"Why Do You Hate God?"

I have not been asked this question, yet, but I am sure sooner or later it will be. I will grant it’s a perfectly natural assumption for True Believers to think that I must not not believe in God, but instead have some personal grievance with Him/Her/It that causes me to deny. I’m sure they must picture the typical atheist to be somewhat like a small child hearing from his or her peers for the first time that Santa Claus does not exist, and the only reaction possible is to clamp the hands over the ears and scream: “No! No! No! It’s not true! I don’t believe you!”

Sorry, folks: it’s just not that simple.

The only answer I, or any other atheist who arrived to the same conclusion I did through reason and careful thinking, can give is: I cannot hate that which does not exist.

I do not hate Santa Clause. Neither do I hate the Easter Bunny. I also harbor no ill will towards leprechauns, unicorns or David Icke’s Illuminati-based shapeshifting reptile overlords. I have no feelings of spite or anger for Zeus or Hercules. I do not plot any retribution towards Quetzalcoatl or the pantheon of Valhalla.

Just so, I do not hate God because the burden of evidence shows, as it does with all the mythical beings and creatures I mention above, such a being is simply not there.

Now, this is not to say I did not hate God at a certain point in my life. I did. Greatly. I had a rather difficult childhood (my wife would say I’m downplaying this a great deal), and while it was not safe for me while young to express my anger - and other feelings - towards those that made growing up such a traumatic experience for me and my sisters, there was one thing I could safely direct my ill feelings towards. Something my Catholic upbringing drummed into my head must exist and was ultimately the cause of all things: God.

But I was not an atheist then, either. Once I came to the realization that there is no Supreme Being, the anger and hatred left me. What it was replaced with was a burning desire to hold those who hurt me and my sisters accountable for their actions (and inactions).

You see, when there is no God, suddenly everyone is responsible for their own actions and the consequences of those actions. It is, frankly, liberating and unsettling all at once. It frees one from fear of divine retribution, but it also makes one realize it’s harder to justify horrible acts against others when there is no Judge Supreme dictating who is deserving of reward or punishment. One can no longer sit back and “just accept” one’s lot in life. One must take control while considering others. Under those circumstances, 9/11 was performed by a bunch of delusional modern-day kamikazes, Fred Phelps is an emotionally stunted old man screaming for attention like a tantrum-throwing toddler, and Barack Obama’s sudden promise to dump more money into faith-based programs is just an obvious ploy to get votes. (Don’t believe me on that one? Then watch this video of a speech he gave some years back… he’s maturing into a true politician, which is sad.)

So to any Christian reading this who is still wondering why I hate God, I’ll throw the same concept back at you: why do you hate Allah?

Yeah. Thought so.

Independence Day: No Kings = No God in Government

Two hundred and thirty-two years ago, today, we declared ourselves independent of the British Empire. We further declared we, as a people, had no need for aristocracy and that we would govern ourselves.

Eleven years later, in Philadelphia, we recomposed our government in the form of the Constitution. This amazing document unified the states under a strong federal government and made two amazing laws (of many, many amazing laws):

1. The First Amendment
   
2. The "No Religious Test" Clause

It is no coincidence that we cut both church and king out of any involvement in our government. We cannot depose one without deposing the other.

And how is that?

The European model for governance (for several centuries) worked like this: the church of the nation (typically Catholic) would declare God's support for the king, granting him divine right over his subjects; in turn, the king would see to it a healthy chunk of change from his tax base would divert to the church's coffers.

A nice, symbiotic relationship, eh?

If you don't believe me, consider this: when Henry VIII of England didn't get his way when he wanted to divorce and remarry, he did not just cut ties with Rome... he established his own church. He needed divine legitimacy to keep his seat of power, otherwise, the Vatican would have started pressing other nations to replace him with someone more suitable (for their own pockets, that is). Kings need divine backing for their subjects to buy into their right to govern. Churches need Kings (or some other form of political figurehead) to keep the money flowing in... because sometimes passing the plate just isn't enough to "pay the bills."

And just look at what is happening today. We have a "man of God" in the White House, and he's making sure our tax money is funneled to religious organizations. And men like Dobson of Focus on the Family are given legitimacy by men like President Bush... and in turn, men like Dobson are treated like they have a right to be political pundits, picking and choosing who is more "suitable" to administrate the United State of America.

And next thing you know, too many people are claiming there is no such thing as "separation of church and state," despite the fact it is written as the first item on the Bill of Rights!

Everyone: if you love your country (as I do), read the Constitution. Read the Federalist Papers. Read the letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists. Keeping religion out of government is more than about taxes and affiliations: it's about keeping dictatorship at bay.

As long as all human beings in this nation may believe (or not, in many cases) as they wish, then no one may persecute them for disagreeing. The atheist and the theist can co-exist, as long as each group is managed by a completely secular government; one devoid of interest in showing preferential treatment for one group over another.

And is that not the greatest thing of all?

Keep America's system of government great.

Keep it secular.

If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.

That is from Mark 4:23.

Meet "Supply Side Jesus," created by Al Franken.

Either you will get this, or you won't. No shame, either way.

Bon appetit!

Doubt comes to a muslim? Stay tuned...

I think My Pakistani Buddy^TM is starting to have some doubts, but I'm sure I'm wrong.

Not quite a year ago (or was it longer than that?) he got his own place. I mean, his own place without having to share it with anyone. A home of his own. A group of us at the office put together a care package for him, and I decided to throw in a copy of the Q'ran because I knew he would appreciate it. That, and I intend to read the thing, myself, and thought it would be good for him to have a copy close by for discussion purposes. He was overwhelmed by my gift. Not, as you might think, because of its thoughtfulness, but rather because the copy I gave him was a side-by-side translation in English next to the traditional Arabic.

When I asked him why the English version was such a big deal, he described to me the extent of his "Sunday School" education in Islam, which was pretty typical for the average Pakistani: he did not read the Q'ran in his native Urdu, but rather learned the Arabic for specific passages by rote only!

That's right! He's never read the whole thing! He's never even read part of the thing in a language (by his own admission) he even understands!

Wow! I thought. This is worse than the average Sunday School experience of most Christians! No wonder some Muslims are persuaded to blow up others along with themselves! No wonder some Christians are talked into murder doctors willing to perform abortion procedures! These people are not encouraged to read the texts and interpret for themselves! They are discouraged from following avenues that may lead to critical thinking!

I found myself wondering if My Pakistani Buddy^TM would find the Q'ran as discomfiting as I found the Bible to be, when I started reading the whole thing...

Fast forward to today.

He's back from Pakistan, after being too close to the Bhutto assassination event. He's engaged. And he's been a bit quiet, of late. At first I thought he was just shaken up from being next to a major world event and acquiring a fiance in short order... now I'm wondering.

He sent me a link to the following YouTube video. Before going to Pakistan, I am almost positive he would have found this offensive.


Is it possible that between reading the Q'ran and witnessing senseless violence in his birth land, he's starting to have doubts?

I'm having lunch with him, today. I introduced him to massaman curry and he's now a slave to the stuff. Maybe we'll talk about it, then... but I'll let him bring it up, out of politeness.

Time will tell.

Notes on Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto"

I finally got around to watching “Apocalypto,” Mel ("I'm not a drunken anti-semite") Gibson’s follow-up to “The Passion of the Christ.” I was not sure what to expect, other than violence. But could the violence match the spectacle of “Passion,” a film I have on more than one occasion referred to as “The Greatest Snuff Film of All Time?”

Yes and no. Yes, “Apocalypto” matches in spectacle, but it is nowhere nearly as horrific in its violence. Instead, it goes for something different: an average action/adventure/chase story loaded with more subtext than the average Congressional bill has pork.

WARNING! The rest of this entry is loaded with spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.


Okay, now that we have that out of the way, I’m going to walk you through the movie and take you through my thoughts more or less as I had them.

“Apocalypto” opens with a bunch of Happy Pre-Columbian Jungle Dwelling Villagers engaged in a tapir hunt. When they finally kill the tapir, there is a gratuitous slow-motion shot of the trap going of that told my spider-sense that we were experiencing foreshadowing. (And was it ever, as we shall see.)

The Happy Pre-Clombian Jungle Dwelling Villager Hunting Party gather around that tapir and Our Hero, a hunter named Jaguar Paw, distributes pieces of the animal to others in the party. They all appear to be brothers hunting with their father (named Flint Sky), but this is never made absolutely clear. Three of the hunters are given the heart, the liver and the ears, but one hunter (named Blunted, for all too obvious reasons) is given the testicles. Blunted is disappointed and offended, and lets his brother Jaguar Paw know it while their father, Flint Sky, looks on.

Blunted is embarrassed because he has not been able to father a child. Jaguar Paw insists Blunted eat the tapir’s testes to give him virility an potency, claiming Flint Sky did the same thing to father all his children. Flint Sky nods solemnly, but in such a way as to tell the viewer it’s a setup… and Blunted is the Big Dumb Galoot of the village.

We are then entreated to an all too graphic scene of Blunted attempting to eat the testes, and almost barfing from it, to the amusement of the others. Eventually, Blunted starts laughing too, delighting in the joke.

Okay, I’m thinking, this must be more foreshadowing: Blunted is going to be instrumental in the plot and he’s going to get some form of vindication later on.

But it doesn’t stop there: his father, taking pity on him, gives him some special leaves to rub on his genitals the next time he performs his Marital Duties with his wife. Of course, I could already guess where this is heading.



By this point I’m thinking the director must have big plans for Blunted as a supporting character. Maybe use this social abuse as a means of working in a metaphor about brotherly love, christian forgiveness, etc. That, and by the end Blunted will probably knock up two or three women in one night, showing up his brothers and old man, right?

Sigh… sadly, that is not the case. But we’ll get there.

Before the “burning balls” scene, the hunting party encountered a bunch of other villagers on the run from unnamed pursuers. These same pursuers, of course, come to destroy the village, kill a bunch of people, and take the survivors (save for the children who are abandoned and never seen again for the rest of the film) to their city. Jaguar Paw also hides his very pregnant wife and their young son in a dry well, which succeeds in providing both a sub-plot (how the mother and child survive down there) and a motivation for Jaguar Paw to escape from his captors.

Some issues I had with the destruction of the village:

Problem 1 - Blunted’s wife is killed during this. Okay, maybe Blunted will find new love in the Mayan city to which they are being taken…

Problem 2 - Blunted appears to be mortally wounded, but on a slow decline. How is he going to survive the hole in his belly?

Problem 3 - The bad guys were painfully clearly Bad Guys. They sneer, laugh with evil joy, and are only lacking Snidely Whiplash mustaches to twirl, they are so damn evil! How boring. We are also given a “noble bad guy” named Zero Wolf. He leads the raiding party and becomes Jaguar Paw’s main nemesis. Zero Wolf starts out as a guy with a dirty assignment just doing his job. He later becomes driven by vendetta when Jaguar Paw kills Zero Wolf’s son during his escape from the Mayan City. At times I liked Zero Wolf better than Jaguar Paw; to the point that I was almost sorry to see Zero Wolf die, later in the film. Mel Gibson take note: it’s never good to have your villains more sympathetic than your heros. But I digress…

Anyway: so the bad guys come and destroy the village, kidnap the viable adults and walk them to a Mayan city (I won’t go into the historical inaccuracies portrayed there).

In the Mayan city there are plenty of gore-filled sacrifice scenes. In fact, the sacrifices were kind of Catholic in their pageantry, but I doubt that was Gibson’s intent. The now Not So Happy Villagers are brought up, one by one to have their hearts torn out and heads cut off.

When it’s Jaguar Paw’s turn, he is saved by a timely solar eclipse: the eclipse is the signal that the sun god is satisfied with the sacrifices. Jaguar Paw and the rest of the survivors are then to be disposed of via target practice. This is where three things take place:

1. Jaguar Paw escapes, setting the rest of the film in motion.
2. Jaguar Paw kills Zero Wolf’s son, giving the antagonist reason for his pursuit.
3. Blunted is killed, making this viewer ask: “Why did his peers torture him, only to have him killed off? It doesn’t make storytelling sense!” (It did later, I realized.)
   

Once Jaguar Paw makes it into the jungle “Apocalypto” becomes a standard Rambo-like chase flick in which Our Hero picks off the pursuers one by one using only his wits and the resources of the environment. And, yes, that foreshadowing at the beginning of the film comes to pass. Zero Wolf is dispatched by the same hunting trap that killed the tapir.

In an interesting twist, there are still two bad guys left pursuing Jaguar Paw after Zero Wolf dies. I wondered why Gibson would do that… the answer? For the sake of the climax. Our Hero Jaguar Paw is saved by… the Catholic Church!

I am not making this up.

Jaguar Paw and his two pursuers reach the beach and stop dead in their tracks at the sight of sailing ships moored just off shore. A rowboat full of soldiers and priests, brandishing a very large, very visible cross, rose towards them. The two remaining bad guys forget about their quarry and walk, mesmerized, towards the rowboats.

Our Hero sees his chance and breaks for it. Jaguar Paw rescues his family from the well and they run off into the forest to hide - but not before his wife looks imploringly at the sailing ships and asks her husband if they should not go to them. Jaguar Paw, quite intelligently, says “no,” trusting no one after his brush with the Maya. His wife looks back with some regret and then they walk into the jungle… …roll credits.

Parts of this movie were just not making sense to me until I saw the ships at the beach. Then it all started coming together.

First, let’s talk about the opening scenes involving the hunters, village life, and the social maltreatment of Blunted, the local pariah. Ostensibly these are the scenes of the “idealistic simple happy life” the forest dwellers have before the bad guys came and destroyed everything. It left me uneasy, because the cruelty - outright cruelty - shown to the big guy was wrong. It departs from formula, here, because no lesson of tolerance is given. The abuse is accepted, even by Blunted, who finds it funny… but this is not about realism. It’s about subtext. It is actually a scorn shown by the filmmaker for his characters: they are, when you get down to it, dumb savages who enjoy torturing one another. The are so dumb they even enjoy being tortured by one another, to an extent. Clearly they need to be taught about Right Living and How to Play Nice With Others.

That’s why so many get to die. That’s why the children are abandoned and never heard from again. That’s why, at the end of the movie, all the women and men who are not killed during the raid are sold as slaves, sacrificed to the gods or used as target practice: they deserve it for being such cruel savages!

And the clearly dying urban Mayan culture we are entreated to are part of the film’s centerpiece? THey deserve their outbreaks of syphilis and leprosy, the failing corn crops, the civil unrest: they are just as much savages as the Now Not So Happy Forest Dwellers!
In the end, we learn, it is only Jesus that can save you. That’s what caused the two remaining pursuers to stop their chase of Jaguar Paw. Even Jaguar Paw’s wife realizes this as she reluctantly follows her husband into the jungle.

With “Passion” Mel Gibson was way too overt.

“Apocalypto” may be a little to subtle. Most viewers will see the Rambo flick, and not the tortured Christian message underlying the story.

Very well said!

This editorial is worth reading. It crystalizes the importance of protecting the First Amendment, a shining jewel in the crown that is the Constitution of the United States of America.

Anyone who says there is "no such thing in the Constitution" as separation of Church and State has never tried to understand the language used in the the Establishment Clause.

Look up the meaning of the word "establishment" as it was used at the time of the Constitution's authoring, and you'll see what I mean.

The light grew dimmer, this month...

For all those believing I'm a paranoid lunatic, raving in the night, read this.

I'm sure you won't remember me when you decide to pack up the kids and haul ass to Canada, should this continue.

Pretty much what I expected...

Well, Mrs. Wit and I did watch "The Last Man on Earth" last night. Good flick. You should check it out. It's superior to the subsequent remakes ("The Omega Man" & "I Am Legend"), both of which replace the twisted climax of the original, which is stunning in its moral ambiguity, with over the top Christ allegories. The original was also made on a shoestring, but unlike the other two versions it manages to keep the tension aloft throughout the entire film.

But I digress. That's not what this post is supposed to be about.

We finished the movie and switched over to "In God's Name" on CBS. We came in half an hour into it. We couldn't finish watching the damn thing. And is was pretty much what I expected.

Imagine being locked in a room with a bunch of well-groomed marketing directors droning "God is Love" over and over again while the same piece of music loops endlessly in the background, and you get an idea of what kind of documentary this is: like "Santa Clause Conquers the Martians," it is a Cinematic Crime Against Humanity.

The first thing I noticed was the soundtrack. There were only three pieces of music used, and the were looped almost without pause. I did not recognize two of them. The third, however, was Peter Gabriel's "Low Light" from his album Ovo. I love Peter Gabriel's work. I own all of his albums. I try to catch his show whenever he comes through the area. But I was really getting sick and tired of hearing "Low Light" after 40 minutes! The filmmakers needed to spend a little more time on the soundtrack.  Actually, it seems to me that if you have enough content in your documentary, a soundtrack score is really not all that necessary.

Speaking of the filmmakers, they spent an inordinate amount of time on camera themselves talking about how 9/11 inspired them to make the film, or having soulfully slow panned still shots of themselves with the various religious leaders they interviewed for the film. The whole time their attitude was to reverently declare something along the lines of:

"Everyone wants to know where God was on 9/11. Well, golly! He's everywhere! Look at all these neat-o keen-o religions and how wonderful they are!"

And every time a nod was made to religiously inspired violence, the various talking heads would inevitably declare: "But that's not real religion!" (With no backing, of course.)

And all these leaders were, of course, only shown to be the most pious mo-fos ever to walk the Earth. Seriously.

And, as predicted, the filmmakers did not even bother with skeptics, freethinkers, and other non-believers. That would have destroyed the treacly junk food they were presenting by introducing some intellectual nutrition into it.

By the last fifteen minutes, it had become too painful to watch. It switched over to a re-run of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" to watch something equally fictional, but much more honest.

Shame on you, CBS. After earning my praises on Sunday morning, you had to destroy them later that night.

Shame on you.

The 12 days of Agnostimas

Courtesy of the Apathetic Agnostic Church. (Thanks to jenamazon for pointing this out.)

The 12 Days of Agnostimas - 21 December to 1 January to celebrate a traditional seasonal festival.

1. 21 December: Solstice - the traditional mid-winter observance (mid-summer in the Southern hemisphere
   
2. 22 December: Apathetic Agnostic Resurrection - commemorates the return of the Apathetic Agnostic web sites to the internet in mid-December 2002 after a three week hiatus due to technical problems. (Meditation 81) This day following Solstice is appropriate because (at least in the Northern Hemisphere where we are based) the days are now getting longer.
   
3. 23 December: Festivus - for the rest of us . Invented in 1966 by Dan O'Keefe, whose son Daniel, a writer on Seinfeld, introduced a family tradition to the wider world, and now everyone can participate in an airing of the grievances and in feats of strength
   
4. 24 December: Agnostimas Eve
   
5. 25 December: Agnostimas - a good day to exchange gifts with friends and relatives in a spirit of generousness, with no need to care about any religious overtones. But we won't object if any traditionalists prefer to devote the day to its original purpose - the worship of Mithras.
   
6. 26 December: Boxing Day - the true origin of the name "Boxing Day" can only be answered with absolute certainty with an "I don't know!" And that is reason enough for agnostics to celebrate it. (If you happen to accept the unproven stories that the rich folks used to give the poor folks gift boxes on this day, then be happy about it, and make sure you give out a few gift boxes to the poor.)
   
7. 27 December: Heidentag - (German for Heathen's Day) Proposed as a warm and festive occasion for getting together, gift-giving, eating comfort food (usually a lot), listening to our favorite music
   
8. 28 December: Childermas - in view of the lack of any evidence to support the horror story of Matthew 2:16, a day to commemorate the inventions and falsehoods on which religion is based. (See Meditation 175)
   
9. 29 December: Apathy Day - sated with the celebrations, feasting, and gift exchanges of the festive season, we take a day to relax, recover, and generally not care about anything. For tomorrow, we start partying again.
   
10. 30 December: Friendship Day - to honor your friends and show the superiority of having friends instead of enemies. Created in reference to the pontifical decree Sancta Romania in 1317, in which Pope John XXII ordered the Franciscan Spiritualists to obey their superiors against their beliefs, which prompted the Spiritualists to become bitter enemies of the French pontiff by aligning with his enemy Louis IV.
    
11. 31 December - Foundation Day - to honor the 1995 foundation of the Church of the Apathetic Agnostic and / or the 1965 development of the term Apathetic Agnostic, together with "I don't know and I don't care" as a personal statement of (lack of) belief.
    
12. 1 January - Founder's Birthday

The original is found in their calendar of events.

Religion & the campaign trail

Lot of talk has been going around about Mitt Romney's speech being like JFK's own defense for being Catholic.

Please.

Name me any candidate today who would have the balls to say the following, as Kennedy once did:

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, . . .

"I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace. . ."

I didn't think you could.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has Romney's number, IMHO.

The State of Iraqi Christians

I apologize for sitting on this for a week. I meant to post about this last Tuesday (Mondays are for the latest cocktail, after all).

Don't bother reading the article. Instead, download and watch the 60 Minutes story. It's riveting, especially when the priest voluntarily cops to the historic crimes of Christianity. I admire him for his candor.

However, he also states that what is happening in Iraq to the local Christians (and, by association, the past abuses of the Church) is what happens when "religion goes wrong."

Excuse me?

No. This is another shining example of what happens when religion starts getting its way. Without strong and enforced secular checks, even a nation like America can find itself with its own version of the Vatican doing its damnedest to boss the federal government around.

Saddam Hussein was not a good man. He was a dictator. He was a tyrant. He was a genocidal maniac. But his governance of Iraq was secular in more than just name. In fact, he was the least evil and fanatical of the tyrannical genocidal dictator-types available. That is why King George I left him in charge of his country, even after Desert Storm.

Of course, this is all lost on King George II.

Illinois Kids: Keepin' It Real

The "Moment of Silence" law in Illinois really rubs me the wrong way.

These kids don't like it either. It's nice to see them organizing a protest, making a point, and goofing off all at the same time.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dim Age Diary is proud to present "Moment of Silence... But Deadly"



(Kind of gives you hope for the future, don't it?)