I believe universal health care could suck the life out of living in America. It seems the end of heroism. Think of all the amazing stories we've heard about, where whole neighborhoods and towns rally around a sick person who can't afford expensive medical treatments. Think of the fund-raising, the charitable drives; think about the bake sales and motorcycle rallies and skate-a-thons and countless other awesome community-based, VOLUNTARY actions that will be lost if EVERY medical expense were covered -- FOR FREE!My questions: Do some Christians oppose secular government measures to help others because it will mean less Christian charity? Are they just grasping for straws in the face of failure? Am I the only person sickened by this mentality of the impoverished being seen as some sort of font from which feelings of satisfaction are bestowed upon the over-privileged who deign to grace but a handful of the thousands who die annually from preventable illness with the means for treatment (provided of course they go to the right church, and certainly never dependent upon the color of their skin...)?
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Discussion: Christian "Charity"
From “moderate” blogger Bill Gnade (who may be a fake crazy person just made up to trick me):
Monday, March 29, 2010
Yuppie Welfare
My wife did our taxes this weekend (I highly recommend marrying a Jew). I imagine most of you who are American and read my blog have already filed or are planning to do so soon. As you do, think about what that money is going towards.
A large chunk is going to the great “Wars of Terrorist Recruitment” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and ever-so-quietly Pakistan. Afghanistan is quickly becoming Obama’s Vietnam, and Pakistan is his Cambodia. I have a theory that he’s trying to catch Bin Laden, as nabbing him before his first term is up would cement his re-election. In my estimation, dozens of kids die so that a politician can appear tough on terror. Some yuppie is sending the people from my generation off to murder and die for the paranoia of the yuppie and baby boomer population of America.
Then there’s social security, or as I think of it: Yuppie Welfare. You see, social security was a great idea planned by responsible people from a complete different generation. They were the Builders, the pre-WWII, Depression Era Americans who had to work twice as hard for half as much. They were fundamentally different from the Baby Boomers and Yuppies that followed.
The Baby Boomers grew up in an era of plenty. They never knew want, they were the first generation raised on the TV, and their coming of age was during the 60’s. Most weren’t hippies, though this is the generation that spawned that subculture. Instead, most were fed a steady diet of anti-Russian, anti-Communist rhetoric from the scary Conservatives known as Kennedy and Johnson. Their failure to suppress media coverage of setbacks during the Vietnam War was an error seldom repeated since.
The Yuppies came to power around the time children became the most powerful force in the nation. This was the 80’s, the era of “Think of the children!” legislation censoring everything: magazines, radio, art, music, comedians, etc.
Yuppies grow up largely to become ignorant fools with little guidance. They fall for Reagan’s bullshit during the 80’s. They gamble their future away on the trust of bankers, deregulating left and right. Before you know it, social security (remember that?) is mismanaged beyond repair.
Now we have my generation, Generation Too Busy To Have a Name. Generation X just squeaked in and got some of the fat of the land, but the bones were picked dry by the time we showed up. We often hold 2-3 jobs without benefits. We work harder for less gain. Our safety net is gone, as we cannot count on Social Security to provide anything but a pittance (that’s assuming we don’t die from something as simple as the flu, since we can’t go to the doctor without risking a $2k medical bill to get antibiotics).
And to top it all off… these yuppies, these irresponsible goons who put us in the dog house… they have the unprecedented audacity to shout for fiscal responsibility any time my generation might stand to gain. It is not the old farts on Medicare who have to worry about medical bills. These socialist yuppies take from the government freely but shout bloody-Commie-murder if it might mean anyone else getting hand-outs.
For once, I’m glad the life expectancy of Americans has been on the decline. We are going to enjoy sending you to horribly maintained old-folks homes where you can meet some people who make minimum wage as they unskillfully apply your catheter.
A large chunk is going to the great “Wars of Terrorist Recruitment” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and ever-so-quietly Pakistan. Afghanistan is quickly becoming Obama’s Vietnam, and Pakistan is his Cambodia. I have a theory that he’s trying to catch Bin Laden, as nabbing him before his first term is up would cement his re-election. In my estimation, dozens of kids die so that a politician can appear tough on terror. Some yuppie is sending the people from my generation off to murder and die for the paranoia of the yuppie and baby boomer population of America.
Then there’s social security, or as I think of it: Yuppie Welfare. You see, social security was a great idea planned by responsible people from a complete different generation. They were the Builders, the pre-WWII, Depression Era Americans who had to work twice as hard for half as much. They were fundamentally different from the Baby Boomers and Yuppies that followed.
The Baby Boomers grew up in an era of plenty. They never knew want, they were the first generation raised on the TV, and their coming of age was during the 60’s. Most weren’t hippies, though this is the generation that spawned that subculture. Instead, most were fed a steady diet of anti-Russian, anti-Communist rhetoric from the scary Conservatives known as Kennedy and Johnson. Their failure to suppress media coverage of setbacks during the Vietnam War was an error seldom repeated since.
The Yuppies came to power around the time children became the most powerful force in the nation. This was the 80’s, the era of “Think of the children!” legislation censoring everything: magazines, radio, art, music, comedians, etc.
Yuppies grow up largely to become ignorant fools with little guidance. They fall for Reagan’s bullshit during the 80’s. They gamble their future away on the trust of bankers, deregulating left and right. Before you know it, social security (remember that?) is mismanaged beyond repair.
Now we have my generation, Generation Too Busy To Have a Name. Generation X just squeaked in and got some of the fat of the land, but the bones were picked dry by the time we showed up. We often hold 2-3 jobs without benefits. We work harder for less gain. Our safety net is gone, as we cannot count on Social Security to provide anything but a pittance (that’s assuming we don’t die from something as simple as the flu, since we can’t go to the doctor without risking a $2k medical bill to get antibiotics).
And to top it all off… these yuppies, these irresponsible goons who put us in the dog house… they have the unprecedented audacity to shout for fiscal responsibility any time my generation might stand to gain. It is not the old farts on Medicare who have to worry about medical bills. These socialist yuppies take from the government freely but shout bloody-Commie-murder if it might mean anyone else getting hand-outs.
For once, I’m glad the life expectancy of Americans has been on the decline. We are going to enjoy sending you to horribly maintained old-folks homes where you can meet some people who make minimum wage as they unskillfully apply your catheter.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Reach Out and Touch Someone
At the risk of Bill Gnade’s knee-jerk, “It’s a hoax!” reaction…
One Mike Vanderboegh is calling for vandalism against Democratic Party offices in his blog. Mike subscribes to the “I can say whatever I want” school of blogging. I can relate to that.
Mike is a big gun lover and figures the federal guvment is out to get him. Note: inciting violence is a great way to begin this self-fulfilling prophecy.
Mike’s a typical “libtertarian.” He bitches about how the liberals keep him down. Did I mention he lives on government disability checks and receives $1,300 per month for medical conditions? The bum doesn’t even work; he gets health insurance through his wife’s job.
For those interested, Mike lives at:
6635 Womack Rd
Pinson, Alabama 35126
He can be reached by phone at: (205) 681-0324
His wife’s name is Rose.
So let him know how you feel. Comment on his blog, give him a call, or even better, send him a check. He’s in the habit of taking hand-outs. And Mike, if you are reading this: we have already sent the predator drone. Clutch that gun until your knuckles are white.
From the Blogger Terms of Service:
[Unless the Democrats are a religion, he seems to be within the rules; as am I.]
One Mike Vanderboegh is calling for vandalism against Democratic Party offices in his blog. Mike subscribes to the “I can say whatever I want” school of blogging. I can relate to that.
Mike is a big gun lover and figures the federal guvment is out to get him. Note: inciting violence is a great way to begin this self-fulfilling prophecy.
Mike’s a typical “libtertarian.” He bitches about how the liberals keep him down. Did I mention he lives on government disability checks and receives $1,300 per month for medical conditions? The bum doesn’t even work; he gets health insurance through his wife’s job.
For those interested, Mike lives at:
6635 Womack Rd
Pinson, Alabama 35126
He can be reached by phone at: (205) 681-0324
His wife’s name is Rose.
So let him know how you feel. Comment on his blog, give him a call, or even better, send him a check. He’s in the habit of taking hand-outs. And Mike, if you are reading this: we have already sent the predator drone. Clutch that gun until your knuckles are white.
From the Blogger Terms of Service:
Hate Speech: We want you to use Blogger to express your opinions, even very controversial ones. But, don't cross the line by publishing hate speech. By this, we mean content that promotes hate or violence towards groups based on race, ethnicity, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity. For example, don't write a blog saying that members of Race X are criminals or advocating violence against followers of Religion Y.
...
Personal and confidential information: It's not ok to publish another person's personal and confidential information. For example, don't post someone else's credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, unlisted phone numbers, and driver's license numbers. Also, please keep in mind that in most cases, information that is already available elsewhere on the Internet or in public records is not considered to be private or confidential under our policies.
[Unless the Democrats are a religion, he seems to be within the rules; as am I.]
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Catholic Conundrum
American Evangelicals must have been insecure again (I’m guessing over healthcare), because the Catholic Church is back in the news for all the familiar reasons. Here are some things atheists should consider before merrily jumping on board the Popebashing Express.
For one thing, most of the cases are decades old. One has to actually think about this historically from a church official’s standpoint. It has nothing to do with public image. Rather, this is a church legitimately based on forgiveness.
I have no doubt the offending priests seemed very sorry and probably even promised to never do it again. If this happened today, we would think they were idiots because hindsight is 20/20. At the time, before this pattern became apparent, it seemed an act of mercy.
There is another problem: the Catholic Church is huge. It’s the single biggest Christian sect, both nationally in US and globally. The fact is, this kind of abuse happens in other faiths, from Judaism to Protestantism to Islam. It even occurs in secular settings, such as sports. There is no “pattern,” just more cases due to the enormous size.
There is nothing structurally wrong with the Catholic Church that is somehow causing, encouraging, or allowing sexual abuse. Celibacy plays no role in the matter. Yes, the Catholic priesthood has plenty of men who may be classified as homosexual, but they’re far more likely to engage in sex with other adult men. Plenty of married Protestant pastors and Jewish Rabbis have been found guilty of molesting young boys.
None of this excuses the acts of abuse. I just think somebody should remind the atheists that Catholics are an oft maligned group. I don’t tend to mock Catholics just as I don’t tend to mock Scientologists: because I wasn’t the lazy bully who made fun of the retarded kid in class. I like a challenge: picking on the bully. “But Ginx, the Catholic Church is huge!” Quit picking on the fat kid, you fucktard.
The Catholic Church makes plenty of mistakes: discouraging condom use, opposing abortion, blah blah blah… but most Catholics are only about a 5 or 6 on the 1-10 “Annoying Scale.” I don’t need to be doing the Mormons or Evangelicals any favors by pretending their biggest competition is somehow worse than they are.
Really, what is it bothering you if you’re not Catholic, anyway? It should be Catholics who are up in arms; it’s their kids! The fact is, it’s rare. Very rare. Clearly I wasn’t. They don’t touch the ones with big mouths.
I think the lesson here is: teach your kids to speak up.
For one thing, most of the cases are decades old. One has to actually think about this historically from a church official’s standpoint. It has nothing to do with public image. Rather, this is a church legitimately based on forgiveness.
I have no doubt the offending priests seemed very sorry and probably even promised to never do it again. If this happened today, we would think they were idiots because hindsight is 20/20. At the time, before this pattern became apparent, it seemed an act of mercy.
There is another problem: the Catholic Church is huge. It’s the single biggest Christian sect, both nationally in US and globally. The fact is, this kind of abuse happens in other faiths, from Judaism to Protestantism to Islam. It even occurs in secular settings, such as sports. There is no “pattern,” just more cases due to the enormous size.
There is nothing structurally wrong with the Catholic Church that is somehow causing, encouraging, or allowing sexual abuse. Celibacy plays no role in the matter. Yes, the Catholic priesthood has plenty of men who may be classified as homosexual, but they’re far more likely to engage in sex with other adult men. Plenty of married Protestant pastors and Jewish Rabbis have been found guilty of molesting young boys.
None of this excuses the acts of abuse. I just think somebody should remind the atheists that Catholics are an oft maligned group. I don’t tend to mock Catholics just as I don’t tend to mock Scientologists: because I wasn’t the lazy bully who made fun of the retarded kid in class. I like a challenge: picking on the bully. “But Ginx, the Catholic Church is huge!” Quit picking on the fat kid, you fucktard.
The Catholic Church makes plenty of mistakes: discouraging condom use, opposing abortion, blah blah blah… but most Catholics are only about a 5 or 6 on the 1-10 “Annoying Scale.” I don’t need to be doing the Mormons or Evangelicals any favors by pretending their biggest competition is somehow worse than they are.
Really, what is it bothering you if you’re not Catholic, anyway? It should be Catholics who are up in arms; it’s their kids! The fact is, it’s rare. Very rare. Clearly I wasn’t. They don’t touch the ones with big mouths.
I think the lesson here is: teach your kids to speak up.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
What’s It All About?
There are words we use all the time that have several different meanings, and sometimes we even use words we cannot define. “Good” and “bad” come to mind. “That movie was good, though I didn’t like it.” That sentence almost doesn’t make sense, but we are able to take away from it that the person saying it did not personally like the movie, but they recognized the movie itself was not flawed. We can assume it is a matter of taste. “I want to be a good person” is much more difficult to discuss.
Of all of these words, none are thrown around American political debates more than “liberal” and “conservative.” I have spent well over a decade actively interested in politics, reading extensively not only news and modern opinion pieces, but also history. I have read so many “What is liberal/conservative?” pieces, I hesitate to bother adding to the clutter.
Yet here I am, sitting down to pretend I can set the record straight.
I can simplify my outlook on it by one simple mechanic: reactionism. Human beings are creatures of habit. Most people try new things on a relatively rare basis. “But Ginx, I am adventurous and eat new foods and visit new places!” That’s great, but I’m sure that when you visit Hong Kong to eat a wife cake, you will still wake up in the morning, shower, brush your teeth, get dressed…
This is not a critique of humanity; it is merely a fact. Routine enables us to perform the tasks necessary for living. These rituals of life become ensconced in culture. There is a form of security in tradition: it’s worked so far. The problem is, our world is not static. If the world changes, we must change with it. Moreover, if we cling to tradition, we give up on progress out of a fear of failure.
A liberal is one who tries new things; a conservative is one who sticks with what they perceive to be the best available option from the past. That’s it. There is nothing more complex about it. It’s not about “big government” versus “small government.” It’s not about spending, or abortion, or immigration, or wars. It’s all about reaction to the current trend.
Because of this, there is a strange set of circumstances when viewed globally over history. Liberals in one place and time bear little resemblance in actual ideology to liberals in another place and time. The methods used to enact change (words and weapons) are the only thing shared by all liberals. These are also the tools used by conservatives, so one cannot identify a group by their methods.
Instead, one must look at what is considered “normal.” This, too, is difficult to define. Normal can be what is most common, or it can be an uncommon ideal, but it tends to be the stereotypes of a society. Conservatives defend normalcy and are the keepers of the back-up plan: a return to what is familiar. Conservative reinforce norms, while liberals seek to redefine them.
Oddly, it is the goal of all liberals to become conservatives. The new, cutting edge ideas enacted by one generation are the established orthodoxy of the next. It is a conservative’s nightmare to become the liberal, for the liberal must actually work to get the world to agree. Conservatism is the incumbent, and liberalism is the challenger.
Because these labels are so fluid, it is futile to go through history and try to determine who was liberal and who was conservative. Is Jesus a bare-foot hippy or a fire and brimstone fear-mongerer? Is Hitler a vegetarian liberal or a father-land defending conservative?
In America, there are few liberal politicians. Dennis Kucinich is one. Bernie Sanders is another. But the fact is, there is no liberal party. Democrats are every bit as conservative as Republicans, they just aren’t as cruel and thoughtless. But both parties viciously defend the two-party system, America’s failed economic policies, our alliance with Israel, predatory businesses and banks, etc. Both parties also oppose drug legalization, public healthcare or anything remotely “socialist.”
America has given up on trying new things. It took us forever to pass anything related to healthcare, and even then it is nothing but a boon for private insurance companies with plenty of loopholes for abuse still open. America is so conservative, it is afraid to take anything but baby steps, even in well charted territory.
And people around the world wonder why we don’t adopt the metric system? We can’t even fix our healthcare when millions of people die due to money-grubbing insurance companies. We’ve become the old man who can’t even set the clock on his VCR, while the rest of the world has DVD players.
Of all of these words, none are thrown around American political debates more than “liberal” and “conservative.” I have spent well over a decade actively interested in politics, reading extensively not only news and modern opinion pieces, but also history. I have read so many “What is liberal/conservative?” pieces, I hesitate to bother adding to the clutter.
Yet here I am, sitting down to pretend I can set the record straight.
I can simplify my outlook on it by one simple mechanic: reactionism. Human beings are creatures of habit. Most people try new things on a relatively rare basis. “But Ginx, I am adventurous and eat new foods and visit new places!” That’s great, but I’m sure that when you visit Hong Kong to eat a wife cake, you will still wake up in the morning, shower, brush your teeth, get dressed…
This is not a critique of humanity; it is merely a fact. Routine enables us to perform the tasks necessary for living. These rituals of life become ensconced in culture. There is a form of security in tradition: it’s worked so far. The problem is, our world is not static. If the world changes, we must change with it. Moreover, if we cling to tradition, we give up on progress out of a fear of failure.
A liberal is one who tries new things; a conservative is one who sticks with what they perceive to be the best available option from the past. That’s it. There is nothing more complex about it. It’s not about “big government” versus “small government.” It’s not about spending, or abortion, or immigration, or wars. It’s all about reaction to the current trend.
Because of this, there is a strange set of circumstances when viewed globally over history. Liberals in one place and time bear little resemblance in actual ideology to liberals in another place and time. The methods used to enact change (words and weapons) are the only thing shared by all liberals. These are also the tools used by conservatives, so one cannot identify a group by their methods.
Instead, one must look at what is considered “normal.” This, too, is difficult to define. Normal can be what is most common, or it can be an uncommon ideal, but it tends to be the stereotypes of a society. Conservatives defend normalcy and are the keepers of the back-up plan: a return to what is familiar. Conservative reinforce norms, while liberals seek to redefine them.
Oddly, it is the goal of all liberals to become conservatives. The new, cutting edge ideas enacted by one generation are the established orthodoxy of the next. It is a conservative’s nightmare to become the liberal, for the liberal must actually work to get the world to agree. Conservatism is the incumbent, and liberalism is the challenger.
Because these labels are so fluid, it is futile to go through history and try to determine who was liberal and who was conservative. Is Jesus a bare-foot hippy or a fire and brimstone fear-mongerer? Is Hitler a vegetarian liberal or a father-land defending conservative?
In America, there are few liberal politicians. Dennis Kucinich is one. Bernie Sanders is another. But the fact is, there is no liberal party. Democrats are every bit as conservative as Republicans, they just aren’t as cruel and thoughtless. But both parties viciously defend the two-party system, America’s failed economic policies, our alliance with Israel, predatory businesses and banks, etc. Both parties also oppose drug legalization, public healthcare or anything remotely “socialist.”
America has given up on trying new things. It took us forever to pass anything related to healthcare, and even then it is nothing but a boon for private insurance companies with plenty of loopholes for abuse still open. America is so conservative, it is afraid to take anything but baby steps, even in well charted territory.
And people around the world wonder why we don’t adopt the metric system? We can’t even fix our healthcare when millions of people die due to money-grubbing insurance companies. We’ve become the old man who can’t even set the clock on his VCR, while the rest of the world has DVD players.
Monday, March 22, 2010
A Dire Threat
My fellow gentle Americans… I post tonight not to warm your hearts, but to sound the trumpet in warning. There is an insidious enemy in our midst.
Every single day, over 11,000 of them enter our great nation. They don’t speak English, and they don’t get around to learning it for years (even then you can barely understand them). They show up without any education, or even vaccinations. They leech off of those around them, suckling at the American teat. They don’t seek employment for years, even decades. And worst of all, once they show up, all they do is whine and cry. I’m talking, of course, about babies.
Every year, over four million of these mooches gain amnesty into our great nation by a loophole in the Constitution, without any sort of background check or discernible skills. Their continued influx is a danger to the nation and our economy. Who will pay for them all? Did you know that 99.9% of all criminals were once babies? Truly eye opening. [I think the .1% have the Benjamin Button disease.]
In light of this threat, staunch conservatives should reconsider their stance on abortion and gay marriage, currently our only recourse against these pernicious parasites. People, we must curtail our copious copulation! If two people have four babies, and they’re kids have four babies, that’s eight inbred babies. The problem is multiplying... so to speak.
Every single day, over 11,000 of them enter our great nation. They don’t speak English, and they don’t get around to learning it for years (even then you can barely understand them). They show up without any education, or even vaccinations. They leech off of those around them, suckling at the American teat. They don’t seek employment for years, even decades. And worst of all, once they show up, all they do is whine and cry. I’m talking, of course, about babies.
Every year, over four million of these mooches gain amnesty into our great nation by a loophole in the Constitution, without any sort of background check or discernible skills. Their continued influx is a danger to the nation and our economy. Who will pay for them all? Did you know that 99.9% of all criminals were once babies? Truly eye opening. [I think the .1% have the Benjamin Button disease.]
In light of this threat, staunch conservatives should reconsider their stance on abortion and gay marriage, currently our only recourse against these pernicious parasites. People, we must curtail our copious copulation! If two people have four babies, and they’re kids have four babies, that’s eight inbred babies. The problem is multiplying... so to speak.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
A Cult Classic
There is an experiment one may do to see what type of atheist a believer would make. If you are an atheist, ask your theist test subject how they feel about as many of the following as they’ve heard of:
Scientologists
Christian Scientists
Church of Satanists
Wiccans
Moonies
Mormons
Raelians
The Order of the Solar Temple
Heaven’s Gate
Branch Davidians
Aum Shinrikyo
The Church of Bible Understanding
The People’s Temple
The Church of the Lamb of God
Likewise, if you are a theist (and apparently read my site in order to electively fulfill your persecution quota), you may imagine what you would be like as an atheist by analyzing your answers to the above. Hell, if you’re Protestant, you could include Catholics, and vice-versa.
How do theists respond to these groups? I have found it is largely based on what the theist has heard about that particular organization. Most people have heard of Scientology, and most non-Scientologists are pretty critical of it. An alien bringing souls to Earth trillions of years ago (in a universe possibly only billions of years old, mind you) seems far-fetched to people, but it actually seems as plausible to me as some unexplained divinity blowing air into dirt thousands of years ago.
The truth is, most people know little or nothing about the actual beliefs or practices of Scientology. Most non-Scientologists are content with hearing the ridiculous parts of Scientology and making a judgment, whether they are atheist or Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist or agnostic or anything else under the sun.
Scientology isn’t very popular, but how do theists feel about Aum Shinrikyo? “Um Shin what-e-o?” Exactly. If I told you this is the name of the group who orchestrated the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway which killed 12… I’m confident I could guess your stance, even (or especially) if you had not known about them before.
These are some of the more common responses to being asked how one feels about a foreign faith. The truth is, most people remain ignorant of beliefs outside of their own, and this is especially true of monotheists. Even though many of the organizations on that list are monotheistic off-shoots of major religions, members of the larger orthodoxy tend to either ignore or attack splinter groups.
My last question: how does a theist reconcile the silly stories and/or violence in one’s own religion, while these are enough to dismiss other faiths? Perhaps most monotheists can only judge a book by its cover. Hopefully, they close their Bibles and take a good hard look. [They won’t.]
Scientologists
Christian Scientists
Church of Satanists
Wiccans
Moonies
Mormons
Raelians
The Order of the Solar Temple
Heaven’s Gate
Branch Davidians
Aum Shinrikyo
The Church of Bible Understanding
The People’s Temple
The Church of the Lamb of God
Likewise, if you are a theist (and apparently read my site in order to electively fulfill your persecution quota), you may imagine what you would be like as an atheist by analyzing your answers to the above. Hell, if you’re Protestant, you could include Catholics, and vice-versa.
How do theists respond to these groups? I have found it is largely based on what the theist has heard about that particular organization. Most people have heard of Scientology, and most non-Scientologists are pretty critical of it. An alien bringing souls to Earth trillions of years ago (in a universe possibly only billions of years old, mind you) seems far-fetched to people, but it actually seems as plausible to me as some unexplained divinity blowing air into dirt thousands of years ago.
The truth is, most people know little or nothing about the actual beliefs or practices of Scientology. Most non-Scientologists are content with hearing the ridiculous parts of Scientology and making a judgment, whether they are atheist or Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist or agnostic or anything else under the sun.
Scientology isn’t very popular, but how do theists feel about Aum Shinrikyo? “Um Shin what-e-o?” Exactly. If I told you this is the name of the group who orchestrated the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway which killed 12… I’m confident I could guess your stance, even (or especially) if you had not known about them before.
These are some of the more common responses to being asked how one feels about a foreign faith. The truth is, most people remain ignorant of beliefs outside of their own, and this is especially true of monotheists. Even though many of the organizations on that list are monotheistic off-shoots of major religions, members of the larger orthodoxy tend to either ignore or attack splinter groups.
My last question: how does a theist reconcile the silly stories and/or violence in one’s own religion, while these are enough to dismiss other faiths? Perhaps most monotheists can only judge a book by its cover. Hopefully, they close their Bibles and take a good hard look. [They won’t.]
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Explosive Science
Few people really appreciate the Dark Ages. Westerners are not taught about European history after the rise of Constantine. The 5th century until well after the 13th are the general dates given for the “Medieval” period, also called the “Middle Ages.” Not a lot of progress went on in Europe during this time. The only local inventions were various farming implements, primarily improvements on the plow (which is itself technology originally borrowed, possibly from Egypt or even further back to pre-historic India).
Westerners are never taught of the Islamic Renaissance that took place from the 8th century and extended well into the 15th. We learn little of the vast Chinese empires that rose and fell during this time. These two cultures produced the technology we take for granted, spurring the Renaissance in Europe.
Peaceful and violent interaction with Arabs during the late Middle Ages brought Europe not only the knowledge of these two great cultures, but also the lost “pagan” knowledge destroyed by the Christians in their rise to power. Our knowledge of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Pythagoras, and many other Western philosophers was preserved by Muslim scholars for centuries.
Chinese paper allowed for the abandonment of expensive parchment and inferior papyrus. The printing press meant books could be reproduced without being rewritten by hand. Arabian optics allowed for the production of eyeglasses, telescopes, and (much later) microscopes. However, there is one invention of the Chinese that met with one field of Arabian science that changed history forever: gunpowder and alchemy.
Al-kimiya was a science the Muslims built out of the Greek study of khemeioa. The Greeks named it such after Egypt, known then as Khemia. Egyptians are the oldest recorded practitioners of alchemy. There, they created cosmetics, glass, dyes, inks, and papyrus. They also extracted metal from ore. This final task was vital, as it was the alchemists who made the Pharaohs wealthy. Alchemy was suppressed in Europe as witchcraft for centuries. All writings on the subject were destroyed, and we will never know how much or how little we lost.
The invention of gunpowder in China in the 9th century by Taoist monks took some time to reach Europe. Muslims are the first to adopt it in the West. It is recorded as being used in Spain against the Reconquista forces of Europe, who had rallied to fight off the Islamic Moors who controlled areas of the Iberian Pennisula, including Spain, Portugal, and even Sicily. The first Europeans to use gunpowder are Vikings (who traded with the Muslims), and the first Christian to write of it are Norwegian nobility in the 1250s. Both used it primarily for incendiary ship-to-ship warfare,
By around 1300, Christian monks began recording the recipe for gunpowder. Early on, it was hidden in anagrams or buried in long rhyming poems in order to conceal it and prevent charges of witchcraft (the latter technique is preserved in the portrayal of “witchcraft” as sing-songy, rhyming recipes, the only kind to survive the period).
Even after the utility of gunpowder is demonstrated, many religious authorities banned it on the same grounds they banned the use of crossbows: it was seen as barbaric that any common man could use such a weapon to kill a chivalrous, valiant knight. Those who did use it were often looked down upon, though success followed them. The first cannons are built by the craftsmen who made church bells. Leonardo Da Vinci dabbled in weapons blending all of the newly introduced technology, from gunpowder to improved metallurgy to mechanics.
However, one of the three ingredients in gunpowder was saltpeter, which was expensive and had to be imported… until Europeans found out they’d been throwing the stuff away for years. After learning an effective means for the production of saltpeter from animal dung, again from Arabic alchemists, Europe went off like a rocket.
More than changing the face of warfare, gunpowder established alchemy as an acceptable practice in Europe. The Dark Ages gave way to a Renaissance of exploring new ideas, questioning our views of the world we lived in. In time, gunpowder also provided the means for monarchies to be toppled, in favor of a Greek form of “pagan” governace: democracy.
Westerners are never taught of the Islamic Renaissance that took place from the 8th century and extended well into the 15th. We learn little of the vast Chinese empires that rose and fell during this time. These two cultures produced the technology we take for granted, spurring the Renaissance in Europe.
Peaceful and violent interaction with Arabs during the late Middle Ages brought Europe not only the knowledge of these two great cultures, but also the lost “pagan” knowledge destroyed by the Christians in their rise to power. Our knowledge of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Pythagoras, and many other Western philosophers was preserved by Muslim scholars for centuries.
Chinese paper allowed for the abandonment of expensive parchment and inferior papyrus. The printing press meant books could be reproduced without being rewritten by hand. Arabian optics allowed for the production of eyeglasses, telescopes, and (much later) microscopes. However, there is one invention of the Chinese that met with one field of Arabian science that changed history forever: gunpowder and alchemy.
Al-kimiya was a science the Muslims built out of the Greek study of khemeioa. The Greeks named it such after Egypt, known then as Khemia. Egyptians are the oldest recorded practitioners of alchemy. There, they created cosmetics, glass, dyes, inks, and papyrus. They also extracted metal from ore. This final task was vital, as it was the alchemists who made the Pharaohs wealthy. Alchemy was suppressed in Europe as witchcraft for centuries. All writings on the subject were destroyed, and we will never know how much or how little we lost.
The invention of gunpowder in China in the 9th century by Taoist monks took some time to reach Europe. Muslims are the first to adopt it in the West. It is recorded as being used in Spain against the Reconquista forces of Europe, who had rallied to fight off the Islamic Moors who controlled areas of the Iberian Pennisula, including Spain, Portugal, and even Sicily. The first Europeans to use gunpowder are Vikings (who traded with the Muslims), and the first Christian to write of it are Norwegian nobility in the 1250s. Both used it primarily for incendiary ship-to-ship warfare,
By around 1300, Christian monks began recording the recipe for gunpowder. Early on, it was hidden in anagrams or buried in long rhyming poems in order to conceal it and prevent charges of witchcraft (the latter technique is preserved in the portrayal of “witchcraft” as sing-songy, rhyming recipes, the only kind to survive the period).
Even after the utility of gunpowder is demonstrated, many religious authorities banned it on the same grounds they banned the use of crossbows: it was seen as barbaric that any common man could use such a weapon to kill a chivalrous, valiant knight. Those who did use it were often looked down upon, though success followed them. The first cannons are built by the craftsmen who made church bells. Leonardo Da Vinci dabbled in weapons blending all of the newly introduced technology, from gunpowder to improved metallurgy to mechanics.
However, one of the three ingredients in gunpowder was saltpeter, which was expensive and had to be imported… until Europeans found out they’d been throwing the stuff away for years. After learning an effective means for the production of saltpeter from animal dung, again from Arabic alchemists, Europe went off like a rocket.
More than changing the face of warfare, gunpowder established alchemy as an acceptable practice in Europe. The Dark Ages gave way to a Renaissance of exploring new ideas, questioning our views of the world we lived in. In time, gunpowder also provided the means for monarchies to be toppled, in favor of a Greek form of “pagan” governace: democracy.
Monday, March 15, 2010
A Weird Turn
I went to a private Catholic high school where the only atheists I knew were me and two of the girls I dated. It was not all Catholics, but it was predominantly Christian, with many denominations represented. There’s no way us three were the only atheists, but I only knew they were atheists because we were close enough to talk about it. This shows part of the problem.
Atheism was shunned at my school. No one was beat up over it, but there were altercations and times when things were thrown at me (nothing harmful), solely because I was an atheist or spoke up when I “shouldn’t uv.” Of course, there wasn’t much else about me worth mocking, and it certainly wasn’t a horrible daily routine. I didn’t feel persecuted or oppressed, but it was irritating how intrusive all the religious rituals, prayers, and other garbage could be for those of us who just wanted an education.
And God forbid you question anything. It wasn’t always teachers enforcing this stuff; it was usually students. There was strange Puritanical peer pressure. Let’s put it this way: my school was so conservative, I actually got made fun of once for PDA. Apparently hugging your girlfriend in the hall is inappropriate for 17 year olds. I was stuck living in the fucking 1950’s.
My school required we take a religion class every year. The first year was a comprehensive look at world religions, and the next three years were variously themed kumbayah sessions where we talked about our “spirituality.” This was basically an opportunity for the Christian majority to alienate anyone who didn’t agree with them in discussion. People of other religions spoke up without criticism, which is a good thing, but I was the only atheist out of over twenty kids in every one of the three years I faced this curriculum.
This was where I honed my chops. This is where I learned to stand up to a group of people and tell them point-blank to their face: you’re wrong. It’s really effortless online. I don’t even have to mask my contempt for you people (yeah I fucking said “you people,” you dirty, unwashed masses; go back to your fucking couches and reality shows if you have a fucking problem with it).
And it wasn’t easy. For one thing, I was newly skeptical. I wasn’t agnostic, but I was not completely sure of my atheism. All I knew was that I wasn’t Catholic, I felt nothing for any sort of personal God that my evangelical friends told me about, and Buddhism was for fags. Of course, those are my words then, not my words now… now I would say Buddhism is for “spiritual, but not religious” people (though one of my two Buddhist friends was gay).
What is the proper response when a teacher writes in your required diary entries which they “grade”: “Those who stand for nothing will surely fall for anything.” Nowadays, I would have told that bitch I won’t stand for that shit and that she can go sit and spin. Maybe if she didn’t drink, her son wouldn’t have been the weird kid who mutters to himself in the corner while banging his head against the wall. [True story.]
If you wonder why I’m not civil and polite and patient and kind when speaking on matters of faith, it may have something to do with the fact that I was “Heil Hitler” saluted by another student in an “Ethics” themed class discussion. The topic? Abortion. Apparently supporting a woman’s right to control her own body is tantamount to a fetal Holocaust. Never mind their laughable support of the racially biased genocide they euphemize as “capital punishment,” or the actual defense of the Vietnam War that I heard stuttered through countless ums and likes.
I’ve not only peaked inside the Christian world, I leered at it day after day from across the table. I didn’t have my thumb on the pulse of Conservative America, I had my needle in its vein. I got a real good sample, and I am torn between terror and violent outrage at the extremist douchebags that the conservative right not only harbors, but encourages. The Right makes things personal, and turns out… it worked.
Fuck political correctness. Fuck the Democrats who want to negotiate. The Right is claiming the Democrats are shoving healthcare down our throats. Great! If I were the Dems, I’d not only shove it down their throat, I’d grease them up, stick it in their asses, and I certainly wouldn’t forget to pull their hair.
For fuck’s sake, why do we bother to elect Democrats if they don’t do a damn thing? When these pussies got picked on, they’re the ones who cowered in a corner and told themselves the bullies were just compensating for something. These guys are such bleeding-heart push-overs, they have sympathy for their tormenters. That is way too Jesus-y for me. What you’re supposed to do is kick the bully in the balls, sleep with his girlfriend, and pour sugar in his car’s gas tank. If you don’t want to cook, get the fuck out of the kitchen. You gotta break a few eggs to make a fucking omelet, and maybe some of those eggs were just for fun.
This whole post seems like the situation of my generation. Everything seemed fairly focused, but it really takes a weird turn and now I have no idea what to do. I feel like this might be generation “I’m angry and I don’t know what to do.”
Atheism was shunned at my school. No one was beat up over it, but there were altercations and times when things were thrown at me (nothing harmful), solely because I was an atheist or spoke up when I “shouldn’t uv.” Of course, there wasn’t much else about me worth mocking, and it certainly wasn’t a horrible daily routine. I didn’t feel persecuted or oppressed, but it was irritating how intrusive all the religious rituals, prayers, and other garbage could be for those of us who just wanted an education.
And God forbid you question anything. It wasn’t always teachers enforcing this stuff; it was usually students. There was strange Puritanical peer pressure. Let’s put it this way: my school was so conservative, I actually got made fun of once for PDA. Apparently hugging your girlfriend in the hall is inappropriate for 17 year olds. I was stuck living in the fucking 1950’s.
My school required we take a religion class every year. The first year was a comprehensive look at world religions, and the next three years were variously themed kumbayah sessions where we talked about our “spirituality.” This was basically an opportunity for the Christian majority to alienate anyone who didn’t agree with them in discussion. People of other religions spoke up without criticism, which is a good thing, but I was the only atheist out of over twenty kids in every one of the three years I faced this curriculum.
This was where I honed my chops. This is where I learned to stand up to a group of people and tell them point-blank to their face: you’re wrong. It’s really effortless online. I don’t even have to mask my contempt for you people (yeah I fucking said “you people,” you dirty, unwashed masses; go back to your fucking couches and reality shows if you have a fucking problem with it).
And it wasn’t easy. For one thing, I was newly skeptical. I wasn’t agnostic, but I was not completely sure of my atheism. All I knew was that I wasn’t Catholic, I felt nothing for any sort of personal God that my evangelical friends told me about, and Buddhism was for fags. Of course, those are my words then, not my words now… now I would say Buddhism is for “spiritual, but not religious” people (though one of my two Buddhist friends was gay).
What is the proper response when a teacher writes in your required diary entries which they “grade”: “Those who stand for nothing will surely fall for anything.” Nowadays, I would have told that bitch I won’t stand for that shit and that she can go sit and spin. Maybe if she didn’t drink, her son wouldn’t have been the weird kid who mutters to himself in the corner while banging his head against the wall. [True story.]
If you wonder why I’m not civil and polite and patient and kind when speaking on matters of faith, it may have something to do with the fact that I was “Heil Hitler” saluted by another student in an “Ethics” themed class discussion. The topic? Abortion. Apparently supporting a woman’s right to control her own body is tantamount to a fetal Holocaust. Never mind their laughable support of the racially biased genocide they euphemize as “capital punishment,” or the actual defense of the Vietnam War that I heard stuttered through countless ums and likes.
I’ve not only peaked inside the Christian world, I leered at it day after day from across the table. I didn’t have my thumb on the pulse of Conservative America, I had my needle in its vein. I got a real good sample, and I am torn between terror and violent outrage at the extremist douchebags that the conservative right not only harbors, but encourages. The Right makes things personal, and turns out… it worked.
Fuck political correctness. Fuck the Democrats who want to negotiate. The Right is claiming the Democrats are shoving healthcare down our throats. Great! If I were the Dems, I’d not only shove it down their throat, I’d grease them up, stick it in their asses, and I certainly wouldn’t forget to pull their hair.
For fuck’s sake, why do we bother to elect Democrats if they don’t do a damn thing? When these pussies got picked on, they’re the ones who cowered in a corner and told themselves the bullies were just compensating for something. These guys are such bleeding-heart push-overs, they have sympathy for their tormenters. That is way too Jesus-y for me. What you’re supposed to do is kick the bully in the balls, sleep with his girlfriend, and pour sugar in his car’s gas tank. If you don’t want to cook, get the fuck out of the kitchen. You gotta break a few eggs to make a fucking omelet, and maybe some of those eggs were just for fun.
This whole post seems like the situation of my generation. Everything seemed fairly focused, but it really takes a weird turn and now I have no idea what to do. I feel like this might be generation “I’m angry and I don’t know what to do.”
Friday, March 12, 2010
Don’t Look Back…
Religion has so much to offer me, though not salvation, or ethics, or community. No, religion provides me the creative fodder I need to write. I like to take a fresh look through new, child-like eyes at religious ideas left unexamined.
Why does heaven have pearly gates? I don’t mean, why are they pearl (though that is its own question). Rather, are there drifters loitering outside trying to get in? Why not build heaven in a nicer part of the universe, away from the riff raff? What if the gates are not to keep people out, but to keep people in…
But I have largely grown bored with Christian mythology. There’s only one god, and the angels are pretty ho-hum. So long ago, I moved on to other religions. As it turns out, most religions believe in some form of reincarnation. The idea of the soul returning to Earth after death was described by the Greeks, Romans, and several Eastern religions.
Plato relied heavily on the idea of the “transmigration of souls” (metempsychosis, which was introduced earlier by Orphism and Pythagoreanism). This idea was essential to Plato’s conception of knowledge. Plato believed all souls spend time in another plane of existence, inhabited by what he called perfect forms. There, our souls soak up knowledge like a sponge. It would be akin to your soul being plugged into an encyclopedia.
The soul then drinks from the River Lethe (meaning “forgetfulness” or “concealment”), causing us to temporarily forget, and we are born again as a baby. To Plato, nothing is ever “learned” during life. Instead, we merely “remember” or “recall” during our mortal lives the things we knew as immortal souls. In Plato’s estimation, we are all repositories of infinite knowledge, waiting to be unlocked. The very Greek word for “truth” was “aletheia,” meaning “unforget” or “unconceal.”
This is a romantic notion, but it is never enough for me to hear a story. I have to think of ways to add on to the established ideas. Moreover, other religions which espouse reincarnation have completely different dogma regarding the cycle of the soul. However, all of these models had a few things in common:
1. The soul is eternal
2. The soul is indivisible
3. The role of gods in the entire cycle is ambiguous
The first two points create a great crisis of internal logic, and this is already assuming the existence souls and the occurrence of reincarnation. There are almost 7 billion people. Right away, we have to assume animals and humans are coming from the same reincarnation pool or someone, somewhere is creating human souls from scratch. If the latter is true, then some souls are older (and therefore “more eternal”) than others.
If we’re using the same souls as animals, there are a lot of souls waiting to get back to Earth, because the number of animals in the wild who have died is greater than the population increase of humans and our domesticated animals (whose population also rises and falls with our own). That is, unless we can be reincarnated as microscopic life… in which case the calculations are too difficult for me to do, as there are trillions of non-human microbes living inside just one human body. And what about plants?
Why not simplify the whole matter and say that souls are divisible? My body may be like a glass, and my soul the water inside it. The glass was made recently, but the water always existed. When the glass breaks, the water won’t disappear; it will evaporate into the clouds or run down a drain or into the soil or trickle into a larger body of water. The exact glass of water can never be re-assembled again. I imagine that is a far more likely scenario than a soul being able to maintain itself as a whole.
Of course, the soul need not do anything. One should not forget the gods when discussing religion. What is their role in all of this?
Since religion is supposedly revealed by the gods, and the role of the gods is largely ignored in all reincarnation systems, I have come to the conclusion that the only logical explanation is that the gods are taking advantage of our souls somehow. The simplest solution is that they are eating our souls, perhaps this is even what gives them immortality, though I would not be surprised if the human soul is far less powerful, and is used for something rather frivolous (perhaps getting high).
Is it so crazy to assume the gods are exploiting the human soul? If we are their creation, and if the apple indeed does not fall far from the tree, it seems not only possible, but likely. Human beings think nothing about whom they hurt, why should the gods be any different? Quite frankly, we may be nothing more than cattle to them. Really puts the “fishers of men” and “shepherd” metaphors into context…
When someone asks me what happens when we die, I optimistically suggest that it will be like before we were born: nothing to us, but exciting for everyone alive (we get his stuff!). This is quite optimistic, at least when compared to my proposed scenario in which the soul is consumed by gods and shat back to Earth. I can’t know what happens when we die, but I find it very intellectually lazy of people to assume it’s either heaven and hell, or nothing.
Why does heaven have pearly gates? I don’t mean, why are they pearl (though that is its own question). Rather, are there drifters loitering outside trying to get in? Why not build heaven in a nicer part of the universe, away from the riff raff? What if the gates are not to keep people out, but to keep people in…
But I have largely grown bored with Christian mythology. There’s only one god, and the angels are pretty ho-hum. So long ago, I moved on to other religions. As it turns out, most religions believe in some form of reincarnation. The idea of the soul returning to Earth after death was described by the Greeks, Romans, and several Eastern religions.
Plato relied heavily on the idea of the “transmigration of souls” (metempsychosis, which was introduced earlier by Orphism and Pythagoreanism). This idea was essential to Plato’s conception of knowledge. Plato believed all souls spend time in another plane of existence, inhabited by what he called perfect forms. There, our souls soak up knowledge like a sponge. It would be akin to your soul being plugged into an encyclopedia.
The soul then drinks from the River Lethe (meaning “forgetfulness” or “concealment”), causing us to temporarily forget, and we are born again as a baby. To Plato, nothing is ever “learned” during life. Instead, we merely “remember” or “recall” during our mortal lives the things we knew as immortal souls. In Plato’s estimation, we are all repositories of infinite knowledge, waiting to be unlocked. The very Greek word for “truth” was “aletheia,” meaning “unforget” or “unconceal.”
This is a romantic notion, but it is never enough for me to hear a story. I have to think of ways to add on to the established ideas. Moreover, other religions which espouse reincarnation have completely different dogma regarding the cycle of the soul. However, all of these models had a few things in common:
1. The soul is eternal
2. The soul is indivisible
3. The role of gods in the entire cycle is ambiguous
The first two points create a great crisis of internal logic, and this is already assuming the existence souls and the occurrence of reincarnation. There are almost 7 billion people. Right away, we have to assume animals and humans are coming from the same reincarnation pool or someone, somewhere is creating human souls from scratch. If the latter is true, then some souls are older (and therefore “more eternal”) than others.
If we’re using the same souls as animals, there are a lot of souls waiting to get back to Earth, because the number of animals in the wild who have died is greater than the population increase of humans and our domesticated animals (whose population also rises and falls with our own). That is, unless we can be reincarnated as microscopic life… in which case the calculations are too difficult for me to do, as there are trillions of non-human microbes living inside just one human body. And what about plants?
Why not simplify the whole matter and say that souls are divisible? My body may be like a glass, and my soul the water inside it. The glass was made recently, but the water always existed. When the glass breaks, the water won’t disappear; it will evaporate into the clouds or run down a drain or into the soil or trickle into a larger body of water. The exact glass of water can never be re-assembled again. I imagine that is a far more likely scenario than a soul being able to maintain itself as a whole.
Of course, the soul need not do anything. One should not forget the gods when discussing religion. What is their role in all of this?
Since religion is supposedly revealed by the gods, and the role of the gods is largely ignored in all reincarnation systems, I have come to the conclusion that the only logical explanation is that the gods are taking advantage of our souls somehow. The simplest solution is that they are eating our souls, perhaps this is even what gives them immortality, though I would not be surprised if the human soul is far less powerful, and is used for something rather frivolous (perhaps getting high).
Is it so crazy to assume the gods are exploiting the human soul? If we are their creation, and if the apple indeed does not fall far from the tree, it seems not only possible, but likely. Human beings think nothing about whom they hurt, why should the gods be any different? Quite frankly, we may be nothing more than cattle to them. Really puts the “fishers of men” and “shepherd” metaphors into context…
When someone asks me what happens when we die, I optimistically suggest that it will be like before we were born: nothing to us, but exciting for everyone alive (we get his stuff!). This is quite optimistic, at least when compared to my proposed scenario in which the soul is consumed by gods and shat back to Earth. I can’t know what happens when we die, but I find it very intellectually lazy of people to assume it’s either heaven and hell, or nothing.
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