Religious Bullshit

Al Gore, Let's Talk About Denial

I read Al Gore's new essay in the June 22nd issue of Rolling Stone--Climate of Denial: Can science and truth withstand the merchants of poison?- with great interest and appreciation. I then found myself immediately wondering, does Al Gore pray for the world to come to its senses when it comes to climate change?

To be clear, I have no quarrel per se with the former vice president. In fact, I admire his decision these last several years to eschew elected office and devote himself to a worthy and critical cause about which he is clearly profoundly passionate. I accept the data and the consensus of the world scientific community that climate change is real, and exacerbated by man. Further, I agree with Gore's assertions that:

When the distinction between truth and falsehood is systematically attacked without shame or consequence — when a great nation makes crucially important decisions on the basis of completely false information that is no longer adequately filtered through the fact-checking function of a healthy and honest public discussion — the public interest is severely damaged.

But I feel compelled to ask the question--is it foolhardy, or at least unrealistic, to expect rationality from a society (any society), that makes faith an unassailable virtue?

Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry is in the news for wanting to hold a prayer fest because the U.S. "has not honored God in our successes or humbly called on Him in our struggles." Elected officials of every party and stripe regularly invoke God (some sincerely, some no-doubt not) as a fail-safe solution to our problems. And who can blame them? The odds of an avowed agnostic or atheist being elected to public office in this country is about as likely as, I don't know, a camel fitting through the eye of--oh, never mind.

My point is simply that, for those who claim science and religion are not at odds ("nonoverlapping magisteria," as the late Stephen Jay Gould called it), I will simply end by quoting Gore once more:

It is time to face reality. We ignored reality in the marketplace and nearly destroyed the world economic system. We are likewise ignoring reality in the environment, and the consequences could be several orders of magnitude worse. Determining what is real can be a challenge in our culture, but in order to make wise choices in the presence of such grave risks, we must use common sense and the rule of reason in coming to an agreement on what is true.

Science and religion are, inarguably, at odds. And until we are willing to put aside all foolish, non-supportable beliefs, and live our lives through compassionate reason, we will continue to ignore and deny all of the inconvenient truths that threaten future happiness and prosperity.

Bill Maher's Best Commentary Yet on Christian Hypocrisy

Why Did Jesus Have to Die? Someone, Tell Me....

As is evident from the dates of my posts in 2010--one on January 2, one today on December 25--my passion for blogging about religious bullshit fades considerably.  But I did find myself today, on the alleged birthday of the savior, considering again the inanity of the entire foundation of Christianity.  

Why, I wonder, does an all-loving, all-powerful God, require the torture and death of a supposedly perfect, innocent God/Man being, in order to "save" the rest of humanity (past and present) from eternal torment?

I've never once heard any argument that makes any sense, rationally or emotionally.

I looked up C.S. Lewis' writings on the topic, and found it to be a typically tortured and abstruse "explanation" for the atonement.  Here's an excerpt:

Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off of if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like.  If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back.  It cannot happen.  Very well, then, we must go through with it.  But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it.  Can we do it if God helps us?  Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us?  We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak.  He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another.  When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them.  We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it.  Now if we had not fallen, that would all be plain sailing.  But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all - to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die.  Nothing in God's nature corresponds to this process at all.  So that the one road for which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked.  God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.

But supposing God became a man - suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person - then that person could help us.  He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God.  You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man.  Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God's dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and he cannot die except by being a man.  That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.

Well--that certainly clears things up!  What gibberish.  

I can still recall with great clarity being a child, reading the Bible fervently and praying my prayers every night and singing my little lungs out at Church, and yet honestly and deeply puzzling as to why this guy Jesus had to die for everyone else.  It just didn't compute.  No one could ever give me an answer that made any more sense than old Lewis's, above. 

And so I feel sure, all over the world today, millions of kids have listened, quietly and secretly confused, to the pious proclamations of parents and preachers solemnly intoning about the birth of the man who "died for our sins."  

They are wondering why it's never OK to kill, but God could kill him.  Some are quietly trembling, troubled specifically by the gruesomeness of his particular sacrifice, nailed to a cross until he bled to death.  Many are trying to do the math of "two wrongs don't make a right--unless it's God."  

Future rationalists, many of them.  But the majority will probably just, well, go along.  "I'm just missing something," they'll think.  And later, somehow, after pushing thoughtfulness aside, they'll find it a beautiful and inspirational notion that a being powerful enough to create the totality of the universe, felt it necessary to torture a nice young Jew a few thousand years ago so that every homo sapien who's ever lived or will, can be spared an eternity of hellfire and torment.

Merry Christmas.  And God bless us, every one.

Can We Let God Fight His Own Fights this Year?

2010 is barely underway, but it's looking to be another banner year for nut jobs who feel their omnipotent gods aren't quite up to the task of self-defense.  Today's "jihadist-of-the-moment" is a 28-year-old Somali douche-bag who shouted "blood" and "revenge" while trying to kill Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard (and his 5-year-old granddaughter).

All of this is of course for the "abuse" that Westergaard heaped upon the prophet Mohammed via outlandish cartoons that posited the clearly indefensible idea that some of Islam's adherents have hard-ons for violence. Right-thinking people everywhere will undoubtedly agree with the aptly-named Sheikh Ali Muhamud Rage (day job: crazy fucking Somalian muslim), who believes this mendacious conflating of Islam and violence can only be countered with, well, murder:  "It is a general obligation for all Muslims to defend their religion and the prophet. He really did what was to be done by any other Muslim." 

Muslims, of course, have not cornered the market on killing in the name of God (however exceptional they may be at it.) Most religions have their foot soldiers who are all-too-willing to slash, maim and kill if that's what it takes to prove that God is all-loving, all-powerful, all-bad-ass. Or whatever.

On the one hand, God is, undeniably, under siege. Men's puckered anuses are at constant risk from other men's penises. Thanks to a health care bill forced through Congress by godless communists (i.e., democrats), God's favorite country is about to start caring for more of its sick and needy (I mean, really: what would Jesus think?). And in large swaths of the Islamic world, if the prophet is not vigorously defended by any and all necessary means, the right of devout muslim men to fuck nine year-olds with impunity is at serious risk.

And yet on the other hand...this is an omnipotent God. Parter of the red sea.  He who brings the dead to life, levitates prophets, turns water into wine, and reveals his presence with equal facility in everything from shrouds to clouds to grilled cheese sandwiches.

Given this awesome and incontrovertible power, I'm wondering if we can't just leave God to defend himself? We all know he's perfectly capable of wiping the entire earth clean (the flood), or taking out just one city at a time (New Orleans). Hell, turn your back against orders, and you're at significant risk of being rendered a pillar of Morton's salt.  

So can everyone just take a year off? Let God do his own dirty work, and let's all just get along.