Jesus: All about lies!

I just thought I'd send out a salute to the genius who grabbed the url jesusallaboutlife.com. For those who haven't been past a church in NSW or WA in the last couple of months, there's a campaign with the slogan "Jesus: All about life" and a great many churches have a large poster out the front with that slogan.


The parody site is brilliant and comes up #4 on a google search. I'm sure this campaign will afford us many opportunities for slander and enturbulation

I wonder if it's got something to do with "Collect '09"?


UPDATE

I've also found out that the url allaboutlife.com has been linked to Secular Thinking.com

A friend of mine, Dr Chaotica has just put out the song 'All about Life'

Nice work, peeps!

Victorian churches can legally discriminate on grounds of sexuality and marital status

In a new equal opportunity bill to be introduced next year, Victorian religious groups will no longer be allowed to discriminate based on the grounds of race, disability, age, physical features, political belief or breastfeeding. Sure, that sounds great, but it's interesting that two of the major sources of discrimination amongst religious communities, sexuality and marital status, will not be included in the new bill.

The gut reaction is likely to be something along the lines of "well great, if the churches are going to discriminate, it'll just drive people away from them, aiding in the secularisation of Victoria", but what is often forgotten is the role that religious communities play in community support, employment and social services. This means that religious schools will be able to deny employment to adequately trained people if they are homosexual, a single parent or even living with a de-facto partner, if their religion supports it. It means that welfare could be denied to single parents. It is a disgrace.

More interestingly, many of the religious communities who will be selectively discriminating against these groups will still be recieving tax benefits which are compensated for by the taxes paid, in part, by the very groups that they are discriminating against!

So what's next?
























News sources
The Age
SMH

Nobody Scores at the Second Coming!

Happy Birthday Zach!

Today is our puppy's 1st birthday!

He's such an awesome little thing, so full of personality and life.

He's also been all over the internet! He has a "Dogbook" page, Twitter account (@puppyzach) and has been talking on youtube!

Here is a quick slideshow of his 1st year, inn'e cute?! (may take a little while to load)
And here is his youtube premiere

Bigger, longer, uncut

I was sent this news story today, and was asked to comment on it.


My response was:

I don't support the idea that a parent has the right to mutilate their children's bodies without a solid reason for doing so.

From what I have heard and read (podcasts, books etc) the health claims made about circumcision are all either false, or negligable when compared to the possible defecits.

If a person chooses to get a circumcision for cosmetic or cultural reasons, I believe that they should be able to choose when they are capable of doing so, with all the relevant information at their disposal.

At the heart of it, circumcision is a cultural/religious practice which may have come from many ancient sources, including health, identifying races, and spiritual beliefs. The modern medical claims seem to be an attempt to justify the practice post hoc, and to me, that's not good enough.

I believe that laws protecting male children from circumcision are a good move, and may help to break down an outdated, irrational practice.

You can read a much better response to the circumcision debate by Harriet Hall, the Skepdoc here: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=269

Ben Goldacre on The Now Show, BBC4

God's facebook page