Verily, verily, let’s not forget the brave souls who rose against the Catholic Church in risk of their precious lives.

Actually, and in all honesty, I don’t believe this is the most proper or the smartest way to go about spreading the word of anti-religion, but you got to admire this man’s balls. Brass balls indeed. During the high Easter mass in the Notre-Dame and dressed in the garb of a Dominican monk, he waited for an opportunity to climb the rostrum and declare the following message to the hundreds gathered and many thousands more at home who watched it on television or listened to it on the radio:

Today, Easter day of the Holy Year here, under the emblem of Notre-Dame of Paris I accuse the universal Catholic Church of the lethal diversion of our living strength toward an empty heaven I accuse the Catholic Church of swindling I accuse the Catholic Church of infecting the world with its funereal morality of being the running sore on the decomposed body of the West. Verily I say unto you: God is dead We vomit the agonizing insipidity of your prayers for your prayers have been the greasy smoke over the battlefields of our Europe. Go forth then into the tragic and exalting desert of a world where God is dead and till this earth anew with your bare hands with your PROUD hands with your unpraying hands. Today Easter day of the Holy Year Here under the emblem of Notre-Dame of Paris we proclaim the death of the Christ-god, so that Man may live at last.

April 9th this was 58 years ago. The man had to be rescued by the police from an ensuing angry mob that would probably have ripped him to shreds if they got their hands on him. More on that whole affair here.

Intelligent Design… [insert huge sigh here]

Now you have got to credit these folks: they never give up. Their fanaticism seems to have no bound!

In theatres 2008: “The Playground For The Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”

Watch the trailer.

Now I’d like to start off my criticism with this message: all pretense gone! They seem to have come out of the closet when it comes to the role Creationism plays in their ideas. Not that there was any doubt about it since the Dover trial. With a film endorsed by the Intelligent Design movement and with interviews with prominent I.D. front-men, the case seems clear.

With that out of the way… well, honestly, I can feel nothing but contempt for the message and tone of this trailer. It’s all: “boo-hoo-hoo, the Neo-Darwinists are oppressing us for no other reason than us righteously questioning their theory.” This awesome lie is bound to fail of course.

First of all, it is common knowledge now that Intelligent Design is a farce. No playing martyr is going to change that. The only thing that could only ever change the pitiful status of Intelligent Design as a scientific theory is evidence. Rock-hard, ice-cold evidence. And don’t think of bringing on the vertebrate eye or the bacterial flagellum once more, like you did in Dover. In fact, don’t bring any examples at all- bring testable, structurally sound theories. And stop this conniving and scheming.

This trailer is a new low in outrageous Creationist propaganda, second only, maybe, to The Way Of The Master. Check that out for some gruesome twists in the fabric of reality.

Several days ago, the news got out that several Dutch Christian organisations filed official complaints at the address of the Dutch “bureau for codes of conduct in commercials” (honestly, I don’t know what the official translation ought to be, so here’s the literal one) due to franchised electronics warehouse “Dixons” disrespecting Christian faith.

The franchise distributed commercial prints depicting the Three Wise Men navigating by TomTom and baby Jesus listening to ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas’ on an iPod in his crib. According to spokesman Bert Dorenbos these depictions are: “Dangerous, especially during Christmas time.” If you can read Dutch, here’s the original article.

Now, I’d like you to consider this and ask yourself how this is different from Islamic outrage over comic portraits of Muhammad in a Scandinavian newspaper. The only difference I can think of is the intensity in the revulsion felt by the offended religion. In fact, I think there is no difference at all. Both situations are equally outrageous and truthfully: the only “dangerous” thing in the whole situation is giving these Christian organisations credulity.

What’s more: where is the danger in these depictions anyway? What’s offensive? I don’t get it. Because it is blasphemous that Jesus might listen to a Christmas song on an iPod? Give me a break! It’s not as if he is trying to get friendly with the mule or anything. Now that would be a decent reason to take offense.

Why did I say it was dangerous to give these Christians credulity? Well, for the plain reason that they are trying to establish that Christianity needs to have a special place in Dutch society. Such a special place, in fact, that it is deemed to be a major breach of common decency to harmlessly depict a Shepherd playing a video-game. What these organisations are lobbying for in this manner, is that society should not be critical of Christianity, however trivially, because it would hurt their personal feelings. And hurting anyone’s feelings is bad thing, don’t you agree?

Well, Bert Dorenbos, you are hurting my personal feelings. Even though I am not too fond of Dixons, I feel offended by the organisations you speak for, for trying to insert small-mindedness into society. For trying to stop us from being critical of a religion that needs to be criticised like never before. For trying to promote Christianity as a clique beyond reproach and mostly– for playing on people’s fears by playing the card that says: “criticizing religion breeds hatred in society.” After all, people, wasn’t Theo van Gogh killed for his blatant critique on religion (Islam), wasn’t Ayaan Hirshi Ali forced to flee the country for the same reason?

For these reasons, I want to hurt your feelings. I want to be critical of you, so that hopefully, it will dawn on you that you are being small-minded and patronising. I don’t mind you and your Christian conviction, however, what I do mind is that you can not keep it to yourself. Instead, you try to tell me, an atheist, and any other person who might ever get the idea to say something “dangerous” about your faith should keep their “blasphemy ” to themselves. I will not shut up. I repeat: I will not shut up. I will never stop criticizing people with small minds and hypocritical agendas.

Amen.

Merriam-Webster (Open dictionary section!):

chemtrail (noun) : chemtrail/chem-trail reference to extensive contrail-like atmospheric appearances that happen in unexplainable and numerous patterns that are created in continuous succession in the sky by unmarked aircraft and thought to have a toxic composition.

The “chemtrail” patterns in the sky were more inexplicable then ever. On a clear day the “chemtrails” are sometimes more visible then usual. —WillPWilson, Many years of Worldwide News reports., www.bariumblues.com, around the year of 2000 and many other published sources.

The crux of the theory is this: the government, or at least a very powerful political force, is spraying airborne toxins and pathogens over populated areas all over the world, in order the “cull the herd.” That is: solve the overcrowding of the lands by killing as many people as possible.

At first this may sound absurd (it is), but then the subliminal power of this theory kicks in. As you walk outside you do something you probably don’t do very often: you study the sky. And what you see are contrails. And yes they really are contrails, not chemtrails. Normally you’d just look past them and look at the clouds instead, but hey, don’t contrails dissipate after a maximum of twenty minutes? (not necessarily) And what if it’s true?
The video above is one of two major “documentaries” freely available on the Internet. The other one is so long and tedious I can’t be bothered to critique it.

OK- now watch the video with my following points of critique in mind.

First off: the documentary starts at 04:35- all what happens before is scary drama, with lots of frightening music, sound effects and unrelated evil things like Adolf Hitler, George W. Bush, Bible burning, atomic bombs exploding and to top it all- a supremely malevolent anti-gravity helicopter. These matters should serve as a filter: general viewers go in, but only paranoid viewers go out. During the rest of the documentary, it’s more scary images as well as a distorted, God-like voice that serves only to irritate and make it hard to understand what’s being said.

The actual content of the video isn’t any better. The time spent on evidence for chemtrails is about two minutes, and extremely circumstantial. All the rest is extrapolation from this weak premise (as well as being presented extremely poorly and tediously.) For the record: in science, circumstantial evidence is wholly secondary to direct evidence from a controlled experiment that can be reproduced by peers.

Now, let me put forward my main question: how on Earth would the American government be able to pull this massive operation off? In all fairness, the U.S. government has an extremely poor reputation when it comes to large-scale military operations. Basically, the last well-executed large campaign was the war against Hitler in Europe and to a lesser extent the war in the Pacific against imperial Japan. After that it was all down-hill, ending with the current occupation of Iraq - which even the staunchest proponents can’t deny is being executed disastrously.

Also, reality check: if this is all secret, how do they plan on keeping it that way? It’s absolutely impossible to keep a gargantuan operation like this secret from anyone not involved. It only takes one single anti-American secret service agent - abroad or at home in the States - to expose the entire cover-up. What will happen next is complete annihilation of anyone involved, as well as all the political parties and corporations that support it. It’s just to risky too even contemplate.

Decimating the civilian population like this would be virtual suicide for your person, your company, your political party if you happen to be a high-ranking political official, since history and common sense insist that this cannot be kept secret, certainly not for twenty-plus years as the video proposes. This is something to be kept in mind for most conspiracies- if they involve huge, secret governmental operations, they are probably bogus and can be safely ignored.

As you see, the theory of chemtrails took less time to dissipate than the average contrail.