"Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but they look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect. Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute. The media exaggerate their numbers and importance. The media rarely mention the fact that the great majority of religious people belong to moderate denominations that treat science with respect, or the fact that the great majority of scientists treat religion with respect so long as religion does not claim jurisdiction over scientific questions."
-- , quantum phycisist, , Princeton.
is -- depending on which commentator you read -- either a significant step towards the decriminalisation of assisted suicide or merely a statement requiring Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales, to clearly state what the current law says.
that assisted suicide is illegal in the United Kingdom. The relevant statute is Section 2(1) of the Suicide Act 1961, which provides: "A person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another, or an attempt by another to commit suicide, shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years."
But serious doubt remains about how this statement should be interpreted in cases where a person takes his or her own life outside the United Kingdom. If that person's partner (or friend) makes travel arrangements within the UK to facilitate the travel of a person who is planning to take her own life, does this amount to aiding and abetting suicide?
If a partner (or friend) makes the journey along with that person, helping them onto the plane, calling for a taxi at Zurich airport to take them to a Dignitas clinic -- have those actions met the terms of the 1961 Act?
What of those cases where a partner (or friend) travels with the person to the clinic, but, at the last minute, the person decides not to go throw with suicide? Could a strict reading of the 1961 Act provide grounds for an arrest of the travelling companion when they return to the UK?
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Following allegations, from former church members, of a lack of transparency at Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle, Pastor James McConnell, pictured, invited Sunday Sequence to visit the church last week. You can listen to Malachi O'Doherty's report on that visit, which you can listen to , has been widely covered locally and internationally. Jim McConnell reveals that he brought five men from his church in Belfast and destroyed a children's home his congregation had established in Romania last year because he feared that the building would fall into the hands of "a paedophile ring in the Romanian government". A spokesperson for the Romanian government strongly denies Pastor McConnell's claims, which have now been reported in Romanian newspapers.
In response to enquiries from Sunday Sequence about financial accountability and transparency, Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle has explained that Pastor McConnell's salary is £25K, the church's annual running costs are in the region of £1.2 million, the congregation's affairs are overseen by seven trustees (including three of the church's pastors and Jim McConnell). Pastor McConnell also told the programme, "our accounts are open to anybody who wants to look at them if they are members of this church."
Listen again to Malachi O'Doherty's report .
The of the is currently underway in Armagh. This is the first time the Society has held its conference in Northern Ireland since it was founded in 1936. Yesterday, my colleague Bert Tosh gave a lecture to the Society on hymns and broadcasting -- under the intriguing title "Producing 5,842 Hymns" -- and he has allowed me to reprint his talk here. It is -- typically of Bert -- well observed and very funny.
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"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1905.
The Marxist critic Terry Eagleton isn't impressed by the New Atheists and their critique of God. In his new book, n, he tries to put manners on Dawkins, Hitchins and their ilk. Whether he succeeds is another question. And whether most Christians would be happy with the arguments he deploys in "defence" (if that's what it is) of belief, is even less certain. I say this only on the basis of . A fuller assessment must await the arrival of the book itself (it's bee ordered). A money quote from the interview:
"God didn't create the world. He loved it into being. Now what that means, God knows, but that's exactly what Aquinas was saying. The concept of God is what will not let you go. He will not let you slip through his fingers. It's that kind of unconditional love. If you like, that's impossible. We can only know conditional love, but if you are to have some kind of authentic idea of God that's the place from which you have to start, not seeing God as some kind of manufacturer."
Andrew O'Hehir reviews the book .
Here's a shorter .
A suggests that one in four Americans believe the US government faked the moon landing in its effort to win the Cold War. If the was all science fiction, it was the greatest hoax ever pulled off in the history of the world. It would also have been a deception involving tens of thousands of people. are so popular that NASA's official website offers of each claim made by the deniers (including that allegedly fluttering flag). Currently, NASA is displaying recent photographs of the Moon landing sites, including the . The evidence that human beings stood on the moon seems so overwhelming that one really has to take an interest in the persistence of the conspiracy theories. Why are so many people prepared to believe that politicians and scientists -- and presumably the media, too -- conspired to fake the landing? in believing that so many people could be persuaded to keep the biggest secret in the history of the world. We'll be talking about the faith of conspiracy theories on this week's edition of Sunday Sequence.
Buzz Aldrin was not only the second man to walk on the moon, but if some accounts are to be believed h on the lunar service.
The primate of America's Episcopal Church has warned the Church of England that it should not formally recognise the breakaway Anglican Church of North America. "recognition of something like ACNA is unfortunately likely only to encourage" further moves towards schism, and "schism is not a Christian act". Meanwhile, in direct opposition to the the Episcopal Church's House of Deputies has voted for an " (meaning that the process is open to gay and lesbian candidates). The American House of Bishops will soon consider the same question and could stop the inclusivity vote in its tracks. It could be a long, hot summer for Anglicanism.
Update: The Episcopal Church's House of Bishops have agreed to abandon the moratorium on gay ordination and the blessing of same-sex partnerships. Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, says the Americans .
On his visit to the historic , President Obama was struck by the presence of a church, built above the dungeons that held slaves prior to transportation. that people . I'm sure also noticed the presence of a emblazoned on the castle walls -- an example of how the Bible was for so long read, or misread, to justify the evil of slavery.
The jurisprudential genie is out of the bottle in Saudi Arabia. A family in Madina has gone to charging a "spirit" with. Here's .
Circumcision is not just a religious act, it is also the most common surgical procedure carried out in the United States for supposedly medical reasons. The claim, sometimes made, is that newborn male circumcision is a harmless procedure that brings significant health benefits for the child in later life. That assertion is now being challenged by , a new group campaigning against the practice. Intact America presents ten reasons why parents should not circumcise their children:
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President Obama and Pope Benedict meeting in the Pope's study at the Vatican on Friday. The White House Blog has a p.
Well, it's not an official holiday, but it is the birthday of the 16th century French Reformer and founder of Presbyterianism. Calvin was born on this date in 1509. I marked the 500th anniversary of his birth with a report from Geneva on last weekend's Radio 4 Sunday programme. Last month, Radio Ulster broadcast a full documentary, Calvin at 500, which examined the Reformer's life and work.
Calvin continues to divide people. Some say he was an austere man of ideas, others that he was an engaged man of the people. Some say he was an early democrat, others say he was a theocrat to the core. Some say he was a defender of liberty of conscience, others say he defended the liberty of others to agree with him. Then there's Calvin's influence on economics. He challenged the church's traditional opposition to usury and developed ideas that changed economic life in Reformed countries, but was he really, as some say, a key figure in the development of modern capitalism?
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Has the Virgin Mary appeared in a tree stump in Limerick? I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that she has. But the stump has a marian shape to end. End of story.
Fr Paul Finnerty, a spokesman for the diocese of Limerick, says: "The Church's response to phenomena of this type is one of great scepticism. While we do not wish in any way to detract from devotion to Our Lady, we would also wish to avoid anything which might lead to superstition."
That comment will fell a few rhetorical trees. Where does "superstition" start and where does it end?
Update: Watch Mark Simpson's .
The global recession is hurting the central finances of the Catholic Church. , which is run by the Jesuits and headed by the director of the Vatican Press Secretary, Fr Federico Lombardi, is now planning to carry advertising because the church is no longer able to fully finance it.
I've a personal connection with Vatican Radio: I was vox-popped on the station while on a student trip to Rome, and that was the first time my voice was heard on radio. Read the official history of Vatican Radio , which ends, "We invite you to Listen for Heaven's Sake!" I wonder if the Vatican will be taking ads fromAntonio Federici's ice cream.
Pope Benedict has been thinking a lot about the credit crunch in the past few months. We now have the of Caritas in veritate (Charity in truth), his encyclical letter dealing with ethics and the economy. (Incidentally, the Vatican runs featuring significant church documents, including this encyclical.) We'll be examining Caritas in veritate in some detail on Sunday morning. See below the fold for a summary of the key ideas in the document.
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Should the Irish government revisit the compensation agreement of 2002 in the light of the Ryan Report, which catalogued decades of abuse in schools and reformatories run by Catholic religious orders? The Dail will vote tomorrow on proposals to reopen the redress scheme.
Ahead of that, , which goes out on Radio 4 at 4pm today, explores some of the legal issues around the limitations of the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme. In particular it hears from campaigners and lawyers in the UK who argue that the scheme should be reopened to allow claims from victims who now live in the UK and were only made aware of the scheme after the publication of the Ryan report in May.
Producer Helen Grady writes about the programme .
The Law in Action podcast is available here.
The codex sinaiticus is one of the most important documents in existence. It's a hand-written copy of the Greek Bible from the 4th century. Now, images of more than half of the 4th century biblical manuscript have been made available online by the British Library.
on this extraordinary document.
Use the search engine .
Few authors are fans of critics, but it's rare indeed that a writer will take the bother to reply to an individual review. Rarer still that an author will tell a critic, "I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude."
That's what Alain de Botton (pictured) wrote in reply to a of by Caleb Crain. His full comment, published , reads:
"Caleb, you make it sound on your blog that your review is somehow a sane and fair assessment. In my eyes, and all those who have read it with anything like impartiality, it is a review driven by an almost manic desire to bad-mouth and perversely depreciate anything of value. The accusations you level at me are simply extraordinary. I genuinely hope that you will find yourself on the receiving end of such a daft review some time very soon - so that you can grow up and start to take some responsibility for your work as a reviewer. You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that's two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review. You present yourself as 'nice' in this blog (so much talk about your boyfriend, the dog etc). It's only fair for your readers (nice people like Joe Linker and trusting souls like PAB) to get a whiff that the truth may be more complex. I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude."
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The Stonewall riots of 1969 have a mythic place in the history of modern gay culture in the West. A police raid on the Stonewall Inn was not unusual in 1969; it was illegal for bars to even serve drinks to "known homosexuals". But the raid on June 28, 1969, was different. For reasons historians are still trying to understand, Stonewall's gay clientele decided, that night, to fight back.
Today, Stonewall is often described as . This was the moment when gay people in New York said no to police harassment, and chose to stand against official oppression. Peter Tatchell, now the UK's most famous gay rights campaigner, heard news reports of the riots while living in Australia and was radicalized by what he heard. How the riots inspired liberationist responses within the gay community in Britain is more difficult to say.
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Pope Benedict that the path is clear for John Henry Newman to be beatified. Beatification is the final stage prior to full canonisation within the Catholic Church. Cardinal Newman, a former Oxford professor and Anglican priest who became England's most famous convert to Catholicism, already bears the honorific title "venerable", and with beatification will be called "blessed". In order to be recognised as "blessed", the Vatican must accept that a miracle has been performed as a result of intercession. A second miracle is necessary for the person to be recognised as a saint.
Pope Benedict has announced that he accepts that an American deacon, was miraculously cured of a spinal disorder, after praying for John Henry Newman's intercession. This means that a ceremony of beatification is imminent. Given the changes to the liturgy of beatification already introduced by Pope Benedict, Cardinal Newman's ceremony could be held at Westminster, rather than in Rome. Some suggest that Pope Benedict might officiate in person at a London ceremony as part of a papal visit to the UK.
A guest blog from Heliopolitan.
The world held its breath last week, as that reliable news source WorldNet Daily reported that the Patriarch Abune Paulos of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was preparing to unveil to an expectant world . It has been missing for millennia - some even doubt that it ever existed. Said to contain the power to vanquish any opposing foe, a single disrespectful touch was enough to kill a man instantly. A fabulous casket, made of acacia wood, smothered in gleaming gold leaf, surmounted by winged creatures and the Mercy Seat of God Himself, and containing the very tablets that Moses took down from Sinai. The holiest relic of ancient Israel: The Ark of the Covenant.
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This is one of the less raunchy versions of the ad that has fallen foul of the Advertising Standards Authority.
The ASA says, "We considered that the portrayal of the priest and nun in a sexualised manner - and the implication that they were considering whether or not to give in to temptation - was likely to cause serious offence to some readers." The watchdog has banned the ads, which include images of the model playing the priest .
The publisher has apologised for any offence caused, though they maintain that their target audience, aged between 25 and 55, would not be offended by the campaign. They say their campaign's original ambition was to create a "tongue-in-cheek" portrayal of Antonio Federici ice cream as "forbidden Italian temptation".
