Pope, you’re a dope, and your mama three

Yeah, your mama is twice as fat as you are. Get it! That makes three. Oh, forget it…

Catholic Pope Francis reckons that there are limits to free speech and that you cannot insult or mock religion. He went on to pontificate that if someone speaks badly of his mother, they can expect to get punched in the face.

The Pope was off course referring to the Charlie Hebdo massacre by religious extremists, and unbelievably excusing it. Insulting a person, even to their face and getting punched in the bargain, is in no way, shape or form equivalent to the response of the religious fundamentalists to the cartoonist’s who lampooned a questionable holy figure.

In any case, any violent response to a verbal or written insult, is unforgivable and just not on. And for a person of the status of the Pope to even think it is, is just plain inexcusable.

I am an atheist. Quite frequently on this blog, my critics label me as the epitome of evil, amongst other things. None of them know me personally, and yet they can assassinate my character and make this value judgement just from reading what I write. Calling me evil is an insult; make no bones about that. But do I go out to find these detractors and brutally shoot them, or blow their houses up? Or do I tie them up and whip them senseless and throw them into confinement? No, prefer to reason it out.

The Saudi Arabian authorities does the latter, while the former is perpetrated by fundamentalist religious bigots. Worse, under a new Saudi Arabian law, atheists are now classified as terrorists. Imagine that. My secular beliefs and values just got declared a highly dangerous weapon, and my keyboard the instrument of mass destruction.

Any God, real or imagined who expects his earthly followers to protect his dignity by killing and maiming the transgressor, is not worth worshipping, and is nothing but a celestial dictator. Any representative on Earth of said Gods, who preach this doctrine, and demand enforcement are just vile scum. It’s that simple.

An aside to Pope Francis: The next time you head my way, I will gladly submit my face to a punching. I will even take one on the other cheek. I surely deserve it for calling your mama fat. But you’re still a dope.

Victory for Irreverence

The Charlie Hebdo weekly normally has a print run of around 60 000 copies. This week they planned to publish 3 million copies following the brutal slaying of 12 of its staff by religious fundamentalists. Instead, such was the demand, 5 million copies will be distributed.

If these idiots thought they were appeasing their God by wanting people who value free speech to be eliminated, they sure didn’t count on how badly such bigoted ideology would blow up in their faces. Spectacularly so. Indeed, instead of 60 000 people having access to some irreverence, now 5 million and certainly more will be laughing their heads off to the silliness of religious narrow-mindedness and intolerance.

Fundamentalists of all stripes need to know that those who wish to free their minds from mental slavery will not be swayed by random shootings, bombing of buildings, suicide bombings using ten-year old girls, kidnapping of young women and children, hacking to death of villagers, imprisoning and whipping of atheist bloggers, issuing of fatwas, killing pro-abortion doctors, demonstrating against and demonizing homosexuality, destruction of ancient monuments, banning women from driving, forbidding snowmen from being built, removing “erotic” cosmetics from shelves, beheading of journalists, banning of medication, building of creationist museums and subjecting young minds to creationist rubbish in schools, and the delusional rants of clerics, priests and holy men.

The list of atrocities, depravity and irrationality perpetrated in the name of religious and other ideology is far too numerous to mention. What is more abundant however, is the sheer will to carry on the fight against this evil by far too many people – people who recognize that the desire for freedom is much stronger than the desire for servitude to Gods and Devils.

Mankind will triumph, because we are more powerful than Gods and Devils. We created them after all.

Power, freedom and other less-noteworthy stuff

The power utility Eskom, had a further mishap at one of their plants yesterday which resulted in a blackout that lasted nearly four hours where I live. That was time in which I meant to download all the photographs from the two cameras I had taken on my recent road trip around the country.

Luckily it was only four hours, which meant I could catch up on the latest news following the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris by what is believed to be Muslim fundamentalists. Looking around the interwebs, it is disconcerting to note the scale of hatred being directed at ordinary Muslims and Islam. This is pretty unfair as they are as much victims as the rest of us. The whole of Islam cannot be blamed for the misguided actions of a minority of fundamentalist idiots.

I managed to get in a post yesterday which was meant to show my solidarity with the victims and also my stance on freedom of speech which should of course be inviolable. It must be recognized that yesterday’s outrageous attack on Charlie Hebdo, was an attack on our freedoms.

On to other less important things…

I’m back at work and it sucks after such a long vacation. This week has been draining. It seems as if there was a conspiracy to hold back completion of all projects for me to return and take care of them.

Today I managed to download all my photos and will start cropping etc. The one above is one of them taken while driving, as we descended from the majestic Karoo down to the Eastern coastline of George.

I hope to start posting some of them here soon. Until then…

Je Suis Charlie