Well Done!

                                       

France's two main Protestant bodies agree to regular dialogue.

The leaders of France's two main Protestant umbrella organizations have agreed to create a standing forum for dialogue and cooperation, following a two-day meeting both described as unprecedented.

Birdie.

 

Super Advice For All.

 

More Than 1300 Prisoners - A Large number of Whom Have Committed Heinous Crimes - Are To Be Released Without Labour's Promised Tags.

Apparently, another 5,000+ jailbirds have already been released - after serving only a fraction of their sentence - without the promised tags.

This is appalling.

No human being who believes in proper justice can now ever vote for Labour again!

Fear of those released has also sent non-stop waves of terror throughout huge numbers of these people's victims.

Disgraceful. Their abandoned promises to voters have now made them into a very dangerous laughing stock.

The Weaknesses of Dawkins' Contentions On Origins.

The existence of God is perhaps the most enduring and fiercely debated question in human history Credit: Stone RF/Fred de Noyelle

Twenty years ago, Richard Dawkins published his international best-seller The God Delusion, thus establishing “New Atheism” as a major cultural force. Over the ensuing decade, other authors – such as Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss and Daniel Dennett – seized the popular imagination with their respective arguments about why belief in the divine is untenable.

The physicists among them argued that the universe could be explained “from nothing”. The biologists argued that Darwinian explanations of “apparent design” in living organisms make appeals to an actual designing intelligence unnecessary. Thus, Dawkins concluded: “God almost certainly does not exist.”

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is one of the world’s most prominent atheists  Credit: Jay Williams

But now, two decades on, the influence of the New Atheists has waned. Former adherents, most notably Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have repudiated atheism entirely and embraced the Christian faith. Others, such as Alex O’Connor, the hugely popular atheist YouTuber and Steven Bartlett, the businessman turned podcaster, have moderated their outlooks too. Ironically, even Dawkins admitted in 2024 he feels “at home” in the Christian “ethos” – though he still firmly rejects the existence of God.

As many atheist philosophers (such as the eminent John Gray) have noted, the New Atheists’ philosophical arguments were never very good. Moreover, their arguments seemed strangely anachronistic following many of the great scientific discoveries of the 20th century.

Consider first modern cosmology. Cosmologists have discovered that the universe, contrary to the expectations of those who long portrayed it as eternal, probably had a beginning. Multiple lines of evidence from observational astronomy support this conclusion. Developments in theoretical physics (such as the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, which states that any universe that is expanding – as ours is – cannot be infinite in the past), also back it up.

Nobel laureate Arno Penzias, who helped make a key discovery supporting the Big Bang theory, noted the obvious connection between its affirmation of a cosmic beginning and the concept of divine creation. “The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses…[and] the Bible as a whole,” he wrote in 1978.

Atheist physicists Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking claimed to explain the beginning of the universe from “nothing”, but their “nothing” turned out to be a set of mathematical laws that allegedly pre-existed (or existed independently of) the material universe. But maths has no causal power. Mathematical equations are inherently conceptual. Thus, the attempt to circumvent the problem of the beginning with what was called “quantum cosmology” led inexorably back to the need for a pre-existing mind.

Prof Stephen Hawking, who died in 2018, did not believe in God Credit: Karwai Tang/Getty Images

Second, physicists have discovered that we live in a kind of “Goldilocks universe”. In other words, the fundamental laws and parameters of physics are finely tuned against all odds to make a life-friendly universe. Even slight alterations of many independent factors – such as the strength of gravitational and electromagnetic attraction, the masses of elementary particles, or the initial arrangement of matter and energy in the universe – would render life impossible.

Not surprisingly, many physicists have concluded that this improbable “fine-tuning” points to a cosmic “fine-tuner”. As Cambridge astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle, previously a staunch atheist, argued: “A common sense interpretation of the data suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics” to make life possible.

To explain fine-tuning, some physicists have postulated a vast number of universes. This “multiverse” idea portrays our universe as the outcome of a grand lottery in which some mechanism spits out billions and billions of universes – so many that ours, with its improbable combination of life-conducive factors, would eventually have to arise.

Yet multiverse advocates overlook an obvious problem. All such proposals – whether based on “inflationary cosmology” or “string theory” – postulate universe-generating mechanisms that themselves require prior unexplained fine-tuning (thus taking us back to the need for an ultimate fine-tuner).

Third, discoveries in molecular biology have revealed digital code in even the simplest living cells. Francis Crick and James Watson elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. Crick then developed his famed “sequence hypothesis”. He proposed that chemical constituents in DNA function like letters in a written language, or digital symbols in computer code.

Computer code depends upon a precise sequence of zeros and ones. Similarly, the DNA molecule’s ability to direct the assembly of crucial protein molecules depends upon specific arrangements of chemical constituents (called “bases”) along the spine of the double helix.

As Dawkins has acknowledged: “The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.” Or as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates explains: “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”

Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion was a publishing phenomenon 

No theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the digital information in DNA (or RNA) needed to build the first cell from simpler non-living chemicals – as Dawkins has acknowledged. Instead, our uniform and repeated experience – the basis of scientific reasoning – establishes that systems possessing functional or digital information invariably arise from intelligent causes. As information theorist Henry Quastler observed, “information is habitually associated with conscious activity”.

Materialists also reject the idea of a designing mind because no such entity can be directly observed. Yet scientists often infer unobservable entities – physical fields, subatomic particles, past evolutionary events, subsurface geological features, the Big Bang – based upon the explanatory power of those postulated entities or events.

Dark matter, for example, which has been in the news of late, was first inferred not because it could be seen, but because – if it existed – it would explain the otherwise unexplainable motions of galaxies within distant galaxy clusters. The fact is that scientists often infer unobservable causes from their observable effects, and the inference to intelligent design from the observable features of living cells has this same character.

Dawkins has claimed that invoking a designing mind to explain the complexity of life would violate Ockham’s razor (the principle that the simplest explanation is usually correct). One should never invoke something more complex to explain something less complex, he avers. Yet this argument implies that archaeologists should not, for example, have invoked the mind of a scribe to explain the inscriptions on the Rosetta stone.

Dr Stephen Meyer was featured in The Story of Everything, a 2026 documentary about the origins of humanity and the cosmos

In fact, Ockham’s razor does not prohibit invoking the activity of complex entities (such as a mind) to explain complex systems or the features of artifacts. Instead, it cautions against invoking complex or convoluted hypotheses – ones that posit many explanatory entities (as the multiverse does) to explain facts that can be explained more simply by positing a single cause or entity.

Oddly, Dawkins himself once acknowledged the cell might contain a “signature of intelligence” – although he attributed that possible signature to a complex alien intelligence. As he mused, “it could be that somewhere in the universe, a civilisation evolved ... and designed a form of life that they seeded on to this planet”.

But invoking alien intelligence as the source of life on Earth does nothing to explain how life, and the information needed to produce it, first arose elsewhere. This “alien designer” hypothesis just kicks that ultimate question out into space.

It is, along with the multiverse and the “universe from nothing” idea, illustrative of the growing strangeness of scientific atheism. Its proponents are reaching for increasingly exotic ideas to explain evidence that seems otherwise to point straightforwardly to a transcendent and intelligent creator. In other words: God.

Dr. Meyer is the author of Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe. He has a PhD in the philosophy of science from Cambridge University and is featured in the new film The Story of Everything, which was covered in the Telegraph.

 

DT.

The Lord's Disciples.

 They left their nets upon the quiet shore,

And walked away from all they used to know,
To follow One who opened up the door
To streams of grace where living waters flow.
A taxman left his booth, a sceptic came,
Twelve ordinary men of simple birth,
Who learned to speak a single holy name,
And carry light to corners of the earth.
Through raging storms and doubts that clouded faith,
They broke the bread and drank the sacred wine,
Then stood as witnesses to vanquished death,
Empowered by a breath of the divine.
Though scattered wide by persecution's flame,
Their faithful lives eternal truth proclaim.

Acts 2. The Fellowship of the Believers.

 The Fellowship of the Believers.

42) They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43) Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44) All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45) They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46) Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47) praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Goldfinch.

 

Never Forget These Vital Words.

 

Hardly Going To Buy Much, Is It?

 

Historic UK churches face growing maintenance crisis despite £2.6m in grants

The National Churches Trust has warned that historic church buildings across the UK are facing mounting financial and maintenance pressures, despite awarding more than £2.6 million in grants during 2025. CT.

Who Would Have Thought It?

 MPs vote against assisted suicide in 'victory for hope, compassion and life'.

 (Photo: Getty/iStock)

The House of Commons has narrowly voted against the legalisation of medically assisted suicide, with 286 votes against and 270 in favour.

The bill was put forward by Labour’s Lauren Edwards MP, however as an issue of conscience MPs were not expected to vote along party lines. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has indicated that while he favours the principle of assisted suicide, improving the country’s patchy palliative care system must come first.

Earlier this year another attempt to legalise assisted suicide failed. That bill, put forward by another Labour MP, Kim Leadbeater narrowly passed the House of Commons but ran out of time in the House of Lords as peers raised concerns about inadequate safeguards on the bill.

Some MPs who voted for the Leadbeater bill openly declared their opposition to the Edwards bill, which is functionally the same.

Speaking during the pre-vote debate in the House of Commons, Labour MP Janet Daby said that she had “nightmares about dying and death” after voting for the Leadbeater bill.

“I had to wrestle with myself, knowing that I was not entirely comfortable with the decision I had made, and my conscience was not at peace, and I cannot again, in good conscience, vote for the Bill," she said.

The decision to vote against the controversial measure shows that a significant change has taken place among parliamentarians, who just a year ago voted 314 to 291 in favour of a virtually identical bill.

Ross Hendry, CEO of CARE, said God had heard people’s prayers.

He said another attempt to legalise assisted suicide within this Parliament was “highly unlikely”. 

“Parliament has expressed a clear desire to tackle long-running problems in the provision of palliative and social care services. CARE has historically advocated for greater access to palliative care, and we will continue to do so,” he said. 

“And we will be vigilant against any future attempts to pass assisted suicide legislation in each region of the United Kingdom. 

“But today is a day to give thanks that England and Wales have been spared, for now, the horror of assisted suicide being legalised. We give God all the glory!”

The news of the vote was welcomed by Right To Life UK, who described the result as a “victory for hope, compassion and life”.

Writing on X, the group said, “After a two-year-long national debate, despite unprecedentedly favourable conditions for assisted suicide advocates, the country has decided to reject the danger, despair, dystopia & defeatism of assisted suicide, settling the issue for a generation.”

The group called on MPs to “unite” and ensure that palliative care receives the investment it needs.

Care Not Killing agreed, saying, “Our hope is that MPs now focus on repairing palliative care in the UK and securing the necessary funding to make sure that no matter what part of the country you live in, you can access the best possible care available and are treated with dignity and respect. As one of many doctors have said, we need much more care, not killing.” CT.

Oh Dear, Labour. Inevitable Consequence of Attacks on Private Schools? - Promises Not Looking Good.

                 The size of the school workforce.

The government, in its opportunity mission (opens in new tab), has set a pledge to recruit 6,500 additional teachers. Further information on this ambition can be found in the 6,500 additional teachers delivery plan (opens in new tab).

The total number of state school teachers in England has slightly decreased between July 2024 and today.

Official Department for Education data published in mid-2026 shows that the Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) teaching workforce shrank by 1,900 teachers (0.4%) year-on-year.

ACQUITTAL!

Street preacher acquitted in Soho ‘safe space’ case.

Richard Johnson outside City of London Magistrates' Court. (Photo: Christian Legal Centre)

The Christian Legal Centre has welcomed the acquittal of a Christian preacher who was accused of violating an LGBT “safe space” by distributing tracts about Sodom and Gomorrah.

Richard Johnson, 72, recounted how he handed out biblical tracts covering various subjects in Soho, most of which were irrelevant to homosexuality. In the incident last year, Johnson was eventually accosted by two men who told him to “get out of Soho”. He left the area, fearing for his safety.

Johnson was later prosecuted under the Public Order Act 1986 after two men complained about a tract referring to Sodom and Gomorrah. It is unclear if the two complainants were the same men who accosted him.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Book of Genesis, tells of how God destroyed the two towns for their sin. As a demonstration of the sinful character of the town, the narrative tells of how all the men in Sodom gathered to try and commit homosexual rape against God’s angels.

One of the complainants argued that Soho was a “safe space” for LGBT people and that as such Johnson was not entitled to share such views as could be elsewhere.

A trial on 4 September saw Johnson acquitted. The court concluded that while the tract was offensive and upsetting, no criminal offence could be proved, and in particular no threats of violence were made against anyone. Soho was determined not to be a separate jurisdiction in which different laws apply. The court also granted a defence costs order.

Following his acquittal, Mr Johnson said: "After nearly two years of having this hanging over me, I am glad to be free. I do this because I really love LGBT people and I want them to go to heaven and not hell. Love is telling people the truth, even if people are offended by the message."