Templeton journalist Andrew Brown states: 9/11 strengthened fundamentalism in every global faith – and in atheism too. But it has also led to backlashes against these doctrines. …. secularisation theory, which had been very fashionable, was wrong." ........ a reaction to modernity as liberalism or secular optimism. These ideologies ….….

So Atheism is a doctrine and secular optimism is an ideology and secularization is fashionable but wrong ?!?

So Andrew Brown : what is your proposal then : true conservative theocracy rather than failed modern ideologies like secular democracy ??

cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005, and the furore surrounding it, demonstrated the deliberate use of blasphemy as a weapon in cultural wars.

Blasphemy is a victimless ‘crime’ and the one cartoon with a bearded men with the bomb in his Sikh style turban was not necessary meant as the prophet Mohammed but just as a common Muslim. So as blasphemy is against a deity and not a prophet or priest it can’t be blasphemy at all, and meant as common Muslim male to highlighting the fact that 99% of bomb attacks we encounter every week are carried out my Muslims. So how can the drawing of a carton to highlight widespread Islamophobia (seeing every Muslim as a potential terrorist) using blasphemy as weapon ???

The religious nutters are using the allegedly hurt religious feeling as weapon to force special rights and concessions from the media and Western governments, and they use blasphemy laws to suppress the basic right of free speech. So cartoons are not using blasphemy as weapon.

Wow : Holy Mary mother of god created Amoebae Dictyostelium discoideum in her own image !

Hurry and tell Francis Collins : he might kneel down and pray to the amoebae group assembling into a slug like Madonna -- after F.C. finished praying to a frozen 3 level waterfall as incarnation of the Holy Trinity of course .....

Article: Throughout much of human history, it has been assumed by both men and women that men are somehow better able to solve so-described spatial problems than are women.

Sorry it has not been ‘assumed’ it was shown test after test, brain-scan after brain-scan that there are differences between genders, the intensity, location, statistical distribution are pinned down – tons of evidence. Men ON AVAERAGE have better spatial skills and women ON AVERAGE (thanks to 15% more nerve fibers in the corpus callosum connecting right and left hemisphere) are better in verbal skills. Females have another hormonal chemistry mix than men, which are expressed in the brain. Tons of evidence here also and some books especially on this topic like ‘the female brain’ and ‘the male brain’ for example.

Test have been done with letting boys play with dolls and girls with cars, and usually the dolls head is used as football from the boys and the car is cuddled and put to bed from the girl, so just dressing the boys in pink and let them play dolls is not changing their genetic makeup of brain wiring and hormone cocktail.

Of course there are environmental factors beside genetics. Factors changing the brain wiring which can improve spatial ability, and training of the abilities is also crucial. Tribes from the dense jungle (whether males or females) have much less spatial ability than tribes on the open plains. So millions of years hunting zebras on the open plains, calculate the speed of pray with own speed and coordinate throwing stone tools to hit the running pray and to find home afterwards( miles away) leave another predisposition on inherited traits, than for females gathering fruits near the cave. Of course not using this predisposition advantage is weakening the skills and especially training them is strengthening it. And all pure nurture apostles ignoring or even scorning those gender differences are not scientific but political motivated.

So this article here is obviously coming from the ‘blank slate’/ there are no gender differences/ all is nurture /political correctness …. gang. It even don’t mentioned the absolute results but just the difference in group A (male dominated) A-male 136 A-female 100 but how was the female dominated B village absolute level ??

(1) B-male 100 B-female 100 means males in male dominated setting perform better and are pulled DOWN if female dominated => the world is losing spatial ability by suppressing males

(2) or was it B-male 136 B-female 136 => so showing that females in male domination are performing bad and the world is gaining spatial ability by suppressing males.

So for me the study seems not scientific, as the reason why the difference is occurring was not traced down, other environmental factors (different surrounding landscape …..) not mentioned as possible source of difference or factored in, the cultural difference of male versus female dominated culture not investigated in detail -like have the men different jobs, different hormonal levels, different hobbies (spatial ability training ), maybe it’s just a nonsense correlation, like villagers from A eat more bananas ergo they have better spatial ability than B who eats apples.

What’s with 3D tests – we are living in a 3D world and every simple IQ test has those or did they showed general male 3D spatial advantage and findings were suppressed therefore not fitting into the agenda ? Interesting topic – but please let proper science drive you and not political motivation.

Praying for rain in the US of A : maybe some native American shamanic rain dance would be helpful.

Reminds me at the official ordering to pray for rain in all dioceses in the Philippines ordered from the Catholic Bishops Conference some year back when the El Nino delayed the usual rain season. And guess what : their prayer helped ! as it started raining heavily just 3 weeks delayed to the normal rain season. Wow rain in the rain season must be a miracle based on prayers no natural explanation possible for rain in the rain season isn’t it ?!? And it was raining so heavily for several days that it caused huge flooding in some areas, and they had to pray for the end of rain.

In Australia the faithful around Sydney encountering draught and forest fires were desperately praying for rain – well and god Yahweh send them rain, lots of rain for Australia but to the north so Brisbane was severely flooded. Well ….. Yahweh is Judean fertility god, so maybe not really the expert for making rain and not too familiar with Australia either ……

Interesting comments on the original (NPR) web-page. How Christians try to rationalize this and winding themselves into apologetic knots. Adam was just one out of many humans – so where is the problem etc… overlooking that then only a small subset of homo sapiens are descendants of Adam from around 4000BC - and only a small subset is stained with the eternal sin.

And of course atheist bashing for the internal discussion from Evangelicals: who are you to tell me what to believe, I need some god as brain soother in difficult times.

and so on ...

I just mentioned Republican Tea Party presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann Yesterday – and just read in today’s morning news that she made the same statement : Quakes and Hurricanes are a message from god Yahweh to Washington to listen to her !!

Comment 64 by Nordic11 Then I won’t bore you any further with a response.

Indeed: had this too many times before the ‘not my god’ defense , there are 33,000 (or some count more splitter groups and end up with 38,000) Christian sects and all claim the ultimate truth about the interpretation of Yahweh – and every ridicule or refutation of some basic Christian tenet is countered by the ‘not my god’ interpretation defense.

And the problem with generalization here is not some atheists who ridicule a single persons like Moron Beck or televangelist Pat Robertson for crazy remarks – but from one Christian coming here and complain that all atheists here ridicule all Christians. So it’s mainly you Nordic11 yourself who makes the generalizations here !

I’m not thinking this is the profile of an insane person. Perhaps insanity needs to be redefined.

The meaning of insanity does not need to be redefined – but maybe your own wrong (non dictionary) interpretation. First nobody has claimed that you Nordic11 are insane or all millions of Christians but that a few religiots who declare natural disasters to be a form of communication of their god (interpretation).

But independent from the 33,000 Christian main interpretations and the millions of personal interpretations of Judean fertility god Yahweh : the absolute basic Christian tenet is believing that humans are made in the image of god, Adam & Eve listened to a talking snake – that’s why all humans are sinners, and god himself (the omnipotent creator of the entire universe) had no other way to forgive the inherited sin by fertilizing a Judean virgin girl to bear a son, who is actually god himself, to get himself (as son) tortured so that he himself (as father) can forgive the sins of all homo sapiens, but only if they all believe this story and do everything their priest demand. Well this is not clinical insane but quite deluded.

And running a normal life as businessman, father etc.. despite believing in talking snakes and virgin birth etc… shows cognitive dissonance. Francis Collins could even run the multibillion $ human genome project and now the NHS despite his believe that frozen waterfalls are a sign of the holy trinity.

Comment 48 by DefenderOfReason! :

Why are we even acknowledging this ignoramus????

Possible because he might be the next president of the US of A.

Or maybe he is the next V.P. behind Tea-Party Michelle Bachman . the lady who has a psychopath serial child rapist and cannibal John Wayne Gacy as role model and congratulates Elvis who is dead since decades to his birthday. Those truly Republicans, superstitious waiting for Armageddon , with a nervous finger on the biggest nuclear arsenal -- holy shit, then you really need magical underpants because the end is near !!

Comment 40 by Nordic11

I hope I don't need to say that the vast majority of Christians do not believe that every natural disaster is a curse or blessing from God

Oh yes :the typical "Not my god defense" ... Yawn
No No I believe not in this terrible wrathful OT Yahweh, my god is no being, ‘god is god’, god is immaterial but necessary existing ...etc.. or some Karen Armstrong like hypothetical spurious definition.

because there is no evil, good or moral authority

There is good and moral authority : no need for a deity or Bronze age scripture thou. It's just in US self, prepared from millions of years evolution - Sam Harris (Moral Landscape) and also Patricia Churchland wrote just this year about it.

I want to make a sacred underwear joke, but it is getting old.

Why not ? this magic underpants was Beck's part of preparation for himself - so he was fully prepared for all eventualities !

And imagine when Glenn Beck will be the next president of the US of A. : A Hurricane or some tornado is approaching : prepare the national guard and distribute the disaster preparation kits: water, food, battery lamps and magic underpants in case it gets really bad.

Comment 70 by Schrodinger's Cat : when a new physical property is not dualism........it is a new physical property.

So looking at a computer we can just see and measure the physical properties e.g. the electrons in the CPU and 1/0 magnetization of the memory etc. We cannot find out from that electrons zipping around what is actually the logic and algorithm of the software which is running. Well the program logic or the internet search engine algorithm are NOT a new physical property.

I heard that ‘new physical property’ staff for consciousness before in the book review I linked to in my first post on this tread. There the author from ‘Mind and Brain’ Jeffry M. Schwartz postulates the same : a new fundamental basic physical property called consciousness on the same level of others like electromagnetism, gravity etc...

A usual persons propagating this new physical force/property = consciousness are never giving a hint at how this is interacting with the brain e.g. is the brain an antenna receiving and sending it, is the brain consuming this physical property like lungs the oxygen, is the brain creating the property itself ?!?

So we are just back in ‘pink unicorn’ territory as Steve puts is – to avoid the immaterial metaphysical spiritual property of Dualism – a new physical – but invisible, not yet measured, not yet know (unknowable ?) , force where we have no clue how it should interact with the brain – some people only have a gut feeling that this new physical force/property exists.

Comment 68 by Schrodinger's Cat : Again, like Steve, you are completely missing the point. Please show me an fMRI scan with an actual picture of the qualitative experience of what it is like to be conscious

I get the feeling it’s going like the discussions with theist “not my god” to all explanation attempts. An fMRI scan can show which area is active during “self referential” and the intensity of the action., so self referential is handled in the mPFC and some emotional reaction resulting in a specific feeling like disgust is handled in the anterior insular – here the feeling of disgust (a qualitative experience) with fMRI :
http://www.cs.phs.uoa.gr/el/courses/emotions/papers/DISGUST%20INSULA.pdf

The fMRI scans can even reveal what kind of movie (love story or horror movie) some test person is watching e.g. in what emotional state the person is and many more information can be gathered.

But as I am sure also this is not enough for you, I repeat again my first post on this tread about the conundrum of QUALIA – the personal reaction to some stimuli, often made as example of your qualia of your red perceived versus mine and/or versus some color blind person.

Again to repeat a couple of neuroscientist on the topic of consciousness in a nutshell “you (the conscious self) is your memory”. I have other feelings/ reactions seeing your mother (a stranger to me) than you have with tons of positive memories resulting in the release of neurotransmitters bathing your brain for example.

Or again the qulia of red is associated with different memories for someone working in a warzone or the emergency room of a hospital, memories clustered with other neurons with other inputs like the smell of blood, disinfection chemicals the sound of agonizing weeps etc.... Some other person might have a total different qualia of red like strolling on a warm summer day through a field of tulips, memories clustered with the memory from the smell of the tulips and the sound of singing birds, the warm wind on the skin etc....

Comment 64 by Schrodinger's Cat : we have just such a self-referential property that cannot be observed externally. I'd argue that's a huge clue that what I am suggesting is correct.

Well I am afraid you have missed out the last 20 years of advances in cognitive neuroscience. The areas for “self referential properties” are quite well located inside the brain, lot’s of fMRI brain scans exists so they can be “observed externally”. Lots of good books about neuroscience highlight this, so there is not even an alien scientists needed, who is checking the brain, simple human neuroscientist have done it many times, for example to see how the conscious experience between believers and non-believers are different.
Just as one example where I have a link :

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/11/creating_god_in_ones_own_image.php

..... The brain scans found the same thing, particularly in a region called the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) that's been linked to self-referential thinking. The mPFC is more active when we think about our own mindsets than those of others.......

So to refute your > “cannot be observed externally. I'd argue that's a huge clue that what I am suggesting is correct.” < I have to rephrase as : you might need to read more on the subject of neuroscience to get better informed above philosophical armchair reasoning, to finally get a clue how the brain handles ‘self referential’ and lots of other things as well, all without the need for any higher property outside of physics.

Double post removed same as #39

The idea is that we have mirror neurons which give us empathy - we are constantly modelling the minds of others and so we feel sympathetic sensations

It's the result of a very useful evolved capacity of our brains to imagine what things would be like for ourselves in different situations.

Again a memory recall : I had this emotion before which resulting into s specific feeling which I encountered -> I understand what you might be feeling now.

And as you can recall memories that you had some empathy too when you saw some emotional reaction of someone else - then you feel - that I feel empathy towards your distress ......

Again all pure physical – firing mirror neurons (not only in the sensory or motor cortex – but also in the frontal lobe), memory recall, release of neurotransmitter – some interpretation of all those -> consciousness without any immaterial spiritual force.

Comment 33 by Schrodinger's Cat

Well this mystified consciousness again, the last realm left for any kind of “spirituality” above/beyond the physical world.

A very good shot are made from neuroscientists like Joseph Le Deux ‘The synaptic self’ or Antonio Damasio ‘Self comes to mind’ – after reading it a lot of this mystic will be gone.

Why can’t it be just the short term = working memory, a pure physical explainable process which is loaded based on some firing neurons competing to be heard more like a Google search-engine. An encountered smell reminds us of some event, a sound/song of some nice encounter with a person loaded up into the working memory, if there are positive or negative emotions related some neurotransmitter are released enforcing good or bad feelings.

And a lot of this ‘self’ is coming from what M. Gazzaniga calls “the interpreter module” after the fact (thought) explanation and rationalization attempts of why some feeling or decision were coming to mind even if it was decided unconscious – and the interpretation is a weird confabulation.

if we had never heard of consciousness, would we ever conclude that such a thing existed solely by looking at a brain ?

Just looking at the CPU and RAM would not tell you what program a PC is currently running, but knowing parts of the logic, memory - and comparing input and output generated - you can get at least some understanding of what’s going on.

Comment 26 by Steve Zara :

Put more briefly; it's no use trying to suggest that consciousness is due to quantum mechanics unless one can point out how the thought that quantum mechanics is involved could in any way have arisen from any physical consequences of quantum mechanics. How could quantum mechanics wiggle brain cells so that we think "hmm! That felt quantum-like!"?

The Copenhagen interpretation of QM of course !! Just looking at some QM effects make them happed and define if some neurotransmitter and Calcium molecules in the synaptic cleft exists or not.

I made some comments about a book using this Qunatum Conciousness woowoo : http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0060988479/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar

Good books about Consciousness from Neuroscientists : look for Joseph Le Deux or Antonio Damasio or Michael Gazzaniga – there are also Youtube videos available.

Consciousness seems to be just you current short term/ working memory content, positive thinking is increasing the chance of loading more positive memories into it. And YOUR personal qualia of red is linked to different memories than for someone who lives in Modena Italy and associate his red with Ferrari cars, a fan of Arsenal has another qualia of red than a fan of blue Chelsea (the red enemy), tomato throwing Spaniards on their harvest fiesta have a different memory recall of red.

And what is popping up into your working memory e.g. consciousness is more like Google or Youtube search result – some hits about what you searched for, other staff what uses the same buzz word but is unrelated, high frequency of usage pops up more often …etc….

Comment 10 by SoHelpMeReason :

I appreciated how kind to and protective of Stephen Fry he was. There was a moment's unease in me when I noted how many people from Africa there were in there. I remembered the overwhelming homophobia on their continent and I was concerned Fry might get a hostile reaction being spotlighted like that.

Just came along an article in German news about a new homophobia outbreak in Ghana. Cheered on from Christians and Muslims regional minister Paul Evans Aidoo odered the arrest of gay and lesbians to "remove those disgusting elements out of Ghana's society". The head of the Christian Council of Ghana' Fred Deegbe warned that any law to protect gay and lesbians, as those "dishusting terrible acts" would result in gods wrath.

So scientist are still hunting to find “The God particle” (Peter Higgs Boson) to proof that God exists.

And if found conclusively (Sigma > 5) it proofs that god is not Yahweh, Allah, Brahma …. but god’s name is Peter Higgs , and we all have to worship him as our true deity :-)

All said brilliantly and poignant and the voting at the end of the session was quite a confirmation that the Catholic Church on the planet is not at all a source of good but rather a source of suffering on our planet.

However – still the “infallible” head of the RCC the self declared “universal church” on our planet, head of a Mafia like organization responsible for the crusade, inquisition, anti-Semitism etc… the biggest multinational pedophile organization with systematic and institutionalized child raping as their main activity ….. obfuscated by “occasional charity” as Hitch put it -- this head of the RCC was invited last year from the UK government to provide British people “moral guidance” !! Epic fail !!

And this head of the biggest multinational - suffering on a grand scale causing organization - will defile the German parliament with giving a sermon about morality in a couple of weeks.

Where is Saudi Arabia ? They are sitting on the world biggest Oil reserves ergo they are filthy rich but still very poor educated (outside the Quran) and highly religious fundamentalists = creationist. Norway is sitting on huge Oil reserves not because they are so atheist/evolutionist either…..

When the US of A will lose is dominant financial top spot on the planet and can’t pay off their debt financed lifestyle (funded from other nations), the US Dollar will not be the ‘world currency’ any more as nobody accepts the excessive printed = worthless paper any more, they can’t finance their military to bully other nations, their economic hitman’s can’t force developing countries to buy their oversized & overpriced public investments (power plants etc…) any more ….

Then (in 50 years ?) the US of A ruled by the Tea-party and the Murdoch Press , will not occupy an unusual spot but will move left towards the graph to fall in line with others with their per capita GDP according to their religiosity e.g. take the place on the graph along Equator, Nigeria and Pakistan.

The main problem is that Canada is not under Shariah law and let the Great Ayatollah ensure that Allah’s will is strictly followed ergo no girls are allowed to go to school and stay locked away at home.

And the Bible (the unerring word of god) is not solely misogynic, as the often quoted chapter about menstruation e.g. Leviticus-15 is also declaring male discharge unclean for 7 days which require a sin offering of 2 doves at the eights day same as sin offering of menstruating women.

Here the teaching of the possibly OCD suffering Levite (Lev-15):

4 “‘Any bed the man with a discharge lies on will be unclean, and anything he sits on will be unclean. 5 Anyone who touches his bed must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. 6 Whoever sits on anything that the man with a discharge sat on must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. And so on and on ….

16 “‘When a man has an emission of semen, he must bathe his whole body with water, and he will be unclean till evening. 17 Any clothing or leather that has semen on it must be washed with water, and it will be unclean till evening. 18 When a man has sexual relations with a woman and there is an emission of semen, both of them must bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. 19 “‘When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. And so on and on ….

Comment 78 by AtheistEgbert :

I am curious why this article is on this website? I'm no fan of Murdoch and I signed the petition, and it's a worthy cause, but what has this to do with the aims of the website?

Because the Murdoch news-empire is anti science, anti reason anti humanist.

Murochs News empire is a source of religious right wing mud-slinging - see US based FOX news – and possibly the RDFRS has some problems with the idea to have the largest commercial TV channel in the UK transformed into a FOX like mouthpiece of the bigoted religious right.

Oxfords Rabbi S.B. : Leading evangelical pastors like Rick Warren and Joel Osteen enjoy vast cultural influence among millions of Americans

So is the 'deepness' of spirituality then depending on the popularity contest ? Therefore a famous Hollywood actor like Tom Cruise as Scientology front-man is a sign of religious truth for Rabbi S.B. ?
Or what with the so morally and so important and necessary influence (according to Rabbi S.B.) of evangelicals like Westboro preacher Fred Phelps or Ted Haggard and other homophobes, misogynic evangelical preachers ? And obviously then also "creation science educators” like Ken Ham, Kent Hovind etc. and their so positive influence are lifting the religious US spiritually above other secular nations as competitive advantage as consequence following S.B. logic. Sound very much that S.B. is talking a lot of B.S. here.

Rabbit Boteach teach BS : British influence in the world, in contrast, has gone off a cliff over the past century. I would argue that the new, militant atheism that is becoming characteristic of Britain is a key reason.

Indeed Richard Dawkins “the most dangerous man in Britain” is responsible for the downfall of the British empire a century ago ?!?

Rabbit Boteach teach BS : religion affirms the infinite dignity of the human person

So therefore all Abrahamic religions all demand the total unquestioning submission to the will of god (as interpreted by their repsective Priests/Rabbies/Mullahs of course) to affirm its dignity ?!?

Rabbit Boteach teach BS: the faith-based values of the country’s (USA) founders

The values of the American founders who were so "much faith based" as to encode the separation of church and state into the constitution ?!?

Rabbit Boteach teach BS : Britain … is today more famous for exporting reality shows...

Good that US based Hollywood produces only all informative, faithful, pious movies compared to the godless Brit’s ?!?

Rabbit Boteach teach BS : Britain is better known for ….. the gratuitous degradation of women

Indeed that’s why all British women try to flee this godless => women abusing and degrading country to find shelter in a much better = religious setting like Iran, Saudi Arabia etc… who are sheer overwhelmed by millions of abused British women falling in line to get their genitals mutilated, dressed in black sack with eye slit and be forced married to religious husbands who beat them up and lock them away at home – to avoid their degrading by godless British society.

How deep has Germany sunken (as deep as the UK who was in the urgent need for the same guidance last year) that the parliament and nation as a whole need moral advise from the head of the biggest multinational child rapist organization on the planet ??

“Without Christianity, our country is simply impossible to imagine.”

Indeed Germany and the whole of Europe would look quite different without more of a millennium of dark ages (Crusades, Holy Inquisition, Witch burnings, Scientist burnings, 30 year war, forced missionary conversions of colonies, up to Hitler joining forces with the Pope Pius XI / Pius XII to do ‘gods work’ with the Holocaust …etc…) . Imaginable different … indeed !!

This is not new staff – Ashera (Israelite fertility goodness) was sometimes considered the wife of Yahweh (Judean fertility god) . And Ashera is not edited out of the Bible as a quick search in Biblegateway.com shows several hits (Exodus 34:13 ; Deut 7:5 ; Deut 12:13 ; Deut 16:21, plus several times in Judges) . Usually the survived OT texts states that she fell in disfavor of Yahweh priests who ordered to break down and burn all the Ashera poles for worship – a kind of hefty divorce.

Beside this Yahweh is son of the most high e.g. godfather Elyon who had 70 sons (according to Ugaritic stone tables), so Yahweh is just one of the many sons of the godfather, and Yahweh was only assigned local responsible for the Judea, the land of Jacob (see Deut 32:8).

Later after the fall of the northern tribes of Israel (722 BCE) and the high influx of refugees south to Judea ,northern pantheon of god(s) Elohim was merged into a chimera with Judean god Yahweh. Therefore we’ve got 2 creation accounts in Genesis : Elohim created the world in 6 days humans last(version 1) and Yahweh created Adam before animals in Garden Eden(version 2) .

And in god old ancient tradition (ala Zeus, Osiris…) of course also god Yahweh/Elohim is fertilizing a virgin to produce just another son of god = Jesus/Christ.

Who is doing the cherry-picking here ?

Phil Zuckerman is just taking the few stoic/cynic teachings (Diogenes of Sinope ) from the ‘Q-Gospel’ which Luke and Mathew sprinkled randomize over Mark’s narrative.

There is the Christ (Krestos) from Saul/Paul of Tarsus – the son of god who by being tortured and killed (more faking his death for a few days) is cheating the devils/daemons to save the planet. Saul/Paul who is anti-Jewish, misogynic and thinks the end-of-time is coming within 3 or 4 years ( writing in 50-55 AD). This theme then followed similar by the Gnostic inspired Gospel of John about the savior.

There is Jesus the Jewish messiah, heir to the Davidic throne who teaches to follow ‘The Law’ e.g. the Jewish Torah, who entertains the crowed of gullible illiterate goat herders with cheap miracle tricks, curses/destroy fig trees, whip out money changes from the Jewish temple etc… .

On top of this there are merged a few other stories into the narrative like Asclepius resurrecting Lazarus being punished by death from his father the god Zeus but resurrected 3 days later…etc…

So just take your pick : the conservatives right wing Christians like and choose the Pauline Christ figure, the son of god who has died for the sin of them, so they can do to others whatever they like and are still saved to the everlasting bliss just as long you believe in Christ.

So they hate Jesus but love Christ.

How smart from the all knowing and all loving god to create mammalian brain cells redundant and it’s neurons so flexible to adjust and rewire after gunshots.

What a foresight and ergo god must exists !

Just replace ‘gay’ with religious (religerous) – so almighty Allah, Brahma ... (2900 god further)... Yahweh, Zeus - send bad weather to prevent religerous people to attend the holy mass, the latest sermon etc. this would be the REALLY satire.

On the subject of Hitler, can someone explain to me why the Catholic Church never denounced him?

Because Hitler was fulfilling gods will with the Holocaust and made a pact with the Vatican (Reichskonkordat) – that’s why Mein Kampf was never put on the RCC banned index and Hitler was never excommunicated. As according to Catholic doctrine only believe in jesus count, Hitler is expected to be in Haven right now whereas “evil” Hindus like Gandhi will root eternal in hell as he didn’t believe in Christ as savior.

It's probably for the same reason they don't denounce Mugabe.

Robert Mugabe will be the next head of state visitor to Britain. After the head of the biggest transnational pederast organization was invited to lecture UK citizens on morality and child care, now Robert Mugabe will lecture the UK parliament and the UK cabinet ministers for trade and finance about economic policies and how to curb inflation.

This visit then will be followed by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who will be invited to the UK to lecture its citizens about the Torah and how to treat Jews peacefully.

This should round up the 2010 guidance for the UK nicely.