Anybody can throw up a website and claim to be a ministry. This is appropriate, because most ministries make me throw up. I just came across this loon, who runs Love God’s Way Ministries.

Originally, there seemed to be some debate about whether this was a genuine fundie nutball or a parody site designed to sell music. I figure the above image pretty much nails him as a parody. That’s too bad. It would be far funnier if it were real.

Kevin found the video for us. Looks fake to me. (YouTube page is here.)

Below is an excerpt from his website. I’m sure Ted Nugent appreciates being on the same list with Elton John, Queen, the Village People and … Cole Porter?

Let’s take a fast run through a few articles at OneNeuronNow.

I actually agree with most of this first article, “Michael Jackson—The American Equivalent of ‘Lady Di’”. I wouldn’t even mention it, but it allows me to shoehorn in the above picture. (At least I know I’m sleazy!)

The article is mostly about how the media spent way too much time covering Michael Jackson’s death, and almost no time covering important issues. Of course OneNeuronNow is incapable of covering a news item themselves without squeezing Jesus into it. For no good reason, the article includes this:

Meanwhile, the sister of Christian singer Andrae Crouch says they prayed with Jackson three weeks before he died last Thursday, but it wasn’t a prayer to receive Jesus Christ as savior.

It also says:

Jackson was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, dabbled in other religions, and reportedly converted to Islam in 2008. In a recent interview with AP, Jermaine Jackson—Michael’s brother—referred to Michael as “a gift from Allah.”

There seems to be some truth to the Islam claim. Amazing how ONN had to include that. Now all of that media coverage is even more offensive. OH NOES!! THEY’RE SAYING GOOD THINGS ABOUT A MOOSLIM!

The next article screams “Expect ‘Rationing’ from Obama’s Healthcare Reform”.

Yes. I’m sure the 46 million Americans don’t have any health coverage today will be quite upset when they discover that the government won’t pay for their LASIK eye surgery.

Another article, “NEA to Consider Full Support of Homosexual ‘Marriage’” contains this unfortunate Freudian slip:

And then there is one little bullet about [how] they will recognize that marriage has a religious connotation…

The scary reality is that fundies have a lot more than one bullet for their opponents.

In “Prop. 8 Still Getting Hit with Lawsuits”:

The latest is a class-action lawsuit in state court claiming a constitutional right to homosexual “marriage.” Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel has fought the litigation successfully for five years.

Yes. It’s called the 14th amendment. Get over it.

“That’s why [the activists] resorted to the courts. That’s the only possible recourse they have—and of course, the courts are not the place to litigate this.”

Where else does litigation occur? Under a bridge? Besides, the courts are the only place you can protect the minority from the majority.

I have an idea. Let’s put an initiative on the ballot to ban Mormonism. Most Christians don’t like Mormonism, so they’d be compelled by conscience to vote for it. Then we can go after Catholics. They’re in the minority, so it’s OK to take away their rights. Then we’ll ban Pentecostalism. It’s perfectly fine to take away the rights of any group you disagree with, as long as they’re not the majority.

Isn’t it?

I started the Comment of the Day feature about a year ago, and then I somehow forgot about it. The idea is to highlight comments that I find especially funny or insightful. The last one I featured was 11 months ago. I don’t know how it slipped my mind. There have been some good comments since then.

As I said back when I started it, I’m using the loose definition of “day” that they use in Genesis. Who (outside of the literal extremists) really knows how long a day is? Right now, it looks like about 11 months.

The first recipient of the Comment of the Day honor was Sue Blue. In the days that followed, we honored LadyRavana, Barbara, Brian, and Bing McGhandi. Since Sue Blue started this off, it is fitting that she reinaugurate the feature. Responding to my quick blurb about the (((Carnival))) of the Godless, she writes:

All I can say is this is what happens when the right wing religionut society finishes scraping the bottom of the barrel and goes on to dredging the deepest, dankest shitpits of hell.

The latest Carnival of the Godless is up over at (((Billy))) the Atheist.

You should have a glance at all of the articles, but the one I thought was the most spot-on was “‘God Sent the Shooter:’ White Christian Terrorism and the Assassination of George Tiller” by Sikivu Hutchinson. She writes:

So while the U.S. condemns Muslim religious fundamentalism and trumpets itself as a beacon for individual and civil liberties unbridled by theocratic intolerance, it has become a breeding ground for the most dangerous Christian fundamentalist terrorist movement in the world.

I read the Discovery Institute’s brain-dead blog, Evolution News & Views, every day. You remember those stories of the highly-devout who will self-flagellate? It’s some sort of twisted penance for thinking impure thoughts or something. Well I punish myself every day, too. I read Evolution News & Views.

I usually see at least one outrageous statement in every article that I just have to write a post about. I usually skip it, because that blog has a high profile. Somebody on Panda’s Thumb usually will do a much better job skewering it than I would, so I leave it to the masters.

Every so often, though, I feel the need to jump in. Today’s article is titled “How Evolution’s Co-Discoverer Discovered Intelligent Design”.

That’s funny. Just a couple of days ago, they were breathlessly telling us that Darwin didn’t discover evolution. Now they’re telling us he did. How do they think they’ll ever pull off selling us the giant lie of Intelligent Design creationism if they can’t even get their little lies straight?

I actually couldn’t read their article beyond the first paragraph. I vomited in my throat just reading that far. Maybe somebody on Pepcid can get through it and tell me if I missed anything.

Anyway, I assume they go on to make the case that Alfred Russel Wallace viewed evolution as God’s process for creating species. That’s an irrelevant argument. Back then, most scientists were theists and were studying the world in an attempt to understand how God put it together. Many scientists in those days were able to do good science despite their preconceptions. In fact, many of the good scientists managed to see beyond their biases and began to realize what the data were telling them: You don’t actually need a god to explain this stuff.

Even if they couldn’t see beyond their blinders but they managed to do good science, here’s the important point: It doesn’t matter what the scientist personally believes. The data speaks for itself. Other scientists are free to take that data and see if they can produce a better explanation. The data doesn’t have a religion! Eventually, combined with enough other data, a clear picture of what is probably going on in the universe emerges. That picture may be very different from what any of its original discoverers set out to find.

One last thing. How can the Discovery Institute call evolution “Darwinism” if they insist on telling us that Darwin didn’t discover it, and he had help not doing so?

Bill Johnson of the American Decency Ass. is continuing his relentless pursuit of porn.

His little tirade of a few days ago got picked up by the acme of journalism, OneNewsNow. And by “acme”, I mean:

Pronunciation: \ˈak-mē\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek akmē point, highest point — more at edge
Date: 1620
: the highest point or stage ; also : one that represents perfection of the thing expressed
synonyms see summit
—Merriam Webster

or…

Everything they produce is a failure.
—Wile E. Coyote

The ONN article quotes BJ:

“This is their latest venture into these dirty waters,” Johnson laments. “And we’re just very concerned that, once again, if Calvin Klein…doesn’t hear in a very strong way from concerned people — Christians — …that they will continue this kind of usage of sexual perversion to toy [with] and lure vulnerable consumers.”

Others see a simple jeans billboard. BJ sees this:

In the comments to my previous article, Barbara said:

One of the things I love is how stupid fundies are about simple things.

They state “A side note: Calvin Klein has hidden their contact information quite thoroughly. We have not been able to find a fax number nor a web contact page nor an email address for them”

It took me less than a minute on CK’s website to discover they are owned by the Phillips-VanHeusen corporation, a quick google for the PVH website which gives both a fill in email form and a phone number to call for information, and I am sure if they have a published email address or fax number, you can get it when you call for information.

Don’t worry, Barbara! We know that BJ can keep it up (his pursuit of this info, I mean). The ONN article quotes him:

Johnson says his organization has put some time and effort into finding the correct contact info for Calvin Klein and has posted that information on their website.

The more time he’s wasting looking for contact info that normal people can Google in a minute, the less time he has for restricting our freedoms.

I guess one of BJ’s latest toys…

…no, not one of those toys! I mean latest web toys is a survey plug-in for his website, so he has daily surveys. In a recent email he sent me (I can’t find these results on his site, though), he gives these results:

Response to survey question:

Do you equate Calvin Klein with quality merchandise or smutty advertisements?

8.2% Quality merchandise. I pay little to no attention to how or what they advertise.
78.1% Smutty advertisements. Their manner of advertising is a real turn off for me
13.7% CK’s merchandise is quality and their advertising is smutty.

Somehow, I doubt that Calvin Klein’s latest ads are targeted at BJ’s demographic. I’m sure they’re not worried about these results.

Today, OneNewsNow has an update on this situation. Apparently Calvin Klein caved into the pressure (boo! hiss!) and removed the billboard. ONN quotes BJ:

“Well, we are encouraged that the 50-foot display of group sex was removed from the building in Manhattan,” he shares. “[But we’re] not pleased that they still are using a 50-foot display of a very scantily clad woman on that very same wall… And the greater concern is that on their website [there] still does remain a group sex display.”

Again, if somebody is able to find actual porn on the CK website, please let me know. This quote illustrates the problem. To BJ, a skimpy outfit is pornography. How can anybody be that troubled by seeing women not wearing burkas? Is this guy wearing a Viagra patch?

Here is what BJ writes on his website:

Disclaimer – proceed with caution. Some of you especially struggle with such displays. It can set you up for the wrong kind of thinking.

This is for documentation only. It is raw and ugly. CK is guilty of advertising perversion and untold numbers will be negatively effected.

Web display of group sex:
http://www.calvinkleininc.com/cktv.aspx

“Negatively effected”, as in actually enjoying life.

I was thinking that I should find something to keep you folks busy for a few days. Nothing could better accomplish this than a few videos from that master of right-wing sulfured methane, Molotov Mitchell. You might remember him from “Whoops! Fundies’ Darwin Conundrum”, where he showed a total miscomprehension of both liberals and evolution.

I don’t have time to post any commentary with these, but it’s really better this way. What do you find appalling about these videos?

First we have “The Abortion Bailout”:

Next, he is “Preparing for…1776”. For the record, this was published less than two weeks before the assassination of George Tiller.

Finally, I’d like you to “enjoy” one ironically titled “Barry! Put the Crazy on Hold!”:

Please discuss among yourselves.

BTW, does anybody know how to present these videos in a WC3-compliant way? My site doesn’t validate right now, and it’s all Molotov’s fault! Whenever I post YouTube videos, I rewrite the HTML, because the embed code YouTube gives me doesn’t validate. These videos from WorldNutDaily seem to be Javascript. I don’t have time to figure out what’s wrong with them. (Actually, I know what’s wrong with the videos. I mean what’s wrong with the code!)

We haven’t looked in on Bill Johnson and the American Decency Association in a while. Let’s see what they’re getting aroused over.

We have a couple of new email alerts. A few days ago, he sent one with the breathless announcement: “Calvin Klein back at it again: 50 foot p–n ad”

Apparently if you actually type out the letters p-o-r-n, your keyboard bursts into flames.

BJ is upset about this billboard in New York City:

He thinks it’s pornographic.

Yup. That’s all it takes to give BJ a boner.

By that standard, this scene from Ken Ham’s Creation Museum is pornographic:

Let’s get BJ and Ken Ham to go at each other. That would be fun!

In another email today, BJ screams:

Calvin Klein is not only using group sex on billboards but has a pornographic clip with group sex on its website.

Sweet! I gotta check that out! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it. I looked all over. This is the closest I could find:

That isn’t porn, and it certainly isn’t group sex.

I really don’t know what we’re supposed to do about people like BJ. They see what doesn’t exist. You can’t fight crazy.

Which of these statements is false?

• Charles Lindbergh was the first to fly across the Atlantic.
• John Glenn was the first American in space.
• Charles Darwin discovered evolution.

They’re all false, of course. No scholar claims that any of them are true, yet there are some folks out there who somehow got their facts confused. I’ll get to that last misconception in a moment.

The Discovery Institute is always dreaming up new ways to sabotage American science education. They employ a whole staff in this endeavor. Among their Senior Fellows are Michael Behe, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, and Benjamin Wiker. I know who those first three are, but Wiker wasn’t ringing a bell.

According to a short bio on Amazon:

He is a senior fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical theology and is also a senior fellow with Discovery Institute. He has written several other books, most recently Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins’ Case Against God (co-authored with Scott Hahn) and 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others that Didn’t Help.

OK, so he has a religious bent, which might color anything he writes.

He has a new book, The Darwin Myth: The Life and Lies of Charles Darwin. From what I’ve seen of it, it should be subtitled The Life and Lies about Charles Darwin.

The Discovery Institute has been pushing this book for the last week. A few days ago, they told us that you can get a free chapter of the book! Here’s the pitch:

The ad makes the rather extraordinary claim that scientists are not allowed to believe in God. That probably comes as a surprise to the many scientists who do believe. Let’s see what else the ad says:

Casting aside Darwinism’s politically correct veneer, The Darwin Myth reveals:

• The Darwin Myth: Darwin insisted that evolution must be godless to be scientific

That’s just because he knew that natural explanations were sufficient to explain all of evolution. He wasn’t out to kill God. In fact, he knew his theory would throw a lot of religious people (including his wife) into a tizzy, so he withheld publication for many years. He was hardly an atheist avenger, as this ad implies.

• Charles Darwin didn’t “discover” evolution—he just put his name on it. (It was explored in the 17th Century, long before his time.)

Well they managed to get the first part of that statement correct. Evolution had been known for a while, because people saw the fossils. Animals were clearly changing over time. What Darwin came up with was an explanation for how the process worked. He also may have been the first to understand that evolution applied to all species throughout history and that everything evolved from a common ancestor. He was hardly just sticking his name on something that other people had discovered.

Throwing this statement into the ad is an interesting ploy. They’re trying to discredit Darwin in every way possible. If they can give you many examples of how he wasn’t credible or honest, then you’ll eventually start to doubt everything he said.

• Although not Darwin’s intention, Darwinism provides an open rationale for eugenics, genocide and racism

Speaking of discredited, there’s that hoary old myth. Interesting how they were eager to dispel the myth of Darwin discovering evolution, but they’re eager to perpetuate this one.

• Darwin’s own theory supported natural slavery—an institution he detested

This is a lie. Darwin’s theory showed that slavery was unnatural.

Anyway, I wanted to see what this book is all about, so I gave them one of my email addresses. There’s a little note somewhere that by giving them your address, you agree to receive their spam.

Shortly thereafter, my free chapter arrived. A day later came an email with an article by Pat Buchanan and a promise of more great articles by the likes of Ann Coulter and Newt Gingrich.

Uhh, no. Time to delete that address.

So anyway, I sat down tonight to read my prize. I must say, I’m very disappointed. This so-called “chapter” is only four pages long. I was robbed! I earned a real full-length chapter! I was exposed to a Pat Buchanan article trying to acquire it. Now I understand H.P. Lovecraft. His protagonists go insane if they see Cthulhu. I, too, have been subjected to an unspeakable horror.

Anyway, I read the chapter, and it’s just an introduction to the book. It hints at the anti-evolution lies from the ad, setting the stage for what the rest of the book is about. That’s about all I can tell from what they sent me, but it’s enough. Don’t buy the book. You shouldn’t have to pay for lies. You can get all you want for free from the Discovery Institute.

To answer the quiz: Charles Lindbergh was the first to fly solo across the Atlantic. John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth. Alan Shepard was the first American into space (on a sub-orbital flight).

Here are a few things I found on the web this morning that I really like. First up is the one I really believe in (but not in a religious way, ’cuz we don’t worship him):

Next is a University of Johannesburg ad (Click to embiggen. Yes, it’s a real word.):

Finally, this is completely off topic, but it’s a brilliant stop-motion animation. Modern CGI can be quite good, but you have to admire people who still do it old school.

I don’t think I’ve actually been in a coffee shop in a really long time. I don’t know why that is. What this means is that I don’t actually know if coffee shops still sell gum and Life Savers.

But in olden times (the 1970s), they did. It was always in the glass counter beneath the cash register. I guess the logic was that you’ll probably want to buy something minty to cover up that putrid breath you’ll have after eating their miserable food.

When we went out to eat when I was a little kid, I would always beg for gum or Life Savers as we were paying the bill. I didn’t actually want the gum or Life Savers; it was just a Pavlovian response to stimuli. My mother would always refuse (I think that was her Pavlovian response to my stimuli.). She’d say “You just ate! You can’t possibly want any more.” Her track record on this was impeccable. She never bought the gum. At least she stuck to her principles.

Through the technology of blogging, we will now jump the story forward 8 or 10 years. I was now in my mid-teens, and I was out with my mother one day. I don’t know where the rest of the family was; it was just us. Maybe she had taken me out to buy clothes or something. Somehow we wound up at Denny’s. Those were the days before they sexualized their menu. It was just regular food.

The waitress brought the bill and departed. My mother picked it up and said “Oh! It comes to $6.66!”

I think I was only vaguely aware of the number of the beast at that age, so I wasn’t fazed. My mother said “Some people think that if your bill comes to $6.66, your money goes straight to the devil!”

I thought that was quite humorous. I wasn’t even sure why the devil would want our money. Maybe once he collects enough of it, then he can buy somebody’s soul with it.

She then told me the story of one of her friends, who was highly religious. It seems this friend was driving a little too fast on the freeway one day, and she got herself pulled over by the CHP.

The cop gave this woman a speeding ticket. Then she looked at her odometer. The last three digits were 666! Satan made her speed!

I thought this was also quite humorous. My mother seemed to think it was funny, too. She certainly didn’t give me the impression that she took any of it seriously.

My mother considers herself Christian. She’s just not one of those church-going Christians. She’s not even a “Christmas & Easter” Christian. She’s probably a “too-much hassle” Christian.

That wasn’t always the case. She is, after all, the one who dragged me to frickin’ church every frakkin’ Sunday morning between the ages of 5 and 10. Then she suddenly lost interest in my moral development, and I never had to go to church again! In the absence of God’s guidance, I’ve been killing puppies and shoving old ladies in front of buses ever since. Don’t be like me. Stay in church, kids!

Anyway, we had finished our lunch at Denny’s, so we went to the front register to pay the bill. I thought it would be slightly amusing to watch my mother pay her “soul tax” to the devil. But what does she do?

She said “I’d also like to buy a pack of gum!”