Gary Haran.com

There are plenty of ways to get people to give you money for a “Ministry”. This one which predates the year 2000 used the y2k bug to scare the money out of gullible pockets.

After the year 2000 went by without a hitch (save a few hangovers) these con artists turn to the mayan calendar to scare the bejeesus out of everyone.

I feel sorry for those who get caught in those shenanigans. We have so many other ways to use money to make this world a better place to live in. Sadly these con artists might be too good at what they do to let any of their victims any time to think. Fear is the tool of the devil.

I was looking forward to seeing Alister McGrath on The Hour. I’m a big fan of Dawkins but I’d pay good money if someone could shut him up with reasonable discourse.

Viewers of the show had claimed that McGrath was the man to bring down Dawkins. After all he was once an atheist and now is a priest. He even wrote two books attacking Dawkins. Aside from half decent rethoric McGrath has nothing on Dawkins.

“God is more exciting than I thought.” - Alister McGrath

After watching the show I felt the segment with this guy was an utter waste of time for me. I was looking for intellectual discourse, a reasoned argument why God could be believable. All I got was empty rethoric and a man calling Dawkins grumpy. Because of that I’d like to state that McGrath is half the man Dawkins is.

I’m reading the latest book by Christopher Hitchens in which he tells the world how religion poisons everything. It’s hard to disagree when you look around you.

Just last month a girl was stoned to death by her own family. Her offense was to fall in love with the wrong man and betray the beliefs of her people by accepting her lover’s faith.

This isn’t the first account of hurtful behavior from family members towards someone of their own family who “chose” to love someone of a different religion. This radio show prank has a girl tell her Jewish parents that she’s now going out with a Italian of Christian faith. The parents treathen to pull her out of school and kill themselves if she doesn’t stop that relationship immediately. If this wasn’t a joke it would be construed as abusive guilt tripping by anyone. As the joke escalates the father says that he’ll go to jail for killing him.

We call ourselves civilized yet we are unable in our modern societies to point the finger at this xenophobic behavior. We just sit quietly saying nothing like that policeman did in the videos of the stoning (I’d link to it but youtube had to remove the content due to it’s graphic nature).

As accountability is waived because no one dares say that religion itself is the problem I can’t help but hope that the new enlightenment is near. Religion is the problem, not the solution.

Yesterday when I saw Digg post regarding a CNN Anti Atheist Hit Piece I decided to write to CNN and protest.

To my surprise this is the response I got.

Dear I-Reporter,

On behalf of CNN, please accept our sincere thanks for your I-Report submission during our memorial coverage of the tragic death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. Thanks to the many submissions from our viewers, our coverage carried the personal touch that came from his vast and personal outreach to his many fans. Our programming effort was a huge success, and you are part of the reason for that.

Again, we sincerely thank you and hope you will continue to send relevant submissions to us at http://www.cnn.com/exchange/ireports/topics/

Best wishes,

CNN Public Information

The protest I sent to CNN was the first time I ever contacted them. I did not follow the memorial coverage of Steve Irwin.

Am I the only one who received this response in error?