Barney Zwartz, a gaggle of atheists and thoughts on boning this pious Sunday ...

Being a novice at football speak, I didn't have a clue what this Daily Terror splash meant.

I rushed off to the Urban Dictionary, here, and to my horror discovered that Rupert's minions were most likely speaking with a filthy tongue. There didn't seemed to be any way around what it meant:

Fucked, meaning in a bad situation

After drinking a bottle of drano, Tim was boned!

Fucked, meaning having had sex with
After heavy consumption of alcohol, Jim and Jenny boned all night.

To fuck, have sex with, intercourse
Why haven't we boned yet?

No matter how you cut it, the Daily Terror seemed to be saying that the dogs were fucked. Now, never mind the bestiality implications, I understand that's all the rage in Newcastle, and no more need be said about it, but let's wait for the next pious bit of crap from the Daily Terror about the failing public standards of discourse on the intertubes. Just wait you bone heads, you bone bunny bone heads.

Meanwhile who else is boning who this fine Sunday?

Well while Kristina Keneally has issued glossy brochures full of herself to celebrate, in the manner of an antipodean wannabe John Kennedy, her first one hundred days in office as premier of the failed state of New South Wales, while voters continue to count the days before they can express an opinion at the voting station which will likely see her carted off to the bone yard. (here).

Surely Barry O'Farrell or one of his key staff would have to be caught boning a sheep for the Liberals to lose. What's that you say? A cheap joke about fucking a sheep, Woody Allen style, as if born to the manner in the approved Gene Wilder style?

You should get out a little more, here's how to bone a leg of lamb.

Perhaps South Australian voters are going to bone Mike Rann, with the Sunday Mail agog about its latest poll showing that he'll have to go down to the wire (hard copy results only in the land of the crow eater), but all the same the fine folk at the Murdoch rag flinch from an ultimate boning, preferring a bout of political instability:

The Sunday Mail believes Labor has done just enough to be returned for a third term, despite our misgivings about the culture of arrogance and lack of accountability that has taken hold under Rann.

However, if South Australia finds itself with a hung Parliament, as predicted by pollsters, it would be no bad thing if the upside is a refreshing wave of accountability. (here).

Perhaps what's needed this pious Sunday is a gentle filleting and skewering, and who better to manage that kind of kitchen work than Barney Zwartz as he does over the atheists in By their fruit shall ye know them.

First Barney discovers all sorts of wonderful benefits arising from the Parliament of the World's Religions - why the US government even sent a delegation to learn about improving its approach to Muslim nations and peoples, perhaps not understanding until they reached the antipodes that drone bombings of weddings tended to alienate people. And then there was the Dalai Lama getting an invitation to the White House, and Hindus and Sikhs active in Melbourne, and Muslims hosting a community night for visiting Muslims, and grassroot activism and 'several' local governments establishing interfaith forums and talk of comparative religion in schools, and young people feeling empowered.

Stunning stuff, transformational, and I definitely felt the earth move several times. It makes Barney wonder:

I wonder what sort of positive legacy the Global Atheist Convention at the same venue this week will produce? This is a genuine question or, perhaps, challenge. I am not presuming an answer: it may be that the convention leads to concerted action for a better world, for social justice, for tolerance and equity. Surely any big idea worth bringing together people should contribute something positive.

Heaven forbid presumption, said the pastor wringing his hands.

Well of course I won't settle for anything less than the abolition of all the world's religions by next Sunday, though I will allow an extra month for the selling off of the assets of some of the largest fraud machines. Just putting all the riches of Rome on the market could send the art market into a slump for decades. Oh yes, by what Caesar keeps hung on the walls as a sign of impossible riches and wealth and hubris shall you know Caesar.

But I digress. Barney is in the grip of a deep fear:

My fear is that, where the PWR was a highly disparate group from a huge range of cultures and religions, who were there to extend their points of view, this will be a self-indulgent gabfest of like-minded people, united mostly by their disdain for believers, who will indulge in a festival of self-congratulation. As someone cruelly said of Rotary, they are a group of self-made men (it was all men then) who gather to praise their makers.

Ah, the skewering, and the filleting. But now surely it's time for an orgy of self-congratulations, a veritable festival of PWR spin:

The PWR could easily have been this, and religion has certainly not been free of the smug and self-satisfied who regard dissenters as manifestly deluded. But the PWR did not fall into that trap.

As Gary Bouma, chairman of the Melbourne organising team, noted recently at a follow-up conference to judge the parliament’s legacy: ''The theme that keeps resounding time and time again was how sessions moved from polite to authentic. People spoke openly about themselves, heard the other in honesty and came away feeling better informed, more deeply connected and ready to co-operate. There were people waiting for things to go from nice to nasty or even violent, and it didn’t happen. It was respectful but it wasn’t just a polite tea party, there was authentic, painful discussion.''

But then the PWR was open and forgiving and always turned the other cheek, except when it felt the urgent need to slap someone else's cheek. Like wayward militant atheists:

Key Melbourne organiser Des Cahill observed that the PWR had secularist and atheist speakers and agendas on its program but it was unlikely the atheist convention would return the courtesy. He’s right.

Oh no, you mean there won't be any ritual sacrifices of Christians to the lions? No bear baiting and bull fighting and spearing and goring? What spoilsports, no fun at all, just a flock of like minded creatures with closed minds, not that we wish to judge them in any way. And worse, the bastards will no doubt want to bone religion, in the way that militant atheists always do, unlike Christians who show ineffable politeness while filleting atheists. Because we must always think of the positive, only ever be positive, no negative thoughts intruding. Keep those positive blinkers on:

Gary Bouma thinks one of the main achievements of the PWR was the way it highlighted the positive side of religion. I’m confident the Global Atheists’ Convention will not highlight the positive side of religion — and fair enough. But today in Australia that blinkered self-congratulation that the PWR might have risked seems particularly the preserve of the militant atheist (a small but noisy minority among atheists). The convention does not have to be dedicated to building their inexorable sense of superiority or ridiculing religion. But I wouldn’t bet against it.

Oh dear, those cowardly atheists, with their inexorable sense of superiority, and constant desire to ridicule religion. When surely they should have joined together to celebrate religion, and praise it, and perhaps, even to their own shock and awe, indulge in a mass switch to the other side. Perhaps by jumping into the brown muddy Yarra to cleanse them of their tendency to superiority.

Well how about a little condescension to help wrap things up? Dr. Johnson caught the tone:

I told him I had been that morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers, where I had heard a woman preach. Johnson: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Now here's Barney doing his Dr Johnson routine about the astonishing fact that the atheists could manage to organise a cake stall and conference:

I have previously written in support of the atheists’ convention, and I hold to that. I think it is a surprising and marvellous achievement for the Atheist Foundation of Australia to have got such a notable line-up of speakers at much shorter notice than the PWR and without any government funding. It could yet offer much, and I’m prepared to listen and learn.

But then of course there's the content of the preaching, and as usual the militant atheists are just so offensive, unlike the Pellist and Jensenist heretics:

But watching star speaker Richard Dawkins last night on ABC’s Q and A being habitually contemptuous and patronising (his first response was to ridicule Steve Fielding) started to erode my optimism. I suspect I might see the secular equivalent of a revivalist meeting with some of that good ol’ religion-bashing.

Fancy wanting to ridicule Steve Fielding. Well I never how outrageous, and Steve such a nice dumb amiable totally inoffensive clucking chook fresh from the farmyard of hayseed ideas.

Yay! Go for it militant atheists!

Many atheists who will be attending the convention read my last post and commented on the blog. If you read this and comment again, I hope you will look for the positive contribution you can make. How are you going to make the world better? What do you hope for from the convention? What outcomes should it produce? If there is nothing specific, will that mean it was a waste of time?

Well indeed, if nothing specific arises and all people have is a hedonistic good time free of religious guilt what a terrible thing that would be. Instead of rabbiting on in pious sanctimonious tones about how they might make the world better and indulge only in "positive contributions". But I fear that nothing specific will arise, because indeed the bid to rid the world of sanctimonious religious claptrap is not so much a Herculean as a Sisyphean task.

You push Barney up the hill, only to find next minute he's rolled back down, ready for some more pricks and parries and skewerings ...

Never mind. Send along your thoughts to Barney, and make sure they're full of dark brooding, negative asides, anarchistic and chaotic and worthy of Nietzsche:

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.

Plenty more of Nietzsche available on the full to overflowing intertubes.

Nietzsche loved to dance. If the atheists failed to go dancing, drinking, or fornicating, all is lost. But if there was plenty of boning going on, then surely it will have been a good conference ...

(Below: and now we return you to the world of Chairman Rupert's minions where dogs and sheep get boned).