gdp's Comments

Wonderful Life : Alastair Noble touts for engagements to push Intelligent Design creationism (including in schools)

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:26:42 +0000

http://freethinker.co.uk/2012/04/12/childrens-evo...

Secular News Daily : Did Jesus exist?

Tue, 9 Nov 2010 08:53:00 +0000

I love a good story too, and this is much more interesting than "Sherlock Holmes"!

Secular News Daily : Did Jesus exist?

Tue, 9 Nov 2010 08:49:23 +0000

But the problem with your hypothesis is that none of this actually happened "around 1AD"! The early disciples of Jesus didn't view him as "The Son of God" - that idea came much later. Even from The Acts of The Apostles it is clear that somebody - labelled "Saul of Tarsus" - got hold of this Jesus cult and turned it into something entirely different: something much more mystical, which appealed to non-Jews of the day, and which provided the foundation of what we now know as Christianity. Jesus's Jewish followers were just sitting around at Jerusalem, rather perplexed, waiting for God's kingdom on earth to somehow appear, as predicted by their late leader. There were countless "messiahs" at the time, many calling themselves "Jesus" (after Joshua, the conqueror of Canaan, of course), but "Paul" - who was in many ways a precursor of Mohammed - for some reason just happened to choose this one as the figurehead of his new, all-inclusive faith.

Secular News Daily : Did Jesus exist?

Mon, 8 Nov 2010 15:06:25 +0000

Except that it didn't - at least until "Saul of Tarsus" came along!

Secular News Daily : Did Jesus exist?

Sun, 7 Nov 2010 08:20:57 +0000

I have to agree with @hambydammit. Whoever wrote "The Pauline Epistles" doesn't seem to have even read The Gospels! But surely, Matthew's idea that Jesus came from Nazareth was a mistake, due to a misunderstanding over the term Nazarean, or perhaps Nazirite? It is, of course, possible that the person upon whom the Jesus myth is based was, in fact, from Galilee, but that it was necessary to have him born in Bethlehem, so as to give him the required connection to King David!

Wonderful Life : Religous schools more likely under new Government rules?

Wed, 8 Sep 2010 23:04:12 +0000

I read with horror that "at least five" of the first batch of "free schools" are to be run by religious maniacs, but it could be more actually, as they're not too sure who is behind all the schools!

Wonderful Life : Christian Legal Centre "Shocked"!

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 07:18:44 +0000

They are just practising their "sincerely held beliefs"! ("I was only following orders"!!)

Wonderful Life : Christian Legal Centre "Shocked"!

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 09:28:24 +0000

This is getting boring! No one is being prevented from "living out their faith in the workplace". Are these people ever going to get the point?

Secular News Daily : In Brief: Billy Graham bashes atheists

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:15:15 +0000

Here's a good one: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/03/billy_...

Secular News Daily : In Brief: Billy Graham bashes atheists

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:57:11 +0000

Yes - very funny, Sadface; but surely no one still believes that these stupid letters are sent in by real people!

Wonderful Life : Creationist zoo wins education prize

Wed, 4 Aug 2010 09:26:39 +0000

I simply love the idea that you just change all the dates for geological strata so that they fit in with the "Biblical record" and that somehow demonstrates that the Bible is correct! That is akin to the argument that the Bible is the inspired Word of God because it says so in the Bible!!

Wonderful Life : Creationist zoo wins education prize

Wed, 4 Aug 2010 09:20:36 +0000

Have you covered this? http://freethinker.co.uk/2010/07/17/stand-by-for-...

Wonderful Life : Creationist zoo wins education prize

Wed, 4 Aug 2010 09:18:21 +0000

I actually think that "studying evolutionary science at a high level" is a contradiction in terms!!!

Wonderful Life : Creationist zoo wins education prize

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 06:00:49 +0000

Someone on the Freethinker blog said this of Jon Woodward only yesterday: According to Jon, he has ‘studied evolutionary science at a high level’ but still thinks that concepts such as ‘time inflation’ and comments such as “the speed of light at Creation must have been much faster than now” aren’t bonkers at all but actually make for good science. He also thinks that a complete re-reading of the entire geological record so it fits neatly with creationists’ view of the universe is perfectly sane and acceptable. Woodward directed him to this site, which you may well have come across before! http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/ http://freethinker.co.uk/2010/08/02/mark-twain-ve...

Secular News Daily : Pareidolia strikes again! Newspaper poll on teaching Creationism.

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 06:38:47 +0000

Oh - very funny! But am I right in thinking that there are a significant number of respondents here who actually believe that "Evolution is a lie"?

Wonderful Life : Discovery Institute's Klinghoffer spews nonsense at Huffington Post

Tue, 6 Jul 2010 07:36:22 +0000

Certainly, Berlinski says, the men who formulated Nazi ideology “weren’t reading the Gospels.” No - just the Old Testament, I suppose!

Wonderful Life : Creationist Claims in Northern Ireland (UTV News)

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 10:08:42 +0000

For the first half of my life I was a member of the Plymouth Brethren, who are very strong in Northern Ireland, so this puerile nonsense comes as no surprise to me. If you ask them how on earth the billions of fossils found on the planet were formed in under six thousand years the reply is "God did it"!

Wonderful Life : Catholics prevent completion of Dark Materials trilogy

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:13:17 +0000

I must be missing something here. Donohue says that "the producers have a right to make the movie", but then, just because he has a right to object to it, due to his nutty religious beliefs, they must be prevented from making it! Where exactly is the logic in his position?

Wonderful Life : Vatican wants Anglicans: Dawkins weighs in...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:04:37 +0000

The Catholic Church is desperate for new priests in Britain. If you can't recruit them, then just steal some!

The Freethinker : Genesis gets the Crumb treatment

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:56:05 +0000

I'm not sure that all these stories are even "myths" in the accepted sense. Some, like the story of Noah may be, but I have a suspicion that others are merely "concocted" morality tales, and are not half as ancient as they are made out to be. Can Dr Harwood shed light on this for us?