(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here.)

In the first post in this series, I wrote about Banana Man’s arguments against evolution which, together with a short biography of Darwin, constitutes about 40 pages of his introduction to Origins. But even Banana Man must know that there was nothing new there. It was clear to me that this was just an excuse to gain attention and on the final pages 39-50, he gets down to the real issue that concerns him, which is to get you to come to Jesus.

Banana Man has a bigger challenge than the sophisticated religious intellectuals who are content to argue for the existence of merely a Slacker God. Such people like Karen Armstrong, Robert Wright, and H. E. Baber only wish to believe in the existence of something, anything at all, however small or inconsequential, that is outside the reach of scientific investigation. They then give that the name ‘god’ and move on. The existence of their god leads to no practical consequences whatsoever and the world would be indistinguishable whether their god existed or not, but this does not seem to bother them. For this reason I call such people ‘religious atheists‘.

Banana Man, however, believes in the literal truth of the Bible, in Jesus’ virgin birth and resurrection, in other words the whole Christian ball of wax. So he has a bigger task than the religious atheists. He not only has to argue for the existence of a supergod who intervenes in the universe all the time, he has to argue for existence of one and only one very specific god, the Jesus-god that he happens to believe in.

In order to achieve this you would think that, at the very least, he would try to show that the god of Christianity is the true god and all the other gods are false. But religious people cannot really argue for the falsity of other people’s gods because those same arguments can be used against their own god. So instead of true and false, Banana Man argues that Christianity offers goodies and rewards that the others don’t, which makes it preferable to believe in. It is like a store that competes against other stores in sales for the identical item by offering sale prices or throwing in a free toaster, and then suggesting that the resulting higher sales means that they are selling the genuine article while their competitors are selling counterfeit. The argument makes no sense.

So using a long and complicated metaphor involving what would be most useful if one were forced to jump out of a plane (seemingly inspired by seeing the Disney film Up), he tries to justify why it is better to be a Christian than to be a Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist.

Interestingly, he does not include Judaism in his list of loser religions. If you think about it, in his eyes Judaism should be an even bigger loser than Islam. At least Islam recognizes Jesus as a great prophet and is even willing to concede that god gave him a virgin birth and the power to do miracles, although not conceding that he is god incarnate. As far as Jews ago, Jesus was just an ordinary Jew of his time, if he existed at all.

But Christians in the US have come a long way since the days when they despised Jews as Christ-killers. While antipathy towards Jews may exist among individual Christians, a political alliance has been cemented between right wing Christians and right wing Jews. It is now Christianist policy to talk of the ‘Judeo-Christian’ heritage of the US and of ‘Judeo-Christian’ values and be nice to Jews and not say any bad things about them (at least publicly) even though they believe that when the Rapture comes, Jews who haven’t seen the light and come to Jesus are going to slaughtered by god, just like all the other unbelievers.

So how does Banana Man try to persuade the reader that Jesus is the only god they should believe in? Those familiar with Banana Man’s schtick know what to expect. He basically does the same thing that he and Crocoduck do when they are out evangelizing in the streets, which is that they accost random people and go through all the ten commandments, one by one, asking people which ones they’ve broken.

Just to be sure that you realize you have broken a lot and get a perfect or almost perfect score of 10, he takes liberties with the wording of the commandments. He says that any use of the word god other than in prayer constitutes taking god’s name in vain and is thus a violation of the third commandment. He expands the word ‘murder’ to include hate, justifying the modification by using some quote from Jesus. So if you’ve ever hated anyone, then you’ve broken the sixth commandment against committing murder. Again roping in Jesus, he expands the meaning of the word ‘adultery’ to include sex before marriage and even simple lust, just to make sure you have broken the seventh commandment.

Basically, the idea is to present you with a list of rules that he says that god insists that you follow but which are impossible to obey. The point of all this effort is so that he can then pass judgment on you and say that because you have violated all or almost all of the commandments, you are a disgusting sinner and thus doomed to spending eternity in hell.

So what’s the point? In the next post, we’ll see why he goes to all this trouble.

POST SCRIPT: Stephen Colbert interviews Richard Dawkins

Look closely and you will see that Dawkins is wearing a crocoduck tie.

<td style='padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;' colspan='2'Richard Dawkins

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Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

By the way, I found a nice image of the crocoduck.

(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here.)

A week or so ago, I wrote about Banana Man and Crocoduck’s excellent new adventure where, on November 19, they are going to give away 50,000 copies of Charles Darwin’s classic book On the Origin of Species on various college campuses (not sure if ours is one of the lucky ones) but with the added bonus of a 50 page introduction by Banana Man.

The Banana Man claims that in those 50 pages he will, using his demonstrated powerful reasoning powers and rhetorical skills that I described in that previous post, demolish the theory of evolution by natural selection that has, for the last century, been the foundation of biology. And who is better able to provide an introduction to one of the greatest works of science than someone whose understanding of evolutionary theory is so deep that he thinks the banana could not have evolved to be so perfectly suited to being eaten by humans and thus had to be directly made by god?

For those who cannot wait until November 19 to see what delights are in store in Banana Man’s introduction, you can see read it here. Oddly, the link to the introduction no longer works, although it was live for more than a week. I don’t know if it is a temporary server glitch or it has been pulled from the site for some reason. I had downloaded the introduction earlier and still have it but you will have to take my word for it about what it contains until the book appears or the link is restored.

For those others who cannot spare the time to read all fifty pages, I have decided to take one for the team and devote some time to prepare a CliffsNotes version of Banana Man’s thesis (with my own commentary added of course) and these will form the topic of posts for this week. The reason I am devoting so much time to this is partly in response to commenter Derek’s point some time ago that I should not devote all my attention on refuting only the sophisticated religious apologists who don’t believe in anything remotely resembling what the average believer thinks, but also examine the views of more traditional believers. The Banana Man is as unlike the sophisticated apologists as one can get. Derek had in mind people like Albert Mohler and Cornelius Van Til who are somewhere in between those two extremes but one has to start somewhere so I will start at the bottom with Banana Man and work myself up from there. Furthermore, a case can be made that the kinds of views expressed by Banana Man have a greater following than those of the others.

Anyway, here is what Banana Man says in his introduction:

Pages 1-4: Short biography of Darwin. Banana Man ends this section with “At the age of seventy-three, Charles Darwin went to meet his Maker at Down house on April 19, 1882, with his wife, Emma, by his side.”

When I first read this, I thought that Banana Man was saying that god lived at Down house and that was where Charles went after he died and that Emma went along with him, and thus must have died at the same time as Charles. Of course, this is not true but is the kind of misunderstanding that can arise when you use soothing religious euphemisms like ‘went to meet his Maker’ instead of the straightforward ‘died’.

Since Darwin was an unrepentant agnostic right to the end, we have to assume that the Maker scolded him and sent the naughty boy to his room without dessert.

Pages 4-8: Timeline of Darwin’s life.

It is after this that the ‘attack’ on the theory of evolution begins in earnest. Given the level of Banana Man’s understanding of the theory, his attack on Darwin is like (to use the late Molly Ivins’ memorable phrase) being gummed by a newt.

Pages 9-15: Shorter version:

“Wow! Isn’t DNA amazing? It contains such a lot of information! It couldn’t have occurred by chance. Hence god exists.”

In other words, we get an argument from personal incredulity, based on the willful misrepresentation that evolution by natural selection occurs by pure chance.

Pages 15-22: Shorter version:

“There are no transitional forms. Hence evolution is wrong. Hence god exists.”

Sadly, Banana Man disses his faithful sidekick Kirk Cameron by not including the latter’s ingenious crocoduck argument. Why the omission? Does he also think Cameron’s argument is ludicrous? Et tu, Brute?

Pages 22- 28: Shorter version:

“I don’t understand how the blood circulatory system or the eye came about. Hence god exists.”

In other words, another argument from personal incredulity. Oddly enough, Banana Man does not include as another example the very banana that he had earlier described as providing irrefutable proof of god’s existence because it was so perfectly suited for human eating and impossible to conceive of as having evolved. Given that he will be forever after permanently associated with that fruit, the omission is inexplicable.

Page 29: Shorter version:

“Some vestigial organs may have some purpose. Hence god exists.”

Pages 30-36: Shorter version:

“Darwin was a racist and misogynist. Hitler was evil and an evolutionist. Hence Darwin was evil like Hitler. Hence the theory of evolution is bad. Hence god exists.”

Pages 36-39: Shorter version:

“Darwin and Albert Einstein and some other well-known figures in scientific history were not atheists. Richard Dawkins and Francis Crick cannot prove that god does not exist. Hence god exists.”

This was pretty much it as far as arguing against the theory of evolution went. Frankly, I was disappointed. Given all the money and resources that Banana Man was pouring into this venture, I had expected better arguments or at least a mention of those golden oldies, the banana and the crocoduck.

As one can see, these are the same old arguments against evolution that have been thoroughly refuted over and over again. Biologist Jerry Coyne makes a clinical dissection of these arguments against evolution here.

I think that Herbert Spencer’s response in 1891 is still the best: “Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution as not being adequately supported by facts, seem to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all.”

Next: The last ten pages where Banana Man gets to the point of the exercise.

POST SCRIPT: Mr. Deity explains how baptism by water came about

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(My new book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from the publishers Rowman & Littlefield for $34.95, from Amazon for $31.65, from Barnes and Noble for $26.21 ($23.58 for members), and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here.)

Those two mighty warriors for Jesus, evangelist Ray Comfort and his trusty sidekick the aging Boy Wonder Kirk Cameron, have come up with a new scheme for fighting the evil theory of evolution which they, along with many religious people, think is threatening to bring about the end of civilization as we know it. Two days before the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species on November 21, they plan to distribute 50,000 free copies of the book at 50 prominent universities. The catch? They have added a 50-page introduction where Comfort will point out all the flaws in the theory. They can do this because the copyright has expired on Darwin’s book.
[Read more…]

Homeopathic treatment is based on the belief that if something making you ill, then a highly diluted solution of that same thing will act as a cure. It was introduced in 1796 by a German physician named Samuel Hahnemann who claimed it illustrated the workings of the ‘principle of similars’ or ‘like cures like’. This counterintuitive notion may have sounded plausible in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and even now may sound plausible to those who know that vaccines consist of building antibodies to a disease by introducing into the body small quantities of the same or related organisms,

The levels of dilution used were quantified by Hahnemann by something called the “C scale” which meant diluting by a factor of 100. So 1C dilution meant diluting by 100, 2C meant diluting by 100×100=10⁴=10,000, 3C meant diluting by 100x100x100=10⁶=1,000,000, and so on. The substances are diluted in a stepwise fashion and shaken vigorously between each dilution.

A key feature of homeopathic belief is the “principle of dilutions” or the “law of minimum dose” which states that “the lower the dose of the medication, the greater its effectiveness.” So a 7C solution is supposedly more effective (i.e., “stronger”) than a 6C solution, even though it is 100 times more dilute.

The development of the atomic theory of matter in the 19th century pretty much destroyed the scientific credibility of homeopathy. According to modern science, one mole of any substance contains 6.022×10²³ molecules or atoms of that substance. This number is called Avogadro’s number. So for example, the element sodium has an atomic weight of 23, which means that 23 grams of sodium contains 6.022×10²³ atoms. So if you took one mole of sodium (=23 gram) and diluted it to 12C (i.e., by a factor of 10²⁴), you would have just about a single atom of sodium in it. If you go to even higher dilutions then the chance of having even a single atom of the original substance becomes vanishingly small. Since Hahnemann advocated dilutions of 30C, what he was giving his patients was water. Of course, the idea of the atomic theory of matter and Avogadro’s number was only coming to the fore in the early 19th century so Hahnemann could not know this.

But homeopathic treatments and practitioners are still around. How can people still believe in homeopathy now since we know that there is no active ingredient remaining and people are merely taking in water? This is where the parallel to religion comes into play. Both began in times when science was more primitive and the explanations offered by homeopathy/religion seemed plausible, or at least no worse than the competing explanations. But as science advanced and showed that the original explanations were untenable and better ones existed, people became split. Some accepted science and rejected homeopathy/religion. Others wanted to continue believing and so made up ad hoc theories to enable them to continue belief.

What homeopathy devotees did was find new reasons for believing, arguing that the shaking that occurred during the process of dilution (which they refer to as “potentization”) transmits “some form of information or energy from the original substance to the final diluted remedy. Most homeopathic remedies are so dilute that no molecules of the healing substance remain; however, in homeopathy, it is believed that the substance has left its imprint or “essence,” which stimulates the body to heal itself (this theory is called the “memory of water”).” But there is no evidence that water, a very much studied and well-understood substance, can carry with it any such memory.

Similarly, as science increasingly exposes the inadequacy of religious explanations for phenomena, religions invented theology with its own convoluted reasoning, trying to find ways to retain belief in god. It has ended up being forced to postulate a Slacker God.

Modern theological language is similar to that of modern homeopathy, making stuff up as they go along, introducing vocabulary and modes of operation that are so vague, elusive, and tenuous that they defy any systematic investigation, all in order to continue believing in something that has ceased to have any credibility.

POST SCRIPT: Woo

The term ‘woo’ or ‘woo-woo’ refers to “ideas considered irrational or based on extremely flimsy evidence or that appeal to mysterious occult forces or powers.”

That Mitchell and Webb Look pokes fun at homeopathy and other forms of woo.

Religious people like to dwell on the virtues of their holy books. They also like to claim that those books were either directly dictated by god or at least divinely inspired. But what is remarkable is that there is not a single thing in any of those books that shows any insight that could not have been held by an ordinary person living two thousand years ago or so with the knowledge that was at hand at that time. The lack of any hint of divine foresight in the Bible is striking.

For one thing, modern science has revealed that the universe is, by any measure, absolutely huge. Even the craziest of the religious crazies do not claim that the Earth is the center of a small universe and that the sky we see is just a bowl with holes in it. But as Carl Sagan pointed out, “[T]his vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe, in my view has been taken into account, even superficially, in virtually no religion, and especially no Western religions.”
[Read more…]

During the Labor Day weekend, I spent a good portion of it going through all the comics on the Jesus and Mo website. For those not familiar with this strip, the premise is that Jesus and Mohammed are roommates somewhere in the United Kingdom who spend a lot of time at the neighborhood pub being challenged about religion by an atheist barmaid. Moses is a mutual friend of Jesus and Mo who does not live with them but drops by for periodic visits.

The comic strip is a remarkable blend of philosophy, theology, and humor that appears twice weekly and if you start from the very first strip in November 2005 and go through to the present, you get a good introduction to many of the issues concerning religion and atheism that this blog has been addressing, except that the strip says things more concisely and is funnier. It is well worth your while to read all the strips.

It is also very insightful. This strip from 2008 made me suddenly realize that we new atheist scientists have been going about things all wrong in our attempts to show that being an atheist makes the most sense intellectually.

The trouble with scientists is that when we are asked a question to which we don’t know the answer yet, we say we don’t know the answer yet. This is our usual reply when religious people ask, “What existed before the Big Bang? What caused the universe to come into being? How can matter arise out of nothing? How did the laws of science come into being? How was the first life form created?”

Religious people seize on these frank admissions of ignorance as if they are a fatal weakness of science or of atheism and their theologians triumphantly claim that religion does provide answers to all these questions and is thus superior to science, since this shows that religion has ‘ways of knowing’ that are superior to science.

But what are their answers really? When you come right down to it, what religions do to get ‘answers’ is simply make stuff up. They have no evidence or proof for their answers or even decent arguments that are not circular and self-serving. But once you invent an imaginary entity to which you can assign any powers you like, you can give facile answers to any question.

Here are some examples:

Q: Who created the universe and matter and the laws of science? A: God.
Q: How did he do all that? A: He is omnipotent so he can do anything.
Q: Why does he allow evil and suffering? A: Because he loves us.
Q: How does that make any sense? A: He has a cunning plan.
Q: What is the plan? A: It is a secret.
Q: Why? A: We are not ready to understand it.
Q: When will it be revealed? A: When we are ready to understand it.
Q: Why don’t we see any evidence of god? A: He carefully hides the evidence from us.
Q: Why? A: Because he has a cunning plan.
Q: What is the plan? A: It is a secret.

And so on, ad infinitum. You could easily write a computer program to provide these kinds of answers.

Scientists should take a cue from the theologians so that whenever we are confronted with the kinds of questions that religious people love to ask, like “What is the meaning of life?” or “What is the purpose of beauty?” instead of answering honestly, we should simply make stuff up too.

This was the genius of Bobby Henderson. Rather than debating the existence of god, he simply made up a new deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster and challenged traditional religions to explain why theirs is more credible than his. This, of course, they cannot do. So the Flying Spaghetti Monster now proudly stands as an equal in the pantheon with Amun, Zeus, Odin, Krishna, Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Zoroaster, and others. To get a sense of how many gods there have been in the history of the universe, the website Machines Like Us has compiled an alphabetized list, though the FSM is inexplicably not included.

So taking my cue from Jesus and Mo (and Bobby), here are some sample answers that I will give in the future to some popular questions:

Q: What existed before the Big Bang? A: Shirley MacLaine, in the very first of all her previous lives.
Q: What caused the universe to come into being? A: Shirley sneezed, and this was the Big Bang.
Q: Where did all the matter come from? A: Shirley baked it in her oven.
Q: Who created the laws of nature? A: Shirley again. That amazing woman can do anything!
Q: By what mechanism did the first life form come into being? A: Shirley gave birth to it.
Q: What is the meaning of life? A: To propagate Shirley’s genes.
Q: What is the purpose of beauty? A: To give pleasure to Shirley. She likes pretty things.

Actually these answers are even better than the ones provided by standard theology because they involve no secret cunning plans. Shirley tells her followers everything.

Truly Shirley is the greatest of all gods.

POST SCRIPT: Happy Birthday, Baxter!

The wonder dog is four years old today.

(Since it’s the Labor Day holiday, I am reposting something from July 16, 2008, updated and edited.)

The last time we encountered Christian evangelist Ray Comfort he was, along with his trusty sidekick the Boy Wonder Kirk Cameron, arguing that the exquisite design of the banana was absolute proof of the existence of god. The banana, Comfort pointed out, was “the atheist’s nightmare.” Why? See for yourself.

[Read more…]

Once in a while I get private emails from readers of this blog who disagree with my atheistic stance. Recently I got one that said in its entirety:

Dear Sir, from your comments about the religious beliefs of scientists, I gather that you contend that, for the scientist, the greater the learning, the lesser the belief in God; and, conversely, the greater the belief in God, the lesser the knowledge of science. It never ceases to fascinate me, the adoring eyes of a child for the elderly, yet the grown up has little need for them, and, so, they confine them to a home and out of their way. By far, what the child has is greater than what the grown up has. Love never enters the equations of scientists, nor does faith; consequently, the eternal God is not in view of scientists, but only His temporal creation. Archeology has uncovered less than 1% of all the treasures of our past (just scratched the surface), yet, for many decades, archeologists, in their haughtiness, have spoken with authority against the Bible, as bulls from the chair. Many scientists today, and of the past, with their silver surfboard in hand, have yet to feel a wave flow by their ankles, as they have barely just stepped into the ocean. What the eye cannot see, and the ear cannot hear, and the mind cannot understand, the spirit (even of a child) can fathom.

This letter, in somewhat flowery language, illustrates some of the contradictory beliefs that religious people commonly express without them even realizing it.

For example, it says that a child’s understanding of the world is superior to that of the adult. It says that in order to perceive god, we need to be like children in our ignorance, and listen to the voices in our head, rather than the concrete senses of sight and sound. In other words, deeper knowledge and greater learning undermine faith. I actually agree with the last sentence but view it as a good thing.

It amazes me that people think that ignorance is a good thing. When people sing the praises of childlike faith, I don’t think they quite realize how insulting that is to their religion. It is saying that faith in god is on a par with faith in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, things that only a child would believe in. I agree with that last sentence too but am surprised that religious people advocate it as a virtue.

But the letter writer then promptly contradicts that position by implying that scientists know so little now and presumably that when we get to know more, evidence for god will emerge. So in order to perceive god should we be like children unburdened by knowledge or should we seek more knowledge? Religious people want to have it both ways, on the one hand saying that we see god only by faith and not by knowledge, and on the other hand that we are ignorant now and that more knowledge will provide the necessary evidence for what now must be accepted only on faith. What is interesting is that this contradiction never strikes them, providing another illustration of how religion undermines the ability to think rationally.

The contradictions go even deeper. After all, if god created us then he also created our unusually large brains and gave us the power to think and reason and use logic. As Hamlet says (Act II, Scene II), “What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty!” If so, then why would god not expect us to use the abilities he/she supposedly gave us to understand everything about the world, including religious beliefs? Why would he/she give us this extraordinary intellectual ability and then make it into a liability?

In the end, what religions want you to do simply boils down to this prescription: “You must believe in god. Anything that helps you believe is good. Anything that undermines belief is bad. Ignore any contradictions. Use your brain for everything except examining your religious beliefs to see if they make any sense.”

In the great title song from the film O Lucky Man, singer Alan Price describes the qualities that a lucky man possesses. One of them is not being tempted by promises of heaven or made fearful by threats of hell but he also adds that, “If knowledge hangs around your neck like pearls instead of chains, you are a lucky man.”

This phenomenon of religious people sacrificing knowledge and reasoning abilities in order to preserve beliefs for which there is no credible evidence whatsoever is sad, really. For religious people, knowledge is indeed like heavy chains, holding them back and burdening them because it contradicts their myths. Atheists, on the other hand, not being bound by dogma and religious texts, delight in discovering pearls of knowledge.

POST SCRIPT: Jesus and the dinosaurs

Many Christians are anxiously waiting for the promised second coming of Jesus when they will get their reward for being faithful believers. But what they don’t realize is that the first coming of Jesus was not at the time described in the Gospels in the Bible but actually occurred much earlier, during the dinosaur age. Eddie Izzard recovers this lost history.

So the second coming of Jesus has already occurred. Sorry, Christians, the show is over, there is nothing more to wait for.

Some readers may remember my post on the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation where it is believed that during the communion service, the wafer and wine become the actual body and blood of Jesus. I took that idea to its logical conclusion and argued that if true it could be used to clone god.

I also wrote about the huge ruckus that a college student in Florida caused when he did not immediately consume the communion wafer and instead tried to take it back with him to his seat. He got into a scuffle with a woman who wanted him to return it and the student was threatened with violence, comparisons were made to a hostage taking, and there were threats to break into his dorm room and rescue the wafer being held ‘hostage’ by him.

The university even sent in armed guards to be present at future services to prevent any more hostages being taken. The Catholic diocese also sent in a team of nuns as added protection for the wafers, though no mention was made as to whether they too were packing heat.

Well, it turns out that when the Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper recently attended a memorial service in a Catholic church for a deceased dignitary, he may committed the same religious offense as the college student. Watch and see for yourself.

I can guess what happened. Non-Catholics are not supposed to receive communion in the Catholic Church. The prime minister is a Protestant and probably realized at the last minute, when he was in a line where everyone was about to be given the wafer by the priest, that he did not know what the proper protocol was to deal with it. Eating it may have been sacrilegious and refusing it or giving it back might have been seen as rude. As a non-Catholic he realized he was in danger of committing a religious faux pas and poor sap, like all politicians faced with a tricky decision, he decided to punt. He probably felt that the safe thing to do was to put it in his pocket and deal with it later, not realizing that what he did was worse than the other options. As one news report on what is being called Wafergate says:

[T]he handling of the host is no trivial matter. As a non-Catholic, the prime minister should probably have refused communion, and church officials should have been advised of this in advance. But once the communion wafer, considered the body of Jesus, was in the prime minister’s hand, it should have been consumed promptly or returned.

Of course, what he should have done when he was called on this was to admit that he had pocketed the wafer out of uncertainty about what to do and simply returned it. Even very religious people realize that their Byzantine rules are not understood by outsiders and would have forgiven him. But again, Harper’s political instincts to never admit a mistake kicked in and he denied pocketing it, deciding to brazen it out.

So he either still has the wafer or he has destroyed it in some way and removed the evidence. There is no word on whether the Mounties or an elite swat team of nuns are going to try and stage a rescue of the hostage wafer from the pockets of this infidel.

The were fears that the allegations that Harper pocketed the wafer may have caused some embarrassment for him when he later went to meet with the Pope.

If I were Harper’s advisor, I would have suggested that he give the Pope the pocketed wafer and say that he took it because he wanted to give the Pope a special gift, something with more meaning than a typical head of state gift like a painting or vase or an iPod. What could be more special to the Pope than getting a piece of the body of Christ?

POST SCRIPT: The real rulers

Government of Goldman-Sachs, by Goldman-Sachs, and for Goldman-Sachs.

<td style='padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;' colspan='2'Pyramid Economy

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There is a famous and funny old sketch called the Five Minute University in which comedian Don Novello acts in his character of Father Guido Sarducci.

As he says, when the students study theology at his university, all they will learn are the answers to the two questions “Where is god?” (Answer: God is everywhere) and “Why?” (Answer: Because he likes you). I am beginning to think that the answer to the first question is absolutely correct.

Take a look at this picture of a cut tree stump that is in a churchyard in Ireland. What do you see?

Nothing? Just a tree stump that someone has cut in an odd way? Oh ye of little faith! To the devout this looks like the Virgin Mary and they think its appearance is (what else?) a miracle. People are making pilgrimages to pray around it. Over 2,000 have signed a petition objecting to plans to uproot the stump, and want to convert it into a permanent shrine of some sort.

The thing that strikes me is that recently Jesus and Mary seem to be showing up all over the place, in slices of toast, grilled cheese sandwiches, womb ultrasounds, Marmite jar lid, Kit Kat bar, shower curtain, cheese curl, dental x-rays, mugs of hot chocolate, even on the backside of a dog or in bird droppings. Here are yet more sightings.

Such stories, apart from revealing religious people to be hopelessly credulous, also demonstrate how weak some people’s faith is, not how strong. It is only people who are really desperate for a sign to bolster their beliefs that will seize on such pathetic things as validating their faith. The woman who saw the Marmite Jesus ‘took comfort from the image’ saying, “I’m not particularly religious but I like to think it’s Jesus looking out for us.”

This kind of thing puts religious authorities in a quandary. On the one hand, they realize that if you have too many such sightings, religion begins to look more and more ridiculous. After all, if people start worshipping tree stumps, how can you distinguish so-called mainstream religion from more allegedly primitive religions, such as paganism. Some religions actually do involve tree-worship and the Christmas tree symbol itself likely began as one.

On the other hand, religious authorities cannot categorically debunk all of them as nonsense because their bread and butter depends on people believing that god can reveal himself to people on occasion even if it in this weird way. The problem for the church is that it wants to discourage freelancers and keep a monopoly on what qualifies as a revelation of god and what doesn’t as this is the source of their power and money. They tried to walk that fine line on this occasion too.

Local parish priest Fr Willie Russell said on radio station Limerick Live 95FM yesterday that people should not worship the tree. “There’s nothing there . . . it’s just a tree . . . you can’t worship a tree.”

A spokesman for the Limerick diocesan office said the “church’s response to phenomena of this type is one of great scepticism”.

“While we do not wish in any way to detract from devotion to Our Lady, we would also wish to avoid anything which might lead to superstition,” he said.

Fortunately for the spokesman, he was not asked what distinguishes this particular “superstition” from all the superstitions that the church expects people to believe, such as that the wafer and wine become transformed into the actual body and blood of Jesus when the priest mumbles some words over it. Mary-in-a-tree-stump is nothing compared to that.

Fortunately for the spokesman, he could depend on the ‘respect for religion’ nonsense to deter ‘polite’ reporters from asking such obvious questions.

That Mitchell and Webb Look reports on another miraculous sighting.

All these Jesus and Mary sightings and the comment in the above clip that the melon message blew his tomato message out of the water gave me an idea for a new reality TV series, because what the nation really needs is another reality show. This one would consist of people bringing their candidates for an authentic god appearance and making the case for it. Then a panel of theologians would give their comments, and the audience votes for which artifact is an actual miracle of god and then worship the ultimate winner.

I think a good title for the show would be “American Idol”. I hope no one has used it already.

UPDATE: Commenter Chris sent me this compilation of a huge number of Jesus sightings. There seems to be an epidemic.

POST SCRIPT: You mean the Earth isn’t 6,000 years old?

Watch this statement by Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen (R).

What is amazing is that her statement that the Earth is 6,000 years old is said so casually during a discussion of environmental concerns over uranium mining, as if it was the most commonplace fact in the world and not at all something idiotic and controversial. These people live in their own bubble world.