Onward Christian Militias, Marching As To Jail

For toxic Christian nuttery
It’s hard to beat the Hutaree;
I’d say it to their face, except I’d rather not get shot.
A branch of Christianity
With double the insanity—
In mental evolution, they’re the land that time forgot.

In events unfolding as I write, a christian militia group is … what? Fighting the government? Preparing for the antichrist? Shitting their pants when confronted with FBI agents with guns, instead of the trees they are accustomed to shooting at?

That’s the thing about ongoing events. We can’t see the future, and these next hours and days (and, if you believe the Hutaree forums, weeks and months) could get interesting… or remain mind-numbingly predictable and dull.

Even the other militia groups are distancing themselves from the Hutaree militia, so I am guessing there is some weapons-grade lunacy there. I am not going to link to their site (their google hits have gone through the roof, so you’ll have no problems finding them), but it’s a fun little place. In a DSM-V clinical study kind of way.

I’d recommend popcorn, but it is a bit early to see if this goes Waco (or worse) on us, and I don’t want to make light of that possibility. The forum already spoke of the possibility of a government building going down… of course, taken down by the FBI themselves as part of a false flag operation.

Jesus is their General, you know. This would never have happened had they been touched by the FSM’s noodly appendage.

I Just Love A Good Vatican Scandal!

(Channeling Mark Russell, and wishing I could channel Tom Lehrer…)

The Vatican is rocked by scandal!
No more singing Bach or Handel;
Finding men to suit demand’ll
Get you in the end!
Caught on wire as he confesses
Finding dates for men in dresses;
Hold the tape and stop the presses,
Better to attend!

What’s the problem? Prostitution;
Finding, matching, distribution,
Knowing later absolution
Wipes you free of sin!
A chorister who likes duet work
Organized a proper network
Told the gigolos they’d get work;
“When can you begin?”

With ornate bedposts, leafed with gold, and sheets of finest satin
Your tips are better, we are told, if you can moan in Latin.

He’s lost the high ground in these quarrels
No more resting on his laurels;
If the Pope should speak of morals,
We can roll our eyes.
Throughout time, since Eden’s apple,
Till the current papal grapple,
Seems the urge to fuck a chap’ll
Always get a rise!

Hat tip, PZ, of course.

Goodbye, John Reed

Although I have been accused of trying to be the incarnation of W. S. Gilbert (high praise I don’t come close to deserving!), I have a confession: In the constellation of all things G&S, although I admired Gilbert tremendously, he was never my source of inspiration. When I think of Gilbert and Sullivan, my thoughts are not of abstract words or perfect melodies, but of one voice–the voice of John Reed.

Our library had, and I often borrowed, a large collection of the D’oyly Carte recordings; most featured Reed as the comic baritone. It was his voice that defined G&S for me, and brought Gilbert’s words, Sullivan’s melodies, to perfect life. Reed’s voice was not operatically trained, but it was perfect for this task (others may disagree and have their own favorites, but I am right). I am very happy he sang at a time when a good stereo recording was possible.

So, goodbye, John Reed! Thank you for your elocution, your timing, your voice.

Imitation being flattery and all that, I reprise an earlier bit of work. Far better to acknowledge this as inspired by Reed than by the undeserving creationist plagiarists.

I am the very model of a devious creationist
I’ve made a film that’s best described as stolen-animationist
I know the use of rhetoric when facts are unavailable
To render the impossible into the unassailable

I’m very well acquainted, too, with data manufacturing
I’ll claim I stand on solid granite even as it’s fracturing
I document complexity, like when it’s irreducible…
And think my movie’s in the league of Arthur Miller’s Crucible

And think my movie’s in the league of Arthur Miller’s Crucible
And think my movie’s in the league of Arthur Miller’s Crucible
And think my movie’s in the league of Arthur Miller’s Crucible

I’m very good at lying, both the verbal and statistical—
Like Darwin in his later years, I’m openly theistical
In short, you might describe me as a mental masturbationist
I am the very model of a devious creationist

In short, you might describe him as a mental masturbationist
He is the very model of a devious creationist

My evidence, in volumes that would baffle a librarian
Is not so much orthogonal as utterly contrarian
Presented with a problem like the claw of a Deinonychus
I pause for just a moment, then it’s “Dammit, bring it on!” I cuss

My scientific colleagues have been banned from Universities
Expecting them to publish was just one of their adversities
They’ve parried the attacks of retroviruses endogenous
Maintaining all the while that Darwinians are dodgin’ us

Maintaining all the while that Darwinians are dodgin’ us
Maintaining all the while that Darwinians are dodgin’ us
Maintaining all the while that Darwinians are dodgin’ us

My evidence is solid as a fossil of triceratops
Presented with the humor of a monologue of Carrot Top’s
In short, you might describe me as a mental masturbationist
I am the very model of a devious creationist

In short, you might describe him as a mental masturbationist
He is the very model of a devious creationist

In fact, when I know what is meant by “cinemas” and “enemas”
When I can tell by sight the harmless serpent from the venomous
And claim I found the evidence in chapter one of Genesis
You’ll see, compared to Darwinists, which one of us the menace is

When I have crack’d a book on Evo-Devo or Biology
Enough to understand instead of mutter simply “Golly gee!”
And understand my argument is simply false dichotomy
You’ll say that this creationist does not deserve lobotomy

You’ll say that this creationist does not deserve lobotomy
You’ll say that this creationist does not deserve lobotomy
You’ll say that this creationist does not deserve lobotomy

For the science that I know was not updated for millennia
Not since the latest virgin birth, or genesis parthenia
But still, you might describe me as a mental masturbationist
I am the very model of a devious creationist

But still, you might describe him as a mental masturbationist
He is the very model of a devious creationist

Lindsey Vonn Puts Faith In Cheeses, Wins Gold

Lindsey Vonn was badly bruised;
Her shin was black and blue.
But these are the Olympic Games–
Whatever would she do?
Some athletes rub on emu fat;
For some, placenta pleases–
But Lindsey Vonn’s a different sort:
She put her faith in cheeses.

She could not race until she healed;
Her hopes would all be lost,
And so went where cheese is priced
To calculate the cost.
She found some at the marketplace
And bought a couple tins,
To make a Topfen poultice
For forgiveness for her shins.

By all accounts, her injury
Was really rather vicious–
But thanks to cheeses, once again
Her legs are just delicious.
Apparently, for Austrians,
This cure is very old–
My guess is we’ll see more like this,
Since Lindsey got her Gold!

****

My guess is, if you follow the Olympic Games at all, you already know about Lindsey Vonn’s injury. It was her great good fortune that the weather caused a series of delays, giving her shin time to heal, at least a bit. During that time, she used some laser therapy, massage, painkillers, and now we hear, a poultice made of cheese.

After injuring her shin in Austria during training, American downhill skier Lindsey Vonn did what Austrian skiers do: She wrapped topfen cheese curd around her swollen right leg in hopes of reducing the swelling.

Whether or not the cheese helped her recover enough to win an Olympic gold medal Wednesday, the Austrian curd remains obscure.

Many gourmet cheesemongers aren’t familiar with the semisoft cream cheese-like fromage, and sports medicine experts certainly aren’t rushing out to prescribe it to injured patients.

Top athletes are often superstitious (having had a lot of success, they have had a lot of opportunity to falsely correlate that success with a lucky object, routine, or ritual); it is no surprise that, having had plenty of opportunity to recover from injury, athletes are prone to some pretty strange cures as well:

When orthopedic surgeon Dr. John Benjamin heard that Vonn had spread cheese on her hurt shin, he said he chuckled. “It’s a curious use for a dairy product, and I have not heard reports of great success,” he says.

Other curious treatments for sports injuries have ranged from rubbing placenta juice into a bad hamstring as Serbian soccer player Danko Lazovic reportedly did, according to the AP, and using the fat of an emu as a rub for pain and swelling.

You may also remember, if you followed this in the news, that Ms. Vonn initially suspected that her leg might be broken, but refused X-rays to confirm her suspicion. She was “putting her fingers in her ears” and refusing to consider the possibility that she would spend the Olympic Games with her leg in a cast, because of a broken shin.

Maybe it was denial and fear, but my hope is that her refusal to X-ray, her refusal to have her leg in plaster, came from her innate determination, her perseverance, her guts, her metaphorical cojones. I picture her telling her doctor “let he who is without stones cast the first shin. I’m putting my faith in cheeses.”

The Learned Judge Blair

The learned Judge showed mercy,
For she knew the man devout;
One cannot be religious, and
A brutal, lowly lout–
Religion shows the brighter light,
Not worldly, but sublime;
You’d never break a fellow’s jaw…
Except, of course, this time.

The learned judge, she reasoned
That forgiveness was the path;
She’d demonstrate God’s mercy
When she could have picked God’s wrath.
A judge who follows faithfully
Could never be a dunce;
She’d choose the wise and sober course…
Except, of course, this once.

The learned judge is hearing
From the slighted and the wronged
For speaking through her prejudice
As if such views belonged.
Some arguments belong in court,
But then again, some don’t;
The judge should learn from this mistake…
Except, of course, she won’t.

Judge Cherie Blair has suspended the sentence of a man found guilty of assault, on the basis that the convicted is “a religious man”. AC Grayling writes eloquently of the story on RichardDawkins.net. Cuttlecap tip to PZ.

Girl, 16, Buried Alive

How dare she talk to boys as friends!
It’s time to dig a hole
This is where her flirting ends!
It’s time to dig a hole
At sixteen years, a headstrong girl
Get in the hole and kneel
She used to be my precious pearl
Get in the hole and kneel
She would not bend to my demands
A shovel-full of dirt
So hold her tight and bind her hands
A shovel-full of dirt
The family council called for death
Ignore her cries and screams
Inhaling earth with every breath
Ignore her cries and screams
Our family’s honor is at stake
So bury her alive
We have a code we cannot break
So bury her alive
Throw more dirt down on her head
A daughter must obey
It took a while, but now she’s dead
A daughter must obey
My daughter’s gone, the shameless whore
A father’s word is law
But no great loss–I’ve got eight more
A father’s word is law


This is the hole where she died. Where her own family buried her alive. Where she breathed and swallowed dirt, kneeling with hands bound, until her death restored her family’s honor.

M.M., a 16 year old Turkish girl, had male friends she would talk to. It appears, according to reports, that this was the reason her own father and grandfather buried her alive.

This is one of those stories I cannot read without putting my daughter’s face on the victim’s. Sixteen was not that long ago.

Why Not Use The Bible As A Science Book?

It’s not hatred; it’s not loathing;
It’s the emperor’s new clothing,
And Creationism doesn’t have a stitch.
There’s no bible-methodology
That’s better than biology–
It seems a level playing-field’s a bitch.

When the real world’s more exciting
Than some Aramaic writing,
Cos it adds to what we know about ourself,
Then the bible’s contribution
When it comes to evolution
Is most useful when you keep it on the shelf.

See, the truth about the ages
Isn’t there within its pages
It’s a waste of time to even go and look
Science strives to see the lawful
But the bible’s frankly awful:
All in all, the perfect anti-science book!

Cuttlecap tip to PZ

Super Bowl Sunday, Redux

A repost from a year ago, and pretty much nothing at all has changed. My wish is that one of these years, a QB is going to say “well, first of all, I gotta give it all up for my lord and savior Jesus Christ, without whom nothing is possible. I couldn’t have done what I did without Him watching over me”… in the presence of an offensive line that sweated blood to keep this guy off the turf for 4 quarters, and who are comprised of a very talented group of Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, and atheist athletes who decide to let Jesus take care of the QB by himself next game.

Oh, well. Not likely in this lifetime.

The repost:

****************

It’s Super Bowl Sunday again (well, tomorrow, as I write)! I must admit, I love the Super Bowl. Not because it is the SB, but because it is the last meaningful game before next season. My dad, when I was really young, was a football coach, so I watch football looking for all the fun interior line details that are never part of the televised commentary; football, like so many things, gets better the more you know about it.

What is irritating, though, is that God is always on the side of the winners (as PZ noted); it is such a great time to wear one’s religion on one’s sleeve. Of course, it also bothers me that even those among us who find that notion silly, the same after-the-fact reasoning is used to show that the team that had greater will to win, that wanted it more, that just refused to say die, is the one who took the trophy home. Nobody ever gives up the will to win, but then cruises to victory anyway.

Anyway, here’s the song of the day… with sincere apologies to Bob Dylan, and to pretty much everybody else, too.

Oh, the workouts are nothin’
And the wind sprints are less
We don’t even practice
We think that it’s best
Cos practice means nothing
I’m forced to confide—
But we’ll win big on Sunday
With God on our side

Oh the networks will show it
They’ll show it so well
How the righteous team won
And the evil team fell
Oh the righteous team won
But it’s not cos we tried
It’s Super Bowl Sunday
With God on our side

Oh, when I cross the goal line
I’ll raise my arm high
With one upraised finger
I’ll point to the sky
I’m sending a message
That can’t be denied
I just scored a touchdown
With God on my side

When it’s fourth down and inches
We’ll go for it all
It’s a quarterback keeper
But where is the ball
They’ll bring out the chain gang
And the refs will decide
First and ten to the team
With God on their side

And the fans in the stadium
Will cheer on their teams
And eat without stopping
Or that’s how it seems
And most of it’s salty
And all of it’s fried
They’ll eat it on Sunday
With God on their side

Oh, it won’t even matter
What’s the final score
The points aren’t important
That’s not what it’s for
This game’s about Jesus
We can all say with pride
We won big on Sunday
With God on our side

We gather each Sunday
We won’t miss a week
It’s more than just victory
It’s salvation we seek
It’s more than religion
It’s the reason Christ died
So we could play football
With God on our side

Atheist Billboard Hypocrisy! (Or Not)

When they pass the plate on Sunday, and we put our money in,
They assure us that it lets the Church do good
So we dig a little deeper—being selfish is a sin—
And we donate like the Bible says we should.

Though we haven’t got much money, we still give as best we can,
Every Sunday morning, roughly ten o’clock
Now we see our small donations help a much, much bigger plan,
Cos we’ve got the biggest billboard on the block!

Every church around has got one, and there’s some with five or six
Praising Jesus and inviting folks to come
There are dozens in the city, and there’s more out in the sticks
And they must have cost a mighty godly sum!

When “Our Lady Of The Blessed Heart”, the local Catholic Church,
Put their new one by the highway overpass
We just couldn’t let it stand like that, with us left in the lurch;
Our humongous billboard really kicked their ass!

We’ve competed now for decades, with our steeples and our signs,
Till the megachurches left us in their dust;
And it might be steeple envy, if you read between the lines,
But there’s something now that fills us with disgust!

Yes, the godless heathen atheists, the lowest of the low,
Have a billboard that they want to put in town!
If they try it, though, I’m telling you (and really, I should know)
If they put it up, we’re gonna burn it down.

What a waste of their resources! Why, that money’s better spent
Housing homeless, feeding hungry, helping poor;
For a message on a billboard should be strictly heaven-sent—
That for all your problems, Jesus is the cure!

****

I got a comment (thanks, Mariano!) on the “Starving? Have a bible!” thread, linking to a hilarious article accusing atheists of hypocrisy with regard to our reaction to the Audio Bible story. Now, to be fair, the Audio Bible person (not Mariano) who commented assured us that they are not sending these bibles instead of relief items, but along with them, and by request of people in Haiti. Moreover, he or she is trying to get the future runs of the device to include a radio receiver, so that it will be of practical use in disaster areas. I maintain that, although the actions of Faith Comes By Hearing are good, and their intentions perfectly honorable (although they certainly don’t need my approval), the Audio Bible, as is, does nothing to alleviate the real problems in Haiti. (It does work to alleviate some illusory problems, though; problems that stem from their belief in the first place. It may comfort them when they feel they have been abandoned by god; a solution to a problem that never needed to exist.)

From Mariano’s article:

Certainly, atheists, being absolute materialists, do not see how human beings are anything but bio-organisms and require nothing but bio-organic fuel, housing, etc. Yet, the Christian view is holistic and thus, organizations such as Faith Comes By Hearing seek to provide both; food for the body and food for the soul.

Actually, the atheist view is holistic, if by “whole” you mean “all that is there, without making shit up.”

Now, what of atheistic hypocrisy?

The fact is that for at least the last couple of years atheists worldwide have been literally wasting hundreds upon hundreds of thousands upon thousands of dollars in donated money not in order to help anyone in need during times of recession, war, poverty, etc. but in order to purchase anti-theistic and pro-atheism bus ads and billboards in order to attempt to demonstrate just how clever they consider themselves to be.

Now, they suddenly anoint themselves the charity police, complain and condemn based, by the way, on relative-subjective-personal preference based “morality.”

Well, my dear atheists friends; first repent of your own astonishingly wasteful back-patting boasting and then, perhaps, eventually, get around to criticizing those who are feeding, housing the needy body and soul—those who have been doing it for millennia upon millennia by the way.

I’ve seen atheist billboards. None in person, mind you; only online. I’ve seen religious billboards. Hundreds. Online, on the road, on the hill, on the bus, in the paper… By Mariano’s logic, think how much money has been thus wasted, that could have been used to help those in need.

Mariano is right about one thing–the churches have been doing it for millennia. We disagree on precisely what they have been doing. I hope that Mariano himself is free of hypocrisy, and will perhaps join Sarah Silverman’s “Sell the Vatican: Feed the Poor” campaign.

Actually, it kind of sickens me to read the sort of thing Mariano has linked to. The church-going people I knew while growing up were the first to donate, the first to volunteer, and never gave a thought about who else was donating or why. It was their own business. Of course, I found out years later that at least one pillar of that religious community was himself an atheist; the church was simply the best way he could help.

The billboards are up because atheists are treated as second class citizens. It’s nice to see, for once, that we are considered good enough to actually hold to a higher standard than believers themselves.

On God And Haiti

“We stand here by the grace of God”
The quake survivors said,
And thanked Him they were not among
Two hundred thousand dead.
“What happened is the will of God”
But God receives no blame;
Survivors gather humbly, and
Sing praises to His name.
One wonders, in the aftermath,
If God is really there—
But which is worse: no God at all,
Or gods that do not care?

In a Saturday NYTimes op-ed, author James Wood ponders the various different invocations of God in the reactions to Haiti’s devastation, from Pat Robertson, to President Obama, to the Haitian survivors themselves.

[A] 27-year-old survivor, Mondésir Raymone, was quoted thus: “We have survived by the grace of God.” Bishop Éric Toussaint, standing near his damaged cathedral, said something similar: “Why give thanks to God? Because we are here. What happened is the will of God. We are in the hands of God now.” A survivor’s gratitude is combined with theological fatalism. This response is entirely understandable, uttered in a ruined landscape beyond the experience of most of us, and a likely source of pastoral comfort to the bishop’s desperate flock. But that should not obscure the fact that it is little more than a piece of helpless mystification, a contradictory cry of optimistic despair.

It is an interesting look at the use of God in such times.

For either God is punitive and interventionist (the Robertson view), or as capricious as nature and so absent as to be effectively nonexistent (the Obama view). Unfortunately, the Bible, which frequently uses God’s power over earth and seas as the sign of his majesty and intervening power, supports the first view; and the history of humanity’s lonely suffering decisively suggests the second.

Interesting, that either view still maintains a God. I wonder why it is that a god who either causes or allows such suffering is not consigned to history. My universe works just fine with no god at all.

****

In an update, I had a visit in the comments on the “Starving? Have a bible” thread. A representative of the company says he will bring the idea of including a radio receiver, to make the audio bible more useful in such disaster scenarios. I think there are contact details in the link to the company website from my older post, if anyone wants to deliver words of encouragement.