So then to round out the festival of silliness there’s darling Cardinal Buttercup I mean Murphy-O’Connor again. (Nice of the major UK newspapers to give him so much oxygen of publicity, isn’t it? Wouldn’t do for them just to ignore his absurd woolgathering, would it.)

It’s just the same old stuff – word for word, some of it. Once again ‘atheism has become more vocal and aggressive.’ There’s something intriguing about the way clerics and apologists like to get up and say harsh things about secularists and atheists all the time and then squeal like pigs when secularists and atheists have the gall to say anything in return. It’s kind of like a playground bully complaining about a kid who … Read the rest

So then there’s this other thing with this ‘junior dictionary’ (what’s a junior dictionary? why not just have a regular dictionary and use it as needed? what’s the point of having a special dictionary that won’t have the words that you don’t know what they mean?) that’s part of a sinister plot to get rid of words about Christianity and the queen and flowers so that there won’t be any more Britishness. Something like that.

Oxford University Press has removed words like “aisle”, “bishop”, “chapel”, “empire” and “monarch” from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like “blog”, “broadband” and “celebrity”. Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.

Really? How does Julie Henry know that … Read the rest

There’s this Australian MP who can really spot a sinister coincidence and then having spotted it figure out that it’s not a coincidence at all but a joined-up sequence of events with one (after a gap of six months) causing the other. If only more people had talents like that, All would be Explained.

Labor MP James Bidgood, the first-time MP under investigation for selling pictures of a protester attempting to set fire to himself outside Parliament House, has declared the global financial crisis an act of God…”In 1987 there was another march for Jesus. That took place in April. And guess what happened in October 1987? The stock market crashed.”

Oooooooooooooh – I never noticed that before. Makes you … Read the rest

So Cherie Blair is giving a lecture in Rome on Friday titled ‘Religion as a force in protecting women’s human rights’. So…..what’s she going to say then? What can she say? It would be interesting to know.

One wonders if she’s going to just…make stuff up. People do that you know. I’ve noticed it. They like women’s rights, and they like religion, so they want to say the one helps or supports or fosters or protects the other – but there is very little evidence of that, and quite a lot of evidence of its opposite. So what are they to do? Well…just say things, that’s what. Religion allows that, and most other institutions and bystanders allow it too. … Read the rest