Rapturous

It's May 22nd. The rapture was yesterday. Anybody notice a certain 144,000 people missing this morning? Bueller...?

Israel still around? Oh, it is? And growing, you say?

His ways truly are mysterious.....

Lent Out

For Lent, I'm giving up any belief in mythological savior figures.

And microwave taquitos.

I'll resume the taquitos after 40 days....

Love Your Fellow Heathen Day!

After a solid two minutes' meditation on the subject, my considered take on Valentines Day is that...at least we have one holiday that emphasizes love for your partner (and by extension family and friends) in a non-Judeo-Christian fashion.

Complain all you want about corporatism, but here's a day in the year when the idea of considering the needs of those you care for is completely unfettered from the usual God-and-punishment tripe.

I think paying for some uprooted plant genitalia and a few cocoa-sugar confections is worth society at large being free of the hypocritical, fire-and-damnation love we hear so much about on any given Sunday.

Not that I opened my wallet in any related way today. Jes' saying....

Score One For The Polytheists?

I can only read a story about the Nepalese child that is the "living goddess" and think...religion ruins one more young life.

Hooray!

Jaundice H. Christ

A Christmas day communion in Long Island may have exposed hundreds of churchgoers to Hepatitis A.

So given the principles of transubstantiation...did the priest give the Holy Son a liver infection by accidentally bleeding in His blood? It works both ways right?

Or did Jesus already have Hep A from some Magdalena tomfoolery and it took science 2,000 years to notice?

Either way, it's a Christmas miracle!

Unbeleever Kat Cannot Eet Yer Soul Cuz You No Haz Won

This is awesome:

It makes me want to write a sequel to the brilliant Grandma's Dead: Breaking Bad News With Baby Animals, something like God Is Dead: From The Mouths of (Cute Animal) Babes.

Yeah...

The Good Word

Underground preachers are pretty common here, as anyone who depends on the subway can tell you. As part of my route from home to work every morning, I happen to pass through the tunnel that connects Times Square with Port Authority. For as long as I've been here, a nook of this tunnel has played host to a group of Proselyteers, whose church--a couple of folding tables with placards featuring the harsher sayings of the Bible in large fonts--I've struggled to find a witty name for for years now. ("Under the Rock of Ages"? "Sub-Corpus Christi"? It'll come to me...)

Today, like most days, someone tried to hand me a pamphlet with the Good Word and, like most days, I politely declined. But it again got me mulling the ongoing discussion about why atheists don't proselytize, and for the first time I felt in my gut that our absence from such public forums was a bit sad.

Here was a religious man spending his precious time trying to get his fellow travelers to think about the afterlife. Wouldn't it be of infinitely greater value for one of us non-religious types to impress upon our fellows that they'd be better served by concentrating on the treasures of this life?

Then again, knowing how absurd the idea is of changing a stranger's entire belief system through one sloppily-printed flier handed off while said stranger is walking from the 7 train to the blue line at 9:45 in the morning...maybe by not wasting hours thus proselytizing we atheists are indeed treasuring the little time we have on this earth.

Hallelujah.

Homocentrism Tastes Funny

...At least, in a different way than the title might lead you to think.

I'm watching a murder mystery where the killer(s) find inspiration for their crimes in the works of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as told by the Bible's crazy uncle, John.

I'm also watching my cats wrestle with each other in what appears to be a serious contest of wills.

And I think to myself, "a book written almost two thousand years ago that predicts the end of life for every species on the entire planet has only humans to talk about." Then I watch my cats fight some more, and remark that the intensity of that relationship--the reason they pay attention to each other the way they do--is because their genes are so close, and I think about how dogs do the same thing, and how barnacles on a fucking dock do the same thing, and in the face of that I'm forced to look at the movie about the Apocalypse and think...

"Yeah, the world's very existence depends on an invisible being that governs all life but is undoubtedly predisposed towards operating like a primitive human from basically the same time period as the original text was written. Totes. Fer sher. LOL"

Okay, back to the so far not terrible movie....

~~~~~~~~~

Update: It was terrible.

Moron(i)

Having just watched the episode of South Park in question, I'm a little confused as to the judgment call that it was a "hatchet job" on the Mormon religion. (You know, the one with the gold plates no one saw and the apparently Sicilian angel Moroni explaining how the Native Americans are actually ancient Jews...yeah, that one.)

Now, I'm not what most churchgoers would call "irrational, unquestioned belief" friendly, but I thought Matt and Trey handled the issue as gently as mass media entertainment requires. I mean hell, they even let the little Mormon kid Gary have the last words, which--if Mitt Romney has his way--prophetically were "suck my balls." What more could any believer in God As Really Wise Alien Man ask for?

By the way, Matt and Trey's best joke may just be the other religious people laughing at this send-up of those silly Mormons. How could they ever believe such weird stuff? Tsk....

~~~~~~~

Update: I mean, compare their treatment of Mormonism to the spiked gloves they use to handle Scientology. Brutal.

From The Dept. Of Polishing My Fingernails On My Smoking Jacket

Heh.

Wrong Angle

I'm always amused by the intellectual laziness of arguments like this:

A devout Southern Baptist, (Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron) Angle has said she felt a "calling from God" to run for the Senate, a comment opponents mocked. She also took heat for saying she doesn't believe in abortion in any case, including rape and incest, because "God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives."

I had a wonderful argument in college with a believer who espoused this same line, and my thought experiment in response came down to, "what if God's plan for this 'person' were for the proto-he or -she to be aborted?"

Did she have an answer? No. Was I being harsh? Yeah. But it's good practice to follow the snaking paths of one's beliefs to their possible implications. Not that believers are generally skilled at such an exercise--or else they wouldn't be believers.

I only ever occasionally find the energy to engage in the debate about God's plan, which is essentially the age-old attempt to reconcile free will with the concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful deity. Such a reconciliation is impossible since the latter half of the equation is false. You can spend a lifetime worrying the thing over--millions and millions of people, in fact, have--and it would be nothing more than a life spent swimming in circles in a very small mental fishbowl.

Anyway, you have fun with Ms. Angle, Nevada. Stay classy!

He Got It Almost Right

According to entirely sane, totally not-gay religious person, John Hagee:

"The Rapture is the Great Escape! Escape from what? Escape from the Great Tribulation that will happen as soon as the church leaves the earth."

If by "Great Tribulation" when the church leaves the earth you mean a collective sigh of relief followed by an epic wine and cheese soiree because all the finger waggers have been sucked into the clouds, presumably to frown only at each other forever and ever amen....then yes, you're spot on.

Two Bunnies, One God

Whenever I have a little downtime I get to thinking about the orifices of woodland animals and how those orifices fit into the grander scheme of the Universe.

I'd just like to share what I believe is a fundamental meditation on the subject.

It's God By A Landslide

Clearly, this tragedy in Uganda is God's judgment on a once proud nation now corrupted by its widespread tolerance of the homosexual lifestyle. Right, Mr. Hagee?

I'm sorry, what's that you say...?

A Separate Concrete Example

Since my favorite blogger has her comments restricted to team members only, to this, I say this:

"Organized religion is a slippery slope. First, you shrug away the Pope's hateful politics then before you know it you're Southern Baptist..."

...

I have so much more to say about the subject, but the magnitude of it wearies me. So for now, I'll stick with that...