Theologians of the week

Here are some stories of faith from the news this week. I won't say they're heart-warming, but they will raise your temperature.

• Miss Beverly Hills 2010 Lauren Ashley reminded us that yes, the Bible really does say that gay men should be killed.

“The Bible says that marriage is between a man and a woman. In Leviticus it says, ‘If man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.’ The Bible is pretty black and white.”

By Jove, she's right. Of course, Deuteronomy says that you should kill anyone not of your religion. Wonder why she didn't mention that?

Well, even though she didn't take it all the way, you must admire her courage in not soft-pedaling her holy book.

• Evangelical Christians in Haiti attack a vodou ceremony, and the vodou leader is not pleased.

Some of the fresh converts have said they did so because they believed God caused the earthquake.

"It will be war - open war," Max Beauvoir, supreme head of Haitian voodoo, said in an interview at his home and temple outside the capital.

"It's unfortunate that at this moment where everybody's suffering, that they have to go into war. But if that is what they need, I think that is what they'll get."

...
"I would like to see each one of them tied up in ropes and thrown in the sea, and I hope the best of them will be able to catch a plane and run away and leave in peace," the voodoo priest said. "Because this is what we need right now -- peace."

Which is more notable: the Haitians Christians for their commitment to religious tolerance? or Mr Beauvoir for his dedication to the cause of peace?

• A Christian couple in California is up for murder for killing their daughter, who challenged their god-given authority by mispronouncing words from a book she was reading.

Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz, the Paradise couple accused of murdering their 7-year-old adopted daughter during a discipline session last Saturday morning were arraigned in court Tuesday. The couple is also charged with the torture of their 11-year-old adopted daughter, who remains in critical condition at a Sacramento hospital, and a misdemeanor count of cruelty to a child for signs of bruising discovered on their 10-year-old biological son.
...
Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey said both girls sustained extensive bruising and whip-like marks on their bodies that were consistent with a 15-inch length of rubber or flexible plastic tubing - commonly found in toilet tanks.

This method of discipline is favoured by Michael Pearl of the 'No Greater Joy' ministry. From the Pearl link:

This is a practical look at spanking children. Parents must understand that spanking is just one element in God’s child training program. It is essential, but is not the whole—only a part. Nor is it the most important part. Important yes, but not all-important.
...
What instrument would I use?
As a rule, do not use your hand. Hands are for loving and helping. If an adult swings his or her hand fast enough to cause pain to the surface of the skin, there is a danger of damaging bones and joints. The most painful nerves are just under the surface of the skin. A swift swat with a light, flexible instrument will sting without bruising or causing internal damage. Many people are using a section of ¼ inch plumber’s supply line as a spanking instrument. It will fit in your purse or hang around you neck. You can buy them for under $1.00 at Home Depot or any hardware store. They come cheaper by the dozen and can be widely distributed in every room and vehicle. Just the high profile of their accessibility keeps the kids in line.

Pearl (and the Schatz's) is only following the biblical doctrine that if you train a child up in the way they should go, they will not depart from it. Also, that children need to submit to 'the rod' -- after all, they won't die (unless they do), and you'll save their soul from hell. If a parent needs to give their children regular thrashings so they'll continue in the religion of their parents -- well, this simply shows the difficulty of raising godly children in these secular times.

If you're interested in NGJ Ministries, why not check out their Facebook group?

• Also in parenting news, a Baltimore mom is on the stand for starving her one-year-old for not saying 'amen' at a mealtime prayer. You wouldn't think a child that age would be saying much at all, but it took a perceptive religious leader to notice that the child had an evil spirit.

Ramkissoon told the tale of her son's excruciating death from the witness stand on Wednesday, at the trial of the woman she says told her not to feed the boy. Queen Antoinette was the leader of a small religious cult, according to police and prosecutors, and she faces murder charges alongside her daughter, Trevia Williams, and another follower, Marcus A. Cobbs.

Many parents have let their children die for lack of medical treatment due to their religion, but this story stands out for the mother's unquestioning faith that her baby could be raised back to life, New Testament-style.

Javon died in either December 2006 or January 2007; Ramkissoon isn't sure of the exact date. His body was hidden in a suitcase for more than a year and has since been buried. But even now, she maintains her faith in his resurrection.

"I still believe that my son is coming back," Ramkissoon said. "I have no problem saying what really happened because I believe he's coming back.

"Queen said God told her he would come back. I believe it. I choose to believe it," she said. "Even now, despite everything, I choose to believe it for my reasons."

Later, she acknowledged that her faith makes her sound crazy. "I don't have a problem sounding crazy in court," she said.

Even though the sunk-cost fallacy virtually ensures that the mother will never break free of her delusion, she makes the list for her devotion and unquestioning faith in her religious leader and the healing power of the resurrection.

We'll be back with even more stories of faith in the near future.

Universities don't take religions seriously!

I teach at a university. I try to teach students to think well. That means I teach about critical thinking skills, using evidence to support claims, and controlling for bias. (And I hope I don't forget to exercise those skills myself.)

There are also many people at the university whose job is to teach students to think badly. These are mainly religious groups that regularly encourage reliance on unseen spiritual beings, emotional reasoning, and not challenging deeply-held beliefs.

Dallin H. Oaks is a Mormon apostle. He spoke to Harvard grads recently, and tried to encourage them to think badly. Let's see how he did this.

1. Insulting secular Americans

Elder Oaks acknowledged that LDS doctrines and values are not widely understood by those not of the LDS faith, and said that his disappointment with that "is only slightly reduced" by research that shows "that on the subject of religion Americans in general are 'deeply religious' but 'profoundly ignorant.'"

By 'ignorant', he apparently means 'someone who has failed to study and/or agree with Mormon doctrine'.

If people are ignorant about religion, doesn't that mean that churches haven't done a good enough job teaching it? Sorry, Mr Oaks. Teaching religion is your job. Don't expect universities to reaffirm your preconceptions.

2. Denouncing universities for not promoting superstition

Elder Oaks said the higher education system was partly to blame for prevailing ignorance about many aspects of Christianity and other religions.

"Many factors contribute to our people's predominant shallowness on the subject of religion, but one of them is surely higher education's general hostility or indifference to religion," he said. "Despite most colleges' and universities' founding purpose to produce clergymen and to educate in the truths taught in their chapels, most have now abandoned their role of teaching religion.

I think univerties have pumped out quite enough clergymen, don't you?

"With but few exceptions, colleges and universities have become value-free places where attitudes toward religion are neutral at best. Some faculty and administrators are powerful contributors to the forces that are driving religion to the margins of American society. Students and other religious people who believe in the living reality of God and moral absolutes are being marginalized."

Universities aren't positive enough about religion? That's the best news I've heard all week. Universities should marginalise bronze-age mythologies as much as possible. Why should the people wearing the clown-shoes be taken seriously?

3. Elevating scripture and revelation as superior to empirical knowledge.

Elder Oaks said he chose "three clusters of truths to present as fundamental premises of the faith of Latter-day Saints." Those clusters are:

• The nature of God, including the role of the three members of the Godhead, and the corollary truth that there are moral absolutes.
• The purpose of life.
• The three-fold sources of truth about man and the universe: science, the scriptures and continuing revelation, and how we can know them.

Notice how religion takes up two of the three top spots?

I understand Oaks wanting to spread the word about how great his religion is -- a religion whose members view him as an incontestable authority, by the way. He's supposed to promote his religion. It's part of the business. But Oaks is barking up the wrong tree if he expects universities to accommodate religions when religions add nothing to the store of human knowledge. All they offer is big stories, and when you challenge the story-tellers to offer evidence, they take refuge in uncertainty, and teach poor reasoning as a protective device. And, it would seem, holler loudly about how educated people just don't take them seriously.

Religion makes no contribution to these places of science that we call universities. But as Matthew Cobb and Jerry Coyne point out, science can contribute something to religious thought: atheism.

Oh, I really meant to say that agnostics are nicer.

Homeopathy on the rocks at last in Britain

Good news from the UK: a British governmental committee agrees that homeopathy is rubbish, and shouldn't be funded.

The NHS should stop funding homeopathy, MPs say.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee said using public money on the highly-diluted remedies could not be justified.

The cross-party group said there was no evidence beyond a placebo effect, when a patient gets better because of their belief that the treatment works.

I'm glad they decided that placebos aren't good enough. Homeopathy has had a privileged place in Britain for far too long.

And my schadenfruede is off the charts. Let's hear from the quacks.

Robert Wilson, of the British Association of Homeopathic Manufacturers, said he was "disappointed" by the findings.

He said the MPs had ignored evidence that homeopathy was effective.

"There is good evidence that homeopathy works, for example in animals and babies, neither of which experience placebo effects."

Wrong. Animals and babies don't experience placebo effects, but judgments about how the animal or baby feels are made by caregivers, who are susceptible to the placebo effect.

And Dr Michael Dixon, medical director for the Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health, set up by Prince Charles to promote complementary medicine, disputed the findings, saying homeopathy still had a role in the NHS.

"We should not abandon patients we cannot help with conventional scientific medicine.

"If homeopathy is getting results for those patients, then of course we should continue to use it."

Homeopathy is not getting results. That's the point, dipstick.

There's no down-side to this. Public money will be saved, or perhaps used for treatments that actually work. Patients will be better served, since they'll get real medicines instead of fake ones. And the fakes will have a harder time plying their phony trade.

More font sightings

My typefaces keep popping up.

Yataghan is still popular in the fantasy genre. I've just noticed that it's been used for the UK editions of the Treason's Heir series.

You can download Yataghan here.

And the Daniel font keeps going. It makes an appearance on a book jacket -- The Jeremy - Snaps of the Dragon by Jo S. Wun. Click on the link above the main image to see the back of the jacket -- that's where the text is.

And Daniel Black is everywhere on the CanHaveGifts website. No, I mean, it's all over the site -- they've used CSS3 to include it as actual text, not graphics. Have a look!

You can download the Daniel font here.

Back in your closets

Sometimes I look at what's going on in America and I shake my head. I suppose that's why those bobble-head dolls are so popular there. If you had to all that head-shaking yourself, your neck would break, so it's nice to have a machine to do it for you.

It seems that having prayer meetings at coffee shops is now a popular and ostentatious way for religious believers to flaunt their holiness.

If I saw that going on, I'd introduce them to Matthew:

6:5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Christians interpreting their scriptures selectively? Shocked I am! Shocked, I tells ya!

Deluded people belong in one of two places: a mental hospital or a church. No need to pester the rest of us with their bizarre and aberrant hobby.

Does this mean god doesn't come with Flash?

I think the iPad looks cool, but I wouldn't exactly say it's proof of God.

On the other hand, who am I to argue with an expert?

Sure, we were as surprised as you are! But trust us, everyone who tested the sleek gadget saw the same version of God. I guess you’d call it an epiphany or something. There is a God. Don’t worry. When you get one, you’ll understand.
...
For this reason alone, we give the iPad four out of five stars. Yes, this next generation device has a highly responsive user interface and a gorgeous display screen. But, no one is really sure how to live, or if there’s even a reason for living any more. We look forward to seeing if Apple addresses this bug in later versions.

I'm not sure about her conclusions, but I was rather surprised to learn that Hinduism is Bluetooth ready.

UWA Atheist & Agnostic Society at O-Day

If you're at UWA tomorrow for Orientation Day (that's Friday, 19 Feb), why not stop by the UWA Atheist & Agnostic Society tent on the big lawn? I'll be there signing up new members, debating any believers that feel like a challenge, and trying to drown out the horrible dance music pumped out by nearby groups at high volume the entire day. Should be a lot of fun!

Be sure to tell her. She'll be surprised.

Another great devotional

I'm here at BYU-Idaho with M. Russell Ballard, a Mormon apostle. Elder Ballard, I was wondering if you could give me some words of wisdom that would help me in my mortal probation.

"I want to try to pull this together, not to frighten you but to wake you up," Elder Ballard said. "We've got to be so solidly anchored in our testimonies of the gospel of Jesus Christ that, regardless of what may come next, we will not waffle; we will stand firm in our belief; we won't question the doctrines that are part of our belief."

Not question doctrines or beliefs. Got it.

I do have one question though, and that's the LDS stand on gay marriage. Why is it so important for us to fuck around with the marital status of other people?

"It's a pretty simple answer," Elder Ballard responded. "God created this world and He put Adam here and He gave Adam a helpmate whom he called Eve. They had a charge and a responsibility to multiply and replenish the earth. It is a marvelous and glorious experience to bring forth children and have a family, and that is done between a husband and a wife who are married."

Um. Do you have an answer that doesn't involve fictional beings?

"I'm telling you what the Savior said would be the signs of the acceleration towards that day when He shall come," he said. "We could stay here for a couple of hours talking about all of the prophecies of what will occur in the last days. We're in the last days — you can quote me on that. And it is moving more rapidly."

Wow, thanks, Elder Ballard! For a moment there, I was thinking calmly and rationally. Now I'm so scared, I'm ready to believe anything if it just makes the fear go away.

By the way, how long has it been the Last Days? Are we now in the 'lasty-last days'? Don't look at me like that, Elder Ballard, I'm just kidding.

So in summary, Don't question, and be very afraid. That's all for now. Keep praying, paying, and obeying!

Bertrand Russell's 'A Liberal Decalogue'

This is a list I found in my wanderings. It's sometimes known as Bertrand Russell's 'Ten Commandments', though I like his title better: 'A Liberal Decalogue'.

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it is from your family, endeavour to overcome it with argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do, the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness.

I'm glad number 1 is at the top. Certainty just isn't on offer in this universe. And that's okay. We try to perceive reality as close as we can, even though we know our view is only partial, and we'll need to update sometimes.

For some reason, number 10 jumps out at me. I suppose that's because I know a lot of people in organisations and religions that teach foolishness, and, yes, achieving some happiness therein. I don't envy them. Maybe I can't be happy if I know I'm pretending.

Talk the Talk: Retarded

On this week's "Talk the Talk", we discussed the use of the word 'retarded'. Do you use the r-word? Would you ever describe someone as a 'retard'?

The issue has come to the fore in recent weeks as Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, used the word to describe Democrats that criticised other Democrats -- and subsequently apologised. "Rosa's Law" has been introduced as a bill to the federal legislature, which would prohibit the use of the r-word in federal documents. And if you're willing to never use the word again, you can take the the 'r-word' pledge.

Or you can just listen to me talking about it on RTRFM.



I'm on about 5/6ths of the way through the stream. Watch out; it starts playing as soon as the page loads.

Here be weasels

If you take it upon yourself to argue with Christian creationists, you have to know the regular stuff: biology, the second law of thermodynamics, flood hydrology, DNA, optics, embryology.

But if you decide to take on Mormon apologists, you have to have a passing knowledge of all of the above, plus archaeology, linguistics, and Meso-American metallurgy. There's just no telling what they'll throw into the mix.

I've just discovered Mormon Times writer Michael R. Ash. He makes money as an apologist for FAIR, a Mormon confabulation factory. His job is to disguise the lack of evidence for Mormon doctrines until the church can safely write them out of the canon. They call it 'Mormon scholarship', but 'Mormon scholarship' is scholarship like 'Christian rock' is rock. In his latest article, he complains about the lack of respect.

Shorter Michael Ash
Countering subversive attacks on Mormon scholarship

It's so unfair that anti-Mormon scientists 'poison the well' by dismissing our arguments out of hand. But their claims are invalid because they haven't read the Book of Mormon cover to cover.

It makes you wonder why he's addressing the need for science at all, though, when he also claims that questions of the Book of Mormon's truthfulness

can only be answered on a spiritual level -- through faith, humility and personal study and prayer.

And only by carefully defining words like 'true', 'correct', and 'historicity' so as not to include anything that normal people mean when they use those words.

I'm looking forward to many cobbled-together bad-faith arguments in future.

My exit letter from the LDS Church

Even when I'd decided that the claims of the LDS Church were not grounded in reality, it took a while for me to resign formally. It was a big deal, so I didn't want to rush it. But after about a year of not believing, I decided that it was time to write my Exit Letter.

You see, in the LDS Church, even if you no longer attend, or no longer even consider yourself a Mormon, you are still being counted in the church's records. (Which are thus a bit inflated.) To no longer be counted, you need to resign formally.

A member of the Stake Presidency (who is also a good friend) was very helpful in the process. He explained that if I wanted to, I could submit a letter of resignation to the bishop of my ward, the bishop would write back asking if I was sure, I could write back and say 'yes', and then the matter would go to Salt Lake. There are ways around the rigamarole, but that was direct enough for my purposes.

What follows is the text of my exit letter. I don't recommend using my letter as a model. Richard Packham has a page with information that you can adapt for your own purposes. An exit letter only has to be a one-sentence deal. But I'm a bit more verbose than that, so I wanted my letter to be a manifesto of sorts. You only get to write one of these, after all! In the end, it was exactly what I wanted to say.

Here's the letter:

Dear (first name of bishop),

This letter is to notify you that I resign my membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, effective immediately. I’d like to ask you to carry out the necessary paperwork to remove my name from the records of the Church. I recognise that according to Church doctrine this cancels all ordinances I have engaged in, and I have made my choice with that consideration in mind.

This is not a decision that I have made lightly. ‘Being Mormon’ has been a part of my identity throughout my life, and I have made many sacrifices in service of the Church because I thought it was right. The process of ‘deconversion’ has at times been difficult. However, I have also found it to be immensely worthwhile. I have gained the ability to reason without worrying about the presumed opinions of hypothetical beings, and I am better able to enjoy and value every day of this life with the people I love, while still being the moral agent I have always been.

In my youth, the LDS Church instilled in me the highest regard for truth. That was what made it better than other churches -- it had the truth, or so I thought. Ironically, it was this regard for truth that led me away from religion in general, and Mormonism in particular. As I became more aware of the scientific method, with its reliance on empirical, real-world evidence, it became clear to me that the Church was promoting an essentially false method for finding truth. Latter-day Saints try to evaluate the truth of an idea by how that idea makes them feel. They try to maintain their belief by having faith-promoting experiences and by bearing testimony to each other. But feelings, experiences, and testimony are not reliable sources of evidence because they are coloured by our tendency to see what we want to see. By contrast, the scientific method requires evidence to establish the truthfulness of claims, and it offers a set of tools that control for our human biases and our tendency for wishful thinking.

Science and religion are opposite and irreconcilable ways of understanding the world. Science does a better job. It offers testable ideas, and makes predictions that are confirmed by experimentation and observation. Religion fails miserably at this, but believers are expected to ‘have faith’ and continue believing anyway. I’m pleased to say that I no longer believe in supernatural beings -- gods, angels, spirits, or devils -- because there is simply no empirical evidence for the existence of such beings, and there are better explanations for the experiences people claim as evidence. I will be very interested should any good evidence appear in the future, though I find it rather unlikely. In the meantime, I do not wish to be a member of an organisation that promotes a superstitious and magical worldview, of which the LDS Church is only one example.

That said, I’d like to add that my experience with the Church -- both inside and outside -- has been a largely positive one where I have learned much. I have recently had occasion to speak to someone who was going through the deconversion process in his faith, and I observed that our experiences were very similar, with one exception: his church ostracises its unbelievers. The threat of losing his family and social contacts at a time of great change has caused him an added dimension of grief. I am glad that Mormons do not engage in this tactic, and that my LDS friends are still my friends, though I no longer share their worldview.

Thank you for your timely handling of this matter. I would appreciate if you could confirm when my request has been processed.

Best regards,
Daniel Midgley

In the weeks after posting my letter, I had several enjoyable chats with church leaders, in which I asked if they had any evidence for various Mormon doctrines yet, and they tried to explain why I shouldn't need any. Sadly, their enthusiasm for these chats waned long before mine did. And then some months later, I received my very own letter from one Mr Greg Dodge in Salt Lake City, informing me I was officially No Longer Mormon. I'm having it framed.

My exit letter reflected my experience in the LDS Church. Yours will no doubt be different. But whatever your circumstances, if you no longer believe in the church, there are some good reasons for making an official resignation. Otherwise, you're still being counted in their statistics, and as long as you're on their rolls, the things they do are done with your tacit approval. I found a psychological benefit to having that sense of closure. My status on the outside matched my status on the inside, and that's a great feeling.

To date, my resignation from the LDS Church is the intellectual accomplishment I'm proudest of. I was able to overcome a lifetime of religious conditioning, centuries of socio-cultural tradition, and millions of years of human perceptual weirdness, with only my mind.

By golly, it works!

The little machine works better if you click on the 'nifty' graphic above. It's not going automatically for me.

Religion in the 2011 Australian Census

Australia's having a census next year, and you know what that means: Statistical religion hijinx! Australia will no doubt continue its proud tradition of pumping up some joke religion to wreak havoc on the census statisticians. The exercise also serves to nurture a vain hope of forcing the government to elevate the 'religion' to official status.

So what's the new Jedi? Possibly heavy metal, if this Facebook page is any indication. (Its UK counterpart is doing rather better.)

It's all a bit of fun, and everyone loves to take the piss, but I'd like to encourage all atheists and agnostics to put down 'atheist' or 'agnostic' (whichever you are). That way, we'll boost the 'none' category (we're still not sure if 'Jedi' did), and there will be more specific evidence for the rise of a*ism, if anyone breaks the results down.

I'm kind of excited to see what comes out of this. We know that the 'nones' have been growing steadily for several decades (that's the blue part in the chart at right), and it'll be fun to see the pattern continue as the stats come in.

More encouraging is the announcement that people in same-sex relationships will be able to tick the 'husband or wife' box for their partner, and it will be counted the same as a hetero marriage.

Paul Lowe, Head of the ABS Population Census Branch, announced in an email to Australian Marriage Equality (AME) that "the count of people in same-sex relationships who tick the 'husband or wife of person 1' box at question 5 will be made available as a part of the standard output from the 2011 Census".

Australian Marriage Equality (AME) national convener, Peter Furness, welcomed the decision, which will count the number of married same-sex couples living together even though such marriages are denied recognition under Australian law following amendments to the Marriage Act in 2004.

"As government agencies like the ABS begin to recognise the reality that some same-sex partners are married, the Rudd Government's opposition to recognising same-sex marriage looks increasingly outdated", said Mr Furness.

"The Rudd Government may choose to bury its head in the sand and pretend same-sex marriages don't exist, but clearly the ABS will not."

One more step to full acceptance for our gay and lesbian friends, and to equality for all.

Religious vultures in Haiti: Worse than even I'd thought

I complained in an earlier post about religious groups in Haiti jockeying for position so as to mix aid with proselyting (and in some cases, victim blaming).

I didn't expect them to be carrying off children.

Ten American Baptists sit in a Haitian jail on Monday, accused of child trafficking for what they say was a hastily conceived attempt to rescue orphans by quickly removing them from Haiti — before getting official permission or even checking to determine that the children really were orphans. In Haiti and on the Web, the arrests have led to fresh accusations that some religious groups may be guilty of a kind of spiritual trafficking, by mixing the help they offer to victims of last month’s earthquake with proselytizing.

The Baptists were open about the fact that they felt driven by their Christian faith. Speaking to reporters after the group’s arrest, Laura Silsby, who led the Baptist team to Haiti, described the children as “deeply in need most of all of God’s love and his compassion.” In a description of the mission posted online, the group wrote, “God has laid upon our hearts the need to go now.”

Meanwhile in Idaho, where several of the Baptists are from, Rev. Clint Henry, a pastor involved in the effort, denounced what he called “the accusations of Satan,” made against “our team,” The Associated Press reported.

In other words, anything they do is right, and any efforts to oppose them are from the devil.

Even I wouldn't have suspected religiously-motivated aid workers of something so self-righteous, misguided, and wrong. But when you're high on faith, and think a god is directing you, it means there's no possibility of accountability or negotiation.

But only 33 children? Amateurs!

I'd be critical too.

This headline in the Sydney Morning Herald is causing me some trouble with my word sense disambiguation:

Woman critical after car hits her

This one's caused problems in headlines before. The Trenton Times (9/2/1982) had a similar headline:

'Nagging' wife critical after hammer attack

Isn't there some other word they could use?

iPad jokes 'no longer funny'

In what is believed to be the quickest turnaround in humour history, jokes about the name of the Apple iPad became 'no longer funny' minutes after being conceived.

The previous record was held by the Liam Lynch song "My United States of Whatever".

"We've never seen a joke age this quickly, " says Frank Overton of the Comedy Institute, a humour think-tank. "It's probably because of the juvenile nature of the joke, combined with the fact that, well, there's only one joke you can make. iTampon. How many times can you say 'iTampon'?"

The joke will be added to the list of no longer funny things, including jokes about the vibrate function on mobile phones, quoting Monty Python sketches in their entirety, and potentially risqué variations on the word "Pokémon".