Now this is magical thinking I can respect!

Indigenous Australians pay their respects to the former member for Bennelong. (Via Oz Atheist)


Howard vs. Aboriginal Australians

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXXIV

The week in fundie . . .

1. The Opus Dei wing of the Liberal Party is being blamed by moderates for the fall of the Howard Government. (While they're at it, they might also throw some blame at Howard himself for backing Silas in Mitchell.) (Sydney Morning Herald)
2. The Australian Christian bookstore chain Koorong (along with other Christian book retailers) has indicated that it will be unlikely to stock a new Bible study guide challenging the notion that the Bible excludes same-sex relationships. (The Age)
3. A British primary school teacher in the Sudan faces a maximum of 40 lashes, six months in jail and a fine for the dastardly crime of "allegedly insulting Islam's prophet by allowing children to call a teddy bear Mohammed." You have got to be fucking kidding me. (AFP; see also Pharyngula)
4. I'll let this grab from a Cutting Edge radio transcript speak for itself:

   The demons of Satan's army will soon physically manifest themselves as Aliens, arriving in armadas of space ships which we have heretofore called UFO's. The plan calls for them to suddenly appear at many places on Earth simultaneously. Some will appear at the White House to confer with the President; some will appear at the United Nations; other aliens will appear at key governmental buildings all over the globe. Aliens will appear in some people's homes or on their front yards. The world's peoples will literally be shocked out of their minds. This is the Plan. This may occur before the worldwide Rapture of the Church; we must be prepared to deal wisely with this planned phenomenon.

   (Via Fundies Say the Darndest Things)
5. "Nice soul you have here. Awful shame if something were to happen to it." More standover tactics by Catholic clergy (obviously from the Pell wing) in the US. (The story comes via Fundies Say the Darndest Things. The mobster reference should be credited to Denis Loubet of the Non-Prophets)
6. I just had a look at the Australian Christian Lobby's list of what it considers are the strengths and weaknesses of the Australian Greens' policies. Among the "weaknesses" the Lobby identifies are the Greens' support for a Bill of Rights, and their support for the extension of anti-discrimination legislation to (partially-taxpayer-funded) private schools as well as public schools--a reminder, if any were required, of how the ACL and the Religious Right in Australia generally are no friends of liberal democracy.
   

UPDATE: Off-topic, but Phillip Adams really sums up why Labor's victory is so sweet.



Humor via Atheist Media:



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Just when you thought the Liberal Party couldn't be any more unelectable . . .

The Opus Dei wing of the party has won a seat in Federal Parliament.

The new member for Mitchell

The electorate of Mitchell lies smack-bang in the middle of Jesusland (a.k.a. the Hills district of north-western Sydney) and is thus safe Liberal territory*. In 2006, Alex Hawke--who believes moderate Liberals should instead join the Greens--branch-stacked and bully-boyed his way into the Liberal candidacy. In what might someday come to be known as the "Hawke-Clarke hijack," Hawke and David "The Teacher" Clarke have extended the influence of the uber-Christian Right over the Liberal Party in NSW and the Young Liberals nationally.

And I say more power to them. The more lunar and extremist the Liberals appear, the further they will fade into the electoral wilderness where they belong.

(P.S. Super Simmo has returned to the blogosphere!)

(*Admittedly, there was a 9.6% swing to the ALP in Mitchell.)


More YouTube gold from Swannysback:







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I see now What's So Great About Christianity

Rightwing pundits keep trying to tell me What's So Great About Christianity. Well, I think I understand where they're coming from, now.

In the remote Penza region of Russia, a group of Orthodox Christians has barricaded itself inside an underground bunker to await the Apocalypse, which it believes will come to pass in May next year. Better still, the group contains in its number four children, including an eighteen-month-old baby, who are obliged to await the Apocalypse in temperatures dropping to minus 10 degrees Celsius.

The group has nothing in the way of sound empirical evidence to support the claim that the world will end in May 2008. But that's OK, because "While reason helps us to discover things about experience, faith helps us discover things that transcend experience."

And yes, the leader of the cult--under whose orders the Penza group are sitting out the end of the world in an icy cave--may be currently undergoing evaluation in a psychiatric facility, but surely all this means is that he now sees "in color what we previously saw in black and white." And isn't this whole episode a demonstration of the fact that "Christianity makes of life a moral drama in which we play a starring role and in which the most ordinary events take on a grand significance?"

And sure, you could always make the argument that these cultists have an ethical duty to look after the welfare of the children in their care--and that this duty involves not indoctrinating them and holding them hostage in below-freezing conditions. But Christians, you see, live sub specie aeternitatis. And isn't it "better [for those kids] to suffer wrong than to do wrong?" And if the kids die of exposure out there, why should we worry? "The secular person thinks there are two stages for humans: life and death. For the Christian, there are three: life, death, and the life to come. This is why, for the Christian, death is not so terrifying."

Face it, heathens. The people in that cave in Russia are "pursuing [their] higher destiny as human beings. [They] are becoming what [they] were meant to be," because Christianity "not only makes us aspire to be better, but it also shows us how to be better." By barricading oneself in a remote cave to await an event one has no reliable evidence will come to pass, stockpiling weapons, holding children against their will in below-freezing conditions, and threatening to blow oneself and one's fellows up if anyone tries to intervene. Read more!

Tinfoil site of the week

Family Security Matters is a US conservative front group for a neo-con think-tank. The following headline pretty much sums up the level of sanity on which this outfit operates:

How the Leftist/Marxist/Islamist Alliance Will Accomplish a One Religion/One-world Government


(Part One of Five)

David J. Jonsson

One might ask why it is important to understand the relation between the Leftist/Marxist/Islamist Alliance and the Emerging Movement among Churches and Mosques. It is because it indicates the movement of a historically conservative church and other organizations into the fold. These Emerging Church and Mosque Movements are the elephants in the pew. The Radical Islamist Movement has realized that the tactical weapons of terrorism and suicide bombing may not be achieving their goal for world domination, and that seduction, economics and political action are more effective in winning the war. In this essay, I address how the Leftist/Marxist/Islamist Alliance is approaching the goal of achieving a one religion/one-world government.

The public failure of the Soviet Union in 1991 interred Lenin’s theory of social causation in his Red Square casket, although, like Dracula, the monster occasionally climbs out of its casket and wanders through American college campuses and churches, seeking whom it may devour.

There you have it, folks. A "CABAL (sic)" of radical Islamists, Marxists and liberal Christians all plotting to achieve a one religion SLASH one world government. Reds under the bed and elephants in the pew. Does this guy ghost-write the editorials in The Australian?

Jonsson claims that
the Emerging Church movement is like a gateway drug to Islam, and only US fundies like him stand between Islam and global domination. No evidence is presented in support of this, of course, unless you count Revelations as "evidence".

Elsewhere on the site, we learn how teachers are "Teaching Terror in American Schools" and that America is "facing a liberal-Islamist alliance." The site also accuses American college students of "empty patriotism." Read more!

Celebrate Halloween with some old-style evangelical ad baculums

Nobody does the appeal to firey and brimstoney consequences like the fundies. Enjoy!


Via Pharyngula.

More below the fold . . .

Remember "Hell House," featured in The Root of All Evil?" . . .



In the spirit of Halloween and True Christianity (TM), here are a couple of excerpts from a documentary on the Hell House phenomenon:





Dramatised abortions, rapes and domestic violence. Let's just call this for what it is: Christian porn. Read more!

Keeping up with the Grodses

This post is chiefly inspired by sour grapes on my part: I pride myself on bringing you the latest in matters fundie/theocratic, and GrodsCorp up and steals the march on me. Twice.

Maybe I’m the last guy in Australia to know about this [nope, second last -- AV] but the Gloria Jeans coffee shop franchise is co-owned by two men with close links to the Pentecostal Hillsong Church. In addition to this, Gloria Jeans is a major corporate sponsor of Mercy Ministries which “is a non-profit organization for young women who face life-controlling issues such as eating disorders, self-harm, drug and alcohol addictions, depression and unplanned pregnancy.” Mercy Ministries is strongly anti-abortion and views “lesbianism as a sin that their residential program assists girls to ‘walk in freedom from.’”

It probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise that an icon of materialism (I'm not talking about the philosophical kind; I'm talking about the praise-Jesus-and-pass-the-remote-to-the-plasma-TV-in-my-theatre-room kind) such as Gloria Jeans has such strong links to Hillsong (which, like many evangelical churches, preaches the prosperity gospel) and the religious right.

Close to a decade ago, my sister was involved with Amway and invited me to a meeting. At the time I wasn't aware of its affiliations, but the loungeroom seminar did feel strangely like my sister had invited Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses into her house to give a presentation. (Later my parents, who (being parents) had attended a few of these meetings, described the atmosphere as "cultish.") The quasi-religious ambience was no accident. In the US, Amway (founded by Rick DeVos) has been a major supporter of conservative politics (see also this article by Bill Berkowitz), disgraced private armies, and religious right causes. From Scoop:

Eric is a good example of this kind of conversion. Before he came into Amway, politics had never been an issue with him, and he was not a deeply religious person. But he soon came to believe that he was dealing with people of great faith and integrity, in part because the tapes he was instructed to listen to.

Unbeknownst to Eric, an educational process had begun that would eventually alter and control nearly all of his values and beliefs. As part of that process, he was instructed to (1) attend choreographed Amway rallies where it delivers its message, often over 2 or three days; (2) read politically charged books; (3) listen to hours of politically slanted audiotapes and voicemail messages; and (4) pay large amounts of money to listen to Right Wing Religious and Republican spokespersons at seminars around the nation.

While attending these seminars, Eric began to learn about the supposed evils of liberalism and the Democratic Party and how the liberals wanted to take from the hardworking, honest people and give to the nonproductive members of society, who were only poor because they were lazy.

I've always thought of evangelicalism as one big pyramid scheme anyway.

OT: What do these two clips have in common?




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We need one of these things for the Australian federal election

The Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education, a collaboration between five leading US universities, has created an interactive tool for gauging the role played by religion in the 2008 Presidential Election campaign.

The following is an interactive matrix examining the intersection of faith and politics on the stump as presidential hopefuls line up for their chance to win the White House in 2008. Issues range from abortion and public education to religious history and gay rights. Every candidate so far declared for office has been thoroughly researched for any mention of faith and its impact on their decision to reach a particular stance. Use the following matrix to explore how faith has been invoked as a part of their respective campaigns.

(You'll have to go to the site to open the tool.)

It would be extremely handy, don't you agree, if a similar tool was made available for Australian election campaigns.

Actually, those of you who are familiar with the website Political Compass will be interested to learn that a chart has been made for the 2007 Federal Election:


The extent to which the political centre of gravity is sinking deeper and deeper into the right-wing authoritarian quadrant is truly disturbing. Looking at the party's website (which basically resembles one long angry Letter to the Editor from Joe Incontinence Pad), I can understand how difficult it must have been for the Political Compass guys to place One Nation. They are undoubtedly authoritarian--well, let's just come right out and say it: they're protofascist--but in terms of economic policy they can be both left-wing and right-wing. (For instance, they're stridently anti-corporate: they even link to the Outfoxed website!) By the way, secularist potential One Nation voters be warned: your party advocates the teaching of Scripture and "Christian values" (whatever they are supposed to be) in public schools. And oil is--and this must be said in ALL CAPS, just like it is on the One Nation website--A RENEWABLE AND ABIOTIC FUEL."

In other news, I've submitted Five Public Opinions to Blogotariat, a political blog aggregator. Bruce, Mikey, Jeremy, the Editor . . . all the cool kids are doing it. Read more!

More unconvincing arguments for God: Pareidolia

Here's an interesting photo taken recently in Poland . . .



AND UNLESS YOU CAN PROVE OTHERWISE, THE DEFAULT EXPLANATION IS THAT POPE JOHN PAUL II HAS INCARNATED HIMSELF IN A BONFIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

While credulous theists the world over are once again basking in their own insipidness, a new voice of reason has emerged on the Australian political landscape. I mentioned it in passing on Sunday, but the Secular Party of Australia will be fielding candidates for the Senate in this year's federal election. Jen of Unsane and Safe fame will be running, which is good news, because I vote below the line. I wish her the best of luck: Ganbatte!, as they say in Japan.

As for the party's policies, there is very little that I disagree with, except this one: "We stand against . . . The wearing of religious attire in schools." As long as no one is compelled to wear religious attire, and as long as the wearing of such attire does not hinder the wearer's ability to participate in classroom activities, I don't see how it infringes anybody else's rights. (And the Party does claim, elsewhere on the site, to "believe that people should be free to indulge their beliefs, provided they do not infringe the rights of others.") Indeed, banning the wearing of religious garb, I believe, is just as anti-democratic as enforcing religious observance. (You might say that it amounts to the state overstepping the boundary between church and state.) I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of a representative of the Secular Party on this issue. Read more!

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXVIII

The week in fundie . . .

1. Ann Coulter wants "Jews to be perfected." (Via Pharyngula)
2. Air America adds ex-evangelical Christian Dan Barker's Freethought Radio to its line-up, and FOX News screams "GODLESS PROGRAMMING!!" (Via Pharyngula)
3. Under Christian and Muslim pressure, UK teachers are becoming reluctant to teach evolution and are being urged to teach creationism.
4. Left Behind Games: Criticise our sad excuse for a computer game, and we'll sue! (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
5. Kent Hovind talks to God. And God talks back. Yessireebob!
6. US Department of Defence greenlights fundamentalist Christian proselytism in the military. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
7. Catch the Fire: Baby Jesus told Pastor Nalliah that he wants John Howard to win the election (Alan Matheson)

Ann Coulter: Anti-Semite
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PZ Myers' mutating genre meme

Here are the instructions:

The Pharyngula mutating genre meme

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

• You can leave them exactly as is.

• You can delete any one question.

• You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…" to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is…", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…".

• You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…".

You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

My parent is: Pharyngula.

1. The best time travel novel in Magical Realism is…

The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco.

2. The best romantic movie in historical fiction is…

Cold Mountain.

3. The best sexy song in industrial rock is…

Closer, by Nine Inch Nails

I shall attempt to disseminate my seed of a meme to:
Mikey Capital
Ninglun
The Thinker's Podium
A Churchless Faith
Unorthodox Atheism




Via Nullifidian, Kent Hovind getting pwned on the Infidel Guy. . .


Funny stuff. God himself now talks to this guy in his prison cell.

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXVII

The week in fundie . . .

1. Texas law, with the Orwellian title "Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act," allows evangelical students to proselytise to captive audiences at public school assemblies. (Alternet)
2. Fundies--of both the Protestant and Catholic varieties--call for the shutting down of a San Francisco gay and lesbian festival and for the boycott of sponsor Miller's. (As one liberal pastor observes, a conservative Christian boycott of alcohol--isn't that a little like Hindus boycotting beef?) (The Bay Area Reporter)
3. Archbishop declares he would refuse communion to Rudy Giuliani. (via Morons.org)
4. The Red Mass: where Catholic archbishops have the annual opportunity to instruct the members of the US Supreme Court on how to vote on constitutional matters. (via TheocracyWatch)
   
5. God-fearing evangelical Christians--default moral exemplars to us all--gay-bash an Indian man to death in Sacramento. Apparently "God has 'made an injection' of high numbers of anti-gay Slavic evangelicals into traditionally liberal West Coast cities," according to the host of a Russian-language anti-gay radio show in Sacramento. "'In those places where the disease is progressing, God made a divine penicillin,'" he said. The murderers belong to a Latvian Pentecostal church linked to anti-gay activist Scott Lively, who in the 90s wrote a book comparing gay rights activists to Nazis. (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
6. William Dembski: evil atheist materialist scientists unfairly try to rationalise away the existence of angels (which Dembski insists are as real as rocks and plants and animals) with reason and science and whatnot. Evil atheist materialist scientists!
   

Religion as Child Abuse
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The Liberal Party's secret weapon

"Junglebunnies want to give your daughter aids [sic]."

Given that the Liberal Party likes its racism subtle and just-below-the-surface--right where it can be plausibly denied--Legohead can't be happy with this Adelaide Advertiser headline:

Africans drink and fight: Andrews

Ouch.

Or this.

Double ouch.


The Chaser does Pauline Hanson
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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXIV

The week in fundie:

1. God orders fundie to kill gay man. (via Pharyngula)
2. Fundies disrupt Hindu man praying in the Senate. (via Pharyngula)
3. Fundie mother tries to ban books from school library. (Friendly Atheist)
4. Trailer park bans HIV-positive 2-year old from swimming pool. (via Morons.org)
5. Former US Surgeon-General gagged by Bush administration. (via Morons.org)
   

(More of my thoughts about Jesus Camp over the fold . . .)

Watching the opening scenes of Jesus Camp, in which Pastor Becky Fisher whips up her pre-pubescent flock into a frenzy of flailing limbs and glossolalia, I had a passing thought. Imagine if these kids were encouraged to get passionate about the things that matter--politics, ethics, science, literature, philosophy--instead of rolling around the floor like mindless ululating idiots. Imagine if they could be encouraged to actually use their brains rather than surrendering them to fundamentalist dogma. That's the real travesty of this glimpse into the parallel universe that is Bible Belt USA: a generation of kids--smart kids--whose potential is being squandered in the cause of that politico-religious hybrid known as the Christian Right. A generation of kids whose intellectual development is being corrupted by the pseudoscientific and pseudohistorical claptrap that constitutes the Christian homeschooling curriculum. A generation of kids who are being raised to consider themselves, by virtue of their religious affiliation, as their nation's ruling class--who are urged by the likes of Fisher to Christianise the US, not by the use of reasoned debate and discussion, but by gradually seizing control of its institutions. I stand by my comment in the previous post. This is child abuse, pure and simple.

It would be easy to write this documentary off as a stereotypical representation of fundie America: creation science homeschooling, speaking in tongues, worshipping the image of President Bush, the family pledging allegiance to the Christian flag. It can't be real, can it?

But then you have only to consider the Dover ID case, the Creation Museum, the Left Behind videogame, "Paul Hill Days," the War on Harry Potter, "erototoxins," Paul Cameron, abstinence education, "fundagenics," the War on Science, Conservapedia, David Paskiewicz, Purity Balls, Idiot Pete, the War On Contraception, Christian Exodus, anti-Semitism, Pensacola Christian College . . . .

Jesus Camp, however disturbing, was not without its funny moments. In one scene, Fisher's young charges visit New Life Church, Colorado, to hear Pastor Ted Haggard preach against homosexuality. Read more!

Jesus Camp

My girlfriend and I will be seeing it tomorrow night.



UPDATE: The whole thing (with Italian subtitles) is available on Google Video. Read more!

Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXIII

The week in fundie:

1. Malaysian woman, born to Muslim parents but raised as a Hindu by her grandmother, claims intimidation and mental torture during her imprisonment for renouncing Islam in favour of Hinduism.
   
2. Anglican Bishops blame floods on TEH GAY.
   
3. Jesus Camp screening at Perth's Revelation Film Festival 15/7/07
4. Religious Right protests promotion of Hindu professor to head of religion department at Lutheran-owned university
5. Bush administration flooded with graduates from a poorly-rated Christian fundamentalist law school
6. Kansas Education Board member unapologetic about her efforts to get Christianity into public schools through the back door
7. Yet another Christocrat Big Day Out: "American Vision"
8. Fundamentalism with a friendly face?
   

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Blog Against Theocracy: the Australian Christian Lobby Has Control of Your Television

On August 9th, both John Howard and Kevin Rudd will address 200 church figures in a National Press Club event, organised by the Australian Christian Lobby, that will be broadcast live across the country. Why? Here's why:

The Federal Election, to be held later this year will be a significant election. In the 2004 election for the first time in many years, election analysts identified the impact of a Christian vote or Christian constituency. ACL wants to assist this important constituency to make an informed decision on how to vote in 2007.

In 2004, the influence of the Christian Right (whenever you hear someone like Jim Wallace crowing about "the Christian vote," he means the Christian Right) was most keenly felt in the arena of marriage legislation, when the Federal Government--eagerly supported by the "Opposition"--introduced a law banning same-sex marriage. The impact of this new "Christian constituency" was soon felt in the education portfolio, where in 2005 the then Minister Brendan Nelson, having watched the Campus Crusade for Christ DVD Unlocking the Mystery of Life: Intelligent Design, opined that ID should be taught in schools if that's what parents wanted. And last year, in the midst of a long debate over the supposed lack of "values" in secular schools, the Federal Government unleashed a $90 million plan to fund school chaplains.

So what's on the agenda this year? First of all, the ACL is very keen to see that the filthy homosexualists don't get too uppity about "equality under the law" and whatnot: "We would [. . .] not want to see any [. . .] moves made which would undermine the traditional definition of families, and therefore the strength of families as an institution, or jeopardise the best interests of the child." (WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN???) Furthermore, now that the Federal Government has banned the sale of X-rated material to the dark-skinned savages, the ACL is calling for an across-the-board ban, lest this filth corrupt the pure hearts of decent white Christian folk:

"The deeply concerning problems in the Northern Territory show just how great a problem pornography is and how far greater controls are needed," Mr Wallace said. "It is time we put the future of our children before the demands of the pornographic film industry!"

WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN??? Hmmm . . . there seems to be a theme here.

While it will be interesting to hear Rudd couching ALP social democracy in the patois of the Bible-thumper, while Howard promises to lead the nation into an era of 50's-style socks-and-sandals wowserism, it would be nice if there was an Enlightenment constituency--a secular liberal democratic constituency--for our political leaders to pander to.

After all: we think, and we vote.

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXII

(Blogswarm: see below fold)

The week in fundie . . .

1. Alabama Governor proclaims a week of prayer for rain. (A tactic which has worked so well for John Howard.) (Via Pharyngula)
2. C of E bishop blames floods on TEH GAY. (Nullifidian)
3. Islamic nutjob blames recent thwarted terrorist attacks on the Salman Rushdie knighting. "Is Britain longing for Al Qaeda's bombings?" You fucking tool! (Dispatches From The Culture Wars)
4. Rightwing creationist nutjob Ann Coulter gets smacked down on national television to thunderous applause. (Via Morons.org)
5. Christian Zionist nutjob: Tony Blair is not necessarily the antichrist. "Many prophecy experts believe that a future pope will be the false prophet." (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
6. Christian fundamentalist nutjobs are planning a series of "Paul Hill Days" in honour of the man who in 1994 assassinated a doctor and his escort outside an abortion clinic. Planned events include a re-enactment of the shooting. (Talk2Action)
   

On the subject of theocrats, another Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm has been planned for July 1-4, 2007. Here's what to do:

1. Post to your blog about the separation of church and state. If you want to point your readers to something they can DO about the religious right, send them to the First Freedom First website and ask them to sign the petition. First Freedom First is not a sponsor of this blogswarm, but they have been a very very helpful resource, and Blog against Theocracy would like to return the favor. You may wish to tag your post "Blog Against Theocracy."

2. send an email to

blogagainsttheocracy.july07 AT blogger DOT com

The SUBJECT LINE of your email will be the NAME of your blog. I would type for my subject, "Blue Gal". Don't use all caps or any extra lines. It won't get picked up.

The BODY of your email should have ONE thing in it: The url for your post. Blogger will turn this into a link automatically. Make sure you post the full url, including the http, etc.

I'm sorry, but that's all you're allowed to email. Longer posts will be truncated, and if they're not, BAT staff will edit them. We have to be fair to everyone participating. We'll also be watching for spam and deleting that as it arrives, so don't feel you have to email me if you see any violations or spam on the site, we'll get to it.

I've tested this system and the biggest problem is getting the darn email address correct. It's AT blogger DOT com not AT gmail DOT com. And make sure you have a period between the blogagainsttheocracy and the july07, and that you spell theocracy correctly. (even I screwed up in this post. Be aware it's july07 not jul07. See?)

You may email blogagainsttheocracy AT gmail DOT com if you have any questions or problems.

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Degayifying the Moskva

Orthodox Christian Russians were working tirelessly last Sunday to cleanse the Moskva River's sparkling waters of TEH GAY, after a dirty gay cruise vessel full of dirty gays trailed megalitres of santorum in its wake the previous evening.

Participants hired a ship and decorated it with church banners, icons, Russian imperial flags and their motto, "We are Russian, God is with us."

"Our great Orthodox capital is in spiritual vacuum and experiences ideological aggression from the West. So our aim was to demonstrate that the Russian people's spiritual and moral ideals are alive and will be so forever," Yury Ageschev, coordinator of the Union of Orthodox Brotherhoods, told Interfax.

He said one of the action's aims was "to purge the Moskva River after a large group of gays, who hired a similar ship to have a party going the same route last night."

On a more serious note, this follows a plan by Christians to conduct anti-homosexual pogroms in a Moscow park popular as a meeting place for gays and lesbians.

YouTube: Christians and homophobia
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Short story: the Marquis de Sade's "Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man"

This is actually a dialogue rather than a story. A priest is giving the last rites to a dying man who repents that he has not taken full advantage of the fact that he was "created by Nature with the keenest appetites and the strongest of passions and was put on this earth with the sole purpose of placating both by surrendering to them." The dying man then proceeds to state his case for atheism.

Despite the fact that the dying man seems not to have heard of the is-ought fallacy, he makes some good arguments that resonate well with current debates. His opponent is probably an unfair strawman, but I have heard a Christian apologist in a recent debate with Christopher Hitchens advance at least one of the priest's counter-arguments--the notion that the world has been created "broken" as an answer to the problem of evil.

The dialogue is far too long to reproduce here, so I'll just provide a link to the PDF:

"Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man"

Of course, more than just atheists have been influenced by de Sade's ideas:


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