Apart from that, we mind our own business… mostly; I don’t know if it’s confirmed yet that this year the Vatican’s Nativity diorama loses all that stuff about a stable, and… the Archbishop of Canterbury apparently has had to clarify remarks:
www.christianpost.com/article/20071220/30579_Archbishop_of_Canterbury_Dismisses_Three_Wise_Men_as_'Legend'.htm
A manger yes, three kings no. The bible says (and doesn’t say) so.

As for where the thread goes, I think on the whole it’s best to look at the original article. Perhaps it could be made easier to transfer a discussion into the general forum. Then we might not get hundreds of articles debating homeopathy on these pages but we could afford that.

It shows how desperate they are – and rather backfires IMHO. Any Catholic devoted enough to read the man’s words are going to lose all respect for the mail; and as for non-Catholics – the pope is hardly an authority figure is he??

As for Christianity, I suggest the best evidence against the existence of God is in fact the Bible, a self-contradictory mish-mash of the brutal shanigans of minor Middle Eastern warlords and the rationalisation of the same by the professional woos of the age.

www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.htm

Did I say the Church was stupid in the sense of low intellect? As #26 pointed out, it might be that they are very clever and manipulative and we non-believers do not get it, but should that be the main characterics of an institution that claims as an objective universal peace, love and harmony on earth? – Let’s instead encourage people to produce many many offsprings that all become Christians, then we can claim that we have a huge number of happy believers. If we really push them hard to have many kids, maybe we can even surpass the number of happy Muslims! *gasp*

And of course the Church is against premarital sex, because they had foreseen that one day we would have a problem with AIDS. It was a well calculated step to prevent the epidemic spread of a deadly disease and it’s a shame that people can not appreciate their foresight. If only we had listened to the Church, then we would have no problem with AIDS. If only we listened to the Church more we would all be incredibly happy people. We’d be completely diseasefree, no AIDS, no cancer, no gays, no damn liberals, no bad science. Just the thought of this makes me fall into a happy delirium.

And Christians are invited to chime in and present their opinion. Maybe that’s better than complaining that atheists are taking over this board.

Well, so what? My initial reaction was the same: hey, the pope actually said something decent!

Perhaps we are in danger of praising him too highly because we naturally expect him to say things that are blithering and contrary to human happiness. That’s a reasonable expectation and it is genuinely a surprise when he says something of value.

Having said that, it’s hardly a surprise that he comes down in favour of environmental issues in general. Afterall, there is no scripture I know of that urges us to rape the planet (although there are one or two things people have interpreted that way), so he can appear pretty enlightened on this point, while still preaching horrifying things about contraception etc. I’m unable to muster more than a slow hand clap, I’m afraid.

In some ways, I suppose we should be grateful that this mentalist has delivered a positive message on a particular issue, as compared to the enormous harm he continues to support in other areas, but I’m not sure I can be as charitable as Ben on this, even at Christmas.

Possibly this says more about me than it does about the pope.

Having said all that, Happy Christmas to everyone. Even the pope.

I’m an atheist myself, but the arrogance of most atheists is simply embarassing. Fair enough that you disagree with the Pope about various things (so do I), but this assumption that if he disagrees with you that must be because he’s stupid and hasn’t really looked at the issues is just absurd. Modern Christianity is built on the collected works of some of the greatest minds in history. They have not reached the same conclusions as you. Get over it.

Like the whole contraception thing. If you’re in the business of spreading an ideology, and you recognise that probably the most effective method of communicating an ideology is from parent to child, in what way is contraception a good idea? Contraception’s a terrible idea, and the Church have two thousand years of evidence, during which they’ve managed to spread their ideology from a handful of hippy rebels in an unimportant corner of the Roman Empire into being in active control of the two largest empires the world has ever seen and being one of the most widespread religions in history. To claim that their position is not evidence-based is ridiculous. They don’t have the same aims as you do, but they are very very good at achieving their aims.

Oh, and the Church’s position on condoms is immaterial, since they preach that you should never have sex with anyone but your spouse and you should never divorce. If everyone followed the Church’s advice on sexual matters, AIDS would still be an obscure disease that only a handful of specialist doctors had heard of. I admit that I have not followed the Catholic Church’s advice on sexual behaviour in my life — I had premarital sex — but, weirdly, I don’t blame the Church for the consequences of my actions when I’m doing exactly what they tell me not to.

But it does strike me that this thread is turning into a bit of an atheist rant. There are plenty of things well worth bashing Christians over (and I’ll happily help with that- we Christians are always best at fighting amongst ourselves). But there are lots of places to be out and proud atheist without associating a science column with automatic atheism. Not that there’s anything wrong with being an Atheist. Or a scientist. But it’d be a pity to become further sidelined as a niche of liberal atheist scientists rather than a broader group holding the media coverage up to (scientific) scrutiny.

The Pope is saying that we shouldn’t be believing things that are ‘dubious ideology’, and is in favour of hardcore evidence?

Might have to step down as being the Pope then. Can’t see him believing in God.

As for putting the news on a Catholic Web site, doesn’t news get out anyway to the faithful whenever the Pope says something?

1) Well, starvation has often been caused by distribution problems, especially with bad governments.

HOWEVER

2) I suggest reading “The End of Cheap Food” just recently in The Economist:
www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10252015

Some of this effect is transient, but some is going to be with us for a long time. Food is going to get more expensive.

3) If you don’t know about Peak Oil, see David Strahan’s
www.lastoilshock.com/
or
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

4) Among other things:
a) Oil is about to peak or already has (if you believe famous oilman T. Boone Pickens). Given population growth, and rapidly increasing demand in China/India, one can expect that the price of oil will (with usual jiggles) continue to rise.

Higher oil prices ==> higher food costs, because:

- Big efficient farms use machinery, which funs on diesel/gas.

- Farms use fuel to get food to market.

- Even ignoring silly trade, a lot of food is grown in places not close to where its consumers live. In particular, the huge, efficient farms of the North American midwest depend on cheap fuel to ship their food to the coasts and outside N. America. As I recall, the UK imports some food, an unless it’s coming via trains through the Chunnel, fuel is burnt to get it there.

- in The USA, there is serious competition for farmland between food crops and fuel crops. Corn-based ethanol is only a stepping stone to cellulosic ethanol (like switchgrass or miscanthus), but there *will* be more acres devoted to fuel, if only to have fuel for the part of the farm system that can’t be electrified.

(On the plus side, maybe could eliminate tobacco, as there is plenty of prime farmland used for that.)

- Some input for farming (fertilizer) needs to get shipped.

b) Speaking of fertilizer, nitrogen-based fertilizer is usually made from natural gas, which is also tending to get more expensive, and when natural gas Peaks in a couple decades, it will take very hard work to keep yields up. [No-till farming, more GM foods, etc; reducing the resulting Nitrous Oxide (a Greenhouse gas) is a good thing, as is reducing excess runoff, but still, a lot of the Green revolution depends on fertilizer inputs. Google: Norman Borlaug

We will burn all the oil & gas we can reasonably get, which will warm the planet, but maybe is recoverable. If we also try to burn all the coal, we will melt Greenland and the WAIS, at least.

c) And then there’s water. California grows half of the fruit&veggies in the US, and with global warming, we have serious work ahead, because our water system depends on Sierra Mountains snowmelt patterns, in which snow builds up over a few months, and then slowly melts over the rest of the (precipitation-free) months.

CA is rich and can deal with this. The similar effect in the Himalayas affects a lot more agriculture.

Also, the productive High Plains area of the US sits atop the Ogallala Aquifer, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer

In some parts, water is dropping 100X faster than it is being recharged.

Google: aquifer stress

5) Now, this is not doom-and-gloom, because there are many useful actions to be taken to stretch oil+gas while we switch to renewable power, electric tractors, and enough biofuel to handle the non-electrifiable part of the transporation system.

But still, I expect food to get more expensive.

Moreover, Christian fundamentalists have generally viewed both Roman Catholicism and Mormonism as non-Christian “cults.”

www.britannica.com/eb/article-252663/fundamentalism
Cults.

Most fundamentalists have strongly opposed the Roman Catholic Church for theological reasons; in recent years there has been limited political cooperation between individuals in each group on certain social issues, such as abortion. However, the relationships between Fundamentalist Christians and Catholics are still often strained due to historical/cultural perceptions and strongly divergent views on a number of theological issues.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Christianity

the Global Commons Intsitute, who came up with contraction and convergence, have some nice graphs to illustrate the point.

www.gci.org.uk/contconv/cc.html

The resource problem we are faced with now is one of distribution, not of production.

Your best introduction is through Jack Chick, one of the most hilarious lunatics on the internet.

www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0071/0071_01.asp

I have actually been given one of his cartoons in real life. It was when I was in Spain once. The absurdity of it all filled me with glee.

You’re probably already aware of “fundies say the darndest things,” one of my favourite websites.

For those of you who are not, this is a sample of what you can find there:

“One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn’t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.”

Yes, people can actually say this without any hint of irony.