Miracles - just more proof that god's an a-hole.

I’ve talked about my disdain for organized religion before… most people of course accuse me of hating people who believe in religion. This is untrue… most people I know subscribe to one religion or another, and in fact my best friend is quite happily religious. I have no problem with people believing in god, for the most part… it’s the organizations of religion that I really have a problem with.

The reasons are many… they are the purveyors of the “great lies”, they assert truths without evidence, they offer forgiveness for abhorrent behavior by simply affirming belief, they harm progress by stifling independent thought, they stunt intellectual growth by promoting the concept of belief in things despite contrary evidence. They govern and control on a principal of fear of eternal and horrific punishment. And what’s worse, they can never be contented with keeping their beliefs to themselves. Almost all religions have the same goal: convert as many people as possible to your belief. The term “missionary” is one of reverence and respect to the religious, while all it is to me is an asshole who insists him / herself on other people whether they like it or not.

In addition, religion instills people with a false sense of hope, and a belief that problems can be solved without action, by simply praying. How can this lead to a productive, affluent, progressive society? Additionally, religion is notoriously exclusivist, and bigoted by its very nature. There are thousands of religions... in fact, according to the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (2006), there are over 38,000 denominations of christianity alone. And each one thinks every other one has got it wrong… so much so that despite believing in the same god and reading from the same essential 2000 year old texts, protestant and catholic members of the same god still actively kill each other over who’s fucking interpretation is more correct. This is the insanity that religion breeds in people. It removes objectivity and creates insular, ignorant followers who believe without question, and accept without consideration.

It’s with this preface I come to the case of the recent “miracle” at Lourdes. According to the Catholic News Agency, via a report from the Italian news agency ANSA, a woman who was reportedly wheelchair-bound, stricken with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), bathed in the waters at Lourdes and immediately was cured… and now she is walking and even running… all signs of her disease apparently completely gone.

Now, first of all, let’s attack the “miracle cure” thing directly… these things are almost never truly miracles. They nearly always end up having some mundane, if not medically cool, answer once looked into more closely. In this case, despite the quotes from her doctor, I’m left unconvinced that she was “cured”. What was her actual condition when she was at Lourdes? What was she doing just prior? She was apparently medically diagnosed with ALS, so was she participating in any drug trials? Was she mis-diagnosed? Was she examined immediately after Lourdes? No… “miracles” never have these questions available, nevermind actually answered. In fact, interestingly enough, there has been an ongoing medical trial for ALS treatment involving Lithium, which has shown the ability to halt or even completely stop the progression of ALS. Where has this trial been taking place? In Italy, interestingly enough. I have no direct knowledge of it, but would I be surprised to find out that this woman was part of such a trial? Nope… in fact I find it far more likely than the possibility that she was miraculously cured by magic water.

But for the sake of this discussion, let’s just take the claim of a “miracle cure” at face value. So she was cured, by god, at Lourdes. She alone, out of the hundreds of thousands that visited Lourdes this past year alone, was worthy. We’ll accept that premise for this discussion. Reports are that the crowd at Lourdes wept and praised god when the woman got up out of her chair. They were all grateful. GRATEFUL! This is what I don’t understand about christians, and the religious in general. At best, if this is a true miracle cure, does it not show god to be capricious and inconsistent? Millions of people have come to Lourdes… millions upon millions… many very sick, all believers. I’m sure many of the afflicted have suffered far worse and lived a far more pious life than this woman, and yet she was chosen to be cured? Why? What could be the possible reason that god would do this? If god has the power to remove pain and suffering instantaneously at his whim, why must one make the effort of going through ritualistic behavior like traveling to Lourdes, which may be painful and difficult, if not impossible for some, in order for that suffering to be alleviated? If this woman was worthy of being cured, why not just cure her? And if making a statement for god was the point, why make it so rare?

Additionally, if this woman was so worthy of being cured, why make her suffer the disease in the first place? And what of the others? Why are they unworthy? And why do they not ask this question of themselves?

I’ve asked these questions of the religious, and invariably I get the same answers. It's apologetics at its worst. The most common has to do with why god allows her and so many others to suffer. Invariably the answer is that we must suffer in this life to become closer to god and to enjoy the afterlife, or some bullshit like that. OK… fine. So god allows suffering as some sort of “penance”. So does that mean that this woman who has been cured and doesn’t suffer anymore will not be getting into heaven? If that is the case, I’d bet the woman would gladly take her ALS back to make sure she gets into heaven… if that’s not the case, then why not just remove suffering for all who believe in him? Why allow it for some and remove it for others? It seems capricious and arbitrary. If there is a god, then he’s a monster and I’d rather not know him anyhow.

Once the questions start getting tough, where the answers begin to contradict each other, most inevitably resort to the religious “ace-in-the-hole” catch-all answer: god works in mysterious ways, and you can’t know his mind, and to assume you can would be arrogant.

Great. Well that’s just great. So god can continue to be shown as a capricious, arbitrary, sadistic, petulant child with no consistency who insists on worship but refuses to show evidence for himself, and continually tests our faith just to prove how great he is, but we are to accept it anyhow because we can't know his mind? Fuck that. I want no part of it. Frankly none of it makes any sense, and the older I get the more clear to me it becomes that the only rational, reasonable thing to believe is that it’s all complete hogwash - ancient mythology that served to control populations and answer questions we didn’t yet have answers to. Every answer religion provides is so irrational, inconsistent, arbitrary and vague as to not merit consideration unless you have already been pre-programmed to accept a specific set of answers.

For too long, the term “taking it on faith” has been seen as a virtue. It’s not. It’s an admission of willful ignorance. The world needs less of that, not more.

Book burning... a ghastly demand made by ghastly people.

What is it with religious right-wingers and burning books?

That's the demand being put forth by some right-wing-nuts in a small town in Wisconsin. It seems the local library had the nerve to put some books on the shelves of the public library. Books that dealt with some fairly controversial issues. Specifically books that talked at length and in detail about homosexuality.

These books were written about, and targeted for, young adults, and were correctly placed in the young adult section. You can find these books at most libraries across the country, and find them in the young adult section. You see... it's a library. A public library. Its responsibility is to offer reading material to the public community. It is not responsible for censoring the content of that material or restricting access to that material based on arbitrary moral decisions demanded by religious authority.

Unfortunately too many of the residents of West Bend, WI don't fully understand the First Amendment, nor do they fully grasp the slippery slope they are planting their moral flag upon. And if that's not bad enough, they can't be bothered to simply voice their opinions... no, in traditional christian fashion, they must resort to threats of violence and damage to public property. It's a long-standing religious tradition: "believe what I believe or I'll beat the shit out of you".

Interestingly, the two people who started this whole mess, Jim and Ginny Maziarka, while totally ridiculous for believing they have the right to impress their morality on the community at large, are not the most unreasonable. They disagreed with the content, and petitioned that it should be placed in the "adult" section and marked as "sexually explicit". While completely wrong in that assessment, the request is not inappropriate and they went about it the right way. They even asked the library, if nothing else, to offer books that affirm hetero-sexuality. This is also not an unreasonable request, assuming those books do not incite hatred and violence against the homosexual community (or ANY community for that matter). I'm always in favor of libraries offering as many varied opinions on a topic as possible.

Ginny Maziarka began blogging about the issue, and that brought the righteously batshit crazy out of the woodwork... and that's where things start to get surreal. People began calling for the jobs of the library board... one man stood up during a meeting on the subject and told the library director he should be tarred and feathered! Another man, Robert Braun, who is 74 and a professed staunch christian, actually filed a claim along with 4 other "elderly" men to have the book burned! In the 21st century we actually have adult men calling for book-burnings.

Anger, hatred, violence, and destruction. That's the christian response to that with which they do not agree. It has been that way for 2000 years and shows no signs of changing. And burning books is the absolute worst form of ignorance and censorship, and is generally an action reserved for only the most hate-filled, vile idiots among us. I've said this before, but this is why I have such a problem with religious accomodationists. Religion can't be happy to leave the rest of us alone... it insists itself... its self-serving morality and dogma, upon everyone else, and does so often violently.

Thankfully, we continue to educate people in this country... and the tide is beginning to turn. The elderly, hateful christian fundamentalists like Mr. Braun are slowly dying out... and more and more we are seeing people stand up for rational, intelligent action and behavior. For example, in this case we have Maria Hanrahan, who started her own blog in opposition to that of Ginny Maziarka, calling for free speech and parental responsibility for what their children read and learn about. Her quote is what I would expect from a rational, intelligent person:

"I'm against any other party telling me what's appropriate for my child and what isn't," said Hanrahan, 40, who also created a West Bend Parents for Free Speech group. "We don't mean to say these are appropriate for everyone, but we don't feel they should be set apart from other materials or restricted from the young-adult section."

We need more of that type of intelligent discourse from our vocal citizens. Too often it's the angry, hate filled mob that have the loudest voice and brightest spotlight... It's good to see a shining light like Maria Hanrahan glowing in the darkness.

The good news: the library board voted to keep the controversial books right where they are. It was the only correct decision.

The bad news: in typical fashion, the city council voted not to renew the board members when their current terms expire. Which means the city could put new board members in place that could then decide to restrict access to the books or remove them altogether.

I hope they do, because thanks to people like Maria Hanrahan it looks like they'll have a legal fight on their hands... one that they shouldn't, and won't, win. Good for her. I said it a few posts earlier... it's about damn time we grew up as a society.

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By the way, if any of you are interested, the two main books in question are The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and Baby be-bop by Francesca Lia Block. Neither has ever been classified as "adult" or "sexually explicit" by any official authority.

Why I'm an atheist... and refuse to hide it...

The meat of this post is a few paragraphs below, but I wanted to share some thoughts first...

As many of you know or have already guessed, I am an atheist. Contrary to popular belief, I don't kill babies or eat puppies as a result. I simply have no reason, not a single shred of proof or evidence, for the existence of a god or gods. Gods of all sorts have come and gone throughout our history... some have faded away into myth, like the Greek and Roman gods of old, while some have maintained a foothold in modern society, like Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. All religions, from ancient Egypt to Sumeria to Aztec Mexico, have the same basic goal: control. Religion is a means of controlling a society and its population. Religion initially springs from a need to put answers around natural phenomena that a culture is unable to explain through mundane explanation, and more often then not fail when human knowledge expands to a point where religious explanations are overturned in favor of empirical evidence.

This is perfectly displayed with the collapse of ancient Greek religion. Over time, it became obvious through observation and application of scientific method that a giant, immortal being was not throwing lightning down from the clouds, that the sun did not ride across the sky in a chariot.

At any rate, that desire to explain the unknown is quickly used by those who wish to wield power over a group of people. It's an easy thing to do, really. If you are a member of an early society, and you want to be in charge, simply assign mysterious and frightening phenomena to supernatural forces, and then claim that you speak to, and therefor FOR, those forces. If you are convincing enough, you will instill enough fear of this possibility into the society. Thus religion is born, and your community is now under the control of that religion. The problem of course arises when someone else from somewhere else comes along with different answers from a different supernatural being... and depending on how convincing that person is, you might have a problem on your hands (Christians call this missionary work, by the way).

I think that over the course of our development as humans we've needed that structure... that ability to assign something to the things we don't understand, in order to function and start crawling out of the caves and start living in organized, fruitful communities. Religion has embedded parables into our culture that teach some basic lessons of right and wrong, and convey the customs of the time. The biggest problem I have with chrsitianity now is that too often christians look to a literal interpretation of the bible, a book written 2000 years ago by barely literate goat-herders. The lessons were relevant to the culture and society of the time, but they do not translate well to today's culture. The bible is full of hateful racist and misogynistic verbiage that was far more commonplace and acceptable in the time and place it was written. It is the same with other religions, including islam. Unfortunately there are many cultures who still enforce a strict adherence to these writings, and women and minorities are still persecuted and oppressed as a result to this day.

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I was raised an Irish catholic in a section of Boston that was, and still is, very religious. I was an alter boy for a time and was confirmed when I was about 12. However, I was also a fairly intelligent and very curious young man, and as a result of the very teachings I was given to become confirmed, I began to have serious questions and concerns about the writings in the bible. So I began to research some of this stuff, and actually read the bible for the very first time. I was amazed at how much I was expected to swallow. The more I learned, the more and more clear it became that the bible was no more factually correct than Aesop's fables. I think it's safe to say I was an atheist by the time I was 18.

But, being an atheist in the mid-80's in Boston was not something you could just proclaim. Even then, I wouldn't admit to being an atheist... to those who would ask I would simply say "I'm not sure what I believe" and leave it at that. I spent many years playing the role of the agnostic for fear of the stigma attached to atheists.

As I got older and more educated, my refusal to accept religious claims was only reinforced, and I began to read books about the atrocities committed in the name of religion (the crusades, the Inquisition, to name a couple) and I began to embrace my atheism even more. I had become an atheist because I was unable to accept the obvious problems with religious doctrine, but I've become a more outspoken atheist as I've gotten older because religion continues to make it impossible for me to do otherwise. I've come to feel that religion does far more harm than good, and continues to be nothing more than a means of control over a population. And outside of the abject inhumanity of fundamentalist islamic sects in the middle-east, there is no better example of this than the Roman Catholic Church of which I was once a member.

And there is no better example than the story of the 9-year-old Brazilian girl who was raped and became pregnant. This poor, innocent little girl was raped by her step-father and became pregnant... with twins. Carrying twins to term at her age would likely have killed the little girl, so her family and her doctor decided an abortion was the only safe, humane thing to do. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church doesn't understand the concept of humane action when it opposes its outdated dogma. The local bishop ex-communicated the doctor and her family for having an abortion. The little girl would have been ex-communicated too, but catholic doctrine does not allow for ex-communication of people under the age of 18. While this is absurd, of course, it is not all that surprising. The catholic church's position on abortion is that the blob of cells is far more important than a living, breathing 9-year-old. And you may think this is just something that happened because it's Brazil and they are more fanatical... well you'd be wrong. The Vatican has weighed in on this, and has defended the decision of the bishop. A vatican official was quoted as saying "This is not just theory. And you can't start backpedaling just because the real-life situation carries a certain human weight." Yup... you read that correctly. According to the vatican, strict adherence to doctrine is paramount, and exceptions can not be made under any circumstances.

Yes, ladies and gentleman... it is time to grow up as a society. These are not the governing morals we want to continue to be driven by. Religion is never content to be left alone and keep to itself... it insists itself upon society... it demands respect where it has not earned it, it expects to be treated with deference and be given special treatment... it pushes its beliefs into places that should remain secular. It will not leave well enough alone. It never has, it never will. I've read in many places recently that we need to "play nice" with religion in order to further the goals of secular society, that being the "angry, uppity atheist" only hurts the cause. That's code for "sit down and shut up", and to that I say, fuck no! I am angry because stories like the one above make me angry... and if they don't make you angry then there's something wrong with you, and you need to adjust your moral compass. I will continue to write in outrage and continue to push the message that it is time to cast off the shackles of religion and leave it behind along with the other fairy tales we've dismissed.

Defenders of religion claim that we need religion in order to maintain a proper morality. I've seen too many examples of "christian morality", like the one above. I'm not religious, but I have morals as strong as any christian... stronger, in my opinion, as I don't share, for example, a hatred of homosexuals or beliefs that cause me to say "praise jesus" when a relative is spared their life in an accident that also took the lives of other innocent women and children. Was Jesus not looking out for them? My daughter has never known religion in any formal way, and her morals are spot on... in fact even at her young age, she is far more giving, caring and empathetic than most of her peers that go to church every Sunday and bible school in the summer. And she doesn't need the fear of burning in eternal fire in order to know the difference between right and wrong and act appropriately. Funny that.

I was once afraid to admit that I was an atheist... but every day that I live and see how religion affects the world around me, I'm more and more proud of it. You should be too.