by cameron | Apr 19, 2007 | Christianity, Melbourne, Uncategorized
How’s this for a cool way to enter the office each day?
Apparently this is the the Headquarters of Red Bull in London. Pretty brilliant huh. See more images here. (via PureProfile’s blog).
******
Yesterday I had the privilege of listening to Phillip Goodman speak at the offices of E&Y in Melbourne. Goodman is the owner of clothing manufacturer/retailer Rivers. Wow. What a story. He talked for 30 or 40 minutes about how he started and built the company. Totally brilliant story. I invited him onto G’Day World as a guest for our “Melbourne’s Leaders” series but he declined. Apparently he avoids the press and prefers to stay under the radar, which I kind of understand. But if you ever get a chance to hear him speak, grab it. I can’t begin to tell you how many terrific anecdotes this guy has. It inspired me for the rest of the day.
******
Yesterday I listened to Thomas Friedman’s recent talk at POPtech about “why this isn’t your parent’s energy crisis”. It’s brilliant. He explains how the USA is funding BOTH sides of the “War On Terrorism” by continuing to buy ever-larger energy purchases from countries in the Middle East who then donate large chunks of the money to Islamic fundamentalist organisations who, in turn, attack the US and US interests. He suggests that the only way to break the back of this addiction is to move as quickly as possible to green, renewable sources of energy.
******
This image of Cho Seung-Hui from the video he sent to NBC is pretty interesting. Anyone else see a John Woo homage? I also love Cho’s rationale for his killing rampage:
“Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ to inspire generation of the weak and the defenceless people.”
How many times have I said here that Christianity was a violent religion that inspired (even justified) violence? The fact that the media is carrying this quote from Cho and everyone just accepts his rationale is interesting in itself.
“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.â€
Matthew 10
But you have to admire the resolve of the NRA in situations like this. Despite the rest of the world thinking the US are completely frakking NUTS for allowing the amount of guns they have on the street, the NRA obviously enough photos of US Congressmen and women engaged in sexual congress with furry mammals that they just breeze through situations like this.
Did you see that they are actually GIVING guns away this week in Virginia?
They are calling it the “Bloomberg Gun GiveAway”. On Thursday two gun shops in the state of Virginia will stage a prize draw. Anyone spending more than $100 in either Bob Moates’ stores or Old Dominion Guns and Tackle will be entered, and the first prize a free handgun or rifle worth $900.
(link)
******
by cameron | Apr 7, 2007 | Christianity, Melbourne, science, science vs religion
I hadn’t planned to post anything about Easter this year but my neighbour David sent me a link to this article in The Age today written by Melbourne “literary critic” Peter Craven and it’s annoyed me. Craven has written a pretty bleary counter-revisionist attempt to convince us that the Christian mythology behind Easter actually has some validity and should be honoured. For someone who is self-described as “blisteringly arrogant” , this is a shabby piece of pious nonsense. Reading this article, you’d think that Craven must be nearing death and suddenly feeling like he has to do some major sucking up to his imaginary God to account for a lifetime of past sins.
As I wrote back to David:
I don’t see anything mysterious or wonderful about continuing a 2000 year old myth. I find it primitive and scary that so many people in the 21st century still feel the need to worship supranatural beings. I do agree with Craven though that kids should be taught about human mythology in school, but I’d love to see ALL human mythology taught. Kids should be taught the Christian heritage behind easter, but should also be taught the original reason for a celebration at the spring equinox, to celebrate the fertility gods that ancient humans believed brought new life, new crops. I think that if more people had an unbiased and comprehensive education in human mythologies they would recognize that Christianity is a mish-mash of many older mythologies,
some judaic, some “pagan”. Unfortunately the catholic church did too good a job wiping out the memory of those older mythologies during the dark ages so 1500 years later they aren’t understood by most people. All most people in the West have known is the christ myth which has value, no doubt, but should be seen in context to the entire body of human mythology.
Let’s teach the kids, from a very young age, the stories of Ishtar and Isis and Tlazolteotl (the eater of filth!) and, my favourite, Aphrodite.
Let’s not be sexist either. We should teach them about the blokes – Ba’al and Adonis and Marduk and Mithras (who was born of a virgin on December 25 with shepherds in attendance… 100 years before Christ) and Osiris.
Try finding a book for primary school kids which tells those stories at your local bookstore.
Now, let’s get back to the travesty of this Peter Craven article in The Age.
He writes:
“And with all the hideous barbarities of Western civilisation that made Nazis of us all, you can’t go very far in the civilisation stakes without recognising the power and the glory of the Easter story and what has been made of it.”
NAZIS?!! WTF?
“It may be that we live in a post-Christian age, it may be that the Enlightenment worked wonders to deepen the mercy that is enjoined on Christians, but our civilisation will lose its heart and mind — you might say it would lose its soul — if it turns its back on the miracle and mystery of the Easter story.”
Actually Peter I think abandoning the worship of imaginary deities and learning to accept rational thinking is the only way we can consider our society “civilized”. Any people that worship imaginary deities must be considered, at least in part, woefully primitive. The “civilized” parts of our society have nothing to do with imaginary deities. They can be considered the benefits of rational minds. Let’s not forget that Christianity forced the dark ages on the human race. They deliberately destroyed the great works of human antiquity. The science and philosophical works of ancient Greece and Rome were nearly all destroyed by small-minded Christian leaders. The “heart and mind” of the human race was obliterated and forced into a period of darkness which it finally struggled out from underneath only hundreds of years later.
“It is a story resonant with the gravest tragedy in the world, but it ends (that’s what those Easter eggs are all about) in light and triumph and love.”
No, Peter, the eggs and the rabbits are both ancient fertility symbols which were being used to celebrate the Spring Equinox in ancient times. Like most things in Christianity, this was borrowed/stolen from older human mythologies, probably to make it slightly easier to force the new religion down the throats of the pagans.
“Whether we like it or not, the story of Christ’s death on the Friday we call Good runs through all our dreams. It’s there in the greatest architecture we know, it’s animate in the great paintings of the Renaissance and a constant point of reference in our greatest poetry and drama, even in Samuel Beckett, who says he saw the world extinguished though he never saw it lit.”
Peter’s education is obviously sorely lacking. Greatest architecture? What about… The Cheops Pyramid? The Colosseum? The Aztec Cholula pyramid? The Eiffel Tower? The Sydney Opera House?
Poetry… 1001 Arabian Nights? The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam?
Drama… The Illiad? The Odyssey? Wuthering Heights??
Anyway… I could go on but I’m bored.
I agree with Craven that “the Easter Story is graphic, stark, mesmerising”. Like much of the Judeo/Christian bible, it’s a terrifying look at human (and deist) depravity.
Let it sit where it should with the rest of ancient human literature. A reminder of where we came from. A lesson on how thousands of years of oppression and bloodshed were justified.
And let’s move on to a brighter future.
by cameron | Mar 31, 2007 | Christianity, Iraq, Podcast, science vs religion
Greydon Square is the future of hiphop.
Raised an orphan by Seventh Day Adventists in Compton, Los Angeles, he did time at 17 for possession of a weapon, then joined the US Army for a tour of Iraq, where he did bible group in his spare time with a view to becoming a minister after he was discharged. However, the more he learned about Christianity, the more he questioned it.
Today he is studying cosmology and quantum physics at University and self-producing his own hiphop album with a powerful message – that rational thinking is superior to religion and faith.
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.
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 | Feb 26, 2007 | Hillsong, science, science vs religion
Back in 2002, Scientific American ran this hold-no-punches piece “15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense” to provide a concise rebuttal against the arguments of the people who continue to favour mythology over reason.
Why am I harping on this theme again? Someone emailed me a link to this site from the American-import-cum-Australian Christian evangelicals at Hillsong Church:
Many eminent scientists in different fields are currently saying that the complexity and balance of the universe points to intelligent design. This has re-opened the debate about whether God and science should be studied in the same classroom. The answer comes down to our understanding of science. If science is the search for truth, as some scientists argue, then God should be mentioned in any classroom that pursues it.
Much of the debate about the origin of life and the universe is speculation. It comes down to a question of belief.
At Hillsong Church we believe that God created the world. In other words, the universe is a product of intelligent design. We also believe that science is part of humanity’s search for truth, and it is therefore important for science curricula to include all valid viewpoints of the origins of life and the universe, including intelligent design.
* Comments from Ps Brian Houston, Senior Pastor Hillsong Church & National President AOG in Australia.
This is the nonsense these people are filling children’s minds with. Someone needs to defend the kids against having their minds tarnished with this kind of appalling rubbish. Outwardly they present the image of being nice, toothy people who just want to do good works (okay, except for Brian’s father Frank, who held senior positions in the church, but was forced to resign in 2000 “following exposure of his homosexual paedophile activities.”) However they are really subverting young minds, turning them away from reason and rational thinking – and as far as I’m concerned, that is the definition of evil – almost as evil as the paedophilia.
Let’s examine the website quote.
“Many eminent scientists” – who? Name them.
“If science is the search for truth, as some scientists argue” – What do the other scientists argue? That science is the search for falsehoods? This suggests that science could possibly be something other than the search for objective knowledge which is the very definition of the word – “then God should be mentioned in any classroom that pursues it.” – Why? Science uses evidence to support theories for how the universe works. God is a theory completely unsupported by evidence. It is completely unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It has no place in the science classroom.
“Much of the debate about the origin of life and the universe is speculation. It comes down to a question of belief.” – Rubbish. Trying to understand the origin of life has nothing to do with belief. There are a range of scientific theories at present. On the other hand, the origin of the universe, aka “the big bang”, is supported by overwhelming evidence. As we discussed here, the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded for that evidence just last year.
“it is therefore important for science curricula to include all valid viewpoints of the origins of life and the universe, including intelligent design.” – again, intelligent design has no relationship to science. It denies facts and ignores the evidence, as several court cases in the Unites States have now determined.
I know we’re unlikely to pass a law preventing people like this from polluting the minds of children with this rubbish – in fact, I’d probably be the first to protect their right to free speech (a right, I’m continually reminded, we don’t actually have in Australia, as we don’t have a Bill of Rights), but I hope we are not far from the day when making these kinds of statements in public will be similar to advocating the genocide of the Jews or suggesting blacks are an inferior species. It needs to become completely socially unacceptable to pollute young minds with the idea that denying evidence is somehow valid and rational.
