Just in case you don’t know, Richard Dawkins doesn’t much care for the pope (via: The Atheist Rabbi):
I really liked how he made a point about the attack on atheists and secularist as being a willful act of distraction by the pope to get people to stop talking about the rampant sexual attacks on children by the employees of the church.
From “The Gods” by Robert Ingersoll:
We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amen’s.
All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your moldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want this year’s fact.
We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years.
Their reputation for “truth and veracity” in the neighborhood where they resided is wholly unknown to us. Give us a new miracle, and substantiate it by witnesses who still have the cheerful habit of living in this world.
Do not send us to Jericho to hear the winding horns, nor put us in the fire with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Do not compel us to navigate the sea with Captain Jonah, nor dine with Mr. Ezekiel. There is no sort of use in sending us fox-hunting with Samson.
We have positively lost all interest in that little speech so eloquently delivered by Balaam’s inspired donkey. It is worse than useless to show us fishes with money in their mouths, and call our attention to vast multitudes stuffing themselves with five crackers and two sardines.
We demand a new miracle, and we demand it now. Let the church furnish at least one, or forever after hold her peace.
This speech was written in 1872 and is applicable today as it was then.
Stephen Fry on the Catholic hierarchy and it’s effect on the world:
The Pope is in England for the first official visit in a few centuries and a British rapper decided to write him a letter:
One of the biggest Baptist churches here in Texas has left the Baptist Convention a little over a century after joining it. The reason?
They, along with another Baptist church in the area, do not discriminate against people and have openly gay members in their congregation.
Brent Beasley, Broadway’s pastor, called the break “sad” but necessary. “We’re committed to welcoming all people here, and we would not want to do anything that would be hurtful to anyone just to please the BGCT,” Beasley said.
Having grown up with Baptists, I’m always surprised when they do something like this. I can’t imagine the church I grew up in doing something like this as they can’t stand other Christians, much less we, as they see it, willful sinners.
It recently came to light that no Catholic church in Belgium was safe for children with every church having at least one child rapist on the dole. In fact, 13 children had commited suicide with six others attempting to commit suicide. To say that people were upset is an understatement.
The church has reponded by stating that the reason they haven’t really apologized is because they’re more concerned with keeping their money than with doing the right thing:
Questioned about [the lack of an apology], Bishop Guy Harpigny, who speaks for the Belgian bishops on abuse issues and who also attended Monday’s news conference in Brussels, said the church had missed an opportunity.
“The news conference yesterday was a missed chance for a ‘mea culpa,’ ” Bishop Harpigny told Belgium’s Radio 1. “Maybe the church was too concerned with itself. If we say ‘mea culpa,’ then we are morally responsible, legally responsible, and then people come wanting money.
“We are afraid. Who will ask — the victims, the court or someone else? That’s why we are so careful.”
I have to say that’s the first time I’ve heard one of them openly admit that they’d rather protect their money than even attempt to do right by the victims.
The husband’s been reading Obama’s Audacity of Hope and shared the following part about religious supremacy with me.
Having the same question myself, I thought I’d to share it with you all.
… let’s even assume that we only had Christians within our borders. Whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?
Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests that slavery is all right and eating shellfish is an abomination?
How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount – a passage so radical that it’s doubtful that our Defense Department would survive it’s application?
This passage can be found on pg. 218. He downplays the whole slavery thing, but at least he makes the point.
Funny cartoon about people who do not know what’s actually written in the Bible:
(via: Atheist Cartoons)
Justin Carl Moose been arrested for his involvement in a plot to bomb a women’s health clinic:
A Concord man was charged with describing how to make explosives, in an effort to bomb an abortion clinic, after FBI agents found instructions on the man’s Facebook page and caught him in a sting, officials said Thursday.
The self-described “freedom” fighter used Facebook to call for violence against pretty much everyone, but mostly healthcare workers at women’s clinics. He also referred to himself as Christianity’s version of Osama bin Laden.
According to Christianity, a supernatural being knocked up a human female with himself so he could kill himself to appease his own anger.
You either believe this or the supernatural being is going to burn you forever and ever, amen.
You’d think it would be impossible to make that story more absurd than it already is. You’d be wrong.
A church in Scotland has declared God’s no longer a dude:
God is no longer a “he,” at least according to the Scottish Episcopal Church. Its bishops recently debuted a new order of service that removes all masculine references to God, including but not limited to “Lord,” “he,” “his,” and “him,” the Daily Mail reports. Priests who have problems with the traditional liturgy can use the new service, but some religious figures aren’t too happy with it. “It is political correctness,” and “quite unnecessary,” one reverend says.
So, exactly how did God knock up Mary then? Think it went a bit like this?
