Nutjob News Roundup

May 21, 2011.
Mark that on your calendar. I know I will. This is the day that Jesus will return and oversee the Rapture, when all good and righteous Christians will be wooshed into the sky to see Jesus's dad, who is really Jesus, as God created himself so that he could sacrifice himself to himself and spend a whole weekend in a tomb and then ressurect himself to go back to see himself in heaven where he was all along except when he was down here, which was at the same time...but I digress.

Family Radio Inc., a Christian radio network and fundamentalist braintrust are have announced that for sure, no foolin' this time, the world will end in just under 6 months. In fact, the Bible guarantees it! There is little doubt that this is correct as actual math was involved, and that's science, and who can argue with that?

According to Family Radio's Tom Evans, spokeman for their crack team of delusional mathematicians 'the Rapture will happen exactly 7000 years from the date that God first warned people about the flood. He said the flood happened in 4990 B.C., on what would have been May 21 in the modern calendar. God gave Noah one week of warning. Since one day equals 1,000 years for God, that means there was a 7,000-year interval between the flood and rapture."We hope that anyone would get a Bible out and try and prove that this is wrong," he said.'

Here's more, form their website, which is worth a look if only for its jaw-dropping, eye-rubbing lunacy...beware, there's an equation and everything.

In 2 Peter 3:8, which is quoted above, Holy God reminds us that one day is as 1,000 years. Therefore, with the correct understanding that the seven days referred to in Genesis 7:4 can be understood as 7,000 years, we learn that when God told Noah there were seven days to escape worldwide destruction, He was also telling the world there would be exactly 7,000 years (one day is as 1,000 years) to escape the wrath of God that would come when He destroys the world on Judgment Day. Because Holy Infinite God is all-knowing, He knows the end from the beginning. He knew how sinful the world would become.

Seven thousand years after 4990 B.C. (the year of the Flood) is the year 2011 A.D. (our calendar).

4990 + 2011 – 1 = 7,000

[One year must be subtracted in going from an Old Testament B.C. calendar date to a New Testament A.D. calendar date because the calendar does not have a year zero.]

Thus Holy God is showing us by the words of 2 Peter 3:8 that He wants us to know that exactly 7,000 years after He destroyed the world with water in Noah’s day, He plans to destroy the entire world forever. Because the year 2011 A.D. is exactly 7,000 years after 4990 B.C. when the flood began, the Bible has given us absolute proof that the year 2011 is the end of the world during the Day of Judgment, which will come on the last day of the Day of Judgment.

Amazingly, May 21, 2011 is the 17^th day of the 2^nd month of the Biblical calendar of our day. Remember, the flood waters also began on the 17^th day of the 2^nd month, in the year 4990 B.C.

Ooookay! Where to start? Well, burden of proof aside, the Bible is riddled with contradiction, vaguaries and general kookiness. It is, as has been mentioned ad infinitum before, a colloection of Bronze Age mythology that was cobbled together over centuries, the most contemporary New Testament writing being jotted down at least 30 years after Jesus/God went home for the semester. If God wrote the damn thing, as these cotton-brained mouth breathers explicitly state, you'd think he could have come up with something a little clearer, say a fucking DATE! Nope, have to do the math, folks. God is apparently a cosmic Sudoku maker. He also apparently knows how this whole shebang ends, and how wicked we would become. So what the hell is the bloody point of the whole exercise? He set the cosmos in motion, hiding dinosaur bones all over the place to throw us off, appears on the occasional cheese sandwich now and again, allows Satan to develop rock n roll, creates sinful homosexuals (according to Family Radio Inc., Gay Pride and same-sex marriage are also part of God's weirdly contrived plan and are a sign by him that the End is near), heals the odd cripple here and there, all the while knowing n advance exactly what would happen to the sinful that he created in the first place, and yet somehow can't figure out why we aren't without sin, which he must have known in the first place....my head hurts. It must be a bitch being God. No spoiler alerts, 'cause you already know that Vadar was Luke's father and that Bruce Willis is dead.

Still, I suggest that now would be a fine time to head out the door and sin, sin, sin. Come the 20th of May, merely kneel down, say 'my bad' and God's mercy will be upon you, even in his wrath. I invite anybody who subscribes to this twaddle to please give me your car, house, money etc. as you sure won't be needing it in heaven. I think the car lots up there are giving the things away, or at least have zero % financing for eternity. I really am curious how many of the sepf-proclaimed believers will give away their earthly possessions and how many will keep the house and car 'just in case"? The usual fallback for when the earth doesn't end is that enough people prayed their asses off that God was moved and decided not to smite us, in his mercy and confusion. Which begs the question, if this date is written in the Bible and has to be true, how do you square that with the inevitable non-end? Poor calculation? But its all worked out and makes perfect sense. I will be checking the website on the 22nd of May and can only imagine the gymnastics that will be involved in setting this right (there's your problem...you forgot to carry the 3...and did you factor in leap years, cause a quarter of a day is like 250 years to God...).

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20101201/NEWS06/12010350/Nashville+billboards+claim+Jesus+will+return+May+21++2011&h=c0e22

http://www.familyradio.com/index.html

On another note, the Answers in Genesis, the gang behind the Creation Museum where you can see dinosaurs co-existing with Adam and Eve, are building a...wait for it...full sized Noah's Ark. To be precise it is a 24.5 million dollar replica of the Ark. I am at a loss for words. I suppose there is no better way to spend an assload of cash than to build an ark. It is certainly better than, say, feeding the hungry or sheltering the homeless. The bottom linei s that it is going to be a tourist draw, and not for just the true believers either. Fuck me, I'd go see the damn thing if I was in the area. Why not? I enjoy looking at giant monuments. I once saw a giant fiberglass lobster in New Brunswick and it was excellent. I hope they fill it with animals and no air filtering mechanism, just to get an idea of how idyllic it must have been. I am constantly non-plussed by the humility of Fundamentalist Christians...sorry...stupidity.

http://www.wlwt.com/r/25961768/detail.html

Twat in a Hat!

http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2010/03/twat-in-hat.html

Lono alerted me to this. God knows how he found it, probably searching for some pornographic hats. "Penis hat" in google fails to turn up anything as good as Twat in a Hat. It does, however, turn up this alarming hat:

http://www.amazon.com/Zoogster-Penis-Hat/dp/B002IALSQK

We do the work, that Ass gets the credit.

I am posting this on behalf of Lono, who apparently doesn't remember how to work his computer...either that, or God is SO mad at him, that he has permanently fucked up his computer. It's probably the second reason.

Anyhow, here is his excellent tirade:

Well, after over two months stuck some 700 meters underground, miners in Chile are finally being pulled out of a hole drilled into the mine to rescue them. The miners ride up the shaft in a specially designed rescue pod, just barely smaller than the dimensions of the hole. Thus far, they emerge seemingly in good health and spirits, and are being shuttled to the surface at a somewhat faster pace than initially expected.

Seventeen days after the mine collapse, the miners were discovered to be alive and rescue operations launched. Engineers, geologists and other experts began to meticulously hammer out a plan to retrieve the miners as quickly as possible. This entailed drilling three different rescue shafts, using three different drilling rigs. Psychologists and NASA experts were called in to determine how best to keep the miners mentally fit and functional for the months it would take to finally reach them. Medical professionals were on hand to ensure that the miners would be physically able to endure both the time underground and the no doubt claustrophobic ride to the surface. Food, medicine, video links, entertainment were all lowered down smaller shafts so that the miners’ needs would be taken care of. In the end, it appears that all has gone according to plan and that the miners are going to emerge safe and with a hell of a story to tell.

Now, who gets the credit? Well, fuck, God of course! Almost every comment I have read or heard coming from the miners, their relatives and supporters thank the Almighty for His help in rescuing these men. It boggles the mind. First of all, and most importantly, this kind of nonsense is an insult to every person who worked for hours on end, day after day, diligently planning and digging and otherwise working their asses off to orchestrate the rescue. To suddenly ascribe it all to an invisible God is, frankly, a slap in the face for all those involved. Secondly, where the fuck was God in the first place. He seems to have a penchant for skiving off and having a cold one when there is work to do. Couldn’t he just *poof* them out of the hole and be done with it? Now that would have been impressive and would also have converted and humbled legions of non-believers while allowing the Pope and his ilk a snarky ‘told you so’. Why did the Big Guy let this happen in the first place? What an asshole.

I know that Chile is a very religious country, having if memory serves, been overrun by Catholic nutters who arrived in fleets of ships and proceeded to rape and slaughter almost all the indigenous peoples and then taking all the gold for themselves, all in the name of goo ol’ Buddy Christ. Consequently, after centuries of having Christianity literally beaten into them, the masses cling to their patently ridiculous mythology, to the exclusion of rational thought and giving credit where credit is fucking due. I personally do not believe any God or Gods exist, having never been presented with even a shred of evidence to support this supposition. Barring Jesus appearing on a grilled cheese sandwich, or a miracles that can more likely be attributed to spontaneous remission or medical intervention (in the case of illnesses), coincidence or plain dumb luck. Now I don’t suspect it will happen, nor do I hope it does, but if the shaft suddenly collapsed and trapped the remainder underground until further notice, perhaps crushing some poor bastard in the capsule while en route to the surface, would these ninnies still attribute it to God? More likely, it would be seen as the work of the devil, or some unfathomable link in God’s great plan. This kind of fuzzy-brained thinking puzzles and annoys the shit out of me.

Be that as it may, I don’t expect anything to change anytime soon. People will continue to praise God for his mercy and beneficence. He will continue to be thanked for from pulling a few hapless souls out of plane crashes while happily allowing incineration of the rest of the passengers. He will be acknowledged on bent knee for the work of antibiotics rather than the scientists or physicians who developed and prescribed them. He will be kowtowed to for his brilliance in not flooding all of some tropical island hit by a hurricane. He will even win football games for those who pray just hard enough. While we humans work fucking hard over generations to overcome the brutal reality of existence, to eke out a living on this mostly inhospitable ball of dirt in an uncaring and immense universe that gives not one shit about us, the faithful will take our toil and hand the kudos over to imaginary friends. It all comes down to thinking critically...but thinking is so darned hard! Should God exist, and should this God be the omnipotent, omniscient being of the Bible, He is a c#nt. He is a lazy, vindictive, insecure and wholly psychotic ass who can’t be bothered to reveal himself to us in any unambiguous manner. Yet his flock of boneheads (I am not much for cultural relativism) continue to minimize the actual physical labour of those who cumulatively SAVED THEIR LOVED ONE’S LIVES and who DESERVE PRAISE AND THANKS AND RESPECT and hand it over, lock, stock and barrel to their impotent imaginary fairy. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Lono is famous...again

Lono is in the newspaper again! That is at least four letters he has had published in the Ottawa Citizen to my total of zero. In fairness to my ego, I haven't tried yet, but even so, I am getting an ass kicking of biblical proportions.

Anyhow, a fire has been lit under my ass, and I am now on a quest to get in the paper. I'm debating between siding with Lono and fighting the good fight, or making a mockery of the process by pretending to be a retard, er, I mean Christian.

Here is the link to Lono's hateful spew:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Believers+shouldn+take+offence+free+speech/3402816/story.html

Care for some hypocrisy with your inaccuracy?

Boy, a lot wrong with today's missive from the Cathloholic News Service:

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1003136.htm

The basic position of the church, as expressed by a high ranking wizard, is that using small collections of cells from in vitro fertilization produces for research is the same as "the sacrifice of human beings." Quick, someone tell God! Not even counting all the real humans he manages to kill every year, but God is one avid abortionist. Every time God causes a spontaneous abortion, do we say he is making human sacrifices? We probably should. And God isn't even using the cells for anything, that prick! In contrast, scientists are using little blobs of cells from petrie dishes to help people walk again. Seems different to me. Of course, I am not of the mind that making people walk again should remain the exclusive purview of faith healers and Jesus. I often find myself trusting the evidence-based assertions of those damn dirty scientists, even if they are heathens.

Also from the article, stem cells are described as "totipotent," and that such cells "tend to reproduce a whole organism or individual, but not specialized cells." I'm not sure what biology class the author failed, but last time I checked, the whole organism is made of specialized tissues. It is theoretically possible for stem cells to make cells that have the characteristics of a given tissue- that is what totipotent means. However, reproduction of a whole organism or individual (whatever that means) is not something the cell does on its own- rather, it requires a complex environment- like being in a womb, or complex treatment with a variety of growth factors. These little cell blobs aren't sitting in a dish of kool-aid slowly turning into human beings. Only a retard, or a religious dummy, would think that is how stem cells work*.

* Before any one of our grand total of 3 readers calls me out, I know this last part is a "straw-man." However, by calling it a "straw man," that makes you a sexist. It's "straw-person." Now how do you feel, you oppressive tyrant?!

Douchebag of the Week

I know that Lono is planning to spew about this guy, but I figured I would prime the pumps by stealing his idea. Here is what I am talking about http://www.smh.com.au/world/irans-supreme-leader-seeks-music-ban-20100804-115xn.html

The most bewildering part is the Ayatollah's comment that people should "spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful skills, and fill their time with sport and healthy recreations instead of music." Christ, I don't even know where to start with that one. Honestly. I've been rendered typeless. Help me out, please. Anyone?

Anyhow, for stupidity so vast that it has deprived me of any ability or desire to argue rationally, the Ayatollah gets the first ever 'Douchebag of the Week' award here at Christinaction! Bravo! (Well, not really, but you know what I mean).

In any case, I hope to make Douchebag of the Week a somewhat regular feature here at the blog. At least, I hope I can get my shit together often enough to find a weekly douchebag. It might be a Douchebag of the Bi-week. Not for a lack of material, of course, but mostly because I suffer from one of the seven deadlies (sloth).

AMEN!

Temple Trouble and Icky

Ah, Temple, how nice and gratifying that the cheap little button I aquired for you is causing distress for Christian and spouse alike. First off, with all due respect for your significant other, it isn't supposed to be 'funny' in and of itself. The reaction it seems to generate most certainly is. This was one of the milder statements of atheistic worldview that was available at TAM. Some were much more mocking and funny. One I recall had the words 'born okay the first time'. Another said 'if you want peace, renounce Jesus and Allah'. How about 'Gods don't kill people. People with Gods kill people'. One more: 'religion. Because its easier not to think'. So a 'No god' button is hardly the most inflammatory one imaginable. On the other hand, if wearing a 'no God' button is enough to cause apoplexy in Christians, why do they proudly sport buttons and stickers trumpeting their own faith in an entirely unproven and improbable god? I refer of course to the 'Jesusfish' emblem, one that, despite residing in a nominally secular society, I still find attached to mini-vans and cars on a daily basis. It is not personally annoying to me. It merely helps me to instantaneously identify the intellectually feeble and lazy, at least in the realm of the theological.

But let's take a look at Icky's comments:

It is probably a group huddle of people who deserately don't want to believe in anything, telling each other that is[sic] is all okay. Serioulsy!

I find this a curious statement on a number of levels. First off, Icky speculates on what this disparate and diverse group of individuals think, without having attended the meeting in question or, I will venture, ever spent time in the presence of skeptics and free-thinkers. More than likely Icky would find such a group to be friendly, non-threatening and moer than happy to consider any argument and then weigh it on the basis of merit i.e. evidence. Secondly, to say that (and I will speak for the collective here) we don't 'believe' in anything equally curious. Belief is equivalent to 'faith' which is essentially to accept a position about something without having adequate proof. I don't want to believe in anything. I will however accept that something is true based on the evidence presented to me. I don't believe in unicorns, or fairies, or God because no demonstrable evidence has been presented to me.

One has to believe in something, otherwise there is no purpose or meaning in life.

What does Icky mean by 'believe in something'? I suspect he is suggesting that we are special and that we have a higher purpose to fufill, based on some divine plan. To this I say codswallop! Icky, how can I put this, all the evidence suggests that we have no preordained 'purpose' as such. We are, again based on unbiased scientifically verifiable evidence, not particularly special or important. We exist as the result of a series of cosmic events, entirely purposelessly directed, and find ourselves in the rather lucky position of being alive here and now. Humanity is really insignificant and the universe gives not a whit whether we are here or not. It would continue on rather nicely, thank you very much, in the absence of our kind, and will one day do just so. Sorry Icky, you are not special, just a lucky collection of chemicals that are organized as you for a while...This is not to say that our lives are meaningless. One's 'purpose' to use Icky's word, is what we make it. Personally, I will try to leave this planet a little better than when I entered, be kind and considerate to others, enjoy my life and take great pleasure in the universe and learning what little I can about it while I am here. Hey, I learned to fucking juggle at TAM, a skill that I continue to practice and improve, and certainly more worthy of my time than kowtowing to an imaginary being who displays the cruel moral standards of a psycho/sociopath.

Finally:

There is nothing in the human genome that accounts for why we have the cognitive, rational, emotional and creative capacity that separates human life from animal life. DO the TAM people talk about such things, or do they just hold hands and go, "Ohhhhhh, life is good!"

Icky's argument is one from ignorance. I can't see how we could have evolved to be rational, thinking creative beings therefore 'Godidit'. Icky, just because you, or for the sake of argument, scientists know how these things arose does not mean it will never be discovered. Hell, diseases used to be demons, the earth sat in the middle of all things, etc. Science is devoted to finding shit out, and by the way there is nothing wrong in saying 'I don't know'. It is more intellectually honest than pinning everything on a being you cannot demonstrate exists. If you are able to, please roll out the evidence (without recourse to spouting scripture). I will consider it and if I find it convincing, I will accept your God belief as true. Incidentally, the TAM speakers do indeed address such topics. We had a slew of neurobehavioral scientists and such speaking about these very topics. By the way, while every single detail of the origin of the aforementioned 'mysteries' has not been worked out, scientists now have a pretty good understanding of how these attributes came to be. In a nutshell, they have proven to be evolutionarily selected as beneficial for our species and society in general. For example, clearly cognition, the ability to think about situations, is an evolutionary advantage. Ditto for rationalism. Emotions likewise serve a purpose in that they allow others to interpret our moods and feelings and respond accordingly, the very essence of societal interaction. Creativity as well can be seen to be an evolutionary advantage. It involves communicating ideas to others, problem solving and a host of other higher cognitive functions that serve to unite us. In fact, your implication that the above traits are somehow unique to humanity is demonstrably false. Many animals, primarily mammals and birds display high levels of cognitive abilities, have the ability to pass on learned behaviors through teaching (arguably a creative pursuit), are clearly emotional and, at least in primates, are able to form societal structures that mirror our own.

Icky, I surmise that your grasp of biological science is either not that great (not insulting you here) or if it is, you are able to apply rational thought to all the areas of your life except your theological belief. Icky, you have been indoctrinated into a cult, a belief system that is predicated on clearly contradictory and ambiguous text, based on the inculcated fear of hellfire and the carrot of a heaven where you might dwell in hapiness for all eternity, if only you follow all of the arbitrary rules and teachings in your holy book. Your ilk have not yet, not ever, presented even a shred of evidence to back up your God. I am going to suggest that you never will or can.

The universe is a marvelous and wondrous thing Icky. Come to TAM, if you dare, with an open mind and you might, despite your protestations to the contrary learn something. We're nice folks, really. Sometimes we even hold hands and say'Ohhhhhh, life is good!' ... and why the hell not? It is a pretty good deal. I refuse to waste time worrying about mythology. Icky, I suspect you reject Allah, and Buddha, and Zeus and Poseidon, and all other Gods except Jesus and his Dad (but they're the same thing, right?). If so, you are only one God away from being an atheist. Good luck.