The Feast Of Saint Quadragesimus
Posted 6th February 2007 at 11:42pm by M1ke, tagged as Religion | Commenting Closed
Confessor and a shepherd known for miracles. He lived at Policastro, Italy, and served as a subdeacon. According to Pope St. Gregory I the Great, he was responsible for the remarkable achievement of raising a man from the dead.
I'm not really sure why, nor do I actually care at this point, but whilst searching an online database of Catholic Saints (see, the Catholic church can be a bit modern) we found the titled Saint Quadragesimus, whose feast day is on the 26th of October. So if you want to celebrate on that day (sod halloween, it's a holiday for fat kids and dress-up fanatics) then write it on a big banner, check your spelling and hang it somewhere that people will gaze at and mumble in confusion.
- Link to St. Quadragesimus
Bible Study
Posted 26th January 2007 at 10:33pm by M1ke, tagged as Religion | Commenting Closed
Having been to a church here for the first time on Sunday I proceeded to meet a friend from my course who duly invited me to join him, and others, at the church run bible study on Thursday. I accepted the invitation, and we went there after our last lecture. Before the study we had a reasonably nice meal, then we split into groups and began to read over a passage. All very nice, and quite boring in the recollection. However the reason I'm writing all this here isn't due to my inability to think of anything good to post today, but because of what happened in the second half of the evening.
Once we'd finished looking at and discussing the passage we had a talk by the minister of the church about the concept of "church." It looked at where the word church turned up in the Bible, and what it really meant, both definitively and to the minister himself. It was here that things began to go awry, as he showed some rather worrying opinions on what should and shouldn't be considered a church, throwing around the words heresy, heretic and un-converted. He told us that he believed the Cathedral here in Durham was a waste of the money used in its upkeep - a valid point in some cases, but forgetting everything except a pure practical reason for its existence, and even putting his foot in it totally when he later complained that the church building he uses was not big enough for the congregation of students; I think maybe the cathedral would suffice.
Regardless of that opinion it was his views about seemingly innocent and occasionally forward thinking church practices that astounded me the most. He disagreed with the Roman Catholic practices - so do I - but went on to say that churches that did not teach from the Bible were also heretical and denounced churches full of the un-converted. From what I understand converted means that someone has come to Christianity from another faith, no faith or perhaps a weak faith, but do you have to have to have been converted? I know I've always believed and always felt the same way, am I un-converted because I lacked the sudden revelation that others have experienced?
Going on someone asked him a question about going to a church with their parents where they did not teach from the Bible. He said that there were levels of heresy - that "Grade A heresy" would be a church that preached that the bread and wine became the body of Jesus (a Catholic belief which I do disagree with) or preached that homosexual sex was OK. Woah! Hold on just a second there mate - you're now saying that it's best to learn from the Bible, but that we should condemn homosexuals as heretics? What happened to "love thy neighbour"? What happened to the ideas put forward by that guy called Jesus? You know, the one who founded this whole religion?
As if this wasn't enough he then called for a spade and proceeded to dig as he described "Grade B heresy" which is apparently a situation that wouldn't lead to your damnation but that you shouldn't make a habit. Oddly he only gave one example of this kind of heresy in a church saying:
One that preaches the Bible, but lets a woman preach.
O RLY? Once more flaunting a severe ignorance of any part of the Bible actually containing stuff Jesus said, and ignoring any progress made by ordained woman in the past few decades, he chucks this one out to his flock of students, despite the fact that about half are female and are going to have a rather more enlightened opinion on that issue than he does, what with being female and not a stuck-in-your-ways evangelical idiot like preachy up there.
Yep, this is me now openly mocking a member of the clergy, but to be honest who wouldn't? Far be it from me to pass judgement, despite the fact that he seems to have few qualms about such activities, but I'd say he'd be better off hawking this crap in the market next door than to a church. A quick rifle shot of his other opinions include a dislike for the Alpha Course because it tries to convince people to become Christian through ideas of spirit and forgiveness rather than fire and brimstone, the Charismatic church for much the same reason and pretty much everyone who hasn't had a flash of light conversion and donated their house to his church.
So, a big thanks to Alex for inviting me, thanks to those in my group for making it an evening of interesting discussion, and thanks to the muppet in the dog collar for putting me off ever going to that church again whilst giving me something to both rant and sound clever about at the same time on my blog.
Bad Publicity For Christianity
Posted 23rd June 2006 at 2:34pm by M1ke, tagged as Religion | Commenting Closed
Insurers have withdrawn the cover on their virginity taken out by three sisters in the event of the second coming of Christ.
It does annoy me sometimes, as a pefectly happy and faithful Christian that people in all shapes and forms can sully the good image of the religion. On one hand you have religious nut jobs believing that God tells them to attack foreign countries, and on the other a group of obviously-to-rich women in some forsaken backwards Scottish-land town who insure their virginity in case they give birth to Jesus.A rant about the insurance companies would be forthcoming as well, but I have work to do in the organising of a birthday party, and so must wait until another day. In the event of my accidentally giving birth to the son of Elvis, site updates will be suspended for a few days whilst I pick up my insurance policy.
Confused About Creationism?
Posted 21st April 2006 at 2:40pm by M1ke, tagged as Religion | Commenting Closed
An interesting thing I've found on my travels, the religion of Flying Spahetti Monsterism (Wikipedia). I like this, because whilst in some way it mocks religion it mainly mocks those people who refuse to bring any logic into their thoughts, such blind faith do they have. Alot of places in America are thinking of teaching Intelligent Design (Wikipedia) alongside the sensible scientific theories of evolution. But this CAN'T be taught. Teaching implies telling people something as a truth, not challenging them to think. Intelligent design is merely a knee-jerk reaction by people who would prefer to believe that the world was flat and Adam preceeded the dinosaurs.
Thing is, I myself am a Christian, I have been since I was a child and made the decision many years ago to be baptised. But I'm also very scientifically minded and won't accept anything just because I'm told it in an area I believe in. I believe in God, but I don't reckon he created the world in seven days - science proves that's rubbish. But at any time there's always room for God, what caused the Big Bang? Why did the chemicals that began life on this planet react? How can people die and come back to life minutes later? All it takes is an objective look, rather than forcing children to be taught something for which there is no evidence.
So be nice to your kids, and make sure to give them some nice meatballs to celebrate Flyingspaghettimas next week.
Extra: Apparently Bush is a big believer in Intelligent Design. Any more reasons to scrap it?
Equality and Skin Colour
Posted 9th February 2006 at 12:00pm by M1ke, tagged as Religion | Commenting Closed
Ever since Martin Luther King's civil rights movement, we have been aware of the need for equality in our society. This is a fact that does not change - everyone should be treated on their actions and merits, and not judged on circumstance. But recently it seems that people are forgetting that if things are equal, they don't need to be considered.
2+3 = 5
5=5
0=0
That's a simple mathematical example of something that has nothing to do with maths. What I'm getting at is that there is still a high level of segregation in our western society. The two main areas of discrimination are between opposite sexes, and different races - more specifically, different skin colours. The former is more of a complex issue, as men and women can be very different in a lot of aspects, and so there are considerations to be made when hiring them for jobs, for example. But two people with different skin colour have just that, and nothing more different. Just look at Michael Jackson - despite looking like a bit of a freak, he's pretty convincingly white. Skin colour is no different from hair colour, eye colour or anything else.
This is all very obvious - indeed all movements aimed at promoting 'equality' have made this clear (anti-apartheid, civil rights etc.). But if this is so, why do we keep having it shoved down our faces? Whatever people may say, we still have segregation, and I'd reckon that around 80% of the population of England segregate themselves from people with a different skin colour. Not just people - the media is a prime culprit, as is the government. Let's look at a few areas in which segregation is made very obvious:
- 1Xtra, radio for black music
- The Mojo awards, music awards for black music
- Hiring regulations on ethnicity
- Being asked to put down an ethnic type on surveys
- Promotions, campaigns and the like on contributions by ethnic groups
- Regulations against 'racism'
Now that was rather a diverse list, and what was apparent? That we still live in a society where skin colour segregates us.
Now, there will already be people reading this and thinking 'racist' in my general direction, because I seem to be opposed to what people would view as 'inclusion' of other groups. This is not the case, what I am saying here is that there are no other groups - or not separated by such ridiculous criteria as skin colour. Sure, a black person from Africa has a very different cultural view in comparison to a white person in London - but the same is true between a white person in London and one in Russia, between a black person in America and one in Asia. The upbringing, the choices, the location, all these things contribute to the wonderful diversity we see in society, but skin colour is meaningless.
I class myself as British - I am proud of this as it is my home country. A friend of mine back at High School classed himself as Mauritian, due to his coming from there. He had black skin, but his outlook was different from mine only because of where he had come from. Another boy, like me, classed himself as British. He also had black skin, but in this case his outlook did not differ from mine, because we grew up in the same place, went to the same school and the like. Segregation based on skin colour is, as you can see, stupid.
But why do we still do it then? My own guess is that it's just inbuilt into us, in our upbringing. A child sees a boy in his infant class with black skin and thinks nothing of it. He goes home, tells his mummy that his new friend has black hair, brown eyes and black skin. His mummy tells him that he must be respectful of the boy, that he mustn't offend him, that he must be careful what he says. The child now views the boy as something different from him, something separated. The boy's parents maybe did the same - as their boy was going into a class with all white people, they told him that he shouldn't be afraid of them, that they were no better than him, that he should stand up for himself. The boy would have done all that out of social interaction anyway, but now he does it because he thinks he is different. As he grows up, he will gravitate towards other black boys, and the chain of segregation continues. How easy it is, to be careful of something and end up highlighting its existence all the more.
The answer, in the end, is not for me to decide. Were I in charge of the country, I would order that people never be forced to see differences - that they should make their own minds up. Radio stations should play musical genres, not play music depending on the skin colour of the musician. Awards should be given to those deserving of awards, jobs given to those who fit the bill. Maybe some job interviewers still have racial prejudice - so how about preventing face to face contact if the boss of an interviewer believes this to be the case. In schools, remove the posters promoting equality - instead let the children never see a difference. In law, treat those in the court as if they too had full body suits on, as if their skin colour were hidden - judge on their behaviour. Whatever people may say, adding more laws for protection of this so called 'equality,' bringing in more teaching of it, promoting any group in any area only ever reinforces the segregated society - no matter how good people feel it to be.
If the system worked, I wouldn't even be writing this lengthy blog, as I would never have noticed the difference between black and white.