Racist Jesus
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008But no, really, the story about the Good Samaritan is actually racist.
Birthday Presents
Monday, July 9th, 2007For my birthday, my friend, Erin, got me National Geographic’s The Ultimate Field Guide to Photography, which is a great find. I’ve been taking fewer photos lately, and this is just the thing to learn more and get better—which is itself just the thing to re-spark my interest. I can’t handle sucking at something.
My friend, Rene, got me Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. The so-called New Atheism is definitely my cup of tea: People who are unabashed and uncompromising atheists who refuse to tow the politically correct “whatever you believe is okay” party line. Religion is harmful, and while I may tolerate it politically (as in, you certainly have the right to believe what you wish without fear of violence or any sort of coercion) without hesitation, I do not tolerate it as a morally or rationally acceptable choice. My other current read, Sam Harris’s The End of Faith, is the perfect complement to The God Delusion, and I wholeheartedly look forward to reading it. It was fun watching Rene worry that I already owned it while I was unwrapping.
Thanks a ton, you guys! Those were my only gifts; 31 is such an odd year, isn’t it?
Hitchens on Religion
Monday, June 11th, 2007I’m rather new to the rather interesting enigma that is Christopher Hitchens, and I find that I often disagree with him, but as a religion-hating atheist, I find myself rather often shouting in agreement with him for his politically-incorrect but flat-fucking-out true statements about religion.
In celebration of hatred of superstition and in solidarity with all those who call out the irrational bullshit that is god-worship, here are some of my favorite clips of him from our blessed YouTube:
In reference to ecumenism: “We need to have inoculation against plague, not the spread of a more gentle version of it.”
When Sean Hannity asks if he’s angry at God, Hitchens responds: “Not at God, of course. That would be absurd.”
When asked why a “religious nation” (the US) had to save his “secular nation” (the UK) from the Nazis in WW2, he politely reminds the questioner that America is a secular nation by law and the UK is a religious nation by law.
“Religion ends where philosophy begins just like alchemy ends where chemistry begins just like astrology ends where astronomy begins.”
In many cases, this guy says on a national stage what I believe, and with conviction and eloquence. Now, Mr. Hitchens, please do something with your hair … like not boozing it up in DC all the time.
Now finally, my favorite short clip:
“I think [religion should be] treated with ridicule and hatred and contempt, and I claim that right.” I could kiss him.
Dem Jebus Bones
Thursday, March 1st, 2007The Times has a blog post about James Cameron’s forthcoming documentary about finding the tomb of some dude named Jesus, his brother, James, his son, Matthew, and his wife, Mary.
First, from someone who doesn’t believe this Jesus guy (in the Bible) even existed, I can only ask the obvious: How do you prove this is that Jesus? I can’t really think of anything except a preponderance of circumstantial evidence that makes the probability higher. I don’t see any here. The article itself seems to have some logical flaws along the same line.
It reads that if we could confirm kinship between Jesus and James, we could prove there was no Immaculate Conception, and if we could prove the Mary and Jesus in the tomb were not related, then they were definitely man and wife. But it all only begs the question: Is this the Jesus Christianity talks about? Where’s that proof? God wanna offer us up some DNA for kinship analysis?
What’s funnier, though, is the response from the Church:
“Every Christian knows that Jesus the son of God and man died and rose again on Easter Sunday,” a New York Archdiocese spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, told The New York Post on Sunday. “No alleged DNA test or Hollywood film is going to change that.”
Apparently, no actual verifiable truth is going to change that either, considering the defensive tone, but that’s beside the point. Are you catching this embarrassingly blatant reversal of faith and reason here? So telling. “Every Christian knows?” Doesn’t that defeat the requirement of faith? Even if not, how do they know? Revelation, the authority of the Church, assurance that Jesus sounds more real than Zeus. And “alleged” DNA testing? I’m pretty sure that whether they actually did DNA testing is quite verifiable. It’s what the DNA tells us that is the problem: It tells us diddly shit. It seems this spokesman is implicitly accepting the validity of these archaeological findings and Cameron’s claims and simply responding with, “Nuh-uh. Your mom is ugly.”
The president of the National Clergy Council, the Reverend Bob Schenk commented in similar fashion:
According to Cameron, his film is no mere speculation, but historical fact. By claiming the remains of Jesus returned to dust along with other members of his family, the Hollywood filmmaker is denying the divinity of the Son of God and his victory over death. Cameron clearly intended to drive a stake into the heart of Christianity, since without the Resurrection, Jesus was only a mortal man.
The author of the blog post notes, quite astutely, that the remains of Jesus’s body could only actually disprove Jesus’s Ascension into Heaven. I know the Ascension is part of the articles of faith listed in the Nicean Creed, but is it really necessary to remain consistent in this little bubble of theology? In a world where God forgets to pull out (or use a jimmy hat), it seems perfectly conceivable that Jesus could have been crucified on Good Friday, risen from the dead on Easter Sunday, gone to let his disciples know he was okay after all, and then lived a long happy life being married with kids. Perhaps Resurrection was his official retirement from Son-of-God duties. I can imagine the following at the famous fish-eating, nail-hole-poking meal: “Hey, Thomas; I really am alive. But I’m gonna go hook up with that fine piece of whore ass and have her pop me out some progeny now, so, while it’s been great knowing y’all and literally dying for you, I think I done my part. Feel free to tell the natives I floated up into the clouds or what the fuck; I’d like some privacy, yo. Peace out. Go start a church or something.”
The Taliban Jews
Monday, February 19th, 2007[Ed: (2007-02-20 07:36) Numerous glaring errors corrected. I wrote this when I was tired, I guess.]
[Ed: Thanks to emjaybee for the tip.]
So-called “tolerance” of religion is being challenged, even in the overtly Jewish state of Israel.
A group of Israeli women are fighting back against what one called “Taliban-like” Jewish fundamentalists who order women to sit in the back of the bus and to abstain from wearing “immodest” clothing on public bus lines.
It seems that there are some public bus lines in Jerusalem that “look like every other public bus”—with “no written or overtly stated rules about gender segregation”—where fundamentalist Orthodox Jewish men, some of whom apparently self-identify as the “modesty patrol”, demand that women sit in the back of the bus and wear “modest” clothing. And some women aren’t going to stand for it. Naomi Ragen, New York-born Orthodox Jew, when ordered to move to the back, responded, “[A]s long as this is a public bus, I will sit where I please, thank you very much,” and, “Look, you show me in the code of Jewish law where it’s written that I’m not allowed to sit in this seat and I’ll move.” The Israeli Ministry of Transportation had no official response to NPR except that “the seating arrangements are left to the bus company”.
What really bothers me most about this article is a statement by Shira Leibowitz-Schmidt of the Haredi College for Women:
Today in Israel, women go around sometimes as if they’re at the beach. … It’s really very undignified and it’s erotically stimulating and it’s also just distracting. And that’s a form of coercion—I call that non-religious coercion. I call that coercion of eroticism. That’s a much more serious problem: the creeping degradation of the public square.”
All I have to say in response to Ms. Leibowitz-Schmidt (yes, I did say “Ms.” and not “Mrs.” or “Miss”) is: By whose judgment? But at least she’s being honest. She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about rationalizing any sort of “tolerance” toward the Haredi (the so-called “ultra Orthodox”); in fact, she’s a Haredi herself. She demands that the the entire state of Israel fund a bus line and roads and public areas and enforce their own specific value judgments on those who choose to utilize these “public” resources. I hope you can see the outright contradiction in her statement. Apparently, a woman’s wearing of anything not deemed by some divinely revealed or traditional edict of what is modest should not be allowed by the state—and should even be considered coercion—COERSION!!! Apparently, even the natural and even unconscious determination that a woman walking along the street or sitting in the bus is sexually attractive is coercive to a man. Of course, if you believe that even thinking about a strange woman in a sexual way somehow damns or shames the entire race of Jews throughout history, you have a serious problem with logic already. That rabbit hole is deep and full of obvious statements such as: “Morality can only rationally be the realm of individual, conscious, deliberate decision,” “One’s own moral choice cannot logically be transferred or shared with another,” and “You’re individuals, not Jews, goddammit,” and “God does not exist, you assclowns,” so I’ll leave that rabbit hole at that.
Just the idea that in a state that the US supports as its unequivocal ally—that even Objectivists claim is a moral state—such outright discrimination, denegration, and deliberate second-classing of an entire gender occurs is preposterous. While I do object in principle to the idea of the state’s subsidizing the free market in any regard, as long as it is, it must apply its own restrictions upon those subsidized markets. As long as the entire citizenry funds it (coerced funding though it may be), the bus system belongs to all citizens, and all citizens must be able to use it in any matter that does not coerce another—which does not include making a side-curled, bigoted, misogynist think about titties—or bare ankles. God forbid. If such a man really thinks that God will punish him or his race for such thoughts, he alone has the responsibility to avoid those thoughts, and making it law or “regulation” (i.e., law without representation) is just the sort of coercion that invalidates its moral justification.
People, listen: On government or “public” property, the government rules, and the government cannot morally enforce the rules of one religion or another. They can only enforce rational laws that prohibit actual coercion—fraud, physical harm, or imminent (not in the George W sense) threat of physical harm. The government must not take any position on the arbitrary, divinely revealed code of some arbitrary religion. At the very least, many are bound to be contradictory; at the very most, many are bound to be coercive in and of themselves.
But this is all moot in a government that was only mildly transparently formed as a religious state. Individuals deserve justice and, if possible, recompense—not races, not peoples, not religions, not herds, not bushels, not stacks, not gaggles. Individuals. Period. Only an individual can be coerced, and thus only an individual can be a victim. In a state like Israel, where race, parentage, and heritage are all officially recognized by the state for many purposes, I wonder whether such protections can ever be enacted.
I hope Ms. Ragen, above, will modify her argument: The government cannot morally or ethically enforce the edicts of one religion over another on government property. Only private citizens can on their own private property. But no one can enforce their religious edicts by force (except possibly eviction from said property). This is the only rational argument, and the only one that will stand the test of critical thought, but I doubt it will stand in Jerusalem.
Search
Wednesday, November 8th, 2006Popular dating site.
Search terms:
- Find: Woman seeking man
- Age: Between 24 and 35
- God Question: Atheist
- Politics: Libertarian
All other search terms left as “No Preference”.
Results: No matches found. Try another search.
Me: Sad. :(
Honestly, at this point, I’m well prepared and satisfied to be single for a long time. I’d better be. But am I such a freak that there are no women like me anywhere? Hell, at this point, I’m just looking for atheist libertarian women; the issues of physical attraction, personality, intelligence, etc. can wait until after I find out if they exist. And if you, like my mother, are going to try to tell me not to be so stringent on the atheist and libertarian questions, why don’t you go eat santorum and fuck off?
Fuck Jesus
Wednesday, October 11th, 2006For whatever reason, Google has been serving an ad that says, “Does Jesus really matter?” and links to y-zine.com, an obviously evangelical Christian magazine. I really have no idea how this is contextual or relevant to my blog and any of its content, but I want to try an experiment to try to get it off. Who knows, it may even backfire. Ready? Here goes:
Satan is my lord and master. I worship the dark lord and regularly eat and/or burn babies on a burning pentagram in my basement. I am the butt-monkey of Beelzebub. May he do his dirty, dirty will by me.
The Official God FAQ
Wednesday, September 13th, 2006The authoritative database of frequently asked questions frequently given answers about God is now live on the intranetwebnetthing.
Santorum’s Theocracy
Sunday, May 11th, 2003Jacob Sullum’s article in Reason Online, called “In the Bedroom”, is right on.
He digs down to the fundamentals—almost. Santorum didn’t make any of the important moral, legal, and psychological distinctions between homosexual sex, adultery, incest, polygamy, pedophilia, and bestiality. Santorum also revealed his own agenda and morally repulsive views when he dichotomized the sin and the sinner, or in his words, “It’s not the person, it’s the person’s actions.” And Santorum’s later proclamation that the government has the right “to limit individuals’ wants and passions” is frightening.
On the other hand, Sullum fails to take Santorum to task for the real issues of political freedom and the scope of government. It’s socially risky to proclaim that the government has no right to tell a man and his mother that they don’t have the right to have consensual sex—even if it is psychologically damaging—but it’s still a fact. The government derives no right to prohibit the actions of any consenting adults—no matter their numbers, familial relation, or genders—providing such actions are done at no one else’s expense.
Sullum also reminds us, very importantly, that the GOP is still the party of social oppression: Santorum hasn’t paid any political price for his comments.
I would go on to say that this is yet more evidence that the GOP has never really changed. Political pressure has made them accept women and racial minorities, and political pressure—not reason—will have to force them to accept homosexuality.
