Blah Blah Flowers

Christ's fat cock. A nine-year-old Brazilian girl, sexually abused by her father (who also has abused her physically handicapped elder sister) and somehow made pregnant was given a termination. That is where the wonderful Catholic Church steps in as the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife has now announced he's going to excommunicate everyone that was involved in the abortion. Because it's much better that a girl far, far, far too young to be able to bare children be made to go through pregnancy and face the risk of dying or, if not dying, giving birth to twins who would have unguessed congenital problems due to their father and grandfather BEING THE SAME MAN because God loves foetuses more than humans.

Remember this, any time you feel the need, whoever you are, to whine about Atheists being 'mean'.

Labels: abortion, angry, atheism, atheists, Brazil, child abuse, children, Christianity, God, women

You may also like to read Towing Jehovah by James Morrow.

[via Pharyngula]

Labels: atheism, atheists, Christianity, God, humour, YouTube

I've just watched God on Trial and, if you haven't, you really, really, really should. Go to your Torrents oh my brothers and sisters! Set in Auschwitz as a cabin of condemned Jews wait for some of their number to be taken to the gas chamber they decide that all they have left is the power to put on trial the one they hold responsible for them being there, namely God. By allowing the Nazis to seek the destruction of the Jewish race, has God abandoned his Covenant with those he called his 'chosen people'?

While finding it a piece of piss to fly my flag in Atheism County when it comes to any organised religion, I find it difficult to do so absolutely outside of religion and personally. Sure, this is not a question of whom to bend the knee to or doff the cap, I can't understand why any Supreme Being would show any interest or need for my love, respect or fear and, if ze has any interest or concern for it then ze comes up far short of Infinite (although as it's only the religious types that try to curry favour with hir by describing hir in such terms). This is the entirely personal problem I have with Skepticism, Richard Dawkins, the Brights and that whole cabal. Sure I trust science to save my life and not crap like homoeopathy, but seeking to silence all the stories under the belief they have no value is wrongheaded. A plague o' both their houses.

I don't claim to know what God is. Us reflected back through our own history in the glare of the Eschaton? Sure, why not. An ancient robot servitor of some alien race designed to cultivate intelligence? If you like. A vengeful old Jew who really doesn't like it when the poofs and blacks forget their place? If we must. However, I find it easy to keep my ruminations private and not let it leak out into my professional or daily life, so can only conclude that those who are unable or unwilling to show the same restraint insist on expressing themselves on the grounds that they are deeply afraid that they are wrong and lack the faith to wait until they die to see who was right.

Anyway, back at God on Trial. The set is simple and the acting first rate, Stellan Skarsgård as the judge, Jack Shepherd as the elderly Jew who continually seeks to have the proceedings brought to a close out of fear of the blasphemy and Anthony 'National Treasure' Sher as the elderly rabbi that has the final word. The last scene, in which modern day visitors stand reading the memorial in the gas chamber, surrounded by the naked ghosts of the Jews waiting for their last shower, is extremely well-shot and upsetting. Many of the arguments in the 'prosecution' against God are those against his existence but in the end it remains balanced as it addresses that oldest imponderable, if there's a God, why do bad things happen?

Labels: atheism, God, religion, skepticism, Television

Mr Deity. A gently satirical series of short videos about the life of God and some of his personal friends as they go about creating and maintaining the universe. Episode two where He has to persuade Jesus to do him a really REALLY big favour is my favourite so far.

Labels: Christianity, God, humour, religion

For an agnostic/atheist I seem to have had God on the mind a lot recently. Certainly I have a moment of religious weakness each year around this time, or a little later. If I happen to stumble across a Christmas carol concert on TV or radio (and, if I go to stay with my parents for the period then that probability becomes a near-certainty as my Dad, similarly irreligious, seems to enjoy them) then I tend to have the briefest, five-second flutter, in my stomach as the CofE gene that all English boys have tucked away in their genetic code tries to fire and persuade me that that is His voice. Fortunately, as you can prove the monster in the corner of the room is just a pile of clothes by turning the light on, the holy terror never lasts. There are no atheists in foxholes though, and seventy-two hours without sleep makes a desperate man say foolish things, as I found earlier this year.

Anyways, I've just finished Towing Jehovah by James Morrow. God's dead body has been found in the Atlantic, a disgraced former oil-tanker skipper has to command a crew and see the huge corpse safely transported to it's Arctic tomb before radical atheists, the Catholic Church or just the development of a post-Deus morality can destroy it. It's both a funny and thought-provoking book, though I'm a bit annoyed that, yet again, there is the suggestion that belief in a higher power is necessary for good behaviour, and this comes from a humanist author. When are we going to have the good guy who is explicitly a non-believer?

Towards the end of the book, there is a discussion about God's motives for suicide. One character suggests that, looking down on His creation, God sees Himself as a block on humanity's progress, the Stern Father stopping his children from becoming adults, His death acting to confirm that He existed then forcing humanity to stand up for itself. It's a point of view that I have some sympathy for, I've felt that all the nonsense I was taught as a child about how God would love to come down to Earth on a cloud and tell us to stop being beastly to one another but gave us free will so feels obliged to stay away and let us make our own mistakes is a big pile of guff, and that He qualifies as the biggest Deadbeat Dad in all of creation, unworthy of our praise. By chance I had an idea for a story last week, before I started reading this book, which is the opposite of that philosophical point, and ends with, effectively, God rerunning creation and staying alongside humanity, not in any metaphorical way, or the way that some Christians insist "God is always with me, inside " but in a real and direct way, corporeal and present. The difficulty I have is that I've no idea how to direct the story to this conclusion and, as I'm much more in favour of the parent standing aside rather than towering over his children watching what they do, it's beyond my meagre storytelling powers to think of how to argue the point convincingly.

Anyway, I'm off to read In God we Doubt: Confessions of a Failed Atheist by grumpy morning microphone botherer John Humphrys.

Labels: God, philosophy, religion