Paranoia

Well, the Church of All Worlds, it ain't:

Former follower: Sect leader wanted to sleep with teenagers

CLAYTON, N.M. - For 16 years, he followed a man who calls himself Michael, finally settling along with other families on a former ranch in a remote corner of New Mexico.

There were red flags along the way, but John Sayer didn't break away from the apocalyptic church until late 2005.

Michael "said God told him that he was supposed to sleep with seven virgins," recalled Sayer, 36. Two were to be Sayer's daughters, then 14 and 15.

OK, the cheap shot here would be to bash all religions as being about power and exploitation. And I don't go in for cheap shots - I'm better than that.

Because I don't think that is true. However, the magical thinking usually associated with religion makes believers more susceptible to power games and exploitation by crazies and con men.

Offered without further comment . . .

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

. . . because none seems necessary.

Jim Downey

HELLO,
MY NAME IS JULIET IN SEARCH OF A MAN WHO UNDERSTANDS THE MEANING OF LOVE AS TRUST AND FAITH IN EACH OTHER RATHER THAN ONE WHO SEES LOVE AS THE ONLY WAY OF FUN BUT A MATURED MAN WITH NICE VISSION OF WHAT THE WORLD IS ALL ABOUT SO AFTER SEING YOUR ID IN A SITE I TOOK INTREST PLEASE REPLY ME WITH THIS BOX IF YOU ARE INTRESTED IN ME. (julietdonaldsononlylove@xyz.co.uk).

Quick, someone drop Juliet a note!

OK, got a question for people. And I'm serious about it.

Why so few comments here anymore?

In the last few months, it seems things have really dropped off. Of all the posts currently on the front page, only one got more than 20 comments. Most have less than half that number.

I try mixing up what I post about. Short pieces. Long philosophical ones. Topical items. YouTube clips. Rants. Nothing seems to provoke much discussion. Likewise with the things posted by Brent, Rick, Dirk, and anyone else. Yet anytime I drop in, there's always 20 or 30 people online.

Illinois state Rep. Monique Davis has apologized to Rob Sherman, who has graciously accepted her apology, for attempting to deny him his civil rights in a public hearing that he was invited to testify before last week.

Apparently it's OK to be a bigoted, unconstitutional, theocratic asshole if you're having a bad day.

One of our favorite guys, Rob Sherman, testified before the Illinois House State Government Administration Committee on Wednesday related to Gov. Rod Blagojevich's proposed $1 million grant intended for Pilgrim Baptist Church, and was blindsided by wackjob theocrat Rep. Monique Davis who seems to think that atheists don't have any right to exist, and that we are "dangerous to children".

[link] Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy -- it’s tragic -- when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.

I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?

I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous--

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court---

Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.

You can listen to the whole sordid thing here.

(Tip of the ballcap to Twitter and Hemant!)

Because I have an email address posted over there on the left, I am open to all manner of spam, rants, threats, and general crazy-people appeals to embrace their version of Big Magic Ju-Ju Man. It's no big deal, and goes with the territory. Usually.

But occasionally something will come through that account that gets my attention.

Nah, not the threats. I've long since learned to ignore those. I'm not afraid of hell-fire, and if someone wants to try and kill me there's not much I can do about it beyond what I already do in how I live my life.

But I am amused by some of the more creative things the nuts do, like adding me to a online group called "Serenity Fountain". Hmm. Could be something about Serenity/Firefly (I'm a big fan). Could be a porn site. But no, it's a religious discussion group, with this description:

Father Raniero Cantalamessa, writing a "Gospel Commentary for Palm Sunday" in Zenit, the Catholic news service from Rome, Italy, has redefined atheism so that it means, well, theism.

How incredibly convenient!

[link] Jesus on the cross has become an atheist, one without God. There are two forms of atheism: the active or voluntary atheism of those who reject God, and the passive or suffered atheism of those who are rejected (or feel rejected) by God. In both forms there are those who are "without God." The former is an atheism of fault, and the latter is an atheism of suffering and expiation. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, about whom there was much discussion when her personal writings were published, belongs to this latter category.

On the cross Jesus expiated in anticipation all the atheism that exists in the world, not only that of declared atheists, but also that of practical atheists, the atheism of those who live "as if God did not exist," relegating him to the last place in their life. It is "our" atheism, because, in this sense, we are all atheists -- some more, some less -- those who do not care about God. God too is one of the "marginalized" today; he has been pushed to the margins of the lives of the majority of men.

So, as you can see, all atheists really do know that God exists, but they either choose to "reject" Him, or they are going through so much suffering that they lose sight of Him. Mother Theresa's atheism is a good thing, you see? It means that God was heaping on extra punishments and torment for no reason - because she was so saintly and good. Obviously she needed to be tortured her entire life. And this is proof that He exists! Hallelujah!

And God Himself is "marginalized"! The horror! The poor, put-upon, all-powerful Universal Creator of everything is sad because every time He punishes one of his most faithful creatures over the course of years, then refuses to provide any evidence that He actually exists in any real sense, they stop believing in Him. It makes me weep, really.

That means that all of us atheists who make the simple claim that god-belief of any kind is absent within us are delusional liars.

I see.

Thank you Father, for your enlightened Palm Sunday commentary in which you attempt to marginalize and demonize 12 to 15% of the world's population. But that seems to be one of the things the Catholic church does best. Create the illusion that a group of fellow human beings are somehow sub-human, then use that perception to get the upper hand politically

Great job! Mission accomplished! I am SO looking forward to your God making me suffer. Maybe I can be as big an atheist/theist as Mother Theresa if He keeps me alive long enough, and I get painfully tortured enough!

Yes! Religion is so great! And Catholicism is the best religion ever!

Update: D'oh! The Manka Bros punked me with this one. Nicely done satire!

Dammit. I missed the obvious "white Christian teen rapper" angle when I was looking for my multi-million dollar record deal.

I strongly encourage all you pagan atheists to have a stiff drink before watching this delightfully insane video. (I'm 100% serious here. Have a drink of something before clicking the Play button. Make sure you swallow first.)

And yes, I am well aware that more exposure for this tweener singing/rapping dynamic duo means that they will probably sell more records - and I am perfectly OK with that. More power to 'em. Fleece the sheep for all they can bear, seems to be their father/producer/manager's motto. It's a textbook lesson in exactly how one can indeed worship God and mammon, contrary to what their holy book says.

Enjoy.

Source at U.N. tells of secret UFO meeting February 12, 2008

I understand it was horrible. Andy Rooney's fangs speared from his demonic slash of a mouth, ripping the Christian flesh off of poor, poor evangelist Tony Didlo's throat, spilling his blood in the street like a fountain. Then Andy Rooney howled like a wolf and started rooting around in Didlo's guts while he cried for mercy from the curmudgeonly old atheist. Random atheists on the street - you know, because there's so many of us - cheered as Rooney smeared blood all over his face and swung a loop of intestine around and around, smacking the whimpering, dying Christian witness repeatedly in the face.

Then he went to the Super Bowl and enjoyed the game, leaving the evangelist dead in the streets of Phoenix, like us atheists always do when we come across defenseless Christians.

[Baptist Press] PHOENIX (BP)--As thousands of people thronged Phoenix for the Super Bowl, a small contingent of Christians spread out across the metropolitan area to share their faith in Christ.

One of them had a chance to talk with Andy Rooney, the commentator whose curmudgeonly complaints wrap up the weekly "60 Minutes" program on CBS.

"I was standing on a corner and turned around and there was this little old man walking across the street," said Tony Didlo, a member of Grace Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Des Moines, Iowa. "I knew right away it was Andy Rooney."

Didlo held out a Gospel tract and asked Rooney if he had received one yet.

"Yeah, I've got one of those," Rooney replied, according to Didlo's account of the Jan. 31 encounter.

"Sir, do you believe in God?" Didlo asked.

"No, I'm an atheist," Rooney said. "I think it's sad you people believe in that stuff."

Didlo tried to pursue the conversation, asking if the existence of creation didn't imply a creator, but Rooney's cameraman stepped in between them and said, "We've got to go."

"He wouldn't let me go any further with it," Didlo said. "I was surprised he thinks people are totally off their rockers for believing in God."

Hello All,

This is my review of Vox Day's new book called "The Irrational Atheist". I'd like to make some things perfectly clear before I proceed with this review. I am still, and barring some pretty convincing evidence that I find personally credible, will most likely always be an atheist. What I mean by "atheist", as I have written volumes about in the past, is someone in whom god-belief of any kind is absent.

I have lately (within the last few years) come to the conclusion that the entire social and political "atheist movement" is a big, fat exercise in futility. Atheists are not, in any way, shape, or form, a "group" in the same sense that Methodists, Shriners, or Republicans are a group. The atheists who blog and organize activist marches and identify themselves as part of this "atheist movement" group are lying to themselves. There is no "atheist group". Rather, a movement has emerged and become politically active lately that has co-opted the perfectly reasonable descriptive word "atheist" and has twisted its meaning into something that I do not agree with, endorse, or really even recognize any longer. Ellen Johnson telling all of us atheists to "Vote your atheism first..." was the last straw for me. I mean, what in the heck does that even mean? I am not a member of your little club, Ellen.

I have my own opinions, political views, and values. I have my own, personal rationale for being a person in whom god-belief is absent (an atheist). I recognize no "atheist leaders" or spokesmen, and I endorse no one who claims to speak for me, or insinuates that they speak for me in any way.

I speak for myself, and myself alone.

I find it troubling that one of the recent trends in the "atheist blogger" community is to label someone who does not seem to toe the party line as an "appeaser" or as a "concern troll". It's complete crap. I didn't sign a fucking "atheist loyalty oath", and my lack of belief in a god isn't dependent on kowtowing to the self-anointed leaders of this misguided abortion of a political movement, whether or not they exist. If after this review someone uses the "no true Scotsman" fallacy on me in this fashion, they can go fuck themselves. With a jagged stick. Sideways. The political and social issues that concern me - personal liberty, civil liberties, honesty, personal responsibility, fiscal responsibility, freedom, justice, the American Way, all of that, don't require my allegiance to some new political movement. I was concerned with those things before I started calling myself an atheist, and I still am today. Atheism has nothing at all to do with any of that stuff. (See my first paragraph above.) Nether does "theism" for that matter.

I evaluate the books I read, the beliefs I come across, and the philosophies I examine fully, and with an eye towards the facts. I have a highly-sensitive bullshit meter, honed through 20-plus years of discussion, research, study, debate, and arguments with theists (that is, folks in which god-belief of any kind is present.) So, when you read the review below, keep in mind that I was really, really trying hard to find something that I could latch onto and argue intelligently and forcefully against. I was positive that it had to be there. I had my BS meter cranked up to 11 as I read through the book twice in an attempt to sniff out something that I could use - and the damned thing only went off a couple of times, and only when Day was explicitly talking about God and/or Jesus and his personal belief in the Christian mythology.

Shit. Double shit.

Ah, well. I am ethically and morally bound to review TIA honestly, and that is what I will do - regardless of how much it hurts me to do so. Heh. ;)

So, hang on to your hats and join me below the fold.

Via ectoplasmosis, a fun little Crucifix gun! 33 cm long, 9mm caliber, just perfect for those occasions when the power of prayer isn't sufficient to get you out of a bad spot.

Heh. You have to wonder about this sort of thing. If someone was a true believer, you wouldn't think that they would need to carry a weapon, would you? Let alone one which seemingly makes a mockery of the whole "Prince of Peace" motif.

Jim Downey

MY INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE GREAT WHITE THRONE JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD

Alvin Miller

(Note: This blog is identical to that on my site. I recommend you clink on the link below to get a more readable version of it than here. Also, Firefox browser blocks the annoying Angelfire popups.)

http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/spaceman

TOPICS

Preface MY INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE GREAT WHITE THRONE JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD
Introducing Myself
I'm the Captain
The Joke
The Great White Throne Judgment of the Dead
The Taboo
White Armband
Instant Prophet
The Witches
My Favorite Sport

This was about as much as I thought would be safe to quote. I'm serious - only go and read this bugfuckingly insane article if you want to literally reel in disbelief. The crazy - it burns!

[link] The atheist and evolutionist are motivated by the evil spirit of rebellion against God, whose goal is to destroy as much of mankind as possible. Take notice of their strategy, which is to only have the secular theories of science required and taught in public schools. But when it comes to teaching (the correct data) from the book of Genesis, they say "teach it in religion class, because it’s religion, and not science". That is a bold face lie!! The very teaching of evolution is indoctrination into the religion of Atheism!! It is Satan’s mission to deny the reality of God and His Word, or at least redefine the scriptures, so that he can destroy all of mankind that he can. Evolution denies the existence of both the Creator, and of the Entity of Evil. Denial of the supernatural, which gave birth to the natural, is worst than foolishness.

Yup. That's this atheist's goal: To destroy as much of mankind as possible. You know, because of teh Satan. Which I deny, apparently, along with God, even though I am working with Satan to destroy mankind because I'm motivated by the evil spirit of rebellion against God, which I also don't believe in, um... urk... ...

*head explodes*

Romney's exclusion of secular and atheist Americans from his rose-colored vision of a happily religious "Stepford wives" America was despicable, to say the least. Now the Huckabee camp in the person of Huckabee aide Ed Rollins gets in on a little atheist-bashing action by using the term as an epithet against Romney aide Ron Kaufman on the Chris Matthews show Hardball. And they all have a laugh at how ridiculous it was to call Kaufman an atheist.

Hah hah hah! Chuckle chuckle, elbow in the ribs. Isn't it so silly to say that a top aide to one of the Presidential campaign's front-runner candidates is a dirty, stinking, filthy godless atheist? Why, what could be more far-fetched? Everyone knows that atheists can't be in powerful political positions!

Silly Ed Rollins - what a merry jokester you are!

Oh wait - I mean bigoted asshole. Yeah, that's what I meant.

Mitt Romney appeared on Meet The Press with Tim Russert, and immediately Russert hammered him with the atheist/atheism question. Romney stumbled a bit, but managed not to wedge his foot too firmly in his mouth, I thought.

But what in the heck is this "common bond of humanity" he says that he shares with atheists? Is the Mittster a Humanist now? He's trying too hard. He seems to be trying to be all things to all people, and that's just a recipe for disaster.

Transcript below the fold...

Can you believe there’s an actual Christian website named The Persecution Times?

I found the site a few days ago, and the most recent story is a Dec. 10th ditty written in response to the recent shootings at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The story, written by Dan Wooding, “Founder of ASSIST Ministries,” is titled “Has persecution finally come to the Church in America?”

The very name of the site is enough to raise your eyebrows, but the title of the piece – if you know anything at all about “the Church in America” – threatens to drive them all the way over the top of your head so they end up on the back of your neck like lost caterpillars. It’s like a sulky 6-year-old deprived of the biggest slice of cake, running to his room screaming “Why does everybody hate me?!?”

Here’s a juicy bit from the story:

Many will be asking if this is the beginning of persecution of Evangelical Christians in America or if these were just isolated incidents.

Sudan, so we are told, is supposed to be one of the "moderate" and "secular" Islamic theocracies.

Can you say oxymoron? I knew you could.

[link] KHARTOUM, Sudan (CNN) -- Hundreds of protesters brandishing swords and sticks gathered outside Khartoum's presidential palace Friday to vent their anger against a British teacher jailed for allowing children to name a teddy bear "Mohammed."

About 600 Islamic demonstrators piled out of mosques, chanting: "By soul, by blood, I will fight for the Prophet Mohammad."

I am floored. Our planet is going down the toilet unless we can get a handle on insanity of this nature.

Very funny mockumentary about a "born again atheist preacher" and his "Church of Nothing" from Goodiebag.tv.

(Tip of the Stetson to Kirby over at Goodiebag.tv. Good stuff Kirby! Keep 'em coming!)