he's a big lad

House!

did I say that out loud or just think it?

Blasphemy of the highest order

"Every now and then we get some angry emails here at theChive for one reason or another. Sometimes we post the email exchanges and tonight we had a real live wire on our hands. I'm sure the fact that we're posting this won't help matters but this guy has it comin'..."



Apparently

This photo is seething blasphemy of the highest order

I hope it's 'cos he's all angered up and typing quickly... surely he doesn't actually think that's a photo of Jesus. Everybody knows all the photos of Christ were destroyed in WW2.

check out the response LINK

Papal visit

You may have heard that the Pope is coming over to Merry Olde England, we're just getting ready...

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti

I've always been intrigued by the fact that given a universe of possibilities and a mind that is spinning rapidly in the roiling waters of psychosis... why do so many mentally ill people share very similar delusions?

Perhaps it's reflection of that old saw that there are only seven types of joke or something along those lines - there are only a few 'core' delusions, I dunno I'm not a psychiatrist. It kinda disappoints me that if you're gonna go through the terrible experience of suffering from a mental illness, mind careening from one free association to the next in an unfettered pinball game, what a shame that your visions and revelations are just so... hack.

A popular delusion is that the patient believes they're Jesus. In the late fifties psychologist Milton Rokeach had a plan. One assumes that in the good old days you didn't need to bother with such distractions as ethics. He got three patients, each with the delusion that they were Jesus Christ, to live together for two years in Ypsilanti State Hospital to see what happened.

The early meetings were stormy. "You oughta worship me, I'll tell you that!" one of the Christs yelled. "I will not worship you! You're a creature! You better live your own life and wake up to the facts!" another snapped back. "No two men are Jesus Christs. … I am the Good Lord!" the third interjected, barely concealing his anger.

taking a baptismal

All the cool kids

All the cool kids will be wearing these great new t-shirts!



According to the good folk at Passion for Christ a quick hand shandy is definitely a sin - and they can prove it. Possibly using an Etch-a-Sketch or some crazy shit, I don't know.

And if you need even more encouragement, check out ya girl Dameco's latest blog entry, in which she fearlessly testifies to her struggle and victory over masturbation!

It damn well better be a graphically described heavily illustrated struggle. With any luck the final victory only arrives when her friend Shanice turns up ... gotta love those goody goody chicks.

Sweet Jesus

Jeebus is with you always... clicky

Stop worrying

I rarely venture into The Smoke (London) these days, but I gather from those who do that there is a growing trend for adverts on public transport for evangelical religious groups, and not just the sort suggesting that you may want to pop in for tea and cakes - more the sort that suggest you're a filthy sinner who is destined for eternal pain and torment.

In a charming reaction The Atheist Bus Campaign launches today, Tuesday October 21 2008.

With your support, we hope to raise £5,500 to run 30 buses across the capital for four weeks with the slogan: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."




Professor Richard Dawkins, bestselling author of The God Delusion, is officially supporting the Atheist Bus Campaign, and has generously agreed to match all donations up to a maximum of £5,500, giving us a total of £11,000 if we reach the full amount - enough for a much bigger campaign. The British Humanist Association have kindly agreed to administer all donations.

God's house moves in mysterious ways

Daniel Pemberton is a prolific composer of TV themes/music as well as writing (he's the fella behind Shoreditch Twat). Here's a song he composed for a programme about feats of engineering skill involving a church being moved miles across the US on the back of a very big lorry.

Against a stark blue sky some of the footage is almost Fellini-esque or reminiscent of a LemonJelly cover, and when the music kicks in I'm reminded of Terry Gilliam's best work on Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Grand Canyon? Noah's flood

Click here for an extensive flickr slideshow, outlining a trip to the creation museum. Your intrepid explorers manage to photograph a fair bit of the accompanying text, so it gives a fascinating glimpse into the museum policy.

There are too many examples of straight-out of idiocy to start listing them here, I suggest you take a couple of deep calming breaths and take a look for yourself.

When the people behind this project started out on their 'the Bible is literal truth' jaunt they can't have imagined the kind of insane convoluted positions they'd need to take to make their ideas hang together... carnivores didn't exist before Adam's sin apparently.

This 'museum' is an insult. Not to rational atheists - I think we kinda had their number from the start. This 'museum' is an insult to decent god-fearing people who have allowed their faith to be hijacked by morons, pimps and hustlers. christians who allow it to proselytize in this manner and turn a blind eye should be ashamed of themselves.

I want to hear the people who profess to be rational normal christian folk lobbying their pastors, priests, senators and MP's to say "this isn't us. This is downright wrong, and we're not gonna stand for it" so far, the silence has been deafening.

Legacy

A throwaway item on the Today programme this morning suggested that Tony Blair, casting around for something to do after stepping down as Prime Minister of Great Britain, may create a foundation to foster more understanding between christianity, judaism and islam. Whilst it may just be a rumour it has that ring of plausibility that all good rumour-mongers look for.

There are of course plenty who will point out that Mr Blair has done much in the recent past to unite muslims, christians, atheists and everybody else thank you. But I suspect that isn't quite the type of unity he's after.

Tony is as we all know a 'committed christian' but he is a modern faithful type who wants to invite all the other sects round for a cuppa and "can't we all just y'know, get along?"

I've never quite understood this stance - if your faith is right everybody else is going to hell. End of story.

I think this is why Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church cause discomfort to other christians. The WBC are by anybody's reckoning a tiny, marginal bunch. But when they insist that their interpretation of their god's word is correct and every other man jack of you is going to hell, people tend to feel a little uneasy.

"So that means it's 23 people sitting on gods right hand side and 6.5 billion don't get in?"

WBC: "Yup"

They cause embarassment not because their ideas are ker-razy, but because they are so dam close to the acceptable face of religiosity, just delivered with a wide-eyed zeal and assurance that scares folk.

To suggest that a particular issue that Fred Phelps preaches about is not valid, or un-christian turns a lens onto less extreme christians and asks all sorts of difficult questions about scriptural interpretation that they'd really rather not answer.

Anyhoo, Tony seems awfully keen that he has a legacy (I think you'll have one T, don't worry) so I'm going to open a foundation to create dialogue between Santa and the Tooth Fairy. Isn't it time that they just got along?

Of course I'm peeing on the floor. Isn't that what you want?

Flipper got sick on Friday night. He tried to make it to the bathroom, but instead left a three foot puddle of vomit on the carpet. The beige carpet. We threw a wet towel on it, and left it to clean in the morning. All of the Sysmidgets had dentist appointments in the morning. I took them, and left the Sysmistress to fend with the giant vomit stain. I was pulling pack up to the house as she was pulling out of the driveway. The carpet cleaner had busted, and she was running out for a replacement part. Damned handy, that woman. As we passed, she asked if I would take a basket of food to the church to get blessed. Sure.

The Sysmidgets and I were in the lobby of the church, with about 50 other families. What I had been expecting to be a 5 minute process turned into a 20 minute children's sermon. I saw quite a few parents poking and prodding their young children to participate in dialog with the priest. The symbolism of the food was the topic. Including Peeps. Oh yeah, the priest insists on the pronunciation "Geez-US!", using the linguistic subtlety similar to using a baseball bat to break an egg.

We were back at home, with our sanctified butter, about the same time the Sysmistress was arriving back home.

"How'd it go?" she asked.

"Fine," I said, "but they were really milking it."

We had Easter dinner at our house. We didn't go to services. None of the practicing Christians in the family said one word about the holiday itself. They were more concerned about the Master's gold tournament. No one said "Grace." It was really just an excuse for a family gathering. Mind you, my religious beliefs are not something that I dwell on with my family. As far as they're concerned, I'm benignly non-practicing. So no one was avoiding any topics of faith for fear of starting an unpleasant discussion with me. They just don't come up. Never have. Not at Christmas either.

In that sense, it's pretty easy being a non-believer in a family that really doesn't make a big deal out of believing in the first place.

Now for one of those segues that's not a segue.

The SysmMutt and I have been having some difficulty lately. He has been too rough with the boys. Jumping and biting. And I've had to establish with the dog that I am the alpha in the house, and if he messes with the kids, he will be disciplined. So, to show that he gets it, he's been showing that he is submissive. One of the ways he shows it is by peeing on the floor. I don't want the dog to be afraid of me (unless he's doing something wrong). And it's been driving me crazy that when he's being good, when he's listening, and when he's getting praise from me, he's still peeing.

So I read up on it. He is trying to please, the best way he can. In the dog world, submissive urination is supposed to be the signal that you are being completely "with the program." I need to adjust my body language to avoid sending the signals. I shouldn't look him in the eye. I should squat next to him instead of stand in front of him.

It's working. He's still listening better. And I'm not setting off whatever mental buttons that release his bladder. We all win.

I've been reading a bit lately. Juggling books by and about C.S. Lewis, Richard Feynman and Albert Einstein. They all address faith in an interesting manner. Obviously, Lewis was a prominent Christian. Feynman and Einstein both admitted to a spirituality, in a way, but not a spirituality that fits into conventional ideas of an organized dogma.

I think I can run with a version of Feynman's version. To put it into my own language - I think it's extremely unlikely that we could ever understand the scope of the universe. When things become beyond our grasp, and beyond our ability to even think of how we could think about them, it's tempting to label those things as "God". But why should we expect to have the capacity to understand everything, any more than I expect my dog to be able to understand the things that I do? It's a monumental display of hubris to say that if humans can't figure something out, then that topic is mystical. More accurate would be to say that that area of knowledge is beyond our operating parameters.