Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, OM, FRS (born 23 June 1942 in York[1]) is an English cosmologist and astrophysicist. He has been Astronomer Royal since 1995, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge since 2004, and President of the Royal Society since 2005.

Some still pine for the good old days when medical practitioners used theology and astrology as the basis for health care.

The struggle to marginalize superstition will take more time however there can be no let up in reminding the public to be wary.

I may be the first person in the history of the website Trip Advisor to post as part of my London hotel review, that bibles be removed from rooms. As a paying guest I do not wish to be proselyted. On the way to the rally on the 18th I took along the found Gideon and pitched it as a symbolic act. Following that up to the hotel management was easy. (FYI - hotels do not pay for bibles, Books of Mormon or Gitas, they are provided by NGO religious corporations and hence this is not destroying hotel property.)

Objecting to the influence of religion is necessary, do it often and in public.

A few years ago there was a fantastic exhibit at the Museum of Sex (NY, NY)

Kung poo panda 'The Sex Lives of Animals' exhibit digs deep.

It is too bad that the show didn't travel as it was very insightful.

@ hitchens_jnr

Germany (scroll down when you hit the link & look at Switzerland too, oh the meddling continues by the the Holy Roman Emperor)

Germany levies a church tax, on all persons declaring themselves to be Christians, of roughly 8–9% of the income tax, which is effectively (very much depending on the social and financial situation) typically between 0.2% and 1.5% of the total income. The proceeds are shared amongst Catholic, Lutheran, and other Protestant Churches. In 1933 Hitler had the entry "church tax" added to the official tax card, which meant that the tax could now be deducted by the employer like any of the other taxes.

Some believe that the church taxation system was established or started through the Concordat of 1933 signed between the Holy See and the Third Reich.

Hildegard von Bingen was the 10th child and hence tithed to the Church. I guess from that peried (12th century) intelligent women had a chance for a better life in a convent than to opt for marriage to a brutal chavainist. Today German citizens are required to tithe, I am astounded by that.

Perhaps due to Hildegard's visions, or as a method of political positioning, Hildegard's parents, Hildebert and Mechthilde, offered her as a tithe to the church.

'Administration problems' blamed for Pope Benedict's ticket slump

Although just 400,000 tickets had been allocated for the open-air masses which will be presided over by Pope Benedict in Glasgow, London and Birmingham, organisers are now racing to ensure the parks will be full.

Parish priests have been urged to distribute thousands of tickets to schools, while the Archbishop of Westminster, Rev Vincent Nichols, wrote to Catholic school heads in London last week asking them to organise parties of schoolchildren to attend the evening prayer vigil in Hyde Park on Saturday.

Using kids to pad numbers is cheating.

Maybe we should be kinder to A. Brown, he may be lonely and have some other emotional issues. While he has the wonderful job of being the GU Belief Editor no one notices him in a crowd. A while ago he announced a 'London Meet Up' and only a handful of people turned up, frankly the poor man couldn't fill the back room of a tiny pub. Oh and on the subject of alcohol, he seems to celebrate drunkenness and maybe there is a clue in that if y'all get my drift. Brown is often nasty to those who post on CiF and I have been a target too of vicious remarks as have many others. During the year end holidays at the end of December 2009 I couldn't post on CiF, blocked I guess while the Mods had a little time off. WTF is that about and as others have said, call that 'Comment is Free'.

Paula have you ever submitted a piece to Cif? If not why not, your voice is needed there.

@ Stevehill, I have been on the road and didn't know that you quit, that is a shame. Didn't you just get one of those fancy chief big C things? Best, LucyQ

BTW - WML is posting on the Independent!

I have set the PVR to record this on CNN, September 25 @ 10:00 p.m. BBC iPlayer wouldn't let us watch it live while in England even though there we a local wifi connection on the laptop. That seemed odd.

The momentum to make changes and reduce the influence of religion is a high speed train that won't be stopped now.

Paula please submit a commentary to Andrew Brown, how can he refuse you?

Miranda, good work, hitting them with documentary evidence only results in a group of people that stick fingers in their eyes and chant, la,la,la.

The GU mods are removing all posts calling for Brown to apologize & quit. Man oh man, how Free is Comment?

I feel grouchy now.

Brown popped up on the thread not to apologize to RD but to let the audience know that he is working on a piece to dispel something that he sees as a myth that religious groups and especially the RC church, count baptisms to pad their numbers.

I then posted this clip & link:

Number of Catholics Increases Worldwide

"In 2008 there were 1.166 billion baptized Catholics worldwide, an increase of 19 million (up 1.7%). Taking into account the increase in the world’s population to 6.7 billion, there is a slight growth in the percentage of Catholics who make up the global population (from 17.33% to 17.40%)." [http://www.zenit.org/article-28425?l=english][1]

I then said this: "Counting babies issued from poor women in the developing world is cheating." It set off slurs against my comment by the usual faith defenders. Is it that I should have typed very slowly and correctly stated:

'The Roman Catholic Church ... counting babies issued from poor women in the developing world ... to pad their numbers is cheating.'

WTF is wrong with them?

Is it that they are like Fritzl's wife a woman who claimed that she didn't know what he was up to in the cellar?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case

I wonder if the believers are the ones that are easily hypnotized at magic sideshows and act out whatever the magician suggests. Man oh man life is generally more absurd than fiction.

Ah well thanks to everyone who made this wonderful event happen.

Theology is justification for the existence of priests and rabbis without which they'd be forced to work at real jobs.

Richard, I quit the Times and will not pay for it.

Stay strong when you are up against the other side today.

We know where gods come from surely and that they are created in the images of nasty tribal patriarchs. The billions of us are too many for this little orb and yet the usual suspects, the religious, the terminally ignorant of reality, continue to churn our more litters of human animals. They don’t seem to get that less is more.

What is so attractive to modern, well educated people who can't shake off early childhood religious cult condition? Why are they so afraid of life?

Imitating and indoctrinating defenseless children into this or that tribal religious cult and following that up with faith schools means that too many wallow in fear of the unknown or that some imaginary CCTV watches their every move. Any cleric that declares knowledge of the gods or after life is lying and should be called out for that.

Sometimes I feel as if visiting this era from the future when seeing billions groveling around praying to imaginary gods. It’s like tuning into a National Geographic documentary on primitive cultures that engaged in all kinds of crazy rites aiming for water or fertility.

The brain is complex and neuroscience a relatively new field of study. In time science will reveal how and why life on earth is what it is. Imagination can be enhanced by LSD type symptoms from food poisoning or triggered by any number of events including epileptic seizures.

Climate change is most likely the driving force for our species evolving so quickly and that some become the genius able to turn abstract thought into great inventions.

Being thrilled by scientific observation does not lesson the joy of being part of evolution.

Other animals express emotions too, love and empathy isn't unique to us.

There is nothing supernatural to see here so move along folks.

The Guardian poll question today: Hawking: God 'not necessary' http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/poll/2010/sep/02/religion-hawking

Jerry, man that is one eloquent essay. It should make everyone who reads it pause and think. Thank you.

re: 1) What evidence do you have for God’s existence?

The continuous loop of psycho-babble by those who claim special 'sensing' of something supernatural without being able to produce 3D evidence is annoying. Declaring that their collective mass validates delusions is tiresome too. As is the daily dose of believers who proclaim that emotions, love, or puppies and babies are evidence of god. Too many won't accept that a bang on the head, food poisoning, epilepsy and other neurological events can produce LSD type symptoms or that tribes create gods in their own image.

I am shocked and dismayed by this story of horrific, emotional child abuse against a 7 year old:

Phone calls from God still had some children in awe Thursday morning at St. Nicholas of Myra vacation bible school.

Who played God on the phone? That is a dishonest and cruel thing to do to a developing mind. Is it any wonder that so many are still off the charts like Gary Gutting, they are terrified, afraid of the voice planted in their heads as defenseless children.

The Saudis by building a mosque around Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, are displaying insensitivity. It does seem like a provocation. If they truly cared then why not simply donate the land to be used as a park and let the people of NYC decide what trees to plant.

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The insane are dangerous yet elevated to exalted positions in society.

Ah then Russell Blackford, consider the source, did you forget who owns the WT?

(The Moonies founded, own, and control the Washington Times)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church][2]

Whatever book was first into the mass market would be a top seller, so what?

Common literacy in the West is fairly modern, even today most of the 7 billion people around the world are illiterate. Billions may own a household copy of book called Bible, Torah or Koran, but will use it as as a status symbol, a prop, or talisman, and not for reading material.

Too many serious dailies are censoring remarks refuting the twisting of facts by believers especially when they cheat by counting initiated infants as validation for the claim of the growth of religion yet no ones challenges them on the issue of mature adult consent.

Tragic

Please stop perpetuating the myth that the Vatican is a nation. It is a global monolithic corporation.

A nation is "a group of people who share culture, ethnic origin and language, often possessing or seeking its own independent government.1 The development and conceptualization of a nation is closely related to the development of modern industrial states and nationalist movements in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,[2] although nationalists would trace nations into the past along uninterrupted lines of historical narrative. Though the idea of nationality and race are often connected, the two are separate concepts, race dealing more with genotypic and phenotypic similarity and clustering, and nationality with the sense of belonging to a culture."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation

Families do not populate the Vatican as citizens procreating, establishing and forming the evolution of it.

Please stop perpetuating the myth that the Vatican is a nation. It is a global monolithic corporation.

A nation is "a group of people who share culture, ethnic origin and language, often possessing or seeking its own independent government.[1] The development and conceptualization of a nation is closely related to the development of modern industrial states and nationalist movements in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,[2] although nationalists would trace nations into the past along uninterrupted lines of historical narrative. Though the idea of nationality and race are often connected, the two are separate concepts, race dealing more with genotypic and phenotypic similarity and clustering, and nationality with the sense of belonging to a culture."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation[link text][1]

Families do not populate the Vatican as citizens procreating, establishing and forming the evolution of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation

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love fashion and whenever wearing a new, invented getup on the street notice others laughing. That makes me laugh too. When dressing up as Queen of Voodoo at Mardi Gras in N.O., cannot bring myself to wear a mask as part of the costume. It is so uncomfortable in the heat.

The most extreme images of women draped in black with only a slit for eyes was seen in Dubai where the temp averages 45°C. Shops there and in other wretched Islamic theocracies also sell plastic face masks demanded by some tribal patriarchal misogynist peasants who insist that their harems wear them to step out of their home-prisons. Men of course wear pristine white, loose fitting robes and sandals while females are tortured. That must be especially painful for menopausal women when suffering hot flashes.

Sometimes when in London at Camden (home of Goth culture) I try to take photos and may get some pretty nasty comments by the severely tattooed, pierced, leather & rubber wearing folk. Fuck off is a popular one, but that makes me laugh too. Any of us who display in public will be the subject of amusement by others. What is the big deal?

While we should be free to wear whatever it is inappropriate to expect service in public places for failure to comply with basic dress codes hence masking is being outlawed Restrictions on what is appropriate is justified. Will restaurants serve those with bear torsos or without shoes?

Richard, you always hit the nail on the head and that comment is succinct.

The tragedy is that the UK is so insecure as a culture that it is failing to protect all citizens equally from the tyranny of the infection of religion. I am thrilled to hear about the new work 'Faith Schools Menace' and hope that it will be available for viewing to all of us around the world.

I am designing a tee to wear on September 18th inspired by Miranda's blog on Transubstantiation, that is the theme for the outfit. Hopefully that will be a fun day for photography in London.

Linda

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Scotland takes the lead on the 'arrest the pope' issue while England hides in a corner and only crawls out to grovel.

This is good news. At last a few nations are stepping up to their moral responsibility to do the right thing and dispense the law equally with regards to any suspected sexual abuse of minors. It took some strong willed Belgian bureaucrat to order the recent raid on the RC church offices there and maybe Scotland will show some courage and enforce their laws too.

The Roman Catholic Corporation manipulates worldwide governments with impunity. Why won’t people in positions of power do the right thing? What are they afraid of?

Richard was very clear about the ongoing, ignored criminal butchery of the genitals of female children. Surely a lot of people will listen to the broadcast and demand that police do their jobs and arrest the perpetrators.

The interviewer tried to deflect blame from religion as the inspiration for the blood lust by invoking culture, folk beliefs, as if either excuse deserves to be protected. To a person those who use knives to assault children are doing it to satisfy religious conditioning. They are automatons born without the capacity to know right from wrong.

Perhaps a quick fix would be to mandate that religious leaders admit that the ritual is criminal and then scare their groups into believing that they will rot in hell for it.

Once the police are shamed into arresting criminals that cut female children the next step will be to include the boys.

Logicel - That is a good link that you have posted.

Jeffrey Lena, the American attorney for the Holy See, argued the Vatican is not responsible for individual priests in dioceses, saying the existence of the priest in the case "was unknown to the Holy See until after all the events in question."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100629/ap_on_re_us/us_supreme_court_clergy_abuse

Juxtapose that legal defense of the Vatican with this story from yesterday:

[Vatican Rebukes Austrian Cardinal][1]

"The Vatican issued an unprecedented public rebuke Monday of a leading cardinal who had questioned the church's policy of celibacy and openly criticized the retired Vatican No. 2 for his handling of clerical sex abuse cases."

They are boxed in, talking out of both sides and I do hope that the lawyering up by the Vatican fails.

I can't wait for the Pope to say 'let them eat cake'.