Before Christmas there was a stooshy in the Courier due to Dundee holding a Winters Light Festival which included turning on the Christmas tree lights among other things as part of the Homecoming Celebration.

Rants and raves from the religious and righteous about political correctness gone mad etc etc. Missing the point that people were taking part in the event who would have no interest in turning on some lights along.

Some were proclaiming that as Christians were a majority no-one should do anything in the slightest to offend any Christians etc etc (never mind the usual Revs who write in saying gay people are hell bound sinners and so on).

I wrote in asking these Church organisations to reveal their church attendance to determine whether they really were a majority or not. Should that be established then and only then could you discuss minority/majority rights/responsibilities with knowledge of the facts.

Answer came there none.

We do have a comparison though. The Church of England has released some figures.

Their average attendance in England is 1.145 million per week. This was a figure from 2008, I could only find the population figure from 2001 (49,138,831), but this will have probably risen so this will be an over-estimate in their favour. This puts attenders at 2.33% of the population of England.

Is this the figure for Scotland or Dundee – no, is it likely to be similar – no reason why it won’t be the same ballpark. Until the figures are revealed it’s as good an estimate as any.

So the next time you hear or read some Christians ranting about how they should have special rights over everyone else or how their spokespersons should have a seat on every debate or indeed that they are a majority in society – remember that figure.

2.33%

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

What shocked me was that I couldn’t really think of anything significant I had done yet. For me. I thought about it a bit more and counted up about 20 days I had helped Genna on stalls including about 3 weeks of holidays from work. So from someone else’s perspective, they (hopefully ) view me as having done something significant this year.

It was kind of humbling to think that over the course of the year the things I have done and spent my time doing have had a positive effect for other people more than myself. I’m quite happy with that.

What have you achieved for yourself or anyone else this year?

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Of course it will be no surprise to know the rag source of this garbage is the Hitler supporting Daily Mail.

Of course if such a claim were true the DJ would be in luck, with a profile and a paranormal ability he can go for the Randi $1million Challenge.

Given that previous claimants with similar abilities have not been able to tell when wi-fi signals are on or not his chance of winning is low, but surely it would make his illness bearable to live off a million dollars?

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Current software I am using include WordPress, OpenOffice, Linux (Tablet PC), Firefox (and Phoenix before that) and numerous other bits and bobs including at work.

It is one of my goals for the year to find time to contribute towards at least one open source project. I have been unable to donate hours so today donated $2 to Google SiteMap Generator. This plug in automatically generates a site map for you as frequently as you wish. Really useful and has saved me more than $2 in the time to manually generate one using Audit My PC or similar.

What Open Source software do you use and have you contributed anything back – from cash to code to bug reports?

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

If you needed a better reason to doubt that religion is the basis of morality and irreligion is the basis of amorality it is the recent case from Brazil.

A nine year old girl was systematically raped by her stepfather for a number of years. She eventually fell pregnant to twins. At nine years old.

Her doctors sensibly advised that she have a termination due to having the body of a nine year old and thus having a very high if not certain chance of death giving birth. Her mother supported the decision and the doctors carried it out.

Then along came the celibate ranks of the Catholic Church.

Shock and Horror, Hell and Damnation they spouted. Abortion is a sin don’t you know. Can’t have that sort in our church they proclaimed.

Cast them out like the imaginary demons they exorcise in Latin.

Excommunication for the child’s mother and the sinful doctors who save her life. The girl herself is fine, too young to be at fault – just like her foetus in heaven or Limbo or whatever the line is now. She can remain in the church. Her and her step-father. The multiple rapist (who also molested her mentally disabled sister).

Rape children or be a fascist dictator (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco) and you’re a-ok. Just repent your sins on your deathbed and it’s straight to heaven with you. You can also stay a member of the church.

Save the life of a nine year old rape victin – begone, out ye go and probably straight to hell when you die.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

FFRF

They have a wide range of topics and guests to do with atheism, secularism, humanism, philosophy etc. Some of the guests are excellent, some not so much, but it’s such a diverse view you get it’s worth wading through the occasional bad one.

RSS feed for show.

One topic frequently covered is the rights of oppressed groups, such as LGBT, African Americans, and women (Annie Laurie Gaylor, one of the presenter is the daughter of Anne Nicol Gaylor, a pioneer for abortion rights)

Show 132 which was particularly excellent.

Topic: Prop 8 & the Religious War Against Gay Rights The show will be devoted to an expose of the religious backing of Proposition 8, to deny same-sex marriage to California residents via a Nov. 4 ballot initiative. Listen for clips of religious ads, and of religious leaders inveighing against gay marriage. FFRF Lifetime Member and Gay Atheist founder Dick Hewetson will be interviewed about Proposition 8 and the religious war against gay rights.

Show 132 is a particular highlight and well worth listening to.

A word of warning, Dan Barker, the other host, used to be a minister. Although this means he has an excellent grasp of the Bible and criticism of it, he still loves playing songs on his guitar about his belief. Some of these are excellent, some are a bit cringe worthy.

Some of the excellent tracks he plays, and has others play are Bread & Roses, Nothing Fails Like Prayer, It Ain’t Necessarily So, No Gods, No Masters

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I hadn’t been reading books for a while so to get back into it started taking them for the bus journey to work and back. Unfortunately this was probably a poor choice for reading early on the day.

It’s a book analysing late 18th century political theory and is written in a style to match. Really dense, black hole academic dense. I quite enjoy books with loads of endnotes and footnotes.

The bibliography is almost 30 pages.

30.

pages.

That tells you how many endnotes etc. there were.

The book was enjoyable, interesting and informative. It just achieved these attributes in spite of its style. And it was a bargain too, normally £20+ I got it for £3 from the SSP‘s Wee Red Bookshop.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

It was a really interesting and engrossing read.

The book is split into a number of chapters, each dealing with a type of logical fallacies. These include “The right to my opinion” and “morality fever”. It is well written and funny, dissecting statements from the great and the good, showing their flawed reasoning. As well as contrasting hypothetical positions of liberals, socialists, conservatives and libertarians.

One timely chapters deals with stock brokers. After discussing whether their high salaries are rewarded for luck or for skill, and discussing statistics of results and how some of the traders will have good runs he concludes:

Investment banks should employ former winners of Lotto tickets for them. No salary could be too high for these wizards of ticket selection.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites