I had to look twice to make sure this was in England! Yep, it is in the city of Birmingham. They list atheism right down there with witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy and criminal activity. (Though the article points out that witchcraft is a legitimate religion called Wicca.)

LINK: A city council has blocked its staff from looking at websites about atheism.

Lawyers at the National Secular Society said the move by Birmingham City Council was “discriminatory” and they would consider legal action.

The rules also ban sites that promote witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy and criminal activity.

The city council declined to comment on the possible legal action, but said the new system helped make it easier for managers to monitor staff web access.

*snip*

The authority’s Bluecoat WebFilter computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with “witchcraft or Satanism” and “occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism”.

Under the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, it is unlawful to discriminate against workers because of their religion or belief, which includes atheism.

He said the society would initially contact the council and ask for the policy to be changed, and otherwise pursue legal action.

He said he believed he would have a “very strong case”.

Mr Sanderson said: “It is discriminatory not only against atheists but they also are banning access to sites to do with witchcraft.

“Witchcraft these days is called Wicca, which is an actual legitimate and recognised religion.

“We feel very strongly that people who don’t believe should not be denied the access that people who do believe have got.”

He added that some opinion polls said that up to 25% of the UK population now considered themselves atheist.

A city council statement said the authority had a “long-standing internet usage policy for staff”.

It added: “We are currently implementing new internet monitoring software to make the control of internet access easier to manage.

“The aim of this is to provide greater control for individual line managers to monitor internet usage, and for departments, such as trading standards and child protection, to gain access, if needed, to certain sites for business reasons.”

If the reason given for banning the sites listed was to make it easier to monitor internet access, it would be even easier to monitor if everyone was banned from going to religion sites, as well. In fact, just ban all sites that are not related to business like most of the companies I have worked for have done. Banning the traffic of going to Christian, Hindu, Muslim and other religious sites should make their internet monitoring much, much easier to manage (if that is their real reason.)

Religious superstition makes time stand still.

As Sangeeta Goswami, head of the Assam chapter of the activist group, People for Animals said, “It is strange when India talks of progress in science and technology and is clamping down on child marriages, it is allowing such practices as animal sacrifices in temples”.

LINK: Indian politician sacrifices 200 goats to mark win

GAUHATI, India – A lawmaker said he sacrificed more than 200 goats and four buffaloes at a temple in northeastern India to thank a goddess for delivering victory to the prime minister’s government last week.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Congress party survived the July 22 confidence vote after weeks of political uncertainty that nearly toppled the government.

The last-minute support of Kishor Samrite’s Samajwadi party, a one-time opponent, was key to the victory.

And since Sunday, Samrite has been participating in rituals at the 16th-century Kamakhya temple in Gauhati, the capital of the northeastern state of Assam.

Animal sacrifices are traditional rituals at the hilltop temple, a famous Hindu pilgrimage destination.

The animal sacrifices have sparked controversy, however, as animal rights activists have held street demonstrations near the temple protesting Samrite’s prayer ceremonies.

“Animals cannot just be sacrificed for the interest of political leaders,” said Sangeeta Goswami, head of the Assam chapter of the activist group, People for Animals.

Link to full story

This politician may be doing this to keep people clinging to their insane superstitions in order to control them like many in power have done throughout the centuries. Using religion to keep the sheeple in line has been a political tactic even in western culture. Using religion is also a tool, as we see in our own country of getting elected to powerful positions. However, if this Indian politician truly believes his imaginary goddess friend is pleased with the slaughtering of innocent animals, then he is a very deluded individual who is perpetuating superstition and magical thinking and doing his people more harm than good.

This story is not unique and surely happens quite frequently since priests, pastors, rabbis, deacons, elders and other church leaders are only human.

Pastor Accused Of Using Church Funds To Gamble

ROSELLE, Ill. (CBS) ― A pastor in Roselle is accused of stealing thousands of dollars in church funds to feed his gambling habit. CBS 2’s Suzanne Le Mignot reports.

Lou Vicari has been a parishioner at St. Walter Catholic Church for almost two decades.

“You feel, ‘what the heck!’ If you can’t trust a priest, who can you trust?” Vicari said.

Ummm…trust a priest? Unless you know a person as a close friend, you don’t really know who they are, yet millions of people put clergy who they only see for an hour once a week (if that) in such high esteem and adoration for merely holding the title of “pastor” or “Father”.

And it seems that no matter what the clergy does in any religion, the sheeple will still cling to their man-made beliefs and practices which are led by human beings just like themselves and one never knows who is good, who is bad, who is sane, who is insane, who is a pervert and who is not. And praying about it does squat. No God comes to protect the believers.

When a church comes under scrutiny or one of their leaders is accused of wrong-doing and found guilty of even the most heinous crimes, they always say the same thing as this parishioner said:

“It truly is a test of our Catholic faith, in terms of moving forward, forgiving for one who has potentially offended us and carrying on,”

Remember Father Adelir Antonio de Carli, the Brazilian Catholic priest who went missing in his lawn chair, balloon stunt that I posted here? Nearer My Gawd to Thee

Here is an update:

Body of ballooning Brazilian priest found at sea

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – The body of a Brazilian priest who floated out over the ocean suspended by hundreds of helium-filled party balloons, has been found off the coast of southeastern Brazil, police have confirmed.

The corpse of Father Adelir Antonio de Carli was spotted by a tugboat at sea near the city of Macae, three months after he disappeared while flying a contraption buoyed by balloons over the Atlantic Ocean in a fund-raising stunt.

“We were almost certain that it was the priest due to various elements, such as the clothes and material used in the balloon trip,” Macae’s chief of police, Daniel Bandeira, said on Monday. “The DNA only confirmed our suspicions.”

The priest disappeared on April 20 after he called friends from his mobile phone to say he was about to crash into the ocean.

He staged the stunt to help raise money for a chapel for truckers in his highway parish.

He phoned friends but no humans could get to him, and since no friends could help him, he was doomed because God never shows up and all the magical prayers people were saying to their imaginary friend to save the priest were pointless.

The video…YouTube has everything:

. . . among other things.

Now for a little entertaining break. This video starts out with a couple of non-religious jokes, but then goes into some funny shit…especially about Scientology. (I wonder if the Scientology police paid him a “visit” at his home as they do people who diss their weirdass church?)

Dana Carvey: Squatting Monkeys Tell No Lies

LINK: Part four making fun of Dubya is also pretty funny.

If you have time, one thru six are all pretty funny. He does an awesome Bush and Cheney.

Graduating from a good law school with strong grades and excellent credentials hasn’t meant much to the hiring officials at the U.S. Department of Justice. Apparently, in the Bush administration you just have to be a fundamentalist Xian.

As Mike commented at American’s United, “Change the world through discrimination, oppression, bigotry, and lack of intellectual honesty. Gotta love the RR’s vision for a better America.”

Justice Injustice: Regent Grad Hired Only The ‘Pro-God’ And The ‘Pro-GOP’ At The DOJ

The New York Times says that senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke the law by hiring applicants based on political affiliation, and that the head of this operation was former White House liaison for the Justice Department Monica Goodling.

Goodling is a graduate of Regent University School of Law, a school founded by televangelist Pat Robertson in 1986. The vision of the school is to transform “society by affirming and teaching principles of truth, justice and love as described in the Holy Scriptures, embodied in the person of Jesus Christ and enabled through the power of the Holy Spirit.”

That vision seems to fit right in line with that of President George W. Bush’s “faith-based” vision for our country. Not surprisingly, since Bush took office in 2001, 150 Regent alumni were hired into federal government positions. Prior to this, it was rare for Regent graduates to join the federal government, according to The Boston Globe. The school ranks in the lowest tier of law schools in the U.S. News and World Report rankings.

“When the Bush administration came to power, it looked to Regent for a reliable pool of well-groomed Republican ideologues eager to wage the culture war from the inside,” the Huffington Post wrote.

Full story by Sandhya Bathija

Feel the “conservative xian love” in Tennessee. If you disagree, just shoot them damn libruls!
(I wonder if next he will say his imaginary friend told him to do it.)

Police: Man shot churchgoers over liberal views

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Knoxville’s police chief says the man accused of a shooting that killed two people at a Tennessee church targeted the congregation because of its liberal social stance.

For those in fundieland, don’t forget to go out and buy your bullet-proof vests and body armor before election day!

Update: Video…Xians “trying to make sense” of the tragedy. Several people interviewed stated the usual programmed Xian response that they were “praying for the victims”.

 A blogversation at the NGB alerted me to this (a fanato-troll there brought this up as a challenge). Apparently, Muslims are getting special treatment – in US schools.

Some public schools and universities are granting Muslim requests for prayer times, prayer rooms and ritual foot baths, prompting a debate on whether Islam is being given preferential treatment over other religions.

The University of Michigan at Dearborn is planning to build foot baths for Muslim students who wash their feet before prayer. An elementary school in San Diego created an extra recess period for Muslim pupils to pray.

Which is an incursion on SOCAS, no matter how it’s spun.  While I can understand (barely) how this is going on at Dearborn (given the demographic), this gets more ridiculous:

At George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., Muslim students using a “meditation space” laid out Muslim prayer rugs and separated men and women in accordance with their Islamic beliefs.

No, no, and in capitals: NO.

Because the rules for one are the rules for all. I’m all for pluralism and diversity, but as the saying goes – give ‘em an inch, they’ll take the whole damn ruler. And of course, as the religious always do, they see it the way they call it:

“The whole issue is to provide for a religious foundation for those who are observant while respecting separation of church and state,” says Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, based in Los Angeles. Many schools accommodate the Christian and Jewish sabbaths and allow Jewish students to not take tests on religious holidays, he says.

And they allow religious jewelry and yarmulkes, so what? These are not clear intrusions into the schools – prayer mats and foot baths clearly are.

In the San Diego case, a substitute teacher at Carver Elementary School alleged that teachers were indoctrinating students into Islam. The San Diego Unified School District determined that a teacher’s aide was wrong to lead Muslim students in prayer. Carver still has a special recess to allow 100 Muslim students to pray.

Should’ve fired the yobbo.

The ACLU, which has often sued schools for permitting prayer, says it is waiting to see what kind of policy the school settles on before deciding whether to sue. It says promoting prayers is unconstitutional.

“If you start carving out time in the school day that you would not do but for the need to let students pray, then it begins to look like what you’re trying to do is to assist religion,” says David Blair-Loy, legal director for the ACLU in San Diego.

Exactly.

Thompson says such conflicts are bound to proliferate. He and other Christians, he says, are preparing to ask for equal consideration such as a Christian prayer recess.

“What you’re going to see out there is more of these kinds of cases as the Muslim community tests how far it can go in the public school system,” he says. “If this can happen for Muslims, it can happen for Christians and other religions.”

All this ruckus over gobbledy-gook that doesn’t even work anyways. Stupid.

Belief: it’s for the hopelessly romantic and the romantically hopeless.

In case anyone hasn’t been keeping up with Professor Myers’ latest bandwidth gorge – he started here with a newsworthy story about a student getting jacked up over a cracker (guess you’d call that Crackerjacks), and has received a voluminous amount of threats online, via email, etc. Because of course, lunatics wax exceedingly wroth when someone actually cuts through the bullshit and tells them they’re smoking ideological crack.

Threads on Pharyngula have bloated to well over a thousand comments (here’s one and two of them – three’s more than enough to kill off a few precious hours).

That some tasteless, pasty wafer is actually (or symbolically, or whatever) a cannibalistic substitute for an imaginary friend…I’d like to say it beggars the imagination, but it beggars the intelligence, more like.

It makes me wonder if these simpletons actually see the same colors I do.

It is to plotz, sometimes.

Till the next post then.