Religion

When seven mortal sins just aren’t enough

March 11, 2008

So good old Popey has decided that it’s time to update the seven deadly sins – seven of the most powerful words in recent history for the religiously minded. Back in the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great came up with the original seven mortal sins of envy, pride, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth. Supposedly these were sins that, if you died guilty of them, you went straight to Hell, did not pass go and did not collect two hundred virgins. Naturally, as with everything in the Catholic faith, even these things are completely forgivable for a once only special offer donation of your soul. Just remember to recant before you cark.

How come Pope Gregory was “the Great”, by the way? Why haven’t we had any other popes with cool nicknames recently? Pope John Paul the Awesome would have been better than Pope John Paul the Second. Anyway, I digress.

The entertaining thing is that the new sins developed by the Vatican under Pope Benedict the Ratzinger are all more global sins, with the church trying to move away from the individual sins. The new sins are polluting, genetic engineering, obscene riches, taking drugs, abortion, pedophilia and causing social injustice.

Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, which is the Department of Catholic Sin Absolution, named the new mortal sins in an interview with the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, on Monday. He said the new seven sins had a social resonance and showed worshippers that their vices affected other people. “New sins have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalisation,” he said.

I would imagine that several of those sins have actually appeared from directly within the Catholic church. Causing social injustice? Would the active misinformation spread about condom use in AIDS infested Africa not suggest a social injustice? Even to the point where some Catholics have been claiming that it is condoms that cause AIDS. Not to mention the numerous other injustices done by missionaries over the years and the many still being perpetrated.

But that’s nothing compared to obscene wealth. Best guesses about the Vatican’s wealth put it at US$10 billion to US$15 billion. Of this wealth, Italian stockholdings alone run to $1.6 billion, 15% of the value of listed shares on the Italian market.

Still, I would imagine that they would have a lot more cash than that if they hadn’t had to settle all those pedophilia lawsuits recently. I could go on, but it’s shooting fish in a barrel really.

It’s not really the revelation it seems

By alan

January 4, 2008

I was walking past my favourite church yesterday. It’s my favourite purely because of the ridiculous signs they always put up. They’ve surpassed themselves this time.

churchhypocrites It’s not really the revelation it seems

This church is not full of hypocrites.
There’s always room for more.

The sign is qualified by a quote at the bottom which reads, “Romans 3:10 ‘No one is righteous – not even one.’”

At first this seems to be quite progressive and tongue in cheek from the church. But it’s not really. Admitting to something doesn’t mitigate you from being guilty of it. It’s like when people say something like, “No offence, but you’re a really dumb bastard.” Whenever anyone starts a sentence with the words ‘No offence’, you know right away that they’re going to be offensive.

There’s another one like that. “I’m not racist…”

But you’re about to make a really racist comment, right?

So to me, the sign above is doing exactly what I’ve always accused the church of anyway. Blatantly advertising for more hypocrites as they don’t feel that they have enough yet. Gather ye, hypocrites and willfully ignorant, and we shall stand on moral high ground and thumb our noses at those with a free thinking mind.

Condensed Lord’s Prayer, txt style

By alan

December 27, 2007

I know this is very old news, but I’m still in holiday mode. I came across it again recently anyway, so it’s like fashion – everything old is new again. Back in 2003 (yeah, that old) the satirical Christian online magazine Ship of Fools ran a competition to rewrite the Lord’s Prayer in 160 characters or less. This was based on the concept that text messaging and online chat abbreviations were taking over the modern language. Of course, that debate still rages on and there are people that are convinced that text messaging, sorry txt msg, will take over once today’s teenagers graduate. Of course, there’s a fundamental flaw in that logic, but let’s not all get into a flap about something that’ll never happen. Language continuously evolves, but not at that pace and not driven entirely by teenagers. Even though they’d like to think that they are responsible for everything. But I digress.

The Ship Of Fools competition wanted the Lord’s Prayer in 160 characters or less, as that is the accepted standard maximum for a mobile phone text message. The winner was Matthew Campbell of York University, with the following sterling effort:

dad@hvn, ur spshl. we want wot u want &urth2b like hvn. giv us food & 4giv r sins lyk we 4giv uvaz. don’t test us! save us! bcos we kno ur boss, ur tuf & ur cool 4 eva! ok?

Bible myths at bus stops

By alan

December 23, 2007

Twas Christmas Eve morn and all through the streets
Cars queued angrily and folk ground their teeth

On this pagan celebration, by Christians hijacked
Stress levels were soaring and nerves were wracked

When there sat at a bus stop a prophet, all grey
And he shared his message with a sign all day:

BIBLE
MYTHS

A
BABY
NOT
VIRGIN
BORN
BUT
INVENTED

Almost has a touch of the haiku about it. Every once in a while he’d turn the board around and written on the other side was ‘EX-FAITH CHRISTIAN’ and his name, which I can’t remember unfortunately. He was very happy, smiling and waving at the cars as they crawled by. Made my morning, that did.

Religions of the world united at last?

By alan

November 10, 2007

No. Of course not. That’s a ridiculous concept. By their very nature they’re antagonistic towards each other. But you could be forgiven for thinking they had the capacity to unite by looking at this picture:

clergymeet1 Religions of the world united at last?

The guy in the middle definitely wins for the silliest hat.

The people in this shot have been identified as (left to right) Sheik Abed es-Salem Menasra, deputy mufti of Jerusalem; the Rev. Michel Sabbagh, the Latin patriarch; the Archbishop Torkom Manoogian, the Armenian patriarch; Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi; and Rabbi Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi. The poor fella at the far right was not identified for some reason. Maybe he still needs to get a bit more bigoted or something.

So, why are they all together and looking so happy to be in such close proximity? Don’t forget, each of these people considers all the others to be idolators and infidels of some stripe or another. Well, they have found something to unite about, but it’s nothing for us to get even vaguely hopeful about. Apparently, international gay leaders planned a 10-day WorldPride festival and parade in Jerusalem in August 2005, saying they want to make a statement about tolerance and diversity in the Holy City. I have to admit, I had no idea gay people were so organised. International leaders? Sounds vaguely ominous to me.

But at last, the three “great” religions of the region, Christianity, Judaism and Islam have found something to agree about. They say the event would desecrate the city and convey the erroneous impression that homosexuality is acceptable. Whereas, they seem to have no problem with systemic child abuse and dogmatic mind control.

“They are creating a deep and terrible sorrow that is unbearable,” Shlomo Amar, Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi, said of the festival. “It hurts all of the religions. We are all against it.” I’m quite impressed. Hurting all the religions at once has to be a worthy goal of any group. And if they have international leaders…

Abdel Aziz Bukhari, a Sufi sheik, added: “We can’t permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty. This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem.” Sure. Because before this festival was planned, there were no gay people there at all.

Apparently, this rare show of unity was initiated by the Rev. Leo Giovinetti, an evangelical pastor from San Diego, cited as a veteran of the American culture war over homosexuality and a frequent visitor to Israel. A culture war?

Hagai El-Ad, the executive director of Jerusalem Open House, a gay and lesbian group that was the host for the festival, hit the nail on the head with this observation: “That is something new I’ve never witnessed before, such an attempt to globalise bigotry. It’s quite sad and ironic that these religious figures are coming together around such a negative message.”

But let’s give the last word to an American Rabbi, Yehuda Levin, of the Rabbinical Alliance of America. He claims that the festival is “the spiritual rape of the Holy City.” To clarify his point, he claimed, “This is not the homo land, this is the Holy Land.”

(I should point out that this story is two years old, as this was a festival that took place in 2005. But hey, so what? It’s a good story, and religious bigotry is eternal. Interestingly, the parade was marred by violence when an Ultra-Orthodox Jew invaded into the march and stabbed three participants. Way to go, religious tolerance.)

Dumbledore’s gay and Christians are idiots

By alan

October 21, 2007

So, Albus Dumbledore is gay and Christians are idiots. I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know, I suppose.

It seems that J K Rowling has posthumously outed Dumbledore. In a fan Q and A at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Rowling was asked if Dumbledore had ever enjoyed passion in his life. She answered, “My truthful answer to you is that I have always thought of Dumbledore as gay.” She went on to explain his relationship with Gellert Grinwald, explored in the final book of the Potter septology, as a love affair. To be honest, anyone that read that particular story and didn’t pick up on the homo-erotic subtext should watch a few Carry On films and have a serious word with themselves.

Apparently Rowling was cheered when she revealed this revelation and was quite surprised at the adulation. “If I’d known it would make you so happy I would have announced it years ago,” she said. Well, she did announce it really, in the books. It’s actually very good that she made the sub-text apparent without actually announcing it out loud. It makes the whole subject less relevant and simply more character development. After all, so what if the Headmaster of Hogwarts is gay?

dumbledore Dumbledore’s gay and Christians are idiots

Hands up if you like men!

And then, as surely as night follows day, the idiots begin to swarm. One particular idiot is Georgia mother and anti-Potter campaigner Laura Mallory. She has been campaigning hard to have the Harry Potter books removed from school libraries on the grounds that they “indoctrinate anti-Christian values”. The irony of a devout Christian arguing that indoctrination is a bad thing. To quote the woman, “My prayer is that parents would wake up, that the subtle way this is presented as harmless fantasy would be exposed for what it really is: a subtle indoctrination into anti-Christian values.”

Well, Laura Mallory, let me riposte. I wish that you and others like you would wake up and recognise that the sledgehammer way in which your Bible is presented as fact would be exposed for the harmful fantasy that it really is: a not so subtle indoctrination into anti-intelligence values.

On the subject of Dumbledore’s homosexuality, Mallory said, “A homosexual lifestyle is a harmful one. That’s proven, medically.”

And an idiot will say anything if it fits their agenda. That’s proven time and time again, no medical required.

Free Bible in new evangelical assault

By alan

September 10, 2007

The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, is on a new evangelical attack. He wants to give every family in Sydney a free Bible in an attempt to halt the decline of Bible ownership and study, especially among the young. Of course, he’s only planning to give out the New Testament, or Christianity-Lite as I like to call it. The likely cost is around half a million dollars. Imagine where that money could be better spent doing good works.

Peter Jensen

Jensen is concerned that Sydneysiders are at risk of losing their core values due to a lack of knowledge of the New Testament, once again perpetuating the myth that Christianity is responsible for our moral structure. Western civilisation is built on a structure of Greek and Roman morals that were simply poached by the New Testament Christian cult. Remember the vengeful god of the Old Testament razing entire villages and telling his followers to leave no man, woman or child alive? Not the best moral framework to endorse. In fact, much of our moral progress, such as the equality of women and acceptance of sexual preference variation, has been and still is actively opposed by Christians.

Jensen’s plan reminds me of a comment by American comedian Dennis Miller:

Now 7-Eleven has bowed to pressure from the Moral Majority to remove Playboy and Penthouse from their newsstand. I guess to be fair you have to look at it from the fundamentalist perspective… because what it does is it forces a certain type of literature on somebody in a public place. It would be like, uh, oh, I don’t know, say like putting the Bible in everybody’s hotel room or something crazy like that.

I checked where we stayed this past weekend and sure enough, there was the Gideon Bible in the nightstand. I often wonder why there’s no Koran, Bhagavad Gita, Torah, Dianetics or anything else there along with it. The other mythologists are missing a prime opportunity there, aren’t they? I’m sure the motel and hotel owners would have no problem with it. They wouldn’t want to be seen as hypocrites, surely.

Anyway, back to Jensen. He said, “Would it not be wonderful if some person to whom you gave a copy of the word of God read it and was saved?” Well, yes, it certainly would. Of course, he means the Bible, which, among Christians, is the alleged word of their god. He has also said on numerous occasions that he has no intention of silently acquiescing to the death of the Anglican faith. At least he admits it’s dying. One down, umpteen more to go.

Still, more power to him. There’s nothing like a good, solid education in religious texts to set intelligent minds free from the absurd and dogmatic bonds of man-made religion.

God, the ultimate child abuser

By alan

August 16, 2007

You have to respect a good name. John Shelby Spong is a good name. Mr Spong is a retired Episcopal bishop and has recently written a book that should have all free thinking folk dancing for joy. The book is called Jesus for the Non-Religious. The publishers originally wanted to call it Freeing Jesus from the Shackles of Religion. It’s hard to decide which is the better title really.

spong God, the ultimate child abuser
John Shelby Spong – great names, great ideas (for a believer)

The basic thrust of the book is rather heretical to Christians, but awfully refreshing to those with a critical mind. Spong posits a number of things, but essentially that all the supernatural aspects accredited to the life of Jesus are fictional additions, tacked onto the cult of Christianity decades after the death of Jesus himself. Among the things that Spong denies are that Jesus was born of a virgin, that there were any miracles or that he rose from the dead. In other words, all the really meaty stuff on which modern Christianity is based.

We get a couple of fantastic quotes from Spong with regard to this latest book. For example, he does not believe that god sent Jesus to die for the sins of humans. That would make a victim of Jesus and god “the ultimate child abuser”. He suggests that the central message of Jesus, whoever or whatever he may have been, was for everyone to live lives full of love and compassion. What a blasphemer.

Naturally, there are those that are gunning after Spong for his book. One of those is Mark Thompson, president of the Anglican Church League, an evangelical lobby group. All right, we already know he has a bias, to say the least, but his comment is priceless. He accuses Spong of “defacing the only portrait of Jesus that makes any real sense.”

Right, so the idea of Jesus having magical powers, being born from a virgin and subsequently dying only to be reborn and ascend to heaven makes sense? More sense apparently than a decent bloke who tried to convince people to be nice to each other? Thompson goes on to say that “One cannot imagine anyone willing to be martyred for Spong’s Jesus.” Isn’t that a good thing? The idea of martyrdom is what leads idiots to strap bombs to themselves and blow up discos or fly planes into buildings. Surely rather less of that in the world is worth aspiring to.

Spong himself gets this week’s Word Quote of the Week, however. Rarely do we find a turn of phrase as expressive and succinct as this one. When questioned about the derision his views attract, Spong said that he was used to it and likened it to being “gummed to death by a herd of clacking geese.” I’m not sure that geese herd, but let’s not let pedantics get in the way of a damn fine insult.

Learn more about Spong at Wikipedia.

Spong, because I wanted to say it just one more time.

Satan-worshipping cults

By alan

July 24, 2007

The Word Quote of the Week this week goes to Ahmad Reza Radan, Tehran’s police chief.

It seems that police in Tehran are cracking down on women who “dress like models” and men that have “Western-style haircuts and clothing”. All of this is in an effort to “increase security in society” for the Islamic state.

Rather than cracking down on crime, the police seem to think that guarding fashion is the thing that will prevent the slow decay of Iranian society. Apparently women that wear clothing that is too figure hugging or short or have veils that expose hair and men with un-Islamic hairstyles, along with clothes shops and hairdressers are all being targeted.

Have a look at this shot. The woman on the right (with a face like she’s just sucked a lemon) is the police officer. The other woman in this shot was subsequently bundled into a police van where she protested for her freedom.

tehran fashion police Satan worshipping cults
(Photo: AFP)

Apparently offenders are initially warned, then taken for “consultation” to correct the error of their ways. “Normally the problem is resolved here,” said police spokesman, Mr Mehdi Ahmadi. “If not, and these cases are often those of reoffenders, the case is sent to the judiciary.”

Anyway, the bizarre and medieval behaviour of the Iranian theocracy aside, let’s get to the comment that’s taking out the coveted and strangely infrequent Quote of the Week award.

The city’s police chief, Ahmad Reza Radan, discussing the reasoning for the fashion crackdown, said:

“Some young people, intentionally or unwittingly, are walking advertisements for Western deviant sexual and Satan-worshipping cults.”

That’s right, Ahmad. We here in the “West” brainwash your young people in a recruitment drive for our Satan worship.

Muslims demand murder of Knighted author

By alan

June 19, 2007

“If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the prophet Muhammad, his act is justified.”

Yes, that’s right. Adherents to the so-called religion of Peace are at it again. The quote above was from the Pakistani Religious Affairs Minister, Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq in response to the Knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday honours list for the author Salman Rushdie. Ejaz-ul-Haq also said, “The West always wonders about the root cause of terrorism. Such actions are the root cause of it.”

So, Knighting a writer for his outstanding contribution to world literature is justification for the murder of innocent civilians that had nothing to do with the book, the Knighthood, the religion that claims to be affronted or anything else remotely connected. Sounds like more barbarian chest beating to me from people desperate to justify their violence. Then again, what do you expect from a religion that has world domination as a central tenet?

The Pakistani parliament passed a unanimous resolution deploring Rushdie’s honour as an insult to the feelings of the world’s Muslims. Rushdie spent around a decade in hiding after the Ayatollah Khomeini denounced his book The Satanic Verses as an insult to Islam and the prophet Muhammad and issued a fatwa calling for his murder. In 1998, when the Iranian government said that it would not support the outstanding fatwa, Rushdie emerged from hiding. Now there are fears for his safety all over again. Apparently Ejaz-ul-Haq was later forced to clarify his statement and claimed that he was speaking about the wider causes of terrorism and not of Sir Salman specifically. Yeah. Sure.

rushdie Muslims demand murder of Knighted author
Salman Rushdie

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

On Monday Pakistan’s religious parties ordered supporters onto the streets of two provincial cites. Effigies of the Queen and Sir Salman were burned while some protesters chanted “Kill him, kill him.”

rushdieflagburn Muslims demand murder of Knighted author
Brainless idiots jump at the chance to burn another flag. (Pic from smh.com.au)

Pakistan’s lower house Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Sher Afgan Khan Niazi, said, “This is a source of hurt for Muslims and will encourage people to commit blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammad.” It’s ironic that he doesn’t consider calling for the murder of someone for a book they wrote some kind of blashpemy against all humanity. After all, is it not written in the “holy koran” “when you kill one human, you kill all of humanity”? Of course, as usual, religious zealots are picking and choosing what suits their current agenda as they have little else to occupy their feeble minds. There are even those that consider non-Muslims to be less than human and apostates even worse.

The Iranian foreign ministry’s director for Europe, Ebrahim Rahimpour, said, “The British government’s insulting, suspicious and ill-considered act is an obvious sign of Islamophobia which has terribly hurt the feelings of 1.5 billion Muslims.” What a load of bollocks. Has he asked all 1.5 billion Muslims? I’m sure the large majority of them consider statements like that far more damaging than anything Salman Rushdie has ever written.