Monday 29 June 2009

"Banana man" Ray Comfort writes Charles Darwin Bible for Atheists!

According to an article at One News Now, laughing stock Ray Comfort is back again!

The founder of Living Waters ministries says atheists and evolutionists don't have a Bible -- so he's about to fix that problem.

Evangelist Ray Comfort says atheists and evolutionists are a boat without a rudder, a ship without a sail. "You ask one atheist something and he'll say I believe this about God -- and someone else will say something else," he shares. "They don't have a 'bible'...there is no rock to stand on. So I decided to give evolutionists a rock to stand on -- I gave them 'The Charles Darwin Bible.'"
Read more here...

Famous for his failed attempt to explain that bananas are "The Atheist's worst nightmare", I'm sorely tempted to get a copy purely for its inevitable comedic value. I wouldn't want to inflate sales of it for the wrong reason and make it an accidental hit!

Sunday 28 June 2009

Connecticut's Anti-Gay Ghostbusters

There is a spectre haunting Connecticut - The spectre of homosexuality - and its a very real one according to Patricia McKinney of Manifested Glories Ministries. I happened upon the following CNN clip over at The Freethinker a few days ago of an exorcism on a 16-year-old boy to remove a "homosexual spirit" and stop him being gay. Like just about every other sane person who has seen it, I was saddened and disgusted to a degree, but I was not shocked in the least.


Despite being unhealthily and dangerously obsessed with what goes on in other people's bedrooms, the batshit consensus among deliverance believers seems to be that the church was at fault primarily because an exorcism is a private affair. If you want to roll around on the floor with a vomiting 16-year-old while a crowd tell you to push his belly to pop out Casper the gay ghost - in the comfort of your own church - what business is that of anyone else after all? These highly hypocritical murmurings on forums and comments sections are hardly surprising given that anti-gay exorcisms are nothing new, but always controversial when such blatant homophobia is mentioned in public.

The church itself, judging from the photos, looks more like a smoke-damaged Florist's than a place of worship. On their official website, "Apostle Prophet" McKinney's barely literate ramblings demonstrate what years of being possessed by the "crack spirit" can do to a person's mind. It is filled with many of her visions which, funnily enough begin and end like many of the nightly visions I have.
"I HAD A DREAM THAT I WAS IN THIS BIG HOUSE........
[three inane magenta paragraphs in uppercase omitted...]
AND THEN I WOKE UP."
McKinney wears her blind devotion to God over any kind of intelligence or education like a badge of honour on the church's now deleted wordpress blog. Google still has a few pages cached of it, and it seems to have been removed some time between now and 15 June. Her writing is full of paranoia about leaders of larger churches using witchcraft against her, something she can handle because she's from the street.

No matter what these Leaders say about me it’s not going to change the fact of who God called me to be, it’s not going to stop the purpose that is on my Life. No matter how much Witchcraft they try on me it won’t work because I know who I am in Christ Jesus and no weapon formed against me shall propser, they can’t hurt me with those hateful words I’m use to them.

I came from the Streets and anyone that knows me, they will tell you I was no joke and I was deep in the streets I done it all, and seen it all, I been talked about all my life ridicule, stepped on, lie on, cheated and it goes on and I survived it so what the Church does to me is nothing.

I am a Survivor because bad that I was in the streets I’t was only God that saved me from death, I had to survive out there I learn to stay alive, and the Church Leaders want to rise up against me………… that’s nothing to me if you been through what I have been through and if you can survive in those crazy streets like I did the Church IS NOTHING!!! to deal with TRUST ME.

The saddest thing is that in the case of Patricia McKinney herself, if her story is to believed, using religious mumbo jumbo as a surrogate activity to a crack habit has almost certainly been of benefit to her. Its impossible to deny that in cases where nothing else is offered by way of help, escaping into a fantasy world of angels and dream visions is understandable, albeit unfortunate.

However, this crazy bastard loses all sympathy the second she begins to use the authority she has built up to psychologically torture teenagers about their sexuality. The fact that there was no gun to the head of young guy in question is beside the fact. When the church and community you live in tell you that if you feel or think a certain way it is a sickness or a demonic possession, that's direct enough coercion to be abusive.

A full version of the exorcism video can be found here. Although looking for the loud, misinformed and the downright idiotic in the comments below YouTube videos is like shooting fundies in a barrel, a quick scan through was necessary, just to take the pulse of nutty Joe Public on the subject.

Many of the ever tolerant, faceless Christians commenting on this video voiced their own dismay at such a practice. While some argued that it is wrong on the grounds that women should not be allowed to speak at such events, others questioned whether or not the Holy Spirit would ever enter black people in the first place.

Last word has to go to commenter g2a5, presumably head of YouTube's "The Christianity the bible [sic]" Research Department, helpfully pointing non-believers in the direction of that well known documentary 'The Exorcist' for proof. It may be a small church, but they certainly aren't alone in believing in it.