Dissing Muhammad?

The Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten last fall published 12 caricatures of Muhammad, causing an uproar that continues to build more than three months later.
Arabs and Muslims also are calling for a boycott of Danish foods, including popular cream cheese, butter and cookie brands.
Palestinian extremists have ordered all Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes to leave Gaza. Libya decided to close its embassy in Copenhagen," said it would be taking "economic measures" against Denmark.The published cartoons showed "Muhammad" in various settings. One depicts him wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with its fuse lit, while another has him with eyes blacked out and carrying a large, curved knife, flanked by two women in burqas. In another, the prophet is shown telling a line of suicide bombers seeking entry to paradise:
"Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins."

The Atheologist has taken a look at these images, and although not an art critic can see what the uproar is all about: The drawings are amateurish and lack balance, contrast or contrapposto. They should never have been published.
The Atheologist searched the Internet and found what he believes to be a portrait that is worthy of the great prophet Muhammad. This portrait seems to really capture the feelings of the artist as well as his subject matter. It is a well balanced work where the personality of the subject really comes alive, it left the Atheologist speechless, the word, synergy, comes to mind, where the whole seems to be greater than the sum of its parts. I am sure that this work of art will be appreciated by Muslims the world over. Here it is:



Somewhat related to this item was an December 2005 eBay auction of a portrait of Jesus which was actually autographed, 'with love J'., by the subject. The back of the portrait is said to have the inscription, 'I signed this, Jesus H. Christ', thus authenticating it. Surprisingly, there were no bidders.


There also weren't any boycotts, protests or death threats.

The Atheologist

New Jersey's Newest Mohel

A story that caught the medias attention late last year was about a Hebrew religious procedure, called metzitzah b’peh which involves using the mouth to suck blood from the open wound after a boy is circumcised on the eighth day of life.

Well this procedure also caught the attention of the one and only Blood Count, also known as Dracula, who dropped out of his CDU online Catholic Priest course, and since then has been attending mohel classes under the direction of Dr. Neil Pollock of Vancouver, British Columbia.
The Count, who attended the course at Pollock's clinic in Vancouver, has converted to Judaism and is preparing to set up his practice in the heavily Orthodox Jewish populated community of Tenafly, NJ. He recently commented,

"Sure, becoming a Catholic priest would have been great, but there was so much confusion when it came to consubstantiation and transubstantiation. Was it now bloody wine, pretend blood, real blood or still just wine? They just couldn’t make up their minds. It drove me nuts."

When asked by one of his fellow classmates at the graduation ceremony if he would be a, “cutter”, or a, “snipper?”, the count replied,

"I haven’t perfected my technique yet but am looking forward to really sinking my teeth into my new found profession. Shalom."

And the Count kidded that he had heard that the tips were pretty good too.

The Atheologist

Survey: The World Trade Center Cross

From time to time the Atheologist will be conducting short surveys through this blog, and other venues, on a variety of issues such as, and relating to; Atheism/ Theism, Church/State, Evolution/Creationism, Paper/Plastic…etc.


Background: Recovery worker, Frank Silecchia noticed two steel beams in the shape of a cross as debris was being removed two days after the 9/11 disaster. The cross now sits at the World Trade Center site along Church Street on the eastern border of the 16-acre WTC site. Frank, who describes himself as a born-again Christian was quoted as saying,

"Even an atheist watching this building must have said, 'Oh, my God!' Evil did this work, and God prevailed to show his strength."

What do you think.

1) The World Trade Center cross,
a) was left as a warning by the Christian God.
b) was left as a sign of love by the Christian God.
c) was left by Allah to show that he was victorious. (typical Muslim response.)
d) is just a chunk of metal, and it is actually in the shape of the letter “X”, not a cross at all.(typical Atheist response).
e) none of the above.

2) The fact that no other religious symbols formed by pieces of the demolished buildings were found in the rubble means,
a) that the Christian God exists. (No other gods do.)
b) that the symbols that were left by the other gods, (star of David, Islamic Star and Crescent the Wican Pentagram…etc), were accidentally shipped off to the landfill, (dump), on Staten Island.
c) that the other gods were not there that day.
d) it’s not a religious symbol, it’s just a chunk of metal. (Typical Atheist response).
e) none of the above.

3) When the WTC site is rebuilt, the cross should be,
a) the central point of any memorial, or placed on top of the Freedom Tower.
b) moved to the RNC headquarters.
c) moved to a nearby church. (Typical Americans United for the Separation of Church and State response.)
d) melted down and recycled into something usable. (Typical Atheist response).
e) none of the above.

4) If and when the cross is displayed at the new WTC memorial, there should also be:
a) a ten commandment display.
b) a display sponsored by any religion, other than Islam.
c) a bust of President George W. Bush.
d) a curtain hiding the cross. (Typical Atheist response).
e) none of the above

The Atheologist

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

The Atheologist was listening to Ray Nagin’s Martin Luther King Day speech the other day and in it, Nagin commented:

"I don't care what people are saying uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way.”

Well, Pat Robertson heard it too and had this to say:

"I have some questions for the mayor: Did god want New Orleans to be black so he could wipe it out? If God wanted New Orleans to be black, why did he target so many black neighborhoods? And I have the answer: The black, heathen, hoodoo and voodoo people of New Orleans were being punished for their digressions from our Lord, and I believe it may be time to have a different color of people populate New Orleans. This would please the Lord. Mayor Nagin is telling a lie about hearing God speak; I know this for a fact, because I am one of only a handful of people that God speaks to. What Mr. Ray Nagin needs to do, is to learn proper grammar and syntax. Have you heard the way he speaks? Do you think that God would want to converse with someone with has defiled the great Christian language of English with Ebonical dialogue? May God bless the Lower 9th Ward."

Yes, may God bless us, every one.

The Atheologist

Was Martin Luther King Jr. An Atheist?

Today we celebrate Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s birthday. In the spirit of the celebration, the Atheologist performed an online search with these four words: Martin, Luther, King, and hero. One of the websites that came up in the search was, greaterthings.com, in which the supposed owner of the site, Chuck Baldwin states that the good doctor King was:

"a philanderer, a violent person, a plagiarizer, that he was cozy with Communists and worst of all he came to renounce the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith. He rejected Christ's deity, His virgin birth, and His physical resurrection. He also rejected the authority and inspiration of the Holy Bible."

The Atheologist was taken by surprise to say the least, why would Doctor King have rejected the authority of the Holy Bible? Was he an Atheist?
To get some insight into this question the Atheologist turned to Mark Knoll, the well known Bible expert, Mark says:

"Martin Luther King Jr. was not an Atheist; he was an Apostate Minister and the reason that he rejected the authority of the Holy Bible, was mostly due to his incorrect interpretation of it. While it is true that the Bible is full of stories containing cannibalism, child killing, rape…etc, and has rules for keeping and treating slaves, and for a black man in this country, which I believe he was, slavery, was a no-no. There are some parts of the Bible that actually teach us to be nice to one another. Martin Luther King Jr. did not read the bible properly. The proper way to read the Bible and get the most out of it is to skim over and ignore the parts that may cause you to distress or may confuse you and just read the ones you like, or better yet just have your minister, pastor or parish priest read them to you."

The Atheologist

Is Baseball The Answer?

The faithful continued to get the crap kicked out of them in this very young New Year. Once again there was a stampede during the stoning of the devil ritual at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia; At least 345 Muslim pilgrims were reported killed and hundreds were injured today. The stampede in 1990 killed 1,426 people and another in February 2004 killed 244. The Saudi interior ministry said it would look into the suggestions made after the last stampede that baseball should be made the official sport of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the OPEC nations. One official was quoted as saying:

“…in baseball you must throw a ball with great speed and accuracy. This would help because then the stoners, the baseball player ones anyway, would not have to get so close to the devil. Many of the pilgrims would be able to throw their stones from their buses or camels as they pass the pillars. This should prevent most of the stampeding.”

And may the Atheologist add that there’s no crying in baseball.

The Atheologist

Ariel Sharon; Smite or Appetite?

On January 4th in the world's only Jewish state, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a massive stroke. And once again Pat Robertson offered his insight into the situation:

"Ariel Sharon was dividing God's land, and God says, 'This land belongs to me, and you'd better leave it alone,' so the old Jew received his proper smiting, and woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course."

Anyone that pays attention to the mainstream media knows that Pat Robertson speaks for God and says that God speaks to him in an audible voice. Reverend Pat is always getting the medias attention and his insightful quotes are everywhere, here, here, here. As logical as Reverend Pat's explanation is, the Atheologist went ahead anyway and performed in-depth research, (mostly Googling), into any other possible explanations for Ariel Sharon's stroke.

President George "Richard Simmons" Bush spoke to Sharon after his previous stroke, in December of 2005 and said:

"Allow me to give you some pointers; be careful about food, start exercising and cut back on work hours, be careful, my chubby friend."

Sharon reportedly replied that he knew that Bush was an expert on cutting back on work hours and he would listen to him about the food and exercising too.

Shortly before Dr. Atkins died, (from a fall on an icy sidewalk, not heart problems which he previously had had, which were found to be not connected to his heart, or something like that), he commented on Ariel Sharon's girth:

"Wow that guy's a whale! He would be a perfect candidate for the Atkin's diet, maybe even a spokesman for the new Atkin's Kosher Plan, which I just invented. Of course if he were to suffer a heart attack or stroke after being on the new Atkin's Kosher Plan, it would probably be found to have been caused by a fall on an icy sidewalk."

So it seems that Ariel Sharon had a weight problem which may have contributed to his stroke. It is said that when he was in the company of his closest friends he would always joke around, holding his hands up screaming, "I just can't stop killing and eating!!!!!!!!" What a kidder!

The Atheologist then interviewed Dr. Mahmud al-Zahar at his office in Gaza, by phone. The Atheologist had met the Hamas chief at a gun safety course in upstate New York, a couple of summers ago. He said:

"It is an infidel's lie to say that the Christian God smited Ariel Sharon. The fact of the matter is, that it was Allah who struck Sharon because he was giving us Palestinians gestures of peace. We as Arabs have a tradition to uphold, which is the annihilation of the Jew, how can we continue our holy war when our enemy is being nice to us? We prayed to Allah to get rid of Ariel Sharon and to put in a real Arab hating Jew in his place. The first part of our prayers have been answered and we wait for mighty Allah to complete the second. We then will not rest until Israel disintegrates before our eyes. Have a nice day."

The Atheologist is a bit confused. He will have to wait and see, along with the rest of the world, on how this all plays out.

The Atheologist

What’s Going On?

2006 is just a few days old and already the faithful of the world are having the crap kicked out of them.

On January 4th why did 12 miners die in West Virginia when their town and the entire country was praying non-stop for them?
On January 4th a landslide in Indonesia sent mud, rocks and trees cascading onto the Java island village of Cijeruk before dawn, when many residents were asleep or were praying at a mosque, approximately 200 were feared dead, most of the dead were found in the mosque.
On January 5th at least 76 people die when a hotel in Islam's holiest city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, collapsed as millions of Muslims arrived for the annual Hajj pilgrimage?

What is the reason for all the death and suffering that is happening so early in this New Year? The Atheologist didn’t have to search for very long to get some answers. Pat Robertson as usual, was one of the first to offer an explanation, on the subject of the Indonesian and Mecca tragedies he said:

"It’s simple, New Year - New Smiting, that’s a no brainer, when you pray to the wrong God, the right God will smite you, and the good Lord is a smiter extraordinaire. When you cry out, 'Allah Akhbar', while the mud is rising all
around you, you would have to be crazy to think that Jesus would put out his hand, or even his pinky to try to rescue you.”

But Robertson was not so sure about the smiting of the miners and their community, he had several theories:

“It could have been a problem with their praying. I know they say they were praying in that church, but were they praying hard enough? Were enough of them praying? Were they praying correctly? Were there any Atheists present? They do seem like good Christians, going by all the news reports, with them constantly praising and thanking God and Jesus for taking their loved ones from them. It seems that they have not allowed this little mishap, to weaken their faith, but it has actually strengthened it, but I will have to look a little more deeply into this one. Did they change their public school curriculum to include the new sciences of Intelligent Design and Creationism or are they still teaching old fashioned, heathenistic evolution theories that were disproved long ago? This smiting may have had several causes which contributed to it; it’s what’s commonly known as the "combo-smite".”

James Randi, of the James Randi Educational Foundation shares similar similar views as those of Reverand Pat; that the prayers for the miners may not have been properly phrased or that there may not have been enough of them, he writes in his weekly newsletter that when the first report came out on the NBC-TV Today Show:

“that all 13 miners had survived, people were quick to attribute it to God. On that same program, there was an item about a woman who’d won a huge lottery prize. The first words out of her mouth were, “God has answered my prayers!”…God ignored all the prayers for the trapped miners… because do you suppose there weren’t quite enough prayers? God allowed the miners to die because the pleas for mercy directed at Him weren’t properly phrased, while the lottery winner’s prayers were better formulated?”

An acquaintance of the Atheologist, who goes by the name of Crosius, seems to think that Mr. Robertson may be on to something with the prayer issue and Atheists, he notes that:

“There are no miner deaths in countries without Athiests, so Athiesm, diluting the power of prayer is to blame.”

Crosius’ theory is similar to the one that states that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s.

It’s possible that if we all learned to pray correctly, maybe God wouldn’t just answer prayers at a rate that makes it seem like he wasn’t listening or even there.

The Atheologist