Please forgive me for going OT right away to present irrefutable proof that Christians are different. Well, electrified christian pickles at any rate.

http://minnesotaindependent.com/view/video-a-pz-myers

Wow, another toady for money.

How original…

Almost as shocking as Dobson embracing McCain. So glad the principled adults are in charge again after those infantile Clinton years.

gbear,

That pickle demonstration you linked to made me immediately think of three things:

1) Abu Ghraib
2) Grandpa John is apparently an Arminian heretic, as he rejects the doctrine of the preservation of the saints.
3) The final message of the demonstration seems to be: do not try Christianity at home. Works for me!

javafascist: “Almost as shocking as Dobson embracing McCain. So glad the principled adults are in charge again after those infantile Clinton years.”

Eh. It’s change you can believe in.

I was traveling last week, which inevitably means seeing airport CNN. The stories about prospective first ladies and cookie recipes made me wish I could go back to the primaries and vote Clinton. I though Obama would be against that FISA thing, but he wasn’t. Having accepted that this is the decline of America, what I want to see is Bill Clinton on the View, sharing cookies and beauty secrets. Damn it, is that too much to ask?

Okay, I enjoy the bashing of wingnuts as much as the next guy, but can people here please lay off Christianity and Christians. We’re not all foaming-at-the-mouth fundies like Mad Pat or Jimmy-Jims, you know.

Shorter Eternal Daniel Pipes:

Arabs are bad. Kill them all.

Dangerous Delusion, best I can give you manrush.

manrush,

I feel perfectly comfortable attacking people who demand that I become a Christian and “demonstrate” the necessity of this by electrifying a pickle.

I know damn well that all Christians don’t share these tendencies and certainly didn’t mean to suggest otherwise or to criticize those who don’t.

Let’s put aside for a moment that Daniel Pipes is now arguing in support for a group currently designated as a terrorist organization.

What has the MEK done for the US? Well Pipes presents two nuggets of intel produced by the MEK dating back to 2003:
1. EFP’s used in Iraq were supplied by Iran and
2. Iran’s nuclear weapons technology.

And with all this fantastic intel, we are now able to confirm neither of these points. Sure, either one of them might be true, but after years of investigating, there is exactly zero proof.

But, then again, without the spectre of Iraninan nuclear weapons and clandestine programs, the smoking mushroom cloud gun won’t play as well. Remind me again, how well did it go – the last time unproven accusations of nuclear arms were used to justify military action?

Okay, I enjoy the bashing of wingnuts as much as the next guy, but can people here please lay off Christianity and Christians. We’re not all foaming-at-the-mouth fundies like Mad Pat or Jimmy-Jims, you know.

I can only speak for myself here, but as a mean-spirited, soulless atheist I find all religions equally silly (I don’t necessarily find them all equally dangerous, destructive or just plain bad, but that’s another point).
That said, Christianity is the dominant religion in the States, and the religion with which most of us have the greatest familiarity, so its going to attract the greatest numbers of slings and arrows.

If that wanker is so concerned about the MEK, perhaps he should pressure the US government to give political asylum to the members of the MEK.

BTW, there is a very good reason for Shiites in Iraq to hate the MEK that that wanker does not mention, the MEK assisted Saddam Hussein in putting down the Shiite rebellion that GHW Bush first supported and then dumped after Gulf War 1.

Look what I found in my time machine:

Daniel Pipes
July 23, 2008

Now that the whole world has been shown Iran’s dishonesty about their nuclear program, it is time for decisive action. The revelation of the purchase of thousands of high strength aluminum tubes, devices which can only be used for the development of nuclear warheads, in conjunction with the evidence that Iran is seeking to purchase nuclear materials, leaves the civilized world with only one option. The total annhilation of the Iranian people – every man, woman and child regime.

Indeed, let me show you some slides detailing Iran’s extensive WMD operations.

[slides 14 to 17]

It is not only to protect Israel the only reason to do anything that we need to strike now, but Iran has also shown itself capapble of delivering a missile warhead to US soil in our embassies in the Middle East. It’s only a matter of days, or possibly hours, before Iran detonates a massive nuclear blast, and it’s just as likely to be in New York or Washington as it is in Haifa.

I hope you don’t mind but I editted out the slides. WordPress would probably have eaten them anyways.

Re gbear’s video posting:

So becoming a Christian is like having God/Jesus sticking a fork in your ass and plugging it into an electical source? Does that mean that when we send people to death in the electic chair, we are really trying to turn them into a Jesus pickle?

BTW, I was particularly amused by the admonition to “not try this at home”. Not sure if he meant plugging in pickles or becoming a Christian (or if he means there is no difference).

Is it me, or does Daniel Pipes look like Hans Gruber from Die Hard in that picture?

Re: devout pickles

Note how there’s steam shooting out both ends of the pickle when it’s plugged into God. This explains the crazed ranting of the religious right. Also note that, with all the steam escaping, the pickle will dry out and shrivel, leaving just a husk, which if left plugged into God too long, catches fire. The only way to avoid this is by dipping the pickle back into the brine of humanity, by which I mean hookers and teen-aged boys.

Okay, I enjoy the bashing of wingnuts as much as the next guy, but can people here please lay off Christianity and Christians. We’re not all foaming-at-the-mouth fundies like Mad Pat or Jimmy-Jims, you know.

Okay, I agree that there are many fine Christian folk out there (Bill Moyers & John Shelby Spong being a couple of good ones in my book), but you simply have to admit that the visual of the smoking, oozing, sparkling pickle over the audio of GrampaJohn saying that this is what Jesus does for you is somewhat ridicule-ready. The fact that his pickle sling is held together with duct tape would make it mock-worthy even if it was just a science project, let alone a lesson in eternal salvation. I hope you saw the video as at least somewhat funny.

We’re not all foaming-at-the-mouth fundies like Mad Pat or Jimmy-Jims, you know.

You need to say something about your rabid brethren then. You need to speak up. It looks like Christianity has been taken over by Satan and he’s eager to make Jesus look bad and he’s given you creationism, ignorance, intolerance, rampant homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, James Dobson, John Hagee, Robertson, Swaggart and a whole host of other negatives that you are doing squat to combat.

What kind of all-powerful deity lets that happen? It’s time for some smiting.

You can get mad at me, or you can take a deep breath and take a good hard look at your religion and maybe you can figure out why people are down on Christianity and its epic failure.

The fact that his pickle sling is held together with duct tape…

Does that make anyone else think of the metal detector scene in Spinal Tap?

He should have turned the pickle up to 11 to show us what the rapture looks like.

He should have turned the pickle up to 11 to show us what the rapture looks like.

WIN

Hee hee

That does have to be the silliest analogy for Jeezus-power I’ve ever seen, though I’ve no doubt someone will be able to outdo it.

If the Spanish had had electricity in the 15th century, I’ve no doubt they’d have shown people the power of the Christian God by hanging them from slings and electrocuting their pickles, though.

apparently someone tried the fork system on this kid:

http://failblog.org/2008/02/27/fork-fail/

You need to say something about your rabid brethren then. You need to speak up. It looks like Christianity has been taken over by Satan and he’s eager to make Jesus look bad and he’s given you creationism, ignorance, intolerance, rampant homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, James Dobson, John Hagee, Robertson, Swaggart and a whole host of other negatives that you are doing squat to combat.

Yeah, because it’s not like Christianity, in particular of the Abrahamic faiths, has a tradition of fragmenting and turning into crazy insular cults that state as a basic doctrine of faith that all members not of their crazy insular cults are non-Christians and in service to the Devil if they ever try to talk you out of being part of that crazy insular cult.

They just need a real good talking too! That’ll fix ’em!

Also, how much of that shit are you doing to combat? I don’t see any progress, as they’re all still there. Which is obviously how you’re assuming manrush has done nothing to combat it either.

Somebody throw Pipes a puppy. He needs to KILL something, soon…

Also, how much of that shit are you doing to combat?

Silence will be construed as agreement with the nutcases, because they’re nutcases.

Hoosier X is not silent.

Hoosier X encourages whatsit to not be silent either.

Looks pretty constructive to me

Daniel Pipes getting all emo over potential human rights abuses: Comedy Motherlode or Mass Hallucination?

“Silence will be construed as agreement with the nutcases.”

Y’know, I ignore the crazy homeless guy screaming about aliens fucking his ex-wife, and that’s why he lives in the street, because his kids were brainwashed by CIA operatives to not recognize him.

Y’know why? Cause he’s a nutcase. Me not arguing with him in a debate over the matter, on how it’s very unlikely his children warranted CIA brainwashing, and that there’s currently no official evidence showing the existence of aliens, let alone aliens that cuckold you while you’re at work, doesn’t mean I agree with him.

So why should the same instance, replaced with crazy bullshit over the Tribulation or spontaneous generation or electric pickles, constitute agreement with his stupid stupid ideas?

Like yeah, nobody in history ever thought to ask the crazy assholes to tone it down a bit.

While we’re at it, can we talk about how it’s so stupid when the wingnuts demand to know where the moderate and liberal Muslims are to talk down the crazy assholes? And then we show like seventy thousand Muslim alliances saying exactly that, but because the crazy assholes are still blowing shit up and burning American flags, they’re obviously not doing anything?

Shorter HTML Mencken:

I’m just a pretentious, preachy, backwoods-Arkansas pseudo-intellectual hick who is really out of place on a humor blog (but I wanna be taken srsly!!11!).

“While we’re at it, can we talk about how it’s so stupid when the wingnuts demand to know where the moderate and liberal Muslims are to talk down the crazy assholes? And then we show like seventy thousand Muslim alliances saying exactly that, but because the crazy assholes are still blowing shit up and burning American flags, they’re obviously not doing anything?”

This isn’t an American speciality. After the London bombings we heard a great deal about something called the “Muslim community” and its duty to denounce the fundamentalists at thirty second intervals.