Friday, December 30, 2005

Is There Any Reality in the Bible?

Find out with the help of Bubba’s bible website - play the movie

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Why Be Born Again When You Can Just Grow Up?

While wandering the web I came across this interesting post, with links to recent studies and data, posing the question:  Is Christian Morality Harmonious?

Can there be a harmonious Christian society? Even the United States can hardly be called harmonious, at least compared to the average. There is a certain level of disharmony to be expected, by virtue of human nature. So the question becomes - does Christianity improve on this, or regress ? Christians would say the former, but the data shows the latter.

I know I’ve ranted about my take on Francois’ next bits… like here

Now let’s look at the issue from the perspective of moral development. As I’ve proven before, Christianity is an order-based morality - a morality adapted for babies and little children - imposed on adults. So you necessarily have a tension there. What you get, is a society full of repressed children, grown adults who hoot and holler at sexuality and bodily functions as if they were schoolchildren, like a lot of Americans. People who are morally retarded in this fashion cannot truly appreciate the finer things of life. This tension results in the fight against alternative lifestyles, alternative worldviews, censorship, and the breakdown of responsibility and civility (for example, people dealing with each other by lawsuits and public recrimination).

What’s more, such moral retards often pose a DANGER to themselves and to the rest of us due to their ignorance and/or shame about their own bodies.  The pervasiveness of this attitude that everything between your navel and your knees is something secret and shameful often makes it quite difficult for many people with conditions like Crohn’s Disease to seek treatment until they’re in rather dire straits.  After all, one’s bowel habits or butt pains aren’t to be discussed… that’s dirty! 

The second tension is between order-based morality and natural morality. As adults, Christians still have the brain development, the instincts, the desires that all adults have. But on the other hand, their order-based morality directly contradicts all of these elements, in fact attacks these elements as being of “the world”, “anti-Christian”.and “sinful”. So we end up with a situation where people are conflicted and feel tremendous guilt about their own mind and their own actions. This is not the recipe for a healthy society, but rather the recipe for an oppressive society. We see the results of this tension in high teen pregnancy, high rates of adultery and divorce, high rates of obesity and preponderence of violent crimes born out of insecurity and frustration.

And I wonder how many of today’s “good Christians” caught something nasty during their coked-up days in the 80s or 90s before they got hooked on Jesus, and think they’re safe now because their naughty bits haven’t seen the light of day (never mind any thorough self- or outside exams) for such a long, long time… their shameful behavior is forgiven, being from their “old” life and all… until they give it to their new spouse?

How the hell are we supposed to not be “of the world” when this is where we friggin’ LIVE?  Disconnecting from reality is NOT the way to go… educating people to deal with today’s realities IS.  That includes the children—because otherwise they’ll be freakin’ children FOREVER.  We all have to grow up, which really sucks ass most of the time.

The third moral tension is between Christianity in general and Western civilization. This civilization of ours, regardless of its many faults, was founded on the tearing-down of authority, on the progress brought about by reason and science, on trade and material progress, on the freedom of being (through “human rights"), belief and lifestyle. Although we may have strayed from these ideals in the past century, we can still identify living Western values, such as material gain, romantic love and sexuality, equality, tolerance and respect, the importance of life – as well as our most noble and venerable institutions – the discovery and application of scientific principles, peaceful trading and commercialism, as well as acting and being judged based on one’s values.

[all emphasis mine]

We’ve been straying farther from those ideals in the past 25 years than I’m comfortable with, and it’s no coincidence that in that same 25 years the fundie Christians have been finding more and more devious ways to subject all Americans to their order-based morality with the support of government.  Why wouldn’t the sort of people who make up our government be on board with that?  What could be better than ruling over a nation of children… ignorant, fearful and easily led?  Big Brother, Heavenly Father… someone to save them from the demons and monsters… it’s all good.

We rational people, the actual grown-ups, know who the real monsters are.  They are those who warp children’s minds with tales of vengeful gods, heavenly rewards; with myths and lies about sex, drugs, people unlike themeselves in whatever way and the realities of everyday life in our own country and the world over.  They are those who aim to create a world FULL of children by limiting what we learn, know and speak of to those things appropriate only for children.

Children who giggle and snicker and blush when discussing anything that happens below the waist.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Don’t Believe in Evolution? Then Don’t Be a Hypocrite

CBS News reports: Majority of Americans Reject Theory of Evolution

NEW YORK (Oct. 23) - Most Americans do not accept the theory of evolution. Instead, 51 percent of Americans say God created humans in their present form, and another three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process. Just 15 percent say humans evolved, and that God was not involved.

These views are similar to what they were in November 2004 shortly after the presidential election.

This question on the origin of human beings, asked both this month and in November 2004, offered the public three alternatives: 1. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process; 2. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process; or 3. God created human beings in their present form.

The way I see it (copied from a post on the Restore the Pledge forum):

Anyone who disbelieves in evolution, yet takes advantage of medical technology that is a direct result of its basis in FACT (antibiotics, vaccines, etc.) is a hypocrite of the highest order. If they were truly committed to their beliefs, they’d eschew any of these life-saving treatments for themselves and their families and pray themselves well… which would serve not only to address shortages of medicine, but probably help out with overpopulation as well.

They’ll talk the talk, but if walking the walk puts their lives in jeopardy, their beliefs take a back seat to survival. Why do they not stand by “Let Go, Let God” when the only treatment that might save yourself or a loved one is based on what these people claim is a “lie?”

Laporte, or any other Christian claiming “Goddidit” to be a more worthy theory than evolution with regards to biology, can you explain why you wouldn’t avoid any of these treatments and rely solely on God’s healing powers, if you’re so SURE that evolution is pure bunk?

I’d REALLY like a fucking answer to this question, please.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Sam Harris says it best

There Is No God (And You Know It)

An excerpt:

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is—and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.

Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion—to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources—is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.

I have to send that to everyone I know.  Maybe then they’ll start to understand…

I Choke On Jesus… but it’s for charity!

Like every other parent in America, I do my part to raise funds for school groups and programs the Princess belongs to.  Wrapping paper, candy, restaurant nights, the whole shebang.  In these parent booster groups, it’s inevitable that there’s one or more exuberant follower of Christ who gives not a moment’s pause before going on a tirade about what’s “right” or what “shouldn’t be allowed.” By law, I’d presume… and according to “God’s Law,” of course.

It took every ounce of will I had not to get in this one lady’s face when she started ranting about how horrifying it was to go into Costco and have “one whole huge section of nothing but Harry Potter and all sorts of things relating to sorcery… it’s awful that they can sell that to kids!” Rather than goad her by asking just what the fuck you’d call turning water into wine; or walking on water, if not some sort of sorcery, I simply said, “It’s harmless fantasy… make-believe, y’know?” I restrained myself from adding like your God, and devils and demons.  But it was right on the tip of my tongue, I tell ya!

Why is it ok for HER to push her own myths and invisible magical beings without someone like me laughing in her face, or calling her a superstitious and delusional twit; yet beyond the bounds of social grace for ME to exercise MY right as an American and say I think HER fairy tales have every reason to be in the Wal-Mart, but NOT anywhere NEAR my kid’s school?  I don’t want my kid to have any repercussions due to my outspoken nature, and it’s so difficult within the context of the whole “booster” scenario that I’ll be really surprised if I make it through four years without being branded a heretic and ostracized.

I guess I just have to sell lots of candy, and wrapping paper, and ad space, and car washes, and rummage sales…

The irony of it all was that her hysterics and lamentations were delivered while wearing a perfectly satanic little smock covered in Hallowe’en ghosts and those Agents of Satan himself, black kitties.