Some good news for the future:

Nearly half of teenagers in Britain are atheists, according to a new Mori poll commissioned by the British Library.

43% of 16–19 year olds say they have no faith. In those over 20 it is 20%, and that goes down to 8% in the 65+ age group. Overall, 21% of the 2,030 people questioned say they have no faith. Of those who do not follow a religion, around one third say they used to be Christian (32%), while three in five have never followed a religion in the past (58%).

“Does this mean people tend to find faith or become more religious as they get older – or, alternatively, does it mean that the younger generation are increasingly less likely to follow a religion or have any belief?” said a British Library spokesperson. Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society responded: “This British Library spokesperson clearly hasn’t been paying attention, or they would know that academics have resoundingly concluded that it is the latter. An exhaustive study of Scottish census data confirmed this.”

Yes — that’s correct.

I think it best to keep posting on this sort of thing and pigeon/monkey sex just for the moment. After all — what is one to do? Chuck up a post based around more embarrassing fucking crap on the Guardian’s comments pages?

Let’s see…how about this fucking disgrace for a start:

“And it is likely that just as the militant Hindu is usually an upper-caste man fearful of assertive low-caste groups, the non-relativist muscular European liberals are no more than a few middle-aged pundits rattled to see their assumptions defied by the upstart regimes of Iran and Venezuela, as well as India, China and Russia.”

And that is before we get on to Jenkins …

So — fuck it and fuck it again — no posting on that sort of thing — it is getting too repetitive.

hAt TIp: gaDgIE

Picture of the day…nicked from yesterday’s Daily Heil - so they can fuck right off if they expect a link.

The abandoned monkey who has found love with a pigeon (click image for full size). Awwwwwwwwwwww…

Forget the Birmingham Six or the Guildford Four, this must be the ultimate case:

A CASE on behalf of Jesus Christ has come knocking on Kenya’s High Court door, lodged by a fervent Christian group that wants his conviction declared null and void and his crucifixion illegal.

Though cases to right historical wrongs are far from unusual around the world, Kenya’s Friends of Jesus (FOJ) has reached back two millennia in what may redefine the quest for closure.

The petition was filed on Monday with the court registrar, raising a novel set of legal quandaries - not the least of which involves the statute of limitations and whether the high court has jurisdiction over the Son of God.

The report continues,

They want “the court to declare Jesus’s trial null and void … because the (ancient) court that convicted him was not properly constituted, the prosecutors violated the law of the time and the trial was a sham”, Mr Indindis said.

The FOJ’s lawyer Humprey Odanga said Jesus’s crucifixion was a wrongful punishment for a trial based on charges of “blaspheming the Holy Spirit” and should be corrected by modern law.

My laughter at the complete absurdity of it all stopped suddenly when I read this justification for the court action:

“Jesus was lynched by Jewish mobs. That was illegal. It was abuse of office, malicious prosecution, fabrication of evidence, judicial misconduct and goes against the principle of natural justice.”

So, once again, literalist religious fundamentalism leads us back on the murderous path of anti-Semitism. Now, what was Christopher Hitchens saying?

Hat tip Gill not Will

“There is no hope in the country so long as Robert Mugabe is alive. There is nothing here. He is killing us.”

If you missed it last night, watch a Newsnight report from inside Zimbabwe here (NB: strong stomach needed).

…from Bell Mobility and the Pistols.

Not that anyone on the news desk appears to have noticed the latter.

Another reason to be against capital punishment…

High cholesterol intake prior to death.

Hat tip not me.