What should Jenny do?

Pharyngula pointed out a section of Oprah/Harpo's site that is asking for submissions - ideas for Jenny McCarthy's talk-show.

Here's the request: (note the bad grammar)

You've seen it all over the news...Jenny McCarthy, one of America's funniest and coolest moms and Harpo is giving her, her own show.

Here is where YOU come in.

What would you like to see featured on Jenny's show? What would you like for her to talk about? What are you and your friends buzzing about?

Any topics you'd like for her to tackle? Are there any questions that you have -- that you would love for her to answer?

If so -- we definitely want to hear from you!

Write to us and tell us exactly what you'd like to see Jenny do.

Here's my suggestion:

Firstly, I would like to point out that this sentence: 'You've seen it all over the news...Jenny McCarthy, one of America's funniest and coolest moms and Harpo is giving her, her own show.' makes absolutely no grammatical sense. For such a large, well known, world-wide corporation, this is indefensible.

Secondly, I don't think Jenny McCarthy should have a program in the first place. However, if you are insisting that she does, here are a few ideas for her:

1. She should talk to real scientists and doctors, learning as much as she can about the scientific and medical practice. Hopefully, this will either A; help her to understand something she has so far shown she does not and B; shut her up – thence preventing her from spouting her un-scientific views about vaccination.

2. Invite families of children who have died or become seriously ill, because of a lack of herd immunity in their areas, on to her show, so she can tell them exactly why she thinks vaccines are dangerous. Maybe she’ll have her eyes opened.

3. Invite families of autistic children and adults on to her show – those who have autism despite not being vaccinated and those who are autistic and over the age of forty. According to McCarthy, there are no autistics over forty, because the vaccines are what started autism. Let’s prove her wrong, definitively.

Oprah, Harpo, do not give this woman TV time. She has no idea what she is talking about, little to no understanding of the issues she talks about and she is contributing to a much larger problem. Instead, find someone more worthy – someone with an interesting life, someone who knows the ins-and-outs of reality, someone who will not convince millions of credulous viewers that vaccinating their children is a bad idea. Because, really, she’s on TV – she can’t be wrong, can she?

Catholicism and abuse

So the report on Catholicism and the child abuse endemic within it's churches and 'care homes' has been released.

It's shameful, disgusting even, what has been found. And I'm not in the least bit surprised. I've read some of the survivor books and hear about individual abuses in the news all the time.

What has surprised me, is this quote:

"I think of those in religious orders and some of the clergy in Dublin who have to face these facts from their past which instinctively and quite naturally they'd rather not look at. That takes courage, and also we shouldn't forget that this account today will also overshadow all of the good that they also did."

That, from the Archbishop of Westminster.

You know what I get from that? More unwillingness to face up to the crimes. He is basically ignoring the victims, ignoring the crimes and pretending that the clergy did nothing so much as, I don't know, occasionally shout at a child.

I mean, come on. This is more of that Catholic bullshit. For years this church has been ignoring victims, ignoring the crimes, ignoring the fact that if not punished, the perpetrators will keep doing it.

We all know that, basically, the church has simply been moving pedophile and abusive priests around, in an attempt to cover up the problem, rather than deal with it.

And here we have a perfect example of the mindset that leads to that action.

'Oh, they weren't so bad, they're courageous to face up to it' - bollocks. Big, fat, hairy, wrinkly bollocks.

No. The victims are courageous for coming forward. The perpetrators are cowards, despicable, disgusting cowards.

What makes the victims that more courageous, is the fact that this is not a criminal enquiry. Many, if not most, of the perpetrators sued for anonymity in this investigation and no charges will be brought against individuals.

The Christian Brothers delayed the investigation for more than a year with a lawsuit that successfully defended their members' right to anonymity in all references in the report, even in cases in which individual Christian Brothers had been convicted of sexual and physical attacks on children.

"I'm very angry, very bitter, and feel cheated and deceived. I would have never opened my wounds if I'd known this was going to be the end result. It has devastated me and will devastate most victims because there is no criminal proceedings and no accountability whatsoever."

The thousands of survivors said they had no safe way to tell their stories until the investigation began because much of Irish Catholic society regarded them as liars.

The investigators are now calling on the Vatican to make a similar investigation into other areas under the Catholic rule - as well as to do a full investigation into the Irish Catholic Religiouis orders.

I have little hope that the Vatican will do anything. They haven't done anything other than move pedophiles and abusers around, in an attempt to hide from the reality of their situation, for decades.

However, maybe now they'll stop doing that and actually take real action when abusers are discovered.

I'm also left wondering, on a side note, how the Catholic people are reacting. They've just had it confirmed, on a very large scale, that their own kind can act in truly horrific ways - not just their own kind, but members of the actual clergy, ordained and most of them supposedly celibate. Surely they must be wondering how their 'good God' could let this happen?

---

But when questioned, the Christian Brothers indicated they would continue to protect the identities of rank-and-file brothers accused of abuse — men who were never reported to police, and instead were allowed to change jobs and keep harming children.

The Christian Brothers' leader in Ireland, Brother Kevin Mullan, said the organization had been right to keep names of even the most well-documented abusers out of Wednesday's report because "perhaps we had doubts about some of the allegations."

Yahoo! News

What a load of crap - literally.

Really, why, WHY does Jenny McCarthy think people want to read about her bowl movements (or apparent lack thereof)? It's incredibly uninteresting reading, except as something to take the ever-lasting piss out of.

She not only writes about her own bowl-movements, but she also writes about those of her child. I mean, really - what is the attraction?

From the comment box, it looks like she does have a few readers who appear to enjoy her idiotic sorority style ramblings, but bloody hell.

Oprah, why did you do it? Why did you give this extraordinarily inane woman blog-space? I mean, I know you're a bit of a woo-loving kook, but Jenny McCarthy? Really? It's bad enough that you allow her to spout her ignorant opinions on Vaccines and Autism, but you're now giving her free reign to talk about her own and her sons shitting habits?

I swear, it's only a matter of time before she starts talking about her boyfriend (Jim Carey's) shitting habits as well, and I seriously don't want to think about that - I mean, this IS (as Orac pointed out) the guy made famous for having a talking ass in Ace Ventura.

(And before anyone asks, I spotted other people talking about it and out of curiosity, went to see if her blog really is as bad as all that - and seriously, it really is.)

'Beyond Chance' with Melissa Etheridge

I was up annoyingly early in the morning on Thursday (six ish) due to a resurgence of what my mom and I are beginning to think may be a peptic ulcer..

So, I spent most of the day on the couch, feeling sorry for myself, napping and watching atrocious day-time TV. And I really do mean atrocious.

Seriously, what is it with American TV? I caught at least four episodes of 'America's Dumbest Criminals' - with their really rather shite re-enactments of real crimes (complete with bad dialogue) and fake reporters/news-anchors. I swear, by the end of the first episode, I wanted to strangle the female reporter. The 'crimes' were amusing though, giving me a good giggle now and then.

I also caught an episode of 'Crossing Over, with John Edward' - I've already blogged about that charlatan, and this episode was more of the same utter shite; unsuspecting gullible audience and using people's real grief to make money. Bastard.

However, what I'm going to write about is the episode of 'Beyond Chance' that I caught.

This program very nearly takes the proverbial cake. It's so stereotypically credulous, American Daytime TV pap. It really is. I'm pretty sure the program was laid to rest in 2002, so these episodes are re-runs, but still.

I could just about put up with it, if after every story, there wasn't stupid fake 'candid camera' shots of Etheridge laughing or dancing or simply talking as if she doesn't know the camera is on her. And they filter those shots! They not only make it look like a home-cam-corder caught those shots, (with shaky recording as if they're sneaking up on her) but they also make it all soft and gooey, with misty lighting effects that are obviously added in post-production. Ugh.

Anyway, there were six stories all together, each one of them touted as 'Beyond Chance!' and 'Miraculous!' and each one of them was introduced with a little spiel from Etheridge, in honeyed tones of concern and 'isn't this amazing!' that, after only thirty seconds or so, really got on my nerves (by the third story, I really wanted to mute Etheridge's introductions.)



Unlucky Numbers

The first story, was titled 'Unlucky Numbers' (I'll get back to that) and apparently took place in Oregon in April of 1994. (At this point, you begin to realise I took notes - yes, I am that person.)

Basically, four youths attacked a store - viciously beating to death one of the two female clerks and attempting to beat to death the second. She escaped when the youths were distracted by a customer coming into the store - the youths grabbed a few things and then ran (I would think, scaring the shit out of the new customer.)

The surviving victim (I didn't catch her name) managed to give a complete description of all four of her attackers to the police, despite being so badly beaten that they nearly scalped her.

Her recall of the four attackers was described as 'remarkable' and 'rare' and I swear, the cop they interviewed looked like he wanted to call it 'miraculous', but luckily it didn't go that far.

However, despite her excellent recall, and the four excellent artists impressions, the case went dead (apparently).

Until, four months later, the store decided to do a check of what was stolen and found that a roll of 200 Lottery tickets had been taken. 44 of them were registered as winning tickets. The cops then decided to check all the stores in town for the 44 winning tickets.

As luck would have it, all 44 had been handed in to one store, and again, as luck would have it, the clerk at the time was new and she had the man handing them in sign them all as proof and then kept them!

The cops got a hold of these tickets and through good old fashioned policing, found all four of the attackers. One is on Death Row, and the other three are serving life sentences.

This was all explained as a wonderful 'Twist Of Fate' by Etheridge.

Now - my problems:

1. Why is it called 'Unlucky Numbers', when quite clearly, they were all very lucky numbers, proving both beneficial to the attackers (winning them money) and the victims (by giving the cops a way to find them)? Shouldn't it have been 'Lucky Numbers'?

2. Was, as Etheridge told us, the case really at a dead end? They had the attackers descriptions and fingerprints all over the place. As the Cops actually said themselves, the leader of the gang was already in the system - it would simply have been a matter of time before his face was recognised by someone, either by the public or the system itself.

3. Did the victim's recall really merit being described as 'remarkable'? It is my understanding that the victim not only had quite some time watching the youths walk around the store before it all happened, but it's well known that a victim either recalls everything, or nothing.

4. What the hell of all this was 'beyond chance'? Ok, so, one of the attackers was stupid enough to take the winning tickets to a store in the same town where he committed the crime. So what? Ok, so, he was stupid enough to sign the damn things. So what? Ok, so, the new clerk kept them - so what? It's called a 'coincidence'.

I feel like I'm going to be mentioning the Law Of Very Large Numbers more than once in this blog >>



Call From The Mountain.

So this bloke, an experienced climber/hiker, sets off to climb Torris Peak (I think that's how it's spelt) back in July 2000.

About halfway up, he encounters a block in his chosen path and decides to take a short-cut round it. It's snowy, he slips, he has a fun ride down the mountain-side for about 300 feet, until he manages to catch himself by digging the heel of one boot into the mountain.

He's got a broken arm and a fractured back - and I think a broken leg - as well as many cuts, bruises, scrapes and probably a few broken ribs. Any movement sets the rocks under him sliding again - so he's stuck and he's off the track he told people he would be on.

He tries his whistle. Nothing. He starts to give up - then he digs into his pack for some water and discovers he'd packed his mobile phone before leaving!

So he calls 911 and 'miraculously' there's enough signal and battery for him to not only get through, but to also stay on the phone for the next three hours, while a search-and-rescue team look for him.

They find him, he survives and even managed to make it for an interview on Beyond Chance where he explained 'I don't understand how it worked, I don't understand why it worked!' The dispatcher he spent three hours talking to also chimed in with 'Cell phones just don't work up there - at all!'

My problems:

1. What the hell is 'miraculous' about this? People have accidents on mountains all the time, some survive, some don't. Why is this guys story any more or less 'miraculous' than anyone elses?

2. I'm guessing the 'beyond chance' bit was the absent-minded packing of the phone and it's working on the mountainside. Again, some people take their phones, some people don't - and evidently, mobile phones DO work on that mountain, because his did. Where was the investigation into how close he was to the nearest signal-tower? What's the betting he was a lot closer to one, after falling 300 feet down the mountain, than he thought he was?

3. He didn't understand how or why it worked? What? It's a phone, he was obviously close enough to a signal tower for it to pick up enough signal. He obviously had enough battery on the thing for it to work for long enough. What is so hard to understand here?

Again, I'm forced to make mention of the Law Of Very Large Numbers. He may have survived, but there's plenty others who didn't and don't. But of course, they and their coincidences don't make it on to TV.



Desperate Measures

Bob and Samantha Greybill, from Pennsylvania, are driving their four kids to church. She's three months pregnant with baby number five (can anyone say 'Quiverfull'?). The minivan crashes. All are fine, except Samantha, who has a broken leg.

She's sent home, but three days later, she's taken back to hospital with breathing problems. She's suffering from ARDS (fat particles released into the bloodstream are lodging in her lungs). She's put into an artificial coma.

Beyond Chance interviews everyone, and all of them go on and on about trying to find a 'miracle' to save her - even her bloody doctor, Dr. Cooney is quoted as saying 'I was looking for a miracle!'

They decide (after Bob apparently went through much soul searching)to go ahead with an experimental procedure, that has some risks involved to the baby, because they've never tried it on a pregnant woman before.

They introduce Nitrous Oxide to her blood. It works, everyone's happy, though understandably worried about the baby. Six months later, their daughter is born hale and hearty. The procedure is now common-place and even used on babies.

My problems.

1. Again, where the hell is the factor that makes this 'beyond chance!' She was ill, they tried a risky procedure on her, it worked. SO WHAT? Stuff like this happens every day, all over the world. It's how we end up with common-place procedures - someone, somewhere has to be the first person it's used on. She was that first person. This does not make her and her child's survival 'beyond chance!'

2. Miraculous? Sorry - but where was the praise for the doctors, nurses and scientists who came up with the procedure, treated her and so on? There was none, there was simply talk about God and miracles.

Again - Law Of Very Large Numbers is in play. There are so many thousands of vehicle crashes every year in the US. Someone, somewhere, was going to get that rare ARDS problem, the population of America is certainly large enough - it just happened that she was the one who did.



A Slight Risk

If that title doesn't give you what you need to figure this one out, I don't know what will.

Anyway, Erica Sanchez drives the I40 pretty much every day on her way home from work. This time, one of her tires blows and she ends up pinned under a Semi (a truck pulling two trailers, rather than just one). The base of the rear trailer shears the roof off her car - she survives by ducking it just in time.

The Semi driver does what he aught and simply keeps driving, slowing down until he can pull over, instead of stopping suddenly and jack-knifing.

She climbs out of the ruined car with nary a scratch. The reason she survived? She's only 4ft 11" tall. When she ducked, she was so small nothing touched her.

The cops who responded to the accident described it as 'Remarkable'.

I don't really have much to complain about with this one:

1. Again, the population of the US is so large, and the numbers of crashes that happen every day, and the percentage of the population that is short and a driver, once again makes it really bloody easy to knock off the 'beyond chance!' crap. It's bound to happen at some point, to someone.

2. 'A Slight Chance'? Can someone shoot the writers, please?

Again, Law Of Very Large Numbers comes into play.



Free As A Bird

This one is one of those annoyingly sickly sweet stories.

A woman, Lisa, in North Carolina is pissed off with her ex-husbands Cockateil, Tookie. It makes a lot of noise, it plays Hudini with it's cage, it swears, mimicks and dances. One mid-winter day, she gets so pissed off with it, after it escaped and tore her house to bits, that she simply opened the door and let it fly away.

Nice of her really, considering it's not really equiped to survive any winter weather, let alone snow and ice.

She realised how cruel that was, gets a torch and tries to find him and bring him back. No such luck, he's gone.

Five years later, when she's no longer so bitter and angry, she's working as a teacher and meets a shy young girl named Crystal, who doesn't talk much, doesn't engage with people and is generally all around introverted.

Lisa tried everything to get Crystal to open up, but nothing worked until she started asking her about her favorite pet.

Crystal's favorite pet turns out to be a Cockateil named Pretty Boy. He makes a lot of noise, plays Hudini with his cage, swears, mimicks and dances. After some careful prompting, it turns out that Pretty Boy and Tookie are one and the same!

Five years ealier, in the next town over, Crystal's family had found Tookie walking up their ice-covered drive-way, freezing and near death. They took him in and Crystal adopted him.

My problems:

1. Jeebus, that particular story was so sickly, gooey sweet, I felt like reading some Edgar Allen Poe after watching it >>

2. So, the moral here is 'animal cruelty can still have a happy ending'? Seriously, what type of person releases a tiny warm-weather bird into the freezing North Carolina winter? I don't care how pissed off the woman was - if she was that annoyed with the creature, she should have sold him off.

3. Apparently Lisa followed up her cruelty by '[praying] that he would find a home, that he would be safe'. So, you basically give the thing a death sentence, and then pray to god that, actually, you didn't mean it really?

4. Unwanted birds (and other pets) are released into the wild all the time, and, unwanted pets are found in the wild, adopted and given better homes all the time. It's not exactly surprising that Tookie did manage to find a new home - it happens, there's nothing 'beyond chance!' about it.

5. Ok, so he happened to be adopted by a girl in Lisa's future class. That's a little more remarkable, but it's still only a coincidence, given the amount of pets released and consequently adopted in the US.

6. Apparently talking about Pretty Boy helped crystal out of her introversion. Again, so what? Kids like Crystal will have something that brings them out of it - her's happened to be the bird she adopted.

Again, I'm left with pointing out the Law. Seriously, getting sick of pointing that out now.



Phoenix Heart

Finally, the last one! And seriously, this one's a stinker.

Lyle D. Baade, from Phoenix, Arizona, old dude in his sixties, gets a heart transplant. His replacement heart came from a 16 year old shooting victim.

(Can you tell where this one's going?)

He's living in a retirement village with his wife. They go to a meeting with other residents. They start to leave a little early.

As they leave, an ex-member of the village (who left due to debt problems) stops them in the doorway, carrying a gun - he tells them to go back to the meeting. They comply. As they do so, Lyle tells the interviewer that he thought 'He's got a gun! Then I knew we were gonna die!'

However, as the guy walks in the doorway, Lyle yells 'He's got a gun!' sending the other members scurrying.

Suddenly, as the bloke starts to take aim, Lyle 'hears a voice'!

'You can get there, before he can turn the barrel on you!' he hears in his head. He explains to the interviewer - 'That meant I had to move immediately!'

So he did. He rugby tackled the gun man. He says 'It was like someone picked me up and threw me!' Another resident exclaims in interview 'It was not Lyle Baade!'

Lyel speculates that he has a 16 year old 'Guardian Angel'.

Melissa Etheridge commented, as a voice over, 'Could there be a connection between the voice and the sixteen year old heart?'

After he rugby-tackled the guy, the rest of the members at the meeting rushed in and they all basically pinned the guy to the floor. It turned out later, that the man had not only brought the gun he was carrying, but he also had a van full of weaponry parked outside.

My problems:

1. Gag me now. There is no such thing as a connection between donated body parts and personality changes or 'voices'. Operations, traumatic events, drugs, placebo effect/confirmation bias (as in, they heard about the personality of the person who 'donated') and so on, all account for anything slightly different in a personality afterwards - and personalities are subjective anyway. The 'voices' thing though, that's worrying and more suggestive of a mental problem. Or, in this case? Lyel's own bloody conscience. Duh.

2. 'Thrown across the room'? Yeah, that'll be an adrenaline rush. You're protecting friends and family - it happens.

3. 'Guardian Angel' - just goes to show exactly how credulous this guy is.

Seriously, the whole personality change thing after organ transplants is so stupid and has been debunked so many times. I find it absolutely ridiculous to find it on this show.. well, actually, I don't, it's perfect fodder for something titled 'Beyond Chance' - but you know what I mean.


To top the whole program off, Melissa then gave this little statement:

When there are no simple answers to the mysteries of life, we look for explanations that are often beyond our imagination, beyond reason, beyond chance.

Seriously? Maybe credulous people do, but I find myself looking for the rational, real-world explanations.

'Beyond imagination'? I'm sorry, but the human race has a huge capacity for imagination, it's one of those things that's helped us to get where we are today. Without imagination, we would never have made our way out of the forests onto the plains, and then off the plains and out to the rest of the world - being able to imagine a 'better life' over the horizon, for example. There is very little that is 'beyond' the human imagination.

'Beyond reason'? Again, no. Only those gullible, credulous types think there are things in any of these stories that can't be 'reasoned' in a proper, factual, intelligent and real-world fashion.

'Beyond chance'? Really. No. Not a single one of these stories was 'beyond chance', not even in the slightest possible fashion. As I stated for most of them, the Law Of Very Large Numbers pretty much dumps each and every one of them, exactly where they belong, on the rubbish heap. These things were not 'beyond chance' - they were all statistically possible and statistically probable - they all would have had to happen somewhere, at some point, and very likely, most of them are one of a vast collection of highly similar stories.


This program, 'Beyond Chance', really is fit only for a bloody rubbish tip. It does nothing other than fuel the stupid imaginings of the credulous, fostering belief in things that are niether real, nor healthy - and in some cases, even hurts the cause of real medical knowledge.

I wouldn't suggest watching any more of it - if only to avoid the ridiculous fake-candid-camera shots of Etheridge acting like an idiot.

Eurovision 2009!

WELL!

Norway won this year, but bloody hell, UK came in FIFTH! I'm amazed!

I'm going to see if I can find youtube vids of the songs...

Here's Norway:





Here's UK:





And here's Armenia, one of my faves:





I LOVE those outfits c.c But really, I loved this song - no bloody idea what the hell they're singing about most of the time, but neh, I liked it XD

Anyway - Well done Norway - and BLOODY HELL, WELL DONE UK!

However, can someone PLEASE explain the blue thing and the face-painted dwarves in Albania's song??





Seriously - wtf?

HEADDESK OF EPICNESS

That 19 year old kids response to my last message:

you talk alot but i'll only give you five simple questions to answer

1. how come were perfectly away from the sun.

2 how come we can create large buildings.

3. how come monkeys don't have jobs like real humans do

4. can monkies get married

5.can a horse breed an elephant?

HEADDESK/FACEPALM/DOUBLEFACEPALM

Analysis of the Ten Commandments

I found this today, quite by accident, and spent a happy hour (ish) reading all the posts. Very enjoyable - I recomend you read it ^^

1. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

2. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them….”

3. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”

4. “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

5. “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

6. “Thou shalt not kill.”

7 - 10. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." "Thou shalt not steal." "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s."

Blog posts by Atheist Under Ur Bed and they're the kind of posts I want my (still, unbelievably) Christian friends to read and think about.

'Saudi judge: It's OK to slap spendthrift wives'

'Saudi judge: It's OK to slap spendthrift wives'

Arab News, a Saudi English-language daily newspaper based in Riyadh, reported that Judge Hamad Al-Razine said that "if a person gives SR 1,200 [$320] to his wife and she spends 900 riyals [$240] to purchase an abaya [the black cover that women in Saudi Arabia must wear] from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment."

He said that women and men shared responsibility, but added that "nobody puts even a fraction of blame" on women, the newspaper said.

Al-Razine "also pointed out that women's indecent behavior and use of offensive words against their husbands were some of the reasons for domestic violence in the country," it added.

Because spending money and talking back are absolutely fucking BRILLIANT reasons to beat your wife, oh yes.

Yet another reason to avoid Islamic countries. I don't care how nice their tourist business is, or what lovely things they have to offer me - until they start treating women equally, I refuse to go there.

'Say you weren't raped in jail and we'll let you live'

I can't find this same version of events being reported in other papers, so maybe Daily Mail is being inflamatory again, but if it's true, I'm more than a little bit disgusted.


'Say you weren't raped in jail and we'll let you live', pregnant British woman told in Laos prison

I left a comment, after seeing the amount of comments suggesting she be left to her fate. Which is, actually, the firing squad (though not while pregnant - I hate to think what they'll do with the child once she has it - will it be given to a local orphanage? Or will it be sent to her family in the UK? Or will she keep it with her? What?)

What the hell, people? The top six comments on the main list are telling this woman to serve her time. Do they even know what her sentence IS? Death by firing squad!

If she had done this in a country where ALL she would face is a prison term, then fine, I would be behind it 100% - but this woman faces death by being shot!

And telling her the only way to be sent home is to say she wasn't raped? I'm sorry - she's been in there for ten months, the pregnancy obviously occured as a result of being in there. If it WASN'T rape, then fine. If it WAS, she shouldn't be forced to lie about it, to save her life!

This situation is despicable, however you look at it.

Footage of 'Baby Preacher'

This is actually creepy, chilling and a little upsetting. Obviously, he's simply parroting what he's seen and heard the preachers in his parents church do, but it's saddening to watch - especially with the cries of Jesus! and praying you can hear in the background.

Found via James Tracy's Blog.

Continued conversations with Christians

19 year old Kid:

if god'snot real then you can do what ever you want nobody can tell you what to do because we changed from animals and animals kill otther animals

And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature

that's how we tell them of jesus

if you don't like the bible don't read the newspaper watch the news hear about who's the next president going outside etc you said that the bible is disgusting and i said what's disgusting in the world


Really? They are born in sin, so they carry Original Sin. If theyve not been baptised/christened, then according to that tract, they got to hell. There is absolutely no way you can get around this unless you admit that it is stupid.


im going to send you a video about this

19 year old Kid:

ok im going to tell you why dead babies going to heaven because compared to adults they have choices and unlike babies they can't walk to or even feed themselves and how can babies have choices if they can't think salvation is a reality

Hannah:

‘if god'snot real then you can do what ever you want nobody can tell you what to do because we changed from animals and animals kill otther animals’

No. No and no. No. No, no, no, no and double no. This is an old, old, old and tired argument and has been refuted and debunked and shown to be incredibly stupid by so many people...

As I explained in my last post to you – morals and ethics are subjective and driven by society. We cannot act as we please, because society will punish us. We cannot act in such a way as to harm others, because it is morally wrong – and it is morally wrong, because it harms the herd.

Animals in the wild will expel any member of the herd/group that acts in any way to harm the herd/group. Wolves, for instance, will chase off and even hunt down any member of the pack that is acting in a socially unacceptable way – for instance, attacking the pups of the dominant pair, stealing and hording food and so on. The same happens in lion prides, chimpanzee families and so on. Morals are not only found in humanity.

Animals don’t have the capacity to believe in any god, and the bible doesn’t say anything about god giving animals morals – so where do their morals come from? That’s right – it’s as I told you in my previous post – we evolved them, they evolved them. Morals are evolved.

Also – the bible simply reflects ten thousand or so years of evolved morals. Did people before the bible act differently? Were they constantly sinning, because they didn’t have the bible’s rules to abide by? No. In fact, some places were better than the Christians the bible and Jesus helped to create. And of course, some were worse.

Humanity is humanity – we are all both good and bad.

If you stopped believing in your god, would you go and rape someone? Murder someone? Steal? Would you start ‘sinning’, simply because you suddenly stopped believing that your god is real? That there is no-one looking over your shoulder, preparing to send you to hell for doing it?

As I have said, I and my atheist friends, acquaintances and family are all living good, happy, moral lives. We are doing this without a god. We are doing this without the bible, or any other holy book’s, laws.

On the other side of the coin, there are plenty of religious people who ARE raping, murdering and stealing. There are plenty of religious people who are living dishonest, moralistically empty lives. There are religious people who are racist, bigoted, prejudiced, homophobic – downright HORRIBLE people. And you CANNOT claim they are not ‘true believers’ – because they are. They believe with all the conviction that you do, they believe with all the faith and trust and knowledge that you do.

But it doesn’t stop them being horrible people.

The rates of religion and atheism, represented in the US prisons should be in favour of atheism, if your claim that religion (and your god in particular) makes people good. But it isn’t. Atheists make up as little as 1 percent (in actuality, 0.21% of the prison population is atheist!) That is disproportionately small, compared to the 8 – 16% of atheists in the US society as a whole. Christians, in contrast, make up 83% of the US prison population!

The most atheistic countries in the world, are also the ones with the lowest crime rates. Of the G-8 member countries, Japan (the least religious country) has the lowest crime rate and America (the most religious country) has the highest crime rate! In fact, Louisiana – the state with the highest levels of church attendance – is the state with the highest murder rates, TWICE the national average for the rest of America.

So, it looks a lot to me, like believing in god does NOT make you a good person (and likewise, that god didn’t give these people their morals, or me, mine, or you, yours.)

Oh, and finally, I’d like to say something about the bible and it’s ‘laws’.

They were stolen, almost verbatim, from older, non-Christian, religions. Egypt’s Osirian Requirements and Babylon’s Hammurabi’s Law are the most notable.

They pre-date Moses by at least a couple hundred years and have almost exactly the same laws, with almost exactly the same wording – oh, and Hammurabi also climbed a mountain and received his laws from the god Shamash in a way incredibly similar to Moses (who, as I said, did his climbing and receiving a couple hundred years later).

Anyway – next.



‘if you don't like the bible don't read the newspaper watch the news hear about who's the next president going outside etc’

‘you said that the bible is disgusting and i said what's disgusting in the world’

I had to break that part up, in an attempt to understand it. Truly, your typing skills and coherency skills are lacking.

Sooo... Newspapers, the News and President Obama (who is actually your CURRENT President, not the ‘next’ President, by the way) and ‘going outside’ are disgusting? I’m not sure I understand you. Let me think on this for a few.

‘if you don't like the bible, don't read the newspaper’
‘if you don't like the bible, don’t watch the news’
‘if you don't like the bible, don’t hear about who’s the next president’
‘if you don't like the bible, don’t going outside’

Nope... still doesn’t make sense.

What has liking or disliking the bible got to do with any of these things?

Next.


‘im going to send you a video about this’

Ok, so you can’t explain it to me yourself? Ah – looks like you’ve tried in your follow-up PM.

Next.


‘ok im going to tell you why dead babies going to heaven’

I’ve had to break this up again, because, seriously, your typing and coherency is appalling.


‘ because compared to adults they have choices and unlike babies they can't walk to or even feed themselves’

What? No, really, what? I’m going to TRY to make sense of this.

‘Adults have choices’ ‘Babies can’t even walk or feed themselves’

Ok, is THAT what you meant?

Either way, this did not answer my question about original sin. According to that Chick Tract, and the bible, and pretty much all versions of Christianity, original sin is passed from parents to children. The babies are born in sin and if they die before being christened/baptised/whatever, they go to hell for original sin.


‘and how can babies have choices if they can't think salvation is a reality’

This one baffles me. Did you mean:

‘How can babies have choices, if they can’t think salvation is a reality?’

Or

‘How can babies have choices, if they can’t think? Salvation is a reality.’

Grammar is a wonderful thing. I would suggest learning it and maybe giving it a go.

Anyway, neither of those statements had anything to do with my original question, so I’ll leave them.

Also – you STILL haven’t answered me on the mentally ill, disabled and never-heard-of-Jesus people. What about them? Do THEY all go to hell? Why or why not? According to that Chick Tract, they would. And you sent me that Tract – so I’m guessing either you agree with it, or you didn’t actually apply any critical thinking to it – or you didn’t understand it.

Next.

H

If nothing else, these conversations give me a chance to put my own thoughts on the subject in order - even if it is all futile in the end.

Anthems For Atheists: Godless and Free!

Rather taken with this one XD

Glem Beck Vs A.C.O.R.N

Seriously. What the fuck? He wouldn't get away with that shit on UK TV. Seriously. How the hell does he get away with this?

'Shut his mic off!' ????

Glen Beck is an asshole.

Venomfangx is gone???

I've just heard - Venomfangx (Creationist, Young-Earther, all around complete and utter berk) has closed his Youtube account and shut down his website!

So far jordanowen42 and gogreen18 and amazingatheist have all Vlogged about his apparent departure.

He claims he has left the internet, due to 'death threats' from 'muslims' - though he gives no proof of this.

There are mixed reactions so far - nobody knows quite whether he's telling the truth (though he has an extensive track record of lying) or if he's lying to protect his dignity (some are even postulating that his parents shut him down, amusingly enough!).

I'm not entirely sure whether to believe it yet. He's got that track record, you see, of lying and show-boating and so on. So, I'll wait and see whether he comes back - especially considering he recently set up his 'ministry'.

Here's the Vlogs so far.








EDIT:

Don't know if this is actually Venom of not, but it's certainly all his videos - or a goodly proportion of them at any rate.

Venomfangx1

Either he's created himself a new account (he's done it before) or someone has mirrored his account. I'm sure we'll know in time.

Patricia Putt - Randi challenge results in

A 'Psychic Medium' named Patricia Putt (or 'Ankhara' when she's working, from the looks of her website) took up the Million Dollar challenge at the JREF.

The results are now in for the preliminary round. She had to pen psychic readings for a number of volunteers, and five or more of those volunteers had to recognise their own reading from the collection for her to pass.

None of them did. She failed the Preliminary round and has to go home.

I'm not in the least bit surprised - but apparently she's taking it will and only blames her own powers for failing.

Find info here.

And her own website here.

A 'Bad Psychic' review of her.

A BBC Inside Out report.

Digital Journal; Science OpEd piece on the test.

The JREF Forum catalogue of the test procedure and events.

Letters to our daughters...

Letters To Our Daughters Project

A collection of letters by women in science, to the younger generations of women who want to embark on a career in science, or are just starting out.

Here are the letters so far from Dr. Barbara Goodman and Dr. Pascale Lane. Their letters, while intended for fellow scientifically inclined women, strike me as relatable to other paths.

I read them with pleasure and look forward to reading more.

One Law For All Petition

One Law For All Petition

* We call on the UK government to recognise that Sharia and all religious laws are arbitrary and discriminatory against women and children in particular. Citizenship and human rights are non-negotiable.

* We demand an end to all Sharia courts and religious tribunals on the basis that they work against and not for equality and human rights.

* We demand that the law be amended so that all religious tribunals are banned from operating within and outside of the legal system.

Sharia law is unfair and unjust in civil matters

Proponents argue that the implementation of Sharia is justified when limited to
civil matters, such as child custody, divorce and inheritance. In fact, it is civil
matters that are one of the main cornerstones of the subjugation of and discrimination against women and children.

Under Sharia law a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s; a woman’s marriage contract is between her male guardian and her husband. A man can have four wives and divorce his wife by simple repudiation, whereas a woman must give reasons, some of which are extremely difficult to prove.

Child custody reverts to the father at a preset age, even if the father is abusive; women who remarry lose custody of their children; and sons are entitled to inherit twice the share of daughters.

The voluntary nature of Sharia courts is a sham

Proponents argue that those who choose to make use of Sharia courts and
tribunals do so voluntarily and that according to the Arbitration Act parties are
free to agree upon how their disputes are resolved.

In reality, many of those dealt with by Sharia courts are from the most marginalised segments of society with little or no knowledge of their rights under British law. Many, particularly women, are pressured into going to these courts and abiding by their decisions.

More importantly, those who fail to make use of Sharia law or seek to opt out
will be made to feel guilty and can be treated as apostates and outcasts. Even if completely voluntary, which is untrue, the discriminatory nature of the courts would be sufficient reason to bring an end to their use and implementation.

Full information (PDF) lefleat here.

Response to a Chick Tract

A kid (I say 'kid' - he's 19) I was discussing Christianity with a while ago, sent me a completely random out-of-the-blue PM yesterday, containing one single line of text.

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0100/0100_01.asp

Yes, that's right - it's the link to a Chick Tract!

Specifically the one titled 'The Choice'.

Here's some excerpts:







And my response:

I really hate Chick-tracts, not just because they're terrible, but they're so badly drawn. As an artist, they offend me on that artistic level.

As an atheist, they offend me, because the 'atheist' in them is always ugly, or belittled, or stupid, or miserable - or basically, a stupid caricature of something that doesn't exist.

None of the atheists I know, and I know MANY, are stupid, or ugly, or belittled or miserable. We are happy, intelligent, fulfilled and beautiful people, who manage to be all this, without the need for any outside force.

As for this tract itself? What a load of hogwash.

What about the babies? A two year old child dies. They are developing a personality and an understanding of right and wrong. They are killed or die of an illness. WHERE DO THEY GO? According to that tract, they go to hell!

A two year old child has no idea of any god or gods, they are far to young to understand such things. So where is the good and loving in this act?

What about the tribes-people who live in the middle of the asian forests? They've never heard of any christian god, or jesus - in fact, they've never met any humans other than their own people. Yet this tract says THEY will go to hell, as well. For simply having not heard of Jesus? Where is the good and loving in this act?

What about the mentally ill and the mentally disabled? These people are far less likely to be able to understand what a god is, let alone be able to worship him or 'repent' of sins. Yet, once again, this tract says THEY TOO will go to hell - for not being able to understand! Where is the good and loving in this?

And so we come to the ordinary atheist. Atheists use the brains they were born with, they live blameless lives, they protect their own families and those of strangers, they give to charities, they further human knowledge, they look after animals, they fight for human rights, they right wrongs. Yet, for the simple choice of using their brains, and ASKING FOR EVIDENCE that they NEVER GET, they too will go to hell? Where is the good and loving in this act?

Lastly, I would like to point out that that tract is WRONG. There is NO CHOICE.

Lets put it in simple terms:

Father: You can paint your room any colour you like!
Son: Yay! Can I paint it blue?
Father: No - it has to be orange. But you can paint it any colour you like.
Son: But.. so can I paint it blue?
Father: You can paint it blue, if you don't mind being tortured for doing so. Paint it orange.
Son: But you said I can paint it any colour I like!
Father: Of course you can! But it has to be orange. Any other colour and I will have to torture you. I don't want to torture you, but I will have to.
Son:...but that's not a choice!
Father: Sure it is. Paint it orange - or - paint it another colour and be tortured! That's a choice!
Son: ... no it isn't.

Do you see my point? THIS IS NOT A CHOICE. You don't want to be tortured, but you have NO OTHER OPTION. A choice would have more than those two options. This is coercion, NOT choice.

Your god is despicable.

Oh. And trying to threaten an atheist with hell, is like, I dunno - threatening YOURSELF with the Muslim hell.

You don't believe in the Muslim hell, do you? So you don't worry about it - there's been no evidence to make you believe in it, so you don't believe in it, and you don't worry about it - do you?

It's exactly the same with atheists - we just go one hell further. There's been no evidence to convince us that YOUR hell exists, so we don't believe in it and we don't worry about it.

Have a good day.

H

P.S. - Would you still like me to answer your previous post? I will if you want, I was about halfway through finding all the quotes, when I got sick of reading how disgusting your bible is.

I paraphrased that Father/Son story from somewhere, but for the life of me, I simply can't remember where. Does anyone know?

Also, I adore the way education (and by association, of course, critical thinking), is of the devil and thus evil. I also love the way the 'young people/atheists' are represented by what appear to be punks, or bikers - as if the only young people who are atheists are those who outwardly eschew convention.

Oh - and that picture of what I'm guessing is some sort of gorilla, or chimp, some primate of some sort at any rate (his art really is just that crap) - is supposed to be a dig at evolution? Very clever of Chick, really.

Jenny McCarthy and Oprah

Yupp. That bane of childrens health, Jenny McCarthy, has signed on with Oprah.

Following in the heels of Dr. Phil and Rachael Ray, McCarthy has signed a deal with Harpo Productions to develop multi-platform projects, including a syndicated talk show and a blog, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Via seattlepi

This woman has already helped increase the histeria over vaccinations - this show looks set to propogate that fear even further.

A wonderful example of woo thought

From an Anti-Vaxxer no less:

# mike yadon Says:
May 4th, 2009 at 8:48 pm

I cannot believe you people have lost all respect for common sense. These vaccinations have dangerous ingredients. These ingredients at toxic levels are being injected. There are never any long term studies done on any of this. Our children are being used as guinea pigs.

You folks think you can just scare people with boogey man diseases and claims of antivaxxers being murderers. How dare you assault common sense with that rubbish? Go get a lick of common sense and you’ll come to the same conclusion i have.

The chance of contracting one of these diseases is slim. So minutely slim, really pretty much none. A. Because the majority of the diseases are fake. Aids is fake. Polio is fake. Swine flu is fake. It’s all fake. Basically Germ theory is a fraud. B. The human body is so much more miraculous than the drug companies would have you believe. You can heal most anything via diet modification, herbs&spices appropriately chosen, and lots of fresh water.

So, if there is a group of us out here who have woken up to the power of the human mind and the human body and chose to go a different route than those of you that chose to intervene and play god with your shots and needles.

so be it. i chose my way. you chose yours. i guess there’s no sense in arguing further with you folks.

Via Bad Astronomy

My bold.

This man scares me. That there are people out there, who actually think like this - I know it, of course, but to have it so blatantly demonstrated!

Makes me wonder what happens when someone he loves contracts something disgusting and deadly. Will he continue with his 'germ theory is a fraud' stance? Will he treat them homeopathically? Or whatever other woo he follows?

Scary thought - scary man.

10 things more likely to cure you than Homeopathy

1. Private island
2. Gas mask
3. Real medicine
4. Aliens
5. Mace
6. Jesus (note: only if you’re in a Stephen King novel)
7. Superman
8. Your own immune system


Via Skepchick

Which just about says it all, really.

As we all know, Homeopathy is nothing more than magic water that's been shaken about a bit and dripped on sugar pills. So I hope I'm not the only one finding it annoying that Homeopaths are trying to claim they have cures and treatments for this new flu.

It is important for those more at risk to seek professional help from their homeopath, GP or health practitioner now. Constitutional treatment is the best way for anyone to strengthen the immune system and Helios would recommend consulting a homoeopath.

Via Helios Homeopathy

Homeopathic Remedies

Considering that the Swine Flu virus produces symptoms similar to the human influenza virus, the following homeopathy medicines may prove useful in cases of swine influenza:

#Gelsemium. [Gels]
#Baptisia.
#Eupatorium perfoliatum.
#Sabadilla. [Sabad]
#Arsenicum. [Ars]
#Arsenicum iodide.

etc

Via Hpathy

Homeopathy was successful in treating the flu epidemic of 1918 and can provide answers to questions about the 2009 Swine Flu. Homeopathy can provide quick and inexpensive relief for symptoms of the flu.

Via NaturalNews

My recommended homeopathic formula for this type of flu is as follows.

1- The treatment would start with a single dose of Pyrogenium-200 for all cases and in long cases once every week.

2- Ten drops of Baptisia-6 should be mixed in 3 ounces of plain water. Two teaspoonfuls from this water to be given every hour till four doses are complete, later every 2 hours until the fever is below 100 degree F.

Once the patient starts to show better comprehension and seems mentally alert the frequency of dose may be reduced to every 4 to 6 hours. Antiboitics to be avoided untill absolutly required.

Via HomeoGuide

Dr. Jacob Mirman of Homeopathic Medical Clinic says the homeopathic clinic is offering a flu kit that's growing in demand, reported at KSTP TV. "That's a hundred bucks from Washington homeopathic pharmacy. They are right now inundated with requests, so they say it's one or two weeks to get it," he said.

"The virus does not become resistant to homeopathy because we don't treat the virus. We treat the vital force, the immune system, so then it takes care of the virus, whatever it is," explained Mirman.

Via HealthNewsTrack

It's also been speculated that the reason the flu is so bad in Mexico, is that people rely too heavily on alternative treatments:

But one important factor may be the eclectic approach to health care in Mexico, where large numbers of people self-prescribe antibiotics, take only homeopathic medicine, or seek out mysterious vitamin injections. For many, only when all else fails do they go to a doctor, who may or may not be well prepared.

Via NYTonline

I'm sure there's more if you look. These people are vultures. They know, just as well as the skeptics do, that there is no evidence for their claims - yet they still peddle this crap - mostly to the vulnerable, gullible and desperate, and mostly to the poor (though, don't forget the high percentage of middle-class, moderately wealthy folk who get in on it because they think it's 'spiritual' etc).

I'm getting sick of seeing all of this. Just like the baby in my previous post, people die because they take this snake-oil instead of seeking real medical care.

Homeopathy: What's the harm?

Disgusting.

Now, I expect the various Homeopathy supporters to crawl out of the woodwork and attempt to explain to me why the Homeopathic solutions this child was being treated with didn't work, and why she died.

Go on. Give me your apologetics. Explain to me why this 9 month old baby died in agonising pain, of something that is treatable by real medicine?

I'd like to hear what reasons and excuses you think can explain this.

Was he giving her the wrong solutions, perhaps? Was he giving her too much? Too little? Was her father simply the wrong Homeopath for the job?

Or is it, perhaps, that magic water is nothing more than snake-oil?

Bill Maher on Swine-Flu

If you get it and you don't believe in evolution, you have to pray it away!

Too true.

We all wonder how they don't get it. Even Ray Comfort's cartoonist - Ray Gunther - actually said:

The spread of the so-called 'swine flu' demonstrates yet again how useless and sometimes deadly a mutation can be.

Of course, completely missing the damn point that this mutation is actually incredibly beneficial to the virus! DUH.

It really is a simple refusal to accept reality. So I'm with Bill on this - if you don't believe in evolution, you shouldn't get the benefits of it.

Fuck off and pray you'll get better - you believe that's how it works, right?

Vs Anti-Vaxxers in Australia

I think the 'debate' was too short, and no-one took the Anti-Vaxxers on as stridently as they aught to have, but it was good nonetheless.

Via 'The Skeptics Book of Pooh Pooh'.

Some Flood/Mudslide, somewhere, sometime...

Premonition of possible Flooding and Mudslides

Written by faithfulangel Tuesday, 28 April 2009 04:26

Last night I had a premonition of ground sliding..usually from experience of previous premonitions usually most times a warning of floods and mudslides about to occur. I can't say where as I didn't get a location, it was a land where the soil was rich and fertile. That's all I had in the premonition.

Whisper:

I would be interested if you could say, specifically, where and when - as anyone can make this kind of prediction. Mudslides and floods are fairly common and happen all over the world, all the time.

I have the distinct feeling my comment will not get through the censors.

Someone needs to tell these people, and the people like him/her, that coincidences are actually really bloody common. They should also look up on the Law Of Truly Large Numbers.

Melanie Phillips and her amazing ability to completely missunderstand anything, strikes again!

Melanie Phillips (best known to myself for writing her Opinion articles in the Daily Mail) wrote a wonderful article on Creationism, Intelligent Design and her inability to realise that they are one and the same.

Here's a sample:

In an item on the growing popularity of Intelligent Design, John Humphrys interviewed Professor Ken Miller of Brown University in the US who spoke on the subject last evening at the Faraday Institute, Cambridge. Humphrys suggested that Intelligent Design might be considered a kind of middle ground between Darwinism and Creationism. Miller agreed but went further, saying that Intelligent Design was

nothing more than an attempt to repackage good old-fashioned Creationism and make it more palatable.

But this is totally untrue. Miller referred to a landmark US court case in 2005, Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District, which did indeed uphold the argument that Intelligent Design was a form of Creationism in its ruling that teaching Intelligent Design violated the constitutional ban against teaching religion in public schools. But the court was simply wrong, doubtless because it had heard muddled testimony from the likes of Prof Miller.

The woman is masterful in her lack of research, subject knowledge and even apparent inability to understand what has been quite simply spelled out to her.

I'm also thoroughly amused by her decree that the Court Ruling 'was simply wrong'! The statement makes it abundantly clear that she didn't read up on the case - you know, something one is wont to do, when one is writing about this particular subject - and thus has made her own conclusions apparently based on her own biases.

Wonderful bit of journalism, there!

I left a reply:

Whisper
April 30th, 2009 10:09pm

Seriously, Melanie, if you plan to write in the public forum about these subjects, at least make some pretense at having researched the topic. ID is and always has been, a trumped up attempt to make Creationism 'scientific'.

It's one of many, many comments that are attempting to set the woman straight. Though there are a few amusing Creationist comments, too - well worth the read, if only for those.

'Swine-Flu' offensive?

The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed “Mexican” influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday.

And you thought they couldn't get any more ridiculous. Well, they've gone and proven they really can. I mean, come on! It's called 'Swine Flu' becasue it resembles 'Swine Influenza' for goodness sake!

Seriously - it really is incredibly petty to get het up over a fuckin' NAME. Grow up.

What's the betting Muslim's and Jew's actually don't give a rat's arse? It's normally just the PC Brigade that get this het up, just like with all the 'Christmas is offensive!' bollocks.


Edit: Apparently it is rumoured the name-change was requested by the Pork Industry - of all things!

Wooden shoes and Feng Shui?

Now this is just bloody stupid. When such an important event is relocated, simply because of superstition, it really does show quite how fucking ridiculous thing's can still get. Feng shui, my arse.

Atheist Chaplains

We need a few more of these available. Not at all surprised that her fellow Chaplain couldn't break out of his 'Christian Box' when trying to figure her out!