We’re already used to the kind of logic used by Catholics against condoms. The CBCP has called it worse than corruption. The Vatican has compared it to the Holocaust. But I can’t help but be surprised whenever they come up with something new. Alonzo Tan, head organizer of the recent anti-condom demonstrations around the country had this epiphany:

We have to admit that using condoms is equal to legalizing free sex.

What the faith? So free sex is illegal? Either husbands are now paying their wives (with jewelry?) or Tan considers marriage payment enough.

Or maybe free sex used to be illegal — until it was legalized when people started using condoms. So once people stop using condoms, free sex will be illegal again.

Perhaps he was referring to prostitution, which is of course, not free. So he meant to say something like this:

We have to admit that promoting condom use is like legalizing prostitution.

But this contention is debatable — it actually makes sense. And since we know these anti-condom nuts never make sense, it’s probably not what he meant.

Hi, Twin-Skies here. We’re trying a bi-weekly format for the FF Top Ten news of the week. I’ll be handling the Sunday updates, while sinister will be handling the Wednesday updates (at least that’s the plan).

The Church has renewed its opposition to the DOH’s condom policy, with one affiliated group staging protests over the matter last Saturday. On a more refreshing note, Desmond Tutu has voiced his opposition regarding the prevalence of anti-gay movements in Africa:

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God’s family. And of course they are part of the African family. But a wave of hate is spreading across my beloved continent. People are again being denied their fundamental rights and freedoms. Men have been falsely charged and imprisoned in Senegal, and health services for these men and their community have suffered. In Malawi, men have been jailed and humiliated for expressing their partnerships with other men. Just this month, mobs in Mtwapa Township, Kenya, attacked men they suspected of being gay.

Bishop Tutu’s statement is a proverbial breath of fresh air, at a time when the stench of hypocrisy is rife in churches that have systematicall hidden their sex offenders for years, and attempt to impose their medieval concept of sexuality on believers and non-believers alike.

Send your stories via The News Thread or the comments. Theme suggestions are also welcome.

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Chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth says Devil is in the Vatican (via Times Online) Link – Egon Spengler and Hellboy unavailable for comment

In Africa, a step backward on human rights (via Washington Post) Link – Desmond Tutu speaks out against homophobia

Polk woman who died alone while fasting was following God’s call, husband says (via St. Petersburg News) Link – Methinks we’ve got a contender for this year’s Darwin Awards.

Ang Kapatiran’s JC de los Reyes nixes WHO push for condoms (GMA News) Link – The short version: *JC covers ears*, “lalalalalala!”

Church-based group’s march vs condom use set Saturday in Manila (via GMA News) Link

Victims react to pontiff’s letter (via BBC) Link – The abused are not happy with Pope Benedict’s apology letter

Jon Stewart Crucifies Catholic Church Over Vatican’s Gay Prostitution Ring (via Gawker TV) Link -
Stewart rips the RCC a new one for their hypocrisy over the scandal

Cardinal Brady will not resign over abuse ‘cover-up’ (via BBC) Link

Sceptic challenges guru to kill him live on TV (via Times Online) Link – A feature article on Sanal Edamaruku, a skeptic who debunks “holy men”

His fortune polishes atheists’ reputation (via News Observer) Link – A feature article on Todd Stiefel, a secularist who’s been using his new-found fortune to help fund freethinker movements in the US

I took the lyrics of the song The Big Bang Theory and tried to write a line after each of the song’s lines. The original lyrics are in normal type while my lines are in italics.

* * * * *

THE BIG BANG THEORY

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state
A singularity – you can’t predict its fate
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait…
Space-time became a growing estate
The Earth began to cool
And formed the primordial pool
The autotrophs began to drool
Helped produce our fossil fuel
Neanderthals developed tools
Placed the beasts under their rule
We built a wall (we built the pyramids)
And scaled them like we’re arachnids
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries
As well as mankind’s glory and all that misery
That all started with the big bang!

“Since the dawn of man” is really not that long
A lot has happened before we came along
As every galaxy was formed in less time than it takes to sing this song
(In one of them we happen to belong)
A fraction of a second and the elements were made
The stars and planets then came in cascade
The bipeds stood up straight
Tried new positions when they mate
The dinosaurs all met their fate
Just like the animals they ate
They tried to leap but they were late
Imagine jumping with all that weight!
And they all died (they froze their asses off)
While the furry mammals merely coughed

The oceans and pangea
Tibet and Himalayas
See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya
Saying all this blah blah
Set in motion by the same big bang!
It all started with the big bang!

It’s expanding ever outward but one day
Gravity will make it sway
It will cause the stars to go the other way
And bring to mankind a great dismay
Collapsing ever inward, we won’t be here, it won’t be hurt
What will be left is only our dirt
Our best and brightest figure that it’ll make an even bigger bang!

Australopithecus would really have been sick of us
Wondering what’s all the fuss
Debating out while here they’re catching deer (we’re catching viruses)
They really needed good irises
Religion or astronomy, Encarta, Deuteronomy
Chemistry, biology, philosophy, theology
It all started with a big bang!

Music and mythology, Einstein and astrology
The proletariat and the bourgeoisie fighting over a decree
It all started with the big bang!
It all started with the big BANG!

I just had a three-mile run and a quick shower, and the endorphins are still kicking in. Runner’s high, they call it. Now I’m sitting in front of my PC trying to update my blog and hoping to get a “writer’s high”. And should I fail to get the creative juices flowing, there’s a bottle of Scotch sure to give me a real kind of high every time.

But then again I would not be able to write anymore tonight because whatever little artistic inclination I have automatically gets flushed out the moment alcohol enters my veins, and it only makes me want to watch youtube music videos instead. I’m no Edgar Allan Poe.

I remember this book titled The Artist In Society – Problems and Treatment of the Creative Personality. The author, a psychiatrist, explains that contrary to popular belief that artists are more creative when depressed or neurotic, they are actually unproductive in states of depression and poor psychological health because the mental energy and emotional discipline needed to create are absent.

He further illustrates the subtle difference between the artist and the psychotic when both are in the state of withdrawal: the former uses isolation to focus energy into creative activity while the latter merely dissipates incoherent energy.

The book did not mention anything about artists getting drunk and what effect that would have on their creativity. Speaking only for myself as an artist-wannabe, I think it’s a bad idea to drink if one wants to write, paint, sculpt or compose, because aside from messing up the mind’s focus, alcohol already provides the high that one would normally get from creating. There is no more incentive.

Now some people might argue that if one can get high on alcohol – and alcohol gives a very reliable high – why spend time and mental effort writing or painting just to get high? Well I guess the natural high that comes from making a work of art is always healthier and lasts for a much longer time. And it also gives a high to those people who appreciate your art. In the movie Wonder Boys where Michael Douglas is a writer and his girlfriend is a voracious reader, Douglas says, “She was a junkie for the printed word. Lucky for me, I manufactured her drug of choice.”

Wow, isn’t it every writer’s dream to find a girl like that?

* * * * *

This is an old post, previously published in innerminds.wordpress.com. I reposted it here to encourage others to get high, I mean, to write. Come on guys, let’s get that top spot in the Religion category at topblogs.com.ph/religion!

Since I have come out as a full-fledged atheist, I have experienced being bullied on the Internet.

I wonder if it has something to do with  men being misogynistic towards me. The two men who bullied me were flaming with anger, using capital letters and words of condemnation such as “YOUR SOUL WILL BURN IN HELL!!!” I take all of these with a grain of salt. I got used to it already.

I am also a member of an Internet group and recently came out as an atheist. Oh boy, only two of us against everybody. I am very confident now, debating with theists, but when they start to bully me, I feel it is because of me being a female. Is it a disadvantage being a female and an atheist? It clearly boils back to their god who is a misogyny. What else can I think of as a reason. Funny, my female friends get mad when we exchange ideas about religion, but they never bully me. In the end, they even appreciate a new knowledge/idea from an atheist.

Slowly, but surely, we are carving ourselves out in the humanity’s map.

I believe that you cannot sell a product without full conviction. I believe that if you truly believe in atheism, you can also preach it.

“The health of the mother and child”

Not many people realize this, but many Muslim clerics worldwide actually do support family planning. Back in 1979, a fatwa (religious degree) was issued in Egypt by Sheikh Jadel Haq Ali Jadel Haq which stated that  “…A thorough review of the Qur’an reveals no text (nas) prohibiting the prevention of pregnancy or diminution of the number of children, but there are several traditions of the Prophet that indicate its permissibility….”

In our country, one may be surprised to learn that back in 2004, 200 Moro clerics jointly issued a national fatwa which stated that family planning particularly birth spacing “promotes the health of the mother and the child”.

The fatwa, also known as the Tanzim al-Usra (Arabic for “Call To Greatness”) Fatwa, was issued after more than a year of careful study and frequent consultations with Islamic universities and scholars worldwide. The edict states  that, ”all methods of contraception are allowed as long as they are safe, legal, in accordance with the Islamic shariah (courts) and approved by a credible physician, preferably a Muslim, for the benefit of both the mother and the child”.  Overall, the Tanzim al-Usra Fatwa is not more conservative than the position of many Protestant churches.

Family Planning education

After the fatwa was issued, several groups sprung into action to help educate the Moros within ARMM about this “historic” fatwa. For example, the Society for Family Development and Education of the Philippines, Inc. sent a team of trainers in every province in ARMM on Reproductive Health and Family Planning. They helped developed training materials. They involved the aliyma (women religious groups), Moro community leaders, ustads (Islamic school teachers), and the health providers in the dissemination of the information on Reproductive Health and Family Planning. The Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy and the Magbassa Kita Foundation Inc. also did a lot of work in disseminating information about family planning. Everything seemed to be running smoothly and all of this was funded by grants and donations.

When Ecumenism Becomes A Form of Intimation

In 2007, an election occurred–I say occurred because the truth is in ARMM I’m not sure if there are actually elections where people can freely elect who they want, but that’s another story.  Due to pressure resulting from certain quarters of society, Muslim politicians in general kept quiet about the fatwa. It is also alleged that that certain interfaith networks and “ecumenical meetings” were held where Catholic bishops tried to persuade a number of influential Moro clerics and politicians to ensure that the fatwa follows the same line as the Catholic position and to not promote family planning outside of ARMM. Given that there was an election, a number of Moro politicians outside of ARMM felt pressured to comply and opted to support the Catholic position in the name of “ecumenism”.

Then the following year, hostilities arose in Mindanao over the issues of Ancestral Domain and the Memorandum of Agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. There was a resurrection of Christian vigilante groups such as the Ilaga.   This caused the issue of reproductive health to be placed on the back burner.

The Reproductive Health Bill

The respite, however, was not to last for long. With the Catholic Church’s increased attention on the Reproductive Health Bill, this created new tensions within ecumenical relations. Some Muslims feel that this is another example of the Catholic Church imposing itself over the Philippines.  Other clerics and Moro community leaders, particularly in Manila, complained that the Catholic position on reproductive health is largely being rammed through interfaith meetings and the mass media without any “meaningful” consultation with the Muslim religious leadership.

However, by large, the Reproductive Health Bill–the one the Catholic Church is essentially trying to veto–does not contradict the Tanzim al-Usra Fatwa but rather helps to support it by including the necessary state funding so that it could have a larger impact.  When one considers that 70% of residents of ARMM are below the poverty level, it is essential that couples are at least able to space their childbirths. But basically what the Catholic Church hierarchy and their supporters are doing are not just denying the Catholic faithful of access to make informed choices, but everyone else, including Muslims.

Of all the areas that the issue of reproductive health has touched I have always considered that population should be removed from the table by virtue of agreement.   There is nothing more annoying than to hear the issue resurface and discussed over and over again.

Now how could I consider both parties agreeing when in the media they seem hell bent on tearing each other’s heads, hopefully not literally. The reason is family planning.  Yes, each side favors its own method: natural in the anti-reproductive health side and artificial for those in favor; but whatever the method, if people calmly think about it, the intent is the same: control.

Family planning is basically controlling the number of children being born to a family.   So it makes no sense to me why any anti-reproductive health advocate would want to argue population when they have already agreed to a method of family planning.   Favoring any method is agreeing that children should be limited or that there should be ample spacing between children.

Without the population argument all that is left is a superficial argument over tools and methods.   People will be judged as pious or condemned as sinners based only on which method they use.

I believe we have a saying for this: “Don’t judge a book by its cover”.  Man is far too complex a being to be judged simplistically.   Skin, religion, race, financial status, possessions – or in this case, tools – should not have any bearing on the goodness of a person.

Let’s a take a pen for example.   I have one, a Parker at that, and I have glasses, but that does not necessarily mean that I am a writer. It doesn’t make me sinister or violent either, but I have to ask, is it justified?

As for my Parker pen, I have to say I like its size and weight compared to the plastic ones or the silver Parker pen of some years ago.   It feels denser than the silver models.   Simple physics can tell you that I can impale anyone’s head or puncture someone’s jugular without a problem should I want to use it as such. And with it being in my shirt pocket it is easy to use.

With that being said, can I still be judged as a meek intellectual? Would people still tell me if I exceeded my commas or misused a semicolon? Perhaps people still would, but more carefully now.

How about a weapon, say a pistol, will it be different since its only use is to cause harm?

If I walked around the mall with a gun bulging at the back of my pants, wearing maong, rubber shoes, and maybe for dramatic effect a Che Guevara T-shirt, people would  most likely run away in a stampede because my attire gives out the signals I was up to no good.  But if I wore a police uniform which matches my enormous belly, people wouldn’t run; in fact, they might even ask me for directions.

In both cases, from a tool predominantly harmless to an outright deadly weapon, judgment depended a great deal on my (presumed) intent.  Now why is intent suddenly irrelevant with regards to reproductive health? A couple is judged to be pious when natural family planning is used and condemned as sinners when they use artificial.

What is the difference between ejaculating sperm in latex and ejaculating it in a uterus in its monthly off switch?   The intent is the same!

What’s even crazier is the reason why the natural family planning is considered acceptable.  It is the position of the Church that any method that makes procreation impossible is immoral.   So in effect natural family planning is a method that can fail, which is why it is allowed in the first place.

Let me repeat that. Control and limitations are agreed to by the Church because of endorsing natural family method. They have agreed to a goal and yet they set themselves up to fail.  There must always be a chance for children.

Despite all their recent protestations that condoms do not work the only reason why they do not allow it according to the Humanae Vitae is that it greatly impedes chances of fertilization.

Another thing, those who are only for natural family planning may not be as respectful as they claim to be but are actually disrespectful in a lawyerly sense, playing technicalities with God whom they claim to be all knowing and all powerful.

In paragraph 13 of Humanae Vitae it states, “If they further reflect, they must also recognize that an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and contradicts the will of the Author of life.”

If sex should equal children as God has intended then what is the difference between natural and artificial when it is the intent of both to limit children?  That’s Almighty God, not a Supreme Court judge, is it not?

Why are these supposedly obedient servants playing with words like lawyers? They say they are loyal then they should have avoided the idea of planning altogether.  Why worry when, as they always believe, God will always provide.

So here I am annoyed still seeing the Philippines still in a stalemate that should not be so. The state needs to provide action and yet it sits idly by. Virgins (presumed at least) now dare to lecture couples on marriage and ‘cold turkeys’ when the rule for many other situations might be ‘you don’t make the rules if you don’t play the game’.

What’s worse is that with this year’s election, with all the issues on corruption, economic trouble, human rights, and leadership, the Church recommends that candidates should be chosen because of condoms, of all things.

Why the stalemate? Why do people refuse to take action? Why the sorry state of affairs? Maybe one reason is that people have deluded themselves into seeing communion as a tool in getting to heaven or that they even need the Church to do what is right.

But do these ‘tools’ really make a good man?

Also seen in my blog.

A behavior one can observe is how the Anti-RHB groups have actually attempted to dehumanize their opponents. One can easily see it in the headlines as Bishops accuse Pro-RH people of immorality in public online discussions. The readiness of the Anti-RHB to never understand a side that understands them all too well is apparent. It flies in the face of common sense when the Anti-RHB assume that these former Catholics or Christians or Pro-RH Christians do not understand their faith. Opposition having come from their own ranks, it never occurs to them that they already know or that they did not understand the teachings enough. This arrogant and distorted view has led to many clashes and polarized the discussion.

It does not help that the Anti-RHB people do not even provide adequate scientific backing to their arguments. Practically all of these arguments, and I’m not generalizing, are very poorly constructed. Most of the time there are no links or sources cited. Most of the arguments are anecdotal and follow poor logic, falling into logical fallacies like argumentum vericundum, negative premise, fallacy of illicit process, and a lot of self-reliant fallacies. One of the “strongest” evidences posted fail miserably in the fact checking. As an example, look at the  medical primer for the RHB by Dr. Angelita Miguel-Aguirre.

Fallacy of illicit process: Julian Simmons and Professor Gary Becke talk about overpopulation with respect to WORLD capacity, not the nation’s economic capacity. Their books and abstractions can be found in this link . It would be only fair for their views to be clarified if they really pertain to allowing families to grow sustainably in an emerging and poor market like the Philippines, especially since the Nobel prize they were awarded dealt with an entirely separate issue from Reproductive Health.

Quote-mining and fallacy of illicit process: regarding Edward C. Green’s research on the condom use in Uganda.

Obsolete and Debunked Studies: Barbara Seaman: the Pill and I 40 Years on the Relationship and the latest technology regarding contraceptive pills.

Because they have wasted people’s time with really poor and invalid evidence and continue to provoke and harass the Pro-RHB people, the credibility of such people have come to a point that they are no longer seen as worthy of proper attention or respect. Wasting people’s time, provoking them,  continuously giving the same poorly constructed arguments, and ignoring well constructed counter-arguments are actions that can only be interpreted negatively.

What is compounding the damage is the language that assumes that their opponents don’t understand anything Christian, theological, moral or ethical, that these people who are of their same faith know nothing about these things and that only they are the sole source of authority to be worth listening to.

As their actions have crossed the line to many of the Pro-RHB people and pointed out with the negative language that best describes those that act in that method, a vicious cycle is created. Their ability to selectively choose information, also known as confirmation bias, makes them think their provocation is justified and they continue to pursue a strategy of repetition. The very repetition is already a symptom of severe mental tunnel vision, being unable to act dynamically to the individual circumstances of a given situation. Cut off from rationality, they will continue to repeat this strategy until they grow tired of having severely damaged all credibility of their cause for lack of a more diplomatic solution.

It’s sad reading all this debate between the CBCP and Secretary Cabral on this issue of free condom distribution. Personally, I believe that contraceptives should not be given freely. The secretary is better off distributing free medicines rather than focusing on free contraceptives. There are those who are in dire need of medicines these days.

It is a fact that contraceptives help control booming population and STDs, and foreign financial aids pour into the country supporting initiatives to stop AIDS and overpopulation. However this does not mean that we should take the opportunity to distribute contraceptives freely. That would be helpful for some people but there are those whose sense of morality is stuck in the middle ages who will feel that this act is a violation their moral fiber.

It would be better to give subsidies than contraceptives and appropriate proper education and regulation methods. Contraceptives should be requested and not distributed freely given the available finances. If these contraceptives are duly subscribed and approved by the local health center, paid by the educated user and subsidized by the government, we can have a sense of assurance that the people who will use it have a sense of commitment and ownership. However, if contraceptives are given freely, we cannot be sure whether these contraceptives will be used properly, sold to a third party, or used as water balloons in the next wet ‘n’ wild party. Proper education and regulation should be the first step, not immediate distribution. Or else… the very eager and voracious cookie monster will do the job of educating for the government.

Kidding aside, it is true that the country needs to resolve overpopulation through the use of contraceptives. But, as a wise woman said during one FF convention: “It is not enough that we know that truth. We should hear that truth from the voices of our people.” They should be the ones asking and voicing out their need – not Secretary Cabral, not the CBCP.

And besides, we don’t want spend foreign aid and the tax payers money for the next wet ‘n wild party do we?

To those who actually haven’t googled the term, Wikipedia defines freethought as:

“a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or any other dogma. The cognitive application of freethought is known as freethinking, and practitioners of freethought are known as freethinkers.”

In the FF forum and Facebook page, every once in a while someone oblivious to the standard definition butts in with the assumption that freethinking means setting the mind completely free – unrestrained even by reason, logic or reality. More commonly, people have assumed that freethought is synonymous to atheism.

It is important to note that the free in freethinking only means freedom from dogma imposed by “authority” – but not from the rules of logic and the cold test of science. In fact, freethinking is actually a very strict discipline that keeps the mind on its toes, preventing it from jumping into convenient conclusions. Once an argument commits a single logical fallacy, all its conclusions are automatically void; long-held scientific theories are discarded like yesterday’s paper once contradicting evidence is found. (Scientific theory differs from the layman’s definition of theory in the sense that the latter is actually just a hypothesis.)

As such, freethought is a journey where one takes the road paved with science, logic and reason; atheism, agnosticism, deism, and even philosophical theism are just the destinations, none of them final. This may come as a surprise, but while the majority of the vocal Filipino Freethinkers are atheists, we do have some members who acknowledge the possibility and even the probability of God to a certain degree but are well aware that all they have are circumstantial evidence and logical arguments, not proof. There are no fundies in Filipino Freethinkers or even strong theists (#1 in Dawkins’ spectrum) who claim not just to believe, but to know that there is a God. Remarkably, there are also no strong atheists (#7 in Dawkins’ spectrum) in Filipino Freethinkers, or at least none have declared being so at the forums. More importantly, our beliefs (or non-belief) matter less than how we arrived at such beliefs (or non-belief). So you’ll never hear the words “because the Bible says so” from a freethinking theist or “because Richard Dawkins says so” from a freethinking atheist.

So what does it mean to be a freethinker? I guess it means being a truthseeker, relentlessly holding on to reason amid powerful forces telling society that blind faith is preferred. The Filipino Freethinkers are sometimes accused of being angry at religion. Well I can’t say that we aren’t, because religion, being very influential, pervading education and politics, has become the embodiment of ignorance and the eternal cause of poverty, overpopulation, and the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases while the churches continue to rake in the offerings. And yet they have the guts to say that we are the bad guys.

But how can freethinkers be the bad guys? We never ask people to give up anything - not their money, not their reason, not their freewill, not even their beliefs. Freethought is not telling anyone to believe in a certain freethought doctrine or creed; it is merely asking that we open our eyes and use our minds, to see for ourselves what is right, what is good, and what is true. How can that be bad?

Omega Nebula, 5500 light years away, in the constellation of Sagittarius (Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Hester)

Skeptics are often accused of being dismissive of the numinous and the magical aspects of life. Belief in the miraculous brings to people an aspect of life that is beyond cold and calculated reality. How can skeptics think that it’s okay to sully the wonder that comes from belief in fairies that may hide under rocks, waiting for a child to turn over their homes with the intent of granting the child’s wishes? Doesn’t faith in the supernatural bring even adults back to the delightful unfamiliarity of childhood?

Instead of turning over rocks to look for fairies, you can teach your child all about the armored bugs crawling there in lieu of imps. You can tell her about the societies these alien creatures build, where they go about their own business just like grownup people with their suits and briefcases. If she finds that interesting, wait ’til she sees what a drop of pond water looks like under a microscope. Perhaps you yourself won’t be able to suppress a childlike elation, seeing the most unremarkable of places brimming with life.

We live in a time rendered uninterested and detached by familiarity. Ignoring the marvels that can be plainly found in nature, we turn to superstitions that we think will recover the excitement we had as children, cowering under the bed sheets from monsters that are deterred only by cloth blankets. The myths we choose as bedfellows pervert and diminish the beauty readily available with a glance up at the night sky. Consider those who take horoscopes at face value. Most do not even have a thought to spare for the stars that comprise the Zodiac signs. It is amazing how our narcissism can demote KW Sagittarii, a red hypergiant star in the constellation of Sagittarius and a staggering 1,460 Suns wide, down to a menial post in newsprint, proclaiming that those born from November 23 to December 21 should hit the casinos today.

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) synthase, which is a turbine the size of a molecule, turns the protons from your food into energy your body can use. These motors are inside all of the cells that make up your body and they evolved blindly from simpler forms that did other tasks inside your single-celled forefathers. On to the macro scale, mass deforms the fabric of space-time just like how your college textbooks bend your mattress out of shape while you study for an exam. This warping of not just space but of time has magnificent implications that predict different relative rates of aging depending on whether you live by the sea or on top of a mountain. Ranging from the sub-atomic to the so-massive-it-sucks-even-light, the cosmos is vast and mystifying beyond human comprehension.

Dig into your pocket and take out your mobile phone. Open up the menu and click through the programs. You are holding in your hands something worthy of immolation, if found in 15th century Europe. Even during a time as recent and as enlightened as the 1990′s, some onlookers may be tempted to grab their long-retired pitchforks upon hearing the witchcraft that is a Nokia polyphonic ringtone. But here you are in the 21st century, dropping your sorcerous electromagnetic contraption on the floor from time to time, without concern.

Science has been unweaving rainbows and smashing things together for hundreds of years now, allowing us to revel at even the fundamental particles that form the spectacular and the colossal. Technology has turned the fantastic into the everyday. We are living in the future. It is only our fault that we think it mundane. Albeit, it does seem rather absurd to wax poetic every time your phone receives invisible waves from space sent by your friend, declaring: ‘K’. The silliness of the situation only goes to show that we don’t need to ponder on the doctrine of the Trinity to appreciate mystery nor do we need to buy that words can transform tap water into a liquid imbued with the essence of a ghost in order to delight in the transcendent. Let us not cheapen our curiosity by satiating it with self-absorbed imitations. Reality is more arresting and much more fascinating than what humans can ever grasp. There is still much to find out and, if we’re lucky, this is a pursuit that will never cease.

I’d rather see this picture hung upside down.
Makes it more interesting to see
the familiarity
`top -> sky; bottom -> ground’
shattered -
now, it’s the other way around.

Still, horses don’t fly into the sky.
Their feet are hanging by the ceiling of verdant grass.
Chandelier trees are not uprooted to join the company
of the what used to be company of clouds.
Water of the lake, dewdrops on grass mountains
don’t rain to put the light out of the morning sun.

How I wish to see -
rose petals sprinkle on the opalesque sky.

One thing is quite surprising -
the rainbow,
which used to look like a giant frown,
is now a radiant prismatic smile.

Today’s top ten offer some new perspectives on religion.  Is it me or is secularism gaining ground? Check out the analysis on UK’s Equality Bill and Gordon Brown’s secularist government. Because the majority of MPs are not politically aligned with any church, sex ed bills and equal rights for homosexuals were passed, and no church has major influence on legislation.  Amazing, isn’t it?

“The unique feature of Gordon Brown’s government is not its economic incompetence. Rather, it is doctrinaire secularism. For the first time in British history, no one sitting around the Cabinet table holds traditional Christian views that defy the liberal consensus on social issues or sexual morality.”

Send your stories via The News Thread or the comments.  Theme suggestions are also welcome.

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Gay church blessings and a crisis of faith (via The Telegraph) link – Brilliant analysis of secularism in the UK and how it has allowed for certain bills to pass

3D BIBLE MOVIE IN THE WORKS!!! (via Deadline New York, Gawker) link

Pope’s brother: sexual abuse at choir school not discussed (via inquirer.net) link

“Koran says – you’re free in your religion” – Muslim cleric (via RT) link – Cleric issues fatwa against terrorism; insists ‘fatwa’ was mistranslated and does not mean ‘holy war’

Which came first – religion or the brain? (via Eurekalert) link – Press release on new book proposing that the brain needs religion; here is a good interview of the author by Mcleans link

Pope’s path to sainthood delayed by miracle doubts (via The Telegraph) link – Pope John Paul II is not a faith healer after all!

Funeral flap: religion and free speech rights (via wired.com) link - Apparently some bigots want the government to uphold their (alleged) free-speech right to disrespect funerals of homosexuals

Violence in Nigeria – food not faith (via The Guardian) link - Analysis on the murders in Jos

6 questions for an atheist undercover in an evangelical church (via The Huffington Post) link

Oregon faith healers get 16 months for son’s death (via AP) link – Faith healing could lead to negligent homicide!