Halloween Hullabaloo: Goin’ Psycho

Okey-dokey, then. It's Halloween. Six numbers from me, of an unashamedly psychobilly bent. Feel free to add your own ghoulish examples, from any genre, in comments.
—Daz

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A Petition To Keep Sales Reps Out Of NHS Maternity Wards

Via change.org comes this disturbing news about patients in NHS maternity wards being preyed upon by sales reps; and we're paying them to do it!

… In maternity wards across the country Bounty sales reps abound and an alarming number of new parents are reporting feeling harassed and pestered by them. Even worse some are reporting being misled, lied to and disrespected at a time when they are at their most vulnerable. Why is this being allowed in our NHS? And why is Bounty being paid by HMRC to distribute Child Benefit forms as they travel the wards?

In 2011 – 2012 HMRC paid Bounty £90,000 to distribute Child Benefit claim forms within the packs that they hand out to new parents on wards. Bounty has become the only paid vehicle for distribution of these important forms. Why? Why not give the forms out when a birth is registered – a sure fire way to reach 100% of new parents without the involvement of a commercial enterprise and the blurred boundaries that this seems to have created.

Child Benefit forms and Bounty's role in distributing them has become a hot topic over the past few months of this campaign, as it has emerged that some Bounty reps have been misleading parents about the need to hand over their personal information to the rep, before they can have the form. This abuse of the situation Bounty has found itself in, as the main distributor of the form (by a very long shot) needs to stop.

Please sign this petition.
—Daz

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Pie In The Sky Has No Nutritional Value

I'd like to give some free advice
You should remember well;
There won't be smiles in Paradise,
There'll be no tears in Hell.
Be your preacher e'er so nice,
Illusion's what they sell.
This time on Earth's your only life
So you should live it well.

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Morals At Knife-Point: A Point Missed

If violence is how you show
Your highfalutin moral rectitude—
Well, please excuse, if I seem slow
Or maybe just a little bloody rude,
But it seems to me you're rather dumb.
Your logic has a certain toilet-taint.
Did you pull it from your bum?
'cause "moral" is exactly what it ain't.

—Daz

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Dictionary Atheism

I have to tell you, Gentle Reader, that I really really do not grok the dictionary atheist (because: Deep Rifts!!!!) argument. That is, the argument that we cannot say that disbelief in gods will have any consequences for the disbeliever other than not believing in gods. (Though it's true that we cannot say what those consequences will be for any particular person, notwithstanding my conviction that they should lead to a liberal worldview.)

Allow me to indulge in what might seem a digression…

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FNIMN: Whether ‘Tis Nobler In The Mind

So this week's Friday Night Is Music Night is on the theme of questions.

Do you, Gentle Reader, have any suggestions for songs on that theme? If you do, feel free to add them in comments.
—Daz

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There Are No Atheists

Reblogging this so that (a) folks at my blog can have a fucking good laugh at the erm, “logic,” and (b) i can point out that it’s fucking hilarious, without having my comment spirited away where the woodbine twineth.

Seriously, if anyone can sort out the word-salad and explain to me how not believing in gods equals believing in gods, I’ll… I dunno, but I’ll think of some kind of reward.

CWoznicki Think Out Loud

I have often heard it said that there are no such thing as atheists, even atheists believe in God. Now, no atheist would ever agree to this proposition, however I always believed that it was a clever play on words (to be an atheist = (literally) to be  “without” “god.” Hence you need to believe in God in order to deny that there is a God. Clever. Well along comes David Bentley Hart in The Experience of God and makes a clear argument why even atheists believe in God. Here is what he has to say:

It is an old maxim — one that infuriates many unbelievers, but that happens to be true nonetheless — that one cannot meaningfully reject belief in the God of classical theism. If one refuses to believe in God out of one’s love of the truth, one affirms the reality of God in that very…

View original post 115 more words

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The Road Back To Reading Gaol

In the name of a god who you say
Places love at the noon of eternal day,
You see love and persecute it;
It's not like yours, so you try to uproot it.

You hang, you jail, you bully, deride;
In the name of this love you've deified.
In the name of "love," you've harkened back
To the time of the screws, the cat, the rack.

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The Miracle

When the plane screamed down to Earth, like a homeward-heading rock
The news was buzzed around the world, and folks looked on in shock.
Four hundred bodies, burned and broken, strewn across the land
And it seemed that not a single soul escaped Death's clammy hand.

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Theological Building Techniques

Take a brick; suspend it on its ownsome in the air.
Add another at its side, so that you have a pair.
Add more bricks, and further bricks and more bricks still, and then
Add another row atop, and more atop again.

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