Agylen

Massive Gas Cloud Speeding Toward Collision With Milky Way: “A giant cloud of hydrogen gas is speeding toward a collision with our Milky Way Galaxy, and when it hits — in less than 40 million years — it may set off a spectacular burst of stellar fireworks.”

Looks like we’re safe, as “the cloud will likely strike a region somewhat farther from the Galactic center than our Solar System and about 90 degrees ahead of us in the Milky Way disk.” And we’d have at least 20 million years before starting to worry.

Even if this is the case, though, it’s impossible not to feel awe at the way the cosmos, far from being an orderly, peaceful, and predictable place, is full of chaos and violence on a scale that cannot even be fully understood. Witness the recent discovery of a gigantic beam of matter ejected from a massive black hole and smashing into a nearby galaxy, literally tearing it to pieces like the jet from a garden hose tears apart an ants’ nest.

You might think that those planets that are being hit by such phenomena are not hosting any kind of civilization, or that their inhabitants are not protected by a loving god, or that it’s all part of god’s plan, which we cannot know.

Or you might think that we’re the lucky ones who get an opportunity to live for a brief (on the time scale of the Universe) instant of time, thanks to random chance or contingency, and nothing is pre-ordained or in any way predetermined.

Guess which one I think is the sensible opinion to hold.

Three Wise Men are just a legend, says Archbishop of Canterbury | the Daily Mail: “During an interview on Radio Five, the Archbishop of Canterbury dismissed the well-known version of events as legend saying: ‘Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t tell us there were three of them, doesn’t tell us they were kings, doesn’t tell us where they came from.

Oh, really?

‘It says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that’s all we’re really told.’

Oh, really?

Turning to the topic of when Jesus was born, he said it was ‘very unlikely’that there was snow.

Oh, really?

He said there was no evidence of animals present - a popular theme of Christmas cards.

Oh, really?

He dismissed the idea that the star of the North stood still in the night sky - because stars just don’t behave like that.

Oh, really?

For good measure, he added Jesus probably wasn’t even born in December. He said: ‘Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival’.

Oh, really?

Next time the good Archbishop will tell us that maybe the virgin birth is a legend too… oh wait, he alredy did! What’s left then, the resurrection? After all, there’s just as much proof that Jesus rose from the dead as there is for his birth in a manger. It’s all a bunch of unsubstantiated myths, so why not get over it once and for all?

Sonny Perdue to God: “I said G-E-O-R-G-I-A, not Bangladesh.”

Obviously God is American: most Americans would not be able to place Bangladesh on a map. Well, maybe not even Georgia ;).

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Shock at archbishop condom claim: “The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.

Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected ‘in order to finish quickly the African people’.”

Of course, if Pope Ratzi and his minions had any decency they would have fired the lying scumbag already, but I’m not holding my breath. They will probably do nothing or, at most, move the dickhead (the picture on the right is an actual depiction of the brand of condoms the archbishop uses) to a different diocese where he will be able to continue misleading and harming his flock.

They should also have the decency to ask Chimoio to reveal the name of the other European country that is infecting condoms with HIV. We all know the first one is the Vatican, right?

Technorati Tags: chimoio, condoms, mozambique.

Can you see any similarity between the guy pictured here and the one in the first frame of this strip?

Well, if there is any physical similarity, it is purely coincidental, because the guy on the left is Cosimo Mele, a member of the Italian Parliament elected with a Catholic party (UDC), whereas the vignette on the right represents a “sanctimonious, moralizing Republican”.

The coincidence, however, is stunning: on the same day the strip was published, it was revealed that Mele—with all probability a sanctimonious, moralizing Catholic but definitely married with children and a member of a political party that defends “traditional family values”— had spent last Friday night in a Rome hotel with “a lady, or maybe two, who was later admitted to a hospital with problems apparently due to cocaine and alcohol abuse”.

Now, a lady or maybe two is not the same as a lady, a clown, a lift boy and a giraffe, but the similarity is striking.

You can read more about this story here. The (as usual) hilarious Google translation is here (don’t be fooled by the reference to “Apples”, it’s just that “mele” in Italian means “apples”, as in the fruit).

What’s the problem with religious leaders in Sydney? We already established some time ago, that its Catholic Archbishop, George Pell, is a moron. Now we learn that its Anglican Arcbhbishop, Peter Jensen is not even able to answer a simple question like: “What parts of the Bible should we believe?”

I mean, if you argue against homosexuality because the Bible says so, why don’t you ask that gays be stoned to death, like the very same Bible says? Isn’t it a mortal sin to think you know better than your own God?

I don’t know whether it’s the air, or the water in Sydney Harbour, that causes religious leaders to be either stupid or liars, or hypocrites, or all of it at the same time. Hmmm, wait… what if it weren’t a matter of geography at all? What if being either a stupid or a liar was a prerequisite for being a religious leader, all over the world?

We might ask Cardinal Bagnasco, when the organization he heads publishes a book that advocates genocide, slavery and the suppression of sexual “deviants”, yet he gets all upset when people send him death threats.

By the way, it fills me with pride to know that, at least according to Google, I am more famous than the Italian Catholic Church ;).

(Via God is for Suckers.)

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Louis with car

Originally uploaded by Amy Watts.

After that bozo in a funny hat, Benedict XVI, spewed forth some incredibly ignorant and inane words on evolution and science, we cannot stop wondering whether the one depicted in this picture is going to be the next popemobile.

I don’t know what to make of GodTube. Looks like a serious site, but there are some videos there which are so stupid you can’t help but wonder whether it’s all a parody or not. Take poor Charley and his creationist babble: it takes a comic genius to reach such heights of idiocy. And what about that man and his banana as the atheist’s nightmare? Hilarious.

Admittedly, the PC vs. Mac spoof ads are well done and can make you smile a little, but would someone please explain what’s this distinction between a “Christian” and a “Christ follower”? I never heard of it before.

I also tried to have a look at IslamTube. Unfortunately the site is so slow that I wasn’t able to watch even a single video. Judging from the descriptions, they aren’t funny at all, rather quite grim. I can only imagine the level of idiocy is about the same as GodTube.

Paul Kedrosky: “Welcome, apparently, to Godless America. One of the unremarked-upon quirks of GW Bush’s State of the Union speech last night was the disappearance of God from the text’s closing.”

That’s not really true, apparently, as some commenters pointed out, and the New York Times’ SoU Analyzer confirms: Bush did say “God bless” at the end of his speech.

I wish it were true, though. As George W. Bush, for the first time in the history of his State of the Union addresses, pronounced the words “climate change”, having this latter phrase present, while “god” were absent, would have clearly been a case of reality trumping fantasy, for once.

Technorati Tags: bush, state of the union, god, climate change, kedrosky.