Archive for February, 2009
Aiming High for Disabled Children
Posted by: | CommentsFrom the organisation Together for Disabled Children
Aiming High for Disabled Children
Let’s aim high for
CHILDREN and YOUNG PEOPLE with ADDITIONAL NEEDS who live in Reading
Information and Fun Day
Saturday 21st March, 1PM to 4PM
Rivermead Leisure Centre, Richfield Avenue, Reading
Loads of INFORMATION about services for PARENTS and CARERS
- FREE ENTERTAINER & FACE PAINTING
- FREE TRAMPOLINING, SOFT PLAY AREA
- FREE AUTISM FRIENDLY ROOM inc. Wii AND POKEMON (we will have some, but you can bring your own Nintendo DS if you wish)
- FREE FAMILY SWIMMING from 3pm to 4pm
- FREE CRECHE for under 5’s – limited places
Parents/carers are responsible for their children and young people at all times
Depending on popularity, we may have to limit the number of activities per child. All are on a first come, first served basis, booking system on day, sorry no pre-booking.
PARKING is available, free for disabled badge holders, Up to 3 hours £1, up to 5 hours £2.50, over 5 hrs £5.00 – 50% back when you present your receipt at reception
DO COME AND JOIN US – JUST TURN UP ON THE DAY!
For further information about the day, please call 0118 9 594 594
Hope for Planet Earth
Posted by: | CommentsHope for Planet Earth
A national tour exploring climate change from a Christian perspective
Friday 6th March 2009
Doors open at 7:00pm
Presentations commence at 7:30pm
and finish by 9:30pm
Reading Community Church
384, The Meadway, Tilehurst, Reading, RG30 4NX
For general information: 020 8781 1741
Tickets in advance: £6 adults; £3 under 18’s
Tickets on the door: £7 adults; £4 under 18’s
Available on-line at www.faithtickets.co.uk or call 020 8781 1740 (office hours)
Leading experts from the John Ray Initiative will be exploring the science behind climate change and dispelling the associated myths. Tearfund will be looking at the effects on the poor and A Rocha will be examining the effects on our planet. Share Jesus International is investigating why this topic should be important to Christians. The tour aims to educate, equip and empower you to take action.
London for a Secular Europe
Posted by: | CommentsThis weekend saw a demonstration to protect democracy and human rights against the religious organisations who wish to retain undemocratic influence and privilege within EU.
Peter Tatchell of Outrage
This protest was taking place at alongside the “NO VAT” (NO VATICAN) demonstration happening at the same time in Rome against the Vatican and its intervention in Italian, European and world-wide politics.
The protest aimed to promote:
Gender equality and women’s rights
The full citizenship of LGBT people in all the European Union
The decriminalisation of homosexuality worldwide
A secular European Union – immune to the Christian political agenda
Whilst at the same time rejecting:
The commitment of the EU to religious organisations (Lisbon treaty art. 16c)
The special status of the Vatican in the United Nations
State-funded faiths schools in the United Kingtdom
The economic privilege and political influence of the Vatican in Italy
This was not a protest about individual’s beliefs but interference by the organised religions into the affairs of our elected officials in Europe.
There were not large amounts of people joining the march (maybe 80 or so), but it did draw a lot of interest from people walking past. For many looking on I don’t think it was clear what the issue was, but they did stop to take leaflets which will help raise awareness.
All of the representatives spoke very well, and talked of how the Vatican seeks to impose its own Christian values on the rest of us at a European
BHA Protestors
level. When we arrived at the Italian embassy in Grosvenor square, Bob Churchill spoke on Behalf of the BHA, highlighting the unreasonable influence of the religions. Terry Sanderson from the National Secular Society echoed his comments closely,and Finally Peter Tatchell representing Outrage condemned the Catholic church for blocking sex education programmes and telling lies about condomns having holes in them.
Why is life so full of suffering?
Posted by: | CommentsThe Reading Interfaith group are holding an even this week which highlights suffering.See a separate posting for details. BH submit this as a contribution to the debate.
The uncut interview with Randolph Nesse from ‘The Genius of Charles Darwin‘ interviewed by Richard Darwins
Source -CLICK here . The video is split into separate sections and this is the last 3 minutes of the last section.
Dr Randolph Nesse, Physician and author at The University of Michigan
Richard Dawkins, interviewer]
Mr Dawkins: Why is life so full of suffering?
Dr Nesse: You know, it’s such a profound and awful question, you hardly ever dare touch it…Um…But thinking about it from an evolutionary point of view, there’s a quite specific answer. Most of the kinds of suffering we experience whether it’s pain or even vomiting or fever or anxiety or depression…Those are adapted defences in their place. The question is why do they get this regulated….why do we…why do we have so much in them when you don’t really need it and because of how natural selection have shaped the mechanism that regulate them. It shapes them to go off when they possibly could be useful because most of them are inexpensive and as a result many of us spend our lives feeling like we’re missing something or too anxious or depressed or something or in pain and we don’t need these feelings in modern life especially. But, even in an earlier life but they’ve been good for our genes…for our ancestors…. on the average…so we have them.
Mr Dawkins: It’s the smoke detector principle….
Dr Nesse: It is a smoke detector principle….has profound implications for the future and our ability to change human life. You know, right now we’re in an immense of a revolution in Psychopharmacology where we are beginning to use medications to influence our anxiety and our mood and all of the rest. Usually, that’s talked about our brains being broken in some way and as people as it is. But in many people, they’re having more of an emotional negative response than they’re useful and blocking that response with medication is just as useful and appropriate as it is as blocking a fever with aspirin and it’s doing a very much same kind of thing. But the key is ‘thinking’ about what we’re doing and the key to thinking about what we do is asking the evolutionary question about ‘Why hasn’t the natural selection made the body better?’…
Mr Dawkins: Randy, I know that you wrote a book with George Williams. In America, it’s called ‘Why we get sick’. In Britain, it’s called ‘Evolution and Healing’ and it really should be called ‘Dawn of Darwinian medicine’.
Dr Nesse: We tried to call it that….they wouldn’t let us…..
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Can anyone explain to BH exactly what is meant by the ‘smoke detector’ principle.? Leave a comment.
Freedom of Speech Includes…..?
Posted by: | CommentsExcerpt from
Despite the Riots and Threats, I Stand By What I Wrote
article originally posted here
Freedom of speech includes OFFENDING ideas, including but not limited to offending religion and its symbols. The current limit to freedom of speech (including EU’s banning of Fitna) is the result of the war OF terrorists with the US Militarism & its allies on one hand and their Islamic terrorist counterpart on the other hand.
Western governments cozying up with the ‘moderate’ political Islam has provided the latter the best excuse to freely attack OUR freedom of speech. The freedom of speech is not given to us by Western governments nor any other statesman. The freedom of speech is the result of 100s of years of confrontation with the authoritarian governments. That’s why the current governments are generously giving it up.
We have to fight it back or else it will be gone before you know it.
This group is about defending ABSOLUTE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, nothing less. You may or may not agree with Johann Hari’s opinion. That’s not the point. The point it he has the right to SAY it. Join us if you too believe so.
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Now let’s read what Johann Hari went through:
“Last week, I wrote an article defending free speech for everyone — and in response there have been riots, death threats, and the arrest of an editor who published the article.
Here’s how it happened. My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments that forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states have successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on “abuses of free expression” including “defamation of religions and prophets.” Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it.
I argued this was a symbol of how religious fundamentalists — of all stripes — have been progressively stripping away the right to freely discuss their faiths. They claim religious ideas are unique and cannot be discussed freely; instead, they must be “respected” — by which they mean unchallenged. So now, whenever anyone on the UN Human Rights Council tries to discuss the stoning of “adulterous” women, the hanging of gay people, or the marrying off of ten year old girls to grandfathers, they are silenced by the chair on the grounds these are “religious” issues, and it is “offensive” to talk about them.
This trend is not confined to the UN. It has spread deep into democratic countries. Whenever I have reported on immoral acts by religious fanatics — Catholic, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim — I am accused of “prejudice”, and I am not alone. But my only “prejudice” is in favor of individuals being able to choose to live their lives, their way, without intimidation. That means choosing religion, or rejecting it, as they wish, after hearing an honest, open argument.
A religious idea is just an idea somebody had a long time ago, and claimed to have received from God. It does not have a different status to other ideas; it is not surrounded by an electric fence through which none of us can pass.
That’s why I wrote: “All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don’t respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don’t respect the idea that we should follow a “Prophet” who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn’t follow him. I don’t respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don’t respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice…. When you demand “respect”, you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade.” ”
Excerpt from
Despite the Riots and Threats, I Stand By What I Wrote
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/despite-the-riots-and-thr_b_166562.html
There is now a facebook group called
Despite the Riots and Threats, I Stand By What I Wrote!