God was a Marine

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AOTD: Another Fark Headline

This time, starring us!

Atheists outraged that "Spore" has religion in it. Then again, is there anything that doesn't outrage atheists?

You know, I don't even care about the article itself, I just like the headline. How's that for lazy online journalism?

My New Slingshot

I know someone who is a diehard xtian. And I recently overheard him talking to someone on the phone at work and he was saying what a blessed life he has. He's been praying all year for a solution to his problems because he's had a lot of health issues, he's been trying to get custody of his sons, and he's had severe financial problems and almost had his house foreclosed. And God finally answered his prayers by allowing his birth mother to get in contact with him. He's been looking for her for years and she contacted him from the internet. It's just amazing how god always knows what you need even when you don't quite know yourself. These are all his words, not mine.

And that really got me thinking... isn't that just like god? You ask for a car so you can get to and from work to feed your family and he gives you a slingshot. The only way this would have played out to be anything close to what he asked for is if his long-lost mother were a family attorney who specialized in getting custody for fathers. Or maybe if she were a specialized physician who could fix him. But NOOOO... god just gives you a plain old slingshot. And what's worse, he even makes you go out and find the perfect piece of wood, rubberband, and leather patch. He then makes you put it together and then takes all the credit when you kill a squirrel to feed your family of 6.

Rainbows

Perhaps my schooling was better than this lady's, but I recall learning about refraction in middle school science class, and perhaps earlier grades. The link is to a video of a lady videotaping her water sprinkler and assuming nefarious reasons there is a rainbow in the mist since she only recalls rainbows around the sun and moon (!) 20 years ago.

But that reminded me of a Christian story about rainbows that perhaps a grandmother told me. A rainbow, the story goes, is a sign of God's promise not to repeat the floods of Noah's Ark fame.

I wonder which explanation of a rainbow is more useful? I wonder which the lady in the video heard?

Torture is torture.

I've only got one thing to say to you asswipes in the Whitehouse who think waterboarding isn't torture.

Simulated drowning is to torture what simulated rape is to rape.

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?

Religion and Punishment

I saw this excellent show on punishment this weekend and it sparked a couple things. I may end up spreading this out into more than one post just to keep the length down.

One of the things that strikes me is that when the Romans used to kill people for sport it was the xtians who stopped them. Apparently they didn't approve of cruelty and killing... unless it was for virtuous reasons like religion. Funny isn't it? How bad do you have to be when the xtians are the voice of mercy and reason? So they were able to bring about chance in the Roman Empire but only to bring about even worse tortures and cruelty when it suited their own purpose.

And that brings me to the Inquisition. I, like others, thought that the Inquisition was somewhat of a mass torturing that clouded all of Europe. Of course, that's wrong. As it turns out since the fall of the Roman Empire there really wasn't a new set of laws solidified yet so everyone was pretty much on their own for all but the big stuff. The Roman church started a purification where they wanted everyone to be catholic and they started this massive campaign to convert everyone. They were fairly merciful about it and only really used violence when they needed to. It was Spain and Spain alone who asked to be able to run their own Inquisition to which Rome agreed thinking that they would run it as they had. They were wrong. Spain went off on their own and started the Spanish Inquisition which was the horrifying tale we've all come to know. But from what I gather, it was only in Spain. These trials were there mainly to get someone to confess to heresy. There was no way out. You either get tortured and ultimatly die, or you get tortured and confess in which case depending on the circumstances they may only torture you a little bit more and then let you live.

And of course the big question I always had was why would anyone allow themselves to be tortured until they died? Why not just stop it early on and save yourself the agony? The answer to that is simple and was unknown to me until today. The inquisitors made it very clear that if their confession was a lie then they'd live forever in hell and burn for all eternity. So there's real motivation to try to hold out. But again, the system wasn't designed to get to the truth. It was designed to torture you at any cost. There was just no way you could win. You either lie to save yourself the pain and burn in hell, or you hold out and ultimately end up dying a savage death. And these guys were creative as hell. Some of the devices they had would make any adult have nightmares. To me one of the most freightening was the pear. It was a thing they put in your mouth and they expanded it slowly. As it expanded it opened your mouth until it was opening so wide it began to break. The hinges were destroyed and the jaw itself was broken beyond repair. The victim could never close his mouth again. I don't remember if they said why, but this was all centered around making sure the victims didn't bleed. For some reason that was a stipulation.

However, the biggest example of xtian idiocy was obviously during the witch trials. Again, the witch trials weren't meant to find the truth. They were meant to be able to torture women with no hope of being found innocent. One of the fucking insane tests was they would weigh a woman against a bible. And if she was heavier than a bible she was obviously a witch. Seriously? Isn't that fucking ignorant even for you dumb fucks? There's not even a baby that's just been born that doesn't outweigh a bible. It's fucking ridiculous even for them. That's like saying ok, we'll hold her head under water for 30secs and if she has to take a breath when we pull it out, then she's a witch. Or... we'll shoot her in the face with this rifle. If she bleeds and dies, we'll know we made a mistake. They actually had one similar to that with water ya know.

Another witch test they had was looking for moles. If she had a mole they didn't like they'd proclaim her a witch. And of course, the famous bleed test. They poked her with a needle and if she didn't bleed, she was a witch. Unfortunately, sometimes it took hundreds of pokes to find a spot that didn't bleed because the spot could be anywhere. And some used retractable needles so they could proclaim her a witch when she didn't bleed because it never pierced her skin. Yeah, that's really fair. So what you're telling me is that you're not actually concerned with looking for witches and ridding your town of evil. You're really just looking for an excuse to torture and murder women. And all of this was done in the guise of religion.

And I say again... now that they're not allowed to KILL people who don't believe what they do, they're having to actually justify themselves and their religion. They did get one thing right. There will be a day of reckoning. Only it'll be a day of reckoning with science when they finally have to admit that god was made-up to keep control over the masses.

That is, if this country doesn't turn into a theocracy first.