Men and Women of God: Leave Me Alone

Perfection. I feel humbled.

The Blog of The Re-Enlightenment

If God has anything to tell me, The Lazy Fucker can speak to me directly instead of using brokers like you.

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Musical Roots

Sod it, I've had more than enough of the serious stuff for today. Instead, this…

If you want to know where my musical roots lie (you do, you do!), then this is it. My tastes have expanded over the years, but this is my benchmark. Two to three minutes of frenetic guitar and the choppy rhythm of a slapped double-bass. Drums optional.

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Offence—Yet Again

My, but we seem to be getting a lot of comments about offence and hurt feelings around here lately. This is the first of two posts talking directly to that. It is, I suppose, a brief "Why I do what I do" post. The next, hopefully this evening but probably tomorrow morning (I have a computer to rebuild for a friend in the meantime), will be about what goes on under the line, in comments.

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Parafisking Archbishop Sentamu

I've been meaning to do this since Sentamu made his little rant speech, but what with one thing and another, I never got past the third paragraph. Which means it's hardly topical any more, in this fast-paced world we live in. Still, I ran across the document I'd saved my first partial draft in, and thought "Why not?" So here is my parafisking of The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu's speech in the House of Lords, during the same-sex marriage debate, some weeks back.

Oh, and I think I've just invented the word "parafisk." To fisk is to take someone's speech, blog-post or such, and criticise it in a point-by-point essay. To paraphrase is to, well, paraphrase; to say the same thing in different words; to reiterate with changed vocabulary; to rephrase but keep the same meaning. So to parafisk is to paraphrase on a point-by-point basis, okay?

Anyways, Gentle Reader, here's Sentamu, to start us off…

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Checks & Balances

You'll never see such a zealot as those who claim
Their zealotry's done in a god's holy name.
For those who would harm in secular cause—
Whose greed for power leads to secular wars—
Eventually fall as they're shown to be liars;
Are tested in Earthly and visible fires.
But those who aim for the sweet by-and-by
Say their proof is in Heaven, their pie's in the sky.
No check's close to hand, to balance their claim,
No cost's too high, of death, fear and pain.
No Earthly reason can temper their acts—
No test in this life will hold them to facts.
Their Paradise trumps an ocean of blood
Spilled in God's name; a Biblical flood.

—Daz

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FNIMN: They Do Things Differently There

Yoiks, it's Friday again! Okay, this week's Friday Night Is Music Night might be a bit tougher. It's on the theme of "historical stuff," given recent conversations. For the purposes of this post, "history" will be defined as referring (at least in passing) to actual events or people, and placed in time at least twenty years before the song in question was published.
—Daz

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“Without History, We’re Just Making Shit Up.”—Waylon Hedegaard

Back when I first stumbled into the online atheist community, one of the first blogs I regularly engaged with, after a short spell of arguing under YouTube videos (not a great venue), was that of the sadly now inactive Blessed Atheist, who had set himself the rather too monumental task of examining the entire Bible from a literalist perspective (something many fundamentalists claim to, but seldom actually, do). It's been over a year since his last post appeared there, and the occasional comment which turns up in my feed is nearly always spam. Such is life; bloggers become non-bloggers, or move on to other projects; and Mr Hedegaard always was something of a workaholic, having way more irons in way more fires than is conducive to a relaxed life. Something had to go, and apparently it was that blog which went. Ho-hum.

Anyways, partly because I feel something of a debt of gratitude to him, having been so warmly welcomed at his blog, and partly because the subject is both interesting and important, here's Waylon Hedegaard, in a video spotted some time back by Rustiguzzi, talking about the history of the labour union. It's a four-part series, and I intend to post them weekly for, obviously, four weeks. If you're impatient, though, the rest of the series is available here.
—Daz

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Apologetics

Pondering apologetics, just now, I had a momentary, all-too-fleeting vision…

Of every priest, pastor, imam, shaman, witch-doctor, vicar, rabbi—every cleric in the world…

Gathering together in a huge stadium and proclaiming to the world…

We're sorry!

Now that really would be meaningful apologetics.

I'm not holding my breath, though.
—Daz

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An Open Letter To Mary Speakman, Headteacher At Altrincham Grammar School For Girls

Silencing the victims is never the solution.

shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows

Dear Mrs Speakman,

.

I recently read in The Guardian about the efforts of one of your students to set up a Feminist Society within your school, and about the backlash she and her fellow students have suffered as a result of it. Almost as disheartening as the rampant misogyny of their detractors, however, was the response of the school itself, which was to require their work to be taken down from the internet.

.

In your words (my emphasis), “We are committed to protecting the safety and welfare of our students, which extends to their safety online… As such, we will take steps to recommend students remove words or images that they place online that could compromise their safety or that of other students at the school.”

.

Mrs Speakman, not only is this contradictory – you start out by saying that the school is committed to protecting…

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Sent From My Windows™ PC

Re: your email

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. In ut ornare orci. Mauris id molestie nulla, et aliquet sem. Sed dapibus sagittis ante, vel facilisis ipsum. Ut sollicitudin libero non congue tempor. Suspendisse vitae tortor eleifend, condimentum justo dignissim, euismod risus.

Sent from my iGod iI'm iSo iSmug iAbout iOwning iThis iOverpriced iTat, iBased iPurely iOn iThe iFact iThat iIt's iNot iMade iBy iMicrosoft.

Fuck me, but that's annoying. Don't Apple-users ever get tired of being used as Apple's free advertising conduit?
—Daz

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