You know who’s got a hard job? » « Anybody who’d hate an octopus is warped

Silly scurrilousness against the sanctimonious

I’ve been slacking off on Pharyngula lately — I’ve had a week to relax and get caught up on a few other things. Here, though, are a few links to ridiculous religiosity that have been piling up in the mailbox.

You know who’s got a hard job? » « Anybody who’d hate an octopus is warped

Comments

  1. bernarda says

    I don’t think Jeebus had a roach problem, rather he and his followers had a magic mushroom problem.

  2. says

    I don’t think Jeebus had a roach problem, rather he and his followers had a magic mushroom problem.

    It’s a metaphor. His followers are the roaches.

  3. Teenage Lobotomy says

    I, would like to take the person who cracked that idiots skull and the receptionist out for a few rounds of stiff
    drinks for job well done.

  5. says

    And people wonder why the human species will be soley responsible for its own extinction. There really is no end to the moron brigade.

  7. Matt says

    Would god get mad if they hired an exterminator, or do they just have to live with roaches because it is part of god’s plan?

  8. Carlie says

    Clowns. I hate clowns.
    Rick Racki, aka Riff-Raff, the troupe’s only hobo clown, said the outfits make people more receptive to a spiritual message. “There’s something inside them that just opens up,” the 43-year-old said. “They’re more open. They’re less afraid.”

    The only thing more frightening to me than a Southern Baptist proselytizer would be one dressed like a clown. And I should know, I’ve been one. (the former, not the latter)

  9. raven says

    Pope Ratzi has a chief exorcist (which implies a lot of little assistant exorcists, too…), and he has declared Harry Potter to be satan.

    Odd. Doesn’t he know Harry Potter is a fictional character? While it will be easy to win a supernatural battle against someone who isn’t real, what is the point?

    Really, this guy needs to consult with the Vatican PR department or something. It won’t take too many strange PRs before he makes himself irrelevant.

    And anyway, where was he when Sauron of Mordor was riding high. Now there was someone clearly on the wrong side!

  10. Hank Fox says

    Pope Benedict XVI’s chief exorcist, Rev. Gabriele Amorth … compared the Potter character to dictators Stalin and Hitler, saying they were possessed by the devil.

    “You can tell by their behavior and their actions, from the horrors they committed and the atrocities that were committed on their orders. That’s why we need to defend society from demons,” said Amorth, who has reportedly performed 30,000 exorcisms.

    If he performed 30,000 exorcisms and did them regularly for 50 of his 82 years, that would make it 600 per year. With a 5-day work week and a 2-week annual vacation, the poor man was doing an average of 2.4 of these a day. With travel time between each exorcism, he’s been a busy man indeed!

    Conservatively estimating only a gallon of pea-soup projective vomit per demon over his career, that’s still more than five hundred 55-gallon drums of vomit. Plus, figure dry cleaning at about $10 per set of vomit-stained vestments, you get a cleaning bill of $300,000 to get that vomit out. And that’s IF demon vomit is chemically the same as regular vomit and can be so easily removed.

    And Harry Potter is just the same as Hitler and Stalin! Man, I knew it! It was the way he had all those Death Eaters killed by firing squads, and then there was that time he ordered the roundup of Muggles for extermination!

    … Sheesh. The 82 years have not been kind to this man.

    The creepy thing is that we’re all laughing at this bugfuck insane stuff only because we’re safely outside it. But inside the Vatican, apparently they’re DEADLY SERIOUS about it all. Unless he’s lying (obviously possible, even probable), this old fart has subjected more than 30,000 people to his primitive juju. You have to wonder how many of them were mentally ill and needed real medical care, or were maybe just suffering from epilepsy or diabetes or whatever, and died under his fanatical care.

    I’ll make the point one more time: They’re SERIOUS about this stuff.

    Religiosity of this type not only provides cover for extremism, it IS extremism. And this is not some unauthorized dimwit out on the edge of Catholicism, this is an OFFICIAL Vatican representative, a freakazoid from the vital core of the Catholic Church.

  12. says

    Really, this guy needs to consult with the Vatican PR department or something.

    I just had Eddie Izzard and the “PR Department of Rome” go through my head.

  13. Ichthyic says

    Cthulhu has risen from the dark depths…you won’t find any newspaper or police accounts of this, but trust me.

    any news of Dagon?

    He’s not answering his cell.

  14. says

    Harry Potter is now ofically the Devil.
    Exorcism squads.

    If all this is true, maybe Pope Ratzi is planning to change “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” back to it’s original title.

  15. says

    Having spent some time in Nazareth, I would be astonished if Jesus didn’t have a cockroach problem.

    Jesus as web editor is hilarious. Check out the email responses.

  16. Ichthyic says

    this old fart has subjected more than 30,000 people to his primitive juju.

    LMAO! The vomit analysis was worthy of the Onion! thanks Hank.

    However, on the ’30k exorcism thing…

    i rather picture lines of parishioners claiming demon possession, daily, and he simply waives some incense over them and gives them a blessing. Then claims they are free of demons.

    He might be able to process 30 or 40 a day that way, before lunch.

    are we sure that the Exorcist is an informative documentary of how the CC performs exorcisms?

    are we sure that bishops in the CC really DO take this shit seriously… or are they simply placating their more, uh, ‘devout’ parishioners?

  17. stogoe says

    That “Harry Potter is Satan” article is from September 2006. Still bugfuck crazy, but kind of old.

    I can’t wait for the invasion of Pope Palpatine’s exorcist squads. That ought to be fun (if it’s even true).

  18. gorckat says

    “Magic is always a turn to the devil,” said the Roman Catholic priest, according to Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper.

    Amorth, who is also the president of the International Association of Exorcists, said the series contains many positive references to “the satanic art” of magic and makes no distinction between black and white magic.

    If magic is always a turn to the devil, what’s this white magic?

  19. bernarda says

    stelios, sometimes it is difficult to tell the real sites from the satirical ones. Here is another. “Show Me Clowns for Jesus”.

    http://www.showmeclownsforjesus.com/

    Here is their, serious?, introduction.

    “Cultivate learning opportunities to develop and refine Christian clowning skills.

    Encourage high ethical , professional, and Christian clown standards.

    Promote clowning as a ministry to bring joy and the love of Jesus to others.”

    Even George Carlin couldn’t do better.

  20. Ichthyic says

    by the way, on the pope’s CEO of excorcism claiming potter is da debil…

    that was quite a while back:

    Pope’s top exorcist says Harry Potter is ‘king of darkness’
    Last Updated: Sunday, September 3, 2006

    not saying it isn’t worthy of discussion (it is), but it isn’t exactly front page news.

    here’s a fun interview from 2002:

    http://www.medjugorje.org/framorth1.htm

    what is the latest news on this assclown? There doesn’t appear to be anything in the last few months.

  21. says

    “makes no distinction between black and white magic”

    leaving the fiction issue aside for a moment…

    I suppose I was imagining the references to “Dark Arts” and the Defense therefrom.

  22. bassmanpete says

    “How to edit a webpage like Jesus” is definitely not serious. Go read the FAQs and some of the articles.

  23. Carlie says

    “Magic is always a turn to the devil,” said the Roman Catholic priest, according to Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper.

    I first read that as “Magic is always a turn on to the devil”. Entirely different, much more entertaining, yet no less stupid.

  24. CalGeorge says

    The rite of exorcism involves a series of gestures and prayers to invoke the power of God and stop the “demon” influencing its victim.

    Do they get hazardous duty pay? We all know that Satan is fond of hurling himself out the window while inside the body of a priest. That’s gotta be worth a few bucks.

  26. Ichthyic says

    We all know that Satan is fond of hurling himself out the window while inside the body of a priest.

    thought that was Pizuzu’s kick?

  27. MercuryBlue says

    Attn: people who think the Harry Potter books are tools of Satan: Read the damn books. All the way through the end of Deathly Hallows. And try again to tell me with a straight face that Harry Potter is driving kids to the devil. Harry’s only a friggin’ literal Christ figure…oh, sorry, did I spoil the ending for you?

  29. Grumpy says

    “If the majority of the people are agnostic and atheistic, it may be that they are partly to blame for the problems we have.”

    Oh dear. I think Vera Ivie has been hoodwinked into thinking that the percentage of non-religious Americans is somewhere in the double digits.

    She might also be satisfied that plenty of Americans are praying for George Bush, and his approval rating is God’s answer.

  31. dieselrain says

    I was given the gift of an hour today and spent it browsing Barnes and Noble’s in St Cloud. Near the cafe, right in the middle of a display table of featured, stacked books, under the tee-rack mounted poster announcing the books as “HUMOR”, yep, right in the middle: a stack of A.J. Jacobs’ recent book, The Year of Living Biblically. Just thought you’d like to know…. Am gleefully meeting 2008 tonight with book in hand!

  33. dieselrain says

    Oh, I forgot: this morning’s Mpls Star Tribune had a front page article (Second section, mercifully) on “The Highway of Holiness” (I-35, that runs between International Falls MN and Laredo Texas–of course). The dupes think “I-35” stands for “Isaiah 35:8….
    Here’s the url: http://www.startribune.com/local/12928811.html

  34. says

    Oh noes! Atheistic people are the reason why Dubya’s a lousy president!

    Aside from that, I kind of like the notion of the Pope’s new Goon Squad. Can we call them terrorists?

  35. Janine says

    Well, except for the warm shelter and the stockpiles of food, I doubt those little cockroaches care much for we humans. Look at how they scurry away when the lights are on.

  36. Janine says

    We all share in the burden. We all need to live and teach the truths upon which our country was founded. The world is made up of two types of people: critics who are negative, fearful and have no plan, no vision, no faith, and authors who are positive, visionary builders. Which kind are you?

    What, the big sky daddy is being blocked by the faithless. Does not seem so all powerful.

    Wait, this is not christianity, this is The Secret.

  37. Ichthyic says

    I might have missed if someone else posted this, but the “alleged anti-conservative attack” apparently was completely fabricated by the supposed victim:

    BY THE WAY(2), you really want to check out the New York Sun’s followup on this, particularly this juicy nugget:

    A student at Princeton University who said he was beaten unconscious by two black-clad assailants Friday has said that he fabricated the assault, and that he sent e-mail death threats to himself, three other Princeton students, and a prominent conservative professor at Princeton, Robert George, police said today.

    That’s right — self-proclaimed moral standard bearer Nava was the one who sent the death threat(s) to conservative professor Robert George. Oh, frabjous day! Does it get any funnier than this?

    Answer: No.

    http://canadiancynic.blogspot.com/2007/12/shriek-shriek-shriek.html

  38. Ichthyic says

    Well, except for the warm shelter and the stockpiles of food, I doubt those little cockroaches care much for we humans. Look at how they scurry away when the lights are on.

    no, no…

    see, they’re just like little shoe elves, doing work to help you out at night, when they can’t be seen. they run away because they aren’t supposed to get caught helping you out.

    yeah, that’s the ticket.

  39. Janine says

    How will Jesus respond to this question?

    Are You Drinking With Me, Jesus?
    (Peter Berryman)

    Do you nestle by my barstool
    Makin’ me so calm within
    Have you touched me with your warmness
    Or have I touched myself with gin?

    cho: Are you drinkin’ with me Jesus
    I can’t see you very clear
    If you’re drinkin’ with me Jesus
    Won’t you buy a friend a beer?

    If you’re omnipresent, Jesus
    You don’t have to use the phone
    If you’re always by my side, Lord
    You need never drink alone

    Do you teeter with me, Jesus
    On my way home so forlorn
    If you think that you feel bad now
    Wait until tomorrow morn

    Does your head pound with the masses
    As hungover you do rise
    What does heaven look like, Jesus
    Seen through holy bloodshot eyes

    Should we take a taxi, Jesus
    Should we try to walk from here
    I know you can walk on water
    Can you walk on this much beer?

  40. Janine says

    Well, damn, Ichthyic. I guess I need roaches where I live so they can do my housework. snicker

  41. Ichthyic says

    Well, damn, Ichthyic. I guess I need roaches where I live so they can do my housework. snicker

    works for me

    :p

    ever see “joe’s apartment”?

  43. Janine says

    No. The last twenty years, the only things from MTV I could handle were “Beavis And Butthead” (Which really surprised me.) and “Daria”. But I fear I am off the various topics now.

  45. Uber says

    I think Vera Ivie has been hoodwinked into thinking that the percentage of non-religious Americans is somewhere in the double digits.

    Nope she is correct. All the polls show it. And in the younger generation it approaches 40%.

  46. Ichthyic says

    really?

    that’s good news.

    last I heard was Pew data from around 2002 showing atheists in single digits:

    U.S. Religious Affiliation, 2002
    (self-identification, Pew Research Council)
    In February and March 2002 the Pew Research Council conducted a survey of 2,002 adults. Questions about religious preference were included. The results are below:

    Religious Preference % June 1996 % March 2001 March 2002
    Christian 84 82 82
    Jewish 1 1 1
    Muslim * 1 *
    Other non-Christian 3 2 1
    Atheist * 1 1
    Agnostic * 2 2
    Something else (SPECIFY) * 1 2
    No preference 11 8 10
    Don’t know/Refused 1 2 1
    TOTAL 100 100 100

    This table was published in a study titled “Americans Struggle with Religion’s Role at Home and Abroad”, released on March 20, 2002.

    where do you find more up to date poll info?

  47. Janine says

    The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism.

    Vatican chiefs are concerned at what they see as an increased interest in the occult.

    They have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of “Godlessness.

    This hardly makes any sense. Satanism implies a belief in god, just that you are opposition to god. Most of the occult deals with non christian deities, though most ‘demons’ are merely co opted deities. The the Godless rejects all of this as nonsense.

    These people claim to be moral leaders cannot seem to tell the difference. Methinks Ratzi should go back to co ordinating his Prada.

  48. Janine says

    Ichthyic, if I am going to watch a movie with talking bugs, I am going to stick with “The Naked Lunch”. But thank you for the link.

  49. Ichthyic says

    These people claim to be moral leaders cannot seem to tell the difference.

    or they can (and likely do), but instead choose to lie instead.

    now why would they do THAT, I wonder…

    xianity simply can’t stand competition. It’s always been that way.

    apparently Islam can’t stand it either.

    Seems to me that the CC has had “PR” departments for as long as it has existed.

  50. Janine says

    The fact that some old people died was big news for Christianity Today. Has anyone sat down with them to explain the facts of life?

    Anyone who breaks out in that theme song will be shot!

  51. Janine says

    Abortion Supporter Knocks 69 Yr. Old Pro-Lifer Unconscious, MSM Silent
    Photo of Warner Todd Huston.
    By Warner Todd Huston | December 29, 2007 – 05:12 ET

    On December 22nd a 69 year-old pro-life activist who was standing atop his automobile and protesting in front of the Hillcrest Abortion Clinic in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was physically attacked by an abortion supporter and thrown to the ground with enough force to knock him unconscious. Doctors even worried for a time that the elderly man might perish from the attack. And here, nearly 7 days out from this attack, there aren’t any accounts of the attack in the MSM. As I searched for the story myself, I found two and only two Internet hits for it. Why the silence from the MSM? Can you imagine the MSM swarm that would have occurred if it had been a pro-lifer that attacked an abortion supporter? The cacophony would have been deafening if a pro-lifer had been the one to get violent.

    I just cannot seem to give a flying fuck here. I have heard to many stories about pregnant women trying enter these clinics being pushed around by these anti-choicers. And where is the MSM for all of this?

  53. raven says

    I have heard to many stories about pregnant women trying enter these clinics being pushed around by these anti-choicers.

    A lot worse than that. Attacks on family planning centers, abortion clinics, MDs, staff, and patients are so common they rarely make the national news.

    The casualty list from the Xian terrorists runs 7 assassinated MDs, 17 attempted murders, and 200 or so wounded, many seriously.

    Xians have a long, long history of being violent.

    San Francisco Chronicle
    Abortion, family planning clinics in Albuquerque attacked
    Dan Frosch, New York Times

    Friday, December 28, 2007

    A rash of attacks on abortion and family planning clinics has struck Albuquerque this month, the first such violence there in nearly a decade.

    Two attacks occurred early Tuesday at two buildings belonging to Planned Parenthood of New Mexico, according to Albuquerque police and fire officials. An arson fire damaged a surgery center the organization uses for abortions, and the windows of a Planned Parenthood family planning clinic 12 blocks away were smashed.

    Neither building sustained significant damage, and activities at both resumed Wednesday, a spokeswoman said.

    The attacks came just weeks after the Albuquerque clinic run by a nationally known abortion provider, Curtis Boyd, was destroyed by arsonists Dec. 6.

    On Wednesday, agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, along with local arson investigators, arrested two suspects in the fire at Boyd’s clinic, which has provided abortions to women from throughout the region and Mexico since 1972.

    The suspects, Chad Altman and Sergio Baca of Albuquerque, both 22, were arrested on arson charges after the authorities received a tip, said Jake Gonzales, the agent in charge of the firearms agency’s Albuquerque office.

    Gonzales said it was not clear whether the Dec. 6 attack was related to those at the Planned Parenthood offices, which are under investigation by federal and local authorities.

    The small, tight-knit group of abortion providers in the city have reacted with a mix of shock and fear. In 1999, the same Planned Parenthood surgical center was set ablaze. An ex-convict, Ricky Lee McDonald, who has a history of violence against New Mexico abortion clinics, was convicted in that attack and sent to prison.

    Planned Parenthood of New Mexico spokeswoman Martha Edmands condemned the recent attacks, as did Dauneen Dolce, executive director of the Right to Life Committee of New Mexico.

    “It makes me really angry,” Edmands said. “It’s really upsetting that anyone would attempt to put any kind of doctor out of business.”

    Dolce said: “We never encourage violence of any nature. After all, there’s enough violence going on in these clinics.”

    A study issued last year by the Feminist Majority Foundation, which monitors attacks on abortion clinics, concluded that the most serious anti-abortion violence had declined since 1994, when federal legislation gave greater protection to providers and patients. According to the report, 18 percent of clinics experienced severe violence in 2005, compared with 52 percent in 1994.

    Still, the report said, many clinics remain targets of extreme violence.

  56. Charlemagne says

    “Q once compared my reaction to roaches to God’s reaction to our sin”

    Wow. That Q, eh? He’s just a barrel of laughs.

  58. HP says

    If magic is always a turn to the devil, what’s this white magic?

    White magic:

    2 slices of Wonder Bread
    1 tsp Parkay
    1 tbs Miracle Whip
    2 oz Boiled Ham (or subs. Oscar Mayer bologna)
    1 individually wrapped slice of Kraft American cheese food product

  59. Ichthyic says

    ack! that sounds like pure poison!

    white magic?

    yeah, voodoo magic, maybe.

    I keep thinking this is the formula used to turn people into zombies in that movie “Serpent and the Rainbow”.

  60. bernarda says

    I have mentioned at various times that Prescott Bush, Dumbya’s grandfather, was treasurer of Planned Parenthood in 1947.

    He lost his first Senate campaign because churches attacked him for that. If today’s journalists were not such brown-nosing Republican wimps, they might ask Dumbya and the current Rethug candidates about that.

    Furthermore, Prescott supported the socialist Interstate Highway System of Eisenhower and civil rights legislation and the Peace Corps. He also voted to censure Joe McCarthy.

    He doesn’t sound like he could be a Bush Republican today.

  61. says

    And anyway, where was he when Sauron of Mordor was riding high. Now there was someone clearly on the wrong side.

    I know. And then there’s Ming the Merciless. I sure hope there was somethin’ in the encyclical about that rat bastard. Not to mention Dr. No, Dr. Evil, Gargomel from the Smurfs, that scary witch/queen character from Snow White…

    Geez. That Pope guy, seems to me he’s doing a pathetic job of defending us from the ravening hordes of deadly fictional characters. We need someone of sterner stuff, clearly.

    How ’bout He-Man? Always liked the cut of his jib. Probably the man for the job. That and picturing He-Man in a mitre sorta amuses me. I mean, even more than mitres do on their own.

  62. says

    My cousin was an assistant exorcist at the Vatican for a while. I think he spent more time in training than in the trenches doing actual exorcisms. I think it was a pretty cushy job.

  63. Kagehi says

    The world is made up of two types of people: critics who are negative, fearful and have no plan, no vision, no faith, and authors who are positive, visionary builders.

    Hmm. Lets see… Negative about anything different than themselves. Fearful of everything and anything new. Their only vision is over 2,000 years old, and stolen from everyone else. Their authors are almost universally negative about *everyone*, except themselves, and when they do write “positive” things, its usually a distortion of facts, to make it **look** like something positive came out of things, like, oh, just off the top of my head, Katrina and the tsunami… Scratch visionary, their heads are so far up the butt of the nearest idol that they can’t see *it* properly, never mind envision anything else. And as for builders… WTF have they built in 2,000 years other than more fracking cathedrals and/or churches?

    Yeah, I know exactly which on I am. And I don’t think this clown has a clue what *any* of the words he is using mean. lol

  64. Gene says

    Re: How to edit a webpage like Jesus.

    Jesus is the official editor of the Center for Rational Debate. How many websites can claim that? Don’t answer that; it’s a rhetorical question. We already know the answer because we made Jesus sign a prayer-based exclusivity agreement with us [emphasis mine]. Thus, you can rest assured that everything on this website is divine, righteous, inspired, and most importantly of all, rational.

    I’d LOVE to know what kind of leverage these assmonkeys have over their Lord and Saviour that they could force Him to sign any kind of agreement. I guess they made Him an offer he couldn’t refuse…

  66. says

    … which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly

    Christianity grows?? in the soul? Like a fungus perhaps? Or a bacterial culture? This new Pope is one wierd Dude.