When religion meets mental illness

This story is too bizarre and horrific for words. Religion (which some say is a mental illness already) combined with someone who is truly mentally ill can have terrible outcomes. Of course, the Christers will say that it was the devil who made her do it.

Mom kills son, then self at shooting range
‘I had to send my son to heaven and myself to Hell,’ suicide note says

Family members found the audio tapes and three suicide notes late Monday and gave them to police.

“I’m sorry to do this in your place of business, but I had to save my son,” one message said. “God made me a queen and I failed. I’m a fallen angel. He turned me into the anti-Christ.”

Moore said she could have killed only herself but felt she had to “save” her son and do it in a public way so the world could also be saved. “Hopefully when I die, there will 1,000 years of peace.”

Larry Anderson, a manager at Shoot Straight, said it’s unclear whether the Moores had been to the range before, but they weren’t regular customers. The range requires that customers fill out a form with a series of questions, including whether they have ever been convicted of a felony or been declared mentally unstable. But it has no way to verify the information.

Anderson defended the range’s policies, saying: “If someone acts right, we have to assume they are right.”

Yeah, just keep putting those guns in the hands of crazy people. After all, they “look” alright. It seems that some things need to change as far as screening folks who come in to shoot loaded weapons even at a shooting range, in the best interest of safety of all who go there.

Obama gets it

As most of you know, I have been skeptical of Obama and his buddying-up to Rick Warren and other evangelical leaders. I was irritated by his decision to continue Bush’s faith-based initiatives and tax-funded religious discrimination, I was concerned if Obama could really keep his religious beliefs and political decisions separate. Then what Obama said yesterday at a press conference in Turkey put my mind a bit more at ease — the U.S is NOT a Christian nation:

LINK: Celebrating The Secular: Obama Says U.S. Is Not A Christian Nation

“I’ve said before that one of the great strengths of the United States is – although as I mentioned we have a very large Christian population – we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation,” Obama said. “We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

A few second later, Obama went on to praise the concept of “a secular country that is respectful of religious freedom, respectful of rule of law, respectful of freedom, upholding these values and being willing to stand up for them in the international stage.”

Well said, Mr President.

Jewish magical incantations to the sun

As we all know, it’s not just fundie Xians and Muslims who believe in this creationism bullcrap, but thousands of observant Jews believe that the universe was created 5,769 years ago and have a special ceremony when the sun returns to a magical spot every 28 years.

Israeli Jews bless the sun in rare 28-year prayer

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Tens of thousands of Jewish faithful turned out before sunrise on Wednesday in front of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the country to bless the sun in a prayer said once every 28 years.

Dressed in white prayer shawls, men and women, adults and children filled the plaza in front of the wall, Judaism’s holiest site, and crowded onto nearby rooftops to catch a glimpse of the sun rising over the Holy City.

As the faithful swayed back and forth in prayer, the area filled with the din of the Birkat Hakhama prayer.

Elsewhere around Israel and the occupied West Bank, tens of thousands of observant Jews sought out hilltops and rooftops to catch the first rays of the sun to recite the prayer.

Birkat Hakhama is said as the sun comes up to mark what according to Jewish tradition is the sun’s return to its position at the moment that the universe was created 5,769 years ago. It returns to the spot once every 28 years.

Once again, superstitious belief without evidence.

Full story

"Don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out"

As atheists, we are often accused of not being open-minded enough when we are not willing to consider made-up explanations for the “mysteries” of the unknown without supporting evidence. The following video takes a look at some of the flawed thinking that prompts people who believe in certain non-scientific concepts to accuse others of being close-minded for seeking scientific explanations and evidence for claims of supernatural activities, etc.

From the Friendly Atheist

Gay marriage legal in Iowa

Who woulda thought? Iowa of all states. H/T to Pharyngula

Iowa high court strikes down same-sex marriage ban

The Iowa Supreme Court struck down a state law Friday that banned same-sex marriage.

Iowa becomes the third state in the nation to allow same-sex marriage, after Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Friday’s decision upheld a 2007 ruling by a lower court that Iowa’s 1998 law limiting marriage to heterosexual couples went against the state’s constitution. It becomes effective in 21 days.

“This is a great day for civil rights in Iowa,” said attorney Dennis Johnson, a co-counsel with Lambda Legal, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of six same-sex couples seeking to marry in Iowa. “Go get married. Live happily ever after,” he said at a news conference where there was loud clapping among plaintiffs.

Atheist Comedian on Religion

Keith Lowell Jensen

Sunday funnies

Jimmy Kimmel Show - Nadya Suleman Giving Birth

Catch a falling star

Here is a story brought to my attention by tinaFCD. Very interesting news.

LINK: Astronomers catch a shooting star for 1st time

WASHINGTON – For the first time scientists matched a meteorite found on Earth with a specific asteroid that became a fireball plunging through the sky. It gives them a glimpse into the past when planets formed and an idea how to avoid a future asteroid Armageddon.

Last October, astronomers tracked a small non-threatening asteroid heading toward Earth before it became a "shooting star," something they had not done before. It blew up in the sky and scientists thought there would be no space rocks left to examine.

But a painstaking search by dozens of students through the remote Sudan desert came up with 8.7 pounds of black jagged rocks, leftovers from the asteroid 2008 TC3. And those dark rocks were full of surprises and minuscule diamonds, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature.

*snip*

The asteroid, which mostly burned in the atmosphere 23 miles above the ground, is likely a leftover from when chunks of rock tried and failed to become a planet, about 4.5 billion years ago, scientists said.

"This is a look back in time and it came to us," said University of Maryland astronomer Lucy McFadden. She wasn't part of the study, but like four other outside experts praised the findings as important to the understanding of the solar system.

"It's a beautiful example of looking at an earlier stage of planet development that was arrested, halted," said NASA cosmic mineralogist Michael Zolensky, a co-author of the study.

But it also serves as a lesson for the future if this asteroid's big brother comes hurtling toward Earth.

*snip*

Blowing it up like in the Bruce Willis movie "Armageddon" wouldn't be smart because this type of asteroid turns out to be very much like a "traveling sandpile," Zolensky said. "If you blow it up, all the pieces are heading toward Earth."

Instead, a spaceship-aided nudge would be more effective, said NASA Ames Research Center director Simon "Pete" Worden, another study co-author. He is a longtime advocate of a worldwide program to plan for the threat of asteroids and comets hitting Earth.

"The real important issue is to understand the physics of these objects," Worden said.

Let's hope they figure it out before a big one comes at us.

LINK TO MORE, CLICK HERE

Martian Dunes and the Shadow of Opportunity

Credit: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, JPL, NASA

Explanation: Human made robots continue to roll across the surface of Mars. Both Opportunity and its sister rover Spirit are in their sixth year on Mars, exploring the red planet for years longer than original expectations. Pictured above is a composite of recent images taken by the navigation camera on top of the Opportunity rover in Meridiani Planum. Visible are parallel rover tracks, rippling sand dunes, light-colored bedrock protrusions, metallic rover parts, and the dark shadow of the sometimes-artistic robotic photographer. Currently, Opportunity is on its way toward huge Endeavor crater, while Spirit is trying to climb an unusual rock structure known as Home Plate. If it can survive the harsh martian environment, Opportunity should arrive at Endeavor crater in about two years, at which time it may revolutionize human knowledge of this ancient martian landform.

Prayer instead of action leads to disaster

When will people ever learn that prayer does not work.

Crash pilot who paused to pray convicted

PALERMO (Reuters) – A Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures before crash-landing his plane, killing 16 people, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by an Italian court along with his co-pilot.

The 2005 crash at sea off Sicily left survivors swimming for their lives, some clinging to a piece of the fuselage that remained floating after the ATR turbo-prop aircraft splintered upon impact.

A fuel-gauge malfunction was partly to blame but prosecutors also said the pilot succumbed to panic, praying out loud instead of following emergency procedures and then opting to crash-land the plane instead trying to reach a nearby airport.

Another five employees of Tuninter, a subsidiary of Tunisair, were sentenced to between eight and nine years in jail by the court, in a verdict handed down Monday.

The seven accused, who were not in court, will not spend time in jail until the appeals process has been exhausted.

Yet another instance where this god doesn’t show up. When will people ever get it. All those people died because of the religious bullshit belief of a delusional pilot. If I was a relative of one of the victims, I could never forgive such stupidity .

Obama administration upholds ban on Muslim scholar

The ACLU has championed the case of Swiss Muslim Tariq Ramadan, an Oxford University professor and a vocal critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, who has been barred first by the Bush Administration from entering the United States on the grounds national security concerns, and that decision has now been upheld by the Obama administration.

While I was expecting a clean break from the Bush administration’s failed policies, Obama still clings certain policies from the previous administration, as we have discussed here a few times concerning Bush’s faith-based programs that Obama plans to continue, as well as policies involving our national security. But in this case, is he justified? I think maybe he is.

Obama lawyer sticks to ban on Muslim scholar

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A lawyer arguing on behalf of the Obama administration on Tuesday echoed Bush administration policies to back a decision to deny one of Europe’s leading Muslim intellectuals entry to the United States.

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Jones told a U.S. federal appeals court panel that they should uphold a decision to bar Swiss Muslim Tariq Ramadan, an Oxford University professor and a vocal critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, from entering the United States.

Civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, had hoped Tuesday’s arguments would see a reversal of Bush administration policies that they argue exclude foreign scholars from visiting the United States due to their political beliefs.

“Consular decisions are not subject to litigation,” Jones told the three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, broadly arguing the courts have no power to examine visa denials. The ACLU argued against a judge’s ruling in late 2007 that upheld Ramadan’s ban.

Ramadan is the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, an Islamist thinker and activist who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood, which opposed secular and Western ideas.

The ACLU has championed Ramadan’s case as part of a larger pattern of scholars and writers being excluded due to unwarranted or unspecified U.S. national security grounds.

*snip*

The ACLU argued the government was using the provision more broadly to deny entry to people whose political views they did not approve of.

My immediate reaction, while remembering what happened on September 11, 2001, is to say fuck this terrorist sympathizer and America hater. On the other hand, is it right to ban people from coming here simply because of their political viewpoints? Is this a dangerous anti-American instigator who should be kept out of this country for security reasons, or should he be allowed a visa to enter and exercise his freedom of speech?Many people, liberal and conservative think he should be barred from entry because of the rhetoric he espouses. He isn't simply speaking in disagreement of an act committed by the USA, but is against the USA and all of Western culture, in general. Ramadan says he is a moderate, but holds very strong Islamic views towards women and in support of the fundamentalist form of his religion.

The Greatest Story Ever Told - again and again and again

Christianity is just a spin-off of other past religions, based on the movement of the sun. The sun worshipers were closer to the truth than other god creators. The sun is what gives us life, we cannot live without the sun. Throughout time, "sun" turned into "son" in various religions. But it's all based on astrology. The Egyptian religion is very likely the basis of the Christian religion.

This revealing documentary is part of the piece called Zeitgeist. This segment deals with the Ancient African origins of the Christ story based upon the story of Heru (Horus), Auset (Isis) and Ausar (Osiris). Even though the documentary says the story occurs around 3,000 B.C. It actually goes back to about 8,000 B.C.

This documentary shows in clear cut manner shows the similarities between Heru, the other crucified saviors and Jesus the Christ. It is all based on the journey of the Sun through out the 12 signs of the Zodiac. The Astro Theology has been put into literal form and taught as Theology. This is inaccurate.

A few of the similarities are between Heru and Jesus are:

1) The Virgin Birth
2) The Annuniciation
3) The Crucifixtion
4) Resurrection
5) 12 Disiciples
6) Birth on December 25th
7) Healing the sick
8) Raising the Dead
9) A Star in the East
10) Three Kings or Wise Men
11) Started teaching at age 12
12) Was dead for 3 days

Watch the videos:




Part 2


Part 3

"God-less" churches for humanists

A major reason so many people congregate at churches on Sunday mornings is for the social aspects and sense of community of being together with other people. While many of us atheists, agnostics, and humanists, reject anything that resembles organized religion, there are many who like the idea and humanist and atheist “churches” are growing in numbers all across the nation like this one in Cambridge, MA.

LINK: God-less ‘congregations’ planned for humanists

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The monthly schedule is church-like, with its parenting classes, guest speakers and small group meetings to hash out shared beliefs. But God isn’t part of this Cambridge congregation.

Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard University, is building a God-free model of community that he hopes helps humanists increase in numbers and influence.

Epstein sees potential in research showing that there are more people with no religion. In the latest American Religious Identification Survey, released this month, 15 percent of respondents in 2008 said they had no religion, compared to 8.2 percent in 1990. Epstein believes that group includes large numbers of people who are humanist, but have never identified themselves that way and can be reached.

At the same time, there is broader acceptance of those with no faith, as indicated by President Barack Obama’s mention of “nonbelievers” in his inaugural address, Epstein said.

*snip*

“This is a new mission field, if you will, but are those vineyards ripe for the picking?” Edwords said. “I haven’t seen sufficient evidence of it.”

Still, both men agree that more humanist communities are needed, for mutual support and to offset isolation humanists often feel.

I never feel isolated. I’m just a person living among millions of other people who just has no god beliefs. I really don’t need the support group, which in my opinion is what these “churches” resemble. I feel that these folks just can’t let go of the whole church routine that many of us atheists have freed ourselves from. Many will be turned off by these gathering places.

But he said he doubts humanism can sustain itself in the local congregations Epstein envisions because community is not a natural part of humanism, where the individual is the ultimate source of meaning. If humanism becomes concerned with the “greater good,” and a sort of natural moral order that implies, it starts to resemble religion and humanists will back away, he said.

What is your opinion?

World religion extreme fighting event!

This would make for a quite entertaining reality show!

click on cartoon to enlargeThanks to Austin Atheists of Austin, Texas

Evolution is NOT about people coming from apes

nor did people come about via dirt and magic.
Thanks to Austin Atheists of Austin, Texas

Happy St Patrick's Day!

I did a search to find out if there are people who actually believe in leprechauns and sure enough, I found this group of "believers" in Alabama who try to take pictures, videoes and even special flutes to try to lure the leprechaun out of hiding. Just when you thought you heard it all, there is always more.


(If you shine a light in its direction, it disappears…that cracked me up!)

Alabama Leprechaun Part II

What star created this huge puffball?

click on image to enlargeTycho's Supernova Remnant
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: MPIA, Calar Alto, O. Krause et al.

Explanation: What star created this huge puffball? Pictured above is the best multi-wavelength image yet of Tycho's supernova remnant, the result of a stellar explosion first recorded over 400 years ago by the famous astronomer Tycho Brahe. The above image is a composite of an X-ray image taken by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, an infrared image taken by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, and an optical image taken by the 3.5-meter Calar Alto telescope located in southern Spain. The expanding gas cloud is extremely hot, while slightly different expansion speeds have given the cloud a puffy appearance. Although the star that created SN 1572, is likely completely gone, a star dubbed Tycho G, too dim to be easily discerned here, is being studied as the possible companion. Finding progenitor remnants of Tycho's supernova is particularly important because the supernova was recently determined to be of Type Ia. The peak brightness of Type Ia supernovas is thought to be well understood, making them quite valuable in calibrating how our universe dims distant objects.

Stem cell research -- releasing science from the prison of religion

Solar Prominence from SOHO

click on image to enlargeCredit: SOHO - EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA

Explanation: What's happened to our Sun? It was sporting a spectacular -- but not very unusual -- solar prominence. A solar prominence is a cloud of solar gas held above the Sun's surface by the Sun's magnetic field. In 2004, NASA's Sun-orbiting SOHO spacecraft imaged an impressively large prominence hovering over the surface, pictured above. The Earth would easily fit under the hovering curtain of hot gas. A quiescent prominence typically lasts about a month, and may erupt in a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) expelling hot gas into the Solar System. Although somehow related to the Sun's changing magnetic field, the energy mechanism that creates and sustains a Solar prominence is still a topic of research.

Never think critically again!

Via Friendly Atheist

Bananas

God's favorite way to kill quiz

From Landover Baptist Church

A Landover Baptist Bible Quiz

We all know God has historically killed or tortured those who rub Him the wrong way. What you may not realize is that God’s methods of maiming are as varied as his reasons for smiting people. A Biblical scholar/True Christian should have no difficulty determining God’s favorite way of torturing and/or killing less desirable folks in each of the following circumstances. Get the correct answers by clicking here

---

1. Which of the following are among God’s methods of punishing those who break His commandments?

A. He strikes them with plagues, burning fevers that consume the eyes, pestilence, consumption, blasting, the sword and even mildew.
B. He strikes them with hemorrhoids, scabs, itching, madness and blindness.
C. He sends wild bears to devour their children.
D. Any of the above, depending on His mood.

2. How does God handle people who make Him jealous by having a religion different than ours?

A. Trick question. God is not vain.
B. He has them burned with fire, shot with arrows, bitten by beasts, poisoned by serpents, stabbed with swords and dashed to pieces with rods of iron-man, woman and child including infants, the aged and virgins.
C. He gently nudges them in the right direction.
D. None of the above.

3. How does God kill whiners?

A. What? God wouldn’t kill people just for complaining.
B. Fire.
C. Earthquakes.
D. Terminal illness.

4. How does God prefer to torture those who somehow become enemies of His chosen people?

A. He breaks their bones and pierces them with arrows.
B. He sends hornets to kill them.
C. He has them eat their own flesh and drink their own blood.
D. All of the above.

5. How does God kill those who vacation in Egypt?

A. Sword.
B. Famine.
C. Pestilence.
D. Take your pick.

6. How did God express his hatred toward people living in metropolitan Babylon?

A. By destroying their livestock.
B. By making the women barren.
C. By turning the men into drag queens.
D. All of the above.

7. When a community’s sins really make God mad, how does God find comfort?

A. By killing a third of the people with plagues and famine.
B. By killing a third of the people with local warfare.
C. By killing a third of the people with international warfare.
D. All of the above.

8. Whom does God slaughter when He gets jealous because a community is worshiping someone else?

A. The women.
B. The babies.
C. The unborn infants.
D. All of the above.

9. How does God punish promiscuous folks, like men who have sex with both their wives and mothers-in-law and daughters of priests who sleep around?

A. He has their genitals mutilated so they can sin no more.
B. He ensures their misdeeds result in unwanted pregnancy or venereal disease.
C. He has them burned with fire.
D. Any of the above.

10. In Jesus’ time, how did the Trinity deal with nonbelievers?

A. They had one eaten by worms.
B. They struck one blind.
C. A and B.
D. None of the above.

or Click here to get answers

More Medieval bizarrness

So much stuff can be found on the grotesque beliefs and rituals of the Christian church throughout the centuries. How people in today's world can still have anything to do with an ancient religion in any way, shape or form is beyond me. In these modern times, with education and all the information we now have, many of us find it mind-boggling how folks can still cling to religions associated with unrealistic, barbaric, hideous, crazy beliefs. What do the people today do when they find something like the girl in the story below? They bury her with some other "new and improved" form of mythology.

Girl decapitated 700 years ago gets church burial

LONDON – More than 200 people have attended the funeral of a teenage girl decapitated 700 years ago in a gruesome medieval ritual.

Archaeologists discovered the girl's body two years ago in unconsecrated ground beside an English church. Her head had been placed beside the body.

Experts believe she may have been executed or committed suicide and then decapitated. The ritual was sometimes done during medieval times to deny Christians eternal life.

The church's vicar, the Rev. Andy Harding, requested that the girl be reburied in the main churchyard. Harding said that whoever she was or what she had done, "everyone deserves a dignified and respectable funeral."

Yeah, complete with magical incense, magical holy water and magical incantations...yeah, that's more respectable. (sarcasm)

The ceremony was held Saturday at Hoo St. Werburgh parish church, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of London.

The more respectable thing to do would be just let the poor maiden's remains RIP.

Medieval "vampires"

Religion often leads to beliefs in other supernatural absurdities, like witches, demons, ghosts, flaming dragons, etc. And in medieval times, the Church was instrumental in perpetuating the vampire myths, and often performed "exorcisms" of exhumed bodies of dead people. During times of plague, when they would open mass graves to bury more bodies, the sight of the decomposing bodies were horrifying and the people back then didn't understand the whole decompression process. So what did they do when they didn't know what was happening? They do like they do today and make up an explanation, and a quite scary one at that. The god of Abraham believers are very good at doing that, making stuff up to scare their followers into submission.

This is a pretty interesting find:

LINK: Italy dig unearths female "vampire" in Venice

ROME – An archaeological dig near Venice has unearthed the 16th-century remains of a woman with a brick stuck between her jaws — evidence, experts say, that she was believed to be a vampire.

The unusual burial is thought to be the result of an ancient vampire-slaying ritual. It suggests the legend of the mythical bloodsucking creatures was tied to medieval ignorance of how diseases spread and what happens to bodies after death, experts said.

The well-preserved skeleton was found in 2006 on the Lazzaretto Nuovo island, north of the lagoon city, amid other corpses buried in a mass grave during an epidemic of plague that hit Venice in 1576.

"Vampires don't exist, but studies show people at the time believed they did," said Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist and anthropologist at Florence University who studied the case over the last two years. "For the first time we have found evidence of an exorcism against a vampire."

*snip*

During epidemics, mass graves were often reopened to bury fresh corpses and diggers would chance upon older bodies that were bloated, with blood seeping out of their mouth and with an inexplicable hole in the shroud used to cover their face.

"These characteristics are all tied to the decomposition of bodies," Borrini said. "But they saw a fat, dead person, full of blood and with a hole in the shroud, so they would say: 'This guy is alive, he's drinking blood and eating his shroud.'"

Modern forensic science shows the bloating is caused by a buildup of gases, while fluid seeping from the mouth is pushed up by decomposing organs, Borrini said. The shroud would have been consumed by bacteria found in the mouth area, he said.

At the time however, what passed for scientific texts taught that "shroud-eaters" were vampires who fed on the cloth and cast a spell that would spread the plague in order to increase their ranks.

To kill the undead creatures, the stake-in-the-heart method popularized by later literature was not enough: A stone or brick had to be forced into the vampire's mouth so that it would starve to death, Borrini said.

Ignorance proves once again to be at the core of superstitious beliefs. While we cannot say that folks who hold religious beliefs are ignorant in modern western society, some have used the phrase "willfully ignorant" to those who cling to ancient superstitious beliefs in imaginary gods, goddesses, elves, aliens that live in volcanoes, magic underwear, etc. While we atheists find it all silly, it is rather interesting.

Culinary Iconography - Jesus on a French fry

Here's another one for my ever-growing collection of culinary icongraphy (see link in sidebar to all of them I have found so far.) This one was found by an 88-year-old woman in Sacramento. While I can see a cross in this, she claims she sees Jesus in there, too. People see what they want to see.Here is the link to LiveLeak video...listen to the dude in the background saying " that is very cool." She has a special pretty little embroiderd cloth to keep it in and everything.

She admits to being influence by other people seeing images in stuff, and when we look hard enough, we can all see familiar images in other objects, and she saw what she wanted to see.

To me, it just looks like two old stuck-together pieces of fried potatos.

Culinary Iconography - Cheesus sightings

Well, here are two reports from the godly folks who see visions in their food of Jesus according to their own imaginings of what he looked like. Funny this Jesus always has the standard beard, long hippie hair parted in the middle. No portrait or statue was ever made of the historical Jesus (maybe because his existence is debatable), yet people seem to know exactly what he looked like. (Because that is how Jesus has been portrayed based on the creations of how humans imagined him to be.)

Here we have a couple of Jesus sitings in Cheetos.

The first is from a youth director from a church in Houston, Texas.

He says ""Seeing the image of Christ in a Cheeto means that I was able to imagine it. God's creation is full of signs and things that can and do remind us of Him." Well, humans see all kinds of images in things and that is psychology of the human mind, not some "miracle" from an entity that lives in another dimension in the cosmos.

The next was of Jesus being crucified on a cheese puff. This one was seen by a woman named Kelly Ramey from High Ridge, Missouri.

The local pastor is one of those who give southerners a bad name. He asserts that "all that really matters here, people, is that we learn that all of us have to find Jesus. Be it a Church or at the bottom of a bag of greasy, cheese-covered puffed corn nuggets." Some idiot commenter in the thread of that article says that it "tastes like salvation". Cheese puffs are not good for you, they are greasy, high in cholesterol and can bother your stomach and clog your arteries, so fitting to compare it to believing in imaginary salvation since that is only hurting your mind.

Cheesus and other "spiritual" iconography

Instead of imprinting his image on the ass ends of dogs and cats and on cheese puffs, etc. why doesn't this god drop loaves of bread and fish in the laps of the starving? (Because god does not exist, Jesus if he existed is long dead, and humans have some incredible imaginations.)

Thanks to my friend Bob for yet another good find for our amusement. I will be highlighting some of these "findings" for my Culinary Iconography collection (links found in my sidebar).

Brilliant!

Click on image to enlarge

Hickson Compact Group 90

Credit: NASA, ESA, R. Sharples (Univ. Durham)

Explanation: Scanning the skies for galaxies, Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson and colleagues identified some 100 compact groups of galaxies, now appropriately called Hickson Compact Groups (HCGs). This sharp Hubble image shows one such galaxy group, HCG 90, in startling detail. Three galaxies are revealed to be strongly interacting: a dusty spiral galaxy stretched and distorted between a pair of large elliptical galaxies. The close encounter will trigger furious star formation. On a cosmic timescale, the gravitational tug of war will eventually result in the merger of the trio into a large single galaxy. The merger process is now understood to be a normal part of the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way. HCG 90 lies about 100 million light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. This Hubble view spans about 80,000 light-years at that estimated distance. Of course, Hickson Compact Groups also make for rewarding viewing for Earth-bound astronomers with more modest sized telescopes.

Blasphemy- The Movie

H/T to my friend KA over at biblioblography for pointing to this one.

I am going to rent this via Netflix so I can watch the entire thing. You can view it via YouTube in seven parts.

Synopsis:Martian Garcia announces to his parents that not only is he proud to have converted to Atheism, but he intends to tell his whole family on Christmas. His parents then disown him on the spot, and they turn to his Aunt Patrica, who turns the rest of his family against him, and she's determined to either bring him back to the fold or kill him trying.

(That's what some religious folks to, disown their own relatives when they don't accept their worldview as truth...I have had it happen to me with a couple of members of my extended family. Hopefully one day they will see just how unnecessary and extreme their actions were all because I asked them nicely not to witness to me via email or otherwise.)

Here is part two, just for a preview:

Televangelist Swine

Ozzy Osbourne's Miracle Man tells it like it is about greedy, evil televangelists

Lyrics:

Miracle Man

[Daisley - Osbourne - Wylde]

I'm looking for a Miracle Man
That tells me no lies
I'm looking for a Miracle Man
Who's not in disguise
I don't know where he'll come from
And I don't know where he's been
But it's not our Jimmy Sinner
Because he's so obscene

Miracle Man got busted
Miracle Man got busted

Today I saw a Miracle Man
On TV cryin'
Such a hypocritical man
Born again, dying

He don't know where he's going
But we know just where he's been
'Twas our little Jimmy Sinner
That I saw on the screen

Miracle Man got busted
Miracle Man got busted
Miracle Man got busted
Miracle Man

A Devil with a crucifix
Brimstone and fire
He needs another carnal fix
To take him higher and higher
Now Jimmy, he got busted
With his pants down
Repent ye wretched sinner
Self righteous clown

Miracle Man got busted
Miracle Man got busted
Miracle Man got busted
Miracle Man got busted

Miracle Man got busted
Miracle Man got busted
Miracle Man got busted