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It is always nice to start the weekend off with poking fun at the mythology and silliness that masquerades as religion. Arguably one of NSC’s finest works to date about the christians and their funny book.
If there is one general feature of North American psyche that does not appeal to me, it would be our inability to see how privileged we are, and the small things we take for granted that other people are fighting for right now. Take Lebanon a state riddled with sectarian violence and all the divisiveness that comes with running a country on religious principles. Al Jazeera reports:
“Thousands of protestors have gathered in Beirut to demand a separation of politics and religion in Lebanon.
The demonstrators marched on parliament on Sunday chanting “secularism” and waving placards calling for the recognition of civil marriage in the Mediterranean country.”
Wow. A secular state not ruled by the wisdom of 2000 year old magic books and the delusional rantings of assorted high priests and mullahs. We take it for granted that we can keep the tomfoolery out of state affairs and run a marginally rational state and by that extension a marginally rational society.
“The idea of a secular political system has faced stiff opposition from ruling politicians who fear an erosion of power if the complex power sharing system between the different religious communities is abandoned.
Power. Control. Influence. Make no mistake, religion rules by no heavenly mandate; only the lowly aspirations of pernicious, greedy men who value power over any so called ‘ethical’ pronouncements their assorted magic books may make.
“What is missing is the political support. In the last election in 2009, all the main political parties paid lip service to the sectarian system,” Elias Muhanna, a Boston-based political analyst and blogger, told Al Jazeera.”
The Lebanese people are rallying for a secular nation. This should be front page news here in the North America where we purport to hold the institutions of Liberal Democracy and personal freedom so dear to our collective identity as a nation. Of course the religious nuttery of the USA precludes covering any movement so clearly geared toward freeing a country from religious rule. Depending on the news cycle it can look like the US is regressing toward some flavour of a theocratic state, where delusional behaviour is openly celebrated.
“Lebanon is home to 18 religious sects, and is deeply divided between Christians and Muslims.
Its sectarian system was soldified in a 1943 national accord in a bid to avoid religious conflict, but the country was torn apart by a brutal 15 year civil war that started in 1975.
The agreement that ended the conflict called for the abolition of sectarianism, but the system has endured.
Under the complicated rules, public sector jobs are subject to religious quotas that change year-on-year in a bid to maintain the delicate balance.”
Such a waste of time and resources all just to keep the people who wear funny hats and irrational attitudes happy and in check.
North Americans should take notice and see what a religious state is like and realize it is not a good outcome if we are interested in maintaining the liberal democratic society which we seem to regularly take pride in while at the same neglecting the institutions that maintain it.
I figured I needed a video today, I just did not expect it to come via the Canadian Cynic, who is quite resplendent in dispensing snark, but as of late propagating important cultural work as well :)
The New Testament is all about love. Sure, there was some practices promoted in the old testament that could be considered a bit brutish by today’s standards, but Jebus fixed all that, not by recanting any of those barbarous edicts, but by saying ‘love your neighbor’. So you see, all you christian naysayers, the new testament represents a much nicer and loving image of god. Oh, yeah, one more thing, he also invented hell.
I was quite shocked to learn that the old testament doesn’t speak once about a lake of fire or eternal suffering anywhere within its dreary pages. Brimstone and torture that lasts forever was introduced by the new testament. Now up until I learned that, I was of the mind that the new testament was just as horrible as the old, but with this new tidbit of knowledge I find that the new testament is far worse than the old in terms of brutality and moral perversion. Allow me to illustrate.
For this thought experiment, we need to be able to quantify the amount of suffering, or evil, that a person could do in his or her lifetime. Just for the sake of humourous triviality, I will call the units of this quantification “sin points”.
Let’s say we have an absolutely wonderful person, a real saint. Nice to everyone, very giving goes the extra mile to make the world a better place. Now, people being the fallible entities that they are, it wouldn’t be realistic to say that this person would acquire zero sin points throughout his life, so let’s say someone like that would only get one. The average person, let’s say, would get something like 1000 sin points in their life (that first guy was really REALLY nice) and your average rapist murderer type person would get 1 trillion.
Now, since we imagined one of the best people that could exist (only one sin point, for goodness sake!) lets also imagine the worst. This individual not only hates people enough to do horrific things to them, but through some unlucky circumstance, he also acquires the longevity and resources to take out this hate on more people over a longer period than anyone ever has in history. Imagine if, say, a Hitler type decided that anyone who did not have green eyes deserved much worse than death. So, this super Hitler successfully creates a worldwide totalitarian regime wherein he lives a long life of torturing billions of people death in the most excruciating ways possible. Even after his death, it takes the globe about 3 generations to recover from super Hitler’s reign of terror. Now this is one bad hombre. How many sin points does he get?
Well, a murderer gets 1 trillion. If the murderer uses torture, let’s say, it’s upped to 1 trillion squared. Multiply that by the number of people Super Hitler tortured to death (let’s say 10 billion people, just to say he was extra mean) and square that for all the suffering involved in the global recovery (a bit excessive, but we are making this guy the worst possible person) and just for good measure, lets square it again. Grand total that’s 1X10 to the power of 128 sin points (that’s 1 with 128 zeros after it, in case it’s been a while since your last math class).
Christians everywhere awed by magical blanket, now with the image of Jesus. It is proof, proof I say of all the malarkey I have been force fed and child and led to believe. The CBC reverently intones:
“The Shroud of Turin, believed by many Christians to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, went on public display Saturday for the first time in a decade.
Confirmation bias anyone?
Over the next six weeks, about two million people are expected to view the linen bearing the faded image of a bearded man.”
Oh fantastic. Sheeple to the ramparts, the magic cloth has arrived!
“Each visitor will be allowed five minutes to stand before the bulletproof, climate-controlled case containing the cloth inside northern Italy’s Turin Cathedral, where it has been kept for 500 years. In that time, the public has been allowed to view it on only five different occasions. The last time was in November, 1998”
And then the Jebus blankee along with the disney Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs go back into the vault. So do not delay!
“Pope Benedict XVI will visit Turin on May 2 to pray before the 4.3-metre-long, one-metre-wide shroud.”
2010. 21 century here, we really need to stop propagating foolish dangerous mythology.
From his Skeptical Essays, published in 1928:
“I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I must of course admit that if such an opinion became common it would completely transform our social life and political system. Since both are at present faultless this must weigh against it.”
Religion, the stupidity mill that keeps grinding out the awesome. Stolen from the CC.
Oh hey, and for extra churchy-fail Thunderfoot examines the Catholic Church for the evil entity that it is.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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