Postcards to say something: 011

Simple, beautiful and only a meanyhead would deny the existence of such a wonderful being! You cannot disprove this.

No, we’re talking about the unicorn.

(A nod of the goateed chin to our friend Mr C.T. Pot!)

Postcards to say something: 010

An old friend, Anonymous Trad, sent me this. Like the lovely folk songs Mr Trad has been providing for a number of years now, the origin of this picture is shrouded in mystery.

As you look, observe the layers of meaning: an artist’s work is stolen and made into an image by people working to make an image, and somebody has come along and added yet another layer of meaning to the image.

And as for the big chairs? Takes a lot of chutzpah.

Postcards to say something: 009

When I had a Jesus, he was looking out for the little guy, standing up against mercenary, heartless authoritarians.

Other people have a stern Jesus with a stick, making everybody do his bidding or else. Rich Jesus and Pharisee Jesus seem to be the Malibu Barbie of accessorised deities.

Part of the fun is that you can dress up Jesus just like your fantasies!

Sundays JesusAAL submitted picture

Ignoring the starving children, the Jesus All About Life campaign is focusing on cute pictures and claiming jesus gives answers, while really just ignoring them.

Here’s their Sunday contribution on FaceBook.

Maybe they should use ones like this?

Maybe caption this one? (Warning graphic images of dead children from natural disaster) You know, something about how jesus creates tsunamis that kills children then says ‘it’s to teach you to believe in me, so you can go to heaven’. What a bastard. This isn’t a laughing matter, I’d like to see exactly how this jesus is answering this.

I’ve actually asked on some christian sites about JAAL, and recommended a list of answers that christians really need to answer to gain some credibility, I’ll repost them here :

If you REALLY want to make a difference, and reach non-christians, you have to face and answer the massive evidence and critiques of your faith with actual ANSWERS. You don’t give any. You just state ‘Jesus is the answer’, with nothing to back it up. There is basically ‘he will make you feel better if you believe’.

You have to :

1/ Show logic and reason behind the existence of a supernatural entity other than pointing continually at your bible and using it’s phrases to point out positions that most all humans find totally obvious regardless as we are evolutionary socialistic beings.

2/ Show how your god is the one true god, amongst hundreds of others, and thousands that have gone before you.

3/ Show us the evidence of the claims for a young earth, and the ‘fact’ of creation that you claim is an alternative Theory (and look up how a scientific theory actually works) to the evolution of humans from a common ancestor to other life. Actually read up on what evolution actually is, that it is seperate from abiogenesis and cosmology, and approach the facts, not the straw man you put forward

4/ Stop trying to point at non-belief, and saying it is a belief (like not stamp collecting is a ‘hobby’) as it does not make sense to anyone but you.

5/ Explain why we have mountains of evidence that contradict the creationists claims, why the mass of evidence in radioactivity, tree rings, ice cores, corals, supernovas – from astronomy, biology, physics, geology, chemistry and archeology all combine and go against your faiths concepts.

6/ explain why your god has always existed, and the universe in some form, couldn’t. (you may want to actually read up on scientific concepts like singularities and bubble universes etc etc)

somehow I am pretty sure none of this will be answered, they’ll just keep on keeping on commoditising their jesus.

So what’s the answer? praying to Jesus? Or actually getting off your knees and doing something?

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 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.

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.

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.

The Theory of Evolution – What a scientific theory actually means

I have had to deal with so many christians lately with the standard reply that ‘evolution is just a theory’, and that there is another theory, that of ‘Intelligent Design’.

I thought I would break down what a scientific theory actually means to try and make it as small a possible explanation, for those christians hard of hearing, and are totally ignoring what ‘theory’ means in science.

The ‘Theory of Evolution’ is different to the ‘Fact of Evolution’. Evolution is a fact, however in science, theory means something, it does not mean the whole concept is still in dispute, evolution is fact, it is talking about the mechanism. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them.

Commonly ‘fact’ is used to refer to the observable changes in organisms’ traits over generations, evolution is PROVEN FACT. It occurs.

The word ‘theory’ is reserved for the mechanisms that cause these changes, that part is the Theory of Evolution.

Now to understand what theory means in science. In science, a current theory is a theory that has no equally acceptable or more acceptable alternative theory, and has survived attempts at falsification. That is, there have been no observations made which contradict it to this point and, indeed, every observation ever made either supports the current theory or at least does not falsify it by contradicting it completely. A revision of the current theory, or the generation of a new theory is necessary if new observations contradict the current theory, as the current findings are in need of a new explanation. However, the falsification of a theory does not falsify the facts on which the theory is based.

Evolution is FACT, the Theory of Evolution is the accepted idea of Darwin’s, as well as 2 others built up since the discovery of DNA by various scientists, over WHY evolution is fact. Darwin just started a whole CHAIN of ideas since his initial discovery, that build the Theory of Evolution.

The three main mechanisms that produce evolution in the theory, are natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow. Natural selection favors genes that improve capacity for survival and reproduction. Genetic drift is random change in the frequency of alleles, caused by the random sampling of a generation’s genes during reproduction. Gene flow is the transfer of genes within and between populations.

geddit?

How is Intelligent Design a fact? What is the theory, that has no contradictions, that explains it?

Intelligent Design is not a fact, it is not a theory. It’s a BELIEF.