New Humanities College in London launched by famed atheists

Famed atheists Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling are part of a team of British academic elites who plan to launch a new college to rival top British tertiary institutions like Cambridge and Oxford.

The New College of the Humanities will be based in central London and will offer degrees in English, philosophy, history, economics and law starting from September 2012.

Richard Dawkins, who wrote the bestseller The God Delusion, will teach evolutionary biology and a required course on science literacy, while AC Grayling, who wrote The Good Book: The Humanist Bible, a manifesto for secular humanists, will serve as the college’s first master.

Other academics who will teach at the college include historians Sir David Cannadine and Niall Ferguson, former Oxford professor of poetry Sir Christopher Ricks and psychologist Steven Pinker.

“Our priorities at the college will be excellent teaching quality, excellent ratios of teachers to students, and a strongly supportive and responsive learning environment,” said Grayling.

"Our students will be challenged to develop as skilled, informed and reflective thinkers, and will receive an education to match that aspiration."

Students at New College will be required to take core courses in three areas: Science Literacy, Logic and Critical Thinking, and Applied Ethics. They will be taught on a ratio of 1 lecturer to 10 students, and receive one-on-one tutorials. The students will receive an undergraduate degree in their field of study, and also receive a Diploma of New College. Creators of the college describe the education offered as “new concept” but it does not come cheaply. Annual tuition will cost £18,000, or approximately double the cost of a normal university in Britain, reports The Daily Telegraph.

[Image of Richard Dawkins from anglican-mainstream.net].

Archbishop Tutu pays warm tribute to Albertina Sisulu

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu paid a warm tribute to Albertina Sisulu on Friday in response to news of her death.

"She truly was a special gift to the nation. We are much poorer without her. There will be an extra bright star in the heavens tonight," Tutu stated, adding that the former parliamentarian and senior member of the ANC was the epitomy of grace and humanity even in the darkest days of apartheid.

"Her husband was imprisoned for more than 20 years, her children were harassed and detained, and she was herself banned for many, many years,” Tutu added as reported in TimesLive.co.za.

"But try as they might they could not break her spirit, they could not make her bitter, they could not defeat her love."

Tutu said it was people like Sisulu who had made the new South Africa possible.

"[It is people like Sisulu] who kept the home fires burning, who calmly and resolutely demonstrated by example that we are all members of one family, God's family ­- regardless of adversity or what the National Party said," he emphasised.

(Image from dunyabulteni.net).

Radical clerics in move to ban Bible in Pakistan

A number of extremist clerics in Pakistan have begun a campaign to declare certain passages in the Bible as blasphemous because they depict Biblical characters as flawed.

The clerics insist these characters are considered to be Islamic prophets and thus find the sections blasphemous according to their religion.

If the court fails to find in their favour, the radicals intend to submit an application to see the Bible formally banned in Pakistan.

The campaign was announced earlier this week by clerics at a Lahore mosque and reported on by CNSNews.com, via the Karachi daily The News and the Urdu-language Roznama Islam.

The campaign leader, Abdul Rauf Farooqi, said that part of their motivation was to pay back “blasphemers” like Florida pastor Terry Jones who burnt a Koran in his church earlier this year. Farooqi said they would not follow in his footsteps by burning a Bible, but would like the passages in question banned instead.

Farooqi’s statement did not include a list of the passages, but instead maintained that various Biblical “insertions” were offensive to Muslims, who hold all prophets in esteem.

Farooqi does not represent Islam as a whole, but instead speaks for the ultra-militant Islamist organization JUI-S (Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Sami-ul-Haq group), and his move to ban parts of the Bible is the latest attempt by radicals to use Pakistan’s controversial “blasphemy” laws to stamp out minority religions.

Included in the blasphemy laws is provision (295-C) that entails life imprisonment or the death penalty for defiling the name of Muhammad, “by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly."

Farooqi’s JUI-S party is closely associated with jihadi organizations such as the Taliban.

Rihanna’s latest music video draws fierce criticism

Pop singer Rihanna is no stranger to controversy with her sexually provocative lyrics and stage performances but she has now drawn criticism for the violent undertones in her ‘Man Down’ music video. Critics are saying that she is sending all the wrong messages to her fans with a song sung from the perspective of a young woman who has been raped and then shoots the man who did it to her. The first minutes of the video sees Rihanna take aim at her attacker and then gun him down in the middle of a crowded street.

Lyrics to the song include: “Momma, I just shot a man dead … I never been so proud.”

Paul Porter, co-founder of US think tank Industry Ears, responded to the song and video by saying: “‘Man Down’ is an inexcusable, shock-only, shoot-and-kill theme song.

“In my 30 years of viewing BET, I have never witnessed such a cold, calculated execution of murder in primetime.

“If Chris Brown shot a woman in his new video and BET premiered it, the world would stop. Rihanna should not get a pass.”

Melissa Henson, of the Parents Television Council, agreed with Porter: “Instead of telling victims they should seek help, Rihanna released a music video that gives retaliation in the form of premeditated murder the imprimatur of acceptability.

“The message of the video could not be more off base.”

A spokeswoman for Mothers Against Violence told The LA Times: “Murder happens all around us. We need solutions, not songs influencing vulnerable individuals. Sadly, these kind of scenes are a reality for some.”

Oxfam predict world food crisis

Soaring food prices and the resultant scarcity of important food items are believed to have been the breaking point behind the recent revolution in Egypt, and if a study undertaken by Oxfam International is to be believed, then these problems could soon spiral into a global crisis.

The 76 page report compiled by Oxfam has made the following findings:

1. Prices of staple foods will more than double in the next 20 years unless world leaders act now to avert climate change and reform the global food system.

2. Importantly, the cost of key grains such as maize—an essential dietary component in the world's least-developed continent, Africa—could rise by as much as 180%, with more than half of this rise due to the degrading effects of climate change.

3. Other factors, including rising oil prices, the increasing diversion of crops for biofuels and scarcity of water are also expected to make the forecast 70% rise in production needed by 2050 to feed the world's population even harder to meet.

The May edition of the National Geographic weighed into rising food crisis concerns with a reminder that our already stretched resources would soon need to cope with a population of 7 billion people. The magazine stated that in 2009 alone 52 billion chickens, 2.6 billion ducks, 1.3 billion pigs, 518 million sheep and 293 million cows were killed for food.

According to Emily Rauhlala, writing for Time.com, Oxfam recommend a complete overhaul of the current global food system to meet these needs, including placing a limit “on trading in agricultural futures (which they link to price jumps), ending the disproportionate influence of agro-businesses, and curbing subsidies for biofuels (which they credit with a move toward growing fuel over food).”

Rauhlala also states: “Though radical change seems unlikely at present, the Oxfam report comes at a good time. Food factored heavily in this winter's revolutions and prices are rising in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Those unmoved by the plain fact of hunger, may well see the wisdom of heeding the Spanish proverb of which [Julian] Cribb is fond: Lo que separa la civilización de la anarquía son solo siete comidas. 'Civilization and anarchy are only seven meals apart.'

(The full report can be found on www.oxfam.org. The image is from grain.org).

Bellringers locked up in belfry by peeved villager

An elderly villager from Sharow, near Ripo, Yorkshire, grew so irritated by a team of bellringers who were in the midst of a three-hour practice session in a local church, that he locked them inside the building.

The team of bellringers were practicing at the church of Saint John the Evangelist when the man, believed to be in his 70s or 80s, charged into the building and began shouting at them and threatening to damage their cars. He then trapped them inside the belfry by wedging a piece of wood in the door.

The group was only freed when a local church member, Sandra Price, heard them banging on the door when she went to lock up.

Price informed The Northern Echo: “I wandered up at 5.10pm and heard this stamping and I thought that was a funny way to ring the bells - it sounded more like Irish dancing!”

Harold Camping continues to make macabre prophecies

Undeterred by the failure of his first end-of-the-world prophecy for May 21, and by the criticism of many senior Christian leaders, preacher Harold Camping has continued to insist the end of the world will now happen on October 21.

Camping explained the failure of his previous prediction by saying that God’s judgement did indeed occur on May 21, but only in a spiritual sense and not in any physical way. Camping has already said that it is for this reason his organisation, Family Radio, will no longer participate in evangelism since he sees it as too late for those who are ‘lost’. Camping said they will now focus their ministry on the ‘saved’ to assist in preparing them for the end of the world.

Earlier this week, the doomsday preacher stepped up his prophecies into the realm of the macabre when he said during a question-and-answer forum on his radio show that the corpses of the "unsaved" will be thrown out of their graves and on the ground like "manure" on October 21.

"Those who are unsaved are going to experience the curse of God. They will be shamed in the eyes of God," said the president of Family Radio.

"One of the things that you'll notice at this time of year. We're talking about May 30 (Memorial Day in America) and we consider all the graves and all those who have died in connection with the armed services of the United States and there is great respect, great respect for them," he said.

"On the last day, all the unsaved are going to come under the curse of God. They are going to be thrown out of the grave if there are still a corpse there or bones. If they are in the grave, they will be shamed in the eyes of God. If they die on that day, they're not going to be buried. They're going to be shamed in the eyes of God," Camping insisted.

The preacher explained the person would not actually experience this since they are dead and no longer have any consciousness.

"But they will be shamed," he emphasised.