So here we are on Christmas Eve, 2011. A time when we like to think a hush of peace descends all over the world and everyone contemplates a child born to a virgin mother in a dirty, dark stable, cushioned by a manger full of hay and warmed by the breath of barnyard animals lucky enough to be there at the right time, at the dawn of a new era of human existence.
For Christians in the civilized world, it is the holiest time of their year, a time when everything stops and everyone steps away from their regular routine and gathers around a crackling fireplace to gaze dreamily at a tree covered in lights, sheltering a pile of brightly-wrapped gifts. Songs are sung, glasses raised in toasts of family and friends, hearty meals are partaken, and people travel great distances to be with the ones they love. We will not trouble ourselves with the fact that the vast majority of people in the world are either Hindu or Buddhist and to them Christmas has no meaning. This is one day that is very special, and we all drink deep from the cup of shared cultural experience.
Let us consider what might be happening this day:
Somewhere in America, a family pet is outdoors in a dirty, drafty shelter on a cold, damp night, shivering in the darkness, away from the company of his family. Looking at his empty food and water bowls, he knows the only thing in abundance is loneliness and the bite of the cold wind. He can hear their voices as he gazes at the warm light coming through the windows of the home, so near yet so very far.
Somewhere in America, through either the ignorance or carelessness of its owner, an animal is giving birth to a litter of babies. Humans will take the babies, put them in a cardboard box, and leave them by the side of a road. The box will not be found for three days.
Somewhere in America, an animal will languish in a cold, sterile metal cage in a pound, huddling in fear of the terrifying sights, sounds and smells which surround it. It will not understand why, just a very short time ago, it was living in a home with a family it had grown to love. It was taken out of that home and roughly shoved into a tiny carrier, and watched as the family it loved turned their backs and walked out the door, without another word. It knows that it is a good animal, and will continue to hope in vain that its family will return and take it home again.
Somewhere in America, a good, sweet, friendly dog will be brought to a shelter and will sit next to its owner as he fills out the surrender form. The dog has no idea what is about to happen to him; the only thing he knows is that he is happy to be with his owner. He will take his paw and place it on the arm of his owner to try to get him to play, but the man only continues writing. He looks at his owner with love-filled eyes, and trusts him so very much. The paperwork is completed, and the dog's life will change forever.
Somewhere in America, a skinny, mangy cat, looking far older than its actual age, walks down a filthy, trash-strewn alleyway of a big city, looking for any scraps of garbage or discarded food it can possibly eat. It has learned that humans cause it nothing but pain and injury, and is constantly chased and targeted by rocks, bottles, anything that can be used as a missile. It will watch the rain as it puddles up on the grimy streets, and will never know the gentle touch of a loving hand.
Yes a lot of things will happen tonight, and some of them will be very bad. Right now, an automobile crash is happening and lives will be lost. Right now, an elderly woman lies in a hospital room, alone, with no one to hold her hand, her life slowly slipping away. Right now, a married couple will sit in silence in a neonatal intensive care unit and look at an impossibly tiny human form in an incubator, covered with wires and tubes and tape, taking short, labored breaths, and they will wonder why a merciful and loving God would do this to them and their firstborn.
These things, and a lot worse, will happen tonight. But since I try to be a "glass half full" kind of guy, I like to think that some good things will also happen.
I like to think that people are gathering together and sharing stories of the solstice, and of traditions and customs past, and forming bonds that will last a lifetime.
I like to think there are families where children are taught to accept everyone for the kind of person they are, rather than judge them on what color their skin is, or what kind of accent they speak with, or who they love, or how much money they make, or whether they worship a god or not.
I like to think we can live in a world where all children and animals are loved and wanted, and everyone has a home, enough to eat and medical care when needed.
I like to think there are people who are beginning to awaken to the understanding of the unimaginably vast universe in which we live, and how there are billions and billions of galaxies, each one containing many billions of stars, millions of which have planets similar to our own, and how some of them might harbor life with sentient beings who do as we do: look out into the vast starry expanse of a clear night and wonder if there's anybody else out there.
I like to think that not all people in the world are ignorant and bigoted and hateful, although so often it seems politicians, celebrities and athletes go out of their way in a very public fashion to prove otherwise.
I like to think that someday humans will rid themselves of the arcane, discredited and destructive notion that they are the superior form of life on this planet and all other forms are to be abused and exploited as we wish. I completely and utterly reject and condemn with every fiber of my being the Biblical idea that mankind has been given "dominion" over the earth. With each passing day, it's becoming more critical that mankind understands and accepts that it is a part of the immense web of life that exists on this planet, and we must coexist with every other life form. We have the ability to destroy this planet and with that comes the responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen. We have no right to ruin this planet for other life forms just because we're unable to control our primitive urges.
I like to think that we can create a world where people are freed from the tyranny of religion and are fully able to realize their true potential. I want to live in a world where laws are just and fair and rooted in compassion and mercy, instead of hatred, fear and antiquated superstition.
I wish we could take a little bit of the peace and serenity of this day and keep it close to us and nurture it, and find a way to make it last through the other 364 days.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Monday, October 3, 2011
The Price of Moderation
I'm reading a book by Sam Harris, noted atheist and free thinker, called "The End of Faith." In it, Harris makes an interesting point about the dangers of religious moderation.
Everybody thinks religious moderation is a good thing. Live and let live, people say. Different strokes for different folks. Various cultures have their own ways of eating, dress, speech, art, and it stands to reason they would have their own ideas about religion, too.
When compared to religious extremism, the case for moderation is even stronger. Everybody hates religious extremism, right? After all, it was extremism that caused the jet planes to fly into buildings on September 11, 2001. Extremism entices people to do extreme things. If everyone was a religious moderate, there would be no extremism and no extreme acts.
Well, the world doesn't quite work that way. There will always be religious literalists; that is, those who believe that their scripture of choice needs to be interpreted word-for-word. A prime example is, of course, the Bible. There are a lot of people in the world who feel the Bible is the unadulterated Word of God. Other people of faith kind of roll their eyes and say that a lot of the more outlandish pronouncements in the Bible really don't mean what they say, and you can opt to live by them or not, your choice. To the moderate, an extremist is rigid, didactic, strident and inflexible. To the extremist, a moderate is a "failed fundamentalist," someone whose faith is not strong enough to hold up to strict interpretation.
Where does religious moderation come from? Harris points out that maybe a thousand years ago, people were much more amenable to allowing the Bible to dictate their everyday lives because it offered some structure and understanding to the universe that science, at that time, could not. Nowadays, the education level of the general public is considerably higher than a millennium ago, and many people understand how the world works. They integrate this knowledge into their faith and back away from the strict, literal interpretation of the Bible because it just does not fit the modern world into which they were born and have come to understand on a detailed level.
The main failing with religious moderation is that it requires the moderate to tolerate extremism. The religious extremist must be accepted unconditionally, and when their extremism leads to violence, the religious moderate is left in the uncomfortable position of trying to condemn the violence without condemning the extremist and their beliefs.
Just when does "extremism" become intolerable? Again, moderation insists that we tolerate all religious viewpoints, but in a practical sense even the most moderate will have some line they will not cross. Not that I'm a moderate, but for me any ritualized killing of animals is completely unacceptable. I don't care if you believe in God, Mammon, Isis, Buddha, Zeus or the lady with snakes in her hair, I will never ever be okay with taking the life of an animal just to appease some invisible being who's having a hissy fit over some imagined infraction. Others will disagree and are okay with killing animals. Maybe they draw the line at ritual sacrifice of humans. Or maybe seriously object to the Islamic tradition of arranged marriages between children. Point is, moderation says all religious viewpoints must be respected, until you come across something you can't tolerate. Then, moderation breaks down and in fact, turns into a form of extremism.
Harris says, "By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally." This is the price of moderation. a niche in the middle where extremism on one end and secularism on the other continually pull at the moderate, forcing them to accept everyone's positions, no matter how incompatible they are. By leaving the door open to all opinions and beliefs, the moderate will find themselves more and more isolated in the no-man's land of the middle.
Everybody thinks religious moderation is a good thing. Live and let live, people say. Different strokes for different folks. Various cultures have their own ways of eating, dress, speech, art, and it stands to reason they would have their own ideas about religion, too.
When compared to religious extremism, the case for moderation is even stronger. Everybody hates religious extremism, right? After all, it was extremism that caused the jet planes to fly into buildings on September 11, 2001. Extremism entices people to do extreme things. If everyone was a religious moderate, there would be no extremism and no extreme acts.
Well, the world doesn't quite work that way. There will always be religious literalists; that is, those who believe that their scripture of choice needs to be interpreted word-for-word. A prime example is, of course, the Bible. There are a lot of people in the world who feel the Bible is the unadulterated Word of God. Other people of faith kind of roll their eyes and say that a lot of the more outlandish pronouncements in the Bible really don't mean what they say, and you can opt to live by them or not, your choice. To the moderate, an extremist is rigid, didactic, strident and inflexible. To the extremist, a moderate is a "failed fundamentalist," someone whose faith is not strong enough to hold up to strict interpretation.
Where does religious moderation come from? Harris points out that maybe a thousand years ago, people were much more amenable to allowing the Bible to dictate their everyday lives because it offered some structure and understanding to the universe that science, at that time, could not. Nowadays, the education level of the general public is considerably higher than a millennium ago, and many people understand how the world works. They integrate this knowledge into their faith and back away from the strict, literal interpretation of the Bible because it just does not fit the modern world into which they were born and have come to understand on a detailed level.
The main failing with religious moderation is that it requires the moderate to tolerate extremism. The religious extremist must be accepted unconditionally, and when their extremism leads to violence, the religious moderate is left in the uncomfortable position of trying to condemn the violence without condemning the extremist and their beliefs.
Just when does "extremism" become intolerable? Again, moderation insists that we tolerate all religious viewpoints, but in a practical sense even the most moderate will have some line they will not cross. Not that I'm a moderate, but for me any ritualized killing of animals is completely unacceptable. I don't care if you believe in God, Mammon, Isis, Buddha, Zeus or the lady with snakes in her hair, I will never ever be okay with taking the life of an animal just to appease some invisible being who's having a hissy fit over some imagined infraction. Others will disagree and are okay with killing animals. Maybe they draw the line at ritual sacrifice of humans. Or maybe seriously object to the Islamic tradition of arranged marriages between children. Point is, moderation says all religious viewpoints must be respected, until you come across something you can't tolerate. Then, moderation breaks down and in fact, turns into a form of extremism.
Harris says, "By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally." This is the price of moderation. a niche in the middle where extremism on one end and secularism on the other continually pull at the moderate, forcing them to accept everyone's positions, no matter how incompatible they are. By leaving the door open to all opinions and beliefs, the moderate will find themselves more and more isolated in the no-man's land of the middle.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Ten Years Later
As everyone knows unless you've been trapped in a 60s-era bomb shelter and can't get out, it's the tenth anniversary of the WTC terrorist bombings.
I'm really not much for anniversaries because I'm not sure they mean anything. Sure, these past ten years amount to one-sixth of my entire life. Anniversaries are human conceits, ways for us to acknowledge the limited time we have on this planet. Things are not the same as they were ten years ago. Everything is different now, and will never be as they were.
I'll leave it to other people more qualified than I to summarize the national trauma and grief we went through. I will say it was one of the worst days of my life, that warm September morning ten years ago. I remember looking at the television news thinking, "This is really REALLY bad." Little did I know what an understatement that was. To this day I avoid looking at any coverage or video footage. To say it was nightmarish is pitifully inadequate; there are no words to describe an unprecedented catastrophe of that nature. Anyone who watched it unfold that day has their own memories deeply, indelibly etched in their consciousness. We don't need video footage to remember; we can never forget.
It's also unbelievable how much our lives have changed. We now have many words and phrases we never could conceive of before. Things like "Al Qaeda," "jihadists," "Al Jazeera," "threat level," and so many more. Air travel has become even more of a spectacular pain in the butt than it ever had been. I used to love to travel so much but now I avoid it like a letter full of anthrax. The Department of Homeland Security was unknown ten years ago. Now we have to remove our shoes at the airport and ridiculously mundane items like bottles of shampoo are regarded as serious threats. Anyone who even looks vaguely middle-Easternish is automatically assumed to be a terrorist, and every U-Haul truck is a potential car bomb.
How can such drastic changes happen in such a short time? There is much discussion on the Internet about the role religion had to play in all this. And the term "religion" includes Christianity and Islam and every other belief system in the world. People are saying that religion is the cause of all this. As anti-religion as I am, I know that is not true. Religion by itself did not do this, but when religion is distorted and corrupted by extremists whose lives are ruled by irrationality and hatred, then these kind of things can happen. People blame Islam for the aircraft plunging into buildings and Pennsylvania farm fields but really, there is barely any noticeable difference between Christian fundamentalists and Islamic fundamentalists. Religious extremism of any kind can be responsible for unimaginable horror, as history has proven again and again.
So, while I do remember that September morning ten years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than backward. If I thought for one second it would be possible to go back and undo everything and get those 3,000 innocent lives back, I would do it in a nanosecond. But we all know that is impossible. For me, the only rational thing to do is live my life the best way I can, knowing that we only get one life to live and when it's over, it's over. I will live in the present and anticipate the future, and remember everything we lost.
I'm really not much for anniversaries because I'm not sure they mean anything. Sure, these past ten years amount to one-sixth of my entire life. Anniversaries are human conceits, ways for us to acknowledge the limited time we have on this planet. Things are not the same as they were ten years ago. Everything is different now, and will never be as they were.
I'll leave it to other people more qualified than I to summarize the national trauma and grief we went through. I will say it was one of the worst days of my life, that warm September morning ten years ago. I remember looking at the television news thinking, "This is really REALLY bad." Little did I know what an understatement that was. To this day I avoid looking at any coverage or video footage. To say it was nightmarish is pitifully inadequate; there are no words to describe an unprecedented catastrophe of that nature. Anyone who watched it unfold that day has their own memories deeply, indelibly etched in their consciousness. We don't need video footage to remember; we can never forget.
It's also unbelievable how much our lives have changed. We now have many words and phrases we never could conceive of before. Things like "Al Qaeda," "jihadists," "Al Jazeera," "threat level," and so many more. Air travel has become even more of a spectacular pain in the butt than it ever had been. I used to love to travel so much but now I avoid it like a letter full of anthrax. The Department of Homeland Security was unknown ten years ago. Now we have to remove our shoes at the airport and ridiculously mundane items like bottles of shampoo are regarded as serious threats. Anyone who even looks vaguely middle-Easternish is automatically assumed to be a terrorist, and every U-Haul truck is a potential car bomb.
How can such drastic changes happen in such a short time? There is much discussion on the Internet about the role religion had to play in all this. And the term "religion" includes Christianity and Islam and every other belief system in the world. People are saying that religion is the cause of all this. As anti-religion as I am, I know that is not true. Religion by itself did not do this, but when religion is distorted and corrupted by extremists whose lives are ruled by irrationality and hatred, then these kind of things can happen. People blame Islam for the aircraft plunging into buildings and Pennsylvania farm fields but really, there is barely any noticeable difference between Christian fundamentalists and Islamic fundamentalists. Religious extremism of any kind can be responsible for unimaginable horror, as history has proven again and again.
So, while I do remember that September morning ten years ago, I prefer to look forward rather than backward. If I thought for one second it would be possible to go back and undo everything and get those 3,000 innocent lives back, I would do it in a nanosecond. But we all know that is impossible. For me, the only rational thing to do is live my life the best way I can, knowing that we only get one life to live and when it's over, it's over. I will live in the present and anticipate the future, and remember everything we lost.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
The Rapture That Wasn't
There was another incidence last weekend of a predicted end-of-the-world that didn't quite pan out. Some decrepit old fool named Harold Camping on this preachy "Family Life" radio station claimed to have "crunched the numbers" in the Bible and came up with May 21, 2011 as the day the Rapture would take place. This is when all the good, proper Christians would be yanked out of their clothing and sucked up into heaven. In my opinion, having to see millions of naked Christians floating through the air is the closest approximation to hell on earth that can possibly be imagined. I guess the national media was caught with nothing to talk about since gasoline prices appear to be headed downward, at least temporarily, and they all jumped on the end-of-the-world story like Kirstie Alley on a chocolate layer cake. But extreme Christian-battiness aside, what does it say about our culture that such a preposterous thing could garner that much publicity?
That anyone would believe an obviously addled, shriveled old douchebag somehow figured out a fairly momentous event that everyone else on the planet didn't, is somewhat of a stretch. And we all know how precise and exact the Bible is when it comes to relating historical events and timelines. Anyone with at least two firing brain cells would have dismissed this claptrap out of hand, but we're not talking regular people here, we're talking religious nuts whose lives are so empty and dreary and devoid of meaning that they have to take their cues from some desiccated old dirtbag with nothing better to do than scare the witless.
While most of us did just write off this nonsense as kabuki theater for the trailer-park crowd, a number of followers did go to extremes in their blind, lemming-like panic. One man in New York City spent his $140,000 life saving putting up advertisements in many subway stations warning of the impending catastrophe. I don't know which is more depressing: someone throwing away their life savings, or $140,000 even being considered "life savings." At any rate, he's out big bucks and for what? A big pile of nothing. The news reported that this guy was hanging around Times Square warning people that the end is near and when the 6 p.m. hour of reckoning came and went, he frantically starting looking through his Bible for help while a crowd of people laughed and jeered at him.
Harsh treatment, you might say, for someone of obviously limited intelligence who was taken in by just another religious charlatan. But the man was nearing 60 years of age and you would think after all that time you would be able to tell when something is bullshit when you smell it. The old saying goes, "There's a sucker born every minute," but maybe that should be changed to "There's a sucker baptized every minute." After a while, unless someone is mentally incapacitated by a psychological disorder and totally unable to make rational decisions, they have to take responsibility for their own actions and choices. Everything we do has consequences, and some consequences are worse than others, but the fact remains that when you do something stupid and idiotic, it's your own fault, and you have to deal with the aftermath.
But this whole "Rapture" thing is another way for Christianity to do their "us and them" thing, separating the world into the "saved" (i.e. believers) and the "unsaved" (those who don't believe). It doesn't matter that possibly some of the non-believers lead perfectly moral, exemplary lives - maybe even better lives than those who profess to believe in God - the fact that they don't accept the belief system of organized religion automatically dooms them to a horrible fate. I am a firm believer that organized religion of any kind gets in the way of a truly personal, fulfilling relationship with whatever higher power you choose to believe in, and it should be bypassed in favor of a much simpler, direct and honest way of dealing with that higher power. You don't need churches, temples, mosques, synagogues or crazy, Alzheimers-ridden old coots to run your life for you. You have and always have had the key to a rich, productive life in the palm of your hand, and you don't need crazy people telling you what to do.
So now, this old moron has come out from under the rock where he's been hiding for the past couple of days and reset his Doomsday countdown clock to October 21, 2011. That's the new date that the Rapture will happen. I suspect he'll probably get substantially less publicity and markedly fewer followers panicking in the streets at that time, but rest assured there will still be some people who will happily allow themselves to be snookered over and over again, and to whom the other old adage of "Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on me!" has no meaning.
That anyone would believe an obviously addled, shriveled old douchebag somehow figured out a fairly momentous event that everyone else on the planet didn't, is somewhat of a stretch. And we all know how precise and exact the Bible is when it comes to relating historical events and timelines. Anyone with at least two firing brain cells would have dismissed this claptrap out of hand, but we're not talking regular people here, we're talking religious nuts whose lives are so empty and dreary and devoid of meaning that they have to take their cues from some desiccated old dirtbag with nothing better to do than scare the witless.
While most of us did just write off this nonsense as kabuki theater for the trailer-park crowd, a number of followers did go to extremes in their blind, lemming-like panic. One man in New York City spent his $140,000 life saving putting up advertisements in many subway stations warning of the impending catastrophe. I don't know which is more depressing: someone throwing away their life savings, or $140,000 even being considered "life savings." At any rate, he's out big bucks and for what? A big pile of nothing. The news reported that this guy was hanging around Times Square warning people that the end is near and when the 6 p.m. hour of reckoning came and went, he frantically starting looking through his Bible for help while a crowd of people laughed and jeered at him.
Harsh treatment, you might say, for someone of obviously limited intelligence who was taken in by just another religious charlatan. But the man was nearing 60 years of age and you would think after all that time you would be able to tell when something is bullshit when you smell it. The old saying goes, "There's a sucker born every minute," but maybe that should be changed to "There's a sucker baptized every minute." After a while, unless someone is mentally incapacitated by a psychological disorder and totally unable to make rational decisions, they have to take responsibility for their own actions and choices. Everything we do has consequences, and some consequences are worse than others, but the fact remains that when you do something stupid and idiotic, it's your own fault, and you have to deal with the aftermath.
But this whole "Rapture" thing is another way for Christianity to do their "us and them" thing, separating the world into the "saved" (i.e. believers) and the "unsaved" (those who don't believe). It doesn't matter that possibly some of the non-believers lead perfectly moral, exemplary lives - maybe even better lives than those who profess to believe in God - the fact that they don't accept the belief system of organized religion automatically dooms them to a horrible fate. I am a firm believer that organized religion of any kind gets in the way of a truly personal, fulfilling relationship with whatever higher power you choose to believe in, and it should be bypassed in favor of a much simpler, direct and honest way of dealing with that higher power. You don't need churches, temples, mosques, synagogues or crazy, Alzheimers-ridden old coots to run your life for you. You have and always have had the key to a rich, productive life in the palm of your hand, and you don't need crazy people telling you what to do.
So now, this old moron has come out from under the rock where he's been hiding for the past couple of days and reset his Doomsday countdown clock to October 21, 2011. That's the new date that the Rapture will happen. I suspect he'll probably get substantially less publicity and markedly fewer followers panicking in the streets at that time, but rest assured there will still be some people who will happily allow themselves to be snookered over and over again, and to whom the other old adage of "Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on me!" has no meaning.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Great Religions of the World, Explained
As a public service, and to dispel the frankly incredulous notion that this blog is somehow hostile toward any one religion, this post will seek to explain the beliefs behind the major religions of the world. The careful reader can then make up their mind as to what they want to believe. Or not.
BUDDHISM: This religion is made up of followers of Buddha, also known as Siddhartha Gautama, who lived in the 6th to 4th century BC. The prime contribution of this religion is the concept of karma, which says anything you say or do now might very well come back and bite you in the ass several decades from now. I know my butt is going to look like Swiss cheese when karma gets finished with me. Okay, Swiss cheese with a lot of cellulite, will honesty get me some good karma? Buddhists also seem to be very preoccupied with suffering. They think it is a part of life and if you're lucky you'll suffer enough to become enlightened. For a religion that seems to be all about peace and love and getting along with each other, they sure are hard on themselves. We can thank this religion for the phrase "Buddha belly," which one applies to a chubby rabbit that has never met a snack they didn't like. I guess if I was to become religious at all, other than being a Wiccan I would probably become a Buddhist, with their emphasis on meditation and respect for animals. True story: In the previous sentence I typed "medication" instead of "meditation" and for a second it made total sense. If Buddhists believed in hell, I would be going there for sure.
CONFUCIANISM: This religion is based on the teachings of Chinese philosopher Confucius, or K'ung-fu-tzu, literally, Master Kong. It is very big in the far East, in places like China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea and Japan, but not well known elsewhere. Until Chinese cuisine became popular in the West and the demand for fortune cookies skyrocketed. Then Confucianism baffled millions if not billions of people worldwide with cryptic, arcane, mostly incomprehensible little sayings, usually coupled with lottery numbers and wrapped in a crunchy, delightful treat. It also made racist, annoying, Charlie Chan movies possible. Confucianism seems really hung up on ritual and conformity and tradition, and mandates a patriarchal, gender-biased system where older males have all the power and authority. A lot of religions seem to do this, and if I was a cynical, suspicious person I'd think there was a big conspiracy behind this, all designed to keep boring, senile old men in power. Just like Congress.
CALVINISM: One of the 3,000 or so variations of Christianity, Calvinists take their cues from the writings of John Calvin, a prominent proponent from the 16th century. Calvinism says that every person in the world is inherently evil, born into the stinking morass of original sin, and a lot of people never find their way out, a concept Calvinists call "total depravity." When I first read about "total depravity" I thought they were talking about the 1980s and all the drugs and party favors that were going around. I was ready to sign up until I read further and it really is dismal and depressing and just not a happy kind of religion. God is the only authority here, and it is up to His Divine Whim whether or not you're going to be saved or damned. I know when the deck is stacked against me, and so I will take a pass on Calvinism. Those people work entirely too hard and have no fun at all.
LUTHERANISM: The main tenets of Lutheranism were put forth by Martin Luther, when he told his wife he was going to put up some signs publicizing their upcoming yard sale but instead nailed his "95 Theses" to the door of some cathedral. After the yard sale, his teachings spread like wildfire throughout Germany and Scandinavia, and quickly became ensconced in this country as the religion of choice for bachelor farmers living in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Since my primary source of knowledge about Lutheranism is what I hear on "A Prairie Home Companion," I feel I am not qualified to comment much on this religion. But it does kind of sound like fun, in a dreary sort of way.
ISLAM: Yeah, like I'm going to bad-mouth Islam. Are you kidding me? I don't want to get killed. Islam is okay with me, thank you very much.
EPISCOPALIAN: Sorry, I got nothing. This religion baffles me. Even Wikipedia says, "WTF?"
ROMAN CATHOLICISM: Fasten your seat belts, this is going to be a bumpy ride. Let's go through the checklist, shall we? Guilt? Check. Revenge/retribution? Check. Fear and loathing? Double check. Parochialism, sexism, racism, homophobia? Check. Child molestation, greed, avarice, duplicity, lying? Check. Anti-intellectualism, elitism, Inquisitions, Crusades, mortal sin, hell, fallen angels, Holy Ghosts that look like pigeons, nuns? Check, check, check and check. Catholicism has it all! Where else can you get all that PLUS original sin! Oh but wait, there's more! What other religion had the hubris and the chutzpah to take on BOTH Galileo and Copernicus and tell them they're full of crap and they would get their asses kicked if they DARED to make the Sun the center of the Solar System? And it only took them 400 years to come around and admit their gross inaccuracies and apologize. What other religion would say that God loves and cherishes you dearly but will pop your ass down into the fiery depths of hell in an second if you dare question any of their teachings, no matter how minor or obscure. The same belief system that gave us Christmas and Easter also gave us Sodom and Gomorrah and the practice of crucifixion. What other religion has untold billions if not trillions of dollars tied up in artwork and relics and property in their very own city-state, the Vatican, and around the world and then screams like a stuck pig when someone brings up the subject of taxing their vast U.S. real estate holdings? What other faith co-opted a number of pagan celebrations, most notably Saturnalia (a.k.a. Christmas), as their very own and then turned right around and condemned these same pagans as stinking non-believers? If all this stuff is enough to make your head spin, it's just scratching the surface of the Wide World of Dysfunction that is Roman Catholicism. But check this out: without Roman Catholicism, this blog would not be here. I would not be here. Take THAT into consideration next time someone asks you what's wrong with Roman Catholicism.
PROTESTANTISM: This religion came about as Christianity fractured into a bunch of pieces in the 1600s, triggered by Martin Luther's 95 Theses doctrine (see above). The main problem appeared to be the Catholic practice of indulgences, in which people could pay the Church money in order to get out of punishment for doing bad stuff. It was like a Frequent Sinners reward program, only instead of free air travel you got a couple of years lopped off your stay in Purgatory, which I imagine to be a lot like Mesa but without the shopping and restaurants. The Catholics thought this was a great way to raise money but other people had moral qualms about that. Anyway Protestants had a chip on their shoulders from the very beginning and that kind of put them in a permanent bad mood. But hey, don't take it from me, check out the finest, definitive portrait of Protestantism offered in the great movie, "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life":
JUDAISM: I admit, I wanted to be Jewish when I was a kid. I thought it was like a really cool social club where everyone was in show business. All the great comedians I saw on television - legends like Milton Berle, Phil Silver, Sid Caesar, George Burns, to name a very few - were Jewish. Even Lucy Ricardo was Jewish! I loved reading Mad magazine and it had a very New-York-Jewish sensibility. My parents hated Mad magazine and thought it was turning me into a smart-ass. I wanted to tell them sorry, you're too late - the smart-ass train left the station long before I got a hold of my first Mad. Anyway, the music was pretty cool - I thought the "Theme from the Movie Exodus" was really awesome. Being Jewish meant being the beneficiary of thousands of years of history and tradition, much more appealing than the wanna-be, derivative nature of Catholicism. In school we learned all about the trials and tribulations of the "tribes of Israel" as they bravely wandered around homeless in the desert. They were truly the "chosen people" - until they killed Jesus. I thought for a long time the Roman centurions killed Jesus, but the Jews ended up taking the rap for that. All of a sudden the nuns didn't like them anymore. After Jesus' death the Catholic Church took off, and Judaism was left in the dust. That was pretty unfair, seeing as Judaism has cool holidays like Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and Passover. Without Judaism, Woody Allen movies wouldn't be nearly as funny and for that it gets a thumbs-up from me.
Well, there you have it. The Great Religions of the World Explained, in simple, easy-to-understand terms. It's so gratifying to me to write this blog and bring enlightenment to my valued readers. Part Two will be coming soon, in which I will take on Mormons, Southern Baptists, the Amish, Anglicans (as soon as I figure out who they are) and others. Who knows, someday I may start my own religion. If I do you will be the first to know, and discounts will be available to Careless Whispers fans!
BUDDHISM: This religion is made up of followers of Buddha, also known as Siddhartha Gautama, who lived in the 6th to 4th century BC. The prime contribution of this religion is the concept of karma, which says anything you say or do now might very well come back and bite you in the ass several decades from now. I know my butt is going to look like Swiss cheese when karma gets finished with me. Okay, Swiss cheese with a lot of cellulite, will honesty get me some good karma? Buddhists also seem to be very preoccupied with suffering. They think it is a part of life and if you're lucky you'll suffer enough to become enlightened. For a religion that seems to be all about peace and love and getting along with each other, they sure are hard on themselves. We can thank this religion for the phrase "Buddha belly," which one applies to a chubby rabbit that has never met a snack they didn't like. I guess if I was to become religious at all, other than being a Wiccan I would probably become a Buddhist, with their emphasis on meditation and respect for animals. True story: In the previous sentence I typed "medication" instead of "meditation" and for a second it made total sense. If Buddhists believed in hell, I would be going there for sure.
CONFUCIANISM: This religion is based on the teachings of Chinese philosopher Confucius, or K'ung-fu-tzu, literally, Master Kong. It is very big in the far East, in places like China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea and Japan, but not well known elsewhere. Until Chinese cuisine became popular in the West and the demand for fortune cookies skyrocketed. Then Confucianism baffled millions if not billions of people worldwide with cryptic, arcane, mostly incomprehensible little sayings, usually coupled with lottery numbers and wrapped in a crunchy, delightful treat. It also made racist, annoying, Charlie Chan movies possible. Confucianism seems really hung up on ritual and conformity and tradition, and mandates a patriarchal, gender-biased system where older males have all the power and authority. A lot of religions seem to do this, and if I was a cynical, suspicious person I'd think there was a big conspiracy behind this, all designed to keep boring, senile old men in power. Just like Congress.
CALVINISM: One of the 3,000 or so variations of Christianity, Calvinists take their cues from the writings of John Calvin, a prominent proponent from the 16th century. Calvinism says that every person in the world is inherently evil, born into the stinking morass of original sin, and a lot of people never find their way out, a concept Calvinists call "total depravity." When I first read about "total depravity" I thought they were talking about the 1980s and all the drugs and party favors that were going around. I was ready to sign up until I read further and it really is dismal and depressing and just not a happy kind of religion. God is the only authority here, and it is up to His Divine Whim whether or not you're going to be saved or damned. I know when the deck is stacked against me, and so I will take a pass on Calvinism. Those people work entirely too hard and have no fun at all.
LUTHERANISM: The main tenets of Lutheranism were put forth by Martin Luther, when he told his wife he was going to put up some signs publicizing their upcoming yard sale but instead nailed his "95 Theses" to the door of some cathedral. After the yard sale, his teachings spread like wildfire throughout Germany and Scandinavia, and quickly became ensconced in this country as the religion of choice for bachelor farmers living in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Since my primary source of knowledge about Lutheranism is what I hear on "A Prairie Home Companion," I feel I am not qualified to comment much on this religion. But it does kind of sound like fun, in a dreary sort of way.
ISLAM: Yeah, like I'm going to bad-mouth Islam. Are you kidding me? I don't want to get killed. Islam is okay with me, thank you very much.
EPISCOPALIAN: Sorry, I got nothing. This religion baffles me. Even Wikipedia says, "WTF?"
ROMAN CATHOLICISM: Fasten your seat belts, this is going to be a bumpy ride. Let's go through the checklist, shall we? Guilt? Check. Revenge/retribution? Check. Fear and loathing? Double check. Parochialism, sexism, racism, homophobia? Check. Child molestation, greed, avarice, duplicity, lying? Check. Anti-intellectualism, elitism, Inquisitions, Crusades, mortal sin, hell, fallen angels, Holy Ghosts that look like pigeons, nuns? Check, check, check and check. Catholicism has it all! Where else can you get all that PLUS original sin! Oh but wait, there's more! What other religion had the hubris and the chutzpah to take on BOTH Galileo and Copernicus and tell them they're full of crap and they would get their asses kicked if they DARED to make the Sun the center of the Solar System? And it only took them 400 years to come around and admit their gross inaccuracies and apologize. What other religion would say that God loves and cherishes you dearly but will pop your ass down into the fiery depths of hell in an second if you dare question any of their teachings, no matter how minor or obscure. The same belief system that gave us Christmas and Easter also gave us Sodom and Gomorrah and the practice of crucifixion. What other religion has untold billions if not trillions of dollars tied up in artwork and relics and property in their very own city-state, the Vatican, and around the world and then screams like a stuck pig when someone brings up the subject of taxing their vast U.S. real estate holdings? What other faith co-opted a number of pagan celebrations, most notably Saturnalia (a.k.a. Christmas), as their very own and then turned right around and condemned these same pagans as stinking non-believers? If all this stuff is enough to make your head spin, it's just scratching the surface of the Wide World of Dysfunction that is Roman Catholicism. But check this out: without Roman Catholicism, this blog would not be here. I would not be here. Take THAT into consideration next time someone asks you what's wrong with Roman Catholicism.
PROTESTANTISM: This religion came about as Christianity fractured into a bunch of pieces in the 1600s, triggered by Martin Luther's 95 Theses doctrine (see above). The main problem appeared to be the Catholic practice of indulgences, in which people could pay the Church money in order to get out of punishment for doing bad stuff. It was like a Frequent Sinners reward program, only instead of free air travel you got a couple of years lopped off your stay in Purgatory, which I imagine to be a lot like Mesa but without the shopping and restaurants. The Catholics thought this was a great way to raise money but other people had moral qualms about that. Anyway Protestants had a chip on their shoulders from the very beginning and that kind of put them in a permanent bad mood. But hey, don't take it from me, check out the finest, definitive portrait of Protestantism offered in the great movie, "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life":
JUDAISM: I admit, I wanted to be Jewish when I was a kid. I thought it was like a really cool social club where everyone was in show business. All the great comedians I saw on television - legends like Milton Berle, Phil Silver, Sid Caesar, George Burns, to name a very few - were Jewish. Even Lucy Ricardo was Jewish! I loved reading Mad magazine and it had a very New-York-Jewish sensibility. My parents hated Mad magazine and thought it was turning me into a smart-ass. I wanted to tell them sorry, you're too late - the smart-ass train left the station long before I got a hold of my first Mad. Anyway, the music was pretty cool - I thought the "Theme from the Movie Exodus" was really awesome. Being Jewish meant being the beneficiary of thousands of years of history and tradition, much more appealing than the wanna-be, derivative nature of Catholicism. In school we learned all about the trials and tribulations of the "tribes of Israel" as they bravely wandered around homeless in the desert. They were truly the "chosen people" - until they killed Jesus. I thought for a long time the Roman centurions killed Jesus, but the Jews ended up taking the rap for that. All of a sudden the nuns didn't like them anymore. After Jesus' death the Catholic Church took off, and Judaism was left in the dust. That was pretty unfair, seeing as Judaism has cool holidays like Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and Passover. Without Judaism, Woody Allen movies wouldn't be nearly as funny and for that it gets a thumbs-up from me.
Well, there you have it. The Great Religions of the World Explained, in simple, easy-to-understand terms. It's so gratifying to me to write this blog and bring enlightenment to my valued readers. Part Two will be coming soon, in which I will take on Mormons, Southern Baptists, the Amish, Anglicans (as soon as I figure out who they are) and others. Who knows, someday I may start my own religion. If I do you will be the first to know, and discounts will be available to Careless Whispers fans!
Friday, October 1, 2010
Yet Another Senseless Tragedy
Not that there ever is a "sensible" tragedy - there isn't - but the recent suicide death of Rutger's University freshman Tyler Clementi points out in stark detail a facet of our society which so often is given lip service at best or completely ignored at worse: suicide of young people who are gay.
Clementi jumped off a bridge after his roommates at Rutger's shot a video of him having a romantic encounter with another male and posted it on the Internet. There are so many things wrong with this, starting with why the roommates were so unnaturally interested in such a thing, as if it only happens rarely in this world, and that it's any of their damned business anyway. Taking the video was bad enough, but posting it on the Internet took a very serious lapse of judgment and multiplied it a million-fold.
It's impossible to believe that the two roommates had no idea what they were doing, or what it meant to post something on the Internet, where it immediately gains a worldwide audience and assumes a life that ironically will be much longer than Tyler's life. They knew what they were doing every step of the way, and the only thing left is to decide the motivation. Was it a hate crime? I certainly think that it was.
At the very least, it was an outrageous violation of privacy. It's not like Tyler was doing something really obnoxious in a public place, such as a woman breast-feeding an infant in McDonald's (don't get me started). It was done in the relative privacy of a dorm room. I think that everyone everywhere has a reasonable expectation of privacy under those circumstances, and for the violation to be done by people Tyler knew, lived with and presumably trusted, makes this whole thing all the more baffling and disgraceful.
But what it shows about our society is much more troubling. The idea that many people have about posting the most embarrassing and personal facets of life for everyone in the world to see on the Internet is a direct offshoot of our 24/7/365 trash culture and the predilection that everyone is a voyeur. Our see-all, tell-all culture demands, validates and rewards such behavior, but far more toxic is the shame that Clementi must have felt after being exposed or "outed" in such a horrible fashion. One has to wonder, would all this have happened if he had been making out with a woman instead of another man? Would the roommates had even bothered making a video or posting it? I don't know, and we may never know the true answers to those questions.
But the fact remains, homophobia is rampant in our culture and is probably the last great "acceptable" (to some people) form of discrimination. Subtly (and not-so-subtly) reinforced every day by organized religion (yes, that means Catholicism, fundamentalist Christians, Mormons, and other groups), they sanctimoniously claim to "love the sinner but hate the sin." To that, I give a resounding BULLSHIT! Those supposedly "Christian" people are motivated by nothing but hatred, bigotry, ignorance and intolerance. They hide behind their Bible as a cowardly way to shield themselves, much as Islamic terrorists carry out their work in populated areas, using innocent civilians as shields. All the while these "Christians" fight any and all normalization and integration of gay people as full members into our society, either by supporting anti-gay-marriage amendments in many states or working to pass anti-gay ballot initiatives in cities and states everywhere. They know how to use the media and code words to appeal to the homophobia and bigotry of their ignorant followers without having to answer directly for their hatred and bile. All this results in a pervasive attitude in this culture that being gay is something to be ashamed of, and gay relationships, while often longer-lasting and every bit as deep and valid as heterosexual relations, do not deserve equal recognition under law. The recent shameful actions by crotchety old cowards like John McCain to delay the repeal of the ridiculous "don't ask don't tell" military policy is another in a very long string of incidents that show just how deep-seated the bigotry of some people is, and how eager they are to show it to the world.
Justice denied to some is justice denied to all, and we really cannot claim to be a nation of freedom and equality if discrimination of this kind is tolerated, encouraged and codified into the laws of this country. The United States must be the laughing-stock of the world as so many major countries have long since made their gay citizens full members of their society, and the world didn't come to an end for any of them. So many Americans insist on showing themselves as ignorant, backward, poorly-educated and just plain hateful to the rest of the world, and that is something that degrades and denigrates every single one of us.
Clementi jumped off a bridge after his roommates at Rutger's shot a video of him having a romantic encounter with another male and posted it on the Internet. There are so many things wrong with this, starting with why the roommates were so unnaturally interested in such a thing, as if it only happens rarely in this world, and that it's any of their damned business anyway. Taking the video was bad enough, but posting it on the Internet took a very serious lapse of judgment and multiplied it a million-fold.
It's impossible to believe that the two roommates had no idea what they were doing, or what it meant to post something on the Internet, where it immediately gains a worldwide audience and assumes a life that ironically will be much longer than Tyler's life. They knew what they were doing every step of the way, and the only thing left is to decide the motivation. Was it a hate crime? I certainly think that it was.
At the very least, it was an outrageous violation of privacy. It's not like Tyler was doing something really obnoxious in a public place, such as a woman breast-feeding an infant in McDonald's (don't get me started). It was done in the relative privacy of a dorm room. I think that everyone everywhere has a reasonable expectation of privacy under those circumstances, and for the violation to be done by people Tyler knew, lived with and presumably trusted, makes this whole thing all the more baffling and disgraceful.
But what it shows about our society is much more troubling. The idea that many people have about posting the most embarrassing and personal facets of life for everyone in the world to see on the Internet is a direct offshoot of our 24/7/365 trash culture and the predilection that everyone is a voyeur. Our see-all, tell-all culture demands, validates and rewards such behavior, but far more toxic is the shame that Clementi must have felt after being exposed or "outed" in such a horrible fashion. One has to wonder, would all this have happened if he had been making out with a woman instead of another man? Would the roommates had even bothered making a video or posting it? I don't know, and we may never know the true answers to those questions.
But the fact remains, homophobia is rampant in our culture and is probably the last great "acceptable" (to some people) form of discrimination. Subtly (and not-so-subtly) reinforced every day by organized religion (yes, that means Catholicism, fundamentalist Christians, Mormons, and other groups), they sanctimoniously claim to "love the sinner but hate the sin." To that, I give a resounding BULLSHIT! Those supposedly "Christian" people are motivated by nothing but hatred, bigotry, ignorance and intolerance. They hide behind their Bible as a cowardly way to shield themselves, much as Islamic terrorists carry out their work in populated areas, using innocent civilians as shields. All the while these "Christians" fight any and all normalization and integration of gay people as full members into our society, either by supporting anti-gay-marriage amendments in many states or working to pass anti-gay ballot initiatives in cities and states everywhere. They know how to use the media and code words to appeal to the homophobia and bigotry of their ignorant followers without having to answer directly for their hatred and bile. All this results in a pervasive attitude in this culture that being gay is something to be ashamed of, and gay relationships, while often longer-lasting and every bit as deep and valid as heterosexual relations, do not deserve equal recognition under law. The recent shameful actions by crotchety old cowards like John McCain to delay the repeal of the ridiculous "don't ask don't tell" military policy is another in a very long string of incidents that show just how deep-seated the bigotry of some people is, and how eager they are to show it to the world.
Justice denied to some is justice denied to all, and we really cannot claim to be a nation of freedom and equality if discrimination of this kind is tolerated, encouraged and codified into the laws of this country. The United States must be the laughing-stock of the world as so many major countries have long since made their gay citizens full members of their society, and the world didn't come to an end for any of them. So many Americans insist on showing themselves as ignorant, backward, poorly-educated and just plain hateful to the rest of the world, and that is something that degrades and denigrates every single one of us.
Monday, September 20, 2010
The "Careless Whispers" Mailbag
You might think that writing a blog is all action, excitement and glamour, and it is, but there is a significant amount of work involved. Researching, composing, editing, re-writing - all have to be done before an entry is posted. Merriam-Webster's dictionary and the online thesaurus are my constant companions. It is fun to get mail from people who read my blog and ask me stuff. Here is just a sampling of what I get in the Careless Whispers Mailbag:
Dear Steve,
Why do you bad-mouth Sarah Palin so much? I think she is beautiful, smart, articulate and a real "down to earth" person. Why are you such a hater?
Dear Sarah Palin,
Don't try to pretend like you're someone else, you dimwitted ho-bag, I know this is you. I don't get many letters written in crayon on the back of a Burger King napkin. Why do I hate you? You might as well ask how many stars are in the sky or how many fish in the sea. Or how many meth labs there are in Alaska. It may be easier to ask, what is it about you that I like? And the answer is: nothing. I hate your robotic, annoying perkiness and how you try to be such a populist and middle-class hero, when in fact you have amassed millions of dollars in book revenues and personal appearances, and everything you do is geared to garnering more money and power. I hate the fact that you constantly excoriate the national news media and blame them for every bad thing that has ever happened, when in fact you would be nothing without them and their misguided coverage. But mostly I hate you for being such a phony. People somehow think that you speak truthfully and honestly, but in fact there is not a single word that comes out of your mouth that hasn't been calculated and scripted and written for you, by someone else. You try to position yourself as being a courageous and principled leader, but you resigned from the governorship of Alaska halfway through your term and abandoned your constituency to pursue national fame and the almighty dollar, because you're a greedy, lying, disingenuous, money-grubbing little coward. That's why I hate you, Sarah Palin, because you are such a complete, total and utter fraud.
Did I mention that I think you're an obnoxious, nasty little bitch, too?
Dear Steve,
You always say such awful things about religion. What do you have against God?
Dear D.E.,
Oh, I don't have anything against God. Me and God go way back and we are just fine. Ever since I banished religion from my life over 4o years ago I feel I understand God better than ever. God is only one name for a creative force in the universe that man created. There was also Yahweh, Buddha, Mohammed, and lots of other incarnations in many cultures and civilizations. These supernatural beings were created by people who could not explain natural phenomena with their current level of scientific development. As such, "God" served a purpose by bringing order and harmony to an apparently disordered and chaotic world. He provided answers, although not very good ones, for things that were beyond the control and understanding of humans. I get that, and I'm okay with it; it's organized religion that I have the problem with. Organized religion keeps people in the dark and stifles their spiritual growth with superstitions, myths, and out-and-out lies. Organized religion is all about guilt, shame, fear, coercion, retribution and intolerance. Organized religion's primary concern is hoarding wealth and power and using it to obtain more wealth and power (note parallel to Sarah Palin above).
See, way back in the past, religion used to be a deeply personal, individual thing and everybody was their own church. That is, you didn't have to go to some big building somewhere to talk to God; He was with you every minute of every day. Then, somewhere along the line, religion became externalized and God was no longer inside you, but outside of you. Instead of man creating God, religion turned things around so that God created man. Instead of being a source of enlightenment and comfort, religion became a source of tyranny and oppression. Instead of drawing you closer to your Creator, religion pushed you away. Instead of being a benevolent presence in your life, helping you do what is right, organized religion cast God as a force to be feared, always ready in a split-second to exact a terrible vengeance on anyone who questioned His Word. Over the centuries organized religion succeeded in "stacking the deck" to its advantage and relegating God to the background, all the while claiming to "represent" Him on Earth. So, to answer your question, I don't hate God any more than I hate Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, which is to say, not at all. God and I have wonderful conversations and we're okay with all this. By the way, He thinks Sarah Palin is an obnoxious, nasty little bitch, too.
Dear Steve,
You always talk about rabbits, it's like you are obsessed by them. What's so special about rabbits?
Dear Just,
People who know and love rabbits are the most fortunate people in the world, and we think of ourselves as members of a very exclusive club. We are bonded together by the love of a miraculous little creature who is a curious, fascinating combination of strength and fragility, timidity and fierceness, instinct and intelligence, all mixed in with a huge amount of love and affection. Being a prey animal, rabbits are naturally fearful of big huge mammals like us with eyes in the front of our heads. That's why when you gain the love and trust of a rabbit, that is a real accomplishment, since everything in their genetic and instinctual make-up is telling them to be afraid and run away. Rabbits are amazing, delightful and wonderful animals. My life has been changed in the most positive ways possible since bunnies entered it. They have brought joy, meaning and purpose into my life, and many, many fantastic, loving people, who have become my dear friends and extended family. People say the bunnies owe a lot to me, but in fact, the exact opposite is true. I owe them a lot, because of them my life has been immeasurably enriched. I will always be grateful to them - for being bunnies!
Well that's all for now. I'll be opening the mailbag again soon, although it takes a while to sort through the ticking packages and smelly manila envelopes. Hope you enjoy my blog as much as I enjoy writing it!
Dear Steve,
Why do you bad-mouth Sarah Palin so much? I think she is beautiful, smart, articulate and a real "down to earth" person. Why are you such a hater?
Para Sailin'
Dear Sarah Palin,
Don't try to pretend like you're someone else, you dimwitted ho-bag, I know this is you. I don't get many letters written in crayon on the back of a Burger King napkin. Why do I hate you? You might as well ask how many stars are in the sky or how many fish in the sea. Or how many meth labs there are in Alaska. It may be easier to ask, what is it about you that I like? And the answer is: nothing. I hate your robotic, annoying perkiness and how you try to be such a populist and middle-class hero, when in fact you have amassed millions of dollars in book revenues and personal appearances, and everything you do is geared to garnering more money and power. I hate the fact that you constantly excoriate the national news media and blame them for every bad thing that has ever happened, when in fact you would be nothing without them and their misguided coverage. But mostly I hate you for being such a phony. People somehow think that you speak truthfully and honestly, but in fact there is not a single word that comes out of your mouth that hasn't been calculated and scripted and written for you, by someone else. You try to position yourself as being a courageous and principled leader, but you resigned from the governorship of Alaska halfway through your term and abandoned your constituency to pursue national fame and the almighty dollar, because you're a greedy, lying, disingenuous, money-grubbing little coward. That's why I hate you, Sarah Palin, because you are such a complete, total and utter fraud.
Did I mention that I think you're an obnoxious, nasty little bitch, too?
Dear Steve,
You always say such awful things about religion. What do you have against God?
Devout Episcopalian
Dear D.E.,
Oh, I don't have anything against God. Me and God go way back and we are just fine. Ever since I banished religion from my life over 4o years ago I feel I understand God better than ever. God is only one name for a creative force in the universe that man created. There was also Yahweh, Buddha, Mohammed, and lots of other incarnations in many cultures and civilizations. These supernatural beings were created by people who could not explain natural phenomena with their current level of scientific development. As such, "God" served a purpose by bringing order and harmony to an apparently disordered and chaotic world. He provided answers, although not very good ones, for things that were beyond the control and understanding of humans. I get that, and I'm okay with it; it's organized religion that I have the problem with. Organized religion keeps people in the dark and stifles their spiritual growth with superstitions, myths, and out-and-out lies. Organized religion is all about guilt, shame, fear, coercion, retribution and intolerance. Organized religion's primary concern is hoarding wealth and power and using it to obtain more wealth and power (note parallel to Sarah Palin above).
See, way back in the past, religion used to be a deeply personal, individual thing and everybody was their own church. That is, you didn't have to go to some big building somewhere to talk to God; He was with you every minute of every day. Then, somewhere along the line, religion became externalized and God was no longer inside you, but outside of you. Instead of man creating God, religion turned things around so that God created man. Instead of being a source of enlightenment and comfort, religion became a source of tyranny and oppression. Instead of drawing you closer to your Creator, religion pushed you away. Instead of being a benevolent presence in your life, helping you do what is right, organized religion cast God as a force to be feared, always ready in a split-second to exact a terrible vengeance on anyone who questioned His Word. Over the centuries organized religion succeeded in "stacking the deck" to its advantage and relegating God to the background, all the while claiming to "represent" Him on Earth. So, to answer your question, I don't hate God any more than I hate Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, which is to say, not at all. God and I have wonderful conversations and we're okay with all this. By the way, He thinks Sarah Palin is an obnoxious, nasty little bitch, too.
Dear Steve,
You always talk about rabbits, it's like you are obsessed by them. What's so special about rabbits?
Just Asking
Dear Just,
People who know and love rabbits are the most fortunate people in the world, and we think of ourselves as members of a very exclusive club. We are bonded together by the love of a miraculous little creature who is a curious, fascinating combination of strength and fragility, timidity and fierceness, instinct and intelligence, all mixed in with a huge amount of love and affection. Being a prey animal, rabbits are naturally fearful of big huge mammals like us with eyes in the front of our heads. That's why when you gain the love and trust of a rabbit, that is a real accomplishment, since everything in their genetic and instinctual make-up is telling them to be afraid and run away. Rabbits are amazing, delightful and wonderful animals. My life has been changed in the most positive ways possible since bunnies entered it. They have brought joy, meaning and purpose into my life, and many, many fantastic, loving people, who have become my dear friends and extended family. People say the bunnies owe a lot to me, but in fact, the exact opposite is true. I owe them a lot, because of them my life has been immeasurably enriched. I will always be grateful to them - for being bunnies!
Well that's all for now. I'll be opening the mailbag again soon, although it takes a while to sort through the ticking packages and smelly manila envelopes. Hope you enjoy my blog as much as I enjoy writing it!
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The Age of Ignorance
As the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks draws near (Saturday), instead of concentrating on the ongoing ramifications of that horrific event and how much our lives have irrevocably changed since that awful day, we are instead inundated by a rising tide of bigotry and intolerance, from a number of sources.
The debate over the Ground Zero mosque in intensifying, with the opponents seeming to adopt a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) approach; that is, saying that Muslims have every right to build their mosque, just not where I tell them they can't. There's this huge gray area of "respect" for the innocent victims who tragically lost their lives when the World Trade Center towers collapsed, and I fail to understand how building a mosque somehow desecrates their memories. There are liquor stores and porno palaces within equal walking distance from Ground Zero, I don't know why they are not protested for providing an equivalent level of desecration.
No one is expecting anyone who suffered through that horrendous disaster or lost loved ones in such a senseless manner to ever "get over it," but one of the defining moments of a healthy, vibrant society is how it learns from tragedies and overcomes them. Not forget them, but learn from them. To me the very best tribute anyone could ever make to the 9/11 victims is not to succumb to the blind hatred of the terrorists, but instead rise above it. Don't embrace the fear, reject it. Tell the terrorists: you tried to make us afraid and hate our fellow man; we will not, and just as you seek to pull us apart, we will draw together, in a united front against Islamic extremists anywhere and everywhere in the world.
Then we are subjected to a peculiarly noxious version of religious idiocy as the obviously mentally-ill pastor of some minuscule evangelical Christian cult in Florida has taken it upon himself to make some kind of statement (and as far as I'm concerned the only "statement" he is making is how the mental health system in Florida has failed by not institutionalizing him ages ago) about Islam by burning several hundred copies of the Qu'ran, the Muslim holy book on the 9/11 anniversary. It's impossible for me to see how anything positive could come out of this cockamamie publicity stunt. But what is more incomprehensible is how this batshit-crazy nutjob, who looks like he hasn't bathed in a very long time, could be catapulted onto the world-wide stage by being as stupid, obnoxious and bigoted as he can possibly be.
This "Reverend" (term used sarcastically) Terry Jones is being interviewed by every major news outlet on the planet, and it is a publicity windfall beyond his wildest dreams. It is so indicative of how degraded our civilization has become when someone attains a world-wide celebrity (however briefly) by indulging in the most obnoxious, boorish and hateful behavior possible. Despite vociferous condemnations by representatives of every major religious group in the country, plus the Vatican, this pitiful, angry old geezer is stubbornly going ahead with his insane stunt, just like a spoiled, selfish, socially-maladjusted eight-year-old who throws tantrums to get what he wants, no matter what. Maybe Jones and his wife will take a break from their other occupation, selling furniture on eBay, and realize the complete folly of his actions. But I strongly doubt that, the publicity is too important.
That this grimy little ogre and his toilet-bowl opinions are even being paid attention to at all is directly the fault of the eternally loathsome Sarah Palin, who has succeeded in two short years in making ignorance, mediocrity and stupidity acceptable in the United States. There is barely an eyelash-difference between Sarah Palin and Terry Jones. Consider that:
1. They both have arisen from the garbage- and meth-infested cesspools of backward, primitive parts of the country.
2. They both claim to have religious righteousness on their side and use it to prey on the vulnerability and gullibility of uneducated, ignorant people trying to find some meaning in their wretched, pathetic and pointless lives.
3. They both have been given a world-wide stage to spew their stupidity and idiocy - Palin with her failed vice-presidential candidacy and the racist ranks of the Tea Party, and Jones with this Qu'ran burning and anti-Muslim bigotry.
4. They both take on a populist view, claiming to speak for and to the "average American," all the while laughing and sneering at their followers behind their backs for being too dumb to know when they are being played.
5. They both deny any responsibility or culpability for the consequences of their idiotic remarks, with Palin being uncharacteristically quiet about her "Drill, Baby, Drill" philosophy in the wake of the Gulf oil disaster, and Jones haughtily dismissing any possible danger he may be causing our service men and women in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world where Islam is the dominant religion.
How sad, and how telling of the complete moral bankruptcy of our culture that the most deliberately ignorant and willfully hateful members of our society are the ones who are publicized the most. What immense damage is being done to America's image everywhere in the world when Sarah Palin and Terry Jones are the faces everyone sees and associates with the United States. And lastly, how toxic and poisonous to our own nation and culture when two people can aspire to be the biggest assholes in the entire country, and succeed so well.
The debate over the Ground Zero mosque in intensifying, with the opponents seeming to adopt a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) approach; that is, saying that Muslims have every right to build their mosque, just not where I tell them they can't. There's this huge gray area of "respect" for the innocent victims who tragically lost their lives when the World Trade Center towers collapsed, and I fail to understand how building a mosque somehow desecrates their memories. There are liquor stores and porno palaces within equal walking distance from Ground Zero, I don't know why they are not protested for providing an equivalent level of desecration.
No one is expecting anyone who suffered through that horrendous disaster or lost loved ones in such a senseless manner to ever "get over it," but one of the defining moments of a healthy, vibrant society is how it learns from tragedies and overcomes them. Not forget them, but learn from them. To me the very best tribute anyone could ever make to the 9/11 victims is not to succumb to the blind hatred of the terrorists, but instead rise above it. Don't embrace the fear, reject it. Tell the terrorists: you tried to make us afraid and hate our fellow man; we will not, and just as you seek to pull us apart, we will draw together, in a united front against Islamic extremists anywhere and everywhere in the world.
Then we are subjected to a peculiarly noxious version of religious idiocy as the obviously mentally-ill pastor of some minuscule evangelical Christian cult in Florida has taken it upon himself to make some kind of statement (and as far as I'm concerned the only "statement" he is making is how the mental health system in Florida has failed by not institutionalizing him ages ago) about Islam by burning several hundred copies of the Qu'ran, the Muslim holy book on the 9/11 anniversary. It's impossible for me to see how anything positive could come out of this cockamamie publicity stunt. But what is more incomprehensible is how this batshit-crazy nutjob, who looks like he hasn't bathed in a very long time, could be catapulted onto the world-wide stage by being as stupid, obnoxious and bigoted as he can possibly be.
This "Reverend" (term used sarcastically) Terry Jones is being interviewed by every major news outlet on the planet, and it is a publicity windfall beyond his wildest dreams. It is so indicative of how degraded our civilization has become when someone attains a world-wide celebrity (however briefly) by indulging in the most obnoxious, boorish and hateful behavior possible. Despite vociferous condemnations by representatives of every major religious group in the country, plus the Vatican, this pitiful, angry old geezer is stubbornly going ahead with his insane stunt, just like a spoiled, selfish, socially-maladjusted eight-year-old who throws tantrums to get what he wants, no matter what. Maybe Jones and his wife will take a break from their other occupation, selling furniture on eBay, and realize the complete folly of his actions. But I strongly doubt that, the publicity is too important.
That this grimy little ogre and his toilet-bowl opinions are even being paid attention to at all is directly the fault of the eternally loathsome Sarah Palin, who has succeeded in two short years in making ignorance, mediocrity and stupidity acceptable in the United States. There is barely an eyelash-difference between Sarah Palin and Terry Jones. Consider that:
1. They both have arisen from the garbage- and meth-infested cesspools of backward, primitive parts of the country.
2. They both claim to have religious righteousness on their side and use it to prey on the vulnerability and gullibility of uneducated, ignorant people trying to find some meaning in their wretched, pathetic and pointless lives.
3. They both have been given a world-wide stage to spew their stupidity and idiocy - Palin with her failed vice-presidential candidacy and the racist ranks of the Tea Party, and Jones with this Qu'ran burning and anti-Muslim bigotry.
4. They both take on a populist view, claiming to speak for and to the "average American," all the while laughing and sneering at their followers behind their backs for being too dumb to know when they are being played.
5. They both deny any responsibility or culpability for the consequences of their idiotic remarks, with Palin being uncharacteristically quiet about her "Drill, Baby, Drill" philosophy in the wake of the Gulf oil disaster, and Jones haughtily dismissing any possible danger he may be causing our service men and women in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world where Islam is the dominant religion.
How sad, and how telling of the complete moral bankruptcy of our culture that the most deliberately ignorant and willfully hateful members of our society are the ones who are publicized the most. What immense damage is being done to America's image everywhere in the world when Sarah Palin and Terry Jones are the faces everyone sees and associates with the United States. And lastly, how toxic and poisonous to our own nation and culture when two people can aspire to be the biggest assholes in the entire country, and succeed so well.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Another Day, Another Scandal
Once more we are treated to the sight of one of our august elected officials acting like a lovesick teenager and completely betraying the trust of their constituents and the integrity of their own ideas by getting caught in a tacky, tawdry extra-marital affair. South Carolina governor Mark Sanford apparently woke up the other morning and decided he could not get through the day without hopping on an international flight down to Buenos Aires to see his squeeze-on-the-side Maria Something-Or-Other. Telling no one where he was going or when he would be back, Sanford blithely turned his back on his family and his responsibilities of his leadership position and just left, forcing his staff to sound like totally clueless idiots by making them serve up some drivel about him "hiking the Appalachian Trail" to "get away for a while." When he was busted by a reporter getting off a plane in Atlanta he knew he had gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and a seedy, blubbering, squirm-inducing, public apology was next on the list of terminal embarrassments that are in his immediate future.
Sanford, who was also the head of the Republican Governors' Association (a terrorist organization if I ever heard of one) was being groomed for a possible presidential bid in 2012. I'm thinking he should look into a local Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise instead. Other Republican governors who are also likely presidential contenders are the eternally loathsome Alaska governor Sarah Palin (Tammy Tundra), Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty (Snoooooze), Mississippi's Haley Barbour (any guy named "Haley" is automatically disqualified) and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (HAHAHAHA! I'm so sure!).
Politicians acting like swine in the middle of their spring rut is nothing new; in fact it happens all the time. Eliot Spitzer resigned the governorship of New York after he was discovered engaging the services of a high-priced hooker. The country was treated to the double spectacle of his rubbery face and beady, shifty eyes as he tiptoed around his behavior, and also his wife standing by his side, looking like she just wanted the earth to open up and swallow her. Her embarrassment and mortification were epic, and an acknowledgment that her marriage was a complete sham. Then a while ago there was Governor Jim McGreavy of New Jersey who had a same-sex dalliance with some guy from Israel and the nation was treated to the TMI details of that little snogfest. Just last week, Senator John Ensign of Nevada, another potential Republican presidential contender in 2012, announced he had an affair and resigned from the Senate leadership. At least he had the good grace to resign, something which is apparently lost on Sanford.
And then there's the classic case of Idaho Senator Larry "Wide Stance" Craig, who got caught toe-tapping for a little male companionship in an airport restroom. Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, Craig adamantly denied his guilt and shrilly declared his heterosexuality, which turned more stomachs across this country than the latest salmonella scare. His wife looked so pathetic standing by his side, but she obviously had neither the mental capacity nor the worldly experience to even dimly understand what was going on.
Democrats get caught with their pants down almost as much as Republicans, but when it happens to a Republican it is especially gratifying, because they are the party of social conservatism and family values. They are constantly bellowing about how those godless liberals and gay people are destroying the family and the sanctity of marriage. It seems to me that these Republican man-sluts are doing more to destroy the sanctity of marriage and respect for the family than all the gay and lesbian couples across the country who are in committed relationships and only want those relationships recognized and validated like those of every other tax-paying, native-born citizen.
Sanford was a darling of the Republican right for at least initially turning down economic stimulus money for his state and also for his socially conservative views, but I guess that was all for show because he obviously has no respect for his vows of matrimony and his family. And many Republicans have all their fake piety and sanctimonious bullshit on display as they listen to Sanford's rambling, disjointed confession and say, oh he has sinned, he's a human being, let's all forgive him. Where is this magnanimity when it comes to accepting people with different lifestyles and political views? Where is this open and loving spirit when they gleefully rejoice over the cowardly, cold-blooded murder of an abortion provider? Where is this gentle, forgiving spirit when they spend millions of dollars to pass discriminatory amendments to state constitutions?
All this is very indicative of the rot and hatefulness which is at the core of the Republican party. One thing all Republicans seem to have in common, and indeed seems to be a genetic prerequisite for party membership, is their towering, unbelievable and monumental hypocrisy. Their mantra apparently is, "Do as I say, not as I do." They impose standards of morality and personal conduct on every citizen of this country and then see nothing wrong when they choose to violate those standards themselves. For a fellow Republican it's always all sweet forgiveness and grace; for everyone else, it is loathing and disdain for their lack of moral character and respect for religion.
Hypocrisy really does find its highest, truest expression in the Republican party. And you can bet your butt I'm going to wallow in all this delicious schadenfreude at the expense of the Republican party for as long as possible. I suggest you do, too, because it's great fun and they so deserve it.
Sanford, who was also the head of the Republican Governors' Association (a terrorist organization if I ever heard of one) was being groomed for a possible presidential bid in 2012. I'm thinking he should look into a local Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise instead. Other Republican governors who are also likely presidential contenders are the eternally loathsome Alaska governor Sarah Palin (Tammy Tundra), Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty (Snoooooze), Mississippi's Haley Barbour (any guy named "Haley" is automatically disqualified) and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (HAHAHAHA! I'm so sure!).
Politicians acting like swine in the middle of their spring rut is nothing new; in fact it happens all the time. Eliot Spitzer resigned the governorship of New York after he was discovered engaging the services of a high-priced hooker. The country was treated to the double spectacle of his rubbery face and beady, shifty eyes as he tiptoed around his behavior, and also his wife standing by his side, looking like she just wanted the earth to open up and swallow her. Her embarrassment and mortification were epic, and an acknowledgment that her marriage was a complete sham. Then a while ago there was Governor Jim McGreavy of New Jersey who had a same-sex dalliance with some guy from Israel and the nation was treated to the TMI details of that little snogfest. Just last week, Senator John Ensign of Nevada, another potential Republican presidential contender in 2012, announced he had an affair and resigned from the Senate leadership. At least he had the good grace to resign, something which is apparently lost on Sanford.
And then there's the classic case of Idaho Senator Larry "Wide Stance" Craig, who got caught toe-tapping for a little male companionship in an airport restroom. Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, Craig adamantly denied his guilt and shrilly declared his heterosexuality, which turned more stomachs across this country than the latest salmonella scare. His wife looked so pathetic standing by his side, but she obviously had neither the mental capacity nor the worldly experience to even dimly understand what was going on.
Democrats get caught with their pants down almost as much as Republicans, but when it happens to a Republican it is especially gratifying, because they are the party of social conservatism and family values. They are constantly bellowing about how those godless liberals and gay people are destroying the family and the sanctity of marriage. It seems to me that these Republican man-sluts are doing more to destroy the sanctity of marriage and respect for the family than all the gay and lesbian couples across the country who are in committed relationships and only want those relationships recognized and validated like those of every other tax-paying, native-born citizen.
Sanford was a darling of the Republican right for at least initially turning down economic stimulus money for his state and also for his socially conservative views, but I guess that was all for show because he obviously has no respect for his vows of matrimony and his family. And many Republicans have all their fake piety and sanctimonious bullshit on display as they listen to Sanford's rambling, disjointed confession and say, oh he has sinned, he's a human being, let's all forgive him. Where is this magnanimity when it comes to accepting people with different lifestyles and political views? Where is this open and loving spirit when they gleefully rejoice over the cowardly, cold-blooded murder of an abortion provider? Where is this gentle, forgiving spirit when they spend millions of dollars to pass discriminatory amendments to state constitutions?
All this is very indicative of the rot and hatefulness which is at the core of the Republican party. One thing all Republicans seem to have in common, and indeed seems to be a genetic prerequisite for party membership, is their towering, unbelievable and monumental hypocrisy. Their mantra apparently is, "Do as I say, not as I do." They impose standards of morality and personal conduct on every citizen of this country and then see nothing wrong when they choose to violate those standards themselves. For a fellow Republican it's always all sweet forgiveness and grace; for everyone else, it is loathing and disdain for their lack of moral character and respect for religion.
Hypocrisy really does find its highest, truest expression in the Republican party. And you can bet your butt I'm going to wallow in all this delicious schadenfreude at the expense of the Republican party for as long as possible. I suggest you do, too, because it's great fun and they so deserve it.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
A Separation Most Vital
Awesome article on Salon.com detailing the many reasons why this country is not a Christian nation, claims of the religious right notwithstanding:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/04/14/christian_nation/index.html
The fundamentalist extremists in the country never fail to exceed their own standards of arrogance when it comes to their assertions that the United States is a "Christian" country and anyone who disagrees can GTFO. The occasional mention of "God" and a "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence does not necessarily infer that this country was founded on "Judeo-Christian principles." Religious conservatives harp mercilessly on the fact that the Pledge of Allegiance has the phrase "under God" in it but they don't mention the fact that those words were not in the original Pledge, but rather added to it in 1954, not really that long ago.
The founding fathers back in the 1700s were not a homogeneous bunch of Bible-thumpers. They were a diverse group including Rosicrucians, Freethinkers, Free Masons and others. For the religious conservatives of today to appropriate the history of this country into their own narrow-minded, modernist version of Christianity is wholly invalid and quite an unreasonable stretch. They seem to think they have a monopoly on God and everyone should conform to their own particular brand of delusion. Two principles upon which this country most definitely was founded were religious freedom and a strict separation of church and state. It was no accident that the founding fathers worked so hard to keep religion out of government and government out of religion. The whole purpose of this country's formation was to provide religious freedom to those who had been persecuted by the majority, for their beliefs. And today it's happening all over again.
To insist that the laws of this country be modified to conform to the beliefs of the majority, at the expense of the freedoms of the minorities, is one of the most blatantly treasonous and un-American things that could ever happen.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/04/14/christian_nation/index.html
The fundamentalist extremists in the country never fail to exceed their own standards of arrogance when it comes to their assertions that the United States is a "Christian" country and anyone who disagrees can GTFO. The occasional mention of "God" and a "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence does not necessarily infer that this country was founded on "Judeo-Christian principles." Religious conservatives harp mercilessly on the fact that the Pledge of Allegiance has the phrase "under God" in it but they don't mention the fact that those words were not in the original Pledge, but rather added to it in 1954, not really that long ago.
The founding fathers back in the 1700s were not a homogeneous bunch of Bible-thumpers. They were a diverse group including Rosicrucians, Freethinkers, Free Masons and others. For the religious conservatives of today to appropriate the history of this country into their own narrow-minded, modernist version of Christianity is wholly invalid and quite an unreasonable stretch. They seem to think they have a monopoly on God and everyone should conform to their own particular brand of delusion. Two principles upon which this country most definitely was founded were religious freedom and a strict separation of church and state. It was no accident that the founding fathers worked so hard to keep religion out of government and government out of religion. The whole purpose of this country's formation was to provide religious freedom to those who had been persecuted by the majority, for their beliefs. And today it's happening all over again.
To insist that the laws of this country be modified to conform to the beliefs of the majority, at the expense of the freedoms of the minorities, is one of the most blatantly treasonous and un-American things that could ever happen.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Forgiving Easter
Public Service Announcement: Do not give live rabbits as Easter presents. Come on, people, it happens every year. You don't need to give your shrieking, ADHD-addled offspring a little bunny to torture and feed crap to. No one's saying you can't have a happy Easter - give a plush toy bunny or a chocolate rabbit to enjoy. Save the beautiful life of an innocent rabbit. Spread the word.
It will be Easter in a couple of days and I always get to thinking about a lot of things when this holiday rolls around. I was born and raised in a devout Roman Catholic household, although I never considered myself to be Catholic. Actually I never had any say in the matter - a couple of days after I was born they whisked my little bald head off to church to be baptized. You see, I had been born with "original sin." Rumor has it (and by "rumor" I mean the Baltimore Catechism circa 1941) that after Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden apple they were banished from the Garden of Eden (site now occupied by a Honda dealership in Anaheim, California) and all of their progeny would be stained with "original sin" for all eternity.
Um... seriously? Babies being born today who haven't done anything at all automatically have a sin credited against them when they take their first breath? You don't need to be Mr. Cynical to think that maybe it's just a transparent, self-serving scam perpetrated by the Catholic Church to make sure all babies get baptized as soon as possible after birth, before the parents can change their minds. And once the Church gets its fishhooks into you, you will stay hooked unless and until you do something drastic.
My parents were devout Catholics, not to excess. They certainly weren't fundamentalists, but the Church was a huge part of my life growing up. Attendance at Sunday Mass was absolutely mandatory unless you were two seconds away from death, and only then would you be grudgingly excused. In my first sixteen years of life I remember missing Sunday Mass only once, when I was very sick with a fever and was hallucinating about being 10,000 feet tall. I was sent to Catholic school and our house had a Bible and a huge garish crucifix in the living room above the television. Imagine watching Monty Python's Flying Circus under the watchful gaze of a bloodied Jesus and you get some idea of what my childhood was like. And yet the second I went away to college I turned my back on the Catholic Church and never, ever looked back. For all their good intentions, my parents made the same mistake that the Roman Catholic church, and most organized religions for that matter, make, and that is you can't force a person to believe in something that they innately don't believe in.
I may be wrong, but I've always intuitively felt that religious faith is something that comes from inside you, not imposed by force from the outside. Faith is a deeply personal thing that goes to the core of your understanding of life, your purpose in it, and if there is an afterlife. If you don't have faith in something, how can someone or something make you have faith? Fact is, they can't. Someone can impose their beliefs on you and you can say that you believe it, too, but that's a form of lying, because you are merely telling them something that they want to hear in hopes that they will get off your case and leave you alone. But that is not true religious faith.
However, back to Easter. It was the second-biggest religious holiday of the year, after Christmas. It was a string of days, starting with Holy Thursday, where admittedly nothing much happened but I guess it was a gearing-up day, and ended with Easter Monday, also known as Dingus Day in my little Polish-Catholic hometown, when it was okay to run around and throw water balloons at all the girls. I am not kidding about this, just don't ask me to explain it. In between was Good Friday, which commemorated the day Jesus was actually crucified, and we were not allowed to go outside and play or make noise or watch television between 12 noon and 3pm. We had to sit around a quiet house and stare at the walls and do pretty much nothing, which was amazingly surreal to me. At some point we got hustled off to church for Stations of the Cross, which was unmitigated torture to me. Also Holy Saturday, which was fun because that's when they had the Blessing of the Animals and everyone got to bring their pets into church, which I thought was outrageously cool, especially when some big dog would take a dump on the floor in front of the altar.
Speaking of unmitigated torture, nothing was worse than the previous Sunday, Palm Sunday, when the priest read that incredibly long gospel about the passion and crucifixion of Jesus and you had to stand throughout the whole thing. It was awful and I can remember wanting to sit down so badly as the priest just droned on and on. One horrible Palm Sunday the priest read through the long, tedious gospel in English, and then at the end when everyone thought they were going to finally sit down, he read it again in Polish! All the way from the start, for the benefit of the three elderly Polish ladies in the back row who couldn't hear a damned thing anyway. I can remember being delirious with outrage as I had to stand for what seemed like a horrendously long time while the priest blathered on in an incomprehensible language.
Tortuous church services notwithstanding, out of all the Catholic holidays Easter seemed to have the most meaning for me, because it dealt with redemption and forgiveness, two concepts which are eternally interesting to me. I liked the idea of admitting your sins, atoning for them, and coming out a better person afterward. Redemption is a transformative process, a way to get closer to God while still retaining your humanity, by admitting that you are a flawed being and allowing the power of love to heal you. But just as Christmas has become distastefully corrupted by the many, onion-like layers of greed, materialism, commercialism and consumerism that so easily supplants the true, basic meaning of the holiday, Easter has too become stained by the emphasis on colored eggs, marshmallow peeps and Easter baskets filled with the most obnoxious, wasteful crap imaginable. And, as I mentioned at the top of this entry, the unfortunate association of Easter with domestic rabbits, which in the vast majority of instances results in a rabbit being abused, neglected, abandoned, turned into already-overcrowded shelters, doomed to a lonely life isolated in some outdoor hutch, or worse.
What to do then, with this holiday where innocent creatures are sacrificed for some anachronistic tradition of the "Easter bunny". Maybe we should just forgive Easter for this unfortunate association and move on to a better way of celebrating it. After all, it would be the most Christian thing to do.
It will be Easter in a couple of days and I always get to thinking about a lot of things when this holiday rolls around. I was born and raised in a devout Roman Catholic household, although I never considered myself to be Catholic. Actually I never had any say in the matter - a couple of days after I was born they whisked my little bald head off to church to be baptized. You see, I had been born with "original sin." Rumor has it (and by "rumor" I mean the Baltimore Catechism circa 1941) that after Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden apple they were banished from the Garden of Eden (site now occupied by a Honda dealership in Anaheim, California) and all of their progeny would be stained with "original sin" for all eternity.
Um... seriously? Babies being born today who haven't done anything at all automatically have a sin credited against them when they take their first breath? You don't need to be Mr. Cynical to think that maybe it's just a transparent, self-serving scam perpetrated by the Catholic Church to make sure all babies get baptized as soon as possible after birth, before the parents can change their minds. And once the Church gets its fishhooks into you, you will stay hooked unless and until you do something drastic.
My parents were devout Catholics, not to excess. They certainly weren't fundamentalists, but the Church was a huge part of my life growing up. Attendance at Sunday Mass was absolutely mandatory unless you were two seconds away from death, and only then would you be grudgingly excused. In my first sixteen years of life I remember missing Sunday Mass only once, when I was very sick with a fever and was hallucinating about being 10,000 feet tall. I was sent to Catholic school and our house had a Bible and a huge garish crucifix in the living room above the television. Imagine watching Monty Python's Flying Circus under the watchful gaze of a bloodied Jesus and you get some idea of what my childhood was like. And yet the second I went away to college I turned my back on the Catholic Church and never, ever looked back. For all their good intentions, my parents made the same mistake that the Roman Catholic church, and most organized religions for that matter, make, and that is you can't force a person to believe in something that they innately don't believe in.
I may be wrong, but I've always intuitively felt that religious faith is something that comes from inside you, not imposed by force from the outside. Faith is a deeply personal thing that goes to the core of your understanding of life, your purpose in it, and if there is an afterlife. If you don't have faith in something, how can someone or something make you have faith? Fact is, they can't. Someone can impose their beliefs on you and you can say that you believe it, too, but that's a form of lying, because you are merely telling them something that they want to hear in hopes that they will get off your case and leave you alone. But that is not true religious faith.
However, back to Easter. It was the second-biggest religious holiday of the year, after Christmas. It was a string of days, starting with Holy Thursday, where admittedly nothing much happened but I guess it was a gearing-up day, and ended with Easter Monday, also known as Dingus Day in my little Polish-Catholic hometown, when it was okay to run around and throw water balloons at all the girls. I am not kidding about this, just don't ask me to explain it. In between was Good Friday, which commemorated the day Jesus was actually crucified, and we were not allowed to go outside and play or make noise or watch television between 12 noon and 3pm. We had to sit around a quiet house and stare at the walls and do pretty much nothing, which was amazingly surreal to me. At some point we got hustled off to church for Stations of the Cross, which was unmitigated torture to me. Also Holy Saturday, which was fun because that's when they had the Blessing of the Animals and everyone got to bring their pets into church, which I thought was outrageously cool, especially when some big dog would take a dump on the floor in front of the altar.
Speaking of unmitigated torture, nothing was worse than the previous Sunday, Palm Sunday, when the priest read that incredibly long gospel about the passion and crucifixion of Jesus and you had to stand throughout the whole thing. It was awful and I can remember wanting to sit down so badly as the priest just droned on and on. One horrible Palm Sunday the priest read through the long, tedious gospel in English, and then at the end when everyone thought they were going to finally sit down, he read it again in Polish! All the way from the start, for the benefit of the three elderly Polish ladies in the back row who couldn't hear a damned thing anyway. I can remember being delirious with outrage as I had to stand for what seemed like a horrendously long time while the priest blathered on in an incomprehensible language.
Tortuous church services notwithstanding, out of all the Catholic holidays Easter seemed to have the most meaning for me, because it dealt with redemption and forgiveness, two concepts which are eternally interesting to me. I liked the idea of admitting your sins, atoning for them, and coming out a better person afterward. Redemption is a transformative process, a way to get closer to God while still retaining your humanity, by admitting that you are a flawed being and allowing the power of love to heal you. But just as Christmas has become distastefully corrupted by the many, onion-like layers of greed, materialism, commercialism and consumerism that so easily supplants the true, basic meaning of the holiday, Easter has too become stained by the emphasis on colored eggs, marshmallow peeps and Easter baskets filled with the most obnoxious, wasteful crap imaginable. And, as I mentioned at the top of this entry, the unfortunate association of Easter with domestic rabbits, which in the vast majority of instances results in a rabbit being abused, neglected, abandoned, turned into already-overcrowded shelters, doomed to a lonely life isolated in some outdoor hutch, or worse.
What to do then, with this holiday where innocent creatures are sacrificed for some anachronistic tradition of the "Easter bunny". Maybe we should just forgive Easter for this unfortunate association and move on to a better way of celebrating it. After all, it would be the most Christian thing to do.
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