The uselessness, stupidity and irrelevance of organized religions

The September 11 attacks by al-Qaeda on the United States were a lesson from God to the "powerful of the Earth", the head of the Greek Orthodox Church said in a sermon released by his press office today.

Pope Benedict XVI said Wednesday he was praying for victims of Hurricane Katrina and urged rescue workers to persevere in bringing comfort to survivors.

Pat Robertson, host of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club and founder of the Christian Coalition of America, called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Hurricane Katrina, which some say bears striking similarities to recent events in Israel, was punishment from God for President Bush's support of the evacuation of Jews from the Gaza Strip, a senior Israeli rabbi announced.

Two days after 9/11, Jerry Falwell took to the airwaves to proclaim that God had allowed the United States to be attacked because "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians" had tried to transform America into a secular society. Just this weekend, wingnuts from the Westboro Baptist Church turned out at the funerals of two fallen soldiers to say that God is punishing the United States in Iraq for its tolerance of homosexuality back home.

In an e-mail message, a group calling itself Columbia Christians for Life alerts the world to the fact that a satellite image of Hurricane Katrina as it hit the Gulf Coast Monday looks just like a six-week-old fetus. (http://tinyurl.com/7t7rw)

Notwithstanding former provincial Attorney-General Marion Boyd's claim that there is no evidence women were being discriminated against in faith-based arbitration, the Ontario provincial government has decided to reject the use of a set of centuries' old religious rules called Shariah law to settle Muslim family disputes and will ban all religious arbitrations in the province.