"Swear" words

Okay, I guess I can understand why “God damn it” would be a big no-no to our pals in the Religious Right TM, given the whole ten commandments thing, but why should they care about good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon cussing?

(Honestly, if you’re offended by allegedly “foul” language, you might want to stop right here. On the other hand, you might gain a new outlook.)

Because of family connections and other accidents, there are a few devout Christian readers of this site, and for that I am grateful. The number of venues in which religious and not can meet and discuss is small and getting smaller. I can hurl invective with the best of them, but Lordy, it would be nice to have a dialogue.
I don’t want to drive anyone off, but this seems like a fitting topic for a rant.

The Onion once had a great article by a guy selling Bibles. “Why can’t I sell any of these fucking Bibles? These aren’t some cheap ass shitty Bibles. They’re fucking quality Bibles.”

The church definitely preaches that words like ”shit”, ”piss” or ”fuck” are somehow “bad”. On what scriptural basis? Why is feces not obscene, but shit is? You can say fornicate from the pulpit, but they’d throw you out for saying, “Fucking come to Jesus, y’all”.

Any theologians (or English majors for that matter) who can clarify this for me?

On the theme of tradition vs. scripture, I had to throw in the old joke:

Q. Why don’t Baptists make love standing up?
A. Someone might see them and think they were dancing.

And my brother Steve’s line of artificial swearing:
“Got dandruff! And some of it itches!”

Religion, bane of humanity and deity

Okay, earlier in this blog, a devout, educated, American Christian, Ben, defends the righteousness of sending a starved 5 month old child to eternal damnation because the child may have sinned.

I’m watching a mob of Sudanese on CNN marching to demand the execution of a teacher who “allowed” her 7 year old students to name a teddy bear Mohammed.

Last year, a huge brouhaha broke our in Kabul after an Afghani
converted to Christianity and was sentenced to death as a result.

My earlier post included the letter from the RV park host warning that “Muslim mosques are “Hate America Centers””.

I don’t remember the last time an agnostic killed an atheist over his or her religious views.

I can’t count the number of catholic/protestant/muslim/hindu/mormons killed because they weren’t catholic/protestant/muslim/hindu/mormons.

What the hell is wrong with you people?

Is it possible that God hates religion as much as I do? It’s really not hard to imagine. In fact, I take it as an article of faith.

Abortion- Jesus thought it was a great idea

Okay, the idiots in today’s right wing consider opposition to abortion to be the touchstone shibboleth of faith. The death of millions of innocent zygotes, whose lives they will defend, right up to the moment of birth and not one minute more is some kind of genocide. These same knuckleheads can’t find $100 a head to have at risk 5 year olds get a school lunch or tutoring, but God forbid that a cluster of 12 cells gets sucked into the Hoover and all hell breaks loose.

Jesus hung with ho’s and never said a thing about abortions. Think about it; unless these women only worked 3 days a month, they were practicing abortion, whether falling down stairs or using herbal potions. He never said a thing. What the hell is wrong with these idiots whose real motivation I believe is, “The little slut wouldn’t sleep with me. Screw her.” Or "I never got laid in high school, why should you?"

Oh the absurd suffering that's been laid (sic) on the world thru the sexual neurosis of the Religious Right and its' ancestors. A bunch of inhibited perverts, in my opinion. Latent child molesters and wanna be swingers with too much weird guilt to pull it off. Get over yourselves.

Justice and mercy anyone?

What’s the struggle?

Evangelicals, it seems to me, are always bitching about the corrupting influence of the culture, the oppression they face, the secular humanists running the world (huh?), the rampant sexual content (pardon me, but Jesus forbids consensual sex outside of wedlock between adults where? He hung out with prostitutes, you tight-assed Puritans!) and all manner of other distraction from their living a Godly life.

WHAT? If I actually believed that I’d get a billion years in heaven and all I had to do was survive my 70 plus years here on earth, it’d be a piece of cake. No sex, no drugs, no problem. It's like telling a kid you'll take him to Disneyland for a month if he stays quiet for 10 seconds. So why is it such a trial for Christians? Could it be doubt? What if this is the only chance I get at life and I make the wrong bet?

So Is God Evil or Weak?

There’s a religion out there that worships a god who allows 29,000 innocent children to die of starvation every day. The vast majority of them, these folks believe, go to burn and suffer in unimaginable pain for billions of years, and then billions more and billions more. Because of original sin. This is considered the actions of a merciful god. In fact, they like to say, “God is love.”

Sorry, but God sounds like a major league asshole to me.

Nobody has ever successfully explained to me whether God is weak, and can’t prevent evil, pain and suffering, simply because he’s not up to the task, or if he’s evil and wants us to suffer.

As for the “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”, the game was rigged. Adam and Eve faced the choice of the skinny kid facing the schoolyard bully, ho asks, “If you don’t want me to hit you, say, “Hit me.”” For this, billions of humans are relegated to eternal suffering on an infinite scale.

Sorry, but I don’t get it. What is it, weak or evil or just a bully?

Are Christians evil?

So I was walking around the Tucson Barnes and Noble, trying to think what English language drivel I’d wish I had during a month in Mexico, and I saw the Harper’s cover story, “Are Christians evil?”

This I obviously had to have. The point of the article, which is actually a book review of David Lewis and Phillip Kitcher’s “Philosophers Without Gods” published in August, is interesting..

The premise is that because God insists that those who know nothing about him are sentenced to unimaginably long torture of unimaginable agony in unimaginable ways that God is intrinsically evil. Works for me.

The following idea is that if Christians approve of, and in fact worship this kind of behavior, then they are in fact evil. Where the hell is the love in sentencing African five month olds who die of starvation to billions of years of anal rape by barbed penised demons? It has always struck me as the plan of a less than loving deity.

Call me crazy.

If I were Eve, I’d pick an apple from a tree because it’s human to be hungry, and that’s all.

Lies, damned lies and statistics

Okay, a month ago one-third of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein had a personal role in the attacks o 9/11, and 40 percent believed he had some role. (This result certainly includes my parents and various other family members, who also believed That Governor Bill Clinton imported cocaine to Arkansas and that his wife killed Vince Foster. Also, Nixon was framed.)

How can you believe in democracy when these boneheads each get a vote? It drives me crazy that my vote is countered by a guy in an F-150 with Confederate Army battle flag decals on the bumper.

“Hey man, being White is my heritage.” Yeah, but being White doesn’t mean a damn thing except that you’re not Black. It’s not being English or Irish or Lithuanian. That’s not heritage, it’s just another ugly, ridiculous abuse of the ignorant by the right wing to get their votes. Those people are utterly contemptuous of those ignorant lowlifes, but they sure are useful stooges.