Magic Statistics

Every year on 26 April, the “Chernobyl Way” coordinates a march through central Minsk, the capital of Belarus, to mark the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster that contaminated more than one-fifth of Belarus.  In preparation for this year’s observance, an opposition party suggested that Chernobyl Way’s organising committee collect donations of cash, clothes, toys, books, etc., to give to children suffering from cancer.

There’s one small problem: The Belarusian government under Alexander “Europe’s last dictator” Lukashenka forbids connecting cancer cases with the near-meltdown at the nuclear power plant.

”There is a real epidemic of oncology diseases in Belarus but the doctors are prohibited to associate this cancer boom with Chernobyl. And the main thing is that the state can`t find the money for sick people but it is easily found for showing off”, chairman of the BNF Party Vintsuk Vyachorka declared.

“The central streets are luxuriously and wastefully lighted in Minsk, ice palaces and other prestigious constructions have been built all over the country”, the politician says. “But if you come, for example, to the oncology policlinics which is at the ground floor of the Oncology Institute in Baraulyani you will see endless queues of suffering and lethally sick people. You will be surprised of the patience of surgeons who after a long-hour operation (when according to the world-accepted standards the surgeon must have a rest) go to the policlinics to examine patients because there are not enough doctors there”.

Belarus suffered more than any other country from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.  Although the plant was situated in neighbouring Ukraine, winds blew 70% of the radioactive fallout over the east and south-east of Belarus.  Over one-quarter of the country’s territory was designated part of the Exclusion Zone and closed to habitation and agricultural activity.

The government of Belarus has severely restricted independent investigation of the long-term health impacts of the accident and now plans to begin significant re-settlement of the Exclusion Zone.

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About 25 American tourists visiting the slum area of a city in Andhra Pradesh state, south India, were taken into custody after allegedly speaking to residents about Christ.  Local Hindu radicals, upset after learning that the tourists were Christians, accused them of attempting religious conversions and complained to the police.

Religious speeches allegedly made by a group of American tourists during a visit to Palamuru Basti, a slum in Baghlingampally, sparked controversy with Hindu radicals accusing them of attempting religious conversions on Thursday [6 April].

The Chikkadpally police took the 25 foreigners, most of them women, into custody initially, but let them off saying they were not at fault. However, a case under Section 298 (uttering words hurting religious sentiments) of Indian Penal Code was registered against four locals, including two pastors, who were guiding the foreigners in going around the city.

If the tourists were released after police determined they did not intend to persuade anyone to change religion, why were their local guides charged?

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In a debate held in Oxford last month, theology professor and former atheist Alister McGrath scoffed at the anti-religion arguments of evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins.

"Having been an atheist, I discovered religion was in fact an enormously powerful, transformative power for good," said Alister McGrath, Oxford University's professor of Historical Theology. "The claim that the scientific explanation ends everything, ignores fundamental realities. There's a whole range of human experiences, often involving a longing for something beyond us which brings legitimacy to our core notions and philosophical ideas."
. . .
"Far from being enriching, religion is stultifying, impoverishing and limiting," said Dawkins, whose book, "The God Delusion", has sold a million copies since publication in 2006. "Science and religion both attempt to answer the same questions - the difference is that religion gets the answers wrong," the atheist campaigner asserted.

In response, Prof McGrath, who holds doctorates in both molecular biophysics and divinity, argued that science cannot provide a moral framework or vision to order and guide human life.

The claim that “[s]cience and religion both attempt to answer the same questions” is, in my view, quite wrong and reflects a dismayingly reductionistic view of life.  Science attempts to answer questions about the causes and effects of physical phenomena, while religion examines questions about the purpose of existence.  To equate the two implies that discovering the forces giving rise to some physical process is the same as discovering its purpose.  That appears to me a non sequitur.

h/t: Faith-Science News

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According to research published last year, one-sixth of clergy in the Protestant Church of the Netherlands, the country’s second largest denomination, were either agnostic on the question of God’s existence or outright atheists.  Now the outgoing chairperson of the church synod advises local congregations not to ask their clergy for a statement of belief in God. 

An elected official of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands has said congregations in his denomination should be wary of trying to set limits to the beliefs of their clergy, including those who say they do not believe in the existence of God.

"You cannot capture the relationship with God in an arithmetic sum, just as you cannot turn a loving relationship into a formula," said Jan-Gerd Heetderks, the outgoing chairperson of the church synod, in an interview with the Protestant newspaper Nederlands Dagblad.

The question, of course, is not the quality of a clergyman’s relationship with God, but whether he has one at all.

He advised clergy who doubted the existence of God, not to say so in public. "The church is not an appropriate place for an ordained minister to say they do not believe in God," Heetderks noted.

When it comes to whether ordained clergy believe in God, Mr Heetderks’s policy amounts to: Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Previous related post: Mavericks or heretics?

The collect for today, Monday in Easter Week, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

For the Epistle: Acts 10:34-43
The Gospel: St Luke 24:13-35