Letter from a Lunatic

Today, mixed in with the other mail on my doormat, there was a religious magazine called "Good News". I'm not sure why it's called that, as there was nothing in there about me getting pots of cash, or about the government getting the hell out of consenting adults' private lives, or the Olympics being cancelled, or the murderous government of Burma being overthrown. Perhaps the good news was more subtle.

And I've found what it is. There's a letters page in the magazine! One of their readers wrote:

" Whether this present depression and downturn signal's Jesus Christ's return, no one knows. Some of us have been through redundancies, high mortgages, food rationing and saw air skirmishes in the Battle of Britain. This looks the worst yet. " (my emphasis)

Yes, that's right, "G F" from Eastleigh thinks that this 'ere recession is worse than a war that killed somewhere around 70 million people, injured countless more, and destroyed tens of millions of homes, farms and businesses.

Given that this letter was actually published, and published without a stern rebuke, his church obviously agrees, thus demonstrating its moral bankruptcy. Thanks, Good News Magazine! Without that, more people might have been suckered into your death-cult!

Religion makes you stupid (again)

Apparently the bible says that if you see someone to whom a law (like, say, those commandments that GAWD gave to Moses) doesn't apply (like, say, someone who isn't a Jew), then you should spit on them and kick them in the head. I've never read that bit of the Wholly Babble myself, but that must be because I don't read Hebrew. If only I could, perhaps I'd realise that every version I've read is a poor translation and that "thou shalt not woship graven images (or whichever commandment it is)" actually says "thou shalt spit on people and kick them in the head if they press a button on an electrical device".

Presumably the original, made up by prescient Bronze age primitives, has a footnote explaining what electricity is. Again with the bad translations! If only the church hadn't fucked those up, the Romans would have had electricity! Which would have been awesome!

It's funny, the Jewish dietary laws make a certain amount of sense when you remember that they were Bronze age primitives living in a desert without fridges, and so tasty pig-flesh and shellfish are a Bad Idea. But obviously Moses's doctor was on holiday when all that unhygienic spitting was permitted.

Anglican hypocrisy

I suppose it's only to be expected that, as an offshoot of the Roman church, the Anglican church should be just as hypocritical as its parent is. Today the Anglican church is feebly bleating about oh how terrible it is that some people play football during the Easter weekend.

According to the BBC, "church leaders have called on the government to use Sunday trading laws to prevent Premier League matches being held on Easter Sunday in the future." The archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, said "the amazing thing about England is that we are not trying to force religion down people's throats, but there is a culture, a tradition, a way of behaving." Of course, Dr Sentamu isn't English, he's Ugandan, which presumably makes it OK for him to force religion down football fans' throats and may go some way towards explaining his lack of understanding of the English culture of not poking your nose into other peoples' lives.

Catholic lies and hypocrisy

So as well as the pope being a proven liar, we now have an unnamed cardinal being an obvious hypocrite (about half-way down the page; search for "state-sponsored sectarianism").

Unless of course this cardinal is prepared to also call the Vatican's rules for who can become pope "state-sponsored sectarianism" and work to change the rules so that non-Catholics can become his head of state.

Religion Makes You Stupid, part 2064762 in our series

[originally posted on 19 Dec 2008]

Lillian Ladele, homophobe, claims that the employment tribunal case she's just lost wasn't "an attempt to undermine the rights of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender communities" - apart from, of course, their right to get married. Strange how that wasn't mentioned. Her lawyer also claims that "the evidence showed that Lillian performed all of her duties to the same high standard for the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender communities, as she did for everyone" - apart from the small matter of refusing to carry out her work for EVIL DIRTY homosexuals.

So not only is she a homophobe, and a liar, she also demonstrates contempt for anyone who can understand English by thinking that anyone would believe her transparent porkies.

[update: 7 Mar 2009]

The lieing homophobe lost her appeal too. And how curious it is that the hate group that was sponsoring her doesn't mention on their website this failure to impose their Bronze Age superstition and willful ignorance on everyone else!

Bus Ad Wars

First there was the Atheist Bus Campaign, whose ads look like this:

Then a bunch of nutters came up with this (although you're unlikely to see it, because they don't have many supporters so can't afford to put it on more than a coupla dozen buses):

which to my uneducated eye looks remarkably similar. So:

The Root of All Evil?

I recently watched Richard Dawkins's two-part series from a couple of years ago "The Root Of All Evil?" about religion and its place in society.

I'm afraid that, while I think Dawkins was right about just about everything, it wasn't very satisfying. There was very much a feeling of "preaching to the choir". There's no way that it would convince a critical viewer who wasn't already an atheist. Dawkins made sure that except for one brief segment all (and I mean all) the religious people he interviewed were from the, umm, lunatic fringe of their faiths, and really obviously so. None of them tried (presumably because they couldn't) to justify why they reject various bits of the scriptures - eg, the ones who thought killing doctors and adulterers and shunning homosexuals was good obviously rejected "love your neighbour", but didn't say why. That one brief segment was mostly Dawkins agreeing with the bishop of Oxford, while still legitimately pointing out that the bishop was rejecting scripture selectively, and not giving the bishop much time to expand on his thoughts about why he rejected the bits of scripture about stoning unbelievers while keeping "love your neighbour".

Without fair interviews with main-stream thinkers in proper churches, the piece comes across as being in places smug, and in others a strident propagandist attack, and I'm afraid that people these days are far too cynical to simply swallow propaganda from a smug bastard. If Dawkins is so sure of himself, presumably he thinks he can out-argue the mainstream, so why didn't he? The obvious answer, of course, is that it wouldn't be as visceral as the loonies - it would be more Open University than Channel 4.

Of all the people in the programme, the one I'd most want to have a drink with is the bishop of Oxford. It's a toss-up which one I'd most want to punch in the face, whether it's Dawkins or Ted Haggard.

Update: on further reflection, it would be Haggard. Dawkins is an old man and it would be about as much of a challenge as mugging a five year old, whereas Haggard could fight back with those teeth.

Ted Haggard's Mouth

I'm watching Richard Dawkins's pleasingly iconoclastic "The Root Of All Evil?" documentary. In it, he spends some time with Ted Haggard - bigot, hypocrite, far-right-winger, christian, self-hating homosexual and habitual drug user - who looks like this. No, really. I've paused it three times now when there's a close-up on his face, and every time it looks like this.

I can only assume that his mouth has got stuck in this shape from sucking off rent boys so often. But damn, that means he uses his teeth!

Ill

I am ill. I've been ill since Thursday, with a cold. You're meant to be able to cure a cold with [insert old wives tale remedy here] in 5 days, or if you don't, it'll clear itself up in just under a week. So hopefully today is the last day.

So what have I done while ill?

On Friday I became old (see previous post), and went to the Byzantium exhibition at the Royal Academy. It was good. You should go.

Saturday was the London Perl Workshop. My talk on closures went down well, and people seemed to understand what I was talking about. Hurrah! I decided that rather than hang around nattering and going to a few talks, I'd rather hide under my duvet for the rest of the day.

I mostly hid on Sunday too, and spent most of the day asleep. In a brief moment of productivity, I got my laptop and my phone to talk to each other using magic interwebnet bluetooth stuff. I'd tried previously without success, but that was with the previous release of OS X. With version X.5 it seems to Just Work, so no Evil Hacks were necessary.

The cold means that I can't taste a damned thing, not even bacon. So now I know what it's like to be Jewish. Being Jewish sucks.

And today, I am still coughing up occasional lumps of lung and making odd bubbling noises in my chest, although my nasal demons seem to be Snotting less than they were, so hopefully I'll be back to normal tomorrow.

OMGTEHSTUPID

World's stupidest woman

But these people come a close second

I survived Mass

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Mass. No, not the club. The other event where you get music, men wearing funny clothes, and odd substances being burned.

My mother has been making dresses for priests - and various other ecclesiastical embroideries - for forty years, and had a celebratory Mass done at St Bart's church in Brighton. So I went along. And I didn't catch fire!

This was the first church service I've been to in a long time, and the first Anglican Mass ever. It was very odd. St Bart's uses The English Missal instead of the Book of Common Prayer or the more recent ASB which I'm familiar with from having been made to take part in boring services while at school. There was lots of processing and bowing and scraping, and burning of incense. More so even than I remember at any of the two papist Masses I've been to.

Being so very High Church, the service sheet was printed in both English and Latin. This is the first time that I've seen the filioque in context (while I've obviously been aware of the controversy, I've never thought it important enough to bother looking up the text) and ... I can see why people grump about it. Of course, the reasons that I can see for grumping about it probably aren't the reasons that silly theologians grump about it, as they seem to delight in absurd readings of simple words to back up their preconceptions. And really, after nearly a thousand years ... GET OVER IT, there are more important things to worry about!

And I was mistaken for an Orthodox priest. Mum has, I think, made dresses for priests from a few different sects, so it wouldn't be surprising, I suppose, for an Orthodox to come along to the service, and that would also explain to an observer why I didn't go to the altar for communion - although the real reason is that the wine isn't very good so there's no point.

It makes a change from being mistaken for a rabbi.

Ha ha - maybe god hates you

Awww, poor ickle baby diddums. Perhaps if the "reverend" Peter can't afford to run his car he should pray for his invisible friend to slip an extra 20 into his wallet. Go on Peter, pray really hard. You can do it! God Loves you! And you're doing his work! He's bound to help!

No?

Well, I guess god just hates you then. What a cunt!

Here's an interesting fact for you: Peter works for the richest landowner in the country. If he's actually using the car for work and not just for jollies (mmm, having a cup of tea with a parishioner, what fun!) perhaps he can just send in a fucking expenses claim.

Usury

One of the few things that some religions have got right is condemning usury. I am appalled that ads like the one below (the link obviously doesn't go to the company in question) are legal. I'm even more appalled, of course, that there are people stupid enough to take them.

183.2%

Fuck me with a pineapple! Or rather, fuck the idiots who take those loans with a pineaple, cos that's what they're going to get.

More evidence that religion makes you stupid

More evidence of the close correlation between being religious and being retarded.

Gratuitous insults

There's been lots in the news recently about "insulting Mohammed". Let me get this clear. People are upset because of insults to a self-proclaimed prophet, someone indistinguishable from the sort of tramp who wets himself and has long shouted conversations with lamp-posts about how that bastard Wellington tricked him at Waterloo?

Advice to Christians, part 4

This story irritates me. It appears that this bunch of religious idiots think that, when given a choice between providing medical care and not providing medical care - which, after all, is the raison d'être ofa hospital - they should, umm, squander their money on priests and not spend it on medical care. This is stupid. I'm not denying that for superstitious patients, having a priest come round and whisper inanities at you might do some good - I'm sure it does. But medical care will do more good, and it'll do it to normal people as well, not just the superstitious.

You know what would do people more good than priests? Not being bored out of their skulls while in hospital. But you don't see Christians telling hospitals to spend their money on Playstations, DVD players, a decent library, and "interesting" tattoos for the nurses. You're expected to take your own entertainment with you, as that provided is only suitable for geriatrics.

So how about, if the deluded think that having their professional god-botherers traipsing infections around hospitals is so important, they bloody well pay for it themselves. It's not as if the church is short of a quid or two. And if some random sect can't afford it, then maybe they should pray harder and get their god to pay.

A theological question

If the pope were a protestant, would bears still shit in the woods?

Advice to Christians, part 3

Here is yet another example of why no-one pays much attention to the church these days. This bishop says that a bunch of people got flooded out of their homes because of "moral degradation ... because every lifestyle is now regarded as legitimate" and that we're "liable for god's judgment" because of the sexual orientation regulations which give gay people civil rights.

Way to tell people that your god, if it exists, is a contemptible bigot unworthy of the time of day, let alone respect or worship! Christians would do well to replace him and his fellow idiots with decent, thinking people.

[Update: Genesis 9:8-11 would seem to be relevant - "And God spake unto Noah ... neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth"]

Moslem martial artists

I'm very pleased to see this story about Moslem women learning martial arts. It's something I've been advocating for a long time (in the second piece, search for 'defence', it's about half way down the page. My comments are in green).

Hooray for Jesus!

He died so we could have a long weekend!

Interwebnets roundup

Some things that got my attention in the past few days ...

David Cantrell's home burnt down and now he lives in an old bus, according to the Dallas Morning News. You too can get bizarre stories about your evil twins emailed to you with Google Alerts.

A retard tried to ban a couple's Christmas peace symbol because, well, clearly, Christ was only joking when he said "blessed are the peace-makers".

And finally, I owe the hip-hop community an apology. I have previously dismissed all their work as "illiterate shouty crap". But now Baba Brinkman, a Canadian student of Mediæval and Renaissance English, has set the Canterbury Tales to music. It's still shouty crap, of course, but illiterate it is not.

The Veil

The recent palaver about the full-face veil worn by some Moslem women (and it should be noted that the politician who raised the issue is somewhat deaf and to a large degree only understands what people are saying by lip-reading) prompted me to think (again) about why the veil exists. If the full veil really were a reaction to uncontrollable male lust, then surely us uncontrolled lustful males would just rip the damned things off so we could get at the gloriously rapeable wenches* hiding underneath. In which case, the best response to the presence of those uncontrollable male beasts would be for the Moslem community to arm its women and send them to self-defence classes.

I note a distinct lack of veil-ripping, and also of Moslem women at self-defence classes. Which, to be perfectly blunt, demonstrates that all that prattle about lust is somewhat terminologically inexact.

* I like that phrase so much that I'll say it again. "Gloriously rapeable wenches". Lovely.

More theology

I was very pleased with the results of my last little excursion into theology. Lots of lovely hate-mail, including from one guy who figured out where I live and threatened me with a right good kicking. I'm still waiting for the chance to educate him in the ways of christian brotherly love in person. Sadly, none of the replies posted as comments in this journal made it past the spam filters. Please, all of you, try harder.

Anyway, I enjoyed that so much that I thought I'd help those of you struggling with your faith some more.

Today's text is Matthew 5:29, which reads:

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

In conjunction with the following verse it is obvious that Jesus only uses the eye (and the hand in verse 30) as examples. He clearly means this to apply to all body parts. Therefore when a trans-sexual takes the difficult step of "coming out" and deciding to go the whole hog, bodily modifications and all, he/she is to be applauded not only for great personal courage, but also for doing what so many christians can not and following the Lord's teachings not only in the abstract sense of being a decent person but in the concrete too.

Advice to everyone ...

... but especially to Christians and straights.

According to the bible, the original sinner, who tempted man into everlasting damnation, was a woman. It is therefore clear to me that a righteous man would reject women and seek only the solace of men. Through this method, Original Sin can surely be purged and we can enter into the light of the LORD.

I realise that there are some amongst my audience who may doubt this God-given vision of mine. They need only consider the terrible rise in crime over the last few decades, years within which sinful Woman has been granted "rights" by sinful men, even so far, God forbid, as to be able to celebrate the Eucharist and then cast her vote.

No, this can surely not be right. The Lord has vouchsafed to me a simple message. Abandon Woman. Embrace Man. It is only through the holy institution of Homosexuality that we can attain peace and godliness.

Advice to Buddhists

While I would be the first to agree with you that the music of Mr. Dave Mustaine and his troubadour friends "Megadeth" is jolly fine stuff, I don't really think that it's suitable listening for monks attempting to follow in the footsteps of the Enlightened One.

Advice to Christians, part 2

If you want to convince me of how splendid your GAWD is, you'll get a better response by not waking me up with a hangover. I will give you credit though for sending cute birds in pretty flowery dresses instead of the usual boring cunts in suits. Not that that stopped me from being rude to them.

Ha ha, God hates you

God, fed up at idiot religious nutballs pestering him at all times of the day or night, hired his mate Zeus to give some of them the slap they so richly deserve. The supposedly omnibenevolent God could not be reached by this reporter for comment before going to press, but the usual crowd of sycophants (is it a coincidence that the first two syllables are "sicko"?) insist that he had those children zapped for their own good and that God works in mysterious ways.

Praise the Lard!

An Easter Thought

I give you ... H.P.Lovecraft's "Saint Paul, Re-animator".