Paul's blog

Archive for August, 2006

Just one word: Shit

If you believe in God and in miracles, I have a tip for you:

Leave the miracles to God

He’s a trained professional. Don’t try this at home!

If you really have to do that water-trick, then follow the bible: the correct order is:

first part the seas, then do your crossing.

 

I’m sorry, but this image of a nun laying in an MRI machine while having some kind of a religious orgasm .. is too much for me to take. I’m losing it.

The “ramped-up electrical activity in parts of the brain“ is the result of “feelings of profound joy and union with a higher being”? How about the result of feelings of extreme claustrophobia? Ever been in such a thing? Well I can almost envision anyone praying when you’re in one, but “feelings of profound joy” while every unpaired proton and neutron in your body is being spun around? You’ve got to be kidding me!

If you’re not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin

*wipes foam off mouth*

I will probably respond to this later. It’s too soon after I read this. I need to sit down a bit for a while. Get my heart rate and blood pressure under control. 

I mean:

“Separation of church and state is ‘a lie we have been told’“?

This candidate for the US senate *gasp* calls her own nation’s constitution a lie?

“separating religion and politics is ‘wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers‘”?

Lady, go look up the meaning of the word ‘democracy’. This is neither Iran nor the Vatican. US citizens choose our leaders (check that constitution again!). In any case, if God chooses our rulers, why are you campaigning?

“God and the nation’s founding fathers did not intend the country be “a nation of secular laws.”“?

To claim to know God’s intention is pure blashpemy, or stupidity, depending on your religiosity, but in both cases extremely arrogant. The intention of the founding fathers, however, can be known, since they wrote it down. Mrs. Harris clearly doesn’t have a clue about her own country’s history.

She means to tell me that the founding fathers didn’t mean to establish the strict separation of church and state after one of them, Thomas Jefferson, wrote this (part of a longer) letter:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.“

 

I’m at work, in my office. I was just handed a black trash bag. “For over your computer”, I was informed. We don’t have windows in this building, so I guess they don’t particularly trust the roof.

Ernesto is coming!

JUST after I wrote the post about ‘remnant prayer’, I came across an hilarious website that offered Armor of God Pyjama’s.

Hilarious, untill I realized these people are most likely serious about it. Just read it. I’m just speechless. Don’t know where to begin. Too crazy for words.

Okay, just one remark: see their about page and notice these two statements:

a. “although we are a new company, our desire is to grow” (followed by a lot of blah-blah, but what they want is to simply sell a lot of that crap .. I’m tempted to say “Holy Crap”).

b. “we believe in One God – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit”

ad. b: Armor-of-God-folks, if you keep up this kind of arithmetic, or rather, basic counting, you’re probably not going to achieve your goal mentioned ad. a. 

Well, okay, maybe a second remark:

This whole idea was inspired by a mother reading Ephesians 6:10-18 to her children every night.

First of all, read it yourself here: imagine that this is read to you every night .. is that really going to give you a warm fuzzy feeling and helps you falling asleep feeling safe and well guarded? Flaming arrows from the evil ones? Would scare any kid shitless .. If they had a clue what it was all about.

But they don’t. They’re kids for crying out loud.

Heck, even mama doesn’t really understand what it is all about:

“Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

See that Mam? That helmet and that sword? It’s a (difficult word: look it up mam!) ‘metaphor’. It doesn’t mean a real helmet or a real sword, it means (read it again!) “the word of God“, whatever that means, but most definitely it does not mean a pyjama!

It’s not about man to man combat (could ‘our struggle is not against flesh and blood‘ be anymore clear?)!

It’s about fighting rulers corrupting power. It’s simply telling you to join the ACLU.

Just join the ACLU and don’t turn your kids into the joke of the day by forcing them to wear moronic PJ’s.

Please? Mam?

 

When I read about remnant prayer (English not being my native language I first read ‘rampant prayer, and thought .. ‘yeah!’) I had a quick look at the calendar to see if it was April 1st already.

Time flies you know.

Please read the details too: very informative!).

I feel so silly: every time I think things can’t get any crazier, I am proven wrong!

For sure, even devoutly religious people must see that this is a ridiculous joke scam. (Or will I be proven wrong on this statement too?).

Anyway, since they’re selling stuff .. can’t these people be sued and taken out of business for something or another?

Come to think of it: probably not, they nowhere claim that it actually works!

That’s brilliant: selling ‘prayer’ stuff … since prayer, despite various scientific studies showing the opposite, is ‘supposed’ to work, you don’t have to explicitly state that in your ads.

As for “We don’t concern ourselves about the complex technology of electronic broadcast”: so much is obvious, at least for them (we don’t receive broadcasts through a relay of antenna’s. No matter how many antenna’s you use, if you don’t have transceivers at each relay station, you’re not going to get very far).

This morning I had the scare of my life. Lasted short enough to allow my heart to start beating again.

At 5:45am I was awoken by the alarm. I know, people who know me would probably think that this was the scare. In a way it was, but it got worse.

The reason we were this early was that my wife had to catch a Delta commuter flight to Atlanta (and then on to San Antonio, Texas), so I had to drop her off at the airport here in Melbourne, Florida.

When I got home I went straight back to bed.

Then when I got up at a more reasonable time (okay… it was after noon) I checked my email, and the first thing I read was a ‘breaking news’ messages from CNN, a service I subscribed to.

And I started reading: “All 50 people aboard a Delta commuter flight are presumed dead after the plane crashed ….”

This is where my heart skipped a few beats, in fact, it felt as if it stopped for 30 minutes…

I felt an enormous sense of relief when I learned it wasn’t flight 638 to Atlanta, but then I felt horrible for feeling this relief in the context of 49 people dying in a plane crash.

It’s amost unimaginable that there are still people who do not know that, despite the first amendment, one cannot joke about explosives anywhere near an airplane or airport. Just like jokingly yelling fire in a crowded theatre isn’t a particularly smart move.

This guy however never got the memo …

Judge jailed for exposing himself during trials

So many  astonishing facts in one case!

1. that the guy did this.
2. that he did it so often and everyone and his brother seemed to know about it.
3. that folks were looking under his desk for semen.
4. that folks tried to take pictures of it.
5. that he got four years for ir. Sure, he deserves a slap on the wrist … but four years in prison? Who got harmed? Come on!

Insanity strikes again.