At last, military forces around the world have coordinated to take out a tyrannical dictator: we’ve invaded heaven. The dishonest leader of that country, with his scourges and plagues and cataclysms and arbitrary executions, has been deposed.
The denouement was a bit predictable, however.
One doesn’t like to blow one’s own horn, or in this case, pimp one’s own blog, but…
I think this can all be explained by the fact that He’s on vacation.
http://deusexeverriculum.wordpress.com/
Err… heaven has oil now?
Yippie!!!
Philip Pullman had it right all along, just as I’d hoped.
(.)(.)
Mission accomplished…uh, except for the continued bombings, guerrila attacks, etc.
A lot nicer place to occupy than Iraq, anyhow. Unless, that is, perhaps heaven isn’t quite what the seers and prophets said it was. Heaven forbid that to be the case.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I’ve been saying for years that God, as presented in all the major religious texts, is the ultimate terrorist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygGiJg7DLjE
Strolling into a deserted realm isn’t quite as exciting as riding into combat on an armored bear.
I believe we already nuked heaven during the nuclear testing era. That would explain why there was no resistance.
Cool beans. Let me know if they find any barber shops up there. I look a complete mess.
Then again God’s death was announced in the 19thC. Thomas Hardy even wrote an apparent eyewitness account of the funeral, though in verse. I suggest the occupying forces should forthwith make every effort to determine the timing of the demise of the inhabitants of the divine realms so that we sue for fraud and manifest falsehood all those who have claimed since then to have been told what to do by god. That should be really, really fun…
This is perfect, and gets at something I try (unsuccessfully) to describe to front-door godspammers all the time:
1. There’s no evidence for any God.
2. If there were evidence for a God, the likelihood of it being the particular God you are peddling (or that anyone else is peddling for that matter) is vanishingly small.
3. If it turned out to be your God, as depicted in your holy books, I still would not worship it, due to the anachronistic morality and general monstrosity of the character. Indeed, “regime change” in heaven would be warranted, if we could pull it off.
Damn it! As an ex Navy person who had his SF (potential ) career cut short due to injury, I wanted to be in on the raid! Curses!
He may mean to align with the forces of reason and denigrate religious bullshit, but the effort, to me, was wasted in the manner in which he couched this scenario. When you use words that give credence to the very idea that you are mocking, then the result you wish to convey loses its seriousness. Just by presenting it as he did lends credence to the idea that it exists, nothwithstanding his capitalization of the word “god”. To me, this is analogous to so-called atheists who wear tee shirts that say “Thank God I am an atheist.” You don’t eliminate one idea and replace it with another that only establishes that which you are trying to dispel.
Holback: the result you wish to convey loses its seriousness.
You’re a nincompoop. It lost it’s seriousness because it’s a joke.
Holback @ 13: “When you use words that give credence to the very idea that you are mocking, then the result you wish to convey loses its seriousness.”
This must be a “framing” issue of some kind, because I don’t understand how the joke is diminished by using religious language.
Indeed, I don’t know how the joke would have worked without it.
Seriously, Holbach, buy, beg, borrow, steal, or hire an irony detector.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
good grief, but there are some really Woo comments on that article (at the guardian site, pharyngula is, as usual, very Woo-free).
Heh, I actually couldn’t help but laugh out loud at it. Been a while since I’ve read anything humorous and this was a well needed read.
Good God, Holbach! I’m going to tell Santa not to visit you this Jesus H. Christmas.
At least Dick Cheney has never called the war in heaven a quagmire.
And, unlike the war on Christmas, we can fight it year-round.
Damn. Heaven’s been sitting there, ripe for the plucking for millennia, and a mere four days after I post my nefarious plan for its conquerance I find out I’m too late.
Nevertheless, I submit that Heaven was actually conquered years ago.
Consider this:
1. Hell sucks. In fact, it sucks so much that there’s no place worse. No place worse means nothing to lose for trying to escape Hell. No place worse means nothing to lose for trying to conquer Heaven.
2. History’s bloodiest, most evil, most conniving, most dangerous, and–if I may infer from the Christians I’ve met who certainly won’t be going to hell–smartest people are all in Hell.
3. God has an army, the Heavenly Host. God wouldn’t need an army if there weren’t external or internal enemies to worry about, or if there weren’t the threat of invasion.
4. Nobody’s heard from God or Jesus in nearly two millennia.
At this point it’s all circumstantial, but the evidence so far suggests the castle was probably stormed quite a while ago.
Hey, it isn’t that irony is lost on me so much as it is that I detest religion so vehemently that it is not even worth joking about. I recognize the irony, but bear with me that we all interpret irony in different ways.
Holbach @ 22: “Hey, it isn’t that irony is lost on me so much as it is that I detest religion so vehemently that it is not even worth joking about.”
Ok, well my position is that since religion lost the logical and evidential arguments long ago, yet continues to thrive even today, I’m going to try mocking it out of existence, to see if we can’t make the next generation of children more than mildly embarrassed at the childish theology of their parents.
I’m not disagreeing, mind you. If anything, I’m suggesting we utilize all available tools, attack from all ends and meet in the middle to trade stories of battles hard-fought and hopefully, eventually and inevitably, won.
Some funnies:
http://www.jesusandmo.net/
http://cectic.com/
http://russellsteapot.com/comics/
http://religiouscomics.net/
Holbach, if you detest religion so violently you can’t even enjoy satire thereof, I can’t entirely blame you… But Pharyngula is probably not the blog for you.
“Hell sucks. In fact, it sucks so much that there’s no place worse.”
Brownian, you mean to say that all those metalheads are wrong?
Jason @ #23; Thanks for the Jesus & Mo link. That’s good stuff.
“How do you think I got these fucking stigmata – a knitting accident?”
I wonder if anyone’s done any solid research into that possibility.
Funny how this threat of God goes away when you quit thinking about him. We could do the same thing, like the Star Trek episode “Sprectre of the Gun” where the crew imagined themselves at the O.K. Corral. They needed a Spock mind meld to eliminate all doubt. Anyone know how to do one of those?
Brownian, you mean to say that all those metalheads are wrong?
On some things, yeah. For instance, located inland on the prairies, I in fact rock you like a supercell.
Nice!
Computer models of climatic change reveal that increased CO2 emissions will result in the Scorpions rocking harder.
[4. Nobody’s heard from God or Jesus in nearly two millennia.]
Wait, I got it! Jesus is a Cylon !!
So when the rapture comes, will we get Skin-job Jesus or Toaster Jesus?
The Book of Revelations as read by an old school 1970s Cylon…now that would be rich…
/joke>
Blake @7. I’m afraid the British armoured bear procurement programme is late and over budget. When we invade Iran, we’ll just have to borrow yours if you want us to tag along, in the tapeworm-trailing-out-of-a-sick0-dog’s-arse way we did in Iraq.
Peter Mc doubtless the Americans will sell us the latest model bear at a knockdown price but supply the analog bears with digital armour meaning they have to sit in an airconditioned bear pit doing nothing for years while we spend vast sums deciding to ditch the digital armour and go all analog…
@21
4. Nobody’s heard from God or Jesus in nearly two millennia.
Species (showy vertebrate varieties only) are considered extinct if they have not been seen in 50 years.
—
We invaded heaven, I wonder who we sent. . . .{hears distant rumbling and voice) “I love it when a plot comes together.”
Species (showy vertebrate varieties only) are considered extinct if they have not been seen in 50 years.
Hmm. Sounds like a captive breeding program for gods is in order. Just imagine the hybrid vigour of the offspring of Jesus and the demon/goblin of Adachigahara.
“One doesn’t like to blow one’s own horn, or in this case, pimp one’s own blog, but…”
Of course one likes it! And now that it’s been brought up as a subject, here’s a post about Stirling engines; I drew pictures and everything: http://janneinosaka.blogspot.com/2008/05/stirling.html
So-called atheist here… Didn’t know I could get a t-shirt that says “Thank god I am an atheist”. In lieu of that I get down on my knees every day and thank god for making me an atheist.
I also love the episodes of South Park with Jesus in them.
And they managed this without Æsahættr? Wow. I’m impressed.
The Book of Revelations as read by an old school 1970s Cylon…now that would be rich…
It could never be as good as Cylon and Garfunkel from Futurama.
@Jason Failes: “If it turned out to be your God, as depicted in your holy books, I still would not worship it, due to the anachronistic morality and general monstrosity of the character.”
Well put. There’s always this unwarranted cognitive leap, among believers and agnostics alike, that goes directly from “If God is real, then…” to “… we must worship Him”. Whereas there actually need to be some questions in between the two: “What is He like?”, followed by “How should we react to Him?” An honest consideration of those may lead to your answer above!
I made a short post recently, coming to an even harsher conclusion that’s been in my head for years:
If the monstrous, murderous God depicted by the religionists is indeed real, then how do we kill the damn thing?? ( http://www.defaithed.com/blog/defaithed/2008/06/strong_antitheist )
(Yes, a silly proposition; it’s the same as asking “How do we catch the Trix Rabbit”? But I like it all the same.)
Meh. Gods. Ignore them they go away… eventually. It’s the believers we have to be wary of.
Gods. Ignore them they go away… eventually.
Ha! Beware my thunderbolt, shane!
The Grauniad really does have a fair number of Friends of Reality writing for it nowadays: A.C. Grayling, Ben Goldacre, Charlie Brooker, that repentant ex-woo-woo with the dye in her hair. They also have a lot of faithheads, mind.
Btw commenting on the article has become un-borked. You lot seem to have smarter things to say than the cif commenters; maybe we should invade the thread? (I’ve already commented under my secret cif alias)
defaithed said:
I think the late, great Douglas Adams had the answer to this one in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The exchange went something like this:
According to Adams’s logic therefore those insipid religious apologists we come down so hard on are actually, secretly on our side even if they don’t know it. Should they succeed in actually producing the Babel Fish (any conclusive proof of God’s existence) they will promptly become, not the intellectual defenders of God, but his murderers.
And there will be much rejoicing :o)
Just take care on zebra crossings, Lilly.
Matt Heath:
LOL!
A boss in heaven is the best excuse for a boss below. IF god existed, he would have to be overthrown….
They ended up gifting us Stalin and Mao, but some of the old timers were good.