Beating up the Power Team

The Power Team is one of many evangelical circus shows—they specialize in doing energetic school assemblies where they rip telephone books in half and breaking bricks, all with the intent of getting people to attend their tent revival shows where they somehow argue that all the machismo makes them better Christians. In a beautiful example of fighting meat with mind, though, John Foust has an excellent page of information on their evangelical intent that he has successfully used to shut down their shows in public schools. If your local schools start advertising one of these meathead shows, that’s a resource you’ll find useful.

The PowerTeam web page is just sad. For instance, their senior member has been doing this act for 20 years:

John has blown up over 2,000 hot water bottles, and has literally crushed countless tons of ice and concrete with his fist, forearm, and head.

Put that on his epitaph someday. I was also dazzled with the background of the “smart one” of the group:

Jonathan can also bench press over 400 pounds and has a strong mind, holding two degrees in Sports Medicine and Christian Education.

Sure, they can bend rebar with their bare hands, but I get the impression that if their combined IQ were a temperature, it would scarcely suffice to make a tepid soup.

(via Austin Atheist

If only banality disqualified one from running for president…

I passed on listening to the Democratic debates, so you can sure as heck bet I skipped the recent Republican debate. Just as well, too; the candidates got pressed on that evolution question again, and wouldn’t you know it, it simply triggered an avalanche of idiocy, with Mike Huckabee leading the way. Just look at these quotes.

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Egnor’s machine is uninhabited by any ghost

Egnor, the smug creationist neurosurgeon, is babbling again, but this time, it’s on a subject that he might be expected to have some credibility: the brain (he has one, and operates on them) and the mind (this might be a problem for him). It’s an interesting example of the religious pathology that’s going to be afflicting us for probably the next century — you see, creationism is only one symptom. We’re seeing an ongoing acceleration in scientific understanding that challenge the traditional truisms of the right wing religious culture warriors, and represent three fronts in our future battles.

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Ted Storck is an inconsiderate, arrogant jerkwad

Hey, I’ve got this wonderful forum that’s read around the world, so I’m going to use it to unload on one of our local idiots, Ted Storck. Storck is one of those insufferable self-important Christians who makes the whole religion look like a lobotomy ward. His wonderful contribution to the cultural life of Morris is that he donated a set of ghastly electronic chimes to the nearby cemetery. And he writes letters to the Morris Sun Tribune.

This Memorial Day weekend, the chimes will play more hymns and patriotic songs at the cemeteries here in Morris.

We hope the few who dislike chimes will tolerate them as we honor the brave men and women who gave their lives to protect this great country.

Ted Storck

U.S. Navy, retired

Morris

Let me count the ways in which Ted Storck is an obnoxious jerk.

  1. Pushing a button to play amplified, sterile hymns over a cemetery honors our dead about as much as slapping a magnetic yellow “I support the troops” ribbon on a hearse.

  2. He knows that there are residents here who find the chimes loud and annoying, yet he announces that he’s going to fire those suckers up anyway.

  3. This cemetery is next door to the university, six blocks from the center of our town, and only a block away from my house. It’s well-positioned to annoy a large number of people.

  4. Ted Storck lives nowhere near the chimes.

  5. He didn’t just start ’em up for Memorial Day weekend. They’re playing this weekend, too. He’s probably hoping to drive us mad all summer long.

  6. And the major reason Ted Storck is a contemptible hypocrite and curse on our community: they’re playing these damned hymns and patriotic songs EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES. ALL DAY LONG. LOUDLY.

I also live two blocks away from the Catholic church in town. They ring their bells — real bells — a couple of times a day on Sunday, I presume at the start of Mass or something. That’s no problem. It’s even a pleasant sound, and I rather like hearing it—it’s a classic reminder of small town America.

But I want you to imagine this. Even if you are a devoutly religious person who thinks Christianity is the essence of all that is good and true and loving about humanity, try to imagine spending a quiet weekend at home with your family, out on the deck with the barbecue or relaxing in the easy chair with a good book, and every 15 minutes a set of cheesy chimes blares out “Onward, Christian Soldiers” or “Stars and Stripes Forever”. Now imagine being atheist or Jewish or anything other than a blithering Christian sheep and getting slammed with the same noise incessantly.

Ted Storck’s legacy to our community is that he is going to have conditioned lots of us to puke on your shoes if we hear you humming “Rock of Ages.” Thank you, Christianity, for training your members so well to be insensitive, inconsiderate, pushy, arrogant dimbulbs. And thank you, Ted Storck, for personifying one reason why I despise your religion. I still wish you’d shut those damned things off.

I’ll be at City Hall tomorrow to complain, not that I have much expectation that anyone there will do anything.

I fear she was a victim of a Dementor

Laura Mallory wants to ban the Harry Potter books from public schools, and she took her case to court. This is a perfect example of a mixed message:

At Tuesday’s hearing, Mallory argued in part that witchcraft is a religion practiced by some people and, therefore, the books should be banned because reading them in school violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

“I have a dream that God will be welcomed back in our schools again,” Mallory said. “I think we need him.”

Everyone will be relieved to know that she lost.

Undead pirates, undead Jesus…same difference

Arrrr, curse ye, jpf. How dare you reveal this abomination to me? What’s this crazy born-again doing reviewing a pirate movie as a justification for his dogma?

But back to Jack for a second — sorry, Captain Jack. I was thinking about one of the central themes of this movie which involves the principal characters, one that you’ve most likely picked up on it as well:

Resurrection from the dead

As it turns out, getting swallowed by a nasty beastie called the Kraken is a bad thing, so one of the key story lines in this film is a desperate need for Captain Jack to come back from the dead so the forces of evil can be defeated.

And also as it turns out, we all have a Kraken of sorts on our tail as well … and unfortunately being on shore doesn’t keep us safe. Our nasty beastie is called death, and one day it will find us. We need someone to rescue us when that happens — to resurrect us so we can live out our eternity that way God intended it — which is in heaven with Him.

Jesus Christ defeated the Kraken called death. Like Jack Sparrow, he willingly jumped into its jaws to save others. But here’s the most amazing part … Jesus didn’t stay there. He came back so that we too could come back from the dead as well!

Look, Pirates of the Caribbean is fiction. That characters in a cartoon-quality story pop back and forth from the living to the dead and back again does not say anything to support your quaint superstitions about Jesus. Quite the contrary, it says that resurrection is a familiar (and lazy!) trope in fantasy stories, and if there’s any conclusion to be drawn, it ought to be that, gee, this bible story sure does sound as silly and improbable as a tale about a pirate getting eaten by giant cephalopods and getting rescued from Davy Jones’ locker by people with a magic compass. In fact, it ought to tell you that the bible is inferior. No pirates. No cephalopods. No swashbuckling. No undead monkeys. No men with tentacles.

Go ahead. Compare the bible to a fairy tale. I’m one up on you—I can recognize a fairy tale when I see one.

Wow, that was some promotion Avalos got — to tyrant lord king of ISU!

If you’ve recently had lunch, don’t go to this opinion piece from a fanatical sports fan at Iowa State University. It will turn your stomach. It’s a tirade against Hector Avalos, of course, who is apparently the man who runs ISU (it’s amazing how holding an opinion contrary to the majority suddenly elevates you to a controlling power). It’s an appalling demonstration of ignorance and idiocy by some born again fool named Steve Deace.

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