1. Sex for diploma offer caught on tape

Comment #164282 by Timmeh! on April 20, 2008 at 1:55 am

While it seems quite clear that he's committed a crime, and he really was offering money for sex, something doesn't quite seem to add up. How and why was the original conversation recorded? We are told that she had this conversation, then contacted the news team and they wired her, but where did the original recording come from?
I'm wondering if someone else had reported this sort of thing going on and this woman was a plant sent in already wired to expose the hypocritical old bastard.

Oh and I disagree with those who are saying this story is not relevant. Granted, on it's own it proves nothing except that some people are sleezy scumbags, but it's one more point in the "christians are no more moral than atheists" argument that we have to get into so many times. Personally I suspect it's the repression caused by the puritanical regimes that causes people to seek relief in these ways. They are denied, or deny themselves, perfectly acceptable sexual practices, and so are forced to underhandedly seek relief in other ways secretively. I think it's the same thing that drives so many supposedly celibate catholic ministers to prey (or pray ;)) on the young and vulnerable.

2. The Great Tantra Challenge

Comment #144573 by Timmeh! on March 16, 2008 at 10:55 am

I don't know if I would have been brave enough to do it. I wouldn't put it beyond these loonies to conceal a poisoned needle about their person to stick me with during the ceremony, or just stab me with a knife out of frustration after having been made to look a tw@ in front of millions.

Perhaps one of his fruitcake followers will now poison or otherwise injure the chap; then they can claim it was a delayed reaction from the ceremony, which they doubtless also will if he's hit by a bus anytime in the next decade.

3. Church exhumes Padre Pio

Comment #138298 by Timmeh! on March 4, 2008 at 7:13 am

This is the excellent chap who faked his stigmata with acid:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/padre-pio-faked-his-stigmata-with-acid-397811.html

4. BREAK THE SCIENCE BARRIER - Available Now on DVD

Comment #124669 by Timmeh! on February 10, 2008 at 3:09 am

Anyone else having trouble with the QT versions?
Part one freezes the video and goes into an audio loop around 12.36 here.

5. The Group Delusion

Comment #112444 by Timmeh! on January 17, 2008 at 6:28 am

Hey, I've got a great idea for the furtherance of science; we put all the theories to "the Wooter test".

If we tell our new hypothesis to a group of primary school kids and they can't understand it or prefer a simpler explanation, we'll discard our idea and do whatever they think is best.
We'll have a cure for cancer in no time. It's probably just something as simple as eating tiny plastic soldiers who will go and shoot the cancer to death; that sounds much more sensible than all that mucking about with radiation or administering nasty poisons.

I guess this is what happens when you let someone with arts degrees teach science.

6. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #110398 by Timmeh! on January 11, 2008 at 5:45 am

Irate_atheist said:

Could there be a Darwinian Account of Wooter's Inanity?

There has to be, since that's all we have.

Personally I favour Boyer's explanation
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Religion-Explained-Instincts-Fashion-Ancestors/dp/0099282763/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200058968&sr=8-1

7. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #109369 by Timmeh! on January 8, 2008 at 11:26 pm

Wooter, really: "this perfect world"??? A world with earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, deadly viruses and other micro-organisms, ice-ages, infernos, deadly spiders, deadly snakes, deadly crocodiles; disease; infirmity; disability; pain. I could go on and on and on. This is far from being a perfect world. If it's God's creation, he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

This just reminded me of a song (to be sung to the tune of "all things bright and beautiful")

http://www.lyricsdepot.com/monty-python/all-things-dull-and-ugly.html

8. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #109167 by Timmeh! on January 8, 2008 at 1:17 pm

Yup that single statement alone demonstrates the enormity of the misinformation that our friend has been taught about how evolution works. I'm afraid my faith in mankind makes me want to believe that if we can just explain it to him properly he'll stop perpetuating creationist crap into the next generation. It seems I'm not as adept at recognising wishful thinking in myself as I am in others. :(

9. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #108980 by Timmeh! on January 8, 2008 at 4:33 am

I have no idea how many scientific web pages I put forward on this argument. But you either became evasive through being funny or claimed that they are flawed.
Growing finger nails for a couple of days are true. No need to try falsifying it.

It is not true, it is a myth. The quote you put in is even from a report showing that it is a myth as if we needed evidence that you can't read properly. I don't know where you got that exact quote from but here's the BBC news article relating to it.

I can't imagine a worm will have an off spring without another worm.
Second a worm genetically cannot have a frog offspring, even a similar one unless it breeds with a worm. Today as we know that the breeding of different kids result in death or monster like creatures which can live for a short while.

I can't be held responsible for your lack of imagination. And once again neither I, nor the theory of evolution, have ever suggested that a worm will ever give birth to a frog; this is a straw man argument.

You either haven't read, failed to put any effort into understanding, clear examples given to you that explain all the gaps in your understanding. Your watchmaker argument is drivel, as are all your others. Just because you are unable to comprehend how small mutations over time can result in large changes and are incapable of explaining this properly to primary school children is no point in your favour at all.

I thoroughly recommend that you go and buy The Selfish gene, Climbing Mount Improbable and The Blind Watchmaker. Read them, make an effort to understand them and then come back with some arguments that haven't been stamped out a hundred times already. Or failing that, maybe try this book.

Actually, screw that, watch the Growing Up In the Universe videos available for free on this site.

They are for children so you should have no trouble grasping them. If you don't get it after that, I'm afraid there's no hope for you, and you are doomed to waste the only life you've got in meaningless acts of worship to a non-existent sky-fairy.

10. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #108507 by Timmeh! on January 7, 2008 at 5:15 am

Wooter:

Evolution game

So you're saying that worms did not change into frog? Okay let me illuminate you with a logical math.
"What are the chances for person who flips a coin and gets the head? It's got two sides, so 50%. What about two coins landing heads on? 25%. Three coins flip? About 1 in one hundred tries. DNA has four different nucleotide units. Adenine Guanine, Cytosine and Thymine. We find around 3,000,000 nucleotides in the most basic cells. What are the chances of one of these nucleotides happening by chance? One in four. Two nucleotides by chance? 6 tries in 100. Three nucleotides? 1.5% 0r one in 50 chance.
Following this logical math, what are the chances of getting just 84 nucleotides together in a PRECISE ORDER by chance? 4.8x10 to the 50th power, that is, 4.5 50 zeros behind it; 480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

That would be enough to prove it.

I'm certainly not saying that a worm changed into a frog, and especially not in a single step. Actually I'm not aware of the exact evolutionary path of the frog but let's suppose that this was the case, that some hypothetical worm is an early ancestor of the frog, this would not be theoretically impossible. Imagine that a worm once had offspring that were infinitessimally more frog-like due to a tiny mutation. These survived due to selection pressures, and further mutation caused them to become even more slightly frog-like in the next generation, or 100 generations hence, and so on and so on. Over several millenia, voila: the frog! It is certainly not true that a worm laid a frog egg one day, and no one is suggesting that this occured.

This gradual process reduces the required leaps of chance that you imply. The chance of each small change is very much larger than that chance of all changes occuring at once, and the cumulative effect is great. The problem with your premise is that you are calculating your probabilities from the wrong end. To extend your coin-flip analogy: Imagine someone flipping a coin a large number of times; say 10,000 At the end of his 10k tosses, there was a particular sequence of heads and tails. The chances of throwing that particular sequence are astronomical, but nevertheless that sequence has just been thrown.

First the activities in our like growing mustache or beard will still go on for a couple of days after we die. It is not end of the story but it is the beginning of the story. If you compare forever heaven life to a short span of life, our lives on this earth is just beginning. I wish you can believe that. I say it sincerely. Even though I mock or tease the points in evolution idea, I never mean to insult anyone on this web page. I am targeting evolution not the personalities behind this although you are insulting me sometimes. Don't you think that a forever life is waiting for us; why are we so stubborn not to accept that there is a creator?

It is a myth that hair and fingernails continue to grow after death. It is an illusion caused by the skin receding as it decomposes.
No I don't believe a forever life is waiting for any of us. Death is the end; that you can't bring yourself to face this is irrelevant to the truth of the statement. The existence of an afterlife is just wishful thinking.

We are so "stubborn" to accept the existence of a creator because there is insufficient evidence that points to that conclusion, and plenty that supports viable alternatives.

11. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #108148 by Timmeh! on January 6, 2008 at 5:39 am

Oh, and two things I feel the need to comment on.

I agree, although you haven't proved it by any stretch of the imagination, that a body without a soul is just a clump of flesh. And a very happy clump of flesh I am too.

When I die that's it. All electrical and chemical activity in my brain and body ceases, and I start to decompose. End of story. That's what makes this life so precious, it's the only one I've got. I don't really want to waste parts of my life debating its nature with the belligerently deluded faithful, but until you all wake up or f*ck off I feel honour-bound to do so for the benefit of mankind.

12. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #108143 by Timmeh! on January 6, 2008 at 5:27 am

Wooter, I've decided to abandon our previous discussion, not because I can't refute your arguments, but because I don't have the time to waste and all the others are doing a fine job (if only you'd listen). From reading your posts it is clear that you have a fundamental misunderstanding about how evolution works that seems to be leading you to make fallacious claims about it. I think this needs to be sorted out before any further discussions are worthwhile.

If we were proposing that DNA simply sprung into being accidentally in one instant, or that suddenly normal squirrels gave birth to squirrels with wings, this would indeed make a mockery of the reasoning involved. However, these claims are not being made, by us, or the theory of evolution.

Could one of you biologist chaps perhaps explain to wooter in simple terms how DNA can be arrived at from simpler replicating molecules? I've had it explained to me but don't feel confident enough in my biology/chemistry to simplify it sufficiently for our friend and not screw it up in the process.

13. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #106311 by Timmeh! on January 2, 2008 at 4:22 pm

Wooter, you have been lied to by creationists who have filled your head with nonsense arguments, bad science, and lies. In the interests of what I feel is my duty I must try to explain some of this to you. I will do my best to not be antagonistic toward you as I believe you need the truth explaining to you; please try not to be antagonistic toward me in return. I apologise if my tone seems patronising but it is apparent from your posts that English is not your first language and your education has been either substandard or hampered by creationist teaching, so I am trying to pitch at a level you will be able to understand. If you wish to ask further questions please feel free, but please try not to do so in a confrontational manner. Also, I don't know everything, but I'll illuminate where I can, but others may need to help with, or correct, some of the science (I'm only a Software Engineer)
I realise I'm probably on a hiding to nothing, and we'll probably end up with a deist position at the big-bang, but, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Also, I would like to point out that the FACT (nee theory) of evolution by natural selection tells us nothing about how our planet was formed or how life first originated on the planet, and it doesn't need to, as there are plenty of other facts and theories that do so. Darwin's idea, does however, explain perfectly how all life on the planet evolved after replicating life came into existence.

Here goes:

1. How did the medieval soup come out in the beginning?

I Assume you mean Primeval (or Primordial) soup. Medieval soup would be a very different thing.
Medieval soup would be something that was eaten from a bowl by humans sometime between the 5th and 15th centuries CE
Primordial soup existed around the time that life began: sometime between 4.4 and 2.7 billion years ago.

Anyway, this soup was formed by entirely natural processes. The elements from which it was formed were released from the cooling earth, and were acted upon by the environmental conditions, to create the situation in which life could arise. No supernatural involvement is required or was present. Several experiments have proved that the building blocks of life can be created spontaneously, in a relatively short space of time, by natural processes acting on simple chemicals.

2. How do you explain fruit flies found in fossils that have remained as fruit flies for millions of years or arthropoda, sponges, and sea crabs found in fossils from rock formations formed 500 million years ago?

The theory of evolution by natural selection does not tell us that all animals evolve indefinitely; an animal (or indeed plant) that is well adapted to it's environment does not have to evolve at all. However, a group of the same species, in a differing environment may have other selection pressures and thus will potentially evolve further. Thus it is perfectly possible for a "prototype" species and its descendant species to co-exist on the planet for many millennia.

3. Scientists found bees and honey from millions of years ago. The bee produced honey and the honeycomb in the same way as it does today. How do you explain this?

See the answer to 2. above. Those species of bees that produce honey in honeycombs have had no need to evolve, or all mutations have either spawned other species, while leaving the original intact, or their mutations have proved negative and have thus died out.

4. In spite of having many varieties, bacteria have not evolved into anything different and higher though they adapt very quickly;

This has the same argument as 2 and 3 above.

5. How do you explain the evolution of the horse from a small dog like mammal with five toes to the big horse with one toe or hoof. In fact, the evolutionists have no evidence for that claim. Nowhere in the world have they found a series of fossils to demonstrate such an evolutionary order. It is entirely hypothetical, delusional.

This is just a lie.
As shown in this diagram of the skeletons of only a few proto-horses:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/Horseevolution.png
the hoof evolved from five toes, by gradual reduction of the outer toes to leave one large toe where the thick toe-"nail" forms the hoof. and These are just a few of the intermediary steps that have been discovered.

6.
7. Evolutionists claimed that the coelacanth, a fish that lived 400 million years ago, as a link between the fish and the land animals because of its limb like fins. It was hypothesized that the coelacanth went up the land for food, staying there longer and longer until—about 70 million years ago—it disappeared from the fossil record. Truth has got bad habit; it comes out sooner or later. Local fishermen caught several dozen coelacanths off the coast of Madagascar in 1938. The fish were exactly like their ancestors, perfectly adapted to their deep sea environment and showing no signs of evolution. The coelacanth has been quietly dropped by many text books from the list of evidences of evolution, because it became the symbol of the non evolution of organisms, rather than of their evolution. How do you explain this?

I refer the honourable gentleman to the answers to questions 2, 3 and 4

7. Overbeck and his coworkers at the Baylor College of Medicine tried to convert albino mice into colored ones through genes (The melanin related gene that his group injected into the albino mouse embryo had inserted itself into a completely unrelated gene. An unfamiliar stretch of DNA in the middle of a gene wrecks that gene's ability to get its message read. So in the mice, it seems whatever protein the gene coded for went unproduced, whatever function the protein had went undone, and the stomach, heart, liver, and spleen all wound up in the wrong place. Somehow, too, the kidneys and pancreas were damaged, and that damage is apparently what killed the mice.) But they failed because there is no trial and error in nature.What is your reply?

So Overbeck inserted a gene into the wrong place in the sequence and it didn't cause the effect it has elsewhere in the sequence? This is hardly unexpected, and is certainly not in any way in contravention of any genetic theory or the theory of evolution.

8. Please let us know how embryo develops in womb?

I'm not sure what kind of response you are looking for here; the range of possible responses is so huge. As a very brief overview, the fertilised egg latches onto the uterus wall. Cells divide, chemical differences in location eventually start triggering some genes on and others off so cells differentiate and become different tissues until eventually what we might recognise as a young organism develops. You'll need to elaborate on what part of embryonic development you find tricky in order that we can help you with this.

9. How does Kasparov's body move, act, dream (while his eyes are closed) while robots (deep blue) move by power?

Again, a huge topic. Kasparov's, and everyone else's, body moves because chemical reactions triggered by electrical impulses from the brain, fuelled by energy from food, cause muscles to contract. He, and we, act because of the electrical impulses in our brain cause us to. He dreams because the electrical impulses in his brain are causing him to experience simulations of real and imagined events.
Robots move by "power" (do you mean electricity?) because we have designed them, based around the principles of physics, to do so. The illusion of design in Kasparov's, and every other living being's body, is just that: illusion.
It should be noted that Deep Blue was not a robot, but a computer that gave instructions to a man, who actually moved the pieces on the board.

10. The Earth is tilted at an angle of twenty-three degrees. This gives us our seasons through revolving around the sun as well , and at the same time, spinning around itself to give us days and nights? How do you explain this?

In one leading hypothesis, a twin planet called Theia smashed into the earth in an event called "The Big Whack"; at which point its core fused with the Earth's and a significant portion of Earth's crust was blown into orbit around it. This eventually collected to form the moon. This event set up the tilt and "wobble" we now have, but also, the moon has the effect of regulating the Earth's tilt and wobble, which prevents it becoming so eccentric as to cause massive environmental fluctuations. All of these rotations of differing time-periods are explained by the laws of physics; no supernatural intervention is required.

11. The sun, the source of all life, has a surface temperature of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and our Earth is just far enough away so that this "eternal fire" warms us just enough and not too much. How do you explain this?

This is simple coincidence. If the Earth wasn't where it is, it would have no life. I think you are verging on what is called "The Anthropic Principle" which erroneously claims that since we are here, the universe must have been created for us, when in fact the reverse is true: if the universe was not as it is, we would not be here. There are innumerable planets in the galaxy, and innumerable galaxies in the universe. So far as we are yet aware, no other planet has life (although there there may yet turn out to be others that do); we are here because the odds against all the requirements being right in one place in this universe are outweighed by the number of places in which the circumstances could be right. Simply put, the odds against someone winning the UK national lottery jackpot are 1 in 13 Million, and yet someone wins nearly every week. We should thank goodness that this planet won the celestial lottery.

10, I can go on more, I guess it is enough. If you convince me I will give up.

I can go on more too. Let me know if I need to.

14. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #105236 by Timmeh! on December 31, 2007 at 12:38 am

Steve Zara wrote:

I have to admit to being unsure about this, but I think he is saying more. I think he is saying that creative thoughts themselves also arise in a Darwinian manner, and not just the ability to have them. The issue is that some people try to claim that creative thoughts arise from some special process, even though they may concede that potentially creative beings can arise naturally (as in "Bach was a child of Nature, but his musical gifts came from God").

I didn't read that into it at all, since he explicitly lays out the mechanism he believes is involved in the generation of ideas and inspiration (simulation, generate and test) I don't think he is saying that ideas evolve in the brain at all, simply that the mechanisms for having them do.
I think one could make an analogy between "generate and test" thought processes and natural selection (have a lot of ideas, take the ones that seem good, build on those, discard the rest, rinse, repeat) but I agree that might be a shaky analogy, and one I don't think Dennet has made here. Although it might have some merit; as Linus Pauling said - "The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas."

And krisking, are you seriously offering us Pascal's Wager or was that a gag? If you meant it, I think you'll find that argument to have been adequately dismissed already many times over.

15. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #104924 by Timmeh! on December 30, 2007 at 2:56 am

eric, I think professor Dennet is saying:

Inspiration, genius, invention and creativity are the result of natural processes, not some form of "magic" internal or external to the brain.
The structures in the brain that arrived at those natural processes were arrived at by natural selection.
It is likely, since no other reasonable, non-supernatural, hypothesis has yet been proposed, that the processes that arrive at these moments of genius are analogous to a computer program performing a brute force, trial and error simulation of all possible outcomes, and choosing the one the seems best.
Genuinely designed things are not arrived at by natural selection, but the processes that enabled the designer to design them were.

Or have I missed the point anyone?

16. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #81613 by Timmeh! on October 25, 2007 at 1:08 am

Theocrapcy wrote:

"Abortion and contraception are the greatest threats to peace in the world today"

How on Earth is that a moral statement? If you read between the lines, Mother Tereza rellay meant to say: "Rape is preferable to abortion, and AIDS is better than using a condom. A reasonable person, atheist or not, would not admit such a thing, as it has no morality.

I was interpreting the phrase "moral statement" as "statement about morality" rather than "a statement that is moral". The first is a definite thing, the second is a matter of debate. Many people agree with it; I, and I suspect most people on here, do not.

Oh, and I completely agree with you about what she meant. I forget where I read it (it may even have been on here), but someone wrote something like "in the eyes of the catholic church, rape is a lesser sin that condom use, because at least it can result in pregnancy."

17. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #81266 by Timmeh! on October 24, 2007 at 2:08 pm

Reposted from my blog:

The idea that morality is not possible without religion is so obviously untrue that it would be laughable if the consequences of the lie weren't so serious. If one actually looks at the evidence the implication is almost that reverse is true. Mark Twain once said "The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive...but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anaesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition." And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the barbarity committed by the religious, not just in the name of their faith, but because of it. If you look at violent-crime rate figures worldwide and correlate them with religiosity it becomes clear that the non-believers are a much more peaceful bunch than the supernaturally credulous. The same is true if this correlation is made by US state, rather than nations. It seems clear that the more religious a group becomes, the greater it's propensity for bloodshed. The problem here is that the holy books of the three major abrahamic religions teach barbarity and inhuman acts on a grand scale. They are littered with the depiction and glorification of genocide, incest, slavery, rape and murder, not just witnessed by god or done in his name, but ordered and required by him. Against this background, people of reason have had to fight to gain laws that reflect morality that is obvious to them, but proscribed by biblical law, for the last few thousand years. As Bertrand Russell pointed out "the moral objection [to religion] is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel than they are and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow." The very fact that people today are more moral than the holy books describe and prescribe should be evidence enough that it is people themselves who determine morality and not their faith. The Bible is unequivocal in its support for slavery, even the supposedly gentle Jesus was OK with it as long as you didn't beat them so hard you knocked out their teeth and eyes or killed them on the spot (Luke 12:47). He also said that children should be put to death for swearing at their parents (Matthew 15:4-7) though, so why should we look to him for guidance? It should be clear that our modern sense of morals is neither derived from these writings nor should be. Even the most seemingly innocuous of Jesus' teachings are can be shown to be immoral if one actually takes the time to think about it. Take loving thy enemies and turning the other cheek. Love thy Enemies? Why? Why Should I love people who want to kill me, my family and friends? Standing by and doing nothing while the evil commit evil acts it is within your power to prevent is an evil act itself. There are Christians who say that we can safely disregard the Old Testament as having been written for a different age when times were hard and barbarity was the norm. Though this is questionable in itself, if it is true we are still left with the assumption that the teachings of Jesus in the new testament are the pinnacle of morality and still relevant today. It is apparent from the examples above alone that this is not the case, and they're not the only instances. Jesus, if indeed he existed, clearly had some very progressive thinking, for his time and place, but he has little to tell us today. Indeed he would have had little if anything to tell the Greek philosophers who predated him.

The facts are that Children demonstrate concern for the wellbeing of others long before they learn to read or are old enough to understand indoctrination from their parents. From this alone it should be clear that the roots of morality are innate. Many "lower" primates have complex systems of morality and justice: reward for good behaviour and punishment for bad, and I can't recall ever having seen a monkey reading the Torah.

Christopher Hitchens, on his US tour in support of his latest book "God is not Great : How religion poisons everything." challenges his audiences to come up with one single moral statement made by the faithful that could not easily have been spoken by the secular. Nobody has yet managed it, which surprises me as I can think of a few. How about "Abortion and contraception are the greatest threats to peace in the world today"? An idiotic statement made by Mother Theresa when accepting her ill-gotten Nobel peace prize. OK, maybe it could have been said by an atheist, but it would have to have been a really stupid one.

There are moral atheists, no question. Ask yourself this, who is the more moral, someone who does the right thing simply because they know it to be right, or someone who does it because they believe their god wants it and will punish them if they don't? Doing things out of fear of retribution or promise of payback isn't morality, it is cowardice and avarice.

18. Crisis of faith in first secular school

Comment #74257 by Timmeh! on September 28, 2007 at 1:37 am

I tried to create a petition on number 10's website with the following wording:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to: 'abolish the requirement for state school to have a daily act of worship.'

Detail:
The requirement for a daily act of worship of a broadly Christian nature in state school in an anachronism in modern British multicultural society. It discriminates both against people of all other faiths and those with none. Indeed some Christian denominations would prefer it was not done at school as what is taught is often in conflict with their own beliefs. Religion should be a matter for the home, the church and the community of the family; no single religion should be promoted by our state schools. The current option for those of a different faith (or none) to opt-out of these observances is inadequate as this draws attention to the child's differences, which causes isolation of those with other beliefs, and encourages division between them. If religion is to be taught in state schools, it should be taught only to enable students to understand the beliefs of those of all faiths, and none should be taught or assumed as truth.

it was rejected for the following reason

Your petition was classed as being in the following categories:

* Duplicate - this is similar to and/or overlaps with an existing petition or petitions

Further information: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Assemblies/

To save you the trouble of reading it, the petition that they claim mine is a duplicate of calls for a ban on religious school assemblies. Clearly not the same thing as lifting the requirement. On reflection I realised that the body of my petition could have been read that way so, after signing that petition :), I resubmitted with the following changes:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to: 'abolish the requirement for state school to have a daily act of worship of a christian nature.'

Detail:
The requirement for a daily act of worship of a broadly Christian nature in state school in an anachronism in modern British multicultural society. It discriminates both against people of all other faiths and those with none. Indeed some Christian denominations would prefer it was not done at school as what is taught is often in conflict with their own beliefs. The current option for those of a different faith (or none) to opt-out of these observances is inadequate as this draws attention to the child's differences, which causes isolation of those with other beliefs, and encourages division between them. The decision of whether to include a daily act of worship should be left to the individual school, not mandated by law, thus allowing parents to choose a school that was acceptable to their beliefs, or to petition their child's school for a change.

I added a note in the "special instructions" field explaining that the removal of the requirement was not the same as a ban, but the resubmission was rejected anyway; still the reason given was that it was a duplicate, but no petition was named.

FYI a similar petition was run to completion in april with the following wording:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to remove collective worship in schools

Detail:
The law that requires daily acts of collective worship is outdated, and against the human rights of the child to have an education free from religious indoctrination.

In collective worship there is no equality for all, no adequate provisions for those wishing to opt out of it, and it discriminated against those particularly with no faith. It also breaches equal rights.

Religious practice is not education, it is faith, and should be kept seperate from an educational environment.

Unfortunately it only got 277 signatories, and the official No.10 response was

he Government remains committed to the provision of collective worship in schools and recognises its valuable contribution to the spiritual and moral development of pupils.
This is a view which is shared by many parents who still expect their children to understand the meaning of worship whether they hold a faith or not.

We believe that it is important that collective worship should provide the opportunity for pupils to worship God as well as to consider spiritual and moral issues and to explore their own beliefs. Collective worship can play a valuable role in developing community spirit, promoting a common ethos and shared values. The Government believes there is sufficient flexibility in the law to allow both Christian and other forms of worship.

The Government respects the right of parents to raise their children in accordance with their own faith and this is why parents have the right to withdraw their children from collective worship. From September 2007, pupils in school sixth forms will also be able to withdraw themselves from collective worship. The Government believes that for younger pupils, it is appropriate and practical for parents to decide on whether to withdraw. The Government believes this strikes the right balance between the requirements of the law and accommodating the wishes of parents.

Also, I noticed that a few other people have tried to create similar ones and been rejected recently. Any of you lot?

19. God Talk on 'The View'

Comment #71499 by Timmeh! on September 19, 2007 at 12:05 am

"this is what cuts it on American television"

Let's not be too unfair on our American cousins in this respect; we have plenty of Daytime TV where idiots talk rubbish about things they don't understand in the UK too.

I like the "I'm gonna stop this line of questioning by saying 'I've never thought about it.'" defence. Wouldn't "I'm sorry, I bring nothing to the table, maybe I should just leave." have been more honest?

And was it just me or was the chairwoman trying to make the point that elephants and apes show evidence of morality, but is so inarticulate that it got completely garbled in a string of meaningless or irrelevant words, thus allowing the conversation to revert to fairy tales and at what age god puts morality into children?

20. New age therapies cause 'retreat from reason'

Comment #61647 by Timmeh! on August 6, 2007 at 5:04 am

I think those criticising RD for diluting his/our attack on religion by attacking this rubbish should remember that it's not his job to attack religion; that's just a fortuitous by-product of his real job, which is promoting the public understanding of science.
Surely disputing religion and disputing "alternative" therapies both fall within that remit?