Reciting psalms is punishment - official!

Those of you who've been reading my ongoing Road to Rationalism posts will no doubt have noticed that my main objective is to establish that through reason and the accumulation of knowledge, the human race has steadily overturned the old creation myths told by the world's religions, and to reinforce the point that believeing literally in these tales is quite ridiculous and not in fact laudable or virtuous behaviour.

Mostly I'll be doing this by employing reasoned argument, but my cynical, sarcastic and scathing wit cannot help occasionally wanting to take the piss out of deeply held religious beliefs, because once you have had your consciousness raised above the traditional 'respect' that we are supposed to show to religions, the religious, and the idea that blind faith held in the face of massively overwhelming contrary evidence is somehow virtuous, it follows quite simply that faith should actually be a target for ridicule.

My intention is never to offend, but if religious people can be made to feel even just a little bit silly for believing what are, after all, extremely silly ideas, we can slowly chip away at the confidence they have in their faith, and this can only be a virtuous outcome!

To this end I'll be posting the amusing tit-bits that I sometimes find in my newspaper, The (London) Times.

"Holy punishment
Santiago A catholic priest in Chile has been told to recite seven psalms every day for three months after a traffic violation. Father Jose Cornejo said he could not afford the 50,000 peso (£49) fine for illegally parking in the city of Puerto Montt. (AP)"

I like this story for several reasons. Why would it be a punishment for a priest to read out psalms? I suppose they are deeply depressing! Was the court taking the piss, do you think? Who would supervise the sentence - is the ultimate abritrator in Chilean justice God? Most importantly, for the sake of the priest - how much extra time will he have to spend in purgatory for parking illegally?

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