Scrapings from the comment bin

Golly, it must be one of those Jungian synchronicity things… I was preparing a visual response (above) to one of the many comments that just don’t make it, and a colleague was replying by mail to the same member of Generation SuperficialBook™.

Here’s what he had to say:

I guess another mod deleted your comment to save you from looking like an idiot for not actually reading content on the pages posts, but just looking at pictures, then judging us on that.

What drives me personally, is that christians continually force themselves to have more rights than others. They also fight basic concepts of science, where humanity has to deal with people who believe bronze age concepts of the earth, and push it into our schools. Religion has a status above and beyond any secular group doing the same thing. Our children are brought up in a world where your bigotry is continually being reinforced as moralistic.

YOUR religion pushes itself and tries to tell OTHERS what to do. You invade our laws and try and tell women what they can do with their bodies, their lives, you say who people can love and show commitment to, you actively stop secular parents from being able to have their children taught ANYTHING while your kids get brainwashed by scripture. You hypocrite.

Have a read of some of these articles, then come back and post something that doesn’t make you look like an uneducated bigot cheers!

Thanks to my colleague Gee Suss.

Postcards to say something: 006

Real estate, motorcycles, flash cars, Lear jets: use of the church’s this or that (even the this or that which was especially purchased for your use). The anointing greases the palm.

God wants you to have more money. (Actually, Bob McGuire can keep the poor people as long as the archbishop gets the Money!)

It’s a great lurk. The blokes in Acts, who used to serve in distributing to the needy, have been replaced by those who are ready to see their own wants as “needs”, and see to them pretty swiftly.

Government slaves to work on your house? No problem!

And if you’re the shepherd, who gets to say how you spend the wool-cheque, or tell you off for taking a ewe or little lamb to keep you warm at night?

No wonder the campaign points away from the churches, while trying to get people to connect with those churches. You’d be mad to point out the truth.

Religious bigotry in Victoria being made legal

THE Victorian government is expected to announce today that religious groups will be allowed to discriminate against gays and single mothers in a controversial compromise reached on workers’ rights.

Poor Christians!

Would these religious groups think it fair that it was enshrined in law, that one was able to discriminate against those with faith, based on the fact it undermines lack of belief?

I think not!

This is just plain bigotry.

Postcards from our friends: 001

Thanks to our friends who contribute postcards and comments: here’s the first few in an ongoing series.

We promise they won’t jump all over your screen or choke the household bandwidth like the other guys. (Also, contains no hot chips!)

More to come, and a big welcome to Gee Suss’s brother Mo Suss, who’s joing the Legion editorial cadre.

Jesus. All About Life bus shelters campaign posters download

Pretty deep this JAAL campaign

I mean really. Big chairs?

You can check out the downloadable files here if you really want to be dissapointed like me.

The piece is by the Italian sculptor Giancarlo Neri and is about ‘writers block’, which is an affliction in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. It’s basically like this concept of god and the bible, I guess this god suffers pretty badly as there’s not been any new material for a loooong time.

Why don’t they thank the work and insight of Giancarlo? I mean credit to the creator of the piece where credit is due .. Jesus?  Thank Jesus, not the actual designer? huh? Did this bloke have the choice whether to make it or not?

Can you do something that god did not predict, is that it? If you can, then god is not omniscient. If you can’t, then there is no choice, you are doing exactly what god predicted before choosing to create just like a machine. Yea sure, to you it may seem like free will from the little perspective you have of everything, but to an omniscient god, you are doing exactly what was predicted, when the whole of creation was set in motion. You cannot deviate from that. ie: fated. You can’t have ‘choice’ and free will if you can’t act differently from what was known fully before you were even existed and set in motion to play out it’s part with an already defined end. Let alone that that being created these ‘souls’ to burn in eternal torment for eternity. Sounds like one hell of an evil twisted kind of supreme being to me.

I thought there would be something that would make a bit more sense in these posters, or at least attempted too. Pretty much any kid I know, let alone adult would think it pretty lame. “Thankyou Jesus for birds that look like they’re wearing pants”?

“Thankyou jesus for my priviledge of being born into a rich country where we can afford to put lame arse posters up while innocent kids starve in another to ‘teach me something’”. yea makes sense, not.

I know this post is a bit of a lame approach to critique, but what kind of substance is their to critique?? .. is it just me or is a lot of money being spent on some pretty out of touch attempts to raise awareness of their literary creation? Is this the best they can do with raising awareness of their faith? I don’t get it.

Postcards to say something: 004

Like the families and lovers of characters in TV detective dramas are always getting killed. arrested and so forth, it seems that hanging around with Jeebus will get you into all kinds of trouble. That car accident that killed half-a-dozen, “and God spared me”…. hey, doesn’t that mean he was a complete turd-croquette to the other six?

Or maybe shit just happens, and we think we’re important. What do you think, O Unique and Preshus Snowflake? (This is a rhetorical question.)

Postcards to say something: 003

Postcards to say something: 001

And thank you, reader Nerdiah, for our first postcard.

This is why good christians should never French kiss.

Chalk One Up For Jeebus The Graffitist, or “Postcards From The Dull Edge”

So, what’s new in the game of promoting Jeebus without mentioning bibles, churches, and all the other cultural and literary baggage that would normally be associated with this figure (who is, after all, a product of bibles and churches)?

There’s postcards… in which people express their gratitude for hot chips, termite mounds, poorly-cropped photos of people making faces, Ferraris, and dogs. Lots of dogs. I’m fairly sure the chips were made by Spiros Papathanassiou, from spuds grown by Bert Fernackerpan. As for the Ferrari… does one of them fit through the eye of a needle?

Top marks, anyway, to the team who are still trying to draw the fire away from the bad bits about Jeebus’s followers by making him all that much more nebulous.  The control over at that site is more rigid than we practice here: after all, we do let the occasional gripe or pretending-to-be-atheism-curious post in here from christians. But on the site of the Farceur, the (six-figure) Sum, and the Holy Post(card), there’s no chance of thanking anybody for herpes, genocide, deformed babies or jock itch.

We reserve the right, at any time, to refuse or remove any material from the Site for any reason in our absolute discretion, including without limitation where the material is considered obscene, offensive, inappropriate, blasphemous, or infringing upon the rights of any third party.

And of course, you don’t own it any more once it’s up there. Somewhere an ad agency creative is laughing, while Jeebus’s zealous people do his or her work, in their own intent-but-often-inept way. I loved the one that had still managed to maintain its “insert your text here” template.

But, just in case you’re wondering why our toothy little friend is grinning, he’s seen that postcards are not the bottom of the barrel…

In the spirit of Mr Eternity, Arthur Stace who wrote the word Eternity in chalk on the streets of Sydney for many years, the Eternity Chalk Challenge wants church youth groups across NSW to write ‘Eternity’ on as many streets as they can.

The Challenge will run from 1-7 October 2009 in conjunction with the Jesus. All about life campaign running on TV and other media. The Challenge is a unique, fun opportunity for young people across NSW to do something special in the holidays, for a great purpose.

The youth group that scores the most points in the Eternity Chalk Challenge will win an amazing weekend away at the stunning Youthworks Port Hacking camp complex in Sydney.

A fantastic prize will be awarded to the most creative expression of ‘Eternity’ chalked on the pavement.

The prize for the most creative expression of ‘Eternity’ in chalk is a free overseas Mission Immersion trip sponsored by Jesus. All about life.

The individual prize is open to anyone aged 16 or over who is a member of a youth group registered for the Challenge.

I hope the minions of Jeebus keep it legal. It would also be a shame if they inspired others to edit, add, erase or parody the chalkings…

Meanwhile, there are plenty of things christians could be up to, quietly. And some of them are, probably. Shame about the guys with the bullhorn and the billboard.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

There. Some of you thought I couldn’t spell it. But I have it.

In particular, big props to Bob McGuire.  Bob is so christlike, the establishment (as personified by one Archbishop, ironically surnamed “Hart”) apparently want him gone.

Now, there is no “caritas” in the Archbishopric(sp?): none of your “The poor and street kids of St Kilda need not fear, as here’s what we’re doing to carry on this vital work.” Priorities don’t seem to take the poor and oppressed into account when there’s turbulent priests to be ridded of..

Just, out of the blue…

“It’s the archbishop. I’ll be there in 20 minutes.” I didn’t have time to think or call for help.

Luckily, Judy, the office manager, was present to take notes.

By the time he left, I was feeling 90 years of age, not 75, the age of statutory senility.

He gave me two dates for compliance. One was my birthday. He expects a letter of resignation. The other is a month later. He expects me to vacate the premises.

No good whingeing about lack of courtesy or respect for a senior field officer.

Power makes some people less restrained than they naturally are. Jesus warned about power, especially among his disciples.

I hope Bob’s Foundation can carry on: from what I have been able to see, it’s not church-controlled.

You know, if there were more Bob McGuires and less Denis Harts, Benny Hinns and Jim Wallaces, christianity itself might have a fighting chance of being respected.

Can you tell the management of most major christian organisations from the Pharisees without a field guide?

As another little, old, bald guy once put it:

LATE ADD: It’s apparently about Bob spending money on the poor. Well, that is just so un-Catholic: what was he thinking?