God is good?

An acquaintance from high school who is now a 'friend' on Facebook left me this response to my Facebook post congratulating the Reich wing Christians for last week's verdict from the CA Supreme court and for causing the murder of that doctor in Kansas:

Here's a tip! If it's not good......it's not God! If it contains confusion.........it's not God! If it is not done with love...........it's not God! Jeus leaves nothing to wonder nor to question...........but, humans do. Humans do a lot of things 'in the name of God' but that doesn't mean God is in it. True Christians do not like some things that are being done in the name of Christ either. I assure you that a 'true Christian' did 'not' kill that man. They would pray for him. God is good.

Let me break down how wrong her statement is for you folks who don't have me on your Facebook friend list.

First of all if you buy into the premise that God created the heavens and the earth (which I don't), then you've got to accept that he created everything on the heavens and the earth. Everything includes sunshine, fluffy bunnies, wet nosed cute lil' puppies, brownies, sweaters, snow, swimming pools, trees, childhood cancers, birth defects, genocide, homophobes, drunk drivers, intolerant Christians, well meaning atheists, in short, if you believe in God the creator, then must believe that he created everything and not just the good things.

Second of all most of the colossally bad things that have taken place were done in the name of God and in order to bring Jesus to more people. Chief among those things would be slavery (sanctioned and condoned in the book of Bronze Age fairy tales we know as the Bible), subjugation of women, persecution of homosexuals, discrimination against blacks and others who are non white, and the murder of countless thousands of native peoples who had the gall to be born in a culture that had no truck with Jesus and his daddy.

Thirdly, Jesus and God left plenty to wonder and question. If they didn't then they would have told us long ago how to heal diseases and sickness. They would have told us how to build rockets sooner than we did so we could explore the universe. They would have told us how things work in the natural world without us having to find out ourselves. But they did not do those things. And they didn't for one reason and one reason only, they don't exist. We made up God and Jesus. Humans made it all up back when we had no idea how things worked. It was easy to say, "Oh, no worries. God made it all." But what was easy was not true. God didn't make it all. God is not behind everything. It's intellectually cowardly to claim otherwise. It's also, as history has showed us time and time again, dangerous and deadly to listen to people who claim to know the will of God and who tell us we must be meek and submit to them because only they know what's best. If we had listened to them then 99% of modern medicine would not have come about.


Fourthly, to claim that the killer of that doctor was not a 'true Christian' is nonsense. The man who is accused of killing that doctor is a Christian. He was a member of Operation Rescue, which is a Christian based anti abortion group. For someone to say that someone else is not a true Christian because they do things that other Christians would not do is utter nonsense. If you believe in God and if you believe that Jesus is his son and he came to earth to save us all, then you're a Christian. And that means even though you may not like or agree with people like Fred Phelps, or Jerry Fallwell, or Pat Robertson, or James Dobson, or people who murder in the name of God, you are still part of their sect and whether you like it or not they speak for your group of believers. Just as you lump me in with Hitler, Mao, and Stalin (all alleged atheists), you get lumped in with the worst of your belief group.


And finally, if God is so good why do we still have birth defects? Did those little babies displease God in the womb? Why do we still have racism? Does God favor one skin color over another? Why is there still genocide in the world? I thought God loved us all. And no, you Christians don't get to claim that the Devil is the cause of all the bad shit in the world, because you know what? God created him too if you believe the Bible and Christian tradition.


You know what really is good? Being kind to others. Not being judgmental, not killing, not stealing, not lying. Helping others when they need it regardless of their faith, skin color, gender, or the gender of which ever consenting adult they choose to love. Respecting the earth and all it's inhabitants is good. Living an ecologically sustainable life and reducing your footprint on our planet is good. God is something that we can't see, feel, or touch, but other people, plants, and animals are, be kind and loving towards them and that'll help out things more than praising something that is not there and that most of us can't agree on on anyway.

They don't like the competition

The reason Sally Kern and the evangelical Christians hate homosexuality so much is because in their minds the gay agenda is too much competition for them. You see, they believe, and wrongly so I might add, that part of the homosexual "agenda" is to proselytize people to get them to "turn" gay. And they think that proselytizing is their domain alone and they don't need all those homos trying to muscle in on their turf.

They think nothing of constantly forcing others to listen to their message of "love" but then when gays or friends of gays talk about equality for everyone under the law they scream that we're disrespectful of their religion. If it was the case that Sally and the evangelicals had to compete head to head against the gay movement for the hearts and minds and members, oops, I mean for the hearts and minds of the members of the human race, then Sally and the Jeebus lovers would lose hands down. Think about it, if you're a Christian then you get your ultimate reward after you die, if you're gay you get it after going to the gym, after going out for drinks, after watching Lost, after you wake up, etc. Seriously, if it came down to choosing to follow some stone age religion that puts all kinds of restrictions on you and tells you you're going to hell the second you pop out of the womb or choosing to be a part of a well dressed, well groomed, tasteful, pleasure loving group of folks who make love to people of their own gender then the ranks of homosexuals all over the world would be swollen beyond belief.

But they are not. And they never will be because the notion that gays, lesbians, and transsexuals are out there recruiting in the schools, through the mass media, and on the streets of every city is nonsense. But you know who is out there recruiting in the schools, in the mass media, and on the streets of every city? Evangelicals, that's who.

I can tell you from my 46 years of life experience that no gay has ever tried to recruit me to become gay. Maybe it's because they know I'd never hit the gym enough to get a set of rock hard six pack abs and an ass so tight you could bounce a quarter to the moon off it. Or maybe the fundamentalists need someone and something to hate and demonize and they decided the target for their twisted rage is going to be the gays and the lesbians until it's fashionable to hate black and brown skinned folks again. Maybe the fundies need to try to stay relevant in the press so they decided that they better go after the one group of folks they think are weaker than them.

And please notice that I did not lump all of you believers in together. I know there are many Christians who don't hate or fear or scapegoat gays. It's too bad for them that people like Sally Kern, Fred Phelps, and Pat Robertson are the Christians people identify with the sect of Jesus. Maybe if more Christians loved more and judged less then people wouldn't be so turned off to Christianity.

How do you ruin the baby Jesus's birthday?

You stick a reminder of how he's going to die and a big ass picture of Jeff Gordon in his new born face.

"Jesus is born!"

"Good. Let's kill him!"

Damn, you Christians are funny. I mean it. Some of you slay me.

Really? You're kidding me right?

This can't possibly be true can it?

I thought those people believed in love and treating each other like they'd want to be treated. Huh, I guess they really didn't listen to what the guy who they claim got nailed to a tree said after all.

I'd be quite the catch but they won't chase me

Since I jumped into this whole Facebook thingy a bit more I've come back into contact with some old college friends. And just like in college they fall into two distinct groups, one group of them I partied and hung out with, the other I didn't. I've been exchanging emails and all sorts of memories with my old party pals but the folks I didn't party with I have hardly exchanged much with except for the cursory greeting and 'friend adding.'

The thing I find funny about all this that a couple of my old college friends have become ministers and as soon as they found out I was a card carrying atheist, and the card I carry is my library card, they stopped communicating with me. No more messages on my Facebook wall, no emails, nothing. I'm grateful they don't, but you'd think they try to save my soul or something. You'd think they at least be cordial on the off chance that I might turn to them to find out about the good news about Jeebus H Christ. But just like in college it turns out that the religious people only want to be be around others who think like them or who they think they can brainwash into thinking like them.

I'm glad I've reconnected with my old party buddies even though we live hundreds of miles apart. And as far as the god squadders who I've reconnected with, the way I feel about them is just about the same way I felt about them in college, which is to say, I can take them or leave them and mostly I leave them.

Oh, and I'm glad that I connected with some of my blog pals on Facebook because it helps me get to know you a little better and we share a different side of our selves on there. But if I don't return good karma, or throw more "snowballs," or pass you "drinks," then I apologize. I'm still a Facebook rookie and I don't spend enough time there to be all hip to the latest advances in Facebookism.

Here's yet another reason to not be a Christian

That Saddleback preacher guy, Rick Warren, gave our Chickenhawk in Chief an award for peace. Maybe next he'll give Amy Winehouse an award for sobriety and Jamie Lynn Spears an award for chastity.

In other Rick Warren news, he's got a closet full of shoes like these:

Say amen somebody!

And now here's a message from Sarah Palin

Oh gosh, you know I was just so mad at my "maverick" running mate Grandpa John for deciding to leave Michigan that it totally ruined my weekend!

Sure it looks like I'm happy as I'm standing next to Alaska stud #1, who may have just knocked me up with a baby that we might name Flywheel McSneezer Palin, but I'm not really. In fact I'm the opposite of happy, I'm steamed let me tell ya you betcha.

I'm ready to go to the great lake state and rustle me up some votes. I'll take Todd and Bristol and Levi and the new baby and Cooter and Lolly Pop and Sleestak and Satchel and Jim Bob and Mary Ellen and the rest of our kids and by golly we'll canvass from Germfask to Fowlerville to Alpena to Grosse Point and by gosh by golly don't cha know we'll have Jesus by all our sides and we'll turn that blue state red! I'll even get my Kenyan minister, you know the witch hunter guy, to got to Dee-troit to get all those black folks to vote for me and Grandpa John.

Hey I want to go but Grandpa doesn't want me to, I guess I'm the maverick now because I'm trying to do my own thing! Hey Grandpa, who's a maverick? Me. I'm a maverick. I'm not just a MILF or a PYW2P4 (Pentecostal You Want 2 Pray 4)!

But okey dokey then, if Grandpa John doesn't want me to spend time in Michigan I guess I'll just sit here and not talk to the press. I'll just sit here and hope Jesus comes back before that uppity elitist black man gets elected.

Christians can't count

Refresh my memory, how many is in a quartet?

Unacceptable

There was an anti gay hate crime in my fair city last night and you can read about it here.

This kind of shit sickens me beyond belief. And before any of you decide to leave me a comment that you're not surprised that this type of thing happened in TN, please don't waste your time because I'll just delete it. Let's be clear, this type of assault happens all over this country and it happens because of the climate of fear and anti gay hate that is stoked by the radical religious right and the Republican party.

Some in the radical religious right claim that they hate the "sin" of homosexuality but they love the homosexual. This of course is bullshit. People on the far right politically and religiously hate anyone who is not exactly like them. They need someone to demonize and and to try and "save" and who better to hate and despise than the people most unlike them in the world. It used to be they hated Jews, then blacks, then women's libbers, then hippies, then Communists, and now it's the gays turn to feel their wrath and unholy unchristian hatred.

Don't get me wrong people, not all religious people hate or fear gays. My friend Rev. Shuck is a huge advocate for gay, lesbian, and transgendered people. He's all for marriage equality and having gay people serve in the ministry. And he's a Presbyterian minister. And he started the local PFLAG chapter in our area. So not all men or women of the cloth are bad or "scum of the earth." Some actually believe in equality for all in all phases of life.

If people in the radical religious right stopped hating gays like James Dobson and Pat Robertson do and they started loving people the Jesus Christ said to then a lot of hate crimes against gay people would stop. But I'm not about to hold my breath waiting for the sanctimonious religious blowhards in this country to actually live as their messiah commanded them to.

The 1956 Baptist Student Association from East TN State would like to remind you that...

...unless you suck it up and become Baptists like they are, then you're going to hell. And that goes double for liberals and folks who think it's okay for two dudes to kiss and get married.

Wide Stance and Diaper Boy strike again.

I wonder if Mark Foley will lobby them when they try to get this bill passed.

It's a damn good thing there's not a war going on and that our national economy isn't tanking and that all the our government's regulatory agencies that are supposed to be protecting us citizens are fully staffed and fully funded, because if all that shit was going well then introducing a bill to amend the Constitution just to please some right wing religious hate filled puss bag bigots would be election year pandering that once again shows how hollow Republican "values" are.

What Would Jesus Drive?

I found this great video on The Underground Unbeliever, it's a great atheist blog. I highly recommend it and if you have not heard about the bullshit ad that Kieff & Sons Ford put out, then you can read all about it over there as well. The people at Kieff & Sons Ford are the kind of people who only want freedom of religion for Christians only and they only want freedom of speech when it suits their agenda. It's people like them who give all religious people yet another black eye.

McCain's minister

Since the corporate media won't tell you this, I will:

Unlike Sen. Obama, who never sought out the endorsement of his old pastor, Bush McCain actively sought out the endorsement of the hateful bag of religious pus in the above photo, so it's fair to John Hagee is McCain's minister.  Now, let's remember some of the things that McCain's minister has said and that he believes:

• He wants a wider war in the Middle East that will trigger Armageddon and bring Jesus back.
• He said he knew that his god let hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans because he wanted to stop a gay pride march.
• We can't ever negotiate with followers of Islam because they want to kill us all.
• The Harry Potter books are nothing more than tools to teach kids about the occult.
• Critics of the war on Iraq should stop whining about how much the war costs because we need to keep fighting it so we can keep Israel safe, until they are allowed to attack Iran which will trigger Armageddon.

Now you tell me, which minister is more of a nut job, the one who wants to trigger a nuclear war so his saviour can come back and wipe all of us non believers out and send us to hell so they can have the earth and everything on it, or the one who has had the gall to speak up for his oppressed flock and talk openly about the terror and injustice that the USA has inflicted on so many people all over the world?  If you picked the raging right wing homophobe from Texas then you win.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure but only to people bright enough to know better

I hope they convict these two and give them the maximum sentence allowable under the law. Their action, or more correctly their lack of action, killed their daughter just as sure as if they had shot her in the head at point blank range.

They claim that their god was going to cure their daughter. The sad thing was he was indeed going to cure her. But what those idiot parents of hers don't realize is that their god was going to do it through the doctors at the local hospital.

Some people should not ever be allowed to raise children, especially religious whack jobs.

Five out of five white people agree that...

...covered dish suppers at United Methodist churches are preferable to being beaten with semi flexible metal rods. 

Damn Heretics

Meet the Cathars.They were a group of people who didn't believe the exact same things in the exact same way of the prevailing religious authorities back in medieval times. They believed in a more gentle faith that spoke about respect for all living things and not just for humans. They eschewed the dietary mores of the day and they advocated a diet that was low in killing of living things and high in the eating of vegetables and breads. They wanted no part of fighting or going to war, they believed in peace and they took seriously the commandment that said, "Thou shall not kill." The bottom line was the Cathars believed in peace and non violence all the way around, peace towards other humans and peace towards animals.

This all of course pissed off people at Catholic HQ in Rome. They told the Cathars that they must bring their faith in line with the teachings of the mother church or they'd face excommunication. The Cathars said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Fine, excommunicate us. We believe we're following God's word and you aren't, so what you say doesn't matter. We're going to live how we like and do what's best for us."

The folks at Catholic HQ in Rome said, and again I'm paraphrasing, "Oh hell no you won't." The Cathars were then not only excommunicated, they were hunted down and slaughtered for daring to believe something different from the theocratic leadership. There was one point when some Cathars were trapped with others in a church who may or may not have been followers of their doctrine and when the commanding Papal army person was asked if the Papal army soldiers should try to sort out who was and who was not a Cathar before the mass murder took place, the Papal commander infamously said, and I am not paraphrasing here, "Kill them all. God will know his own."

And that's the problem with theocracies in my opinion. If you don't believe the same things as the religious group in charge then you're going to be persecuted and perhaps killed. It happens in every theocracy sooner or later. In fact it's happening here in this country now and we're not a full blown theocracy yet. Senator Obama's minister is singled out for daring to have opinions that differ from the ones most of the mainstream churches have and now he's being hounded and persecuted for it, for the record I agree with most of what he said and whether you believe it or not we got attacked on September 11, 2001 not because terrorists hate our freedom but because we've supported oppressive regimes in the Middle East for many many years and because we treat people with brown and black skin like they are shit. On the other hand people who have made more hateful and insanely inflammatory remarks like Pat Robertson and John Hagge are not persecuted, they are applauded and lauded for being courageous enough to speak out.

Only when we get religion out of government all together can all our beliefs be safeguarded. I could care less if you choose to believe in Jesus or Buddha or Golems or Vishnu or Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. As long as you keep those beliefs out of the sphere of government and you don't put one religion or belief system above any other then we'll all be fine. If we keep all religion out of government then all religions can concentrate on the thing they like to do best, hating atheists like me.

"Jesus said, 'Take it to the hole!'"

My favorite bit ever from Upright Citizens Brigade.

Are you listening to us or what?

"Hello to all the godless hell bound pagans who read this crappy blog. James Dobson here...""And Pat Robertson too! Don't forget me!"
"Zip it Pat. Listen to me people, I have a question for you. Ready?"
"Was that your question James?"
"No you idiot, this is my question: Are any of you listening to us anymore? Because it sure as hell doesn't look like it. If you were listening to us then you'd be voting the way we told you to damn it."
"I told them to vote for Rudy!"
"Robertson, if you don't shut that pie hole of yours I'll smote it for you. If you voted for that cross dressing Roman Catholic then you deserve to be excommunicated. I have been telling you people for weeks to vote for Huckabee and yet you keep voting for McCain. Why is that? Is it because Huckabee is an inbred idiot? Well of course he is but who cares, so is our current President. And so what if he married his half sister? The man is a minister and you people need to vote for him now. Stop screwing around and do what I tell you, I mean it. I've got to go count all the money my church took in this past Sunday so I'm gonna let some folks from Square America tell you about what a swell guy Huckabee is and what an ass McCain is. You people better listen to them or you'll be making me and Reich wing Jesus mad!"

"I'm not from Square America but I'm voting for Huckabee anyways. And you know what else? I'm squirting out this baby sometime before November and he or she is gonna vote for Huckabee too!""John McCain wants to force me to give my cake recipes to the Viet Cong. He turned into their puppet when he was in the Hanoi Hilton and he cracked under the pressure of torture, I heard that on Rush Limbaugh. Everything he does is to bring the godless Viet Cong glory!""My 'roids are killing me. Leave me the hell alone."

"Can McCain do this? Can he look like a gopher? Hell no he can't and that's why I'm voting for Huckabee."
"I'm waiting for the Blair Witch so I have no opinion one way or another."
"We're ass over tits for Huckabee! His wife, Jethrine, is our hero!"
"You kids get the hell away from my trailer! I'll shoot everyone of you if you mess with me."
"Yo, ya'll could live to be a million and you'd never be as big a playa as me. Me and my foxxxy lady will be voting for Obama and then we'll be making sweet sweet love while we sip some Boone's Farm wine."

"That's all for now. I've got to finish my work out. I need to bulk up so I can whoop Dobson's ass one of these days. Praise Jesus!"

Praise the Lord and pass the lube!

Ted Haggard is out of gay recovery. He said upon leaving, "I'm not gay anymore but my boyfriend still is. Praise hot hunky six pack ab Jesus."

Out of Africa

Does the rioting in the wake of the "elections" in Kenya surprise anybody?

If you lived in abject poverty that was brought on by your government's greed and by the rape of your country's natural resources by western multi-national corporations and when you went to vote your vote was ignored or tossed aside, then I'm betting you'd riot too. If you saw that the only way out of a miserable existence was to attach yourself to whatever dictatorial strong man was in power then I guess you'd take up a machete and try to hack off the heads of the people who wanted him out. If you skimmed food and cash off all the charity that flows into your country and you got fat and rich off it then I'm sure you'd do whatever it took to keep that flow going.

For years western countries like the US and Britain have forced alien political systems on African nations. They've told them, "You must be a democracy like we are!" Of course it doesn't matter to the US or to Britain that for hundreds of thousands of years Africans got along fine without democracy. The US, Britain, and other countries have insisted that multi-national corporations be allowed to plunder Africa's resources and to make low paid wage slaves out of their citizens. We've also shoved our twisted brand of Christianity down their throats for hundreds of years and we've done our best to obliterate their tribal past.

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I can't help but see that the past 40 years of trying to remake Africa into the USA and Britain has been a disaster for most every African and for Africa in general. Of course there have been some who have profited and have done well from our plunder of the dark continent, and as usual it's been the corporate CEO's and their henchmen in our governments.

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Maybe if we got the hell out of Africa and we stop forcing our political and economic systems down their throats, then Africans might just work things out for themselves. After all, the one country that has rejected the IMF and the World Bank, Botswana, is one of the most peaceful and economically sound countries in Africa. They do things in Botswana the way they think best and not the way the technocrats in Washington and London think they ought to. Most every other country in Africa has adopted western style economics and aped western style political systems to their detriment. If we got the politicians, the missionaries, the corporations, and the zealots out of Africa then life would be better for millions of Africans once again.