You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life - Albert Camus

Friday, August 06, 2010

This news just galls me. They got caught in a huge scam, and their answer as their cause is abandoned by sane people, is to steal more of our wealth in order to keep the machine that is intended to steal all of our wealth alive. And the energy companies and people opposed to the dogma hawked by these cultists are the ones accused of greed and nefarious motives. A pox on their house!

Monday, July 12, 2010

The AGW cultists have recently been up in arms about how an “independent review” of the Climategate scandal cleared the cultist, finding no evidence to question the “rigor and honesty” of scientists involved. Of course, as was obvious to anyone but the cultists, there wasn’t anything independent, and nothing much other than a political whitewash to continue to lend credibility to, and defend, the indefensible and incredible , as this WSJ article clearly points out.

Monday, February 22, 2010

So now it looks like the drastically rising oceans, the apocalyptic end game the AGW church has warned us would happen if we refused to accept the collectivist government takeover of our freedoms and cash, was also, erm, exaggerated?

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings. The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.

At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study ”strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results”. The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.

Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in Decemberthat projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100.

OK, so now we are told that they are unsure of the rise. That’s bull of course because what was likely found is that they have no science to prove this idiotic claim. So now even the threat of Waterworld is gone? No melting glaciers, no disappearing North Pole or ice in the Himalayas, no oceans rising… WTF? What’s left? What’s the impending catstrophe that should scare us all into letting them take away our freedoms and cash in return for, well nothing but an overarching government that has control of every aspects of our lives by limiting our access to energy and controlling our purchase power?

All the fear mongering we used to say was bunk and based on bunk science, is now proven as bunk. That’s why it was retracted. Asked to prove with science their claims, one by one, they are being retracted, or drastically revised, to a point that the end result is a statistical insignificance. And yet, the defenders of the AGW cult are still hard at work trying to make not only like they still have the science behind them, but that the onus is on the “deniers” to disprove the AGW claims, even though now it is a given that the underlying data, methodology, and the projected damage all are outright falsehoods or exaggerations. Even worse, people are starting to see that the real big money influences were not from the people that the AGW cultists demonized, but by the very priests of the AGW cult, which have all made millions, and stood to make billions more, scamming us all.

If the AGW watermelon cultists had any sense, they would drop this lost cause and go invent the next big lie they are going to glom on to try and convince us to let them create their global wealth redistributing collectivist government for the elites by. Of course they will not. They will continue to try and lie & bluff their way through this – after all, they have a complacent and willing media that has so far ignored the scandalous behavior by them – and in the process make sure we all know this is a fanatical cult based more on faith than any kind of science.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Colorado is pondering a Religious Bill of Rights, to respond to the increasing attacks on mainstream religion within our society.  I mean, we all know how unwilling our politicians are to talk faith and how atheists are getting elected to everything and taking over school boards and rewriting history books.

Oh, stop that snickering.  I’m sure it’s perfectly reasonable. They start out with affirming students’ and teachers’ right to Freedom of Speech and Assembly, which I don’t really have a problem with, as long as there is no money involved. Here are some of the other rights that students and teachers have:

(III) EXCHANGE A GREETING CARD OR OTHER ITEM WITH A RELIGIOUS THEME;

(IV) SING RELIGIOUS SONGS ALONG WITH SECULAR SONGS AS PART OF A SCHOOL-SPONSORED OR CURRICULUM-RELATED PROGRAM;

(V) USE A RELIGIOUS GREETING;

(VI) WEAR RELIGIOUS GARB ON A PUBLIC SCHOOL CAMPUS, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO CLOTHING WITH A RELIGIOUS MESSAGE

This is about the so-called War on Christmas.  They want pageants to be able to use religious songs and kids to be able to say “Merry Christmas” to each other without causing the ACLU to have fainting spells.  Again, I’m fine with this.  I am almost always on the side of liberty in these cases.  I oppose any official religious activity in public schools.  But throwing a shit fit because someone wants to sing “O Holy Night!” at the Christmas pageant is a bit much.

Religious greetings and garb are fine ... as long as there okay with people wearing yarmulkes or greeting each other with “Allāhu Akbar”.

So nothing really controversial.  I guess we can ... wait ... what was that?

(VII) EXPRESS HIS OR HER RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OR SELECT RELIGIOUS MATERIALS WHEN RESPONDING TO A SCHOOL ASSIGNMENT IF HIS OR HER RESPONSE REASONABLY MEETS THE EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT; AND

(VIII) RECITE RELIGIOUS MATERIAL WHEN AN ORAL RECITATION IS ASSIGNED IF THE MATERIAL FAIRLY MEETS THE EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT.

And for teachers:

(VI) NOT BE REQUIRED TO TEACH A TOPIC THAT VIOLATES HIS OR HER RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND NOT BE DISCIPLINED FOR REFUSING TO TEACH THE TOPIC;

Now we get to the heart of the matter: the sponsors of this act want teachers to be able to refuse to teach subjects that violate their religious beliefs and students to be able to drag religion into an assignment.  You don’t have to go too far to figure out which subjects this would apply to.  It’s not like anyone has a religious objection to chemistry or European history.  We’re talking about evolution and sex ed.

These provisions move the Religious Bill of Rights from pointless to ominous.  It turns it from being an affirmation of freedom to an injecition religion into the curriculum.

I linked to the NYT’s story about the political war going on in Texas’ schools.  Evolution and sex ed have been at the forefront of that fight, with a slim majority keeping the religious bloc on the board from voting in a host of anti-evolution garbage.  And this is not accidental; it’s planned:

The cultural roots of the Texas showdown may be said to date to the late 1980s, when, in the wake of his failed presidential effort, the Rev. Pat Robertson founded the Christian Coalition partly on the logic that conservative Christians should focus their energies at the grass-roots level. One strategy was to put candidates forward for state and local school-board elections — Robertson’s protégé, Ralph Reed, once said, “I would rather have a thousand school-board members than one president and no school-board members” — and Texas was a beachhead.

Strip those provisions out and I have no problem with this bill.  But I get the feeling this bill is all about those provisions, with religious liberty being used as the duck blind.

(H/T: Bad Astronomy)

Friday, January 15, 2010

The usual suspects in the MSM have been all over Pat Robertson for his comment about how the earthquake happened because the Hatians made a pact with the devil to get rid of the French - a myth I had actaully heard in some caribean enclaves, decades ago, and which even Hatians sometimes say is so, I should add - and are being punished, and thaqts good because this stuff is idiotic, but I wonder how much coverage Danny Glover will get for saying that it was caused because Gaia is pissed that Copenhagen was botched?

Says Glover: “When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?”

This will likely not be news. The left is replete with people that agree with Danny. The same people that tell us hurricanes and such happen because of AGW when we all can see that’s bunk. They may not mention Gaia, but that’s were this crap comes from..

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Our president has received and signed a 1.1 trillion spending bill, and I am sure most people have not heard anything about the bill. Here are some details:

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has signed into law a $1.1 trillion bill that increases the budgets in many areas of the government by about 10 percent, including health, law enforcement and veterans’ programs. Obama signed the bill privately at the White House on Wednesday after receiving the bill from Congress on Sunday. The bill lumps together six of the 12 annual appropriations bills for the 2010 budget year that began Oct. 1.

So this is signed in secret, increases government spending on itself by 10%, at a time when the economy is in chaos, the people are hurting bad, unemployment is again going up, government has to do things like borrow close to $300 billion more because we already are over the limit on our spending for next year. And to top this all off, the collectivist crooks are trying real hard to make up their own version of reality with the ludicrous, ridiculous, and odorous claim that their government takeover of the healthcare decision making process and finances plan that under the best of circumstances will add a minimum of $2 trillion dollars to our already astronomically expanding debt, is actually needed to prevent healthcare costs from breaking the bank! Seriously, do they have no shame? In the mean time we find out that these idiots till think government spending is the solution to unemployment. Tax cuts? Never! That crap is evil. Of course we know tax cuts actually spurred growth, and had the government spending not gone up faster than that growth, things would have been good, while this collectivist government spending stuff has never worked to do anything but drag out recessions. Maybe these losers get their ideas from eating stuff from this place? Americans are wising up to the scam run by these bastards though.

In the mean time the cultists gathering in Copenhagen is providing a platform for the worst of the worse. The clergy continues to pretend their house of cards isn’t coming down and on flames, even as more proof comes out that the game is rigged. And the worlds biggest polluter tells the gang of nuts to take a long walk off a short pier. Don’t the peasants know that Waterworld is coming if we do not bow down to Gaia and let the church of AGW run amok with their grand scheme? the Pope of the church of AGW has predicted it! Don’t worry though. If this thing blows up as spectacularly as Pinatubo did back when, it will spew so much junk into the atmosphere - comparable to decades of man doing its worst possible - that we will again see a 1 degree temperature drop world wide.

If this stuff didn’t hurt so much, it would all be funny.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Twenty-three years after he first threatened to do so, God finally called home Oral Roberts.

Evangelist Oral Roberts, founder of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University, died Tuesday from complications of pneumonia in Newport Beach, California, his spokeswoman said. He was 91.

Roberts did some good stuff like building a University and a medical research center.  But he was also part of the late 80’s Televangelist Comedy Hour, as the side show to Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart and Peter Popoff.  When his name comes up, I can’t help but think of Bloom County‘s “Fundamentally Oral Bill” series of strips that did a fantastic job of skewering the fundamentalism of the time.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Looks like even the MSM can no longer ignore ClimateGate anymore, as this WaPo article shows. What’s ClimateGate about? I’ll get there in a second, but let me set this up for you. Basically we all already know that the watermelons pushing “Climate Change” and demanding we establish a socialist world government to spread the wealth and solve the problem - I know, this baffles the sane mind that their solution to what they have labeled to be a world ending climate issue, is collectivism writ large - before we all die and the mackerels become the dominant species in Waterworld. We are told that there is no disputing the science because the consensus is on their side. But this article in the WaPo is showing another thing.

Electronic files that were stolen from a prominent climate research center and made public last week provide a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes battle to shape the public perception of global warming. While few U.S. politicians bother to question whether humans are changing the world’s climate—nearly three years ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the evidence was unequivocal—public debate persists. And the newly disclosed private exchanges among climate scientists at Britain’s Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies. In one e-mail, the center’s director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University’s Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.

What is missing form this WaPo piece is the “why” that this is going on. The issue comes back to Steve McIntyre’s critique of work by Keith Biffra, which as this American Thinker piece shows, rigged his tree ring research - the same one the IPCC uses at it’s bible on AGW - showing the famous global warming “Hockey stick” effect. basically McIntyre was lambasted and accused of foul play, lying, and much worse, before some saint hacked the e-mail of these clowns and showed us how deep this scam and the defense of these scammers runs. Of course, the cultists are not budging, and the WaPo dutifully mouths their crap for them:

Kevin Trenberth, who heads the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and wrote some of the pirated e-mails, said it is the implications rather than the content of climate research that make some people uncomfortable. “It is incontrovertible” that the world is warming as a result of human actions, Trenberth said. “The question to me is what to do.”

This cult is based on lies, damned lies, and the IPCC’s lies. This is about faith, not science. Then again, considering what they keep telling us is the solution to their made up cataclysmic problem, one could easily have concluded this whole thing was a scam from the start. This is going to be fun to watch.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

You sometimes have to wonder when the Obama Administration is going to grow a pair:

While attracting surprisingly little attention, the Obama administration supported the effort of largely Muslim nations in the U.N. Human Rights Council to recognize exceptions to free speech for any “negative racial and religious stereotyping.” The exception was made as part of a resolution supporting free speech that passed this month, but it is the exception, not the rule that worries civil libertarians. Though the resolution was passed unanimously, European and developing countries made it clear that they remain at odds on the issue of protecting religions from criticism. It is viewed as a transparent bid to appeal to the “Muslim street” and our Arab allies, with the administration seeking greater coexistence through the curtailment of objectionable speech. Though it has no direct enforcement (and is weaker than earlier versions), it is still viewed as a victory for those who sought to juxtapose and balance the rights of speech and religion.

Read the whole thing, which lists blasphemy prosecutions in Europe on behalf of not only Islam but Scientology, Judaism and Christianity.

Free expression is under assault from many quarters.  And it is reprehensible that our President, in an effort to placate nations run by religious fanatics, is siding against freedom.  There’s absolutely no reason that building bridges to the Muslim world (or whatever) should involve the sacrifice of one of our sacred and important freedoms.  There’s no reason you can’t say, “Hey, we don’t have anything against Islam.  But you have to understand that our nations enjoy the freedom to criticize anything, including religion.”

Update: I was arranging a trip to Pearl Harbor (I’m in Hawaii) and had to dash this off quickly.  But as I stood at the desk, I though about this some more.

I just read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s fantastic book Infidel, which chronicles her life, her liberation from radical Islam and her fight against its encroachment into Europe.  She makes the point—one I agree with—that there is no way to reconcile liberal Western values with radical Islam.  One or the other will have to yield (read a recent interview with her here).

For her efforts, Ali has been the subject of death threats.  Theo van Gogh was murdered in broad daylight in the Netherlands and a threat against Ali was pinned into his body with the murder weapon.  She is the specific and stated target of many radical Muslims.  And she is still bravely speaking out, campaigning against pseudo-"tolerance" and defending free expression.  This woman—born into the “Virgin’s Cage” in Somalia—has more courage and more understanding of what freedom means than our Hawaii-born and Harvard-educated President.  It’s a disgrace.

I’m for engagement with Islamic nations and prefer the diplomatic approach of this Administration to the blundering approach of the last.  But this approach only works when you have clear areas that you will not compromise on.  Eventually, you have to stand for something.  Eventually, you have to draw a line and say, “this is as far as we go.” And carving out special exemptions for religion in freedom of speech to keep religion zealots happy is a step too far.

Monday, October 05, 2009

One of the problems that the biblical literalists have is that the Bible says a lot that they don’t like.  The Old Testament endorses indentured servitude, capital punishment for breaking the sabbath, Levirite marriage and forbids delicious lobster.  The New Testament is even worse, with such things as forbidding divorce, asking Christians to love their neighbors and ... ye Gods!  .... communism!

The far right fanatics who run “Conservapedia” have a new project: they’re planning to rewrite the Bible to get rid of all of that liberalism and socialism: Conservative Bible Project.

Yes, really. Here’s an example of the kind of stuff they think needs to be excised from the all-new conservative Bible:

First Example - Liberal Falsehood

The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34:[7]

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.

Yeah, conservatives don’t want no truck with that librul “forgiveness” thang! Out with it!

Expunging one of the most beautiful moments in the Passion.  Good start, guys.

Among other things, they want to remove liberal bias and unisex language, use conservative terms (removing references to “comrade” and “peace"), expunge gambling references, put in free market parables (Joseph nationalizing Egyptian land? Out!) and exclude later-inserted liberal passages (Goodbye, Book of Ruth!).  Lovely.  Corinthians can’t be long for that version.  I’m sure they’ll even resurrect (ha-ha) the canard that when the Bible says “wine” it really means “grape juice”.  Because all of us remember how, like Noah, we passed out naked and drunk from our first taste of Welch’s.

(Bible revisionism is not unique to the religious by a long shot.  As a Torah scholar, I’m always infuriated when, for example Exodus 21:7 is trotted out by the anti-religious as saying a man can sell his daughter into slavery.  According to Etz Hayim—hardly a fringe source—the hebrew word there—amah—means a woman who is sold into marriage to pay off debts.  As repulsive as bride prices may be to modern ears, it’s not slavery.  In fact, the passage in question says that a woman who marries to pay off her father’s debts can not be treated like a second class bride, can not be sold and is entitled, like all wives, to food, clothing and “ointment”—a euphemism for sex.  Yes, friends, the hoary Old Testament says that women have a right to sexual gratification.  I expect the Conservative Bible will stick with “ointment”.  More from me on misreading of the Bible can be found here.

And as long as I’m flexing my Bible scholar muscles, what the heck is up with new translation of Psalm 23?  Tyndale’s version is gorgeous; the new one sounds like an ad campaign.  Translation is as much art as science, comrades.)

Anyway, I’m sure the CBP will provide endless hours of entertainment.  If they ever actually publish a CBP, I’ll be sure and buy one.  It would make a great drinking game.  You read the old Bible and drink anytime it shows liberal bias.  Then you read the conservative bible and—man!—do you need a drink!

Monday, September 14, 2009

I am extremely skeptical of this story:

Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin’s “struggle between faith and reason” as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie.

The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as “a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder”. His “half-baked theory” directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to “atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering”, the site stated.

The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as “a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying”

Consider the films that have found distributors in this country—torture porn like Hostel, radical liberal documentaries like everything Michael Moore has done, controversy-laden films like The Passion of the Christ (incidentally, one of the best movies about Jesus I’ve seen) and outright crud like Garfield 2.  Hell, Religulous and Brokeback Mountain not only found distributors but massive amount of money and awards.

Forgive my skepticism, but I smell a rat—a film-maker trying to get better terms than he’s being offered.  I’ll be distressed if this story is 100% true—not because of the implications for the country but because of the incredible cowardice of the studios that would be revealed.  I severely doubt that a film about Darwin would draw any protest of note.  And what little it did would probably increase the box office.

It is worth noting that the major studios have shown this kind of craven approach to religion before.  For example, they forced the movie adaptation of The Golden Compass to water down or eliminate it’s anti-religion aspects.  But this story just reeks—it plays too much into my prejudices about the fundamentalists.  And so I’m waiting to see if there’s more to the story.

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

As if it was not enough that I get my women to scream the lord’s name during birthday and anniversary love fests - hey, I been married 20 years, know what I mean - now the catholic church wants me to also pray before the deed. Isn’t it enough that I beg? Anyway, does this now make foreplay unnecessary? What about that cuddling after stuff? Do we need an after prayer too? Will this work for pre-marital sex as well? What about those joy filled “alone” moments? Hookers? And for the freaks out there, what about when they are engaged in their sweat sessions? Just don’t want to go into all the details and freak fests because then this post would make the length of “War and Peace” look short. Yeah, I am making fun of this whole thing. What’s next? A prayer before a good bowel movement? Considering the Dutch which allow all manner of perversion and deviancy to be cool already feel a good bowel movement to rate better than sex, that should be looked into. Oh wait, the Dutch are predominantly atheists and protestants, so this isn’t going to fly well there. Never mind.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

And the Republican crack-up continues:

Members of the House of Representatives have introduced a resolution seeking to declare 2010 as “The Year of the Bible.”

The bill was introduced last week by Rep. Paul Broun , a Republican from Georgia, and co-sponsored by 13 other Republicans.

The bill states , among other things, that “the Bible has inspired acts of patriotism that have unified Americans, commemorated through shared celebrations such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.”

The bill seeks to have the president designate 2010 as the Year of the Bible and “to issue a proclamation calling upon citizens of all faiths to rediscover and apply the priceless, timeless message of the Holy Scripture which has profoundly influenced and shaped the United States and its great democratic form of Government.”

Now, let me just say for the record that I believe that our greatest leaders were indeed sincerely motivated by their faith. But that’s not what this is about. This is about the increasingly rabid and paranoid fundamentalist wing of the party turning to dumb ideas like this one that only serve to illustrate their continued stranglehold on the Republican body politic. They see 2010 as perhaps their last gasp to hold onto power, so they’re going to pull out all the stops in the hope of preventing a meltdown of epic proportions.

They have a chance at challenging Obama on spending, health care, etc. Instead, they’re blowing it on these cheap publicity stunts. I think I’ll go join Hal in banging my head on the table for the next few years.

Friday, May 08, 2009

Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson comments on how religious fervor has actually turned off a generation to religion:

According to Putnam, religious “entrepreneurs” such as Jerry Falwell organized and channeled the conservative religious reaction against the 1960s into the religious right—the first aftershock.

But this reaction provoked a reaction—the second aftershock. The politicization of religion by the religious right, argues Putnam, caused many young people in the 1990s to turn against religion itself, adopting the attitude: “If this is religion, I’m not interested.” The social views of this younger cohort are not entirely predictable: Both the pro-life and the homosexual-rights movement have made gains. But Americans in their 20s are much more secular than the baby boomers were at the same stage of life. About 30 to 35 percent are religiously unaffiliated (designated “nones,” as opposed to “nuns”—I was initially confused). Putnam calls this “a stunning development.” As many liberals suspected, the religious right was not good for religion.

Conservatives-sane ones, at least-have actually also been noticing this. And it hasn’t necessarily made them more liberal, fears of the activist right to the contrary:

America’s Generation Y (born between 1980 and 1995) is the first to have grown up with the Internet, which leaves it the most liberty-loving generation since the era of Andrew Jackson....Millions of Gen-Yers have grown accustomed to making purchases online tax-free. They download movies and music (much of it pirated), read their news online for free (to the detriment of print media), find recipes online and network with friends and relatives online.

In short, they love their freedom.

This love of liberty translates into a unique political composite. Gen-Yers are less nationalistic and more likely to see all politicians as corrupt than older voters. They support liberalization of drug laws and would prefer to see marijuana legalized. And they are much less likely to support restrictions on immigration than older voters. On these counts, they seem to lean left of center, at least as the political spectrum is defined today.

But they are also free-traders, much more supportive of globalization than older voters. They’re optimistic, overwhelmingly believing that they can change the country for the better. And in the most recent surveys, they support proposals to privatize Social Security, which few believe will be there for them when they retire. On these counts, they seem to lean right of center.

So, down-on-their-luck Republicans take note-you do have a potential audience. You just need to send out the right message if you want to attract the next generation to your side.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

This has been up on a lot of blogs, but I thought I’d post it:

A Maryland woman involved with a group described as a religious cult pleaded guilty in the starvation death of her son, but insisted that the charges be dropped when he is resurrected.

The condition was made a part of Ria Ramkissoon’s plea agreement, officials said. She entered the plea Monday in Baltimore, Maryland, to a first-degree felony count of child abuse resulting in death, her attorney, Steven Silverman, said Tuesday.

Ramkissoon, a member of a group called One Mind Ministries, believes Javon Thompson, her year-old son, will rise again, and as part of her plea agreement, authorities agreed to the clause.

It gets crazier.  You may not want to read this.

Ramkissoon and the others are accused of denying Javon food after the group’s leader, a 40-year-old woman who goes by the name Queen Antoinette, decreed the boy was a demon since he refused to say “amen” after meals, Silverman said.

“Ria would cling to him every day and try to get him to say ‘amen,’ “ Silverman said. Eventually, Queen Antoinette ordered that Ramkissoon be separated from the child, he said.

Javon is believed to have died in December 2006, court documents allege. Following his death, the group members put the boy’s body in a back room, and “everyone was directed to come in and pray,” according to the documents. “The Queen told everyone that ‘God was going to raise Javon from the dead.’ Javon remained in the room for an extended period of time (in excess of one week). The resurrection never took place.”

Authorities believe the boy’s body was then placed into a wheeled suitcase along with mothballs and fabric-softener sheets, documents said. Prosecutors allege Antoinette opened the suitcase periodically and sprayed its interior with Lysol to mask the decomposition odor.

The group then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and befriended a man who agreed to take care of their luggage before they left, documents said. The body was found in April 2008, still inside the suitcase, in the man’s storage shed.

All five One Mind Ministries members were set to stand trial Monday. The case against the others has been postponed, Silverman said, as Antoinette and another woman lack attorneys and must either obtain one or waive their right to counsel. Silverman added that Antoinette has suggested, though not said outright, that God is representing her.

WTF, man?!

There’s been a stampede to use this to bash religion, but that’s misguided.  There was a time in my life when I was quite religious and I still dabble a bit.  There has never been any time when a rabbi could have gotten me to deny food to my starving child.  99.9% of the religious people in this world—even the Jesus Camp End of Days people—would not starve a child like this.  This is a person with severe mental problems.

Still ... WTF?!