Token outrage

In my view we should invent a word for it, just imagine the entry in the 2010 Oxford English dictionary, something like,

Plastifury the offence and outrage that religious people feel when confronted with something that they simply don't agree with.

Plastifury seems to be a special mental state, one that has no logic, something you can't argue with, in fact something that is so fragile in the mind of the sufferer that it is dangerous to even talk about it in anything but hushed, underhand tones for fear of a fully fledged attack.

For those readers still struggling to envisage something as stupefying as experiencing outrage whenever you see something you disagree with, and wondering how on earth someone with such an affliction could make it through an average day then I offer this example.

Exhibit A: Ron Heather (a Christian bus driver) is experiencing the full force of plastifury; Ron can't comprehend that there are millions of people in this country (UK) that actually disagree with his world-view, and are exercising their right to free-speech by paying for advertising space on buses to articulate their point of view. Poor chap, you'd think he would seek psychiatric help for this clearly crippling mental condition, lets hope that someone will take him in give him a nice strong cup of tea and introduce him to the twenty first century.

My irony meter just burst...

My irony meter burst when I read this story, apparently Stephen Green of the Christian Voice organisation is complaining to the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) that the currently running "Atheist Bus Campaign" is not truthful or substantiated i.e. the statement "there's probably no god" is a lie.

I'm sure most rational people will have a similar response, i.e. laughter and a rolling of their eyes; however as per the Dover Pennsylvania (USA) case in 2006 that demolished another whack-a-loon religious organisation (The Discovery Institute) over intelligent design, some part of me would love this to actually go to trial. A formal public examination of Mr Green would I'm sure expose a whole raft of ignorance, lunacy and sexual deviance as is his "kind"; at the very minimum it would provide Atheists with an even more rich and fertile source of absurd assertions from the ignorant Mr Green that could come in handy in the future when he inevitably moves on to bully the next group of people with whom he disagrees.

Apparently in another irony shattering interview Mr Green was heard to say that the bus campaign wouldn't be received very well by the public because "nobody liked being preached to", amen to that Mr Green!

I am put in mind of this cartoon from the excellent Jesus and Mo series available here.