coherent message about God; instead it is inconsistent and arbitrary, trying to rescue the bible through citing bits of texts. Nice people find the nice bits, nasty people find the nasty bits; both say that theirs are the essential bits.
It is often held against atheists like Richard Dawkins that they do not know theology, but they don't need to because others have done the work, like Walter Kaufmann in his Critique of religion and philosophy and now Avalos in this excellent book.
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Post by dodger on Aug 31, 2013 14:44:04 GMT
The absurd logic of 'Islamophobia'
WORKERS, SEP 2013 ISSUE
In 1997 the Runnymede Trust defined Islamophobia as the “dread or hatred of Islam and therefore, [the] fear and dislike of all Muslims”. The logic is absurd. Dreading or hating religion is normal and progressive. Religions are hierarchical, organised forms of social control.
History, past and current, is littered with examples of the horrors perpetrated when religion becomes fused with government. Of course, all religions in opposition are for tolerance and peace. Look at the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. But to hate religions doesn’t mean hating those who believe in them. Why on earth should it? Any more than liking one religion means liking all its adherents.
And yet the Runnymede formula, however ludicrous, has gained currency. After the Stockholm International Forum on Combating Intolerance, the EU took up the idea in 2001 – a sure indicator that it might be flawed.
Worse, the definition presents Muslims as an undifferentiated mass, with no class divisions, no political divisions, no ideological differences – a strange oversimplification. Ridiculous when you look at the nature of many present conflicts in the world.
Do we really accept this view here in Britain? We certainly too often allow trade union meetings to be diverted and derailed by the dreaded “Islamophobic” insult. Such name-calling is used by the ultra-left to stop discussion and inspire fear, and thus get us off what should be the business at hand.
Since our goal is to unite the working class we do not exclude or discriminate against anyone on grounds other than class; the only questions we ask are whether the person is worker or employer and, if worker, is he or she committed to the interest of our class? Any attempt to impede our common fight is pernicious to our class.
So when fascist Islamists killed 52 Londoners on July 7 2005, they were following the pernicious ideology of terrorist jihadism against British workers. Those who tried to blow up a march in Dewsbury last year had similar ideas. But the ultra-left said on both occasions that blaming their ideology was Islamophobic, refusing to distinguish between their terrorism and their religion. They want to identify Islamists with Muslims, conflating the two in an attempt to prevent any critique of Islamist terrorists.
Jihadists use the “Islamophobia” slur as cover for their jihadism, just as Zionists use the “anti-Semitism” slur as cover for their Zionism. Criticism of Zionism is not anti-Semitic; criticism of jihadism is not “Islamophobic”. The terms are used to intimidate and close down critical thought.
We denounce all terrorism, “left” or “right”, pro-Islamist or anti-Islamist. We must stop the use of insult to divide us. At work our fellow workers are class comrades. Arise ye starvelings from your slumbers (OK, smile, but look around: if you don’t fight you too will soon be a starveling). Fight the class fight with all your might! No diversions! ■
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Post by dodger on Sept 2, 2013 8:08:17 GMT
English missionary reaching Hengchow. A crowd gathered in silent stupefaction as he disembarked and then shouts of 'Kill the foreign devil' could be heard from the rear and clods of earth were flung. Thanks to the boatmen, he reached an inn unharmed. 'The doors were bolted behind us, and the crowd, after a noisy demonstration in the street, finally dispersed.' For months he could not venture into the street without attracting a disorderly throng who would press around him. His blue eyes amazed them. 'Cats' eyes!' they would shout, and then 'No pigtail! And look at his outlandish clothes!'
Seems they had as much understanding of bible gobble-de-gook as at home. Still he carried his cross with great fortitude--as did the local sedan chair bearers.
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Post by dodger on Sept 9, 2013 9:28:04 GMT
here a link: bulatlat.com/main/2013/09/09/protestant-pastor-harassed-by-state-agents/
Protestant pastor harassed by state agents
By no means an unusual tale, religion a social phenomena, alongside ideology, has placed the good pastor in harms way. We must hope he escapes the deadly clutches of the state. Life here is cheap as chips. To the ruling class that is.A |
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Post by dodger on Sept 13, 2013 8:27:17 GMT
Church worker nabbed in Misamis Oriental
“We regard with disgust the continued attack against church workers and advocates, farmers and indigenous communities, and all other human rights defenders in Mindanao and the entire country.” – Rural Missionaries of the Philippines–NMR
By RONALYN V. OLEA
Bulatlat.com
MANILA — A long-time lay worker of a Catholic-run organization was arrested by elements of the Philippine Army, Sept. 8.
Joel Q. Yadao, a member of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) , was arrested at around 11 a.m. inside the compound of a Roman Catholic Church in the municipality of Villanueva, Misamis Oriental, according to RMP-Northern Mindanao Region. Yadao, 44, was meeting another lay worker in preparation for the October peasant month campaign.
According to RMP-NMR, a certain Capt. Joe Ryan Manalo of the Philippine Army led the arresting team. Yadao is charged with double murder and multiple murder in connection with the pre-2013 elections armed encounter between Mayor Ruthie Guingona’s convoy and the New People’s Army (NPA) in the hinterlands of Gingoog City.
In a statement, RMP-NMR coordinator Sr. Ma. Famita N. Somogod, MSM, condemned the “trumped-up charges” against Yadao and called for his immediate release.
“We denounce this act of judicial harassment to disable Joel from doing his human rights work for the peasants of eastern Misamis Oriental,” Somogod said.
Joel Yadao (in gray shirt) attends an activity of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines-
Northern Mindanao Region in June 2012. (Photo courtesy of RMP-NMR)
As a lay worker of the RMP, Yadao has been assigned to organize and assist existing peasant organizations in the towns at the eastern part of Misamis Oriental. RMP-NMR credited Yadao for assisting organizations like the Balingasag Farmers’ Association and other community-based organizations of peasants under the Misamis Oriental Farmers’ Association (MOFA). The group said thousands of poor farmers in eastern Misamis Oriental towns benefited from these agrarian campaigns, including efforts to increase farm gate prices of bananas, increase of wages of manghornalay (seasonal agricultural workers) and elimination of usury, among others.
Somogod said the RMP-NMR office and its staff have been put under intensified surveillance this year, which caused dislocations in their work for the rights of poor farmers and indigenous peoples.
“We regard with disgust the continued attack against church workers and advocates, farmers and indigenous communities, and all other human rights defenders in Mindanao and the entire country,” Somogod said. “We condemn the evil structures that perpetuate human rights violations and impunity.”
RMP-NMR vowed to join and assist thousands of poor farmers and indigenous peoples from Misamis Oriental to march this October Peasant Month to protest landlessness and the sustained persecution of human rights defenders working for land rights and access to resources.
Last month, Pastor June Ver Mangao of the United Church of Christ of the Philippines (UCCP) experienced threats and harassment. (http://bulatlat.com) - See more at: bulatlat.com/main/2013/09/13/church-worker-nabbed-in-misamis-oriental/#sthash.UyhL1kNJ.dpuf
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Post by dodger on Oct 10, 2013 16:11:57 GMT
www.itv.com/news/story/2013-10-06/uk-imams-agree-underage-marriages/#18-uk-mosques-agree-to-perform-underage-marriages_26952810:17AM, SUN 6 OCT 2013 UNDERAGE MARRIAGES 'AGREED'
18 UK mosques 'agree to perform underage marriages'
UK Imams agree to perform underage marriages,..............yes the year is 2013.  Ex-Muslims Forum @cemb_forum 20h t.co/JVZVMAme " Looking forward to some serious introspection from Muslim orgs, feminists & people on the Left in response to this "If you are worried about a child then you can get advice and support from the NSPCC free helpline service on 0808 800 5000 or you can chat to a counsellor online at nspcc.org.uk/reportconcern. The service is available 24 hours a day and is completely confidential.Karma Nirvana is a helpline for victims of honour based violence and the number is 0800 5999247. Lines are open Monday to Friday from 9.30am - 5.30pm.You can also contact the government's Forced Marriage Unit 0207 008 0151.
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Post by dodger on Oct 10, 2013 16:19:33 GMT
Double standards......much?
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Post by dodger on Oct 13, 2013 18:13:01 GMT
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Post by dodger on Oct 20, 2013 0:51:41 GMT
Fine study of a criminal organisation, 5 Mar 2012
This Will Podmore review is from: Beyond Belief: The Papacy and the Child Abuse Scandal (Paperback)
This extraordinary book reveals how the Roman Catholic Church covered up and facilitated countless crimes of child abuse.
But, as Yallop comments, "The Vatican that for centuries has told people on pain of eternal damnation how they should lead their sexual lives now demands that the clerical sexual abuses that have been revealed over the last thirty years should be forgiven and forgotten. Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger and a great many other like-minded Princes of the Church are on public record claiming that it is the abusers who are the victims."
Former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating wrote, after Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles forced him to resign as chair of a national panel whose brief was to investigate the sex abuse scandal, "our Church ... is not a criminal enterprise. It does not condone and cover up criminal activity. It does not follow a code of silence. ... To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away, this is the model of a criminal organisation, not my Church."
But his Church did condone and cover up criminal activity, it did follow a code of silence, it did resist grand jury subpoenas, it did suppress the names of offending clerics, it did deny, obfuscate, explain away. So didn't its actions prove it to be a criminal organisation?
The 2009 Murphy Report observed, "The Dublin Archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sex abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State."
During 2003 there were 60 complaints of sexual, physical and emotional abuse against the Catholic Church in England and Wales, but as of mid-2004 not one alleged abuser had been prosecuted.
Pope Pius V had declared in 1568 that sexual abusers `must be handed over to the secular authorities for punishment and if he is a cleric will be demoted from everything'. So the Church has gone backward since 1568.
However, sexual abuse is not just practised by Roman Catholic clerics. A 2004 study into the sexual abuse of women found that clerics from the Church of England, Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians, as well as Roman Catholics, were also sexual predators. The report noted, "Approximately 50 per cent of the clergy involved in these particular cases are married men, which rather demolishes the proposition that celibacy is at the heart of the problem of clerical sexual abuse. It's not about celibacy, it is about abuse of power."
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