Posts Tagged ‘christianity’

A few weeks ago I went to a friend’s christening. Well, a friend’s son’s christening.

That was all fine though it did get a bit weird as in the middle of the service the vicar went into a massive rant about how he hates atheists because we insist that he isn’t allowed to teach his kids about religion (as we do). I seemed to get quite a lot of eye contact during that section…

Rick Warren is probably a bad man. He doesn’t like gay marriage. It doesn’t support gay rights. He doesn’t like the idea of two men having anal sex with each other, even though he has never tried it. But my god (pun intended) does he know how to run a church.

The Purpose Driven Church talks about grow to run a church, which a specific reference to how we started Saddleback Church in California – that now has 20,000 a week attending. It is a gold mine of information. A lot of the strategies he discusses are things I found very effective in running Atheist Society, and there is so much more besides that.

There is a lot of stuff about Jesus in there, as you would expect, but still a useful book for anyone running a Humanist group, Sunday Assembly, etc.

A friend recommended that I read “How to be a Bad Christian: … And a Better Human Being” by David Tomlinson. So I did. His message seems to be that organised religion is not really relevant or useful, it is all about loving Jesus. Meanwhile, he works as a vicar.

He started a church in a pub, called Holy Joe’s, that is pretty cool.

Overall, I did not find it the most interesting read however. I do not think the book was really aimed at me. I think it was aimed at Christians who do not go to church and generally feel guilty that they do not practice actively enough. For them, it would probably be quite an enjoyable read.

Last month, Michael Burgess gave a talk to Leeds Atheist Society on “The Christian Ideology of New Atheism”. The video will be available on Worfolk Lectures at a later date.

For the March meeting of the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire, Jim Hatfield presented a talk entitled “Good and Evil in the Gospel Myth”.

Today, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, better known as Pope Benedict XVI, will step down as Pope. I for one, am very disappointed.

As an atheist, I thought having a former member of the Hitler Youth, who personally covered up child abuse during his career at the Catholic Church, made an excellent elected leader for their organisation. As the infallible representative of God here on Earth, it makes it much more difficult for them to sweep such endemic abuse problems under the carpet as a few nutters gone astray (a tactic that has so far worked very well for the Islamists).

So it is with regret that I see Ratzinger quit the post that most people keep for life – and nobody is implying such tradition once again draws the line between religion and cult into question, so lets lay that one to bed right now. I didn’t think the man known as Hitler’s Other Pope would let anything get in his way.

I wonder what kind of retirement package you get as Pope. They probably haven’t put too much thought into this given it hasn’t happened in 600 years, but presumably he is still going to need security and other considerations, above that of the level of a Cardinal.

Also, at what point does he stop being infallible? Is that today? I hope he has squeezed out all the knowledge he can while we still has the chance.

Still, what is done is done. He had a great run – pissing off all the gays, women, non-believers, Anglicans, health workers and many other groups along the way. I only hope that their next leader is such an apt representative of an organisation that is brought an unparalleled amount of evil into the world^{[1][2][3][4][5]}.

Recently, Margaret Bramham, a former Religious Education teacher, gave Atheist Society her take on the Gospels. Here are some photos.

This man has a tattoo of Leviticus 18:22.

The verse is as follows.

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

Unfortunately, he apparently got that before reading any further. For example, Leviticus 19:28 says the following.

Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you

In short: no tattoos.

This month, Alex Gabriel travelled all the way up from Devon to discuss his experiences at Soul Survivor, the biggest Christian evangelical festival for young people, in the UK.