Inevitable

The traditional perps have become the vics. We fall over each other to politely and politically talk about the “narrative that allows this to happen”. “How does the West address radicalism and social threat?”

“The normalisation of terror.”

“An attack on them is an attack on us”

Faith, peace, obedience, submission.

In the same month that two of the most senior reps in the Catholic church have been either indicted or jailed for sex crimes, is the same week that we see yet another mass-murder performed in the name of god.

Clarity and epistemology is required here. 

Faith is the enabler and found wanting.

These things could not happen in a secular, rationalist society.

If the response to the great spiritual and moral questions is “still working on it,” society will be a bit bland, but bland in the right way.

I am appalled but not surprised at what happened.

It will always happen when people can call “Faith” and abrogate responsibility.

Beauty May Be Skin Deep, But It's The Only Skin I Got

Five days a week, I drive by a church on my way to work. It has a billboard out the front that rotates a series of pathetic little messages that are supposed to be modern, hip and religious at the same time. They’re about as hip as your grandmother’s joint replacement. Stuff like, “Jesus. Detox for your soul.”

There’s one there at the moment that is so dumb, it’s self-defeating. It features a large picture of someone with absolutely terrible facial deformities. I mean, there’s been plastic surgery, there’s a glass eye, there’s no lateral symmetry, this poor person has either suffered the most awful congenital condition or they’ve suffered an absolutely horrendous accident. I can’t tell because I’m driving at the time but suffice to say, this person is doomed to a life of other people avoiding their gaze and praying that their little children don’t say something too honest within earshot. The large font caption is, “Beauty is in the eye of the creator.” I understand that the church is trying to be deep as a tonic to the shallow beauty-consciousness of the rest of us, but I want to run through the logic of that.

The all-powerful creator, the one that keeps the atoms moving in the correct orbits, the one that designed the universe, its magnificent machinations and all of the laws that keep it delicious for life, Him; every now and then can’t be bothered and makes some basic errors in the construction of some human beings. Or, he does it on purpose.

He also finds it acceptable to leave the poor sod the way he sloppily turned them out. He doesn’t think it worthwhile enacting any miracles to correct the oversight.

He also designed the rest of us to find physical attractiveness very important, to the point that we will pay certain especially beautiful people enormous amounts of money just to appear in pictures (moving or still). This slavish attention to physical beauty will ensure that someone who doesn’t get anywhere near the barest minimum of attractiveness is going to find the world a very hostile and difficult place.

This all-powerful being is happy with this situation. The beauty is in His eye, remember. Doesn’t matter that it isn’t in anybody else’s, He’s happy with a lifetime of misery that He’s foisted on someone for… what reason? Has He ever explained why?

If this God was real, why would you want to abase yourself to something so manifestly cruel and unfair? My “God-given” right as a person of self-determination, would be to rebel and reject this monster with every fibre of my being, even if it cost me my life. Lucky I don’t actually have to put my money where my mouth is on that one.

All the church has advertised, is that He is cruel, capricious and sloppy. It’s actually better to assume that the universe does not care, feels no animosity or joy at your existence and that sometimes awful things happen. Better to understand that and not also be worried about the super-long-term consequences of being born with horrible facial deformities. In the religious mind, the reward for putting up with such unfairness in your temporal life, is to go to heaven. Who the hell wants to spend eternity with such an unconscionable bully?

Cut It Out

Tribal Wives is a show that takes English women of varying degrees of poshness and catapults them into a village where vaccination is witchcraft and the technology behind bras is borderline magic. I’ve watched only one and I was disgusted, but probably not for the reasons that you would expect me to be. (I’m fine with people volunteering to be put in embarrassing or potentially dangerous situations for my entertainment.) This was something else.

One of the Posh Girls was getting to know her local matriarchy when she came upon their practice of female circumcision. The elder proudly stated that she had circumcised hundreds, maybe thousands of girls in her community. Our Posh Girl, remaining open minded and culturally sensitive, asked why. The main reason for a total clitorectomy on all of the girls in this “society”, is so they can get pregnant.

Let’s be clear - They believe that if they don’t get circumcised, they can’t get pregnant. Obviously, no one in this group has put that to the test, but there’s their reasoning.

Posh Girl remains politely interested and asks questions of the girls who have had it done and we learn a little more about female sexuality, but nothing more about the hideous injuries that must have been inflicted. Posh Girl finishes the show with a new found respect for her sisterhood and we’re all heart-warmed as she disappears back to Blighty to resume her life with running water and antibiotics.

But, really, after the cameras stopped rolling, Interpol should have swept in. Why isn’t this elder up in front of the Hague for crimes against humanity? She is a self confessed butcher of children and her rationale is an easily disproved belief. We’re happy to try Milosevic for his stupid beliefs. No doubt Anders Breivik is going be dealt with as harshly as possible for his ridiculous beliefs, why does this mutilator in a mud hut get away with it? We’re now too embarrassed to intercede with the noble savages after centuries of our rape and pillage?

Priorities and perspective please, people. 

Hope I Don't Get "Chosen"

Ricky Gervais’ stand-up, Politics was on telly the other night. It features a bit on Hitler misinterpreting Neitzsche. I wouldn’t recommend it to sensitive Jews but by the standards of people who think like me, it’s funny. Don’t get me wrong, genocide is bad. Let me just be plain about that: Genocide - Bad. Also, I don’t have time for racial supremacists. I’ve never wanted to join one of those clubs. But, it did get me thinking.

For a religious Jew, the Holocaust would have to be considered a miracle. If their god is the all seeing, omnipotent being that they claim He is, then something as big as the Holocaust would have to have come to His attention.

In fact, He would have had a hand in it if He is an omniscient hyper-being in charge of daily affairs. Further, He would have to have been quite convinced of His plan. If we consider that this is a super-being that can have his mind changed by chanting and praying, I think it would be safe to say that a lot of Jews at the time would have been appealing to Him to stop the slaughter, but He persisted. Surely this is a miracle. Not a good one, which is usually nuance we see put on miracles, but it’s an event that rivals a natural cataclysm so strays into that category.

This, I think, leaves the Jews in a nasty position as far as being the chosen people. Chosen for what?

It points to another thing that annoys me about religious thinking. You always see people thanking gods for saving their children, landing the plane safely, sparing their houses from the flood and on and on. Not only is it insulting to hardworking surf lifesavers, pilots and emergency service workers, it’s not apportioning blame properly.

I’ll give five bucks to the next person on a news report who says, “Thank God all the rooves in this neighbourhood were ripped off during the storm and that bit of tin flew across the road and decapitated Mrs Wilson. I hated her.”

Osama - Are We Doing Ourselves Any Favours?

There’s nothing like an internationally hated dead guy to push Skinny and Baldy’s honeymoon out of the news cycle - and that’s a good thing.

But, because you expect nothing less (or more) of me, I have some things to say about dead terrorists.

One of the things that sickened us in the West at the time of 9/11, was certain groups getting out and celebrating in the streets at the destruction of the Twin Towers. I can understand why Americans are happy at the symbolic importance of getting the bad-guy, but it would’ve been so much classier if they’d just been cool about it and not behaved in exactly the same way.

Much better would be, “Yep. Got him. Took a while, but we knew we would. We used seals in helicopters. Should have seen it. Balancing the balls on their noses, clapping their flippers, killin’ bad guys. Cool.”

That’s how we’re really going to beat extremism and religious fanaticism, by being classier and not taking ourselves too seriously. Have you ever noticed how heavy religious types, the ones who can talk poorly educated people into blowing themselves up, are always such wowsers? They take themselves too seriously. You have to, if you’re going to kill in the name of your invisible sky fairy. We shouldn’t do it too.

So Americans, while you’re out there yelling “Oo Ess Aye” like that, be aware that you’re drawing attention to the score-line, which would so far have to be in the bad guy’s favour. How many military casualties - six thousand or so? How many civilian casualties? I hate to think. I don’t even know if there’s a reliable number. At the same time, while prosecuting the War on Terror, the West has resorted to nastier and nastier tactics. No one has been improved by any of this.

Burial at sea: A fancy way of saying chucking stuff overboard. It also means that we are going to have sightings of “the real Osama” for the rest of our lives. I read yesterday this was done because there wasn’t any country that’d take him for burial. How many countries did they ask? What’s wrong with taking him back to the US and allowing anyone who’s not convinced to come and have a look? While you’re at it, charge admission. Nothing would annoy the type of people who blow up civilians to make a religious point more, than turning their martyr into a C-grade theme park. Then, when you’re all done, rubberize him and turn him into a hatstand for the Oval Office. Or, then take him back out to sea and chuck him overboard.

I can’t see that killing Osama will do anything to Al Qaeda. It’s like trying to get rid of all professional gardeners by killing Jim of Jim’s Mowers. I’m pretty certain Jim isn’t driving all those trucks and trailers around by himself. (If you were to believe the press on the subject, Jim and Osama occupy similar positions in the Pantheon of Evil, too.)

Finally, I would like to castigate a few of our local media types in person, if I got the chance. Channel 9’s News for last night airing a photo of the dead Osama -  that has been circulating on the net for the last two years (excellent research) - and the Telegraph for today’s cover, front and back. The headline on page one “Evil Dead” is topped by the gloating, fake obituary on the back surrounded in black ink.

You have the right, within reason, to do whatever you want, that’s one of the cool things about our culture. But please, try and make us proud of what we’ve won when we do actually prevail.

You Can't Hug Your Children With Bear Arms

I have only the most fleeting interest in a multiple murder that occurred in Arizona and involved a politician. I have received what I have been told through ABC radio news and not gone looking for any more detail. I don’t feel my life would be improved with it.

One thing has stood out to me in the coverage I’ve heard, though: The hand-wringing within America has all been about the nastiness of political debate inciting this kind of crime.

To me that seems backwards. I want my political debate to be as nasty, seditious, illuminating, forward, unafraid, derogatory and honest as I would like my politicians to be. I would also like to know that it can be done without the danger of being shot.

Why has the gun debate not reared its head properly in the shake down after this? Isn’t the US sufficiently sick of its absolutely ridiculous gun homicide rate yet?

It’s a continuing collective madness that grips the US on gun ownership. I saw a guy in The States wearing a T-Shirt that said, “Blaming guns for crime is like blaming spoons for making Rosie O’Donnell fat”. It’s cute, but not actually an argument that survives inspection. (If you leave a spoon lying around and your kids start playing with it, you aren’t going to come home twenty minutes later to find one of them dead on the floor from cholesterol induced heart failure.)

You often hear the NRA say that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. They sure help, right?

To be fair to the complexities of the argument we can’t just blame guns. Total gun ownership per capita does not have a direct relationship to total murders. Canadians own twice as many guns as Australians but murder each other in similar amounts. They own a third as many guns per capita as Americans but murder each other at only 0.05% the rate Americans are offing each other. What can we take away from this?

Well, firstly, Canadians are lousy shots, but secondly that Americans have got psychological problems and a lot of them seem to be enshrined in law. Here’s the thing, though, it’s just law. It’s artificial. You made it. You can change it. Just ‘cause it’s old, doesn’t make it right or good.

It’s interesting to note that the murder rate in Washington DC is the highest in the country, so you’d think that’d be ample incentive for the pollies to go and make some sensible law around gun ownership, if only to save their own hides. (Speaking of the right to bear arms, ol’ Mama Grizzly’s home state, Alaska is number two with a bullet, there on the chart. Arizona - number 5.)

You Are Aware We Can Hear You, Yes?

The Churches have reacted angrily to the proposal that ethics classes should be offered to students as an alternative to scripture classes in NSW schools.

They (Church Leaders) argue that holding the classes at the same time as scripture classes would disadvantage scripture students, who would not be able to attend. 
SMH. 20-10-10, P1.

In religion’s overweening struggle for relevancy and as a buttress to why they think they have any moral authority at all, the Church keeps saying that morals and ethics flow from scripture. But here, by their own admission, the student is at a disadvantage in the scripture class. 

I couldn’t agree more (unless the lesson was for atheists and called “Know Thine Enemy”) but it’s nice to hear the Church come out and say it for me.

In the statement, the Church blithely throws out, “…students, who would not be able to attend”. 

Why can’t the student attend? Weren’t they allowed to change to something they felt was more enlightened? Could this type of dictatorial meddling in the mind of a young adult be ethical at all? Never mind - it’s the church! It has the authority handed down to it from these here old books called scripture… that don’t really say very much conclusive or sensible about anything… so you’re just going to have to apply your own personal set of morals to them to try and sort out anything of value. Oh, you didn’t go to that lesson? Ahem.

So, as some kids go back to their scripture classes to be earbashed about the impossible requirements from a fictional sadist in the sky, and the other kids go back to classes on the nature of personhood and how to navigate a way to moral outcomes in an ethical way - that must really set up a tension. It gets even worse as they toddle off to their next lessons - evolutionary biology for one lot, and “Why the heliocentric view of the solar system is a godless lie” for the others.  

Nice One. Now For The Implausible Escape

As a crime-fighting-moral-crusader type, it’s easier to avoid arrest when you’ve got a specialised vehicle.

When Batman’s personal vendetta against evil doesn’t quite line up with the local constabulary's exhaustive enquiries - and the duly elected officials want to stop him, he always escapes and achieves his ends with the use of superior equipment. He’s got a better budget and that’s why the Batmobile is as critical to the story as the guy who drives it.

I reckon our favourite ex-Nazi and reigning Super-Surrealist, the Pope, is dodging his responsibilities as a Superhero by not turning up in countries that are threatening to arrest him.

He’s got the Pope-mobile. Get on with it, Deluded Moral Crusader. Na na na na na na na naaaa, Pope-man!

“To the Vatican, Cardinal-Boy! There’s rational thought out there that must be thwarted.” (Do it in your best Adam West voice. It’s more fun that way.)

The reason I bring this up after a couple of days of quiet, is that my Senior Euro-Gotham-Correspondent, Smurf, sent me an article from the BBC. It covers the latest pronouncement against EVIL that Popeman has dreamt up. It’s a corker. He aligns the evils of Nazism with atheism.

This is so far off the mark that for the first 30 seconds I was angry beyond speaking. After that, I sort of decided to have a sandwich.

Sometimes, you just know you’re going to wreck a lot of perfectly good police cars chasing a lunatic down. There's just no point. If there is the Divine Justice that he craps on about, he will implode under the weight of his own just desserts.

For anyone unclear about why this is a disgusting piece of misrepresentative filth from a particularly disreputable house-of-lies, feel free to drop me a line at, nick.greyarea@gmail.com.

I’ll debate the point - starting with the Catholic Church’s apology to the Jews for, essentially, collaborating with the Nazis. Try escaping from some of their specialist vehicles.

The Story So Far

Nutbag in camp A wanted to say something about the behaviour of the Nutbags in camp B. He decided he would burn something symbolically precious to the B-Nutbags.

Powerful People asked Nutbag-A not to, because when the B-Nutbags are criticised on matters surrounding their behaviour, they behave badly.

In a pre-emptive move, the B-Nutbags, to say something about how badly the A-Nutbag was threatening to behave, burnt a whole lot of symbolically precious stuff to the A-Nutbag camp and rioted in the streets.

Well done, all. Well done indeed.

I Care About Everything Except PM Fanta Pants and Mr Rabbit

It’s been a red letter day for the rational among us.

In the news, some fishermen spent a crap night out clinging to the hull of their boat after being submerged by a bad storm. On their safe return to land, thanks to highly skilled rescue teams, the leader (can’t go with captain) repeatedly said, “All I can say is, 'Thanks to God. Really. Thank God'.”

This is not only rude to the guys who risked their lives to save the fishermen in foul weather, it’s ignoring who’d nominally be responsible for bad weather to start with.

In other news - a woman claiming to have supernatural abilities went out looking for the body of missing six-year-old Kiesha and, after finding the decomposing torso of a grown woman, is now being feted as the next important psychic phenomenon.

That’s like being sent out for basil and coming home with a book about whippets.

For God's Sake, Grow Up

You come to A Grey Area for the light-hearted whimsy, but you stay for the relentless religion bashing.

The Catholic Church is really getting it at the moment and all sorts of defences have started surfacing. My job as a loud-mouth atheist wouldn't be being attended to, if I didn't arc up and refute some of the egregious crap coming from certain quarters.

Miranda Devine wrote in defence of the Pope in the Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday, with the title of her article being “Evildoers, not Pope, to blame”. One of her demands was that we should stop picking on the head of the institution. (Let's just wait for her input on the F3 traffic jam and the NSW roads and traffic Minister, to see how consistent she is on that point.) But, leaving consistency aside, her main thrust is - It's not the Pope's fault - it's those fantastically clever paedophiles that tricked him.

“... for too long church leaders allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by paedophiles, who are by nature, brilliantly deceptive.” SMH. April 15, 2010. p.13.

She then tells us that the Catholic Church has been the most vocal and upright in the fight against moral breakdown in our society and that the Pope has been penitent, humble and frank about how this issue needs to be addressed.

Total and utter bullshit.

Miranda needs to see a 3 minute file story that played on Hungry Beast this week Catholic Church Sex Scandal  that logged the Catholic Church's response to paedophilia.

Paedophilia being brought up as a problem, was first documented in... drum roll... the year sixty.

Yes - 60 AD.

A two thousand year paper trail of denial and stupidity.

It has been a routinely reported problem and universally brushed under the carpet. I particularly liked the part where a Cardinal Ratzinger (that name ring a bell?) recommended that it be dealt with using the highest level of Vatican secrecy. I think it's called the “Eyes-only, top-secret, don't tell anyone or we'll send out the Swiss Guard to kill you with the can-opener on a Swiss Army pocket knife” level of secrecy. I might not be right about that last bit, but to pretend that the Pope has been hoodwinked, is ridiculous.

The Church removes itself from the criticism of us mortals by claiming to be the moral authority on earth. Not only is this preposterous (at times it seems we are ethical despite the church, not because of it) they are manifestly unable to perform the job role they have described for themselves. As soon as you start to get into it though, you get shouted out of court for being disrespectful.

There is nothing more disrespectful than putting yourself into the position of authority and trust, violating that trust, and then pretending that nothing is going on.

Is the incidence of paedophilia higher, per capita, within the priesthood than it is in the general public?

If it is, is it because the environment is thick with defenceless fodder? Is it because the priesthood attracts people who wouldn't naturally compete too well in the real world? Is it because they then ask them to be celibate? Is it a heady mixture of lost souls, celibate losers, crazy ritual and systemic weirdness?

Let's pretend that it was another institution that was continually caught with its pants down. Imagine we were talking about an institution that is not protected by tradition and man's need to avoid the reality of death. Imagine if we were talking about a large, secular government body that kept getting repeated cases of child abuse surfacing. We'd tear it apart. We'd treat it like DOCS.

Devine blames modernity for the breakdown of morals and tempting these poor priests. She virtually quotes the Pope himself in his letter to the Irish Catholics last month,

“If paedophilia seems to be on the increase, it has been enabled by the eroticisation of our culture over decades, and even priests themselves are not immune.”

More incredible bullshit. Sixty AD they started to notice the problem! And, Miranda, in case you haven't noticed, the people coming forward to recount their abuse as children, are adults. See, there's a time delay there? See it?

It's not a young problem. It's a mature one.

The mature taking advantage of the the immature. A mature, secular society running up against an immature set of beliefs. Ancient problems being dealt with by people who have immature responses because they have been left in a state of adolescence by being, literally, cloistered.

Dear Church,

Take a good hard look at yourself and have the courage to grow up. In fact, do us all a favour and go away and die.

Armageddon Off Your Friends List

I had a dream that I ended up in Purgatory. Not the S&M nightclub in Melbourne*, but the real make-believe one. I ended up on Mount Purgatory because I am not on Facebook.

I don’t do Facebook. I tried it for a while but it’s just not my speed. It annoys me and if you want to chat, my email‘s on this page.

But in my dream, judgement day came and the blessed and the fallen were divided up just as you would expect, by who was who's Facebook friends. God got a scare as his friend count was actually lower than Satan’s, but he covered the resultant nasty mood swing by getting all snooty about quality over quantity.

I watched from halfway up the hill. It felt nice to be a bystander, as usual.

*The toughest thing about S&M nightclubs is bumping into people in the darkened corridors. You don’t know whether to apologise or thank them.

We'll Make Great Pet Minders

Extreme-leisure correspondent, Gooby, has found the franchise I've always wanted.

No outlay. All profit.

It'll be vaguely educational, too.

Eternal Earthbound Pets

Backing Out Of The Church Slowly And Avoiding Eye Contact

For a while now, I’ve had a hunch that the Church of England is trying to back out of the deal.

I’ve mentioned before that there’s an almost resigned air of defeat to their communications. (Specifically in Organising Atheists...) It’s like they know the jig is up, and just want to leave quietly so that not too many people are embarrassed.

I have divined their plan to achieve this quiet withdrawal.

Smurfy sent me an email with the title, “Is the Archbishop of Canterbury secretly one of us?” At first I was confused. I was expecting to see a picture of the Bishop painted blue. It would make sense, he’s already got a pointy hat. But when I read this article God Will Not Give Happy Ending I realised Smurf meant atheist.

If you don't read the article, here’s the summation. The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that God can’t help us with our environmental troubles. What is He willing to help with?

So far they’ve said that; He doesn’t intercede on a trivial personal level of folly or sin. He doesn’t intercede on man-made acts of evil and now He won’t do anything about the planet. According to the Church of England, all we can count on, even in the worst disaster, is His love. Great. Stick that in your survival kit and send a flare up with it.

See what they’re doing? See? They’re incrementally removing the advertised features from the product until there’s nothing left to sell. It’s a recall by attrition.

The greatest trick that God ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn’t exist – gradually.

Your Move

I reckon you’d need to be a self-flagellating nutbag to want to rise in the ranks of the sort of organisation that has woven a profound dislike of you and your kind into its fabric.

I’m not talking about Obama and the US Government. The organisation he has sought to rise in doesn’t have at its core proscriptive statements on gender, race or creed. The Founding Fathers were quite eloquent on the point that it wasn’t about that (even though a few of them were slave owners).  Obama can work there without having to pointlessly claw away at the very basis of the organisation on a daily basis. It wasn’t built to hate him. In his organisation, you get there and stay there by being popular - and he’s clearly that. His particular club is all about that.

No, if you are a woman or a gay and want to rise up in the ranks of a big church I reckon you’ve got to love wearing a hair-shirt. 

Even if you are unable to face the realities of an omnipotent being that supposedly loves you, hears your every thought, is interested in meddling in day-to-day human affairs, but is also willing to let gratuitous human suffering happen across the planet, at least you should recognise the realities of the organisation you have decided to devote so much time to.

It does not like you. It's worked so hard to keep you out.

That organisation is predicated around the idea that it has the sole line to the only true sky fairy, and in the main, this creator of planets tends to feel fairly threatened by the likes of you. (Even though He made you, the only reason I can see that He would be so anti-you, would be that He doesn’t want to get girl's germs or dress too snappily.) According to His infallible books, you are not liked or welcome - and this is not a democratic process.

So when Jon Stewart announced that his guest for last night’s show was going to be Bishop Gene Robinson, America’s first openly gay bishop, I turned the vacuum cleaner back on and kept dancing to “I want to break free.” (Did anyone else find Roger Taylor disturbingly attractive as a school girl in that clip? No? Only me? Ok, let’s move on.) But the vacuum was off when Gene was interviewed, and he knows how to bring the funny.

Jon Stewart was asking him about how the inauguration had gone. The Bishop said, “Blah blah history, blah honour to be there, blah, hope blah,” and then they got onto how many people had attended. 

While they were talking about the enormous crowds, Stewart quipped that it would’ve been doubly difficult in the throng for Robinson, because he was only allowed to move diagonally.

Laughter in the audience rises (slowly, as people catch on) and dies down.

Bishop Gene Robinson comes back with, “Jon, you’ve gotta remember, there’s also a queen on the board.” 

A Little More Christmas Foot Pudding For You, Pope?

I was willing to leave the whole religion/Christmas thing alone for the moment. 

But, you just can't beat the Catholic Church (see how polite I'm being? I gave them capital letters.) for releasing bags of stupid down your chimney, can you?

In the news today...

Pope Benedict XVI says saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

... because that whole other thing with the celebecy is working so well for you guys, isn't it?

For fuck sake! 

I meant that.

Organising Atheists is Like Herding Cats - Pity Really

In a positive move in a world of woe, this little story comes from Ol' Blighty. 'No God' slogans for public buses.

In synopsis, the British Humanist Association (BHA) has paid for ads on the side of bendy-buses which say, "There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

To pay for them, the BHA thought they would need to raise about £5,500, and Professor Richard Dawkins said he'd match them pound for pound, if need be. The BHA has now managed to accidentally raise £36,000 all on its own.

I like it. This is an indication of real sentiment. You can measure it and literally take it to the bank (if it's still there).

It means they have wandered into the street with a hat and said, "Hi, we're raising money for an anti-religion campaign, and we were just wond... oh, thank you very much!"

I suspect there are a lot of people who are alarmed at the re-emergence of dark-age thinking (travelling under the ill-deserved protection of 'belief' and 'conservatism') and are sick of being beaten over the head by people who think they know better.

But, by nature, they are a quiet voice. It's hard to organise those people into mobs - that's exactly the sort of thing they're suspicious of. You certainly can't get them up early on a Sunday morning to go and mumble at an invisible sky fairy.

Of course there's been backlash from all those 'right-minded' religious types (or, as we in the business call them, "People who lack the imagination to really think it through").

Stephen Green of Christian Voice said:

"Bendy buses, like atheism, are a danger to the public at large."

You can't argue with that. Actually, you can barely find a line of logic in it. When was the last time you saw an Atheist, or a bus, nail someone to a plank of wood or go on a crusade? I like his healthy self esteem though, thinking that somehow he contributed. He is someone who is never going to wake up in the dead of night worrying about the consequences of his actions or his contribution to the forum of human endeavour.

Rev Jenny Ellis helped out god with: "This campaign will be a good thing if it gets people to engage with the deepest questions of life." But Rev, your religion does the opposite. You obviously haven't been listening to your own brand of bullshit. You guys are saying that the answers are right here in this rather old, hard to understand book. Stop thinking and have faith. Don't engage, questioning might lead to apostasy.

The Anglicans (Methodists to be precise) have my favourite response. They thanked Dawkins for encouraging a "continued interest in God".

I snorted my Weet-bix back out my nose at that one (they were really soggy so I'm okay). It's so pathetic it's kind of endearing. They've taken the 'no such thing as bad press' maxim and applied it to their supposedly omnipotent being. If it was required, you'd think god would be able to raise interest in himself .

Do you ever get the feeling that, any day now, the C of E is going to throw their collective hands up and go, "Yep, awright, you got us. It's a crock. But can we keep the pretty clothes and buildings?"

Christ! Here He Comes Again

If he were to turn up for a Second Coming, I don’t think I would recognise Jesus.

I should be polite and mention that there are two potential plot spoilers following here.

First: The Second Coming - never going to happen.

Second: Dexter - episodes five and six of series one. If you’re watching it on free-to-air in Australia, they’ve already aired, so read on. If you’re watching them at your own pace though, because you’ve given up on the bastard free-to-air broadcasters and haven’t got to these episodes yet… turn away.

To the problem of recognising the Baby Cheeses if he returned.

Dexter is about a serial killer who murders other serial killers.

In the episodes in question, Dexter perforates some evil-doers because they were holding Cuban refugees in a lock-up. They intended to drown the refugees when the inflated smuggling prices weren’t met. Dexter does the right thing as he leaves the sauce spattered scene, and sets the new Americans free. A kid, locked in the boot of a car nearby, witnesses all of this.

Dexter is a forensic scientist attached to the police department, and finds out later that there is a witness. He spends a very uneasy couple of days as the kid is coaxed into giving the police artist a description.

The kid is exhausted and only gives a small amount of a description before dropping off to sleep. Our Dex sneaks a look at the picture in progress, and there is no doubt that it is his own eyes taking shape on the sketch pad.

Later, certain that he is going to be uncovered in front of all his colleagues in the police station, the fully finished portrait is revealed, only for us to giggle in relief. The confused Cuban kid has described Jesus, with Dexter’s eyes.

We all get the point about the kid being a bit delusional and mistaking the refugees' saviour. We can add a bit of habitualised religious thinking and blend it with post traumatic stress and you've got your own... personal... Jesus (Do it like Depeche Mode, it's more fun that way).

But…

There can be no mistake that the picture is of Jesus. But it has Dexter’s eyes, so why is it Jesus?

When I come to think of it, I have seen countless representations of JC and really, I couldn’t tell you what he is supposed to look like - other than shoulder length hair, beard, and often a faint glow behind the head. That’s not going to wash in a police line-up, or deliver a particularly helpful identikit portrait.

If he returns and decides to update his look (nice little brushed forward emo number. No beard) he will pass unnoticed. (Probably a good thing. Saves him getting nailed.) For all we know he’s been and gone and couldn’t get anyone to believe him.

I’m not the only one fuzzy on what he should look like. The following is a true story and occurs on an international flight.

To pass time on international flights, I go about things really slowly.

Would I like a cup of tea? Maybe yes. I’ll think about it for a bit, then have one in half an hour.

In this case, the hour was going to be passed by watching someone struggle with the door of the toilet I was sitting opposite. They had pushed and pushed, made all the wrong moves, and got the bottom of the door off its runner and made things worse for themselves. I gave it a few minutes, and when the struggling and banging had the real look of panic about it, I went over and pushed the door on the bit that needed folding. It popped open deceptively easily. Sort of like I 'had the touch’.

The Spanish speaking woman on the inside collapsed to her knees, genuflected and said several things including thanks, praise and Jesus.

During the rest of the flight, she would not stop looking at me, genuflecting and giving thanks. There were many references to lords and saviours. She walked past my seat and touched my elbow a number of times. In a final embarrassment, she asked me to bless her as we left the plane.

I’m certain her high altitude confusion was worsened by the fact that I had long hair and a two week growth at the time. The lights in aeroplane toilets turn off when the door opens, so I would’ve had the light behind me too when I had magically touched the door.

Here was a devout Catholic woman who was confused about what her Lord and Saviour should look like. I’m an atheist, what chance do I have of correctly identifying him?

He's going to have a bugger of a time.

Nursing Home Plight Worsens

"It has just been terrible," said Ida Lump, resident of the Seeping Pad Retirement Home.

"We've been overrun with stray popes. They come in here, and if they can't steal some of the gruel... they chew the table and try to lick the varnish off the sideboard. It's not like we've got a lot to start with."

This indignity was not enough it appears. Earlier in the week Ida and her fellow residents were evacuated for an emergency fumigation for a pilgrim infestation.

"It was quite strange," said Esther Estherhausen. "I'd be looking for the remote control, move the cushion, and there'd be hordes of the little buggers running for the shadows chanting 'Go Jesus'."

Normalcy and sense will be returned to the home as soon as the eradication is complete, promised a manager who preferred not to be named.

Three or Four Days of Night

You can't use the garlic at that range, it's not effective. It's stakes or silver bullets.