To Whom It May Concern

If you subscribe to any certain religion, or wholeheartedly devote yourself to a certain faith, I commend you. I don't' respect you, but I commend you. I commend you for choosing one outlook on life (most likely the one with which your parents reared you) and sticking with it while the rest of the world throws alternative options in your face on a daily basis. I commend you for not doubting your faith, and holding true to your convictions of an overall balance of good and evil. It is almost inhuman to not question your surroundings and the idea of an afterlife, but you have succeeded in suppressing human nature with theology. For this, I commend you. It is no minor feat.

If you happen to be one of the above mentioned religious individuals and you promote brotherhood, compassion, open mindedness, tolerance and equality, then I thank you. I thank you for standing up for the betterment of society when the rest of the religious community wants to judge, condemn, bitch, moan and fight with everyone who disagrees with their fundamental outlook.

However, if you are religious and think your religion is better than every other religion on the planet, or if you think your specific prophet held the one and only way to those roads paved with gold, well, to you I say fuck off.

Fuck off you intolerant, murdering, hypocritical, lying, primitive Muslims. Threatening people with their lives in order to force them to uphold your beliefs is exactly what Mohammad wanted, I'm sure. Which Surra states killing babies and innocent people because they don't share your beliefs is okay? Which Surra states the importance of converting everyone on the face of the planet? How pretentious. Get a fucking life and finally join the rest of the world in the post-barbaric age of heyletsallgetalong.



And to the Buddhists who think all the answers of the world can be answered by OM-OMMMMing and sitting under willow trees for hours at a time while pondering the meaning of bird: fuck off. Life is a bit more complex than that, and sometimes a green bean is just a green bean. I mean, yeah, your philosophy is super cool and I love the coy fish, but don't down play the complexity of life by reducing our consciousness to fluffy clouds.



And to the Christians who drive around with bumper stickers that say things like "Eternity is a long time to be wrong" and "real men love Jesus":fuck off. Jesus would hate bumper stickers and billboards and corny t-shirts and the concept of using fear of an eternity in hell as the sole method of converting people to Christianity. And fuck off to you if you think the world was created in six 24 hour periods between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Jesus wanted you to have faith, not ignore science and become an idiot in his name. For those of you who use the bible as a political weapon:fuck off. The Gospel means "good news," not "give me separation of church and state and make this country a Christian theocracy so we can forever battle the evil, blasphemous Muslims." Fuck off to the Mormons (hey, they're kind of Christian) for having their giant, gaudy temples closed to the public. What better way to spread the word than by closing everyone out and then pounding on their doors with tracts and bicycle helmets to drag them in.



For all the hypocrisy, fundamentalism, simplifying, stupefying, judging, hating, killing, and fakery religion brings to our world, you would think people would start opening their eyes and brains. After all, religion is supposed to help us by promoting love through the works of teachers of yore and through a love of God and the betterment of the world. Religion isn't a competition. If you think it is, and you think you are on the winning side, and you think you have it all figured out and that you are on the path to "heaven" and everyone else is doomed, to you I say, with all the bravado, arrogance and cockiness my lack of religion affords me: fuck off.

Apostle's Creed - The Christians' owner's manual

Suppose a friend asked you to get a joint gym membership with him. As with any other proposal, your immediate response would be to consider how you would benefit from it. You weigh the pros and cons and after a brief moment of internal debate, you ask your friend why he thinks you should. What would you say if he responded like this:

"Well, the gym in town donates a lot of money to charities and I think it would feel good to be part of that. Also it's a really old gym and it has a rich history and there is a very strong sense of pride for the members of this gym. Oh, and also, the people there are really friendly and cordial and they always make you feel welcome and appreciated."



You may dwell on it for a moment, and there's a small chance you would join based on the benefits proposed, however, the chances of you joining this gym would greatly increase if you added a few more benefits, like this:

"Well, the gym in town donates a lot of money to charities and I think it would feel really good to be part of that. Also, it's a really old gym and it has a rich history and there is a very strong sense of pride for the members of this gym. The people there are really friendly and cordial and they always make you feel welcome and appreciated. Not to mention, if you do it right, you could become totally healthy, lose weight, increase your quality of life, live longer and boost your self-esteem."



In the first scenario some benefits are listed, but nothing overtly tangible. Everything listed could be attained by some other means and aren't necessarily worth the cost of joining a gym. However, the second option coaxes a bit better with direct, substantive effects and positive physical changes that can ONLY be attained by physical activity, which happens to be the purpose of a gym. Now, one can justify the membership fees because the benefits of the specifics offered by the gym outweigh the money.

Now, let's look at religion like a gym membership. How many successful religions do you suppose there would be if none of them offered the gift of salvation or eternal life or virgins or paradise or reincarnation?

"Hey man, join my church."
"Why?"
"Well, uh, because we are a group of people organized to praise God and promote kindness. Oh, and sometimes we have potlucks."
"Oh. Well, that sounds kind of cool. What do I have to do if I say yes?"
"Well, come to church as often as you can and live life as God wants you to."
"What happens if I don't do those things?"
"Nothing."
"What happens if I do?"
"Nothing."
"I'll pass."

Ultimately, without offering the direct benefit of being able to live forever in a land of golden roads and mansions, religion is just another charity offering soup suppers and can drives. The prospect of spreading the word and saving (or eradicating) non-believers while also ensuring salvation for one's self keeps membership levels high, devotion strong, and minds closed to non-religious ideals.

That said, let's turn our attention to the more complex issues of religion, like religious texts. Every major religion has them, and they're all equally as confusing. Since, as we concluded above, the biggest reason people subscribe to religion is to experience the afterlife, then why learn anything other than how we can achieve our goal?

When I buy a toaster, I don't want a thousand page owner's manual covering the history of toasters and why toasters are good and where the future of toasters is most likely heading. I just want to know how to safely use the toaster to toast my tasty bread. And if I subscribe to a religion, I just want to know how to get the main benefit from it, which would be going to heaven. Yeah, I'll read the Koran out of curiosity, but give me a simplified form with the basics first, then I'll worry about heritage.



That's why I love the apostle's creed. It basically breaks down the meaning of Christianity and tells people what they need to do to get their cut. So, pretty much just believe the things listed below, and you're good to go.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Maker of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;

He descended into hell. [See Calvin]

The third day He arose again from the dead;

He ascended into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost;
the holy catholic church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body;
and the life everlasting.

Amen.

Pretty simple, huh? You know all those arguments about what God thinks about abortion and gay people and evolution and slavery and sex before marriage and makeup and stem cell research and "The Stairway to Heaven" backwards? Not important! Just know the ten commandments and follow the above guidelines and you should be A-OK.



Boy, is that a weight off of my shoulders! I just got into Leviticus and man, that's a lot of rules! Now that I've realized the Bible is more-or-less a history novel and reading it is not vital to my salvation, what shall I do with all my time?

Anyone up for going to the gym?

The Easy way to stay Green

I love reading extreme, religious literature. Not just the old testament or those little thumbnail comic books you find in the bathrooms at truck stops or that wacky book o' Mormon either. I mean the fire-and-brimstone-hurling, Revelations-interpreting, baby-Jesus-speaking (seriously, it's in the Koran)stone-your-daughter-to-death-if-she's-not-a-virgin type of religious literature. You know, the kind of stuff that when you read it, you momentarily denounce religion and the western concept of God until you realize that would make you a blasphemer and you get scared of going to hell and immediately repent.
Take, for example, the article in the Jehovah's Witness magazine called The Watchtower which I stole from the hospital waiting room earlier today. The title was "Will the Earth Come to an End?"
After a brief intro discussing America's infatuation with the end of the world, it goes on to list discussion points in an attempt to hypothesize at how God really thinks.
The most intriguing and somewhat baffling point is Does our Planet have an expiration date?
The mysterious, unnamed author uses Ecclesiastes 1:4 to explain. "Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever." and Psalm 104:5 which prophetically reads " God founded the earth upon established places and designed it to last to time indefinite, or forever."
So wait, all that talk about the sun incinerating our planet in 7.5 billion years is a hoax? Whoo hoo! Mother earth aint got nothin' to worry about! Let yer hair down mamma!



Wait, wait, wait, hold the phone. What about all this crazy talk about global warming? Does The Watchtower have anything to say about that one?

Ha. Does Miley Cyrus need orthodontic attention and a boob job? Of course it does. It states that there is no way irresponsible humans could spoil the planet beyond recovery because unlike humans, Jehovah is able to do all things and can confidently guarantee that nothing can stop him from carrying out his purpose for the earth. Oh, and it says God made earth specifically to be inhabited (Isaiah 45:18), and since God doesn't make mistakes, that means he made an indestructible earth that can't be harmed by the very creatures he created to inhabit it, right?



Right!Under the bullet point titled Turn to God and Be Saved it says God's good news for us in Matthew 24:14 is his unfailing word that our earth will never come to an end. And it also says that soon, only the righteous will possess the earth and they will find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace.

Yes! Earth's existence is infinite, and only the righteous will be allowed to live here in delight and an infinite amount of peace. Sounds like Belinda Carlisle had it right all along.

Whoa. Seriously, that makes me totally happier now. All that guilt about my size 17 carbon footprint and all those gallons of oil I dumped into that creek because I didn't want to pay the four dollars for proper disposal...gone! God has a plan for this smoggy planet after all, and it's all good things. And to think, all this time I've been buying recycled material and turning the water off as I brush my teeth when I could have just converted to a Jehovah's Witness!

Eat your heart out, Al Gore!

This is a place of worship, not logic!

I got into a theological debate with a friend who happened to be quite radical in his beliefs. He said he doesn't even believe in evolution a little bit and that he puts all his faith in the bible. He thinks Genesis tells exactly how it all began and that nothing existed before. When asked how he explained fossils of creatures that walked the planet millions of years before humans he smiled, as though I were a naive layman, and said "That's easy. God created the earth with fossils embedded in the soil to test our faith. I worship God, not science. I have faith and that's all I need."

What the hell do I say to that?

Roe V Wade, Islam, rock music, liberalism and now... pink Ouiji boards?
Of all the threatening societal barriers fundamental Christianity faces, I would think they have bigger fish to fry, but apparently not. In a recent article posted on foxnews.com, Stephen Phelan, communications director for Human Life International, one of the largest international pro-life organizations and missionaries in the world says "There's a spiritual reality to it and Hasbro is treating it as if it's just a game. It's not Monopoly. It really is a dangerous spiritual game and for [Hasbro] to treat it as just another game is quite dishonest."
You know, he's right. Hasbro should probably limit their pink Ouiji board sales to tween, voodoo practicing girls in Haiti. Or maybe in Uganda so we can weed out non-christians and imprison and kill them like they want to do to the gays.
While you're at it, why don't you speak out against pink magic eight balls, or pink rabbits' feet. Hell, how about this one?
Someone should tell the fundamental Christians if they're going to get all bent and wage a war on corporations capitalizing on Americans' radical, unfounded reliance on spirits and goblins, then they should start their beef with Genesis.

Pink shmink

Pink necklaces. Pink rubber wrist bands. Pink cosmetics. Pink broaches. Pink t-shirts. Pink sunglasses. Pink laptops. Pink...soup cans. Wait, what? Pink cement trucks? Pink pistols?



Has this breast cancer awareness thing gotten totally out of hand? Don't get me wrong, I'm all about healing and finding cures and surviving and all that jazz, but where do the lines of decency in promoting a cause get drawn? At what point do we filter the products that get a coat of pink to boost sales? How long until American consumers say, "you know what? If I want to help find a cure for breast cancer I'll donate to the American Cancer Society, just don't offer me a pink snow shovel."?

All this wreckless spattering of pink has taken the honor out of the fight for breast cancer and has transformed it into a matter of popular culture and marketing. I find it just as insulting to see a pink cement mixer as I do to see a punk ass kid with a POW MIA tattoo plastered around his forearm because his great uncle is a Vietnam veteran.


As a matter of fact, next time I'm at Walgreens and they offer me a breast cancer awareness flashlight for 4.99 I'll tell them to actually make a difference by donating money to the American Cancer Society, then shove the flashlight up their ass.

If you would like to donate to help fight cancer click here and save yourself from buying some tacky, pink item you don't need.

It's official

I finally decided to take the leap and become an official Bright. I can't change the world, but every step counts. What is a Bright? I'm glad you asked.

- A Bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview.
- A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements.
- The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview.

Brights is pretty much a community pushing for a metaphysical-free, deity-free, magic-free world with no supernatural mumbo-jumbo or non-science based beliefs...in a nut-shell.

If you think you may be interested, go to
the-brights.net
for more info.

NO MORE!

The GOP is finally dead.
Let’s lift our hands in praise
and set our minds on future times
filled with better days.

They tried to tear this country down
with God and fear and war,
but on this day we make a stand
and boldly say “NO MORE!”

“No More!” to secret agencies
infringing on our rights.
“No More!” to Texas oil men
picking global fights.

“No More!” to aristocracy
dining off our dime.
“No More!” to intel cover-ups
and blatant Wall Street crime.

“No More!” to bible politics
and Evangelic rule.
“No More!” No Child Left Behind
and underfunded schools.

So stand with us and say “No More!”
to Bush and all the rest,
and let’s lead Lady Liberty
to the bright and shining left.

Because it's THE LAW! 2

The more I read, the better it gets. Gotta love that old testament.

Deuteronomy 22.8 When you build a new house, be sure to put a railing around the edge of the roof. Then you will not be responsible if someone falls off and is killed.

Deuteronomy 23.1 No man who has been castrated or whose penis has been cut off may be included among the Lord's people.


Deuteronomy 21.10-14 When the Lord your God gives you victory in battle and you take prisoners, you may see among them a beautiful woman that you like and want to marry. Take her to your home, where she will shave her head, cut her fingernails, and change her clothes. She is to stay in your home and mourn for her parents for a month; after that, you may marry her. Later, if you no longer want her, you are to let her go free. Since you forced her to have intercourse with you, you cannot treat her as a slave and sell her.

Deuteronomy 21.18-21 Suppose someone has a son who is stubborn and rebellious, a son who will not obey his parents, even though they punish him. His parents are to take him before the leaders of the town where he lives and make him stand trial. They are to say to them, "Our son is stubborn and rebellious and refuses to obey us; he wastes money and is a drunkard." Then the men of the city are to stone him to death, and so you will get rid of this evil. Everyone in Israel will hear what has happened and will be afraid.


Deuteronomy 22.28 Suppose a man is caught raping a young woman who is not engaged. He is to pay her father the bride price of fifty pieces of silver, and she is to become his wife, because he forced her to have intercourse with him. He can never divorce her for as long as he lives.

because it's THE LAW!

Leviticus is such a fun book to read. So many specific rules, and covering a plethora of topics too!

Leviticus 15.2,3 When any man has a discharge from his penis, the discharge is unclean, whether the penis runs with it, or is stopped by it.


-Leviticus 11.1-8 You may eat any land animal that has divided hoofs and that also chews the cud, but you must not eat camels, rock badgers, or rabbits. These must be considered unclean for they chew the cud but do not have divided hoofs. Do not eat pigs. They must be considered unclean for they have divided hoofs but do not chew the cud.

-Leviticus 11.9-12 You may eat any kind of fish that has fins and scales, but anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales must not be eaten. You must not eat them or even touch their dead bodies. You must not eat anything that lives in the water and does not have fins and scales.

Leviticus 11.13-19 You must not eat any of the following birds: eagles, owls, hawks, falcons, buzzards, vultures, crows, ostriches, seagulls, storks, herons, pelicans, cormorants, hoopoes, or bats.

Leviticus 11.20,21 All winged insects are unclean, except those that hop.


Leviticus 15.16 When a man has an emission of semen, he must bathe his whole body and remains unclean until evening.

Leviticus 15.19 When a woman has her monthly period, she remains unclean for seven days. Anyone who touches her will remain unclean until evening.

And my favorite Deuteronomy verses;
Deuteronomy 25.7-10 But if the dead man's brother does not want to marry her, she is to go before the town leaders and say "My husband's brother will not do his duty; he refuses to give his brother a descendant among the people of of Israel." Then the town leaders are to summon him and speak to him. If he still refuses to marry his brother's widow, she is to go up to him in the presence of the town leaders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say "This is what happens to the man who refuses to give his brother a descendant." His family will be known in Israel as 'the family of the man who had his sandal pulled off.'

Deuteronomy 25.11-12 If two men are having a fight and the wife of one tries to help her husband by grabbing hold of the other man's genitals, show no mercy; cut off her hand.