I’d heard/seen these headlines about a pastor arbitrating the Obama/McCain discussion. Of course, this in and of itself is enough to curl my upper left lip into a semi-snarl. I mean, don’t we just have a surfeit of these religious folks sticking their noses into the process as is?

So, as the title implies, I began poking around.

I am even less happy now. I am, well, for wont of a better term, horrified that this fellow has the ability to broker anything in our government, let alone a meet for the two presidential candidates.

So let’s start out here (mind you, this starts the article, paragraph one no less!):

Rick Warren has Rick Warren syndrome. That’s not a joke. He has a brain disorder. “I was born with it,” he says. “I went to the Mayo Clinic, and the doctors said, ‘We have found a dozen or so other people with this. There’s no name, so maybe we’ll just call it the Warren syndrome.” He describes the ailment’s chemistry as an inability to process his body’s own adrenaline. Its symptoms are tremors, disorientation and pain, and, as he says, “it makes my brain move very fast.” I ask — since a colleague of his has asserted it — whether Warren also has attention deficit disorder. Warren laughs heartily. “Am I ADD? Yeah, I’m probably ADD too.”

How much of this impacts his judgment? I don’t want to be politically incorrect or mean-spirited, but a brain disorder? He seems to do pretty well despite it – he’s authored a number of books, and yes, you guessed it, they’re all paeans to his specific superstition.

Here’s the thing – this ‘Warren’s Syndrome’ is extremely rare. I couldn’t find a flipping thing on it anywhere. I even went as far as the Mayo Clinic’s website and search there. Nada.

Another snippet:

A shift away from “sin issues” — like abortion and gay marriage — is reflected in Warren’s approach to his coming sit-downs with the candidates. He says he is more interested in questions that he feels are “uniting,” such as “poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate change and human rights,” and still more in civics-class topics like the candidates’ understanding of the role of the Constitution. There will be no “Christian religion test,” Warren insists. “I want what’s good for everybody, not just what’s good for me. Who’s the best for the nation right now?”

Yeah, a ’shift away’ my ass. As I understand it, it’s an “in for a penny, in for a pound” package.

If Warren were content to be merely the most influential religious figure on the American political scene, that would be significant enough. He isn’t. Five years ago, he concocted what he calls the PEACE plan, a bid to turn every single Christian church on earth into a provider of local health care, literacy and economic development, leadership training and spiritual growth. The enterprise has collected testimonials from Bono, the First Couple, Hillary Clinton, Obama, McCain and Graham, who called it “the greatest, most comprehensive and most biblical vision for world missions I’ve ever heard or read about.” The only thing bigger than the plan’s sheer nerve is the odds against its completion; there are signs that in the small country Warren has made a laboratory for the plan, PEACE is encountering as many problems as it has solved.

All these assholes must’ve read the fuzzy wuzzy version, because pretty much anything ‘biblical’ usually entails huge swathes slaughtered en masse for just about any old damn thing.

During the 2004 presidential election, he seemed to toy with using his new influence to become the next Jerry Falwell or James Dobson. Although he did not officially endorse George W. Bush, the mega-author made no secret of his preference. Two weeks before the election, he sent an e-mail to the several hundred thousand pastors on his mailing list, enumerating “non-negotiable” issues for Christians to consider when casting their votes: abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage, euthanasia and human cloning. Shortly after the election, two attendees of a Washington meeting of conservative religious and political heavyweights remember Warren’s actively soliciting advice on how he might increase his clout with GOP politicians.

I’m with old James Madison (founding father) – these folks want to stick their nose into the political process? Start paying taxes.

Here’s a serious capper:

Warren had an epiphany in 2003. His wife Kay had dedicated herself to the fight against HIV/AIDS, a brave move in a community where it was still often stigmatized. In Africa with her nine months later, he says, he heard a message from above. “God said, ‘You don’t care squat about the sick and the poor. And you need to change; you need to repent.’” He became fond of repeating that the Bible has 2,000 verses dedicated to the poor and that the Gospel of Matthew contains not only the Great Commission, in which Christ bids his disciples to spread his word, but also the great commandment, in which he tells the Pharisees to love thy neighbor as thyself.

So this clown hears voices. He admits as much here:

I’m willing to admit my presuppositions: there are clues to God. I talk to God every day. He talks to me.

Oh, and the icing on the spoiled cake is, yet another fucktard who thinks evolution is a belief:

If you’re asking me do I believe in evolution, the answer is no, I don’t. I believe that God, at a moment, created man. I do believe Genesis is literal, but I do also know metaphorical terms are used. Did God come down and blow in man’s nose? If you believe in God, you don’t have a problem accepting miracles. So if God wants to do it that way, it’s fine with me.

And here’s a direct statement from the Saddleback Church:

Although it cannot be stated with certainty, it appears that dinosaurs may have actually been mentioned in the Bible. The Bible uses names like “behemoth” and “tannin.” Behemoth means kingly, gigantic beasts. Tannin is a term that includes dragon-like animals and the great sea creatures such as whales, giant squid, and marine reptiles like the plesiosaurs that may have become extinct. The Bible’s best description of a dinosaur-like animal is in Job chapter 40. We don’t know for certain if these are actually dinosaurs or are some other large creatures that became extinct.
This should not sound so strange. After all, God tells us that he created all the land animals on the sixth day of creation, the same day that he created mankind. Man and dinosaurs lived at the same time. There was never a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth. From the very beginning of creation, God gave man dominion over all that was made, even over the dinosaurs.

He hears voices on a daily basis. He also admits to having a brain disorder. He (and the other morons in his midst) think that dinosaurs were shoulder-to-shoulder with humanity.

He’s a highly functional schizophrenic, is what he is. This guy should be in therapy, not directing anything resembling major political discourse. In short, he and his should butt the fuck out.Why on earth does he have this ability? Well, he’s fairly charismatic. He’s also made millions on his book (contributed 90% of it to his club, too).

And of course, the addled masses have a soft spot for all that warm ‘n cuddly fuzzy wuzzy crap we call religion.

This gets up my nose in so many ways, I should have a deviated septum.

Final analysis: people as a rule aren’t able to distinguish teh crazies. Wear a suit, be articulate, brownnose, and have some money is all it takes in this country. Because reason and evidence don’t fluff the fuzzy wittwe heart.

Till the next post, then.

More Xian political propaganda in our local paper, and once again from Pastor Mondo Gonzales of Crossroads Community Church who I wrote about before concerning this article, “Does archaeology prove the Bible?” And once again he is twisting and turning and interpreting his mythology book to influence the delusional to vote according to how they are brainwashed in their churches.

Who would Jesus vote for?

Gonzales writes, “I have shared all of this to lay a foundation for discussing the upcoming election and whom we as Christians should vote for.”

Then he goes on to say, ” I am not going to tell you who to vote for,”

then contradicts himself with

” but I believe we should vote for the person that Jesus would vote for.”

Then he continues to arrogantly tell how Jesus would vote:

“How do we know whom Jesus would cast His vote for? We can be absolutely certain Jesus would only cast His vote for someone who loves God, not in word or tongue, but in action and in truth.”

*snip*

“I can assure you Jesus would not vote for someone who would ever support a pro-abortion policy, or a candidate who promoted the homosexual lifestyle. He wouldn’t vote for a person who did not affirm that marriage is between one man and one woman, just to name a few topics. How can we know this? The main reason is because the Bible condemns these things as sinful acts before God and Jesus wouldn’t cast his vote for anyone in power who would use their influence to encourage things that violated God’s Word.”

Another arrogant asshole who presumes to know exactly what this ancient dead person would think and do according to assumptions based on the Old Testament writings which states that children who smart off to their parents should be stoned to death, adulterers should be stoned and where it states that if you leave your wife and take another you have committed adultery. They conveniently ignore those things.

They also ignore the fact that nowhere does Jesus write against abortion. Nowhere does he talk against gay marriage and say that it is wrong. He hung out with a prostitute. He never married, had no children, and was followed around by a bunch of fishermen. Jesus, if he had existed, was a liberal…a far-left-leaning liberal who talked about feeding the hungry, helping the poor and a man who did not have a country club church for social gatherings. We never hear from these loonie evangelicals that we should vote for someone who will help feed the hungry, help the poor and those in need of medical care. Because if they said that, then they will be advocating voting for the evil liberal baby-killers. (A good point my husband had was that there are no “pro-abortionists”…pro-choice, but no one goes around saying that all women must kill their babies. It is not a decision that is made lightly, in most cases.)

My husband and I are sick of these fundies in our local paper and their ignoring the fact that this country is a diverse one, that our state is a diverse one and that our community is a diverse one with many varieties of Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindu, Non-believers and more. Our local newspaper prints this local crap on a weekly basis. Let’s see if they will print our response. I seriously doubt they will and will keep you posted.

Has anyone seen this? (I just found it here)…

Check out the smugness and arrogance. Just gotta love it…

(Isn’t pride supposed to be bad or something?)…

But always remember folks: Xians aren’t perfect — just forgiven…

This time reporting on Hindu and Christians warring with one another in the Indian state of Orissa last weekend:

(Right is a picture of what was left of a Christian orphanage after weekend devastation.)

Riots grip India’s Orissa region

Four people have been killed in armed clashes that broke out between Hindus and Christians in the Indian state of Orissa at the weekend.

Now a total of at least eight persons have been killed in the spiralling communal violence sparked by the killing of an eminent Hindu leader.

But we atheists are told that the world NEEDS some kind of god beliefs for there to be peace and love, etc.

Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati was killed on Saturday night.

Seven of the eight deaths have taken place in Kandhamal district, the epicentre of the communal upheaval.

The incident took place at Barakhama village in the afternoon as rival groups attacked each other with guns and bombs. Those killed in the clash included a woman.

Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said: “Four bodies were found at the scene of the clash at Barakhama. But the identity of the deceased is yet to be established.”

Making a statement on the incident in the State Assembly, Mr Patnaik said a small contingent of police personnel present there had done “its best but could not prevent the violence”.

And none of their gods show up from either side.

Reinforcements have now been rushed in and the situation brought under control, he said.

And once again, human intervention to the rescue.

Two people were burnt to death in Tiangia village in the district after rioters set fire to their houses last night.

One person had been burnt to death at Rupagaon village on Sunday night.

Arson and burning of Christian religious places continued on Tuesday in Kandhamal despite a curfew in all major towns and prohibitory orders in force throughout the district.

Even a Flag March by paramilitary forces did not deter the rioters, who went on a rampage setting fire to churches, vehicles and government facilities.

Ahhh, feel that godly love.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that the woman who was burnt to death in an orphanage in Bargarh district yesterday was a Hindu.

“We have verified the antecedents of the woman and found that she was a Hindu,” Sambalpur DIG YB Khurania said.

Initial reports had suggested that she was a nun.

Does it matter what sort of god botherer she was? She was a human being. Humanity is hopeless.

During the 7th-inning singing of ‘Gawd Bless America’, a Yankees fan decided to use the bathroom during the little break. That is when he was confronted by one of New York’s “finest” and told he wasn’t allowed to leave during the religious/patriotic song. When the fan told the officer he didn’t care about ‘God Bless America’ and just needed to use the bathroom, two officers pinned both of his arms behind his back and ejected him from the stadium. What’s this country coming to where we are forced by public officers to remain seated for a religious tune at a baseball game? Of course, the police are making up their own story once the legal representatives were called in.

Here is the story and the video:

Fan Ejected From Yankee Stadium For Bathroom Break

Italian museum defies pope over crucified frog

The Catholics are crying persecution again over what they see as a blasphemous mockery of a symbol of “God’s love”.

Boo-fucking-hoo! The wooden cross was a bloody, gruesome execution device, people! Wake up!

ROME (Reuters) – An Italian museum on Thursday defied Pope Benedict and refused to remove a modern art sculpture portraying a crucified green frog holding a beer mug and an egg that the Vatican had condemned as blasphemous.

The board of the Museion museum in the northern city of Bolzano decided by a majority vote that the frog was a work of art and would stay in place for the remainder of an exhibition.

The wooden sculpture by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger depicts a frog about 1 metre 30 cm (4 feet) high nailed to brown cross and holding a beer mug in one outstretched hand and an egg in another.

Called “Zuerst die Fuesse,” (Feet First), it wears a green loin cloth and is nailed through the hands and the feet in the manner of Jesus Christ. Its green tongue hangs out of its mouth.

*snip*

Pope Benedict, who is German himself and was recently on holiday not far from Bolzano, obviously did not agree.

The Vatican wrote a letter of support in the pope’s name to Franz Pahl, president of the regional government who opposed the sculpture. Pahl released parts of the letter, which said the work “wounds the religious sentiments of so many people who see in the cross the symbol of God’s love”.

Pahl, whose province is heavily Catholic, was so outraged by the sculpture of the pop-eyed amphibian that he went on a hunger strike to demand its removal and had to be taken to hospital during the summer.

“Surely this is not a work of art but a blasphemy and a disgusting piece of trash that upsets many people,” Pahl told Reuters by telephone.

“This decision to keep the statue there is totally unacceptable. It is a grave offence to our Catholic population,” he said.

Art experts defended the work.

“Art must always be free and the artist should not have any restrictions on freedom of expression,” Claudio Strinati, a superintendent for Rome’s state museums, told an Italian newspaper on Thursday.

I think this froggie is amusing, and think it’s even funnier how superstitious people get their panties in such a knot so as to make themselves sick over one person’s artistic expression. When they do this they draw even bigger attention to the artwork. I am sure the artists welcome their public protests.

Randall Terry is back. For those who don’t know or don’t remember, he’s the founder of the radical anti-abortion group Operation Rescue which terrorized abortion/reproductive health clinics during the late 1980s and early ‘90s. As the following article from Americans United states, Terry is an “ardent theocrat, a foe of church-state separation and an all-around rotten guy.”

A Terry comment from 1993 encapsulates his “Christian” worldview.

“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you,” he said. “I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good…. Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this county. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”

And now he has brought his “Xian luv” to the 2008 Democratic convention:

According to news accounts, Terry and 12 others were arrested yesterday outside the Democratic Convention in Denver. His press release in advance of the event said he and other “Catholic and Evangelical Christians will peacefully ‘break the law’ to protest the slaughter of the innocent by abortion, and to call on fellow Christians to reject the Obama/Biden ‘Ticket of Death.’”

Pro-lifer activists like this asshat call on their fellow god botherers to protest abortion, but they never say what they will do for that child once they force the women to have these babies. What about the child after it’s born to a mother who cannot take care of it? What about the child who is born to an drug user? What about the child who would be born with fetal alcohol syndrome? What about the child who is born into some other dire circumstances because pro-lifers forced their mothers to have them? Few of these activists say what they will do for the child once it is born and no longer an infant (if it survives that long). We don’t see this kind of religious activism to call for help for the homeless, those who live in poverty, drug addicts, and others who live in desperate situations.

Relatives of mine are pro-life. They are adamant about their anti-abortion stance and believe that abortion is never an option. They will vote for the government to take away legalized abortions. Yet what do they do to help children who are born into poverty and poor environments? They moved to a beautiful and isolated island off the coast of Alaska where they believe their “God is blessing them” while they spew out their rules they wish everyone else to live by. They did not take their “work” to the inner cities and other areas where there is the greatest need.

For every religious fuckwit that bites the dust (as in Karen’s post below), others refuse to die even though most of American wants them to STFU: Nightmare On Theocracy Street: America Wants Randall Terry To Get Lost

In the following video, Terry sounds eerily like Scientologist whackadoo Tom Cruise

Randall Terry Gets Owned

Is prevarication a course in seminary colleges? Or do the liars and frauds just naturally navigate toward the ministerial profession? Our special today comes to you from Adelaide, Australia. Yes, we envy our friends in Oz for their lower numbers of Crusaders for Christ, but someone turned over a rather large rock and look who crawled out:

Disgraced pastor Michael Guglielmucci, porn addict (since age 12, no less), who for two years pretended to have cancer and used his “disease” to fleece his flock and get support. He even made a recording of a song, called “Healing,” sung at one point with an oxygen tube coming out of his nose. Here is a YouTube video of the song, with lyrics subtitled. It’s a painfully long and droning, repetitive POS. But I supply it to highlight the delightful irony of the lyrics juxtaposed to the situation Mr. Guglielmucci finds himself in.
>Healer-Guglielmucci-Planetshakers-Hillsong

From an interview with Michael’s father Danny Gugielmucci in The Australian,

“When he was about 12 he did vomit all the time, he’d get really really sick,” he said.

“He was in the Adelaide Children’s Hospital for seven weeks at one stage; he didn’t eat and we thought we were going to lose him.

“They took out his appendix, thinking that it might be that, but they realised that it wasn’t.

“They gave us the option of putting him in a psychiatric ward to see if there was something psychological but we felt uncomfortable with that at the time. (emphasis mine)

“We signed him out from hospital and then he would go a few months and then he would get sick again.

“We’d always take him to hospital; we’d always do the proper thing but they couldn’t get to the bottom of it until now.”

Mr Guglielmucci said he and his wife were in “absolute shock” to discover their son was not terminally ill.

“We have watched our son go through what we thought was cancer,” he said.

“My wife and I, over the past two years, have watched him vomit in buckets, having nosebleeds, and even his hair fell out in clumps at one stage. What the hell kind of porn is he into?

“Every time we saw him, we saw symptoms. He stayed with us for a while where we had to put a special air-conditioner in one of the rooms because he would heat up so much in the middle of winter.
I hear porn will do that for ya.

“He had this cold air-conditioner blowing on him to try to keep the heat down. As a professional minister I’ve stood in front of my congregation and cried and said to pray for my son.

“I’ve travelled the world asking people to pray for him. Can you imagine what a horrible thing it would be if I was playing a game? Well, it’s not like they invested anything in it…or did you pass the plate for him too?

“To be honest, I ask myself as a father, ‘What did I miss, what did I not do? What could I have done better?’ ” Um, maybe let him be analyzed and get therapy back when he was 12?

It seems the stress of living a double life guilted Michael into confessing to his minister father and his mother about the fake cancer and his 16 year porn addiction. They thought he had called them urgently to his side because he only had a short time to live. They were shocked- SHOCKED!- to find out he wasn’t dying! His wife of seven years was clueless also. He is NOW getting the psychiatric help he needs and the docs concur that he’s a pretty sick puppy. Wifey’s getting counseling too; “hasn’t made any decisions yet”.

The parents were last seen wandering around and mumbling, “He’s addicted to porn? Why couldn’t he just be dying? ”

Hat tip to my buddy “What” over at NGB for suggesting this post.

Update:

PASTOR Michael Guglielmucci has been told by church officials to report to police, who will investigate what has happened to money raised during his cancer deception.
The Australian Christian Churches told The Advertiser yesterday (Aug. 22) that it was auditing Mr Guglielmucci’s bank accounts, which included money donated from people touched by his hit song Healer.
{snip}
The ACC has promised that all money raised deceptively will be returned or donated to charity.
The Assemblies of God, Australia’s largest Pentecostal movement, adopted its new name of Australian Christian Churches in 2007.

The former pastor with one of Australia’s biggest youth churches, Planetshakers, inspired hundreds of thousands of young Christians around the world as he performed with an oxygen tube in his nose.

Healer became an anthem of faith for believers, many of whom are suffering illnesses and were praying for Mr Guglielmucci. The song, featured on Hillsong’s latest album, debuted at No. 2 on the ARIA charts.

In a YouTube video, he tells how the news from the hospital that he had “quite an aggressive form of cancer” inspired his song. “I just went home. I knew I had to go home and needed to get alone with God,” he says in the video.

“I walked into my studio at home and for some reason. . . I sat at a piano and began to worship.

“I sang that song from start to finish. I was crying. I just realised that God had given me an incredible gift and I realise that song was going to be my strength.”

Church community sources said Mr Guglielmucci attended his medical appointments alone.