No happy medium as Psychic Sally's 'sidekick' prompts outrage

Thanks to the Irish Independant for this one...

More than 2,000 people watched TV star Sally Morgan, alias 'Psychic Sally', seeming to make contact with the spiritual world at the sell-out performance Dublin's Grand Canal Theatre recently.

However, callers to RTE's 'Liveline' yesterday allege a voice at the back of the auditorium was relaying information to the 58-year-old while she was on stage.

"The first half of the show went really well but when the second half started we could clearly hear a man's voice coming from the window behind us," caller 'Sue' told 'Liveline' yesterday.

"Everything he said, the psychic would say 10 seconds later. It was as if she was having the information relayed to her."

The audience member said a number of people in her row heard the man speaking, but when an usher heard him, the window closed and the voice disappeared.

Stephen Faloon, the theatre's general manager, last night denied anything underhand was going on and said the voice heard by the audience belonged to two 'follow-spot operators' working for the theatre, and not Ms Morgan.

"These two guys, Stuart McKeown and Mick Skelly, are professional light technicians who were working for us, and unfortunately because a window had been left open, were heard talking.

Distraction

"But as soon an usherette heard them talking, and informed her supervisor, the window closed and the talking stopped.

"It was a slight distraction but that was the chain of events on Sunday night."

The theatre stressed it would "never be a part of any scam", or attempt to "mislead" its audience.

A spokesman for Sally Morgan Enterprises yesterday refuted the suggestion that the medium was being fed information during the Dublin show.

"There are absolutely no plants on Sally's show. This is her gift and she has been sharing it for years with audiences and doesn't need to do that," said the spokesman.

The theatre said it had received "no complaints".

"The only complains were about how long the queue was to meet Sally after the show. We were expecting 300 people and we got 700, which is a record here," added Mr Faloon.

Ms Morgan describes herself as 'Britain's Best Loved Psychic' and has said that her "psychic life" began before she could even walk.

"I heard voices when I was only nine months old. I saw my first spirit or ghost when I was just four," she says on her website.

From a psychic practice that she first ran from home, the mother of three has gone on to star in television programmes for ITV and Sky.

She has penned two bestselling books on her life and work.

A third book on death has just been published.

In 2008 it was claimed that the Londoner had a waiting list of 72,000 people for her time.

Kinda goes to prove what I've been saying for the last 30 years - that all "psychics" are actually charlatans.  And don't even get me started on so called "Astrologers".

Sometimes, just an article in the press will give you a lift

A couple of weeks ago, the Sunday Times published, as its lead in its "News Review", an article by a man, who 26 years ago, left our sunny shores for a life "across the pond". Last year, he returned to Britain to live, and now, aged 48, he writes about the Britain of then and now. He, more than most, can clearly see the differences between the Britain of 1985 and the Britain of today and many of his comments are uplifting. Britain is now a less class ridden society, he says, and given the violent class warfare at the time, of the miners versus the Thatcher government, one can see his point. But he saves his biggest statement on "volte face" for religion.

I quote - "What's gone of course is the C of E. Religion itself seems to have been wiped away from the cultural map in Britain in ways unimaginable in faithful America. I see the merits of secularism more clearly now. It takes constant exposure to American fundamentalism to feel relieved by the prosaic dismissal of the spiritual by the English. I wonder whether this has really truly changed. Anglicanism, as founded by the first Queen Elizabeth, was always about the blurring of doctrinal difference, the aversion to looking into others souls, the modesty of a limited spiritual imagination epitomised by the Book of Common Prayer."

Well, this article lifted my spirits no end. Being here day in and day out, one sometimes wonders whether humanism or atheism is making any progress at all, or whether we are simply banging our heads hard against the wall of entrenched religion and especially Chistianity. But here is a man who has been away for 25 years who can see real change in our society! Hoorah!

Pastafarianism - the new religion?

from BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14135523

Austrian driver allowed 'pastafarian' headgear photo

 

Having received his driving licence, Niko Alm now wants to get pastafarianism officially recognised

An Austrian atheist has won the right to be shown on his driving-licence photo wearing a pasta strainer as "religious headgear".

Niko Alm first applied for the licence three years ago after reading that headgear was allowed in official pictures only for confessional reasons.

Mr Alm said the sieve was a requirement of his religion, pastafarianism.

Later a police spokesman explained that the licence was issued because Mr Alm's face was fully visible in the photo.

"The photo was not approved on religious grounds. The only criterion for photos in driving licence applications is that the whole face must be visible," said Manfred Reinthaler, a police spokesman in Vienna.

He was speaking on Wednesday, after Austrian media had first reported Mr Alm's reason for wearing the pasta strainer.

After receiving his application the Austrian authorities had required him to obtain a doctor's certificate that he was "psychologically fit" to drive.

According to Mr Reinthaler, "the licence has been ready since October 2009 - it was not collected, that's all there is to it".

The idea came into Mr Alm's noodle three years ago as a way of making a serious, if ironic, point.

A self-confessed atheist, Mr Alm says he belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a light-hearted, US-based faith whose members call themselves pastafarians.

 

A medical interview established the self-styled "pastafarian" was mentally fit to drive

The group's website states that "the only dogma allowed in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the rejection of dogma".

In response to pressure for American schools to teach the theory known as intelligent design, which some Christians favour as an alternative to natural selection, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster wrote to the Kansas School Board asking for the pastafarian version of intelligent design to be taught to schoolchildren.

Straining credulity

In the same spirit, Mr Alm's pastafarian-style application for a driving licence was a response to the Austrian recognition of confessional headgear in official photographs.

The licence took three years to come through and, according to Mr Alm, he was asked to submit to a medical interview to check on his mental fitness to drive but - straining credulity - his efforts have finally paid off.

It is the police who issue driving licences in Austria, and they have duly issued a laminated card showing Mr Alm in his unorthodox item of religious headgear.

When asked for his reaction to Mr Reinthaler's comments, Mr Alm told the broadcaster ORF: "I didn't know I was guilty of not collecting it. That doesn't alter the fact that it still took nearly a year [to be issued]".

The next step, Mr Alm told the Austrian news agency APA, is to apply to the Austrian authorities for pastafarianism to become an officially recognised faith.

Great lip sync video - Under Pressure

I love lip syncing - and this pair do it alarmingly well...

Proving Atheists Wrong with Science (!!)

Now, there are some strange things encountered by me on the web.  One often finds extremism, fundamentalism, homophobism and lots of other isms, that in a perfect world would be consigned to the rubbish bin.  However this piece of nonsense below, that I came across recently, takes some beating.

Where to start with my comments?

Well one - the writer seems to assume that there have been 6 billion people living on Earth since the first appearance of Man, which is a ludicrous statement to start with...

but the even more incredible observation seems to be that the writer has somehow conveniently forgotten that everyone, at least a couple of times a day, goes for a piss!  So when we consume these two litres a water per day, they don't stay in our body, but  flow back through the sewers, through the water treatment plants and back into the water cycle.

Someone save us from christian lunatics!

The End is still coming on 21 October, says failed Rapture pastor Harold Camping

Despite causing worldwide hilarity on 21 May, California pastor Harold Camping clearly doesn't know when he is beaten. Demonstrating the persistence we have come to expect from a man who has predicted the end of the world on three separate occasions in the past three decades, Camping, whose latest doomsday came and went without incident on Saturday, has told followers that the world will definitely end on Friday 21 October. It's a date that already featured in his apocalyptic schedule – 21 May was the date for the Rapture, when good Christians would ascend to heaven, leaving the rest of us behind to face rule by the Antichrist, with the world ending properly on 21 October. Now, following a hasty reappraisal, Camping claims that Saturday was merely a spiritual Rapture (i.e., one where absolutely nothing changed) and says we will have to wait until October for the real fireworks:

"On May 21, this last weekend, this is where the spiritual aspect of it really comes through. God again brought judgment on the world. We didn’t see any difference but God brought Judgment Day to bear upon the whole world. The whole world is under Judgment Day and it will continue right up until Oct. 21, 2011 and by that time the whole world will be destroyed."

Source: http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/

What to do when the Jolly Wallies come knocking

It’s an age old problem isn’t it? What to do when the Jehovah’s Witnesses come knocking at your door. I, being the sort of person that has too much spare time on their hands, usually invite them in for a coffee and a chat. I look forward a great deal to these great theological arguments but the problem is that they and I are at the polar opposite ends of the theological spectrum so finding any common ground to even start the conversation is difficult.

“What evidence is there that god exists” I say, and then have to sit back in glazed amusement as my visitors trot out some verbatim repetition from some old book written 2,000 years ago which, apparently establishes the existence of a deity without any room for doubt or dissent.

“But could you point me to the evidence” say I, wildly waving my arm in the general direction of the outside world. But of course, we are miles apart, my visitors and I, so we have to part company reluctantly a few hours later, neither side having made any headway at all against the other’s intransigence.

My friend has hit upon a much more fun and interesting procedure.

“Do come in” he says delightedly as they wave a copy of The Watchtower under his nose. “We have much to discuss. Would you like a drink?”

His guests usually concur that a drink would be fine and having sat them in his lounge, he disappears into the kitchen, returning shortly with glasses for his guests.

“What’s this?” they ask nervously, after smelling the contents of the glass.

“It’s a cup of bleach” he says, smiling in a manner of someone who knows how to welcome a person with very strong religious beliefs into his house. “You are surely familiar with “Mark Chapter 16, verse 18”

they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”

“Oh no” they say, horrified. “That part’s not to be taken literally”.

And then the conversation can really get going!