Here’s a personal testimonial.
Meanwhile, the Republicans play games with women’s lives, and Christians build bait-and-switch centers to deny women appropriate health care.
I saw the open letter from Anonymous threatening to shut down the Phelps gang and the Westboro Baptist Church. It didn’t sound right. WBC is not at all reliant on the web, but they are always on the lookout for more opportunities at promoting themselves through the media…so it seemed to me like a futile exercise, with any damage Anonymous might do being entirely tangential to the operation of the GodHatesFags gang, and actually gaining them more notoriety and news.
Cory Doctorow has a more plausible angle. This is WBC itself playing games to draw more attention. He also suggests that the WBC site has been left open as a honeypot to draw in hackers, who would then be traced and sued by the infamously litigious family. I don’t know if I’d go that far; I’d give the Phelps’ credit for cunning and devious legal acumen, but I haven’t heard that they’ve got the specific skill set they’d need to beat hackers at their own game.
Lies and threats, that’s what Gaddafi is reduced to now. I won’t shed a single tear when he’s deposed, but I will hope that he isn’t removed by impaling his head on a stick. He has just given a blustering speech. I think he’s doomed.
Although I wish there were less chanting about Allah, I do think it’s great that the people of the Muslim world are rising up. Is this another 1848?
In a too rare fit of quality, our local theater is showing The King’s Speech this week, which I keep hearing is wonderfully well made and a serious Oscar contender. I was thinking of going, but now Christopher Hitchens shreds its historicity — it’s about yet another royal fascist-sympathizer — and Katherine Preston explains that it’s got the neurology of the speech defect all wrong. I don’t think I can watch it at all now. I can enjoy a fiction without apology, but I find it impossible to watch a false story that pretends to be true.
The reviews are annoying, too — they all praise the quality of the movie-making and the acting, while telling me that the core premises of the story are false. How can I enjoy it when Something Is Wrong On The Screen?
I’m reviewing a series of three fundagelical short stories about famous people entering a Christian afterlife. Anthony Horvath is going to pretend that his dogma is true, and in the first story place the dead Teresa in his version of heaven to play out events as his puppet. It’s not a pretty story at all; the main lesson I took away from it is that Horvath is a proponent of a vile doctrine that cheapens our lives and turns an imaginary afterlife into an exercise in servility. Later in this series, he’s going to send Richard Dawkins to hell in an explicit and horrible way, but it says something about Horvath’s religion that I still find his hell more appealing than his ghastly heaven.
Warning: there will be lots of spoilers.
With friends like these…Mudcat Saunders has some advice for the unions in Wisconsin.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, David “Mudcat” Saunders, a longtime Democratic political strategist known for his work with blue-collar voters, had a different take. Rather than worrying about floodgates bursting open, he argued that the best public relations move for the Democrats would have been to simply let Walker’s bill pass and then demonize it.
“Sometimes the best punch you can throw is to let somebody throw theirs first,” Saunders said. “I would have debated it forever, as long as I could have kept it going, and I would have voted against it. Let the Republicans have their way and then work on getting the state house back and the governor’s mansion. But a protest, that can only work so long.” [HuffPo, emphasis added.]
Wow. Brilliant. So let’s allow the Rethuglicans to gut the unions first, and then we’ll work on supporting labor rights. Maybe then they could start working on why so many of us have little loyalty to the Democratic party anymore, too. I’m sure they’ll be mystified by the idea that they’ve become the Republican-lite party, and don’t seem to have much attachment to any of the principles some of us value.
But then, maybe I’m just prejudiced against any comment given to the Huffington Post, that faux liberal rag.
How tasteless, tacky, and dishonest can a Christian get? This will do: selling fictional fantasies about what will happen to people when they’re dead.
What’s going on? Are all universally saved, after all? Did Richard Dawkins become a Christian? Did he… remain an atheist, and STILL go to heaven? Such questions leap to mind when presented with title of the newest short story collection released by author and Christian apologist Anthony Horvath: “Richard Dawkins, Antony Flew, and Mother Teresa Go to Heaven.”
Written over a span of two years, these three short stories detail what happens as each of the individuals come face to face with the reality of life after death. From Mother Teresa, who devoted her life to God but felt abandoned by Him to Antony Flew who vowed to ‘follow the evidence,’ to Richard Dawkins, who with Bertrand Russell said, “Not enough evidence!” these stories draw from what is known publicly to imagine what would happen in this most private of moments.
I thought to myself that someone who isn’t one of the ghouls ought to pick this book up and review it, even though it puts $2.99 into the pocket of a rather repulsive apologist. Since I have a strong stomach, I volunteered myself, and I’ll actually review the three stories right here on Pharyngula for you. Not just yet, though…let me draw out the suspense and space them out over a day or two. They won’t be drawn out for long, though, because there isn’t much to review. These stories aren’t particularly substantial, and it’s rather appalling that the guy took two years to write such fluff, and is then overcharging everyone by selling them for almost $3.
I will give you an overview right now, though. The author is capable of stringing English words together grammatically and competently…and that’s the kindest thing I can say about it. The stories are mostly incoherent and not very bold at all; all but one rely on ambiguity to make a case for their highly fundamentalist, extraordinarily nasty version of heaven. The one that doesn’t is poor Richard Dawkins, who I will tell you is not saved, and receives a sanctimoniously cruel eternal punishment.
Oh, I forgot to say: there will be spoilers in my discussion of each story.
My overall impression of the book is that the author basically demonstrates Richard Dawkins’ point: their heaven is a hell, and these believers are a vile lot that would turn even paradise into an eternity of disgust.
Anyway, if you were itching to get your hands on this hot and exciting property, you might want to wait a little while until you’ve seen the full review.
I finally made it through the snow and long detours (I94 was closed!) and have arrived at home, having missed an entire day of broken appointments. Now I better get to work and prepare for tomorrow morning’s class.
Unbelievable. Look at the first and so far leading choice in this poll: “The unions need to be reined in.” What has happened to this country? Aren’t the people who are voting in this poll likely to be mostly working class… yet here they are, whining that they aren’t whipped and oppressed enough!
How do you feel about Gov. Walker’s plan for the public workers’ unions?
Gov. Scott Walker wants to help fix state finances by cutting benefits for union workers and wiping away their ability to negotiate over anything but their wages, setting up a potentially explosive battle in the Capitol.I like it. The unions need to be reined in (79%)
Something needs to be done with the unions, but this is a little harsh (3%)
Hate it. These are dedicated public servants (18%)
