Posts Tagged ‘Britain’

Fry, Hitchens and the ‘Big Ten’

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Hitchens and Fry vs. Ann Widdecombe on the Ten Commandments
(video: Atheist Media Blog at YouTube)

In 1993, crazed conservative, faith-biased anti-gay and Member of the British Parliament, Ann Widdicombe left the Church of England over its decision to ordain women as priests. She became a Roman Catholic. The Conservative MP for Maidstone and the Weald and a former Shadow Home Secretary, Widdicombe along with Nigerian Archbishop John Onaiyekan, last November, debated a pair of well-known atheists, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, on British television. The question: Is the Roman Catholic Church a force for good in the world?

I watched and blogged about the debate back then. Widdicombe’s side and, by extension, the Vatican were utterly destroyed, whipped and sent packing by the non-believers. Proof? The video is re-posted below.

Apparently one sound thrashing was not enough for Ms Widdicombe that day. Following the debate, she confronted Hitchens and Fry for a recently-aired BBC special on the Ten Commandments. The incident and well-deserved contempt with which she was pummeled are nothing less than hilarious, as the video above attests.

The Intelligence Squared Debate (video: BBC, via iqsquared)

+++++++

As a super-duper extra-special bonus here’s Christopher Hitchens having another go at the Ten Commandments.

Christopher Hitchens: The New Commandments
(video: Atheist Media Blog at YouTube)

Read more here at Hitchen’s Vanity Fair article. Thou shalt enjoy. Trust me.

As Odin is my witness …

Monday, March 1st, 2010

I believe in the god of thunder … thank Thor our politicians agree

As a person of faith it’s gratifying to know that my views are being taken seriously.

I believe in the Norse Gods. Everyone from our own dear First Minister, to the current UK Labour Government and the likely incoming Conservative administration firmly holds the view that a belief in the supernatural, and the indoctrination of supernatural beliefs in our children by state-funded schools, is a good thing. This is marvellous news. When we finally get our state-funded school, Odin’s will and the family values that he laid down for all mankind will finally be taught as fact. About time too.

For too long our children have suffered under the bigoted education system that teaches them lightning storms are a result of charged electrical particles in the atmosphere, when the faithful know it is our lord Thor beating his mighty anvil with his Divine hammer. And our truths, we believe, are particularly important in sex education. Our school will teach no nonsense about homosexuality being natural and contraception being important because we know that the jotuun Ymir’s son, from whom Odin descended, bred a man and a woman from his armpits. So we will be insisting that armpit reproductive health will trump all other considerations. We will teach young boys and girls to cover their armpits modestly, and how to avoid unwanted pregnancies from the oxters. Happily, Ed Balls has made provision for this in law, so our children can grow up with these all-important values in place.

Thanks to Muriel Gray for this piece at the The Herald Scotland. There’s much more at the link.

If you suspect that Gray is merely having you on about all those preposterous beliefs, check out the subsequent paragraph:

I’ll stop now. You’ve got the point. People actually believed this stuff. Just as people still believe in similar stuff, such as virgin births, Satan, djinns, saints who cure hiccups, gods who like swings chained up on Sundays, gods who don’t like us to mix meat with cheese, angels who won’t enter a house if it contains a dog. They believe a man received the word of God on some golden plates and then handed them back, and that a man received the word of God on a stone tablet and then smashed it. Another man, much more conveniently, had the word of God dictated directly to him in his tent. They believe if you transfuse your blood you lose your soul, that we are all aliens called Thetans, that God thinks women are not equal to men and that gay people should be killed. They think that God considers a collection of dividing cells in a woman’s womb always more important than the woman herself, and that if you go to where prepubescent girls claim to have seen The Virgin Mary appear and light some candles then your terminal cancer might be cured or your brain-damaged child made to talk.

Who’s the real CPAC pansy?

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

GOProud’s Jimmy LaSalvia at CPAC (video: Sarah Posner)

Don’t take inclusion here as any kind endorsement of these conserva-buffoons, but here’s GOProud’s executive director, Jimmy LaSalvia, at the über-über-conservative CPAC conference trashing the dainty cowards from the National Organization for Opposite Marriage. Writer Sarah Posner is the author of God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters and no stranger around here. Here’s Posner’s take on this little spat.

Come’on, Maggie and Brian. Walk across the aisle. The exercise will do you good.

(tip: Sarah Posner)

Not the Messiah

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Monty Python’s Not the Messiah – He’s A Very Naughty Boy trailer
(video: Monty Python at YouTube)

Oh. My. Dog!

Dear remaining Pythons: Please, please, please, please, please bring Not the Messiah to the Colonies, as quickly as possible, s’il vous plait.

Invertebrate archbishop apologizes, again

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Rowan Atkinson (left), Rowan Williams (right)

I can’t help it. I seem to keep getting this clown’s name mixed up with British comic and actor Rowan ATKINSON – the star of Mr Bean, Black Adder, etc. Here we have the invertebrate archbishop, who took his sweet time answering the cluephone Uganda’s exterminate-the-gays bill, once again on his knees.

Peter Lloyd, writing at PinkPaper, reports:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, issued a “profound apology” to the lesbian and gay Christian community today, in a bid to avoid a schism.

In what’s largely considered a PR move, he claimed that any divide in the church would “represent a betrayal of God’s mission.”

On the pending Ugandan genocide, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion finally got around to telling the Daily Telegraph: “Overall, the proposed legislation is of shocking severity and I can’t see how it could be supported by any Anglican who is committed to what the Communion has said in recent decades.”

However, it was reported yesterday that the Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Orombi, has come out in support of Uganda’s exterminate-the-gays bill, with this sniveling, cowardly amendment to protect his fellow clerics:

Ensure that the law protects the confidentiality of medical, pastoral and counseling relationships, including those that disclose homosexual practice in accordance with the relevant professional codes of ethics.

Other than this, the head of the Anglican Church in Uganda wants the terms of the criminalization of homosexuality defined more clearly and applied just as harshly.

At least the brilliant Rowan Atkinson stands for something worthwhile: the freedom to criticize religion and bigoted cons like Rowan Williams and Henry Orombi.