The first Carnival of the Godless is now up over at Unscrewing the Inscrutible. Kudos to the UTI gang. Very nice. And, they were gracious enough to include our little rant “Merry fucking Xmas, part II”.

Hey look, it’s the return of the Shroud of Turin! You thought carbon-14 dating done in 1988 had shown it to be basically new when it showed up in the 14th century. But no! A retired chemist from Los Alamos is saying that, although said the carbon dating test was valid, the patch they carbon dated just happened to be a place that the cloth had been patched in the 14th century! The rest of it is as old as Jeezus.

Man. What were the odds that they took out exactly the one new piece? What a fluke!

Silly bit of flakiness? Sure. But the New York Times is taking it seriously: Shroud of Turin: Old as Jesus?

What complete fucking bullshit: Church Plans to Bury the Ashes of Fetuses From Abortion Clinic

“We never meant this as a political statement; we wanted to give dignity to the unborn child and dignity to the pain and sorrow a woman who has had an abortion feels,” Susan LaVelle, a parish volunteer organizing the service, said. [...] “If we had not buried these ashes, they would have been thrown away in the trash,” she said. “Why would they be upset that we are treating the remains of unborn children with dignity?”

Oh, just shut the fuck up. No, no intention at all to suggest that killing fetuses is MURDER and should be followed by a funeral JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE, and how COULD you, and at least SOMEBODY cares about them since YOU clearly don’t — blah, blah, blah.

Yes, if that’s not clearly giving “dignity to the pain and sorrow” of women who have had abortions, then I don’t know what is.pussy clips big pornstar big roger pornporn pizza sassauge bigporn big scrotum mensister germany porn bigvideos big teen pornotit big porn asianebony tit porn big Map

The Landover Baptist Church hits a slam-dunk about the tsunami, as they do about so many other things: God Fails to Break His Own Record for Killing

True Christians know from the Great Flood that one of God’s favorite ways to indiscriminately kill enormous swaths of children is by drowning them and watching them gasp for air and while floating like little discarded Styrofoam cups in the tide. Sometimes, He extends an enormous hand as if He is about to rescue the bobbing tot, only to retract it at the last minute to teach the drowning child a valuable lesson about the ineffable nature of God’s love.

As a follow-up to Ron’s previous post about “bold xians” — i.e., what we call “bible-thumping assholes” — here’s a story: Republicans Push For `In God We Trust’ Banners In Libraries

“It’s very simple. It’s not political. It involves all parties,” Bunting said this week. “This country was founded on Judeo-Christian values. If you’re an atheist, and you don’t like it, you can put a banner over it and take [the banner] down when you leave.”

Or, Sparky, maybe you could just not put one up in the fucking first place?

If anyone’s interested in a list of stupid people, go here. The last quote really brings it home:

God is sending signals, but we don’t know what they are.

And there ya go.

Old GifS friend Brent over at Unscrewing the Inscrutable is starting up something that should be fun: The Carnival of the Godless, a weekly digest of posts “from a godless perspective”, drawn from around the godless ghetto of the blogosphere. Including, I hear, from our little love shack here. Check it out.porn ameature sitesamele pornporn ameraturporn star amercas nextamerican porn animatedporno american dadamerican dreamers porn dayporno daydreams american Map

I’ve said it before: The Xians are getting less tolerant of this whole “separation” thing. In their desire to defend religion’s encroachment on the affairs of state, they’ve largely turned from the more traditional “Oh no, that doesn’t violate separation” to the more aggressive “Separation? We don’t need no steenkin’ separation!”.

And here’s some poll data that’s supportive: As put in the MSNBC piece Survey finds church-goers growing bolder:

Church-going Americans have grown increasingly intolerant in the past four years of politicians making compromises on such hot issues as abortion and gay rights… those polled said they were growing bolder about pushing their beliefs on others — even at the risk of offending someone… On the question of whether elected officials should set their convictions aside to get results in government, 84 percent agreed in 2000. However, four years later that had dropped to 74 percent… In the survey, 32 percent of those who attended church once a week said they were willing to compromise on abortion issues — a 19-point drop in four years. Among the same group the question of compromising beliefs on gay rights was acceptable to only 39 percent, down 18 points from 2000. The poll also found that 37 percent overall felt that deeply religious people should be careful not to offend anyone when they “spread the word of God,” a decline from 46 percent four years earlier.

(Thanks to Tim for pointing this one out.)