2 posts tagged “religion”

I'm currently reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and it is fantastic. I just have to share this paragraph with you:

To be fair, much of the bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries.

Read it! He's a brilliant scientist and a brave defender of rationality, and a good author as well.

... and amuse me. Religious is perhaps too broad a term – people believing in gods and anti-scientific theories such as creationism is more exact. People who call themselves religious when they are in fact philosophers are merely confused, which doesn't really piss me off. I'll focus this little rant on Christians. Fucking morons.

Take that word, for example. Fuck. What the fuck is their problem with that? One thing I like to do to get a good laugh is browse Christian Music websites. It's a lot of fun. When a Christian person wants to judge whether a piece of music is suitable for his co-morons, the word fuck is important. One website, Plugged In, uses the terms pro-social and objectionable to classify music. Fuck, according to these guys, is not pro-social. My guess is that lyrics speaking of crusade or inquisition, two Christian historical highlights, would be positively pro-social. Not a devious swear-word like fuck, however, oh no. Must've been invented by Satan, as it is often (and was first) used as an expression for that horrendous activity that cannot be spoken of (except in the Song of Solomon, of course). Torturing and chopping off heads is a much more acceptable activity.

Back to Plugged In, because I can't help myself – it's too much fun. First off, I'll steal an example I saw somewhere when doing some Googling: Beck's Mellow Gold. It is a brilliant album, which most people with more than one brain cell can hear, but not Plugged In, who sum up the review with "this worthless disc spews refuse from start to finish". What can I say? Pay them a visit. You'll either end up rolling on the floor laughing or planning something highly illegal (I honestly can't make up my mind).

Another example, picked randomly, is Beastie Boys' Hello Nasty. Another great album, which gets the following summary: "the severity of Nasty's nastiness--obscenities, drugs, astrology and mysticism--make it one to avoid". Oh, yes, astrology and mysticism, can't have any of that. Better to stick to solid, well-researched stuff like creationism. Speaking of which, some people have claimed that there was a great gap in time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, but that is not true. The truth, which is based on solid evidence such as things written in a book, is that it (the universe and stuff) was all created in six 24-hour days. Yes. Read all about it. More on this highly relevant debate here.

One more, and then I'll stop with the examples. Radiohead's Hail to the Thief, an incredible piece of art. "Hail to the Thief has a measured, sleepy sound that might narcotize teens, but sure won’t do anything to inspire them". Yes, it might narcotize them, you have been warned! Better to inspired them Bible-style: "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him." (Proverbs 22:15)

If you've been trying out the links above, you might've noticed that I link to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible a few times. It's a great resource if you want to do some Bible research. Another good project is the Blasphemy Challenge. For me, however, it doesn't feel necessary to participate. My atheism is rather more pragmatic – I don't think there is anything that needs to be challenged. Some people believe what some men once wrote in a book, some people believe that they've been abducted by aliens, others believe that they see ghosts – they're all morons, and I only take offence when they try to push their fantasies on people.

There is, of course, much more Christian stuff that can be brought up for a good laugh, but right now I have more important things to do than discussing cults based on crap literature.