After listening to Ken Ham set to music, I never want to hear another complaint about auto-tuning Carl Sagan.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
After listening to Ken Ham set to music, I never want to hear another complaint about auto-tuning Carl Sagan.
The peculiarities of dietary restrictions by the religious are always entertaining. Catholics have their own weird practices: here’s a bit of strange information from a Catholic agony aunt forum.
Do alligators count as fish?
As a Catholic who observes the custom of abstaining from meat on Fridays, I would like to know if alligator would be considered meat or fish. Recently, on a Friday, I was in a local restaurant where I was sharing a dinner of alligator. I thought upon this, and decided, as a reptile, alligator would fall into the fish category. I hope I’m not sounding too scrupulous, but if it is considered meat, I will avoid it on Fridays in the future.
Uh-oh. This woman made a judgment on Catholic theology without consulting a priest. Doesn’t she know she could be getting an eternity in hell for her plate full of alligator? Fortunately, it turns out that going meatless still allows one to eat all the reptiles, amphibians, and insects you might want.
An alligator is certainly not a fish, and it certainly does have meat. But the custom of abstaining from meat on Fridays is abstinence from the flesh of mammals and birds. Fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects, etc., are exempt from this. Since an alligator is a reptile, those who abstain from meat on Fridays are free to eat alligator if they wish.
Why?
Does anybody ever just ask why these strange eating habits are a part of the doctrine? Does god like birds and mammals so much that he doesn’t want you to eat them on one day? Would he really be that pissed if you had a cheeseburger on Friday?
Some things just make you want to cringe under a table somewhere, they’re so awful and embarrassing. And sometimes they’re so bad I don’t want to cringe down there alone, so I’m going to creep you all out, too. Behold, Andrew Cohen. His ex-girlfriend, who turned down his proposal of marriage for what rapidly become obvious reasons, was getting married to someone else — so he wrote her a ‘wedding gift’, a publicly published, soppy opinion piece on how wonderful she is and how much she’s hurting him by spurning his deep, stalkerish obsession with her. For her wedding, he tries to hand her a long guilt trip; I’m hoping that if she saw it at all, she’s just had the rightness of her refusal amply confirmed.
It’s an amazing example of inappropriate obliviousness, so painful that I thought Cohen had to be uniquely blind and self-centered…but no, the comments contain several people praising him for his fantasies about marrying and impregnating her. Gah. I need a shower now.
If you can’t stomach the whole mess, read this distillation of the worst of Andrew Cohen.
(via Amanda.)
Wait, wait, this story makes no sense.
A gay netball coach fired from a Christchurch Christian school has gained compensation and an apology.
The 28-year-old man was employed as a girls’ netball coach at Middleton Grange School in February, but said he was sacked by the board of trustees after members discovered his sexual orientation.
A gay man was fired from his job as coach of a girls’ team? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to fire him if he were heterosexual?
Oh, it’s a religious school. They specialize in stuff that makes no sense.
This is disgraceful. A reader sent me a link to a Target catalog, and apparently they’re now selling a Li’l PZ Action Set.
Think of the children.
I’ve already complained a little bit about the poor availability of network connectivity at my mother’s house. I looked next door at the Bible Chapel and discovered the source of the problem. We’re jinxed.
This story is nice and sad at the same time. At an Anglican church in Canada, a parishioner attended with his dog, went up to take communion and his pet followed him, and after giving the man the magic cookie, the priest placed a communion wafer on the dog’s tongue, too. Hey, he was just waiting there with his tongue hanging out, it was the most natural thing to do. Unfortunately, and entirely predictably, some prissy-pants whiner in the congregation didn’t like it.
Days later, the church and diocese received a complaint from one parishioner, who felt the church offended the sacred ritual. The bread and wine are meant to represent the body and blood of Jesus Christ and are only to be given to those who have been baptized.
It’s a cracker. Come on. I’d rather make one dog happy than please all the dogmatists in the world.
And these speculations as rationalizations annoy me.
“In his email, the man’s argument was that Christ wouldn’t have liked it,” said Needham. “But in my opinion, Christ would have thought it was neat. It was just being human. And it made everyone smile.”
Face it, your god is simply a projection of your own personality and beliefs. He isn’t there. If you like dogs, you’ll imagine that your god likes dogs; if you think noisy smelly animals are a nuisance, your god bars the gates of heaven to them.
Westboro Baptist Church decided that they were going to picket Comic-Con, and Justin Kirchart sent me pictures. He also sent me a photo of the WBC picket — it’s a sad and pathetic 4 people standing and holding the usual “YOU HATE GOD” and “GOD HATES FAGS” signs, and it wasn’t very interesting, so I didn’t bother to upload it.
Here, though, are the forces of Comic-con madness across the street. They’re much more entertaining. Click to zoom in!
Justin liked “Jesus was nailed to a cross. Thor has a hammer.” I kind of liked “ODIN IS GOD. Read Mighty Thor #5”. Thor is always good for a laugh in these sorts of things.
I’m sure it was a moment of epiphany. Person in charge of an MRI takes avantage of an idle moment in the parade of patients to have lunch. Pulls a banana out of a brown paper bag. Looks at banana. Looks at MRI. Looks at banana. Looks at MRI. And the rest is history.
Give it time to load, and if you’ve got a slow connection, you might not want to bother; these are all animated images of 2-D slices scanned through MRIs of fruit and vegetables. The artichoke is my favorite.
Is anyone going to Comic-Con? You’ve probably heard that the Phelps gang will be picketing it (IMPORTANT: you know Phelps is a litigious con-man who baits people so he can sue them, right?), so you may have to pick a god to annoy them. Here’s a list of appropriate comic book gods and goddesses. Praise Thor, piss off Phelps.
Although I would think being an atheist would be even more effective. For that, here’s a list of atheist comic book characters. It’s short, and unfortunately, most of them aren’t very memorable.
There is, apparently, a comic book called The Atheist. I’ve never seen it, but it sounds…interesting.
The storyline revolves around present day humans that are having their bodies being “possessed” by the souls from Hell similar to the possessions in the fifties horror movie “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. The souls from Hell then begin an extremely hedonistic and malicious lifestyle that includes raves, drugs, self mutilation, murder, and other violence. The possessed bodies then start congregating in Winnipeg, Canada.
That’s not very atheistic. But, yeah, it sounds exactly like Winnipeg.
