Monday, July 24, 2006

Sin against nature?

In Terry Pratchet's novel, Monstrous Regmient, Pratchet discribes his fictional country in which the God, Nuggan, has died but echoes remain, handing down new abominations to the priests. But these abominations keep getting more and more senseless, oysters, rocks, and the color blue (thus devout Nugganites avoid looking at the sky).

But sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Earlier I posted Brother Jed's 10 commandments, the majority of which were senseless. But it's easy to brush Brother Jed off as a bit deranged.

However, it's another thing when a major church does it. We can understand the biblical 10 commandments as being pretty solid but perhaps no so solid is the insistance that birth control is a no-no to some religious sects, as is the restriction of gay marriage based on a single sentence from the bible. But it seems that God's given a notice to bishop Richard Chartres of the Church of England saying that taking planes for holiday travel is "a sin" against nature. I'm all for cutting down on pollution, and support the idea of this, but it sounds to me that bishop Chartres is taking this a little too far. Perhaps he forgot that commandment about not worshiping false idols (like nature).

No comments: