Live Blog - The God Dammers' Saturday Night

SurferJesus says he used to date this girl, years ago, and wanted to marry her, but they couldn't because of the big difference in religion between their families. Her family believed it was most important to shun Islam, while his believed it was most important to shun Christians, and he didn't want to go through the trouble of converting.

Three guys I knew in college were publicly flogged for hoping out loud that the world wouldn't end any time soon.

What would the pamphlets look like for door to door evangelical atheists? Christians always have happy, blissful people smiling on the front, but atheits are realists. So maybe people with "WTF?" expressions, or people with goggles and test tubes.

If you wanted to publicly prove that you were a really really good atheist, what would you channel to speak in tongues? You could channel Carlin, I suppose, or Dawkins, or Joe Pesci (he swears a lot!)

SJ asks, What's going to be the penalty for hosting a gay wedding reception? And I said, no, atheists get pissed off when STRAIGHT people get married. PN added that it's far worse to involve an invisible third party. The way marraiges are these days, rings should probably be made out of something biodegradable.

The real pisser about being atheist is that it usually isn't, in and of itself, an excuse to get together with other people. I mean, there are atheist clubs, but only because we need to resist, to fight for reason. Without resistance there isn't a reason to have a full organization, get together every week, do dinner parties...you're forced to go out and make friends on your own charisma. Pisser.

Atheist award ceremonies are a lot shorter, because you just get up and say "Thanks! I worked really hard!" And sit down. (Isn't it odd how porn stars thank God when they accept their awards? I think SJ's going to elaborate on that, sorry...)

Jesus is EVERYONE's copilot. When I'm flying, I think, "How much time does God HAVE on this kind of plane?"

Christians Looking Forward To Armageddon

Taking some threads from SurferJesus' and my recent posts, a shared belief among many Christians is the prophetic wars and horrible things that are going to happen at the end of the world, or the conquest of the world by Hell, or some similar bad thing where all Christians will teleport to heaven via the rapture. And they're looking forward to it.

Those damn Christians are always euphoric about the afterlife and about the end of the world. Do they really look forward to all the bad shit, or are they operating in cognitive dissonance mode and not realizing that their vision of holding hands with God results from widespread misery and evil on the mortal Earth? Why yearn for that even if you believe in it? And why do many keep predicting the world will end soon? Which, by the way, they've been doing for eons. The world is always about to end, according to somebody.

And Christians and Muslims general goal is to spread their religion and take over the world. They don't quite put it that way, but they have little tolerance for us atheists asking logical questions about their silly faith, and they think more and more people should be like them. Don't they realize the consequences? They seem to almost look forward to a religious war where God shows everyone they are right by letting them win. (Both sides of the war believe this.)

It's really weird to watch somebody supposedly peaceful and nice to talk lovingly of the impending end of the world and the associated wars, but I've seen it repeatedly.

And the implications are scary. I agree with SurferJesus that Christianity if allowed to take over the United States would degenerate into a state of harsh punishments for dissenters.

Remember when Clinton got militarily involved in Yugoslavia? I don't recall anyone pointing this out, but I wonder if it's why so many Christians seem to hate the guy. He was protecting Mulsims from being wiped out by Christians in Yugoslavia. Modern day Christians in an industrialized nation (they even exported cars to us: the Yugo) were ethnically cleansing their dogmatic competition. And it doesn't surprise me. I've heard Christians speak with hatred and a suspense of humanity about people they dislike. Hey, if God is on their side, got hates the dissenters, too, so how can they not feel justified in wanting them tortured, maimed and killed? And they are euphoric in this.

More Crazy Testicles

I just love catchy title, don't you?

So yeah, this is a comment/response to PraiseNull's comment on my first post on this topic.

So he's right to a degree that it's hard to look at the world with the cynicism that I do, but is it really cynicism? Am I really all that far off base? Look at any theocracy and show me where non-believers weren't persecuted. In fact, show me any theocracy where even the believers who just didn't happen to believe the same thing the established religion believed weren't persecuted. And these people aren't any different than you or me. We all want the same things. We want to be happy. We want a good life. We want to instill values in our kids and have them grow up to be what we consider 'good people'. We want the world to be a good place. But what happens when people refuse to get along and work at being tolerant of each other is they turn to religion. They setup an impossible doctrine and make laws that are ridiculous. And then they punish people for breaking them.

Remember that story last year where the couple was arrested in Dubai for drinking OJ in public. They were germans visiting and it was during that stupid fucking ramadan (sp?) holiday where you're not allowed to eat or drink in public. The story I get is that it's because they want you to experience what it is to be poor and sort of walk a mile in their shoes. So somehow that's turned into a religious crime that's actually punishable, even to outsiders who know nothing of the law. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone to come to your country and not run a red light, or to not rape a child. Those are common sense laws that are fairly ubiquitous. But drinking juice... how the fuck is someone supposed to know a stupid law like that? And I call it a stupid law just because I don't want to typy "fucking bullshit goddamn assinine motherfucking asswiping piece-of-shit monkey-fucking stupid law" every time I go to type it. So just know that's what I mean from here on out.

I've started listening to the dogma-free america podcast and the shit that goes on in this world in the name of religion is just fucking amazing. Women being buried alive for wanting to choose their own husbands, kids being beaten for not believing a rotting body sitting on their toilet is actually going to come back to life, pedofiles claiming their cleansing little kids by fucking them up the ass, blind kids being hung from ceiling fans and beaten to death because they're unable to read the koran, 1yr olds starved to death because they're unable to say amen after grace, etc. This is all just pure evil. And what's worse is those are ALL real stories.

Now, not everything religion has to offer is evil... or is it?
There are some seemingly benign actions that everyone puts up with like praying before meals, organizing group prayers to alleviate drought or a crime wave, having something censored because it offends your religion, etc. Well, if pot is a gateway drug then these are gateway religious behaviors. Just the practice of these things leads to you wanting, no NEEDING to control other people's lives. All of a sudden it's your business where my dick goes, and even worse, where my hands go. I'll tell you something right now. If I wanna lotion-up and stroke my cock with my right and shove a curling iron up my ass with the other one, that's none of your fucking business. That's only between me and the owner of the curling iron (who I'm sure might object sutstantially). But it's certainly not a religious matter.

Let's look at gays in the military. If I were gay and in the military and someone asked me about my sex practices, I would ask him first. I would say something like...
So how about you and your wife? Do you fuck her in the ass? Does she finger your ass when she sucks your cock? Hey does your wife swallow? How high can you get her legs up over her head? Come on man, tell me... what's it like to be deep inside your wife's pussy?

Of course all of those questions would be met with extreme offense, and might even start a fight. So why are the details of my sex life important, but yours aren't? It doesn't matter in the least whether I'm fucking a man or a woman. The details of my sex life are none of your fucking business. Yet, because there's a book that says it's bad to fuck a man up the ass, you're going to make it your business who I fuck. But you could line up people of both sexes bent over in the dark and you could be lead in to fuck one of them in the ass at random and I guarantee you couldn't tell the difference between a male and a female ass. So any of you guys out there who fuck their wives in the ass are just as guilty as the gayest queer out there. I mean, you like to fuck ass, so how can you blame queers for it?

So where was I... oh yeah, gateway bahavior. By making it ok to pray, or to censor a TV show, etc you're making it ok to go further. Next you move up to wanting to post religious signs in government buildings. You make it ok to stop educating your kids by teaching them design theory. You make it ok to illegally start a war because god wants you to. You make it ok to keep people out of jobs because they don't believe in god. And much much more, right?

Then people are voting by religion and then we've got a theocracy. And I know the xtians think that's what they want, but it's really only while they're on top. What happens when a radical comes into power (as they always do) and starts making weird, restrictive laws? Within 10yrs women would probably not be allowed without being covered up. Then we do away with evolution in schools. Then you're not allowed to hold public office if you're not xtian. Then companies are allowed to use religion as criteria for whether you're qualified. Then you can be refused medical care based on religion. And it goes on and on.

So what is it causing these changes? Is it that people are basically good and they're just doing what's best for us? Or is it that people are basically selfish and evil and they've not got laws to back up what they've been dying to do? It's ridiculous and very scary how close to Pakistan we could become.

So yeah, maybe I'm a little cynical, but it's also not that far of a leap. Look at Canada even. Right now they're in the middle of a huge free speech crisis because the religious fucks are allowing people to be sued for offending their religion. IN CANADA!!! So yeah, it's not that far outside the realm of possibility that we could fall under such rule. And once that kinda shit gets going and is endorsed by the state, it's easy to take it one step further. And another. And another.

The funny thing is that while it's against the law for the US government to endorse a religion and have an official US religion, there's nothing like that at the state level. States have the right to have an official endorsed religion. And until the late 1800s, Massechusets had an official state religion. Scary huh?

OK, I'm just rambling now but I'm sticking to my guns. Religion doesn't make good people do bad things. It turns good people bad. But make no mistake... when they're doing those bad things in the name of religion they're no longer good people.

Big dildo up your ass.

Maps

A random, late-night thought: I was into maps as a kid. I recall one of my elementary classes having some extracurricular map instruction self-study courses available for extra credit, but you had to get your main work done first. I put an unusual effort into finishing my work so I could do the next map course.

I recall thinking that I had no way of telling if the maps were true. At the time I had not been to many of the mapped places. As I got older it was a comfort to travel around by plane and car and verify that the maps were true. I don't mean every road and every detail, but that the cities were where the maps said they were. I could see them from the air; I could navigate between them by car. I've driven in a 20-foot circle where 4 states meet. I've cruised the sea from Florida to Cozumel. I've stood at Pike's Peak and looked over the fruited plains. (That reminds me, I've also been to San Francisco.) I've driven alongside a few hundred miles of the Mississipi River. I've been into the Smoky Mountains. The maps were true.

I am not from Missouri, but sometimes you need to show me. I've had too many people testify with sincerity things I later found out to be complete bullshit. I'm not the type of person to do that, and it is hard for me to accept that others do it, but I've seen it repeatedly and know from experience that some people are simply full of shit. So don't testify to me about your dear and fluffy lord or show me a bullshit piece of cloth that covered him 2000 years ago or a popular book that has been translated and altered multiple times, isn't verifiable and contradicts itself as a matter of habit.

Your Own Personal Jesus, Fuck You

My thoughts on religion lately--although I'm not sure I've put it quite this way--are that religion is not actually a cohesive set of beliefs but a framework for an identity and self-entitlement. "I am Christian and can justify my actions through scripture/church peers/church elders." However the individual beliefs vary so much it's comical.

Christians--and I use Christians all the time because that's what I've grown up around and am surrounded by--seem to believe all sorts of crazy things that aren't shared beliefs. In particular I've had them describe tree fairies (remember that, Faithinate?), varying incarnations of angels (you'd think there'd be a standard definition of what an angel is), ghosts, etc. And they have differing beliefs on raising kids, accepting gays, and all sorts of other stuff.

It's hard to look at the world as cynically as SurferJesus looks at it, but the more I look the more the cynicism seems justified. Perhaps the most comforting thing about religion is that it accepts and forgives your flaws and sins if you pay mouth service (and tithe) to the church. It cleanses the guilt from the guilty without remedying the victim, and quite often it demonizes the victim for not accepting the sinner's cleansing. I think the three of us have seen examples of this closer than we want, and closer than I could have imagined just a few years ago.

No, I take that back. I had imagined the possibility before that the sinner had wronged the victim. Some questions had no satisfactory answers, and one possibility seemed to fit. When I was told the story I was not surprised. It's just that everyone else who knew about it kept quiet about it, deified the sinner and made the victim a pariah. Some great goddam Christians, eh? That sin fucked up at least two generations of a family, and the rest of the family praised the sinner and wondered why the vitcim was so crazy. Fuck you all, seriously, for allowing Christianity to celebrate a multi-year child rapist for 40+ years and leave those of us who finally say enough is enough to be the outcasts.

I think I was going somewhere else with the thread of thought that started this post, but now I am here, pissed off at the more prominent Christians in my life. And sometimes we wonder why so much anger shows through this blog. It's because I've seen too many Christians, Muslims and Jews near to me and far away use religion to excuse acting in ways universally perceived as evil when not blessed by or later excused by God (with or without the victims' consent). Fuck all of you.

Oh yeah, I think the point I was headed for is that each person has their own individual religion or set of beliefs rather than a cohesive shared religion. Perhaps the shared parts are the forgiveness. "God forgave me, really, so I'm all right now." And everybody's happy...except the family pariah who was raped by her father for years and her family. But it's her fault because she hasn't accepted that God forgave the sinner. Guess she didn't get the memoBible.

Deep-fried Goat's Nuts

Since PraiseNull brought up Dawkins I might as well go ahead and get this off my chest and see if I can articulate it well enough to not look like a huge asshole.

Dawkins always that it takes religion to make good people do bad things. I'm not so sure about that. One of the things I've had a problem with for a long time is how can you really be all that good of a person if anything can talk you into doing something that bad? Religion gives bad people an excuse to do what they really want to do. Of course it's not as simple as that, so I'll flesh this out a little.

We all know that there are nuts on both sides of the fence. You can find athiest nuts(salted nuts) just as you can find religious nuts(deep-fried goat's nuts). These aren't the ones we're talking about really though because they're so far out there it doesn't matter what's happening or who they are because they'll always be nuts. Oh no, it's the middle of the road religious crazies I'm talking about here. The ones who look like you and me, and even to a degree talk like you and me, but they're definitely NOT you or me.

These are the people who think it's ok to tell a child that he's going to hell because he saw his aunt's tit when she came out of the bathroom. Or who are beating their kids because their grandma died on the fucking toilet and the parents left her there because god's gonna bring her back and the kids don't believe enough. The kids get beaten whenever the body smells because it's their disbelief (true news story, I swear). Or who have some guy fired from his job and now he can't feed his family because he doesn't believe in god. These people aren't out physically killing people, but they're far worse. Killing someone is a single act that ends a life, but it doesn't effect the public in general. And it takes a lot more planning and is harder to do in mass numbers. But fucking up somebody's life, well shit, you could do that several times and day and it's not only a lot easier, it's legal so you can be perfectly open about it.

These people who do these things think so little of human life that their victims are nothing to them. Do you really think they look at us as people? No, they look at us like ants or animals who just get in their way and need to be controlled. The big question though is why do they do these things? Do they really want to make us better? Do they just want to rule us so they can show everybody how much better they are than us? No, that's not even close.

The reason these people do these really mean things is because we have laws and they can't legally kill us anymore. Y, go ahead, I know what you're thinking. We've come a long way as a society and xtians don't really wanna kill us anymore. I'm afraid to say that's just a little naive. Listen to the way so many of these guys discuss god when you bring it up. It really doesn't take long for xtians to get really really upset. And I mean really really upset. They hate having to explain their god, and to justify their religion. Do you really think religion would have spread like it did if they weren't allowed to kill anyone who didn't believe? If logic and reason ruled there wouldn't be any religion today because nobody would have bought into the bullshit. It doesn't stand up to the simplest of tests.
But that's not what this is about.

Look guys, it's like this. If someone shows you who they are, believe it. And that's the problem we as athiests and as a society have. We refuse to believe what people are telling us about themselves. Sure, if we had a complete theocracy in America there wouldn't be religious killing right away. It would take a while. It might even take a couple decades for religious killings to be sanctioned by the state. But if you doubt anything I'm saying, then just look at the middle east. Look at Pakistan. People are all the same. We're not anymore moral than they are and our religion isn't any better than theirs. If people in America were given religious freedom to really practice the way the bible says, I guarantee you that you'd see a switch to the Old Testament again. Right now they're all leaning towards the New Testament, but that would change.

So if you can look past basic human compassion. If you can look past human suffering. If you can ignore a starving family. If you can overlook all of these things because your bible tells you to, then no, you're not a good person. You're an evil motherfucker who's really only being kept in check by the law. But given your teeth you would bite. Humans are all the same. That's one thing that the equal rights movement has taught us. So if you want us to not be bigots and treat everyone the same because deep down we're all the same people, then you have to accept the argument that any theocracy is just Pakistan waiting to happen.

Religion is nothing but justification for doing what you really wanna do to begin with. How can you honestly call yourself a good person when you allow something to turn off your compassion and emotions to real people? Hell, just a few yrs ago I was completely fucked over by a guy at work who claimed to a mega-xtian. As a result I got fired for something I like totally didn't do. He fucked me and he fucked my family. It's a good thing I'm good at what I do and I wasn't out of work long at all. But there's no way he could've known I wouldn't be unemployed long. And the thing is, he seemed like a nice enough guy. We hung out, we talked, we joked, etc. But when the chips were down, he fucked me. And he didn't lose a second's sleep over it. So Mike, here's to you, you xtian fuckshit motherfucker. Go fuck yourself. And I DO wish you a blessed day. I wish you all the god you can muster because I know what god is like. So the last laugh will be mine.

Faithinate has a friend right now who's really upset about the religious discussions they've been having online lately. Her friend is telling her what kind of person she is, but Faithinate still refuses to believe it. She's hoping she wrong. Trust me dear, your friend is exactly who she's telling you she is, so believe her.

I had more but I can't remember right now.

OK, take care guys...
Big dildo up your ass.

The Jesus Fallacy?

I'm reading Richard Dawkins' The Extended Phenotype. As far as I know it has nothing to do with atheism or religion, but a possible atheist insight hit me while reading it.

In arguing a particular point on genetic adaptation he brought up what he called the Concorde Fallacy, that sometimes a choice is made not on the results that may follow but on the effort put into the project so far. His biological example was of some sort of wasp that makes a burrow and collects katydids to feed the larvae. Sometimes two wasps will collect katydids in the same burrow and then fight over who keeps the burrow. Research bore out to his surprise that the wasps will fight with effort related to how many katydids they themselves collected rather than how many katydids in total are to be won which is the logical value of the burrow.

This brought into focus some thoughts I've had recently about Faithinate's atheism Facebook debates. It occurs to me that atheists in general--and certainly us three on this blog in particular--can and do question beliefs, value and even ourselves, and I sometimes wonder if that's why we're atheists: we question belief and come up with no compelling answers. The same arguments to be made for Christianity or other religions are no more compelling than things generally regarded as absurd such as alien abductions, UFO's, witchcraft, etc.

Sometimes I read accounts of Christians questioning their beliefs and then becoming rededicated. I don't see their compelling reasons, but I wonder if it's analogous to the Concorde Fallacy? Have they put so much time and effort into their beliefs that it's not worth dumping in the face of dubious evidence for and plenty against?

Faithinate recently brought up the question again of whether atheists are smarter in general than religious people. I don't want to believe that, and it's rather conceited, but then again we three seem to be relatively rare in the ability to objectively look at ourselves and fundamentally change if we deem necessary or desirable. Objectively the argument for Jesus over Horus or Ra or a secret government collaboration with space aliens are equally compelling--that is to say, hardly at all. Only personal testimony and dubious real evidence is available to show for them. That says a lot to me, but somehow the Christians we talk to can believe apparently unfailingly in God and Jesus while dismissing Wicca, Scientology, UFO's and hollow Earth "theory".