I talk to the POSTGRES Missionaries

This Comic is a work of fiction, and not based on any particular person, alive or dead, if you can identify any person in this portrayal, then you have got it wrong.

Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen! If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it. Dan Barker.

Where I ask the Minister about ACCESS Ministries

Australia has been on a slow slide to a soft theocracy for the last decade with even the left wing Labour Party moving to embrace the religious right. In 2006 the then PM John Howard decided that the schools of Australia needed a Chaplain, not a youth worker, or a councillor or a Psychologist, but a religious Chaplain.
To bypass the constitution, these Chaplains who must be religious, are supposedly forbidden to mention their religion while at school. So the Chaplains often meet with young students at lunch, and after hours in order to make converts.

The Australian Government has cut funding to disabled students, and added more money to the Chaplains. Some people think it's for votes, but I think the Religious Right have actually made inroads into the Liberal and Labour parties, and are in the process of attempting to take the country back to the intelectual dark ages, but I seem to be in the very small minority with this veiw.

No other first world country would even think of wasting money on this bizarre project.

To keep up to date with this ongoing story, a parent created website http://religionsinschool.com/
is keeping track of events. If nothing else, listen to the recording of the ACCESS Ministries CEO in a talk to a conference of Bishops, and how she says the complete opposite on the radio to the public.

Mike Stuchbery has been amazing good at following the story, and a publicly funded High court challenge hopes to stop this waste of Tax payers money.

And just in, is a story on the one days training given to religious teachers from ACCESS.

I would defend the liberty of concenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent. - Arthur C Clarke

A bit more vanity from me.

As done by http://icemaxx1.deviantart.com/

"The essence of drawing is the line exploring space." -  Andy Goldsworthy

Deviant Art Commissioned Picture

I got this done by http://operative274.deviantart.com/  and I really love it. I have tried to get some artwork done by other people on Deviant Art in the past, but sometimes it just seemed so hard to get something done.
This was almost done overnight, did I say I love it?..Did I? 

I wanted to become a cartoon artist, a portrait artist, and an illustrator. This was my first idea.
Karl Lagerfeld

Debaptise and become and an Official Pastafarian Minister

The UK National Secular Society produced a Debaptism certificate some time ago and it's available on their website here

The US Freedom from Religion Foundation has also started to produce one, and is available from here

                                               

I guess after this event, you might feel a little empty, you could of course read some Darwin, Dawkins, some books of Philosophy, books on  rhetoric to defend your new found freedom, or you could join the fastest growing religion amongst the worlds most intelligent people.

Become an Official Pastafarian Minister!!  

Yes, you to can become assume the title Reverend, (or maybe Captain, or Father) 

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
Denis Diderot

UK decides it can't figure out how Australian voting works

Well the AV vote has been, and surprisingly it turned out to be NO :-(

Yes vote at 32.1% and the No vote at 67.9%

But at least some people are happy 

If the NO side says #yes2av is too hard, then the Tories are admitting Australians must be smarter than people in the UK, so prove them wrong   - Shockwave Plasma

Concordats, the Vatican and Human rights

                                                  

                I'm not a Catholic or a diplomat, and my reading of history is pretty good, but I had never heard of a Concordat until recently, when I came across Concordant Watch.
It can be as simple a treaty, or legal document that is written up between a sovereign state and the Vatican. It's one of those documents that both parties must agree to dissolve, but as it's usually about the Vatican keeping it;'s privileges then it's not likely they will do so.

The Vatican is a legal oddity, it claims to be a state, and the Pope to be the equal of a Prime Minister, or a country's President. the discussion usually is split by people who are Catholic or sympathetic who say it's a country, and those who are irreligious, and think that it's probably not. I haven't the slightest idea who is legally correct, I just find it seems to be what ever is convenient for the Vatican to be what it want to be at that particular time. In Italian law the Vatican is it's own microstate, this was confirmed in 1929 when the Lateran Treaty was signed between the Vatican and the Mussolini Government.

One thing to keep in mind is that the catholic Church isn't really big on Civil law, you know the stuff everyday people have to worry about. It's got it's own Canon Law, that it believes overrides Civil law. That's why raping a child will just get you moved to a different parish, but making a woman a priest will get you excommunicated. 


So how does the Church really see it self?

The Catholic Church, for her part, has always maintained that she is a supranational community and does not receive her legal existence from any temporal State. The Catholic Church exists as such, and it is in the Holy See that her organic unity is guaranteed, represented and perpetuated. Her extension corresponds to the spread of Catholic believers throughout the world. She is therefore a universal community that knows no national frontiers . Put in other words, when a state and the Holy See conclude an agreement they enter into a relation as two "perfect societies": the first as a temporal society, the second as a spiritual one. The Church receives its laws from her 'Founder' and not, like states, from some temporal power. But that doesn't mean that acts of the Catholic Church can have no effect on temporal jurisdiction. An intersection is possible and at this point the sovereignty of the Catholic Church stops and the problem of concordats begins.

Why does this really matter?

    The Catholic Church is a big employer, it has a million people working for it in Germany, and it is one of Australians biggest employers, one of the biggest landowners, and would be in the 10 richest corporations in Australia if is was actually incorporated, and could sort out it's accounts. In concrete terms it can mean that you can be discriminated against for employment, in a church run business, that is paid for by the state, such as happens in Australia, for not being the "correct" religion. Italy still pays the Vatican money for the loss of the Papal States. State funded, but church run hospitals will refuse abortions.


To to find out what has been happening in modern times we can  use a Slovakia  as an example. Oddly it has recently been turning more Catholic, a trend that has been a bit disturbing to the rest of the EU, where Poland and Ireland have been becoming more secular.

How have they been using in the past?  Well it shows very simply that the German Government under Hitler was very keen on the Vatican, and signed the Reichskonkordat not surprisingly as he was a Catholic, Germany still continues to sign them to this day 

Are they still in use in this day and age?

On the third of May 2011 Azerbaijan the and the Vatican signed a new one 

East Timor is currently in the process of signing one.

To find out more about concordats this very very excellent page on Wikipedia sums the problems very well, and is far better than I could have written myself.





As usual with matters of the Vatican, caution must at all time be taken to recognize actual issues, and those that are products of conspiracy, or fantasy.


 “Each concordat marks a state’s renunciation of its own powers and its assumption of the obligation to contribute to those of the Catholic Church. In exchange for these gifts, authoritarian governments buy from the church hierarchy a kind of legitimacy and support for their power, as being in harmony with the commands of God. In some cases they gain influence in the appointment of senior Churchmen. A democratic system does not need this legitimacy [...] To grant the Church any privileges violates the foundations of democracy, even if the facade is retained.”
— Anonymous Polish MP to President Kwaśniewski, cited by MP Ryszard Zając on 12 September 1996 in the Sejm.

Want to get Divorced in Malta, well not yet.

                                      

There is only one European Country that does not have a divorce law, and it's Malta, unsurprisingly Pope Benedict XVI  praised Malta’s stance against abortion and divorce, during a visit last April. Malta is about 96% Catholic, and usually the only time anyone actually hears about Malta, is when the Knights of Malta appear in some sort of historical or less likely modern context.

On 28 May 2011 Malta will have a referendum if they should have a divorce law. The local Humanist are for it, and as usual the dark age Catholic Church is against.

The referendum question in English is as follows:
Do you agree with the introduction of the option of divorce in the case of a married couple who has been separated or has been living apart for at least four (4) years, and where there is no reasonable hope for reconciliation between the spouses, whilst adequate maintenance is guaranteed and the children are protected


Malta is still big on Billboards, and here is one for the YES side

 Personally I am on the YES side.


 Divorce is a declaration of independence with only two signers. – Gerard Lieberman

To presume to be talk for god ?

May 21 is coming, my take on what the real Rapture story will be.

Many people  will have heard about FamilyRadio and Harold Camping, and his prediction (yet again) of the Rapture and the 2nd coming of Christ. You may have even seen the Billboards, or the car, or even the Vans.

I suspect something else is going to happen, that it's a cover story for something much more sinister.

Nom nom nom







Thanks to lynnfriedman on Flickr for the Wecanknow van image
Thanks to Oni Horan for Necronom
Thanks to various Aliens for eventually not eating me

Those of little faith are of little hatred. - Eric Hoffer

Derren Brown does a Marjoe

      In following up with my post on the movie Marjoe, Derren Brown has trained a person on how to become a faith healer. He is called Pastor James Collins, and he even has his own  website.  The show includes another fake healer who tries the old leg lengthing trick on Derren, brilliant!

If your in the UK you should be able to see it on More4

He's really cool and has a show on in London from June 8 to July 16 at the Shaftbury Theatre

"Seems the seance has become the most complained-about show. It received 700 complaints. I might add that the prospect of me blowing my head off on live TV last year attracted only twenty. Fair enough, I suppose." -Derren Brown

Happy Ishtar

Ishtar was the ancient Sumero-Babylonian goddess of love, sex and fertility. Also known as Inanna (sumerian name) and Astarte (kanaanäic name). 

So it follows to have a really traditional Easter, have sex.

I mean if you can believe in the Christian religion you can believe in anything, you know it's so utterly preposterous.- Tom Baker








Thanks to seriykotik1970's for the Ishtar picture

Happy 84the Birthday Pope Ratzinger

It's the Popes Birthday, and I would like to celebrate with a little song

Has science ever retreated? No! it is Catholicism that has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat. Emile Zola

Say NO to Chaplains

Dave the Happy Singer has created notochaplains.org This is to let those in power how much the general population of Australia, really don't want religious based evangelical helpers in our schools.

It's an expensive vote grabbing exercise, and an insult to the mainstream of Australia. 

The current church going population of Australia is about 7%, but the Federal government is falling over itself in letting these people having their own way. The Church run schools already get a huge handout of cash, now the State schools have to put up with this Christian interloper.

Dear Labour party, remember, this was started by the second PM ever to have lost his seat in an election, and you have been in the political wilderness for many years, for the precise reason that Keating forgot about mainstream Australia. Sucking up to minorities just doesn't work.


"I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. " Bertrand Russell

Marjoe and the Religious Con trick

       

        Thanks to the Skepchick Rebecca Watson blogging about this movie. I remembered reading about this man "The World's Youngest Ordained Minister" Marjoe Gortner, in Hitchins "God is not Great", but I never followed it up even though I had the book on my desk.

  The movie is called "Marjoe", a 1972 Academy Award winning Documentary,  thanks to YouTube it's available for viewing here.  

 Marjoe was the son of two missionary parents, and as a child he was turned into a tiny Evangelical minister until he was about 16 and decided he had enough, and stopped. Then his father took what was remaining of the US$3Million (US$15million in 2011 money)that Marjoe had raised, and left.

The movie follows Marjoe as he makes his return to Ministry, and shows the  tricks used and events that the evangelicals use to suck cash from those taken in by these confidence tricksters.

While we are on simple con tricks, a good one is the Miracle Leg Lenghtening, it's been done in the past by AA Allen , it's currently a favourite in Denmark and in the USA. Starting with the legs slightly sideways and pulling the shoe slightly off the heel, makes one leg appear to be longer, or the other to be shorter. James Randi has exposed this trick a number of times.

A book about Marjoe is available on Amazon

"Missionaries are perfect nuisances and leave every place worse than they found it." Charles Dickens

UK Democracy undermined again.

          Today could have been a very good day for British politics, the reform of the House of Lords as been an ongoing issue for nearly 100 years, and the Liberal Democrats have been trying hard to have a fully elected Upper House.

 The previous Labour Government had got rid of most of the hereditary Lords, but 92 remain. I'm not sure if that was really much of an improvement, more like getting rid of those who are not toeing the Labour Government line.
Personally I would trust the Hereditary Peers, rather than those appointed by the political parties.

Britain is one of two countries that have clerics given a guaranteed place in it's Parliament, the other one is Iran, it's good to see the company we keep with open and democratic government.


But we see that we are going down to 300 Lords, of which 80% will be elected leaving 20% to be appointed, simple maths, 60 will be appointed in some way. As usual, no one has actually figured out how the second Chamber will actually work.

The hardest part is to make something the citizens will actually trust.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians. Tony Benn

Vote YES to a fairer voting system

On the 5th of May Britain will have a vote on changing the current first past the post voting system to a proportional vote.

In 1994 New Zealand changed to a proportional vote called Mixed Member Proportional, this is much like the system they use in many places in Germany. Australia also uses this method to vote for it's Senate.

It's hoped that the change will help stop the Jobs of Life mentality of those MPs in safe seats. The major parties don't want it. Not at all! So you know it has to be a good thing.

The No campaign will tell you it's only used by a few countries, when it's actually used by over 80, and the current First Past the Post is prone to wasted votes and our old friend Gerry Mander.

    http://www.yestofairervotes.org/

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good  -

Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken

Priest takes down Sex Party Electoral Posters

Sex Party Posters Ordered Down at Church Polling Booth

Written by ASP Staff

Saturday, 26 March 2011 13:55

Sex Party volunteers at the St Peter’s Catholic Church polling booth on Devonshire st in Surry Hills, have been ordered by the priest in charge of the venue to pull their posters down for most of today’s NSW election. No other parties were ordered to take down their signage. Sex Party volunteers claimed that the priest was so aggressive and rude to them that they were fearful of an altercation developing and agreed to take down the signage. Sex Party President Fiona Patten said the Catholic Church was being paid by the NSW Electoral Commission to hold the election in the Parish Hall and that included hosting signage on the property. “The actions of the church’s representative in unfairly discriminating against the Sex Party for its political views, represents an offence under the Discrimination Act. He has also jeopardised our chances of getting a fair and legitimate vote at this booth which could constitute an offence under the Electoral Act. We will be pursuing this issue with the Electoral Commission on Monday and see what our options are”, she said. Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero

Learned Socities, debates and the Web

        One of the things I really love about being in Britain is the history, and the amount of public discourse. The country really does have a large amount of intellectuals, (although you would never know it around Soccer season)

Learned Societies have been around here for over 350 years with the founding of the Royal Society. These days most are on the web, and provide great resources with Libraries, pictures and videos. Many have been hosting public lectures from experts in their fields for hundreds of years. (not the same experts)

Britain was the centre of the industrial and scientific revolutions, and this means a great number of these Societies or Institutions exist in London, such as :-

The Royal Society
The Royal Society of Arts
The British Academy
Gresham College
The Royal Institution
Society of Chemical Industry
Royal Geographical Society
Royal Institute of Philosophy
Royal Asiatic Society
The Linnean Society
Royal Academy of Arts
Royal Statistical Society

Almost all of the above have useful and informative web sites.

These days we can see many of these lectures on the Web
Royal Society TV
RSA on You Tube
RiAus

I am quite pleased to see that some of these have spread around the world, and have branches or affiliates in Australian such RiAus

Intelligence Squared is a London based debating forum, where the debates are now streamed over the web for free, and people can interact via twitter in real time. It's been so popular it's spread to the US, Australia, Hong Kong, Nigeria, and the Ukraine.

London also has public debates at the Centre for Inquiry. Some of these are video recorded as well.

Many Universities have Lectures on the Web, just to point out two London ones.
London School of Economics
Imperial College London 

It was on YouTube where I first came across The RSA, and from there I started to discovered the rich variety the local instutions provide.


“London is the epitome of our times, and the Rome of today.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Purple Economy - A book review

    

                                                                             

   Max Wallace has authored a book that lays out how Australia, and (almost only Australia) keeps the Churches on side with Government with these particular Tax deductions and handouts.

The first part of the book demolishes any ideas about separation of church  and state in Australia.
In the 1998 DOGS case (Defence of Government Schools), the high court decided there was no separation of church and state in Australia.

This is why we  had  Peter Hollingworth  an Anglican Archbishop as Governor General, and the Government can fund Chaplains in Australian schools.

Even though the Australian constitution is almost exactly written and intended to be the same in the church/state regard as the USA, it has a single word different, and that was enough for the High Court to determine their is no separation.

Looking back over 100 years to the founding of the Australian Commonwealth can't be easy, and parts of the constitution will have been taken from many models, but our interest is in Section 116.

I won't reproduce it here, as the wikipedia entry is quite through. But the interpretation of the meaning separation of Church and State is one that needs to be investigated, e.g.  What does it all mean?

 Some think it means that the State looks after the government of the people, and religion is just something funded by believers and and those particular principles of belief are just for themselves. This is how secularism works, and certainly the most desirable in modern society (until the human race grows up). This is the French model.

Some think it means the government will not establish a State Church, as it exists now in England. This is how the courts have interpreted the situation  in Australia.

Some think it means that the Government will not tax you to pay for the support of a religions that you don't believe in. The situation in Germany, Denmark  and Sweden, is actually much like this. The Government taxes it's citizens on behalf of their church.

Italy has the Tax Eight Per Thousand

In the US, the principle is that the state does not subsidise religion, also
Everyone is free to exercise their religion.
Religion can't be imposed on anyone.
There is no religious test for government positions.
There is no State religion.

Nice theory, but for those in the USA, this NYT article will probably interest you your separation of Church and state is slowly being eroded, your taxes going to support the religious, and civil laws being exempted for their benefit.

This is exactly what is happening in Australia, the taxes the church doesn't pay on it's profit making activities is made up by taxes the rest of the population pay. Australian Government money goes to religious schools, these schools that were setup precisely to be outside the government system, and to promote the religious views of the respective churches 

But to sum it up, Australian Church / State separation is a DOGS breakfast, and the importance of the DOGS case takes some pages to go over in the book

So again it comes down to money, I have covered this before in my post about the lack of a Charity Commission in Australia

The Business Review Weekly estimated in 2005 the 5 biggest religious groups in the country had a revenue of A$23.3 Billion. It is summarised in this PDF from the Australian and New Zealand law and History journal  and this page at the ADOGS website

The BRW also claim the Catholic Church is the biggest landowner in Australia, I can't confirm this, and finding out for certain is beyond my resources, as part of the problem is the parish systems and the different Australian states. The Catholic Church is spread across 200 religious orders, and if the comments by an ex-member of Opus Dei are to be believed, the accountants are completely disorganised, and it's very likely the Church doesn't know what it actually owns, and probably prefers it that way


The Second part is about Religion and Government

How much has religious thinking affected those we elect to Government?
In the last decade a National day of Thanks Giving has been informally held, although I have no idea how popular it is compared to Talk like a Pirate day.
Peter Costello is certainly keen on it, and even likes to make the occasional speech , John Howard was also keen to support  this day of intellectual fiction.

So how is the  Australian Government records for doing what is best for it's citizens, instead of furthering the Christian agenda?

•  2005 was a year to remember for the drug RU486, Tony Abbott showed his contempt for women by trying to have it restricted/banned, but it was made available during a conscience vote, it was noticeable the overwhelming number of woman in parliament voted for it.

• The lack of a Royal Commission into priestly Child Abuse.

• Sale of a radio transmitter to a fundamentalist Christian group so they can send their signals into Asia (Station is now closed)

• 20 Million gift for a World Youth Day, with the pope in attendance, but nothing for the World Atheist Conference in 2010.                                                              

• Of course there is also the Chaplains, a social/psychological disaster just waiting to happen.                                                                                                      

• Religious businesses are exempt from anti-discrimination laws. 

• Continual disregard for the establishment of a Charity Commission 

 
Much of the book then goes in to the murky world of Charities and Government, and some comparisons of how other countries handle the relationship. Then continues with how some MPs deal with their religious convictions and the rest of the community, and the Liberal Governments attack on the human rights of citizens.

One thing Max Wallace says in a minor paragraph is how Dr Carmen Lawrence received hate mail and death threats when she spoke about Hill$ong Church in Parliament. This reminded me about this video of Richard Dawkins reading his hate mail. Ben Goldacre the author of Bad Science, just said on twitter that he does get abusive hate mail, and it would surprise many who it's from.


The book also has a short section on Black Collar Crime, and notes the Catholic Church had documention called On the manner of proceeding in cases of the crimes of solicitation in 1962 to advise on how to move Priests around, and threaten excommunication on anyone who made claims public. 

This is the first time I have re-read a book immediately, it's full of shocking details of things that I never knew, but then again I have never been exposed to Religion. This was where I first heard of the Magdalene Laundries, and how they operated in Australia at least in the 1940s, and only due to the intervention of a "miracle" they didn't come to public notice at that time.  

The Purple Economy is available from Embiggen Books

Notes:-
Australian Industry Commissions 1995 report (PDF) Charitable Organisations in Australia

The Catholic Church also gets income from Peters Pence.
It's only $US84 Million, but it's likely it goes into the Vatican bank, an organization with alleged links to the Mafia, a fencer of Nazi gold, and money laundering potentially even more corrupt than banks are generally supposed to be.(I take note that the Vatican Bank is the subject of many conspiracy theories, so anything written about it is highly suspect)


Do you know why I have credibility? Because I don't exude morality -- Bob Hawke