SAN DIEGO: Can life arise from nothing but a chaotic assortment of basic molecules? The answer is a lot closer following a series of ingenious experiments that have shown evolution at work in non-living molecules.
For the first time, scientists have synthesized RNA enzymes - ribonucleic acid enzymes also known as ribozymes - that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components.
COMMUTERS at Melbourne Airport were agog yesterday when a flamboyant - and very tall - cabin crew strode through Terminal 3 towards the boarding gate for flight DJ 857. To celebrate Sydney's gay and lesbian Mardi Gras weekend, Virgin airlines had a special themed Melbourne-to-Sydney flight, complete with a drag queen cabin crew, dance routines and champagne at the boarding gate and the kind of in-flight entertainment one would normally find at the Greyhound Hotel.
Ugandan LGBTI activist, Frank Mugisha, speaks about persecution of gay people in Uganda, and the draconian penalities proposed under the new Bill which will further criminalise and stigmatise homosexuals in that country if passed.
It is heard to believe, yet a true story. A pregnant woman in Iowa (USA) had been jailed for "attempted feticide" because she told hospital staff that she once thought about having an abortion.
DALLAS - Investigators have seized books on demons and atheism as well as rifles and knives from in a home linked to one of the men charged with setting an east Texas church on fire and suspected in a string of similar blazes.
The Lord Chief Justice expressed surprise today at the BCA's libel suit against Simon Singh. Padraig Reidy reports
England's most senior judge today said he was "baffled" by the British Chiropractic Association's (BCA) defamation suit against science writer Simon Singh.
A Sydney priest who used a webcam to broadcast himself masturbating to a person he believed was a 13-year-old girl will be behind bars for at least six months.
Robert MacGregor Fuller, 54, has been sentenced to a maximum of 18 months in jail for grooming and procuring a child under the age of 16.
Today the Science and Technology Select Committee delivered its verdict on homeopathy and it was devastating. The committee has called for the complete withdrawal of NHS funding and official licensing of homeopathy.
"Wives are to submit to their husbands in everything in recognition of the fact that husbands are head of the family as Christ is head of the church," wrote the Reverend Angus MacLeay, rector of St Nicholas Church, Sevenoaks, Kent.
PRIMARY school children will be taught if it's OK to lie and will debate whether products should be tested on animals in the state's first ethics lessons.
Ten government schools, including Haberfield, Darlinghurst, Crown Street, Leichhardt and Hurstville, will start the landmark 10-week trial in late April.
Each week, for 30 minutes, students in Years 5 and 6 will discuss the ethics of issues such as bullying, graffiting, stealing and children's rights.
The classes, tipped to be extremely popular, will be offered to students who have opted out of scripture lessons.
NSW University philosopher Philip Cam developed the curriculum and said the classes would encourage children to consider a series of scenarios and make relative judgments.
"From time to time God reviews his creations (products), and he may decide to recall some of them after the review, which causes that particular creation (species) to go extinct. It's tough, but it's God's will." declared leading creationist Rich Hawkins, hoping that the theory will put an end to all kinds of speculations going on over dinosaur extinction.
As religious extremism grows, its opponents are getting organised. Jacqueline Maley reports.
Something you will never see: an atheist boarding a plane with a bomb strapped to him, waving a copy of On The Origin Of Species, before he blows himself up in a violent attempt to further his cause.
A gay couple jailed on charges of "gross indecency" for holding Malawi's first unofficial same sex wedding will be sentenced next month, a court says.
A study released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public life appears to bear that out. On the one hand, it finds that young Americans are significantly less religious than their parents and grandparents were when they were young.
As more victims of sexual abuse by priests in the German Catholic church in the 1970s and 80s come forward, their lawyers said on Tuesday that compensation could reach into the millions.
Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz of Paradise, California, were charged with murder and torture for allegedly beating their two adoptive daughters, causing injuries so severe that one of the two died. The other remains in critical condition.
"For the under one year old, a little, ten to twelve-inch long, willowy branch (stripped of any knots that might break the skin) about one-eighth inch diameter is sufficient. Sometimes alternatives have to be sought. A one-foot ruler, or its equivalent in a paddle, is a sufficient alternative."
A PASTOR seeking to bolster Uganda's anti-gay laws screened gay porn in a church in the capital Kampala overnight in a bid to gain support.
The screening in an evangelical church was attended by around 300 supporters after plans for a "million man march" were thwarted by police.
"The major argument homosexuals have is that what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms is nobody's business, but do you know what they do in their bedrooms?" pastor Martin Ssempa asked the crowd.
According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, an amazing 92% of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit-even one in five of self-identified atheists believe in a higher power. Ardent secularist Sam Harris isn't deterred by those numbers, and in fact has made it his life's mission to force the faithful to question their religious faith-Harris would even argue that the future of civilization is dependent on it. Questioning commonly held assertions and wisdom found in the Bible; seeking out debates with theologists across the spectrum, from Judaism to Christianity to Islam; and all but picking a fight with God, Sam Harris takes his secular crusade to Patt's microphone.
The calls for censorship were quick to come. I think that we might need a limit on Catholic education. Wasn't a good Catholic education supposed to teach children how to be good? He probably spent more time at school than watching movies.
This, I understand, is a baseless claim but it illustrates the baseless nature of the claim that any violent movie leads to children killing each other. Could we have more facts before we start screeching for more censorship, please?
This is a very cynical attack on civil liberties by the Qld LNP party. Could we at least bury the poor child before we start using his death to leverage political and religious agendas?
A secularist group has lodged an official complaint against Cherie Booth QC after she spared a man from prison because he was religious.
Shamso Miah, 25, of Redbridge, east London, broke a man's jaw following a row in a bank queue.
Sitting as a judge, Ms Booth - wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair - said she would suspend his sentence on the basis of his religious belief.Well, it's true.
Westboro Baptist Church showed up to protest in front of Twitter's San Francisco office on Thursday, but found themselves severely outnumbered by a crowd of absurdist pranksters, including guest blogger EDW Lynch above.
WBC Tries to Protest at Twitter from Ed Hunsinger on Vimeo.
Morality is the last bastion that fundamentalists cling to; it is the one realm that science can say nothing about. But what morals does the Bible really promote? It's been quoted to justify numerous evils, including The Crusades, The Inquisition, The Salem Witch Trials, and the modern Middle East disaster. Fundamentalists such as Phelp's Westboro Baptist Church have even claimed that God struck America through 9/11 and Katrina.
A court has heard detailed accounts of how a Victorian man raped his daughter over a 30-year period, fathering four of her children.
The man, now in his 60s, has pleaded guilty to 13 charges, including rape and incest.
Former Christian Apologizes for Being Such a Huge Shit Head for all Those Years, by Rechelle ~ January 28th, 2010.
1. I apologize to all the homosexuals. I am sorry that I believed in a religion that condemns you. I am sorry that for many years I thought that the bible was right in it’s condemnation of homosexuality. I am sorry that when I no longer thought the bible was right about homosexuality being a sin, I did not raise a gigantic stink about it every Sunday right in the middle of the sermon… week after week after week… until the church issued a restraining order against me and I could no longer come within a hundred feet of the sanctuary.
2. I apologize to everyone on the face of the earth that has not accepted Jesus christ as their personal savior because I believed that you were all going to hell. This includes Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans, Environmentalists, Democrats, Movie Stars (especially Tom Cruise), Scientologists, University Professors, Physicists, Geneticists, Europeans, Women’s Studies Majors, Feminists, Millionaires, Billionaires, Hippies, Atheists, Agnostics, Astrologers, People who read their horoscopes, People who watch Bay Watch, Vegetarians, J.K Rowling, Bill Gates, All High-School Biology Teachers who teach evolution and P.E .Teachers who teach a yearly unit on sex-ed..
3. I apologize to all my former Sunday school students because I taught you that the bible was the word of god. I perpetuated a myth that the bible is a special book that should be regarded ‘much more highly than it ought’. I encouraged you to trust this book, to think this book contained sacred ideas about life and god. I made you think that the stories in the bible were intrinsically valuable and could teach you about how god works and who god is. I apologize for always referring to god as a ‘he’, thereby further anthropomorphizing a pretend deity and making you think ‘he’ was real and decidedly masculine. I apologize for teaching you to think that you were a sinner and that Jesus had to die for you when you are really just a beautiful child, perfect in every way from the minute you were born (except for when you aren’t). I apologize for telling you that Jesus conquered death and that you should put your trust in him when there is not a shred of evidence of the resurrection except for what is in the bible. I apologize for not respecting your intelligence and glazing over thorny issues and rationalizing all the bullshit that is so present at all times in ‘god’s word’. (I apologize for saying bullshit in this apology). I apologize for ever calling the bible ‘god’s word’. It isn’t ‘god’s word’. It’s just a book. There are a lot of other much better books. There are books that helped humanity move beyond misogyny and slavery and tyranny. There are books that led to scientific discoveries which led to medicine and helpful machines and made the world a better place. None of those books are in the bible. In fact, the bible helps people to justify misogyny and tyranny and slavery and the bible made church leaders fear science and so they burned scientists and doctors and smart people because what those smart people were learning was often in direct conflict with what the bible and the church taught. I apologize for not telling you that the bible and christianity are two of the main reasons that it took people so long to move from tyranny into democracy, from slavery to human rights, from cruel religious mandates to civil law. I hope someday you will figure that out for yourselves in spite of what I taught you.
4. I apologize for giving money to the church. I apologize for helping to support and pay for a building that stands empty six days a week. I apologize for giving my hard earned cash to pay an enormous utility bill on a mostly empty church building. I wish I would have given all that money to alleviate real human suffering. To purify drinking water, to build a third world hospital, to educate a child living in a slum, to improve an orphanage, to further research on diseases, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, heal the sick, reform the prisoners, but instead so much of my available funds have up until now, been sucked into a huge building that gets used once a week by wealthy over -fed Americans who get upset if the sanctuary is not adequately cooled in July.
5. I apologize for believing all sorts of mad things that are seriously messed up and incredibly hurtful to my fellow humans. Things like god causes the sins of the parents to punish the children and the grandchildren (which some christians use to explain birth defects). Things like excusing the extra creepy stuff in the bible (slavery, misogyny, genocide) based on ‘historical context’ instead of just insisting that it was wrong back then and it’s wrong now. I apologize for things like teaching the stories of big bible heroes like Abraham and Jacob and not insisting that taking a slave for a wife was a hideous violation of human rights because having a slave and then raping a slave and then fathering children with a slave is no way for anyone to EVER behave even if you are a BIBLE BIGWIG. I apologize for thinking it is okay for god to ask a person (Abraham) to murder their child to prove their faith and even thinking that if I really loved god, I too must be willing to murder my child if god asked me. I apologize for things like thinking that I had ever done anything so terrible… so horrible.. so AWFUL to warrant someone else to have to die on a cross for me. (Hey! I am far from perfect, but no one should have to be tortured and slowly murdered for my eternal salvation).
6. I apologize to my kids for being a passive aggressive christian mom. For saying things to them like ‘”if you are lying to me, god knows. He knows you are lying so you better not be lying because he knows. God knows everything. Are you lying? Because if you are lying god can tell. You can lie to your mom but you can’t lie to god. God sees everything. Are you lying? You better not be lying to me because even if I don’t know – god knows” … etc etc etc…
7. Finally, I apologize for allowing my faith to numb my response to the problems of the world. So when there was injustice, or crime, or pain, or hunger, or illness, or ignorance, or war, or greed, or tyranny, or slavery or abuse, or addiction, or pollution, or natural disasters – I believed that god was taking care of it and I didn’t really have to do anything… (except pray). Because it was god’s will… and god was using these bad things to teach me compassion… or patience… or that satan was ‘the ruler of this world’… or that we should forgive… or god was ‘perfecting’ us… or ‘disciplining’ us. (Boy! god sure disciplines the hell out of Africa doesn’t he?) I was taught that all you have to do to get into ‘heaven’ is accept Jesus as your savior. You can do good things if you want, but good deeds are not getting your ass into heaven. So why would I bother helping out? My ass was already saved!
For all these things I am truly sorry and I most humbly repent…
AND plan to make changes, repair damages and do the hokey pokey and turn myself around.
So Be It,
Rechelle
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