David Penberthy, David Cameron, and let loose the hounds, or at least a militant atheist ...

Hmmm, hits are down, mood is tepid, lack of interest high, a dank, stagnant smell fills the air over the pond. Murky sludge and green slime covers the still dark watery surface.

What to do? I know, I know. Scribble a rant, a tirade about born-again atheists ...

Dammit, wouldn't ya know, David Penberthy's stolen the pond's thunder yet again, as he lines up the coconuts in Please God spare us the born-again atheists.

Please oh please dear long absent, wayward and fickle god, can you spare us the bog standard rant about born-again atheists? Can we instead see some splendid commentaries along the line Please Zeus spare us the pathetic rants of ordinary humble closet dwelling atheists against born-again militant atheists.

Hang on, hang on, remind me exactly again what a born-again atheist is? Do they get plunged in atheist holy water, and emerge hollering and shouting 'convert or die heathen, or I'm off to collect my 72 virgins?'

Is that how we get lumbered with militant atheists?

In the typical way of these things, Penbo has got his mindless lines down rote. There's the obligatory slagging off of Dawkins - these wretches all seem a little afraid of Hitchens, so it's always Dawkins - and then a detour to the flying spaghetti monster, so a conspicuous lack of humour can be conspicuously displayed:

For Bobby Anderson, what started as the highly specific ridicule of teaching theological nonsense as science has now ballooned into a more generalised form of juvenile abuse towards anyone who believes in God.

His website devoted to The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster encourages readers to send in Virgin Mary-style sightings of their chosen deity, and includes images desecrating religious art, such as Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, where God has his finger outstretched to a bowl of pasta with googly eyes stuck on it.

Bugger me dead, and feed me to the chooks. Did someone stick Penbo's finger up his righteous fundament?

He goes on to quote a moving response despairing at Anderson's shocking nihilism, which is about the time I felt like dislodging a nauseous glob of Penbo spaghetti speak.

Naturally the Queensland loon comes in for a bruising:

The latest example of this belligerence came from Queensland this week, where Brisbane legal academic Alex Stewart managed to be both remarkably offensive and deeply naive at the same time by shredding the Bible and the Koran, smoking them in a YouTube clip, and then expressing his fear that he might lose his job as a result of his actions.

Um, he was in a non-academic position as a commercial contracts lawyer. Is it obligatory to garble the truth while having a whinging whining rant?

It seems to have escaped Penberthy's attention that the Queensland goose was intending a bit of repartee, a response in kind to the mad Christian mullah who was planning to burn the Qur'an in the deep American South. Not to mention the way that the American media, and indeed the entire country ground to a halt to witness the madcap routines of a man with a giant moustache, fifty followers, and not enough for a game of marbles amongst the lot of them.

Which raises the question. Who's best at the book banning and burning game? Sssh, not a word about the Catholic Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

It got me to thinking that Penbo's scribble, in which he admits he's an atheist, should be immediately banned, and failing that, a bunch of faggots stacked high, so he can be burned like the bloody heretic he is, as they used to do in the old days before the militant Christians got quietened down a little.

Penbo blathers on about the noble cause of atheism, but if his idea of advancing the noble cause is to quietly return to the closet, can I suggest that there's the closet, and why doesn't he just fuck off there. And close the door quietly behind him. I'm sick of closet-living atheists and their door slamming ways.

It turns out that the whole thing is actually head towards a bit of smugly self-congratulatory tripe:

Our website The Punch has now published a number of thoughtful columns by a fellow called Greg Clarke, who co-founded the Centre for Public Christianity.

Bugger me dead, and let the pigeons peck my eyes out. The Punch is home to thoughtful Christians. In which they blather turgid hopeless explanations about how god had nothing to do with the floods of Pakistan. Oh, and it also features lickspittle fellow travellers like Penbo.

Meanwhile, alarmed at the thought that there were militant atheists all around, rampant, and burning bibles and Qur'ans in search of a toke, I went off in search of evidence of more recent outrages.

Perhaps yet again some militant tosser atheist being given a state reception to celebrate his atheist activism ...

Luckily I chanced on that prize goose David Cameron offering up Faith is a gift to be cherished, not a problem to be overcome.

In it, Cameron seeks to damp down the native unrest about the Pope making a state trip to the UK.

Yes, yes, outrageous, the way these militant christians get a state visit wherein they're given the keys to the castle and the right the blather about christianity to anyone forced to listen.

Oops, it seems Cardinal Walter Kasper has been forced to withdraw from the state sanctioned trip of joy, just days after he called Britain a third world country, not to mention an ongoing ruckus about the church continuing to lie about its abuse of children (Debate: Church 'Continues To Lie' About Abuse).

How to get back on track? Why mention Newman, surely, a rock solid English chappie, and Thomas More.

Cardinal Newman was one of the greatest Englishmen, not just of his own times, but of any times. Like other courageous men and women of faith, he believed passionately that we should follow our consciences.

Or perhaps we should follow young men, since it's well known that Newman had a fondness for male company - and nothing wrong with that, and that if he'd been truly following his conscience, these days he might well have been thinking he was inclined to TS and a post op state (and nothing wrong with that). (Character and relationships).

But back to Cameron:

Too many have died for that same cause. In Britain, their numbers have included both Protestant and Catholic martyrs, like Thomas More, whose trial took place in Westminster Hall, where the Pope will address representatives of civil society from across the country.

Ah yes, Thomas More. Now there was a famous book banner and robust dealer of woe to heretics. (Campaign against the Reformation).

In the usual way of sanctimonious well meaning blather, the interesting complexities about these historical figures blurs their relevance to contemporary proceedings - for example, in relation to the Catholic church's deeply homoerotic culture and its problems with children. Not that there's anything wrong with homoerotic culture, nor need it be linked to the sexual abuse of children ...

If only the church would acknowledge that sex and marriage between consenting adults of whatever hue and gender and even amongst their own clerics is the way forward, instead of turning sex into a detour down a side, grubby, repressed and perverted street.

Instead we get this kind of piety from Cameron:

Like other faith groups, the Catholic Church proclaims a message of peace and justice to the world and we work closely with it in the furtherance of these causes.

Where does the 'suffer the little children to come unto me' bit fit into these proceedings?

Don't you worry about that. Let's just feed the chooks more prime Joh blather:

There has been a lot of exaggerated comment that Pope Benedict will this week be visiting a largely secular country. I do not agree with this. There is much evidence in polls and the attendance at religious services to contradict it. But, in any case, I believe such comment misses the point. The Pope's visit should not just be welcomed by British Catholics or people of faith more broadly but by all who welcome what faith groups contribute to our society and who understand that for many faith is a gift to be cherished, not a problem to be overcome.

Can I tell that to the next mad bomber who blows himself and those around him to kingdom come (thy will is never done) in the delusionary notion that he's off to paradise to frolic with virgins? And don't start me on the local idle repressions and casual outrages of the Pellist heretics and the Jensensist nepotics.

A little while ago we quote Christopher Hitchens in Free Exercise of Religion? No, Thanks.

The taming and domestication of religious faith is one of the unceasing chores of civilization.

By golly, it's grand the way he's raging against the dying of the light. Now he needs to rage against the Penbo fellow travellers and whiners, and the Cameron blatherers.

Luckily he's just bobbed up again, and funnily enough, along with giving the Catholic church a hearty pounding, he mentions Cardinal Newman:

Cardinal Newman himself was rather dubious about the late-19th-century proclamation of papal infallibility. He also asked to be buried in the same grave as his lifelong companion, Ambrose St. John. The Catholic authorities have now rudely disinterred the bodies, finding nothing that had survived decay or could serve as a relic. This is grotesque enough, but not as grotesque as the air of persecuted innocence that they wear when confronted with their obscene offenses. Now at last there is a careful guide to legal redress, which can be taken up either by a victim or by a prosecutor and used to bring a man-made outfit, and its chief executive, within the rule of law. The sun and moon don't need to fall and the species doesn't have to die in agony in order to expiate this sin—a little application of simple earthly justice is all that is required. Will it really continue to be withheld? (A Call for Earthly Justice)

You'll have to read the earlier bits of Hitchens in this piece to make full sense of his closing par rage, but the bit about the Catholics ferreting around amongst Newman's - and his life long male partner's - bones is surely the topping of the cake for this week's follies surrounding one of humanity's oldest cults ...

If only we could persuade Hitchens to turn on lickspittle Penbo and smarmy fellow travelling Cameron.

Sadly you have to do more than a whine or a blather to attract the attention of an intellectually credentialed militant atheist ...

And now since loon pond is an all encompassing body of water, it's time for a little immersion music as you sink luxuriantly into the weeds in search of redemption ...

If only religion had stopped at its contribution to music ...