Baby Jesus told me 2 + 2 = 5

The dribbling fucklord killjoy brigade that wants to dictate to everyone else what they can and can't do with their own bodies is opening up a new front in the culture wars: contraception.

Emboldened by the anti-abortion movement's success in restricting access to abortion, an increasingly vocal group of Christian conservatives is arguing that it's time to mount a concerted attack on contraception.

Their voices were raised in Rosemont on Friday and Saturday at an unusual anti-abortion meeting that drew 250 people from around the nation to condemn artificial birth control. Experts at the gathering assailed contraception on the grounds that it devalues children, harms relationships between men and women, promotes sexual promiscuity and leads to falling birth rates, among social ills.

And how's this for a copybook example of Jesus Math?

"It's always been a touchy subject, but you have to stand strong on your beliefs. Contraception is the root cause of the explosion of the amount of abortions in the world," Mazur said.

Right. Global warming increases in inverse proportion to the number of pirates in the world, and abortions increase in direct proportion to the availability of contraception.

More at Dispatches From the Culture Wars.

UPDATE: Speaking of dribbling fucklords and pirates and such, I just saw this in the hate mail section of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster:

Fuck you Bobby and I mean that.

I am 165 pounds of pure hell if I wanna be.

This is how you relate to people of God?

Kill something you don’t understand?

FUCK YOU

and all your kind.

You want Armegeddon?

Are you fucking nuts?

I asked God for an earthquake in Montrose, Pa and got it.

Think I am faking? Ask Pete Rose of the Montrose Inn.

ASSHOLE

You would be wise to read that Bible and find out God is also pissed and is going to send disasters to the unbelievers.

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Yes, I like inane personality tests :)

Which OS are You?



Which File Extension are You?

Via Bruce

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When I hear the word "culture" I reach for my kool-aid

Not to be missed: this week's Four Corners looks at Australia's own batshit-crazy ultra-right-wing religious cult the Exclusive Brethren (which, as Mr Lefty recently pointed out, likes to try and influence the course of Australian democracy even as it forbids its members to participate in it).

"I had a knock at the door saying that we’ve excommunicated you and you’re not to sleep with your wife tonight," says one former senior Brethren member who fell out with the then leader more than 20 years ago and hasn’t seen his wife or children since. His sons wrote to tell him they don’t want to see him because he’s "not right and withdrawn from and out of fellowship". He treasures these painful letters from his boys; he loves to look at their handwriting.

Can't we just export these maniacs to the US like we do our creationists?

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LOLOLOLOLOL!!!

It's funny what you can stumble across on the blogosphere these days . . .

(Via Christian Green)

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Then I saw His face . . .

Agnostics! Pagans! Atheists weak and strong! This will change your whole way of thinking!!!

(Via Pharyngula)

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Naomi Robson is the smarterest journalist in the world

Perhaps it's true what they say about the state of the education system in Australia--when it churns out credulous morons like this:

As far as I am concerned, Naomi Robson is good with her job and a terrific good reporter. All the comments being made against her were all doings of someone who would like to ruin her reputation as TT reporter. What happened in the last episode with Wa Wa was beyond her control even if they send someone there to cover the rescue. Naomi is a victim of people who got nothing to do but destroy people the same way as Jessica Rowe. Thank you Peter Meakin in retaining Naomi in the program as she is doing an excellent job. I am not only a fan of Naomi but I admire her professionalism.
Claire of Sydney

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! They laughed at Einstein, too.

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"The infidel can walk to school!"

From Assist News:

A young British schoolgirl has been barred from taking an official bus to her Church of England school in the United Kingdom because she has not been baptized. [. . .]

Sydnie Jai from Hatfield, Hertfordshire, was hoping to attend Townsend School in St Albans, traveling by bus as her two brothers had done for some years.

But, according to a report in London's Evening Standard newspaper, Hertfordshire County Council said she must use public transport because she had not been baptized.

A statement from the council said: "We provide free transport to all children attending their nearest maintained faith school if they have a place there in line with their parents' beliefs. [. . .] "To qualify for free transport to a Church of England school the child must be baptized or have a parent on the parish electoral roll," the local council said, adding: "We think it quite reasonable when offering transport to faith schools that parents show that the child is of that faith."

And rightly so. God-fearing parents pay good money to send their kids to religious schools so that their blessed little angels don't have to mingle with the evil pagans. (Or, in the case of faith schools such as that mentioned in the article, they don't pay--enjoying the "choice" to keep their darlings separate from pagan-spawn partially at the expense of pagan taxes.) And now you want said little angels to share transportation with unbaptised pagans? And risk being infected with pagan-ness and eternal damnation?

How about a compromise: we let the pagans ride on our faith-based schoolbuses, so long as they stay down the back. All unbaptised passengers must relinquish their seats for "saved" passengers.

(Via Morons.org)

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Something nerdy this way comes . . .

"Is this a dagger, which I see before me,/The handle toward my hand?"
(Act II, Scene 1, lines 41-42)

Much has been made of the influence of Catholicism on The Lord of the Rings, but I can't believe--having read the book more than a dozen times in my younger years--that I didn't recognise sooner all the references to Macbeth:

1) The Mirror of Galadriel (The Fellowship of the Ring)= The witches' cauldron in Act IV, Scene 1.

2) The prophecy regarding the fall of the Witch King (The Return of the King) = The prophecy of the Second Apparition (the bloody Child): "Be bloody, bold, and resolute./Laugh to scorn/The power of man, for none of woman born/Shall harm Macbeth."

3) The Huorn-attack on Isengard and Helm's Deep (The Two Towers) = The prophecy of the Third Apparition (the Child crowned, with a tree in his hand): "Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until/Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill/Shall come against him."

4) Frodo's vision at Tom Bombadil's house of the line of the Dunedain, the last (Aragorn) wearing a star on his brow (Fellowship) = The final vision in the witches' cauldron: "A show of eight Kings, and Banquo last, with a glass in his hand."

5) The return of the king = Malcolm's return to Scotland.

6) The Black Breath (Return of the King) = Malcolm (referring to a disease known by the scientific name of scrofula): "'Tis called the Evil." (Act IV, Scene 3, line 162)

7) "The hands of the king are the hands of a healer" (Return of the King) = Malcolm again: "A most miraculous work in this good King;/Which often, since my here-remain in England,/I've seen him do. How he solicits heaven,/Himself best knows; but strangely-visited people,/All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,/The mere despair of surgery, he cures;/Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,/Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken,/To the succeeding royalty he leaves/The healing benediction. With this strange virtue/He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy;/And sundry blessings hang about his throne/That speak him full of grace." (Act IV, Scene 3, lines 163-175).

8) The loophole by which means Eowyn slays the Witch King: "No living man am I! You look upon a woman." = The loophole by whic means Macduff, who "was from his mother's womb/Untimely ripped," slays Macbeth (Act V, Scene 8, lines 19-20)

I can't claim credit for any of this, of course. But I did find the references on my own before I discovered that someone else--maybe many others--beat me to it.

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Understatement of the day

". . . we don't decide what sorts of stories to do based on journalistic credibility. That's more an ABC judgement."

Peter Meakin, Seven news and current affairs director

In the same report the ABC, no doubt smirking from ear to ear, points out the obvious parallels between the Today Tonight crew's ill-fated West Papua venture and the Frontline episode "Playing the Ego Card." (That's the one where Mike goes to PNG to boost his journalistic credibility.)

Sarah suggests that the venture, however ill-considered, indicates that Today Tonight might be turning over a new leaf in appearing to pursue a more "serious" story. (You know, as opposed to soup diets and infomercials and the like.) And I have to admit that was my first reaction, too . . . until I discovered which story the TT crew were actually chasing in the old East Indies . . .

CANNIBALS.

JUST MILES FROM OUR NATION'S DOORSTEP.

IS YOUR FAMILY SAFE?

Naomi Robson reports from West Papua on the threat from our North . . .

UPDATE: Via Sarah:

Robson and a Today Tonight crew say they were trying to save a Papuan orphan from being eaten by his cannibal tribe when they were detained by Indonesian authorities this week.

[...]

Today Tonight was following up on a Nine Network report about an orphaned boy, Wah-Wah, who was going to be killed and eaten at some stage in the next 10 years.

When Nine refused to go in and rescue the boy, Today Tonight stepped in, leading to the crew being detained, the program claimed

This is the high-water-mark of aspirational television, peeps!

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The Pope Versus Science

Pope Benedict XVI attracted some 250,000 people to an outdoor Mass on Sunday, urging his largely secular home country not to let science and reason make it “deaf” to God.

“Put simply, we are no longer able to hear God ­ there are too many frequencies filling our ears,” he told the crowd, at a former airport on the outskirts of this city where he once served as archbishop. “What is said about God strikes us as pre-scientific, no longer suited for our age.”

[. . .]

“I know that in our pluralistic world it is no easy thing in schools to bring up the subject of faith,” he said. “But it is hardly enough for our children and young people to learn technical knowledge and skills alone, and not the criteria that give knowledge and skill their direction and meaning.

“Encourage your children and students not only to raise questions about particular things, but also to ask about the why and the wherefore of life as a whole,” he added. “Help them to realize that answers that do not finally lead to God are insufficient.”

Dogma first. Supporting evidence/reasoning/justification second. Got it. Via the New York Times.

UPDATE: Is there a theme here? Ahmadinejad wants secular academics booted out of the Iranian academies. Ratzinger claims that “People in Africa and Asia [. . .] do not see the real threat to their identity in the Christian faith, but in the contempt for God and the cynicism that considers mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom and that holds up utility as the supreme moral criterion for the future of scientific research.”

And now, according to US conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza, the secularleft--"people like Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, Bill Moyers, and Michael Moore--are responsible for fostering a culture that angers and repulses not just Muslim countries but also traditional and religious societies around the world...[D'Souza] argues that it is not our exercise of freedom that enrages our enemies, but our abuse of that freedom--from the sexual liberty of women to the support of gay marriage, birth control, and no-fault divorce, to the aggressive exportation of our vulgar, licentious popular culture." For D'Souza, "It is only by curtailing the left's attacks on religion, family, and traditional values that we can persuade moderate Muslims and others around the world to cooperate with us and begin to shun the extremists in their own countries."

Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars, where D'Souza's thesis receives the smackdown it so desperately deserves.

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Tagged: Book meme

My first ever tagging comes via Sketchgirl . . .

A book that changed my life: The Lord of the Rings. I've read it cover to cover at least 11 times since I was 16, and worn through three copies. I even wrote my honours thesis on it.

A book I've read more than once: see above. Also: Feist's Riftwar Saga, Empire Trilogy and Serpentwar series (I kid you not, Sketchgirl), Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed.

A book I would take with me if I were stuck on a desert island: A Nietzsche Reader. Or The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

A book that made me laugh: Stupid White Men.

A book that made me cry: I can't imagine a situation in which a book would make me cry.

A book I wish I could have written: Anything by Nietzsche.

A book I wish had never been written: This question is a little too close to "Which book would you burn?" for comfort.

A book I've been meaning to read: Where do I start? War and Peace, The Decameron, Swann's Way and Gargantua and Pantagruel have been sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me to either read or finish reading them for about ten years.

I'm currently reading: Thackeray's Barry Lyndon. Also working my way through Thinking in Education by Matthew Lippman.

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The debate is hereby resolved.

Hard evidence that prayer works!!!!! Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

P.S. While we're on the topic of religion (hehe), biologist uber-blogger and Steve Irwin fan P.Z. Myers reflects upon an "obituary" penned by creationist and former Queenslander Ken Ham.

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Rate My Professor (Tehran chapter)

What do these men have in common?

Well, both hate secular and liberal academics and believe their professional activities should be legally constrained. But whereas the one simply whines and lies about his bêtes noire in the academies, the other is all about getting things done:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's outspoken president, fired an ominous warning at the country's educated elites yesterday by calling for a purge of "liberal and secular" academics in the universities. [. . .]

"Today students should protest and shout at the president asking why some liberal and secular professors are still present in the universities," he told a gathering of young scientists. "Our educational system has been under the influence of the secular system for 150 years. Colonialism is seeking the spread of its own secular system."

Wingnuttery. The international language.

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I guess he found Utopia.

Story?

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Sunday reading material

(To SB, and any other fathers who pay visit to this neck of the blogosphere from time to time, Happy Father's Day . . .)

Is Heaven Hotter than Hell?
The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right (Alternet)
The Sinners Guide to Walmart (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
More logical fallacies (atheism.about.com)

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