Balloon Art for Believers

Wow.

Just... Wow...

"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.

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.

Huckabee knows Jesus

I've already made comment on Mitt Romney.

Huckabee, his closest competitor, ain't much better.

Time to move on, people. Let's look at what the other parties have to offer for the Presidency.

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.

Update on My Pakistani Buddy!

He just let a bunch of us know he made it to Dubai.

He should be home in a little over 24 hours.

I let out a huge sigh of relief when I got the news.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Especially now.

Kissing Hank's Ass

A beautiful metaphor for organized religion in general...

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.

There was no Santa & kudos (of a sort) to CBS news

I have not been sleeping terribly, lately, and woke up at about 1:15 this morning. I already knew it was going to be a while before I went back to sleep, so I decided to make the most of it by catching a really cheesy movie on TV.

I've already mentioned my love of Svengoolie in a previous post. According to Sven's Dec. 22nd post, anyone staying up until 1:00am would be treated to "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians." Anyone who loves bad film is probably well acquainted with this cinematic crime against humanity. This film is so bad that it is the only movie I am aware of my father ever walking out on. And my father will sit through anything. It's also notable for being Pia Zadora's first movie, as well. (If you don't know or remember Pia Zadora, don't weep. It's no great loss. Really.)

Here's a taste, if you have the stomach for it.



Well, I tuned in to watch and found... it was a rerun of the night before's "Frankenstein" broadcast! O Sven! What hast thou wrought?

I'm sure he'll never hear the end of this from his fan base. Serves him right.

I also like to catch CBS Sunday Morning from time to time. Today was a lucky find: a meditation on the importance of separation of church and state in light of the current presidential election campaigns. It's called "In God We Trust." I found it very even handed save for one small, but bothersome, thing: there was no concession that there are also non-beleivers like me, out there, but rather a tacit assumption that all Americans practice some form of faith or other.

Ultimately, the truth is this: if I am allowed not to believe, then you will always be allowed to believe however you wish. It seems so simple, and yet so many want to take that away...

There's also going to be a two-hour special on CBS tonight: "In God's Name." If the previews are any indication of the show's content, I'm not going to have the stomach for it, tonight: it appears to be a bunch of talking heads claiming region is anti-violence. According to the show's web page it's going to be nothing but religious leaders. No non-belief voice is going to be given even 10 seconds of air time!

If religion is anti-violence, then I guess the lessons of history (and most texts upon which many religions are based) are wrong. But only a holy man would have the gumption to make the claims made in the preview I saw this morning.

I think tonight I'd rather watch Vincent Price in "The Last Man on Earth," instead.

From Cold War to Today

This holiday season, as we fret about Iran having nukes (and other things, too) we should relax and remember the simpler times of the Cold War.

Right, Al?

Happy Winter Solstice, Everyone!

Before the Abrahamic Faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc.), there was the far more ancient celebration of the astronomical event, the Winter Solstice.

Make some hot cocoa and snuggle up with your loved ones tonight... this, my friends, is the Original Christmas!

Peace to all, and to all a good night.

A Public Service Bulletin courtesy XTC

As so many complain about not enough people remembering God this Christmas, I'll offer this classic song of positive atheism from XTC.

As always, you're welcome.

Time to get into the holiday spirit!

Tidings of despair, everyone!

(I love you, Hello Cthulhu!)

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.

8th Annual Fairy & Human Relations Congress: Fun! Magic! Family! Inspiriation!

As Dave Barry would write: I am not making this up.

Yes, the 8th Annual Fairy & Human Relations Congress is coming to North Cascades, WA, this summer, and I am once more fascinated with the human capacity to sincerely delude ourselves.

Eight years? How can this have been going on for eight years? Then again, I also can't understand how anyone could keep a conference dedicated to bigfoot going year after year.

Be that as it may, this is woo on a grandiose scale:

Though many deny the existence of the spiritual realms and the nature spirit/fairy/devic realm, the numbers of people who are tuning into these realms is increasing by leaps and bounds. The Fairy & Human Relations Congress is one of the vanguard events bringing these people together.

Ah, yes! A variation on the "so many people can't be wrong!" arguement combined with a touch of persecution complex. By the logic presented above, Scientology's claim of being a rapidly growing religion which is being unfairly treated by Germany must have merit! (Not! on both counts!)

Many humans, fairies, devas, angels and spiritual beings come together to create an outpouring of education and celebration. The fairy and devas who attend the Fairy Congress are spiritually advanced and very intelligent. We approach the fairies and devas with respect and love as co-creators of this event.

It is a rare event for humans to experience so much fairy energy and such an outpouring of fairy/devic blessings.

Participants are requested to tune into their fairy friends, angels and spirit-guides in the higher realms and invite them to the Congress.

We are all Light Beings and each of us has the potential to assist in the widening of communication between our realms, in cooperation with the great Deva Light Beings who work with all of Earth's plants, animals and life forms.

This is nothing more than a variation of turning to God and using the power of prayer to solve all problems. Rather than spending all that time and energy petitioning a temperamental spirit (or spirits), how about trying to figure out how to solve the problems ourselves? I mean, you can always credit God or the Fairies for your hard work and ingenuity afterwards, if it's really all that important to you..

Then again, I'm talking about applying logic to situations, a skill the participants in these fairy congresses clearly lack. For example, among the items listed on their "things to bring" page for the congress are such essentials as:

• Make lists, plan ahead and five yourself enough time
• Enjoy the drive
• We are blessed

I realize I'm being nit picky, here, but these items make no sense alongside "water bottle", "crystals", and "items for fairy altar."

But then again, what should I expect? The people attending this affair are not of the most rational and discerning mindset. After all the managers of this website are also fascinated with "orbs", a phenomenon anyone who's spent even a modicum of time taking digital photography seriously has encountered, investigated, and found the quite simple explanation. Unless they need to believe, in which case they will insist on having found the spirits of the dead.

But what's really sad is, a lot of people either passionately believe in fairies, or think that this congress is a bunch of kooks getting together for harmless fun. Me? I just find it sad, and a little worrisome. I mean, the only real difference between this and say, a group of people building a new utopia based on a shared spiritual outlook, is time and sophisticated centralized dogma. Then again, that's the same difference between this, and say, a church.

I give this fairy congress group another five to seven year before one of three things happens:

1. It fizzles out
2. It splinters into two or more competing congresses due to "spiritual differences" regarding the nature of faries
3. It consolidates into a more formal organization, heading towards churchhood (in which case the splintering factor is not far behind)

After all, is that not the fate of most religious systems?