Archive for the ‘catholicism’ Category
Atheist Strike + Eucharist Desecrated
Who says atheists cannot organize themselves? A group of atheist bloggers who debunk everything Ray Comfort says (Raytractors) have organized a strike of his blog. I’ve joined their group as a contributor, so hopefully there will be some posts debunking Ray from me as well, after all I have done them in the past.
Ray Comfort rules his blog like a dictator. Every comment goes through a moderation phase before being displayed, and any comment that contains vulgar language or doesn’t capitalize “god” and “jesus” is removed. Repeat offenders are blocked. He calls his website “Atheist Central”
Due to this behaviour, and Ray’s continual ignorance in science, Raytractors has declared a strike for all atheist commentators of the blog. The aim of the strike is to see what happens to the blog when it is pretty much devoid of all life, since it is evident that Ray has more atheist “followers” than theist ones, mainly because of the absurdities of his beliefs. The rules of the strike are quite simple. You can visit Ray’s blog as many times as you want, but you cannot post a comment. Instead, why not write your comment as a blog post if you have a blog, or send in your comment to an atheist blog you read. I would be willing to post any comments you want to make about Ray Comfort right here.
Eucharist Miracles Explained
Looking over my stats, I found a few visitors coming in from a HaloScan comments page. Incidently, does anyone know how to find the original blog from this comments page? Judging by the comments it’s probably some deeply ignorant Christian blog. Anyway, I’d got some hits off that for my copy-cat wafer stealing event.
Reading through the comments, it turns into a discussion/argument about Eucharist between Catholics and (I assume) either atheists or semi-religious Christians. One Catholic named
Two miracles take place at the consecration. The first is that the substance of the bread and wine change into Jesus Christ. Not His dead Body and Blood but His risen and living Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity - His whole resurrected Self. The second miracle is that the qualities of bread and wine still remain as though no change has occurred. This is necessary so that the Eucharist can be in a foodlike form that we can easily consume.
Seriously? THAT is a miracle??? It’s always been my thinking that miracles were meant to be observable to be a sign of God’s power, as well as reward the believers (possibly converting some non-believers in the process). Now I know what miracles really are I should have been more open minded towards them. I apologise, and will now list various miracles I have encountered in the last hour.
I Kidnapped Jesus
Yesterday I commented on a news story about a student in America who took a wafer from a Catholic Mass, incurring the wrath of quite a number of Catholic organizations in the process. The “crime” was referred to repeatedly as kidnap because of the strange belief of transubstantiation which states that the wafer and wine turn to the body and blood of Jesus Christ once blessed, although our sense still perceive them as food.
In this sense, taking a wafer without eating it is apparently equal to the crime of kidnapping Jesus himself. For atheists, this claim is completely ridiculous and illogical; not so much because there is no way of proving any of this transubstantiating actually happens, but because by their own logic, Catholics (and other denominations which subscribe to the process) are partaking in ritual cannibalism of their Saviour.
The whole debacle got me thinking about churches in England, and I found that my “local” cathedral followed a rare doctrine introduced by one of it’s early bishops to unite both Catholics and Prostestants on the issue of transubstantiation. As such, they adhere to the doctrine that the wafer and wine literally become the body and blood, but can only be “grasped by faith”. I decided to mimic the student in America, go to church for the first time in 10 years, and take Jesus’ body home with me.
When I first announced my plan, some people said it was disrespectful of faith and I would be violating someone else’s freedom of expression in order to fulfil my own. Such an idea was not the case, and it was if I had planned to run up to the alter and grab a handful. In my defense, I will tell you exactly how the morning went.
Taking The Church Hostage
Pharyngula reports that a student walked into a Catholic Mass and walked out with the small bread wafer that represents Christ. Apparently the Catholic world is outraged, saying he took the poor piece of bread hostage. It’s been called a hate crime, the student has been sent death threats, and Bill Donahue from the Catholic League says the student should be expelled.
So much for freedom of expression, but I tell you what, it’s given me an idea.
I’m ofiicially going to be the first English copycat. I’m going back to church for the first time in 10 years, and I’m going to steal a wafer. To top the American student Webster Cook, I’m going to steal the wafer from one of the most famous cathedrals in England. No, not St Pauls, but Salisbury Cathedral. It’s a medieval cathedral that’s celebrating its 750th year this year, and it has the tallest spire in England. It’s a mega tourist attraction.
The schedule for events can be found at their website.
Regretfully I cannot do this today (Wednesday), but I am in town on Thursday, and I will be attending the late morning Holy Communion at 11:15. I will go to the Morning Chapel, attend the full service, receive communion and pocket it.
Why My Children Will Never Go To A Religious School…
I attended a lecture a few months back (before I started this blog) entitled “Enemy in the Mirror: Richard Dawkins, the New Atheists and their Crusade against Fundamentalism”. It was nothing special, and the “lecturer” didn’t actually talk about anything to do with the subject. She just went on a random rant about how everyone should respect the church etc.
However, after the lecture there were a lot of questions asked from the audience, a large majority of whom were openly atheist. One such question was from a theist (towards the atheists) who complained that we argue all the time about religion and yet send our children to catholic schools and CofE schools with no problems. The parents in the audience said they do this because the results from those schools are better than those at non-religious schools, and they wanted the best for their kids.
I’ve got no problem with people doing that, they want their kids to do well. However I personally do not trust education systems that rely on religion to get students. The only reason that these students are getting better marks is because of the high levels of discipline those schools have, and the only thing large amounts of discipline does is inhibit creativity. You are taught what to think and how to think, and completely ignore the principles that freethinking was founded on.
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