Poor Scientology…
Louisa Hodkin & Alessandro Calcioli are both Scientologists. They wanted to get married at the London branch of Scientology, but they were denied. The Registrar General of births, deaths and marriages in England and Wales must approve buildings before a marriage service can be performed inside. The Registrar however said the building is not “a place of meeting for religious worship”. Since the building has not been solemnised for marriages, Louisa was denied her dream wedding. Louisa didn’t take the law into her own hands, she took them to court – and lost.
Louisa’s lawyers argued that she was being discriminated against on religious grounds. Thankfully, Mr Justice Ouseley stood behind the Registrar General and dismissed the challenge. Mr. Ouseley’s decision was based on a 1970 court case appeal of “Segerdal”. In that case, the judge ruled another Scientology building was not a church, saying Scientology gave “instructions in the tenets of a philosophy concerned with man” and were not concerned with religious worship.
Good on the UK for pulling out a dusty case from the archives to put some smack down on Scientology. Their denial confirms the illegitimacy of a religion based on the science fiction book written by L. Ron Hubbard. Now, if only we could apply that standard to much older books… Say the Quran, Bible, and Torah to start… 😉
An Idiot Speaks
David Barton is a conservative Christian from Texas. He claims our founding fathers made the claim when writing the Second Amendment that Americans have “the biblical right of self defense“. This entitles every American to own any weapon in the arsenal of the United States. Taken to it’s logical extreme, this means nukes, tanks, and stealth fighters. I am not here to say what is right or wrong with the Second Amendment. Only wanted to leave this video here so you can stare into the eyes of crazy.
Religion of Peace
Grand Ayatollah Ahmad Al Baghdadi Al Hassani, the kindly looking old Iraqi man just made a proclaimation recently on television in Egypt. In his talk, he called Christianity a polytheistic religion (Hitch agreed). He also said Christians are friends of Zionists (Hitch also agreed). The Grand Ayatollah went on to say non Muslims must choose death or Islam (Hitch agreed the Quran said that too). Where Hitchens and the Grand Ayatollah would part ways is Hitchens did not believe all Muslim men are allowed to capture and rape *all* Christian females. That’s right. Rape ’em all.
Hell, Aisha was married to Muhammad at the age of six – but he was kind enough to wait til she was 9 (according to the Hadith) or 10 (al-Tabari records) to have sex with her. It ain’t no thang but a chicken wing to take your wife and young daughter away from their family when a fatwa justifies it. Sure that Grand Ayatollah has a minority of followers, but having just one follower is too many.
I’ve heard it said many times that people are better than their religion. And, most of the time, I completely agree. But this Grand Ayatollah is not. He is a true believer – warts and all. Want a reason I don’t like religion? This guy is a winner. Because he is religious, his words are tolerated – even believed. If you take religion out of the equation, you see an old man that quite probably has mental issues.
~Wesley
PS: The day is half over and I think there is a decent chance we will survive 12/21/12. If you had any doubts, you… need to read credible science sites.