I’m Chris Jenkinson, the Academic Affairs Officer at the University of Manchester Students’ Union.
As an atheist (and paid supporter of the National Secular Society), the subject of religion fascinates me. This category is for issues related to religion and secularism, both in theory and in their impact on wider society.
Posted in Religion / secularism on Apr 24th, 2007
Interesting debate on the place of non-believers in modern society in the House of Lords (hat tip and interesting review). John Sentamu comes out with the new religious tactic of trying to define atheism as a religion, but this is my favourite bit:
Twenty-seven years ago I was chaplain to a young offenders remand centre, Latchmere [...]
Posted in Religion / secularism on Apr 22nd, 2007
Did you know that there are 5 hospitals in the UK run by the NHS exclusively dedicated to homoeopathic “treatment”? What is worse is that a significant proportion of the UK’s population (championed by the anachronism which is Charles Windsor) which believe that homoeopathy actually works, despite any supporting evidence. It, along with so-called alternative [...]
Posted in Religion / secularism on Apr 17th, 2007
Saturday’s Guardian carries an opinion piece from Nicholas Buxton entitled “Face to faith” where he touts out the now-frequent line from organised religions about how atheism is also a religious movement with a dogmatic approach to everything from science to social justice. He starts his piece with this rather extraordinary sentence: “Post-Enlightment critiques of religion [...]
Posted in Education, National politics, Religion / secularism on Apr 14th, 2007
Just thought a certain comment our Dear Leader made about education just about sums up how disastrously wrong New Labour’s focus is on this matter. So much for education, education, education. Schools are not meant to be “popular with parents”, they have a duty to the children. But on the other hand, children can’t vote, [...]
Posted in Religion / secularism on Apr 14th, 2007
With all this controversy about the supermosque proposal in London (which I don’t really care about, though I am slightly concerned about the source of funding), it might be easy to forget the increasing influence Christian creationist groups have in the US. They are fighting hard to open a “museum” detailing the literal Genesis creation [...]
Posted in Education, Religion / secularism, Student politics on Feb 12th, 2007
This week’s edition of Student Direct features the Islamic Society on its Societies page. The article is written by one Walead Quhill who stood for Life Sciences secretary in the Student Union council elections in 2006, and thankfully he wasn’t elected given he doesn’t seem to accept evolution as a valid scientific theory (or indeed [...]
Posted in Religion / secularism on Jan 26th, 2007
According to Christian Today (I’m not a regular reader, it has to be said), the Catholic church is once again lobbying for the reintroduction of a direct reference to the role of God in the formation of Europe as a continent. Considering the reliance of the Catholic church on a centuries-old document one would think [...]
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