Check out this documentary about a Childrens Bible Camp in the US

Full thing on bit torrent @ www.mininova.org

and quite a good spoof trailer on YouTube too.

Penn and Teller do the bible...

http://richarddawkins.net/article,240,Penn-Jillette-Interviews-Richard-Dawkins,Penn-Radio

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/11/tolerance_2.html

I read a great article over summer in NZ Fitness magazine called something like “Is Gym the New Religion”... basically talking about how for broadly secular NZ going to gym is becoming the place where we socialise and 'worship' these days....

Of course in the USA it's all a bit different as Casey points out.

“my home gym is a YMCA, and they are getting all god'ed up for spring”

DPF has a post about a US campus atheist group that is offering porn in exchange for trading in bibles.

Bit of a giggle.

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/archives/012655.html

But Seth Veale, one of my crew in Dunedin sent me this

http://www.venganza.org/

So the Catholic Church elected well known Vatican hard ass Ratzinger as the next Pope. The chances for liberal reform are now probably much lower than with John Paul.... oh well.... at least he's 78 already.

If you needed any more evidence as to The Oneness of Brian Tamaki and Beelzebub this article from The Herald is it.

“I live in Mt Albert with my partner, very happily. I am a lesbian and have so far not suffered any grief from other people, until now. I woke up this morning to find a huge sign plastered in the neighbours' kitchen, aimed directly at us (see photo above).“

Kate, if you would like me to send you a hunting slingshot....

OK... so some Density Raver has come back and posted some Jesus Speak in my comments...

Herewith some reply... theirs in blue.... mine in black.

God made the world. The world did not 'just happen'.

Science and Mathematics would tell you that there is a pretty good statistical chance that the world did just happen and then evolve- well some of us evolved....

God is the most powerful thing that exists.

OK... let me just run off and prepare a suppository form Atomic Weapon.... and we'll see who or what really holds the power around here.

It's up to us weather we choose to love him or not, but there are consequences to what we choose.

And I guess it's also up to him as to weather [sic] he grants us each some basic literacy skills....

There is good and evil, God and the devil, and there is heaven and hell.

Oh ... Can I be evil...  Evil is so much more fun than good.

The devil HATES you - he wants ... to kill your joy and ruin your future.

So basically the Devil wants me to become a Destiny Church Parishoner...

Hell is a horrifying place, where there is the worse torment and agony - and it ever ends. If you go there you will stay there for eternity.

Worse than what? Listening to an hour of Brian Tamaki every morning?

In Matthew 5:17-18 Jesus upheld the commandments in the Old Testament saying he had come to fulfil, and not abolish those laws. One law is Leviticus 18:22 where God commands do not have sex with a man as with a woman, that is detestable.

You can't 'have sex with a man as with a woman'... it's physically impossible.... Oh... unless the woman is super kinky... but I guess that's detestable too?

So the Jews needed little convincing.

Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.  Jesus through Paul therefore calls homosexuality a perversion.

Perverse or otherwise, some people seem to find it jolly good fun.... so who am I to intrude... More importantly what entitles you and your god to intrude given that many of them think religion to be little more than a self perpetuating fairy tale..

Kirk posted something titled 

They don't talk politics on ESPN or The Weather Channel

Bill and Casey are quick off the mark on this one and given my propensity to rant and rave on everything from politics to religion I'm gonna pop my two cents in as well.

I have the advantage that I'm not beholden to anybody when it comes to blogging. I'm my own boss, host my blog on my own server and as such tend to blog about what I feel like. I feel absolutely no obligation to people who read this blog other than to try my darnedest to be accurate and substantial in the things that I post. If you don't like my politics (devout libertarianism) then don't go near my politics category. If you don't like my religious views (devout atheism) then avoid my sacreligion category.... simple huh! Oh, and if you don't like my spelling, typos and grammar... bugger off right now!

I'm no 'self proclaimed expert', but, I take an active interest in politics and in my wonderful democracy that's a darn site better than many useless inert nothings manage. Kirks post almost infers that ones aptitude or capability in different pursuits are wholly unrelated. I think quite the contrary is true- from what i have observed if someone is a clued up cookie in one aspect of life (say technology) then chances are they'll be pretty smart in other areas as well. It's my submission that if your technical content is sufficiently useful to warrant someone like Kirk subscribing then you are most unlikely to be the sort of person who would make 'vote for X' or 'Y is a moron' posts. Rather, you are probably likely to be the sort of person who will at least have something useful, thought provoking and insightful to say on politics- whichever side you happen to say it about.

*Please note that the above applies to politics only. I shall continue to feel unrestrained in so far as calling religious people closed minded moronic idiots (in the nicest possible way). Religion being a fantasy about which nothing useful, thought provoking or insightful can ever be said.

OK... so a few weeks back I posted on a particularly brazen young Destiny Church follower who had been commenting a great deal over on DPFs blog..

A comment on that entry has kinda sparked my interest again... turns out our Destiny supporter is a Health Promoter (whatever that is) @ the Taranaki DHB. Anyway, interest rekindled, I thought I'd whiz through and see what proportion of posts looked like they were done on employers (read Taxpayer of NZ and thus me) time.

Let's be generous and assume a 12am to 1:30pm lunch window....

1. Thursday 19th August, 12:13pm - Covered by our lunch window
2. Friday 20th August 12:02pm - So far so good
3. Friday 20th August 3:50pm - OK... Friday afternoon... was it Beer O'Clock maybe? Do 'health promoters' do Beer O'Clock?
4. Firday 20th August 3:56pm - As above... now at this stage I'm worried I'll make a fool of myself because tommorow is a weekend!
5. But it's OK... because we get radio silence until... she's back @ work on Tuesday the 24th @ 3:02pm - Now please tell me it's not Beer O'Clock on Tuesdays.
6. Wednesday August 25th @ 9:06am... doing morning 'emails'?
7. Wednesday August 25th @ 10:03am... still doing morning emails?
8. Wednesday August 25th @ 10:04am... sure is a lot of emails?
9. Wednesday August 25th @ 10:08am... can you say Acceptable Use Policy?
10. Thursday 26th August @ 4:32pm... again... close enough to end of play to be a gimme.
11. Friday 27th August @ 08:46am... without seeing the IP logs you've got to let this one slip for the possiblity of it being written @ home. Do civil service types get to work before 9am?
12. Friday 27th @ 10:02am.... this one was a WHOPPER... must have been a good 20 minutes worth. Lurker even comments -  I'm guessing naki-girl doesn't hold down a full-time job at the moment... I'm guessing naki-girl doesn't hold down a full-time job at the moment... ... dunno- are 'Health Promoters' full time?
13. Friday August 27th @ 10:36am.... another biggie
14. Friday August 27th @ 10:58am.... I ain't seeing much health promoting going down....
15. Friday August 27th @ 11:35am... TGIF!
16. Friday August 27th @ 11:49am... could call it a tithe @ this rate
17. Friday August 27th @ 11:52am... thats 1 and 1/2 hours by my count.
18. Friday August 27th @ 12:01pm... LUNCH TIME
19. Friday August 27th @ 12:06 pm... still lunch...
20. Friday August 27th @ 12:18 pm... and still lunch...
21. Friday August 27th @ 12:36 pm... and still lunch... but then wasn't 10:30 till midday lunch today...
22. Friday August 27th @ 12:54 pm ... still within our lunch window
23. Friday August 27th @ 01:17pm ... Just as well we allowed for a long 'merchant bankers' lunch
24. Friday August 27th @ 01:24pm ... lunch is almost over
25. Friday August 27 @ 02:32pm ... and now lunch is indeed over.
26. Friday August 27th @ 03:01pm... another monster post this afternoon.
27. Friday August 27th @ 03:09pm ... almost Beer O'Clock.... surely
28. Friday August 27th @ 03:17pm ... it's been a long day at the coal face really hasn't it.... driving Gods Chariot...

... and that's all folks... so let's summarise.

28 posts. 9 within our lunch window, 1 that we suspect as being an early morning not @ work post. So that leaves 18 posts on work time... many of them pretty substantial. Seems god promotion won over health promotion this week.

OK... so I should have better things to do with my Monday night than read bloody comments on DPFs blog... but... well.... you know.

So anyway... Loony Tune Bigot of the week for me is 'naki-gurl'... with such gems as...

If you got to the Destiny NZ (the political party) website www.destinynz.org.nz there you will see all there awesome policies on how they plan to put a halt to awful things such as abortion, rape, sex before marriage. Even stuff on the treaty, education, health, law enforcement.

Being a Naki Boy of sorts I was curious...

Now the funny thing is that we can find out a bit more about naki-gurl because, although she posted under a pseudonym, she used a variety of extremely non anonymous email addresses.

Now I can hardly start ranting as I NEVER really post anon. But then I'm my own boss so the buck stops with me... But I digress. Let's take a look at Naki Gurl for a bit.

Let's go through some of the email addresses.

• hinenui.bryant@tdhb.org.nz
  Started with a pearler.... nothing like posting with your Govt. employer provided address... hope she wasn't posting on Govt. (read my F%^*&%^ tax dollars) time!
• hlb4@waikato.ac.nz
  By about the 3rd post she had wised up... Wouldn't you know it, she went to Waikato University. Not an institution renowned for it's academic qualities and the literacy of this graduate (one can but assume graduation in this era of bums on seats) is case in point.
• naki@gurl.com
  We get a whole heap of posts under the Waikato Uni address until we finally a more anonymous address. This time an address from a leading online community and content site for teenage girls ... founded in 1996 at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and is now published by iVillage Inc... NYU!?! Hardly a bastion of conservative thought is it? Don't know how up with womens lib Destiny Church is... maybe it's me that's out of touch but I don't think Pastor Tamaki is super keen on feminists and their ilk.

She soon dropped back to using the Waikato address.

Lurker posited that this was her http://www.findsomeone.co.nz/chat-rooms/personal-ads-41577.htm but a quick check of ethnicity kinda rules that out.

OK.. so time for a bit more digging... public sources only of course :-( Though I could be tempted for a little subterfuge.... more to follow.

Destiny Church invaded DPF.....

Methinks some of them could do with a little tithe to the church of literacy sometime soon...

Stephen D Taylor (serialMaxim Institute letter writing guy) wins the cunning linguist of the year award from me for using the term Fundaphobia in his letter in the Chch press today.

I think Fundaphobia must be a 'fear of fundamentalist conservative christitan bigots'.... but I could be wrong. Mr Google tells me is means a paranoia of conservative, biblio-centric Christians. What a cool ^*&%ing word. The next time some stupid #*^*%er down the main street asks me to listen to him ranting on about 'Jeezus' I'm gonna say 'sorry mate, I'm a fundaphobe!'

I rank as number 5 for the search

Happy Clappy Church

http://www.google.com/search?q=happy+clappy+church&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=30&sa=N

OK.... so it's probably pretty common knowledge by now that Rodney Hide leads the pack when it comes to being a techno-politician..... His website has gone mad over the past month with the comments and the general level of interactivity.

His blog site has been a huge success.... Quoted in the media- and also the comments quoted in the media (both in our largest national daily paper).......

But it's really cool to see others getting in on the swing of things. For example his recent post on Archbigot Vercoe's little outburst gets a comment from National Member of Parliament (with a bright future) Katherine Rich... is blogging going to be the great leveler in politics? Where the people and the politicians can interact freely on the same plane. I think it is fantastic to see two politicians, from different parties, having free and frank conversational type communications in the blog space. This is the sort of conversational blogging that would make Scoble have kittens!

Here

Bill is a Christian so he has some interesting things to say on the banter that we've been kicking around....

He wades in on the 'whole Gay thing' with some good argument, does Porn, mentions the Darwinian fish....

These Bible beaters are making Christianity a laughingstock and doing more to destroy it than all the strip clubs, bars, and gay people combined.  Their obsession with trashing people different from them is sickening.  And do you really think they don't take money from Adulterers?  Or Drunks?  Or just about any other politically correct sinner category.  There's wayyyy too much house cleaning needing done to be pointing fingers about trivial nonsense like this.  No one is sin free, the bible says so.  So why focus on other's sins instead of your own?  That's why I can laugh at all the mockery, b/c I agree with it.  It's not mocking Jesus, it's mocking the clowns that have coopted Christianity, and THEY DESERVE TO BE MOCKED!   They're the blasphemers.

All good.

[UPDATE] Casey has these on his car...

Casey points to some cool bumper sticker type things... I reckon they would look great on my gas guzzling Subaru......

Any other kiwis want some? We can split shipping.... post in the comments....

P.S. TS in 'What Would Jesus Do Thong' shots please....

I'm kicking through the comments on that post from Rory now... thought I ought to create a new category and post some of the funny shit I'm finding.... like this

The Internet was created by the United States of America - a Christian nation [ref. 1 , 2 , 3 ] - and should not be used to spread anti-Christian, secular, or non-Christian propaganda and hatespeech. This is our Internet, and we should exercise our position as its owners and as the guardians of civilization to stop its misuse.

*note to DARPA* Nuclear Weapons are the least of your worries... please rebuild the internet to be resistent to Religious Attack.....

Another great pisstake site- http://www.landoverbaptist.org/ - home to the

From the comments by Jeremy Brayton ........

You cannot correctly guage a religion until you, yourself, have tried it.

From this I conclude that Religion is most different from sticking a fork in a light socket- something I sure as hell can guage without trying it...

I've had this notion to try to explain the Bible and existence in terms programmers can understand. I've started the post here: http://geekswithblogs.net/jbrayton/archive/2004/05/26/5405.aspx

Scientists experimented and proved the Bible correct. The Bible itself isn't a scientific journal, but it spoke of things that were later proven true.

Hmmm....... 'if you stick a fork in a live light socket it will hurt'... now is that a revelation of scientific or biblical proportions?

I'm kicking through the comments on that post from Rory now... thought I ought to create a new category and post some of the funny shit I'm finding.... like this

The Internet was created by the United States of America - a Christian nation [ref. 1 , 2 , 3 ] - and should not be used to spread anti-Christian, secular, or non-Christian propaganda and hatespeech. This is our Internet, and we should exercise our position as its owners and as the guardians of civilization to stop its misuse.

*note to DARPA* Nuclear Weapons are the least of your worries... please rebuild the internet to be resistent to Religious Attack.....

Another great pisstake site- http://www.landoverbaptist.org/ - home to the

From the comments by Jeremy Brayton ........

You cannot correctly guage a religion until you, yourself, have tried it.

From this I conclude that Religion is most different from sticking a fork in a light socket- something I sure as hell can guage without trying it...

I've had this notion to try to explain the Bible and existence in terms programmers can understand. I've started the post here: http://geekswithblogs.net/jbrayton/archive/2004/05/26/5405.aspx

Scientists experimented and proved the Bible correct. The Bible itself isn't a scientific journal, but it spoke of things that were later proven true.

Hmmm....... 'if you stick a fork in a live light socket it will hurt'... now is that a revelation of scientific or biblical proportions?

Casey points to Rory offending the god botherers..... love it.... I'm gonna have to take some time to giggle through the comments too....

A few quick aggregates from the political scene tonight.....

There is a bit of a bun fight going on over on the Whigs blog centered around the ACT Primary. Things seem to be getting nasty towwards the end- yet they started out so well in Dunedin....

Note to the Whig... where is your... if it ain't syndicated it ain't read in this household :-(

The Whig also points to a great spoof site....

http://www.densitychurch.org/ Happy Clapping for Jesus.

You've kinda got to be a Kiwi to get a lot of this (Destiny Church is a Happy Clappy NZ Church)... but it makes for sme good light reading.

You can even buy some great T Shirts......