Over de hostie, 30 jaar geleden ...

Voor de onder ons Nederlandstaligen:

http://weblogs.vpro.nl/radioarchief/2007/11/29/de-affaire-komrij-vervang-de-hostie-door-aan-schijfjes-gesneden-abortusjes/

Het eerste fragmentje is HILARISCH !!!

For the non-dutch a rough translation (sketch done by a Dutch comic 30 years ago):

Lets change the eucharist ritual, instead of some bread product they should use the flesh of aborted children, Catholics say aborted fetuses are God's children anyway this would solve the abortion question because abortion would be allowed without any guilt and the wafer would be replaced by a delicious sweetbread.  But by all means lets keep the wine, catholisism owes too much to drinking anyway.

Challenge for Catholics

Suppose I have 2 communion wafers, one is an ordinary communion wafer straight out of the box (it was raining when it was taken out of the box so some water may have fallen on that wafer), the other has undergone transubstantiation in a church by a priest.

If any catholic can tell me how I will be able to distinguish one from the other I will publicly convert to catholicism and send a letter to the pope stating that I was wrong and that atheism is bunk.

(also I will do all the work for that catholic to enter and win the JREF $1million)

update: this is off course in response to Wafergate

Atheist Nexus

I added a little badge to the right ---->


View my page on Atheist Nexus


They had some startup controversy but I think they're quite legit and it could be a good, needed addition to things like Facebook

Pole dancer acquitted

The following link is in dutch and I doubt there will be any foreign articles about this even though it is something that could be a success on many "weird news" sites.

http://www.deredactie.be/cm/de.redactie/oostvlaanderen/080711_paaldanseres

Let me tell you what happened, a pole dancer from Knesselare, Belgium had a retired priest as a client (surprise, surprise, NOT ;-) ) and this priest let her use his car for "services rendered" (wink wink).
Now that's all well but this girl needed some oil for her act and used what she found in the car, now this was no ordinary oil, it was holy oil and the priest didn't like that so took her to court.
Thankfully our court system does not stand for such silliness and said that since it was proven that the use of the car was granted by the priest and that oil is oil (I don't know why her lawyer gave a statement in her defense that she "used the oil for other than holy reasons in her profession") the girl is fully acquitted for the infractions against the priest, YAY for reason ;-)
(to be complete: the article mentions that she does have to do some community work and pay a fine for other small infractions)

Catholic Blasphemy

Oh yeah!
Very relevent to PZ's latest post
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php#more

How do they know that

Another twinkling star in the sky perhaps?

Father Damien en route to be a saint

It's on the news here 'cause he was a Belgian, and I'm not saying that he didn't do good, even if his wiki page has a positive bias the man still did good.
However the good he did while alive was real and deserves respect and remembrance but why do some humans feel the need to supplement that with imaginary good and a fantasy of continued life?

What also strikes me as odd is that the "miracle cures" are the usual (easy?) cancer and a seemingly banal tummy ache.
You'd think a man who devoted his life to the sufferers of Hansen's disease (leprosy) and having contracted and died of the same disease would at least cure somebody afflicted with that, but I guess in the afterlife he must have gained some knowledge that it's not a problem anymore or perhaps there's a learning curve and everyone has to start with the easy stuff before they can move up to more difficult diseases, who knows, a tummy ache in 1895, a cancer in 2000, such a step in 100 years suggests that in about 100 years he may be able to grow someone's limb back.

Quick post

It's been a while since my last post, good weather has arrived and I wanna spend some time with my daughter.

Just listened to this (it was posted on RichardDawkins.net by Nick6742 and he's actually the one defending atheism
It's quite interesting, I can't believe that the girl at 33:10 is actually studying to be a doctor.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4814737602943516661&hl=en

I hope I never get her!