Tuesday, December 31, 2013

When in doubt look up...but it won't help

Another annoying religious slogan one sees all the time is "When in doubt, look up".  Gee, if it was that easy then doubt would be extremely rare, since every single human who has ever lived looks at the sky, usually multiple times per day.  It still doesn't seem to resolve any significant issues, however. Looking up still doesn't convince atheists that there is a God up there in the sky, and looking up doesn't do anything to address whether Muslim, or Hindus, or Catholics, or Mormons are correct on matters of theology.

What this slogan really appears to be saying is that, when we doubt a religious idea we should "look to God" for answers, but that appears to be rather circular.  If we are doubting a particular religious belief, why would the answer be to introduce even more religion into mix.  That would be like saying that, if you break your leg that you should "look up" and perhaps try to break your neck as well.  Perhaps a better prescription would be to stop doing the thing that was creating the problem in the first place.

When all else fails...follow the instructions...or not!

There is a typical religious slogan that presents itself as clever by saying, "when all else fails, follow the instructions...The Holy Bible".  Of course, it conveniently omits the fact that most people don't bother with the directions because they are terribly written by someone who doesn't speak English natively, and following the directions often gets people even more confused than if they just attempted to figure it out themselves. This is certainly true, to the extreme, in the case of the Bible, as an "instruction manual", which is so terribly written, vague, and nonsensical that much of it is completely meaningless anymore, and certainly will not serve as an effective instruction manual for you to live your life in the modern world.  Following any random advice from the Bible would have you bathing in a dirty pool of water to cure your leprosy, or declaring your own private holy wars and slaughtering your neighbors, or kidnapping women and using them as sex slaves, all of which are routinely depicted in the Bible.  One certainly hopes that people don't follow these "instructions", and to the extent that they actually do as the Bible depicts, one hopes that they are arrested, tried, and imprisoned.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Dumbf*ck Dynasty Dimwit Phil Robertson Prevails

In case you thought that stupidity might not prevail, remember that this is reality TV we are talking about.  Most people watching Duck Dynasty, like the individuals on it themselves, are proud of being stupid.  That, more than anything, is their IDENTITY.  Of course they expected A & E to back down from the phony, contrived controversy that was ginned up in the GQ interview.  That was just for ratings anyway.  A & E never intended to actually enforce its contractual rights and make a redneck like Phil Robertson behave like anything other than...you guessed it, a redneck.  Now get out there and shoot at ducks that are probably smarter and more productive lifeforms than the ones aiming at them and pulling the trigger with blank stares on their id1ot faces.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Duck Dynasty Duckhead Lies Again about Fake Persecution

Duck Dynasty Duckhead Phil Lying about Just Quoting Scriptures
Phil Robertson, the fake yuppie poser who pretends to be a "redneck" for TV, was busy pretending again, this time claiming that he was being persecuted when  "all I did was quote from the scriptures" .  But, of course, that is a lie.  It's a lie because I'm pretty there is no scripture that says, "a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man's anus".  What is that, the Book of PhilMeUp 2:69?  And how was he just "quoting scripture" when he claimed that he had never witnessed black people being mistreated in the South.  I think a guy named Martin Luther King, who knew the scripture far better than Robertson, would have disagreed.  So Phil is a liar, and according to his own scripture that means that he will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
And if he wants to get all technical, then he has a CONTRACT with A&E and Christians are supposed to keep their oaths.  Remember what happens to oathbreakers, Phil.
He knows perfectly well that his contract, that he agreed to in exchange for millions of dollars, doesn't allow him to just say and do whatever he wants in public, since it can damage the brand, viewership, and reputation of the show as well as cost producers a lot of money -- which is precisely what has happened. Most of the right-wingers defending him right now would normally be defending the absolute right of employers to fire employees for any reason, without cause, without union representation, and without appeal to courts or lawsuits. Furthermore, based on the article cited above, Phil is apparently continuing to break that contract, and continuing to make public statements that further damage potential viewership and his employer and believes that his employer has no recourse.  The rest of his family has similarly stated that they intend to violate their contracts as well.
If A&E were smart, they would cancel the show now, sue him for breach of contract, take back all the money they have paid to him and get a real show about hunting that actually involves people hunting and not just sitting around reading cue-cards that involve anything but actually hunting.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Daffy Duck Dynasty Fanatic Phil Supended for Bigotry

I must admit that I'm one of those who never thought they should have put Duck Dynasty on the air in the first place.  I have tried to watch an episode, and tried to read some of the books and articles about these guys, but it frankly isn't that interesting.  They want to talk about everything except Duck Hunting, it seems.
A case in point would be Phil Robertson who wanted to has made no secret of thumping the Bible that he knows little or nothing about.  His recent comments, which are the standard fare that could be found in about 99% of all evangelical churches across this country, have apparently taken A & E by "surprise" and resulted in his indefinite suspension from the show after he decided to shoot his mouth off in an interview with GQ. Why should A & E be surprised that a bible-thumping religious bigot would thump his bible and express bigotry?  Perhaps if the show was really about hunting ducks then there would not be much opportunity for such issues to arise, but there wouldn't be much to the show if all they did was shoot a few ducks.  It's not like it's that hard a thing to do.

For course Mr. Robertson also took an opportunity to claim that he never witnessed black people being mistreated in the South, and to spout other random Bible nonsense, condemning not just homosexuals, but drunks, and swindlers, and a host of the usual suspects that the bible claims to be against, but somehow doesn't tend to single out nearly as much as homosexuals.  For that matter, the Bible condemns all kinds of additional things, like eating shrimp and crayfish, but I kinda doubt that Robertson is overly concerned with those esoteric matters of biblical dietary law.

Nope.  He's mainly just worried about the good bits like sex, and drinking, and owning slaves, all of which is heartily indulged in when you read about "godly men" like King David, for example.

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Westboro Baptists Picket Paul Walker Funeral

In yet another classy move, the "God Hates Fags" Westboro Baptist  Church is announcing that they intend to picket the funeral of Paul Walker.  Of course, their so-called "pickets" have nothing to do with anything that the individual might have done, but are just an increasingly desperate attempt to grab publicity by an ultra-rightwing fanatic religious group in the US that can't understand why nobody listens to them.   If Westboro Baptists weren't so crazy one would almost think that they were secretly being funded by Atheists or the Illuminati, just to make Christian Fundamentalists look like a bunch of raving loonies.  Fortunately, no shadowy organizations have to waste a penny to fake such a thing, because the genuine fundy nutcases do a so much more authentic job of looking crazy all by themselves.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Funny How Syrian chemical attacks stopped

Isn't it strange that there have been no more chemical weapons attacks in Syria.  That is highly mysterious, because Republican apologists for Assad absolutely insisted that it was the rebels who carried out the attack on their own people to draw in Western support.  See Republicans in the US were terrified that Obama would pull a "George Bush" and bomb Syria, thus gaining a boost in wartime popularity.  They couldn't allow that.  The freepers and  tea party loonies even did their usual mouth frothing about how Obama staged the whole thing.  But if the rebels or Obama had staged chemical attacks in Syria then why did they stop all of a sudden when Obama finally put his foot down and told Assad, "Do it again and I will personally F**k you up".  Once Obama said that, Assad aggreed to turn over his stockpile and "miraculously" there have been no more chemical weapons attacks for the Republicans, or the Russians for that matter, to try to blame on the rebels or Obama. But you would think, if the rebels or Obama had been staging these that the attacks would have continued.  Then they would have said, "look you can't trust Assad.  He's still committing genocide, and the West needs to intervene."  That didn't happen because the rebels and/or Obama were never behind the numerous chemical weapons attacks that were correctly blamed on the Assad regime.  That's called using your brain, and political/religious fanatics should try it once in a while.