Atheist cleaners could sue Christian care homes over crucifixes
Church care homes could be forced to remove crucifixes from their walls in case they offend “atheist cleaners” under the new Equality Bill, Catholic bishops have warned.
The way the bill is written means non-Christians could sue for harassment if church authorities do not remove religious imagery, according to Monsignor Andrew Summersgill, general secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.
He said the bill, currently being examined by Parliament’s Equality Bill Committee, could have a “chilling effect” on religious expression.
Under the terms of the bill, harassment is defined as “unwanted conduct with the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity, or of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading or offensive environment”.
Bishops are concerned that religious authorities could be left in an impossible legal position, because under the bill it would be up to the employer to prove that displaying such an image did not amount to harassment or an employee.
Telegraph (Thanks Houdinia)
Barack Obama kills innocent fly
Lovers of the fly species might find this disturbing.
Teenage girl dug up to be ‘corpse bride’
Five people have been arrested in China for digging up the corpse of a young woman to be a “ghost bride” for a man killed in a car crash.
The suspects included a grieving father who allegedly paid his four accomplices around £2,700 pounds to find a female to be his son’s companion in the afterlife. The men were caught after unearthing the remains of a teenage girl who had poisoned herself after failing her university entrance exams last year, a newspaper in Xianyang in China’s Shaanxi province reported.
In rural China, superstitious villagers have for centuries sought out the bodies of recently deceased woman to be ghost brides for young men who die single. Marriage ceremonies are conducted for the two corpses, and the bride is placed in the same grave as her husband.
Under Chairman Mao’s rule, officials made strenuous efforts to stamp out the ghoulish practice but it has since resurfaced in some rural areas. Last year, a gang in southern China was arrested for strangling young women to sell as ghost brides when the supply of female corpses in their area ran short.
God, Dawkins and tragic humanism
Eagleton has three arresting arguments. The first is that the greatest human traditions are those that contain their own best critique too. Take Plato. We keep reading him, not just because he raised fascinating questions, and proposed answers, but because he also showed why his philosophy could fail. “Tell the truth but tell it slant, Success in circuit lies,” wrote Emily Dickinson, charting the route by which flawed humans may nonetheless find wisdom.
Or consider Christianity. Christians in history have undoubtedly perpetrated many crimes. But their most fearsome judge is the very individual they claim to follow, the man who blessed peacemakers, tended lepers and loved enemies. Religion can be monstrous, like love – though like love, it also longs for the best. As the philosopher Bernard Williams realised:
That religion can be a nasty business (with its evil admitting God) is a fact built into any religion worth worrying about, and that is one reason why it has seemed to so many people the only adequate response to the nasty business that everything is.
Eagleton’s second point follows from this thought. He believes that the problem with the liberal humanism that the new atheists follow is its woeful underestimation of the horrors of which humans are capable. The defect in liberalism, he says, is that whilst it champions noble ideals, it has little to draw on when it comes to their “unsavoury incarnation” beyond the assertion of bland platitudes like the harm principle (do what you like, just don’t damage others.)
And cake wins!
Apologies for the delay. A toss of a 20p found in the cab in which I’m currently riding has found the ‘cake’ entry to the kindness competition to be our lucky winner. The ‘race’ lady, though, gets very special mention for such a worthy and impressive entry. If it were possible to think of a ‘second’ prize for her, slightly less impressive than those we’re sending to the winner, we would do so.
Next project is to find where I put the prizes. I know I had them in Newcastle. Bear with me.
Well done all. Cake Lady please contact Phillis with an address. Oh, and Race Lady please do the same, and if I can find a suitable other something, it shall be yours, tossed coin be damned.
Hard to type in a bumpy cab.
X
First Night West End
Well, if I may say so, it was a triumph. The Adelphi is a beautiful theatre and the new, glossed-up show looks a treat. I was amazed that we pretty much sold out the first night – many thanks to any devotees who made it a point to come on the very first night. Wednesday is the official ‘opening’ night, with press and glitzy people present.
The comedian Mark Watson came up on stage after catching a frisbee – he is sensational, I’m a big fan. I did my best to hide any excitement for fear it might look like we’d pre-arranged something.
As Mark says “I can promise everyone it was an absolute fluke, except in the sense that I nearly mowed a couple of people down in my desperation to catch the frisbee, as I have every time I’ve seen him. I assumed Derren didn’t know who I was. When I saw this on the blog I nearly had a heart attack, which would have been hard on my heart as it’s only just recovering from being in that bloody box. As ever, an amazing show.”
There you go. Huzzah and Hurrah. Shall keep you posted with anything of interest.
x
ENIGMA LONDON: WIN TICKETS via Twitter
Yes that’s right folks you heard heard it right. We’re giving 3 couples (6 tickets in total) the chance to win tickets to what has to be the greatest show in London on Earth!!!
How to win: simply log on to TWITTER and Re-Tweet the message – @BrownTowers – Derren Brown #Enigma London.
You can then insert your own message afterwards about how wonderful Enigma is, how Coops should be the next Batman or proposals of marriage to Phillis/Abeo/Coops/Iain/Jennie/Andy.
Please no foul language and you can enter all 3 weeks (please don’t pollute twitter with 10 entries – it WON’T give you an edge) – we will choose just 1 of you each week (so you’ll need someone to take with you). Dates are as follows: Monday 22nd June, Monday 29th June, Monday 6th July.
We will hold a draw each Friday before and I will contact you directly (so you have 3 chances to win). If you are a winner (I will contact you via twitter and you have just 4 hours to respond) email me and I will arrange a pickup at the box office in your name. The prize is the tickets on the days available above – if you can’t go we’ll give them to our second choice – no cash refunds or “favors for sailors” in return I’m afraid.
Good luck.
Pretty girls saliva for sale (no longer!)
China’s equivalent of eBay has banned an online trader from selling the saliva of pretty teenage girls. The seller claimed the saliva was a ‘tonic’ and was asking the equivalent of £2 a small bottle, reports Hunan Online. Listings for the bottles included pictures of the 18-year-old girls the saliva was supposedly taken from. However, auction house Taobao.com deleted the listings after receiving dozens of complaints from web surfers.
The retailer, whose name was given as Zhou, said he had only been interested in testing the popularity of his ideas. He now wants to market girls’ drool instead – but admits that so far he has failed to sell one bottle of either product. ”The drool was all collected from 18-year-old pretty girls when they were sleeping. And buyers can pay later after they certified the authenticity of this product,” he said.
Toxic nudibranchs—soft, seagoing slugs
Some super freaky forms of nature over at National Geographic (Photography by David Doubilet). You can download these as Desktop wallpapers:
Nudibranchs crawl through life as slick and naked as a newborn. Snail kin whose ancestors shrugged off the shell millions of years ago, they are just skin, muscle, and organs sliding on trails of slime across ocean floors and coral heads the world over.
National Geographic (Thanks Becky)
Who goes to a creationist museum?
There are tail-wagging animatronic dinosaurs, a special effects cinema, a planetarium and a petting zoo. As museums go, the Creation Museum in Petersburg is not short on attractions.
And it doesn’t want for space either. Set in 49 acres of well-groomed grounds – that’s 35 more than London’s Natural History Museum – this is the biggest creationist museum in the United States.
Behind it all is a Christian ministry, Answers in Genesis, committed to spreading its belief that the universe was created by direct acts of God over six days, less than 10,000 years ago. The museum, which cost $27m (£17m) to build, opened two years ago.
And while millions of people the world over will spend 2009 celebrating Charles Darwin’s memory – it’s 200 years since he was born and 150 years since his seminal work, the Origin of Species, which set out his theory of evolution, was published – many others will side with this museum’s theme: “life doesn’t evolve around Darwin”.
