Jesus fixed my hard drive..

Here's an amusing little story for a cloudy Wednesday morning, the Australian chap in the picture above is Jesus, yes the real Jesus of Nazareth! Former IT specialist Alan John Miller, or "AJ" as he prefers to be known, runs a Christian cult known as the Divine Truth from his home near the small town of Kingaroy in the state of Queensland, Australia and claims to be Jesus reincarnated. I watched his video and he seems to be sincere enough, lots of talk of love and human solidarity (especially "love", if you know what I mean), references to Bible characters and insider anecdotes about things like who was at the crucifixion and performing miracles; I guess no one can prove him wrong. He also claims to have visited the "spirit world" and talked to Plato and Socrates, personally I would have gone for Darwin and Alexander the great but "AJ" is clearly a dedicated Brazilian football fan.

For me, what's more amusing than this all too familiar cultist in-group, out-group mind trick is the huffing and puffing going on in blogs and news articles from Christians demanding "proof" that this person is in fact Jesus reincarnated, don't they understand, it's not about proof, it's about faith... After all, the only difference between a cult and a religion is that in a religion the person who knows its all a scam is dead.

Tipping points

Practically every interview I've seen of survivors of the recent tornado in Oklahoma have mentioned their "God" at some point in the dialogue, it doesn't bother me in the slightest of course however I must confess after a while it does sound a little contrived to my ears, perhaps it's the accent. BUT, never mind all that, here's something refreshing and something you don't see everyday, a regular person in mid-western America happy to let the world know that they are an atheist ON TV!. The woman in this interview was asked a completely dumb insensitive question by this facile TV presenter, he asked if she had "thanked the lord" (presumably for being spared), she replied, " no, because I'm an atheist" - good on'ya lady! Significant for two reasons, firstly it shows that belief in Yahweh or any other Deity has sweet FA to do with whether your house collapses on your head and secondly LOOK AMERICA a perfectly decent and nice person with a cute baby (not being eaten) who survives F5 tornadoes and doesn't need Jayzus to be her personal savior.

Although when you think about it the more interesting question for the followers of Jayzus in Oklahoma is why did he send the tornado to kill an innocent bunch of school children in the first place?... or maybe they're all just all praying to the wrong God?

Right direction

Released today here are the results of the 2011 census in the section about religion, Christians down 12%, Muslims up 2% and atheists up 10%, it would be easy to extrapolate the trend and calculate the year when Muslims will outnumber Christians as the largest religious group in England and Wales although I'm sure it won't be that simple, certainly not if the Daily Mail get wind of it.

Optical Illusion

Oh we humans are so easily deceived..

Human misery

In the many strata of human scum in our world there must be a particularly viscous layer reserved for clairvoyants who profit from the grief of others, particularly of the TV celebrity kind.

In the US today we learn of the discovery of three incredibly unfortunate and brave women who endured 10 years of captivity in what sounds like the hands of inhuman criminals for what purpose we can only imagine in our worst nightmares. This is bad enough but what shouldn't be forgotten is the message (supposedly from the "other side") given to the Mother of one of these women just before she died by a fraudulent old hag called Sylvia Brown, a so called TV clairvoyant who told her that her daughter was dead. Where ever Sylvia Brown is today (in jail with any luck) I hope she is feeling the deep shame she deserves.

PS. This isn't a picture of Sylvia Brown but I wanted a suitable image of a clairvoyant so I laid out several pictures of well known woo woo practitioners, closed my eyes and concentrated hard on a mental image of a fresh steaming turd; once the image was clear I let my hand be guided by my spirit helper (Pinocchio) to a particular photo and the star spangled image of Sally Morgan rose up from the pile.

Cryptozoology

I learnt a new word today, Cryptozoology, apparently it means the study of "hidden" animals, like the Loch-Ness monster, Abominable Snowmen or Bigfoot etc. I'm a firm believer in such creatures, it would be so cool if they existed that I don't want to handle the intellectual and emotional disappointment if it were shown they don't, so clearly they do! Fortunately you don't just need to take my word for it, we see the evidence of crypto-creatures all around us, you just need to have an open mind. Take the picture accidentally snapped by the Google street view camera for example (above), it clearly shows an entirely unknown (to science) species of cat! Those pedantic scientists don't know everything you know, after all, what's the point of human existence if you can't make stuff up and convince other people to believe it too, the endorphin rush that I get by feeling part of an in-group is so.. social, I'm not a whole person without it.

There are plenty of us around who feel this way, take the Christians who teach the ACE (Accelerated Christian Education) curriculum to children. As they point out, evolution can't be true since the Loch Ness monster exists and as for those whining secularists who nit-pick about "evidence" they're just not seeing the big picture, after all, it's only a few thousand kids we're talking about so what does it matter if they don't get a decent education, we need uncritical thinkers to host chat shows and write newspaper columns. The British Government even support such open-mindedness by providing positive OFSTED reports and limited funding to at least 5 ACE schools in Britain, Carmel Christian School, Bristol along with Excellence Christian School, Tower Hamlets, Redemption Academy, Stevenage, Kings Kids Christian School, New Cross, and The Lambs Christian School, Birmingham so it must be right?

Obvious solutions

Here is a horrific story, a five year old boy in Kentucky, USA was given (as a gift) a real gun; he then promptly shot his 2 year old sister dead.

Clearly the solution to this problem, as recommended by the pro-gun lobby in the USA, is to buy guns for ALL your children at the same time.

Heaven and Hell... the board game

Looks like the right place for such ideas to me and as usual this spiky but funny concept comes from Crispian Jago

Click the image to see a full sized view.