Guy in a Bear Suit

next step - the american taliban

ok, i have a good idea about how politicians attempt to win elections.  they appeal directly to the group(s) that they know will vote for them by bringing up an issue that will move those people to the polls. 

in 2004, the ohio republican party put an anti gay marriage bill on the agenda, knowing that religious nutters would show up to vote for that, and hey, while you're here, how's about checking that lil' ole box for dubya.  it worked, and bush took a key swing state by around 100K votes.

so with that in mind, i have no idea if rick perry really believes what the people in the following video are saying, but it's scary as fuck to think that he could end up as our president while having these people as his spiritual advisers.  these are all groups that are taking part in his prayer rally in august. 

one thing that i don't understand at all is how some christians want to forcefeed their beliefs on the rest of us and won't accept anything else.  how is that different than what the taliban did in afghanistan?  obviously we're not at the stage of stoning people to death, but it's the same path, just further down.  our country was founded on the tenet of freedom of religion.  that also means freedom from religion. 

so have yourself a look & listen to this video.  some moments that i particularly enjoyed were:

• 0:55 - oprah is the whore of babylon (actually, i might agree with this one)
• 1:30 - hitler was a hunter for jesus, weeding out all the bad jews who didn't want to live in jerusalem
• 2:04 - when you die, god will have a copy of your voting record and will want to have a word or two with you.  "so tell me again why you voted for the bond measure to build a new minor league baseball stadium?  i believe i made it clear that i wanted the toledo mud hens to stay put".

 be afraid.  be very afraid.

 

jesus will only give me as much as i can handle

i can't stand it when people say this.  or really i can't stand it when they actually believe it.

pick up your local newspaper (i'm dating myself, no one besides me reads the paper anymore) on any given day and you'll find lots of examples of people that were bitten off more than they could chew by the almighty choppers of the lord.

take the case of rev. fred winters, who was shot in his church while in the middle of a sermon.  he even used his bible as a shield.  was he given only as much as he could handle?  said god, when reached for comment, "guess i overestimated my book's ability to stop bullets.  i really thought he would handle that".

or what about greg mckendry of knoxville, TN.  he was an usher in a church where he was shot by a gunman.  your thoughts on that, god?  "oops.  mighta given greg a touch more than he could handle, what with the bullets and all".

care to ask the opinions of the nine brazillian church-goers that were killed when the roof of their church collapsed?  god didn't tell me, but i'm almost positive having a roof dropped on your fucking head at the precise moment you're praising someone is more than you should be expected to handle.

now don't get all in a huff and get me wrong; these are horrible, horrible acts.  even though i'm not religious, i think one should be able to worship without worrying about being shot.  my point here is not that bad things happen to people in church, although sometimes they do, just like anywhere else.  my point is that saying, "god only gives us as much as we can handle" is one of the more ridiculous notions i've ever heard. 

people tend to use it when they're facing a minor setback and they're trying to put a positive spin on it.  ok, i get that.  the power of positive thinking and all that, even if the source of the positivity is the magic man in the sky who will fix all our boo-boos if only we ask.

but the reason it fails is because no one ever says it in regard to someone who died.  "man, jesus sure gave old jimmy a fuck ton more than he could handle when he made that pit bull rip his throat out".  if you believe in god, guess what?  sometimes he's gonna give people more than they can handle. 

and of course when he does, it will have been "his will", which is the catch-all for all of the atrocious things that happen to people on earth.  choke on a fishbone and die on your kitchen floor?  his will.  lose your job for looking at tranny porn on a work computer?  he's only giving you something he knows you can handle. 

to me, when someone speaks of "god's will" in response to a tragedy, it's the religious equivalent of shrugging your shoulders and going, "fuck if i know". 

but i'm sure reading this rant is only as much as you can handle.

is christian morality psychopathic?

"if you wake up tomorrow morning, thinking that saying a few latin words over your pancakes is gonna turn them into the body of elvis presley, you have lost your mind.  but if you think more or less the same thing about a cracker and the body of jesus, you're just a catholic". 

 

if you are reading this, you were not raptured

well saturday came and went without earthquakes and all the zombies crawling out of their graves all thriller style before ascending to the heavens.  (as an aside, why is heaven assumed to be "up" regardless of where you are on earth?  let's say heaven is directly above the US.  if someone died in china, would they first have to go around the world before going up?)

the whole thing got me thinking though.  this crazy old dude did some math based on that inerrant word of god called the bible and came up with may 21, 2011 as the end of the world and everyone outside of his church laughed and made jokes.  many of these jokers were christian, distancing themselves from such an absurd notion. 

but if you're christian, you believe that the rapture will indeed happen one day.  the bible lays it out.  so why was may 21 scoffed at?  why couldn't it happen that day?  is it because the bible says that we won't know the day?  other than that, there is nothing crazy about what this dude was predicting if you're a christian. 

i wonder how he felt sunday morning.  i wonder how people who gave him money felt sunday morning.  i wonder how the world feels, knowing that randy "macho man" savage so loved the world that he gave his life to save us all.

atheist eve

 

study about religion is not shocking in the least

this study showed that atheists and agnostics scored highest on a quiz about the bible, world religions, and what the US constitution says about religion in public life.

and the result that amuses me the most?  bible-belt southerners scored the lowest.  ha bloody ha.  not sure if there was a question about jesus riding a dinosaur, but i bet they'd miss that one if there was.

the reason one of the researchers gave for the non believers doing so well is that they (we) had thought more about the subject.  funny how those that thought less about it (christians) are generally the biggest proponents and also those most likely to judge others based on what they presume jesus wants them to do.  "it's in the bible, y'all, jesus hates faggots".

so study up, southern baptists, you might one day catch up to the godless heathens.

jesus loves me, this i know

if you're the kind of fella or gal that gets upset or just plain bored when i rant against religion, then go ahead and keep moving; nothing to see here.

otherwise, allow me to vent a bit.

there are a fuck-ton of quizzes, polls, and so forth on facebook.  and by the way, no, i don't want to play any stupid fucking dungeons & dragons or mafia shit, so quit asking me to help you slay the big scary dragon or whack out a rat.  anyway i ignore 99% of these quizzes & polls.  however, i've seen one lately that makes my brain bleed.  it says, "what do you trust more - the bible or science". 

i've seen quite a few people i know choose the bible.  ok, something like 75% of the US is christian (and probably 112% of Frisco, TX since super holy born-agains & promise keepers count twice), so i shouldn't have been surprised, but......fuck.   are you people fucking retarded?  like simple jack full retard?  i'm just at a complete loss.  i can't for the life of me understand how this is a legitimate debate among educated people.  even if you are a christan, how can you ignore science and say that a book written thousands of years ago by a bunch of goat herders is a more accurate textbook?  you honestly don't think that science has made any more progress in explaining how shit works beyond what people knew back when they still thought the earth was flat and that women shouldn't talk?  ok, so they got some things right.

imagine your car breaks down.  two different mechanics offer to help fix it.  the first guy lifts up the hood and proceeds to show you first hand how a motor works.  he's explaining how cylinders work, demonstrating fuel injectors and waxing poetic about pistons, oil pumps, and catalytic converters.  he clearly knows the ins and outs of an engine and can explain how it all comes together.  he's pretty sure that he can fix your car.

the second dude refuses to open the hood.  he says a magical being that runs the car lives in there.  if this being wants the car to work, it will work.  if the car doesn't work, well, the magic man inside the car just didn't want you to drive that day.  furthermore this magic man, and thus the car itself, works in mysterious ways and you couldn't possibly understand even if dude #2 were to open the hood and show you.  he advises you to hope really hard that the car will work and if the magic man intends it to be so, it will. 

which would you trust more to get you back on the road?  wait, first pretend you're not a drooling mindless idiot and then make your decision.

point the second.

i heard this story on a sports radio show today.  basically paris hilton paid a shaman named "pepe the witch" to put a hex on soccer star cristiano ronaldo.  ronaldo, believing in that shit, countered with his own sorcerer named "Fafa" to remove the hex. 

of course, all the "educated" people had a good laugh at all that voodoo and black magic stuff.  but really, how is any of that different than using prayer beads or gathering with other like-minded people to bow your heads and fold your hands and beg an all-knowing man in the sky to give you what you want?  it's the same thing people. 

if ronaldo breaks his leg tomorrow, pepe the witch is going to look like a fucking wizard.  but guess what, he plays fucking soccer.  people sometimes get hurt doing that. 

if your great aunt sally recovers from vagina cancer, it's because people sometimes get fucking better, not because jesus did his little bewitched nose wiggle thing and took the cancer out. 

and i'll close with one other question that i've never been given a good answer to.  if god has a plan, and everything always follows that plan, why pray?  if god wants it done, it will happen.  if he doesn't, it won't.  your prayer doesn't do a goddamn thing.  it's just like "a few good men" dude.  if jessup gave an order not to hurt santiago and his orders are always followed, why did santiago need to be transferred? 

save your breath when prayer time comes and let god handle the code reds.

jesus the prankster

made me LOLZ:

an early start on hell

there is no hell.  buuuuut, if there is, i will most certainly go there for my 100% lack of belief in god.

not sure why, but last night i remembered this story from either 4th or 5th grade that shows how far back my sacrilege goes. 

we were in music class, singing this song called "hand me down".  it goes, "hand me down, hand me down, hand me down my silver trumpet, gabriel".

well i started singing it like this, "hand it down, hand it down, hand it down you little bastard, gabriel". 

first off, what kind of 4th or 5th grader talks like that?  oh well.  i guess lots of my current issues go way back.

the girl next to me, a girl that i'm still occasionally in touch with named gaylen, leans over and asks me, "do you know who gabriel is?"

of course i didn't. 

she says, "he's an angel". 

oops.  i still believed in god back then, so i stopped singing my version immediately.

but i still bet gabriel is a bastard.

once again with my man J.C

while sitting in traffic the other day, i saw the latest bumper sticker to annoy the fuck out of me.  this one read "1 cross + 3 nails = 4gvn".

of course, there was eye rolling aplenty in my car.

i googled it when i got to work and found some girl's blog where, upon seeing the same sticker, the scottish guy she was riding with said, "what the fook is a gvn".  that made me laugh.

i won't get into the misconceptions about crucifiction that many christians have (e.g., they didn't typically go through the hands, but instead the wrists), but i wanted to address this bumper sticker (of course).

i just don't get the symbol of the cross.  even if you don't believe in god, as i don't, you probably accept that a radical middle eastern guy named jesus was crucified about 2,000 years ago and quite a few people witnessed it.  crucifiction is a fucking terrible, terrible way to die, not to mention the torturing they did beforehand.  go rent "the passion of the christ" if you don't believe me. 

my point is, don't you think jesus has some pretty bad associations with that particular time and symbol?  i can picture the following scene taking place in heaven:

INT.  GOD'S OFFICE IN HEAVEN. 

Jesus Christ lurks outside, nervously debating whether or not to knock.

JC: (knocking at god's door)  hey, dad?  dad?  got a second?

god:  of course, my son.  i was just allowing some fucker to walk into a church and kill the pastor who tried to use the bible as a shield.

JC:  yeah, that's pretty funny.  i'm sure our followers will chalk that one up to your will.

god:  i know, i know.  totally wasn't my idea, but what am i gonna do, waste the effort to stop just one guy from getting shot?  i have bigger fish to fry.

JC:  i know.  listen, um, dad, i was just walking around the united states again and..

god:  (lecturing tone)  jesus....

JC:  no, i was dressed like a homeless guy again.  no way anyone recognized me.  i even shit and pissed myself to be more authentic.

god:  go on.

JC:  fyi, people who claim to be our followers are really fucking mean to the homeless.  might wanna follow that more closely.

god:  noted.

JC:  anyway, you really wouldn't believe how many crosses are down there these days.  it's like the cross store had a going out of business sale.  you can't swing a leper's diseased dick without hitting a cross.

god:  well that's good.  people still have our message after all these years.

JC:  well dad, that's why i'm here.  can we talk about that whole dying on the cross thing again?

god:  jesus, we've been over this.

JC:  i just can't wrap my head around it.  just let me talk it out, ok?

god:  (relenting with a sigh) fine.

JC:  ok, so you're all-powerful, no?

god:  bet your robe-wearing ass i am.  i said, 'let there be light' and do you know what happened?

JC:  yes dad.  there was light.

god:  motherfucking light.  and that was just day one.

JC:  dad, back to me.

god:  ok.

JC:  so we've established that whatever you say or wish will come into existance.

god:  damn skippy.

JC:  so tell me again why i had to get the ever loving fuck tortured out of me.

god:  so that mankind could be saved by your blood.

JC:  see, that's where it goes off the rails, dad.

god:  how so?

JC:  if you have to power to will fucking light into existance, why couldn't you just proclaim, 'let them be saved'?  i mean, i could still have gone down there and preached and all that jazz, but i just find that whole goddamn, er, sorry, that whole damn ending unecessary, given your power.

god:  (looking thoughtfully at jesus)  hmm.  that's a valid point.  i could have done that.  (pause) aw fuck it, i guess i  might as well tell you.

JC:  tell me what?

god:  it was showmanship.

JC:  come again?

god:  showmanship.  if you had gone down there, preached, walked around in your filthy sandals, and then been all 'ok, dad says you're all saved now, thanks and goodnight, be sure and tip the waitstaff', nobody would have remembered that shit.

JC:  aw, fuck's sake.  i went through that for showmanship?

god:  look, i'm sorry, but when they were whipping the shit out of you and pushing those fucking thorns in your head and rigging you up to the cross, i mean, you can't buy that kind of publicity.  you gotta leave them wanting more.   

JC:  dad, it fucking hurt.  you ever get whipped by one of those cat o' nine tails?

god:  can't say that i have.

JC:  well maybe after you're done with the floods and all that, i'll show you what it's like.

god:  don't get lippy, jesus.  that was a long time ago.

JC:  fine.  it just doesn't help that every time i turn around, i'm staring a fucking cross in the face.  couldn't they pick a better symbol?  i mean, that was like a couple of days.  i was down there for 33 years.  let's make them switch to a nice sandal or robe or even a lovely beard.  i have a really nice beard.

god:  you have a fine beard.  but the PR firm i hired insisted that the cross works the best.  you should have seen how it tested.  off the charts.

JC:  don't these people realize that coming to me with a cross around their neck is like sending a postcard from auschwitz to a synagogue?  hey, guys, let's relive the torture, starvation, and ultimate gassing to death.  the weather is great here in auschwitz.  people should just be more fucking sensitive.

god:  well that's a good point.  but there's really nothing we can do about it now, is there.

JC:  i guess not. 

god:  anything else you need today, son?

JC:  naw, i'm late for a handball game with sinatra.

god:  sinatra?  he's not up here, is he?

JC:  (laughing) fuck no!  but this is the loser's bracket of the tourney and it's being held down there. 

god:  well good luck, son.

JC:  thanks dad.  i should be able to beat him in mysterious ways.

FADE OUT