…well, sometimes. The score is: Australia 1; Georgia 0. (You must remember that when you’re dealing with gawd, your chances of getting just what you want are “iffy” at best. Actually, you get nothing at all…)
You will remember this from last November. The fundamentalist governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, was desperate for water. His thirsty constituents in Atlanta, a mega-city that has never heard of “urban sprawl=bad” (and is also the state capital), were running out of water. Lakes Lanier and Alatoona were reduced to mud puddles. Who do you call?

Well, you try a conference call with the Original Rainman. You’d do that, wouldn’t you?

Here’s the backstory:

Via TheCarpetbaggerReport, November 8, 2007

Georgia is in the midst of an awful drought, so Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) has decided to, well, just take a look. (thanks to reader K.Z.)

What to do when the rain won’t come? If you’re Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, you pray.

The governor will host a prayer service next week to ask for relief from the drought gripping the Southeast.

“The only solution is rain, and the only place we get that is from a higher power,” Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said on Wednesday.

Perdue’s office has sent out invitations to leaders from several faiths for the service, set for Tuesday.

Heather Teilhet, Perdue’s spokeswoman, added, “Georgia needs rain. The issue at the heart of our drought problems is a lack of rain. And there is nothing the government can do to make that happen. The governor recognizes that the request has got to be made to a higher power.”

It’s the 21st century. I just thought I’d mention that.

Apparently Sonny only reads the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and maybe just the comics pages. If he had read Section A, he might have found a cautionary tale, made just for him.

AFP (Agence France-Presse), via RawStory, June 28, 2007

Dramatic flooding replaced relentless drought in parts of eastern Australia Thursday, as Prime Minister John Howard expressed hopes that the country’s worst drought in a century may be coming to an end.

[...]

[W]ith forecasters declaring the “El Nino” weather pattern blamed for the drought had ended and predicting the onset of the wetter “La Nina” system, Howard said he hoped climactic conditions may be turning.

But the prime minister, who last month urged Australians to pray for rain after announcing severe water restrictions in Australia’s food bowl, the Murray-Darling Basin, was cautious about whether the experts were correct.

“I hope they’re right, we can all say hallelujah,” Howard told reporters. “We hope they’re right, but let’s wait and see.

“We’ve had a lot of rain, not all of it in the right places, and we still have to keep our fingers crossed that we can get more water into the Murray-Darling Basin.”

[As of the date above, the "wild weather" had claimed nine lives.]

Sonny’s state legislature, taking a more sanguinary view of the problem, decided to tackle the problem in an old-fashioned “land grab”.

Christian Science Monitor, February 15, 2008

But now the Peach State wants more, even the 1.6-square-mile nook that makes up the town of Lookout Mountain, Tenn., just north of the town of Lookout Mountain, Ga. Actually, it’s not really this crag that Georgia wants, but access to the Tennessee River that flows below it [through Chattanooga]. Tapping the Tennessee could slake Atlanta’s thirst as drought strains the megacity.

[...]

Tennesseans say that Atlanta has grown pell-mell at the expense of other Southern states and that the drought reveals Georgia’s lack of planning.

For a map of Georgia’s drought, dated June 12, 2008, click here. (Roughly estimated at 60% of Georgia is in “severe hydrological drought”, 20% in “moderate hydrological drought”, 15% “below normal”, and 5% “above 25% of normal”)

Non sequitor alert: Tennessee might own the Tennessee River but some of it’s citizens can’t lay claim to a functioning brain.

Last week, Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee member Fred Hobbs set off a firestorm when he was asked by reporters why “Blue Dog Democrat” Representative Lincoln Davis was delaying his endorsement of Obama, and Hobbs answered,

“I’m not sure we know enough about him. He’s got some bad connections, and he may be terrorist connected for all I can tell. It sounds kind of like he may be.”

Ya see, some of these down-home folks clowns just luv teh Fox…

WTF?******

This will be my last post for a while. The doctor has released me to go back to work. While I do have wi-fi, I don’t have much time to get online. If I was a solo driver, continuing to post would be easier. But team drivers can (and do) keep the truck rolling 24/7. The upshot is the money. We’ve wiped out three of our four credit cards and are now working on the resulting discrepancy from having our home foreclosed on. Ahhh, life in George Bush’s America…

Slow down, America. It is not your gawd-given right to drive fast.

I found this over at Pharyngula today. It makes me a bit queasy that the guys with the big guns invited such a big nutjob to speak at their prayer breakfast. During his speech, Ham starts talking about life on other planets and doesn’t think there is any based on the following “logic” (or lack, thereof).

The real world is the biblical world–a universe designed by God with the Earth at the spiritual focal point, not an evolutionary universe teeming with life. … Extraterrestrial life is an evolutionary concept; it does not comport with the biblical teachings of the uniqueness of the Earth and the distinct spiritual position of human beings.

So there you have it again, it’s written in their ancient mythology book, so it must be true.

Ham continues:

Jesus remains the “God man,” as he is our Savior. Jesus did not become a “Martian” or a “Klingon” or some other being—he became a human (as God).

So, it wouldn’t make any sense for there to be intelligent beings like us on other planets—they would be suffering from the effects of sin but can’t have salvation, as only descendants of Adam can be saved.

One day the whole universe will be wound up—the judgment by fire—and there will be a New Heavens and Earth. I always say that there can’t be intelligent life like us on other planets—the Bible does not say there is or is not animal or plant life on other planets—but I highly suspect not

Ok, where are my antacids?

Gaza truce takes hold, skepticism abounds

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Guns went quiet as a six-month truce between Israel and Gaza Strip militants took effect early Thursday, but there was widespread skepticism about its ability to hold.

The cease-fire, which Egypt labored for months to conclude, aims to bring an end to a year of fighting that has killed seven Israelis and more than 400 Palestinians — many of them civilians — since the Islamic militant group Hamas wrested control of Gaza a year ago.

It also obliges Israel to ease a punishing blockade of the coastal strip. The sanctions were designed to pressure Palestinian militants to halt their rocket and mortar fire on southern Israel, but have driven ordinary Gazans even deeper into destitution and confined them to their tiny seaside territory.

“I want to be able to sleep without the sound of shelling or warplanes,” said Eman Mahmoud, a 22-year-old Gaza university student. “We have been living a nightmare. … I am not sure how long it is going to last, but my dream is that this calm will continue.”

Tal Mahatzili of the southern Israeli farming community of Nir Oz said she was afraid the tranquility Thursday morning was “the quiet before the storm.”

The Atheist Jew pointed me to this. I cried afterwards and I don’t cry easily. This actually happens in today’s world, and this is the first I have heard of it. Every year, hundreds of children are buried alive in the Amazon, all because of superstitious belief that still exists in their primitive tribes.

A rare documentary insight into how tribal superstition, ritual and ignorance evolved into worship.

An elder of a primitive Stone-Age Amazon tribe performs a sacrificial ritual.

“He must die! For the good of the tribe!”

Could this be the origin the Judeo-Christian crucifixion/scapegoating myth?

Is this ritual, in part, the basis of modern religions?

The following video contains indigenous nudity and some very disturbing footage…VERY disturbing, so if you are quite sensitive, pass on it and take my word for it.

Below the video are links to find out more, and where you can go to try to help stop this horrific practice of infanticide.

Rally to Help Brazil

Voice of a survivor: Hakani

Additional info:

This is not a hoax, this really happens:

Here is a story from the UK Telegraph

Babies born into some Indian tribes in the Amazon are being buried alive, a practice that is being covered up by the Brazilian authorities out of respect for tribal culture.

The tradition is based on beliefs that babies with any sort of physical defect have no souls and that others, such as twins or triplets, are also “cursed”.

Infanticide has claimed the lives of dozens of babies each year, say campaigners fighting to end the practice.

Babies who are girls, who have some disability or who have unmarried mothers are all in danger of an early death in a shallow grave in the rainforest. Others are suffocated with leaves, poisoned or simply abandoned in the jungle.

According to Dr Marcos Pelegrini, a doctor working in the Yanomami Tribe Health Care District, 98 children were killed by their mothers in 2004 alone.

Campaigners say that the true figure is obscured by officials who often record cases of infanticide as simple malnutrition. At the same time, family anguish over infanticide has led to many adult tribal members committing suicide.

Isn’t it great when you see signs of assholery tolerated under the guise of either procedure or evangelism?

Rapture-Ready Evangelicals Impersonate Army Officers

What I found is that the [United States Service Command] was a private “disaster relief” organization with no official military affiliation. USSC no longer seems to be an active organization, but appears to have recently been replaced by something called the United States Operational Support Command (USOSC), another private organization with a deceptively official sounding name [...] What’s different about the USOSC, and formerly the USSC, is that their members wear military uniforms and rank. This is not only deceptive. IT’S ILLEGAL! Title 10 of the U.S. Code strictly prohibits any person who isn’t a member of the armed forces from wearing “the uniform, or a distinctive part of the uniform, of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps” or “a uniform any part of which is similar to a distinctive part of the uniform of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps.” There are some exceptions to this law, but none of them would apply to the USSC or USOSC. Even the members of these organizations who are former or retired military, and permitted under certain circumstances to wear the uniform of their former service, are breaking the law. Those who qualify under these exceptions can only wear the uniform of the branch they served in, and cannot, of course, wear the insignia of a higher rank than they held in the military. The USSC and USOSC use the same rank structure as the U.S. Army, but have their own commissioning and promotion qualifications under which most enlisted members seem to hold the rank of sergeant major, and colonels and generals abound. When in their Class “A” and Class “B” uniforms, those USOSC members who did serve in the military wear all the genuine military ribbons and medals they earned during their service; they get more ribbons from the USOSC; and former USSC members add their USSC ribbons. The result is a chest full of ribbons like you’d see on a real general. [...] New recruits passing through a MEPS, unfamiliar with various military uniforms and insignia, would have no idea that “Major” Sherman is not an Army officer, and would probably think he outranked the first sergeant and other enlisted personnel who work there.

And, in other news…

Impotent paraplegic told: no church wedding

An Italian bishop has reportedly told a young paraplegic he cannot have a church wedding because he is impotent, despite his fiancee being aware of the problem. Salvatore de Ciuco, spokesman for Bishop Lorenzo Chiarinelli of Viterbo in central Italy, told SkyTG24 television: “No bishop, no priest can celebrate a wedding when he knows of admitted impotence as it is a motive for annulment” of the marriage. The 26-year-old groom, who took part in a civil marriage ceremony on Saturday in Viterbo, has been paraplegic since he was involved in a car accident. The curate of the parish who was banned from marrying the couple was present at the ceremony.

When are lies, crimes, and assholes not really lies, crimes, and assholes? When it’s done in the name of Jesus, of course!

Praise Be! Glory!

I ran across this while doing a search for something else,and I thought it was quite comical, and is a fitting follow-up to my last post. Not only is God answering prayers for special favors to win golf games, and football games, etc, he is now got his own sex toy advice hotline! No wonder he can’t save people from all these natural disasters, disease, famine, abuse, neglect, etc. He’s much, much too busy with other things, like Joy Wilson’s sex life.

The Joy of Christian Sex Toys

NPR.org, March 21, 2008 · Joy Wilson went looking for something to spice up her marriage without compromising her Christian beliefs.

Finding nothing, she founded her own “sin-free” sex toy business. Book22.com caters to the Christian community with books, toys and occasional advice. The name refers to the Song of Solomon, the extended love poem that forms the 22nd book of the Bible.

Wilson says that after the birth of her first child, she had trouble rekindling her desire for intimacy. She and her husband went looking for marital aids, and found that Internet searches for products as tame as massage oil led to sites with pornographic images. “I was really surprised that it was that bad,” she says.

She and her husband talked it over and decided that there must be a way for conservative people to add a spark to their romantic lives. She says their site steers clear of certain types of sexual activity that they believe are unholy. And they carefully consider which new products to add.

“We pray about things before we add them to our site,” she says. “We live our lives very openly in front of Jesus, so we just kind of pray for direction about which way he would have us go, and I have to be honest with you — he’s really surprised us. … Almost our whole entire ’special order’ page has come about from that.”

Wilson says she and her husband are blessed with good health, but that God has shown them that other couples might need help from a particular toy.

On our blog, an open thread: Sex toys as a Christian ministry.

(If cartoon doesn’t show, go here: Why life Isn’t fair.)
Yep, Bob Smith needs to win a golf bet, Sam Jones needs to win at the horse races, and football players want their team to defeat their opponents who are also praying for victory. Starving children need food, critically ill people need organ transplants because their “intelligent design” isn’t so intelligent, and hospitals are full of children and adults who are being prayed for . . . all the while many people are praising their god for their new Mercedes or SUV, for their child getting into a college of their choice, or that brand new house and other possessions, etc. (or praying to thank their imaginary genie friend for favoring them when the killer tornado came through and wiped out their neighbors.)

It is ludicrous that people actually believe that there is a god who listens to billions and billions of prayers and wishes (trivial or otherwise) from billions of people (while all the while keeping track of who is bad and who is good, who is going to heaven and who is going to hell as well as paying attention to all those billions and billions ghosts up in heaven that are worshiping him.)

How BIZARRE this belief is that there is a god who is some sort of customer service prayer rep, meeting the demands of billions of people, putting some on hold and ignores them while he waits on the next one in line! How weird that so many people think they are the special pet of this god when their wishes are granted even though so many people are praying far more crucial and desperate prayers and are overlooked. When those prayers aren’t answered, and they are asked to explain why god favored them with a new car and fancy home while other prayers by starving people sleeping in the dirt go unanswered, one explanation I hear on a regular basis is “ours is not to know the ways of God” or “we are not to question the will of God”. The people who really puzzle me are the ones who are starving and sleeping in the dirt and keep calling out to the imaginary genie even when that genie never grants their wish, and no help ever comes to them unless human beings arrive on the scene.

Completely goofy.

(This post was provoked by god botherers in my area who write comments to our area newspaper about how god saved them from the recent violent weather, or how when they aren’t spared they will gain strength from their Sky Daddy who allowed their home to be completely destroyed. If we send in a letter to the editor of these newspapers stating that random crap happens and THERE IS NO GOD…they won’t print it. We have tried a couple times already.)

I have long maintained that the Old Testament (and by extension, the Talmud/Torah) are a compilation of borrowed myths and stories as the Israelites moved from one culture to another.

To be honest, though, I much prefer the Greek and Egyptian mythologies. Their deities tend to be richer (or darker) in character, more interesting by far than the drab micro-managing psychopathic one-note weirdo named YHVH.

And those Egyptians! Whew! While the Greek godset was content to be changing back and forth from animals (or varied other shapes) to their original humanoid forms, the Egyptian godset were patchwork creatures both animal and human.

One such was Ma’at:

Ma’at, to have been pronounced as *Muʔʕat (Muh-aht), was the Ancient Egyptian concept of order—law, morality, and justice which was deified as a goddess. Ma’at was seen as being charged with regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the deities, after she had set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of creation.

Later, as a goddess in other traditions of the Egyptian pantheon, where most goddesses were paired with a male aspect, her masculine counterpart was Thoth and their attributes are the same.Like Thoth, she was seen to represent the Logos of Plato. After the rise of Ra they were depicted as guiding his boat, one on either side.

After her role in creation and continuously preventing the universe from returning to chaos, her primary role in Egyptian mythology dealt with the weighing of souls that took place in the underworld, Duat. Her feather was the measure that determined whether the souls (considered to reside in the heart) of the departed would reach the paradise of afterlife successfully.

(Snip)

In Duat, the Egyptian underworld, the hearts of the dead were said to be weighed against her single Shu feather, symbolically representing the concept of Ma’at, in the Hall of Two Truths. A heart which was unworthy was devoured by the goddess Ammit and its owner condemned to remain in Duat. The heart was considered the location of the soul by ancient Egyptians. Those people with good, (and pure), hearts were sent on to Aaru. Osiris came to be seen as the guardian of the gates of Aaru after he became part of the Egyptian pantheon and displaced Anubis in the Ogdoad tradition.

(End snip)

The ancient Egyptians had some weird aspects in their deities – Atum-Ra created himself, they had death gods galore (hearts and skulls, hmmm…), and trying to keep track of who was father/mother to whom becomes a chore best relegated to Egyptologists.

The reason I even bring this up, is the interesting 42 Negative Confessions:

1. I have not committed sin.

2. I have not committed robbery with violence.

3. I have not stolen.

4. I have not slain men or women

5. I have not stolen food.

6. I have not swindled offerings.

7. I have not stolen from God/Goddess.

8. I have not told lies.

9. I have not carried away food.

10. I have not cursed.

11. I have not closed my ears to truth

12. I have not committed adultery.

13. I have not made anyone cry.

14. I have not felt sorrow without reason

15. I have not assaulted anyone

16. I am not deceitful.

17. I have not stolen anyone’s land

18. I have not been an eavesdropper

19. I have not falsely accused anyone.

20. I have not been angry without reason.

21. I have not seduced anyone’s wife.

22. I have not polluted myself.

23. I have not terrorized anyone.

24. I have not disobeyed the Law.

25. I have not been exclusively angry.

26. I have not cursed God/Goddess.

27. I have not behaved with violence.

28. I have not caused disruption of peace.

29. I have not acted hastily or without thought.

30. I have not overstepped my boundaries of concern.

31. I have not exaggerated my words when speaking.

32. I have not worked evil.

33. I have not used evil thoughts, words or deeds.

34. I have not polluted the water

35. I have not spoken angrily or arrogantly.

36. I have not cursed anyone in thought, word or deeds.

37. I have not placed myself on a Pedestal.

38. I have not stolen what belongs to God/Goddess.

39. I have not stolen from or disrespected the deceased.

40. I have not taken food from a child.

41. I have not acted with insolence.

42. I have not destroyed property belonging to God/Goddess.

My point being, is that many of these seem…eerily familiar. Or is it just me?

(The one about ‘not eating my own heart’ is just weird, but then, it probably has some esoteric meaning that escapes me.)

So, when the Hyksos were forcibly evicted from Egypt (obviously the only real ‘exodus’  that occurred), they obviously borrowed the minimalist version that suited their nomadic lifestyle.

Obviously, they didn’t much appreciate the hybridization concept the Egyptians bestowed on their make-believe friends.

Along with the obvious issues that Judaism has always had with the opposite gender, I might add.

This has been the Apostate, reporting from the dust bins of history, signing off.