Nathan Lee

So the churches of Australia a little while back put their differences aside to push a common theme: Jesus.

This weekend we had sky-writing (more on that another time), showing that the church funds scammeddonated for this purpose are certainly not helping anyone in need.* Wonder how many people could have been fed, watered, clothed or vaccinated? The dollars involved in sky-writing make my contributions to (genuine and secular) charities e.g. Oxfam, Fred Hollows foundation etc (By all means go donate too!) look trivial. I wonder if instead of spending money fixing people’s eyes Fred Hollows would prefer the dollars collected to go to writing up “Fred Hollows = vision” in sky writing.

I’d wonder why God can’t just settle this once and for all without the need for hiring planes to do what an almighty all powerful being could do with the snap of the fingers. Pull that burning bush out of storage and wave it around the sky if nothing else.

*Unless your need was to have the sky drawn on for the briefest of moments before the wind blew it away.

The goal of the campaign was to encourage discussion on a mythical figure that has most certainly been discussed ad nauseam for, oh, about two thousand years or so with no conclusive results and no evidence forthcoming to back up the wild supernatural claims. Certainly no need for millions of dollars to be spent on the hope of converting some “cynical Sydney-siders”.

Jesus isn’t about life

I’d have to question whether the campaign knows anything about Jesus. Saying Jesus was all about life is kinda silly when the whole Jesus concept is “God creates son to be sacrificed so that said god will be able to forgive mankind for various accumulated sins”.

The Jesus mythology is pretty clear that the whole point is blood sacrifice (e.g. DEATH): without the end of crucifixion there is no life-death-rebirth type mythology. Sure you can gloss over this and claim that he died for humanity to live, but it’s some pretty spectacular doublespeak to get to “all about life” from “all about death”.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the symbol of Christianity a tortured guy nailed to a cross?

Doesn’t look like much of a life eh?

Childish (and child targetting) posters making ridiculous claims

Check out some of the posters here (warning 3.2 meg PDF): here.

Let’s look at the claimed creation of a giant chair.

The poster thanks Jesus for it. Hmm.. Funny, because I found this little picture that shows a bunch of PEOPLE making this.

Funny, I don’t see Jesus in there or maybe he’s running the crane.

The real creator is Giancarlo Neri and the piece is called “The Writer”. Of the things claimed as inspiration I didn’t read anything about Jesus either (see here for a PDF archive of a tonne of articles on the work). There’s no mention of the word Jesus and one reference to “my god it’s vast”.
From an article on it:

Neri calls the design a “monument to the loneliness of writing” but says he hopes people in London will make of it what they will.

No dedication to Jesus there. But I guess the Bible Society made an ad of it to promote their religion without any basis. *shrug*

Another “bizarre” one mentioned in a newspaper article thanks jesus for hot chips: have these people never been into the local fish and chips shop? It sure as shit isn’t Jesus accumulating oil burns over the deep fry vats.

Then there’s one claiming Jesus created parrots (I’m a little fuzzy, but I don’t remember any mention of Jesus being around until long after genesis).

So can just anyone claim natural processes as their own without a shred of scientific basis? I’d like to claim rights to the natural process of cow digestion so that I can claim royalties every time the churches put out future religious bullshit. Since my taxes are subsidising this sort of rubbish, it’s only fair I get my cut.

Then there’s the one I really think crosses (boom-tish) a line  (or two) that shouldn’t be in a public place directed at children. The R.I.P. cartoon one. Here it is:

Clearly aimed at children (or those of a childish mind I guess) and I think a pretty clear violation of the relevant advertising/marketing code for Children.

Firstly: there’s absolutely zero proof that there’s an afterlife. None. Zip. Zero. If this was a medical product making claims about care it’d need disclaimers and hard evidence.

Secondly: Substitute anyone’s name in there and it would have equal proof. If Christianity can claim it with no proof, why not (other) corporations?

Muslims could run an identical ad thanking Allah or Mohammed for looking after their dead mother. Scientology could thank Xenu or thetan alien spirits whatever it is they believe in.

But perhaps more accurate would be the following (which falls within the findings of effectiveness of prayer studies e.g. like this one showing prayer not only doesn’t aid recovery, actually made recovery statistics worse):

Or perhaps if they’re going to claim parrots and other man made or biological things as the realm of things to thank Jesus for:

Of course I’m forgetting the golden rules of this “God” concept which is:

• responsible for all good, even if you did it yourself
• testing your faith or a deserved punishment if bad stuff happens

Anyhow, I lodged a complaint with the advertising standards bureau because I think these ads breach a number of the standards on advertising for children. We’ll see how that goes. If making any and all unfounded claims to promote the Jesus corporation is fine with them then what’s to stop other businesses from doing so (assuming Religion doesn’t magically deserve an exemption to the rules about deceptive advertising and misleading children targeted information).

If you’re going to productise Jesus then just like other product advertisement you can’t make unfounded claims. Keep it nicely contained in that little book of fairy-tales and it isn’t as much of an issue.

Other links:

• Jesus about life (parody site as the idiots forgot to register the .com)
• The official site is here