Oh the irony of the Jesus All about Life Campaign

I think I will let the message itself speak, as it does so in volumes

“Thankyou for not judging me or who I chose to spend my life with”

(click image for full size)

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.

Deny the Holy Spirit, home of denial and blasphemy in a simple and elegant solution.

In co-operation with jesusallboutlife.com, a new service has opened up that gives you a quick and easy way to damn yourself for eternity.

Sick and tired of those annoying attempts to save your eternal soul? Why not damn yourself forever and be done with it? We have a sneak peak of a project already taking signatories, that provides a more open service that the Blasphemy Challenge that runs on youtube. A big props goes out to the people at Rational Responders and The God Movie for sparking an initial project in our ongoing atheist ‘projects for fun and profit’.

Don’t despair: there is a way to get preaching, praying, proselytizing pests off your back for ever! In the very same Bible these guys are waving in your face, is the Permanent Solution: “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.” (Mark 3:29)

At DenyTheHolySpirit.com, they want to help. Use their facilities to record your denial, and we’ll provide you with a printable Certificate Of Irrevocable Damnation (coming soon), suitable for framing, display, or mopping up the tears of your grieving religious relatives.

Use our Registry Of The Damned to record your sign-off from the Eternal Harp Orchestra: you can always point ‘em to your own personal link if they don’t believe you.

Stop in at our Store Of The Damned, for “I Deny The Holy Spirit” shirts, “Jesus Can’t Save ME!” wallet cards (repel missionaries faster than any other product), and other unholy pleasures. (Again, these products are coming soon!)

Up In Smoke

No apology is offered to readers who are smokers, or christians, of their own free will. The author has been both, and is now neither.

The article’s vanished from the website of The Australian now, but there are copies all over the web, like sweaty prints in a shroud of Turin, helping with the problem of disbelief. Of course, I mean Roy Eccleston’s article from September 20, 2005: “The Atheist Who’s Selling Jesus”.

The big-bucks media push and website of the Jesus All About Life campaign, set up as part of a multiple-state, multiple-church campaign to spread their big message, is an interesting study in What’s Not Said.

The article begins:

Angus Kinnaird has advised some big brands – the Sydney Olympics, the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, Telstra and Brand Australia to name a few – but admits he has rarely had an assignment so tough.

“I’ve had lots of clients wanting to update their image,” says the Melbourne strategy director of FutureBrand. “But I don’t think I’ve ever come across one that has quite as many problems as the church.”

The Christian church certainly has had its share of difficulties: paedophile priests, an out-of-touch hierarchy, falling attendances in traditional churches, a reluctance to incorporate women, and a lack of relevance to a baby boomer generation bred on freedom, consumerism and self-absorption.

Further in, we read…

The new marketing strategy keeps the church, the Bible and religion well out of the picture. Instead, the spotlight falls on just one star. Jesus is played not as the son of God but a tough-talking no-nonsense philosopher who makes life easier and, incidentally, eternal.

and…

Why Jesus? “That was the only place we had to go,” Kinnaird says. The research shows that the church is almost an insurmountable obstacle to the campaign. “The church was seen as the problem, not the solution,” he says.

This “Accentuate The Positive, Dodge Around The Negative” approach reminds me of the devious ways of cigarette advertising, back in the days when overt advertising of the stuff was allowed over here.

The image of the carefree smoker, complete with success, all the play-toys imaginable, and not a problem in the world, was the thing. In Marlboro Country, where the flavour is, there are no sad bastards with coughs, and even the skinny, round-shouldered guy becomes a tanned, manly cowboy, at ease with the world he surveys from atop his powerful horse.

Tar, carcinogens, bunged-up airways, clogged arteries and cancer therapy are never mentioned when tobacco is advertised. This holds true from time immemorial, till today. It’s all about flavour, all about freedom, all about choice, all about style, all about satisfaction, all about social acceptance, all about freshness, all about mildness… somebody ought to have chucked in “all about life” somewhere down the line: after all, an early choice for Kinnaird’s campaign was “Jesus. Nothing about Religion“.

Bit of a soft-soap, huh?

Now bear in mind that cigarettes, no matter how they’re packaged, will still yield tars and carcinogens, clog up some bits of the user’s body, and considerably increase the susceptibility of the smoker to cancer. And anybody responding to the Jesus All About Life adverts will get exactly what the advertisers don’t want to tell them about… a church, complete with all the things people get to hate in a church. I think Mr Kinnaird listed some in the article quoted at the beginning of this post:

• paedophile priests,
• an out-of-touch hierarchy,
• falling attendances in traditional churches,
• a reluctance to incorporate women,
• and a lack of relevance to a baby boomer generation bred on freedom,
• consumerism and
• self-absorption.

All in all, it’s much the same, church or cigarettes… buy into the dream, pay more and more for a pack, and get irritating, harmful hot air.

Still, everybody’s doing it, as the opinion makers will gladly tell you…

Jesus Goes To Hill$ong Because The Corporate Catering’s Better

Another reason the various Jesus franchises are irrelevant these days, is that Jesus only appears to have a selective social conscience. Back in the (alleged) old biblical days when there were stern regulations on everything, there were rules against withholding pay and entitlements. Yes, these are those same rules and reg which are cherry-picked when Benny Mk 16,

|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Fred the Nihilist,

|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|

or some other upstanding Fist Of God wants to have a go at the gays or some other group.

Anyway, what did the old version have to say?

Leviticus 19:13 – Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.

Let’s chuck in a couple of prophets from the old testament, just to show that the Leviticus thing wasn’t a blip on an otherwise-clear radar…

Jeremiah 22:13 – Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work;

Malachi 3:5 – And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.

So, among the other poor and powerless, workers getting stiffed for wages and entitlements gets a specific mention.

You’d think the holy-rollers would have put down their copies of Brian Houston’s “You Need More Money” and showed up, en masse, in solidarity at a picket or two by now, but nah.

Here‘s a situation:

Three hundred and thirty eight workers at Drivetrain Systems in Lavington (Albury),the only manufacturer of gear boxes in Australia, have been sacked without pay or entitlements as management proceeds to strip the factory of an estimated $17 million in assets.

Workers are camped at the gates of the factory demanding about $25 million dollars in entitlements owed to the workforce. In December management and the AMWU assured employees that their entitlements were safe at the troubled business. On Friday workers were sacked without pay, and informed that there was simply no money.

“Between now and December they’ve been spent our entitlements” said one worker “we don’t know what on”.

Whilst all workers were sacked without pay, management and executive staff were retained on full wages. Management still occupies the factory.

Workers say that there are still $17 million dollars worth of gear boxes still at the Kaitlers Road factory, but they fear they won’t see a cent. The administrator has announced that the payment of financial creditors comes before giving workers their due entitlements.

Management has embarked on a deliberate campaign to split workers at the Kaitlers Road factory. Management has said they will re-employ a third of the workforce for a period of eight weeks, but have not stated which third of the workforce will be re-employed.

So, that’s bad dealing by old testament standards. Can the christians of the 21st century ignore it, along with that silly ban on eating molluscs, and hack into another half-dozen oysters Kilpatrick while those scruffy lefties shuffle up and down outside the perfectly respectable factory?

Here’s just one from the new testament, to whet your appetite if the oysters didn’t get you going…

James 5:4 – Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

Now I don’t expect this to make a single bloody whit of difference. Any christian reading this will have worked out any dozen reasons to dismiss what I’m reading from their very own sourcebook. After all, I’m a vile apostate.

And Jesus, as they will be told from respectable pulpits up and down the country, was a conservative. A guy who never raised his hand to a profiteer.

Hello Thinkers!

Welcome to Jesus All about Life Lies.

We are not alone in recognising the pyramid scheme that is the business of Jesus, and as part of the large percentage of Australians that do not have a faith in a god, have created this site with the sole reason of giving critical review to the ongoing campaigns of religious organisations actively spreading the ideas of religion under the veil of fact.

We will be bringing relevant information, critical review of Jesus All About Life campaigns, as well as parody to allow reason to also have a say when it comes to concepts that effect all of us as humans on this earth, and not just the overwhelming display of religious bigotry that has people of reason unable to voice any ideas opposite to that of religion, giving it rights above and beyond any other.

From religious organisations using tax free status to promote business oportunities in their flock, to reason based arguments and discussions on whether Jesus and god even exist, we will attempt to bring as much reason to the discussion, along with balance to the one sided discussions and advertising religious groups are allowed to make, whilst those of reason are forced to be silent.