Jericho: Proof of God's existance!

Thank you, God!!

Max: Same Old Story

Via the International Herald Tribune

A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

Max: John Scalzi Fights Moron Marriage

Well, fine. Since apparently it’s the fashion to deny marriage status to people ... simply because we don’t like them and their marriages make us twitchy, by the power vested in me by whichever existential and ontological reality conveniently lets me get away with it, I hereby declare that marriages which include any of the following never ever existed:

Max: The Lord's Day

Today's sermon:

Max: Bob's Bible Tales

This is the word of the Lord. Really. Check your Bible if you doubt.

Max: LHC v God

Why can't I have the kind of crazy that comes with fun stories?

Max: Science; Threat or Menace?

Max: Atheism in the Millitary

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

One of the darkest developments of many dark developments in the Bush years has been the slow ascent of Christianism as a core value of the military. The promotion of Christianists throughout the armed services, the insistence by the president that no public institution be regarded as a place where religion should be silent, clear discrimination against Jews and atheists in military educational institutions: the possibility of a secular military dedicated to defending all Americans regardless of their faith or lack of it has been called into question under the current administration. The resilience of the ban on gays - while the military has granted a record number of waivers to criminals - can only be understood if one sees the US military as an increasingly religious institution at this point, and not a rational secular one. The latest story of an atheist soldier being threatened by superiors is believable in this context.

Once again, Sullivan shows his fellow Christians what "Christian" -- Christ like -- means as he calls Christians in the military out for their mistreatment of Atheists in uniform.

Max: Sexpelled

Max: The Autism "Epidemic"

An explanation for the "increasing$quot; incidence of autism

Fashion is a strange thing, and many fields are susceptible to it—not least, medicine. There has, for example, been a vogue (among commentators, if not among doctors) to ascribe the rising number of cases of autism diagnosed over the past couple of decades to childhood vaccinations against measles, mumps and rubella. That this is fashion rather than reality is suggested by the fact that the explanation proffered in Britain has been that such vaccines provoke an immune response that damages the nervous system, whereas Americans have blamed residual mercury in the same vaccines.

We had once come to think of things like mumps, measles, whooping cough, etc as but extinct. But thanks to scientific and mathematical illiteracy, they will soon be on the prowl again. There is a scary degree of stupidity on the march in this country -- the sort of stupidity that thinks it is better to condemn thousands of women to cervical cancer than allow the use of a vaccine that would *gasp* make sex a little safer. Reason seem to still win most of these battles, but it can only win if we are willing to stand up for it -- even in the face of exasperating stupidity.

Max: Creationist Compromise

Read about it at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Blog

Max: State of the Union

Max: Dawkins and Maher Sitting In A Tree

Max: IL Dem Declares Atheists Have No Rights

Max: Nanotech Declared Witchcraft

Via Science Daily

Is nanotechnology morally acceptable? For a significant percentage of Americans, the answer is no, according to a recent survey of Americans' attitudes about the science of the very small.

I was hoping this stupidity came from a failure to grasp what nanotech really is. But;

The moral qualms people of faith express about nanotechnology is not a question of ignorance of the technology, says Scheufele, explaining that survey respondents are well-informed about nanotechnology and its potential benefits.

Welcome back to the dark ages...

Max: Our God Fearing, Christian Founding Fathers...

did not fear God and weren't particularly Christian.

"[The Founding Fathers] didn't believe that Jesus was divine. They thought he was a great moral teacher," says Wills. "They didn't believe in the efficacy of prayer. They thought 'God doesn't need our advice.' "

From Voice of America

Max: Anonymous

Modern life is science fiction.

Max: Agree to Disagree, as Long as You Shut the Fuck Up

Archbishop Burke wants infidel punished

St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke said this morning that St. Louis University basketball coach Rick Majerus should be disciplined over his public comments supporting abortion rights and stem cell research.

Majerus made his comments at a campaign appearance for Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday night during an interview with KMOV (Channel 4).

During an interview with the Post-Dispatch today in Washington, where Burke is attending the March for Life, he said the coach should be disciplined.

"It's not possible to be a Catholic and hold those positions," Burke said. "When you take a position in a Catholic university, you don't have to embrace everything the Catholic church teaches. But you can't make statements which call into question the identity and mission of the Catholic church."

Max: America's Armageddonites

America's Armageddonites: "Utopian fantasies have long transfixed the human race. Yet today a much rarer fantasy has become popular in the United States. Millions of Americans, the richest people in history, have a death wish. They are the new “Armageddonites,” fundamentalist evangelicals who have moved from forecasting Armageddon to actually trying to bring it about."

Jericho: Pasta with a rich Dogma sauce ...

I thought that the Discordianism was funny. Hail Eris!

I thought the SubGeni were funny. Hail "Bob"!

I think that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is hilarious!

However, it would appear that FSM is getting some official attention.

I think it's funny how religions, even fake religions, come and go. I mean, the Sub-Geni and the Discordians are still around, and they experience ebbs and flows of popularity. But, let's face it, they are on the way out. The Pastafarians are the new, hot parody!

What would happen if the parodies joined forces? Why couldn't "Bob" be an avatar of Eris and vice-versa? Eris, "Bob" and FSM - the new Holy Trinity?

Max: Take That, Fundies

Homo Floresiensis, not a midget.

An international team of researchers led by the Smithsonian Institution has completed a new study on Homo floresiensis, commonly referred to as the “hobbit,” a 3-foot-tall, 18,000-year-old hominin skeleton, discovered four years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores. This study offers one of the most striking confirmations of the original interpretation of the hobbit as an island remnant of one of the oldest human migrations to Asia. The research is being published in the Sept. 21 issue of Science.
The team turned its research focus to the most complete of the 12 skeletons discovered and specifically toward three little bones from the hobbit’s left wrist. The research asserts that modern humans and our closest fossil relatives, the Neandertals, have a very differently shaped wrist in comparison to living great apes, older fossil hominins like Australopithecus (e.g., “Lucy”) and even the earliest members of the genus Homo (e.g., Homo habilis, the “handy-man”). But the hobbit’s wrist is basically indistinguishable from an African ape or early hominin-like wrist—nothing at all like that seen in modern humans and Neandertals.

The lead author of the study, Matt Tocheri, a paleoanthropologist in the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program at the National Museum of Natural History, was completely surprised when he first saw casts of the hobbit’s wrist bones. “Up until then, I had no definitive opinion regarding the hobbit debates,” said Tocheri. “But these hobbit wrist bones do not look anything like those of modern humans. They’re not even close!”

The evidence from the hobbit’s wrist is extremely important because it demonstrates further that the hobbit indeed represents a different species of human as was originally proposed by its discoverers. It is not a modern human with some sort of pathology or growth disorder. The distinctive shapes of wrist bones form during the first trimester of pregnancy while most pathologies and growth disorders do not begin to affect the skeleton until well after that time. Therefore, pathologies or growth defects cannot adequately explain why a modern human would have a wrist that was indistinguishable from that of an African ape or primitive hominin.

I am looking forward to seeing how the creationists/ID freaks will spin this.

I guarantee that Richard Dawkin's prediction that this would destroy religion will not come to pass. There is perhaps no force in this universe greater than invincible ignorance.

Max: Nebraska State Senator Sues God

via: Wired Threat Level

Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers filed suit against God Friday, asking a court to order the Almighty and his followers to stop making terrorist threats.

The suit (.pdf), filed in a Nebraska district court, contends that God, along with his followers of all persuasions, "has made and continues to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons." Those threats are credible given God's history, Chambers' complaint says.

Chambers, in a fit of alliteration, also accuses God of causing "fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, and the like."

Likewise the suit accuses God of having his chroniclers "disseminate in written form, said admissions, throughout the Earth in order to inspire fear, dread, anxiety, terror and uncertainty, in order to coerce obedience to Defendant's will."

Max: Moyers on Rove

Max: The Gospel According to Shrub

Shrub talk about the Big G.

1. I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did. Sharm el-Sheikh August 2003

2. I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job.
Statement made during campaign visit to Amish community, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Jul. 9, 2004

Max: Oh My

Pretty album covers.

Max: Ding Dong

The dick is dead.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television minister whose 1979 founding of the Moral Majority galvanized American religious conservatives into a political force, died Tuesday at age 73.

Max: The Masons

Open Sesame

Mammoth sphinxes guard the House of the Temple of the Scottish Rite, a formidable neo-Classical building in the heart of Washington, D.C. Inside, Egyptian hieroglyphics adorn a soaring atrium. The building's nine-foot-thick walls hold human remains. Bronze coiling snakes flank a large wooden throne, canopied in purple velvet, in a second-floor inner sanctum called the Temple Room, where men from around the world gather behind closed doors every two years. Over the centuries the select membership has included signers of the Declaration of Independence; George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and 13 other presidents; Senators Charles Schumer and Robert Dole; Chief Justice Earl Warren and other Supreme Court justices. Formally they are known as Freemasons, but most people know them simply as Masons. And this artfully forbidding edifice, a mile from the White House, is their southern headquarters.

Max: Benny Don't Like Nobody

Pope says science too narrow to explain creation

Pope Benedict, elaborating his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, says science has narrowed the way life's origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question.

The Pope also says the Darwinist theory of evolution is not completely provable because mutations over hundreds of thousands of years cannot be reproduced in a laboratory.

But Benedict, whose remarks were published on Wednesday in Germany in the book "Schoepfung und Evolution" (Creation and Evolution), praised scientific progress and did not endorse creationist or "intelligent design" views about life's origins.

Max: Honorary Irate Weirdo

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Vanuatu cargo cult marks 50 years

One of the world's last surviving cargo cults is celebrating its official 50th anniversary on Tanna island in Vanuatu.

The John Frum Movement worships a mysterious spirit that urged them to reject the teachings of the Church and maintain their traditional customs.

The cult was reinforced during WWII, when US forces landed with huge amounts of cargo - weapons, food and medicine.

Villagers believe the spirit of John Frum sent the US military to their South Pacific home to help them.

Devotees say that an apparition of John Frum first appeared before tribal elders in the 1930s.

He urged them to rebel against the aggressive teachings of Christian missionaries and instead said they should put their faith in their own customs.

Nutbar, cult-leader and enemy of Christian missionaries; this guy is Irate Weirdo material.

Max: Whackjobs

The Earth Is Not Moving

An electromagnet and computerized sensor hidden in its display stand cause the Earth to levitate motionlessly in the air. Could God have engineered something like that for the real Earth? The Bible and all real evidence confirms that this is precisely what He did, and indeed: The Earth is not rotating...nor is it going around the sun.

Please join me in laughing at these inbred retards.

Max: Gaaaaayyy

Haggard Now "Completely Heterosexual", Disgraced Pastor Convinced He's Now "Completely Heterosexual" - CBS News: "One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is 'completely heterosexual.'

Haggard also said his sexual contact with men was limited to the former male prostitute who came forward with sexual allegations, the Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur told The Denver Post for a story in Tuesday's edition.

'He is completely heterosexual,' Ralph said. 'That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing.'"

Max: The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth

As long as they kick ass and take names.

The leaders of BattleCry claim that their religion and values are under attack, but amid spectacular light shows, Hummers, Navy SEALs and military imagery on stage, it is BattleCry that has declared war on everyone else. Its leader, Ron Luce, insists: “This is war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent—the ‘forceful’ ones—will lay hold of the kingdom.”

Max: Thomas Jefferson Hates America

Muslim Congressman Sworn In On TJ's Koran

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he'd take his oath of office on the Koran -- especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.

Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

I love it when the founding fathers stick it to the right-wing nutballs.

Max: Blasphemy Challenge

Jericho: Christian Weirdos

We have blasted the Christian Reich out here nearly weekly. But, when a shining example of a Christian pops his head up, it's our duty to point to him.

Thus, I point you here.

I stand here and DEFY anyone to tell me that these kids are wrong!

So - if these guys are right, as I'm sure they are, will the Reich change? If the Reich doesn't change, what does that make them?