1. pharyngula
  2. Respect the tradition

Respect the tradition

By pharyngula on March 9, 2011.

Today, you may notice people wandering about with strange smudgy marks on their foreheads. You may also know that today is my birthday. And you might be wondering if those two observations are related.

Yes, they are. I traditionally celebrate my birthday by punching god-botherers in the forehead. Some of those people may have been victims of my fists, and are badly bruised. Others, more cunning, put the marks on their heads so that when they see me coming, they can say, "Hey, you already got me!" Either way, the appropriate remark to individuals you see with these smudges is, "I'm sorry, I hope you get better soon."

There are alternative explanations. You can also say "Praise Odin" to them, and point them at the nearest monastery to sack and burn. Another possibility is that they're credulous, brain-damaged nitwits, but I think it's kinder to pretend they've been punched in the head by PZ Myers. It's a gentler, more accommodating belief, and as we all know, tone and sucking up is so important.

Tags
religion

More like this

The Dick Delusion
I've been getting slapped upside the head with this "dick" meme that's roaring through the skeptic community lately, largely because it seems that any time someone makes a generic criticism of rude, abrasive, confrontational critics of foolishness, the audience all thinks of the life-size poster of…
Bravo, Oregon!
The Oregon House has passed a bill removing the special protections for faith healers. Sorry, god-botherers in Oregon, you don't get to claim the approval of gods to justify torturing, maiming, and killing your children with neglect. It passed unanimously, too, although of course a couple of…
Blithering spiritualists
Palazzo has put me in a pissy mood, now. He's mentioned those pompous god-botherers at the Templeton Foundation, who awarded 1.4 million dollars to that credulous gasbag, John Barrow. When Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins challenged physicist John Barrow on his formulation of the constants of…
Disagreeing with Wilkins
Wilkins is not happy that I jumped down Pagels' throat for a stupid comment in an interview. He thinks I ought to take Pagels more seriously (as did some of the commenters here), and, unfortunately, also goes on to mischaracterize the uppity atheist arguments, like so: This is what I reject about…