And the atheist said: "We must questoin the story logic of having an all-knowing and all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes." -Gene Roddenberry And God said: "No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord." (For the Lord thy God is not only a jealous God, but gay, too.) -Deuteronomy 23:1
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It's been a LONG minute since I wrote a blog post, for various reasons, but I tend to think the bulk of attribution probably forks off into what seems to be 1) an implacable genetic surplus of indolence, and 2) an even more implacable fear of self-indulgence. I'll give the former only these two lines: indolence is rectifiable simply by getting up off your ass, though one has to concede it's not always the easiest thing to do, and in my indolent oasis a nice quotable struck me clean from thin air: "At times it feels like the hardest thing in the world to do is put on a pair of pants." Ain't that the truth. Well, I've finally decided to slip mine on, one leg at a time like everyone else, and voila: I've showed up tonight ready, hungry, tunnel-visioned bent on making some moves, inciting some real thinking from the cozy but dangerous abode of complacent dormancy.
That leaves to be addressed the latter problem, my fear of self-indulging. This seems to be a thematic undercurrent in my blogging/writing continuum as far back as I can remember, and it's probably safe to say that this insecurity is entirely justified: there's no way around it, blogging is self-indulgent. Well, shit. I don't like to be self-indulgent, at least as it appears to the external world. So, what to do? I could take a long vacation as I've done, or hang up the blogging boots completely and be done with it. But then I think about a couple things, namely the subject matter I've been writing about since Antipriety's inception, my militant atheism and the mind-fucking absurdity of religion, and then I think about said relevant news overwhelming the world at present, like the one about the two men visiting Saudi Arabia who got deported the other day, on the grounds of being too good-looking, and therefore too likely of being too irresistible to women at a Saudi festival. Or like the news in Bangladesh, where fanatic Muslims (what's the opposite of an oxymoron, by the way? Are there any two words in the universe more incapable of being separated than "fanatic Muslim"?) are calling for the execution of atheist bloggers. Those are just recent current affairs pieces. How about the daily ubiquitous mentions of His Obvious Man-Madeness, God Almighty? I swear the more militant I become in my atheism, the more my intolerance toward religion swells, the more exponentially proportioned mentions of God I see. Sorry, folks, but I mean this strictly as a pun when I say, He really is fucking everywhere. The never-ending exhausting litany of God mentions starts off as follows:
-Rockets v. Lakers: James Harden, before OT starts, walking toward the scorer's table, all the while shooting either index finger toward the sky multiple times in an obvious invocation to God. (Who, by the way, didn't help J-Hard in this game. The Bearded One shot just 8-25. For crying out loud, give the fucking ball to J-Lin!)
-Macklemore's "Starting Over" song: If there's anything I hate more than false modesty, it's pretentiously false and specious humility. Consider the following lyrics: I wanna tell her I relapsed but I can't/ I just shake her hand and tell her congrats/ Get back to my car and I think I'm trippin', yeah/ 'Cause God wrote "Otherside", that pen was in my hand/ I'm just a flawed man, man, I fucked up...
Mack's right about one thing: he definitely done fucked up. Am I the only one who sees the gaping hole in the rapper's pathetic, ostensible servitude? I refuse to believe it, except that on some level I do. There are two things in this universe I rarely, if ever, give: the first is souvenirs, and the second, the notorious benefit of the doubt. I'm unwilling and unwont with the latter just for the sheer, simple fact that in the 21st century, so far defined by instantaneous access to information unbound, probably some 80-plus percent of human beings still falls knees-first in the face of superstition sloppily disguised as an invisible dude in the sky whose care for trivialities extends as far as your bedroom, your Sunday activities (or lack thereof since it's supposed to be Rest Day), and last but not least of all, your hairdo (Leviticus 19:27: "Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.").
So back to Macklemore: can anyone really take the bolded line as humble writing? "'Cause God wrote 'Otherside', that pen was in my hand."No fucking way! Just the opposite. Think about what he's really saying. Of six-plus billion people on planet Earth God decided to make Ben Haggerty, stage name Macklemore, the conduit from which to showcase His Holy rap skills. The thinly-veiled, unbridled arrogance! And the same goes for anyone shouting out God as the sole reason to why he or she is so awesome at a particular craft: God chose me. Not you. ME. M-E, ME. You fuckin' loser.
-The gay marriage debate, and Piers Morgan v. Michael Reagan on CNN: One thing is certain. Morality has never moved forward BECAUSE of religion. (That is, at least the three predominant monotheistic ones.) Again, just the opposite. Every moral victory humanity has achieved, it has achieved DESPITE religion. God has historically been the biggest, loudest, most obnoxious naysayer to positive change the cosmos have ever seen. He reminds me of naive couples (I'm including myself in this one) saying to each other, "Let's not ever change, okay? Let's stay exactly as we are forever." Which, of course, beyond being bullshit, is literally impossible, except if you become a corpse, and even then your body can't resist braving physical change. Sameness's half-life endures for only so long; change seems to be the lone constant in the universe, unless you count my impassioned desire to forego underwear. But that's what religion tries with all its might and political lobby connects to do. God through man through interpretation through further interpretation said such and such 2,000 years ago, and that's it. We follow blindly. No questioning, no analyzing; just imbecilic adherence to commands made before Hawking, before Darwin, before medicine, when everyone and his/her momma owned a fucking goat.
Such is the case with gay marriage. Again, quoting from what's quickly becoming my favorite Bible book for its raucously entertaining narrative, Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." And so millenia later we come to the gay marriage debate. Yes, it's true that in 40 years everyone opposed to its ratification, specifically the diehard picketers, are going to look like neanderthals. But hindsight is 20/20, and for sure with the blind leading the blind at all times of the hour, future verisimilitudes mean, for right now, jack fucking shit.
Case in point: both Michael Reagan and Piers Morgan on the latter's CNN daily show. The pair, both faith-affirming Catholics, duked it out a couple weeks ago, Morgan for gay marriage, and Reagan (son of president Reagan) against. Hearing both idiots was maddening, to put it mildly, and in a nutshell here's how it went down (I'll be paraphrasing): MR: Gay marriage is a slippery slope. PM: Why? MR: First it's gays who can get married. Then before you know it, there will be polygamy, then incest, then bestiality, etc. etc. It's a slippery slope, to say the least. PM: So you're against the redefinition of marriage. MR: That's correct. PM: But marriage has been redefined before. In the 1960s it was illegal in 16 states for blacks to marry whites. But marriage has since been redefined.
A good point by Morgan. So now put yourself in Reagan's position for a second. How would you respond to Morgan's rebuttal? Remember, you're a fervent Catholic, son to a former bigotted president; you've got enormous connects and a infinitesimal worldview. What do you say? Whatever it is, doesn't matter. Reagan's answer is incalculably worse; it's got to be the single saddest thing to happen to humanity since the picture below:
The following is verbatim: Morgan: Marriage got redefined by the Supreme Court to allow black people to marry white people. What is your answer to that? Reagan: Those are laws that were made by man. Man is sinful, as you know. You're Catholic and I'm Catholic. I believe marriage was defined and blessed by God. Two different things. Man is the sinner, Christ just died for our sins and rose again last Sunday for our sins. The fact of the matter: man will always sin and make mistakes. I'm glad the Catholic church has taken a stand and is at least in this--in this day and age of the world in turmoil, they are taking a stand for righteousness...
Nothing more needs to be said.
And a few more to add to the list:
1) #PrayForBoston: What good is your prayer going to do for the parents who lost their 8-year-old?
2) Ray Lewis.
3) And I write this one reluctantly, dejectedly... Jeremy Lin.
4) The precarious and clinically insane Middle East.
And last but certainly not least of all...
5) Obama, half-black, which means half-marred in the intractable, bloody history of slavery, in which whites gave Christianity to blacks exactly as they've given drugs to the destitute... this same man is a proud believer in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.
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I'm tempted to believe the non-belief closet is chockablock with fear-ridden atheists, agnostics, secularists and the like. But the movement toward a superstitious-free world (see "knocking on wood") is still in a state of inertia, so the encouragement to come out is virtually nil. All the matter. God is popping up every which way you look, and if you haven't noticed by now, I'm sick of it. I'm beginning to reach my personal threshold of tolerance. The list of God sightings and hearings is forever growing, and the pessimist in me thinks that at this point in time it's achieved immortality. Now, I like to be right as much as the next person, but seriously, I'd like to be proven wrong just once. A la Holden Caulfield, "And I really mean it too." Just the one time will suffice.
Any non-believers still hiding in the closet?
And God said: "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." -Leviticus 20:13 from the Bible And the atheist said: "In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point." -Friedrich Nietzsche
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The other day one of those Christian recruiters approached me outside my school, and of course I was jubilant. (For whatever reason I get some sick, sadistic pleasure hearing Christians say dumb shit.) Sure enough within the first thirty seconds of our talking the guy spewed the bullshit. I asked him why God is so spiteful and jealous in the Old Testament, and that being the case, how could you possibly worship someone who acts like such an immature asshole all the time. His answer was so beautifully stupid it's only right to grant it its own paragraphical autonomy: "He's jealous because he loves us. You know when you have a girlfriend or a wife and sometimes you get jealous if she flirts with another guy or something like that? It's because you love her and you want her all to yourself. It's only natural. And it's the same way with God. He loves us so much and He wants us for Himself as well. So He often gets angry or jealous because of that." Fucking amazing. I gave the guy the "you're not actually buying what you just said" look, and though his face didn't carve or contort into unmistakable culpability, I did see a flash of uncertainty pan across the lines of his face, and that was good enough for me. Pretty sure later when we parted ways he was thinking to himself, "What the fuck was I saying? 'He loves us so much and wants us all to Himself'? What does that even mean?" Unless, of course, the exact opposite is true; unless he sauntered away merrily and thought, "What a great response. And so true too. God doesn't want to share. So sue Him. I think I'm gonna have a sandwich tonight..."
Appallingly moronic as the guy's reasoning was, still it did more than just make my day in terms of entertainment. Unbeknownst to the Christian recruiter, his boyfriend/girlfriend-God analogy revealed buried roots to a concept I've been suffering over for a couple years now: Monogamy. Of course his own attempt at logic missed the mark completely, but in doing so he paved the way for me to arrive at the following hypothesis, that in society's creating one God and one God only (the shift from poly- to monotheism), it brought the reins of "exclusive love" into the forefront of human relationships, and thus monogamy was either established as the societal norm, or was further reinforced to be as such. Let's take a look at the first three of the 10 Commandments (King James Version): 1) Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 2) Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing... for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God. 3) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. I have to ask this again: religious folks, is this really the God you worship? He sounds like Chris Brown lecturing Rihanna when they first started going out. Which brings me to my next point. Don't the above commandments have much in common with the unspoken rules of romantic relationships? Chris Brown's first three Commandments: 1) I will be your only lover, you got that, bitch?
2) Don't even think about another guy, or even think about thinking about another guy. Or I'll fuck you the fuck up. 3) You will refer to me only as CB, baby, or daddy. What do you think? Could the poly- to monotheistic belief shift transform the scope of intimate relationships for the next 2,000+ years to come? Next post will actually delve into my own opinions about monogamy. Stay tuned. S.DOT OUT!
This post's title is a quote taken from the video below:
And it begins.
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I can't pinpoint exactly how or when it happened, but very recently my atheism really started to take its true shape. Now it's grown and matured and--I use this word intending all the scientific implications it carries with it--EVOLVED. My atheism now stands upright, bi-pedaled, no longer lying dormant in my king-sized bed of thought, where all the magic of creation is supposed to take place. I'm really truly creating from this bed now, using the evolutionary gift of human rationality--something that religious people seem to want no part in--to think my own real thoughts. There are those who say it's your right to believe whatever you want to believe; that it's not my place or anyone else's to disabuse you of your notions, no matter how fallacious (euphemistic for the word "stupid") these notions may be. We're supposed to treat beliefs, especially of the religious and spiritual kind, with a certain unspoken respect; it's clear that they're the eggshells of topical conversation we're supposed to tiptoe around. Well, I'll be frank right off the bat: this is absolute nonsense, complete and utter bullshit. On a personal level I'm all for the truth. If I operated in life like two and two make three, I'd be grateful for the person with ovaries enough to show me otherwise. But that's not the argument I'll use here, since that's simply preference, and too many assholes walking this Earth can't wait to arm themselves with a different preference, namely "Ignorance is bliss," AKA "I'll take 'Being a dumbass on purpose' for $1,000, Alex." The more readily acceptable argument is as follows, and we've all heard it before, for good reason: how many wars must be waged, how many people must be killed, in the name of God? When religion moves away from the harmless realm--an inevitability with such stupid and sensitive fucking people everywhere you go--that's when we got a real problem. What makes it worse is the inanity of the beliefs from a rationalist's point of view: people are being killed over and over and over and over for a thing that is clearly 100 percent bullshit. And many of these religious assholes aren't wishy-washy or Keatsian in their conceded uncertainty of what's true and what's not; no, it's just the opposite: God exists, god damn it! Heaven exists! The devil exists! If you don't repent for your sins you go to hell! If you were never baptized you go to hell! The 10 Commandments! Jesus died to save you! Noah's ark! Two animals of every kind on a boat! Prayer! (Apologies in advance to Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Satanists, etc. for this post's predominantly subverting Christianity. It's the only religion I'm familiar with to any respectable degree. But feel free to substitute your own religion's ridiculous ideas and beliefs wherever you see fit--I assure you it all works out the same.) I think a great way to gauge just how advanced a society really is, is to evaluate how it treats the supernatural, meaning the fake, the made up, the superstitious, etc. So long as we're a species that bows its head, locks its hands together and whispers selfish desires to an invisible man in the sky, we're a primitive fucking people. There's no way around it. What amazes me about prayer is the religious person's inability to see the blatant, clear-shot idiocy of his/her rationale. If you pray for something and you get it, you say that God answers prayers. If you pray for something and don't get it, all the same, you've got a tailor-made retort ready at the fingertips: "God works in mysterious ways," or "It's part of His plan." Oh my fucking god. If I hear that type of shit spewed from some fanatic's mouth one more time I think my head's going to explode.
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Pinpointing human stupidity when it comes to its religious beliefs is so easy to the point that it's just plain unfair, like black guys playing basketball against white guys. (To be clear, I'm the black guys in this scenario.) A long long time ago, human beings didn't have the foresight or the creativity to truly imagine a God who transcends the physical realm. Limited as we were (are and continue to be), we basically made God a man, except that he's in the sky, can't be seen, and he probably has no issues when it comes to getting an erection. He's like Man version 2.0. Proof is littered in every page of the Old Testament. God speaks. Somehow he's without a body, or a brain or a mouth or any organ necessary to emit speech, but he's God and he can do it anyway. He judges. He's a fucking narc. He's more insecure than I was with my first girlfriend when I was seventeen. He's patriarchal. He's all-loving but you say his name in the wrong tone and he'll set a lake of poisonous frogs on you and your entire family. He's vindictive. In a phrase, he's JUST LIKE US. What a coincidence. We couldn't imagine an actual spirit, something that is everything and nothing at the same time because that's too complex, too abstract for the human brain. So we made our Man version 2.0, and in doing so we separated ourselves from him. I think if I was in charge of birthing or spreading Christianity, that right there was the first Big Mistake: making humankind separate, and therefore inferior, to man-God, who is deemed as everything, but is treated like an entity the size of five or six beluga whales and dwells somewhere above the clouds, conveniently out of reach from human eyesight. Had we not started Christianity or any religion from this angle, life might look night-and-day from its present state. I won't go super in depth, but suffice it to say this: when you're coming from a place of inferiority, separateness, worthlessness with the constant need to prove yourself, you get the heap of bullshit and all that comes with it: hatred, jealousy, intolerance, vindictiveness, to name a few. People will say, "Okay, I don't literally think God exists in the sky. He's everywhere." But how many times do you see an athlete on TV do something spectacular, only to look up and point with his/her forefinger to the sky? Why up but never down? If God is everything and everywhere, surely he takes up occupancy in just as much one direction as the other. It's obvious: religious people will say one thing, but borne of conditioning, brainwashing, societal pressure, habit, stupidity, etc. they will act completely independent and contradictory to their stated "beliefs." Sure they'll say that God is everywhere but when the appropriate moment comes, they won't be able to help but point upward when thanking "the man UPSTAIRS."
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If there is a God who judges, who grants and denies wishes based on some celestial metric, my question is this: what the hell was he doing before human beings came into existence? Was he just kicking it on his cloud while the dinosaurs roamed, waiting patiently for them to die out? Or did he rule just as authoritatively, sending t-rexes to hell for eating brontosaurs, condemning pterodactyls for not resting on Sunday (before Sunday was even a real day)? How did the fan mail work? Did he read into the dinosaurs' mechanical brain patterns to excavate their prayers, then respond yes or no case by case? These are stupid questions but only because the premise is stupid--that God cared one way or the other what dinosaurs got into on a daily basis. But we staunchly believe God cares what we do. So is the Man Upstairs for humans only? By religious definition, that can't be true; God governs the universe and everything in it, including animals and plants on planet Earth. Do you see the inherent problem with God now? He's conveniently stitched and crafted for homo sapiens. He rewards and punishes based on how we behave morally, but we're the only species to even own such a concept like morality. When an animal kills another animal, according to the 10 Commandments, that animal has just outright disobeyed God's moral code. So then what? The answer, of course, is so then nothing. If an animal kills another animal, there are no supernatural consequences. But here's the twist: you may have forgotten, but human beings are homo sapiens. Homo sapien is a type of primate. Primate is a type of mammal. Mammal is a type of... you guessed it: animal. I'm talking about us! It is so fucking narcissistic to think you're above the animal classification. It's not "humans and then animals"; it's "humans are animals." If we kill, we are not doomed to suffer an eternity in everlasting fire. (Right there you're physicalizing what is supposed to be the spiritual realm, which is supposed to transcend the physical. Pearly gates, my ass.) If we kill, so then nothing. If you get caught by other humans then you'll suffer the consequences of your fellow human judicial systems, but that's it. No wrath. No hell. No nothing.
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Plain and simple: religious people, stop being so fucking stupid, PLEASE. If God really does exist, it is in no way, shape or form anything like the God you've been reared from birth to conceptualize. Stop pointing to the sky, unless you're pointing out a plane or a cloud or the stars or something that is REAL. Stop bowing your head and asking for shit. Stop touching your forehead, your chest and shoulders in quick succession. And if you're a Jew or a Muslim or whatever, please stop being those things. Make a conscious choice that YOU really own, that YOU really are the source of, just for once. In God's name we pray. Amen.
