The authoritarian leader of the world’s Catholics promised to restore the purity of his church. So why is it still plagued by scandal upon scandal? Peter Popham reports.

Of all the countries Pope Benedict XVI is visiting this year – including Malta, Portugal, Cyprus and Spain – Britain, which he visits in September, is the one in the greatest moral difficulty from his perspective: a citadel of wild-eyed relativism, beset by all the ills which the Sixties incubated and which the Catholic Church here, in the Vatican’s view, has done little to combat.

Look at the evidence: we have women vicars, openly gay Cabinet ministers, the minaret of a mosque looming over Regent’s Park. Multi-culturalism has supplanted Christianity as the religion of choice; hardly anyone goes to church any more; a Christian tradition going back 1,500 years is discarded as immigrants belonging to every faith and none pour in. In our adoration of pop stars we have produced a new reign of idolatry. Benedict’s late boss, whose doctrinal conservatism was lightened by a Bohemian theatrical streak, happily sat through a Bob Dylan concert and quoted the singer’s lyrics in his subsequent sermon; on another occasion the current Pope’s predecessor went so far as to try on Bono’s shades. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict’s name before he was Pope), obliged to accompany his boss, shook his head sadly over such lapses. These “stars of the young”, he later wrote, “had a message completely different from that to which the Pope was committed. There was reason to be skeptical – which I was, and in a certain sense still am – to doubt whether it was really right to involve ‘prophets’ of this type.” Pop music, he said in 1986, was “a vehicle of anti-religion”.

[Read more at the Independent]

In a whirl of limbs and with eyes bulging, the woman is helped to a squat in the ramshackle shed and starts cackling maniacally like a terrified chicken.
“Kaaaa! Ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka,” she screams and stutters, her right arm bent in front of her.

Around her, the other Voodoo worshippers look on, unsurprised but expectant as their ceremony reaches its climactic mid-point. Someone ties a red cloth to her arm, which stops shaking.

In their eyes, she is possessed by a spirit of the dead – one of the 220,000 estimated to have perished in Haiti’s January quake perhaps – and is thus, in a way, blessed.

When she picks up a rusty knife and swings clockwise around the room, gulping from a bottle of cherry-flavored alcohol, they do not draw away.

Instead they embrace her, even kiss her. And in that way they are blessed, too.

But for all the fervor and favor being shared in this back-alley corner of Cite Soleil, a Port-au-Prince slum that was badly smashed in the quake, the practitioners of Voodoo are feeling under seige.

Their cult, a form of west African polytheism that came to Haiti with the slave trade, is being blamed by some followers of the rapidly growing Christian denominations – evangelicals, Seventh-Day Adventists, Baptists – as the cause of God’s anger in smiting their country.

[Read more at the Telegraph]

The draft national curriculum does not prohibit the teaching of creationism in schools, raising questions about whether this will open the door to its promotion as a science in classrooms.

The NSW Board of Studies has explicitly ruled out the teaching of creation theory from the Bible as a science, however it allows the teaching of spiritual perspectives on creation in science classes, as long as they are not dressed up as scientific or used to substitute any curriculum content, such as the teaching of evolution.

Greens MP John Kaye said he did not oppose discussion of Aboriginal Dreamtime or Christian explanations of the world’s origins in science classrooms, as long as they were presented as non-scientific beliefs.

However, while the NSW curriculum explicitly required schools to present and ”discuss evidence that present-day organisms have evolved from organisms in the distant past” and to ”relate natural selection to the theory of evolution”, the draft national curriculum ”was remarkably silent on the connection between natural selection and the evolution of ancient species into modern forms”.

“[The state curriculum] leaves open no wriggle room to slip in religiously based views on the origin of species as science,” Dr Kaye said.

[Read more at the Sydney Morning Herald]

A rarely seen Buddhist flower, which blossoms every 3,000 years, has been discovered under a nun’s washing machine.

The Udumbara flower was found in the home of a Chinese nun in Lushan Mountain, Jiangxi province, China.

The rare Youtan Poluo or Udumbara flower, which, according to Buddhist legend, only blooms every 3,000 years, measures just 1mm in diametre.

[Read more at the Telegraph]

Meditation appears to build up cortex, MRI scans find

If you’re trying to reduce your sensitivity to pain, Zen meditation may help by actually thickening your brain, new research suggests.The authors of a new study, published in a special issue of the journal Emotion, reached their conclusions after comparing brain thickness in 17 Zen meditators and a control group of 18 people who didn’t meditate and hadn’t practiced yoga or suffered from chronic pain, brain disease or mental illness.

The researchers applied heat to the participants’ calves and used MRI scans to study how their brains reacted to the pain.

“Through training, Zen meditators appear to thicken certain areas of their cortex, and this appears to underlie their lower sensitivity to pain,” study author Joshua A. Grant, a doctoral student in the University of Montreal’s department of physiology, said in a news release from the school. “We found a relationship between cortical thickness and pain sensitivity, which supports our previous study on how Zen meditation regulates pain.”

[Read more at Bloomberg.com]

Much like Halloween, the Jewish holiday of Purim carries a veneer of boisterous and innocuous fun overlaid on some ghoulish history. Of all the “they tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat” holidays in the Jewish calendar, Purim has been the most responsible for shaping the Jewish view of other nations—and the theology behind that worldview has rung many alarm bells over the potential for Jewish violence.

Anyone familiar with the Bible can joke about the seemingly endless array of tribes with peculiar-sounding names, from Jesubites to Hittites. But one tribe’s spiritual legacy is very much alive today and embodies the most controversial commandment in the Bible: Amalek is the nation that attacked Israel at its weakest point during the Exodus story, and God’s quest for revenge is total—commanding King Saul’s army to slay every man, woman, child, and even animal, sparing nothing and no one. That singular military order recalls the broader commandment given to all the Hebrews in Deuteronomy, to “blot out the remembrance of Amalek.”

That Jews today must grapple with their predecessors’ engagement in divine genocide is troublesome enough for many theologians. What makes it even more difficult is that many think the war with Amalek isn’t over.

[Read more at Slate]

“If there’s no God, then where did all this come from?”

I’ve written a fair amount about some of the more painfully bad arguments for religion and against atheism. I’ve written about the argument that religion is just a story, not meant to be taken literally…a story that still somehow makes people get very bent out of shape when atheists point out that it isn’t true.

I’ve written about an assortment of arguments from wishful thinking, from the insulting (and irrelevant) argument that atheists don’t stay atheists when faced with death, to the baffling (and irrelevant) argument that religion gives us a needed feeling of mystery.

I’ve written about the arguments that essentially tell atheists to just shut up. And I’ve written about the ways that, when asked what evidence they have for their religious beliefs, many believers simply deflect the question. Instead of saying, “This is why I believe what I do,” they offer a list of excuses for why they don’t have to show us any stinking evidence.

[Read more at Alternet]

A wooden object claimed to be a replica of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant has gone on display at a Zimbabwe museum.

The “ngoma lungundu” belongs to the Lemba people – black Africans who claim Jewish ancestry.

They say the vessel was built almost 700 years ago from the remains of the original Ark, which the Bible says was used to store Moses’ 10 Commandments.

For decades the ancient vessel was thought to be lost, until it was found in a storeroom in Harare recently.

Tudor Parfitt, who rediscovered the artefact three years ago, told the BBC he believed it was the oldest wooden object ever found in sub-Saharan Africa.

“On each corner there is the remnants of a wooden ring, and obviously at one point, it was carried by inserting poles through these two rings on either side,” he said.

[Read more at BBC News]

For a fee, this service will place your dog or cat in the home of a caring atheist on Judgment Day.
Many people in the U.S.—perhaps 20 million to 40 million—believe there will be a Second Coming in their lifetimes, followed by the Rapture . In this event, they say, the righteous will be spirited away to a better place while the godless remain on Earth. But what will become of all the pets?

Bart Centre, 61, a retired retail executive in New Hampshire, says many people are troubled by this question, and he wants to help. He started a service called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets that promises to rescue and care for animals left behind by the saved.

Promoted on the Web as “the next best thing to pet salvation in a Post Rapture World,” the service has attracted more than 100 clients, who pay $110 for a 10-year contract ($15 for each additional pet.) If the Rapture happens in that time, the pets left behind will have homes—with atheists. Centre has set up a national network of godless humans to carry out the mission. “If you love your pets, I can’t understand how you could not consider this,” he says.

Centre came up with the idea while working on his book, The Atheist Camel Chronicles, written under the pseudonym Dromedary Hump. In it, he says many unkind things about the devout and confesses that “I’m trying to figure out how to cash in on this hysteria to supplement my income.”

[Read more at Business Week]

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama. Photo by Luca Galuzzi - www.galuzzi.it

A US president is again choosing to meet the Dalai Lama despite Chinese opposition. BBC News asks why this Tibetan spiritual and political leader is such a popular figure in the West:

To the Chinese government and to many of its people he is an inciter of violence and a defender of a brutal, backward, feudalistic, theocratic society.

But to many politicians and people in the West, the Dalai Lama is a kind of smiling, spiritual and political superhero.

His monastic robes, beaming countenance and squarish, unfashionable glasses are the stuff of a thousand photo opportunities. To some he is in a league of international personalities that contains only one other person – Nelson Mandela.

He is well-known for his contact with Hollywood supporters like Richard Gere and Steven Segal.

Those who have met him describe an intense personal charisma.

There is a “wonderful smiling face, cherubic looks, the infectious laugh” says Alexander Norman, who co-operated with the Dalai Lama on his autobiography as well as several other works after first meeting him in 1988.

It is hard to escape the idea that the Dalai Lama is perceived almost as an avuncular “Santa Claus” figure by some, says Dr Nathan Hill, senior lecturer in Tibetan at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

“He is very photogenic. In the West we like stars. He is an extremely engaging person, and an extremely smart man. I find him extremely savvy politically, very forward looking.”

There are many in the West who are seeking an unthreatening spiritual boost in an age of materialism, suggests Norman, who recently wrote The Secret Lives of the Dalai Lama.

“There is a huge desire in the secular West… a hunger for something other than the benefits that modern industrial society can supply.”

Search on Amazon for the Dalai Lama’s books and you see long lists of spiritual and self-help tracts.

“He is unstained by the world [to some readers],” says Dr Hill. “You want to read his books in order to find enlightenment yourself.” …

[continues at BBC News]

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation.

The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith, apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith.

The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers.

The lines read out by the DJ included: “One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother.”

The presenter on Genesis TV, a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films.

[Read more at the Telegraph]

According to the New Catholic Dictionary the Holy Grail is “a legendary sacred vessel, identified with the chalice of the Eucharist or the dish of the Paschal Lamb, and the theme of a medieval cycle of romance”. It “is said to have been the dish… used by Joseph of Arimathea to gather the Precious Blood of Christ.” And, according to author, historian and folklorist Mark Oxbrow, the Grail has actually been found.

Of course, the Grail was once in the hands of Indiana Jones, but even he ultimately lost it; so what makes Oxbrow’s claims special? Why should we believe him when we already have several Grails, including the Nantios Cup, the “Holy Bloodline” of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln’s The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and the Stone Tablets of the Ark of the Covenant in Graham Hancock’s The Sign and The Seal? And the foregoing is a non-exclusive list; a full tally of all claimants to being the Holy Grail would take considerably more room than space permits.

Before we examine Oxbrow’s claim, it might be worth establishing exactly what it is we’re actually talking about.

Traditionally, the Grail is said to be the plate used for the Last Supper, or a cup used to catch the blood of Christ on the cross. Where do these ideas come from? Three of the four Gospels of the New Testament specifically mention a cup or platter at the Last Supper – perhaps not all that surprising, as it was a meal, after all. None mention a vessel used by Joseph of Arimathea, or anyone else, to collect the Blood of Christ while on the Cross.The closest we have to a biblical mention of blood and a vessel is when Christ pours wine into a cup and urges the assembled Disciples to drink of his blood. So that’s pretty much all we can glean from the Bible.

For the next mention of the Grail we have to wait for an event which supposedly happened in AD 717 but was not recorded in writing until about 1200. In 717, according to the Cistercian chronicler Helinandus, a hermit was shown a vision of the dish of the Last Supper. This learned hermit then wrote a book in Latin, entitled Gradale. Gradale is the mediæval Latin for ‘dish’, and the Old French for dish was Gradalis, whence we get graal, greal and greel. One short leap across the English Channel and we end up with ‘grail’.

[Read more at Fortean Times]

Religious people may have taken comfort from a number of studies over the past two decades showing those adhering to a faith tend to be healthier but a new study casts some doubt on this belief.The study, published in the journal Circulation, suggests that when it comes to clogged arteries, attending religious services or having spiritual experiences may not protect against heart attacks and strokes.

“There’s not a lot of extra burden or extra protection afforded by this particular aspect of people’s lives,” concluded Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, of the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, who led the study.

In a review of data from nearly 5,500 people, Lloyd-Jones and his colleagues expected to see less risk for heart disease among those with more “religiosity.”

The researchers defined religiosity as participation in religious activities, prayer or meditation, and spirituality, regardless of denomination. They did not report the religious faiths of study participants.

Over the course of four years, those in the study had 152 events related to heart disease or clogged arteries, including 9 deaths, 42 heart attacks, and 24 strokes.

[Read more at Yahoo News]

Ali G talks to religious wingnuts about their beliefs .. oddly, religious wingnuts don’t like talking about aspects of their own religion that offend them .. if their religion and its real-life applications are so offensive, why believe all that wingnuttery in the first place?

[Read more at ScienceBlogs]

The Air Force Academy has set aside an outdoor worship area for Pagans, Wiccans, Druids and other Earth-centered believers, school officials said Monday.A double circle of stones atop a hill on the campus near Colorado Springs has been designated for the group, which previously met indoors.

“Being with nature and connecting with it is kind of the whole point,” said Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, who sponsors the group and describes himself as a Pagan. “It will dramatically improve that atmosphere, the mindset and the actual connection.”

The stones were moved to the hilltop last year because erosion threatened to make them unstable in their previous location near the visitors center. Crews arranged them in two concentric circles because they thought it would be a pleasant place for cadets to relax, Longcrier said.

When Longcrier and academy chaplains were looking for an outdoor worship space,

when they discovered one already existed in the form of the circles.

[Read more at The Washington Post]

It’s clear that America’s Founding Fathers must have made a pact with the Devil. How else to explain the curse America is so obviously under today? I want to go even farther than Pat Robertson and tell it like it really is!

(Disclosure: back in the 1970s and 80s before I quit the evangelical right, I was on the 700 Club with Pat 6 times, given my late father Francis Schaeffer was a founder of the religious right).

What else besides a punishment for a satanic pact could explain the following?…

• Sarah Palin, who got a heartbeat from the presidency and who believes that health care reform means there will be death panels and that she needed to have witches cast out in a Pentecostal ceremony before she’d run for governor
• A whole subculture of American rooting for the “End Times” and Armageddon
• Pat Robertson who explained 9/11 and now the tragedy of the earthquake in Haiti, as results of God’s wrath and/or satanic dealing.

[Read more at the Huffington Post]

The report, compiled by the research and statistics department of the Archbishops’ Council, also found half of those in the pews are pensioners.

Some rural congregations were older than 65 on average, while the youngest Anglicans were found in London, with the ‘standard’ churchgoer aged 54.

It compares with the population as a whole where the average adult age is 48.

This is the first year in which the Church has analysed the ages of its congregations in detail, so no long-term trends can be determined.

However, weekly church attendance continues to fall according to separate figures published on Friday. Around 1.14m people went to a church service at least once a week in 2008, the latest figures show, but average Sunday attendance was down to 960,000 from 978,000 the previous year.

There were also slightly fewer infant baptisms, confirmations, marriages and funerals.

Details of the ages of churchgoers are likely to reinforce fears that congregations will continue to dwindle.

[Read more at The Telegraph]

Debates over faith often leave non-believers holding the bag: look like a jerk or leave the debate unfinished and apparently concede defeat.

In conversations between atheists and believers, is there any way atheists can win?

I’ve been in a lot of discussions and debates with religious believers in the last few years, and I’m beginning to notice a pattern. Believers put atheists in no-win situations, so that no matter what atheists do, we’ll be seen as either acting like jerks or conceding defeat.

Like so many rhetorical gambits aimed at atheists, these “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” tactics aren’t really valid criticisms of atheism. They really only serve to deflect valid questions and criticisms about religion. But they come up often enough that I want to spend a little time pointing them out. I want to spell out the exact ways that these “no-win” situations are both unfair and inaccurate. And I want to point out the general nature of this no-win pattern—in hopes that in future debates with atheists, believers will be more aware of them, and will play a little more fairly.

When atheists focus our critiques on conservative or extremist religions, we get accused of ignoring the tolerant progressive ones and lumping all religions together. But when we do criticize progressive or moderate religions, we’re accused of mean-spirited overkill, of alienating people who could be our allies.

Why this is untrue and unfair: It doesn’t make much sense to assume that the atheist critique of religion you’re reading that moment is the only atheist critique of religion this writer has ever come up with. Most atheist writers who criticize religion do so many times, and from many angles. We critique extremist fundamentalism, and moderate ecumenicalism. We critique specific religious beliefs and practices, and the general belief in the supernatural. It’s not “lumping all religions together” to point out the flaws and hypocrisies and evils committed by one in particular.

[Read more at Alternet]

On the first day of 2010 (note: not 1310), Ireland’s new blasphemy law came into effect, making statements about the folly of religion punishable by a 25,000 euro fine. Specifically, the law forbids “publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion.” Ireland, yet again, has shown the world the toxic result of religious influence on the state. Fortunately, the Irish specialize in blasphemers as well as zealots; a group called Atheist Ireland is flouting the law by posting on its website 25 quotations selected intentionally to outrage religious sensibilities and daring the authorities to prosecute them. They chose a wide range of blasphemy, which was smart, because the new laws, ironically, are intended to promote tolerance. Blasphemy was already a crime in Irish law; the new legislation merely extends the right not to be offended to people of any faith at all.

Alongside quotes from Frank Zappa about “The Cloud Guy who has The Big Book,” the atheists are promoting attacks on Muslims and even Buddhists, such as Icelandic pop singer Björk’s uncharacteristically hostile comment: “The Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say f–k the Buddhists.”

There’s only one blasphemer on the list of 25 blasphemous quotations that’s deemed worthy of two entries, and he is, of course, the greatest blasphemer of them all: Jesus Christ. Two thousand years after his ministry, if Jesus were to choose Ireland as the spot for his return to Earth, he would be fined ¤25,000. I guess the good news is he wouldn’t be crucified. (You have to take progress where you can find it.) Pope Benedict XVI should probably be careful what he says, though. If he were to repeat the remarks he made at the 2006 Regensburg lecture, in the course of which he quoted the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II’s statement that Muhammad’s teachings are “evil and inhuman,” he might well be subject to prosecution.

[Read more at The National Post]

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Derek co-hosts PID Radio with his wife Sharon and hosts A View From The Bunker.  We had an amazing time speaking with Derek about his ministry in PID and AVFTB and about the wide range of subjects he speaks about on his shows.  From dominionism to the state of the Church in America, Derek’s insights and concern for people gaining a knowledge of the current (but not widely known) issues that face our country and the world is refreshing.  Enjoy!

The Canadian government says it will not act upon a request by the Jordanian government that it seize the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls, now on their last day of display at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.Discovered in 1947 by Bedouin tribesmen in caves bordering Israel and Jordan, the 100,000 fragments of ancient religious parchment and papyrus manuscripts have been a source of conflict between Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians — who all claim ownership.

Jordan formally asked Canada to seize the 16 scrolls, which have been on display at the ROM since last June. Jan. 3 is the last day the scrolls will be exhibited.

According to The Globe and Mail, the Canadian government issued a statement at the end of the year in reaction to Jordan’s request saying that “differences regarding ownership of the Dead Sea scrolls should be addressed by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. It would not be appropriate for Canada to intervene as a third party.”

[Read more at CBC News]

The Advent season is a fun time. For many Christians, it is the happiest season of the year. The joy comes from the anticipation: “Joy to the world, the Lord has come. Let earth receive her king.”

I do not desire to dim the lights of Christmas, but it might be helpful to some to hear what the stories of Jesus birth are really about.

There are four versions of the life of Jesus. We call them the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Only two of the versions say anything about the birth of Jesus.

Mark, the first of the Gospels, begins the Jesus story with Jesus as an adult. John, the last Gospel written, likewise says nothing about the birth of Jesus. Matthew tells the birth story in only a few short paragraphs. Luke’s version of the beginnings of Jesus is four times as long as that of Matthew.

Those two versions are very different. Luke plays with a much larger cast. His flair for the dramatic is pronounced. He includes an abundance of poetry and music with the support of angelic hosts.

Reconciling the two versions has been tried by many, but never with success. They are two different stories. They each have their own distinctive version of the events that surrounded the birth of Jesus.

[Read more at Alternet]

Do atheists hate diversity?

Is the very act of atheist activism (trying to persuade people that atheism is correct and working to change the world into one without religion) an act of attempted conformity? Are atheists trying to create a drab, gray, uniform world, where everyone else is just like them?

It’s probably pretty obvious that I think the answer is a big fat “No!” (Probably said in the Ted Stevens voice.) But it certainly is the case that many atheist activists, myself among them, are working very hard to persuade religious believers out of their beliefs. Not all atheists do this, of course; many have the more modest goals of separation of church and state and religious tolerance, including tolerance of atheists and recognition of us as equal citizens. But a good number of atheists are, in fact, trying to convince religious believers to become atheists. I’m one of them.

And since many believers see this as an intolerant attempt to enforce conformity — particularly believers of the progressive, ecumenical, “all religions perceive God in their own way and we have to respect them all” stripe — I want to take a moment to address it.

The Intolerant Bigotry of the Germ Theory

If there’s one single idea I’d most like to get across to religious believers, it would not be, “There is no God.” Or even, “There is probably no God.” I want believers to reach that conclusion on their own. Preferably upon being awestruck by my brilliant arguments, of course, but ultimately on their own, after thinking it through, after looking at the reasons for belief and the reasons for atheism, and concluding that atheism makes more sense and is more consistent with what we know about the world. I don’t want people to stop believing in God just because I say so.

[Read more at Alternet]