God: clearly in need of an ego-boost
This can’t be said enough when ‘embattled’ Christians/Jews/Muslims/A N Other Faith start banging on about how their religion is under threat/attack/a cloud: Isn’t your God supposed to be, like, omnipotent. If he’s as all powerful as you claim he is, won’t he be able to shrug off a few people calling Christmas ‘Winterval’ (if such persons exist)?
You know, if he’s the one true God and all that.
If you’re so sure of your facts, why worry? (’the facts are always more interesting,’ as religious rent-a-gob Ann Atkins said on Radio 4 this morning.)
Facts. If being a good Christian (in the current instance of ‘Christmas Under Attack’ faux-hysteria) is about being honest and truthful, why try to further your agenda via lies and right-wing demagoguery?
Or is this more about one’s personal vanity rather than God’s delicate sensibilities? ‘Oh, look at me ostentatiously defending my faith. Aren’t I a good Christian? Watch me spend money I haven’t got on crap I don’t need in order to honour the baby Jesus’. If that’s the case, somebody needs to go back to Sunday School.
And what the hell was Jack Straw, thinking about:
If I may speak on [the angel] Gabriel’s behalf, I’m very clear on his view for 2006. Put the tinsel in the office.
You know, I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find tinsel mentioned anywhere in Nativity story. This guy used to be Foreign Secretary and now he’s claiming to speak on behalf of an angel. Did he ask Gabriel’s advice on the eve of the Iraq war, do you think? Let’s hope not because it would put the whole notion of divine omniscience into question. That’d shake your faith rather more than a bout of fictional political correctness gone mad, wouldn’t it?
What is wrong with this country?
(The always excellent Oliver Burkeman has yet more. The poor sod deserves a medal.)
Update: Jeff Randall, on the other hand, is hysterical. And I don’t mean synonymous with ‘hilarious’. Don’t forget, he got paid for what looks like an article inspired by urban myths he found on Google. Had he been a blogger he’d probably now be considering retirement after the deluge of abuse that he would have doubtlessly received (and indeed does receive, of a fashion, in the comments under his piece - the comments agreeing with him are another matter and yet further evidence of how squalid white middle-class people are when they try to fool themselves that they are oppressed).
Posted on December 12th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
| See also • A nutter, yes, but for a different reason • The chicken time bomb scenario • Tony Blair: He’ll believe anything |
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Except of course tinsel severely disrupts wi-fi activity. Perhaps this is a security threat, is Jack *gasp* a double agent for Al-Queda perhaps?
The whole war on Christmas is laughable nonsense, but I can understand why they’re edgy.
After all, maybe it was political correctness that did for Baal, Osiris, Demeter, Dagda, Jupiter, Cronus, Milqart, Sol Invictus, Odin, Quetzalcoatl, Ra, Danu, Apollo, Persephone, Anu, Ishtar, Odin and Sin, to name but a few.
These gods were quite big in their day, I gather - maybe secular liberals were allowed to get away with too much blasphemy.
Wasn’t it neoconservative imperialism that did for old Quetzalcoatl?
And didn’t Zeus do for Cronus? Cronus also chopped off his dad’s knackers with a sickle (it says here). That’s not very PC.
Of course it is PC, Justin. Didn’t you know that the PC-hydra has a head devoted solely to brutally ‘feminising’ men?
Uninteresting fact: I quoted Burkeman in my Masters thesis. I spelled his surname wrong.
I met him once and can vouch for his character. A very gentle and softly spoken chap but nonetheless a rather ace journalist, I reckon.
I had to laugh heartily at Atkins this morning for referring to the “facts” of the Nativity. My historiographic standards for “fact” are slightly higher than 2 books of religious propaganda written between 70 and 100 years after the events they purport to describe.
Yet Anne Atkins came across as slightly the most sensible of the four panellists on last week’s Any Questions, when it came to the phony ‘war on Christmas’ (the others being Ken Clarke, Douglas Alexander and David Laws). She was the only one to show even the slightest appreciation that the whole thing might be a sham.