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.

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,

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.

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.

Journal entries from DU

I have struggled furiously over the past three months to understand where DU, Democratic Underground, has changed so much over the 7, 7 1/2 years I've been a part of it. To have it come to the point where I don't recognize the place, to a point where I fear saying anything too free thinking, I am just filled with a wonder how nebulous acceptance is in the world of politics.

I also firmly believe that no politician is a god, extraordinary, or even inherently wonderful. If a politician can give that impression, he or she is an excellent actor, but just as devious as the next guy. A real statesman (or woman) doesn't exist anymore--perhaps never did. Some have come close, but not all smiles are real, not all words are sweet, not all dreams are pure.

As we come to the final end of the 20th century, nearly ten years into the 21st, we can approach the new century with some hope, but also must realize that not everything is as good as it can be, and most of us are bruised and sore from the past century. Some of us are more cynical than others, and some of us can only see change for the better as a distant dream. Centuries--nay, millennia--of history have only made resonant that evil and apathy win far more than hope and brotherhood.

I'm not exactly a poster of every day thoughts, but I will try to keep up. In the meantime, I will be copying some of my old posts from DU here so that they may live on to some degree--my abondonment of the Democratic Underground will trickle and not be abrupt: I guess it is difficult for me to dissolve the political bands that connect me to them. ;)

Things change

but we don't notice it altogether. Unless it's something really big, it just gets filed into a mental filing cabinet, is accepted, and all done at such a speed that we barely acknowledge it.

There are many events which draw more attention, but they are significant in such a manner that we must accept them, and take note of them. But it's the niggling petite changes which make the most impact and the most difference, and we are like frogs in boiling water. We don't notice so much all the small stuff until the world in which we live is somethng new, something so different that we wonder how we could have missed it changing.

For an example, I turn to TV, one of my favorite subjects, and one in which the changes particularly represent a world long gone and far away. Picture the early 60s, the decade in which I was brought up, and how some of the greatest changes were made in television. Lucy and Ricky Ricardo slept in separate beds, or the original Dick Van Dyke series has similar arrangments; how a "darn" was a huge no-no, nevermind one of the great sins of the day. H

Moving on....

Three months and one day. That's the countdown to January 20, 2009, when one way or another the debacle known as the Bush administration will end. Of course, we will know in less than a month who will succeed as president 44, and with all the stars being aligned properly, that successor will be Barack Obama.

Now, I'm not as keen on Obama as some are. Some, like the Obamabots I know from a very well known Democratic website, have allowed their minds to be clouded and their wills to be subjugated in a blind devotion to the Democratic nominee. I personally would have preferred John Edwards or Hillary Clinton for the nominee, but beggars can't be choosers. I've gotten flamed for my hesitation in recommending a full endorsement of the junior senator from Illinois, but them's the breaks. The truth is, in a rush to make an historic run for the White House, many Dems have forgotten to exercise common sense in the selection of the candidate.

Of course, the media hasn't been a whole lot of help. The legions of reporters and so-called journalists has made this primary and general election a study in Pavlovian techniques: ignore the majority of the potential nominees, and concentrate on the most sensationlistic candidates instead. Is it only coincidence that the two most non-traditional candidates were the last to remain, even after a well qualified and vetted candidate as John Edwards was (and is, extra-marital affair nothwithstanding) one of the best possible solutions? And is it coincidence that John McCain, who had been doing quite rotten in the primaries, came from behind to become the nominee?

People in the United States come from three basic groups, regardless of their economic level: knowledgeable about world politics, our place in the global community and capable of understanding our position of power; willfully ignorant of all of the above; and finally, ignorant because of a general lack of education or the inability to understand all of the above. The first group votes their choice because of their own stands on topical issues, regardless whether it's conservative or liberal in nature. The third group might not vote at all, simply because they aren't sure whether their vote will make a difference, or if they vote at all, it might not be to their best advantage. It's the second group that remains dangerous to the country and to rest of the electorate. They will half-listen to

The inevitability of change

Life surrounds us every minute, every second, every day. It is our environment, our thoughts, our actions, our circumstances, and our world.

Sometimes, our life is good, comfortable, and fulfilling, and other times, hell seems like a nice alternative compared to our own reality.

As an atheist, I don't look at our existence with much of a glamour--my philosophy is whatever makes a person happy, as long as it's not being forced on me, is fine. I simply do not believe, and that is all. But through this critical eye, I believe that we are very much going to change things very drastically over the next 20 years if the human race is to survive somehow intact.

And this is not limited to the United States--this is true of every country in the world, because what affects one, affects all. The people in the United States are, for the most part, better off than 85 to 90% of the worald's population. We aren't perfect, and we will never be perfect, but at the very least, we have non-contaminated water, indoor plumbing, and some element of a psycho-social