Big news in the atheist community. A new species of ape has been discovered. A phylogenetic study has just concluded that this kind of orang-utan speciated 700,000 years ago whereas the other two species of orang-utan separated from each other 400,000 years ago. Modern humans at that time were all one big happy family, and still pretty much in Africa, it is supposed.
Welcome to this new species, congratulations on being discovered, and what a wonderful thing evolution is that we see it going on around us all the time, with whole new species appearing again and again despite what these religious nutjobs tell us.
Happily thanks to this discovery, science has once again allowed us to pat ourselves on the backs and reassure ourselves that we can explain fully how this world came into being and even if there are loads of unanswered questions and uncertaintoes, one thing we can be absolutely sure of, God and the Bible had nothing whatsoever to do with it!
The roman catholic church in Uzhhorod (Ukraine) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Given the selection of a new Pope, the Roman Catholic Church is much discussed in the media and on blogs. Here is a random comment I replied to today in one place. It is a comment I can partly assent to, but rather more needed to be said:
Anglicans ARE Catholic. In fact, many of us secretly believe we are more Catholic than the Romans, though we’re usually tactful enough to mention this to them. And of course, we are ALL, Roman and English, “under Christ” in an ultimate sense – the question at issue is merely the more mundane one of how exactly one goes about delegating Christ’s authority on a day-to-day level.
My response was as follows:
Every Christian is a Catholic except those who believe that their denomination has a monopoly. If we be looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our Faith, as it says, we will all be looking at the right direction, the right leader, who needs no vicar, the Way, the Truth and the Life.
The authority of Christ is not at this time a political one – the devil has the lease on the politics of this world and its nation states for now, so Churches in all cases should be separate from states.
Logo of the anti-RFID campaign by German privacy group FoeBuD. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’ve just finished watching the main Polish news programme of the day, the evening “Wiadomosci” programme on TVP1, which had as its closing story information about how in Poznan there has been a blitz on people who have dogs and haven’t paid their dog tax. Dog tax is a local tax in Poland, some municipalities charge it and some don’t, and there is a degree of freedom as to how much can be charged, and in Poznan that amount is 55 PLN/year, which is about $16 a year. This is more than I can remember from the UK, but dog tax was abolished there many years ago. During my childhood the amount was a good deal less than that, but maybe comparable if you account for inflation.
The question asked, and answered, in the news broadcast, was how the authorities knew where these dog owners were in order to charge them and take them to court for their missing payments of dog tax. The answer is, some time ago the municipality had a free chipping exercise for dogs whereby owners were given a free ID chip so that their dog could be returned to them in the event of loss. This you can have from any vet, by the way, but then it is a paid service. Not thinking that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and taking this inexplicable magnanimity on the part of the City at face value, Poznan citizens queued up and took part in the action and had their free ID chips with their addresses and telephone numbers, which of course were all put in a big database and reported to the City. The news report didn’t go into detail as to whether these people had signed anything which allowed that to happen or whether it was simply an abuse of privacy and a breach of the Data Protection Law, but when has that ever bothered government anyhow? It’s the little man with his business that has to worry about that, and not the governing elites.
Anyway, the next thing they said is that a number of Polish cities which did not have dog tax before are about to introduce it, citing Krakow as an example. They then also featured a few seconds of a disgruntled dog owner saying how he found it unfair that taxes apply to dogs but not to cats, guinea pigs, or aquarium fishes. I am sure he was about to use the word “”racism” had they only given him time to do it. Continue reading “Fish and chips…?”→
I received from a good friend the following question:
I want to ask you about something, if you are healthy enough to answer. What does Psalm 82:6 mean? Of course, this is connected to John 10:34 as well. And on the same topic, who are the “sons of God” in Genesis and Job?
This topic may look like one topic, in a sense there is an element of being related, but in fact I would regard these as two separate issues. Let’s deal first with the issue of Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34.
Psalm 82 says the following:
82.1 God standeth in the congregation of the mighty, he judgeth among the gods
At first glance, this looks not dissimilar to other passages, as you say in the start of Job is a good example, where God is talking among the angelic host. But see what he says in the next verse:
82.2 How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked?
This puts an entirely different slant on it, as we see no cases of angels being given judgement of men. Instead, we are told that we shall judge angels (1 Cor 6.3). This certainly puts human judges on a higher line towards God almighty than the angels themselves, but surely that cannot mean any humans, this may be referring to the elect, or to people within the elect that had been given certain priviledges or responsibilities to represent God in the earth. Let’s see what further light we can find as we read on: Continue reading ““Ye are gods” – what does this mean?”→
