New York Man Spends Life Savings Ahead of May 21 Doomsday
[disinfo ed.'s note: just as a reminder, the world may end on Saturday. Have a great week!]
A video report from CNN, and below a write up from Fox News:
A New York man spent his entire $140,000 life savings advertising his prediction that the world will end May 21, the New York Post reported Friday.
Robert Fitzpatrick, a 60-year-old Staten Island resident, said he spent at least that sum on 1,000 subway-car placards and ads on bus kiosks and subway cars…
Living Inside The Westboro Baptist Church
Wondering what it would be like to live in a cult? British documentarian Louis Theroux spent several days in the Kansas homes of members of the Westboro Baptist Church and filmed the experience for the BBC — basically opening a giant can of crazy.
The ‘Passion of the Christ’ Whipping Scene (Video)
In case you were wondering what this “holiday” is all about. (BTW, Mel Gibson makes really good movies):
ACLU Sues South Carolina Jail That Bans All Written Materials Except The Bible
It’s a violation of freedom of religion, obviously. (Jewish and Muslim prisoners were blocked from receiving their holy books.) But beyond that, isn’t it a damaging and cruel form of punishment to prevent inmates from reading books, newspapers, magazines, letters, and other printed material of any kind for years upon years? The Christian Science Monitor reports on rehabilitation, South Carolina-style:
The US Justice Department is asking a federal judge in South Carolina to allow it to intervene in a lawsuit against a sheriff who allegedly forbids prisoners in his jail from receiving books, magazines, or printed materials other than copies of the King James version of the Bible.
Berkeley County Sheriff H. Wayne DeWitt denies that restrictions imposed at the county lockup in Moncks Corner, S.C., rise to the level of a constitutional violation or violate US law.
A Jewish prisoner seeking a Torah said he was told by jail officials that the prison only…
Atheist Publishes Secular Bible
Now that I think about it, it’s amazing that it took so long. Jessica Ravitz reports on A.C. Grayling’s The Good Book: A Humanist Bible for CNN:
The question arose early in British academic A.C. Grayling’s career: What if those ancient compilers who’d made Bibles, the collected religious texts that were translated, edited, arranged and published en masse, had focused instead on assembling the non-religious teachings of civilization’s greatest thinkers?
What if the book that billions have turned to for ethical guidance wasn’t tied to commandments from God or any one particular tradition but instead included the writings of Aristotle, the reflections of Confucius, the poetry of Baudelaire? What would that book look like, and what would it mean?
Decades after he started asking such questions, what Grayling calls “a lifetime’s work” has hit bookshelves. “The Good Book: A Humanist Bible,” subtitled “A Secular Bible” in the United Kingdom, was published this month. Grayling…
Seventy Metal Books That Could Change Our View Of The Bible
Photo: Einarspetz (CC)
A new way to rewrite history: find another version already written. A discovery to rival the Dead Sea Scrolls has seventy metal books found in a cave in Jordan. These books may give a new perspective to the days of Christianity. Via Daily India:
The discovery of seventy ancient metal books in a cave in Jordan is said to have the possibilities of unlocking some of the secrets of the earliest days of Christianity.
The tiny books, their lead pages bound with wire, have left academics divided over their authenticity, but they say that if they are verified, they could prove as pivotal as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.
The pages are not much bigger than a credit card, and on them are images, symbols and words that appear to refer to the Messiah and, possibly even, to the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
Adding to the intrigue, many of…
Was ‘God’s Wife’ Edited Out Of The Bible?
TIME ponders the suppression of an omnipotent female counterpart to the male God solo-featured in Judeo-Christianity. Was this where the great Middle Eastern religions went wrong?
Some scholars say early versions of the Bible featured Asherah, a powerful fertility goddess who may have been God’s wife.
Research by Francesca Stavrakopoulou, a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter, unearthed clues to her identity, but good luck finding mention of her in the Bible. If Stavrakopoulou is right, heavy-handed male editors of the text all but removed her from the sacred book.
What remains of God’s purported other half are clues in ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in an ancient Canaanite coastal city, now in modern-day Syria. Inscriptions on pottery found in the Sinai desert also show Yahweh and Asherah were worshipped as a pair, and a passage in the Book of Kings mentions the goddess…
What’s So Great Up There in Heaven?
The main objective of the Christian scheme of life and death is to get to heaven after we die. Why? Because that’s where God is, and heaven without God would be like a sunny day without sunshine, an innate contradiction. Christians want to be with God because, they say, he is all-perfect, and eternity with him will be beyond the greatest happiness imaginable. But how many people stop to ask why this will be so.
Okay, so God is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Even greater. So what? What will this do for me? As they used to say years ago in my hometown of Italian, Slavic, and Nordic immigrants in northern Minnesota to measure the value of what one was doing, “Will it put a chicken on the table [to eat]?” How does God’s being so great and wonderful translate into our happiness being far greater than we could ever imagine if we are there with him? I don’t get it. So he’s incredible and magnificent and perfect and everything else, and I, along with millions of others, am by his side. Now what? Where do we go from there? I mean, what will we do in heaven besides worshiping the Lord?
All manner of pleasurable things have been envisioned by people through the years about heaven, the Disneyland of the Christian imagination…
Accused Killer Claims Bible Made Him Do It
William Bender writes in the Philadephia News:
John Thomas told police he was inspired by the Old Testament when he slipped a rock inside one of Murray Seidman’s socks and used it to bludgeon the 70-year-old to death.
Unfortunately for Thomas, who was charged yesterday with first-degree murder, the Pennsylvania crimes code hews more closely to the Ten Commandments than the Book of Leviticus, which advocates the killing of homosexuals.
“I stoned Murray with a rock in a sock,” Thomas, 28, confessed Wednesday, more than two months after Seidman’s body was found inside his Lansdowne apartment, where the floor, walls and furniture were splattered with dried blood, according to police.
God’s Name Is “Jealous”
The following is another chapter from my disinformation book, 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know: Volume 2, published in 2004. For more on me go to The Memory Hole or follow me @RussKick on Twitter.
There’s an old joke that says God’s name is Harold, as in: “Our Father, who art in Heaven, Harold be thy name…”
The strange thing is, that’s not too much off the mark, only the truth is even weirder. The Lord does indeed have a name, kind of like Andrew or Beth or José.
It’s right there in the Bible, at Exodus 34:14. Moses has trudged up Mount Sinai with a second pair of stone tablets, on which God will write the Ten Commandments. Moses and the Big G engage in some repartee, then God says:
“For thou shalt worship no other god: for the lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God”
This is straight out of the King James Version. God reveals…
What The Bible Really Says About Sex
Could this “sex and the Bible” story by Lisa Miller be a taste of what the new Daily Beast-ly version of Newsweek will become? Maybe they read the leaked AOL business plan that requires all stories to be SEO-optimized, meaning lots of “content” featuring sex, God and scandal…
The poem describes two young lovers aching with desire. The obsession is mutual, carnal, complete. The man lingers over his lover’s eyes and hair, on her teeth, lips, temples, neck, and breasts, until he arrives at “the mount of myrrh.” He rhapsodizes. “All of you is beautiful, my love,” he says. “There is no flaw in you.”
The girl returns his lust with lust. “My lover thrust his hand through the hole,” she says, “and my insides groaned because of him.”
This ode to sexual consummation can be found in—of all places—the Bible. It is the Song of Solomon, a poem whose origins likely reach back to…
Atheist Students Group Offers Porn For Bibles
Via WOAI San Antonio:
SAN ANTONIO — An atheist student group at UTSA is again offering to trade porn for bibles.
Atheist Agenda set up a booth on the UTSA campus on the Northwest Side and asked students to bring in their bibles in exchange for pornographic magazines. The event is called “Smut for Smut” and, obviously, brings with it some big controversy.
“It is to send a message that the stuff in the bible, and the Quran, and the Torah, and all that sort of thing is, in our case worse, in our opinion worse, than pornography,” explained UTSA student Kyle Bush.
“I can see that God can definitely use this for a greater purpose,” UTSA student Alex Liu
said. “And I see a lot of Christian organizations coming together, you know, to be brothers and sisters standing up for their faith.”
Creepy Tales From The Old Testament (Video)
The premise of this amusing short: a Bible tutor teaches children religious tales (laced with incest and bear attacks) taken from the Old Testament.
South Carolina Woman Tortures, Kills ‘Devil’ Puppy For Chewing Her Bible
Insanity is alive and well in America. South Carolina’s GoUpstate reports on local faith-based crime:
A 65-year-old Pacolet Mills woman is accused of hanging and burning a 1-year-old pit bull after the animal chewed her Bible.
Miriam Fowler Smith, of 410 John Worthy Road, Pacolet Mills, is charged with ill treatment of animals in general, torture, according to an arrest warrant. Smith’s nephew told officers he left the animal at the home he shared with his aunt during the recent winter weather. After returning, he could not find the dog, named Diamond, and he assumed she had broken the chain that kept her on the home’s front porch, according to a report filed by a Spartanburg County environmental enforcement officer.
The man later told officers his aunt admitted to killing the animal, calling it a “devil” dog, and authorities were called to investigate.
After officers responded to the home, the woman told them she killed…
Ultimate Christian Street Fighting: Brawling Over The Bible (Video)
WWJD, you ask? Apparently in these Church-goers’ minds, Jesus would kick your ass. Thanks to Christian Nightmares for the find. Reports KOB-TV:
It’s behavior you wouldn’t expect to see at church, and it was all caught on tape. KOB Eyewitness News 4 obtained video that shows members of two different Roswell churches fighting with each other.
The video was taken by members of Old Paths Baptist Church in Roswell while they say they were preaching outside of another church in the city on November 28th. Armed with signs, Bibles, and a camera, members of Old Paths Baptist Church took their message to the streets. “They may not like out method, they may think or method is too confrontational, never the less its our right to preach in public,” said street preacher Jeremy De Los Santos.
Bible Spouting, Freemason Sword-Wielding ‘Ugly Betty’ Actor Kills His Own Mother
Truly horrific, and the spouting of Bible verses and references to Freemasonry just makes it more disturbing. Via the New York Post:
A crazed bit actor wielding an ornate Freemason sword hacked his mother to death early yesterday in their Brooklyn apartment while screaming out Bible passages and Masonic references, police and witnesses said.
“Repent! Repent! Repent!” Michael Brea, screamed at his 55-year-old mother, Yannick, during his bizarre meltdown and the subsequent bloodbath at their Prospect Heights apartment, neighbors said.
Brea, 31, who had roles in Ugly Betty and the movie Step Up 3D, was heard repeatedly through the door shouting about the “architect of the universe,” a term used by Freemasons to refer to a supreme being. Longtime family friend Sylvan Benoit confirmed that Brea was a member of the Freemasons and had been to a meeting earlier in the evening.
The Masonic sword was 3-feet long and meant for ceremonial use, police sources…
Why The Bible is Repulsive (Video)
Via God Is Imaginary:
By watching this short video, you will be able to prove to yourself that the Bible is repulsive. The Bible is so repulsive that it has no place in a modern, civilized society.
Moses & The Parting Of The Red Sea Explained By Science
Source: Rune.welsh (CC)
Somehow I doubt the faithful will want to hear this, but apparently the parting of the Red Sea was no miracle. Story from Reuters via LA Times:
Moses might not have parted the Red Sea, but a strong east wind that blew through the night could have pushed the waters back in the way described in biblical writings and the Koran, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
Computer simulations, part of a larger study on how winds affect water, show wind could push water back at a point where a river bent to merge with a coastal lagoon, the team at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder said.
“The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus,” Carl Drews of NCAR, who led the study, said in a statement.
“The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water…
Anti-Masturbation Candidate Christine O’Donnell Wins Republican Senate Primary in Delaware
Oh man, Joe Biden must be loving that anti-masturbation/Tea Party-backed candidate Christine O’Donnell is up for his old Senate seat:
My name is Christine O’Donnell. I am the President and Founder of The S.A.L.T. The S.A.L.T. stands for “The Savior’s Alliance For Lifting The Truth.” We choose sexual purity in our lives. We have God-given sexual desires and we need to understand them and preserve them to be used in God’s appropriate context. Our members are committed to be role models, committed to be the salt of the earth … We need to address sexuality with young people and masturbation is part of sexuality but it is important to discuss this from a moral point of view … The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can’t masturbate without lust.
Holy cow as the Washington Post reports. For more on O’Donnell check out this post from Irin Carmon on Jezebel and the mashup video below:
Did Jesus Really Die On A Cross?
Assuming Jesus was a real person, did he die on a cross? A Christian scholar is arguing that the “Christ on a cross” idea seems to be a complete fabrication, with no reliable ancient texts indicating that crucifixion was an execution method of the era, and the Bible itself saying only that Jesus died on a staurus (pole). Which means that rather being a symbol of ultimate sacrifice, the Christian cross is a branding/graphic design choice. From the Atlantic:
The crucifixion is apparently under review. In his doctoral thesis, newly graduated Swedish theologian Gunnar Samuelsson argues that the cross Jesus supposedly died on may not actually have been a cross. He explains in an interview with DRadio Wissen, a German station: “the New Testament said that Jesus died some way on something called a staurus … that’s a Greek name for a cross or a pole or something … I call it…
