cramped pies

Is god good? Christians the world over fall over themselves professing the "love of god" repeating the expression from the gospel of John that "God is love". Other cultures frequently use the expression "god is good" in day to day greetings. I was contemplating this expression whilst hauling my 25kg of paragliding kit up the side of a very steep hill the other day and wondering how anyone could actually believe this without serious amounts of credulity. First of all, it is my assertion that God does not exists at all, and that if he does he most certainly is not good. In order to back up that assertion lets examine the evidence: The bible: I was a student of the bible for well over 30 years and whilst I wasn't the most diligent student quite a bit of it has stuck. As a result I feel I'm adequately qualified to make the following summary. God starts off OK, creating everything and all (good I guess), 1 but things start to g...

When I was a Jehovah's Witness, I used to call on peoples homes and ask them to open their mind to the possibility that maybe their current beliefs about our existential existence were incorrect. I never got very far but often amongst themselves JW's bemoan how closed minded people are. I've since learned that this is actually very normal, psychologists have studied the phenomenon in detail. You can read all about it on the source of all true and accurate knowledge Wikipedia, here:  Selective Exposure Theory . Since changing my mind about god and creation I've experienced the effect myself quite profoundly as now I find it difficult to read material supporting creation/god whereas previously it was quite the opposite. In order to swim against the in-built tide of my psychological condition, I have decided to re-read some of the material the JW organisation release in favour of the creationist view. I will post my reaction to the material here in a later blog. If...

I used to belong to the Jehovah's Witness religion. At the time I believed that the suffering and death that mankind experiences were temporary, and that at some future time God would bring back to life all those who had died and provide them with eternal happy life. This or something like this is a central tenet of a number of mono-theistic religions and its something I've been recently dwelling on. Jehovah's Witnesses teach that God is allowing these things (suffering/death) to continue for the time being as part of his plan to vindicate his name due to a slur against it by the devil. Gods allowing of these dreadful things is OK because in the future the bad effects of them are undone. Whilst I was taken in with this logic for most of my life it was only after allowing myself to question the fallibility of religion and God that I really realised just how flawed and grotesque this argument is. Allow me to illustrate in a way that may be easier for even practising C...

I still can't find any official response on the web from Greenpeace regarding the movie Cowspiracy. They did however send me an email so I am posting it here. For ardent vegans this response may be a little lame, however for me it makes sense and is in agreement with my earlier posts about Pragma Veganism. Thank you for taking the time to get in touch. Greenpeace encourages initiatives like Cowspiracy that expose the destructive side of the intensive livestock industry and its negative impacts on our planet. Our US office declined to take part in this project as they felt sure our position would be misrepresented, but sadly it looks as if our reasons for not taking part have been misrepresented instead. I hope you don’t mind if I explain how we are working on this issue for you, as this was not mentioned in the documentary at all which has led to a lot of misconceptions. First,  please rest assured that Greenpeace does not accept any donations from business or gove...

If you were to ask me how I would describe my political views I would say that I am a socialist. By this I mean that I am happy to sacrifice some of my own personal wealth if it means that someone else who is less fortunate than me can be a little better off. I also care deeply about the rights of minorities and those otherwise oppressed or without voice. This includes things like animal rights and environmental issues. It also seems to me that all politicians want to talk about is "the economy", and economy related issues when to me there are much more important things to worry about. Like global warming, constant wars, degradation of democracy, the advancement of the police state etc etc. What point is a healthy economy if the would is about to descend into war, or be destroyed by the environmental changes? Your healthy economy will quickly descend into an unhealthy one as floods of immigrants leave their war-torn or flooded homes. Also any economy these days is deepl...

This is part two of a discussion of pragma-veganism. For part one go here. There are some people that are "ultra capitalist" (or just selfish for short). These people don't care about other people, and they certainly don't care about animals. They will do whatever they want and to hell with the consequences to others. Another category of people are happy to sacrifice all their personal enjoyment in the belief of some higher cause. Most people however sit somewhere in between these two extremes. They would like to help others and care about animal welfare, but they don't want to sacrifice too much of their own enjoyment in the process. I believe that this group of people can make a substantial positive impact on the environment by making small changes to their diet. Each person should try as many steps as they can, if you feel that your enjoyment of life is suffering too much, take a step (or half a step) back until your happy again. Step 1. Stop eating red m...

The world is in serious trouble. There is only a finite amount of resources but an ever increasing amount of people. Oh and animals are being treated terribly too. Whilst it is basic science that eating meat is not an efficient way to feed people. However it isn't immediately obvious HOW inefficient it is. I watched Cowspiracy a few days ago and the figures shocked even me. According to that film "Livestock and their byproducts account for ... 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions." The guardian #2  says that going vegetarian almost halves your CO 2 footprint and going vegan reduces it again by another 30% (ish). The article is stressing how bad beef is saying it "requires 28 times more land, 11 times more water and ... (releases) five times more climate-warming emissions (than pork or chicken). When compared to (vegetables), the impact of beef per calorie is even more extreme, requiring 160 times more land and producing 11 times more greenhouse gases...