Religion is child abuse.

It's time to get back to it.

I drove by a church/Christian school today whose marquee read: "Now enrolling infants/toddlers," presumably for daycare and Sunday School. If it hadn't been snowing, I probably would have wrecked my car, because I came to the sudden realization that each and every child enrolled by their parents in the daycare or Sunday School will eventually become one of two things: a) a "believer" who breeds and continues to perpetrate the crime by enrolling their offspring in church school, or b) an individual who struggles their whole lives with their lack of faith constantly being overshadowed by their earliest memories being of Bible study while mom and dad were at work. This made me profoundly sad, to say the least.

Here's a prototypical Christian "education:"

1) Sucker them in by getting them young -- Daycare is expensive. Church daycare is cheap. While the parents are out earning a living, little Suzy and Jimmy are in the safe(?) hands of some nice old ladies who have nothing else to do.

2) Feed them the easy stuff -- The most popular story in the Bible for children is Noah's Ark. Why? Animals! Kids fucking love animals! It's easy to convince a toddler that someone put two of every kind of animal on a big boat because toddlers only know of about six different types of animals, and that fits into their worldview, because there's a toy ark at church that has two elephants, and two sheep, and two giraffes, and two lions . . . so that must have worked. Needless to say, the nice old ladies don't have to explain that God MURDERED every living creature on the planet besides what fit on the boat, because kids only need to know that Noah and his wife (and three sons and their wives) and two of every animal (which we have to assume included dragons, gryphons, basilisks, minotaurs, and all the other animals that man believed in back then) got to go on a long-ass boat ride and then repopulate the earth. Kids don't need to know that it's because everyone was sodomizing (gasp!) each other that the boat ride even happened in the first place. They'll have plenty of time to hate those buttfuckers when they get to high school, and ten percent of them are secretly curious about it anyway. But bury those feelings way down, and never talk about them again.

3) Up the dosage -- Jonah and the fish is the next Bible story kids get into. Again, kids love animals, they love using their imagination, and it's not a huge leap from a worldwide flood to a guy living in a fish (not a whale, like so many Christains say). From there, it's easy to explain the creation story (make a little parable during art class!), the Nativity (kids love babies!), and so on.

4) Go to church -- At a certain point, most kids enter the public school system, and start to hear about science, which flies in the face of what they've been told since they were infants. They start to physically change, which makes them feel guilty. They start to learn about sex, politics, geography, and society, and they feel conflicted. What do you do to keep them in their little Christian box? Take them to church to hear from adults (whom they've been told to listen to) about how if they touch their down-their parts, they'll be roasted forever in the fires of Hell. About how if they don't accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, that they'll spend all of eternity wiping Satan's ass. About how if they think boys are prettier than girls, they'll be bathed in a lake of fire until the end of time. About how they have to honor mommy and daddy, or else you'll be grounded forever and ever, and they'll never be forgiven by the bearded man in the clouds.

First of all, what adult would buy this crap if you told it to them outright? Secondly, what if their daddy, who has accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, is touching their down there parts? Do they still have to "honor" him? If you were threatened with eternal damnation for not honoring your parents (it's a fucking COMMANDMENT! There's only like, ten, right?) would you come forward? I doubt it. "Daddies know best, sweetheart."

All of these things are confusing for kids, and that's the part that is abusive. It is downright wrong to intentionally confuse children. And no, I'm not a fan of the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, Santa, or any other crap that is designed to make kids believe something, although I would rather confuse children about where their teeth go than what happens to them after they die based on who they were and under what circumstances they lived their lives.

The end result of Sunday School, Christian School, Vacation Bible School, and church daycare is the same: get 'em while they're young. Breed the hate of millennia of religious doctrine into them by disguising it in cute, clever stories about animals and babies. Get the buy-in before they're old enough to KNOW better. Then scare the living shit out of them by telling them where all the people who are different from them go when they die.

Quick side story: A former employee of mine went to a Vacation Bible School every summer that she worked for me, and I remember that these were the lyrics to one of the songs they sang at "Camp:" “liars go to hell...liars go to hell...Revelation 21:8, 21:8...burn burn burn.” Can you fucking believe this? They teach kids this song! Makes you wonder just what, exactly, Jesus would do.

ANYWAY, I could go on and on and on and on about how awful religion is for kids; that it teaches them to not think, that it only encourages sheep-like behavior and stereotyping, that it promotes physical and sexual abuse in so-called Christian (Muslim, Jewish, Hindu) families, that it causes lifelong guilt over "misdeeds" committed in one's youth, that it discourages free thought, investigation, curiosity, creativity, and imagination, that it cripples the mind and emotions, that it guarantees a limited worldview by attaching the blinders of faith to the eyes of the young and naive, etcetera, but I won't.

I will take a little space for some shout-outs:

Larry! I'm back, baby! Send me some e-mails! We got your Christmas card (I know, I know). Thank you very much for reminding me to get back on the soap-box!

Scott and Carrie! Congratulations on your pending nuptials. I am so happy and proud for/of you both, and I hope that your lives are full, rich, and meaningful, no matter what! Make lots of beautiful babies!

Cedric! Hope you had a great Christmas. I'll still be your friend, even though you're broken. Give me a call when you have some time, and give your family a great big GJ hug from M and I. Hope we'll see you soon.

Puttin' the fear of (no) god in ya . . .

Here is an honest-to-god (I know, I can't help it) church marquee message I saw last week:

"Health and life insurance come from God"

Can you say "cannon fodder?" I had to write about it.

Item #1: I can only assume this is in reference and response to the recent media shit-storm circling around the health care reform debate (and by debate, of course, I mean Christian Conservatives bringing guns to town hall meetings). We can therefore make some basic assumptions regarding the individuals responsible for the marquee, namely that they (like so many of us) have no idea what the health care reform is for, why it is important, or who it will benefit. Instead of learning about these topics, and then disseminating the information to their parishioners in a helpful manner, the pastor(s) at said church decided to confuse and intentionally mislead their flock by discouraging curiosity and turning to a magic man in the clouds for answers. Welcome back to the Dark Ages, gang.

(A quick aside: Doesn't the word "flock" in reference to people make you want to retch? Seriously. How much more medieval and backwards could it get? Even if I were a believer, I would be grossly offended at the implication that I am a dim-witted and herd-able (albeit delicious) animal. It's demeaning at best and reviling at worst.)

Item #2: Health insurance comes from God. Well, then doesn't it make logical sense that God wouldn't allow his followers to get sick (in an effort to keep premiums down), or that if he goofed and let it happen, that he would fix the illness without hesitation? That's what health insurance is for, after all. Interestingly enough, most mainstream Christians will head straight to the doctor's office if they get a sniffle, or to the ER with a broken leg, or to chemotherapy with cancer. We all know where medical techniques and treatments come from -- it's not wizardry or alchemy -- it's SCIENCE. Christians are happy to promote the power of their God when it suits them, but 9.9 out of 10 of them will turn to science and technology and modern medicine when they need it. The truly ridiculous part of the process though, is when they credit God for the countless hours of hard work put in by everyone from the pharmaceutical lab to the nurse's station that actually cured them. It's irreverent, it's hypocritical, hell, it's downright un-Christian, don't you think? Of course, giving credit to God for things he has nothing to do with go back to the foundations of religion: eclipses, floods, disease, war, pestilence, the natural cycles of everything from drought to animal populations, ad nauseam. Any time the faithful don't understand something, even if someone else does, they are happy to credit God with all the work. If nothing else, that makes believers sound lazy as hell.

Item #3: Life insurance comes from God. Riiiiiiiiight. That would explain why burial money rains from heaven when a Christian kicks the bucket. Oh . . . wait. Maybe it would explain why God let's his believers die at all (I know, everlasting life in heaven and all that bullshit). Oh . . . wait. There are a few things about death and Christian belief that trouble me, and I will address them in a segment I like to call: Sub-Items!

Sub-Item A: Christians are, by and large, terrified of death. I like to think that it's because they are smart enough to doubt their faith when it really counts. But if you are doubtful of everlasting salvation and an endless bacon buffet in the clouds (at least that's what I would have) on your death-bed, why not the rest of the time? If heaven is only a comforting idea if you aren't about to go there, why believe in it at all? And if you don't believe in heaven, then why put the effort into believing in God?

Sub-Item B: Even if a few Christians really do believe in heaven on their death-beds, there's still the looming threat that they won't get in! Let's say (hypothetically) that the Bible is right from beginning to end. There is so much stuff in there that sends you straight to hell for an eternity of torture (and no bacon buffet, I'm assuming) that it's tough for even the most devout Christians to get into heaven. That being the case, it doesn't seem like the promise of heaven is even that comforting in the darkest hours, so why should it be comforting any other time? Of course the answer is that it's not, but religion has a monopoly on the whole "after-death" market, so it continues to work.

Item #3: If the marquee was meant to be taken literally (which I doubt, considering the far more likely circumstance that it is a thin veil for racism and fear-mongering among the "conservatives" in this country), then the pastor(s) responsible for it should be punished for endangering the lives of their parishioners by advocating "God's healing love" in place of medical treatment, considering the fact that it's far too expensive to pay cash for said medical treatment, and health insurance is really the only way to get it. Denying the reality of illness and death and promoting miracle healing, the casting out of demons, etc. should be relegated to late-night infomercials (right after the Dual Action colon cleanse spot and right before Girls Gone Wild: Sexy Drunk-Ass College Sluts (a cinematographic masterpiece, no doubt)), not preached (literally) to the ignorant and their innocent children who are dragged (kicking and screaming, I hope) to church every Sunday morning.

Let me put it this way: God healing your liver cancer is about as likely as Extenze actually making your dick bigger. God giving me money to bury my loved one's body is about as likely as (it pains me to say this, but I am excited for football season) the Broncos winning the Super Bowl this year. It ain't gonna happen.

(Here's where a) I get a little didactic, and b) Miranda criticizes me for starting a paragraph with a parenthetical.) The real trouble here is that Christians do one or a combination of several idiotic things. First, they live this life in preparation for the next (which most of them don't actually believe will happen). Second, they lie about how great the next life will be. Just because no one since Lazarus has come back to tell us about it (and he was forced to) doesn't mean it's better. In fact, it seems to me that Jesus' resurrection of Lazarus demonstrates the fear Christians have of death -- even Jesus didn't want him to die. Third, they constantly spout ridiculous dogma like "It's God's plan," or "he/she is in a better place now." I'm sure that's really comforting to the parents of a child who died of leukemia after a traumatic and painful struggle. Deep down (or not so deep down), you know what they really believe: My child's place is by my side. Fuck God's plan.

They're right.

Instead of worrying about what happens after we die (we rot in the ground and fertilize the grass), perhaps we can take a cue from the indelible Mark Twain: "Let us so live that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry." Assuming, of course, that we have a sufficient policy to cover the burial costs. Personally, I want to be stuffed and mounted in the living room.

I'm a people, you're a people . . .

I watched Sen. Ted Kennedy's funeral this morning. It was, I am compelled to say, abysmally sad. Watching a Catholic funeral (yawn) that exalted Sen. Kennedy in a religious manner was also abysmally sad, considering that, at heart, I believe he was a Humanist of the highest degree, and so I am inspired to write a little (I'm tired) about Humanism.
It seems so simple: humanity is the measure of all things. That being the case, how we treat each other is the measure of our own worth on this earth. We, as a collection of social, mostly sentient critters can (and have) create a moral code without having to worry about Yahweh at one end of the spectrum and Old Scratch at the other.
See, our highly-evolved brains have enabled us to realize that success as a species depends wholly on cooperation and social laws to govern behavior. Y'know who else does that? Ants, birds, sardines, dolphins, bees, termites, et. al. Wacky, huh? How come god didn't create those fabulous specimens of social morality in his image too? Oh, that's right, because god (standing in here for the words 'god,' 'gods,' and 'goddesses') was created by man in his image. You have to figure that in a few eons (or maybe not even that long) there will be a First Church of Sardine-us Christ (Reformed) on every other street corner under the sea. It's an inevitable product of brain evolution that eventually, sentience will result in the asking of the "Big Questions." Sardines will only be able to assume (and rightly so (from a sardine's perspective)) that their world was created by a creature that looked and acted remarkably like them.
Hopefully, after the sardines struggle through the Dark Ages, some of them will cast off the blinders and see the light. Hopefully, they will reexamine the "Big Questions," and decide that:

• Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis.
• Sardines are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change.
• Ethical values are derived from sardine need and interest as tested by experience.
• Life’s fulfillment emerges from individual participation in the service of sardinian(?) ideals.
• Sardines are social by nature and find meaning in relationships.
• Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness.

Just to be clear, I would like for you to replace "sardine" with "human" in the above bulleted list to get my point, which is that we don't need Jesus or Buddha or Vishnu or Yahweh or Mohammed or Gaia to tell us how to act in society. We don't require the promise of heaven or the threat of hell to dictate our social actions. Instead, we require only that we realize our potential, both individually and as a society and ultimately as a species, in order to be fulfilled. We require a rational, logical, empirical view of the world we experience, if only so that we may experience it more completely, since it's all we've got. We require reaching out (and sometimes back) to grasp the hands of those who need us to pull them closer. We need to stop being so fucking ashamed to be homo sapiens. Instead of cowering in fear of punishment and reward from a vengeful, spiteful, homicidal, genocidal, hypocritical god (and that's just the Judeo-Christian one), we need to stand up and proclaim ourselves as the best homo sapiens on the planet. You know those sardines could stand to be taken down a peg or two.

Albert Einstein believed that. Except the part about the sardines. So did Isaac Asimov, Jonas Salk, and Bertrand Russel. Margaret Atwood and Gloria Steinem still do. Pretty good company, but perhaps the most influential of all was John F. Kennedy, and by extension, Sen. Kennedy (see how I'm bringing it around? That's how you know I'm almost through).

See, when JFK (". . . but I thought he was Irish Catholic." Well, sometimes you have to pretend really hard just to get where you want to go) told the disillusioned people of an America facing civil unrest, ideological assault, and an un-winnable war to ask not what their country could do for them -- but what they could do for their country, he was invoking a basic humanist belief: Working to better the whole improves the self. Edification and fulfillment lies not in placing blame, passing bucks, pointing fingers, or bombing Afghani villages into Democracy. It didn't lie in bombing Vietnamese villages either, turns out. It doesn't lie in shouting down elected officials at town hall meetings, nor in assassinating MLK. It doesn't lie in stealing money from the sick, old, and frail to build golden monuments to Jesus and dress his preachers in clothes befitting only the sleaziest of pimps. It doesn't lie in beating homosexuals to death and leaving them for the coyotes, nor in detonating a car bomb outside a cafe in Belfast, Sarajevo, Baghdad, Kabul, Islamabad, Oklahoma City, Mogadishu, or Jakarta. It doesn't lie in signs reading "God Hates Fags!" or telling the viewers of The 700 Club that Hurricane Katrina was punishment for legalized abortion. It cannot be found in condemnation, hatred, violence, intolerance, or any of the other social sins of religion.

Look at all the horrible things I just pointed out. Imagine if just one iota of the energy that we, as a species, have spent on religion had been spent on bettering ourselves collectively. I won't even guide your thoughts -- just . . . just think about it.

Let's make a pact then, to start to look for what we can do to make our society and species better, bigger, stronger, faster . . . wait a minute . . .. But seriously. The tools are there: our big ol' brains, our iPhones, laptops, Facebook, video cameras (thanks to Jeff, Kathryn, and the rest), blogs, novels, scripts -- a host of forums that are relatively untapped. Remember, a few sardines swimming in the opposite direction can turn the whole direction of the school. Let us not forget those who parted the waters. RIP Senator Kennedy.

Also, check out this clip from Real Time with Bill Maher with Bill Moyers that inspired this rambling, ill-thought-out little rant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gSQ2DWkVE0.

A time to plant . . .

A call to action within a blog is a bit like a fart in a field -- no one hears it, and it doesn't even make much of a stink. Be that as it may, I am calling my readers to action (all one of you) in hopes that a level of awareness can be reached regarding an issue that, regardless of your persuasion, is affecting all of you:

Religion.

Yep. I'm painting a target on the back of belief. Fire at will.

Afraid to? Embarrassed? Wondering what your parents will think? Don't want to disappoint Nana and Grandpa? I can't say as I blame you. There is a stigma against those speaking out against religion in this country (supposedly founded with ideals regarding freedom of it), because it's disrespectful. Well, you don't get many more juicy targets than that, so go ahead . . . take a pot shot . . . see how it feels.

The first question is: Why is it disrespectful to criticize or denounce religion? I have a few ideas:

1. You were raised at least a little religious (church on Easter and Christmas, Sunday School, etc.). Yeah, me too. It's tough to go against the things we were taught when we were little, especially when the threat of eternal punishment for sins committed in this life was hung over our heads. Even still, most of us who are not believers (and even quite a few of you who claim to be) recognize the ridiculousness of religion, but it is difficult to denounce it in the face of childhood lessons learned.

2. Society has conditioned us to be tolerant. Liberal minds (which, by the way, are more conservative these days than those occupying the brainpans of the Religious Right or the Christian Conservatives, or the GOP, for that matter) are trained to be tolerant, accepting, and willing to acknowledge and embrace the Other (capital "O"), even in the face of overwhelming evidence that their beliefs are dangerous, foolhardy, bigoted, violent, intolerant, self-righteous, and bass-ackwards, precisely because those individuals are free to hold them. It goes against logic. Richard Dawkins, advocate of atheism and author of The God Delsion (among others) makes this point regarding female genital mutilation. Is it best for the young girls being subjected to this barbarous act (designed specifically by religious leaders within the community to deprive them of sexual pleasure) by their elders? By those they should be able to trust not to hurt them intentionally? Every fibre of your body should be screaming "NO!" Is it an important part of their cultural heritage that we (as progressive, forward-thinking, accepting individuals) should respect as being different than ours? We're caught in our own web, I fear. But there is an answer (and I'll get to it).

3. The fallout from the religious. This especially goes for those whom we call friends, and it is perhaps the most difficult reason to overcome when speaking out (or ill against) religion. My best friend, Scott, is a believer, and the love of his life, Carrie, is even more so. Am I more cautious about what I say around them than my wife, Miranda, who is a fervent atheist? Of course. I don't want to offend my best friend or his girlfriend. I don't have a great answer to this one. All I ever do is hope that my friends (and parents, and co-workers, etc.) will be as intellectually cogent as I attempt to be. We'll talk more about this in future postings.

So how do we get around this? What is the "call to action" (remember? Check the top of this posting) that I'm talking about?

Alright, here we go.

Step 1: Actively denounce any faith you may have had. Sure, you went to Sunday School. Big deal. Sure, you like Christmas (we'll talk about it later), but it's mostly for the presents, the family time, the food, the booze, rather than the bastardized version of the myth regarding the birth of Saturn. Change your Facebook information concerning religion from "Spiritual, but not religious" to "no, thanks." Tell your loved ones that you are an atheist. Tell your friends, your co-workers, your etcetera. Let everyone know that you aren't buying in to the lies and fabrications designed to oppress free thought, suppress women and minorities, subjugate homosexuals, destroy local and indigenous cultures, promote genocide, murder, abortion clinic bombings, 9/11, the USS Cole, missile attacks on countries from Pakistan to Korea to Bosnia to Somalia to Iraq to Israel, suicide bombings, war, divisiveness, domestic abuse, I COULD GO ON! If you read that last bit and thought "sounds about right," then I fear for the rest of us. However, if even one item sparked a little fire in your brain, do the work. Connect the dots back to belief. Horror should be setting in . . . now.

Step 2: Stop giving such a colossal shit what other people think. Recognize the validity of what you think. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson don't care what you think. Their legions of minions (along with those of the Ayatollahs, the Pope, Rabbis, etc.) at a minimum think you'll be burning in hell for all eternity, and at a maximum want to send you there a little faster, so forget about them. Focus on yourself, and on the people around you. Be proud of your ability to separate fiction from fact, scientific progress from reading of tea leaves, enlightenment from fear of the unknown. Turn that spark into a torch -- a beacon of progressive thought and rationality.

Step 3: Engage in rational, logical, informed debate with the other side. In order to do this, start reading. A lot. Start with the Holy Bible (pick your version -- the political agendas behind the lies are fairly meaningless, considering many of them were made in the 1600's). Follow up with the Qur'an, the Torah, and any other scripture you can find. Know why? Because a) most of the people you will be debating against haven't read the book they "believe" in, and b) as Sun Tzu always said . . .. Next, read atheist literature. Start with Darwin and work your way around. Dawkins is great, as is Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, author of one of my favorites: God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Of course, after you are informed enough to begin discourse, do so! Poste-haste! In addition, (spoiler alert: shameless self plug) check back with this blog. Leave messages. E-mail me. Of course, that won't (and can't) be the only thing you do. You have to engage the Other on the field of intellectual battle. Talking only to others who agree with you is how a lot gets said and nothing gets done.

Now, having said that, if you disagree with me, read up, and we'll talk.