Just what Canterbury needs right now – a fucking prayer-wheel!

Let me paint the scene here in Canterbury: some houses still don’t have power, buildings are being demolished, schools closed, police patrol the inner-city to prevent looting and injury, the sleepless population is under stress from on-going after-shocks as high as 6 on the Richter Scale, business’s are closed and struggling to survive.

Faced with a catastrophe of this scale, pray-tell what is New Zealand’s Buddhist Communities solution to Canterbury’s woes?

Well their top-temple up in Auckland is going to spin its giant purpose-built prayer wheel, said to be the worlds largest (wop de fuck) and magically spread ‘calmness’ down to the frazzled peoples of Canterbury.

This is frankly a well-meaning load of cobblers we could do without.

If the Buddhist community wants to genuinely assist Cantabrians I can suggest a more pressing piece of philanthropy that will create more calmness and inner peace than even a prayer-wheel built on the same scale as one of Jupiter’s moons.

Tragically amongst the businesses/buildings damaged in the first quake was New Zealand Breweries operation in Christchurch.

Horror of all horrors imaginable - the pubs in Canterbury are now running dry.

So stop wasting valuable-time spinning that wheel & get your best monks from The Dorje Chang Institute on ‘mercy mission’ down south.

Set them to work repairing our local brewery!

Gods Ultimate Reality Show!

Television programmers take head of this idea for a reality show.

An anointed representative of every religion on the planet lines-up for a 12 hour televised ‘boom or bust’ experiment with a global audience measured in the billions.

Trust me - this will be the biggest T.V program ever screened!

Catholics, Baptists, Jews – you name the superstition – as long as they believe they have a telephone-line to God – there’s a place for their chosen warrior on the show (think ‘David’ in the story with Goliath) In-fact this is one show they couldn’t afford to miss.

Oh yeah, there will also be one Bonobo Chimp as well.

The chimp will be representing the non-believing heathens.

The religious representatives are all lined-up and then given a set of six dice (specially manufactured and tested, then randomly drawn from a lotto type machine on the day)

The chosen warriors of God plus the chimp then have 12 hours to throw as many sixes as they can – an average count of which will determine the ‘winner’ (rest assured it will be all above board and it won’t simply be a matter of the individual who throws the most dice but the average result)

The representatives and their supporters watching at home will be encouraged to evoke Gods support for their cause.

Believers will be motivated to prove to the world it is ‘they’ who have Gods favour above all others.

The chimp will get bananas and beer.

What do you think would be the result after all the dice had been thrown?

God Texts Fijian Pastor about impending Disaster!

There’s one thing to be said about the ‘Interim Fijian Regime’ (read: Military-Lead Government) – they don’t take fools lightly.

For the last month or so Pastor Laione Lutumaimuri Nacevamaca (above) and his side-kick Bill Govaka (ironically the one time former head of The Fiji Visitors Bureau) have been telling anyone who is interested, that a major natural disaster was about to hit Fiji – specifically 2:30 pm on Wednesday (23rd) this week.

The reason why the time/date is so specific is because it was God that personally told Pastor Nacevamaca, by way of his cell-phone clock.

That’s right: God telepathically communicated with Nacevamaca, then texted him!

“This is the date and time, mark it on your calendar” is what the excitable & delusional Pastor told the local press.

Sadly there were large tracts of the Fijian populous that believed his prophecy, so when whole villages began moving to higher-ground, tourist resorts were cleared following warning emails sent by Govaka, business’s & schools closed to avoid the impending disaster(s) - the Government acted decisively - by arresting & imprisoning the pair on Tuesday for spreading rumours.

Nacevamaca is charged with maliciously fabricating and spreading by way of mouth that there would be a tsunami, earthquake and strong winds, causing public alarm.

Mr Gavoka was charged with spreading the rumours by e-mail about the tsunami and earthquakes and causing public alarm.

Needless to say the time/date passed without either a ripple on land or sea, nor more than a warm sea-breeze.

Whether God bothered to text Nacevamaca to say “sorry for standing you-up” has yet to come-out.

Note: Off-Air for 10 days (may be less - who knows?)

Family Planning in New Zealand under attack from Christian Extremists.

“The philosophy of Family Planning is alien to a culture of life.” (Right to Life NZ)

Every day literally hundreds of thousands of New Zealand women take ‘the pill’ for contraception.

In 1995 the percentage of women in this country taking some sort of contraception was put at 75%, males/couples using condoms at 12%.

Few if any adults consider ‘the pill’ to be a form of abortion.

One of the rarest forms of contraceptive methods practiced (4%) happens to be what has been dubbed by its advocates as ‘Natural Contraception.’

Natural Contraception relies on the couples avoiding fertile days of the monthly cycle and the male pulling-out prior to ejaculation.

It was known as ‘The Rhythm Method’ and prescribed for decades by The Catholic Church.

The chances of a female falling pregnant using ‘Natural Contraception’ is about 10% - or one in ten times intercourse takes place – so the jokes about large Catholic families are based-on more than school-yard innuendo.

The chances of one falling pregnant taking ‘the pill’ is about 1 in 200.

Given these stark differences in effectiveness and the relative ease of use, the preferred contraceptive method for Kiwi’s is ‘the pill.’

To the conservative Christian movement in New Zealand all the forms of contraception are evil, products of The Beelzebub Corporation and peddled to 10 year olds in parks by Labour voting lesbians - in particular ‘the pill’ is top of their hate-list.

They consider ‘the pill’ to be what they term ‘a chemical abortion’ and the chief peddlers of this death The New Zealand Family Planning Association, is in their sights.

The Stop New Zealand Family Planning group - a loose collection of anti-abortionists, far right conservatives modeled-on similar and dangerous groups in the U.S, Family First, Catholic Church, religious ‘end of times’ nut-cases with nothing better to do – is out to deny New Zealanders the right to decide their own contraception.

They fervently believe sex is only for procreation between married couples and any other forms of contraception is an abomination in the eyes of their god called Yahweh.

Stop Family Planning want the Government to close down family-planning clinics and for schools to teach teenagers that sex is dirty and can only be practiced by those who have undertaken an ordinated wedding – never, ever between any other form of consenting adults.

Don’t get them going-on on gays, either - they hate homosexuals with a passion - get all giggly at the thought of them burning in hell.

Stop Family Planning wants Kiwi’s to know chemical contraception is a form of child abuse and women should feel guilty using its deadly cocktail to stop eggs ovulating.

The very principal of Family Planning and free access to contraception is in-fact killing the countries future!

Seriously, have any of these guys ever had a root?

What is going-on in the heads of these eccentric loons?

NEPAL'S HINDU MASS ANIMAL SLAUGHTER HAS BEGUN!

It’s not a good week to be an animal of any kind in Nepal, particularly Buffalo's – 200,000 of them alone, are due to be slaughtered.

Add to the 'death-list' pigs, goats, chickens and pigeons and anything else the superstitious Nepalese can get their bloodied hands-on.

In case you missed it, the world’s largest animal sacrifice The Gadhimai Festival, which happens once every five years, is taking place this week in Bariyapur southern Nepal.

The highlight of the festival is the ritual slaughters of more than a quarter of a million animals for Gadhimai - a goddess of power.

Participants believe that animal sacrifices for the Hindu goddess Gadhimai will end evil and bring prosperity.

The fact the festival has been going for centuries without any apparent abatement to evil around the world and Nepal remains to this day one of the poorest countries in the world – has escaped devotees.

Calling all Atheist’s to get out and Support The Church of Scientology!

It hasn’t been a good few months for the followers of b-grade sci-fi writer L.Ron Hubbard.

First a French Court found The Church of Scientology had defrauded its members and this week across the Tasman we have a South Australian MP calling for an enquiry in Canberra.

The Australian Senator Xenophon (no he's not a distant relation to the evil space-overlord) said he had received correspondence from former members of Scientology implicated the organisation in a range of crimes, including forced imprisonment, coerced abortions, embezzlement of church funds, physical violence, intimidation and blackmail.

Then Scientology's chief spokesman, Tommy Davis (evidently Tom seems a popular name for those who believe in Alien occupations of earth and the liberal use of very large numbers) stormed out of a television interview with Martin Bashir in a rage befitting a person of a far lower operating level [refer You-Tube video above]

The thetans must well and truly be enveloping the COS hierarchy producing itchy-welts that won’t go away – even with the most thorough auditing and creams.

And I for one feel sorry for them!

That’s right I feel sorry for The Church of Scientology.

The major thing that COS does wrong and pisses the public-off - is to charge above market rates for their load of superstition.

The ‘Johnny come lately’ COS also has the audacity to believe in invisible alien life forms as opposed to the traditional invisible deities worshipped for millennia – this too brings it’s detractors.

Having a f*ck-knuckle like Tom Cruise as a poster boy & a propensity to act like the East German Secret-Service can’t have helped their cause either.

So if the media and state-authorities around the globe are going to target COS and portray them as a bogus religion - we must place the same burden of proof on all their competitors.

The Islamic religion believes their messiah split the moon in two.

The Christian religion believes the earth was made in six days.

Are these any more credible propositions than Xenu?

As I have just stated what pisses the public off (atheists and theists alike) is the way they function and not their actual beliefs – which are a bunch of expensive crap as opposed to the discounted version available at other corner churches - except of course Destiny up-in Auckland.

My message to COS – believe you me they troll the internet looking for detractors and insignificant dissertations such as this - is to start offering a 2 for 1 discount and run sale to coincide with that false-holiday the other pretenders call Christmas.

PS: On the right of this blog are the results of the recent month long poll I ran to find-out the weirdest religion. Guess who won?

I Say Bring-on The Rapture!

I hope the Christian God gets some time-off in his busy schedule to read this fervent plea.

Diary reading my dissertation in-between devastating South Pacific Islands with tsunamis and giving some innocent an incurable disease.

BRING-ON THE RAPTURE!

I prostrate myself in your presence begging-you to whisk your believers off this planet and up-into the heavens.

The effect would be an immediate increase in the average IQ scores of at least 10 points.

Scientists and researchers could go about their business without baseless interference and as a result the life expediency would, in time, increase.

There would be no need to go-out murdering and maiming in your name any more.

People would judge other humans on their merits, not on their sex or sexuality.

Mankind could prevent the AID’s epidemic in Africa spreading further with the mass distribution of condoms your followers say are evil. Millions on that Continent would be saved.

All the time, effort and money that are currently wasted on worshipping you can be better directed into education, health care, feeding the hungry etc etc.

Boy oh boy, there are just so many positives that would result in you ridding planet-earth of all your devotees.

So stop pissing about 'Big Fella' and send that one way ticket to the clouds to your followers - before they drive me crazy and mankind back into cave dwellers!

It’s a win/win for all parties involved.

Yours sincerely.


‘One of the Home Team’.

PS: Oh yeah, another benefit for us heathen-types is the standard of music would go up proportionately as well.

You were the first apart from Farid, Abdu and then there was the little-matter of…….

In Egypt there is a large religious stigma attached to women being virgins on their wedding night.

So what is a less-than-chaste girl to do in order to hide her dirty secret from her perspective husband, on those conservative sands of Africa?

How does one hide that night of debauchery spent between the sheets with Farid at a seedy motel in Alexandria.

Then there was the little matter of what went-on on the back seat in Abdu’s Mercedes.

Fret not, don’t get tears on your black wedding dress - help is at hand.

For a measly 15 bucks you can purchase a ‘virginity faking-device’ made in China.

On your wedding-night you simply shove-it-up your fanny and after your new hubby does his thing – it releases a quantity of imitation blood (use your imagination here folks)

He’ll be none the wiser about Farid & Abdu, so why tell him about the drunken night with the local football team either?

There is only one problem - getting your soiled-paws on one these virginity faking-device has got hard (pun intended).

Islamic scholars with the support of The Egyptian Parliament are to blame for this lack of supply.

They have dubbed the device as 'evil' with the potential to spread vice in society (read: adults enjoying pre-marital sex & making individual choices)

They want the importers of the product punished according to Sharia law.

And what is the punishment to be meted-out the importers and re-sellers of these 'evil' virginity-fakers?

That one-punishment that fits all crimes under 'The Religion of Peace'.


Death!

Jedi feels the full-force

I have briefly come-out of self-imposed hibernation, to highlight this ridiculous & highly amusing pantomime currently going-on in Wales (when you read the article the term ‘pantomime’ seems to be a perfect description)

The guy in the photo is Welshman, Daniel Jones, who appears for all intents & purposes , to be on his way to a fancy-dress do - dressed as Luke Skywalker.

First appearances can be misleading.

Danny ‘boy’ takes this Jedi Knight thing seriously, and is the self-appointed leader of The Jedi Church of U.K.

Given his lofty status I was hoping to find some confirmation he could use ‘the force’ to move things telepathically, like ripping the clothes-off desirable women without being detected.

But enough of this jest.

The Jedi Church considers itself as a bona-fide religion with a worldwide membership of 500,000. In the 2001 Census, 390,000 Englishmen ticked- the-box saying they were Jedi.

So when Jedi Jones got tossed out of his local Tesco supermarket last-week for wearing his hood, it doesn’t take much to guess his reaction.

He went bleating to the media crying “Religious discrimination”.

In-what was a masterpiece of rebuttal the spokesperson for Tesco, in 50 words of less, had this to say…..

“We would ask Jedi to remove hoods. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all went hoodless without going to the Dark Side.”.

“If Jedi Knights wear their hoods, they may miss our specials”.

But here’s 'the bully'

What happened if Daniel, who by the way also employs the Jedi name Morda Hahol, had of entered the supermarket in a traditional turban or other so-called religious regalia?

Say like this fella, from the Russian Orthodox Church.

Similarly, would supermarket-security descended on a woman wearing Muslim headdress?

To the best of my knowledge Jedi's are not renowned for acts of indiscriminate violence - tubeway attacks, hijackings etc.

Tesco’s have probably dug them-selves a hole on this one, but one major question remains unanswered.

“When he was initially confronted by Tescos staff, why didn’t Morda Hahol simply use his mind control powers?”.

Gay Exorcisms

Sometimes words fail me, and you secretly hope you are watching some sort of elaborate hoax.

But then reality dawns on you, and you are confronted with the brutal, unpalatable facts.

There really are backward individuals that believe that homosexuality is the result of demonic possession.

It’s not just the share absurdity of the concept of supernatural-beings like demons that is of concern, it’s the fact individuals are permitted to practice psychological torment with impunity, under the guise of religion.

Arrogant and bigoted Christians see it as their ordained duty, to ‘cleanse’ people of the evil they are taught, is homosexuality.

I want you to think about this.

What are the chances anyone can ‘re-orientate’ (for want of a better term) another individual who is a homosexual into a heterosexual?

I’ll tell ya, what chance there are of this happening.

It’s exactly the same as a heterosexual person becoming homosexual.

Any heterosexuals reading this, want to give me the chances of someone turning-you into a homosexual?

Priest labeled a hero after pulling a man from a burning-car.

I’m a stipler for manners with my children.

They are taught manners, to respect their elders, to admire achievers in society and ignore the knockers – above all ‘make their own decisions’ in life.


The other day as I passed my local church on the way to the pool, I got to wondering, why is it a priest or any other man of God, deserves anymore adulation than say a school-teacher, or for that matter a rubbish collector?

For the record, my first job was the later.

So, why should anyone give respect to a ‘man of the cloth’?

We don’t see people postulate in front of school-teachers do we?

Businessmen normally, don’t beg for mercy amongst their peers.

The vast majority of the public respect police-staff, but when you analyse their anointed positions, a policeman is merely a civilian with more rights.

Police in this country often have to put themselves at risk.

Just last month one constable was labeled a hero for dragging two people from a burning-car, under high-risk of injury and even death.

We don’t see teachers or any other professionals as free physiologists – but, apparently priests and ministers of the cloth are automatically qualified to act in this fashion?

Given these individuals have no more powers than a witch-doctor, and by & large less life-experiences than your generic bone-thrower or entrail reader – they are frankly far less deserving of any adulation based on merit, than say a fireman.

So when someone dies, do we go looking for answers from say a fireman?

Does The Head of The Fire Brigade issue a statement on sex-education in school?

Who gives a minister, pastor etc the right to not just hear peoples ‘issues’, but to treat them as if they were qualified to perform this duty?

From a believers perspective, is there any evidence a priest/minister/pastor/mullah etc has ‘magic’ that is some-how stronger than any other person, who can pray & believes in suppositious intervention?

I for one fail to see why normally intelligent people, ‘go weak at the knees’ in the company of ‘men of the cloth’ – it’s cringe worthy and pathetic in the extreme.

Adults acting like 13 year old girls at a Boy-Band Concert.

It’s a public admission that person is weak and easily lead.

Anyone who thinks a minister of the church is by rights worthy of umbrage - suffers some sort of character-flaw or is brainwashed.

Wake-up!

These ‘men of the cloth’ are not worthy of any social status, yet our papers are full of their demands every-time they feel they have been aggrieved by secular life.

Ministers/Priests/Mullahs/Bishops/Pastors etc are all leeches, who hide behind the broad-brush term ‘respect’ as some sort of automatic shield against criticism.

Despite the fact they serve no real function in modern-society – some-how we should all respect them - believers and un-believers alike.

These bludgers exploit on the benevolence of the week-willed and gullible.

They are added by a tax-system which gives them historic privileges that are demeaning to anyone with a grasp of reality.

It’s time they got a real job.

I See Dumb People: Pope orders Catholics not to report sightings of The Virgin Mary.

Here’s a News-Report to digest,and titillate at(and no, not the photo,I'll get to that last)

Catholics who claim they have seen the Virgin Mary will be forced to remain silent about the apparitions until a team of psychologists, theologians, priests and exorcists have fully investigated their claims under new Vatican guidelines aimed at stamping out false claims of miracles.

The Pope has instructed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Holy Office of the Inquisition, to draw up a new handbook to help bishops snuff out an explosion of bogus heavenly apparitions.

Benedict XVI plans to update the Vatican's current rules on investigating apparitions to help distinguish between true and false claims of visions of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, messages, stigmata (the appearances of the five wounds of Christ), weeping and bleeding statues and Eucharistic miracles.

Monsignor Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, a respected Spanish Jesuit archbishop, has been placed in charge of drawing up the handbook, known as a "vademecum", which will update the current rules set in 1978.

According to Petrus, an Italian online magazine which leans towards conservative elements in the Vatican, anyone who claims to have seen an apparition will only be believed as long as they remain silent and do not court publicity over their claims. If they refuse to obey, this will be taken as a sign that their claims are false.

The visionaries will then be visited by a team of psychiatrists, either atheists or Catholics, to certify their mental health while theologians will assess the content of any heavenly messages to see if they contravene Church teachings.

If the visionary is considered credible they will ultimately be questioned by one or more demonologists and exorcists to exclude the possibility that Satan is hiding behind the apparitions in order to deceive the faithful.

Guidelines for the approval of apparitions and revelations were last issued in 1978. They lay down that a diocesan bishop can "either on his own initiative or at the request of the faithful" choose to investigate an alleged apparition. He then submits a report to the Vatican for approval.

So where does one, start on, delusional psychotics, who believe in this sort of drivel?

1.) If people see a mystical entity resembling Mary Magdalene – how will they tell it’s her in the first place? Does she wear a name tag? Will your friendly local church do a line-up of apparitions at some later stage, and ask you to pick-out, the one you saw?

2.) How often do Scientologists, Hindus and Muslims etc, report seeing visions of this ‘Mary’ chick?

3.) If this Virgin, tells you “I was raped by God” will the Church take your claims more seriously?

4.) Surely if you believe in aspirations, the most normal human reaction, would be to tell some one, not bottle it-up for six months, and casually bring-it-up a dinner party?

5.) How can a layman tell the difference between a heavenly apparition, or say one, disguised by nasty-old Satan to appear like it?

6.) When first confronted with an apparition claiming to be The Virgin Mary, should you ask for evidence her hymen is still in tact?

Boy, oh boy, what an absolute load of utter cobblers - surely, no rational educated person can believe any of this stuff?

Sadly, the answer is yes, there are people that have this as their 'reality', and by & large,they don't happen to live in mud-huts, in deepest Africa.

There are over a billion ‘fellow’ humans, your neighbours, who believe in this superstitious crap, to be real as the nose on their face.

PS: 'Mary' the well-stacked lady at the top of the page, is the inspiration of Chilean fashion-designer Ricardo Oyazun. Only his 'vision', was not shared by The Catholic Church and its followers, who 'decorated' his house in human excrement, and made threats to kill him & his family. Perhaps he should have followed the official process?

The Catholic Church claims it has the magical powers that can turn a McDonald's Burger into the Families Dead-Cat!

I’m going to stick my neck out here and say most Catholics, have never heard of the term ‘transubstantiation’ – let alone, laymen.

At first glance, the word ‘transubstantiation’ has scientific connotations, but science has never been one of The Catholic Church’s strong points, and ‘transubstantiation’ goes to prove this abject point- yet again.

Here’s what ‘transubstantiation’ means (per Wikipedia):

“According to the Catholic Church when the bread and wine are consecrated in the Eucharist, they cease to be bread and wine, and become instead the Most Precious Body and Blood of Christ. The empirical appearances are not changed, but the reality is”.

And, so there’s no confusion here (per Ancient & Future Catholics)

“Essentially, the Church teaches that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ in substance, while the incidentals (or accidents), the physical characteristics of bread and wine, remain. This means that what you see, feel, and touch will seem to be bread and wine, while in reality, they are actually the body and blood of Christ”.

Nothing has been lost in the translation here, folks.

In the year 2009, with all the available scientific knowledge at it’s finger-tips, to the contrary, The Catholic Church believes transubstantiation, to be real.

Something more than just, the metaphorical.

Not just symbolic.

In ‘reality’ (their exact description) The Vatican steadfastly believe their religious ceremony, can change the very cellular make-up of bread, into that of a human, and a dead-one at that!

Turning one substance into another – using just thought power!

They have created a grand-illusion - making the Church's reality, the shared reality for a billion people – when it’s not in anyway rational to believe in any of this mumbo-jumbo.

This is one area The Catholic Church can at least say they are ahead of their contemporaries.

After-all it’s only been the last 50 years when The Scientologists & Raliaens began combining religion & low-budget science fiction, into the same package.

The truly sad thing is, any eight-year-old child , would laugh at the proposition a priest could ‘magically’ turn, say , a McDonald's Burger into the family cat (one which is in-fact dead, and buried in the vegetable garden, yet magically comes back alive)

Try getting a child to believe when you eat the rotting-corpse of the moggie - it will still taste like the McDonald's burger!

Worryingly for the rational population, parents of Catholics kids are happy educating their offspring, that their local priest, has magical powers & the pantomine called The Eurcarist – is real!

It’s merely different ingredients these ‘believers’ would argue against.

They would argue, it’s impossible to make a hamburger turn-into into a dead cat, but when you have the right recipe, they fervently believe in their Church’s teachings, that it’s possible to turn bread into a dead god.

There’s substance to The Eucharist, a magical process called ‘transubstantiation’.

To take this from the ridiculous to the sublime, The Vatican takes this alchemy so seriously, they will not tolerate any deviance from the prescribed centuries-old recipe.

That’s why The Vatican has issued an edict, banning the use of Gluten Free bread from The Eucharist – because bread made in this form, will not mysteriously transform into the body & blood of a dead god-man!

And people have the audacity to take the piss out of African Witch-Doctors, eh?

Swine flu of the brain

“I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals” (Sir Winston Churchill)

Largely in keeping with one passage in Leviticus, in a rather ironic twist if I do say so myself, The Jews consider them ‘unclean’ (proving the adage persecution is normally a two-way street)

In ancient Greece, they were associated with dirt and evil spirits.

The eating of Pork is also forbidden in Islam.

In-fact the dietary prohibition of the Torah is pre-Israelite in origin, for abstinence from the meat of the pig was a widespread, religiously motivated custom that was historically well grounded amongst the Phoenicians, the Cypriots, the Syrians, the Arabs, and in fact among all Semitic peoples – long before Jesus and Mohammed made their alleged appearances.

The Seventh Day Adventists also see them as unclean & they weren’t founded till 1863.

Rastifarians, have been about less than a hundred years, and they’ve adopted this hatred as well.

I don’t know about you – but I’m rather partial to bacon, more so when encased in bread.

Let’s face it pork is yummy & modern slaughter, meat-storage etc, renders hygienic concerns to the history-books.

So why do billions of humans still consider Pigs to be ‘unclean’?

There is no other reason than that onerous thing called ‘ancient superstition’.

Here we are in the year 2009 and we have educated humans following ridiculous, almost comical, doctrines, like avoiding pigs.

Big, bad pigs, that will blow your house down.

And in a grand irony, the knuckle dragging chimps, want us the bipedal’s, to ‘respect’ their primitive superstitions.

The ungodly sons of the space-age, should turn a blind-eye to the backward cave-dwellers , in deference to their ‘howling to the moon’ superstitions.

Well stuff you lot.

I’m going to go to the kitchen right now & cook-up a lovely feed of bacon – just to piss you lot off.

A huge fry-pan of delicious, fatty, mouth-watering bacon – the smell of which would get even the most righteous Jew, Muslim etc salivating like Pavlov’s dog.

You losers don’t know what you are missing.

Which weird religious practice is that?

As an atheist I am often bemused, and at times concerned, at the worrying excess’s of religious practitioners.

They get-up to some crazy shit.

As it happens even these devote believers, snigger & ridicule the idiosyncratic practices – but only when it’s not their brand of belief.

Yesterday a group of Auckland, Christians undertook a mock re-enactment of Christ’s crucifixion.

Some of those involved, took their job as Roman soldiers, far too seriously.

The poor guy playing Jesus Christ ended-up in hospital, sporting wounds from over-vigorous use of whips and crown of thorns.

For someone who doesn’t hold any superstitious beliefs, it’s hard to fathom what is going-on in these peoples minds.

What would drive someone to get so wrapped-up in their beliefs, they would ignore the not just the stupidity of what they are partaking-in, but more worryingly for their fellow humans, the suffering of others?

In the year 2009 no one seems to care, that somewhere on this planet fellow humans are at this moment flagellating, tattooing, jumping into fires, kissing rocks, immersing in water, wearing strange clothing etc – doing all sorts on nonsensical & demented stuff, all to get close to their God.

In India recently a 7 year old was married to a frog as part of a ritual to a rain-god.

This Indian practice would doubtlessly be deplored & ridiculed by Christians in this country.

But how can come these very same Christians ignore ‘talking snakes’, ‘people living inside whales’, ‘unicorns’ then symbolically eat their Gods flesh and drink his blood – and not think this is just as absurd as marrying pre-pubescent girls off to amphibians?

Christians see it as their ordained right (with money brings privilege) to go to all corners of the globe telling strangers “Our God is better than yours and unless you convert our all-powerful God will burn and torture you for eternity” and demanding they adopt their weird practices, in place of the existing weird practices.

Why does one group of religious fanatics believe-in say ‘Kaparot’, the Jewish practice of passing ones sins to a chicken, and not others, who laugh at the mere thought anyone could be so stupid, whilst ignoring their own foibles?

What could inspire an outwardly normal, educated Jew to believe in animal sacrifice?

Look at it this way, in my household Zombies movies rule. There is nothing better than returning from the video-shop with a good gory ‘intestine splattered’ zombie horror film, and watching-it with my teenage sons.

Whilst we males in the household derive perverse enjoyment watching the apololyptic visions of flesh-eating living-dead roaming the barren wastelands of earth, destroying civilisation itself – we know it’s a just a film.

Mere furtive creation, of some dark-humoured script-writer.

We know that the dead don’t come back to life.

Try telling that to The Christians!

Did you hear the one about the Moon Splitting in Two?

Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed to see such fun,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Religions make plenty of claims of outlandish supernatural miracles, all of which are unable to be substantiated by evidence, outside the little in the way of detail provided in the texts of ancient holy books.

Lack of historic evidence, violations of the laws of nature etc, are no barrier to billions of believers.

Earths creation in six day’s, is a familiar religious story to most Westerners & probably ‘the granddaddy’ of the divine miracle claims.

But there’s another fable that comes close.

Have you heard about the miracle of the moon splitting in two?

And there’s is a whopping 1.5 billion people, with a deep seated belief, that just 14 centuries ago the moon briefly split in two.

The hour has approached, and the moon split. But whenever they see a sign, they turn away and say, ‘This is evident magic’. (Qur’an: al-Qamar, 54.1-2)

To further summarise the relevant passage(s) from the Qur’an for the benefit of you heathens, the story goes like this;

Mohammed was able to split the moon into two halves, and place one half in front of, one half behind the Hiram' mountain range.

And what could have caused the monumental act of breaking in two an 81 trillion ton object, circling Earth at a distance of 385,000kms?

The prophet Mohammed simply twiddling a finger!

Given the scientific absurdity of the story, some Islamic Scholars seek to revise & interpret the passages from the Qur’an, to indicate Mohammed, with the aid of God, merely performed a grand parlor-trick, in the form of an optical illusion.

So what was observed wasn’t the moon actually being literally broken in two - it was but scene created in the sky by Mohammed (or his daddy) as a display of his divine power.

Imagine David Copperfield meets The Weta Workshop, but much, much bigger.

This is an identical scenario to that of Christian revisionists, who seek to explain the Creation time-frame of 7 days (six, not counting the day God had off for good behaviour) and state it’s not a literal truth, by explaining away the Creation ‘days’ in the bible as ‘ages’ (what ever they are?) rather than the widely accepted 24 hours. Of course all other references to days in The Bible are to be taken literally, it’s just the story in Genesis that time itself is re-written, to suit the fact mankind now knows planet Earth is 4.5 Billion Years Old (give or take a few million) not 6,000.

But back to that Mohammed and his lunar excavations.

Cheap telescopes are surely available from the Middle Eastern equivalent of Dick Smith Electronics, so any child looking into the night’s sky can see the moon comes minus evidence of a massive fault-line.

A ten year old only needs look into the night sky to see the moon is, as it has been for billions of years, and armed even with a half decent pair of binoculars, a quick eye-ball show’s there’s no tell-tale dab of ‘magical’ super-glue holding the satellite together.

Therefore you don’t have to be a astro-geologist here, to weigh-up the proposition being put forward – and dismiss it out right.

Nor is there any evidence outside the Qur’an the moon has split in two at point in the last 4.5 billion years, let alone some where around 625 CE.

So why persist in the year 2008 to fob this moon-splitting ‘bullocks’ off, as anything other than a primitive legend?

The most worrying of words in the English language: Faith.

Despite the irrefutable scientific evidence to the contrary, the followers of Mohammed largely take anything written in The Qur’an as a ‘truth’.

In a grand irony, it’s these very same followers of Islam, that disparage the Christian story of creation, even on occasion presenting scientific evidence to show conclusively the planet we reside on is older than the that stated in Christians Bible, and smugly pointing-out that the Qur’an says an indefinable ‘six periods’ rather than those of the ‘Jesus following fools’ who believe in a measly six days.

Christians, also call into play science and astronomy when it suits them, to defend their faith, and discredit religious stories which differ to their own, moon-splitting being one of them.

Thus an Atheist and a Christian make strange bed-fellows in their disbelief in tales of ‘moon splitting’ and Atheists and Muslims get a good old laugh together, at the ‘creation in a mere six days’ nonsense.

But, it’s only the Atheist has the sense to see both stories for what they are.

Fiction.

And poor fiction at that.