i've been noticing a lot of shit about people getting shit for being atheist. mostly i'm referring to the US - where people have been persecuted like they were cyclists or something - for being honest about their belief that yes, there is no such thing as god. parge's blogThe Environmental Atheist is a voice in this melee. there's this annoying story that he wrote about his mum betty, and the treatment she gets from her seniors' "community" - a term i use extremely loosely because, too often, our "elders" are the same as full-of-shit teenagers:

"A rumour hit the place that the chef was having
a gay affair with one of the residents. This
spurred on a wave of righteous indignation from
a vocal minority of the residents. One upstanding
fellow bullied his way into the chair of the strata
council with the helpof his fundamentalist cronies.
From there he launched a campaign to get rid of the
chef and caretaker, arguing that strata fees were
too high. He eventually succeeded and ended up
stripping the complex of the services that made it a
good place to live. Now it's just a big stucco
monstrosity filled with bitter old conservatives. Mum
moved."

"Also, the community activities consisted of a weekly
coffee klatch with hymns and such. She stopped going to
these after a while when she failed to make social
inroads. She did make some acquaintances in the building
among a few outsiders. Nothing close or fulfilling,
though. Now she's looking to move again.

Her condo has been on the market for a few weeks now
and a few prospective buyers have come to take a look.
The other day, when one couple arrived to have a viewing,
mum ran into another resident in the lobby. The lady
pulled her aside and said that whoever bought her place
should be a "good christian". Mum took it as an inference
that she wasn't. Her absence at the hymn sessions had
been noticed and frowned upon."

so - we hear yet another story of how people with tunnel vision let their crackpot reading of books that were written by marginally educated people 2 or more thousand years ago to explain the unexplainable affect innocents. it's 2000-fucking-seven, kids. what's worse about this is that an elderly lady, a really nice elderly lady, is shut out of any sense of community at a time when she probably needs it more than the average chump out there who has it and takes it for granted.

and plus, the idea of old people singing hymns makes me want to pour gasoline in my ears and light a match. nothing against old people or hymns, really. they're just a terrible combo.

long, ranting sentences. sorry. i tend to collage them when i'm pissed off. ask anyone who has lost an argument with me. there are one or two.

anyways... religion replacing sense, ethics, good manners. seniors acting like "the popular kids" in high school. i'm probably preaching to the choir, but it's not a christian way to be.

the last few years have reinforced a real atheist rebirth in me. a family member at our reunion was miffed that my brother mark wasn't going to be attending "mass" (i fucking hate that word. it should only be used in science or when discussing how many people you want to kill). i mean - mark's a grownup. he has a kid. he works for a living. he's not a stupid kid, and i'm sure he knows how the world works. so can you really fault him for deciding that church never did a thing for him?

it never did a thing for me either. i'm actually kind of jealous, in a twisted way, of people that it does things for. i have been thinking that if i'd been brought up in some quaker sect or southern baptist community - a place where people have what they feel are legitimate, rapturous spiritual experiences - i'd still be attending church. the regimentation, repetition and guilt-laying of the catholic church, coupled with the political wings of it (who can, as a group, kiss my ass) just wasn't for me. i think i figured that out at a very early age. i thought that if god was such an amazing entity, shouldn't there be some sort of presence? some sort of grand feeling that we were united as a congregation? some sort of connectedness with something greater than just a group of people who should be high-fiving randomly in the name of the powerful dude in the sky?

i didn't get it. it just wasn't there. perhaps that disappointed a few. but how can someone be expected to carry on with something they don't believe in? i mean - turn pascal's wager on its side and think about manners - if god exists, and i don't believe in him anyways, wouldn't he take my mere presence in this congregation a lie? and aren't lies bad? lies are bad, aren't they?

actually, the thing i kick myself most for was my habit of dozing off during fr. bourne's sermons. he was the least interesting of all the priests at st. james. never talked about anything even thought-provoking... or if he did, his carl sagan monotone lulled me to sleep. i missed the one time he said anything remotely inspiring, when he called out the whole congregation for being a bunch of hateful pieces of shit to this one guy who had the gall to decide "hey, i'm a woman, but i was born a man. i just feel more comfortable dressing this way, and maybe i'll get my tackle changed surgically while i'm at it". calling people out for being hateful pieces of shit. because last time i checked, god and that jesus guy are pretty fed up with hateful pieces of shit.

basically, christians too often forget those things in their silly little dungeons and dragons fantasy book about the stuff you're actually supposed to do while interacting with other humans - except the shit that justifies them being hateful pieces of shit.

you know all this. and i know it's not all christians, just the shitty ones. i'm just blown away that shit still happens. it's fucking boring.

anyways, some people, like parge, take it one further.
- he has this idea that organized religion is the reason the earth is in a fucked up state. from his second post "on atheism", he writes:

"There's a synergy at work between seemingly unrelated issues
that drive the forces of environmental degradation. I hope to
elaborate on this in future posts, but for now, it suffices to say
that religion is part of the problem as I see it. In truth, I see a
vast network of forces that include religion, feeding each other
to create a juggernaut that will wipe out much of the life on this
planet."

what does he mean by that? i have a couple of ideas. first, the calvinist protestant work ethic horseshit that has so many fucking people brainwashed into the material world, working in cooperation with the idea that if you're morally good, you'll go to heaven - it creates this grey area in which you can get away with being ignorant to anything that doesn't fit your idea of what a "good" lifestyle is, and even though you've stolen some indian's land, or driven a polluting car to church even though you could walk your fat ass there, you'll still go to heaven. horseshit. the illusion of salvation keeps people from formulating serious questions about existence. also, the relative ease of our situations tends to prop up the idea that we've somehow been right, and leads us to not question the fact that continuing on the same myopic path we've been following for such a long (relatively fucking short) time.

what if spirituality really is just organics? ashes to ashes/dust to dust - i'd say that a more intelligent approach is manure to manure. what happens when you die? you shit your pants and become fertilizer. heaven doesn't exist. it's just not fucking there. disneyland is, but heaven isn't. your spiritual existence, 100%, is your existence as part of this planet as a continuum of life, death and organics.

and it's liberating as hell to come to conclusions like that.

i've been neglecting to really get to the meat of parge's blog, but it becomes more topical for me lately as i start thinking of choices, and then factoring that the next generation could be royally fucked thanks to the clayheaded ignorance of the last few - a miniscule blip on both prehistory and history - i think that shit like marriage, kids, future plans... they all make little sense. i take into account my own status as non-polluter. then i see what we're up against, and i can't see that it gives me much hope. it's the same kind of angst that reagan era nuclear freakiness gave us, i think.

i'm not just talking about douchebags who drive hummers, i'm talking about situations like japan's - they have such rigid emission restrictions that it becomes necessary for people to replace their cars at a much higher rate than the rest of the world. where do cars go? vietnam. thailand. laos. india. PLACES THAT JUST DON'T NEED MORE POLLUTION OR MOBILITY. but in that they are developing nations, their educated folk per capita is generally lower. so you get working class people who think like this "damn, my life would be easier if i could just get some fucking WHEELS".

not to mention japanese cars ending up in the hands of people who think that the word "drifting" isn't pronounced "being a douchebag". sorry mark.

yeah, this has been a long fucking rant but my fridays are ended by a 2 hour break. plus, 2 acquaintances are getting hitched in about a week, and it's the worst idea ever. i'm assuming they're doing it because of christian duty and confucian duty. what a double whammy... christianity and much of the korean populace's raging, silly and unquestioning embrace of any sort of authority, and their lack of ability to cope when structure is removed from their lives.

here's what you need to do:
1. listen to bill hicks.
2. listen to the PROBOT record (dave grohl's metal project)
3. do something like sell your house and move to africa just for the fuck of it.

god doesn't exist. sorry.