A number of years back I also stumbled onto an International Newspaper Report published in a prominent Australian Newspaper about the vistation of the Virgin Mary to three sheperd children in a field at Fatima Portugal between the months of May 1917 and November 1917. The children were ridiculed my many who thought they were hallucinating.

On the last day of visitation in November, the children made a request to the Lady to convince the vast crowd of people gathered that the children were in fact seeing the “Beautiful Lady” and asked that a sign be given to prove that those presentwould believe that Lady (and God)existed. As a result the Sun fell from the sky towards the crowd which cowered in fear, and it then retreated back into the heavens. A clap of thunder produced a rain storm from out of a clear cloudless sky which drenched all present, but they were immediately then made dry again.

To this very day many people visit the shrine set up at Fatima because those present on that day in 1917 saw the Miracles (that defy scientic explaination), and over the generations they had past down their experience to those who were not there.

The “Lady” had also told the children the following; a) The current war (WWI) would end the next year, (The Armistice came about on 11/11/1918), b) Russia would be consecreated to her, (today Communism is finished in Russian and many
people of that country attend Churches confidently and without fear of persecution, c) a major catastrophy would befall the World that only God could prevent to show his presence,( is this the problem of a hole in the ozone layer and global warming, both of which man cannot correct??….you be the judge).

I wasn’t around to witness the crucifixtion of Christ, but the Bible (the History Book of the Jews) tells me it happened, as does Roman history which tells me the Roman State executed a troublemaker, and I wasn’t around to see (WWI), but history books tell me it happened. I didn’t see WWII because I was born towards the end of that war, but the many Returned Service personnel who mach each ANZAC day (plus media/history reports) convince me WWII happened.

Why don’t YOU find the Newspaper reports about the visitaion of 1917, and then tell someone else. After all History speaks for itself.

Agreed, but unlike rugby league or medicine a priest’s sole purpose is to provide divinely-inspired moral guidance. If the church is then actively involved in suppressing this issue then it makes perfect sense to reject anyone’s assertion that the institution retains any kind of moral authority.

While you can decry a chauvinist culture in rugby league it doesn’t undermine the game itself, because the game is about rugby. This is simply not true of immorality in organised religion.

While I don’t doubt your religious beliefs are true and have offered you solace in the past that doesn’t mean your god exists or provides any more evidence than the beliefs of those Vanuatans that believe prince philip is a deity.

While you found james’ article thoughtful I was left wondering what his argument or assertion was.

For me faith is a very personal and difficult journey. I would find myself agreeing with many of the disbeliever’s doubts, concerns and critiques of the present form and practice of Christianity. However if a person actually wants to engage on a serious level I would share my experiences of God’s grace helping me through many dark days and turning on a light in my mind and heart.

Martin Luther King and Gandhi both drew upon the profound spiritual traditions of religion. It was the influence of the Quakers in 18th century Britain and the thunderous activism of Evangelicals in 19th century America that powered the abolitionist movement and led to the end of slavery.

Religious people have a human right to free speech, and the vast philosophical perspective of religion easily triumphs over the childish hostility from people who cannot abide a subculture that runs counter to their fickle self-absorbed consumer lifestyle.

Absolutely. It’s odd how false premises are OK on this subject

Caraka & Anthony: Your comments are beyond parody. Any brief look in any Dawkins’ books makes it abundantly clear he shares his scorn with religion in general. You’ve done exactly what you’ve falsely accused Dawkins of, making empty rants on the basis of straw men. Try reading what he’s actually written – http://richarddawkins.net/firstChapter,101

You’ve

Absolutely. It’s odd how false premises are OK on this subject.

When you say most truths are subjective and made up by the individual, do you extend this to your own faith? Given that so many faiths are mutually incompatible, to classify them as all equally valid (all of them being subjective truths) simply runs away from answering the question of whether a belief is a reasonable belief or not. Is the subjective truth of Scientologists as reasonable or believable to you as Christianity? Saying that something sounds like nonsense or is too ridiculous to believe, particularly the supernatural, is not getting worked up – it is looking at the evidence and drawing a conclusion. To be specific, in circumstances like the faithful’s belief that they should empty their already sparse wallets to buy Brian Tamaki a new Harley it is not redundant to to oppose that faith. Nor is it redundant to oppose the views of many faiths that preach intolerance, ignorance or harmful nonsense.

You say that your article has no intention of delving into a conversation about the merits of particular faiths, but then say no one has a right to judge the faith of others. How can you say that a belief is beyond judgement without actually addressing the merits of such belief? This is, again, running away from answering the question of whether a belief is believable or not and similarly providing the Brian Tamaki’s of this world, who’s church’s activities you noted as being extremist, a free ride in their preaching of intolerance, ignorance or harmful nonsense.

The claim that it is a fact that the basic tenets of decent living comes from the church ignores or at least glosses over two important facts about what we now consider such basic tenets. First, these basic tenets are not exclusive to any particular faith, including most have existed prior to most modern religions, making all faiths equally as valid to morality and hence, since they are generally mutually incompatible, equally invalid to morality. Second, what we consider moral is not the result of divine revelation as so much of what any religion sets as its moral basis is little more than a pick and mix of the various possible interpretations of its scripture. This is particularly the case for Christianity which seems very careful in ignoring the more ridiculous bits of the old testament.

As for concepts of morality sitting awkwardly without belief in greater forces this can only be the case for those who think morality is something that you do because God told you to behave that way, rather than a true sense of personal morality. Would the faithful be immoral without God or just unable to judge right from wrong?

While some comments have made you curious perhaps that is because you are completely misquoting what was said. You imply that someone stated that the church had a monopoly on covering up child abuse. No one said that. I, at least, said that “Believing that a former member of the Hitler Youth is infallible because he was elected by a group of celibate men whose organisation systematically covered up child rape is ridiculous.” and, later, that this was relevant to the discussion as the Catholic Church does claim to have a monopoly on judging what is right and wrong. Likewise no one said that the crimes of the institution should be held against it’s innocent members. Indeed it would be a long, long shot to say that anyone implied such a thing, but you can see by what people actually wrote. To start throwing around the term jackass when you are not actually addressing what people said is just silly. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Just saying.

I too am curious, your final comment that “we let people think and act in anyway, but we raise our eyebrows when they believe in the “cloud fairy”, because we think it is strange.” What judgments are you making about what people think and how they act? Indeed, we have a rather full statute books saying how people can or can’t act and religious types are amongst the most enthusiastic about telling others what they should or should not think or how they should or should not act. I’m perplexed at how this relates to eyebrow raising about supernatural belief, be it God or astrology. It is ultimately worth remembering that it is eyebrow raising at supernatural beliefs, or those beliefs justified on the basis of the supernatural, that led us away from believing that the Sun was a god’s chariot, that the Earth is billions of years old and that women are not men’s equals rather than their subjects as the Book of Timothy tells us. Eyebrow raising at beliefs is only a concern to those who don’t want to hold their beliefs up to the torch of reason and evidence. Any view that cannot withstand such scrutiny is not worthy of being immune to judgement or condescension as you seem to suggest they should be.

I am
It seems
Practiced,
In the slippery art
Of resiling.

I can
I find
Slide both ways,
Backwards
And forwards.

Dawkins squats
On my bedside table,
A bookmark
Between his teeth.

I love him.
Such well heeled heresy
Makes my heart race,
Leaves me
Breathless.

But he is all
Crazy about Reason, all
Mad for Science,

And I must
Reject.

Must abjure
My rejection.

Be stretched,
Compressed,
Compelled, it seems
To resume
My original position.

My unoriginal sin,
My terror,
My familiar doubt.

I am
I suspect,
Damned.

True, but on the other hand it is the only institution which claims to take direction from a divine, perfect being. As Stephen Fry said so pointedly of the Catholic church’s complicity in the Holocaust:

“You sit there saying, ‘well, we didn’t know any better’. Then what are you for?”

Paulinem – I would disagree. You may feel yours is the right to preach, and to an extent you may be right. BUT. Do not think you have the right to preach at me. Yes, AT me. Few preachers engage in two-way discussion; you either accept it as fact, or be damned – mighty Christian approach there, in itself.

You do NOT have the right to invite yourself and your friends onto my property and tell me MY beliefs are wrong. You do NOT have the right to force your beliefs on my children. You do NOT have the right to act as moral arbiters when our soldiers are currently prosecuting an illegal, immoral war of aggression, led by a fundamentalist religious nation hell-ben on world domination.

Tom, you have, I think, misunderstood the meaning and, certainly, the significance of this famous quote.

The philosophic problem if God is dead, lies not in the absence of divine rewards or retribution for right or wrong conduct. It lies in the fact that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, used in the absolute sense in which they were traditionally used, become meaningless concepts.

There are then no objective, rational grounds (apart from possible personal advantage)for preferring right conduct to wrong or for even addressing the question of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’.

Morality then becomes just a warm fuzzy, one option amongst many others or even a willful delusion, as opposed to being an absolute obligation imposed by the presumed author of our being.

This is not to deny that humans have an in-built tendency to benevolence (as do some other animals species). But, philosophically, you cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. Moreover, humans also have a tendency to lie, cheat and indulge in pack rape. Should we also, by the same argument, consider these traits worthy of emulation?

The great freethinkers and atheists of the nineteenth century were often troubled by the ethical and philosophic challenges posed by disbelief. In contrast, our modern secular humanists seem blithely unaware of these challenges.

This is not necessarily an argument for religion. But it is an argument against the smug condescension with which thoughtful, religious people are often treated.

Religion is the original social science. Disparage it if you will, but it has done remarkably well with what little it started with, (chimps with opposable thumbs), giving birth to philosophy and the scientific method itself. It’s willingness to keep asking the questions that science fears to even admit will keep it alive and kicking for many millennia to come.

I think people like Niko need to read more history of the ancient church, but getting them to accept the truth may be a whole different ball game.

During the Council of Nicea 325AD certain books were destroyed simply because they would contradict the myth of a very carefull construct of an architypal Jesus which is totally different from the real historical Jesus.

The political agenda behind this construct was that Constantine after defeating Maximillius needed to reunify the Roman Empire by creating a single religion. So the construction of the perfect architypal Jesus was created, he is not to be seen to be a married man as sex is of mortal humans, he is then not to be seen to have children and he is to be percieved as to have done anything wrong in his life.

So the original books of the new testament were obviously edited eg. in the original story it would plainly tell us who’s wedding the wedding of Cana was.
It was obvious that it was jesus and Mary Magdallin, but her name was completely erased.

The books that didn’t make it to the new testament Like the gospel of Philip were deemed heretical as it covered Jesus’ life as a child when he was not so perfect. This gospel has a story when Jesus pushes another child off the side of a building another one was found in Egypt a couple of years ago known as the gospel of Judas who grew up with Jesus, this gospel claims judas was given an instruction by Jesus to dob him in.

These gospels that have been found in the past seventy years tell a very different story to the orthodoxy of the Christian faith.
These books have been carbon tested so there is no way in the world that they are forgeries.

Jesus cannot be held responsible for people who made him out as someone he wasn’t, no I have a lot more love and affection for the real historical Jesus the rightfull philosopher and prophet nothing more nothing less.

So simplistic categorisation is always lazy & depressing, and usually smug, but it is seemingly enlightened to describe the doctrine of every mainstream Abrahamic denomination unsubtle. I have great difficulty believing that most Christians (one’s friends at St Matthews in the City or St Andrews on the Terrace notwithstanding) are closer in belief to Einstein* or a Buddist than they are to the Pope.

*Albert Einstien – letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind: “The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

At that time Judea was a theocratic backwash, and because the Greeks were mostly liberal and tolerant they were light years ahead in their thinking, they knew the world was a sphere and measured it, they were researching on a steam turbine and Democretus theorised the building blocks of matter and called it the atom!!

I think that Rowan Atkinson puts religion/superstition dichotomy into perspective very succinctly when he dresses up as the devil; -

‘Now I am here to inform you all that you are here for a very very long time.
Now will all the burglars and thieves come forth, thats right just move in that passageway to the left. Now where are the murderers? there are whole armies of you lot arn’t there? Adulterers? Oh there are an awfull lot you arn’t there? even more than the rapists, second passage on the left.
Now will the Christians come forth? Oh dear there seems to be a lot of nashing of teeth!! I am very sorry to inform you the Jews were right!’

May the universe bless you all!!

At the end of the day. We are all faulted and we need to accept it.

Have an honest look at yourself and seek the truth no matter what it reveals itself as. Chances are you wont like it. But thats the truth for you. Hard to swallow and difficult to manage.

God bless you all.

Nicholas Tahana Tautuhi.

This personification produces great work and I’ve often been inspired by seeing it in action. Muhammad Ali, Dorothy Day, Maximillian Kolbe, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It’s usually the religious people handing out the free soup and working with the drunks. Not so much the righteous Dawkinhideen.

Seems to be the problem is extremism in anything, and that extremism might find its expression in religion, politics, or anything else prone to cultivating mania in the predisposed. Because of that, I distrust strongly salvationist, utopian creeds, with their common concepts of martyrdom, piety, purity, enviable victory, heresy and righteousness. They’re dangerous. That’s why I’m not a marxist, free marketeer or hardline atheist.

The main difference between sports coaches, teachers and scout masters and the Catholic Church (or Graeme Caphill or Hopeful Christian/Neville Cooper for that matter) is the the former do not claim to be an infallible authority on moral issues.

To claim that the repeated use of this example is an obsession is rather disingenuous, it is an important and relevant example of why religious organisations should not be placed beyond the judgement of others (let alone scrutiny) as the article above suggests.

“Sky fairy” might be an old term but then it’s so much shorter than writing “supernatural omnipotent being with strangely human personality traits for which no verifiable evidence exists”.

Like the date of the second coming? Or Nostradamuses’ BIG END? Which supposed to be 1999 (note the reverse of the 666) and before that 1968, before that 1666 when London burnt down after the bubonic plague.

But no Nostradamus has now been updated and the great apocolypse is supposed to be 2014 so you all better put that down in your dairies and start digging your nuclear fallout shelters because Armageddon may catch us all by suprise!!!

So Is this a regular business? or a regular racket? And after all most religions are only cults that are socially acceptable and like the occults they still speculate on the unknown and play on the fears of peoples superstitions and it is a bulti billion dollar business!!!!

I myself am an Epicurion, that is I don’t believe there is a life after death. Furthermore I don’t think the scribe of Genisis did either ‘From dust we came to dust we shalt return’, And of course one could investigate this with a scientific methodology (like Da Vinci) and pull corpses out of the graves to find that the only life that will be evident is the maggots and worms devouring the flesh!!!

But that is not very romantic is it? How many books, tracts and illustrated publications of scientific observations of decomposing bodies made it to the best sellers list? we all want to be heroes and have everlasting life in our spirttual state or our ghost state. Now I do believe that people have seen ghosts, angels, demons and extra terrestials. But how do we know that these are not states of hypnosis, waking dreams or hallucinations?
So my challenge to all bloggers out there is: Has anyone ever caught and bottled or caged a ghost, angel or whatever, measured it’s dimensions (or is it in the 5th dimention) analysed it’s molecular and atomic structure?

If one claims they have then the Australian Sceptic Society are offering a very generous reward.

I also do not think a religion should be judged by the leaders of the faith. I know that some pretty terrible things have been done in the name of Christianity over the ages (though consider that none of Stalin, Hitler and Mao were Christians, but between them they’ve caused more deaths than any other men throughout the entirety of recorded history) but this is not what the Bible preaches, and it is not what Christianity is supposed to be. I identify with the part of Christianity that teaches about the God who saves me from sin and helps me every day to come closer to him and to become a better person, the maker of the universe, the Lord who can move the mountains and who loves perfectly and teaches others to love. I do not believe this God asks for the suppression of women or children; nor do I believe He wants His priests to wantonly take money from the people for themselves (in fact, Jesus specifically tells a rich young man to give up all his money to the poor and then he can find the Kingdom of God; this injunction is repeated regularly in other places, and at one point He sent all His disciples out with nothing at all to go and preach His truth). He does not call for what little people have to be forcefully extracted from them for the good of people who have a lot, but asks for aid and money to be willingly given to help those who need it.

Love is indeed the law, and it comes first above everything.

This is the greatest commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. And second is to love your neighbour as you love yourself.
Against these there is no law.