Let's say you're my friend. You have just suffered a loss, a deep personal one, and you are grieving. I come to you, sit down, and I listen to you and help you achieve catharsis. When you are done and it's time for me to contribute to the conversation, I simply tell you I care, that I will try to understand as best as I am able, and I let you know that you can come to me anytime you need to talk, and I will listen.
Fair enough, right? I've done what a friend would do most of the time for their friends--be there for them when the need arises. I don't judge whether the loss was something you could have prevented, I don't lecture you on why you should have done something different and I don't try to put my values, moral or otherwise, on you.
Now, let's say the reverse happened. I'm the one with the problem, and you come to me as a "friend." So you listen (at least I think you're trying to listen, even if you interrupt me endlessly during my talking), and then you take my hand in yours and you say, "I will pray for you, you know; I won't let your soul suffer as I will seek a blessing from Jesus for you."
That's well and good if it's a person from your church who believes the same things you do, or if it's a family member who shares your faith, but this kind of response is completely wrong for someone who doesn't share your beliefs. And nowadays, that is often the case.
I'm an atheist. But I'm also secular and a humanist, and I try to keep religion out of discussions in which a difference in beliefs might make some awkward moments. That's how I try to deal with people for the most part, and how some of my dearest friends have been in the past, including one close friend who was a devout Catholic, but who never pushed it on me, despite the fact that I grew up Catholic and "escaped" from it!
But if someone has to inject their faith into any conversations they have with others, especially when they know definitely that the person they're speaking with is not of their faith, how much of a friend are they? If they try to negate the part of you that is either not religious or of a different belief, they cannot really respect you for being who you are--instead, they are transferring their values onto you, and thereupon find you lacking by their moral standards.
I'm pregnant, and I want an abortion....by my belief system, it's got nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with me, a woman, making a choice. By your belief system, I'm going to hell for killing a "baby!" So you feel morally superior to me basing my choice on your rationale.
I'm gay, and I love my partner, with whom I've spent more years than you have with your spouse. By my reasoning, why would you have anything to say about who I care to love and want to spend my life with? You, on the other hand, see nothing wrong with having multiple partners, or multiple spouses, but have a problem with two people with the same equipment caring and loving each other. Again, you are transferring your moral judgement on my life.
I'm for gun control, you love to shoot guns. I don't eat any animal products, you crave steaks about every 20 minutes. I believe that it took many millions of years for this world and all the life on it to evolve into what we know today--you believe that a lot of begatting only took about 10,000 years, and that when your ancestors were little, they used to have Dino the Dinosaur as a family pet.
It doesn't matter. It really can't matter when you come right down to it--no single person on the face of this planet (except if you are one of an identical twin) has gone through the same experiences, has the same genes, or even the same ideas. And that's the joy of being who we are. We are the world (and no, don't cue up the Michael Jackson song, either!) and we are a world of differences. If we were all the same, we might as well be robots or clones, because innovation, ideas and inventions would never come, would never be able to discover the joy at finding out about another person.
I confess: I still have a lot of fury at a former friend because she chose to let her religious beliefs come between us. She always injected her fundie beliefs and values into conversations, and then she got offended the day I told her that I couldn't stand her and the "fucking fundies" she was part of. But during a particularly desperate year in her life, I was there for her, talking about everything in the world (as long as it didn't involve religion) and tried to listen to her without making any moral assumptions. And as a thank you, I had to listen to her rants about gays being evil, about those who had abortions being whores and worse, about how my soul was headed straight for the deepest bowels of hell, and about her being morally superior to me because she had been "reborn" and brought Christ into her life. Oh, and yes, I almost forgot: how Muslims worshipped the "anti-Christ."
I don't ask the people I meet for the first time about what they believe in. It's immaterial, and it isn't any of my damned business. I will argue with you if I find you voted for GWB, but that's far more important than whether you have a personal "savior" or are Wiccan and keep an alter in your bedroom. Who is to know if Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus Christ, or Zeus is the better idol? Who is to question whether you are a better human being if you worship cows or eat them? That's your choice, and I've got mine. Mine says that I have a right to mine, and you have a right to yours. But if yours says that you have a right to yours, and that I have a right to yours, I will surely find you morally repugnant for not extending the same courtesy to me that I have extended to you.
The fact is, we're all right, and we're all wrong. We come at decisions from different viewpoints, we come with a set of values which we inherited from our ancestors, and we will add some new values through our own experiences. If we or our children go to a public school, there is no room--none whatsoever--for religion to be part of a mandatory curriculum. On the other hand, if you or your child goes to a private or parochial school, or if you are homeschooling your child, you are paying or playing to impart to them whatever you want.
I could never be considered shy, nor am I ever anything less than outspoken. But if you give me no reason to attack you on any of your beliefs, you should accept the same from me. Don't tell me smugly that my "god is less than your god," because so help me, I'm to the point where if you do, I will seriously contemplate hauling back and breaking your nose. Treat me as you wish to be treated: nothing less than that. How much simpler can my argument get?
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
We are all the same under the skin
Cruelty and repression are without culture. It happens everywhere, all the time, and to everyone. It is not limited to Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, communists, conservatives, liberals, or any denomination, color, race, creed or gender.
It happens. It's built right into our genes--we are not that far off from our most distant ancestors, clubbing each other with a wooden club. If it weren't for that savagery, though, we might not have survived this far: no one can deny that for some reason, we progress faster when we are acting our worst toward each other. Still survival of the fittest? Perhaps. But there comes a time when we reach a crossroad, and our minds see and imagine more peace while our instincts still pull us toward another horrible conflict. We try to overcome our desire for violence, but we're still bound by rules that keep us clinging to old ways of death and destruction.
Survival in today's world is still gained by domination and force. It's not going to stop until the human race is dead, period. We kill. We believe we kill for a reason, try to rationalize our choices, but when all is said and done, there is someone standing, and someone not breathing.
There is much to change, but so few to understand, few to comprehend our existence. We can map the human genome, but until the cruelty gene is eradicated, we will always be incapable of evolving beyond our current state of mind.
There is much to be ashamed of in our history, but we still thrive on intense emotion, for bad or good. For every living thing tortured, maimed and killed, there is a Michelangelo, a Shakespeare, a Beethoven. Without the sorrow, there is no joy; without the pain, there is no pleasure.
We are dual beings, living in a world of Heaven and of Hell. We aspire to beauty, but we fall to the ugliness that made our world, our civilization.
It is not one sole group that harms and hinders, it is merely a single aspect of who we are. The main difference is how some will never make that transition from the imagination to the factual, but for others, there is only a threshold to cross to do such horror.
Repression of another, of imprisoning someone weaker than ourselves is not only fact, but common. It is a better person who can think, but not act on the impulses that bring about such calamity. If we were in the situation ourselves, there is always the possibility that we would act similarly, even if we can't visualize it. We're always quick to condemn someoone else who has done something we don't approve of, but until we are in their place, we cannot and should not judge them without at least giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Under the skin, we are all the same: none of us has green blood, four eyes or six arms--we like to think we are better than those who bring harm to another, but we are not.
It happens. It's built right into our genes--we are not that far off from our most distant ancestors, clubbing each other with a wooden club. If it weren't for that savagery, though, we might not have survived this far: no one can deny that for some reason, we progress faster when we are acting our worst toward each other. Still survival of the fittest? Perhaps. But there comes a time when we reach a crossroad, and our minds see and imagine more peace while our instincts still pull us toward another horrible conflict. We try to overcome our desire for violence, but we're still bound by rules that keep us clinging to old ways of death and destruction.
Survival in today's world is still gained by domination and force. It's not going to stop until the human race is dead, period. We kill. We believe we kill for a reason, try to rationalize our choices, but when all is said and done, there is someone standing, and someone not breathing.
There is much to change, but so few to understand, few to comprehend our existence. We can map the human genome, but until the cruelty gene is eradicated, we will always be incapable of evolving beyond our current state of mind.
There is much to be ashamed of in our history, but we still thrive on intense emotion, for bad or good. For every living thing tortured, maimed and killed, there is a Michelangelo, a Shakespeare, a Beethoven. Without the sorrow, there is no joy; without the pain, there is no pleasure.
We are dual beings, living in a world of Heaven and of Hell. We aspire to beauty, but we fall to the ugliness that made our world, our civilization.
It is not one sole group that harms and hinders, it is merely a single aspect of who we are. The main difference is how some will never make that transition from the imagination to the factual, but for others, there is only a threshold to cross to do such horror.
Repression of another, of imprisoning someone weaker than ourselves is not only fact, but common. It is a better person who can think, but not act on the impulses that bring about such calamity. If we were in the situation ourselves, there is always the possibility that we would act similarly, even if we can't visualize it. We're always quick to condemn someoone else who has done something we don't approve of, but until we are in their place, we cannot and should not judge them without at least giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Under the skin, we are all the same: none of us has green blood, four eyes or six arms--we like to think we are better than those who bring harm to another, but we are not.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
The new year is coming
Let's see now: a new President -- check;
A fresh administration -- check;
Democrats in charge -- check;
the religious right marginalized -- ummmmm, maybe check;
science of evolution -- check;
Kyoto Protocol -- check;
intelligence in the White House -- check.
So yeah, things are different now -- for the most part.
The U.S. might regain some of the losses of the past eight years -- we can hope. But there are so many things wrong right now it's going to take a long time to make things right.
Listen everyone, and listen good. Those of you who voted for the chimp should be the ones to apologize to every other person in this country. Shut your damned mouths and hear me: you were fucking wrong. YOU chose him, without listening to one fucking word we said -- twice. And between him, Wall Street and people like Bernie Madoff, you have paralyzed this country good.
And, as the name of my blog indicates, this is the end of the world as we know it.
You know, that's the one thing that has always bugged me and bugged me good. How can anyone, in the face of all that is both good and wise, choose to ignore it all? How can anyone sit idly by, and not contribute more to the healthy stratosphere of life and innovation that is happening around the world? How can anyone, faced with so much significant change, try to deny it? And how can anyone still try to justify the actions of a backward administration with fools as its members?
Global warming; global war; preemptive strikes; a toxic wasteland that is proliferating worldwide; unending war in many regions; daunting misery and poverty everywhere; violence and the violation of human rights; and -- where do I stop? Can I stop, or should I stop? Measure by measure, the idyllic society that some might have envisioned in the 21st century is never going to happen, but we must make do with the way things are, and strive continuously to make things a little better, day by day, to ease the burden of a society in ruins.
Yeah, I know. I know that trying to remain conservative is the idiot's and fool's way of dealing with so much. They are the arrogant or prideful souls who can't deal with change because they are so afraid of being swallowed up by a nameless and faceless entity called society that they rail against anything that doesn't fit into their limited worldview.
They're miserable, so they do one of two things: they try to make everyone fit into their neat little box of life so that there is a curtain between them and reality, or they retreat and become reclusive trying to make the world go away. Imagine being so afraid of reality that you hide in plain sight, insisting that everyone else is completely wrong and that you are the only one that is right. Imagine putting all your faith (pun intended) into a book--one single book out of millions, a book that was written by perhaps hundreds of authors adding a paragraph here and there, a book that has seen more change than thr rest of the world around it, and that can not--ever--be considered anything other than metaphorical.
But that's another argument. The point is, people cling to something, something which keeps them safe, keeps them from trying to catch up to the rest of the world. People for whom these changes are frightening, and must try their damnedest to keep these changes from ever happening.
Yoohoo! It's already done. It's been done now, slowly but surely, over the course of a century and longer. From the single lightbulb of Thomas Edison, to the first TV from Philo Farnsworth, to the first mass production of the automobile from Henry Ford, to the first plane of the Wright Brothers--these inventions, and so many more like them, shaped the world we know today. We went from horses and buggies to the Hummer, from dirigibles to a landing on the moon. I recall a speech from a man who had seen a great deal of it who said that technology is essentially tripling every twenty five years. I say now that it has accelerated beyond that estimate. Who could have ever imagined the platforms we now embrace, such as YouTube, texting, handheld computers with more power than was needed for the moon landing? Everything we could ever desire is just a short distance away--but is also so far away from the majority of people on Planet Earth that its tangibility comes into play.
How can just about a billion people on Earth control 99% of the wealth, the power, the technology, with over 6 billion people without such progression? We have brought this situation to a head, with the greediness and arrogance of many who have betrayed the trust the public has put in them. It seems more and more that the divide between most people has grown to a great chasm--the rich, who are
A fresh administration -- check;
Democrats in charge -- check;
the religious right marginalized -- ummmmm, maybe check;
science of evolution -- check;
Kyoto Protocol -- check;
intelligence in the White House -- check.
So yeah, things are different now -- for the most part.
The U.S. might regain some of the losses of the past eight years -- we can hope. But there are so many things wrong right now it's going to take a long time to make things right.
Listen everyone, and listen good. Those of you who voted for the chimp should be the ones to apologize to every other person in this country. Shut your damned mouths and hear me: you were fucking wrong. YOU chose him, without listening to one fucking word we said -- twice. And between him, Wall Street and people like Bernie Madoff, you have paralyzed this country good.
And, as the name of my blog indicates, this is the end of the world as we know it.
You know, that's the one thing that has always bugged me and bugged me good. How can anyone, in the face of all that is both good and wise, choose to ignore it all? How can anyone sit idly by, and not contribute more to the healthy stratosphere of life and innovation that is happening around the world? How can anyone, faced with so much significant change, try to deny it? And how can anyone still try to justify the actions of a backward administration with fools as its members?
Global warming; global war; preemptive strikes; a toxic wasteland that is proliferating worldwide; unending war in many regions; daunting misery and poverty everywhere; violence and the violation of human rights; and -- where do I stop? Can I stop, or should I stop? Measure by measure, the idyllic society that some might have envisioned in the 21st century is never going to happen, but we must make do with the way things are, and strive continuously to make things a little better, day by day, to ease the burden of a society in ruins.
Yeah, I know. I know that trying to remain conservative is the idiot's and fool's way of dealing with so much. They are the arrogant or prideful souls who can't deal with change because they are so afraid of being swallowed up by a nameless and faceless entity called society that they rail against anything that doesn't fit into their limited worldview.
They're miserable, so they do one of two things: they try to make everyone fit into their neat little box of life so that there is a curtain between them and reality, or they retreat and become reclusive trying to make the world go away. Imagine being so afraid of reality that you hide in plain sight, insisting that everyone else is completely wrong and that you are the only one that is right. Imagine putting all your faith (pun intended) into a book--one single book out of millions, a book that was written by perhaps hundreds of authors adding a paragraph here and there, a book that has seen more change than thr rest of the world around it, and that can not--ever--be considered anything other than metaphorical.
But that's another argument. The point is, people cling to something, something which keeps them safe, keeps them from trying to catch up to the rest of the world. People for whom these changes are frightening, and must try their damnedest to keep these changes from ever happening.
Yoohoo! It's already done. It's been done now, slowly but surely, over the course of a century and longer. From the single lightbulb of Thomas Edison, to the first TV from Philo Farnsworth, to the first mass production of the automobile from Henry Ford, to the first plane of the Wright Brothers--these inventions, and so many more like them, shaped the world we know today. We went from horses and buggies to the Hummer, from dirigibles to a landing on the moon. I recall a speech from a man who had seen a great deal of it who said that technology is essentially tripling every twenty five years. I say now that it has accelerated beyond that estimate. Who could have ever imagined the platforms we now embrace, such as YouTube, texting, handheld computers with more power than was needed for the moon landing? Everything we could ever desire is just a short distance away--but is also so far away from the majority of people on Planet Earth that its tangibility comes into play.
How can just about a billion people on Earth control 99% of the wealth, the power, the technology, with over 6 billion people without such progression? We have brought this situation to a head, with the greediness and arrogance of many who have betrayed the trust the public has put in them. It seems more and more that the divide between most people has grown to a great chasm--the rich, who are
Friday, December 26, 2008
Day after Christmas
In England, it's Boxing Day, in Canada, it's also Boxing Day. Here in the US, it's merely the day after Christmas.
When we were young, we often celebrated on January 6, the Epiphany, or "Little Christmas." We'd leave the tree and other Christmas baubles up until then, and just use the day to close everything down for the new year. Right now, it's merely the sales day, more potent than the day after Thanksgiving, because a lot of stores just want to unload a bunch of stuff and sell it quickly. In my estimation, this year, the stores are probably packed to help many actually spend the money that a lot of people didn't get to spend on the holiday itself.
I mention all this because some religious folks on the right blame secular beliefs for creating the commercialism of the say they consider most holy. I contend that these folks are just addled in their brains. You go into a store and you find chaos and mayhem, and if you asked them if they believed in a god, and they would say, yes I do. Then they're off to purloin some items with a deep discount and they think nothing of it. I contend that the day after Christmas has nothing to do with religious beliefs, just people eager to spend the money they didn't spend before the holiday.
Gonna fly now--spending a little, but not much. I simply don't have it to spend. But that's okay. The essentials are just as important as the frills. Perhaps even more so.
When we were young, we often celebrated on January 6, the Epiphany, or "Little Christmas." We'd leave the tree and other Christmas baubles up until then, and just use the day to close everything down for the new year. Right now, it's merely the sales day, more potent than the day after Thanksgiving, because a lot of stores just want to unload a bunch of stuff and sell it quickly. In my estimation, this year, the stores are probably packed to help many actually spend the money that a lot of people didn't get to spend on the holiday itself.
I mention all this because some religious folks on the right blame secular beliefs for creating the commercialism of the say they consider most holy. I contend that these folks are just addled in their brains. You go into a store and you find chaos and mayhem, and if you asked them if they believed in a god, and they would say, yes I do. Then they're off to purloin some items with a deep discount and they think nothing of it. I contend that the day after Christmas has nothing to do with religious beliefs, just people eager to spend the money they didn't spend before the holiday.
Gonna fly now--spending a little, but not much. I simply don't have it to spend. But that's okay. The essentials are just as important as the frills. Perhaps even more so.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
TV too violent? Other media the same?
Blame the religious right. Hell, Hollywood is only putting out what audiences want to see. Massive examples of gore, of horrible things, violence running rampant--it's all the fault of fundies, of repressed right-wingers, and anyone who has ever made the decision to support these people.
Isn't it odd that repression in our country makes the human body in all its glory something to cover up, always? Isn't it bizarre that the most pure activity in the world, sex, is something to mention only in hushed tones, and never in the open? Isn't it just unfathomable that while we don't discuss sex, we live with enough violence of one kind or another to make us desensitized to it?
Psychologists will happily tell you that once we have inured ourselves to a distasteful situation, we can go on without as much trepidation. War is an example, but there are many, many examples in our lives that are smaller,
Isn't it odd that repression in our country makes the human body in all its glory something to cover up, always? Isn't it bizarre that the most pure activity in the world, sex, is something to mention only in hushed tones, and never in the open? Isn't it just unfathomable that while we don't discuss sex, we live with enough violence of one kind or another to make us desensitized to it?
Psychologists will happily tell you that once we have inured ourselves to a distasteful situation, we can go on without as much trepidation. War is an example, but there are many, many examples in our lives that are smaller,
Monday, December 8, 2008
And So It Goes
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!
I get to start another blog, once again finding myself completely and totally committed to trying to squeeze an entry in each and every day, perhaps even more than once a day. Yeah, sure. And my name is Marilyn Monroe, and I have a bridge that goes for real cheap I can sell to you.
I'll try. And I will also be cognizant that I can barely handle the daily stuff already, without trying to make promises to myself--or anyone else, for that matter--to put up a posting that often.
My other blogs have suffered a dearth of entries because I will write often on web boards and make my comments, but I have somehow got the idea planted in my mind that I have to write deep, meaningful entries every time I enter the sacred temple of bloggerism.
I think it took me a very long time to realize that what I post everywhere else is quite suitable to posting as a blog entry, regardless of whether something is short or long, deep or shallow. That's good: it will take a while to let this knowledge sink in, but I will eventually get to the point where I take it for granted.
Each of my blogs concentrates on a whole different area of my interest. The first blog concentrates on life--period. I use that blog to discuss life, the universe and everything else. I talk about my life, my animals, my whole impression as a normal human being. Er, there are likely some limitations on the word "normal" in the previous sentence, just to let you know. Of all the things in my life, normal is hardly a word I would use too often. I know that "normal" is what isn't weird, and I've been weird, too, according to the criteria, but I fall short of being bizarre, so "normal" it is.
The second blog is about politics. My own, especially. I talk about the travesty of the past eight years, about dissent, about freedom, about the "little deaths" that happen every day to what we love, honor and appreciate. I don't know how our "founding fathers" would react to the scum who have ruined the U.S.A. over the course of the past 65 years or so--you can call the majority of the dishonorable thieves Republicans, if you wish--but I doubt if George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, or even Benjamin Franklin would suffer these traitors gladly. They all spoke of dissent with reverential tones, they praised those who fought for freedom and liberty, and despised those who tried to sell the colonies back to the King. Nowhere in their public beliefs did they intimate a theocracy, a plutocracy, an autocracy, or any other of a dozen -cracies that returned the colonies to the failings of the governments they already had escaped. Oooops. I started talking about politics, and my mouth--er, keyboard--won't shut up. But I shall move on, to
This, my third blog. This blog, if you haven't figured it out yet, is about religion.
Okay, so here we are. First, if you aren't a fundie, you're relatively safe here. I don't begrudge anyone--except the fundies and others like them, of course--their belief system. I've always been the kind of person who thinks, hey, let others believe what they want, as long as they aren't hurting me or others with their faith. It's cool, because for the most part, people will agree with that philosophy. We're all different, but it doesn't hurt me to see others finding meaning in whatever they choose to believe in.
Unless, of course, you want to condemn me for MY beliefs, and when you are so smug and arrogant and try to force me to believe in the absolute drivel in which you believe, and try to be so sanctimonious all the while. And then you try to tell me it's all for "my own good" and that I "must be saved" in order to be resurrected sometime in the "near future," time and date to be determined by you and your intolerant asshole friends.
Ah yes--millennial dispensationalists who try to pretend that they are the only ones who have a lock on god's wishes, and everyone else be damned. Oh, there are many names for these people, but good, honest and decent aren't any of them. They cherry pick from a tome with thousands of authors, from those who had nothing to do with their perceived god, to those who made sure that history favored them and their victories. They try to make this anthology the sole "truth" in a nuclear age, not caring how many viewpoints have skewed the meaning of passages, of books, of history itself. They try to define a timeline through who begat who, and when and without even a consideration for any science or even anything attributed to logic. They believe in the inerrancy of the words there, and for many of these deluded bastards, those who have never even heard of critical thinking never mind being the beneficiary of it, they somehow believe the WASP version of Jesus Christ, and that the Bible originated in the English language. Moreover, what exists, mainly in that of the King James version, is the entirety of the book, and the fact that the books themselves were cherry picked, while some of the other books were left out quite deliberately, and for reasons many will never understand.
My argument is only with these gullible fools, who post at web boards that cater to their delusions, who don't want, like or care for multiple truths, whose intolerance is only matched by their smugness and arrogance, and who have traded in their thinking brains for some large, dark entity that controls them and their greatly unwashed masses.
Oh, I am not alone in this frustrating, tilting-at-windmills crusade, but preaching to the choir has gotten a little too safe, and venturing out to offer my thoughts on a far greater scale is a little intimidating. If, however, I didn't try, I would not be able to live with myself, for never being heard above the rabble of morons would label me as timid and useless. I am neither.
THIS I can promise--if I cannot contribute something of my own at least once a day, I will at the very least post quotes from atheists and agnostics from the many who have graced our history, and offer up questions for people to consider during the next twenty four hours.
I will start with a few of those quotes right now:
"...finally men were saved only through God's son dying for them, and that unless human beings believed this silly, impossible and wicked story they were doomed to hell? Can anyone with intelligence really believe that a child born today should be doomed because the snake tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam? To believe that is not God-worship; it is devil-worship." ~~ Clarence Darrow, Why I Am An Agnostic
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"Many Christians base the belief of a soul and God upon the Bible. Strictly speaking, there is no such book. To make the Bible, sixty-six books are bound into one volume. These books are written by many people at different times, and no one knows the time or the identity of any author. Some of the books were written by several authors at various times. These books contain all sorts of contradictory concepts of life and morals and the origin of things. Between the first and the last nearly a thousand years intervened, a longer time than has passed since the discovery of America by Columbus." ~~ Clarence Darrow, Why I Am An Agnostic
I will get angry at times, and I might rant. Ranting is good for the soul, I've heard. I do know that I feel better, sometimes, speaking my mind and not holding some frustrations inside. It did take me a while to realize I had to start a blog strictly on the basis of how obsessed I have become, and why I feel these people are the real threats to the United States, and how allowing them enough free rein to hang themselves is all I can hope for.
If you want to "listen" to me railing against these anti-intellectuals, feel free to join in. And while I know I can't change one of these people's minds for the better since their narrow-mindedness excludes such attempts, it would be nice if I could make them look into what they are doing with a different viewpoint.
So mayhap I shall actually get something accomplished and get all three of my different "worlds" written, and I can keep up the blogs with more of a sense of purpose.
I get to start another blog, once again finding myself completely and totally committed to trying to squeeze an entry in each and every day, perhaps even more than once a day. Yeah, sure. And my name is Marilyn Monroe, and I have a bridge that goes for real cheap I can sell to you.
I'll try. And I will also be cognizant that I can barely handle the daily stuff already, without trying to make promises to myself--or anyone else, for that matter--to put up a posting that often.
My other blogs have suffered a dearth of entries because I will write often on web boards and make my comments, but I have somehow got the idea planted in my mind that I have to write deep, meaningful entries every time I enter the sacred temple of bloggerism.
I think it took me a very long time to realize that what I post everywhere else is quite suitable to posting as a blog entry, regardless of whether something is short or long, deep or shallow. That's good: it will take a while to let this knowledge sink in, but I will eventually get to the point where I take it for granted.
Each of my blogs concentrates on a whole different area of my interest. The first blog concentrates on life--period. I use that blog to discuss life, the universe and everything else. I talk about my life, my animals, my whole impression as a normal human being. Er, there are likely some limitations on the word "normal" in the previous sentence, just to let you know. Of all the things in my life, normal is hardly a word I would use too often. I know that "normal" is what isn't weird, and I've been weird, too, according to the criteria, but I fall short of being bizarre, so "normal" it is.
The second blog is about politics. My own, especially. I talk about the travesty of the past eight years, about dissent, about freedom, about the "little deaths" that happen every day to what we love, honor and appreciate. I don't know how our "founding fathers" would react to the scum who have ruined the U.S.A. over the course of the past 65 years or so--you can call the majority of the dishonorable thieves Republicans, if you wish--but I doubt if George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, or even Benjamin Franklin would suffer these traitors gladly. They all spoke of dissent with reverential tones, they praised those who fought for freedom and liberty, and despised those who tried to sell the colonies back to the King. Nowhere in their public beliefs did they intimate a theocracy, a plutocracy, an autocracy, or any other of a dozen -cracies that returned the colonies to the failings of the governments they already had escaped. Oooops. I started talking about politics, and my mouth--er, keyboard--won't shut up. But I shall move on, to
This, my third blog. This blog, if you haven't figured it out yet, is about religion.
Okay, so here we are. First, if you aren't a fundie, you're relatively safe here. I don't begrudge anyone--except the fundies and others like them, of course--their belief system. I've always been the kind of person who thinks, hey, let others believe what they want, as long as they aren't hurting me or others with their faith. It's cool, because for the most part, people will agree with that philosophy. We're all different, but it doesn't hurt me to see others finding meaning in whatever they choose to believe in.
Unless, of course, you want to condemn me for MY beliefs, and when you are so smug and arrogant and try to force me to believe in the absolute drivel in which you believe, and try to be so sanctimonious all the while. And then you try to tell me it's all for "my own good" and that I "must be saved" in order to be resurrected sometime in the "near future," time and date to be determined by you and your intolerant asshole friends.
Ah yes--millennial dispensationalists who try to pretend that they are the only ones who have a lock on god's wishes, and everyone else be damned. Oh, there are many names for these people, but good, honest and decent aren't any of them. They cherry pick from a tome with thousands of authors, from those who had nothing to do with their perceived god, to those who made sure that history favored them and their victories. They try to make this anthology the sole "truth" in a nuclear age, not caring how many viewpoints have skewed the meaning of passages, of books, of history itself. They try to define a timeline through who begat who, and when and without even a consideration for any science or even anything attributed to logic. They believe in the inerrancy of the words there, and for many of these deluded bastards, those who have never even heard of critical thinking never mind being the beneficiary of it, they somehow believe the WASP version of Jesus Christ, and that the Bible originated in the English language. Moreover, what exists, mainly in that of the King James version, is the entirety of the book, and the fact that the books themselves were cherry picked, while some of the other books were left out quite deliberately, and for reasons many will never understand.
My argument is only with these gullible fools, who post at web boards that cater to their delusions, who don't want, like or care for multiple truths, whose intolerance is only matched by their smugness and arrogance, and who have traded in their thinking brains for some large, dark entity that controls them and their greatly unwashed masses.
Oh, I am not alone in this frustrating, tilting-at-windmills crusade, but preaching to the choir has gotten a little too safe, and venturing out to offer my thoughts on a far greater scale is a little intimidating. If, however, I didn't try, I would not be able to live with myself, for never being heard above the rabble of morons would label me as timid and useless. I am neither.
THIS I can promise--if I cannot contribute something of my own at least once a day, I will at the very least post quotes from atheists and agnostics from the many who have graced our history, and offer up questions for people to consider during the next twenty four hours.
I will start with a few of those quotes right now:
"...finally men were saved only through God's son dying for them, and that unless human beings believed this silly, impossible and wicked story they were doomed to hell? Can anyone with intelligence really believe that a child born today should be doomed because the snake tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam? To believe that is not God-worship; it is devil-worship." ~~ Clarence Darrow, Why I Am An Agnostic
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"Many Christians base the belief of a soul and God upon the Bible. Strictly speaking, there is no such book. To make the Bible, sixty-six books are bound into one volume. These books are written by many people at different times, and no one knows the time or the identity of any author. Some of the books were written by several authors at various times. These books contain all sorts of contradictory concepts of life and morals and the origin of things. Between the first and the last nearly a thousand years intervened, a longer time than has passed since the discovery of America by Columbus." ~~ Clarence Darrow, Why I Am An Agnostic
I will get angry at times, and I might rant. Ranting is good for the soul, I've heard. I do know that I feel better, sometimes, speaking my mind and not holding some frustrations inside. It did take me a while to realize I had to start a blog strictly on the basis of how obsessed I have become, and why I feel these people are the real threats to the United States, and how allowing them enough free rein to hang themselves is all I can hope for.
If you want to "listen" to me railing against these anti-intellectuals, feel free to join in. And while I know I can't change one of these people's minds for the better since their narrow-mindedness excludes such attempts, it would be nice if I could make them look into what they are doing with a different viewpoint.
So mayhap I shall actually get something accomplished and get all three of my different "worlds" written, and I can keep up the blogs with more of a sense of purpose.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
One good reason to hate fundamentalists
Posted by hyphenate in General Discussion
Sat Sep 20th 2008, 03:26 PM
Fundies keep on insisting that creationism should be taught in schools, but then they go ahead and bitch interminably about how all these foreign students are getting scholarships to our best universities and all the world is getting ahead but us. Are they that stupid (or willfully ignorant) that they can't see the link between the educational standards they are seeking to impose and the lower college exam scores American children are getting?
It seems to me that if these people had even half a brain among them, they would back off and shut up.
There are many diverse reasons why American students are sliding on these scores, and homeschooling (as it is done by unschooled fundies and other people with no regard for actual education) is one of them. None of them is more important than sending a daughter or son out with the best possible educational background, and that includes a properly taught scientific base.
Yes, there are other reasons why Americans are flunking scores while other countries are succeeding, and that includes laziness, discipline, obsession with gadgetry and a disregard for traditional subject matter, but that's not at issue here--what is at issue is that fundie parents (and any parent who refuses to teach or let their child be taught scientific subject matter) are forgetting the basic foundation of a good education, and that means biology, chemistry, physics and evolution. The subject matter itself is not debatable--we cannot hope to provide students with the tools and weapons they are going to need in a world that isn't sealed off from reality if they have no idea of what they are facing.
My fundie ex-friend, a teacher herself, could not grasp this concept, and bitterly complained how all these "illegals" were getting scholarships and American students were being shut out. In retrospect, I can see that her mind was too tightly wound around dangerous concepts that show how out of touch she had become with the real world.
The only way to keep the devil from our door--and that's how I look to anyone who shuns actual science in favor of idiocy--is to keep fighting it with everything we have in our arsenal of intelligence. That means, debate, a constant barrage of facts, refusal to allow them to sneak in their religious rhetoric in our public school systems, and battling their notions in every way possible in order to keep that nonsense from pervading our educational system.
One argument that some people give in objection to this argument is that the subculture of fundamentalism is a minority one. Be that as it may in terms of actual people who might be considered fundies, but their influence is a great one: no other cult has as many lobbyists, PACs, or publicity as they do, nor are there as many people in the general population who are affected in some fashion as by fundies. A recent survey showed that even among non-fundies that 2/3 of the American population believed in creationism and not in evolution. Scary, isn't it?
The United States is on the brink of losing everything our founding fathers worked so hard to achieve--we will lose our status as a superpower, we will lose any part of being at the forefront of technological discoveries, and we will certainly lose any credibility as a world leader if we allow the religious nuts like the fundies dictate what will or won't be taught in our public schools. Many fundies are looking to the "rapture" and apocalypse to happen in their lifetime: if we allow them to gain any more momentum in that goal, we are dooming not only the United States, but possibly the whole world to a fiery end.
We can't let them win--our lives, and so many others, are at stake. A win for the fundies is armageddon to the rest of us. In their vision, they will be taken into the "hands" of their lord, and the rest of us will suffer for a thousand years before the world ends. In reality, there will simply be nothing--no redemption, no life, no nothing. If our own lives, the lives of the next generation and the life of our planet itself isn't motivation enough to stop these people, there is nothing else for us to look to. We have already seen what religiously motivated people can do, and we know these people are fanatical enough to lead the charge against those of us with a better perception of what might or might not happen. Stopping them, at the very least, will keep the barbarians from the gates, and grant us enough time to launch a counter position. Because if we can't stop them, there aren't enough places on planet earth we will be able to hide from the destruction of all we have taken so long to build.
Posted by hyphenate in General Discussion
Sat Sep 20th 2008, 03:26 PM
Fundies keep on insisting that creationism should be taught in schools, but then they go ahead and bitch interminably about how all these foreign students are getting scholarships to our best universities and all the world is getting ahead but us. Are they that stupid (or willfully ignorant) that they can't see the link between the educational standards they are seeking to impose and the lower college exam scores American children are getting?
It seems to me that if these people had even half a brain among them, they would back off and shut up.
There are many diverse reasons why American students are sliding on these scores, and homeschooling (as it is done by unschooled fundies and other people with no regard for actual education) is one of them. None of them is more important than sending a daughter or son out with the best possible educational background, and that includes a properly taught scientific base.
Yes, there are other reasons why Americans are flunking scores while other countries are succeeding, and that includes laziness, discipline, obsession with gadgetry and a disregard for traditional subject matter, but that's not at issue here--what is at issue is that fundie parents (and any parent who refuses to teach or let their child be taught scientific subject matter) are forgetting the basic foundation of a good education, and that means biology, chemistry, physics and evolution. The subject matter itself is not debatable--we cannot hope to provide students with the tools and weapons they are going to need in a world that isn't sealed off from reality if they have no idea of what they are facing.
My fundie ex-friend, a teacher herself, could not grasp this concept, and bitterly complained how all these "illegals" were getting scholarships and American students were being shut out. In retrospect, I can see that her mind was too tightly wound around dangerous concepts that show how out of touch she had become with the real world.
The only way to keep the devil from our door--and that's how I look to anyone who shuns actual science in favor of idiocy--is to keep fighting it with everything we have in our arsenal of intelligence. That means, debate, a constant barrage of facts, refusal to allow them to sneak in their religious rhetoric in our public school systems, and battling their notions in every way possible in order to keep that nonsense from pervading our educational system.
One argument that some people give in objection to this argument is that the subculture of fundamentalism is a minority one. Be that as it may in terms of actual people who might be considered fundies, but their influence is a great one: no other cult has as many lobbyists, PACs, or publicity as they do, nor are there as many people in the general population who are affected in some fashion as by fundies. A recent survey showed that even among non-fundies that 2/3 of the American population believed in creationism and not in evolution. Scary, isn't it?
The United States is on the brink of losing everything our founding fathers worked so hard to achieve--we will lose our status as a superpower, we will lose any part of being at the forefront of technological discoveries, and we will certainly lose any credibility as a world leader if we allow the religious nuts like the fundies dictate what will or won't be taught in our public schools. Many fundies are looking to the "rapture" and apocalypse to happen in their lifetime: if we allow them to gain any more momentum in that goal, we are dooming not only the United States, but possibly the whole world to a fiery end.
We can't let them win--our lives, and so many others, are at stake. A win for the fundies is armageddon to the rest of us. In their vision, they will be taken into the "hands" of their lord, and the rest of us will suffer for a thousand years before the world ends. In reality, there will simply be nothing--no redemption, no life, no nothing. If our own lives, the lives of the next generation and the life of our planet itself isn't motivation enough to stop these people, there is nothing else for us to look to. We have already seen what religiously motivated people can do, and we know these people are fanatical enough to lead the charge against those of us with a better perception of what might or might not happen. Stopping them, at the very least, will keep the barbarians from the gates, and grant us enough time to launch a counter position. Because if we can't stop them, there aren't enough places on planet earth we will be able to hide from the destruction of all we have taken so long to build.
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