God Cares About Stolen Cars

http://www.fox59.com/news/wxin-couple-thanks-god-for-leading-them-to-stolen-jeep-20120102,0,7632994.column

Indianapolis, Ind.

A Crawfordsville couple's Jeep was lost but now it's found, and they say God is to thank.

On December 9th, Jared and Angela Pickett's Jeep disappeared from their Crawfordsville apartment.

"It was like I wanted to cry and then I wanted to be mad," said Angela Pickett. "But I'm like, 'who can I get mad at?'"

They were partially mad at themselves. Jared Pickett left his keys inside the Jeep between running errands, and he couldn't lock his driver's side door because he'd just replaced it with mismatched a dark green one...
After a week of praying for the best, the family began to lose hope...
"I had just come to the conclusion that we weren't ever going to get it back," Jared Pickett said. "We were going to have to cancel our family vacation that we were going to take this summer, so that we could replace the vehicle that we had got stolen."

Those plans changed Friday. Angela Pickett was at a youth convention at Calvary Tabernacle in Indianapolis. Before worship, she got lost while driving in search of breakfast. Her GPS took her to I-465 and she decided to get off at 10th Street. A few minutes later, she drove past Allison transmission and saw what appeared to be her husband's Jeep parked in a small parking lot.

... "I was in shock. I just texted all my friends. I'm like, 'I just found my husband's Jeep,'" Angela Pickett said. "It was a miracle. God led me to his Jeep."

Jared Pickett admits he had a hard time believing it until he saw his Jeep completely intact. Despite a mess left inside, he also found some valuable tools and his National Guard helmet left behind.

"Thank goodness," Jared Pickett said. "I couldn't believe that they didn't steal anything."

uhhh they stole the Jeep!  Maybe the GPS in the Jeep was as lame as the GPS in their car and the theives got lost too.

This was a very lucky thing but eventually that Jeep would have been recovered.  They would have credited Gawd if the cops had found it too.

I think the thieves prayed for a Jeep to ride around in while they smoked their weed or looked for their dealer.  Then, they came across this Jeep with the keys inside and thought "Hallelujah, God wants us to steal this Jeep."  So then they took their joyride, got lost, and parked it in a lot where a better vehicle was there for the taking.  God led them to that vehicle too.

The Indiana Taliban wants YOU!!!! (if you're a child)

Well aren't they special?  They want to make it possible for schools to force children to say the Lord's Prayer... unless they or their parents object, which of course any child would be willing to do despite facing rejection, bullying, and discrimination...   I look forward to the inevitable dispute over which version to use.  Debts or sins?  Forever?  Or forever and ever?

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/11/10100687-this-is-what-theocracy-looks-like

or read the original bill:

SENATE BILL No. 251
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A BILL FOR AN ACT to amend the Indiana Code concerning education.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana:

SOURCE: IC 20-30-5-4.6; (12)IN0251.1.1. --> SECTION 1. IC 20-30-5-4.6 IS ADDED TO THE INDIANA CODE AS A NEW SECTION TO READ AS FOLLOWS [EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2012]: Sec. 4.6. (a) In order that each student recognize the importance of spiritual development in establishing character and becoming a good citizen, the governing body of a school corporation or the equivalent authority of a charter school may require the recitation of the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of each school day. The prayer may be recited by a teacher, a student, or the class of students.

(b) If the governing body or equivalent authority requires the recitation of the Lord's Prayer under subsection (a), the governing body or equivalent authority shall determine the version of the Lord's Prayer that will be recited in the school corporation or charter school.

(c) A student is exempt from participation in the prayer if:

1.  the student chooses not to participate; or
2.  the student's parent chooses to have the student not participate.

How does a child choose not to participate when we socialize them to obey their teachers?  How does a Catholic first grader know that they are reciting the "wrong" version of the Lord's Prayer?  How does a child recognize spiritual development from parroting words they don't understand?

...and What the FUCKING FUCK FUCK?????   Someone voted for these idiots who are proposing a bill that can't possibly pass.  What traction will they get from that?  "Hey voters, instead of trying to attract factory jobs so you ignorant slobs can buy bigger TVs, I proposed an unconstitutional bill!"

 

Take *that* William Lane Craig!

A brilliant smack-down of the Cosmological bullshit argument, especially as parroted represented by the bullshitter philosopher, William Lane Craig:

Another Take on "It's A Wonderful Life"

Last year I took on America's most favorite Christmas movie, which has dubious values.

This year, Craig Ferguson dissects it in a very post-modern way (starting at 5:10):

Book Review: The Religion Virus

The "New Atheists" have described religion as a delusion, a poison, and now apparently a virus.  The author says at the end that he hoped people would view their religions differently, but I doubt many religionists could get past the title of this book:  The Religion Virus: Why We Believe in God, An Evolutionist Explains Religion's Incredible Hold on Humanity.

Craig James applies Dawkins' theory of memes to the main concepts of religion.  In many ways I found this convincing, but he tries a little too hard to force the meme concept onto the book.

The concept in this book that has stuck with me most of all is the transition from pantheons of single-function gods to almighty, multi-dimensional single gods.  The All-Powerful god meme, which replaces the Warrior God Meme, the Protector God Meme, and the Loving Father God Meme, or rather conflates them all into one god-meme.  This transition wasn't ever complete with Catholics, at least.  They continue to pray to patron saints for help with their specialties. 

Still, it's a powerful idea.  It explains how God could be so contradictory, taking both sides of a football game for instance.  It also explains how the various stories and phases of the Old Testament portray different concepts of God.

The memeplex lost me a bit, but I get the concept of multiple memes sticking together and supporting each other.  I imagine a herd of gazellish ideas sticking together, which would be very adaptive.

Essentially, the analogy states that ideas that are advantageous to themselves will survive.  The most obvious is missionary work, of course.  Religions that prosletyze survive and those that don't, won't.  Christianity & Islam prosletyze and they number in the billions.  Judaism doesn't, and hence comprises a tiny minority in the world.

The virus analogy enters only at the end: religion is a parasite on society, needing to be passed from person to person to survive and yet destroying some of them.  It survives for its own purposes more than for the benefit to society... or something.  I found this part a little bit of a stretch.  A virus spreads through unconscious mechanisms, and religion spreads through prosletyzing, brainwashing, and "educating" young children.  Some of the memes seem to infect other memeplexes a.k.a. religions, though.

Some of the book oversimplifies, especially the virus analogy.  Religion has helped or hurt its societies to varying degrees.  Of course you can claim that there are beneficial parasites as well as destructive ones, and some that are only destructive under the right circumstances.

It's definitely a thought-provoking book.  Anyone who has read the Bible knows that the "unchanging" God has changed quite a bit from the beginning to the end.  Even the commandment "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" implies that at one time Judaism was not monotheistic.  "The" God just wanted to be Numero Uno.  The warrior god seems to have softened his approach.  He wiped out the world, then he wiped out entire peoples or countries in genocidal rampages, then honed in on cities and eventually individuals.  "An eye for an eye" was a big moral improvement over genocide.  Then later there's no payment at all thanks to penal substitution.  God went from destroying the whole world to saying "fuhgeddaboudit."  This book frames a theory that explains these changes.

The War on New Year's

We used to say "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year."  The phrase has been immortalized in song.  We send greeting cards with this message.

Then we got lazy and started saying "Happy Holidays."  A two word catch-all greeting was much less of a mouthful than the six-word greeting that covered the whole holiday season.

And that worked for quite some time.  Many years.  Our hustle-bustle lifestyle fit with our holiday spirit just fine.  We could do Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving, then come home and eat leftover turkey.  On the day after Christmas we'd be back at the mall, shopping the sales in the same spirit as "Black Friday."  Then by New Year's Eve we'd be ready for a party that didn't include eating too much or giving gifts that people don't really need.  Just pure partying.  No baggage.

And then the next day we could start thinking about Valentine's Day.

But then certain people got concerned that our abbreviated greeting was giving short shrift to Christ's birthday.  After all, without Christ there would be no holiday season.  They don't celebrate all those holidays.  They just celebrate one, but they start it on Thanksgiving and finish up sometime after January 1.   So they took offense at the suggestion that there was more than one holiday in the "season."

It's bad enough that Thanksgiving gets the smack-down when it is clearly part of the Christmas season now, but New Year's is no longer recognized either.  These people want us to say "Merry Christmas" without adding "and Happy New Year."  They are rewriting history, claiming that "Merry Christmas is all that was ever said.

New Year's Eve used to be about getting drunk, kissing strangers, and waking up with a horrible hangover.  Now it's not even its own holiday anymore.  If it's a holiday at all, it's part of the endless marathon of Christmassing that starts just before Thanksgiving.  It's not about getting drunk and waking up in a fog the next day.  Now it's about organizing your shit into color coded Rubbermaid bins and making impossible resolutions.

But some of us know better, and it's up to us to stand up for what's Right and True.  If you know any sanctimonious Christians who claim that "Christ is the reason for the season," walk right up to them from December 26 through January 1, and say "HAPPY NEW YEAR."

Death of a God

The death of Kim Jong Il has brought to light a lot of information I didn't previously know.  I'm surprised he isn't mourned by more people.  His birth was accompanied by a heavenly miracle.  He talked within a few months and walked way ahead of schedule.  He authored thousands of books as a college student, and composed an opera. He made several holes in one on his first time on a golf course. But don't just trust me.  Read it here.

Or check out the movie:




So many people couldn't believe something so untrue, could they?  Sure, they were all taught to believe that, but they were taught it because it's true

Skeptics dispute the details of his life, of course.  Bitter hopeless people with nothing to live for but the evil wish to hurt the reputation of a beloved god will always try to dissuade the true believers.  The tears of the faithful should be proof enough that he is indeed a good and beloved leader.   

I prophesy that he will appear again to his people and tell them to obey his holy son's commandments.