Idiots with too much money

I don’t normally mind people their hobbies and obsessions, even when I don’t share any interest in their object of desire at all, but I did feel some intense schadenfreude at this story about people smashing their over-priced, over-powered sports cars. There is just something excessive about spending $1.5 million on a car. The other troubling part of the article, though, is the mention that more and more people are buying these extravagant luxuries — the number has tripled since 2003 — which is why we’re seeing more of them involved in accidents. It’s another example of how the rich-poor divide is widening in this country. So, yeah, rich pampered scumbags, wreck those cars.

And then you read stories like this one: expensive sports car goes out of control at a charity event, bodies are flying through the air, and 6 spectators end up dead and a score are in the hospital. The driver, of course, is mostly uninjured.

(via Hillary Rettig)

Ewww E-cards

E-cards are annoying. Now what if you had e-cards that looked like they’d been drawn by a first-grader, that contain extraordinarily cheesy tinky-boop music that sounds like it came off a first generation Nintendo, and that recited hokey lies at you? You’d have Christian evolution e-cards. These are guaranteed to turn your brain to mush with prolonged exposure. The lack of talent and stupidity on display will make you sorrow for your impoverished Christian brethren, as well.

Don’t miss the marriage e-cards, especially the one about how wives must submit!

(If you are thinking about sending any of these e-cards to me, don’t bother: the source is already in my junk mail filter.)

(Blame Narciblog)

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

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.

The lion isn’t lying down with the lamb just yet

Did you know that nature is a nice place, a kind of untamed Cute Overload where nobody ever gets an owie, there are no diseases or parasites, and everyone eats tofu? That seems to be what one school administrator in Florida believes, anyway.

A class was studying reptiles and a student brought in his pet boa. Somehow it was suggested that anyone who was interested could watch the boa being fed its usual meal: a live rabbit. The teacher arranged for the feeding to be held after school hours and attendance was voluntary. No one had to be there who didn’t want to be there. According to the story, the teacher even warned the squeamish to stay away.

I’m not bashing the school admistrator’s religious beliefs, but rather his silly inanity in the statement: “The school uses lessons and curricula that teach respect for God’s creative handiwork, and this event does not support that.” Snakes eat rabbits. Welcome to nature. Snakes don’t shop at the market for cans of rabbit stew.

Leave it to me to bash the administrator’s religious beliefs! If your idea of “god’s creative handiwork” involves an absence of death and predation, then you’re an ignorant nitwit, and I blame your religious miseducation — especially since this occurred at a place called Trinity Christian Academy. And I certainly hope this administrator doesn’t ever eat meat, and doesn’t have any pet dogs or cats, unless he wants to be guilty of hypocrisy.

Just to push the absurdity to an even greater level, this administrator has issued a proclamation.

We have taken steps to ensure this type of event doesn’t happen again.

Somehow, I don’t think the hungry carnivores that live all over the place are planning to pay much attention to that order. It’s probably enough, though, that he’ll close his eyes to reality and pretend nothing is eating anything else—willful blindness is the Christian thing to do.

It’s an honor, of sorts

She beat Brownback. She trounced Tancredo. She even clobbered Coburn. America’s Holiest Congressperson is Minnesota’s own Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).

Bachmann, an Evangelical Lutheran, and self-professed “fool for Christ,” ran for Congress because God—and her husband—wanted her to. The representative publicly credited her campaign to her submission to her husband, who was channeling God’s wishes for her.

Prior to this higher calling, Bachmann earned a law degree from Coburn, an affiliate of Oral Roberts University, and helped found a charter school where she reportedly worked to prevent the Disney movie Aladdin from being shown, because it supposedly promoted paganism. Then, as a Minnesota state senator, Bachmann launched a crusade to outlaw gay marriage that turned into a highly publicized spectacle replete with restroom run-ins with angry lesbians and grainy photos suggesting that Bachmann was “spying” on a gay rights rally while crouching behind a bush.

Tireless in her pursuit, Bachmann has even gone so far as to be active in efforts to “rehabilitate” people who “suffer from ‘same-sex attractions,’ and once articulated the merits of being “hot for Jesus Christ.”

The magazine also has a list of our Ten Dumbest Congressperson — couldn’t they have saved some space by consolidating the two lists?

We have an account of the Comfort/Cameron “proof”!

It was as inane as you might have expected. It turns out that
their “proof” of the existence of god was the coke can argument. If you don’t know what that argument is, here it is: it begins about 2½ minutes into this, and is over about 3½ minutes in. He could have done it all in one minute!

I’m sorry, but if you’re at all convinced by that pathetic argument, please, get help.

Comfort simply asserts that everything that exists had to have a creator. He goes on to build a silly argument: buildings must have a builder, paintings must have a painter, therefore creation must have a creator. We’ve been having a storm here in Morris, so I guess when I hear thunder I should assume there is a thunderer.

Anyway, I guess I don’t need to tune in to the broadcast on Wednesday, and I don’t have to worry about bothering a priest to tend to my conversion—those two guys are blithering cretins.

WTF?

The incompetence is stunning. Richard Dawkins makes the Time 100 list, and who do they commission to write up his profile?

Michael Fucking Behe.

That’s not just stupid, it’s a slap in the face. It would have been no problem to find a smart biologist, even one who might be critical of Dawkins’ message, to write something that expressed some measure of respect from the editorial staff. But to dig up a pseudoscientific fraud whose sole claim to fame is that he has led the charge to corrupt American science education for over a decade is shameful.

I’m sure there’s an editor at Time sniggering over his cleverness.