by cameron | Mar 17, 2007 | Podcast, science vs religion
Robert M. Price is professor of theology and scriptural studies at Coleman Theological Seminary and professor of Biblical Criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute. He was also featured in THE GOD WHO WASN’T THERE. DJ Grothe had Robert on the Point of Inquiry podcast last week and he totally demolishes the historical argument for the Jesus hypothesis. You have to listen to this interview. It’s terrific. I wish I’d heard this before I had John Dickson on the show. Price is incredibly articulate on the subject. I’d love to have him on my show but there is no way I could do a better job than DJ did with this. I’d love to see how Christians respond to these arguments. Perhaps I should try to get Dickson and Price on the show together for a discussion?
By the way, DJ and his producer Thomas Donnelly are coming on G’DAY WORLD this week for a chat. I’m looking forward to that.
by cameron | Mar 13, 2007 | Australian politics, science, science vs religion
As mentioned here last week, Democrat Congressman Pete Stark from California has outed himself. Wonkette says he is a “Unitarian”.
“When the Secular Coalition asked me to complete a survey on my religious beliefs, I indicated I am a Unitarian who does not believe in a supreme being,” Stark said. “Like our nation’s founders, I strongly support the separation of church and state. I look forward to working with the Secular Coalition to stop the promotion of narrow religious beliefs in science, marriage contracts, the military and the provision of social services.”
Unitarian Universalism describes itself as creedless, meaning that it has no underlying authoritative statement of religious belief. While some members believe in God, not all do.
I still find it almost unbelievable that in 2007 this is such big news but there you have it. Do you think this means the rest of the US politicians actually believe in mythical beings? Or that they are just too scared to front up? Either way, it’s pretty scary. The LA Times says:
A USA Today/Gallup poll last month found that only 45 percent of respondents said they would vote for a “well qualified” presidential candidate who was an atheist. Ninety-five percent said they would vote for a Catholic candidate, 92 percent a Jewish candidate and 72 percent a Mormon candidate.
I would love to run a similar survey in Australia. Perhaps the Secular Coalition needs an Aussie operation?
And what’s with this “nontheist” crap? What’s that?
According to this blog:
a nontheist is someone who does not accept a theistic understanding of God, as described in the preceding paragraph. Such a person may reject all understandings of God, may embrace certain non-theistic understandings of God, may find God language useful and rich in trying to describe their experience of the world but not true in a literal sense, may believe in certain non-material, transcendent realities that have little in common with the common understanding of the word “God.†An atheist falls within this understanding of nontheist, as does an agnostic, a humanist, a Buddhist, and many Quakers who find the whole practice of labeling our belief systems an unfortunate distraction from genuine religious living.
We definitely need a better marketing term than “nontheist” or “atheist”. I prefer “rational”. Or “sane”.
by cameron | Mar 12, 2007 | Christianity, Podcast, science vs religion, TPN
Tonight is the first edition (if you don’t count a couple of false starts) of GDAY WORLD BITCH SESSION. Your chance to come on the show and bitch to me about anything you like. I’ll try to do one of these each week. You can bitch to me about stuff that’s been on the show recently, the show in general, life in general, or just bring your own baggage. Your daddy didn’t love you? Bitch to me about it. You can’t get laid? Blame me. You need marital advice? I’m your man.
Tonight was a pretty slow start. I started off by myself, nothing wrong with a little onanism, so I indulged and chatted about Priscillian, the first Christian “heretic” executed by Christians in 385 CE. His crime? He said Christians should lead more ascetic lives, avoid marriage, and retreat from “worldly honors”. At the Council of Toledo in 400, fifteen years after Priscillian’s death, when his case was reviewed, the most serious charge that could be brought was the error of language involved in a misrendering of the word innascibilis (“unbegettable”).
Then I’m joined by Urbaer and we talk about religion. Are Taoism and Confucianism religions or just social philosophies? Should Christianity become a social philosophy and leave behind it’s supernatural aspects?
I also show Urbaer the new TPN homepage which went up tonight. This is version 3.0 of the TPN homepage and we’ve been working on it, on and off, for about 10 months. It’s a relief to finally have it up. Version 2 lived WAY beyond it’s due by date. Mano and his team have done a great job pulling this together.
Finally we are joined by Molly and the Randulo, an American in Paris, who tells us about his wine podcast and the 24-hour podathon he is running on TalkShoe this week to raise money for third-world entrepreneurs.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
by cameron | Mar 8, 2007 | Christianity, Podcast, science vs religion
Brian Flemming’s bio on his blog says “I make movies, I write plays, I blog.” You have to admire that kind of brevity.
The main reason for chatting with Brian was to talk about his 2005 documentary “The God Who Wasn’t There” which he describes as “a feature-length documentary partly exploring what amounts to Christianity’s dirty little secret: That Jesus Christ probably never existed at all.”
Make sure you get your free copy of Brian’s film by entering the “Blasphemy Challenge“.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
by cameron | Mar 1, 2007 | Australian media, Australian politics, censorship, Podcast, science vs religion
I’m cranky as hell about the way the Christian Right is taking over this country. The leaders of both major political parties are kowtowing to them because they are mobilizing politically like never before, taking their cues from their US counterparts.
The latest embarrassment for us as a free, democratic society is they way our Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock has intervened in the matter of Dr Phillip Nitschke’s book on euthanasia, The Peaceful Pill Handbook.
In this episode I discuss why this whole affair is wrong, immoral and why we need to fight against it. I’m also exploring what we, as the “new” media, can do about it.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
