The legendary Björn from the even more legendary Abba has written a piece in the Grauniad strongly arguing against religion in schools. Well, *duh*. Sadly in the UK, we’re going in the opposite direction due to the policies of our former religious nutter prime minister. I like to posit that indoctrinating children in religion, Abrahamic or otherwise, is nothing less than child abuse. We limit plenty of other stuff to when they’re 18, so why not belief in sky fairies?

The comments on this piece are pretty good too.

As a bonus, feel free to enjoy Marcus Brigstock’s Abrahamic faiths rant.

The internet is an amazing thing. Get some press release of other and within seconds you can find out what agenda someone has. In this case an religious nutter anti-choice one.

Cocks.

Breaking news: Kansas abortion doctor shot dead in his church.

As my friend Julia said: “Wait, I thought people against him believe life is sacred and precious… Confused now.”

Lovely to hear the howls of outrage at this murderous act:

“The murderous butcher was gunned down in a righteous act which serves to defend the lives of other innocent children.”

Fuckwits.

Update: Jezebel has an excellent roundup of the response.

Been a slow day on the cockbucket front. I had a swim and a sauna so I’m too chilled to really feel the bile.

So instead, let’s have a chuckle. This is a priceless motherlode of stupidity that just made me smile. Thanks to Pedro for the tip:

“No, everyone is born Christian. Only later in life do people choose to stray from Jesus and worship satan instead. Atheists have the greatest “cover” of all, they insist they believe in no god yet most polls done and the latest research indicates that they are actually a different sect of Muslims.”

“I am a bit troubled. I believe my son has a girlfriend, because she left a dirty magazine with men in it under his bed. My son is only 16 and I really don’t think he’s ready to date yet. What’s worse is that he’s sneaking some girl to his room behind my back. I need help, God! I want my son to stop being so secretive!”

There are 98 more such gems here.

Bonus: Pat Condell is worth  good listening at as well.

Or merge the two: Poperah?

I’m sorry for not focusing on the men in dresses enough recently. Oprah is the doughy figurehead of a moneymaking empire that’s only been around a decade or two and hasn’t in the grand scheme of things had much of a chance to fuck things up on a grand scale.

The Catholic church has been around a lot longer and certainly has. The recent blowing up of the Irish children’s home scandal has highlighted the rank hyprocrisy of the men in fancy frocks. The Times has a rather deapan, but spot-on, headline: Archbishop of Westminster attacks atheism but says nothing on child abuse. PZ is slightly less deadpan but no less scathing: Men in fancy hats set their priorities. This cess pit needs to change.

The Catholic church is also shortchanging the Spanish people by some 6 billion Euros a year. Love it.

And finally, the awesomely lovely, well, if she can fall for a gnarly short French guy there’s hope for me, Carla Bruni is also pissed off at the pope about the aforementioned AIDS in Africa thing. You go girl!

As what can best be described as a “secular Catholic”, I’ve remained untouched (fnarr) by the whole child abuse business. The US wing has had to pay out a metric fuckload in reparations and the Irish church has been similarly roasted. As usual, PZ has scathing commentary on the whole business.

How can anyone in the Catholic church try to hold the moral high ground after this? Never mind that the church’s stance on condoms in Africa is condemning the continent to an AIDS epidemic, complete with one nutjob who reckons European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.

So any religious type who tries to tell you that you can’t have morality without religion, feel free to agree. But it seems that the morality is immorality.

Even Mo isn’t impressed.

How about REALLY distributing all that wealth and power to the poor and needy, just like that Jesus bloke suggested?

This is just beautiful.

A school is a place for flinging some facts at our children, teaching them how to learn and to work out where they stand in the social pecking order so their teens and early twenties can be angst-ridden messes.

Once you attach the words religious, Christian, Muslim, Jewish to the word school, that bullshit gets stepped up a level. And here is a great example:

Christian School Threatens To Expel Student For Taking Girlfriend To Secular Prom

Apparently it’s not him that’s the issue, it’s the hussies in their low-cut dresses that will lead him from the one true path. Jezebel sums this up neatly as the equvalent of “Well, she wore a skirt, she was asking to be raped on her way home from work.”

Just get the fuck out you weirdoes.