The Atheist’s Revenge!

As you’ve already heard, the Atheist Foundation of Australia was hit with a denial-of-service attack earlier this week (you can learn more about it in this interview of Jason Ball by Catherine Deveny).

I rather like their planned unofficial response.

This is a call to all non-believers and advocates for freedom of speech to join us in a global co-ordinated minute of prayer with the aim of inundating God (in this context, the Christian god, God, as distinct from the Greek god, Zeus, the Egyptian god, Ra etc etc) with so many useless prayers that it causes his divineness to go offline as as result of our own DDOS (‘Divine’ Denial of Service).

The prayer minute will be at exactly 8pm (Eastern Standard Time) & 9am (Greenwich Mean Time) on Sunday 8 November 2009.

Please join us in this important task, with any luck it will take God a while to get back online, ensuring us at least a few days of godless peace. It will also give the Westboro Baptist Church some much needed time to catch up on paperwork.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to join in, because whatever I have planned for that time, whatever it may be, will be far more interesting and productive than babbling to an invisible man. I’m pretty sure I won’t be needed, though; I understand all modern prayers are first funneled through a 110 baud modem, then passed further upstairs by telegraph, then pony express riders gallop it over to the Pearly Gates, and then a rewritten version is passed on to a team of long-dead Sumerian scribes for transcription into cuneiform on wax plates, and then and only then is it in a format that a bronze age patriarchal deity can understand. I don’t think it’ll take much to swamp the celestial bandwidth (which actually explains a lot, if you think about it.)

Announcement: the World Ended Yesterday!

As you all know, it was predicted that the world would end on 21 October. I understand many of you are puzzled to note that you are still here. The purpose of this post is to inform any of you who have been engaged in wild, drunken orgies all night and are now blearily and confusedly turning on your computers and turning immediately to Pharyngula (as you all do, I know) that unfortunately, you are very late to work. Shower quickly, get to your car, and get coffee at the drive-through on your way — with any luck, though, your boss is in the same state and will forgive you.

However, I have to inform you that the world did end yesterday, exactly as predicted. Note please, that today is Thursday. The world is created anew every Thursday, with all the evidence of great age, including memories of last week, implanted freshly in the universe. So you actually did a) die horribly in chaos and flames or b) loft nakedly and rapturously in a beam of light to heaven last night, but you are now living in a background of false memories that do not include such trauma, because God is good…at dicking around with your head.

As a side bonus, the Deep Rift between the LastThursdayists and LastTuesdayists has now been healed with the positive affirmation of the truth of the former’s position. Any LastTuesdayists who persist in their error can now be dealt with in an entirely justifiable and dire way.

Uh-oh. Atheists will have trouble refuting this

This is a video by an apostate: an atheist who has left the flock and become a believer. I was all ready to point a gnarled bony finger at him and screech to my minions that he must be rent limb from limb, but then I made the mistake of listening further…and he actually makes a good case.

I’m thinking, though, that if I get sick this year and don’t recover, then I’ll be able to mock and laugh at him again. Briefly. From my deathbed.

Bill Donohue just keeps on giving

There’s one thing that could make this video funnier.

It would be Bill Donohue waxing apoplectic over that video.

Hallelujah! My prayers are answered!

Comedian Sarah Silverman appeared on Bill Maher’s HBO show on October 9 attacking the Vatican. She began her monologue bemoaning the plight of world hunger, and then found a solution: “What is the Vatican worth, like 500 billion dollars? This is great, sell the Vatican, take a big chunk of the money, build a gorgeous condominium for you and all your friends to live in…and with the money left over, feed the whole f—ing world.”

Speaking of the pope, Silverman continued, “You preach to live humbly, and I totally agree. So, now maybe it’s time for you to move out of your house that is a city. On an ego level alone, you will be the biggest hero in the history of ever. And by the way, any involvement in the Holocaust, bygones….”

Silverman closed by saying, “If you sell the Vatican, and you take that money, and you use it to feed every single human being on the planet, you will get crazy p—y. All the p—y.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responds as follows:

Silverman’s assault on Catholicism is just another example of HBO’s corporate irresponsibility. Time and again, if it’s not Bill Maher thrashing the Catholic Church, it’s one of his guests. There is obviously something pathological going on there: Silverman’s filthy diatribe would never be allowed if the chosen target were the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem and the state of Israel.

Here’s a reality check for Silverman: the Catholic Church operates more hospitals and feeds more of the poor than any private institution in the world. It also saved more Jews during the Holocaust than any other institution in the world.

Factcheck time, Bill!

In America, as of 1999, 13% of all hospitals were religious (totaling 18% of all hospital beds); that’s 604 out of 4,573 hospitals. [6] Despite the presence of organized religion in America, the Church has managed to scrape together only a few hospitals. Of these 604 hospitals many are a product of mergers with public, non-sectarian hospitals. Not all of these 604 hospitals are Catholic; many are Baptist, Methodist, Shriner (Masonic), Jewish, etc.

Despite the religious label, these so-called religious hospitals are more public than public hospitals. Religious hospitals get 36% of all their revenue from Medicare; public hospitals get only 27%. In addition to that 36% of public funding they get 12% of their funding from Medicaid. Of the remaining 44% of funding, 31% comes from county appropriations, 30% comes from investments, and only 5% comes from charitable contributions (not necessarily religious). The percentage of Church funding for Church-run hospitals comes to a grand total of 0.0015 percent.

Oh, and Catholics and the Holocaust? It was complicated. The Vatican dragged its feet for years; they could have done so much more.

Taking bad acting to new troughs

Bet you didn’t know I’m the guy who talked the deity into using the horrifically inefficient and cruel process of evolution to create life on earth, didja?

The trick to maneuvering him into doing anything? Appeal to his vanity. The guy is definitely omninarcissistic.

(Psst. Notice that the deity’s science advisor is wearing an “A” pin, and one of Lynn Fellman’s sciency ties. Bad acting is no barrier to sneaky product placement!)

Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe and donate. How else will they ever be able to stop scraping the bottom of the barrel for guest appearances?