Guy in a Bear Suit

a chip off the old heathen

i know i haven't posted anything in a while, because mainly, who gives a shit.  but this happened last weekend and i felt like i wanted to share it.  i've never been as proud of my little free thinker.

my oldest boy (9 yrs) and i were leaving his baseball practice last sunday evening when we passed another team that was finishing their practice as well.  they had all taken a knee around the coach.  as we passed by, they bowed their heads and were obviously praying.  the conversation went pretty much as follows:

K (him):  what are they doing?

M (me):  they're praying

K:  oh.

M:  do you know what that is?

K:  yeah.  sorta like telling god what you want from him.  like a christmas list, only not at christmas. 

M:  (laughing) yeah, kind of like that.   people also thank god for things they have too.

K:  what if the pirates (his team) prayed after practice?

M:  would you want to do that?

K:  no. 

M:  why not?

K:  cause there's no such thing as god.

M:  why do you think that?  (he knows i don't believe, by the way, but we haven't gone too far into the reasons why)

K:  cause there's no proof.  

M:  like what would be proof?

K:  well if someone saw him or heard him or if he did something that you could actually see.

M:  some people claim he does do those things when they pray to him.

K:  it just seems like prayers don't work much.  and if something good happens, how do you know if it was cause of prayer or just cause it was gonna happen anyway, like when people get sick and then get better without praying?  and there's lots of times where people get sick and pray and they still don't get better.

M:  well that's a good point.

K:  some kids at school say that the bible is proof.

M:  why are you talking about religion at school?  is it in class? (i'll admit my fucking antennae went sky high at this point)

K:  no, just kids talk about it sometimes.

M:  ok, well what do you think about the bible being proof.

K:  it doesn't work.

M:  what do you mean?

K:  (struggling for the right words)  well a thing can't be the proof of the same thing.

M:  (knowing EX-FUCKING-ACTLY what he meant, but wanting him to reason it out verbally)  how do you mean?

K:  like......well...(wheels turning in his head)......i couldn't say that the spongebob cartoon is proof that spongebob is real.

M:  (positively beaming at this point).  you're right.  that's called circular logic.  you can't say that a book or something that makes a claim can be proof of that claim.  

K:  ok.  i didn't know how to tell the kids that.

M:  what did you tell them?

K:  i didn't say anything.  i stayed quiet.

M:  (good thinking - this is fucking texas)  probably a good idea, buddy.  but that is slowly changing.

K:  what is changing?

M:  the % of people who don't believe is growing and the % of people who do is shrinking.  eventually people won't have to worry about admitting they don't believe.  maybe by the time your kids are grownups.

(silence for a while.  i swear i could actually hear the gears in his head processing all this)

K:  so what if the pirates prayed after practice?

M:  and you didn't want to pray?

K:  yeah

M:  i guess i'd say something to the coaches about it being inappropriate in a public league.

K:  what's a public league?

M:  not a church league.

K:  what if they still made me pray?

M:  no one can make you pray.  and if they tried, i'd yank you off that team really quickly.

K:  that would never happen though.

M:  you're right, not on this team.

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at this point i felt like telling him, "good talk, russ" and sharing a beer with him.  instead, that was it.  

i'm trying to not push my non-belief on him and instead i encourage him to think about what other people believe and see if it makes sense to him.  i will admit that i'm proud that he sees things the way i do for now.

and i hope i'm right that if he stays an atheist, he won't lose friends over it, like i have.  although in my case, it could just be that i'm an asshole too.  

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.