April Time .. .. . April 2022

God's Mum: I am reading a letter I found on-line, dear. Very interesting, reading between the lines, I would love to hear your take on it, dear:

Dear God, As you know I am a born atheist from a large catholic family.

However, I have had a change of heart in my old age and want to be welcomed back into the flock and forgiven. The reason for my conversion is as follows:

If there is no God
then there is no Heaven
If there is no Heaven
then there is no Hell
If there is no Hell
Putin goes un-punished.

Kind regards, Howard.

God: I see what you mean. I'm sure Howard is taking a back-handed slap at * The God Industry * and yet he makes a very valid point.

God's Mum: That many earthlings turn to God in order to see reparation for injustice, dear?

God: Exactly. In desperation really, It is the only justice they can obtain, although it is only imaginary.

You can follow God's Mum's amazing story from day to day here on Libraything. Each month is clearly shown and you can start anywhere you like. The aim is to bring you, precious reader, one new God's Mum fix every day, stolen from her blog.

For ease of reading, a new topic starts on the 1st of each month. To-date on LT we have:

1. In the beginning Nov 2021 .. . . Here
   
2. And then .. .. .. Dec 2021 .. .. .. Here
   
3. New year .. .. .. Jan 2022 .. .. .. Here
   
4. After that .. .. .. Feb 2022 .. .. .. Here
   
5. March on .. .. .. Mar 2022 .. .. .. Here
   
6. April time .. .. . April 2022 .. .. . Here
   
   

   God's Mum.
   She'll tell you bible stories
   that you've never heard before .. .. ..

   
   
   

😎Laughter is the best medicine.😎

"Captain Noah, sir." (Smart salute)

"Yes, wife, what is it now? I'm busy trying to work out where we are."

"We won't have to feed the lions in the ark for the next three days, Sir."

"Good show, why not?"

"They've just eaten the navigator, Sir."

https://www.librarything.com/topic/337045#7671320

_{Credit: God's Mum©}

God's Mum: Some earthlings won't work on a Saturday for religious reasons, dear.

God: That's ok, it's not a problem.

God's Mum: Others will not eat meat from Holy Cattle, dear.

God: That's ok, it's not a problem.

God's Mum: Many will only send their children to selected religious schools, dear.

God: That's ok, it's not a problem.

God's Mum: Others won't let women onto the street unless they are covered from head to toe, dear.

God: That's ok, it's not a problem.

God's Mum: Lots of humans go into church and pray every Sunday of their lives, dear.

God: That's ok, it's not a problem.

God's Mum: Many believe that mankind are all born in sin, dear.

God: That's ok, it's not a problem.

God's Mum: But then they despise all others who do not do as they do, dear.

God: Exactly. The problem is, many Religious Believers enjoy that part the most.

God's Mum: The Russian Orthodox Church thinks Putin is a saint sent by God because he is slaughtering thousands of innocent people in Ukraine, dear. Here is the article, dear

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/03/the-guardian-view-on-the-r...

God: Thank you. The article is opening the eyes of the world to * The God Industry * as a very harmful influence on the world stage.
(The ridiculous Russian Orthodox Church stage outfit worn by the clown in front of the alter in the article gives the world a chance to laugh at the church in this grim situation.)

God's Mum: Putin is doing for Russia what King Herod did for children's homes, dear.

🌼 Words of Wisdom you won't hear in church.🌼

Put it this way: ~ The Golden Rule: Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, predates the Christian religion by thousands of years.

_{God's Mum©}

God's Mum: An Antisocial Strain of Sincere Religious Beliefs Is on the Rise, dear.

https://newrepublic.com/article/165942/sincerely-held-religious-belief-law

God: Yes, I recall an excellent piece from Charles McCrary last year commenting: "Sincere Religious Belief names a distinctly American way of being free and being religious: as an individual, unsystematically, and without regard for others.”

God's Mum: The article further states: "To remain unvaccinated, or to pack a sanctuary at the height of pre-vaccine infection surges, is a personal freedom. And when it is sincere and religious, it is worth protecting, regardless of who else might be harmed." He sees a "one law for them and another for us", situation there, dear.

God: Further, he adds: "Sincerely held religious beliefs insulate their holder from critique. They offer an opt-out not only from the demands of democratic participation but from the democratic process of deliberation, of giving reasons and making arguments. You can always say, when pushed, “Don’t question my faith.”

(Italics added)

😎 Laughter is the best medicine. 😎

"You know, nurse, now that I am old and unwell the Good Lord, in His constancy and affection and with the help of His Holy Guardian Angels, is forever watching over me. Each night when I have to get up for a pee, He, in His infinite grace and wisdom, turns on the light, that I may see my way. When I am finished, with unfailing grace and wonder, He turns the light off again. It is a very wonderful, thoughtful miracle provided by The Lord as a reward for my life spent in celibacy and devotion to Him."

"It is not a miracle, Bishop, you are peeing in the fridge."

_{Credit: God's Mum©}

God's Mum: Tell me all about Moses crossing the The Red Sea by parting the waters, dear.

God: According to Moses, he raised his staff and pointed and the waves parted. All he had to do then was persuade his thousands of followers to stumble with their animals for some ten miles over the mud and slime on the rocks of the sea-bed carrying all their kit and children.

God's Mum: That would take a lot of doing, dear. How did he achieve that, dear?

God: How would I know? I wasn't there.

God's Mum: So Moses had to get all his people to stumble across the slimy, rocky sea bed for 10 miles to get to the other side. He would have had to take a vote, dear. They would not have wanted to do it, dear.

God: Would you?

God's Mum: But the Bible says they all went across, dear.

God: Ah yes, the Bible. All written by genuine eye witnesses who weren't really there...

🌼 Words of Wisdom you won't hear in church.🌼

"Dad, dad, I don't want to go to the church this Sunday."

"Why ever not, Henry?"

"Because they tell such lies, dad. And you said that is not nice, dad."

"No, the church never lies, Henry."

"They have a great sign outside the church, it says: JUSUS LIVES."

"Yes, I've seen that, Henry, why is that a problem, darling?

"I've seen him inside every Sunday. He's nailed up on the wall, dad."

_{God's Mum©}

God's Mum: Book Choice of the Month. ~ April 2022. 💙

Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment.
by Phil Zuckerman (Author)

In his book Society without God, Phil Zuckerman challenges an assertion made by religious fundamentalists: that religion is the only thing that keeps humanity from falling into moral and ethical bankruptcy. Zuckerman takes a job teaching for a year in Denmark, one of the most secular nations on the planet, and finds that rather than being rife with moral depravity, corruption, crime and instability, its citizens actually rank among the happiest and most peaceful according to a variety of UN statistics.

I took copious notes while reading, as there are many quotes and anecdotes worth remembering -- an excellent and refreshing read.
💙💙💙💙💙 (5 stars)

_{Credit: ryner May 29, 2009}

Note: I'm standing-in here for @Teabag88 who has a password problem with LibraryThing that we hope will be sorted soon. Jammy.

God's Mum: Tea, dear. Fresh and hot in your favorite mug, dear.

God: Thank you, that's wonderful. Hard to believe how wrong the earthlings can get things. The "secular state" of Nigeria has just sentenced Mabarak Bala to 24 years in prison for what they choose to call Blasphemy.

God's Mum: Blasphemy is how they describe someone questioning the church's guesswork, dear. Or insulting god, dear. Do you feel insulted, dear?

God: As an omnipotent god? If I were insulted would I need some puny earthling judge to make the decision for me?

God's Mum: It is truly amazing how far some nations will go to prove their ignorance to the rest of the world, dear.

I don't make this stuff up.

Every conversation posted here in God's Mum is a genuine overheard snippet passed on to me by Holy Roly (Devine Lawns PLC) who mows God's Mum's grass.

Sworn on Cardinal Pell's Holy Bible. Oct 2018.
See: "Come home Cardinal Pell".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Minchin

* * *
Religion doe's not intend to be humerous, that's what makes it all the more laughable.

_{Credit: God's Mum©}

God's Mum: The bible makes much of the story of Doubting Thomas, dear. Why does he get so much attention, dear?

God: Hard to tell. * The God Industry * seems to scrape the bottom of the barrel to keep him in the loop.

God's Mum: Wasn't there something about the "Madonna in her Girdle", dear?

God: So it is written, somewhere...

God's Mum: Why a woman taking off her girdle should be such big bible news is beyond me, dear. Oh, yes, I remember now, she dropped it on Doubting Thomas' head, dear.

God: Oh, such big news. How exciting for him. And John found it important to record this event in his gospel?

God's Mum: So, do you think all that is written about Doubting Thomas is true, dear?

God: I'm doubtful...

God's Mum: The most important discoveries of the world were made by Charles Robert Darwin in a lifetime of hard work and devotion. That is why more and more people keep the following holiday each year:

The date for the Easter Charles Robert Darwin public holiday can vary by more than a month. The earliest is 21 March, with the latest possible date being 24 April.

In 2022 Charles Robert Darwin Public Holiday is Saturday April 16. Today!

Herewith a direct link to * The God Industry *.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61109104

Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church can be seen here in his latest stage outfit of a green gorgeous gown and a big white hat with a cross on top. Note the opulence of the building and compare it with the devastation in Ukraine.

Again we see an out-of-touch church leader making a total fool of himself in full view of the whole world. He can't do that! That's OUR job.

God's Mum: The Archbishop of Canterbury is in the news again, dear. He feels he is a good judge of your nature, dear.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61130841

God: Does he indeed? That is remarkable, how did he come to invent that all by himself?

God's Mum: Maybe he had a dream as he dozed in his seat in the House of Lords as an un-elected member of Boris Johnson's government in London, dear.

God's Mum: Eggs and bacon with toast for breakfast, dear. And here's a chocolate egg for you, dear.

God: Thank you, that is very nice, what's the occasion?

😎 Laughter is the best medicine. 😎

And it came to pass: ~ In a cave near The Dead Sea, many years before John the Baptist was splashing water about:

"The order from the Holy Church leaders is to seal these scrolls into these earthenware jars very securely and store them here."

"What for, boss?"

"Posterity, of course."

"But there's nothing written on the scrolls, boss. They're just blanks."

"What a balls-up! Best write stuff on 'em first then."

"What shall we write, boss?"

" I don't know. Any old bullshit will do, just get on with it ...."

_{Credit: God's Mum©}

God's Mum: It seems that many earthlings are suffering badly for allowing their leaders to ban free speech, dear.

God: No words could be clearer than the following:

Without free speech no search for truth is possible; without free speech no discovery of truth is useful; without free speech progress is checked… Better a thousand fold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech.

NSS founder Charles Bradlaugh

📜📜ChurchSpeak 📜ChurchSpeak 📜ChurchSpeak📜📜

The Church of England’s culture of entitlement has to end.
by Richard Scorer

https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion/2022/04/the-church-shouldnt-have-a-privile....

In an article headlined "Peerage snub for top black bishop", the Sunday Times claimed that Downing Street had delivered an "extraordinary snub to Britain's first black archbishop by failing to award him an automatic life peerage".

The article claimed that as a retiring archbishop of York, John Sentamu should have been given a life peerage to enable him to continue sitting in the House of Lords in a personal capacity after his retirement in June.

The article pointed out that in failing to make the award to Sentamu, Downing Street broke with longstanding precedent by which retiring archbishops of York and retiring archbishops of Canterbury are made life peers on retirement.

Amongst other things Sentamu stands accused of failing to respond properly to a report of clerical sex abuse by survivor Matthew Ineson. Ineson was repeatedly raped by a clergyman when he was a vulnerable and homeless 16-year-old. Ineson reported this to other bishops, including Stephen Croft, but no action was taken. So he went to Sentamu, who effectively said: "Not my problem". When confronted at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse with the evidence of his gross mishandling of Ineson's complaint, Sentamu declined to offer any apology to Ineson, who was sitting in the hearing room with him.

This brief summary barely does justice to what happened to Ineson; you can read more about his damning testimony, and the church's disgracefully "shabby and shambolic" response, here. It also seems that contrary to national policy, Sentamu fast-tracked his wife's ordination before she had completed her safeguarding training.

However, the issues raised by this controversy go well beyond John Sentamu himself. They raise much bigger questions about the Church of England's privileged constitutional status.

First, let's consider the custom of awarding automatic life peerages on retirement. When you stand back and reflect on it, the suggestion that the archbishop of York or Canterbury is an office comparable in importance to the prime minister is self-evidently absurd. The suggestion that a retiring archbishop is an important public official may have been arguable 100 years ago; today, with long term religious decline and increased pluralism of belief, it is completely untenable.

Since 2000 some 34 British citizens have won the Nobel Prize: 28 in sciences, three in economics and three in literature. None as far as I can see have been awarded a life peerage.

Are we really saying that an archbishop of a declining church – a church riven with obscure obsessions about the status of women and homosexuality, and now fending off child abuse scandals on a vast scale – has justification? It relies on a long defunct notion that the Church of England plays a role in our national life which makes it deserving of special treatment, and is completely outdated.

Of course, the issue does not end there. Before his retirement Sentamu was one of the 26 serving Church of England bishops who sit in the House of Lords as of right as 'lords spiritual'. In this respect, the Church of England enjoys a unique and completely unjustified constitutional privilege. Only two countries in the world have clerical representation as of right in the national legislature: Britain and Iran. Sharing a constitutional arrangement with a theocracy ought to ring alarm bells for us. As I argued here, this privileging of the Church of England is completely unsustainable.

It's time to bring the Church of England's unearned and unjustified constitutional privileges to an end.

>3 Jammy1:
😎 Laughter is the best medicine. 😎

"You sent for me, Captain Noah, Sir?" (Smart salute)

" Yes, wife. Stand easy woman. Why are you soaking wet?

"It has been pisss...sistently raining for weeks, Captain Noah , Sir."

" Yes, and we can't see the sky, that is why the ark is lost. So, before the navigator was eaten by the lions, did he give any indication of the ark's present position?"

https://www.librarything.com/topic/340853#7803161

_{Credit: God's Mum©}

God's Mum: I am reading that there are factions in USA, dear, who believe the world is only 6,000 years old, dear.

God: Good for them. Their nonsense guesswork is just as laughable as anything * The God Industry * has ever come up with.

God's Mum: But only 6,000 years, dear? It is so recent, dear, you were a little boy then, dear. You were so sweet and cuddlesome, dear, I remember a time when...

God: I'm sure you do, mother, but I'm older now. I'll be a grown-up before you know it.

God's Mum: I'm sure you are right, dear. Coffee and Angel cake, dear?

>22 Jammy1:
God's Mum: Once again The Archbishop of Canterbury, head of The Church Of England is in the news, dear. Trying to tell the Prime Minister of the UK (where 72% of the population do not attend church) how to run the country, dear.

God: The God Industry has gone to his head. He really must sit down and have a long chat with a grown-up.

God's Mum: The whole world is watching as the Russian population is fed fake news by the Kremlin, dear. Lies about their war in Ukraine, dear. How does a whole nation get fooled by a handful of crooks in government, dear?

God: It's the "same old, same old", helped along by * The God Industry * in the form of The Russian Orthodox Church, led by Patriarch Kivill (Ex KGB billionaire conman with a love of gorgeous gowns and big shiny hats). Don't forget:

"If you can sell 'em god and the bible, you can sell 'em anything!"

_{Credit: Basil Faulty.}

🌼 Words of Wisdom you won't hear in church.🌼

"Dad, dad, I don't want to go to church on Sunday."

"Why ever not, Henry?"

"That strange man out in front wearing such a weird outfit says all my friends who don't come to church are going to burn in hell, dad" Do you think that is true, dad?

"I've never really thought about it, son."

"There seems to be an awful lot you've "never really thought about", dad."

https://www.librarything.com/topic/340853#7809447

_{Credit: God's Mum©}

God's Mum: Many Christians are unable to understand how the human race had a moral code long before Christianity arrived recently, dear

God: Interesting, isn't it? * The God Industry * has convinced them that they, themselves, invented morality. They choose to forget that without their ancestor's caring morality they, themselves, would not now exist.

God's Mum: There is indisputable evidence on earth of settled, caring, co-operating family groups 45.000 years ago, dear. That is recently for us, dear, but it is ancient history for Humans, dear.

God: Now many believers think that, prior to them, there was no morality.

God's Mum: The christian record so far over the past 2,000 years is not very promising, is it, dear? Witch-hunts, burning at the stake, Crusades, Religious wars and sex scandals within the clergy, dear.

God: And the morals of the non-religious are questioned?

🌼 Words of Wisdom you won't hear in church.🌼

And it came to pass: ~ Religion poisons everything.

Christopher Hitchens.

😎 Laughter is the best medicine. 😎

And it came to pass: ~ The simple question * The God Industry * has to answer is:

DOES GOD WEAR ODD SOCKS?

_{Credit: God's Mum©}

- - - -
Thanks for being with God's Mum all the way through April. A new topic, "May Happy" takes over tomorrow.Here

We all look forward to seeing you over there.