Come spring, my local park always has two ice cream vans within 100m of each other, and I’ve often thought it’s an episode of Midsomer Murders waiting to happen¹. In my head there are fierce rivalries in all sorts of professions, but I’d never thought of this²:

A documentary now in limited release, “Twisted: A Balloonamentary” examines the world of professional balloon twisters, who make everything from life-size racing cars to their own wedding dresses. It also exposes the rift — who knew? — between the “gospel twisters,” who use their craft as a way to teach Bible lessons, and the “adult” twisters, who use balloons for more prurient entertainment.

That’s hideous. I for one never, ever want to see a professional twister using balloons to teach gospel lessons. Whereas, a prurient show - bring it on. Sure, it’d be easy for it to be tawdry and obvious, but in the right hands I can see that being funny as hell.

The wedding dress can be seen here. My wedding plans so far:

1. compulsory capes + hats

and that’s as far as I’ve got, but I’m going to go ahead and pencil in that dress. I mean, that’s some non-stop innuendo right there.

It’s just occurred to me that balloons are the perfect vehicle for preaching the doctrine of the Flying Spaghetti Monster! I’ve found a niche, people!

1. I think something stole their thunder, actually - New Tricks? [↩]
2. warning: there was a big Battlestar Galactica banner at the top of the page when I visited. I activated Spoiler Defence Mode and killed all power to the building, but beware [↩]

I’ve been itching to know the Vatican’s thoughts on extraterrestrial life. Good news!

Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space.

They know this from all the astronomy mentioned in the Bible, as well as their extensive questioning of astronomers.

Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God.

…well, no. That’s a bit circular, really. The Times has the exact quote:

Father Funes said that just as there existed a “multiplicity of creatures on Earth”, so there could exist “other beings created by God, including intelligent ones. We cannot place limits on God’s creative freedom.”

Immovable objects; irresistible forces. Just saying. Anyhow, we haven’t got to my favourite bit yet.

And some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.

Planets where they don’t have fruit? Where God didn’t take his eye off the ball? Where there isn’t a power-hungry cult trying to control people’s every thought? I lose my sense of humour when people start talking about original sin. It doesn’t take more than a moment’s thought to see original sin for what it really is, and those who preach it lose their right to be treated politely. Twisted, manipulative bastards.

I think it’s a mistake for the Vatican to start looking to the stars. They should stick to vague historical claims that can’t be proven one way or another. There’s more wonder in astronomy than the world’s religions combined, and space has the annoying habit of supplying fresh data. It’ll only veer towards comprehensible, and the Vatican should know to stay away from comprehensible. Like Perry DeAngelis used to say: if you’re going to believe in a God, you have to give him something to do.

From a pamphlet delivered by Jehovah’s Witnesses:

The standard underlying circular logic, but isn’t it usually a bit more subtle? I don’t know how someone types the last three sentences without noticing a problem.

The latest tactic by US creationists is to cry academic discrimination, and they’ve produced a documentary, ‘Expelled!’, claiming that anybody who criticises evolution is being forced out by evil Darwinian scientists. The makers interviewed biologist P.Z. Myers under false pretences, and yesterday he tried to get into a local showing:

I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried … but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird — I was standing in line, hadn’t even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn’t going to cause any trouble.

This isn’t all that surprising, but I haven’t included the best bit. Head over to Pharyngula to see what happened next…Via L.

It’s difficult to be offended by hair straighteners. Maybe if they set fire to your head, but otherwise, what’s to mind? Well, 23 Christians apparently don’t like their adverts, and somehow convinced the generally-sensible Advertising Standards Authority to uphold their complaint.

Here’s the advert (I don’t think it’s quite the banned one, but is close enough). Try to guess what the problem is:

What’s the main issue? They used a cross in place of the letter t. A cross. This makes the baby Jesus cry. He didn’t die / not die / zombify on a cross so people could just use it for…shudder…consumerism, you know. The very existence of the letter t is bad enough - it’s a little known fact that every time you write ‘turtle’ Jesus sends you to hell for another ten minutes - but making it look even more like a cross is offensive to people obsessed with medieval torture instruments. The ASA had no choice.

But Ben spotted the best bit, which has to be my favourite complaint ever. Not only did they use a cross without a note from the Pope, and not only was the Lord’s Prayer quoted without a safety cracker, but the women were ‘praying while being erotic’. Dolly Parton is so going to burn.

Have you seen the Vatican’s list of modern sins? Is most helpful. If you’re catholic, this is divine guidance on how to avoid going to hell. If you’re not, it might seem like an overgrown cult trying to induce guilt so people will go running to church, but let’s not be so hasty. Maybe we can all learn something - let’s examine the scourges of our time:

Environmental pollution

Yep, pretty bad. I’d like some quantitative measures, though. I mean, I should clearly go to confession if I leave the heating on while on holiday, but what about putting too much water in the kettle? Will God hate me? Is there a pits-of-hell-seconds / milliwatt-hour conversion table?

Drug trafficking and consumption

Let’s assume this means illegal drugs and not aspirin, or Tesco is totally screwed. Trafficking illegal drugs is indeed not good, but the evils of consumption are somewhat dubious. You could come up with hypothetical situations in which nobody is being harmed: if I grow my own marijuana, smoke it in an enclosed room and never tell anyone or endorse the product in any way, will God still hate me?

Inflicting poverty

Fair enough.

Accumulating excessive wealth

Seriously? Getting rich is in the top seven evil things? What if you bequeath it all to good causes? What if you’re Bill Gates, and you use your fortune to get direct access to important people who can help you give billions of dollars to charity? What’s ‘excessive’, anyway? I agree there may be a moral case against hoarding money, but it’s pretty low on my list of Things To Fix.

Genetic manipulation

That’s just ignorant. Genetic manipulation could and probably will save billions of lives, by producing varieties of food that can be grown in areas of most need. Any opposition that isn’t “I’m just making sure this is properly regulated” is medieval and verging on the bonkers. I’d also point out that having sex means random splicing of genetic information -far from the carefully controlled small numbers of genes manipulated in labs - and God doesn’t seem to mind that (providing you don’t have any fun in the process, obviously).

Morally debatable experiments

If this were ‘morally wrong experiments’, I’d call the argument circular. What’s evil? Evil cats! As it is, the argument is not only circular but completely insane. Anything morally debatable is a sin?! Based on the Vatican’s debating team, presumably. I’d like to give this pregnant woman a new drug to prevent her dying in childbirth; of course, as with any medical procedure there’s a million-to-one, unforeseeable chance her four-week-old feotus could react against the drug and die. Can I still do it? Can I try feeding millions of starving people with this genetically modified grain, granting that the scientists who created it are evil sinners? Can I use these embryonic stem cells, that were going to be thrown away anyway, to help cure disease and alleviate suffering worldwide? Can I compare the energy usage of normal and energy-saving light bulbs, given that the experiment will add extra environmental pollution?

Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

Well, yes. And these are…? I was aware that bad things are bad; this seems somewhat broad and already covered by commandments and things. Clarification would be appreciated. I don’t know what they could possibly be referring to, here, so let’s pluck something out of the air…say ‘freedom of religious belief’. Well, it’s clearly wrong to outlaw religious belief, yes. Oh, wait, you want ‘freedom from anything that insults our religious belief’, too? That’s not logically possible I’m afraid. Sorry.

Frankly, this list isn’t much use in avoiding eternal torment. Bad cult. Must do better. 

These sins are better than the previous seven, as they aren’t uncontrollable human instincts and laughably obvious ploys. But they’re all redundant or self-serving. It’s also unclear how any of these ‘mortal sins’ relate to the commandments: they’re the only official lists of ‘grave violations of the Ten Commandments’, but neither list contains, say, ‘genocide’, or ‘don’t fight with protestants’.

Concerted efforts to abolish the blasphemy law appear to have paid off, as the Lords have passed the latest amendment to the Criminal Justice bill. This started a couple of months ago when Evan Harris proposed a bill to repeal the outdated legislation, getting a fair bit of publicity in the process. I asked my MP to support it but he never replied, in fairness possibly because the amendment was withdrawn a few days later, after the government said it would propose its own version. I was a little skeptical at the time, but it was indeed added to the Criminal Justice bill amendment, and is now set to become law (or, not-law). Hooray!

The House of Lords Bishops weren’t best pleased. Rowan Williams supported it initially, then made various impenetrable speeches suggesting he thought it was all a bit mean, and finally wrote a wishy-washy letter saying it was maybe a bad move.

It should not be capable of interpretation as a secularising move, or as a general licence to attack or insult religious beliefs and believers.

Those two problems deserve to be placed in the same sentence, of course.

He voted in favour, but the aforementioned speeches suggests he wants more powerful legislation in its place. Well, tough.

Good stuff from Skeptico on the problems of arguing by analogy:

Here’s the thing - if I had to argue that racism is bad, I wouldn’t think of an analog to racism that we all agree is bad, and say “hey, racism’s the same”. No, I would explain why racism is bad. With perhaps some facts, citations, logic, evidence. Of course, I could do that because racism is, actually, bad, and so the facts logic and evidence are there to support the statement. Woos don’t have anything to back up their position, so analogy is often all they have.

I guess it’s a form of straw man, but I’d never thought of it this way before. The common example is: religion is like race, therefore criticising someone’s faith is wrong.

When someone argues by analogy, you can be pretty sure it’s because they don’t have any facts, evidence or logic to support their position. And all you have to do to debunk their argument, is find the flaw in the analogy.

In ways that are pertinent to the argument, religion isn’t like race. I guess analogy is useful when supporting a point, but it’s a weak way of making one.

Adding this to LimerickDB. Wrote it last year and it’s been sitting in the draft folder for months. NSFB.

I await with some trepidation
the hour of transubstantiation.
For what if the crackers
turn into God’s knackers?
Is it gay, messianic fellation?

Anyhoo.

Mediawatchwatch reckons the government’s response means the blasphemy law is on the way out. Here’s what the Ministry of Justice representative said:

Against that background, I can say that we have every sympathy for the case for formal abolition. However, we believe it necessary to consult the Anglican Church before bringing forward a provision that particularly affects it. That is what we are now doing urgently. Subject to that consultation, which I can assure hon. Members will be short and sharp, the Government intend to bring forward amendments in another place to achieve the aims of new clause 1.

Which does sound a little more active than first impressions suggested. Good stuff.

Bah.

The government will oppose a move by MPs to abolish the law on blasphemy, Downing Street has said.

A spokesman said ministers wanted to consult the Anglican community further before supporting such a change.

Yeah, ask them. They’ll be unbiased about it, seeing as it gives them special protection and all. What’s ‘the Anglican community’, anyway? Bishops? Some kind of pew-leaflet referendum?

Lots of Christians have supported the move, but some haven’t:

Don Horrocks, of the Evangelical Alliance, agreed that there was “no real argument” for retaining the law, saying: “Everybody knows it’s not really going to be used again.”

But he warned that changing the legislation could “send out a signal” that “gratuitous abuse and offence” is acceptable.

Blasphemy isn’t ‘abuse’, the ‘offence’ is entirely in your head, and it won’t do any such thing, so shut up¹.

I can only imagine the government is worrying about offending religious people. As ever, playing the offence card seems to work every time. There’s a law against blasphemy. A law. How is this not a no-brainer?

1. in training to be a lobbyist, me [↩]

This Wednesday Dr Evan Harris MP will propose an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill that abolishes the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel. It’s about time.

Right now, if Blue Peter named their teddy bear Jesus, Gethin Jones could get sent to prison. Muhammed? Free speech. Buddah? Bulletproof. But Jesus gets special treatment, as the blasphemy laws cover Christian belief only. Isn’t this alone reason enough for a repeal?

There’s a danger that we might head the other way at some point. Rather than repeal the law, why not add cover for Islam? And, while we’re at it, jews and hindus would like their religion protected too. Oooh, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Scientologists would also like a piece of the action, please, and they have an army of lawyers to ensure it happens. This clearly wouldn’t work. Isn’t a level playing field the only practical, as well as moral, solution?

This is no secular attack on religion. The legal system works on the basis of individual rights, yet this law protects opinions, not people. A law forbidding criticism of atheism would be just as stupid. If anybody doesn’t like what we see on television, they get to say so without fear of being locked up. This is simply the decent way to behave.

It’s true that there hasn’t been a blasphemy prosecution in a long time. But it’s a law, and not something that should be taken lightly. Christian Voice tried to attack the BBC using the blasphemy law. The BBC fought back, but small theatres, publishers and media outlets don’t have this luxury. It’s reasonable to be intimidated when the law says you’re not allowed to criticise certain beliefs.

It’s archaic and ridiculous, and no part of a modern democracy. The Law Commission recommended its repeal back in 1985, and even the Church of England no longer opposes its abolition. Let’s ditch it.

I’ve written to my MP. It’s easy to do, just go to http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp and enter your postcode - you’ll be sent to a page where you can directly email your representative in parliament. Only takes two minutes - so why not?

The Archbishop of Wales:

Any kind of fundamentalism, be it Biblical, atheistic or Islamic, is dangerous.

I think we can agree that fundamentalism, suitably defined, is indeed horrible. I’m not sure what atheistic fundamentalism is meant to refer to, but helpfully he spells it out. Here’s what we’re going to do: let’s pretend for a minute that it’s real. It’s not, of course, but we’ll give him a pass as he can’t be expected to research his Christmas messages and perform all his Archbishop-y duties. Here is his list of the things fundamentalist atheists are supposedly doing:

• Forcing councils to rename Christmas ‘Winterval’
• Making schools put on plays other than the nativity at Christmas
• Getting crosses removed from hospital chapels
• Advocating that religion in general and Christianity in particular have no substance
• Advocating that some view the faith as “superstitious nonsense”
• Making ‘virulent, almost irrational¹ attacks’ on Christianity
• Forcing schools to stop their children sending Christmas cards with a Christian message
• Making airlines refuse their staff permission to wear a cross around their necks

Holy shit. Those atheist fundamentalists are really pulling out the big guns. Councils are renaming Christmas? The humanity! Just for fun, here’s a list of the things Biblical and Islamic fundamentalists do:

• Kill people for not worshipping their deity
• Kill people for performing abortions
• Kill people for trying to convert to another religion
• Kill women for…pretty much anything
• etc.

Not a disgusting comparison at all, then. What a revolting thing to do.

1. Freudian slip [↩]

Meant to be Christmas shopping, but instead getting annoyed by the radio. The Jeremy Vine show is incredulous that Richard Dawkins, avowed atheist, enjoys singing Christmas carols. They interview him. He explains that singing is nice and means nothing. Vicar retaliates that singing is inherently an act of worship. Which is stupid.

Penn Jillette put it well: I’m not in your club, so I don’t have to follow your rules. Rumour has it that senior Freemasons wear special rings - junior members are not permitted such jewellery. But I’m not a Freemason, so I can do what the hell I like. Any senior Freemason objecting to my wearing their special ring is going to get laughed at. You don’t get to impose your own club rules on the rest of society. Christians think singing carols is an act of worship, and that’s fine - go ahead. But don’t tell me what I can and can’t think, thanks.

A Guardian cartoonist stood up for good sense, but briefly took a wrong turn, imho, when he started to argue historically. It’s used frequently, but I don’t much care for the argument that Christmas was a pagan tradition so it’s ok for atheists to celebrate it, or the debates over whether the Christmas tree is a traditional Christian thing. Doesn’t matter, for two reasons:

1. The meaning of any particular tradition is entirely relative - if I like the tradition, I can appropriate it without dragging along all the historical baggage. The Guardian columnist pointed out that his favourite ink was used to stamp people in concentration camps - should he boycott it for this reason? No, that’s silly. It’s ink. Culture is a great big amalgam of unpatentable ideas from throughout history. Christmas trees look good - I like decorating my home with them. I don’t care whether some Christian came up with the idea, or what it means to religious people. I just like having a pretty tree, it’s nice! Some would raise politeness at this point - if Christians get offended by my having a tree, isn’t it polite to avoid it? No! People can declare offence at anything; bending over backwards to accommodate beliefs that make no sense never a) works b) leads to anything good.
2. Religion appropriates nice things to attract people¹. It’s a trick. A toffee-sprout. “Look, we sing nice songs, decorate our homes and all meet up once a week - these are all unequivocally nice things! Also by the way guy-came-back-from-the dead-angels-demons-witchcraft-magic-crackers-floods-smiting-gay-people-bad-also-snakes-don’t-ever-have-sex-unless-we-give-you-permission, and you only get to do all the nice things if you believe all that. This applies to everyone”. No. Get lost with your manipulative crap. I’ll take the yummy toffee, which is nothing to do with you, and leave the sprout for anyone who wants it.  This isn’t all that different from #1, actually - free-floating ideas can be netted by anyone, and nobody gets to claim copyright.

I like carols too. Don’t care that Christians consider carols an act of worship. Tell you what: if you can do that, I’m going to declare doing the vacuuming a rejection of god. From now on any Christian who hoovers the hall is a hypocrite.

1. not necessarily maliciously, but probably just through cultural natural selection - memetic, if you will [↩]

Exciting news!

Pope Benedict XVI has authorised special indulgences to mark the 150th anniversary of the Virgin Mary’s reputed appearance at Lourdes.

What are indulgences? Have a guess. Go on. Bear in mind it is the 21st century. Give in?

Catholics visiting the site within a year of 8 December will be able to receive an indulgence, which the Church teaches can reduce time in purgatory.

I am not making this up.

The pontiff also said believers who prayed at places of worship dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes from 2-11 February next year - or who were unable to make the journey - would also be able to receive indulgences.

I am not making this up. 

Note: “would also be able to receive’. You don’t think they’ll cost anything, do you? Because that would be what’s colloquially known as ‘a racket’. They wouldn’t dare, would they?

Hey, I’ve just remembered: I’ve a voucher offering 10% off at Tesco. It’s only valid this weekend, though. Not sure why I thought of that.

While some might consider indulgences an outdated concept, great spiritual importance have been assigned to them by Benedict XVI and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

I am not making this up.

Going to head to Tesco right now, actually - for some reason I fancy a carrot. Also, a stick.