An unusual reason for kicking someone out of a church

Posted on by
Reply

From here:

The star of an erectile dysfunction commercial in Australia was kicked out of her church until the ad comes off air, the Herald Sun reported today.

Libby Ashby told Melbourne-based radio station 3AW she had been “disfellowshipped” from her local congregation after appearing in the ad.

“They have said I would not be reinstated until the ad comes off the air,” Ashby said, while not identifying which church she attends.

Ashby, a single mother, said she knew when she was filming the AMI ad that it was in poor taste.

But she said she had taken the job because of the money.

“My VISA was calling out for mercy,” she said.

“It was against my better judgement to it. I don’t like to offend people.”

Ashby doesn’t like to offend people – a compunction which I don’t share – but she chose a strange way to show it.

The Diocese of Niagara wants to be recognised internationally for well trained and highly effective clergy

Posted on by
4

From here:

By 2012, the Diocese of Niagara is recognized across Canada and internationally for its well trained and highly effective clergy and lay leadership whose life changing collaborative ministry is grounded in covenants between clergy, Bishop and parish.

If there is anything that the Diocese of Niagara has become known for internationally, it is the materialistic, rapacious greed it exhibits in trying to cling on to buildings for which it has little use other than to sell  in order to replenish its dwindling coffers. Nevertheless, there’s nothing quite as pretentious as church pretension, so the diocese is putting on a bold face – a lying bold face.

A priest – who really is an effective leader – regaled me with the tale of how he has been threatened by Bishop Michael Bird with cancellation of his license since he has left the diocese for another denomination because of theological differences with the diocese. Bird, unable to hold on to a priest with integrity and talent, is vindictively attempting to punish him because he has violated the most significant diocesan principle mentioned above: subservience – in newspeak, covenant – to the bishop.

The Diocese of Niagara, its bishop, his benighted vision and all diocesan hangers-on will be recognised by history an example of why fervent purging of the transcendent from Christianity is a bad idea.

Homosexual couple buying designer baby

Posted on by
2

There was a time when people were bought and sold as slaves; those days are over. Or are they?

Adam and Kyle, a homosexual couple, are buying a baby created to their specifications: a designer baby, a Bruno fashion accessory.

Embryos will be screened for suitability and those which don’t measure up will be discarded. How much does a human commodity cost these days? About $100,000.

From here:

A female friend is donating eggs in return for a pair of £2,000 Christian Louboutin designer shoes.

The men rejected one woman who wanted to donate her eggs because: “She hardly had any nice clothes and that’s just not what we want”, Mr Miller said.

Access to the Internet has become a human right

Posted on by
Reply

According to ahumanright.org at least. To rectify the abhorrent injustice of being unplugged, ahumanright.org is building a  free network.

The organisation doesn’t make it quite clear as to why Internet access is a human right – probably because to try to do so would expose the flimsiness of the reason. Its aim is to give everyone a voice. It’s going to be dreadfully noisy: just think of the spam – sorry, reliable information.

Not a tame lion

Posted on by
4

Aslan, the lion in C. S. Lewis’s “The Narnia Chronicles”, is a Christ figure. As Mr. Tumnus points out, he’s not a tame lion which is more than can be said for the actor, Liam Add an ImageNeeson whose voice plays him. Neeson is only too tame when he grovels before the altar of political correctness by saying that Aslan also symbolises Mohammed and Buddha:

Ahead of the release of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader next Thursday, Neeson said: ‘Aslan symbolises a Christ-like figure but he also symbolises for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries.

‘That’s who Aslan stands for as well as a mentor figure for kids – that’s what he means for me.’

Poetic justice: Wikileaks.org down

Posted on by
1

It has been subject to a denial of service attack, apparently. Those who live by the hack will die by the hack.

Add an Image

From here:

What goes around comes around: Someone is hacking the hacktivist. And it may be none other than the hacktivist himself.

A self-described patriotic hacktivist known as “The Jester” — who has garnered a reputation for taking down jihadist websites and is believed by those familiar with his work to be responsible for taking WikiLeaks offline during its recent dump of State Department cables — is claiming to be the victim himself of an online impostor trying to cash in on his name.

But that’s hardly all there is to the story.

The Jester — who describes himself online as a “Hacktivist for good. Obstructing the lines of communication for terrorists, sympathizers, fixers, facilitators, oppressive regimes and other general bad guys.” — says he’s “an ex-soldier with a rather famous unit, country purposely not specified.”

Following that ignominious rout, the DNS provider for Wikileaks has terminated the domain name:

The WikiLeaks website has been taken off on Thursday, Dec 2 after its domain host provider EveryDNS.net terminated its account.
The whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has told in its Twitter account that, “WikiLeaks.org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks.”

h/t to my underpaid research assistant.

The prospect of Fox News North is still causing brain seizures in some Canadians

Posted on by
7

For some reason Rick Patel at Avaaz.org keeps sending me emails asking me to sign a petition denouncing “Fox News North”:

“Fox News North” is back trying to make us pay for poisonous media — this time through backroom corporate deals that include them in cable packages with channels we actually want. Send a message to cable giants Shaw, Bell and Rogers demanding that they give Canadians a choice and offer Sun TV as a stand alone option to consumers.

I would be delighted if the CRTC would not force unwanted news content down everyone’s throat by bundling channels: I could kiss goodbye to news from CTV and CBC among others. And no more “Little Mosque on the Prairie”. That’s not how it works, though: channels are bundled together and there is no reason why Sun TV’s channel should be singled out for special treatment.

The email continues: “Canadians should not be forced to pay for right-wing agenda news”. According to Patel we should only be forced to pay for left-wing agenda news – what he calls “regular” news channels.

More atheist bus ads

Posted on by
2

From here:

The atheist group behind last year’s controversial bus ads suggesting “there’s probably no God” is rolling out a provocative new set of posters on buses across the country that places Allah beside Big Foot and Christ beside psychics.

The new posters bear the slogan: “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence” with “Allah, Big Foot, UFOs, Homeopathy, Zeus, Psychics, Christ” listed below…

“Why is belief in Big Foot dismissed as delusional while belief in Allah and Christ is respected and revered? All of these claims are equally extraordinary and demand critical examination,”

If atheists were as rational as they claim, the difficult to believe “Extraordinary Claims” list would include a few of atheism’s un-provable sacred cows:

  • A belief that something sprang spontaneously out of nothing at the Big Bang;
  • A belief that life created itself from the aimless interactions of inanimate matter.

A Christian understanding of the universe – the product of 2000 years of accumulated Christian thought – hangs together far more coherently than the conceited, quasi-metaphysical meanderings of the new atheists.