Keeeeeeeeeerrrching!

[insertion of stupid smiley face here]
Will | Homepage | 13.06.07 - 1:43 pm | #

I'm hawking a newly discovered video with Hitch in it here if you want more

http://www.gentheoryrubbish.com/...ves/ 001144.html
Will | Homepage | 13.06.07 - 1:45 pm | #

I just checked out the SPCK website for some stats. They claim to source 50,000 Christian books. That is before we get to Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, Bahais, Zoroastrians, Pagans etc. Then go to your local book store and look at the section 'Mind, Body and Spirit'. There you will find a broad category of what should really be called 'narcissistic quackery and complete bollocks'. There are hundreds of the buggers!

Half a dozen trenchant atheists books get published and suddenly we have too many 'paid-up secularists'. I despair.
The Rotund Gadgie | Homepage | 13.06.07 - 7:10 pm | #

http://scwr.blogspot.com/2007/06...-free- zone.html
Michael Bywater in his book Lost Worlds, on 'The Wisdom of the Ancients.'

"The Ancients knew little and understood less. They scratched a living and died like dogs. Gripped by an uncomprehending egocentricity, they believed that the world had been made for them, and they believed that by a crude process of extrapolation: when they needed something, they made it. Finding themselves in a world which suited them to a remarkable degree, they assumed that it had been made for them; obviously, by someone much like them, but much bigger. Unable to understand any laws other than the law of will, they assumed that when something happened in nature, it happened because Nature commanded it. The river dried up because they had offended it; the volcano erupted because the Volcano Giants had not been placated; the harvest failed because someone--this is a bit of a leap of faith, but it leads eventually to Christianity, so it's all okay in the end--had not had his heart torn out and then been ripped limb from limb and his blood poured onto the soil.
In short, the Ancients spent what thinking time they had trying to make phenomenological bricks without ontological straw. They were wrong about almost everything, hopelessly confused sequence and causation, left the scantiest record of their thinking, and croaked in short order.
So why do a significant number of people, even now, believe not only in the bits of the Wisdom of the Ancients that we know about (like astrology) but also that there is a huge corpus of lost wisdom which, if only we could find it, would guarantee us a future of bliss, with no wars or sadness or cancer ever again, a world of birdsong and crystal and......In our dreams. Specifically, in our dream that the world was created perfect, and has been drifting away from perfection ever since. The silver swan unlocks her silent throat--the initiates will spot Orlando Gibbons' great madrigal, the others get a pretty image, everyone's happy. Those who believe in the Wisdom of the Ancients disbelieve in any progress in human understanding.......In truth, it is not the Wisdom of the Ancients that we have lost; it's any fathoming of their true Ignorance."
Will | Homepage | 13.06.07 - 7:30 pm | #

Secularists are traitors.

Socialist Worker
archive > dated 26 May 2007 | issue 2052
Fatah: Israel’s new found friend in Palestine
by Simon Assaf
The Palestinian resistance movement is under attack once again, but this time the Israelis have been joined by a new ally – the Palestinian Fatah organisaition.
For over a week the streets of Gaza have been awash with blood as Palestinian fights Palestinian. This battle is being presented as a faction fight – but it is nothing of the sort. Factions tend, at least, to be on the same side.
What is happening in Gaza is an attempt by the Fatah organisation to topple the elected Hamas government and silence resistance.
As Israeli warplanes wiped out the family of the popular Hamas MP Khalil al-Hayya last weekend, gunmen loyal to Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas were feeling the full weight of popular anger.
Last week 500 Egyptian-trained and Israeli-armed members of the Palestinian presidential guard slipped across Egypt ’s border into the Gaza Strip to reinforce the assault on Hamas.
According to the Jerusalem Post, these “forces were trained in the use of automatic rifles, curbing riots and on tactics of street battle control”.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak dispatched the additional troops saying, “Hamas will never sign a peace agreement with Israel if it stays in power. With Hamas no way.”
At the head of this attempted coup is Mohammed Dahlan, the so called head of Palestinian security and leading member of Fatah.
Dahlan rose to prominence as a young leader of the first Intifada, or Palestinian uprising. But after a spell in an Israeli jail, he emerged as the chief ally of the US and Israel. Dahlan represents the worst of the Palestinian collaborators that emerged out of the 1993 Oslo agreement.
These people rapidly monopolised the Palestinian economy and grew fat on Western aid earmarked for development projects.
When the US wanted to pressurise the Palestinian Authority, we were treated to endless stories about the scale of this corruption. These criticisms have now been quietly dropped.
Promises and lies
The Oslo agreement promised that in return for recognition of Israel, the Palestinians would be granted self-rule, secure borders and a resolution to the refugee problem.
These promises turned out to be lies.
Hamas, by contrast, emerged out of the forces that rejected the Oslo process. This is not because Hamas is bent on war – the organisation has repeatedly offered a ten-year ceasefire, or hudna, with Israel – but because it understood that any deal that does not deliver real justice is no basis for lasting peace.
Hamas became a beacon to those Palestinians sickened by the government corruption and compromises that delivered nothing. In January last year it won overwhelming backing in elections that were widely described as free and fair.
Israel reacted by imprisoning Hamas MPs, while the West cut off financial aid. As Palestinian projects ground to a halt and wages went unpaid, tens of thousands were driven deeper into poverty and despair. Hamas was told it had to abandon all resistance to Israel. It was blackmail, but it failed.
Hamas sought a way out of the crisis by offering to form a government of national unity with Fatah, and for a while this seemed enough. But the Israelis and the US refuse to accept any Palestinian government that represents the resistance.
Enter Mubarak. The normally sealed border with Egypt suddenly opened, not to food, but to Palestinian policemen trained to do what Israel has failed to do – smash the resistance.
That Fatah is being used in this way is hard to stomach. But the Fatah of today is a far cry from the organisation that grew out the misery of the Palestinian refugee camps in the 1960s.
The graveyards in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan are full of Fatah fighters who fell in the struggle to liberate their land. Their Fatah is dead and gone, replaced by a clique around Mahmoud Abbas that accepts the only future for Palestinians is living under the boot of the Israelis.
The battle now taking place for control of Gaza is one that pits the resistance against both Israel, and Fatah, it’s new ally.

tim | 13.06.07 - 8:47 pm | #

Fuck me, when are the SWP going to incorporate the HAMAS charter into their constitution.
Pilp | 13.06.07 - 9:01 pm | #

Once they agree on a womans minimum wage not being zero, they're done
tim | 13.06.07 - 9:13 pm | #

Back to Crace's Comment is Free blog, commenter NarkGreen0 solicits consumer advice on which god he should follow, and asks some pertinent questions. Here's one that grabbed my attention and set me thinking:

"The buy-one-get-two-free aspect of the Trinitarian Christian god sounds attractive, but it has its puzzling aspect. If Mary, Mother of God, was impregnated by the Holy Ghost, doesn't that make JC a divine MF?"

They're really into G-d, the folks over at Comment is Free. That, and cannabis. 'Tis an absolute disgrace. I blame the parents - baby boomers again.
Jura Watchmaker | Homepage | 13.06.07 - 9:39 pm | #

Great Bywater quote Will - but as for the Sad Wankers Party! Fascism as a beacon of liberation? I know that this is an atheist post but Jesus what are these tossers thinking of?
The Rotund Gadgie | Homepage | 13.06.07 - 11:31 pm | #

Meanwhile ... the Church of Rome is suspending financial aid to Amnesty International over the organisation's support for a woman's right to choose in cases of rape or incest. They are also instructing the gullible to stop making personal donations to AI.

More fightin' talk from the men in frocks and silly hats.
Jura Watchmaker | Homepage | 13.06.07 - 11:53 pm | #

Stop.

You'll have Shuggy round here shortly telling you off for misrepresntin' the Gospels or something...
Will | Homepage | 14.06.07 - 12:27 am | #

Why would I? The Gospels, as indeed the whole goddam Bible, has nothing whatsoever to say about the subject of abortion. This despite fact that it was undoubtedly practiced in the Roman Empire. News, I'm sure, to Evangelicals who seem to imagine opposition to abortion is an article of faith, along with the Trinity, the resurrection, and shit like that.

Anyway, I've done a post now so you can stop bitching.
Shuggy | Homepage | 14.06.07 - 12:43 am | #