Just a quick question for now. Isn’t it nice to know that provincial Conservative party leader John Tory’s plan to fund faith - based schools with public money will fund a school like Grenville Christian College? More to come.

"With a love like that,
You know you sho-o-ould
Be Glad!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah Ye-ah."

Lyrics from She Loves You by The Beatles.

The Globe and Mail asks the question, "Have you experienced a crisis of faith?"

Ongoing Final poll results can be found here.

It would seem that a good number of respondents have indicated that they have never had any faith. Might they be atheists? It's also interesting to note that as many people have lost their faith as those that have kept faith.

* I'll update this entry when the poll closes.

Update: The poll closed with a total of 9280 respondents. Of that total 60% either lost their faith or never had faith to begin with. On the other hand, 39% either found faith again after losing it or had never lost their faith. To summarize, that's 60% non-believers versus 39% believers. Based on the typical reader of the Globe, it's no surprise that the non-believers outnumber the believers by such a large margin. I would suggest that the Globe has a highly literate and educated readership and that this poll supports the notion that highly educated people are less likely to be believers in the supernatural and are likely to consider themselves atheists, agnostics and humanists. And I'm glad to see that the pollsters didn't use the term "atheism" and lump atheism in with religions like another recent poll on the subject.



It’s only in the last couple of years that it has occurred to me that I am an atheist. But thinking about it, I have always been an atheist without formally recognizing and labeling myself as such. As a child my Dad made me go to church with him even though Mum never went. I don’t have any specific memories of being in church back then, only a general sense that I hated being there, stuck in a dark, musty smelling old building, sitting on hard uncomfortable seats, squirming for an hour or so in uncomfortable clothes, listening to some old man in robes talking in religious mumbo-jumbo about something in which I wasn’t the least bit interested. (I’m sure that my lifelong dislike of wearing a suit has its roots in being forced to endure those Sunday mornings in church).

From today's Star:

Tory vow of tax dollars for faith-based schools will 'define' election

and from Dalton himself:

"I don't think that Ontarians believe that improvement or progress is defined as inviting children of different faiths to leave the publicly funded system as we know it and go to their own schools," he added.

Well, the day is finally here - Benny's in town. In a somewhat less than positive article, the Toronto Star reports on Pastor Benny Hinn's Toronto Miracle Crusade that happens today and tomorrow: Miracle man lands under a cloud. Next up is a stinging CBC Fifth Estate exposé that suggests, to put it mildly, that Mr. Hinn's Miracle Crusade is not without controversy: Do You Believe In Miracles?

Regarding Mr. Hinn's miracle healing powers, the Fifth Estate's investigators observed that:

After the prayers, songs and preaching from the charismatic minister, Hinn tells the crowd he is getting a message from God that people in the audience are being cured, and he asks them to come to the stage. The Fifth Estate used hidden cameras to show staff screening audience members coming forward, ensuring none with obvious physical ailment get near Hinn.

At approximately 40 minutes in length, you can watch our pal Benny in action in the CBC Fifth Estate exposé here. If you're not disgusted by the methods employed by this snake oil salesman after watching the documentary, well ...



The numbers associated with the giant red star Mira and its tail are simply beyond imagination. From the Toronto Star:

This tail, spanning a stunning distance of 13 light-years, was detected behind the star Mira, located 350 light-years from Earth in the "whale" constellation Cetus.

Here's a NASA graphic that puts the length and age of Mira's tail into a human evolutionary context.

According to The Star article, the debris tail from Mira's deterioration contains oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. NASA scientists suggest that this debris may provide the seed for the creation of new planets:

Like other red giants, Mira will lose a large fraction of its mass in the form of gas and dust. In fact, Mira ejects the equivalent of the Earth's mass every 10 years. It has released enough material over the past 30,000 years to seed at least 3,000 Earth-sized planets or 9 Jupiter-sized ones.

So, I wonder, what's God got to do with it? I'd be interested to hear how Young Earth creationists come up with a biblical explanation for this bit of science.

I too will be afk for a few days, so there won't be much action from me round there parts. But I've recently rediscovered Eric Hoffer's brilliant analysis of mass movements titled The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements after a 4 years of neglect (first year sociology, forgot about it since) and will leave two quotes to consider while I'm away.

Thanks to GIFS.

It really says a lot about the society we live in when a man like Benny Hinn can build a personal empire through taking advantage of those that have put their trust in him. Check out the Benny Hinn Ministries website. Slick or what? The site has more of a corporate feel than that of a religious organization. But here's the good news, next Friday, August 17 / 07, Benny’s coming to your town for one of his Miracle Crusades at the ACC. From the Toronto Miracle Crusade page:

Toronto is the economic center of the Greater Golden Horseshoe, a large urbanized region of 8.1 million people and one that spreads outwards from Toronto and the western shores of Lake Ontario.

Mr. Hinn must drool at the prospect of all that potential money to be made in the "economic center" of Ontario.

As indicated in an ad that appears in the Saturday August 11 / 07 Toronto Star, "All seats are FREE and open to the General Public!". Too good to be true? You bet! I guess the good pastor figures he can afford to give the seats away as he’ll bilk enough money out of the miracle seekers to cover his costs and turn a healthy profit. Speaking of shady financial dealings, Mr. Hinn has been blacklisted by Ministry Watch, an organization dedicated to the transparency of church financial dealings. Mr. Hinn and his ilk disgust me!