JP's Corner of The Blogosphere

I have been lent a copy of Richard Dawkins’ book, “The God Delusion?”, and in this last few days I have finally found a few moments to start reading it. It will be interesting to see how strong his arguments are; Dawkins actually states in his preface to the book that if it works as he intends, “then religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.”  He alludes to the fact that there will be some who warn against reading the book, but I reason that if my faith is true then I should have nothing to be scared of.  For the record, although my bookshelf now contains a copy of “The Dawkins Delusion?” by Alister McGrath I intend to refrain from reading it until after I have finished Dawkins’ book.  That way, I will minimise any accusation that my thoughts and response to Dawkins may have been indoctrinated or contaminated. Well, so far, I have opened the book and put it down several times, and I am still not an atheist.  On some of those occasi...

Jesus Christ Is Risen! Halleluiah! And for the Anglicans… He Is Risen Indeed!  Halleluiah!   So what does this mean for you?  

Following on from my earlier post, I have decided to write a more serious post about the funding of hospital chaplaincy.  I have already had a couple of comments on my views, and I’d like to justify my take on the matter. I’ll start by making it clear that my reasoning for NHS funded chaplains stems from more than the fact that I am a Christian, and a churchgoer myself.  Judging by some of the comments I have picked up on (see, for example, the BBC Have Your Say ), there are a lot of ignorant people out there and that, perhaps more than anything else, is what has annoyed me. One of the arguments for cutting NHS funded chaplaincies is that ordinary vicars (and presumably leaders of other faiths) could go in to hospitals and visit members of their own communities and congregations instead.  I can’t give a definite viewpoint about other faith groups, but let me assure you that vicars already do that.  The majority of churchgoers will already have their own Chris...

As is often the case, I have just found myself with some time to kill on a station platform. Not because the train was late (for once) but because I was. Gutted. Thankfully, the sun was shining (the weather was sweet, yeah) and although there was no londonpaper to be found I did find a London Lite. I never read the Lite, but every rule has the odd exception. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found on the whole. I liked reading Apprentice Candidate Maj's claim that Sir Alan fired him because 'he had a better beard.' The text column made me smile, and I am tempted to visit Sweden again after learning that Stockholm has a hostel made from an old 747. I did question one piece of journalism though. I found a headline which read 'G20 victim's cop clash hour BEFORE he died.' Why the random emphasis on 'before?' In fact, why is the word 'before' necessary at all in this case? Surely it would have been much more newsworthy if the clash had occurred a...

Personally, I don't think that the NHS should fund treatment for lung cancer. It should be funded by smokers. After all, they are the ones who will probably need it more than anyone else. If they choose to smoke that's their choice, but why should I have to pay more in taxes because of their lifestyle choices? -- Sent from my mobile device