Has anyone seen this? (I just found it here)…

Check out the smugness and arrogance. Just gotta love it…

(Isn’t pride supposed to be bad or something?)…

But always remember folks: Xians aren’t perfect — just forgiven…

This time reporting on Hindu and Christians warring with one another in the Indian state of Orissa last weekend:

(Right is a picture of what was left of a Christian orphanage after weekend devastation.)

Riots grip India’s Orissa region

Four people have been killed in armed clashes that broke out between Hindus and Christians in the Indian state of Orissa at the weekend.

Now a total of at least eight persons have been killed in the spiralling communal violence sparked by the killing of an eminent Hindu leader.

But we atheists are told that the world NEEDS some kind of god beliefs for there to be peace and love, etc.

Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati was killed on Saturday night.

Seven of the eight deaths have taken place in Kandhamal district, the epicentre of the communal upheaval.

The incident took place at Barakhama village in the afternoon as rival groups attacked each other with guns and bombs. Those killed in the clash included a woman.

Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said: “Four bodies were found at the scene of the clash at Barakhama. But the identity of the deceased is yet to be established.”

Making a statement on the incident in the State Assembly, Mr Patnaik said a small contingent of police personnel present there had done “its best but could not prevent the violence”.

And none of their gods show up from either side.

Reinforcements have now been rushed in and the situation brought under control, he said.

And once again, human intervention to the rescue.

Two people were burnt to death in Tiangia village in the district after rioters set fire to their houses last night.

One person had been burnt to death at Rupagaon village on Sunday night.

Arson and burning of Christian religious places continued on Tuesday in Kandhamal despite a curfew in all major towns and prohibitory orders in force throughout the district.

Even a Flag March by paramilitary forces did not deter the rioters, who went on a rampage setting fire to churches, vehicles and government facilities.

Ahhh, feel that godly love.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that the woman who was burnt to death in an orphanage in Bargarh district yesterday was a Hindu.

“We have verified the antecedents of the woman and found that she was a Hindu,” Sambalpur DIG YB Khurania said.

Initial reports had suggested that she was a nun.

Does it matter what sort of god botherer she was? She was a human being. Humanity is hopeless.

During the 7th-inning singing of ‘Gawd Bless America’, a Yankees fan decided to use the bathroom during the little break. That is when he was confronted by one of New York’s “finest” and told he wasn’t allowed to leave during the religious/patriotic song. When the fan told the officer he didn’t care about ‘God Bless America’ and just needed to use the bathroom, two officers pinned both of his arms behind his back and ejected him from the stadium. What’s this country coming to where we are forced by public officers to remain seated for a religious tune at a baseball game? Of course, the police are making up their own story once the legal representatives were called in.

Here is the story and the video:

Fan Ejected From Yankee Stadium For Bathroom Break

Italian museum defies pope over crucified frog

The Catholics are crying persecution again over what they see as a blasphemous mockery of a symbol of “God’s love”.

Boo-fucking-hoo! The wooden cross was a bloody, gruesome execution device, people! Wake up!

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian museum on Thursday defied Pope Benedict and refused to remove a modern art sculpture portraying a crucified green frog holding a beer mug and an egg that the Vatican had condemned as blasphemous.

The board of the Museion museum in the northern city of Bolzano decided by a majority vote that the frog was a work of art and would stay in place for the remainder of an exhibition.

The wooden sculpture by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger depicts a frog about 1 metre 30 cm (4 feet) high nailed to brown cross and holding a beer mug in one outstretched hand and an egg in another.

Called “Zuerst die Fuesse,” (Feet First), it wears a green loin cloth and is nailed through the hands and the feet in the manner of Jesus Christ. Its green tongue hangs out of its mouth.

*snip*

Pope Benedict, who is German himself and was recently on holiday not far from Bolzano, obviously did not agree.

The Vatican wrote a letter of support in the pope’s name to Franz Pahl, president of the regional government who opposed the sculpture. Pahl released parts of the letter, which said the work “wounds the religious sentiments of so many people who see in the cross the symbol of God’s love”.

Pahl, whose province is heavily Catholic, was so outraged by the sculpture of the pop-eyed amphibian that he went on a hunger strike to demand its removal and had to be taken to hospital during the summer.

“Surely this is not a work of art but a blasphemy and a disgusting piece of trash that upsets many people,” Pahl told Reuters by telephone.

“This decision to keep the statue there is totally unacceptable. It is a grave offence to our Catholic population,” he said.

Art experts defended the work.

“Art must always be free and the artist should not have any restrictions on freedom of expression,” Claudio Strinati, a superintendent for Rome’s state museums, told an Italian newspaper on Thursday.

I think this froggie is amusing, and think it’s even funnier how superstitious people get their panties in such a knot so as to make themselves sick over one person’s artistic expression. When they do this they draw even bigger attention to the artwork. I am sure the artists welcome their public protests.

Randall Terry is back. For those who don’t know or don’t remember, he’s the founder of the radical anti-abortion group Operation Rescue which terrorized abortion/reproductive health clinics during the late 1980s and early ‘90s. As the following article from Americans United states, Terry is an “ardent theocrat, a foe of church-state separation and an all-around rotten guy.”

A Terry comment from 1993 encapsulates his “Christian” worldview.

“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you,” he said. “I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good…. Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this county. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”

And now he has brought his “Xian luv” to the 2008 Democratic convention:

According to news accounts, Terry and 12 others were arrested yesterday outside the Democratic Convention in Denver. His press release in advance of the event said he and other “Catholic and Evangelical Christians will peacefully ‘break the law’ to protest the slaughter of the innocent by abortion, and to call on fellow Christians to reject the Obama/Biden ‘Ticket of Death.’”

Pro-lifer activists like this asshat call on their fellow god botherers to protest abortion, but they never say what they will do for that child once they force the women to have these babies. What about the child after it’s born to a mother who cannot take care of it? What about the child who is born to an drug user? What about the child who would be born with fetal alcohol syndrome? What about the child who is born into some other dire circumstances because pro-lifers forced their mothers to have them? Few of these activists say what they will do for the child once it is born and no longer an infant (if it survives that long). We don’t see this kind of religious activism to call for help for the homeless, those who live in poverty, drug addicts, and others who live in desperate situations.

Relatives of mine are pro-life. They are adamant about their anti-abortion stance and believe that abortion is never an option. They will vote for the government to take away legalized abortions. Yet what do they do to help children who are born into poverty and poor environments? They moved to a beautiful and isolated island off the coast of Alaska where they believe their “God is blessing them” while they spew out their rules they wish everyone else to live by. They did not take their “work” to the inner cities and other areas where there is the greatest need.

For every religious fuckwit that bites the dust (as in Karen’s post below), others refuse to die even though most of American wants them to STFU: Nightmare On Theocracy Street: America Wants Randall Terry To Get Lost

In the following video, Terry sounds eerily like Scientologist whackadoo Tom Cruise

Randall Terry Gets Owned

Is prevarication a course in seminary colleges? Or do the liars and frauds just naturally navigate toward the ministerial profession? Our special today comes to you from Adelaide, Australia. Yes, we envy our friends in Oz for their lower numbers of Crusaders for Christ, but someone turned over a rather large rock and look who crawled out:

Disgraced pastor Michael Guglielmucci, porn addict (since age 12, no less), who for two years pretended to have cancer and used his “disease” to fleece his flock and get support. He even made a recording of a song, called “Healing,” sung at one point with an oxygen tube coming out of his nose. Here is a YouTube video of the song, with lyrics subtitled. It’s a painfully long and droning, repetitive POS. But I supply it to highlight the delightful irony of the lyrics juxtaposed to the situation Mr. Guglielmucci finds himself in.
>Healer-Guglielmucci-Planetshakers-Hillsong

From an interview with Michael’s father Danny Gugielmucci in The Australian,

“When he was about 12 he did vomit all the time, he’d get really really sick,” he said.

“He was in the Adelaide Children’s Hospital for seven weeks at one stage; he didn’t eat and we thought we were going to lose him.

“They took out his appendix, thinking that it might be that, but they realised that it wasn’t.

“They gave us the option of putting him in a psychiatric ward to see if there was something psychological but we felt uncomfortable with that at the time. (emphasis mine)

“We signed him out from hospital and then he would go a few months and then he would get sick again.

“We’d always take him to hospital; we’d always do the proper thing but they couldn’t get to the bottom of it until now.”

Mr Guglielmucci said he and his wife were in “absolute shock” to discover their son was not terminally ill.

“We have watched our son go through what we thought was cancer,” he said.

“My wife and I, over the past two years, have watched him vomit in buckets, having nosebleeds, and even his hair fell out in clumps at one stage. What the hell kind of porn is he into?

“Every time we saw him, we saw symptoms. He stayed with us for a while where we had to put a special air-conditioner in one of the rooms because he would heat up so much in the middle of winter.
I hear porn will do that for ya.

“He had this cold air-conditioner blowing on him to try to keep the heat down. As a professional minister I’ve stood in front of my congregation and cried and said to pray for my son.

“I’ve travelled the world asking people to pray for him. Can you imagine what a horrible thing it would be if I was playing a game? Well, it’s not like they invested anything in it…or did you pass the plate for him too?

“To be honest, I ask myself as a father, ‘What did I miss, what did I not do? What could I have done better?’ ” Um, maybe let him be analyzed and get therapy back when he was 12?

It seems the stress of living a double life guilted Michael into confessing to his minister father and his mother about the fake cancer and his 16 year porn addiction. They thought he had called them urgently to his side because he only had a short time to live. They were shocked- SHOCKED!- to find out he wasn’t dying! His wife of seven years was clueless also. He is NOW getting the psychiatric help he needs and the docs concur that he’s a pretty sick puppy. Wifey’s getting counseling too; “hasn’t made any decisions yet”.

The parents were last seen wandering around and mumbling, “He’s addicted to porn? Why couldn’t he just be dying? ”

Hat tip to my buddy “What” over at NGB for suggesting this post.

Update:

PASTOR Michael Guglielmucci has been told by church officials to report to police, who will investigate what has happened to money raised during his cancer deception.
The Australian Christian Churches told The Advertiser yesterday (Aug. 22) that it was auditing Mr Guglielmucci’s bank accounts, which included money donated from people touched by his hit song Healer.
{snip}
The ACC has promised that all money raised deceptively will be returned or donated to charity.
The Assemblies of God, Australia’s largest Pentecostal movement, adopted its new name of Australian Christian Churches in 2007.

The former pastor with one of Australia’s biggest youth churches, Planetshakers, inspired hundreds of thousands of young Christians around the world as he performed with an oxygen tube in his nose.

Healer became an anthem of faith for believers, many of whom are suffering illnesses and were praying for Mr Guglielmucci. The song, featured on Hillsong’s latest album, debuted at No. 2 on the ARIA charts.

In a YouTube video, he tells how the news from the hospital that he had “quite an aggressive form of cancer” inspired his song. “I just went home. I knew I had to go home and needed to get alone with God,” he says in the video.

“I walked into my studio at home and for some reason. . . I sat at a piano and began to worship.

“I sang that song from start to finish. I was crying. I just realised that God had given me an incredible gift and I realise that song was going to be my strength.”

Church community sources said Mr Guglielmucci attended his medical appointments alone.

Here is news in The Guardian concerning atheist UK foreign secretary David Miliband possibly becoming the next prime minister. It will take about 400 more years for the U.S. to get to this point, I am afraid.

In this climate of quarrels between religionists and secularists, there are very many reasons to hope for a non-believer at No 10

When Labour cabinet members were asked about their religious allegiances last December, following Tony Blair’s official conversion to Roman Catholicism, it turned out that more than half of them are not believers. The least equivocal about their atheism were the health secretary, Alan Johnson, and foreign secretary David Miliband.

The fact that Miliband is an atheist is a matter of special interest given the likelihood that he may one day, and perhaps soon, occupy No 10. In our present uncomfortable climate of quarrels between pushy religionists and resisting secularists - or attack-dog secularists and defensive religionists: which side you are on determines how you see it - there are many reasons why it would be a great advantage to everyone to have an atheist prime minister.

Atheist leaders are not going to think they are getting messages from Beyond telling them to go to war. They will not cloak themselves in supernaturalistic justifications, as Blair came perilously close to doing when interviewed about the decision to invade Iraq.

Atheist leaders will be sceptical about the claims of religious groups to be more important than other civil society organisations in doing good, getting public funds, meriting special privileges and exemptions from laws, and having seats in the legislature and legal protection from criticism, satire and challenge.

Atheist leaders are going to be more sceptical about inculcating sectarian beliefs into small children ghettoised into publicly funded faith-based schools, risking social divisiveness and possible future conflict. They will be readier to learn Northern Ireland’s bleak lesson in this regard.

Atheist leaders will, by definition, be neutral between the different religious pressure groups in society, and will have no temptation not to be even-handed because of an allegiance to the outlook of just one of those groups.

*snip*

Despite appearances, the world is not seeing a resurgence of religion, only a big turning-up of the volume of religious voices. This is itself a response to increasing secularism among people tired of the disruptions, obstructions and conflicts religion so often causes. Public acknowledgement of atheism by a senior politician who might soon lead his country is just one indicator of the fact that the tide is actually running in the opposite direction: and that is a welcome and hopeful sign.

Maybe the “tide is running in the opposite direction” in the UK, but it certainly isn’t here in the U.S.

Ed note: To clarify–I did not post this to endorse Miliband as prime minister or his policies, I posted this to show that the UK is not afraid to elect an atheist and religion is not the centerpiece of politics there. We are centuries behind them in that regard.

I never thought I would see the day with the Democrats transforming the Democratic National Convention into an interfaith church service. I am greatly disappointed.

DENVER - At the first official event Sunday of the Democratic National Convention, a choir belted out a gospel song and was followed by a rabbi reciting a Torah reading about forgiveness and the future.

Helen Prejean, the Catholic nun who wrote “Dead Man Walking,” assailed the death penalty and the use of torture.

Young Muslim women in headscarves sat near older African-American women in their finest Sunday hats.

Four years ago, such a scene would have been unthinkable at a Democratic National Convention. In 2004, there was one interfaith lunch at the Democratic gala in Boston.

But that same year, “values voters” helped re-elect President Bush, giving Democrats of faith the opening they needed to make party leaders listen to them.

The result was on display at Sunday’s interfaith service, staged in a theater inside the Colorado Convention Center, and will be evident throughout the convention agenda and on the sidelines.

There will be four “faith caucus” meetings, blessings to open and close each night, and panels and parties run by Democratic-leaning religious advocacy groups that didn’t even exist in 2004 — not to mention protests from religious groups and leaders opposed to the Democratic platform.

And of course no atheist, agnostic or secular humanist on the list of speakers. If the intention was to show diversity amongst the Democratic party and unity of people from all walks of life, then that should include everyone. Unfortunately, to the believers, Democrats or otherwise, a coalition that supports nontheistic views is not welcome. But those who value the separation of church and state still made their voices heard:

In June, the Madison,Wis.-based Freedom from Religion Foundation, a 12,000-member watchdog group for the separation of church and state, erected a billboard near the Colorado Convention Center that proclaimed “Imagine No Religion.” In early August the sign was changed to “Keep Religion Out of Politics.”

During the convention, the foundation will fund mobile billboards asking for church-state separation and broadcasting its view that religion is divisive.

“Faith does not unite us,” Freedom co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor said. “And this is a time when we should be in unity behind our secular government.”

Most liberals here still support Obama and the Democratic party despite the religious mumbo jumbo he believes in and that is interjected into politics from both sides now to pander to the evangelicals, but we must continue to make our voices heard that separation of church and state must be upheld and to keep our secular government from slipping towards a theocracy.

LINK TO FULL ARTICLE