death

Once a Baby-Killer…

Once a Baby-Killer…

For some reason, pro-life Christians think their God is against abortion and baby-killing. I don’t get it! There are lots of examples to the contrary in the Bible. I mean, who has killed more babies than the Christian God? Have you read these passages?

Hosea 13:16 Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.

Exodus 12:29 “And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt…”

2 Samuel 12:14 Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.

Isaiah 13:16 Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.

Isaiah 13:18 Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eyes shall not spare children.

Isaiah 14:21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities.

Numbers 31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

I ask you… How can Christians carry that book around and swear by it’s contents, but have absolutely no fucking idea what it says? Amazing!!!

The Bible Supports Abortion!

Just because it’s fucked up to deny the right of a child to live doesn’t mean that your god thinks the same way.

First, he says:

Exodus 20:13 (New King James Version)

****See footnote below this post)****

13 “You shall not murder.

And then contradicts himself:

Ezekiel 9:5-7 (New King James Version)

5 To the others He said in my hearing, “Go after him through the city and kill; do not let your eye spare, nor have any pity. 6 Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women; but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary.” So they began with the elders who were before the temple. 7 Then He said to them, “Defile the temple, and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!” And they went out and killed in the city.

Isaiah 13:15-18 (New King James Version)

15 Everyone who is found will be thrust through,
And everyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
16 Their children also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes;
Their houses will be plundered
And their wives ravished.
17 “ Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them,
Who will not regard silver;
And as for gold, they will not delight in it.
18 Also their bows will dash the young men to pieces,
And they will have no pity on the fruit of the womb;
Their eye will not spare children.

1 Samuel 15:2-3 (New King James Version)

2 Thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. 3 Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”

Hosea 13:16 (New King James Version)

16 Samaria is held guilty,
For she has rebelled against her God.
They shall fall by the sword,
Their infants shall be dashed in pieces,
And their women with child ripped open.

Numbers 5:17-21 (New King James Version)

17 The priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel, and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water. 18 Then the priest shall stand the woman before the LORD, uncover the woman’s head, and put the offering for remembering in her hands, which is the grain offering of jealousy. And the priest shall have in his hand the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 And the priest shall put her under oath, and say to the woman, “If no man has lain with you, and if you have not gone astray to uncleanness while under your husband’s authority, be free from this bitter water that brings a curse. 20 But if you have gone astray while under your husband’s authority, and if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has lain with you”— 21 then the priest shall put the woman under the oath of the curse, and he shall say to the woman—“the LORD make you a curse and an oath among your people, when the LORD makes your thigh rot and your belly swell;

And with all that said, why NOT help send the little ones to your sick, depraved god’s domain?

Just look at them…

HOW could you follow a god that ordered people to massacre these precious little things? Is this what a “loving” god would tolerate and allow to happen?

Think — For Yourself.

****The New King James Version replaced “kill” (from the King James Version) with “murder.”****

Exodus 20:13 (King James Version)

13Thou shalt not kill.

Baby dies after hysterical people jump from Paris flat to ‘escape the devil’

Baby dies after hysterical people jump from Paris flat to ‘escape the devil’

A BABY boy was killed when 12 people leapt off a second-floor balcony – to “get away from the Devil”.

Eight people, including several children, were hurt, some seriously. Police are trying to get to the bottom of the bizarre tragedy.

Survivors of the mass plunge from a flat in a Paris suburb said the incident began in the early hours of the morning when a dad got out of bed naked to feed his crying baby.

They said the man’s wife saw him moving around and started screaming that she had seen the Devil.

The man was then stabbed in the hand by his wife’s sister and thrown out through the door of the flat.

But when he tried to get back in, the other people inside grabbed their children and jumped off the 20-foot balcony.

A spokeswoman for the local prosecutor’s office said: “Panic erupted.”

The family involved are of African origin, possibly from Angola. Police found no evidence of drug use or religious rituals at the flat.

One of the children, a four-month-old baby boy, died in hospital several hours after the incident.

Several of those hurt in the jump have multiple injuries.

Detectives are questioning the man who sparked the incident, and another male who jumped from the balcony with a two-year-old girl in his arms.

The prosecutor’s office spokeswoman said: “A number of points remain to be cleared up.”

Thanks to JT Hundley for the story

Dear Christian, I am an atheist…

An interesting article I found.

Dear Christian, I am an atheist…

By Alegria —

Dear Christian,

I am an atheist, that is, from Greek, ‘a-theos’, meaning, ‘without a God’. I do not believe in your God, nor do I believe in the Son/Younger God, or the Holy Spirit/Deceased God(?). I do not believe in Hell, nor do I believe in Heaven. So I ask you, why can’t you put forward a nice argument for believing in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit without resorting to ‘but you’ll burn in Hell’ and ‘but you won’t go to Heaven’. I repeat, I do not believe in these two metaphysical places and therefore threatening me with eternal damnation is like threatening a mature, intelligent, grown man by telling him that Santa won’t bring him presents.

Furthermore; your continued attempts to tell me that ‘atheism is a religion’ are laughable at best, weepable at worst. Can you remember what ‘atheism’ meant, that’s right; ‘without a God’, from Greek ‘a-theos’. This simply means I don’t believe in a God, an Allah, a Yahweh, or an entire menagerie of Gods and Goddesses. It implies no other beliefs apart from that one. Atheism is a word created simply to define lack of belief in a God, just as bald is a word created simply to define lack of hair on the head. To put it as someone whom I can’t remember said, ‘saying that atheism is a religion is like saying that bald is a hair colour’. Just as ’empty’ is a word created to explain the absence of, well, anything, atheism is a word created to explain the absence of belief in God. Empty isn’t a thing, a place can’t be ‘full of empty’, (unless you’re trying to be poetic, silly, or are genuinely stupid), so is atheism not a religion.

Well I think we’ve made progress, my dear Christian. But we’re not finished yet. Your kind but ridiculous talk of how, ‘you respect my atheism but why don’t I just leave Christianity alone since it’s not doing anything to me’ is next on my little waltz through your arguments.

you know what I hate most about your – loving – religion? I hate it because it demeans Humanity. Why can’t I just leave Christians alone since they aren’t doing anything to me? Well, I’m surprised this is even a question. I will leave Christianity alone when it stops telling people that they’re worthless, that they must be show the ‘love’ of God; I will leave Christianity alone when it stops coming round my neighbourhood, knocking on my door and telling me I must repent, that I am a sinful wicked person because I dare to think for myself and not donate to the upkeep of big useless churches, I will leave Christianity alone when I am no longer demanded to ‘respect’ it and other religions, all while they preach that homosexuals are abominations and must be killed, that non-believers must be shown the light or else, that any non-believer who doesn’t repent will suffer eternal torture at the hands of a loving Father; I will leave Christianity alone when it stops claiming to have a monopoly on morality, saying that people cannot be good without religion, and, even despite this monopoly on ‘morality’, still preaches hatred towards gays, unequal rights towards women, and non-believers, I would argue that Christians are less moral that most, since they require an incentive to be kind, in this case, Heaven.

But you want to know why I hate Christianity, dear Christian? You want to know why I loathe your ‘religion of love’? I hate it because it has started some of the deadliest conflicts in history; the Crusades, the Huguenot Wars, the French Wars of Religion, the Taiping Rebellion, the Thirty Years War. I hate your religion because it tells us that any of the billions of Humans in the past who didn’t believe in God are burning in Hell, even if they lived in the most remote jungle village and had no way of even knowing about God. I hate your religion because it claims that people like me are evil and incapable of kindness, and then goes and spends millions on mega-churches rather than aiding the poor and starving. I hate your religion because it keeps society back, because it stifles creativity and holds back science due to its archaic laws. I hate your religion because you claim God answered your prayer to let there be beef on the menu at lunch today, while on the news we hear of mass-starvation in Africa, or that a plane has crashed and everyone died, or that a man has shot several people dead, and yet God is loving because beef was on your pathetic menu for lunch; where were their prayers? Being ignored so you could have your beef, no doubt.

But you know what I hate most about your – loving – religion? I hate it because it demeans Humanity. I hate it because it claims that Humanity is nothing unless worshipping and serving God in some way. I hate it because it treats people as nothing but God’s possessions. I hate it because it insists that we are nothing but a slave-race, destined to pander to the whims of a certifiably megalomaniacal, angry, vengeful and sadistic Man-in-the-Sky. I hate your religion because you try to spread this shit, you try to force everyone else to recognise that they can never be anything else but slaves, when really, Humanity has the potential to be so beautiful. When really, so many people create wonderful things, write, draw, paint, compose, say, sing, dance, make, wonderful things. Everybody has that potential to be so beautiful, and yet your archaic religion insists that they are nothing but a slave-race, that they mustn’t be beautiful because God doesn’t care for Human potential, he only wants their adoration to satisfy his ego-complex. How can you honestly stand there and tell me that homosexuality is wrong and should be illegal, or even punishable by death? Have you ever been in love? You can’t choose who you fall in love with! How can you say that such as beautiful, cherished and heart-warming thing such as love can ever be wrong and evil? How can you claim that two people of the same-sex will be forever tortured by a ‘loving’ God because they fell in love, they didn’t choose to fall in love, no one can choose who they love.

I hate your religion, dear Christian, because it stands as nothing more than a way of trying to attack what you cannot understand. It has nothing to do with me being ‘narrow-minded’, nothing to do with me being ‘controlled by the Devil’, nothing to do with me being ‘a hate-filled person’; I hate your religion because it does not understand the beauty that is the Human race; the depths of our emotions, the breadths of our minds; the fiery love that sweeps us up and takes us to the arms of another; that passion under the oak tree as two men kiss. It doesn’t understand that moment of silence in the universe as two female lovers stare into each others eyes, that infinite wonder as we create our own salvation; as we, instead of depending upon others telling us what to do, create our own purpose and shape our universe. The great beauty of the Human race is and always will be our emotions, our curiosity; we see something we don’t understand and we try to comprehend it, we try to see how it works, we experiment, we learn, we grow, we think and we question. Your religion doesn’t understand these things, it never has.

A Message to Those Praying for Christopher Hitchens

A Message to Those Praying for Christopher Hitchens

On behalf of Christopher Hitchens, who thinks all of this skydaddy talk is ridiculous, thanks to all of you who wrote in to Goldblog to report that they would be praying for him as he undergoes treatment for esophageal cancer (you can hear him talk about his current predicament here). I would like to reiterate, of course, that Hitchens is still solidly atheist (strike that “still,” actually, because it implies his mind will change, which I don’t think will happen, at least, as he says, in reference to the mind we know today as Hitchens’s mind—what medicine does to his mind is a different story), but nevertheless I can report that he does not mock those who say they are praying on his behalf. What you could really, do, of course, if you’re interested in making Hitch happy, is buy this book.

As for the few of you who wrote to Goldblog to say they were praying for Hitch’s death, I can say that he does not care one way or another what you do or think or pray, but on behalf of myself and the entire team here at The Atlantic, let me just say, Go fuck yourselves.

I believe God will forgive me for that one.

Baby Drowns During Baptism

Horray for pointlessly dangerous rituals!

Baby Drowns During Baptism

A priest in eastern Europe has been accused of drowning a baby boy as he baptised him.

Police are investigating Father Valentin for accidential homicide after witnesses at the ceremony said the priest did not cover the baby’s mouth during the ritual, The Sun newspaper reports.

Father Valentin had denied being responsible for the baby’s death during the baptism in Moldova.

The six-week-old baby died on the way to hospital and an autopsy found he had drowned, the baby’s dad Dumitru Gaidau told Romania’s Publica TV.

Mr Gaidau, 36, said his son was clearly in distress during the ceremony.

“He couldn’t inhale, his face turned blue and he was foaming at the mouth. He [the priest] said we should not interrupt this their ritual,” he said.

“We couldn’t believe it that he just put his hand over his belly and over the head and submerged him three times in the water.”

Water was found in the baby’s lungs.

The baby’s godmother, Aliona Vacarciuc, said the baby had been crying as the priest submerged him in the water.

“We couldn’t believe it but we thought the priest must know what he’s doing, but he didn’t. When we got him back there was nothing that could be done anymore,”The Sun quoted her as saying.

When the baby’s angry relatives confronted the priest, he told them he knew what he was doing and was experienced at baptisms, Ms Vacarciuc said.

If found guilty of accidental homicide, Father Valentin could spend three years in jail.

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Threatened with Prosecution, Death by Pakistan Legal Authorities

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Threatened with Prosecution, Death by Pakistan Legal Authorities

It seems that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is under investigation by Pakistani legal authorities for violation of that country’s anti-blasphemy laws surrounding the recent Draw Muhammed contest.

The penalty for violating the Pakistani anti-blasphemy law can be death.

Section 295-C of the Pakistani penal code reads: “Use of derogatory remark etc, in respect of the Holy Prophet, whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable for fine.”

The Draw Muhammed Contest was started in response, in part, to Comedy Central’s censoring of an episode of “South Park” that dealt with violent Muslim reaction over the depiction of the Prophet Muhammed in the West. A Danish newspaper and cartoonist have also been under violent threat because of a cartoon depicting Mohammed with an exploding turban.

The idea of the Draw Muhammed Contest was that it would be a response to violent, Islamic extremists to show that freedom of expression in the West applies to everyone and every subject. Muslims do not get to tell non-Muslims what to do and what to say.

It appears that Pakistani law enforcement disagrees with this sentiment. The Pakistanis actually expect Interpol to arrange for the arrest of Mark Zuckerberg and his handing over to the Pakistani authorities for trial and presumed punishment. A complaint to the UN General Assembly is also being contemplated.

The situation seems to derive in large part from cultural insensitivity on the part of Pakistanis and many other Muslims. Muslims may feel somewhat sensitive about depictions of their Prophet, especially unflattering ones. This has been known since the Salman Rushdie affair. On the other hand, Muslims need to realize that the right to express oneself, on any subject, with any point of view, is held as sacred in the West as Islam is considered in their own countries. Religion and the religious are scrutinized, criticized, and ridiculed frequently. This applies to all religions, not just Islam.

The difference is that Christians, Jews, and so on seem to be secure enough in their particular faiths that any assaults on them get relatively mild complaints in response. Not so with Muslims. It seems that many Muslims just want to kill people for disdaining Islam. This not only demonstrates a somewhat shaky religious faith, but also tends to reinforce the image of the Muslims as violent extremists.

Coddling or giving into this attitude, as Comedy Central did, is somewhat counter-productive. Self-censorship only enables violent extremists and ensures that the threats of violence will continue.

Thanks to JT Hundley for the link

Baby ‘starved to death’ because he did not say Amen

Baby ‘starved to death’ because he did not say Amen

For more than a week, Ria Ramkissoon watched passively as her one-year-old son wasted away, denied food and water because the older woman she lived with said it was God’s will.

Javon Thompson was possessed by an evil spirit, Ramkissoon was told, because he didn’t say “Amen” during a mealtime prayer. Javon didn’t talk much, given his age, but he had said “Amen” before, Ramkissoon testified in a US court in Baltimore.

On the day Javon died, Ramkissoon was told to “nurture him back to life”. She mashed up some carrots and tried to feed the boy, but he was no longer able to swallow. Ramkissoon put her hands on his chest to confirm that his heart had stopped beating.

Ramkissoon and several other people knelt down and prayed that he would rise from the dead. For weeks afterward, Ramkissoon spent much of her time in a room with her son’s emaciated body — talking to him, dancing, even giving him water. She thought she could bring him back.

Ramkissoon told the tale of her son’s excruciating death from the witness stand on Wednesday, at the trial of the woman she says told her not to feed the boy. Queen Antoinette was the leader of a small religious cult, according to police and prosecutors, and she faces murder charges alongside her daughter, Trevia Williams, and another follower, Marcus A. Cobbs.

The three are acting as their own attorneys.

Javon died in either December 2006 or January 2007; Ramkissoon isn’t sure of the exact date. His body was hidden in a suitcase for more than a year and has since been buried. But even now, she maintains her faith in his resurrection.

“I still believe that my son is coming back,” Ramkissoon said. “I have no problem saying what really happened because I believe he’s coming back.

“Queen said God told her he would come back. I believe it. I choose to believe it,” she said. “Even now, despite everything, I choose to believe it for my reasons.”

Later, she acknowledged that her faith makes her sound crazy. “I don’t have a problem sounding crazy in court,” she said.

Ramkissoon, 23, was born in Trinidad and moved to Baltimore at age seven. She stands 5 feet (1.52 metres) tall and weighs about 100 pounds (45.4 kilograms).

She wore a white sweater and blue jeans and was calm throughout her testimony, speaking in a clear and even voice. She appeared mildly agitated at certain questions but otherwise showed little emotion, even as she described how her starving son lost weight, became lethargic and lost his voice.

She was led to the courtroom in handcuffs. She pleaded guilty last year to child abuse resulting in death, agreeing to the deal only under the condition that if Javon is resurrected, the plea will be vacated. Prosecutors and a judge accepted that extraordinary condition, specifying that only a “Jesus-like resurrection” would suffice.

Because Antoinette is representing herself, she was able to cross-examine the young woman who lived with her for two years, much of that time after her son’s death.

Antoinette asked whether her statement about not feeding Javon was an order or a “suggestion”.

Ramkissoon said she has consistently told prosecutors and her attorney that she was not forced to starve her son, but she made clear the idea was Antoinette’s.

“When I was about to feed him,” Ramkissoon said to Antoinette, “you said, ‘You shouldn’t feed him anything’, and then you told me why. … I believed you.”

Williams and Cobbs also lived in the home, along with Antoinette’s three other children and a childhood friend of Ramkissoon’s. No one challenged Antoinette’s statement that the boy should not be fed, Ramkissoon said.

Ramkissoon detailed how the group relocated to Philadelphia and brought Javon’s body in a suitcase. She described how Javon was packed with sheets and blankets and how she sprayed his body with disinfectant and stuffed the suitcase with fabric softener sheets to mask the odour.

The suitcase was hidden in a shed in Philadelphia for more than a year before it was discovered by police, according to testimony.

Members of Antoinette’s household were told to wear only white, blue and khaki. They left the home only in pairs, and they avoided doctors or hospitals. They destroyed identification cards and had little contact with their families.

Ramkissoon said she often questioned Antoinette’s rules and orders but never disobeyed her because she believed her to be “a godly woman”.

“Looking back now,” Ramkissoon told Antoinette, “I won’t say that everything you thought was right, was right.”

Unsafe abortions kill 70,000 a year

Lets all say it together: THANKS RELIGION!

Unsafe abortions kill 70,000 a year

About 70,000 women die every year and many more suffer harm as a result of unsafe abortions in countries with restrictive laws on ending a pregnancy, according to a report.

The total number of abortions across the globe has fallen, the influential Guttmacher Institute says, but that drop relates only to legal abortions and is mostly the result of changes in eastern Europe.

There were 41.6m terminations worldwide in 2003, compared with 45.5m in 1995. But in 2003, says the report, 19.7m of these were unsafe, clandestine abortions. The numbers of those have hardly changed from 1995, when there were 19.9m.

Almost all the unsafe abortions were in less developed countries with restrictive abortion laws.

“Virtually all abortions in Africa and in Latin America and the Caribbean were unsafe,” says the report. In Asia, safe procedures outnumbered unsafe because of the large number of legal abortions in China. Most of those in Europe and almost all in North America were safe.

The figures are hard to obtain in countries with restrictive laws from hospitals dealing with women damaged by backstreet or self-induced abortion. But the institute, which has been monitoring the numbers for many years, is confident of the picture it paints and hopes it will influence policy makers.

“Our hope is that the new report will help inform a public debate in which all too often emotion trumps science,” said the institute president, Dr Sharon Camp.

Fundamental to turning the tide is preventing unwanted pregnancy, but in many countries there is little advice on family planning and contraceptive products are in short supply. “Women will continue to seek abortion whether it is legal or not as long as the unmet need for contraception remains high,” Camp said. “With sufficient political will we can ensure that no woman has to die in order to end a pregnancy she neither wanted nor planned for.”

The US has always been the biggest funder of family planning in developing countries, but a significant amount of it stopped under the presidency of George Bush, who reinstated a policy known as the “global gag rule” on arrival in office in January 2001.

It removed funding from any family planning organisation overseas that had anything to do with abortion, including counselling. Although European governments, including the UK, stepped up contributions, funds were short at a time when more couples were becoming interested in smaller families. “It really was a lost decade,” said Camp.

President Barack Obama has rescinded the policy and more US funds are expected, but the process of ordering increased contraceptive supplies from manufacturers and getting them to where they are needed will take time.

Where contraceptive use has risen, such as in the former Soviet bloc countries, abortion rates have invariably fallen. Worldwide, the unintended pregnancy rate has dropped from 69 for every 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 1995 to 55 for every 1,000 in 2008. The proportion of married women using contraception increased from 54% in 1990 to 63% in 2003.

However, only 28% of married African women use contraceptives. Lack of availability is the biggest issue.

The report points to a global trend towards the liberalisation of abortion laws, which has allowed women with an unwanted pregnancy to end it safely. Nineteen countries have relaxed their restrictions since 1997. But in three countries, Poland, El Salvador and Nicaragua, tougher legislation has been introduced, the latter two prohibiting abortion even when the woman’s life is at risk.

“We have seen an increase in women’s deaths and teenage suicides in Nicaragua,” said Dr Kelly Culwell, of the International Planned Parenthood Federation at the report’s launch.

Camp deplored the exit of the pharmaceutical companies from research and development work on contraceptive products. “There used to be 13 major pharmaceutical companies with full-blown programmes of contraceptive R&D. Now there are none,” she said.

Yet there was a real need for products women could use if they were having occasional rather than regular sex apart from the condom, which requires the consent of the man.