I didn't realise this was still going on...

I know Monty Python's Life of Brian was controversial back in the '70s, but I really did think that battle had been largely won, especially given the fact we've finally wiped blasphemy off our statute books.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that the mayor of Aberystwyth, Sue Jones-Davies, is currently trying to lift a ban on showing the film in her town's cinemas, 29 years after church leaders recommended one to the local council.

Jones-Davies does have a vested interest – she was in the film as Judith Iscariot – and she's facing some resistance from Reverend Stuart Bell, Rector of Aberystwyth's St Michael’s Church, who sees no reason for allowing local residents to watch Life of Brian: “If it was an unpleasant film 30 years ago, then it remains an unpleasant film 30 years later."

And the Reverend Bell has good grounds for disliking the film, as he explained to the local paper: “I have not seen the film, nor have I any wish to do so."

Of course, this is a good excuse for a clip from Life of Brian, so here you go –

Sydney brothels offer 10% off for Catholic pilgrims

A few weeks ago on this blog we told how market researchers were predicting a rise in custom at Sydney's brothels and strip clubs as Catholic pilgrims (and the Pope) descended on Sydney for World Youth Day.

Well, with that event beginning today one of our Australian readers has sent us an update – according to Melbourne newspaper The Age, Sydney's brothels have grabbed this commercial opportunity with both hands and offered Catholic pilgrims 10 per cent off whichever services they desire.

It was in The Age's "In brief" section, which unfortunately does not seem to make it on to the paper's website, but our reader kindly included the full story in his email:

"BROTHELS 10% off for pilgrims

IT'S proving difficult to prevent com­mercialisation of World Youth Day. Nearby brothels are reportedly offering 10% discounts to pilgrims on presentation of their WYD accreditation, while the Doncaster Hotel in Kensington, as the self-proclaimed "closest pub to the Pope", is running a "Pappy hour" with schooners available for $3.30.

They can hardly be blamed for cashing in, if the Catholic Church is not above commercialising the occasion. WYD merchandise includes coins, T-shirts, caps, stamps and minted memorabilia, all licensed by the church. Pilgrims are being encouraged to buy clothes lest people think them mere tourists. A catalogue exhorts them to purchase rosary beads with cruci­fixes made from West Australian iron ore and stainless steel WYD08 dog tags."

[Thanks Nigel]

Baptist church gives away an assualt rifle as a prize (for teenagers)

It seems guns and US Baptist churches have a lot in common - a few months ago we reported on how Baptists in Georgia were appealing for the right to carry firearms in church, and now we hear of a church in Oklahoma that plans to give away an AR-15 assault rifle as a prize in a shooting competition for teenagers.

The competition will take place at Windsor Hills Baptist Church's Annual Youth Conference, which runs from today until Friday, and the leading young Christian hotshot will walk away well-armed thanks to a church benefactor who has kindly donated the AR-15.

For the non-gun-toters among you, Wikipedia tells me an AR-15 is a is a lightweight, air-cooled, gas-operated, magazine-fed, semi-automatic, centerfire, shoulder-fired rifle capable of delivering a cool 800 rounds per minute over an effective range of 550 metres.

The shooting competition is part of a whole host of events, including a volleyball championship, a "Crunch Revival"(does anyone know what one of those is?), a "Preacher Boys' competition", Youth Workers Golf and a basketball tournament.

There seems to have been some confusion over whether the gun-giveaway was actually going ahead, with some US media reporting that it had been cancelled, but the Church's own website assures teenage Christian gun enthusiasts everywhere that the weapon will still be available. But in case you're worried that giving a gun away to a young person may lead to something bad happening from the long list of bad things that can happen when a young person (or indeed anyone) has a gun, youth pastor Bob Ross has assured the media this is not the case:

“I don’t want people thinking ‘My goodness, we’re putting a weapon in the hand of somebody that doesn’t respect it who are then going to go out and kill'. That’s not at all what we’re trying to do.”

[Thanks to reader Paul Chana for putting us on to that story]

Fancy a confession, mate?

We all know you can find a wide range of counterfeit goods and bogus services on the streets of a big city, but how about fake religious officiants? Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano reports that authorities in the Holy See tried a man for impersonating a Catholic priest.

Apparently the man was trying to hear confessions in St Peter's Basilica, as Vatican Judge Gianluigi Marrone explained:

"Some time ago I had to deal with an unusual case - a fake priest. He was caught by surprise in the basilica while he was trying to take his place in a confessional. He was wearing clerical garb, but the expert eye of our (basilica) personnel didn't need much to sense something strange in his behaviour."

That's as much information as there is, so we can only speculate as to whether the imposter proved to be as good as the real thing.

Christian couple ban swearing and gambling from North London pub

Here's an amusing story from the, err, Daily Mail. A devout Christian couple have been sacked as landlord and landlady of the Kings Head in Islington after they banned punters from swearing and gambling on the horse racing inside their establishment. As if that wasn't enough they added Bible questions to the pub quiz and, astonishingly, took down the pub's dart board and replaced it with what one local described as "some kind of calligraphy".

Unsurprisingly thirsty regulars who hadn't already been barred by the couple chose to seek their beer-fix elsewhere, and owners Oakfield Taverns moved quickly to remove Krista and John Fleming, who took over at the pub last September.

French coach uses astrology to help pick his team

Watching Germany v Poland on the BBC last night, I saw a bizarre little half time feature on how the French coach, Raymond Domenech, factors in astrology and the results of tarot readings when picking his team. Apparently he distrusts Scorpios and believes Leos have a tendency to show off. He didn't pick any Scorpios for his 2006 World Cup squad (even leaving out Robert Pires) and hasn't picked any for Euro 2008. His view of Leos means he's wary of playing them in defence, but the fact that the Arsenal captain William Gallas was born in August means Domenech generally has to overlook that rule.

It's all very odd and I'm not sure football fans over here would settle for the England manager basing his team selection on astrology (that said, we put up with Glenn Hoddle's faith healer for a while). However, the fact that Domenech took his country to within a Zinedine Zidane headbutt of winning the 2006 World Cup probably means French fans are willing to overlook his bizarre views, at least until they've seen how they perform in the present tournament.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a clip of the BBC feature on Domenech, which was a shame as it involved an Ozzy Osborne lookalike French astrologer explaining how horoscopes can be an excellent tool for managing a sports team. Instead you'll have to make do with this article from the Daily Mail...

Now Christians can email their friends after they've been swept up by the Rapture

We've reported on a fair few bizarre religious websites in the past, but this one surely beats all the others. You've Been Left Behind allows Christians to prepare an email for up to 62 of their acquaintances likely to still be on Earth (under the governance of the Antichrist) after all the Bible-abiding Christians have been swept up into Heaven by the Rapture. Allow the You've Been Left Behind website to explain:

"We all have family and friends who have failed to receive the Good News of the Gospel. The unsaved will be 'left behind' on earth to go through the "tribulation period" after the "Rapture". Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the rapture. They will know it was true and that they have blown it. There will be a small window of time where they might be reached for the Kingdom of God. We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time."

Funnily enough, this service is not provided free of charge, with subscribers paying an annual fee of $40 for the security of knowing that their non-Christian friends and loved ones will be contacted at the beginning of the end. Emails will be sent 6 days after the Rapture, the website knowing it has happened "when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system."

I discovered You've Been Left Behind through the blog Threat Level (via the excellent News of the Weird), which emailed the site to find out if it's for real. They received a reply from it's creator, Mark Heard, who assured them that it is genuine and that it actually has some paying customers.

$40 a year well-spent, I'm sure you'll all agree...

Pope's visit to Australia will drive up trips to brothels

Here's an unfortunate knock-on effect if ever there was one – market research analysts IBIS World predict that the Pope's July visit to Sydney for Catholic World Youth Day will lead to an increase in business for the city's brothels, strip clubs and prostitutes.

225,000 pilgrims and clergy are expected at the event, which runs from 15-20 July, but Ed Butler of IBIS World was keen to stress that it is unlikely to be the Catholics, or that matter the Pope himself, caught with their trousers down:

"Any major event will drive tourism, which is closely related to the sex industry … and World Youth Day will also bring out a certain number of non-religious people."

Because, obviously, it's only those pesky "non-religious people" (who Fox Australia clarify as "tourists, support staff and media") who do things like visiting strip clubs and prostitutes. With this in mind, I thought I'd have a look what World Youth Day is all about. For a start it's a five-day event, so the Catholic Church is clearly not concerned by any kind of trade description legislation, and it "brings together young people from around the globe to celebrate and learn about their faith on a more regular basis."

Two things come to mind here. Firstly, of those 225,000 attendees, how many of the young people will be there entirely on the back of their own initiative and religious zeal, and how many will have been sent there by their parents? Secondly, this being a massive Catholic youth event, how much of it will consist of telling the young pilgrims (who are away from home in Australia's biggest city for 5 days) to steer clear of having sex?

If you follow my argument, you may agree that it might not just be those depraved "non-religious people" setting out on pilgrimages to Sydney's brothels and strip clubs next month...

[Thanks to Christina for the link]

Things atheists could do without...

You could probably devise quite a long list, but one thing would surely be anti-religious video games. A graduate of the University of Virginia has designed a game where the object is to prevent the spread of Christianity and Islam by travelling through history killing those religions' key prophets. As if that wasn't inflammatory enough, the ultimate aim of the game is to behead the prophet Muhammad.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the developer has chosen to keep his identity secret though, given the fact that publishers are fairly unlikely to be queuing up for the rights to his game, he's probably pretty low on al-Qaeda's hitlist right now.

Still, as the report from Virginia news channel WSLS10 shows, silly ideas like this give people a good excuse to have a go at atheism in general. The game's creator seems to think he's doing non-believers a huge favour – "Atheists have never really had anything to speak for them like this" – but with any luck few people will agree. If this game does actually exist, it sounds just as bad as the fundamentalist Christian title Left Behind: Eternal Forces (aim: convert or kill the infidels) and we think we'll give it a miss.

Californian Ford dealership tries the bigoted approach to advertising

I thought I'd round off the day with a bizarre story I came across on PZ Myers' ever-excellent blog Pharyngula.

Kieffe and Sons, a Ford car dealership in Mojave, California has produced a radio ad which, rather than pointing out, say, the quality of their service or the range of cars on offer, instead chooses to play on the stat that "86% of Americans say they believe in God" and suggest that they're not interested in custom from the remaining 14%:

"But did you know that 86% of Americans say they believe in God? Since we all know that 86 out of every 100 of us are Christians, who believe in God, we at Keiffe & Sons Ford wonder why we don't tell the other 14% to sit down and shut up. I guess maybe I just offended 14% of the people who are listening to this message. Well, if that is the case then I say that's tough, this is America folks, it's called free speech. None of us at Keiffe & Sons Ford are afraid to speak out. Keiffe & Sons Ford on Sierra Highway in Mojave and Rosamond, if we don't see you today, by the grace of God, we'll be here tomorrow."

It's certainly a novel approach to marketing - "come and visit our good old traditional bigoted Christian car dealership. You won't see any filthy atheists/Muslims/Jews/Hindus/others hanging around here while we're giving you the hard sell". Not sure why they feel it's going to make anyone buy but, as PZ points out, you can't rule out the possibility that it might prove successful.

One atheist blogger tried writing directly to Ford to complain about this rogue dealership, but as her post shows this didn't exactly prove successful.

Here's a YouTube clip with the audio from the ad:

Sharon Stone blames Chinese earthquake on bad karma

Darn celebrities with their bizarre spiritual beliefs. You can't live with them, but reading those free papers they give out in London might become even more boring if we had to live without them. We've featured a few before, most recently Madonna and her belief that parents' souls choose the gender of their children, and now along comes former-Scientologist-turned-Buddhist Sharon Stone with her view that the recent Sichuan earthquake in China might have been caused by "bad karma":

"I'm not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. I've been concerned about how should we deal with the Olympics, because they are not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who is a good friend of mine. And then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, is that karma – when you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?"

That's right, China as a geographical entity (population 1.3bn) has "bad karma" because of the ongoing situation with Tibet (the Dalai Lama's Sharon's friend you know) so along comes an enormous earthquake that kills over 68,000 innocent people and leaves over 4m homeless in a province in the middle of China which is unlikely to be inhabited by any of the people directly responsible for what's happened in Tibet (which incidentally Sharon is "not happy" about).

Needless to say many people in China are unhappy with these comments and some cinemas have vowed to never show her films again, which will presumably come as no great loss to the Chinese people. Cosmetics stores have also taken down adverts featuring Stone, and citizens have posted videos on YouTube calling on the actor to apologise.

Stone made the comments while she was at Cannes last week. Here's a video:

Peanut butter disproves evolution

Anyone out there who thinks the theory of evolution might be true may as well just forget it, as it's almost certainly disproved by jars of peanut butter which, if the theory stood up, would occasionally contain new life when you opened them:



Thanks to New Humanist reader Alistair Scott for sending this in. He was convinced it was a gag until he Googled the presenter, Chuck Missler, and found out that he's a well-known evangelist and a former "Branch Chief of the Department of Guided Missiles" in the US military...

Robbie Williams obsessed with aliens

On this blog we're big fans of stories concerning irrational turns taken by major celebrities, be they YouTube videos of Tom Cruise (they're in the public domain, okay) or stories of Madonna telling a Vanity Fair reporter that our souls choose the gender of our children.

So imagine our delight when it turned out that fading pop superstar Robbie Williams has retreated into the world of alien conspiracies. The Sun recently caught up with Robbie at a UFO convention in Nevada, where he confirmed "his belief that UFOs are 'there all the time' but only show themselves on Earth when they make mistakes and their 'protective shields' come off".

Sporting a new look that may disappoint his female fans (think an overweight Fidel Castro) Robbie meets a mother who claims her son is regularly abducted by aliens, and who believes he is "an 'Indigo Child', who has been put on Earth as a psychic sage. She's taken photographs of him being abducted, but they never come out "because she is not a very good photographer and only owns a disposable camera".

It turns out Robbie's always had an interest in the paranormal, telling the Sun that “Mum was a tarot card reader. On the shelf just outside her room there would be the books about the world’s mysteries — elves, demons and witchcraft. She’d have people round to read the tarot cards and read their palms. She’d talk about spirits, ghosts . . . the other side. I was that scared that I never talked to her about it and just lived in fear of this stuff.”

He says he's tried visiting psychics in the past but has always found them to be "charlatans" and now he's hoping the same won't happen with his interest in UFOs. For the moment he's happy to spend "hours holed up in his LA mansion researching UFOs on the net and watching DVDs about alien conspiracies".

Robbie's not the first celebrity to develop an obsession with alien conspiracies (Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters star Dan Ackroyd believes alien/human hybrids might be walking among us) and, as our exclusive graph reveals, there seems to be a correlation between fame and increased irrationality. But then again, they might be the rational ones...

Tune into Radio 4 tonight at 6.30pm, when Robbie Williams will be talking to Jon Ronson about his interest in UFOs.

Who needs a priest when you can just confess online?

I'm immensely grateful to an anonymous commenter on an old post about the Catholic Church's seven new deadly sins, who has alerted me to a website where sinners can gather to confess online.

I Confess Myself markets itself as a place where you can "Let it all off your chest in a risk-free environment", and is basically a blog with 7 posts covering Gluttony, Sloth, Lust, Envy, Greed, Wrath and Pride. All you need to do is leave a comment on the relevant post to get those pesky sins off your chest.

A quick look through the confessions shows they range from the mundane – "I ate a McDonald's meal and now I feel sick" – to the downright callous – "I was so jealous of my friend being skinny that I kept pushing her to eat more until she got pudgy and then I made fun of her until she got an eating disorder."

Okay, so the website hasn't really taken off yet and, if you ask me, it's lacking some good old fire and brimstone qualities, but this didn't stop me thinking – imagine if the Catholic Church, with its 2,000 years of history, ended up being replaced by a blog.

For this premium unleaded, may the Lord make us truly grateful...

Fuel's in the news right now, what with the recently-ended Scottish refinery strike (advice to drivers "Don't panic". Cue mini-panic) and a convoy of truckers entering London to protest against rising diesel prices.

With this in mind, perhaps all those worried about petroleum-related matters should study the antics of Rocky Twyman (what a name) of Washington state, who last week held three separate "gas-station pray-ins".

Rocky's worried about rising "gas" prices in the States (perhaps he should try filling up over here) and has asked fellow motorists to join him in a simple call of "God, deliver us from these high gas prices."

And his efforts haven't gone unnoticed, at least here on Earth, with a representative of the group Consumer Watchdog saying: "Given the complete inertia and silence of this White House on a crisis that has people feeling just hopeless, prayer is probably as good as anything. Frankly, I wish them luck."

[Thanks Christina]

Russian priest tricked into blessing a strip club

A quick gem here courtesy of Christina Martin:

A priest in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk was tricked by the owners of a lapdancing club into offering a blessing for their fine establishment.

Father Nickolai, an Orthodox priest, was told that Studio 74 gentlemen's club was a training school for ballet dancers and only discovered later that it was a venue for a differing kind of dancing.

Despite the priest's outrage the club's owners are delighted, claiming the blessing is responsible for the fact that business is now booming: "Ever since we had this sacred act performed on our premises customers say they have experienced an entirely new atmosphere here and more people are coming in. The blessing seems to be working."

So nothing to do with the naked women, then?

Now you can make your home smell like Jesus

Regular readers will know we're big fans of novelty religious tat, supported by the efforts of stand-up comedian Christina Martin, New Humanist's tat-finder extraordinaire. And now Christina has discovered what could be the best piece of tat so far – Jesus-scented candles.

Bob and Karen Tosterud, of South Dakota, USA, concocted the "His Essence" candle from a list of ingredients provided by God/someone who wrote a bit of the Bible (delete as appropriate to your religious views) in Psalms 45. "It's a Messianic Psalm," explained Karen, "referring to when Christ returns and his garments will have the scent of myrrh, aloe and cassia."

So, inspired by this heavenly recipe, the couple did what any other sensible person would have done and produced a scented candle that apparently produces "a flowery, cinnamon aroma". For anyone wondering what the point of any of this is, allow Karen's husband Bob to explain: "You can't see him and you can't touch him. This is a situation where you may be able to sense him by smelling. And it provides a really new dimension to one's experience with Jesus."

This may bring a smile to the faces of us rationalists, but when you bear in mind that the Tosterud's have flogged over 10,000 of these candles at $18 a pop, it's hard not to feel that they're the ones who should be laughing, preferably en route to their local bank.

Presidential candidates could win by clamping down on porn

Forget all the talk about Iraq or the economy: if the US presidential candidates really want to ensure victory in November's presidential elections, all they need to do is promise to make it harder for citizens to get their filthy hands on pornography.

Well, at least according to Morality in Media, a Christian group so determined to deny Americans the right to produce and peruse porn that it made it its sole aim. According to the good folks there, if the next US president were to "do all in his or constitutional power" to crack down on "hardcore pornographic materials ... proliferated in the form of videotapes and DVDs sold in sexually oriented and mainstream video stores, films distributed on cable, satellite and hotel TV systems, and still pictures and video disseminated on the Internet", they would have the "total support" of 75 per cent of American adults.

No doubt we can expect a shift in the focus of the campaign in the coming days...

The day Ricky Gervais became an atheist

American men's magazine Best Life has a short piece by comedian Ricky Gervais on how he became an atheist.

After saying how, at the age of 9, he was a massive fan of Jesus – "More than pop stars. More than footballers. More than God" – Gervais describes the day his 19-year-old brother, Bob, walked in just as he was drawing Jesus on the cross as part of his RE homework:

"There I was, happily drawing my hero when my big brother Bob asked, 'Why do you believe in God?' Just a simple question. But my mum panicked. 'Bob,' she said, in a tone that I knew meant 'shut up.' Why was that a bad thing to ask? If there was a God and my faith was strong, it didn’t matter what people said. Oh…hang on. There is no God. He knows it, and she knows it deep down. It was as simple as that. I started thinking about it and asking more questions, and within an hour, I was an atheist."

So, a fairly rapid conversion then. And Gervais goes on to describe the "gifts" that opened up to him as a result of his "newfound atheism":

"The gifts of truth, science, nature. The real beauty of this world. Not a world by design, but one by chance. I learned of evolution—a theory so simple and obvious that only England’s greatest genius could have come up with it. Evolution of plants, animals, and us—with imagination, free will, love, and humor. I no longer needed a reason for my existence, just a reason to live. And imagination, free will, love, humor, fun, music, sports, beer, and pizza are all good enough reasons for living. But living an honest life—for that you need the truth. That’s the other thing I learned that day, that the truth, however shocking or uncomfortable, in the end leads to liberation and dignity."

Nice one, Ricky. And thanks for giving me a great excuse to put up a clip of the hilarious Genesis scene from stand-up show Animals:

Psychics under-fire both on- and off-screen

It's really not a good time to be a psychic. As was reported in the Observer last weekend, in a month's time they face new Consumer Protection Regulations that will come into force following the repeal of the Fraudulent Mediums Act. To the untrained ear the repeal of such an act might sound like a step backwards for rationality, were it not for the fact that less than 10 people have been prosecuted under it in the past two decades. In fact, the old law provided protection for 'genuine mediums', though quite how they were defined is anyone's guess. Under the new regulations, this absurd protection is gone and the onus will be on mediums to prove that they have not exploited 'vulnerable' subjects.

As if this wasn't enough, TV watchdog Ofcom has just issued new regulations aimed at clamping down on premium rate phone-ins. Any digital channels that exist purely as a platform for running phone-ins would be shut down, as the regulations state that the "primary purpose of the programme must be editorial, and any commercial activity associated with the PRS [premium-rate services], such as generation of call revenues, must be secondary to that purpose." In addition to leaving many late-night viewers high and dry by wiping out dedicated quiz channels and adult chat programmes, the regulations will also put paid to any psychic channels.

Told you it was a bad time to be a psychic. Which I guess means it's a good time to be a rationalist.