“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” 

― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

 

“Let us remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think about doing them). A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.” 

― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

 

Picture at top: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/06/10/an-x-wing-using-an-air-force-tanker-another-sign-of-the-militarys-star-wars-fandom/?tid=pm_world_pop_b

 

What happens when an avowed atheist and a committed Christian become fast friends, despite their polar-opposite views? Well, you get a fantastic new book.

A new book with a provocative title is sending shock waves through both the Christian and atheist communities. In "The Faith of Christopher Hitchens," writer and commentator Larry Alex Taunton recounts his friendship with one of the most prominent and outspoken atheists — not to mention intellectual giants — of our time.

There is a lot to say about this book, and I'm not going to try to say it all in one program. Tomorrow I'll talk about the firestorm ignited by this outstanding book and do my part to set the record straight.

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/the-faith-of-christopher-hitchens-opinion-165048/#oS4S1mSrzHiyD83g.99
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Oh boy... Metaxas is pissing in his pants with excitement while having a self-serving laddle to enlarge the godly value of intellectualism and earthquakes. "Intellectual giants?" "Shock-waves?". "Lot?" (in italics?). "Firestorm?" "Record?"
Gus: Why do I bother?... Taunton, an intellectual giant? Go away...

Christopher Hitchens is dead. 
He cannot reply to, nor challenge the comments "in a new book (April 2016)" from Larry Alex Taunton about "their" relationship which had not lasted much longer than a blip on a radar screen. Yes, apparently, Hitchens and Taunton went on long trips together where sometimes they studied the bible... I believe that Hitchens would have done what I often do: read the bible — not to accept the idiotic nonsense of it, but to understand the manipulative hypocrisy, the nonsensical wars and the dictatorial silliness within. One needs to know one's enemy when fighting crap.
Metaxas comments about the friendship: 

With Larry Taunton, though, it was different. Hitchens was sincerely impressed by Taunton's commitment to his faith, and by the behavior inspired by his faith (such as Taunton and his wife adopting an HIV-positive little girl from Ukraine). His respect led Hitchens to defend Taunton and their friendship against other atheists.

"The truth is," Taunton writes, "there were those who did not want us to be friends."

Well... It's a bit like me, Gus here. I am friend with some mighty Liberal (CONservative) people (I even shook hands with John Howard once) with whom I strongly argue about global warming (it also tells me about the weird way some people don't analyse the problem, but the friendship is genuine), some Christians, Some loonies... It does not mean I am a closet Liberal (CONservative), a loony (sorry I am a loony but this has nothing to do with my friendship with other loonies), or believe in god. There are many atheists who will do good deeds without the pressure and cataloguing of charity. Good deeds are not exclusively Christian. Actually, Hitchens had more genuine respect of humanity by not challenging the faith of the HIV-positive little girl from Ukraine, brainwashed into Christianity by Taunton. 

I actually believe that Hitchens, should he still be alive, may not have even commented on the book publicly but would have been somewhat dismayed that his "friend" had betrayed private moments to promote himself — possibly misrepresent Christopher's views under the cover of genuineness. These Hitchens-Taunton moments would not have been of Hitchens renouncing atheism, but most likely of a methodic/chaotic analysis by Hitchens of how the other side thinks, together with the intent of making Taunton see the possibility of a godless universe.

"Christopher was in a difficult place," Taunton said. "He's a dying man. He asked me why I thought he didn't convert. I said, 'You've created a global reputation as an atheist, your fortune, your reputation is based on it. I can't imagine how hard it would be to admit you were wrong. You created a prison for yourself.'"
Hitchens was not wrong — unless he fooled us about his atheism and fooled himself too.
Being dead, Hitchens can not debate what is now this one-sided exposé of his "friendship" with Taunton. Taunton could tell us any porkies, any distillation, any imagination of what he "genuinely" believed Hitchens thought but never expressed. We do not have any means to verify the transcription of ideal, especially in regard to juxtaposing Faith and Christopher's name in the title, all designed to stir "controversy" for profit.
Taunton also mentions the "soul" of Hitchens — which to a proper atheist and to a dog is ridiculous. "The Restless Soul of the World's Most Notorious Atheist", discreet typography screams the hypocritical subtitle. Crap. Go away Mr Taunton. Should this be true, then Hitchens would have been hypocritical, a fake and an idiot. Possible? I don't think so. 
By his determination to seek elusive but verifiable truth, Hitchens showed how much can be accomplished by an individual who unites the qualities of intellectual honesty and moral courage.
Yet this is the epitaph that the new book seeks to deny him.

Another Christian nut tells us:
"I did not want to betray any confidences the way it seems friends and acquaintances of celebrities so often do." At the same time, Christopher had been excruciatingly open (which is not necessarily the same thing as being honest) about many matters that are usually kept private, and so if we are going to talk at all about Christopher Hitchens with any degree of integrity, then it will take someone as fair-minded as Larry Taunton to do it.
Fair-minded? A fair-minded person would never have conspired to expose Hitchens in this manner, especially when Hitchens cannot reply. It's not a "record".

Taunton claims that Hitchens seemed to be reevaluating his religious options, "if only theoretically," after his cancer diagnosis. But Taunton is nonetheless clear that he does not believe Christopher Hitchens made a deathbed conversion: "I make no Lady Hope-like claims regarding Christopher Hitchens. As we have seen, there were no reports of a deathbed conversion."
"In the end, Hitchens had created too big a reputation on his atheism to convert to Christianity" Taunton said.
This is all below the belt. This is so very smugly Christian. Why would you expect Hitchens to make a death-bed conversion and should he had made one what would this had proven? 
Nothing. 
The Christians really love to tally the number of pathetic atheists who, on their deathbed, and possibly full of morphine to the eyeballs "believe in god" to satisfy the morons out there — the family drooling over the inheritance and those do-gooders doing their religious proselytising to gain credits for their turn at paradise. Conversion is their game. 

Metaxas craps on:

So the book is a story about a deeply remarkable friendship, a story that can teach all of us how to reach past barriers and show what genuine Christian love looks like.

Hello? What about genuine atheist love looking like? Or was Hitchens not genuine in the friendship? Metaxas' view is so one track-minded that he is embarrassing, even to his own selfish view point.

Apparently, Taunton first met Hitchens in 2008, (Hitchens died in 2011) when, as director of Fixed Point Ministries (a religious outfit designed to promote religiousness in the secular world), Taunton helped to set up a debate between Hitchens and "the great Christian Oxford professor John Lennox."

Another Gus head-on collision here. I disagree. John Lennox is not great. He just is a scientist/mathematician hopelessly trying to marry science and religion when there is no reality between them. 

Religion does not make sense. 

Lennox is full of facile religious side-tracking because he does not understand the purpose of his own sciences. A bit like Lord Monckton grandstands on global warming, Lennox rabbits on about religion and sciences because people let him get away with it. 

All what fools, jokers, tricksters and clowns need is a jovial face like Lennox and the ability to cook silly sophism with the gift of the gab — hey presto. No solid argumentation, but plenty of confused illuminated crap with assertion that die in quick sand. There is not even illusionists tricks in Lennox windmilling, though these are used by other conjurors. And, despite mentioning DNA as if he understood what this meant, Lennox — like all the religious mobsters — stay clear of the real issue: Evolution. Slow spacial change. Energy of matter, including that that creates the consciousness in animals through a complex structure of reactive memory.

Religious people are afraid of this scientific explanation being discovered.

 The existence of god does not make any sense. The presumption of soul is a crazy notion. 

The so famously quoted John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" does not make any sense at all. 

Why would someone (divisible by three) of infinite intelligence build a 13.6 billion year old universe, create things to live and die, many becoming extinct over 3.6 billion years, then 2,000 years ago send his son to save a breed of monkeys from their ancestors' hamartiological sin, committed 6000 years ago? Hello? Anyone there? 

Should you try to sell this silly story as a brand new proposition today, sane people would have to think a mental asylum is the place for you. Ah I see it's a mystery and all will be revealed at the end of time which of course according to many religious nuts is coming soon, in our lifetime. Their lifetime to be precise, because they are sick of this temporal place with all the sinners crapping on them everywhere — and they want to show their own smug righteousness to the rest of us, poor buggers of the atheist kind.

So at best, I find Taunton's work "The Faith of Christopher Hitchens" a piece of crass commercial opportunism to promote Taunton's own Christian goodness, as if Christians were the only good people. It is offensive and totally unethical. I also find all the Christian commentators — including Douglas Wilson, who are salivating at the prospect of a not-so atheistically committed Christopher Hitchens — despicable.

 

Then the PC police came for Monty Python, the famed British comedy troupe. 

On June 19, the Daily Mail headlined a story: “No Joke: Head of BBC comedy says Oxbridge white blokes of Python wouldn’t get on TV now.” The article detailed the politically correct comments of Shane Allen, the BBC’s Controller of Comedy Commissioning (that title seems like a funny gag in itself), who declared that the comedic needs of today require “a diverse range of people who reflect the modern world.” 

One of the old Pythoners, John Cleese, was quick to rise in defense of his mates on Twitter: “Unfair! We were remarkably diverse FOR OUR TIME. We had three grammar-school boys, one a poof, and Gilliam, though not actually black, was a Yank. And NO slave-owners.” 

Such comments, of course, will not endear Cleese to his PC critics. Yet Cleese has long been on the outs with the BBC crowd: he has, for example, been an unapologetic foe of the European Union and a Brexiteer, perhaps because of his notorious Germanophobia. To be sure, Cleese is no doctrinaire conservative: in one of his most famous Python skits, he played Nigel Incubator-Jones, third-place finisher for the title of “Upper Class Twit of the Year.”

Even the fact that the Pythons often dressed as women doesn’t help. As Cleese put it, “We were never ashamed to reveal the more feminine side of our personalities,” adding, “to demonstrate solidarity with all suffragettes, 91.6% of the people we ridiculed were male (in the old-fashioned sense, that is).” 

Cleese also recalled the genesis of the show back in 1969: “When Python started, the Head of Light Entertainment loathed it, and at a Heads of Department meeting, six of them disliked it.” Thus, Cleese added, speaking of his current BBC detractor, “Allen is just the latest in a long line who don’t really know what they’re doing.”

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/monty-python-in-the-poli...

 

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I won't mentioned that "The League of Gentlemen" is back on ABC 2...

Jokes tend to have a short shelf life. But this doesn’t make humour trivial. What we as a culture find funny is a question of cultural politics. The recent BBC News story that many fans of the 1990s sitcom Friends now find the humour sexist, homo- and transphobic, and fat shaming is testament to how jokes are not only “caught in time” but are also caught in the politics of the time.

Through comedies we learn to “grow up” and invest in the culture we’re born into. And, more importantly, comedies are how we “grow out” of this parent culture and leave it behind – sitcoms end often within a decade of airing. So what does it mean when characters return from the past and start saying things we’d really rather they didn’t? One particular sitcom to have faced this problem and handled it with pathos is The League of Gentleman.

The reboot of The League of Gentleman in 2017 was, according to Mark Gatiss, inspired by the Brexit vote, as today it feels that Britain is becoming “a local country for local people” – a reference to the catchphrase of the series’ sinister local shop owners, Tubbs and Edward. 

The League of Gentleman’s comic sensibility, rooted in vaudeville, is impermissible today. Blackface. Sexist gags. Homophobic jibes. The fictional town of Royston Vasey, where the sitcom is set, is named after the politically incorrect comedian, Roy “Chubby” Brown.

 

Lovely... Love it.

Gus note: since I wrote the article at top, right-wing cartoonist Bill Leak died. Condolences.

See : http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33229

Jabłonowski added that there were other UK cities, including Edinburgh, Bristol, Manchester and Glasgow, that voted to remain in even bigger numbers. “If he doesn’t know that, then why is he commenting on it? When I say things on Twitter, 700 people read it, but when he does, millions read it.”

The British comedian Dom Joly, 51, also criticised Cleese’s tweet. He said: “John Cleese is one of my comedy heroes … Suddenly this thing came out of nowhere and it’s so depressing on so many levels.

“He’s clearly a really smart, funny man, but it is basically a very racist tweet. Secondly, it’s a racist tweet by a man who lives on a Caribbean island – the irony of that is insane. Even the language is insane. Who uses the word ‘opine’?”

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/may/29/john-cleese-criticised-f...

 

The UK should have been thrown out of the EU a long time ago for doing the US secret bidding and throwing rocks at the EU's windows, including doing war under false pretences...

See:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35134

 

Read from top.

The former "Fawlty Towers" actor explained that cancel culture does not let people enjoy life and have fun, and humour is about being critical, which is incompatible with being "woke".

British actor John Cleese criticised cancel culture as he was speaking to Reuters about the show "Why There is No Hope".

According to Cleese, cancel culture "misunderstands the main purposes of life, which is to have fun".

The actor explained that people who are trying to be perfectly polite and kind are boring, and being funny is about people who do not do that. As an example, he drew upon US president Donald Trump.

"Everything humorous is critical. If you have someone who is perfectly kind and intelligent and flexible and who always behaves appropriately, they're not funny. Funniness is about people who don't do that, like Trump", Cleese said.

Cleese added that due to political correctness, comedians "have to set the bar according to what we are told by the most touchy, most emotionally unstable and fragile and least stoic people in the country".

Cancel culture is a practice of boycotting public figures, or companies, who have said something considered objectionable or offensive. It is widely used by a variety of social justice-related movements, such as by proponents of LGBTQ+ rights. However, it has been criticised as a tool for publicly shaming those whose views are unpopular or deemed more conservative.

 

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/uk/202007241079969354-cancel-culture-misunderstands-main-purpose-of-life-john-cleese-says/

 

 

Read from top.

 

The warmongers are not funny either...

 

see also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/936