Well I may not be writing it myself but that doesn't mean I can't report what other people are writing about does it?

Jesus Made Me Puke
Matt Taibbi Undercover with the Christian Right

The above link is an article showing the extreme fringes of Christianity, but that's not to say that those religious folk several degrees from these outer margins aren't also beyond the reach of rational thought. Many of them are. MANY of them.

Right now I'm fairly sick of religion, sick of talking about religion, sick of writing about religion. I have no wish for it to be any part of my life at the moment. So, as you've probably worked out by the title, I won't be adding anything further to this blog until I'm in a different frame of mind. And you can probably see what led me to this decision by the previous entry, on the 13th. I'm 100% sure this won't last - I will be back at some point. You can't keep a good atheist down... or indeed a bad one like me!

I wasn't even going to touch this, given that only yesterday an earthquake killed thousands of people in China. But you know what? Seeing people crying on the TV news as they brought out the dead, and then realising that some bastard God-loving motherfucker somewhere will be gleefully proclaiming that this is yet another sign of the end of the world, gets me seriously wishing they would put all the Jehovah's Witnesses in an earthquake zone and wait for their so-called God to bury them in rubble. They're not getting out of this one lightly, no way.

No, I'm not going to list the whole passage from the leaflet this time, because it's just a sick list of death tolls from earthquakes, as if the fuckers are gloating at the sheer numbers of human lives ended by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, where the earthquakes hit. They want you to know that 'about ten times as many have died each year from earthquakes since 1914 as in previous centuries'. They want you to know because they get off on it somehow, in their twisted little minds, as they imagine that their fucked-up invisible sky God is getting ready to wipe out the rest of us too. They would just love that. It's what they live for, isn't it?

You know how the paragraph ends? After the list of the death tolls, the last sentence is this:

Surely, "great earthquakes"!

Right now, with the TV images still fresh in my mind of real people, real lives, all of them ended prematurely, the bodies being pulled out of collapsed buildings, some of them schools, and carried away on stretchers, those three words 'surely, great earthquakes!' seem like the Jehovah's Witnesses are laughing in the faces of those who died and those who are left to grieve. The exclamation mark even seems to be put there purely to add an air of perverse celebration. To them, yesterday's earthquake will be just another statistic, just another line to add to their magical 'chart of proof' or whatever it is they put together to justify their obscene obsession with natural disasters and death statistics. They don't really care that people are dead and dying. This isn't about real people to them, it's all about the 'signs' that the world is ending. This is one more sign, and you can bet they are thanking God for it.

I hate the Jehovah's Witnesses. I've always hated them. Now I'm beginning to wonder just how much stronger that hatred for these despicable vultures can go. They'd just better not show up at my door any time soon.

When I wrote my 'Too many clowns spoil the circus' article, I swear to you I was under the impression that this picture was a fake:

I only used it because it seemed to fit in with the story, and because there is at least one church sign generator around I assumed that that was how it had been created.

Wrong. Or rather, 'the truth is out there'... and it's bizarre. Because if you click this link you'll find that there are real churches who have what is known as 'Clown Led Worship'.

Look at the page and you'll find information about a 'Clown Eucharist Discovery Class'. What the FUCK are these people smoking? But is it just a parody or is it for real? Oh it's real, alright. As real as this:

And that's WAY too real (shudder). The overall impression I got of the service was: it looks like a lunatic asylum. But with extra crazy. And a large dose of scary. You can watch the whole service using the web site link above, but proceed with caution if you want to stay sane. Christianity + clowns + mime = mind fuck. Don't go there.

I had wanted to make my original article into a video anyway, and seeing all that church clown garbage seemed to spur me on to do it, if only to erase the mad crazy Jesus clowns from my brain. So here it is...

Looking at the titles of this and the previous blog, you might already be seeing a familiar pattern. So far we have war and famine, and if I tell you that another of the five on the Jehovah's Witnesses list is pestilence, and yet another is a list of deaths caused by earthquakes, what have we got? War, Famine, Pestilence and Death - do my eyes deceive me or are those the names of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Yes indeed the Jovos have latched onto the weird ramblings of the drug-addled mind who wrote the book of Revelation (see this excellent documentary: The Doomsday Code), then looked back through the teachings of Jesus and pulled out half a dozen so-called 'signs' to support it. These riders are much like the ring-wraiths in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and of course equally fictional - the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse similarly appear in a work of fantasy.

So let's see what the 'Will this world survive?' leaflet has to say about famine:

2. There will be food shortages (Matthew 24:7) (Note: That's a prophecy?! A bit short isn't it?!)
   Following World War I came perhaps the greatest famine in all history. Terrible famine also followed World War II. A scourge of malnutrition affects up to one fifth of earth's population, killing some 14 million children every year. Truly, there have been "food shortages"!

Again, as per the 'war' scenarios of the first part of the leaflet, I find it strange that the Jovos focus only on famines which occurred after World War I. Are we seriously to believe that before 1914 there were no food shortages whatsoever in any historical period? Look here and you'll see 'In Sudan the year 1888 is remembered as the worst famine in history'. So immediately the JW statement that a post WWI famine was 'the greatest famine in all history' is opposed.

Here's a list of some major historical famines, which all occurred before the 20th century:

• Ireland - 1845-1852
  In The Great Hunger (aka The Irish Potato Famine), the population of Ireland was reduced by 20 to 25 percent when a potato disease caused the catastrophic collapse of the potato crop. But note that the article to which I link also describes many earlier crop failures.

• Ethiopia - 1888-1892
  A famine caused by epizootic rinderpest, drought, smallpox and war led to the deaths of one-third of the country's population.

• China - 108 BC through to 1911
  A long period of time, during which a massive 1828 famines are recorded. One, in 1333-1337, killed 6 million Chinese, and this article notes that 'The four famines of 1810, 1811, 1846, and 1849 are said to have killed not less than 45,000,000 people.'

• India - 1702-1704
  Famine in Deccan killed at least 2 million people. Later, there were 'approximately 25 major famines spread through states such as Tamil Nadu in the south, and Bihar and Bengal in the east during the latter half of the 19th century.'

• Europe - 1315-1317
  Any famine given the name The Great Famine of 1315-1317 is probably going to be something of a major event. Once again, millions died.

Staying with the period of time around that last famine, remember from the previous article that the Hundred Years' War began shortly afterwards (1337)? Unfortunately for the people around at the time, so did the Black Death (1347 onwards - I'll deal with this in a future article), so anyone living in 14th century Europe would see far, far more 'signs' than we see today. Surely the 14th century would have been much more likely candidate for 'the end of the world'. Did it actually end? No, we're still here, more than 600 years later.

It's obvious that famines are nothing new. Whatever the cause - weather, disease, or some other natural disaster - as long as there have been people needing food, there have been times when the amount of food just wasn't enough. Result: famine - people died. So the only thing the Jehovah's Witnesses have to cling to is their assertion that famines are getting worse - more people are dying. And as with their war argument, this is an entirely false premise. Of course more people die when there is a famine. And why? Because there are simply more people alive to die.

Look again at the so-called 'sign'. All it says is 'there will be food shortages'. Here's my prediction: next year, and every year until the end of time, somewhere in the world there will NOT be food shortages. And somewhere in the world there WILL be food shortages. Does either one tell us the world is ending? No, it tells us that there are different natural, social and economic conditions for different people in different parts of the world. It doesn't take a genius, and certainly not the son of a god, to work that one out.

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Coming next:
Next, the Jovos assume that more earthquakes are happening, and more people are dying in each one. As you can tell, their silly number games continue unabated.

Meanwhile, I found this collection of short articles, including some information about famine and the Four Horsemen, which may interest you: Consistently Inconsistent!. Indeed the whole site, JW Files, tears apart the 'end of days' arguments of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and I found this image from Awake! (one of the official JW publications) particularly amusing:

Note the underlined text:

Most important, this magazine builds confidence in the Creator's promise of a peaceful and secure new world before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away.

Er, guys, we're still waiting. 94 years and counting. And doesn't that sound a little like Matthew 16:28?

Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Again, still waiting. And in both cases: not going to happen.

I have to report another weekend sneak attack by the bloody Jehovah's Witnesses. I'm beginning to realise why they always turn up on Saturday morning: it's because at that time I am least likely to argue and/or bring up well-chosen arguments against their religious bullshit. Basically, on Saturday mornings I am completely out of touch with reality, having usually stayed up until the small hours and, like this morning, only got out of bed at all because I was desperate for a pee.

Today all they wanted was to give me one of their leaflets, the cover of which looks a lot like the poster for a low budget 80s sci-fi movie. This one is called 'Will this world survive?' and like Oil of Olay's seven signs of aging, it gives a list of signs (five in this case) which foretell the end of the world. Let's dissect these nuggets of excrement and see if we can dig out any kernels of sweetcorn, er, truth, shall we?

1. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom (Matthew 24:7)
   War in modern times has been of greater magnitude than ever before. One historian noted: "The First World War [beginning in 1914] was the first 'total' war." Yet, the second world war was much more destructive. And war continues to ravage the earth. Yes, Jesus' words have undergone fulfillment in a dramatic way!

This one is partially covered in my blog of 2 March 2008, End Times alert - are there really more wars? In essence, there are now far fewer wars than was the case in most of pre-20th century history. What has changed is the scale of war. There is no denying that it's now far easier to kill more people, simply because the technology is more advanced. And let's not forget that there are simply more people to kill, so obviously more people are going to die. But is that any reason to play the numbers game and use this as a sign that Jesus is about to make a comeback?

No, of course it isn't. World War I was the biggest ever war, certainly... until World War II came along of course. But then before WWI there were other wars which were, at the time, the 'biggest ever wars'. So shouldn't the words of Jesus have applied to the end of the 15th century, after the Hundred Years' War? I see no mention of it in the Jehovah's Witnesses' literature at all. Surely a war which lasted 116 years was actually bigger, by some measurement, than ones which lasted for relatively short periods of time (1914-18 and 1939-45). Yet that was over 500 years ago, and the world didn't end. Life went on. Wars went on.

Wars are almost invariably of greater magnitude than previous wars, but why does the scale of the war even matter? Let's go back to the Bible quote cited by the JW leaflet: 'Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom'. Come on, that is so ludicrously non-specific that it can apply to every moment in history at some point in the world. You would struggle to find a year, perhaps not even a day, when there has not been a war somewhere, and the preceding passage, Matthew 24:6, extends the scope even beyond that, saying 'ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars'. Rumours of war? Just rumours are enough?

This so-called prophecy is as general, and therefore useless, as they get, and can be safely ignored as a tool for prediction, simply because during every day in human history there was guaranteed to be an ongoing war, or at the very least the rumour of a war. It is an utterly worthless 'sign'. Moreover, the spin given to the quote by the Jehovah's Witnesses is entirely invalid. Of course wars are of greater magnitude as time goes by - more people are alive to fight and die, and more destructive weapons are available. But that can be said when you look at the difference between Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars and the Crusades, or between American War of Independence the and the Vietnam War. What does it prove? Nothing.

And by the way, the Gallic Wars were responsible for one million deaths even before the time of Jesus. That's a million people out of a vastly smaller world population - approximately 200 million at the time. In modern terms that would be 30 million (given the current population, 6 billion, which is 30 times larger). Sounds big to me, particularly compared to the 20 million who died in World War I. Granted, WWII deaths were 72 million, but all we're saying here is that 'some wars are bigger than others'. How do we know that World War II was not, in fact, the peak of war deaths, and that all subsequent wars will have many fewer casualties? In fact, since no other war has been bigger, can we not now say that wars are getting smaller? The evidence says as much - wars still go on, but now fewer people die.

Let's further inspect the 'magnitude' claim. There are wars now waging around the world. Is there a war in progress which can be said to be of the same magnitude as World War I? No. WWII? No. Are there even rumours of an impending Third World War? Since the end of the Cold War, absolutely not. How did the once very real threat of nuclear war come to an end if things are actually getting worse? Surely the rumours of wars should include rumours of bigger and bigger wars. They do not. As has always been the case, some wars are big, some are not so big. And anyone, anyone at all, could make the startlingly obvious statement that 'nation will rise against nation'. You may as well say 'someone will eat cheese' and use that as a sign for the return of Speedy Gonzales.

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I'm going to split this blog up into sections, so check back for more. The increasing prevalence of of food shortages is the next JW prediction, so watch out for that soon.

You'd expect me to respond to a news headline which says:

'Respect atheists', says Cardinal
The Archbishop of Westminster has urged Christians to treat atheists and agnostics with "deep esteem".

My reactions on reading the headline: 'I certainly didn't see that one coming', and 'steps back in amazement'. Sadly the feeling of 'what the fuck is going on?' didn't last long. On reading just a little further, not far beyond the headline and first paragraph, the expression 'don't judge a book by its cover' sprang to mind almost immediately - and it was clear exactly what was going on:

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor called for more understanding and appreciation between believers and non-believers.

The leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales said that a "hidden God" was active in everyone's life.

In other words, respect atheists... but only because God is inside atheists too. Well actually this 'hidden' God is so hidden that he doesn't exist at all, so I'm sorry to say that the only way you can show atheists respect is to stop insisting that God exists in all of us. What he's really saying is, 'We'll humour them, even though we think they're wrong'.

I suppose that when it comes down to it his hands are tied. This is the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales we're talking about, so he obviously does believe that God is inside everyone. But why attach it to a patronising message telling other Catholics to respect atheists? Did we ask for his respect? I personally don't want his respect, and I certainly won't return the favour and give any iota of respect to a man who represents a huge organisation of people which opposes secularism, as well as a large number of principles I and a great many other atheists readily uphold:

The Cardinal's lecture at Westminster Cathedral comes after a spate of public clashes over issues such as stem-cell research, gay adoption and faith schools.

He expressed concern about the increasing unpopularity of the Christian voice in public life, saying: "Our life together in Britain cannot be a God-free zone and we must not allow Britain to become a world devoid of religious faith and its powerful contribution to the common good."

Last year, he complained of a "new secularist intolerance of religion" and the state's "increasing acceptance" of anti-religious views.

Does that really sound like he wants to hold atheists in 'deep esteem'? I think not. Not when, as he says, 'we must not allow Britain to become a world devoid of religious faith'. 'Must not allow it'? Isn't that another way of saying that 'atheism must not be allowed'? Of course it is.

Archbishop, just say what you really think. Don't use weasel words. Catholicism, and Christianity in general, diametrically opposes atheism. Similarly, those who actively speak about atheism will often oppose Christianity, certainly the illogical and irrational dogma which manages to infiltrate corners of society where such baseless beliefs are not welcome.

So let's abandon the pretence, shall we? There will be no esteem until religious views are totally removed from public life, and are instead relegated to their rightful position - the private beliefs of individuals. We can all respect that. Everyone has a right to belief what they wish, so long as those beliefs do not impact on the rights of others. So long as there are bishops and priests and preachers of all kinds poking their long noses into the affairs of those who do not share their beliefs, there will be no mutual respect and certainly no 'deep esteem'.

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Update:
I don't believe it
Terry Sanderson (The Guardian) agrees with the idea that the Cardinal is taking 'a patronising line on atheists'.

I've been having an enforced break because my mouse died and I was too lazy to go and get a new one. Having no mouse means it's virtually impossible to use the computer - try it and see - so I've been doing, well, not very much really. However, I've now bought the cheapest mouse I could find (who buys those super-whizzo ones for 30 quid anyway?!) and as a special gift to reward my thriftiness, the BBC has rewarded me with this wonderful headline:

Link to the article (I'm not spoiling the surprise)

As my title for this blog says, I'm easily pleased.

When I was very small, and that was a long, long time ago, my Dad told me that I was old enough to go to the circus and that on my very next birthday he would take me to see one. Well, I was excited, but I wasn't really sure what to expect, and even the word was a new one to me, so I ran all the way down to the local library, pulled out a book and read all the about the circus.

Wow, what a wonderful birthday this was going to be. According to the book everything happened in a huge white tent, so tall you could hardly see the top, and right in the middle of everyone was the ringmaster, with his long coat and tall hat, and he shouted out what was going to happen, and everyone would listen as he told about all the wonderful things to come. I read all about the amazing animals - the lions and the tigers and the elephants, which would run and walk and do whatever they were told.

Then there were the fire eaters - however much fire they ate, there was still more. The book said that some circuses had side shows, with the muscle-bound strong man, the towering giant, the fortune teller and the hall of mirrors. The jugglers and the trapeze artist and the high wire, they were there too, performing in the big tent, doing things you wouldn't believe were possible. And the crowd would be excited, and on their feet cheering, and how wonderful it all sounded. But best of all were the clowns - I knew right away the clowns would be my favourite, even before I saw them. They made me laugh just to look at them. This was the circus and I couldn't wait.

The great day came. My birthday. Without even being told, I put on my best clothes, because today was the day I was going to the circus. Dad gave me some money and told me to keep it safe, and I knew that was how I would pay for my ticket, so I kept a tight hold of it all the way there. I thought we would have to take the bus, but would you believe it, the circus was right around the corner of the street, and I hadn't even realised!

There were lots of people going in, and they didn't seem as excited as I was, but maybe that's because it was my first time. Dad smiled and said I could sit wherever I wanted, and I went right up to the second row, and would've gone all the way to the front, but I didn't really want to get too close to the tigers, not on my first visit anyway.

Well we sat in our seats and it all went really quiet, and then I saw him. The ringmaster! Wow! He looked even more amazing than in the book. His hat was huge and his long coat reached right to the ground. This was going to be great. Suddenly things started to happen. The ringmaster stood in front of the crowd and announced the first performance.

Now I know this is going to sound really ungrateful, and it was my birthday and Dad was doing a special thing for me and all that, but... well, somehow it just wasn't quite the spectacle my excited young mind had conjured up for me. Maybe the ringmaster just wasn't a very good one, because to be honest he was very, very boring. Sure enough he told us about the animals from all around the world, but he really seemed to be taking a long time about it. Okay, so he threw in something I wasn't expecting - something about a boat they would all fit into - but I couldn't really see how they would ever get a boat inside the place, and now I think about it I couldn't see any animal cages either. I looked around impatiently, expecting the elephants to come out at any time, but the ringmaster kept on talking and, well, he was in charge, so there wasn't really much I could do to speed things along.

The library book had said that the ringmaster would anounce the performers one at a time, but this one was different - he seemed to be telling us about all of them before we'd even seen the first one. He told us that the fire eaters were next, and I don't think they were a big favourite of his because he seemed quite angry about them. He even said that some of the audience might be fire eaters, and that seemed like something I could do one day, but oddly enough I got the impression he was warning us against that, rather than encouraging us to take it up as a profession.

I pulled on my Dad's arm and asked where the clowns were, but Dad whispered that I had to be quiet because churches were places where you didn't talk very much. I thought he'd got it wrong when he said 'churches', but no, that really was what he meant. So that was another new word I learned, and come to think of it churches and circus do sound a little alike, so maybe that's why I was confused. All of a sudden I got a sinking feeling in my stomach as I again remembered the clowns. The ringmaster hadn't mentioned them yet, but surely he would announce them soon. There had to be clowns, there just had to be. But somehow I knew that even this was going to be denied me.

No longer listening to the dull ringmaster, I looked at my surroundings for the first time and wondered why I hadn't even realised that this was no tent at all, it was just a big white building made of stone. It wasn't even round - how would the horses run in circles when all there was was quite a small, square space, with some kind of table filled with candles at the far end? The book I'd read never said the audience would stand up and sing, but we did. Twice. And inbetween all that, the ringmaster announced that big things would happen, huge things that we should all look forward to seeing. Now he was starting to sound like the fortune teller, and that wasn't his job at all. I just wanted to see something, if he'd only stop talking about it and let the performers come out and perform.

And remember those coins Dad gave me? Coins I should have used to buy a ticket? Well, I still had them, and I held onto them until much, much later, when a big brass dinner plate was passed around. Everyone else put their money on it, so I did too. But I never got a ticket, and I didn't really see why we should pay at all, because we never saw the tigers, or the elephants, and, most disappointing of all, there weren't even any clowns. This was the worst circus I could ever have imagined, just a ringmaster with no ring, telling us to expect lots of different things, some of which might be great to see, if only we could see them, but we never did. None of the things he told us about ever actually happened.

I don't know why, but after that Dad took me to the circus every week, until one day when I was much older I told him I was never going again. By then we'd moved house a few times and been to quite a few different circuses, but they were all as disappointing as the first. As the years went by the ringmasters became louder and louder, and stranger and stranger. They no longer wore tall hats and long coats, but some of them waved their fists at the audience, and most of them still warned about the dangers of becoming fire eaters.

But those places really do have all the things the circus book said I would find. The ringmaster still tells tall tales about the animals and the boat, the strong man and the giants, and every week he thinks of a new way tell your fortune, as if he knows what's really going to happen. The hall of mirrors is real enough. Wherever you stand things seem different, distorted, until you can't believe what's real anymore. The ringmaster performs everything with words, not actions - he juggles, he balances on the high wire, and does breathtaking acrobatics, all of them with a safety net, which he calls 'The Bible'.

But always, always I missed the clowns. To me that's what the circus was all about, and the day I stopped going was the day I figured out why there were no clowns at any circus I'd ever visited. The clowns were there alright, they'd been there all along. The ringmasters, the men who stand and call out to the crowd, those are the biggest clowns of them all. And although they talk about some truly comical things, you only really learn to laugh at them when you walk out of the circus, the churches, for the very last time.