Religious nuts

Calgary Bishop Fred "Jack-off" Henry

The Catholic church, notorious over the centuries for being well behind the curve, civilization-wise, has taken another giant step towards what it considers the ‘good old days’, known to the rest of us as the ‘dark-ages’. The Bishop of Calgary (Alberta)(in Canada)(d’oh!), Fred Henry, has come out against a program in that city which provides a vaccine shot to protect young girls from the Human Papilloma Virus (HPA). The vaccine protects against two types of the sexually transmitted disease, and it appears that the fact that it has something to do with sex is the bit that sticks in Bishop Fred’s craw.

As is all too often the case with religious maniacs like Henry, he doesn’t like it when humans behave like… humans. Instead of yanking his mind out of the gutter and his head out of his own butt, and perhaps even helping teach people how to make informed and intelligent life decisions (and no matter what the Bishop and other narrow-minded drips of his kind may think, sex is part of life itself, not just part of married life.) But no, instead it is easier to use the tried and true method of sex-control whereby you tell young women that if they have sex without “benefit of clergy”, they could die (400 women die of cervical cancer in Canada every year so it strikes me that something that can prevent cervical cancer would be a good thing.) Good on you Bishop. Looks like you have earned that goofy hat that you wear.

It appears that the Bishop’s concern is that if he had not spoken out against this vaccine then that would have been sort of saying that pre-marital sex was okay by the Catholic church. Well, yes, and we all head out to the apple tree to pick oranges, don’t we? In fact the vaccine is to help prevent a cancer that kills women. I’m in favour of that. I wonder, is the church in favour of smoking because if people are smoking they aren’t having sex? Is the church in favour of talking on a cell-phone while driving because if people are talking on cell-phones while driving then they aren’t having sex? Well that’s just silly, but I do think that instead of wasting time moaning about something like this important vaccine, maybe the church should have put as much time into mentioning to it’s priests that they shouldn’t molest kids or something. Just a thought.

In a similar if somewhat lighter vein: I hear that the Creation Museum in Louisville, Kentucky (that’s in the USA, eh) is doing quite well. Over half a million people from all over North America (and beyond) have toured the museum since it opened in May, 2007, and that’s pretty good for a privately funded “museum” that deals in fantasy and superstition. Sort of a Disneyland where instead of saying “Hi” to Mickey, you kiss his ring. Well, not exactly, but something along those lines. The Creation Museum was privately funded with over $27-million in donations, proving once again that when it comes to religion some people will pay anything to stay out of hell (televangelists depend on this for their income.) And if that money is all spent on providing the latest in computer generated dinosaurs images, and those dinosaurs are roaming all through the Garden of Eden, so much the better.

It’s almost inspiring to think that there are still people out there who believe that the Universe was created on a whim with a blast of magic, but really it is sort of up there with the kids who play Dungeons and Dragons. I mean the real hardcore kids who dress the part and say “prithy” and “avast” all the time. The ones who live, breath and eat Dungeons and Dragons. The thing is that these kids all operate within the internal logic of their game (I myself don’t understand the internal logic of their game, but I know that when you are playing you don’t just grab a laser-gun and nuke some Klingons or something.) The Creationists (like the folks who created the Creation Museum) don’t. The Creationists want it both ways in that they say the books of Genesis in the Bible are the literal story of the creation of the world (and the Universe) some 6000-years ago, and by the way, there were dinosaurs there too, and they co-existed with mankind (um, no it wasn’t, no there weren’t, and no they didn’t.) So why are there no dinosaurs around today? Maybe when Noah built the ark all the dinosaurs were off hanging out with the griffins, the sphinxes and the unicorns (big shout out to the Irish Rovers), or something.

You know, it’s just so hard to take people who think the Flintstones were a real documentary television show seriously.

Anyway… Humouroceros