There used to be an app for that

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iSlam Muhammad is an iPhone application that makes fun of the Muslim tendency to persuade opponents by beheading them. Apple executives removed the application, kept their heads and invented the iDhimmi.

A description of the $.99 app encourages users to “enjoy violent and hateful passages from The Qur’an that support and encourage Muslims to attack and behead anyone who does not agree with them. See how Allah directs his followers to treat men and women.”

The app revolves around parchment images featuring controversial images from the holy text. The app was in the store for a day before it was pulled. Below is audio from the developer’s conversation with Apple, which among other things, points out that a similar app targeting Christians called BibleThumper still exists in the store.

Mary Glasspool consecration: no-one objected

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During the consecration of Anglican-nouveau lesbian bishop, Mary Glasspool there came a point where those attending could object:Add an Image

There was a moment on Saturday when even the usually unflappable J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, held his breath.

It was the point when the 3,000 people at the Long Beach Arena were asked if anyone had any objections to the ordination of the region’s first two female bishops, one of whom is the first lesbian bishop ordained by the Episcopal Church.

There were 3000 people present – many of whom were clergy – but when the moment of truth came, no-one objected. Why? After all, orthodox Christians who remain in TEC and the ACoC are supposedly working for reform from within by holding steadfastly to the faith once delivered; surely there would have been at least one person prepared to politely object to the consecration? Apparently not. And therein lies the flaw of trying to reform Anglicanism from within an apostate province: in practice, it isn’t happening, a stand is not being taken and the heterodox juggernaut blunders on unhindered.

Those who made it conspicuously apparent that they would object were expelled from the assembly – presumably in the name of inclusion – before reaching the point of potential embarrassment. The ejected placard wielders might have made a more strategically effective statement by waiting for the appointed moment for objections – although I can sympathise with their impatience and applaud their enthusiasm.

And early in the service, shortly after Bruce and Jardine had taken the stage, a man seated near the front of the arena stood, waved a placard and begin shouting: “Repent of the sins of the homosexual! Repent of the sin of abortion!”

As the audience stirred, a woman yelled sharply: “Sit down!”

As security guards led him off, the man continued yelling. “It’s an abomination! Repent! The Bible says homosexuals will not enter …” and his voice trailed off.

As the ceremony resumed, a young boy in a white shirt stood up, holding aloft what appeared to be a Bible. “Repent!” he began yelling to the startled arena. “Repent!” As he was led out, a voice called out, “We’re praying for you!” The audience applauded.

Praying what for you, one wonders, and to whom?

Carry on bishop

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I just wish I’d been there with my camera:Add an Image

Meetings of Church of England bishops are usually sedate – and that’s how they like it.

But last week’s proved decidedly more eventful, when they found themselves sharing their conference hotel with a hen party.

It was the cue for Carry On-style high farce which culminated in the Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, 67, gallantly offering his dressing gown to a naked girl, who was apparently locked out of her hotel room.

Other bishops soon became aware of drink-induced vomiting and screaming – and everyone was eventually forced to evacuate the hotel in the middle of the night when a reveller let off a fire alarm.

The Bishop of Wakefield, the Rt Rev Stephen Platten, 63, said: ‘The alarm seems to have been triggered when two young ladies, who were pickled, came back late at night.

‘One of the ladies was naked and one of the bishops had to give her his dressing gown to cover her nakedness. I think the other woman was trying to take her clothes off, too, but she was stopped in time.’

Nearly 50 bishops, among them the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, had gathered at the £130-a-night Park Inn Hotel in York for the meeting, where the main item was admitting women to the episcopate.

Rowan Williams denied foreknowledge of the ladies’ night out and shortly after tussling with Rev. Michael Scott-Joynt in an attempt to thwart his dressing gown manoeuvre, inspired by the moment, burst forth into this peroration: “Nothing will stop sex being tragic and comic.  It is above all the area of our lives where we can be rejected in our bodily entirety, where we can venture into the exposed spontaneity and find ourselves looking foolish or even repellent: so that the perception of ourselves we are offered is negating and damaging.  And it is also where the awful incongruity of our situation can break through as comedy, even farce.”

Conclusive proof that there are Multiverses

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For those that doubted the reality of the multiverse, The Anglican Church – TEC specifically – has produced incontrovertible evidence that alternate universes do exist. Add an ImageThey must, Katherine Jefferts Schori inhabits one:

Episcopal leader Jefferts Schori says anger over gay ordination has eased.

The Episcopal Church USA and its sister churches in the worldwide Anglican Communion have stronger relationships in many ways now than before the American church angered the more conservative members by consecrating a gay bishop, the church’s presiding bishop said Friday….

She said fallout from the 2003 decision to consecrate Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire appears to have settled out for the most part.

“The reactivity right now is much, much less than it was seven years ago,” she said during an interview at Christ Church, where Waldo’s consecration will take place.

“I think the church, and certainly the part of the church in the United States, is reasonably clear about where we’re going, even though everybody doesn’t agree. And those in the church, I think, are willing to live with that tension.”

You will notice that residents of this interpenetrating dimension wear funny pointed hats; it is suspected that the hats house a jamming device designed to prevent rational thought from disrupting the inhabitants’ harmonious – if illusory – euphoria.

Shocking: anti-Semitic slogans banned from the Toronto Pride parade

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From the National Post:Add an Image

Pride organizers have voted to effectively ban the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid from this year’s parade.

Councillor Kyle Rae confirmed the decision despite the efforts of Pride Toronto board members to defer the announcement until a news conference on Tuesday.

“Pride has voted to ban the use of ‘Queers Against Israeli Apartheid,’ ” Mr. Rae told the Toronto Sun.

The board reportedly decided to ban the phrase “Israeli apartheid,” but not any individuals or groups from the July 4 event — a sleight of hand that has outraged a spokesman for Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.

Tim McCaskell accused Pride Toronto of betraying the gay community and buckling under pressure from politicians and sponsors.

“I think people will find it shocking,” Mr. McCaskell said.

I would have thought that the Toronto homosexual march would welcome a restriction that people find “shocking”, considering they have exhausted every other means of shocking the public.

Rowan Williams gets no respect

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I wonder why. From Newsbiscuit:Add an Image

PepsiCo have announced today that they are terminating the current contract with Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury as the face of Pepsi Cola. The brand will now be moving away from the centrist Church of England image, in which Pepsi drinkers were portrayed reflecting upon difficult spiritual matters as the product is remarketed ‘in more of a hip hop direction towards youth and music’.

Although a number of global brands have previously benefited from major celebrity endorsements, PepsiCo have had been forced to admit that choosing an elderly Anglican archbishop has not provided the massive boost that they had hoped for. ‘Oh it’s very easy to be wise after the event’ said Pepsi Co’s Head of Marketing Chad Taylor. ‘Suddenly everyone seems to be an expert in celebrity endorsement and claim they knew this would never work.’

Katherine Jefferts Schori to attend GS2010

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Katherine Jefferts Schori will be attending the Anglican Church of Canada’s General Synod in June. I wonder if she’ll bring her Rainbow Add an ImageHat as a subtle reminder to us Canucks what it’s really all about.

Synod members will welcome a number of international guests including The Right Rev. Suheil Dawani, Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem; The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church

A new proof for God’s existence

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Until recently the popular proofs for God’s existence have been the ontological, teleological, cosmological, and moral arguments.

Now we have the new atheists’ proof:

The best proof of God’s existence is the urge some writers feel to deny it. Since the instinct of writers is to make a noise, and denying something that isn’t makes none, they wouldn’t waste their time quarrelling with a nonexistent God.

Hitchens declares himself an anti-theist: he is against God; he hates him as the ultimate tyrant. Dawkins exhibits much the same loathing. None of the contemporary atheists have the grace or wit of their forebears like Bertrand Russell who, when asked what he would say to God if he was proved wrong said, “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence.” – a demonstration of wilful ignorance, but not hatred.

You can’t hate something that much if it isn’t really there, so it’s hard not to see the excessive protestations against an allegedly mythical Deity as anything other than the recycling of the age old rebellion: a proof, not a denial of God’s existence.

A new proof for God’s existence

Until recently the popular proofs for God’s existence have been the ontological, teleological, cosmological, and moral argument.

Now we have the new atheists’ proof:

The best proof of God’s existence is the urge some writers feel to deny it. Since the instinct of writers is to make a noise, and denying something that isn’t makes none, they wouldn’t waste their time quarrelling with a nonexistent God.

Hitchens declares himself an anti-theist: he is against God. If it turns out God is really there, he would hate him as the ultimate tyrant. Dawkins exhibits much the same loathing. None of the contemporary atheists has the grace or wit of their forebears like Bertrand Russell who when asked what he would say to God if he was proved wrong said, “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence.” – a demonstration of ignorance, but not hatred.

You can’t hate something that much if it isn’t really there, so it’s hard not to see the excessive protestations against an allegedly mythical Deity as anything other than the recycling of the age old rebellion : a proof, not a denial of his existence.

Abortion viewed from two perspectives

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Support for Cardinal Ouellet’s denunciation of abortion has come from two unexpected people: a rape victim who aborted her child:

Angelina Steenstra may seem like one of the likeliest candidates on earth to be offended by Cardinal Marc Ouellet’s much-criticized statements, made earlier this week at a pro-life conference in Quebec City, that abortion is wrong in all cases, even in the case of rape.

As a teenager Steenstra was the victim of a traumatic date rape that resulted in an unwanted pregnancy – a situation that led her to choose an abortion.

But this week Steenstra told LifeSiteNews (LSN) that, far from joining those politicians and media who have blasted the cardinal (in the case of one journalist, even going so far as to wish a “long and painful” death on the cleric), she would like to express her gratitude to him.

Steenstra, who has come a long way since those dark days in her teenage years, is now the National Coordinator of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. She told LSN that the cardinal’s remarks were a “wake-up call to women who are given the misinformation that abortion will solve their problems – even the problem of a child conceived by rape.”

“I wish I had heard his message when I was a teen and was raped and then aborted my daughter,” she said. “I am deeply grateful to the Cardinal for proclaiming the truth that abortion, even in the case of rape, rather than helping the victim of rape, actually adds a second victim – the unborn child.”

Angelina said that her abortion as a teenager led to a consuming self-loathing, and that eventual healing only took place after she faced the truth that the killing of her child through abortion was wrong.

“I was told abortion was no big deal. That it would solve my problem,” she said. “Finally I caved into my fears and made the phone call that would end the life of my child and begin a lifetime of suffering and regret.

And a woman conceived as the result of rape:

I am extremely grateful to and proud of Cardinal Ouellet for speaking up to defend the lives of those of us conceived in rape,” says Deborah Morlani, a wife, mother of five children, pro-life speaker, Catholic writer, registered nurse and grad student working on her Master of Theology degree.

These women both know – from opposite perspectives – that an unborn child is a human being, created by God in his image, a person to be loved and cherished no matter how difficult his or her conception.