Peg a point for the Pope!

 

Those of you who peruse these pages perennially know that I'm not the biggest pro-papacy-pundit, but I'm also not above passing out Pope props in a post when it's appropriate.

The Vatican has become the "greenest" nation-state in the world.  With the bringing on-line of it's massive photo-voltaic array, it has surpassed Germany (the leader in such awesomeness) with it's now 200 watts/capita at peak times (DL has 80/per, but WAY more capita)

From yahoo:

"As Vatican City is the smallest state in the world, it does not exactly require a large amount of renewable energy to achieve this title. However, the city’s solar installations, which include solar panels installed on the rooftop of Paul VI’s conference hall, mean that the city can now generate enough energy to power all of its 40,000 households."

So there you go, Pope.  For the next 15 minutes, I'll look the other way on homos, AIDS, greed, molestation, the Holocaust, the Crusades . . . am I rambling? . . . and thank you for leading the charge to charge with the sun.  Small "s" . . . and a "u".

Some notable quotables to keep in mind when considering your god or mine.

I feel like a bit of a rant today, but rather than use my own words, let's look to some Founding Fathers, some church leaders, some great thinkers of the last, oh, few thousand years:

"The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion…Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to itself, than this thing called Christianity...My mind is my own church."
-Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794):


“In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.”
-James Madison


"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes"


“Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.”
-Thomas Jefferson

"Lighthouses are more helpful then churches."
-Benjamin Franklin

Avatar (a favorite with me) Slammed by Vatican.

Gimme a break. HERE

"In a recent World Day of Peace message, the pontiff warned against any notions that equate human person and other living things. He said such notions "open the way to a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man's salvation in nature alone."

Ugh.

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