Futurama Explains Religion

 

Zimbabwean Churches Causing Hundreds To Die By Banning Medications

Apostolic and evangelical Christian churches in Zimbabew are discouraging and even banning their worshippers from taking their medications for HIV/AIDS, and other conditions, and they are dying by the hundreds.  Because Jesus cures AIDS.  Presto!

Except that he doesn’t.

 

Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe

From Zimbabwe NewsDay (emphasis added):

[…]

Apostolic and Pentecostal churches with their origins in West African countries now based in Zimbabwe have been cited as the major culprits.

This sad story came to the fore during the recent burial of Tambudzai Mazvihwa (not real name) of Banga Village in Shurugwi.

According to speakers during her burial, she had stopped taking her anti-retroviral medication and developed complications, which later caused her premature death.

“Parents and relatives, I think you are all aware that our daughter here was taking anti-retroviral drugs, but for the past five months she had stopped her medication on instructions from her church elders who had prescribed holy water instead of the pills. It is the holy water that has caused her death. Had she continued with her treatment, she would be living up to this day,” said an elderly headman during her burial.

Only a few villagers attended the burial and members of her church did not attend for fear of being beaten up for having caused her demise.

As men shovelled red gravel onto her grave, some spoke in low tones condemning the acts of her church.

[…]

There was no cross, no flowers and no name on her grave. Tambudzai is yet another victim of the doctrinaire religious sects that are taking Zimbabwe by storm; she is among hundreds of other worshippers who met a similar fate.

[,,,]

There are also many versions of Christianity, with some churches overtly borrowing from traditional religious practices such as divination, witch hunting and “spiritual” healing.

Christianity Explained In One Tweet

I think I’ll pass:

Accepting Jesus sounds like a really fucked up thing to do.

Oh, but wait! – there’s some more of his gems of patriotic Christian wisdom and goodness, and are good reminders of why religion is a mental illness:

Christian Privilege Saves Child-Murdering Parents From Prison

 

Christian child abusers Herbert and Catherine Schaible

A Pennsylvania fundamentalist Christian couple, Herbert and Catherine Schaible, are spared prison after being found guilty for murdering their child with prayer and they are allowed to keep their seven remaining children to abuse for Jesus.  (That’s what you call “irresponsible procreation”.)  Cases like this make a good argument for regulating and prohibiting certain religious beliefs and practices that are just fucking dangerous.  The law already prohibits some religious practices, such as polygamy and slavery, yet allows parents to murder their children as long as they believe in magic powers.  Hopefully, however, that may be changing — prompted by the long history of child abuse and neglect by the Followers of Christ Church cult, the state of Oregon has just introduced a bill that will ban faith-healing as a defense for killing your kids.

Churches like these overstep the generous bounds of religious freedom granted to them.  Forcing kids, who cannot consent, to suffer needlessly through these ‘faith-healing’ rituals and to die horrible, painful deaths because their brainwashed, idiot parents are told to believe they have magic powers.

Why are these parents spared prison and allowed to keep their other children to experiment on?  They are clearly insane (emphasis mine):

Following the guilty verdict Clark [the father] said: ‘The legal community is trying to force our church group to put them in the hands of this flawed medical system, when they have chosen to put them in the hands of a perfect God, who does not make mistakes.’

About a dozen US children die in faith-healing cases each year, a handful of which spawn criminal charges, according to experts.

It is not the first time the First Century Gospel Church of Philadelphia’s teachings has clashed with the authorities.

And, the authorities admit that it’s going to take a lot of supervision to make sure that these monsters don’t harm their other kids, as they are still under the influence of the cult First Century Gospel Church.

Sick.

via [link] Philly.com and [link] DailyMail UK

Formula That Never Fails: More Jesus = Less Morals

Christian wife-beater Stephen Green

It never fucking fails.  Inversely proportional: the more Jesus that comes spouting from some ‘holier-than-thou’ moral crusader’s pie-hole, the more effed-up shit they’re hiding and the less morals they possess.

From Joe.My.God.:

Infamous anti-gay activist Stephen Green, who is well known as a British version of Peter LaBarbera, is being divorced by his wife. Because he’s been beating her with a piece of wood.

Caroline Green was often punished by her husband Stephen for failing to be a dutiful, compliant wife, but his final act of violence against her — the one that prompted her long-overdue decision to divorce him — was all the more chilling because it was coldly premeditated. Stephen Green wrote a list of his wife’s failings then described the weapon he would make to beat her with. ‘He told me he’d make a piece of wood into a sort of witch’s broom and hit me with it, which he did,’ she recalls, her voice tentative and quiet. ‘He hit me until I bled. I was terrified. I can still remember the pain. ‘Stephen listed my misdemeanours: I was disrespectful and disobedient; I wasn’t loving or submissive enough and I was undermining him. He also said I wasn’t giving him his conjugal rights. ‘He even framed our marriage vows — he always put particular emphasis on my promise to obey him — and hung them over our bed. He believed there was no such thing as marital rape and for years I’d been reluctant to have sex with him, but he said it was my duty and was angry if I refused him.

Green’s wife also claims that their son had to be hospitalized after a beating from him.

This man is one twisted psychotic sack of crazy.  On his protests against BBC, his loving, Christ-like followers did this:

‘As a result of all this lobbying, we received death threats — awful stuff arrived in the post,’ recalls Emily. ‘Someone threatened to burn us all alive in our beds.

‘We were terrified — but Stephen treated the reaction with glee. He thrived on controversy because he could go on TV and get publicity.’

Read the whole grisly account HERE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351585/Stephen-Green-rails-immorality-voice-Christian-Britan-private-wife-beater-says-partner.html#ixzz1CdZBKJn4

The Stephen Greens in this world have real effect on people, from the unfortunates subservient to them, to the religious zealots who take the teachings of madmen and act on them.  These are not nice people.

 

‘Demonic’ Dog Hanged And Burned For Jesus

Another example of the insanity caused by religious zealotry.  It takes a really mentally disturbed person to do this.

A Spartanburg County woman told animal control officers God advised her to hang and then burn her nephew’s pit bull because it was “a devil dog” and because it had chewed her bible.

Spartanburg County animal control officers said Miriam Fowler Smith, 65, of Pacolet Mills, confessed to wrapping an extension cord around the dog’s neck, hanging it from a tree, and then setting it on fire.

Smith faces one felony count of ill treatment of animals in general, and she remains in the Spartanburg County Detention Center as of this posting.

The dog, named Diamond, belonged to Smith’s nephew, Andy Fowler, who left the home on Jan. 9. When he returned Jan. 15, Fowler noticed the dog wasn’t there.

He told officers he assumed the dog had gotten loose and was running free, but when he pressed his aunt, she confessed to killing it, according to animal control officers.

[…]

Read more at [link]

.

Georgia Home Firebombed Following Christian Anti-Gay Threats

A 40-something gay man in Carroll County, Georgia was in his living room when a rock came smashing through the window of his house.

[… ]

The rock had a threatening note attached.

“It said, ‘we know you’re gay. And God hates gays. You won’t be raping anybody in the county and God’s going to make sure that you burn in hell.’ And something about my daddy… my daddy will make sure you burn in hell,”

Then hours later, he woke up to flames filling his bedroom.

[…]

His mother said she heard a commotion and saw fire coming from her son’s house next door. She said she ran out to find Staples lying in the yard. She said she thought he was dead.

[…]

“This is the first time I’ve dealt with anything of this nature in 16 years,” said Capt. Shane Taylor of the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office.
“I can’t believe anyone would have such hatred in their heart as to do somebody like that, especially when they don’t even know him. They don’t know him,” she said.“It hasn’t sunk in to me yet that somebody intentionally tried to burn my house down with me in it, and it just doesn’t register,” Staples [the victim] said. 

 

[…]

Here’s another report: Arson of gay man’s home probed as hate crime – [link – Times Georgian.com]

And another: Mother of gay Carrollton man speaks out on suspected arson of his home – [link – GA Voice]

More Christian anti-gay arson crimes:

I posted HERE about a fire-bombing incident last October in Canada following weeks of harassment, threatening notes with Christian anti-gay bullshit, then the mailbox burned down, then *boom* — a fire-bomb through the bedroom window in the early morning hours.  The couple barely escaped with their lives and their dog.  Everything burned to the ground.

–

Glory to Jesus!  Praise his name!

California Will Split In Two If Prop 8 Repealed

So says self-proclaimed prophet Chuck Pierce and the lady in the hooker outfits.  For the 9th gazillionth time, California will split in two, slide into the ocean because the [____]s are doing [_____].

From Right Wing Watch:

I don’t know about you, but when Cindy Jacobs tells me that she has received an “urgent prayer alert from our good friend Chuck Pierce concerning California,” my ears perk up … especially when that prayer alert entails God warning that failure by the courts to uphold Proposition 8 will result in California being destroyed by a massive earthquake:

Yesterday, January 4th, I was called by a key intercessor in Santa Ynez. (Please note as you proceed, yesterday was the same day prop 8 was sent to the California Supreme Court) She reported two visions from separate individuals in the area:

A pastor of a large Nazarene Church had a dream of a very large earthquake on the central coast. He shared this at the Christmas gathering for all the Santa Maria Pastors and 5 cities area. Because of the destruction and intensity of the quake he thought he should tell the Pastors so they could pray into it.

Another intercessor in the area had a dream and saw a map of California. She noticed on the map how Pt. Conception juts out into the water. As she looked she saw an 8 with a circle beside it in the waters off Pt Conception.

[…]

Read the rest at Right Wing Watch

Cindy Jacobs Wonders If God Killed Birds

Maybe god will stop killing birds when Cindy stops dressing up in her hooker outfits?

via Raw Story, JMG

Bill Pinhead O’Reilly Versus American Atheists’ Dave Silverman

Bill O’Reilly thinks that an invisible man in the sky controls the motion of the ocean tides and there’s no other way to explain it.  What a Pinhead!  Yes, the man who wrote a book called Pinheads and Patriots, the man who constantly talks over guests who hold opposing viewpoints and berates and insults them, says that it’s insulting for someone to say that religion is a scam and calls his guest, Dave Silverman, a ‘loon’.  O’Reilly has used his “tide goes in, tide goes out, sun comes up, sun goes down” argument on several occasions to “prove” god exists, as Steven Colbert shows in this clip.

Christians who are offended by this ‘scam’ message, are offended about only the christian part — they will readily inform you that all the other religions referenced on the billboard are scams, and don’t you dare question or criticize or mock their beliefs!  And so will Muslims do the same, and on and on.  They’re all full of shit, and they’re all scams.

You KNOW it's the fucking truth!

Moderate Muslim Scholars Praise Murderer Of Pakistani Governor

Over 500, that’s five hundred, Muslim scholars, who are considered moderates, are praising the body guard who murdered Pakistan’s Punjab governor, Salman Taseer, over his opposition to the country’s severe blasphemy laws.  Cheering lawyers showered flowers on the killer, Mumtaz Qadri,as he was fescorted into court.

Taseer has been criticized, by moderate Muslims, for his support of Asia Bibi, the mother of small children who has been imprisoned for a year for allegedly blaspheming the “prophet” Muhammad, and a majority of Pakistanis want her executed.

This is moderate Islam.  From MSNBC:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Lawyers showered the suspected assassin of a liberal Pakistani governor with rose petals as he entered court. Some 170 miles away, the prime minister joined thousands to mourn the loss of the politician, who dared to challenge the demands of Islamic extremists.

The cheers and tears across the country Wednesday underscored Pakistan’s journey over the past several decades from a nation defined by moderate Islam to one increasingly influenced by fundamentalists willing to use violence to impose their views.

Even so-called moderate Muslim scholars praised 26-year-old Mumtaz Qadri for allegedly killing Punjab province Gov. Salman Taseer on Tuesday in a hail of gunfire while he was supposed to be protecting him as a bodyguard. Qadri later told authorities he acted because of Taseer’s vocal opposition to blasphemy laws that order death for those who insult Islam.

As Qadri was escorted into court in Islamabad, a rowdy crowd patted his back and kissed his cheek as lawyers at the scene threw flowers. On the way out, some 200 sympathizers chanted slogans in his favor, and the suspect stood at the back door of an armored police van and repeatedly yelled “God is great.”

Many other Pakistanis were appalled.

[…]

The response from the United States Secretary of State Clinton has been very weak, no mention of the horrific acts being committed in the name of religion, no mention of blasphemy laws, only a generic ‘we-will-help-them-in-their-time-of-turmoil’ bullshit.  Here is a good WashTimes editorial on it.

When Christians Attack

“My Jesus gonna get all UP in your motherfucking Jesus, motherfucker!!1!” – Pastor Jeremy De Los Santos, Old Paths Baptist Church

I think that’s what he said — it’s all in the interpretation!

Pamela Grothaus Gets Naked

 

Grothaus - (actual photo would cause "gagging")

[Update at the end (the little darlin’ has been canned)]

[Note: In case it’s not obvious, my first paragraph here is mocking Grothaus’ style of dramatic ‘I’m-trying-to-gross-you-out’ visuals and her use of ‘gag’]

=

Naples, Florida news blogger Pamela Grothaus brazenly strips it all off, bare naked, and then grinds it in her readers’ faces — her ugly, bile-spewing pie-hole, letting her piss-stained robe of pretentiousness fall around her ankles, naked ignorance and hatred that makes people want to “leave the room and gag”.  From JoeMyGod (it appears that the quote below is no longer on the link to the Naples news site below — I wanted to gag, but I clicked over anyway — it may have been removed due to complaints to the paper):

“Folks, it looks like political correctness has scored another victory at the expense of morality and religious freedom. In-your-face homosexuality will soon be given the green light in our armed forces. What’s next? A pedophile platoon? A bestiality battalion? A man-boy-love marching band? Let’s bring ‘em all out of their dark little closets and onto the battlefield—with special benefits and treatment to help them feel good about themselves, of course!

[…]

“So hold on tight, as America slides even further into the abyss of political correctness, while homosexual soldiers worldwide prepare for a colossal coming out party at taxpayer’s expense. Oh, yeah, there’ll be federal dollars wasted on this nonsense—can’t wait to see the price tag on that. and all of this hoopla so that soldiers who like to have sex with those of their same gender can display pictures of and coo over their same-sex lovers’ photos, as if that makes them “normal” to the rest of us. (Nah, we’ll just wait until you leave the room and gag.) – Naples Daily News blogger Pamela Grothaus.

First off, the level of utter stupidity and total delusional ignorance is just unimaginable and doesn’t have to be explained to normal people.  How is it possible to be so goddamned fucking stupid?  She underscores the basic problem with people like her who are irrationally opposed to equality for every citizen.

Religious Heads Exploding In Unison

The outpouring of pure hatred from the Religious Right talking heads — you can almost hear them screaming “God damn America!” It’s as if they’re wishing for catastrophes to happen just so their insane rantings will be proven.  The purely demented, drama-laden wailings and obsession with sex is both hilarious and sad.

Read the rants on Right Wing Watch – “Reaction to DADT Vote: “The Few, the Proud, the Sexually Twisted” read the reactions from Bryan Fischer of the American “Family” Association and Tony Perkins of the “Family Research” Council (tied to white supremacists), Matt Staver of “Freedom” Federation, Peter LaBarbera of Americans for “Truth”, Mass Resistance, and former chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt (who was court-martialed in 2006 for disobeying orders).

We are now stuck with sexual deviants serving openly in the U.S. military because of turncoat Republican senators … Had the cloture vote failed, we would still have sane moral and sexual standards governing military personnel policy. But sadly those days are gone, perhaps forever.

Oh, the irony of these lunatics calling other people sexual deviants with their diapers and hookers and  committing adultery while their wives lay cancer-stricken.  And it’s well known how pure and chaste heterosexuals are in the military, especially when 1-in-3 women report being sexually assaulted and raped by male heterosexual soldiers.

The rant from Mass Resistance comes complete with a centerfold photo of Scott Brown, who apparently “doesn’t have a problem showering no matter who is ogling him.”

UPDATE: Right Wing Watch reports that most of the right-wingosphere, so far, is dead silent on the repeal:

When Judge Vaughan Walker struck down Proposition 8, Religious Right leaders were falling over one another to release statements decrying it … but the repeal of DADT has largely yielded collecting silence.

So far, we have not heard a peep about the vote from the American Center for Law and Justice, Concerned Women for America, The Eagle Forum, Focus on the Family, the Traditional Values Coalition, Vision America, The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, The Christian Coalition, Renewing America Leadership or anything from conservative leaders like Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, James Dobson, Newt Gingrich, or Richard Land.

Waiting to gauge the public response to calculate what they’re going to spew; the hate-group leaders like Perkins, Fischer, and LaBarbera quoted in the first RWW link just don’t care any more — they cannot sound any crazier than they already do.

Ex-Muslim Could Face Life Sentence For Blasphemy

Twenty-six year old Walid, or Waleed, Husayin (pseudonym), a barber in the West Bank of Palestine, was trucked down and arrested because of his satirical Facebook claims to be Allah.

From JihadWatch.org:

[…]

Their faith is under attack from the West because a Palestinian barber questions Islam? Lunacy.

He could face a life sentence if he’s found guilty, depending on how harshly the judge thinks he attacked Islam and how widely his views were broadcast, said Islamic scholar Tamimi.Even so, a small minority has questioned whether the government went too far.

Zainab Rashid, a liberal Palestinian commentator, wrote in an online opinion piece that Husayin has made an important point: “that criticizing religious texts for their (intellectual) weakness can only be combatted by … oppression, prison and execution.”

Good point, no? Lock her up too!

This man’s own family and townspeople want him imprisoned for life and/or dead.  But, why would they dare say anything different, lest they be locked up, too?

Meanwhile, a Pakistani doctor has been arrested and charged with “blasphemy” because he threw away a business card of a pharmaceutical rep whose name is Muhammad.  The rep turned him.  Why isn’t the rep guilty of blasphemy for comparing himself to Muhammad, as though tossing his business card equaled tossing the “prophet”?  And, why isn’t naming your kid after the “holy” “prophet” a form of blasphemy itself?  Using the fucked-up logic of religion, a living person named Muhammad seems to be more of a likeness than drawing a picture of someone who nobody knows what he actually looked like.

Nothing in religion makes sense.