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.

Religion wants to maintain a monopoly on ethics in Australia

Religious groups have traditionally found their power in maintaining that only through belief, and usually THEIR belief, are morals maintained.

The State Government’s religious education advisory panel is going to fight a pilot program that offers ethics classes to primary school students who have opted out of scripture classes.

We know whats best for your children

They are fighting against critical thinking. It’s dangerous to religion as they want people to believe that only their particular god defines what is moral. Bigots.

Are they saying, that without their belief in their god, they would run around raping and pillaging, murdering and abusing? How interesting. Morals and ethics can completely be explained with science, and are not the total domain of religion. Evolutionary biology and sociobiology. I find it degrading that religion passes this basic fundamental humanistic quality off to their god. Recently, the concepts of ethical evolution has become a major area of study in scientific circles, due to the overwhelming observable evidence.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzAuXwwEZCo[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIYQ4zK2HUA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo3be0F7sE8[/youtube]

The only controversy over it comes from the religious. But then again, it happens to everything that does not fit their world view.

Our morals came about from the fact we are a social animal, we have highly advanced social morals that are very well explained by science.

Indeed Darwin brought it up in Descent Of Man, it’s nothing new :

“any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man.” (ch. 4)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_ethics

Blatant assumptions of the total nature of everything being attributed to a god is degrading to the sheer enormity and brilliance of life. Always the ‘magic man’ did it for them.

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.)

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?

Wipe Your Feet!

The JAAL writers have lives: active lives, not necessarily centered around waiting for the next reader to pop along here, or the next piece of hate mail.

One of Jeebus’s little helpers, on a visit here,  interpreted that in his own special way to mean something or other about our worth as people, or the site or something. Frankly, I couldn’t be bothered checking. See, it isn’t his site, and he’s forgotten those instructions on manners that Jeebus, or Paul (or one of those unknown forgers identified by Bart Ehrman) put in his bible. I’ll give him Philippians 2:3 as a headstart.

Others, for reasons of their own, have chosen to view this site as a battlefield where they may earn themselves public glory fighting for Jeebus. One can imagine the results if these guys employed the same tactics in real-life: assault charges would be the least of it.

And it’s not like these chaps even want to defend their actions using that same bible they don’t know all that well.  For the major part it’s ad hominem attacks or the cyber-equivalent of Dick Size Taunts. Perhaps there is some modern-day extension of those complete absolutions which were given to those going to fight in the Crusades, so all the killing, and any torture, rape, robbery and pillaging, before the fact or during the battle, just Didn’t Count. Dibs. So There. I guess Jeebus can forgive an awful lot of stuff if you imagine him hard enough.

But, apart from being God’s Own Entitlement Bitches, just taking their place in the divinely-ordained order of things right bloody now, thank-ye-very-much, and never mind the consequences, some of the commenters seem to want more… there was a spate from a single source recently.

It was nothing new, the content of these would-be comments. The old peppered moth thing (as if evolution, or a lack thereof, made atheism less relevant, or somehow caused a god to appear through the gaps), and the same fellow having a go at the old Stalin/Hitler/Mao tactic (see? it’s so old I don’t even need to describe it!) in order to show what Baddies those Atheists are.

I don’t get paid to deal with this sort of kindy-bedtime-story stuff any more. Then along comes yet another “poster” from the same IP (although this particular persona was able to use capitalisation), with their swipe.

Could the Prophet PZ Myers have foretold their coming?

Bill Dembski’s Intelligent Design course at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has some interesting course requirements.
provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling 2,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade).

Another 20% of the grade comes from the development of a Sunday School lesson plan.

The whole course page is a rich vein of absurdity. Have fun mining it!

Maybe the source of these entirely coincidental hits is not a course or club that demands its members get out there and actively antagonise an actively unchristian site. Does it matter?

I’m sure I’d get very short shrift and a long push to the front gate, should I show up in a church or a christian forum with the attitude they show. And this is NOT a forum.

I’m pushed to find time to write: why would I want to devote some of what little I have, to gratifying the Precious Little Snowflakes, so they can earn their Cyber-Martyr Badge in Royal Rangers, or whatever the club may be?

Answer: I don’t. That is why I give the blighters one shot. And it normally seems to hit them just behind the place where big and second toe meet… just where Jeebus’s sandal strap might have gone, or a good place for a nail hole (at least in some paintings).

Those I’ve annoyed know who they are, and although they may not have wiped their feet on the way in, they can now use the biblical injunction to “shake the dust off their sandals”, along with the folk wisdom about the swing door and their buttocks.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought of late to the human debris left behind after the Jeebus Juggernaut passes, and I think the wreckage of after-christianity is more deserving of my time than its martyr wannabees. But that is yet another story….

Black

PS: Other JAAL writers might not share my comment policy, and that’s their prerogative.

I delete pointless, stupid comments. Spend your Sunday School money on a site if you want a soapbox.

McJeebus – the Sappy Meal pick ‘n’ choose menu

Ever tried to stand on a stair that wasn’t there? Swiped at an optical illusion and (of course) missed?

If you have, you’ll be part-way to identifying with somebody I know. As a good, skeptical atheist person, my friend has been known to reply with questions and doubt, when buzzed by the whiny mosquitoes of constant evangelising. Indeed, my friend decided to put in some serious work on deprogramming…

…my younger sister. The irony is that she has the information. To her credit she has watched almost all of my atheist DVDs including ‘How the earth began’ and still chooses to believe in her god. Her faith seems impenetrable.

… Her attraction to Christianity is that she feels it provides answers to the randomness of life; it provides consolation and hope. She enjoys the warm of fuzzy of a sky daddy looking out for her. It helps her deal with death and believes it gives her moral guidance.

… Any anomaly I raise with her she may concede but ultimately puts it down to unquestionable faith. “I don’t have the answers but that doesn’t stop me from believing.”

Her church is youth based, Hillsong in its style, lots of singing and praise. It fills her needs to be loved and to extend love to others. It seems details are unimportant. Trying to discuss religion with her is like shadow boxing; an exercise in frustration. So I don’t bother. As long as the idea of god serves a purpose, she’ll hold onto the delusion.

At McJeebus™, the Church Of All Spirit, No Substance, we don’t mind if you ditch the pickle: bins are provided. Straight to the sundae every Sunday? No wucking Mc Jeebus™ Flurries!

It doesn’t really matter what the young footsoldier of Corporate Jesus believes. They don’t have to do more than the old Kenneth Hagin Cop-Out -  ‘The Bible says it, I believe it and that settles it!’ – for that matter, they don’t need to know more Bible than a couple of soundbites such as you might find in a Darlene Zschech song. Certainly contextual reading is out of style. In the age of Twitter, it seems Jesus’s frontliners only need to be twits.

As long as the collections keep coming in, the recruiting happens (come on, how many kids/young adults go to Youth Alight or Plastic Shakers or any of the Jesus Lite™ MoshPits for the noise and proximity of potential jigginess? Lots, I bet!) and the Merch keeps selling, things are good.

Need footsoldiers for a demonstration of numbers, signatures for a development application (sign twice, it’s extra nice!), “volunteers” for those lucrative symposium/conference/rally/merch opportunity occasions? Just keep the excitement flowing, and hordes of young’uns will stack your chairs, stuff your envelopes, carry your (notes and cheques only, please) holey-bottomed collection buckets.

There’s a certain comfort for the management when questions aren’t asked. The members who are just there for the “Ooh! Ponies!” feeling don’t have a foundation to rock. By the time the Holy Spirit Of Endorphins™ has stopped stimulating them, they’re either settled-in as regular tithers (and breeders of NextGen McJeebus™ Consumers) and will sit quietly, or used-up, and should be swept aside for fresh meat. You don’t get to sit too long in Mickey Dee’s if you’re not buying, and woe betide the blow-ins who just want to use the dunnies.

If you’ve gotten this far down the page and haven’t blown an artery, you’re probably an atheist or agnostic. Good. Here’s some advice: don’t bother with the McJeebus Happy-Mealers. You won’t convince ‘em of anything while they’re too busy chasing the sugar rush. Don’t waste your time: you can come back when they’re older and knackered from a constant diet of rubbish. They’ll eventually be out of the drive-thru: as Tanya Levin says of one of these churches: “There is a 50 per cent turnover every five years. Hillsong is renowned for having a very big back door.”

After pap like that, a diet of stone-ground skepticism will probably be very welcome.