Build a Better Jesus

I've been meaning to blog again forever and my backlog of topics is getting as long as my Johnson. OK, that's a lie. I'd actually have to not blog for a few more months for that to happen.

Anyway, I was in the car with my daughter the other day and a story came on the radio that some parents were enraged because their daughter was suspended from school for carrying gang symbols. What was the gang symbol you ask? She brought a rosary through the metal detector.

Now, I know what you're thinking, but it's actually not without merit. It seems as though gangs are carrying rosaries and coordinating them with the rest of their gangware. So the rosary actually has become a gang symbol. And if you ask me it's always been a gang symbol. Look back to Europe when the catholics hired killers to go out and kill every protestant on the protestant side of paris. In the neighborhood of 5,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered in their homes and in the street. These guys just kicked in doors and killed everyone they saw in the house or anyone out walking in the streets. Even infants were kabobbed. So as far as I'm concerned the rosary has always been a gang symbol. Anyway though...

OK, so that being said, it got me thinking to that recent debacle with the communion cracker being stolen. You all know which one I'm talking about. And I still can't see why that nasty little dry cracker is prized so highly. If it's the blessing that's important, then can't you just bless a better cracker? There are so many really yummy crackers out there. So if the blessed cracker is actually the body of christ and they actually believe that bullshit, then couldn't you build a much better christ if you had a better cracker?

I would love to eat me a little rosemary and cracked pepper jesus. Or maybe some whole wheat and sesame jesus would do the trick.

Peoples is Peoples

The politics of religion/atheism aren't as simple as, say, the politics of the ocean. Either THAT guy is going to eat you, or he isn't (in which case you might eat him). But I haven't figured out exactly where to stand with respect to the others in the a/theo sea.

On the one hand, "some of my best friends are..." whatever: Catholic, pagan, Christian. And they're people. Clearly very good and wonderful and fiercely intelligent people, to be friends with me. And I've been around and in faith. I know the good that can come of it, the charity, the comfort and community and so on. You can be a Christian and make your life better because of it. I think, I THINK I believe that.

And on the other hand, religion is ludicrous. It's an antique. It's mindbogglingly, horrifically stupid and bad, and causes bad things. It's not just the headlines - pedophile priests, kidnapped crackers, exorcisms - it's also the day to day. You can't convince me that teaching children and adults to ignore evidence in favor of something that makes you feel better about death...is a GOOD IDEA. It's not a positive life skill, not something I'm gonna slip in there along with how the washing machine works, or that you shouldn't get married before you finish college.

So. Religious people are people. And I love and respect some of them. And they're following a broken model which causes poor thinking and a host of other problems, even on the low end of the spectrum. How the fuck do you resolve that?

I Like Jesus with Cheese

This is a post I've bee meaning to write for quite some time. In fact I've been planning this since Fathinate first told me that this happened. So what am I talking about... why the ficious Catholic cracker kidnapping incident, of course!!

So if you're unsure of which incident I'm speaking, here are some links with which you can amuse yourself.

http://www.wftv.com/news/16798008/detail.html

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/fight_back_against_bill_donohu.php

OK, now if those don't whet your whistle then nothing will.

Now onto business. I think PZ (2nd link) said it best when he called these people a bunch of fuckwits. This issue is not only what's wrong religion, it's what's wrong with this country and this world. If you assholes honestly think that a thumbnail sized store-bought cracker is more important than a human life then you really need to be kicked off this planet.
I'm getting so fucking sick of these exclusionary groups that are nothing more than cheap excuses for hate.

I'm actually mostly at a loss for words. I never thought I would ever have to tell someone that a cracker doesn't actually turn into flesh.

I was actually talking to a Catholic friend of mine today who was in shock as well. He thinks it's common sense that the whole communion thing is merely symbolic. And I'm sure when pressed behind closed doors, even the Pope would agree that it's all bullshit. He doesn't honestly believe that eating crackers he waved his hand over will turn into actual flesh. And besides... that's just fucking gross. I used to take communion all the time and I stopped because I kept getting the foreskin. Oh wait... Jesus was a Jew... I guess it was nutsack. Anyway, the problem is you never know which portion of the flesh is in your cracker. Did you get the elbow, the eyeball, the intestine, a ball of hair, the inside of the colon, a wad of semen, or... well you get the idea.

I'm making light of this very serious situation because it's just so ridiculous I feel the need to fight ridiculous fire with ridiculous fire.

And now I'm gonna put on my monster face.
Listen you ignorant asswipes... I don't care what stupid shit you wanna feed your kids, but don't force it on the rest of us. If you're so in love with your goddamn crackers then go buy a whole stack of them and build a statue of Jesus. If you're going to kill someone over a single cracker, or even over an entire truckload of crackers then you're seriously fucked in the head.
And just because you believe that a that a guy kidnapped a cracker because 2 thousand years ago a snake talked a woman into eating an apple, that doesn't mean that we have to respect it. And it doesn't mean we have to live by it, or tiptoe around it, or lose our jobs or our lives over it. Keep your fairies to yourself.

Because we tolerate your religion doesn't mean we have to tolerate everything you do. I tolerate my children playing loudly while I'm trying to work, but that doesn't mean I have to tolerate them blowing airhorns in my ear. You religious nuts have had it too good for too long. Gone are the days when you can say believe in god or I'll kill you. Now you have to ask nicely and convince us that you're not completely full of shit and it's a lot harder. Only you slip into your old tricks now and then by fucking with some innocent guy over a fucking cracker or by having a policeman fired for marching in a gay pride parade. These are your new crusades. You're still nothing but bullies and murders only you're not allowed to actually kill anybody anymore. But given half a chance, you'd do it in a heartbeat. Well, we're tired of it and we're not going to put up with it anymore. The right to practice religion and to worship dry, shitty crackers is protected in this country. And so is NOT eating dry, shitty crackers and speaking in tongues. We have every bit as much right to not believe in fairies as you have to believe in them, and YES, having someone fired for that belief or killing someone for it is just the same as them having you fired for your beliefs.

All you assholes are intolerant; you're bullies; you're exclusionary; you're bigots; and your actions are completely unacceptable.

We're done putting up with your childish antics. Come into the adult world and join the human race.

AOTD: The Latest Religion Poll

First a side note: I first read this in my local printed paper, and then came home and searched on the paper's site so I could quote more easily. They're not exactly the same story (the printed article is the Boston Globe version, and the online is the AP article). What interests me is the spin, indicated here just by headline, each version of the story puts on it:

• Americans see truth in a range of faiths, massive study finds (Boston Globe website)
  
• Religious Americans: My faith isn't the only way (AP article online and local paper website)
  
• Majority of Americans are believers, poll says (printed local paper)
  

Um, different emphasis much? Not that there's necessarily anything WRONG with that, it's just....interesting. "Yay tolerance!" "Yay tolerance!" "There are lots of us!"

The survey was conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Pew pew pew.

The findings...can either be taken as a positive sign of growing religious tolerance, or disturbing evidence that Americans dismiss or don't know fundamental teachings of their own faiths.

The numbers:

• 92 percent of Americans believe in God
  
• 74 percent believe in life after death
  
• one in four Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants and Orthodox Christians expressed some doubts about God's existence, as did six in ten Jews
  
  
  
• 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life
  
• 63 percent say their respective scriptures are the word of God
  
• 68 percent said there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religion
  
  
  
• 21 percent of self-identified atheists said they believe in God or a universal spirit, with 8 percent "absolutely certain" of it
  

Hm.

Is anything too ridiculous?

Do you think there is ever a point where a devout Christian says to him or herself, "Now wait a minute...this is too weird even for me. WTF?"

Having said that, I give you this post from "Debunking Christianity", with this most wonderful of all possible phrases:

In the end, it was Charroux who “won” the battle of the foreskins...

But seriously. At any point, over these hundreds of years, did anyone say "Oh hang on, this is fucking silly. Christ's leftover penis skin?" Hell, I can't even get my kids' ultrasound photos into their (blank) baby books...I'm having a hard time believing Mary preserved her son's foreskin and passed it on to others.

That aside, I go back to the main point. You're trying to discover the one true FORESKIN? What kind of blessing do you think would be conferred on you if you were to visit the shrine of such a relic and kneel there? (Sorry, kneeling at a foreskin, way too easy....)

I wonder if we could find the one true lock of Jesus' hair from his first haircut. I have snippets from my daughter and son...I bet Mary slipped a few hairs into a baggie. Or maybe a little vial of blood, like that actor (was that Billy Bob Thorton that did that?) Or a jar of toenail clippings like the kid on American Idol. It would really benefit the Christian (especially Catholic) world most if Jesus was some kind of creepy obsessive-compulsive bio-packrat, with stone jars filled with tears, sweat, ballhairs, whatever...

Christ, guys, get a grip. His FORESKIN?

Hail Allah, Fulla Grace...

This was too good to pass up: Vatican currently in negotiations to build first church in Saudi Arabia. No, really

The opening sentence about floored me: "Interfaith dialogue has become an important exercise in finding the right words to overcome both extreme violence and ordinary misunderstanding." Yes, yes, that seems likely...