'Christians should reject BNP'

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has called on Christians to "stand shoulder to shoulder" in rejecting the British National Party and its leader Nick
Griffin, who he branded a "squalid racist".

Lord Carey said it was "chilling" to hear Mr Griffin claim to represent "Christian Britain" in his appearance on BBC1's Question Time on Thursday, and accused the BNP leader of trying to "hijack one of the world's great religions".

His comments came as a poll suggested that a number of controversial BNP policies on immigration, sex education and Islam have resonance with significant numbers of voters.

The survey in the News of the World found that almost two-thirds of voters feel the mainstream parties have no credible policies on immigration. But only 6% said the BNP had the best policies on the issue and just 10% agreed with the far-right party that there should be a halt to all future immigration.

The ICM research follows a YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph which suggested that 22% of voters would consider backing the BNP in a local, European or general election in the wake of Mr Griffin's controversial TV appearance.
Numbers saying they intend to vote BNP had increased from 2% to 3% since September.

The poll provoked a furious response from Labour's long-time anti-racism campaigner Peter Hain, who fought to keep Mr Griffin off the airwaves. "The BBC has handed the BNP the gift of the century on a plate and now we see the consequences. I'm very angry about this," said Mr Hain. Lord Carey said the decision to invite Mr Griffin on to the BBC's flagship political discussion programme was "a mistake".

The former archbishop told the News of the World: "The BBC's director-general errs in arguing that in a democracy all views should be heard. The views of the BNP are not simply false, they are dangerous, indeed irredeemably evil."

During his appearance on Thursday, Mr Griffin said if Muslims wanted to remain in Britain they had to accept that it was "a fundamentally British and Christian country". But Lord Carey responded: "This squalid racist must not be allowed to hijack one of the world's great religions."

Can science prove that there is no God?

John Vashahi

2009-07-22

‘God of the Gaps’ – unfortunately this is how some people think these days about God Almighty who created earth and heaven[i].

Scientists who talk about God first need to define what science is? Is the scientist qualified to talk about God? This is a very fundamental question, and Christians who enter into such a discussion should remember this point. I think many Christians enter this discussion from the wrong angle.

Let’s put it right: science is limited in their ability to talk on metaphysical subjects. These do not come within their sphere of knowledge or authority.

Why science is limited?
The great philosopher of science, Karl Popper, defined what science is and what science is not. “Karl Popper's philosophy of science uses modus tollens as the central method of disconfirming, or falsifying, scientific hypotheses. Scientists start with a current scientific theory and use the usual methods of deductive reasoning to derive specific conclusions, of which some are "predictions". Strictly deductive reasoning is "truth preserving", that is, it is such that if one starts out with "true" premises, one can only deduce "true" conclusions. Starting with a "theory" and deducing "predictions" can be stated in the form of a premise:
“If the theory is true, then the prediction is true”.

Popper shows that we cannot prove that a theory is true, but we can certainly show that a prediction is false[ii].”

“We cannot prove that a theory is true” mean s that we can not talk about any metaphysical subjects in science. Idea or believes are beyond ability of science to prove or disprove them. Popper also said Today's superstition could well become tomorrow's Science.

Scientists are not qualified to talk about anything which is not objective. Because God reveals himself in nature does not mean God is equal to nature.

Talking about God is simply not in the province of science. It is in province of philosophy to talk about God. As popper said about science as we do not know: we can only guess.

Positivism and a philosophy of science

For scientists to claim authority in the realm of God shows that the old 18th and 19th century positivism has become fashionable again. Positivists wrongly believed what some scientists believe today. They thought they could solve everything by science alone. This is very similar to the argument which communists used against the existence of God.

The subject of God comes within the area of philosophy; mixing this issue with science is very wrong.

The fact is that the foundation of science is very shaky and not as strong as most of the public may think. Science is full of exceptions to laws, and it is very rare that a law can be applied in all general cases without exception. As Stephen Hawking explains, "No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory[iii].

It is maybe against public acceptance of science but the fact is science is very limited. As popper said No matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.

Science has expiry dates

As a time passes and our scientific knowledge continues to grow, more contradictions emerge. Take the example of physic mechanics. For many centuries scientists thought it is a complete theory and could explain everything. Later it was discovered that it could not answer everything, and then quantum physics was born. Now we know quantum physics cannot explain everything. To what physicists call it theory of everything (TOE) still a long way or maybe never.

If theories were not eventually superseded and shown to be out-of-date we could never move forward. But this means that science is not qualified to talk about God.

Conclusion

For science to debate the existence of God is wrong in methodology and has a basic error. Talking about God is beyond the sphere of scientific understanding. Science is limited to objective examination.




[i] First God made heaven & earth. Genesis 1.1

[i] A Brief History of Time, p. 11, ISBN 0553380168.

[ii] Popper, Karl [1959]. The Logic of Scientific Discovery

And also

Popper, Karl 1963. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.

[iii] A Brief History of Time, p. 11, ISBN 0553380168.

Easter is most important part of Bible

John Vashahi

With no Easter there is no hope. And we all lost. By Easter Jesus close down the old chapter of Bible, start a new day, new morning.

By Easter we are happy, free of chain of sin. We are free of sin by son.

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, [a] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Lord which not forgets us. Standing by us. Even sending his son to the cross for us

What a faithful God have I

Faithful in every way

I feel sad when I see many peoples in the world, including here in UK are not saved. To be honest it is shocking too.

I think we should do what ever we can to outreach those who do not yet know Jesus. From this point which is evangelising starts. We can’t be Christian and just not doing any thing about it. We have duty toward it.

Happy eater again and we should not forget Easter, Christmas and Pentecost are every day, not only few hours on special day.

We should encourage Christian Marriage

John Vashahi

17/04/09

Many Christian brothers and sisters are experienced bitterness of divorce. In my mine one of the reasons was that they did not married a Christian. And also some churches should educate culture of marriage to young couples.

Churches could encourage and support young Christians to marry a Christian, in this way we will have stronger and healthier church.

If marriage is based on love of Lord Jesus, I don’t think it is going to end in divorces easily. When husband and wife pray together for different issues, this culture is not going to be broken easily plus they will have conversation always. Which not having a conversation is sources of many divorces.

I think the whole issue is individualism which stands between church and people.

With sharp decline in church attendees, this could be very good solution as well.

I never understood how a Christian man could marry a Muslim girl, or Christian girl could marry a Buddhist. The argue that they may bring that non believers to church, is not supported by evidence.

In fact evidence shows that they even could take away committed Christian or effect in person who believes to become some sort of liberal pluralism believers.

Why do we think in many religions like Islam followers are banned to marry others (in their minds non believers)?

I’m not suggesting here that we should make some strange law about it, but it is worth thinking why some religions banning such marriages.

From other side it is very difficult for young Christian to find their matches, simply because there are not many young people in many churches or they are not in touch with other Christians from other churches, so stock in their denomination that they forget they belong to wider family.

In case of new believers with other cultural back ground, it is much harder to find their future husband or wife.

Maybe the solution for such things is starting some coerces regard of Christian marriage and introducing it to churches.

Evangelising Jews: we should first admit wrong treatment done to Jews

John Vashahi

14/04/09

The fact is Christianity is based in Judaism and Jewish culture. Blessing of Jesus for Jews are demonstrated in Jesus wiping for Jerusalem. They are like any other race and nations are entitled and deserve the salvation and eternal life. Some may even argue that Jews are more important to be invited to Christianity than any other Nations.

To evangelise Jews, first we need to admit wrong doing toward Jews by church in name of evangelising them and forcing them to convert them into Christianity which recorded in the history with most upsetting and horrifying stories. That would be the very great first step.

We should show them that those wrong acts done by kings and pops who did not know any thing about Christianity, Showing them that real Christianity is nothing but love and grace.

I think admitting what church did wrong in the past, is the case not only for Jews but for many other nations who suffered by slavery and colonising of western powers in last centuries. Although many of those powers were far from Christianity, those inhuman acts however are registered under the name of Christianity.

We should always be open to debate these issues. With that we will insure never such things could happen under the name of Christianity, which Christ died to save the human.

We have a duty to teach tolerance to Muslim in west

By John Vashahi

Recent violence and terror attacks in the west by Muslims, is very important and alarming.

We as a Christian we need to engage more with Muslims, evangelise them in right way, invite them to debate and dialogue and teach them tolerance and setting a good example for them and showing them the real differences between Islam and Christianity.

Islam is lacking a tolerance, we need to teach tolerance to Muslims, having a debate with them, joint cultural organisation are very good start.

Avoiding Muslims is not going to help any one by any way. We need to engage with them. If we do not engage in 20 years time we will have separated Muslim area in the west. We should remember many Muslims in many different levels are not happy with Islam.

You may saw or heard some preachers who call themselves fire preachers in very attacking way start to saying what ever they like to Muslims, you may also saw or heard some preachers who saying there is no differences between Islam and Christianity and very liberal and pluralistic and no fire at all!!

I think both are not helpful. We need some thing in middle. We need to preach to Muslims in right way. Why Hudson Taylor and early missionaries in Africa and else where started to wear local dress, using local hair style, food and learning language? Well those great elders knew what it needed to be done and we need to use it here as well.

Christianity means peace and clam

Many religions around the world in many ways encourage violence and retaliation and revenge, the only religion in the world which is free of revenge is Christianity.

One may say then what about all atrocities happen by church in past?

The answer is those who did it were en a proper Christian and did not have not have a good understanding from New Testament. Those also were people who merchandise word of god for piece of silver and gold. They used Christianity just to get to power.

But real Christianity as we know today is clean and clearly distance from war and revenge.

Our knowledge about understanding bible increased during centuries, it took along time for people to find out state and church was separated in Christianity.

In Christianity unlike Islam, church was separated from power and there is no sign of human power ruling by Jesus, but in Islam Mohammad established a government in city of medina.

This may look are very small differences, but really are one of main differences between Christianity and Islam. Islamic scalars really struggling to find a solution for separating power from mosques as having a political power rooted deep in Islam.