www.guardian.co.uk

Silvio Berlusconi #fundie #sexist guardian.co.uk

The Italian government has been plunged into a constitutional crisis over the fate of a 38-year-old woman who has been in a coma for the past 17 years. Eluana Englaro was left in a vegetative state after a car crash in 1992. After a decade-long court battle, doctors reduced her nutrition on Friday in preparation for removing her feeding tubes, which her father claims would be in accordance with her wishes.

But in an extraordinary turn of events, the country's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, after consultation with the Vatican, has issued an emergency decree stating that food and water cannot be suspended for any patient depending upon them, reversing the earlier court ruling. On issuing the emergency decree, Berlusconi declared: "This is murder. I would be failing to rescue her. I'm not a Pontius Pilate."

Justifying his campaign to save Englaro's life, the prime minister added that, physically at least, she was "in the condition to have babies"

Darren Clifft and Nick Greger #fundie guardian.co.uk

A number of rightwing British activists have publicly praised mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik – one describing him as a "role model" – since the Norwegian extremist was sentenced.

Members of the English Defence League (EDL) and the National Front have voiced support for the 33-year-old, who was declared sane and convicted by an Oslo court nine days ago after killing 77 people in two attacks last year.

Kickboxer Darren Clifft from Walsall tried to garner support for a petition to free Breivik last week. The 23-year-old National Front supporter, who posts as "Daz MarxistHunter", left a message on Facebook stating: "[Breivik] is truly inspirational. He sacrificed his life so Europe might be free again from the clutches of Islam and cultural Marxism, multiculturalism and political correctness. I see him as my role model, what every European man needs to be in order for Europe to survive."

Another Breivik admirer, Nick Greger – who, along with EDL founder member Paul Ray, runs Order 777, which claims to bring together Christian resistance movements – wrote on Facebook that the Norwegian deserved a medal "for the groundbreaking performance to blow up his Marxist traitor government building".

Lord Tebbit #fundie guardian.co.uk

The determination of David Cameron to press ahead with legalising gay marriage opens up the possibility of a lesbian queen giving birth to a future monarch by artificial insemination, Lord Tebbit has warned...

"I said to a minister I know: have you thought this through? Because you're doing the law of succession, too.

"When we have a queen who is a lesbian and she marries another lady and then decides she would like to have a child and someone donates sperm and she gives birth to a child, is that child heir to the throne?"

Tebbit joked that the change could allow parents to marry their children as a way of avoiding inheritance tax. "It's like one of my colleagues said: we've got to make these same sex marriages available to all. It would lift my worries about inheritance tax because maybe I'd be allowed to marry my son. Why not? Why shouldn't a mother marry her daughter? Why shouldn't two elderly sisters living together marry each other?"

Mumbai High Court, Archbishop of Bombay #fundie guardian.co.uk

When water started trickling down a statue of Jesus Christ at a Catholic church in Mumbai earlier this year, locals were quick to declare a miracle. Some began collecting the holy water and the Church of Our Lady of Velankanni began to promote it as a site of pilgrimage.

So when Sanal Edamaruku arrived and established that this was not holy water so much as holey plumbing, the backlash was severe. The renowned rationalist was accused of blasphemy, charged with offences that carry a three-year prison sentence and eventually, after receiving death threats, had to seek exile in Finland.

[...]

Edamaruku, who has the support of rationalists and atheists such as Richard Dawkins, is well known in India for debunking religious myths, and was already unpopular among Indian Catholics for publicly criticising Mother Teresa's legacy in Kolkata.

When the state "miracle" was pronounced, he went to Mumbai and found that the dripping water was due to clogged drainage pipes behind the wall where it stood. His revelation provoked death threats from religious zealots and ultimately charges of blasphemy under the Indian penal code in the Mumbai high court.

[...]


Edamaruku said his exposure of the weeping statue was also a contribution to public health in Mumbai as some believers were drinking the water hoping it could cure ailments. "This was sewage water seeping through a wall due to faulty plumbing," he said. "It posed a health risk to people who were fooled into believing it was a miracle."

He has been living in Finland since the summer. He was in Europe on a lecture tour in July when his partner rang to say the police had arrived at his flat. "I felt really upset because under the blasphemy law you cannot get bail until the court case begins. I would be in jail now if I had been at my apartment in Delhi," he said.

He has spurned an offer from a senior Indian Catholic bishop to apologise for the exposure of the "miracle".

"The Catholic archbishop of Bombay, Oswald, Cardinal Gracias, has said that if I apologise for the 'offence' I have caused he will see to it that the charges are dropped. This shows that he has influence in the situation but he will not use it unless I apologise, which I will not do as I have done nothing wrong," he said.

Missisippi church #racist guardian.co.uk

Charles and Te'Andrea Wilson, an African American couple from nearby Jackson, were all set for their big wedding day on Saturday at the 150-year-old church that they have been attending regularly for months. The sanctuary of the church had been arranged, the rehearsal was set for Friday, invitations had been sent out to friends extending a "special thank you to the First Baptist Church and members".

Then, at about 5.10pm on Thursday evening Te'Andrea received a call. Some of the congregation of the church, which is largely white, had seen a group of black women setting up the sanctuary for the wedding and complained to the pastor.

"If the pastor married her, because they were black then they would vote him out," Te'Andrea was told. The wedding was off.

Wilson confronted the pastor, Stan Weatherford, and asked him what had happened. According to Wilson, he replied that he had "received all sorts of phone calls, text messages, and it was just not going to happen"

Child Evangelism Fellowship #fundie guardian.co.uk

This fall, more than 100,000 American public school children, ranging in age from four to 12, are scheduled to receive instruction in the lessons of Saul and the Amalekites in the comfort of their own public school classrooms. The instruction, which features in the second week of a weekly "Bible study" course, will come from the Good News Club, an after-school program sponsored by a group called the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF). The aim of the CEF is to convert young children to a fundamentalist form of the Christian faith and recruit their peers to the club.

There are now over 3,200 clubs in public elementary schools, up more than sevenfold since the 2001 supreme court decision, Good News Club v Milford Central School, effectively required schools to include such clubs in their after-school programing.

The CEF has been teaching the story of the Amalekites at least since 1973. In its earlier curriculum materials, CEF was euphemistic about the bloodshed, saying simply that "the Amalekites were completely defeated." In the most recent version of the curriculum, however, the group is quite eager to drive the message home to its elementary school students. The first thing the curriculum makes clear is that if God gives instructions to kill a group of people, you must kill every last one:


"You are to go and completely destroy the Amalekites (AM-uh-leck-ites) – people, animals, every living thing. Nothing shall be left."

"That was pretty clear, wasn't it?" the manual tells the teachers to say to the kids.

Even more important, the Good News Club wants the children to know, the Amalakites were targeted for destruction on account of their religion, or lack of it. The instruction manual reads:


"The Amalekites had heard about Israel's true and living God many years before, but they refused to believe in him. The Amalekites refused to believe in God and God had promised punishment."

The instruction manual goes on to champion obedience in all things. In fact, pretty much every lesson that the Good News Club gives involves reminding children that they must, at all costs, obey. If God tells you to kill nonbelievers, he really wants you to kill them all. No questions asked, no exceptions allowed.

Asking if Saul would "pass the test" of obedience, the text points to Saul's failure to annihilate every last Amalekite, posing the rhetorical question:


"If you are asked to do something, how much of it do you need to do before you can say, 'I did it!'?"

"If only Saul had been willing to seek God for strength to obey!" the lesson concludes.

Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli #fundie #homophobia guardian.co.uk

Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli, an Islamic scholar based in Iran's holy city of Qom, said in a speech among his followers that homosexuals are inferior to dogs and pigs, according to the news website Khabaronline.

"If a society commits a new sin, it will face a new punishment," he said while interpreting Qur'anic verses about prophet Lot whose tribe Isalmic scholars say was punished by God for sodomy. "Problems like Aids did not exist before."

Citing the Qur'an, Javadi-Amoli said politicians who pass laws in favour of homosexuals are lower than animals. "Even animals ... dogs and pigs don't engage in this disgusting act [homosexuality] but yet they [western politicians] pass laws in favour of them in their parliaments."

Lady Warsi #fundie guardian.co.uk

My fear is that, today, militant secularisation is taking hold of our societies. We see it in a number of things: when signs of religion cannot be displayed or worn in government buildings, and where religion is sidelined and downgraded in the public sphere.

For me one of the most worrying aspects about this militant secularisation is that at its core and in its instincts it is deeply intolerant. It demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes – denying people the right to a religious identity because they were frightened of the concept of multiple identities.

Prince #fundie guardian.co.uk

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian's Film&Music, Prince said: "It's fun being in Islamic countries, to know there's only one religion. There's order. You wear a burqa. There's no choice. People are happy with that." When asked about the fate of those unhappy with having no choice, he replied: "There are people who are unhappy with everything. There's a dark side to everything."

Prince embraced religion in 2001, when he became a Jehovah's Witness. "I was anti-authoritarian but at the same time I was a loving tyrant," he told the Guardian. "You can't be both. I had to learn what authority was. That's what the Bible teaches. The Bible is a study guide for social interaction.

Ayandeh (Iranian news site) #fundie guardian.co.uk

Close allies of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "magicians" and invoking djinns (spirits).

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".

Unnamed British Muslims #fundie guardian.co.uk

An imam of an east London mosque has been subject to death threats and intimidation for expressing his views on evolution and women's right to refuse the veil.

Dr Usama Hasan, vice-chairman at Leyton mosque and a senior lecturer in engineering at Middlesex University, ceased delivering Friday prayers after 25 years of service when 50 Muslim protesters disrupted his lecture by handing out leaflets against him and shouting in the mosque for his execution.

Thomas Jackson #fundie guardian.co.uk

My problem with Richard Dawkins is not that he is an atheist. I admire that. It's that he's a Protestant atheist. Religion, many think, has been slain by the experimental method of science. Beginning with Galileo's experiments on free fall, science has succeeded because it is value-free, objective and proves its points not by nebulous belief but by rigorous logic and verified proof. This is a complete misunderstanding.

The history of the experimental method shows us that, far from being value-free, it was deeply enmeshed with a Protestant myth, as in its post-Protestant phase it continues to be. At fundamental issue in the Reformation was the Catholic idea of nature as a sacrament. In the Catholic view nature is a single organic being with a soul[...]

To the [Protestant] reformers this was the grossest idolatry. To them, God was quite other. They would show, by science, that the universe is a collection of machines, testifying to the wisdom of their manufacturer by their most marvellous ingenuity[...]

Dawkins's understanding of Catholic theology seems to be nil. He thinks that religion teaches that God constructed the world like a watch, science has shown it is able to construct itself, therefore there is no God. How Protestant is that? The intelligibility of God is so bright, according to the great Catholic mystics, it overwhelms our minds with darkness, and can only be penetrated by the will. Science is beginning to suggest that reality might perhaps be like that. Quantum physics is bewilderingly irrationally rational.

Pastor Joe Ita #fundie guardian.co.uk

[Regarding child witches in Nigeria]

We are the only ones who really know the secrets of witches. Parents don't come here with the intention of abandoning their children, but when a child is a witch then you have to say "what is that there? Not your child." The parents come to us when they see manifestations. But the secret is that, even if you abandon your child, the curse is still upon you, even if you kill your child the curse stays. So you have to come here to be delivered afterwards as well.

We know how they operate. A witch will put a spell on its mother's bra and the mother will get breast cancer. But we cannot attribute all things to witches, they work on inclinations too, so they don't create HIV, but if you are promiscuous then the witch will give you HIV.

Cynthia Dunbar #fundie guardian.co.uk

"We are fighting for our children's education and our nation's future," Dunbar said. "In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."

Catherine Davis #fundie guardian.co.uk

The abortion industry is targeting the black woman. There is no lynch mob wearing white sheets and hoods. What they've done is take off the hoods and put on suits and say: let's go and kill the black people. It's cloaked itself by talking about choice. But the industry has targeted the black community... If people were put on the endangered species list then certainly black children would be there because more are aborted than at any time in history.

Sarah Palin #conspiracy guardian.co.uk

Sarah says that policy should be based on sound science, not politics

"Climate-gate," as the emails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicised scientific circle – the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse.

The emails reveal that leading climate "experts" deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What's more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.

This scandal obviously calls into question the proposals being pushed in Copenhagen. I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics. As governor of Alaska, I took a stand against politicised science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population had more than doubled. I got clobbered for my actions by radical environmentalists nationwide, but I stood by my view that adding a healthy species to the endangered list under the guise of "climate change impacts" was an abuse of the US Endangered Species Act. This would have irreversibly hurt both Alaska's economy and the nation's, while also reducing opportunities for responsible development.

Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits – not pursuing a political agenda.

Yoweri Museveni #fundie guardian.co.uk

President Yoweri Museveni appeared to add his backing earlier this month, warning youths in Kampala that he had heard that "European homosexuals are recruiting in Africa", and saying gay relationships were against God's will.

Shmuel Poppenheim #fundie guardian.co.uk

Police in Jerusalem were preparing for fierce clashes tomrrow, as ultra-orthodox Jewish demonstrators threatened to escalate protests over a car park, which they say desecrates the Sabbath.

The religious protesters have hurled rocks, set fire to rubbish bins and denounced the police as "Nazis" who would "burn in hell" during demonstrations over the past few weeks against the city council's decision to provide free municipal parking near Jerusalem's Old City for tourists on Saturdays.

[...]

The ultra-orthodox sector – also called "Haredi" or God-fearing – adheres to strict religious codes, of which observing the Sabbath is a central tenet.

They view the decision to open a municipal parking lot as a move that sanctions driving, and indirectly promotes trading on Saturdays – both forbidden according to ultra-orthodox practice – and hence considers it to be a city-wide cancellation of the Sabbath.

"Our struggle is not over a car park, but about the character of Jerusalem," said Shmuel Poppenheim, of the ultra-religious Eda Haredit group, which has organised most of the protests.

"If the mayor decides today that he can open a car park on a Saturday, who knows what he will decide to do tomorrow."

theplank #fundie guardian.co.uk

Demons belong to the dark, sin causes them to appear. They smell bad like burning rubber and metal and they hate people of the light. The dark forces don't want you see the light because you will have the power to exorcise them. There is a hidden spirit world all around us, some call it the ether. Science is scratching the surface of this world, they call it quantum mechanics.

The Pope #fundie guardian.co.uk

Pope claims condoms could make African Aids crisis worse
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 March 2009 14.57 GMT

Pontiff's remarks on first visit to continent outrage health agencies trying to halt spread of HIV and Aids
The Pope today reignited the controversy over the Catholic church's stance on condom use as he made his first trip to Africa.
The pontiff said condoms were not the answer to the continent's fight against HIV and Aids and could make the problem worse.
Benedict XVI made his comments as he flew to Cameroon for the first leg of a six-day trip that will also see him travelling to Angola.
The timing of his remarks outraged health agencies trying to halt the spread of HIV and Aids in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 22 million people are infected.
The Roman Catholic church encourages sexual abstinence and fidelity to prevent the disease from spreading, but it is a policy that has divided some clergy working with Aids patients.

Melis #fundie guardian.co.uk

Reading is a very good way to learn about ideas and understandings. So, if you would like to learn more about the "Famous Darwinist Deceptions" such as following, you should visit http://www.famousdarwinistdeceptions.com and see for yourself:

The deception that "it has been proved that life could have emerged by chance on the primitive earth"
The deception that "the human embryo has gills"
The deception that "natural history confirms the tree of life"
The deception that "archaeoptreyx is the missing link between reptiles and birds"
The deception that "the evolution of the horse has been proven by the fossil record"
The deception that "living things possess vestigal organs"
The deception that "vertebrates' five-fingered hand structure is evidence of evolution"
The deception that "industrial mellanism is evidence of evolution by natural selection"
The deception that "mutation experiments are proof of evolution"
The deception that "fossils prove that ape-men once lived"

Saquibmunirkhan #fundie guardian.co.uk

If the atheists do not believe in God, they should got to hell and come back on the earth to tell us.

They are the most misguided and betrayed people on earth, even worse than the communist who at least believe in the god of materialism.

For God sake, if you do not believe in God, you should at least celebrate the birth of Christ singing at Christmas and forget about your godless existence.

akademosalba #fundie guardian.co.uk

My daughter was told by her high school Biology teacher at the start of this year, 'If any of you don't believe in evolution, you should leave my class now.' She left. Evolution is *not* a scientific theory as it is neither disprovable nor provable. It is a position or viewpoint taken up by those who wish to not believe that 'In the beginning, God made ...'

I am quite content that there are people who wish to believe in evolution over creation. But, they should stop calling it 'science' and be honest: it is a 'credo', an 'I believe in ...' kind of position.

From my viewpoint, as a three-times graduate, the problem is that Biologists push evolutionism beyond what is scientifically reasonable. No-one can prove anything they believe as no-one was there when it happened. A good Historian would warn them of this.

I heard a BBC radio programme last week on the evolution of singing, and its purposes. It was as scientific as a blog from the extreme wing of creationism. It was speculation predicated on evolutionism packaged up as facts.

As a Christian, I believe that I already know why people can sing: in order to praise The LORD God who made heaven and earth. No amount of pseudo-science from the evolutionists can change that.

And, if evolutionists insists on teaching atheist evolutionary ideas, they should not be surprised that the smartest kids (which kids from religious backgrounds often are) opt out of their classes.

BrussellsLout #fundie guardian.co.uk

God wants you to choose Him. (That means everyone from Mother Theresa to (serial killer) Peter Sutcliffe. He has no favourites.)

But if the pathway to Him was paradise, He would hardly be a choice.

The pathway to God is a 100 mile vale of deep shit with broken glass at the bottom, that you have to walk barefoot. That's how God is a Choice. If you think that all the disasters, murders and brutality in the world are a sign that there is no God, you are very much mistaken.

jk47 #racist guardian.co.uk

Black people have a wider nose bridge and thicker lips, Orientals have mongoloid features, different eyes, sharp noses and a different shape to their heads and different skin complexion and Caucasians have normal white features of white skin and sharp defined noses.

(emphasis added)

Abdel-Qader Ali #fundie guardian.co.uk

[From an interview done after he killed his daughter for falling in love with a British soldier.]

If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her.

[...]

Death was the least she deserved. I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion.

[...]

I have only two boys from now on. That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did. My sons are by my side, and they were men enough to help me finish the life of someone who just brought shame to ours.

Abdel-Qader Ali #fundie guardian.co.uk

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. 'If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,' he said with no trace of remorse.

...She died a virgin, according to her closest friend Zeinab. Indeed, her 'relationship' with Paul, which began when she worked as a volunteer helping displaced families and he was distributing water, appears to have consisted of snatched conversations over less than four months...

It was her first youthful infatuation and it would be her last. She died on 16 March after her father discovered she had been seen in public talking to Paul, considered to be the enemy, the invader and a Christian. Though her horrified mother, Leila Hussein, called Rand's two brothers, Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, to restrain Abdel-Qader as he choked her with his foot on her throat, they joined in. Her shrouded corpse was then tossed into a makeshift grave without ceremony as her uncles spat on it in disgust.

...-Qader, a Shia, says he was released from the police station 'because everyone knows that honour killings sometimes are impossible not to commit'. Chillingly, he said: 'The officers were by my side during all the time I was there, congratulating me on what I had done.'

Boltonlad #fundie guardian.co.uk

Homophobia..... has nothing on Christianphobia!

The religious hatred currently being shown by many secularist liberals and gay rights supporters and campaigners especially towards Christians is appalling. It's ironic for a group of people who claim to know what it was like to be persecuted are now the persecutors, Except their venom and hatred is a 100 times more than anything ever shown to them as far as I can see.

Dr Joyce Pratt #fundie guardian.co.uk

A family doctor who allegedly stunned a patient by telling her that she might be possessed by an evil spirit, failed to appear at a medical tribunal hearing yesterday. Dr Joyce Pratt, 44, from Birmingham, allegedly told the young woman during a consultation that "something moving in her stomach" might be an evil spirit.

The General Medical Council hearing in Manchester was told that Dr Pratt gave the patient crosses and trinkets to ward off black magic and told her to visit a priest at Westminster Cathedral in London. The doctor faces a charge of serious professional misconduct.

The patient, Mrs K, attended the Westside Contraceptive Clinic in Westminster, London, for a contraceptive injection after complaining of pain and bleeding. But the panel was told that Dr Pratt claimed to have special powers and gave her stones and crosses to protect her. She allegedly told her that her mother was a witch and was planning to kill her. [...]

Dr Pratt then spoke to a clinic nurse who was present at the consultation. "She spoke to her about the fact that she was a visionary and that her special powers were recognised from an early age.

"The nurse was sufficiently alarmed that she contacted Mrs K to check she was all right and she notified her manager."