suspense, thriller

回魂夜

《回魂夜》(Out Of The Dark),是一套1995年香港電影,由劉鎮偉執導,周星馳主演。片中,周星馳明顯地仿照《這個殺手不太冷》主角尚連奴的造型。《回魂夜》被視為周星馳處於顛峰時期的破格之作,此片包含黑色幽默,傳統恐怖電影元素,同時亦有周星馳的無厘頭演繹方法。雖然相對周星馳同期其他電影,如《百變星君》、《西遊記第壹佰零壹回之月光寶盒》及《西遊記大結局之仙履奇緣》,此片票房相距甚遠 [...]

comedy, science fiction

西遊記-月光寶盒

即依據中國作家吳承恩所撰寫的神怪小說《西遊記》為基礎,再進行改編的電影作品。(上映日期: 香港1995年1月21日). 五百年前,觀音大士不遠千里持續追捕孫悟空,全因為他打算將唐三藏贈送給予牛魔王食用,並偷取盤絲大仙的「月光寶盒」,希望能藉此寶物躲避追緝。不久,觀音大士打算替天行道就此消滅孫悟空,將他收伏入甘露瓶裏,但唐三藏表示願意一命換一命,請她能放徒弟一條生路,便用法杖自殘身亡.. [...]

comedy, science fiction

西遊記大結局之仙履奇緣

西遊記大結局之仙履奇緣》(A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella)即依據中國作家吳承恩所撰寫的神怪小說《西遊記》為基礎,再進行改編的電影作品。 上映日期:香港1995年2月4日. 此時,至尊寶使用「月光寶盒」穿梭數次時空,醒來後見到盤絲洞內空無一人,從洞裏走出來卻已經天亮,無法藉助月光使用寶盒。然而,正當至尊寶思考如何解救白晶晶時,遇到一位不知名的女子打算進入盤絲洞內… [...]

comedy, Action

少林足球

《少林足球》(英文:Shaolin Soccer)是一部香港電影演員周星馳於2001年自編自導自演的電影。此片乃周星馳自九十年代末港產片低潮下最成功的一部電影,單在香港就取得了6,070萬元的票房紀錄,而周星馳也因之而成為香港電影金像獎最佳男主角。 在2006年世界盃塞爾維亞和黑山國家足球隊與科特迪瓦國家足球隊的比賽前約半個小時,場地的大屏幕中播放了一段少林足球的電影片段。 [...]

comedy, Action

功夫

《功夫》為一部武打喜劇片,由香港演員周星馳於2004年合力編寫劇本、導演、飾演角色。片中包含了對武俠文化的敬仰、獨特性與周星馳一貫的無厘頭、誇張的搞笑風格[1] 。故事取景於1940年代中的中國,周星馳飾演一位無所作為、想加入當地最大幫派的小混混。[2] 該片的視覺效果廣泛地受到讚揚;卡通的風格伴隨着傳統中國的音樂則是最大的特點[3][4]。然而電影的特色在時代、甚至演員也是1970年代香港動作電影的演員.. [...]

comedy, Drama

食神

食神》是周星馳主演的電影,於1996年公映。該片為周星馳重要的代表作之一,在港台各地造成很大影響,尤其其中許多經典台詞成為年輕人聊天或搞笑時經常使用的詞語。周星馳在此片中使用其英文名作為主角的名稱。食神是第二部周星馳與吳孟達扮演關係對立角色,第一部是「審死官」。 大廚史提芬周獲得法國廚藝學會所頒發的「食神」榮譽,並身為「唐朝」飲食集團主席,但因看重集團盈利,漸漸忽略了食物本身的味道… [...]

Drama, Drama

《變臉》

中國大陸第四代導演吳天明的《變臉》(The King of Masks, 1996),曾經參加過多項國際影展,也深受全球各地影迷的喜愛。這部片終於在台灣發行DVD了,由昇龍製作永峰唱片發行,值得推薦給大家欣賞。 民國八年,北方軍閥混戰。江湖藝人「變臉王」的兒子於戰亂中一去不回,變臉王孤身一人闖蕩江湖,心中最恐懼的是香火失傳無人繼嗣,這對他來說,比飢餓寒冷更可怕。 當時中南數省水災肆虐,遍地饑民.. [...]

comedy, Drama

算死草

晚清時代狀師陳夢吉(周星馳飾)專以作弄人為樂,結下了不少仇家。孤兒阿歡(葛民輝飾)投靠了狀師陳夢吉(周星馳飾)並拜其為師。後因阿歡愛上了水蓮花(邱淑貞飾)與師父爭吵,一怒之下出走香港。香港大亨何西爵士(鍾景輝飾)的兒子何中(林保怡飾)發現阿歡是他同父異母的弟弟「念西」,為獨吞家產而殺害家丁(陳豪飾)陷害阿歡入獄。阿歡求助於師父,陳夢吉憑三寸不爛之舌說的洋法官啞口無言 [...]

comedy, Drama

九品芝麻官

《九品芝麻官之白面包青天》是香港演員周星馳於1994年參演的喜劇電影,導演為王晶。因1993年台灣華視由金超群主演的包青天連續劇在香港播出時大受歡迎,本片可視為當時的包青天喜劇版,連配樂都跟金超群主演的劇集相同。 電影的香港原名為《九品芝麻官》,台灣則加入「白面包青天」為副標題。「白面」即「白臉」,原因是周星馳扮演北宋名臣包拯的後人包龍星,只是包拯是黑臉的,但包龍星卻是白臉的。[...]

comedy, Drama

大內密探零零發

《大內密探零零發》是周星驰拍摄於1996年的一部賀歲電影,由他和谷德昭联合导演。周星驰在影片中饰演一位不会武功的皇宫大内密探,平时除了当妇科大夫给人看病外,业余爱好是研究一些不被赏识的小发明。最后,靠着这些发明,他挫败了敌人的阴谋,拯救了整个国家。这部影片除了有嘲讽《007》密探的味道,还把古龙武侠小说中包括陆小凤、西门吹雪、叶孤城、花满楼在内的风云人物諧謔了一番,实属周氏无厘头… [...]

comedy, Drama

喜劇之王

《喜劇之王》是李力持和周星馳聯合導演,周星馳所主演的自傳式電影,於1999年2月上映,是當年的賀歲片。 此片乃周星馳從影以來頗受爭議的作品,蓋因片中周星馳雖然以搞笑為主,但內容卻相當藝術化:描述一個實力派演員在明星制度下難有出頭的悲劇。有指這是周星馳早年演藝生涯的影射,因為早年周星馳出道時都只是在電視台連續劇裡擔任「二打六」(龍套),一直要待到出道後十年,才得到電影人賞識,轉戰電影一鳴驚人。 [...]

comedy, Action

破壞之王

《破壞之王》(Love on Delivery)是李力持執導的喜劇片。全劇富有搞笑趣味氣氛,述說窮小子阿銀遭受欺負,但心中充滿懲奸除惡的熱血,決定透過習武來扭轉現狀,徹底擺脫懦夫的陰影。 阿銀經過黑熊的欺負與阿麗的打擊,失意之下走向雜貨店買啤酒,被鬼王達說中阿銀的心事,向鬼王達坦誠第一次失戀,鬼王達藉機向他推薦「中國古拳法」,原本不相信的阿銀,見到一掌就打散了桌子,如此功力使阿銀堅信不疑這套拳法.. [...]

comedy, Action

新精武門1991

新精武門1991是1991年由周星馳,鍾鎮濤,張敏以及元奎等人所拍的電影;元奎和劉鎮偉監製,左頌昇導演。 劉晶右拳天生神力,從廣東來到香港後遺失了同鄉阿強的聯絡地址,卻偶上了江湖小混混瀟灑。晶意外救了霍家拳館館主霍環,更被收為徒;惜一晚撞破大師兄鄭威欲迷姦霍環女兒阿敏的好事,晶瀟二人反被誣蔑為採花賊。被逐出師門的晶重遇強,拜了強的老大為師,成立「新精武門」參加世界拳王大賽,與大師兄在擂台一決雌雄。 [...]

Showing posts with label 宗教. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 宗教. Show all posts

Us and Them - ABC Foreign Correspondent

r400765_1881497 ukma-new

http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/s2631046.htm

300 多年前, 在 Northern Ireland,  大概有一大部份人是來自Ireland, 他們相信 Catholicism. 而剩下的另一大部份人是來自Scotland & England, 他們相信Protestantism 新教教會(應是Anglicans, 請看以下解說). 於是他們互相憎恨,  當然Catholics 都想趕走那些Protestants, 咁 Ireland 就可統一了,  但是 Northern Ireland 是英國領土, 英政府說Protestant 住了那麼久, 點可搬走他們呢.  於是為了平亂, 便建了一圍牆分隔兩教住民了.

{ Protestant 原自 Catholics (當然, Catholics 也是原自 Christians), 自 Martin Luther (1483-1546 德國人)從天主教教庭分列出來後.  便自立門戶來反對羅馬教宗而成立了Protestantism. 在英國的 Henry the Eight (1491-1547)睇到 Martin Luther 的成功, 為了廢除現在皇后, 娶個女侍官.  於是佢又要出來反對羅馬教庭而成立了 Anglicans 聖公會(因為他們也是反對天主教的POPE, 所以都叫Protestant). Henry the eight, 成立了聖公會後, 斬鬼咗個第二個老婆個頭, 前前後後共娶了6位老婆!!!!}  0依!!! 睇嚟做男人, 信聖公教會好過天主教囉, 可以不斷換老婆!!!! 哈哈哈!!!!

Kilometres of high concrete walls snake through Belfast in Northern Ireland - graffiti daubed and grim. They divide catholic neighbourhoods from Protestant.
They’re called the Peace Walls.
But do they keep the enduring hatred and suspicion locked outside or inside?
The consensus among the locals participating in this story is pretty clear – if the walls came down there would be a swift return to the bad old days of intractable sectarian violence.
'If you pull that wall down there’ll be murder, mayhem, there’ll be blood spilt, you can guarantee now, there’ll be big, big trouble.'
William Brown, loyalist resident.
Even as Europe Correspondent Phil Williams was putting the final touches to his story on the quality of peace in Northern Ireland, he found himself in the middle of a dangerous melee. Petrol bombs and water cannon exploded as police tried to break up a riot that had erupted around one of the traditional annual Orange Day parades.
It was a frightening example of what happens when Catholic and protestant communities chafe, undivided by the so-called peace walls.
“Well it’s ugly, it’s horrible, but at the minute, it’s necessary. But there’s also walls of prejudice … walls that were built 300 years ago here and they're still here in legislation, in prejudice and bigotry. So those are the walls that are going to have to come down first.” Sean McVeigh, Republican resident
Despite marked political progress since the signing of the 1998 Peace Agreement, steps towards mending the enduring divisions between some Catholic and Protestant communities have been much slower.
In recent months the killing of two soldiers, a policeman and a Catholic community worker indicate that the tensions of The Troubles still lurk very close to the surface.
Are the Peace Walls monuments to the past or vital and necessary peace-keepers in the present and the future?
_________________________________

Transcript


WILLIAMS: Like veins they snake through the city streets, across parks, through schools. Twenty kilometres of suspicion and hatred separated by bricks, metal and wire. But as well as providing protection from the rocks, bottles and pipe bombs, the so-called ‘peace walls’ also offer opportunity, employment and a sense of purpose.
China has its Great Wall – Berlin used to have one and now no visit here is complete without a tour of the mighty walls of Belfast.
SEAMUS KELLY: We’re now in Comway Street and I remember this particular street in 1969 as a 16 year old. I remember the gunfire coming from the Shankill, which is only fifty metres ahead of us here. You can actually see the dividing peace wall and I just remember running, jumping into the houses to get down out onto the safety of the Falls Road at that particular time. Quite an experience.
WILLIAMS: In his wildest dreams Seamus Kelly could not have foreseen that he would end up as a tour guide, explaining the troubles from a Nationalist point of view and how he and so many of his friends ended up in prison after fighting for a united Ireland.
SEAMUS KELLY: [Republican tour guide] “It’s emotional, but there’s been much more things that have happened since then, between then and now that have been much more emotional. When I relate to the H blocks and the hunger strikes and the comrades who I knew, spent time with, who actually died on hunger strike - that to me is very, very emotional. That’s raw, that’s like yesterday, although it’s twenty-eight years ago. That’s very, very raw.
WILLIAMS: The tour takes in the murals and the memorials to the fallen and provides jobs for former IRA prisoners like Seamus Kelly.
“You wouldn’t consider going through these gates yourself and doing the tour on the other side?”
SEAMUS KELLY: “It wouldn’t be practical. I wouldn’t be talking about a…. ah coming from a unionist perspective, so that’s why loyalist ex prisoners would do that”.
WILLIAMS: [Handover to other tour guide on other side of the wall] Through these gates it’s loyalist territory and time for a change of guide and side.
“Twenty years ago you’d have been trying to kill each other”.
SEAMUS KELLY: “That’s correct, but times move on. There’s a whole new political dispensation here in Ireland at the moment. Projects such as this help… that understanding”.
WILLIAMS: Neither side has changed fundamental beliefs but the days of assassinations and knee cappings appear to be over.
WILLIAM SMITH: “It’s like the fear of being killed, it’s like the fear of being blown up…”.
WILLIAMS: Loyalist tour guide, William Smith, also spent time in prison during the troubles. The transformation from war zone to tourist town was unimaginable a few years ago.
WILLIAM SMITH: [Loyalist tour guide] “I was in prison for attempted murder, but I mean that may sound… you know really, what would you call it, bizarre now at this particular time, but in that, in 1970, thousands of young men went to prison. I will always say that that was a lost generation”.
WILLIAMS: At least some in that generation are now finding a new sense of purpose, explaining their side of the conflict to visitors who’ve left thousands of messages on the walls.
WILLIAM SMITH: “Tourists from all over the world will come here and they will write a message”.
WILLIAMS: “I can see one here from Sara Nicolas from Australia”.
WILLIAM SMITH: “Oh yeah, yeah there’s plenty of Aussies”.
WILLIAMS: While we walk the wall, more tourists draw their conclusions on it. Here the writing on the wall is almost exclusively from foreigners.
TOURIST: “I think it is kind of an odd thing, I think it would make more sense to see locals coming to sign the wall instead, so….. and that would make it a peace wall for sure”.
WILLIAMS: It’s an extraordinary transformation when tourism supplants terrorism. This is enormous progress but while the visitors come and go, the walls remain, splitting two communities.
“It may seem strange that years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, although there was political progress and measurable, as chaotic as it may sometimes be, here at the interface where Catholic meets Protestant these walls are still as they were. In fact there have been more built because the people here see them not as dividing communities but protecting them”.
And this is what can happen where there are no walls. In the north Belfast area of Ardoyne there’s been a tradition of violence handed down from one poisoned generation to another. It erupted again during the annual Orange Order marches. Hopes had been so high that this was over - and the day begun so differently.
NELSON MCCAUSLAND: [Culture Minister, Northern Ireland] “Well the 12th of July is a special occasion, it’s one of the most important dates for me in the year. As you can see it’s a great carnival, a great festival. You’ve only to look at the parade itself and see the artistry of the banners, the music of the bands, the colour of the occasion, the great crowds that are out. It’s a family occasion. You’ve grandparents, parents and children. It’s a day really that could be enjoyed by anyone”.
WILLIAMS: You won’t see many Catholics here. Most see this celebration of the Protestant victory at the battle of the Boyne in 1690 as offensive and a provocation. The majority stay away, but four years of relative peace came to a violent end this time.
[On street] “You can see things are getting very tense here. The marchers are expected to come up through this area, a Catholic area very soon and there’s a large police presence trying to hold the Catholic protestors back. This is just an expression of the sort of tension this day evokes and at the moment, it’s getting very rough”.
The Ardoyne has long been a flashpoint. It’s where Catholic and Protestant territories meet. No wall keeping them apart. No place either for an Orange order march according to these people. Everyone here is used to the rocks and even the petrol bombs - and in reply, the baton rounds and the water canon. But for the first time since the 1970’s, someone fired a gun here - a worrying new threat that had police on edge.
Eventually the Orange Order did pass as the rocks and abuse rained down on them. Sinn Fein’s, Gerry Kelly was quickly on the scene, blaming the Orange Order for marching here, but also dissident Republican groups like the Real IRA for organising the attacks.
“What does this say about the peace process?”
GERRY KELLY: [Sinn Fein MLA] “The peace process is solid, the political process is solid, let us not exaggerate what happened here. These are small micro groups who incidentally came together when they thought they saw the opportunity to bring down the peace process. In a single incident, in a single night they will not achieve that. They will feel…. they have already felt…... They have no strategy… they are going nowhere”.
MARTIN MCGUINNESS: [Deputy First Minister, Northern Ireland] “It’s very important not to, and it’s even important for the Australian Broadcast Media not to distort what happened over the last couple of days from the overall picture which has I think been a very good news story world wide for some fifteen years”.
(News reports of the killing of two soldiers)
WILLIAMS: It’s an optimism not reinforced by recent events, a series of killings over the last few months. The first left two soldiers dead - shot at an army post - and two days later, the Dissident Continuity IRA was blamed for the murder of Constable Stephen Carroll – the first policeman killed in a terrorist attack in Northern Ireland for twelve years.
KATE CARROLL: “He was my life - my son and my husband were my life and I just feel now that I’m dead inside”.
WILLIAMS: Another funeral, this time forty nine year old Catholic community worker Kevin McDaid. He was beaten to death as he tried to help a friend being attacked by a mob. His wife was bashed too. Amongst the mourners was Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.
MARTIN MCGUINNESS: “We have to see all of this in a proper perspective. The big story of the killings over the last number of weeks has been the way in which the political process has come together to repudiate the activities of those who would try to plunge us back into the past. You cannot compare, under any circumstances, the way things are today from where they were fifteen or twenty years ago. We are in a fundamentally different and better place”.
WILLIAMS: It is true despite the recent setbacks, it’s still a long way from the bad days of open sectarian warfare and ironically the very structures that divide, also secure.
WILLIAM BROWN: “In a perfect world it would be great to see peace but let’s face it, it’s Belfast, Northern Ireland - and there’s never going to be peace here”.
WILLIAMS: Loyalist William Brown and his family have lived for years across the road from one of the walls. Talk of knocking them down is not seen here even as a faint possibility.
MRS BROWN: “No, definitely not. For everyone’s sake it’s best just to keep the wall up, to keep the peace”.
WILLIAM BROWN: “Aye if you pull that wall down, there’ll be murder, mayhem, there’ll be blood spilt. You can guarantee now, there’ll be big, big trouble”.
WILLIAMS: “So we’re just coming on dark now, is this about when the rioting would start when you were young?”
WILLIAM BROWN: “Yes when the night falls and the rain falls, that’s when we’d come out”.
WILLIAMS: William Brown takes me the few hundred metres from his house to the same place where the political tours do their handovers.
WILLIAM BROWN: “I don’t trust anyone. I wouldn’t trust anyone with my life”.
WILLIAMS: “No chances of peace?”
WILLIAM BROWN: “There’s no peace here and there’ll never be peace”.
WILLIAMS: “That’s a pretty pessimistic view isn’t it?”
WILLIAM BROWN: “Well I’m the one living on the peace line. I know, I’ve seen it. You will always have your factions. This place is like, like the Palestinians and the Israelis – this is the same scenario”.
WILLIAMS: On the Republican side, Sean McVeigh cannot escape the shadow of the walls. He lives too close to forget this has been a war zone and his family and home attacked.
“How do you feel about this wall now? Would you like to see it down?”
SEAN MCVEIGH: “Well it’s ugly, it’s horrible but at the moment it’s necessary. You know it’s, in my mind, walls aren’t only physical, aren’t only made of mortar or steel or wire, but there’s also walls of prejudice. There’s walls that were built 300 years ago here and they’re still here in legislation and the prejudice and bigotry so those are the walls that are going to have to come down first”.
WILLIAMS: It’s a sentiment echoed across this city – it’s attitudes, not masonry that need dismantling…. and Father Aiden Troy has learned from bitter experience.
FATHER TROY: [2001 footage] “I was terrified, but I was terrified not for myself so much but I was terrified some child was going to be killed or very badly injured - and with that a live device, a bomb was thrown over. In that split second it dawned on me, this is beyond anything that anyone could have imagined”.
WILLIAMS: Back in 2001, Father Troy found himself in the middle of one of the ugliest confrontations in recent years as Protestants tried to stop Catholic children from walking through their area on their way to school.
FATHER TROY: “We were always very conscious that once we got through the gate they moved without looking left or right, right into the school”.
WILLIAMS: “Now that terrible period is over but the conflict isn’t over is it?”
FATHER TROY: “No I think this is one of the very sort of worrying aspects that I think I’ve learnt so much from this. I this peace is very much a gradual process and I think there is genuinely a move forward but there’s always the danger of slipping back”.
WILLIAMS: There are no riots here. At Hazelwood Integrated Primary in North Belfast, Catholics and Protestants share the playground, and the classroom. The main lesson here is if you educate people together, you can break the cycle of distrust.
PEACHES MCCORRY: “If it was a Catholic school only Catholics could go there”.
WILLIAMS: “And what do you think about that?”
PEACHES MCCORRY: “I don’t know”.
WILLIAMS: “Do you think that’s a good idea or not?”
PEACHES MCCORRY: “I don’t think it is because it’s good to let other people in your school”.
WILLIAMS: “Do you think about if they’re a Catholic or a Protestant?”
FEMALE STUDENT: “No, it doesn’t really matter”.
WILLIAMS: Despite the obvious success here, few of Northern Ireland schools are integrated and for Principal Jill Houston, it’s been a frustrating struggle against entrenched opposition.
JILL HOUSTON: [Principal Hazelwood Integrated Primary] “Opposition from government, opposition from parents, opposition from churches but a total belief that having children educated together is sensible. It shouldn’t be something that’s different. It should be the total norm in any normal society”.
WILLIAMS: “And yet there’s only about five per cent of Northern Ireland children in schools like this.”
JILL HOUSTON: “Yes. Basically I regret to say our politicians and our senior civil servants and our people who’ve come over from English rule, have not seen the value and don’t want to upset the local politicians I think by ensuring that most schools should be integrated”.
WILLIAMS: “And yet for you it’s a no brainer”.
JILL HOUSTON: “Total no brainer”.
WILLIAMS: Integration is something happening in some unexpected places. In this Belfast commercial art gallery, two street mural artists are working side by side – that’s new. But what’s also unique is that they come from diametrically opposed backgrounds.
DANNY DEVANNY: “I’m just recreating a picture of Bobby. It’s a mural I did several….. well, many years ago on the Falls Road”.
WILLIAMS: This is Danny Devanny’s iconic mural of Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker who died in prison. Devanny’s artistic talents are well known in Republican areas. He was imprisoned for attempting to rob a bank to raise money for the IRA. Now he shares a gallery with Mark Irvine, the son of a Loyalist politician who was gaoled for fighting the IRA. It’s a level of collaboration unthinkable just a few years ago.
Danny Devanny hasn’t changed his political views. His work reflects a worldview of revolutionary struggle, but both he and Mark Irvine have bridged the religious and political divide. Their message, that with goodwill anyone can do it.
DANNY DEVANNY: [Mural artist] “We totally are appalled by the issues of sectarianism where young people are divided apart because of their religion. In fact the irony is, me and Mark live about a hundred yards from each other and we’d never met each other. His father would have been the same age as mine and in the end when we did meet we got on very well together. We have so much in common”.
WILLIAMS: “Do you worry it could descend back to the bad old days again?”
MARK IRVINE: [Mural artist] “You’ve always got that worry, but I can’t see sort of how that could happen. I think we’ve moved too far forward and I think that the general populous don’t want it. They just want to live a normal peaceful life and get on with their lives. I don’t think anybody wants to go back to the way it was”.
WILLIAMS: “Have you had any luck convincing him about the Unionist cause and vice versa?”
MARK IRVINE: “No. But we agree to disagree”.
WILLIAMS: Inside the glass and steel of a modern Belfast shopping mall, the dominant ideology is consumerism. It’s part of a new world where old brands seem unnecessary – Catholic, Protestant, Loyalist or Republican – and in the city streets and many residential areas, people do live peacefully side by side and yet it seems most in the city still see the removal of the walls a long way off.
FATHER TROY: “People still are fundamentally distrustful of each other and I think that’s why we have so many peace walls – “peace walls” in quotes - in Belfast. It’s bridges we need to build in this society and yet we’re very poor bridge builders. We’re actually brilliant here in Belfast at building walls”.
WILLIAMS: If ever a place was captive to its history then this is it. And yet there is real change. The camera-toting tourists are a clear sign of that. But the walls remain, and there’s not enough confidence to change that for now. Still, this was the only masked man we saw and with luck and goodwill, when he grows up, perhaps all of this will be gone.
MARTIN MCGUINNESS: “Those walls are obviously something that we would like to see removed and I think as the political process goes from strength to strength, that the day will come but I think that decision has to be in the hands of the people who live on both sides of the walls. Our job is to, within the political process, continue to make the gains that I know the vast majority of people welcome. Build a better future that our people want to see, and build a situation where people feel comfortable to remove those walls”.
WILLIAMS: In some areas the fires of sectarianism will continue to burn no matter what the politicians say. At this Loyalist bonfire, Republican flags and posters are destroyed. More often than not, nights like this use to end in violence. Not now. Perhaps the best that can be hoped for in these places is peaceful coexistence. Around here, that’s huge progress.

Religulous

If u have a brain, I think u should look at this!

Bill Maher’s “Religulous”

 

 

Bill Maher on “Religulous”

Religious people believe that they are not destructive, but they really are!!! It is not good enough to portray them as innocent and naïve fools, they really are the most dominant contributors to all violence and evil on this earth!!

The Atheist

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Phillip, I would like you to know that I am sincerely grateful for every single comment you have made tonight on the ABC's Compass "The Atheists"; it is extraordinarily comforting to me to know that we have people like yourself in our country, people with a voice and such an uncompromisingly realistic understanding of ourselves; I am on an absolute high tonight, you have made my day, I am thrithrilled and absolute

Secret Files Of The Inquisition-4

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The End of Inquisition - The series concludes focussing on Napoleon and how he spread the ideas of the Enlightenment, conquered Italy, abolished the Inquisition and ordered its files sent to Paris. It also looks at a Spanish priest who devoted his life to exposing the brutal historical records. The kidnapping of a young Jewish boy secretly baptised was one of the last desperate attempts at exerting the Inquisition's power before the documents were locked away. (From the UK, in English) (Documentary Series) (Final) (Rpt) PG CC WS

 

Episode Four - The End of Inquisition
Napoleon spreads the ideas of the Enlightenment, conquers Italy, abolishes the Inquisition and orders its files sent to Paris. Spain’s greatest painter, Goya, will depict the Inquisition for the first time – and then run for his life.  A Spanish priest devotes his life to exposing the brutal historical records. The Secret Files of the Inquisition are locked away for centuries.
The kidnapping of a young Jewish boy secretly baptised will be one of the desperate last attempts at exerting the power of the Inquisition. A devoted father fights to get back his son. The boy becomes a symbol for a Pope who is about to lose his dominion on earth.

 

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Secret Files Of The Inquisition-3

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Lost Worlds - The War On Ideas - This episode looks at how the decadence of a Medici Pope in Rome outrages Martin Luther, a devout priest in Germany. In the face of the Protestant Reformation, a fanatical monk sets out to obliterate the heresy. On his path to power he will create the Roman Inquisition and become the most hated Pope in history. Powerful leaders of the Catholic Church are arrested and imprisoned, accused of reading books banned by the Church. Free-thinking students are silenced and the Roman Inquisition will leave a legacy that lasts into the 20th century. (From the UK, in English) (Documentary Series) (Part 3 of 4) (Rpt) PG CC WS

 

Episode Three - The War on Ideas
The decadence of a Medici Pope in Rome outrages Martin Luther, a devout priest in Germany. In the face of the Protestant Reformation, a fanatical monk sets out to obliterate the heresy. On his path to power he will create the Roman Inquisition and become the most hated Pope in history.  
Powerful leaders of the Catholic Church are arrested and imprisoned, accused of reading books banned by the Church. Free-thinking students are silenced. The Roman Inquisition will leave a legacy that lasts into the 20th century.

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Secret Files Of The Inquisition-2

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The Tears of Spain - For centuries, the historical records of the Inquisition have been locked away to become the subject of myth and legend. In 1998, after years of pressure from historians, scholars and critics in search of the truth, the Vatican opened some of these archives for the first time. Tonight's episode looks at how Christians, Muslims and Jews lived in tolerance for centuries along the Iberian peninsular. However by 1468 changes were afoot. The young rulers, Isabella and Ferdinand had proclaimed themselves the Catholic Monarchs and began an Inquisition. Jews who had converted to Christianity were accused of secretly sabotaging the Christian faith. Thousands perished in a ritual called the Act of Faith. (From the UK, in English) (Documentary Series) (Part 2 of 4) (Rpt) PG CC WS

 

Episode Two - The Tears of Spain
The Iberian peninsular is a land where Christians, Muslims and Jews have lived in tolerance for centuries.  However by 1468 changes were afoot. The young rulers, Isabella and Ferdinand have proclaimed themselves the Catholic Monarchs and begin an Inquisition. Jews who had converted to Christianity are accused of secretly sabotaging the Christian faith. Thousands perish in a ritual called the Act of Faith.  
In Zaragossa, mothers die to protect their children, the highest in the land pay the ultimate price and the Inquisitor is assassinated, setting off a wave of reprisals. 

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Secret Files Of The Inquisition-1

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Root Out Heretics - Based on secret documents from the Vatican, this four part docu-drama series investigates the Catholic Church's 500 year struggle to remain the world's only true Christian religion. Winner of two Leo Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Original Score, the series, directed by David Rabinovitch, spans medieval France, 15th century Spain and Renaissance Italy, revealing how the most powerful church on earth created the Inquisition to attack its enemies and preserve the unquestioned authority of the Pope. Part one begins with the rise of the dissident Christian movement known as Catharism in southern France during the 13th century and the threat it posed to the power of the papacy. It also tells the story of Jacques Fournier (Eugenio Alvares), an Inquisitor who was to become the Pope Benedict XII, and of Boruch, a Jew who was forcibly converted to Christianity yet tried to defend his right to return to his original faith. (From the UK, in English) (Docu-drama Series) (Part 1 of 4) (Rpt) PG CC WS

Episode One - Root Out Heretics
The year is 1308 and heresy has taken hold in France.  At a time when the Church of Rome proclaims itself the one true religion, the Pope sends the Inquisitors of Heretical Depravity to deal with heretics.  Non-believers are hunted down, condemned and burned.  The entire village of Montaillou is taken prisoner by the Inquisition.  No one is safe, not even the village priest and the chatelaine of Montaillou’s castle.

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Secret Files Of The Inquisition-1

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Root Out Heretics - Based on secret documents from the Vatican, this four part docu-drama series investigates the Catholic Church's 500 year struggle to remain the world's only true Christian religion. Winner of two Leo Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Original Score, the series, directed by David Rabinovitch, spans medieval France, 15th century Spain and Renaissance Italy, revealing how the most powerful church on earth created the Inquisition to attack its enemies and preserve the unquestioned authority of the Pope. Part one begins with the rise of the dissident Christian movement known as Catharism in southern France during the 13th century and the threat it posed to the power of the papacy. It also tells the story of Jacques Fournier (Eugenio Alvares), an Inquisitor who was to become the Pope Benedict XII, and of Boruch, a Jew who was forcibly converted to Christianity yet tried to defend his right to return to his original faith. (From the UK, in English) (Docu-drama Series) (Part 1 of 4) (Rpt) PG CC WS

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The Atheist

http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2517600.htm
Summary

Compass talks to atheists of different stripes.Eminent philosopher John Gray; science writer and editor of Skeptic magazine Michael Shermer; historian and writer Inga Clendinnen and Australia best known atheist Phillip Adams, all explore the philosophical and practical consequences of being an atheist.
How does their atheism shape their attitudes to science and the big questions of our time such as war and global warming? Is conflict between atheists and believers inevitable and necessary? Or, is this debate generating more heat than light?

Story producer: Dina Volaric

Story researcher: Dina Volaric

 

 

 

 

 

Story

Mike Shermer
The problem with the word atheism is that it has become very pejorative. In America, you may as well call yourself a child molester or a rapist or something, a communist.
Inga Clendinnen
I just a common or garden variety of atheist. A person who has found no reason to believe there is any supernatural force existing outside this world and directing it.
John Gray
I belong to no religion and I have no religious beliefs. I would define myself as a skeptic.
Phillip Adams
Atheism is nothing but everything. Atheism is now the fastest-growing faith ?or faithlessness it is growing even faster than Islam in the United States.
Narration
Whether theye called godless Communists, sceptics, secularists or humanists, atheists are raising their voices ?especially in the west. So who are they and what do atheists believe?
Who are the atheists?
Phillip Adams
I’ve been an atheist for 65 years and I didn’t even know the word for the first ten, I didn’t  know there was such a thing as atheists.
Narration
Broadcaster and writer Phillip Adams is arguably Australia best known atheist. Over the years he discussed religion with believers and non-believers of many kinds; on and off air. But he himself dismissed the Almighty at an early age.
Phillip Adams
When I was five I found I couldn’t believe in god. Not that I wouldn’t but I couldn’t. I tried very hard to believe in him because everyone around me believed in him. It was after all the family business of my father a Christian minister. But I found I just couldn’t find any sensible, rational reason or even irrational reason for believing in him. And it came, I have to tell you it was a great shock.
Phillip Adams
I asked one simple question. If everything had to have a beginning there had to be a creation, and if god was the beginning, who begun god? Now I asked that at four. When I passed this thought on to my grandmother she boxed my ears which made the question seem incredibly significant.
Inga Clendinnen
I not in a condition of doubt about this. I might have been in some doubt between the ages of perhaps 7 and 10, but after that Ie had no doubts at all.
Narration
Inga Clendinnen is a celebrated historian and writer whose interest in other peoples and times began early.
As a child her curiosity about other cultures led her to wonder about ?and to doubt ?the existence of God.
Inga Clendinnen
I early discovered that other people in other places had extraordinary ideas about religion.
As soon as you know that there are a variety of gods. That means that god becomes a problematical entity
When you consider the great range of different characters that gods are attributed. When you think of how the Aztecs defined their god. When you think that Aborigines didn define a god at all and that the dreaming creatures were pretty much like humans in their fallibilities and their courage and their lusts and their wants. As soon as you become aware of that, why you should project some old patriarchal figure with very strong views about women modesty and call it god, I don know, and I think that the question.
Mike Shermer
Well I was a born again Christian for a while and then I became something of a born again atheist. You know, going around knocking on those doors and telling people not to believe. And it sort of reminds me of that joke about what do you get when you cross a Jehovah Witness with an atheist: Someone who knocks on your door for no reason at all.
Narration
Michael Shermer is an American science writer and the editor of Skeptic magazine. He founded the Skeptics Society in the United States, a group dedicated to exposing and debunking pseudo-science.
Mike Shermer
In my case it was a change of milieu, different friends, a set of arguments, exposure to science and evolutionary theory, exposure to anthropology, to comparative world religions. You know you sort of put all that together.
I just remember one day taking out my little ichthus ?I had this little fish with the Greek symbols that stand for esus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.?I remember my girlfriend had given this to me and I just felt hypocritical wearing it, so I took it off and I guess that it, I guess I not a Christian any more.
As I got older I mellowed out more, and I decided at first that rationally agnostic is actually the right term.
When T H Huxley coined the term in 1869 he meant it to be, it not knowable.
Not,  not sure, could go this way, could go that way. I waiting for just a little more evidence you know.?That not what agnosticism is.
Agnosticism says it isn possible to know. So therefore no belief in god, because it isn possible to know. That agnosticism. I guess that probably what I am.
John Gray
I belong to no religion and I have no religious beliefs. I would define myself as a sceptic. I prefer not to think, to describe myself as an atheist or an agnostic because that is too restrictive a set of categories.
Narration
John Gray is one of the world most eminent and provocative political philosophers. Until recently he was Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics.
John Gray
Well sceptic isn one who has no beliefs. A sceptic is one who keeps belief to a minimum, and also doesn always insist on making a definite decision about which beliefs one has.
Narration
Gray philosophical framework is rigorous and uncompromising.
John Gray
I have no reason to think that human life goes beyond bodily death for example, so I take that as a basic assumption. I don believe that humans are especially privileged creatures in the universe in the way that theists think they are; that they have souls which other animals don have; that they have a kind of free will that other animals don have. So I do have a variety of beliefs about humans and their situation in the world, but I try to work with as few as I can get by with.
Why does atheism matter?
Narration
For more than a century atheists assumed that with the advance of science religions would die out ?but theye refused to go quietly. Indeed theye turned up the volume, to the alarm of the atheists.
Phillip Adams
We sit in a world now which is on the edge of total disaster because of raging crusades between Christian and Muslims. The hatreds between the major religions and within them have never been more intense.
Inga Clendinnen
Now there is clearly more aggression on the part of fundamentalist sects as we call them, whether theye Christian or Islamic or whatever. But I think there also a notable increase in aggression on the part of the great organised religions; a new readiness to intervene politically.
Narration
The turning point came at the start of the new millennium with an event that shook the world.
Mike Shermer
Since 9/11 the game has changed. It become clear that religions in the modern world can still be very dangerous. And it not that only religious people become fanatics. There are Marxist ideologists that become fanatics for example, but that isn who is doing that now. At the moment it extreme religionists that are causing the problem.
John Gray
Secularisation was expected to be, believed to be up until quite recently, up until maybe the last 10 or 20 years an almost inexorable almost unstoppable process all over the world.
Now it true that some countries have become somewhat more secular, for example. Ireland, is a lot more secular than it was 20 years ago. In Britain most people have long since ceased to be practising Christians.
But on the other hand the great secular parties, the mass movements and the great secular ideologies that existed like Marxism have really crumbled away and the vitality, the energy in the world, and also to some extent the violence in the world, is coming from religions. So wee really living it seems to me in a post secular period. And in a post secular period when religion has vitality you expect what in fact you find, which is a revival of atheism.
Narration
The revival is marked by a torrent of words. In books and the media atheists are taking on religion. Their best-known proponents are Richard Dawkins & Christopher Hitchens ?leaders of the New Atheists.
Richard Dawkins ?Root Of All Evil Part 1
The time has come for people of Reason to say enough is enough. Religious faith discourages independent thought, it divisive and it dangerous.
Christopher Hitchens ?Foreign Correspondent 7 November 2001
Civilisation consists of the leaving behind of the religious mentality ?of the mentality of faith, of the mentality of fanaticism, of the mentality of certainty, of the mentality of Holy Books and the Word of God ?civilisation begins where that stops, in all societies.
Phillip Adams
I don’t disagree with Dawkins arguments. I don’t disagree with Hitchins arguments. I disagree with the atmosphere of their arguments. I disagree with adding, with fanning the flames of bigotry on this planet by taking positions which are that strong.
John Gray
All these new atheists want to convert the world from belief to unbelief. And like Christian missionaries like Christian evangelists they believe that if they can alter human beliefs on a large scale then the world will be better.
In fact we have plenty of historical evidence from the Soviet Union and elsewhere that when attempts are made to eradicate religion, to eliminate religion from human life, to de-convert people from religious belief to some other type of belief or unbelief, the results are generally pretty disastrous.
Mike Shermer
The evangelical kind of atheism is not my thing because I not a strong atheist. I just don believe. I don think we can prove there is no god. I just don think it is necessary to do that.
Look if you encounter somebody whose deepest most cherished belief is god and you say, t all bullshit man, why do you believe this crap for??That the end of the conversation. It over. Youe lost them. You have no hope of converting them.
Inga Clendinnen
On the whole atheists seem to me peaceable beings because they have no vision that they have some understanding of what is truth, which they have a moral duty to impose on others.
Mike Shermer
The problem with the word atheism is that it become very pejorative. In America, you may as well call yourself a child molester or a rapist or something, a communist. That how atheists are treated. Which is why the New Atheist Movement is something of a political social movement, because it is our way of saying, ey look, wee not going to put up with that any more. You can't say things like atheists are not moral. That's wrong. You might as well say blacks are not moral, that women are not as smart ?that kind of thing. Well you can say those other things any more, and you can say that about atheists anymore.?BR>
What do atheists believe?
Narration
But what do the non-believers agree on? Their views are diverse and they don all answer to the name atheist, yet most do share a respect for science.
Mike Shermer
These are part of our science education program. We are pro-science, wee not an anti-religious group. Religion comes up a lot. That simply because it has been such a hot button issue in the last 10 years in America.
Narration
Shermer latest book defends Darwin theory of evolution by arguing the case against Intelligent Design.
Mike Shermer
But in the long run we want to be in favour of something, not just against. Wee not just against Big Foot, UFOs, psychic power. We address those things. What are we for? Wee for critical thinking, rationality, reason, science.
Mark Simkin
Forget what you were taught in school. According to this museum, the Earth is just 6,000 years old; there were dinosaurs on Noah Ark.
Ken Ham
We believe that Christians, those that believe in the Bible, are going to be more equipped to be able to defend their faith and uphold the authority of God word
Inga Clendinnen
When I think of the rise of the Intelligent Design people, the new Creationists, I am truly appalled because Charles Darwin is to me one of my great heroes. Here is a quiet reclusive country gentleman with a giant network of fellow amateur naturalists who had such respect for facts and for care in thinking that he could come up with a theory which shook the world. And which rendered intelligible to us this whole experienced world around us in a new and absolutely thrilling way.
Now I don want to see him not taught in the schools because of some dimwit who wants to go on believing in a six day creation and one day off routine. There is something to my mind obscene about that denial of human reason and its glory.
Phillip Adams
I thought of a new term about six months ago and I rather proud of it. Faitheist. And I think in some ways I a faitheist because I have faith in science. The same way as my religious friends have faith in god, I have faith in Einstein. I have faith in the great brains that have been trying to push back the darkness through rational thought.
Where do atheists find meaning?
Narration
But is faith in science and rationality enough? Do atheists have a sense of wonder? And, where do they find meaning?
Mike Shermer
People who don believe in god are no less spiritual than those who do. I don think religion has a monopoly on spirituality.
For me my spirituality comes from an awareness of something grander than me, than you than us, something beyond the material world; whatever you want to call that, the beauty of nature.
For me just like looking at a Hubble Space Telescope photograph of galaxies expanding you know that triggers that feeling of transcendence, like there is something so much grander than me. I am so unimportant you know. And that what religious people describe.
Inga Clendinnen
I find deep gratification in trying to understand the cultural world of people different from myself. And that keeps me very happy and it gives me a sense of discovery, and even occasional bliss.
So I suspect I have some of the pleasures of religion from my secular base. Some of the pleasures typically associated with religion.
Phillip Adams
I borrow the word numinous from the vocabulary of the religious because I think it a great word. The sense of the numinous is when you stand outside at night at the farm and you look up at a clear sky unpolluted by the metropolis, and youe looking at billions and billions and billions of stars. More suns out there than there are grains of sand in the Sahara.
And if youe not overcome by a sense of the numinous ?which is a mixture of awe and wonderment and dread ?there something wrong with you. It a great emotion. It the emotion I think that drives religion and philosophy and science.
Narration
Does nature or even science hold all the answers? Can a greater understanding of our universe guarantee human progress?
John Gray
Science cannot save humanity. Science is itself a human construction, a human achievement. It embodied in growing knowledge which gives humans greater power to do what they want to do, but science does not make humans wiser or more reasonable. It leaves them as much ruled by folly as they ever were.
However, science is indispensable. Science is the only way in which we can accommodate ourselves I think to climate change for example.
Why do we need science?
Narration
It climate change that is bringing atheists and some believers closer, as Christian ideas about life on earth are changing.
Phillip Adams
The Bible got us off to a bad start with a line of argument that said, it all here for you to use folks, enjoy. Very kind of god. And until very recently that was pretty much the hard line of the hard religious right.
Mike Shermer
There is a small branch of Christians, sort of Millenarians and apocalyptic-oriented, who say, t doesn really matter what we do with the earth; it all coming, like next Saturday Jesus is coming, look busy!?
Phillip Adams
For a long time the Bible bashers, the hard right, religious right, took that view and therefore climate change was a great big left wing conspiracy.
Suddenly that has changed and it changed emphatically. And although there not much of a hint in the good book that we have environmental responsibilities, people are finding it. And many of the most ardent campaigners now to do something about climate change come from religious organisations.
Mike Shermer
I think it more important that I understand and embrace religion because we need to work together to solve say the global warming problem, rather than my first trying to convert them all into secularism and then wel solve the global warming problem. That isn going to happen. Before global warming has its problems, OK, we need to address the problem now.
Does religion have a future?
Narration
So rather than confronting believers, many atheists are now accepting the human need for religion.
Phillip Adams
I think basically it may be a virus. Ie always hoped that the CSIRO would find a virus so people could be cured of religion. But short of that, it a fact of life and I think wee all got to try and get on a bit better with each other ?atheists with God-botherers, God-botherers with us.
John Gray
It seems almost self-evident to me on the basis of anthropology, literature, observation, that the human animal comes into the world with a variety of needs to which religions answer.
John Gray
That being the case one would then think that if one doesn believe in any supernatural creator one should accept religion is part of human beings, part of human life. It like it an impulse like or like the sexual need. Repressing it or attempting to eradicate it, trying to think of a world in which there is no religion would then seem to me like thinking of a world in which there is no sex.
Phillip Adams
The great problem in discovering that you don believe in god is you feel an intense, an all-pervasive sense of loneliness.
And when I found that I didn need to believe in him, I still felt a great sense of desolation and a high degree of fear.
Ie always understood the religious impulse, the great overwhelming fear of death, of annihilation which is a part of most of it, and a desperate need to find a meaning in a universe which really doesn have one.
If you want to know what happens after, think about what happened before; infinite, infinite nothingness. Wee all been dead. We live briefly, we go back to the same state. Why can people see it as simple as that?
Inga Clendinnen
I don think we can underestimate the need for explanations among humans. And some humans will have a greater desire for their daily lives to be made intelligible than others. Their search for meaning, to coin a phrase, is going to be more intense. I suspect this has got something to do with individual psychologies and individual childhoods.
Mike Shermer
I think it is probably safe to say religion will not fall into disuse any time soon, so the John Lennonesque, Imagine no religion, I think is probably not realistic in terms of our social needs.
We may even have something in our brains that hardwires us to believe in supernatural entities, whether it is animistic spirits, ghosts, demons, multiple gods, single gods the monotheistic - whatever it is I think we our brains lead us to interpret certain events in the world to be caused by hidden spirits of some kind.
John Gray
The question is, can the point of living as a human being be simply to see. That to say to look at the world to see it as it is or as close as we can get to seeing it as it is, the finding in it perhaps what is of beauty in it. Can humans adopt seeing as the meaning of their lives?
Phillip Adams
I still think wee at the end of the religious era. It may be, what we see now is the great storms before the lull.
I think in a hundred years almost all of the religious animosities wee experiencing now will be ancient history. I think they will ebb away from exhaustion.
And I still believe that as science advances, god recedes; I still believe that little by little the world is becoming excited by a new form of the numinous as they realise that we are learning more and more and more and more than the people who wrote the Bible and other good books could possibly have imagined.

ABC AandQ II

my views on a recent discussion panel at the ABC QANDA (questions and answers)

the first question raised referred to Kevin Rudd’s statement at the catholic churches youth day in Sydney, in which he said:

“Religion and Logic are not incompatible”

I was delighted by the response from David Marr, he said:

“ Religion and Logic are completely in-compatible; Religion is filled with logicalities that are impossible to square with any natural belief; I mean the catholic church has imported a dead body to be venerated in churches in Sydney ? ---- what could be logical about that????”

furthermore I liked his response to a statement made by a religious member of the discussion panel Angela Shanahan about sexuality and the church;

David Marr :

“ the churches refusal to understand the scientific basis of human sexuality causes immense distress and harm all around the world;-------- what would you say to a woman struggling to bring up her nine children in abject poverty, just because your god did not allow her to use a condom while she was repeatedly raped over the years?----- you people have no idea how unspeakably nasty and cruel you are towards your god’s creatures----- your lot tells people to be celibate and that they go to hell if they have sex, this is nothing but pure bigotry, cruelty and hatred ”

on the subject of **********ity and the suggestion by Angelica Shanahan that god loves all the people in the same way; David Marr replied that if that would be the case, he would let them also go into the church and take clergy positions; but such is your bigotry, you claim to love them and at the same time throw them out of the church;

further David Marr added: “the struggle between the church and science has always been won by science and will always be won by science, only logic will take us forward”

I agree with him entirely it took the church 300 years to accept that Galileo was right; whom they nearly burnt at the stake for his scientific work because it clashed with the totally illogical and stupid teaching of their perverse religion;

it seems inconceivable that even now, in the twenty-first century these criminals prevent some of our children to learn all about Darwin’s theory of evolution, in a vain attempt to prevent them to develop a logical mind; ---- there should be a law against such criminal stupidity

ABC Q&A

當有人反駁我這幾篇反宗教的文章的時候! 我倒很高興, 我希望他們能提出証據指出人類是上帝所製造的, 又或有上帝的存在, 又或聖經不是人寫的......等等!

在17/7/2008 晚上, 我看了ABC 的 A&Q 電視節目討論了, 因為最近的在悉尼的大型"World Youth Day", 教宗來到出巡,  神父孌童/強姦案的事件等等, 在城中熱爆了的話題! 

 

最吸引我的是 Mr. David Marr (An author, journalist and broadcaster) 和 Angela Shanahan (speciality is social and family affairs & She is a Catholic) 的言論了.   這些, 我要有時間才能節錄了, 但大家有興趣, 可以去以下看看:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2300527.htm

在節目中主要是討論了以下的問題:

With the pope in town and a record-breaking number of people attending masses around Sydney, punters will not be surprised that religion took centre stage in last night’s debate. The panellists (討論小組人員) faced a number of tricky questions about the role of faith in our society. Issues raised included the relationship between religion and science, paedophilia(孌童) and the church, the Catholic Church’s stance on **********ity (同性戀)and the place of religion in politics (if there is one). Punters had a range of views on the discussion. Some believed that certain panellists had conflated religion with compassion. Others wanted to see greater transparency when it came to the church’s internal investigation processes in dealing with allegations of child sex abuse by the clergy. Many were divided over the church’s refusal to accept gay Catholics, and wondered why secular governments begin parliament with the Lord’s Prayer. With ex-Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, on the panel there was also some discussion of foreign policy decisions made during the Howard era and much interest in Downer’s plans post-politics.

我對以上一些問題有以下的答案:

Q.  the relationship between religion and science.  宗教與科學的關係.

A.  宗教是一些神話, 一些由人創作出來的人物小說.  以宣傳信念來規限人類道德行為思想.

     科學是要有事實証據, 是要有跡可尋, 是要實驗辨証, 是要講求邏輯推論, 不可天馬行空.

Q. the Catholic Church’s stance on **********ity & many were divided over the church’s refusal to accept gay Catholics  為何同性戀者不可參加彌撒不可為教徒, 被教會拒諸門外呢?

A. 如果是由上帝創造了人類, 即同性戀者都是他的傑作吧????  為什麼會被教會拒諸門外?

     難道你可以說同性戀者是上帝製造出來懲罰現世紀人類的性愛氾濫嗎(我真聽過有人這樣說的!)?  如果真如此, 那豈不更攪笑??? 這樣的上帝恐怕是魔吧!!!! 

     (這點討論, 在討論會上更是精.....)

Q. the place of religion in politics (if there is one) & wondered why secular governments begin parliament with the Lord’s Prayer 澳洲聲稱自己是,非宗教政府, 為何在議會前必須祈禱?

A. 宗教入侵政治, 那不單只是澳洲, 在美國是最鮮明不過了.  我亦不久前聽了電台廣播, 講及了這在美的事實.

Q. paedophilia and the church & Others wanted to see greater transparency when it came to the church’s internal investigation processes in dealing with allegations of child sex abuse by the clergy.  對於教會內部調查, 發生在神職人員上的孌童 / 強姦 案, 要求透明度!

A. 在這些神職人員標榜著他們的聖潔操守時, 我們將深愛的孩童交付到他們身上!  那些受害人, 被教會隱瞞事情的真相而做成的長期折磨!!!

待續....

功夫

Norah Jones

一生所愛