Sunday, July 10, 2011

Sunday, and the news of the world is that the cults are clustered in all kinds of meetings and conferences ...


(Above: yes, yes, off into the sunset with you, and please take Unca Rupe and the gang with you).

At last the stake has been driven into the heart of yet another wretched tabloid rag of the Murdoch kind, and the absent lord willing, hopefully the world will keep a plentiful supply of stakes, because there's still a hell of a lot of vampires hanging around in the News Corp closet.

You can waste ten seconds of your life by heading off to the News of the World farewell page, but why not instead frolic at The Guardian's ongoing coverage of the ongoing coverup?

Oh these wretched left wing rags with their idle chit chat about journalistic ethics. Those bloody Fairfax wankers, so to speak. (Murdoch scandal a symptom of a broader sickness).

But hang on, this is Sunday, so it's not just the first day of a carbon tax which will spell the utter ruination of western civilisation by beating it to death with a wet lettuce leaf.

It's not just the final day of a tabloid, sentenced to death so that the six stages of a project can be honoured, which with kindly old Rupe flying to London to sort things out, has rapidly moved from enthusiasm through disillusion and panic to search for the guilty, punishment of the innocent (oh yes, that in spades) and praise and enthusiasm and reward for the allegedly uninvolved and the non-participant - said Unca Rupe and his merry band of Murdochs, who are so clean, their fleece is whiter than snow.

No, it's Sunday, day of the cults (except for those who like to cult on Saturday), and as our thoughts fly back to the old Dart, are you aware that the Church of England's General Synod is meeting in York, and that The Guardian is providing a live blog as coverage of the momentous event?

The only thing to emerge of interest to date is this heavenly shot of eyebrows and beard on the Archbishop of Canterbury:


Ethereal.

Meanwhile, a Sydney cult - yes, it's Sydney through and through, held its annual conference last week - Happiness is Hillsong: 'what it would be like to worship in heaven' - and the most excellent news is that the delegates have managed to identify the location of heaven.

''It actually gives you the feeling, when you're worshipping, what it would be like to worship in heaven … You can imagine the angels just extending, worshipping,'' Miss Durrell said yesterday.
''I felt that the very first conference I went to at Acer Arena. There was no roof and it was like I actually saw heaven.''


Strange, but then other cults, such as scientology, have also looked to the heavens and seen extra-terrestrial solutions. You might look at the night sky and see the moon and a few other planets and a host of stars (black holes are a tad tricky), and a whole heap of emptiness of a space kind, but then you'd be missing Xenu's epic voyage to Earth in a DC-8 like spacecraft. (Xenu wiki).

Enough already, it's on with the tour of long established cults, and in week old news from the Sunday Terror, Cardinal George Pell reports on yet another meeting, this time between Muslims, Christians and atheists. (Believers and Non-Believers).

The alleged atheist in attendance was one Dick Gross and what a nice man he is, how conciliatory and kindly:

Dick Gross was the atheist, honest and courteous, with nothing of the rudeness of a man like Dawkins. A deal of the discussion focused on the violence perpetrated by each group and whether this violence was fostered or hindered by official teachings.

Gross was unusual because he conceded that "atheists put you lots to shame in the numbers they killed, especially through Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao", and that by evolution atheists are destined to remain a minority.


Gross, who comes across routinely as a believer who'd love to believe if he could only find a way, has also scribbled about this meeting in A Muslim, A Christian and an atheist walk into a pub ..., and continues apace in his desire to render atheism a kind of meaningless gibberish. Take this offering:

I don't care too much about what is in the Koran and the Bible, but they do. It was for me a revelation (groan) about our difference in approach to text. I see text as a lot of very old writings with weird stuff not really that relevant.

Groan indeed. Routinely Gross presents himself as a lick spittle fellow travelling atheist, as if he's the kindly face of an interdenominational atheist movement blessed with its own peculiar kind of faith and need for atonement, perhaps by saying a six pack rosary.

Next Dick Gross will explain how the non-Christian nations then under the yoke of imperialism and colonialism managed to provoke the allegedly Christian nations into bunging on two world wars. I suppose it was all the fault of Japan, egging on those kindly Italians and Germans (but hang on, didn't Japan swing the right way in the first bout when god was on everyone's side?)

According to the godly goodly Pell, the three protagonists in the meeting departed in friendship.

Where's Richard Dawkins when you need him?

But all this is just the entrée because, as a kindly correspondent has pointed out, the restless Sydney Anglicans are always active, and none more so than Phillip Jensen, and he's not having a bar of any of that interdenominational clap trap, as he pointedly explains in Is Allah Yahweh?

Deploying impeccable logic, Jensen isn't about to let Allah anywhere near the bible:

First, is that Allah is not an English word, so it is no longer an English translation.

Damn you furriners, get that Allah the hell outa here 'fore I's plugs him (or her) full of lead.

There's another six points led by Jensen, perhaps the most mysterious being points three and four:

Third, there is the problem that though Islam claims to believe the Old Testament prophets, it doesn’t accept their revelation of God’s name as YHWH. Islam has 99 names for Allah but YHWH is not one of them, even though the prophets use the name YHWH over 5000 times in the Old Testament.

Fourth, Allah has 99 names and at the same time no name, for he is not personal in the same way as YHWH. His names are his attributes and characteristics, but not his revealed person with whom we relate.



Hands up Christians who have a copy of the bible which refers throughout to God as YHWH?

This leads to a triumphant Jensenist conclusion:

We are created in God’s image and reborn as his children. Muslims at best are loved slaves of Allah but never sons of the Father God – because their God is different to ours. Muslims don’t know Allah as YHWH.

I'd like a straw poll of Christians please, to ascertain those who know God as YHWH. Sheesh, and Dick Gross thinks an obsessive compulsive way with words is weird, as if sophist and pedant Christians haven't been playing that game for hundreds of years.

Sorry, Islamics, you're off to hell with the atheists, which happens to be somewhere in the heavens (on the dark side of the moon, or in a deep Martian canyon), unless it's recently re-located to the plasma at the centre of the earth ... or perhaps Acer Arena.

Meanwhile, we were astonished to see the Sydney Anglicans using Harry Potter in a cross-promotional routine, otherwise known as shameless trading off on a brand. Clearly this reprehensible band of unethical intellectual property rights brigands have forgotten that the evil Potter promotes witchcraft, sorcery, devilment, and ultimately complete damnation of the human soul.



The end result? Anybody who reads the Anglican rag Southern Cross after this might well become Satan's spawn.

Is the "Harry Potter..." series truly harmless? you might ask yourself, bravely tossing thoughts of brain damage aside. Do Harry Potter and the Sydney Anglicans promote the sin of witchcraft, you might ask yourself, are they of the Devil? Let us have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, let us reprove them!

Enough already, and there we were going to recommend Freeman Dyson's neat profile of Richard Feynman for the New York Review of Books, under the header The 'Dramatic Picture' of Richard Fyenman, but it's inside the paywall.

Hang on, do you still pay for a Murdoch publication? Time to cancel and get inside a decent paywall?

(Below: helpful advice to Rupert Murdoch on managing change. Pay particular attention to role modelling, click to enlarge).


2 comments:

  1. I await the day that followers of the FSM can wear their own head dress on Australian drivers licences:

    http://www.science20.com/alpha_meme/pasta_sieve_religious_head_cover_driver_license-80805

    To the Loon Pond!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good one aidee, no, second thoughts, great one!

    ReplyDelete

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