Law and Order

Man, did any of you guys see the new Law and Order this week? I don't know when it comes on because I have Tivo, but I watched it last night.

You see this couple kind of arguing in the street. Next thing you know, these huge pieces of hail start falling. One of them catches this dude right in the face. Well it turns out to be large rocks instead, and they were falling off of one of the buildings. And I mean large rocks... they averaged the size of your fist. Those smooth gardening rocks... ok, enough about the rocks...

It turns out this lady was stoned to death on the roof. Messy business.

I'm not going to recount the whole episode for you because I don't wanna spoil it. But it turned out to be this mega-intense xtian group who's waging war on all non-believers. They were taking these little kids and bringing them up and extreme radicals. You should have seen it... these kids were insane. And kids will pretty much believe anything you tell them so there's no help for them.

This one really hit home with me because there are so people like this. Hell, I'm fairly convinced that my ex is getting like that.

But it did get me thinking about a conversation I had with Faithinate one time. Since we were both raised xtian we both have the same tendencies when it comes back to that whole thing. Whenever something bad happens we fall back into starting to pray sometimes. I think I do it a lot less than she does, but still. But that's how much more powerful emotion is than reason. Emotion stays with you forever, but reason get resolved right away. Think about it... do you remember who made fun of you in school? Of course you do... we all do. I remember the name of every bully who ever even looked at me. Now answer me this... do you remember any of the questions on your final math test in the 5th grade? Again, of course you don't. So emotion is much more powerful. And it's for this reason that even though we truly believe that religion is complete bullshit, we still fall back into it sometimes. I've worked hard to change my language because that's where it starts. I try not to say things like oh god, and god willing... I try to say oh dog, and dog willing, or moon willing, etc. Hey, it's a start.

But if people as dedicated as we are have trouble breaking out of the cycle, just imagine how hard it is for an entire society. You could actually prove to these people that God doesn't exist and they would still pray and go to church and kill people who don't believe. There's just no stopping some things. However, I do look forward to a day when the xtians are the extreme minority and they're the ones who have to hideout on the internet and write in secret. With any luck though these people will slowly die out. This won't happen in our lifetime, but it's possible. Imagine all the scientific discoveries that were initially shot down. The detractors eventually all died and science was free to flourish.

And the reason why religion is so much more popular than atheism is because they yell louder. We're not currently free to shout our beliefs from the mountaintops or start killing people because they believe in God. Nor are we really even allowed to say we don't believe in party conversation. It's that whole emotion vs. reason argument, right? Typically, atheists don't believe as a matter of reason so we don't have anything to shout about. I think the times are changing though. We're getting tired enough of the rhetoric and it's starting to take a real toll on our country so we're being forced to get emotional about it.

I was reading this blog today talking about how religion is keeping us out of the forefront of a lot of new technology. And while that's more true than anybody knows, it'll be a long time before anything's done about it because the xtians shout louder. Just a fact of life.