Religion: codified superstition.
Church: the marketing outlet for said superstition.
Pastor/Priest: The local chief public relations flack for that superstition.
Bishop: the district manager for the superstition's marketing outlets.
The Bible, Dianetics, the Koran, the Torah, etc: the line of bullshit that all camp followers are expected to internalize no matter how nonsensical it is. Indeed, they often read like a kind of ecclesiastical People magazine, luridly informing the gapejawed who begat whom, how many, who smote whom, who "knew (i.e.m fucked)" whom, and who, at the end of the day, emerges as the World's Sexiest Man of Eternity (Jesus, Mohammed, L. Ron Hubbard, Buddha, Yahweh, Your Name Here).
This diatribe was inspired by the contretemps of one incoming Congress critter named Keith Ellison, who was said to have desired to be sworn in while putting his lefthand on the Koran. This drew an immediate rebuke from wingnuts hither and yon, especially the pompous twat Dennis Prager, who burbles his bullshit on sieg heil on your dial KRLA in Los Angeles.
The only trouble, as we all now know, is that there is no supposedly holy book used during the swearing in ceremony for new lawmakers in Washington D.C., lending this the aura of another one in a long line GOP works of fiction.
Moreover, USA Today reader
Matthew 5:33-37
33: Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:
34: But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:
35: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.
36: Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.
37: But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
Prager reportedly has a divinity degree, so he knew about this passage. So he was more than willing to climb the soapbox and spout off heretical ideas. Respecting tradition, I'm sure that Prager has now called the Vatican and asked for an Inquisition on himself and is thinking about what outfit looks best while being burned at the stake.Okay, maybe not. Christian Republicans aren't interested in the truth, only power.
Christians are also interested in completely perverting history, as this incident in Kenya shows.
The biggest hobgoblin of hosanna hut bureaucrats is sex. Making men and women feel afraid and ashamed of their sexuality is a 2,000 year old tradition and the GOP has touted abstinence lectures mainly by adopting the Republican go to tactic, fear. Tales of horrible STDs and pregnancy has only served to undermine the credibility among the young vis a vis the subject. Indeed, a recent study showed that teens and young adults are more sexually active then ever but their pregnancy rate is declining thanks to the frequent employment of birth control. This highlights the fact that the abstinence approach is unproductive and should be substituted with discussing the subject openly and honestly in instructing them how to manage their sex drives.
Now don't get me wrong. I don't advocate teenagers having sex. In fact, given their relatively poor impulse control and lack of emotional development it really isn't a good idea for that to happen until adulthood. But since I lost my virginity as a teenager (to an older woman) I feel hypocritical saying that. My parents had given me the full lecture about sex just before I entered junior high and also provided materials written by medical professionals about it so that I knew what I was getting into. That this doesn't happen everywhere, though, is both a tragedy and indicative of how counterproductive religion can be.
And that is before you even get to the sexual proclivities of the hosanna hut managers, who have proven to be much more salacious and perverted than leftwing liberals such as myself. Clearly, receiving large doses of biblical cant has no effect on stemming one's sex drive. Pat Robertson screwed his wife before they got married and knocked her up, as did GOP hero Ronald Reagan during much more ostensibly conservative times. So when any of these rightwing assholes gets on a rant about sex it is no wonder that a lot of eye rolling ensues. Especially if it is coming out of the mouth of a serial matrimonialist such as Clinton impeachment boy Henry Hyde or gay men such as David Dreier.
This is reinforced by television, where, because the FCC feels it must cater to religious nuts there is little honest portrayal of sex, which only confuses teens and adults further.
Consequently, this dissemination of obvious bullshit has turned off teens to religion, a positive good.
But this spreading phenomenon elicited a rebuke from the producers of South Park, who created an incredibly leaden episode that people can make a religion out of anything, even science, and went as far as to propound that the most absurd extension of that is warfare over competing visions of the field.
That humans are competitive, avaricious and often delusional is not a exactly news. But in making one of the characters, Kyle, the preachy conscience of the often rollicking and razor sharp series, it is starting to fall into the same kind of sanctimonious trap that has informed the usual religious spokesmen. In that way, South Park has jumped the shark and is actually getting boring. But every artist eventually runs out of good ideas and their take on the religion vs. science issue may have been a loud warning bell of that. So in a screwy way, religion has claimed another victim there.
The program portrays Jesus as little more than a talented schmuck. At the end of the day, though, what religion is predicated on is control. Back in the olden days, rulers needed a line of bullshit to keep the masses in line as the answer to the question, "who made you king?" "God." Well God and a collection of mercenaries anyway.
Look, Christianity wouldn't even be around if the Emperor Constantine hadn't hallucinated and been talked into being a dupe for those salesmen who flog the Christ brand name. That was during a time when the king determined what the faith of the land was going to be and when Connie became a Christian so did everybody else, dissenters being locked up, tortured and killed. In that way, Christianity is like Prez Turbo. It won't listen to reason and instead chooses to live in a fantasy world while its first impulse is to dispatch naysayers to some gulag.
When Henry the VIII decided to disembark from the Catholic Church's love train (no divorce allowed and buttfucking little boys), the church demanded that Spain and France go to war for Henry's bald challenge to its authority. Not that I want to make a hero of the syphilitic eight ball, but you get the point that religion is all about what most mass organizations are about: money and power (and 12 year old nookie, I guess).
It has also helped idiots escaped responsibility through the "Satan possessed me" for their drug addiction, criminal lifestyle, corruption and lying. These are all intentional acts and there is no little man whispering in our ears to do these things. They are due to the evil that resides in man and not to the cajoling of a red skinned demon prodding you with a pitchfork.
A lot of the religious conflicts in the English church essentially revolved around what kind of entertainment you wanted or didn't want (you call them masses and ceremonies). with your hectoring These conflicts lead to the English Civil War and the ascension of Oliver Cromwell, who Britons had enough of after a little over a decade. Yet, the punters then filled the pews anyway since, well let's face it, there weren't a whole lot of entertainment options available for your average peasant and it was a good place to pick up chicks. In fact, I'm sure that the hottest thing one could do during that time was to celebrate your like of a man or woman by sneaking into the church after closing time to sing your praises of the cosmic big daddy while entangled with each other on the altar, a pew or a storage room. So sinful, but soooooooo delicious.
That may explain why Jimmy Swaggart is able to maintain a semblance of a career much as how the public tends to forgive egregious transgressions by Hollywood stars and pop singers. Mind you, at this point, Swaggart has gone from being on the Playboy level of semi-respectable televangelists to the kind of crowd that reads the biblical equivalent of Swank, but he is still able to divest dumbasses of their hard earned cash. If he screws up again you will see him handling snakes.
The same goes for Paul Crouch, the top (no pun intended) hemorrhoid at Trinity Broadcasting, American's Wal-Mart of electronic rolling of the holy, and a close friend of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. His acolytes not only forgave him building the most gaudy and decadent tribute to white trash predilections ever, foisting Jeff Fenholt, a former member of the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar who spun his few minutes auditioning for Black Sabbath into a non-existent full blown tour with them (Tony Iommi, Sabbath's lead guitarist, declined to sue due to it not being financially worth it; the Fenholts lived in the down at the mouth Riverside County burg of Upland) on them and basically being con artists, but also ignored a claim by a former aide that the kind of girlish Crouch was plowing his back 4o. That sucked because the Bible calls for stoning homosexuals and seeing Crouch, who bears a slight resemblance to Ted Turner, get that treatment would have been ironically cool.
Here is what gets me, though: Crouch preaches so-called "prosperity gospel" and yet there is the biblical passage that intoned, "and again, I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." So next time you see video footage on Faux Nooz of bigtime Dick and crew exiting a local hosanna hut, know that there go the damned. But yet, so many seemed to want to follow them into hell.
This is all wish fulfillment on a level befitting a Star Trek chess game, as there is no heaven or hell but the mere becoming of worm food. So the idea on the part of the gapejaws that the rich who played dirty to become so will get their just desserts in the end is horseshit. Moreover, you take the Christianity brand name off of this and the Newt Gingriches out there are calling that class warfare which doesn't play well among voters. Yes, the Republicans hate Jesus.
Really, all of Jesus' supposed enthusiasts are doing nothing more than engaging in "buffet Christianity," loading up on the ideas that are to their taste and leaving the less appealing ones either for others or to rot.
The reason for this is that Christianity is predicated on fear of death. We all want to be immortal, but alas, it is not so. To salve this, Christian cult leaders came up with the concept of everlasting life alongside big daddy's righthand in paradise, an idea as easily laughable as someone getting to have at 70 virgins if they blow themselves up in an Israeli shopping mall but one that people go for as a coping mechanism. So they shape their religion to comport with their world view. On one hand, that is ultimately democratic, each man being his own pope. On the other, it tends to rob religion of what it sets out to do, set hard ethical and customary boundaries. In other words, all Christians are moral relativists and that undermines its rationale for being.
All of this, when taken together, undermines the need for religion. Those of you out there who would ask, "if there is no fear of God then wouldn't society tumble into anarchy?" Uh, no. Both Korea and Japan have about 10% of the crime rate that America does and yet they are non-religious countries (in Korea, it is about one-third Christians, but that plays almost no role in why there is little crime). Less than 1% of Japanese are Christians and showing outward displays of religiosity is considered socially gauche. It all has to do with child rearing and cultural norms. You parents have to do the job and not use the threat of some third party punishing your offspring for you. Relying on religion makes you look weak and ineffectual and the fairy tale nature of it undermines your credibility.
So be big boys and girls. Start getting real with your outlook and stop hoping that some mythical entity will make things turn out okay for you.
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