of Lars J. Nilsson

Here. Very good. Thank you Mr Carrol.

Again from Going Postal. The book is stock full of stealth philosofy. Here’s a conversation which should be of interest to any moderate theists:

“Alright, alright, I really didn’t want to go into this, but it’s against my religion,” said Moist, who’d had time to think. “We’re forbidden to have any image made of us. It removes part of the soul, you know.”"And you believe that?” said Sacharissa. “Really?”"Er, no. No. Of course not. Not as such. But… but you can’t treat religion as a sort of buffet, can you? I mean, you can’t say yes please, I’ll have some of the Celestial Paradise and a helping of te Divine Plan but go easy on the kneeling and none of the Prohibition of Images, they give me wind. It’s table d’hôte or nothing, otherwise… welll it would be silly.”

On the subject of the bible, and improvements thereof:

You and I both know that it would take us five minutes to produce a book that offers a more coherent and compassionate morality than the Bible does. Did I say five minutes? Five seconds–just tear out Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Exodus, and 2 Samuel from the Old Testament, and 2 Thessalonians and Revelation from the New Testament. The book would be mightily improved. Would it then be the most profound book we have on morality (or cosmology, biology, psychology, etc.)? Not by a long shot. But it would be a much better book than it is at present.

He is speaking to Andrew Sullivan in a “blogalogue”, which you will find here. At the time of this post, they’re not finished but so far Mr. Harris is doing good. Go read it.

I’m reading Richard Morgans Woken Furies at the moment. Godd stuff. His Altered Carbon was a brilliant first novel. This is more mature, slightly slower, but better. So here’s some Takechi Kovacs for you. On theists ignoring the bad sides of religion:

Many of you cringe along in complience, hoping to peel something of worth from the less phycotic directives of you genocidal belief system because you don’t have the wit or nerve to build something entirely new.

Whee! Ok, I did change the qoute somewhat. I changed one character to make it more general. Can you find the caracher I switched? Here’s another, targeted towards a pregnant woman who claims to freely choose an opressive male dominated religion (like christianity or islam):

I’m calling you a gutless betrayer of your sex. I can see your husbands angle, he’s a man, he’s got everything to gain from this crabshit. But you? You’ve thrown away centuries of political struggle and scientific advance so you can sit in the dark and mutter your superstitions of unworth to yourself. You’ll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the excistence your males will let you have. [...] You’ll do all of this because of your fucking faith, and if that child in your belly is female, then you’ll condemn her to the same fucking thing!

Classic! Takechi Kovacs is not a nice man at all, not at all, but the rant above is well worth the ride.

This must be the funniest thing I’ve see for a long time. Dawkings on the Colbert show. Brilliant stuff but unfortunately only 7 minutes long. Did seem like they enhoyed themselves though. (And if you don’t know Colbert before you better be aware that he is… Perhaps slightly sarcastic. Read this for guidance if you get confused.)Update 2007-02-12: Apparently Viacom has flexed its muscles on YouTube and forced them to removed the video. Link dead… Annoyance!

It was bound to happend:

Yes, we now have confirmation of Steve Irwin’s decision for Christ.

I want to inform Creation Ministries International, that Steve Irwin became a born again Christian two and a half weeks ago at the Kings Church AOG Buderim, Queensland Australia, going forward publicly before the congregation to ask Christ to become his Lord and Saviour.

Many of us will now spend eternity with him. I am sure Terri is comforted as a Christian in the fact that she will be with Jesus and also Steve again for eternity. Steve declared the day before he died that he was the happiest he had ever been in his whole life.

Note that this story is still “undetermined” by Snopes but… Even linked in christian sources encourages people to not fall for it. My bet is that this is a false rumour, anyone against?But even if it is true it makes sad reading. Someone is using the death of another human being, a human being with family and friends who loved him, to advance christianity. It is a sad and ugly thing to do. Especially as this doesn’t seem clear cut, there may be many who take comfort in such an email, and should it turn out to be false… Let’s just say I despise poeple sending such emails quite a bit. The originator may well have sent it in good faith but even so; it’ll just be another example of the rotten moralty of christianity.

So, you all knew the Vatican has an official exorcist, right? Well I bet you didn’t know at Hitler was in fact possesed by a demon. Says Father Gabriele Amorth on how you can tell Hitler, and Stalin too, was indeed possessed:

You can tell by their behaviour and their actions, from the horrors they committed and the atrocities that were committed on their orders.

Indeed. You mean like this? Or like this? Or…What an idiot. And it’s not over:

However I have no doubt that Hitler was possessed and so it does not surprise me that Pope Pius XII tried a long distance exorcism.

But Hitler of course wasn’t stopped by a mere exorcism. Soooo.. does that mean that:

1. He wasn’t possessed after all?
2. He was possessed but God didn’t care?
3. He was possessed but God failed to drive away the demon?
4. Or that God moves in mysterious ways?

What. An. Idiot.