freeinfidel

The UK’s blasphemy laws are an embarrassing anachronism. It’s time to get rid of them and an amendment to a bill going through Parliament might just achieve that.

If you’re a British voter, go to this site maintained by the British Humanist Association to find out how to contact your MP and make your views known. Time is short, so act now!

The Vatican is asking Roman Catholics everywhere to indulge in a prayer marathon in order to rid the church of the sin of child abuse. Yeah, that’ll work…

The Roman Catholic church is displaying yet again how remote it is from the real world. It has come up with a novel way of atoning for its crimes - specifically, the abuse committed by some of its priests against the young people in their charge.

Most sane people would see long jail terms for the perpetrators as a reasonable start. Removing ‘celibate’ religious extremists from positions of authority over vulnerable children would be another good move.

But no. The church has decided that Catholics everywhere should bend the knee in self-abasement to atone for the pervert priests. Never mind that the fault lies with an upper hierarchy more concerned with covering its tracks and maintaining a public image than in discovering the truth of its own members’ crimes. The top brass has decided that the blame and shame must be carried by all Catholics.

The initiative is the work of Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, though it is generally held that it must have the approval of Pope Benedict. The atonement will take the form of a prayer marathon. And a fat lot of good that will do the people whose lives have been affected.

Some recompense has been forthcoming in the US, with around $2 billion having been paid by the church to its victims. There are actions impending or in progress elsewhere, too. I can’t image that money will ever make up for the damage done. But at least it’s a honest response.

Getting ordinary Catholics to indulge the church in a pointless act of ‘adoration’ would be laughably silly if not for the context. As it is, it is dishonest, pointless and self-adoring.

It seems as though another miracle worker may turn out to be nothing but a fraud. We all long for the fantastic in our lives, but attributing events to miracles is self-deluding and often dangerous. The rational mind is a better defence against life’s dangers, and when it’s applied, miracles appear to dissolve away.

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The ‘intelligent design’ trial in Dover, Pennsylvania was a landmark case. It established that ID is just a dishonest re-badging of creationism and has no place in a science class. It was an important victory for rationalism, commonsense and science.The video above is the 2006 BBC Horizon programme on the case and the underlying issues.I would also strongly recommend ‘40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, Oxycontin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania’ by Matthew Chapman - a personal, often funny, scrupulously fair and sensitive account of the trial and the people involved.