Poe's law in action

Poor old Australia has been in the wars of late, floods, tornadoes and bush-fires making things down under as rough as a dingo's arse (as they probably say in Aus). However someone pointed me towards this blog post regarding the same. Yep it's all down to the amazing power of botty-sex again! You let gays do each other up the bum and pow, next thing you know your shrimps are floating off the barbie and out to sea.

Do go and have a read if you have a moment, and have a look at some of the rest of his postings, all of them equally batshit insane; I mean real frothing at the mouth and howling at the moon crazy. So completely fucked up in the head you sit there thinking "This has to be a spoof. No-one is this mental." Which brings us to Poe's Law which states that:

“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.”

The parody "Landover Baptists" site used to be a very good example of this, nowadays they do have the "blatant display of humour" but in the past you'd quite often see people posting "WTF are these guys serious" comments in various fora. But for every parody there are real mad Christian (and every other religion I am sure) sites like the odious "god hates fags / America / pretty much anyone that isn't Fred Phelps" family of bile ridden tripe.

Which brings us onto Bob Hutton. Now I really cannot for the life of me tell if this is a piss take or not, it's almost a perfect example of Poe's law in action.

I'm pretty sure it's a spoof though.

I bloody well hope so, I'm really not comfortable sharing the planet with Mr Hutton if he's for real.

A game of numbers

Sorry about the lack of blogging, It's been a bit crazy these last few weeks.

However to make up for it I'd like you to meet Christopher Valentine. Mad as a bucket of elves.



Well it explains why I can never find any chopsticks in my kitchen drawer when I want to eat chinese.

But I bet you laughed at the batshit crazy guy who is clearly 100% hatstand.

But if he was stood there and told you about talking snakes, people with wings who had flaming swords and this Jewish guy who came back to life after being dead for 3 days then you'd just go "oh, right, another God-botherer"

All christianity and the other "real" religions have on their side which this guy doesn't is weight of numbers . Anyone who believes in the truth of the Bible/Koran/Haynes Manual of the Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUH) is equally as howling-at-the-moon crazy as Chris here and clearly should be on some form of medication but aren't because, well, there's millions of them and Novartis simply could not make enough anti-psychotics.

Pretty Prancing Unicorns.

Aw, unicorns, they're so cute. They sing and they dance and they poop rainbows...



... well not that one, obviously.

But if you are a literal bible believing Christian you have to believe these one horned beasties exists because your Holy Text mentions then by name, and not once either.

I bet you would be surprised to learn that there are actually nine references to unicorns in the bible: Numbers 23:22; 24:8; Deut. 33:17; Job 39:9,10; Psalms 22:21; 29:6; 92:10; and Isaiah 34:7.

And all you apologists that say "oh it's just a mistranslation of the Hebrew re'em and it refers to a wild ox let's just look at Psams 92 shall we?

"But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil."

Horn, singlar. Last time I looked oxen had two horns.

And it's not a rhino either, despite what some fundies have claimed like this asshat here seemingly on the strength of its latin species name Rhinocerous unicornis - that's simply the Latin for "one horned" and the fallacy that it once had a "huge range"... it did that but it was to the east, not to the west.

So there you have it. If you believe that the bible is the true, inerrant word of God then you must, a priori, believe in the physical existence of unicorns.

You'll be telling me dragons exist next... oh hang on, turns out with 24 mentions by name we do!

Jeremiah 51:37 And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant.

... and ...

Job 30:29 I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.

Aw that's nice, I have that Job as a brother. Job, can you lend me a tenner until payday bro?

God to Haiti... it's all your fault

Well not God per-se, he has his followers to make pronouncements for him

Rev. Pat Robertson had some interesting thoughts as to why the earthquake struck the impoverished nation:

"And you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it.

“They were under the heel of the French, uh, you know Napoleon the 3rd and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the Devil.

“They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.'

“True story.

“And so the Devil said, 'Okay, it's a deal.’

“And, uh, they kicked the French out, you know, with Haitians revolted and got themselves free.

“But ever since they have been cursed by, by one thing after another, desperately poor.

“That island of Hispaniola is one island. It’s cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti on the other side is the Dominican Republican.

“Dominican Republic is, is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etcetera.

“Haiti is in desperate poverty.

“Same island.

Incidentally Pat, a few dates to chew on: Napoleon III (20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873), Toussaint l' Overture (20 May 1743 – 8 April 1803)

So you can't even get you factual history right you loathsome pig fucking moron let alone the stuff that you made up!

And, pray tell, even if this libel that a few Haitians in the 18th century made a "pact with the devil" why does your "merciful" god decide on collective punishment (even we humans have outlawed that under our rules of war) not on the people who made such a pact, but on a metric fuckton of people living more than 200 years later! Pray tell me, Pat, why your god thinks that this...



... and a hundred thousand other incidents of similar horror, pain and suffering are justification for a bunch of desperate slaves yearning for their freedom making some "pact with the devil"... an event which an eminent scholar (and member of the JC fan club nonetheless) says never happened anyway

although the satanic pact idea is by far the most popular explanation for Haiti’s birth as a free nation, especially among Christian missionaries and some Haitian Church leaders, it is nothing more than a fantasist opinion that ultimately dissipates upon close examination.
- Dr Jean R Gelin PhD

In some ways its a shame there is no eternal punishment after death as Pat Robinson would surely be a shoo-in for having his genitals roasted on pillars of hellish flames for all eternity.



(Hat-tip to The Freethinker: http://freethinker.co.uk/2010/01/14/haiti%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98pact-with-the-devil%E2%80%99-caused-devastating-earthquake-says-televangelist/

Run Away! Run Away!

SAVANNAH, GA (WTOC) - Some church members were able to make contact with their loved ones that are currently in Haiti.

At the Grace Church of the Islands church members were able see and talk to missionaries from their church using Skype. The group seemed upbeat given the circumstances, and none of them were injured during the quake. For parents being able to see their children during this troubling time is giving them new reason to hope.

"I knew he was fine because I had spoken to him by satellite phone last night, and I knew Athat the Lord was going to provide. He was faithful and provided, but it's still great to see him on the camera," said Mary Ellen Calderon, who has a son in Haiti right now.

Because of the limited access to Haiti, the missionaries are still unable to fly home. The church is trying to make arrangements, but it could still be days before they're able to leave the island.

Hang on just a minute, aren't you good Xtian folk supposed to be staying behind and helping out instead of scuttling back home?

I guess what with the locals rather preoccupied with digging their relatives out of the rubble, trying to find a not too badly contaminated puddle to drink from and trying to dodge the bullets that will soon start flying as what little civilisation their country had unravels into barbarism they would not really have the time or be that receptive to your happy clappy come Jesus wants you for a sunbeam message?

Hopefully they will catch you and use you for food before the church can get the Learjet into Port Au Prince internatonal to fly your flabby white asses out of there.

Could not have put it better myself

Well actually I probably could. This gem is from a comment in the Daily Hate on an article on the continuing internal squabbles of the Anglican church as it tears itself about over the amazing power of bottysex.

hi what would god think if someone wanted to marry there pet dog who they loved very much would the church change its views and except them

- richard shepherd, moonta south australia, 7/8/2008 7:53

Actually I think he's probably a bit too bright and articulate to be a Christian.

Incidentally I used to know one vicar who, whilst probably not up for conducting a marriage ceremony for you and Fido would be quite happy to give you a blessing.

I get my centaur after all

Yay! Another shoeing for the sky-pixie's followers yesterday in the commons where sense (and no doubt a government whip whispering things about "vote for centaurs or we will let slip the pictures of you and that mare trying to create one the old fashioned way) prevailed and human-animal hybrids got the go ahead.

What I find truly ugly though is the depths that the invisible fairy's friends will stoop to to impose their delusion on the rest of us. Let's take a look at some of the things that they said shall we...

Ex-minister Edward Leigh, who led the fight against the creation of hybrid "admixed" embryos, said they were "ethically wrong and almost certainly medically useless".

And you are qualified to make a descision about whether something is medically useless because? According to your Wikipedia page you're a member of the landed gentry, have a degree in History and qualified as a barrister. You are about as scientifically and medially qualified as a slice of toast so you can just shut right the fuck up.

He said there was "no evidence yet to substantiate" claims the work could lead to treatment for degenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

If there even the tiniest sliver of a chance that throwing babies in a blender would lead to treatment for these evil conditions then we should be supporting them. I suppose you've never come into contact with these diseases have you? I suppose you think that dribbling into your soup is God punishing you for original sin? Words are barely adequate to describe how I think of you, you utter waste of DNA.

But then he goes and says...

"In embryos, we do have the genetic make up of a complete human being and we could not and should not be spliced together with the animal kingdom."

I have a bit of bad news for you here, fucktard. You ARE a member of the animal kingdom, hard as it is to believe as you appear to display all the intellectual capacity of seaweed.

And ex-Labour minister Sir Gerald Kaufman, agreed, adding: "How far do you go? Where do you stop? What are the limits and what are the boundaries?

Ah, the "thin end of the wedge" argument, you know if someone trots this out their position is truly fucked. Well Gerald, you don't stop, you go full throttle. There's no grumpy old man with a beard there so the sole purpose of the exercise is to make life more bearable whilst we're here and getting rid of or at least mitigating the effects of disease is noble and honorable and we should persue it with all the energies and skills humankind (and dragonkind) can muster. You want to sit in a cave mumbling about how god-of-mountain-will-be-angry-rain-down-fire then off you go but kindly fuck the hell out of everyone else's chance to have a pain free old age where they can actually remember who their relatives are, you wankstain.

I also noticed this bit of reportage:

However, the majority of the Tory shadow cabinet, including shadow foreign secretary William Hague and shadow home secretary David Davis, backed the unsuccessful attempt to ban hybrids.

Same old Tories then. Time to scrawl "None of you fuckers" on the ballot paper I guess.

And in signing off I saw there was an extra win...

A separate attempt to ban "pure" hybrid embryos, that would mix a human egg with animal sperm or vice versa, was also defeated in the Commons by 286 votes to 223, a government majority of 63.

Now it's been a while since I did biology but how does that work, I thought that the chromasome counts didn't match up? Can anyone explain this to me and why we don't already have centaurs, satyrs and lots of half-man/half-sheep creatures wandering around Wales?

(And yes, getting a bit bored with baiting scammers now so I'm going to post more; anyway it's eurovision time which is always good for a post or four)

Result

From the beeb:

A Christian group has lost its High Court battle to prosecute the BBC's director general over the screening of Jerry Springer - The Opera in 2005.

Fucking A! Now let's get these ridiculous blasphemy laws and indeed anything that treats a religion as something special deserving of legal protection off the statute books right now.

I sincerely hope that the suppurating twat who runs Christian Voice, the group of shaven monkeys who brought this action in the High Court, gets whalloped for every penny piece of the cost of the defences' m'learned friends. Fucking hell I took a wander over to their site and nearly lost my fucking lunch. What an irredeemably nasty bunch of cuntstains these people are. Oddly enough they are silent when it comes to the good shoeing they just received at the hands of the courts but quite vocal when it comes down to their preference for young women to die from a preventable disease rather than have an injection which will "encourage promiscuity". Make no mistake these wankers are just as bad as the islamonutters wanting sharia law; sure their theocracy will bang on about love and saving the nation but you can bet your last penny that given the chance they would be lashing rape victims for being "promiscuous" and stringing gays up from cranes for the heinous crime of loving another human being.

I say we take off and nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

Johnny has two mummies...

... three daddies and 10% of his DNA from a Charolais bull called Henry.

Religious leaders

Uh oh! You know this isn't going to be pretty don't you.

have expressed concern over plans to make it easier for lesbian couples to use IVF to become parents.

Incredible isn't it, it's almost a Pavlovian response. Say the world "lesbian" or "gay" to a "religious leader" and the dogs start salivating. Can't see what they are getting all wound up about anyway as all that book written by a bunch of stoned Arabs says is throw rocks at a woman who lies with another one; didn't say anything about "Oh and if they start arseing around with donor sperm and test tubes, throw more rocks!"

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor wrote: "The bill proposes to remove the need for IVF providers to take into account the child's need for a father when considering an IVF application and to confer legal parenthood on people who have no biological relationship to a child born as a result of IVF.

The key phase here, Moron-O'Connor is "Legal Parenthood", my birth certificate has as my legal parents two people who have no biological relationship to me whatsoever as I was adopted. Who gives a flying fuck what it says on a bit of paper; the law is a human construct and humans can change it when the old law no longer suits what society has become.

"This radically undermines the place of the father in a child's life, and makes the natural rights of the child subordinate to the desires of the couple. It is profoundly wrong."

What "natural rights" of the child are these? And what choice does any child have to come into the world. Surely every child is conceived as a result of the desires of the couple whether dishonourable (quick knee trembler outside the disco and you were too pissed to put a condom on) or honorable (we would like to have a child and we will love it and raise it to the best of our abilities)

Family campaigners are also stepping up their opposition to the Bill, with former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith warning it would be a "nail in the coffin" of the traditional family and "another blow" against fatherhood.

And we should listen to a failed slaphead politician like you because?

Look, it's quite simple. Two people want to offer a loving home to a child and are prepared to go through the hassle and (I imagine) pain of IVF in order to have one; that for one thing tells me that their relationship must be pretty strong and so, hopefully, likely to last. If you really want to have a kid that much then surely you are going to love him or her when it arrives. I'd much rather have a kid being brought up by two people who love it that by some 18 year old single mum who can't keep her legs together after ten Bacardi Breezers and whose idea of parenting is to stick junior in front of an X-Box.

Hey you want male role models for the kid... how about that old concept of a godfather? You get one of those when you get baptised. I hear Westminster Cathedral is a lovely place to get that done.



(Oh and I love that picture they keep using of the cardinal... as I mentioned in a post ages ago it looks as though he's about to get assaulted with a horse sized dildo)

An exercise in futility

Flapping around the InterWeb yesterday evening I stumbled upon the XXX Church, a website both hilarious and deeply sad in equal measure. It isn't what you would expect from the URL, no nuns with donkies or pics of Father O'Murphy's latest choirboy but it's a site devoted to helping cure you of your "pornography addiction".

It's very clever on a lot of levels, first unlike most Xtian sites that seem to have been designed by a kid off the special-ed bus using HotDog v1.0 on a 486 this one is well built, quick and engaging so you think you might well have stumbled on an adult site, secondly getting that URL was fucking inspired. Thirdly they have gone for the "it's an addiction, it's not your fault" line, see it's not your fault, it's the nasty booze, heroin, porn that has made you an addict so don't feel bad, we can help you. It's a pernicious lie if ever there was one; of course it is impossible to be physically addicted to anything that isn't a chemical you put in your body. Sure you can become obsessed with anything, stamp collecting, restoring vintage cars or, indeed, looking at online smut but you don't see sites devoted to helping "stamp collecting addicts" do you. Of course once you have something labelled as "addictive" (which immediately equates to "dangerous") it's a lot easy to get your campaign to restrict or ban said something - and make no mistake this is something the followers of your Middle-Eastern Sky God would love to to, even the moderate ones.

What heartens me though is the utter futility of their task. Firstly take a look at the hatemail section. You would expect the hatemail to be from, well, folks like your favourite grumpy dragon telling them what a bunch of wankstains they were and that they could have my horseporn when they pry it from my cold, dead claws but nope, virtually all the hatemail is from other Xtians telling them what evil scum they are and, showing true Christian charity, that they will all assuredly burn in hell where devils will repeatedly poke their nether regions with tiny pitchforks¹

But for the real giggles you need to go to the "Prayer Wall" where the sad sacks who have been drawn in by this nonsense make their confessions and ask for prayers. These are just hilarious, Mrs Dracunculus had to help me back into my chair I was laughing so loud. From the guy who posted his e-mail asking them to repent of their sins and stop running a porn site he'd sent to the customer support address of "Virtualgirls.com" and was still awaiting a response from the management, to the guy who had finally beaten his "porn addiction" and his wife still left him, to the high school student who is doing his "365 days of purity" and keeps falling off the wagon every three or four days never has a group of people deserving of more derisive laughter been gathered in one place.

Equally however I do feel saddened and not a little angry at the whole thing; look porn has been around ever since Ug the Neanderthal picked up a burnt stick and scratched it against the wall of the cave and it will be with us long after we are all wearing one piece silver jump suits on our day trips to Betelgeuse, it is not going to go away, no matter how much you would like it to and how much you pray. Sex is an integral part of the make up of any animal, us included. We think about it most of the time, it's a basic biological drive and uniquely among the animals we can answer part of that biological drive by looking at pictures of other individuals in a sexual context². There's nothing wrong with looking at mucky pictures or indeed having one off the wrist, it's as natural as breathing and going to the lavatory and the only thing making it unhealthy is getting all tied up in guilt over it because you're a subscriber to some mediaeval unreality cult whose way of controlling you is to make you feel bad about anything that might be pleasurable. I want to go on there and just tell the poor fuckers writing in that "You know, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing, keep it up, just don't do it 24/7."

In fact I have applied for an account as I think there is some prime mischief making possibilities here and the opportunity to maybe to make a point at the same time.

If I get the account I'll start messing with their heads next week... see if you can spot which one is me.



¹ Alas! Spare my posterior!

² Does not seem to work with animals that. As a control I printed off some piccies of hunky stallions and showed them to my mare Sunshine. She sniffed them, nibbled them to see if they were edible and then wandered off and started eating the hawthorn hedge.

"We shall have peace"

Oh this is fucking rich!

More than 130 Muslim scholars have written to Pope Benedict and other Christian leaders urging greater understanding between the two faiths. They say that world peace could depend on improved relations between Muslims and Christians.

Greater understanding my arse... we all know this means "you must understand us, we don't need to understand you". Thing is, as I pointed out in an earlier post, by taking a look at the Koran the Christians (whom as you know I hold no brief for) can perfectly well understand where they stand, and it isn't here...

They also cite the Koran as placing a duty on Muslims to treat Christians and Jews as followers of those prophets with particular friendship.

rather it's here...

5:54 O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily God guideth not a people unjust.

and here

9:29 Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the last day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His Messenger and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute (jizya) readily, being brought low.

Peace, apparently, depends on either conversion to Islam or subjugation and taxation as inferiors.

I am reminded of King Theoden's speech to Saruman when Saruman offers peace...


We shall have peace... We shall have peace, when you answer for the burning of the Westfold, and the children that lie dead there! We shall have peace, when the lives of the soldiers whose bodies were hewn even as they died against the gates of the Hornberg, are avenged! When you hang from a gibbet for the sport of your own crows...! We shall have peace.

Mad as a Box of Frogs 2

Grumpy Dragon Entertainments Inc brings you another entry in our irregular "Mad as a Box Of Frogs" series. Today's pearl of insanity comes to you from "Everything you need to know about Christian Sexuality"

One thing that I teach people about in my book, The Spirits of Sexual Perversion Handbook, is that any act of sexual perversion can lead to other acts of sexual perversion. For instance, you can be a hetrosexual male and commit fornication and then find yourself inexplicably developing an interest in gay sex later on.

But wait... it gets worse!

That act of fornication opened both men up to other acts of sexual perversion. The spirits that I expose in the book are:

Fornication, Masturbation, Adultery, Incest, Homosexuality, Prostitution
Pornography, Sexual Fantasy, Rape, Pedophilia, Bestiality , Lust,
Lasciviousness, Promiscuity

Involvement with any of the above spirits can lead to involvement with all of the above spirits. This is especially the case when spirits are transferred to you during intercourse with someone.

There you go, you sleep with someone who likes looking at porn and the next thing you know you're cruising the streets looking to pay for sex with a underage billy goat and thinking about Kylie Minogue in a wetsuit with the bottom cut out... and you're going to do it more than once!

Heal her Lord, for she is afflicted with jelly for brains. She can't even spell "Lasciviousness" - I had to correct it in her post!

UPDATE: For more giggles go to the homepage of the blog and click on her word links... you even get 2 shots at "bestiality" because she spelt it wrong the first time, the fucktard.

Finden Sie eine Erklärungfür dieses

Oh this just rocks so hard my tail hasn't stopped wagging all morning. The last post I made has been translated into German.

"Mürrischer Drache". It just sounds so much better in German.

Even if your German is as appalling as my two years of Höchschule Deutsch go over to "My Automotive Information" and give Henry some traffic. And Henry, consider yourself "ein ehrend drache" (an honorary dragon) forthwith.

Oh and the whiny God-botherer picked up on the traffic spike too and did a post saying what an unhappy soul I must be and requesting prayers for my blackened, twisted soul which I suppose is better than the last Christian I upset who threatened to feed me my teeth (I think she's forgiven me but I'm not flying over Colorado any time soon just to be sure!)

Seconds away. Round One

The Church of England is to consider possible rules for settling disputes in the Anglican Church, amid divisions over the ordination of gay priests.

The bout to be settled by two falls, two submissions or a knock-out.

God's aim sucks

Either that, or as Depeche Mode once observed, he has a sick sense of humour.

According to Bishop of Carlisle, the current flooding some parts of the UK are experiencing is all down to the amazing power of botty sex. Yes, God is pissed at us for passing a law last year which basically says "Treat people equally under the law regardless of what sex they make the two-backed beast with" and The Almighty lets loose a flood of not quite biblical proportions...

In Doncaster for fucks sake!

Last time I was in Doncaster it was full of decidedly heterosexual Yorkshiremen and certainly not a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, well no more than any other northern industrial town. So I can safely conclude that either Jehovah meant to hit the Canal Street area of Manchester and his aim went low and right, in which case he sounds an ideal candidate to replace Flintoff in the England bowling line-up, or maybe, just maybe, this is a natural phenomenon caused by a lot of unseasonal rainfall exacerbated by silly buggers building houses on flood plains.

The bish has got some choice quotes:

The bishop, who is a leading evangelical, said that people should heed the stories of the Bible, which described the downfall of the Roman empire as a result of its immorality.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that Rome at the height of its powers worshipped Pagan gods, drank and ate itself stupid, staged fights to the death for entertainment and a statue like this one was regarded as being in exquisite taste and at the time the empire finally crumbled and the Visigoths strolled off with the loot it was Christian.

"In the Bible, institutional power is referred to as 'the beast', which sets itself up to control people and their morals.

Er... pretty much like the church did for about 1800 years then.

Our government has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want," he said, adding that the introduction of recent pro-gay laws highlighted its determination to undermine marriage.

Disregarding the fact that our present government seems to be keen to pass as many laws as possible to specifically stop people being free at all we're back at the amazing power of bottysex again! Let the gays get wed and suddenly those promises that you and the Mrs made all those years back are suddenly null and void so you might as well just get a divorce and get the years of bitter argument over child custody under way right now.

"The sexual orientation regulations [which give greater rights to gays] are part of a general scene of permissiveness. We are in a situation where we are liable for God's judgment.

So how come God can't just judge those he doesn't like and leave the good citizens of Doncaster who, lets face it, didn't have a whole heap of input into the formulation of the Civil Partnerships Act, alone. I dunno, hit Battersea Park with a tidal wave on gay pride march day or something?

He expressed his sympathy for those who have been hit by the weather, but said that the problem with "environmental judgment is that it is indiscriminate".

Hang on a minute here? What's with the environmental judgement thing. God, being omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent can (with allowances for human free will depending upon your theological position on predeterminism) do anything he damn well pleases so surely whistling up a flood the trashes the naughty and spares the innocent is a walk in the park? Either that or he just unleashes the environment to do what it wants - doesn't sound like a very loving act to me?

The West is also being punished for the way that it has exploited poorer nations in its pursuit of economic gain. "It has set up dominant economic structures that are built on greed and that keep other nations in a situation of dependence. The principle of God's judgment on nations that have exploited other nations is all there in the Bible," he said.

So was the Boxing Day tsunami the poor nations of the East being punished; look at all those dead fuckers, he must really be ticked off at them. And what are they being punished for, giving western tourists poor service at the poolside bar? And how come all these poor countries get hit with natural disasters all the time? In the UK last year the number of fatalities from flooding was about three, in Bangladesh it was in the thousands.

On the same subject we last had a major flood with loss of life in 1953, around 300 people died. No global warming then and I really can't think that God was upset about the government passing the Agriculture (Ploughing Grants) Act in 1952 (mind you the old Witchcraft act was repealed in 1951 so maybe it was that and God just had a lot on in the early 50's)

Somebody desperately needs to give Bishop Dow a few whacks round the head with his crozier, might jump-start his brain if we're lucky.

At least there was one minor note of sanity...

The Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, said: "We are all part of the problem and part of the solution. Instead of living as if we owned the earth we need to recover a sense of being participants in a web of life with responsibilities to other life forms and to our children."

Well yes... except that it was your lot who told us for years that the we humans were touched by god and above all that natural world stuff which was ours to do with as we pleased and the pagans who kept saying we had to respect the natural world. Nice to see at least some of you are coming round; about 18 centuries late but at least you're getting there.

Oining the Xtians

Keen students of this blog may remember a while back I had a somewhat forthright exchange of views with a Christian on whose website I left a comment to the fact that wanting cancer so you can glorify God through your pain was not so much warped and curved through l-space on four or five higher dimensions.

Well it's turned out that our little discourse generated a blog post of its own which you can read over here (Hey she gave me a link, only fair I return the compliment) on the subject of swearing.

Apparently I'm possessed by demons, which would explain a few things.

I did leave a comment mentioning how I found it amusing that Xtians do seem to have this rather convenient excuse of blaming anything bad they do on demons, satan or whatever; you'll notice its never the fact that they might just, well, not be nice people.

She's turned comment moderation on though so I doubt it'll ever see the light of day.

UPDATE: Well credit where it's due, the comment went up. We're chatting about horses now. Maybe I can introduce her to Epona.

An error in your moral compass has occurred, please reset

I see over on Yahoo (I get my news from all the best places) that our wierdybeardy druid archbishop has stuck his oar into the muddy waters of the "debate" (read "vicious backstabbing slanging match") on homosexuality¹ and said that many of his co-religionists are misreading the bible. Yeah like that doesn't ever happen.

It reminds me of a time years ago when I had this Christian friend I used to talk religion with. I'd say something like "Hey, you believe this bible thing so how come you eat cheeseburgers when the bible says you shouldn't?" he would get this sort of fatherly "I love my son but he's making a mess of trying to ride a bike so I'll help him" expression of kindly sorrow and say "ah, you are in error..." and proceed to go through a bunch of tortuous logic that you could drive a coach and four through to try and show that while the bible might actually say in black and white that eating meat and milk together was not allowed that the bible actually says it is. However this chain of shoddy logic which explained why it was no longer necessary to stone disobedient children to death although the bible clearly says you should somehow didn't work where botty sex was concerned.

Anyway back to Archbish Rowan. Now I took a look at the relevant bit of bible verse that is being spoken about here (Romans 1:27 in case you want a look yourself) and it does seem pretty clear that botty sex is a bad thing in Paul's mind. However interestingly enough if you read around this verse what Mr Road to Damascus seems to be saying is that "Because people, who should have known better, worshipped the creation rather than the creator God made them all 'Good With Colours'". So it's God's fault that there are gays because he made them that way. Can't see I follow the logic as I've come across some very heterosexual Pagans in my time but we'll let that pass for now.

Either way I'm struggling here to see Rowan William's point that this passage is all about not being a smug, self righteous prick but apparently that's all in chapter 2

Certainly starts in a promising way...

"Therefore you are without excuse, whoever you are, when you judge someone else. For on whatever grounds you judge another, you condemn yourself,"

And then it all goes downhill...

"because you who judge practice the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment is in accordance with truth against those who practice such things. And do you think, whoever you are, when you judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape God’s judgment?"

Seems clear to me what is being said is "If you rant and rave about gays but are really indulging in a spot of sausage up the bum activity yourself my Invisible Friend will know and beat you up." rather than the whole thing being about not to condemn people. Basically it's saying "Don't be a hypocrite" which is fine but it certainly is our Paul saying that being gay is bad, so bad in fact that if you don't worship him, god will make you lust after other men's willies.

However I am probably (kindly smile) "in error" once more.

It would be nice if the Xtians could make their minds up on this once and for all but I suspect that this one will run and run.

In the meantime I'll continue to put my willy wherever I like so long as it's welcome.