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People Are Not Born Gay, Affirms Royal College of Psychiatrists

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Coverage of Eurovision winner shows ‘cult of relativism’

Coverage of Eurovision winner shows ‘cult of relativism’

The media’s portrayal of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest winner as female – when he is actually male – shows today’s “spreading cult of relativism”, according to a newspaper columnist.

Brendan O’Neill, who is an atheist, said that just because Austria’s winning contestant Conchita Wurst wants to be referred to as “she” when performing in a dress, “does that mean we all have to comply with this rather strange demand, no questions asked?”

“Does objective reality – the fact that there are biological differences between men and women, and that the vast majority of humankind decides whether someone is a man or woman by those biological attributes – count for nothing in the face of one person’s wish to be known as something he is not?”, he posed.

Views, Visions and Values.: Words for the Wise, Discipleship

Views, Visions and Values.: Words for the Wise, Discipleship: 2 Timothy 1 New American Standard Bible (NASB) Timothy Charged to Guard His Trust 1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the...

Revealed: How green zealots gagged professor who dared to question global warming

• Professor Lennart Bengtsson's study was rejected and branded 'harmful' 
• This sparked accusations that scientists are censoring findings 
• The 79-year-old is one of the world’s most eminent climate scientists
• Last week, he resigned from the Global Warming Policy Foundation's advisory council

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2631477/Revealed-How-green-zealots-gagged-professor-dared-question-global-warming.html#ixzz3230IMdyC
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Ground-breaking climate research that was controversially ‘covered up’ suggests the rate  that greenhouse gases are heating the Earth has been significantly exaggerated, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Renowned Swedish scientist Professor Lennart Bengtsson of Reading University was at the centre of an international row last week when his study was rejected by a leading science journal after it was said to be ‘harmful’ and have a ‘negative impact’. 

The rejection sparked accusations that scientists had crossed an important line by censoring findings that were not helpful to their views.

Prof Bengtsson further claims one of the world’s most recognised science publications also decided not to use his research findings, because, he said, they were considered to be ‘uninteresting’.

Prof Bengtsson’s critical paper was co-authored with four colleagues. It focused on the growing gap between real temperatures and predictions made by computers.

In a recent key report, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated the ‘climate sensitivity’ – the amount the world will warm each time carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere double – was between 1.5C and 4.5C.

According to Prof Bengtsson’s paper, it is more likely to be 1.2C to 2.7C. The implications of the difference are huge. If the planet is warming half as fast as previously thought  in response to emissions, many assumptions behind targets for reducing emissions and green energy subsidies are wrong.

The subsidies in turn have led to a significant increase in consumers’ power bills. Last week, it was revealed Environmental Research Letters had rejected his paper because it would be seized on by climate ‘sceptics’ in the media. 

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Fear: Professor Bengtsson of the University of Reading said the pressure was so great he feared for his health

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Established: The Global Warming Policy Foundation was set up by former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson and is regarded as being part of the 'sceptic camp' when it comes to climate change

Later the journal said it had rejected the paper because the reviewers questioned the paper’s methods.

But another journal turned it down without it even being sent out for peer review. Prof Bengtsson says this only normally happens if the editors believe the work is ‘trivial’ or ‘unimportant’.

Prof Bengtsson, 79, is one of the world’s most eminent climate scientists. Last week he was forced to step down from the council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the sceptical think-tank  set up by Lord Lawson.

 

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He was accused by former friends and colleagues of ‘crossing into the deniers’ camp’.
Prof Bengtsson said the pressure was so great he had feared for his health. He said he had been stunned by the ‘emotional’ reaction to his joining the GWPF.

‘The way some in the climate community behaved shocked me,’ he said. ‘It was as if I had been married for many years, and then discovered my wife was a completely different person.’

Prof Bengtsson said the paper  was now being considered by a third journal, after some revisions. But  he had asked for his name to be to  be removed in the wake of the row over the GWPF.

Is this the tipping point for climate McCarthyism?

Some climate scientists have long been warning that the planet is approaching a tipping point. Future historians may one day reflect that we reached it last week.

If they do, they won’t mean that this was when global warming became unstoppable. Instead, they’ll be pointing to the curious affair of Professor Lennart Bengtsson of Reading University as the moment that the rigid, authoritarian campaign to shut down debate on climate science and policy finally began to unravel.

For several years, this newspaper has been at the forefront of efforts to publicise the highly inconvenient truth that real world temperatures have not risen nearly as fast as computer models say they should have, thanks to the unexpected ‘pause’ in global warming which has so far lasted some 17 years.

As Prof Bengtsson has now discovered, anyone who draws attention to this will be vilified  and accused of ‘denying’ supposedly ‘settled’ science. 

The dogma – the insistence, as Bengtsson put it yesterday, that ‘greenhouse gas emissions are leading us towards the end of the world in the not-too-distant future’ – dominates many aspects of our lives, from lessons taught in primary schools to the vast and rising ‘green’ energy subsidies on household fuel bills. 

To be sure, Bengtsson’s treatment is not encouraging. As a former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, he is one of the world’s most eminent experts.

Yet last week, he was accused of having joined the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan and the Flat Earth Society, and of peddling ‘junk science’ – all because he accepted a place on the council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. 

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Some climate scientists have long been warning that the planet is approaching a tipping point. Future historians may one day reflect that we reached it last week

So great was the pressure, he feared for his health, and decided to resign. The most cursory look at the GWPF’s website makes clear  it does not ‘deny’ any aspect of  the science of global warming, nor that this has happened in response to human activity. 

Its focus (as its name rather suggests) is on policy, where it has indeed been critical  of the approach thus far. But for the climate enforcers, that was enough. Bengtsson said: ‘I was labelled a heretic. I felt as if I was dealing with the medieval church.’

It also emerged that a paper he co-authored, arguing that temperatures would rise by  only half as much as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims, had been rejected by a prestigious journal  – after an anonymous reviewer said publishing it would be ‘harmful’ to the environmental cause, because it was bound to be reported by media sceptics. 

Nevertheless, there are grounds for optimism. Perhaps it was simply that a man of Bengtsson’s stature who is still producing research at the age of 79 deserves respect, but the story was reported – not favourably, from the enforcers’ point of view – around the world. It even made the front page of The Times.

Some of those who deplored the ‘climate McCarthyism’ that Bengtsson experienced, such as Prof Judith Curry of Georgia Tech in Atlanta, have received similar treatment for saying global warming may not pose the imminent threat so many want us to fear. 

Others, however, were from the very centre of the climate science mainstream, such as Prof Mike Hulme of King’s College, London. 

He condemned scientists who ‘harassed’ those with whom they disagreed until they ‘fall into line’. 

But if this really was a tipping point, it will be because the areas of uncertainty in climate science are simply too big to be ignored: claiming the debate is over does not make this true. 

As former Nasa scientist Roy Spencer put it: ‘We might be seeing the death throes of alarmist climate science. 

They know they are on the ropes, and are pulling out all the stops in a last-ditch effort to shore up their crumbling storyline.’

So here’s a question. Like Bengtsson, this newspaper believes global warming is real, and caused by CO2. 

It’s also clear that, thus far, the computer models have exaggerated its speed. 

So what exactly are we and others who hold such views denying?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2631477/Revealed-How-green-zealots-gagged-professor-dared-question-global-warming.html#ixzz3230V2F2w
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C of E endorses Stonewall materials in new guidance

C of E endorses Stonewall materials in new guidance

Children in Church of England schools could be given sex education materials provided by gay rights groups, according to new guidance launched by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Critics have raised concerns that within the 72 page guidance, produced by the Church of England, Stonewall is mentioned more than Jesus Christ.

“I think a lot of C of E schools are going to think that balance is wrong”, said Simon Calvert of The Christian Institute.

Christian

“Bullying is evil and Church schools should tackle it in a distinctively Christian way”, he explained.

Views, Visions and Values.: Yet for this reason I found mercy, The Difference ...

Views, Visions and Values.: Yet for this reason I found mercy, The Difference ...: 1 Timothy 1:15-16 New American Standard Bible (NASB) 15 It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ...

Views, Visions and Values.: Equal Marriage : Just Plain Wrong: A Christian Per...

Views, Visions and Values.: Equal Marriage : Just Plain Wrong: A Christian Per...: Today, both in the United Kingdom and other Countries, we face the challenge in the name of Equality and Tolerance to allow same sex ...

Council tells churches they must conduct gay marriages

Council tells churches they must conduct gay marriages

Churches

Simon Calvert of The Christian Institute said the Council’s letter shows the need for churches to know their legal rights.

He said, “there is no legal reason whatsoever for churches to stop holding marriages in the ways they always have. They are free to do so”.

The Christian Institute has produced a new free legal guide which gives reassurance that churches are well within their rights to say no to same-sex marriages.

Bureaucrats

“The behaviour of Essex County Council goes to show why churches need to know their legal rights, because bureaucrats who want to push for gay marriage will try and go beyond the law”, warned Mr Calvert.

He added: “We want to be clear that Christians still have the right to express their belief that marriage is between a man and woman. Christians have every reason to be confident and bold in upholding the truth about marriage.”

“This is just the kind of thing we feared would happen,” said Colin Hart, Campaign Director of the Coalition for Marriage, which spearheaded opposition to the introduction of same-sex marriage.

A litmus test for orthodoxy

A litmus test for orthodoxy

The Evangelical Alliance’s decision to remove Steve Chalke’s organisation Oasis from membership raises the question of what defines an evangelical today. Justin Brierley reflects on why homosexuality has become the latest tipping point.

‘So where do you stand on homosexuality?’ asked the church leader I had met only five minutes ago.

We were attending a media event, and had reached the wine-and-canapés-hobnobbing part that inevitably follows. It’s the kind of question which, in any other context, would seem vastly inappropriate from someone you had just been introduced to. ‘Terrible weather we’ve been having...so what do you think about gay sex?’

There is an unwritten (and slightly depressing) rule in some evangelical circles that the quickest way to ascertain if a person is ‘sound’ is to find out what they think about sexuality. We live in a world of ever-increasing categorisation, and homosexuality seems to have become the de-facto crunch issue that can potentially mark you in or out of the evangelical fold.

Christian feminism is not an oxymoron

Christian feminism is not an oxymoron

"THAT is totally untenable!" my friend yelled over the party music. "You can't be a feminist and a Christian." She was a staunch atheist, and spent the evening telling me, as many have done before, that Christianity is unavoidably and embarrassingly patriarchal. She urged me to throw off the shackles of my misogynistic faith.

I am surprised at how frequently this happens at feminist gatherings. Regularly I find myself the only Christian present, treated like an anomaly in need of conversion to fully fledged, religion-free feminism.

Often it takes me a while sheepishly to admit my faith in these circles. Finally I pipe up that actually I do "believe in that stuff", between the tirades of "God is dead" and "Religion is the oppressor!" that usually emanate from the microphone. In years of attending feminist seminars and marches, one thing has become clear: you are about as likely to meet another Christian there as you would a vegan at a meat-feast buffet.

Occasionally I have found my faith welcomed by fellow feminists. But, more often than not, the confession of Christianity has been met with the sort of facial expression you would pull when opening an awkwardly disappointing Christmas present.

Can You Discern the Spirit Behind the Gospel of Reason?

Can You Discern the Spirit Behind the Gospel of Reason?

While many politicians—including President Obama—are embracing the National Day of Prayer, at least two members of Congress, as well as state and local officials, are swinging their support to the atheistic camp in the name of reason.

Indeed, Congressman Michael Honda, D-Calif., and Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., are celebrating the National Day of Reason, which bills itself as an “observance promoting a more inclusive alternative to the religiously focused, government-sponsored National Day of Prayer.”

It doesn’t take a lot of spiritual discernment to figure out what group is behind this one. You guessed it: the American Humanist Association. This irreverent institution has worked hard to encourage elected officials to proclaim May 1 as the National Day of Reason, flying in the face of the political correctness for which they typically strive.

7 Inspiring Leaders and the Traits That Made Them Great

7 Inspiring Leaders and the Traits That Made Them Great

John Maxwell says everything rises and falls based on leadership. I agree.

But leadership was not something taught when I went to the University of Florida. I’ve had to learn it the hard way, mostly by trial and error. Here are seven traits of leadership I’ve learned by watching leaders who exhibited them:

1. Vision. This is the ability to see the future. The Bible says without vision, the people perish. I’ve learned to focus on one thing and simply work in that direction when I didn’t have any idea what do. Somehow, a way is found.

Christian Brits protected less than other religious believers

Christian Brits protected less than other religious believers

Christians are afforded less protection for their beliefs by the state compared to those who practise other religions, a new survey suggests.

Of the 2000 people surveyed exclusively for The Telegraph, nearly half thought British believers had less protection.

This figure rises to 62 per cent among those who identify as non-practising Christians.

Criticism

The poll also reveals that over half of the respondents – 56 per cent – believe Britain is a Christian country.

The survey comes amidst criticism from a group of atheists who lambasted David Cameron after he called Britain a Christian country during Downing Street’s Easter reception.

But several ministers have backed Cameron’s comments including Attorney General Dominic Grieve who said atheists who claim that Britain is not a Christian nation are “deluding themselves