We need some Conquistadors

A couple of weekends ago, I saw a banner for a Mayan exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum. I made a note to myself to go and see this as I enjoy Mesoamerican antiquities. I've even visited some of the better known places in Mexico. Fascinating stuff, and a pity. It chaps my ass to think of how much we lost to the plague of European conquerors. While the Maya still exist today, they are a pale shadow of their former selves, crushed into assimilation by an arrogant, ignorant, and unworthy master. I even wish they Maya had had some unknown disease that could have killed of those Catholic bastards, or at least let them live long enough to take it back to Europe to decimate their population. <Ecstatic shudders>

That made me think: we need some new conquistadores, and the more I thought about this while I was driving, the more I loved it. Why I loved it had to do with all the sickening piety gushing out of the worthless evangelicals that re a genuine plague to our country. They are extremists. They are zealots. Those people need be destroyed with prejudice.

Here's the scenario:

One day, out the blue and without warning, aliens arrive. They seem benign but they possess a power that goes beyond our comprehension to a diety-like level. In very short time and without warning, rhyme or reason, they become malign and: butcher half of the population and all of the clerical people; destroy the religious and some non-religious cultural texts; make us learn a single, new language; make us worship alien god(s) that have no meaning; put us to work as slaves harvesting our natural resources; give us a disease that kills off a quarter of the remaining population; then leave us to flounder like a dying fish on a beach. If we are lucky, they will destroy our planet when they sail on to other shores.

My pleasure at this situation is derived from the anguish of the pious, crying to their sky pasta daddy, and the silence of the response. With so much of the culture destroyed and poorly remembered, enhanced by a death penalty for anyone practicing the old ways, how can one not love the irony dealt to these pasta lovers-an irony lost on their ignorance.

Suffer, bastards.

Defend your Faith?!!?

I was driving in to work one morning when I saw this little ditty stuck on the back of a SUV. Worse still, it was one of those magnetic ribbons that I see, usually ordering me to support the military. Even more recently, I saw one that ordered me to pray for the troops. Heh. There also is a ribbon ordering me to save the boobies...Major General Mictlantecuhtli reporting, sir!

This message takes the cake and it is not the first time my dessert has been snatched away because, if anything, these cultists are definitely inventive in ways that set to boil my anger and disgust with a side of classic you-poor-bastard head-smacking.

There is no reason to tell people to do this. Does it make a difference? No. The sad part is that they cannot see it. If faith is publicly banished, you, the cultist, still have it. The cultists would not have a label to stick on their group for fear of reprisals but you, the cultist, have faith. That, realistically, is faith - the singular interaction of a couple of neurons in that mass of grey jello in your skull. It is not a group-think. The only thing that the group has is a label for the faith, which has the same depth as calling a mixed group of bovines "cows."

Why? Because, while they definitely are all cows, they are not the same sub-species. This one is brown, this one has eight horns...you see the pattern here. Cultists within a single cult are the same way. They have the same basic tenets but they interpret and express them in different ways. Next time you are in your cult center, look at the zombie-bozo next to you. Do they feel exactly the same way about certain aspects of the tenets of the cult as you do? Are they as vehement about the same things as you? Probably not.

They may lean that direction, but is it the same amount? Maybe they lean the other way. All of those differences make up that person's faith, just as those same opinions make up yours. That is your faith. They are not the same. Maybe the zombie-bozo next to you would like nothing more than for some tenet that you hold dear to be kicked to the curb by the cult. You are both still members of your cult with a fundamental disagreement.

Think it's bullshit? I'll make it simple: abortion. Do you think you disagree with some of your fellow cultists over abortion? Are those reasons mundane or theological, not that it really matters for the sake of the argument - of course, it would be best if the assessment was that it was theological. It is a difference and that makes one person's faith different from another.

It is up to an individual cultist to defend their own faith because they define their faith.

So by defending your faith, which, arguably, will contain tenets and ideas that are antithetical to advancement and human progress, what this imperative is really saying is: "Defend your ignorance."

That is much clearer to me.

Just plain funny

I almost fell off the toilet.

Found at Gods4Suckers.com

Are you the worm?

Today, I drove past by my Taber-chuckle source. Reading the current sign again, my mind raced away with something like the following:

What I fixated on from this sign is the sleeping xian tidbit. As before, my first thought is WAKE UP! Get your ass out of bed and get to work. There are things to do, not just for your community and the world but also yourself.

Sleeping in a metaphor in this case but I find it is more realistic than not. The main thing that is dormant in these people is their curiosity. How can anyone look the cosmos, the planet, or even their front yard and not be interested in something? I cannot remember the exact quote but I believe it was Einstein who observed, roughly paraphrased, that he could not believe that a deity would create something as powerful as the human brain for it to just sit there idle and dormant (my embellishment). Considering that emphatic xians are so keen to earn daddy's favor, should not they do something to make it proud? Would not the creativity of the human mind be just the ticket?

What do these people think will make their daddy proud? Singing? Praying? Kissing its ass? Those seem to be the main avenues to the afterlife. No one wants to be subjected to such crap, except really old, senile people, or Alzheimer's patients. Those people are draining. They are tired of life, but will not admit it. They have nothing more to give, nothing to contribute. Instead, they focus on the glory days, when people cared who they were, when they had power and influence, when they meant something and had significance in the world. No more. Now they just sit there, drooling and loading up a diaper. To these people, daddy is omnipotent and omniscience but to me, it sounds a bit omnistultant. Only an idiot would not appreciate the creative potential of the human being.

Rather than doing something for the world, the people spend their lives groveling, crying, pleading, begging, crawling to daddy to take them up after death. Then what? Do you get to stand on two feet? Of course not. Daddy likes you on your knees in front of him. Keep doing it. Keep crawling like a worm. After a lifetime of practice, they only just suck at it.

What makes them think they can stand up and use opposable thumbs? Daddy is an old daddy. Its thinking is old-time thinking. Its loud-mouthed cheerleaders tell us this all the time. So why do they expect to suddenly find a progressive afterlife experience? Since no other aspect of their perception of daddyland is different from the same concept of those sheep herders who invented it after a week of huffing raw methane, why should this part be any different. There is nothing to do except what daddy wants. Even these people move out of their parents' house because they want their independence and freedom. When they die, they want to move right back in to Slavery Central.

Hmmm. Sounds like hell to me.

Simply ponderous

Newton, NJ stops having a sectarian invocation and members whine. Now they will have secular invocation to open sessions. Why?

I do not normally think about how often a prayer opens up a official government session of whatever. Congress does it. I would expect the Supreme Court does. It has no impact on the proceedings yet they feel compelled to do it, as if without it, the session will be somewhat less. They do not do it for the hell of it, it has a purpose. Functionally, it has no impact.

There may be some members of the session who have to have a prayer before they knuckle down to work. These people are weak and ineffective. Anyone who cannot work for themselves without offering some kind of pagan ritual beforehand should be chastised. For them, it is a prayer to their deity but it really is a pagan ritual. Historic texts that predate the blight of xianity describe a prayer ritual before government works, festivals, and the like. Much like everything else in xianity, they also ripped off the groveling need to beg their sky daddy for guidance because they are too stupid to do it themselves, or, most likely, in an attempt to channel the divine wisdom of a plate of spaghetti into their own dealings.

When these people in New Jersey were told that what they are doing is really not a good idea from a legal perspective, they wisely decided to stop doing it. If only they could have kept their mouths shut. They vomit out the same old shit of If you don't like it, close your ears! The same advice they ignore for the likes of Howard Stern or intelligent, adult material on the radio or tv. Then, that is filth that must be stopped. I am sure that the individual, who brought to their attention this problem, couldn't care less if someone wants to beg the invisible man for common sense to do their job. The objection is foisting it on everyone present. Not everyone is a dolt who needs to be told what to do. Some people can think and make intelligent decisions for themselves.

They have pissed and moaned and changed their ways...or not. Now they are going to try and devise a secular invocation before they start their business. Again, why? It is still a waste of time. The secular wording will only annoy the brain-dead babies who miss their brain-daddy. Every recitation will grate on them and hopefully drive them into apoplexy. With any luck, their heads will explode and then decent, intelligent people can be chosen to work on the council. Unless...that is all that their city has. If they have to perform a pagan ritual to decide when the county faire is, nothing help them if they have to make a real decision.

It is simply ponderous.

Link: Americans United blog

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hypocrisy, idiocy, idiots, ignorance, social evil, thinking, thoughts

Religious Freedom Day

Today, January 16, is Religious Freedom Day. Americans United has a delightful page full of links to historical documents that espouse this concept in an intelligent and tolerant manner. They are as important today as they were when written a few hundred years ago.

Link: Words Of Liberty: Readings For Religious Freedom Day

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freedom, intelligence, knowledge, thinking

Something that they have never considered

It is a common point from evangelical xians that this is a xian nation and the majority of them would like nothing more than to have that xian nation back. Thus, they have mobilized as a political force.

Theocracies are probably the most abhorrent form of government, as considered by a rational, democracy-leaning individual. So, for the sake of argument, let us say that everyone has decided on a change and theocracy is the answer and xianity is the winner. Which one is selected as the government-sponsored religion? Catholicism, the first and arguably the true form of xianity? How about Protestantism, the off-shoot created by people who did not like the oppression of catholicism? Which of the four protestant groups should it be? Which one of the eighteen recognized families of protestantism? Tough choice...someone will be disappointed.

The hyper-evangelicals will definitely lose out because they are too extremist. Most likely, they will suffer in silence and be satisfied that the shift occurred at all. Some of them, however, will not be satisfied. They will protest and cause civil disruptions. The main religion will have to clamp down on them and drive them underground. Others, curious as to what makes this sect so bad, will seek them out and be indoctrinated. As part of the brainwashing, they will be reprogrammed to become part of an underground army that will await the day when they will have sufficient numbers to try and force a change, by any means necessary. It will be a religious civil war.

Each side will believe that they are the chosen ones, as all delusionals do, and will proceed with a game of one-ups-manship to be the victor. It will be messy and so unnecessary...I mean the disruption, not the death of nutjobs.

It reminds me of a video of Richard Dawkins speaking at a university. One student asks him, "what if you are wrong?" He does give her an answer but the key aspect of his answer comes at the end when he points out to her that the one thing that she needs to ask herself, what if she is wrong.



They just do not think of these questions because as Mr. Dawkins has said before: "thinking is anathema to religion."

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religion, thinking, thoughts, Youtube, Richard Dawkins

I want to ride the bus

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7681914.stm
(Found at Gods4Suckers.Net)

My favorite line: ...thinking is anathema to religion. So very true.
Actually, my favorite line is the text of the banner.

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religion, atheism, thinking