Comments by celestialtea

Comment #99368 by celestialtea on December 16, 2007 at 1:04 pm

This is from AH trust's website:

"Investing in the Christian Theme Park
It will cost £3.5M to build a large portal frame studio building complete with adequate car park facilities and we envisage to raise the building costs by various government grants, European funding, American funding and Corporate giving. We have demonstrated to the Television Broadcasting Companies that we can deliver on our objectives and we estimate from the world wide sales of DVDs and Broadcasting fees, the Studio earnings(£4.8M per annum) will be on average ten times the overhead costs"

I wouldn't object to them wasting their own money on this- but expecting government grants?

There's a rather bizarre "prayer request" form on their website too. Would it be terribly immature of us to spam God?

2. The art of the soluble

Comment #95723 by celestialtea on December 9, 2007 at 3:37 am

*yawns*
It would save a lot of time if these people just used a number system for their arguments. Something like 1=argument from complexity, 2=non-overlapping magisteria, 3=personal revelation, etc. Instead of wasting our time and theirs, they could simply say, "1, 3, 7, 2, 1" (Maybe 7 is going too far), we could point them to the relevant chapters of TGD and leave them to it.

3. Can the rest of us have our planet back?

Comment #95087 by celestialtea on December 7, 2007 at 10:29 am

Brigstocke was on The Wright Stuff this morning (a UK topical panel show on Channel 5). The panel was discussing faith schools, which everyone seemed to be in favour of. Marcus was the only one to say that religion should have no place in schools. He made the point about it being no more acceptable to call a child a Christian than it would be to call him/her a capitaist and he got a brilliant reaction from the audience. It was very encouraging!

4. Springer opera court fight fails

Comment #94346 by celestialtea on December 5, 2007 at 12:03 pm

Even so, anything that draws more attention to the ridiculous special treatment expected by the religious has got to be good for the cause. The outright dismissal of this case is still a good sign and sends out a clear message.

5. Highway to hysteria

Comment #94241 by celestialtea on December 5, 2007 at 4:31 am

"How strange is it really, that he's using a HIGHway to lead people to THE way?".

How can you argue with that? Airtight logic, that is.

6. Beyond Belief 07: Enlightenment 2.0

Comment #93761 by celestialtea on December 4, 2007 at 6:45 am

Oh crap. I wonder if I can sue for the detrimental effect this is going to have on my university studies.

7. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #66058 by celestialtea on August 28, 2007 at 6:34 am

I'm having difficulty finding the interview. Followed the link, but 1:34 onwards is just a discussion of gadgets. Can anyone help?

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Quotes of Note:

"Man is a Religious Animal. Man is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.... The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste."

Mark Twain

"I doubt that religion can survive deep understanding. The shallows are its natural habitat. Cranks and fundamentalists are too often victimised as scapegoats for religion in general. It is only quite recently that Christianity reinvented itself in non-fundamentalist guise, and Islam has yet to do so (see Ibn Warraq's excellent book, Why I am not a Muslim). Moonies and scientologists get a bad press, but they just haven't been around as long as the accepted religions. Theology is a respectable discipline when it studies such subjects as moral philosophy, the psychology of religious belief and, above all, biblical history and literature. Like Bertie Wooster, my knowledge of the Bible is above average. I seem to know Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon almost by heart. I think that the Bible as literature should be a compulsory part of the national curriculum - you can't understand English literature and culture without it. But insofar as theology studies the nature of the divine, it will earn the right to be taken seriously when it provides the slightest, smallest smidgen of a reason for believing in the existence of the divine. Meanwhile, we should devote as much time to studying serious theology as we devote to studying serious fairies and serious unicorns. "

Richard Dawkins

"Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading."

Richard Dawkins

"Flowers and elephants are 'for' the same thing as everything else in the living kingdoms, for spreading Duplicate Me programs written in DNA language. Flowers are for spreading copies of instructions for making more flowers. Elephants are for spreading copies of instructions for making more elephants."

Richard Dawkins

"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so."

Sir Arthur C. Clarke

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