And now for our first hymn, written by Pasta Theologian…

‘Good grief!’, I thought, ‘they’ve finally opened up the God slot to non-Christian religions! How odd that they’d choose a broadcast of a Pastafarian service to usher in this new policy!’

After the hymn was over, the minister began his sermon, and I realised that he was Welsh, and therefore must’ve said:

And now for our first hymn, written by pastor-theologian…

I am not at my best in the morning.

Despite the vast number of religions, nearly everyone in the world believes in the same things: the existence of a soul, an afterlife, miracles, and the divine creation of the universe. Recently psychologists doing research on the minds of infants have discovered two related facts that may account for this phenomenon. One: human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena. And two: this predisposition is an incidental by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry. Which leads to the question … is God an accident?

As seen on Metafilter, where you can read a good, wide-ranging discussion on the issues raised by article.

> The Co-operative Bank has asked an evangelical Christian group to close its account because of its anti-homosexual views. The bank said the opinions of Christian Voice were incompatible with its support for diversity.

Well done that bank. Stephen Green, who leads this tiny band of extremists, has responded with spectacular hypocrisy, bleating that the Co-op are discriminating against him. He seems to think that this discrimination is bad, not at all like the discrimination based on sexuality, gender and religous belief advocated by Green and his theocratic chums. You can listen to the bleating on the Today Programme.

The BBC airwaves have disgraced themselves. The Mail went mad with its front-page headlines, “Safe in Heaven” and the next day “Amen”. Even this august organ, which sprang from the loins of nonconformist dissent, astounded many readers with its broad acres of Pope reverencing.

…

He [the Pope] was a good, caring man nevertheless, they say, as if it were a minor aberration. But genuflecting before this corpse is scarcely different to parading past Lenin: they both put extreme ideology before human life and happiness, at unimaginable human cost. How dare our prime minister go there in our name to give the Vatican our approval for this? Will he think of Africa when on his knees today? I trust history will some day express astonishment at moral outrage wasted on sexual trivia while papal celebrity and charisma cloaked this great Vatican crime.

…

Disgracefully, the European rich quietly ignore the church’s outlandish teachings on contraception without rebelling on behalf of the helpless third-world poor who die for their misplaced faith. Those “civilised” Catholics have as much blood on their hands as the Vatican they support. They are like the Bollinger Bolsheviks who defended the USSR and a murderous ideology that they could do much to change. For today, just remember what lies beneath all this magnificent display.

Wonderful stuff.

The piece is full of the usual Messianic bluster from Stephen Green - he wants to watch himself, I hear God considers Pride a bit of sin - but the last line is telling:

Would he draw the line at breaking the law? Green answers thoughtfully: “Yes… unless the law contravenes the law of God.”

The law of God is, famously, not very clearly stated, and open to interpretation. This is how it came to pass that I see the New Testament as a rather sensible set of instructions to be kind to other people and share your things, while Mr. Green chooses to skip those bits in favour of some ancient and obscure Jewish rules about men not lying with men as they would with women, or spilling one’s seed on the ground, or, er, being a gay policeman.

So, we can look forward to Green and his supporters taking their lead from American ‘Christians’ and, you know, killing honourable members of the medical profession to save a few gooey little bundles of cells, pushing women onto the knitting needles of backstreet abortionists? Fabulous.

All this is almost enough to make me reverse my position on the Prevention of Terrorism Bill. There is at least one person who needs to be put under house arrest without access to telephones and the internet for the safety of the public: Stephen Green.

As an aside, I’d know more about this story if Newsnight Scotland hadn’t crashed onto the screen last night midway through a revealing item about CV on Newsnight proper. To tell us about escaped mink and troublesome crayfish.

My right hon. Friend will be aware of a bunch of fundamentalist thugs called Christian Voice, who have recently strong-armed a cancer charity into refusing a donation from the production “Jerry Springer—The Opera”. I do not care how good or bad the production is, but it should concern us all that a cancer charity of all things can be intimidated into that position by such a dodgy outfit. Can we have a debate on the matter?

It’s not just mildly rebellious Labour MPs having a go, either. Christian Today reports on mainstream Christian reaction, including the C of E response:

It is absolutely not what we would expect people in the Church of England to identify with as being a correct or kind way to behave towards others. People should be encouraged to show kindness and compassion to others and should not be in the business of stifling that.

If you want to follow the story, it looks like the best place to head is MediaWatchWatch, a weblog devoted to tracking the activities of fundamentalist Christian pressure groups, including Christian Voice, MediaWatch (cronies of the late, unlamented Mary Whitehouse) and the Operation Christian Vote.

The downside to the exposure and condemnation of Christian Voice, as MediaMediaWatcher, David pointed out in the comments to the previous entry on the affair, is that Stephen Green et al will be finding succour in the rising public donations to Maggie’s, since they’ve claimed from the outset that this is the outcome they desired and expected.

The upside, I hope, will be that now Green’s profile seems to have shifted from ‘harmless weirdo’ to ‘cancer patient bully’ folk will begin to realise that these kooks can wield considerable power — just ask an American — and, unless something is done to curtail the influence of fringe religionists, be they Sikhs, Christians or plain old crackpots, the arts are in danger of censorship-by-intimidation by self-appointed moral guardians, whose ‘morals’ aren’t shared by the majority of the British public, who, at a guess, couldn’t give a toss whether a ‘blasphemous’ play is performed or not.

Using strong-arm tactics that a Mafioso would recognise well, the group contacted Maggie’s Centres to suggest that accepting a donation from the Springer cast and crew would offend Christian patients and potential donors, and that if Maggie’s were to accept the donation, Christian Voice activists would picket their offices and care centres.

Stephen Green, the outfit’s National Director, appeared on the Today Programme this morning, and was brazen, constantly repeating the claim that Christian Voice had ‘saved [Maggie’s] from a public relations disaster’, with an audible smirk in his voice as he sought to imply that his organisation had done the charity a service by helping them avoid accepting ‘tainted’ funds, knowing all the while that any ‘public relations disaster’ would have been down to the flying God-pickets drafted in to disturb recovering, and dying, cancer patients and their families. (Listen to the Today item.)

Fucking scum.

I really can’t think of many things less Christian than denying cancer patients respite, taking advantage of their situation to publicise a cause, and bullying a charity which provides much-needed care and support.

If you’ve not heard of Maggie’s Centres, you can read about their commitment to providing beautiful places where stress management and emotional support programmes combine to foster Maggie’s aim to help folk make a ‘healthy adjustment to the impact of cancer’ in their lives.

By way of contrast, Christian Voice gleefully compare abortion to the Holocaust, berate the Police for their belated inclusive policies towards gay officers, and state as an article of faith the need to replace democracy with theocracy, favouring a government devoted to ‘the maintenance of freedom and justice solely in accordance with Biblical principles.’ Their one contribution to ‘medical’ matters? A link to Living Waters, a ministry which seeks to repair what they call the ‘sexual brokenness’ of being gay.

On the plus side, these bleating, thoroughly un-Christian reactionaries may well end up doing Maggie’s a favour - just as their anti-Springer protest boosted the ratings for the musical’s screening, this horrible bullying episode will hopefully lead to a massive boost in donations to the charity.

You can donate here.

Update: I couldn’t find online references to the news when I wrote the above, but now Maggie’s condemn Christian Voice’s publicity-hungry tactics in The Scotsman, the Daily Record have a misleading headline in place, and The Independent (registration required) lambast Christian voice, while the BBC report on the story. See also, this Guardian profile of Green. I also started this MetaFilter thread, which will probably focus on how dreadful Christians are in general, but might nudge a few folk to donate.

If this is true, it is our duty as VMAT2-lacking atheists, agnostics and all round unspiritualists to fuck each and every fundamentalist we encounter, so that we might slowly rid the world of this unfortunate evolutionary aberration. (Homosexals may prefer to deposit their sperm or eggs at religion-friendly fertility clinics.)

No matter how vile a prospect this may be - the religous do tend to ming rather - or how tricky you might find it to get a religious person into bed without converting to their faith and marrying them, you must try your best, lest members of the human race be bound forever to theism, pantheism and polytheism.