Well, it’s good news, in one sense. “Saudi king pardons rape victim” according to the BBC.

You read that correctly. The headline did indeed say victim, not perpetrator.

The Saudi king has pardoned a female rape victim sentenced to jail and 200 lashes for being alone with a man raped in the same attack, reports say.

This man and woman were in a car when they were abducted and raped by seven men.

The “Qatif girl” case caused an international outcry with widespread criticism of the Saudi justice system

The words “laughably named” could fit snugly in that sentence between Saudi and justice.

The less “good news” aspects of this story are that the halfway-sane outcome is only the result of pressure from the west and that the pardon does not imply that there was any error on the court’s decision. There is no reason to assume that such sentences won’t be passed in the future.

The custodial sentence plus 200 lashes was imposed after the woman, who has not been named, appealed against an earlier sentence of 90 lashes.

She dared to appeal. Her sentence was more than doubled. The man – who you will note was also raped – was also sentenced to 90 lashes. The BBC doesn’t know if he was “pardoned” too and I wouldn’t hold out much hope on this showing.

The pardon was said not to imply any criticism of the sentence. It was just supposed to be the King expressing some seasonal goodwill for Eid al-Adha. Well done, your highness. According to the BBC, he’s been criticised on some conservative websites for the pardon, which is seen as kowtowing to the west. Words fail.

I was trying to ignore this – partly because every post here seems to be turning out to be a crap version of some other atheist’s blog post and I never find out until I’ve posted. But, hoping that the Daily Mail Online is too distasteful for the more faint-hearted in the atheosphere, I’ll present this story.
The Daily Mail headline says:

Wife ‘cured’ by prayer can’t get benefits stopped because government computer doesn’t recognise miracles

….With the Government pledging to crack down on “sicknote Britain”, it seems remarkable the 56-year-old received more than £3,500 she did not even want.

(Stop sniggering at the back!!! Of course, she had to withdraw it………)

What? The government has a sceptical computer? And it’s forcing public money on Christians against their will?

The “story”: A woman got disability payments for 6 years after she had to stop working because of the damage to her “hip, pelvis and spine” (Maybe I’m being too pedantic, but aren’t these all more or less the same place?) She got better but didn’t tell the Social Security (/Department of Work and Pensions or whatever it’s called now.) Then she did. They said she needed confirmation from a doctor before they could stop her claim being processed. But now they have stopped it and she has to pay a few months’ money back.

Simple story. Twisted by the Daily Mail and the people involved into a piece of journalistic excrement that manages to claim evidence of a religious miracle, at the same time as insulting the government.

It’s a little out of character for the Daily Mail – the fearless scourge of the dole-scrounging workshy – to be putting a case that it’s somehow the fault of the government that someone claimed disability allowance when they weren’t disabled.

Was it the spirit of Christmas that prompted this surprising change of heart toward benefits claimants? No, it’s the spirit of Christianity or, at least, of one of its odder forms.

Her husband Stuart, 58, a pastor at Hooe Baptist Church, said that he prayed every day after the accident that God would “bring my wife back”.
The prayer seemed to be answered when his wife attended a Christian conference in January last year.
Within hours, Mrs Clarke was able to fold away her wheelchair and stop taking painkillers. When she realised she was permanently cured four months later, she contacted the Government’s Industrial Injury Department to put a stop to her benefits.
… But the department continued to give her £600 a month – and she ended up being paid £3,600 in incapacity benefits for a period when she was in perfect health.

Oh, so she has to pay back benefits to which she wasn’t entitled, then? (I assume her husband is working, unless it’s a voluntary pastor thing. So she probably wouldn’t have got social security benefit at all – which is a lot less than £600 a month if she wasn’t a permanent invalid. But I digress.)

Ignore the legal aspects or even the sequence of events that must have led to this story.

(Picture an embarrassed civil servant – who is trying to get out of a conversation with a woman who says “I’ve now been healed by a miracle” – saying “Oh good. I just need to see some confirmation from a doctor before I stop the computer payments.” Woman phones Daily Mail in horror.)

What about the confused and confusing theology here? The injury apparently had nothing to with god, (unless the deity wanted this couple to get some invalidity cheques and decided to injure her. Mysterious ways, etc…) But the healing itself came directly from their deity. Well, OK, not actually directly, as such. I mean, it took 6 bloody years to work. The pastor can’t be very good at it, can he? Or god just didn’t care.

She was healed after attending a service? Well, a matter of “hours” after attending a service. Granted there is no time too large to be considered a matter of hours, but I’ll take it this as meaning “a day or so.” He’s a pastor and this is the only service she’s attended in 6 and a half years? Seems unlikely. In fact, it seems unlikely that there are any times in their lives that aren’t a matter of hours removed from attendance at a service.

So, where is the miracle even supposed to be here? God had been too busy fixing the results of World’s Strongest Man competitions and Hollywood awards, that he forgot to take all his calls. But one day, he suddenly switched on his prayer-answerphone, heard the 6 year-old message and decided to do what this one pastor asked. (The selfish bugger could have prayed for world peace or dying babies or at least healing a few amputees, if it was going to work.)

A cynic might see it as the miracle of the new anti-Invalidity Benefit moves by the government – very much spurred by the Daily Mail and its ilk – which involve following fake physically disabled people and photographing them walking to the pub or even (in one recent case) running marathons. This sort of activity can cause great stress to mentally and physically ill people but that cuts no ice with the Daily Mail or its middle-England readers.

Miraculous healings seems to soften their hard taxpayers’ hearts indeed. Soften their heads too, it appears.

Child “witches” are being beaten, tortured and abandoned in the Niger Delta, after the local evangelical pastor has pronounced them to be possessed, according to a story by Tracy McVeigh in the Guardian Unlimited.

This possession by a witch can be miraculously removed by the simple payment of money to the pastor. Is this making you puke yet? Just wait till you find out some of the details.

There is a video on the Guardian website. If you find the video too harrowing, there is a gallery of images with some explanations, although that’s not easy viewing either.