Religious Bullshit

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.

Crazy Mothers

Crazy.  Right here.  See for yourself.  Muy loco.  To quote the great philosopher Forest Gump, That's all I got to say about that right now. 

God Hates Smelly Feet

The "homo sex is sin" zealots have been out protesting at a local farmer's market.  No doubt they enjoy the discomfort they cause, reminding us all of impending torment in hell when all we want to do is taste the organic tomatoes and pluots.

But I can't help but wonder why these nutjobs are always doing the hate thing.  How come they're never out there just loving the be-jesus out of everyone?  Jesus spent a lot more time loving and peace-preaching and "sell everything and give it to the poor"-sermonizing than railing against sodomites and lesbian clit-lickers. 

Where's the love, people?

So here's my plea to the loonies: come out next weekend and wash everyone's feet, Jesus-style.   Take a break from hate, just for a day.  Later you can buy some fresh green peas or make a cobbler with some nummy blueberries.  Even God took a day off -- you can get back to hating on Monday.

"Islam is the Light...goo goo...I shat my pants...burp"

Sometimes there's really no need for commentary:

BEAUFORT, S.C. (AP) - A South Carolina woman says a doll she bought for her daughters at her local Wal-Mart includes the phrase "Islam is the light" among its prerecorded baby noises.

Jennifer Calandra of Burton told The Beaufort Gazette she returned the first Fisher-Price Cuddle and Coo doll she bought, thinking it a malfunction. But she says the second doll had the same phrase.

People across the country have reported hearing similar messages.

Fisher-Price's parent company Mattel Inc. issued a statement in October the only scripted word on the doll's soundtrack is "Mama." The company conceded one of the doll's sounds may resemble the words "night, right or light" and that would be removed in future production.

Wal-Mart corporate spokeswoman Anna Taylor said the Beaufort store was removing the dolls from its shelves.

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Information from: The Beaufort Gazette, http://www.beaufortgazette.com

ARTL: God Calls You Again!

American Right to Life Action members: billions more unborn need you!  Your courageous and divinely-inspired fight to protect all human life (including the precious, eternal souls of the uni-cellular zygotes!) must now be expanded.  From the Zebrafish to the Skink to the common Bullfrog--we must protect all of the unborn.  For the Lord God has revealed to me that even the least among these could develop into His children.

How great is His wisdom, how profound His sense of irony, that it would be none other than the great satanist Charles Darwin who noted the striking--nay, the miraculous--similarity between the embryos of various complex creatures?  That embryos only begin to take on the characteristics of their species later in development?

God's word came to me this morning as I picked up a dozen deliciously sinful Caramel Pecanbons for my Sunday school class.  The yummy nuts were curved  (almost cashew-like!), plump in the middle, some tapering to vulnerable little "tails" at their ends.  God's children, I gasped! Praise God!

As the cascading tears began to moisten the artery-hardening glaze of my luscious, high-fructose corn syrup-laden breakfast cakes, the deeper message hit me: these tiny and vulnerable candied pecans could be any of God's embryos!  Our heavenly Father gives them all human souls, deciding only later whether they will ultimately become God's children (or, whether he is going to rip their souls from their growing bodies and make them His Fish, etc.)

Let no one doubt His greatness or His grace!  For if God can create the heavens and earth in seven days...if  a virgin woman can bear God's only Son...if He can reveal himself in pecans and grilled cheese sandwiches, and help all of those football players score all of those touchdowns on Sundays....Then let no one doubt that we must protect God's children--pecan, gecko and human alike!

ARTL Action members--you of the righteous cause (and awe-inspiring, modern logo! View this photo)--join me! 

Praise God!!

Dare to Imagine

Newsweek--my favorite national weekly news magazine for religious bullshit--has another doozy in Lisa Miller's religion column this week: the resurrection really happened!

Yep.  It's confirmed by the Anglican bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright.  When asked the penetrating question of "what does the resurrected body look like?" here's what N.T. had to say:

"Obviously, we don't know  But it will probably be much, much more like our present bodies than we dare to imagine....Who we are at the moment is just a shadow of our future selves.  There's a real you, a real me, which will one day be there and we'll say, 'My goodness, you're looking well.'"

I'm so glad to know it won't look like this: View this photo

For more on Wright's learned teachings, you can visit the unofficial site I've linked to above.  I can't wait to read his new book, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense.

Ah, yes.  Its rationality is undeniable, isn't it?

Pope Benedict: Have More Kids; Alan Weisman: Have One Kid

Let's hear it for the Jew.

The Pope, in Austria for some vainglorious popemobile tour, chastised Europe for being "child-poor."

Yes, the Pope made it clear that his top priorities continue to be promoting sex without contraceptives (for the general, HIV-infected populace), and for priests, ensuring future generations of pedophile predators masquerading as men of god (he flatly rejected wide-spread calls for changing the chastity requirements for priests).

The Pope also took time out to express "sadness...repentance...and our friendship toward the Jews," which is interesting because a Jew is making a lot of news right now for a meticulously researched book, "The World Without Us," that imagines a world without any rabidly fucking humans.

In Alan Weisman's projections (of course, speculative, but based on the best science we have available) it takes a hundred thousand years for 80% of the carbon we've pumped into the atmosphere to get re-absorbed by the oceans and trees, and plastic goes on forever and ever, until a theoretical, not-yet-evolved microbe comes along to eat it.

But the earth finds a way to heal.

Then there's the Pope's vision.  People having more kids, priests raping more altar boys...until our resources (and young boys) are stretched to the point of collapse.  What then?

The Pope would tell us God will take care of us.  (Evidence--but of course--not withstanding.)

Weisman--god-killing Jew that he is--doesn't factor god into things, but runs a starkly different equation.  What if, like the Chinese, every couple on the planet had one--and only one--child?

My intention was just to run the numbers to see what would happen, which proved very interesting: within a century, attrition would bring our numbers back down to pre-1900 levels, around 1.6 billion. Contrast that with today's 6.6 billion, or 2050's projected 9 billion,and you get the picture. The prospective, which I describe as draconian, would be democratic, because it would apply to all, rich or poor, developed or undeveloped (whatever "developed" means). The Chinese experiment showed us the pitfalls and problems of such a plan. Are we ready to re-address it, as we now finally seem ready to talk seriously about global warming? I don't minimize in my book that this could be a severe measure -- I wouldn't have been born, because my sister came first, etc. But we are facing severe decisions to keep our world livable: we lack technologies to provide enough clean, abundant, cheap energy to meet our skyrocketing demand, and to my observation we also lack the collective will to curb our acquisitive desires. Population control should be part of the mix that we consider, because if we don't take careful measures curb our numbers, nature will surely do it for us. Arguments that we can produce enough food to feed all nine billion humans make no sense: the ecological cost of the way we produce that food even today are already undermining our natural foundation.

Let me repeat a key phrase: if we don't curb our numbers ourselves, "nature will surely do it for us." 

The Pope says God will take care of things. 

Who do you believe?

More Than a Towel to Me-e-eee

Reports are mushrooming about the Sikh who was barred from two Carlsbad night spots a few weeks ago because of his turban. 

Seems the Ocean House restaurant and the Coyote Bar & Grill denied entry to 22-year-old Dave Bindra, who alleges that one of the nightclub operators commented, "Beanie, do-rag or turban, you still have a towel on your head and you're not going in." 

Now the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund has contacted the U.S. Justice Department about possible action.

The club claims it has a policy against many forms of head wear due to gang associations.  Bindra, of course, feels put upon because his tow--turban, that is, is central to his religion. 

No immediate explanation as to why a Sikh wants to be hanging out in a nightclub.  But I guess there's no law says you can't be a Sikh and a Boogie Child, both.

Dinesh D'Souza: Let's Back Up

Dinesh D'Souza--a contemptible misogynist who first achieved notoriety when he ruined a college girl's life because she had sex with her boyfriend, as I've noted before--has written a blog about yesterday's New York Times Magazine article, "The Politics of God."

Here are his major points:

• The Great Separation was not the intent of the Founding Fathers.  (Then some stuff about "the Creator" in the Declaration of Independence, and Jefferson wanting more of a role for religion in public life than most people think....)
• Atheists have killed lots more people than religious fanatics have killed.
• Only academics and "Manhattan liberals" agree with people like Mark Lilla.

I could counter each of these one-by-one.  Many already have, and many will continue to do so. 

But first, I'd like to take a step back to something more foundational. 

That would be: the Truth.

Jesus was not born of a virgin, nor did he walk on water or rise from the dead.  Mohammed did not fly up into heaven.  There is no heaven, and thus no virgins who await, quivering legs spread, for heroic terrorists.  Moses did not part the Red Sea.  There is no Peacock Angel , nor has there ever been a Zeus. 

The only wonder, really, is why so few people are capable of the kind of basic objectivity and logic that point, inevitably, to the fact that the Carpenter and the Terrorist-in-Chief are just as ludicrous as He Who Eats Excrement from his Anus.

The fundamental problem with the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, and all of the rest of the holy books, is that they are mis-labeled.  They belong in the fiction section of the library.

So, you see, the Founding Fathers--or at least those who believed in God--were wrong.  It really is that simple.  Yes, they were, on the whole, wonderfully wise and created a progressive and lasting political system--one that succeeds in no small part due to their intuitive sense that a house divided by religious bullshit, could not stand.

But let's be honest, Dinesh.  You really have to question how many of them actually believed.  Some of the same Founding Fathers who professed their devotion to God-given inalienable rights of equality, went home at night and raped their bitch nigger slaves.  (Those were the days, eh Dinesh?  When you didn't have to bother with hatchet jobs in Prospect, but could just sexually assault the whores instead?) 

Yes, the world has been plagued by religious bullshit since the dawn of human history.  And not a shred of it is true.  That's the starting point.  And really, it's enough to be the end point, too.

But for funsies, let's address a few of the other points.

As to the body bags: who the fuck knows?  Humans are capable of incredible atrocities.  They will always find a reason, whether it be based in religion, atheism, science, or comic books.  What's your point?  God ain't real, regardless.

And lastly, I'm not from Manhattan.  I'm from Tennessee.  I am an intelligent, objective and smart hick, capable of independent thought.  And I can see that God is a fiction.  And when your book you are shamelessly promoting comes out, I will go to my local library, pick it up along with all of the other bullshit books, and put them, appropriately, with all of the other fantasies.  (And by the way, read the Lord of the Rings first.  It's a far better book than the others, and it doesn't pretend to be true.)