The Christ Caper
The rain fell almost hard enough to wash the lice out of the beggars’ beards. Almost. These were Jerusalem lice. You didn’t survive in Jerusalem long without being tough and those critters hung on and dug in like relatives at a rich man’s funeral. It had been six months since the case I’d labelled the Jerusalem Caper for my memoirs and things were back to normal for me. A few jobs here and there and those were lousy. My office had me for company and I think it was considering suicide. I couldn’t blame it. The scholars, priests, guards, and vendors were all hurrying through the downpour to wherever it was they were going. It didn’t look like any of them were hurrying to my office. The early evening had all the hallmarks of looking like another quiet one with my feet on the desk sipping fermented prune juice. "Sam, there’s a Mister Hired Goon to see you." That was Effie Perine of Judea, my loyal and long-suffering secretary. Maybe I’d drifted off for a few seconds because I hadn’t heard her come in. I was briefly annoyed. That’s the sort of thing that can get you killed in this line of business, not that I had much to fear lately. You don’t become the target of reprisals when you’re spending most of your time looking for missing cats. There was a hulking great shadow in the doorway behind Effie. He pushed himself into the room. "Let me guess," I ventured dismissively. "You’re a Goliath lookalike and some runt called David is muscling in on your territory." Mister Hired Goon didn’t appreciate the humour and made for my desk brushing Effie out of the way. I didn’t appreciate the way he knocked her. We all have our limits. I reached for the Smith & Ishmael .22 Slingshot from the drawer but never had a chance. Damn! He was fast. "Damn! You’re fast!" I thought he deserved to hear what I was thinking. I thought the flattery might buy me some time too while I considered my position pushed up against the wall with my feet inches clear of the floor. "Little Pee-Pee has a job you will be interested in." His breath stank of garlic. I let him have the full force of prunes in return. "He didn’t want to come here personally?" I asked. "That’s not Little Pee-Pee’s way." I was dropped to the ground. I made a mental note to buy sandals with more cushioning. A moment later and my offerer of employment had left. In my hand I held the small stone calling tablet he’d left....
The Bible: Uncut
Christianity is the religion for you if choice is high on your agenda! Don’t like the New International version of the Bible? Try the American Standard version! Trusty old King James Bible doesn’t fit in with your sheep-rustling lifestyle? Maybe Young’s Literal Translation is more up your alley! There are tens of different versions of the Old Testament stories and New Testament accounts of the life of Jesus and you’re simply bound to find one that suits you sooner or later. Personally, I like Old Wumpard’s Uncensored Bible with its faithfully-restored passages deliberately left untranscribed in other versions by the prudish monks of ye olde medievale tymes. What other Bible uplifts you quite like this? "Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry, not to mention stung to buggery by scorpions. He had a lovely tan though." Luke 4:1-2 "The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, ‘What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?’ ‘Worst. Sailors. Ever’ he replied and the men, who were fearful and drunk on clam juice, threw Jonah overboard into a passing fish." Jonah 1:11-14 "’I will send fire upon the house of Hazael that will consume the fortresses of Ben-Hadad. I will break down the gate of Damascus; I will destroy the king who is in the Valley of Aven and the one who holds the sceptre in Beth Eden. The people of Aram will go into exile to Kir. I mean it. You’re all for it unless the person who stole my wallet owns up’ says the Lord." Amos 1:4-5 "The hand of the Lord was upon me there, and he said to me, ‘Get up and go out to the plain, and there I will speak to you.’ So I got up and went out to the plain and waited and wondered why the Lord couldn’t have spoken to me inside where it was warm but the Lord did not speak unto me. And so I went back in and someone had eaten my dinner." Ezekiel 3:22-23 "After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptised. Now John also was baptising at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were constantly coming to be baptised and so Jesus and John had an old-fashioned Baptise-Off which Jesus won narrowly after John...
Designed By God
If we are to believe the words of many Intelligent Design supporters (formerly Creationists (soon-to-be Intelligent Evolutionists (never-to-be Actual Scientists))) then evolution exists but it’s far too complex to have just simply evolved into said complexity and must have been designed to simply look complex so as to, er, cause arguments because, ahm, it’s fun to annoy scientific people yes? By redefining science to shift away from an observable and measurable basis and towards a "things I thought when I hit my head on the coffee table" basis it is possible for anyone – especially religious anyones who would otherwise struggle to hold down jobs – to label themselves "a scientician", receive funding, write books, and appear on lecture circuits, thereupon to be beswooned by easily-starstruck fundamentalists and power-hungry, small-dicked (sufferers of tiniwilli, to give it the specific medical term) politicians. Now, proceed to ask an IDiot to speculate what we will evolve into and you’ll undoubtedly run into a problem area for these "brains". You see: either we have now stopped evolving because we are the ultimate goal, the pinnacle of achievement, the perfect beings, or there’s still some growing to do. They would have us believe that far from being merely an adequate form for this environment at this time, we have instead been manipulated through the aeons at a level far too complicated to require proof and we are either the end result or another link on the path to the ultimate prize. Which leads to more questions: if we’re the ultimate goal then what took the definitely-not-God, oh-no creator so long to reach this point? Couldn’t He or She (just kidding: it’s He) have taken some shortcuts? Couldn’t we have jumped from shrews straight to Homo sapiens or are chimpanzees needed for testing cigarettes? Were the dinosaurs all killed off just so we could run cars because, if not, then it seems pretty cruel to wipe them all out and a significant waste of time in the scheme of things? What happens now that we’ve become perfect and how can you measure it happening since this is a sciency thing after all? If we’re not the ultimate goal then how do – ooh, let’s pick a religion at random here – Christians feel about your firm belief that we and – ooh, let’s pick a name from history at random here – Jesus are not in God’s image, unless God Himself isn’t actually perfect or God was created by the not-God creator as well? The answer to all those questions is simply: Darwin’s theory of evolution can’t explain everything and my dad is bigger than...
My First God
tOybubble, a subsidiary of neOnbubble, and parent company to dOllbubble, also trading as cOllectibubble are pleased to announce their latest range of exclusive action figures and associated collectible merchandising for the 2006 season. Introducing: My First God™ Hard work, intelligence, and aptitude will only get you so far in life. These days if you want to get ahead then you need to inject some religion into your veins but with so many to choose from it can be difficult selecting the one that gives you a heavenly high and puts you on the fast track to political or corporate success from the very many that will react badly, send you into a seizure, get you labelled as a terrorist and cause you to be made to quietly disappear in the middle of the night. tOybubble doesn’t have the solution to this problem – we’re only manufacturers of fine collectible figurines and distributors of top quality merchandising after all! – but that doesn’t mean we can’t muddy the waters still further and cash in on a loosely-connected issue! It’s what our stockholders would want! The My First God™ range of figures and trading cards expands on all the various deities and religious beliefs we know and pretend to accept and introduces us to a wide new world of exciting and interesting Gods and Devils. Grouped together under Cults such as "Rock Gods" and "Divine Baldies" for example, the collectible nature of My First God™ is enhanced by competitive rivalry that pits religious group against religious group in a bloody crusade of intolerance just like in real life. Collect from one sect or from all just to be safe; the choice is yours! When something good happens you can be sure that your little My First God™s were responsible for the miracle. When something bad happens then you know that it was all your own fault or someone else’s religion is to blame and a swift smiting should be the order of the day. No matter what happens, though, you’ll want to keep your fantastic new deities close to hand at all times as a sign of devotion. If your My First God™ doesn’t rise in value year on year then you aren’t praying hard enough! Starting in March we’ll be releasing the first series of action figures. Highlights of this amazing range are sure to include: Cult: Fruitism, The Vitamin-Rich Religion. Action Figure: Archangel Granny Smith – Guardian of the Temple of Applelympos. Granny Smith, beautiful and terrifying if you are both attracted to and repelled by old people as you should, resplendent in her Holy Cardigan, protector of the...
Intelligent Design Explained Intelligently
You must have heard of Intelligent Design, right? No? Okay, let me explain briefly just what it is: Intelligent Design (I.D.) is a (snigger) "theory" put forward by some (snort) "scientists" to (choking! send help!) explain the universe without resorting to: intelligence, anything they learnt on their degree course, asking another scientist for help, asking a two year-old for help. In a nutshell (one designed exclusively for the Earth Range by Almighty God and not some cheap, evolved knock-off) I.D. proponents argue that sure there’s a lot of evidence to support evolution and yes scientific models of the universe’s creation do seem to bear out pretty well in experiments and okay natural selection does appear to explain the many varied and wondrous shapes that nature has produced over the countless millions and billions of years but maybe that’s what we’re supposed to think, huh, huh? I.D. supporters point out that life is really, really complex and can cause headaches if thought about too hard so doesn’t Occam’s Razor indicate that it’s much more likely that an omnipotent and omniscient divinity thought "Wait! What about a little horse that swims underwater?" Intelligent Design is an offshoot of ‘Paranoid Science’, a branch of reasoning the major tenet of which is "But what if God is simply testing our faith?" Other examples of Paranoid Science’s exhortations into the public sphere over the years have included: God put dinosaur bones on the planet because there’s only room in Heaven for people who ignore the evidence of the eyes that God gave them, duh!, appendicitis is proof of God’s displeasure since evolution should have evolved that dangly bit away aeons ago dumbass!, you don’t believe in angels but dark matter is fine, yeah sure, whatever!, banjo music is proof of a higher power, there is no scientific explanation for it, none! Fans of Paranoid Science (P.S. International Community of Friends) and I.D. (Worldwide IDiots) fear God. Opponents of the two theologically-derived, scientific-sounding claptrap theories fear God-botherers. If God-botherers contented themselves with bothering God everybody would be fine but since God has failed to react to their botherations over the years – further proof that He exists since He would never reveal He’d been listening so explain that away Mister Professor Bees Evolved From Snakes Ph.D! – they’ve moved onto a target that actually does get distracted by the lunacy: everyone else. The IDiots want I.D. taught in schools and they’ve got a prominent supporter in the guise of George W. "The ‘W’ Stands For ‘Woo! Yay! The Missing Link!’" Bush who endorsed teaching the subject on Monday. To be fair, regular scientists would also...
A Bunch Of Cults
Reading about Ayah Pin’s Sky Kingdom – the Malaysian cult built around a giant teapot – getting fire-bombed recently brought back a lot of memories for me. Yes, it’s a cult built around a giant teapot. No, I’m not making this up. No, seriously. There’s a link here and here too. See. Anyway, the memories: you see, I used to belong to Ayah Pin’s Sky Kingdom. It was one crazy Winter, I was in Malaysia (of course), and all the cool kids were joining. "There’s a giant teapot," they’d say. "You sit around a giant teapot. People from all backgrounds, and it’s the next stage up from all other religions!" Well, the next stage up from all other religions is something you just don’t ignore every day, but, truth be told, I was more interested in the giant teapot. I’d recently bought a giant round Tetley teabag from the market and had nowhere to whip up a brew; this sounded perfect for my needs. Ultimately, it was a disappointing experience. I arrived in time to see Ayah Pin marry his fourth wife against his will. He was merely following the wishes of his cult followers who had decided he needed another wife after he told them they had decided that. It was awfully sticky, temperature-wise, and I was bitten numerous times by various forms of fauna. Possibly some flora too. The Sky Kingdom honoured water for its healing properties but perhaps my heart simply wasn’t in it as the water did nothing to bring down the bumps, rashes, and haemmorhagic fever. Prior to my arrival the cult had simply been known as Ayah Pin’s Kingdom but had entered into a sponsorship deal with Rupert Murdoch; the effect was to cause friction in the cult with various splits threatened by those who wanted to stay true to the path of enlightenment around the teapot and those who wanted to chip in and pay for a satellite dish. In my state of insect-caused delerium I writhed and ranted incoherently and became regarded as a prophet. I apparently formed a Third Way group who overran the cult compound with pointy sticks and parrots on string and finally got the water in the teapot up to a nice boil to try out my teabag. It wasn’t proper Tetley and I barely escaped with my life, dragged to safety by a friendly Howler monkey. I never did catch his name. Good times. Ayah Pin and his magical Sky Kingdom isn’t the only cult to have been blessed by my membership over the years. The Unified Church of Inappropriate Swimwear The Unified Church of Inappropriate...
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