First, they had their church leaders focus their Easter sermons on how yucky those atheists are. Then one fanatical group decided to show how wonderful Christianity is by staging a crucifixion in public, complete with blood and nails and moaning dying hippie.
I find this hilarious.
Hamlyn Heights mother Louise Bridges slammed the performance, calling it an “absolutely disgusting stunt”.
She said she was “fuming” at the public display and said it would “scare children away from religion”.
But it’s in the Bible, Mrs Bridges!
I’m a bit chagrined, though, that we didn’t do anything as fun and informative up here in the American midwest. The vegan daughter fixed us a nice dinner in which no blood was shed at all, and then we just had a quiet evening with no spectacles.
Wouldn’t it have been more disrespectful of atheists to show up with popcorn and drinks to witness the spectacle? I think it’d be more effective to laugh at religion and humiliate it than get offended by it.
I too find vegan food more palatable when I can’t quite see it clearly. Good call.
Meanwhile, the Vatican celebrated Easter by calling the current scandal of child raping priests nothing more than the “petty gossip of the moment”, to quote the Dean of the College of Cardinals.
That gives me a wonderful idea: do a biblical puppet version of genesis for the kids at the local library, but include all the incest and daughter rape.
I started my Easter off by yelling at some torture celebrators at sunrise on the beach. Then I went and had a huge brunch and a then nap. Then I spent the remaining of the day sitting on the deck of a friends restaurant with my two dogs and a few other friends drinking adult beverages and commenting on all the tourists pouring into town.
Not once did anyone try to nail me or anyone I was with to a cross or a circle or even a parallelogram.
“Dying, moaning hippie”.
*snerk*
I see articles like yours, and then I see the one about ritual human sacrifice in Uganda, and that gremlin that lives in my head says, “I don’ see no difference.”
One of the French TV channels ran a news item featuring a real crucifiction in the Philippines, with nails through the ‘victims’ palms, seemingly.
They hoisted him up, but then didn’t show if there was a real corpse at the finale, or not.
Wow, if that display doesn’t turn folk on to the glory of the xtian religion, I don’t know what will.
No spectacles?
Shurely shum mishtake – I’ve seen your photo.
Isn’t that an old photo of Alice Cooper practicing for his stage show?
I say keep doing it then. Every week.
What a friend we have in That Guy. Whoever he is. He’s my savior now.
They obviously weren’t True Christians™. More like fifth columnist, undercover atheists trying to destroy the pure, beautiful religion from the inside.
Also, Dawkins.
“My son was worried they were really hurting (Jesus) because he was covered in blood and moaning and calling out “why, why”.
Have they got the script right there? Shouldn’t he have been saying something about Obamacare and the end of civilisation as we know it??
First thought, especially after seeing “Easter Down Under” in the title:
“Crap. Mel’s making a sequel.”
I ate red meat on Good Friday which got a stir out of some Christian friends, before I challenged some of them who believe in creationism regarding their beliefs on the Jewish Zombie Awareness Day. Best Easter ever.
I posted “Happy Tortured, Murdered Mythical Zombie Jew Appreciation Day” on my facebook wall yesterday… I was un-friended by at least 6 people at last count… which was far lower than I expected… but did include my brother-in-law. Ah well..
Celtic_Evolution@17-
I posted: “Happy National Zombie Scapegoat Awareness Day!”
You just reminded me to check. I got two people who “liked this”, no comments, and no un-friendings. I was pleasantly surprised at that. I do have some friends that could easily take offense.
I’m not big on holidays, so for Easter me and the wife did some housework, had a nice dinner, watched a movie, and played some WoW (I know, I know). One of the random players we did a dungeon clear with wished us Happy Jewish Zombie day at the end. Made my day.
That photo kind of makes me hungry.
Mmmm… lambchops… *drool*
“Throw another Messiah on the barbie!” :P
Awesome. I only wish I had that kind of courage. But I think my mom would be a little un-happy finding out about my atheism through facebook.
No bloodshed? Will no one think of the vegetables? Picking is violence! Plants certainly show behavior — they move toward the light, they communicate chemically. Hell, we share most of our genes with plants.
When you eat a meal of plants, plants DIE!
Hm. Never knew Jesus shaved his armpits.
“I ate red meat on Good Friday which got a stir out of some Christian friends”
I had my traditional Good Friday dinner of a bacon cheeseburger, but this time with a fried egg on it*. Now that, my friends, is sacrilicious.
And since I was alone on Easter, I had the anti-feast of canned chili with Fritos.
* Meat to blaspheme Christianity, bacon to blaspheme Judaism and Islam, cheese with the meat to blaspheme Judaism, and the egg…probably not any religion in particular, but it seemed like the perfect topper. Oh, and the bun to blaspheme Dr. Atkins. I thought about putting syrup on it, but decided against it, to blaspheme the hedonists.
Dang. It’s got to be tough to drive a nail through an I-beam.
AdamK –
Shall I just bill you for the new monitor you owe me?
for all of those unbelievers 2k years from now his name will be Farmawi
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=172363 this is how this shit gets started
You banned spectacles for Easter? Look, I’m all for occasionally testing the limits of what we can do without modern technologies, and I know some people who wear spectacles can get by without them, but there are others who can’t safely navigate an empty room without spectacles, and others who are a positive hazard to life and limb when they can’t find their spectacles.
They forgot the standard disclaimer:
The events depicted in this crucifixion are fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental.
Rey– Canned chili with Fritos is a feast in my book.
Regarding chest/pit shaving. I heard that Jesus was a douchebag. Now there is evidence. I wonder if he uses Axe Body Spray or wears Ed Hardy to the Club?
Auaryn @ #22
You never know…
I had been carefully avoiding the subject of my atheism when calling my mother (she’s in her seventies) so as not to upset her, since she’s a devout Catholic.
She, in her turn, had been avoiding the subject of her atheism so as not to upset me, since she thought I was still a devout Catholic.
It was all revealed when she informed me that my (always atheist) father had noticed that our old church had been demolished and I asked her why she hadn’t noticed it herself!
Some of the extra pics are quite poignant.
This one’s my favorite –
Jesus, with his good friend the Easter Bunny standing nearby.
That is not the true story of the day.
It wasn’t a hippie; it was a Sasquatch.
#7
Madventures has done a report on real crucifixion aswell. It’s in the latter half of the video, it’s a bit graphic:
Madventures Philippines – Flagellation & Crucifixion
Yakaru, you must have missed Alice in that photo…even more appropriate than the Easter Bunny/March Hare.
I was really quite surprised that both Pell and Jensen used their Easter messages to lash out at atheists (or atheist strawpersons). Shurely they can’t be feeling threatened by that one little atheist love-in in Melbourne, can they?
As for that cretin Fisher blaming atheism for Hitler … *facepalm*. No doubt his gift for conscience-free calumny will get him a nice cushy job in Rome, right at the head of the rotting fish.
Actually I would imagine that there are some kids that would be drawn to religion because of seeing something like this. Boys of a certain age at least often are into blood and gore and other gross things.
Although such acts as this might get people to realize how silly religion, and in particular Christianity, is.
And, if you can’t bear to witness such acts as this, then may I suggest that you become a follower of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) and accept hime as your God and Creator. No sacrify needed — as far as I know.
One of the scarier things to learn about in my college Spanish classes is that in some areas of Mexico they celebrate Easter with real live, honest-to-FSM crucifixions. The practice has been outlawed, but it does still happen in some areas. I think it’s got a lot to do with the Indians mixing their religion(s) with Catholicism. In any case, it’s surprising to me that even a little kid wouldn’t realize that, yes, having nail driven through one’s hands a feet hurts a lot (and probably kills a lot of the function in those appendages)!
#35
christianity = BDSM
6000 years ago a man and woman ate some fruit so 4000 years later a guy was tortured to death so 2000 years later I could get harp lessons. That makes perfect sense.
What pathetic rip-offs! They don’t really nail themselves, unlike those deluded fools in the Philippines. Speaking of which, I haven’t had a TV in years – did those folks in the Philippines make it into the news again this year with their flagellations and crucifixions? (And did the church put on a lame act pretending that they don’t really approve.)
Aussie comedian & documentary maker John Safran got himself voluntarily nailed to a cross in his TV series “Race Relations”:
I heard Krishna doesn’t like eggs.
After seeing the reactions on Q&A a few weeks ago, I’m not really surprised at all. A superficial understanding of the concept combined with a genuine fear of its consequences. They really need to do all they can to diminish atheism and atheists, I’m just glad that society has moved so far where the worst they can do is poison the well and scaremonger. Australia is just not ready to have a grown-up debate on the matter.
Yep, no torture and execution for this blasphemer. I for one am thankful to the progress of western society and the values therein of liberty and freedom of expression.
I keep waiting for the camera to pan right and for Eric Idle to chime in.
@Wobert
No I’m Brian and so is my wife.
My FB post was nicer: “Happy chocolate spring festival in autumn day!” Who wants to think about zombies and torture-murders on such a lovely holiday?
Well, OK, the folk festival parade did include some very nice zombies from the fringe festival.
I suspect in Jensen’s case the surprising thing is he didn’t go after the American Episcopal Church for ordaining a known lesbian bishop in a committed relationship.
Jensen is the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Australia and has been a leader against the progressives elsewhere in the Anglican Communion (which includes the Episcopal Church in America, a group he would probably like to see expelled from the Communion). Perhaps atheists are closer to hand and cheaper to attack (his diocese gambled in their investments and took a huge hit in the economic downturn).
I would be interested in reading his whole sermon, but, I can’t seem to find it.
It’s all over the papers and news down under, a lot of argument raging. Given that it was a publicity stunt designed to draw attention to their believes it kinda worked.
The unintended consequence, most people are revolted.
One thing I would say: this kind of fanatical, fundie stuff is more the exception than the rule down under. Normally Australians – and this is gross generalisation – have a healthy cynicism towards organised religion.
Still, a rather pointless act of sadomasochism.
What is even more bizarre is that this ‘act’ was shut down by the police for being ‘offensive’…now that’s a can of worms…
Nothing like a nice bit of family friendly Christian Death Porn to enliven a trip to the shops. One commenter on the papers web site said that it was in the bible so people should see it. Really? Does he not realise that half of what’s in that mouldy old tome would be refused classification and that showing it in public would be a criminal offence. I suppose that is about the only bonus of our pig headed pollies plan to firewall our internet in OZ we could get the online bibles blacklisted
Well, I celebrated the Down Under four-day-weekend, along with thousands of other Australians and international visitors, by attending the National Folk Festival. The only hint of religiosity I saw was a couple of posters and a single building set aside for religious services for part of Sunday. No fake crucifixions, no blood, no preaching in the streets.
ah erpease, how right you are.
Isn’t it funny how there are Anglicans who want to run to the bosom of the Catholic church, even now!; rather than face the ‘travesty’ of allowing equality for women and homosexuals within their own order. Bizarre.
Love the posting name by the way.
G’day to PZ whom I met at the GAC in Melbourne. Thanks PZ for your excellent speech.
Those Christians are getting desperate if the RCC and Anglican Archbishops can castigate Atheists from their pulpits. I would like to have seen them, especially George Cardinal “Go To Hell” Pell crucified instead of the idiot who was “nailed” to that cross, but I would not have taken them down.
No, seriously I was disgusted with that staged crucifixion. I am a bedraggled refugee from the “Holy” Roman Catholic Church now, of course Atheist. I wear a badge stating that fact as PZ would remember seinge it on me at the GAC.I hated the Cross in Churches and I hate more than ever seeing a dead Jew on a Pogo-stick. Of course we all know that the victims of Roman Crucifixions were nailed throught the wrists, not the hands, so why to the pictures and statues get it wrong.
“Crucifixion? Good, Through the door, line on the left, one cross each” (Life of Brian)
You know, I think it’s a good idea to point out how ghoulish a business this whole Jesus-Death thing is.
An interesting counterpoint might be having an illusionist demonstrate how the whole business could have been faked.
If anybody’s in reach of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation signals, over at CBC TV, George Strombopoulous of The Hour is having “Easter with Richard Dawkins” (and someone from Christian Science Monitor). If you miss it, you may be able to get a clip: Richard Dawkins on The Hour. It’s Episode 113–The Faith Show.
Kel @ 46,
I see what you mean about Christians only having a “superficial concept” of atheism, but I would put it another way. There really is zero depth to the concept of atheism. We just don’t believe in gods – that’s it. (There might be depth to secular humanism and other unbeliever philosophies but they’re a different subject).
I suspect that for most of these anti-atheist Christians their problem is with their superficial/non-existent understanding of history, and of Christianity’s place therein. They really are so ignorant/arrogrant as to believe that nobody in the world had any sort of half-decent moral code or any interest in justice until the first missionaries showed up.
Of course there are plenty of Christians who know that that’s bullshit but keep peddling the lie anyway.
BTW, what sort of “grown-up conversation” do you think Australia needs?
Cowcakes #53. I agree. The Bible should be shrink-wrapped and kept on the top shelf next to the porno mags. Children should not be exposed to such violent, immoral filth.
Agreed, yet they manage to miss it on that. It’s nothing, and because it is nothing they miss out. If I were to push forth a conjecture, they’ve bought into the notion that religion (or even more speficially God) is the bringer of meaning and morality into people’s lives to the point that the absence of religion is treated as a defect.
And it sounds really deep, just like pop-psychology or alternative medicine. It’s an intuitive understanding of how things work as opposed to a scientific one.
I guess I can only really phrase this in terms of what I think is going wrong. The first is that many seem to think that there is a due reverence to religious notions, so a lot of discussion about the validity is being met with indignation. The second is I think that a lot of people don’t have anything more than a superficial grasp on matters that make intuitive sense (like the tight coupling between religion and morality), so I’d ask for the debate to be done beyond the intellectual realm of opinion. Just because I speak english, it doesn’t mean I can be a professor of English. The third I think is the propagation of the ideas of cultural relativity, and stemming from the lack of genuine knowledge on a topic people fall into incoherence on the matter.
I think at times, too much can be hidden behind obfuscated meaning, indignity and arrogance in ignorance. And it’s up to people who know better (intellectuals) to in effect monitor what is said and speak up when nonsense is being pushed as if one person’s opinion is as good as another’s. We’ve already seen the effects of this on science, where bodies of knowledge like climate change are being dragged through the mud by people who don’t know what they are talking about, and consequently instead of having a debate on how Australia wants to tackle the issue it has been reduced to having to defend that there really is an issue to tackle.
We’re now in a society of self-professed experts. And with 3,500 self help books being published every year, the only way I think a topic can be addressed maturely is through getting recognition that we don’t know everything about everything – and putting the emphasis back on knowing about a topic at hand.
Paul, you missed the punchline: the cops made them move along for disturbing the peace, telling them to do it on their own property and not in front of the children. That’s the Australian way…
By the way, I got interviewed this weekend about atheism in Australia: here
Hi Kel,
I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at. Where does cultural relativism fit into this? (Personally, I’m a cultural relativist only in trivial things such as not caring whether some people eat dogs or horses; when it comes to killing rhinos for their horns, mutilating female genitals and so on, I’m not a relativist at all).
Are you talking about lefties who paint themselves into a corner by defending immigrants who bring their misogynistic cultures with them? Or just the vague vibe that everyone’s entitled to their opinion and that anyone’s opinion is as valid as anyone else’s?
I agree that people’s ignorance, their lack of awareness of their own ignorance, the arrogance that this engenders and their utter lack of interest in learning anything is at the root of a lot of society’s problems.
I can’t believe how many dickhead tabloid readers think they know more about climate science than the climate scientists do. Personally, since I have only a very superficial understanding of the science of climate change, it makes sense to me to accept the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists until and unless good evidence emerges to contradict them. I don’t understand why the average Joe Sixpack thinks he knows better.
I’m quite concerned about the anti-science zeitgeist, even here in Australia. The anti-vaccine loons and the naive parents they suck in are particularly frightening.
The media, in particular tabloid newspapers and TV, has to take a lot of responsibility for this. Newspapers like the Herald Sun don’t give a shit what they print as long as it sells. The editors would have been wetting their pants at the prospect of the sales spike they undoubtedly got from Gary Ablett’s cut-and-paste creationist gibberish. I’m pretty sure none of them believes that the peanut butter jar disproves evolution, but they just don’t care.
When it comes to real scientific issues, the problem is that most journalists and news executives have little or no understanding of science, and that the specialist science and medical reporter positions are being phased out. Even when they’re not being phased out, the scientific illiteracy of the editors makes it impossible for the editors to know whether the science/health writers are competent.
I saw a piece in The Age the other week about some whale fossil from western Victoria that the journo said cast doubt on the theory of evolution because it was smaller than the whales it was thought to have evolved from. (This is no reflection on Nick Miller from The Age, who didn’t write that story and who has done some fine stuff, particularly on homeopathy and the anti-vaccine movement.)
Anyway, I’m just gibbering now. Time for another abiogenesis experiment as I open my next stubbie.
Totally. It’s a very atavistic idea – by eating a lion’s heart, you get the strength of a lion. By eating a tiger’s penis, you get tigerish. How, then, do you acquire divine sinlessness? How do you become like Christ, like God? You have to consume (“partake of”, if you prefer) his flesh.
Neither of those, but if I were to lean to one it’s more to the latter. This is anecdotal-based speculation on my part and would love to read studies on this. The tendency I’m referring to is when big questions pop up that individuals point towards cultural traditions. I’m probably making a mess of what I’m trying to mean, but it’s along the lines of what Sam Harris talks about with “conversational intolerance”. My conjecture is that many believers don’t really know what they believe, but privilege their cultural heritage with providing those answers.
Where I think the cultural relativism applies is with the “I have my truth, you have yours” that seems to stop any ability to discuss the ideas critically. It’s the notion of personal truth as shaped by culture that makes one belief not preferable to another, not buy the nebulous nature of the concepts at hand but by their cultural relative importance.
Then again, I may have spent way too much time around new agers which has biased me, not helped by the media’s sense of “balanced” reporting being putting two opposite opinions in the same piece. I could be completely and utterly wrong here, and this is where I hope that the knowledgeable people of this place will set me straight.
Indeed. If there’s one area of knowledge people should be taking seriously, it’s science. It’s amazing that people think they know better than the experts of that field in particular. It would be like questioning historians by proclaiming Australia was colonised a week ago, then not wavering from that position.
Yeah, I see that. And I love how the “Judeo” bit has got tacked on to “the Judeo-Christian tradition”, as if Christians have suddenly started giving a rat’s ass about what Jews think or believe. Why not just go the whole hog and say Christianity is part of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition?
I think global warming deniers like Andrew Bolt, who has bolstered his cult of repulsive personality with his witless wittering about climate change, only get away with it because most people simply don’t understand the science. It’s like woo-merchants of every stripe calling things “quantum” because practically nobody understands quantum physics.
If Bolt, Monckton and the rest of them went on a jihad against heliocentrism or the germ theory of disease they’d get nowhere because everyone would know they were wrong. Education – even self-education by reading about science on the interwebs – is the answer, but few people seem interested in learning.