SETI Discovers Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life

SETI, the privately funded organization searching for extraterrestrial life, announced a major break through: The first real evidence for intelligent outside of the Earth has been discovered. Professor P. Varicate stood before a stunned crowd of journalists, scientists and other concerned parties. "At approximately 2 PM local time the Parkes radio telescope in Australia picked up transmissions originating from  the Messier 78 nebula which is in Orion's belt. We are confident that an alien intelligence is the source of these signals."

The Faith-Based Legion Of Doom

Thought of this joke this morning.

Enjoy.

God Wants Some Babies To Be Disabled -- A Rabbi's Musings

Blessed by God?

I was on the Huffington Post's Religion section, and came across this piece: Why Does G-d Allow Children to Be Born With Disabilities? Seeing that I have a minor (at one time not so minor) disability -- hypotonia -- as well as having 17 years of working with people who have disabilities, I clicked and read.

There are many types of faith-based insanity, my friends. There are the left leaning liberal types who really, really try to turn God into card carrying member of the ACLU, while the conservatives typically want us all to believe that God loves his steaks rare, and He eats them with with a M-16 (don't ask me how the Almighty eats steak by using the official assault rifle of the American military, He works in wondrous ways). The writer of Huffington Post piece, Rabbi Schmuley Boteach, is somewhat towards the latter part of the spectrum. While assuming his God is real, the rabbi understands that God can sometimes be a dick (my words, not his), and we are meant to have a conversation with the divine on what it means to be moral.

Five Confessions From An Atheist

A Siren singing her song.

What would an atheist confess to? The question has been rattling around my head for the last day or two and here are five things that theists may find interesting about this atheist. 

5. I miss the certainty I felt when I was a believer.

When I was a believer I didn't worry about the BIG questions. Why worry about your purpose in life? You are God's child -- everything else is gravy. And a lot of my conceptions about heaven were really formed by watching bad 70's and 80's TV. One of the common plot devices in those sitcoms was that a character dreamed he or she died and went to heaven and had all of their questions answered. Didn't know where that lost sock was? God was going to tell you. Did your girlfriend cheat on you in 8th grade? All will be revealed. What I found out was that one of the side effects of not worrying about your place in the universe was that I really was concerned about heretics and unbelievers quite a bit.

New Study Finds Catholic Clergy Are Psychologically Healthy

The Catholic Church has announced that it has completed a thorough psychological testing of all its priests, bishops and cardinals, and that all of them are psychologically stable and healthy. In the spirit of full disclosure His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, has also undergone this procedure.

The Church has been steadily losing members as well as losing millions of dollars and euros since the scandals erupted. In Boston, MA the diocese was forced to pay victims $85 million in 2003. In 2007 the Los Angeles diocese paid victims $660 million. This all inclusive exam is intended to project the message to the world that the Church has successfully cleaned house and is a safe place for families.

The clergy were examined with the Rorschach test. The test traditionally consists of ink blots and is used to explore the true motivations and feelings a person has that he or she may not be willing to say. The test was administered by groups of Catholic mental health professionals and the results were analyzed by using complex faith-based algorithms. Below are a few of the images from the test as well as common responses made by the clergy. Pope Benedict's responses have also been included.

Three Fatwas



One of my pieces from Drawing Mohammed Day.

I've been perusing through the fatwas listed on the AMJA (Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America) site, and thought I'd share a few of them with you, my fellow Purgatorians.

As always, I have not altered the fatwas in any manner. I'm not even going to give clever/snarky remarks, because I think these teachings speak for themselves.

Enjoy.

The Great Accomplishments Of Faith