Todaytonight – Hillsong Churches (Mercy Ministries) abuse of women

“A SECRETIVE ministry with direct links to Gloria Jean’s Coffees and the Hillsong Church has been deceiving troubled young women into signing over months of their lives to a program that offers scant medical or psychiatric care, instead using Bible studies and exorcisms to treat mental illness. Government agencies such as Centrelink have also been drawn into the controversy, as residents are required to transfer their benefits to Mercy Ministries. There are also allegations that the group receives a carers payment to look after the young women.” – The Sydney Morning Herald, March 17th 2008

Todaytonight Report:

 

And various commentary below:

They sought help, but got exorcism and the Bible
Ruth Pollard, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 17, 2008

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/03/16/1205602195048.html

Have you been influenced or impacted by the work of Mercy Ministries? Has Mercy Ministries been helpful or harmful to you? Have you sponsored or provided funds or support for Mercy Ministries? We’d like to hear from you, please comment below.

Why do people laugh at creationists?

Creationism is the belief that a god or gods created the world in the original form that they are today where the existence of the deity is presupposed. It is likely that if you are a Christian (particularly if you are evangelical) that you will be a creationist, but it is not necessarily so. The belief of creationism comes from a person who accepts a religious text or instruction as absolutely true and inerrant and does not have a care for evidence to the contrary, since the position of the religious text must be completely, absolutely and literally true. The Abrahamic God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is understood to have created the world in six days approximately 6,000 years ago. We know from observable and testable evidence that this is absolutely not true, although there are some Christian organisations who are intent on spreading lies and propaganda.

There are Christians such as the notable evolutionary biologist Kenneth Miller, who accept the theory of Evolution (that modern species have and are being continually evolved from prior species) and the cosmological evidence that dates the earth at 4.5 billion years old. The Catholic church even accepts the Theory of Evolution (Theory in scientific nomenclature means “collection of facts”). However for fundamentalist Christians there is an interesting dilemma. If Christians accept the scientific evidence, then this completely debunks the entire Genesis account. If Genesis is wrong, then the rest of the bible may as well be wrong too then. In reality, Christians all pick and choose the nice bits from the bible while ignoring the nasty bits which amongst other things proves that we don’t get our morals from the bible. Creationism was officially rebranded as “Intelligent Design” in 1987 after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively banned the teaching of Creationism. It’s still the same junk and debunking the creationist and “ID” points is so easy and fun I’ll save it for another article.

Creationists are known for using logical fallacies and psychologically manipulative techniques such as straw men (knocking down an abstract of an argument and pretending to ‘win’), arguments from ignorance (“I don’t understand so God must have done it”), appeals to authority (“respect your church leaders and do what you’re told!”) and appeals to emotion. Since deconverting from fundamentalist Christianity last year, I have used all of the above techniques (often without knowing why) as well as false arguments and apologetics to debate. Many other rational freethinkers and ex-Christian’s have put together their own excellent debunking of creationist propaganda. I would like to introduce you to a YouTuber called, “Thunderf00t”. A scientist with a knack for creating easy to understand videos. There are others who I will feature in future articles, but for now please sit back, get a cup of tea and enjoy the first ten videos from his collection, “Why do people laugh at creationists?”.

Part 1

“The Worldwide flood could have filled the earth in about five minutes”
“We can’t find water anywhere else in our solar system”
“Our planet has a perfect spherical orbit around our star”

Part 2

“The moon fits over the sun so perfectly that it makes it possible to observe the surface of the sun”
“Laboratory experiments show that hydrogen cannot turn into any other element, so we know that chemical evolution is impossible”

Part 3

“…fragments of this meteor hitting most of the north and south pole freezing most of the mammoths standing up.” – Kent Hovind

Part 4

“Well, theoretically one drop of water could cover the entire earth if it was spread really thin” – Kent Hovind

Part 5

“Pre-flood things were different, I think there was a canopy of water which increased air pressure that makes animals grow larger” – Kent Hovind

“If the bible is right and the earth had a canopy of water overhead, which the bible clearly teaches, this canopy of water would filter out quite a bit of radiation” – Kent Hovind

Part 6

“Water stops x-rays” – Kent Hovind

Part 7

“The bible indicates we started off stronger and are getting weaker and dumber”

Part 8

Evolution is Random Chance! (no, it isn’t)

Part 9

The divine watchmaker (you know there was a builder if you see a building, so if you see a ‘creation’ you know there was a ‘creator’)

Part 10

Our universe is fine tuned for life / our planet is ‘just right’ / “Maybe there’s a fine tuner!”

More parts will be posted in another article. Thank you, Thunderf00t for these excellent resources. If you have a YouTube account, I highly recommend subscribing to see his videos, they are all very high quality and the more recent ones (the ones I’ve posted here are ten of the oldest) are even clearer still.

Dan Dennett – Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes

“In this video, starting with the simple tale of an ant, science writer and philosopher Dan Dennett unleashes a devastating salvo of ideas, making a powerful case for the existence of memes – thought concepts that are literally alive” – TED Talks

Memes are thought concepts that spread from person to person in an organic way like a virus. Fashionable trends can be thought of as memes and the relative success of an individual who carries certain memes can enhance the survivability of the meme for that successful trait.

Daniel Dennet goes on to explain how a certain parasitic fluke can take over the brain of an ant and manipulates the ant’s brain; using the unfortunate ant as a personal “all terrain vehicle” for the parasite. The parasite drives it’s host up to the top of a blade of grass in order to be eaten so that the controlling parasite can continue it’s life cycle in a sheep or a cow’s stomach.

He goes on to make the arguement for the implication that it is not necessary for the meme to be a positive benefit for the host in order for it to spread.

Source: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_dennett_on_dangerous_memes.html