Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness

[Gr. without god; 'a priv. + god: cf. F. athéiste.]

Rather than actually spend time trying to dissect the Pew Religious Survey with advanced statistical models that I'm not even aware of I thought I'd let smarmy little religious dickweed and Beliefnet editor/founder/secret lover Steven Waldman explain it all. Waldman is famous for giving some of the worst electoral advice in human history, as recorded here. If he or fellow religious concern troll Amy Sullivan ever advise you that ice cream is sweet and delicious, I recommend putting all of your Häagen-Dazs® in a biohazard waste disposal container. So let's away to the numbers:

The Spirituality of Atheists - 21% of Atheists believe in God. What this means is that Atheism has become a cultural designation, rather than a theological statement. Some are likely declaring themselves atheists as a statement of hostility to organized religion, rather than to God. This might help explain polls showing rising numbers of Atheists.

This finding is most puzzling. Of the 35,000 respondents, 1.6% (or about 500 people) declared themselves atheists. That's about 5 long rows of people out of the attendance of an entire Astros game, and ONE OF THE FUCKING ROWS IS GRAVELY MISTAKEN. Please, migrate to the larger unaffiliated group so that you keep our "lifestyle" (which I assume writing angry sonnets towards something you don't believe exists) pure and clean; you may even be given to the afterparty the agnostics (all 750 of them) are throwing.

Evangelicals Similar to Muslims - In many questions, the group most similar to evangelicals was Muslims. For instance, 79% of evangelicals say religion is very important in their lives. The compares to 56% for the population as a whole, 56% among Catholics, 31% among Jews - and 72% among Muslims.

I wonder if he characterizes their zeal as not so much about submission to Allah but rather towards an enduring hostility towards the One True Savior, Jesus H. Christ. It's funny what narratives can develop when you've been the dominant religion on the block for so many hundreds of years.

The Certainty Gap - About equal percentages of Protestants and Catholics say they believe in God. But while 90% of evangelicals say they're certain about God, only 72% of Catholics do, and only 41% of Jews do.

You know, I'm going to go back to that strange 21% of atheists who somehow believe in God, thus negating their own label. That's still less than the 28% of Catholics who aren't certain about God. And we've got a lot of catching up to do with Judaism in terms of culture trumping practice. We will accept all atheistic Jews and Buddhists at our 80's karaoke nostalgia night at Dave & Buster's in Round Rock.

The Heaven-Hell Gap - 74% of Americans believe in heaven but only 59% believe in Hell. So where do serial killers go when they die?

The same place as the Dalai Lama and Albert Einstein? Pass the bean dip, Bundy!

Prayer is the National Religious Practice -- While 39% attend services weekly 75% pray weekly. It is the dominant form of spiritual engagement. 31% say they receive 'definite and specific answers from God at least once a month."

Can the mental hospitals really accommodate these 90 million crazy-Americans? They are either receiving auditory command hallucinations from their toaster ("purge the land of impurities, Jimmy!") or are so narcissistic that they believe an omnipotent, invisible deity is taking time out of her busy schedule to either place or remove obstacles from their life-paths.

Tolerance -- 70% of Americans say "many religions can lead to eternal life" ... most amazing, 57% of evangelicals say many religions can lead to eternal life. Given that one of the most important teachings of evangelical Christianity is that salvation comes ONLY through Christ, this finding ought to rattle Christian leaders.

Next week's sermon: "Jay-sus doesn't cay-are whether you look-ah like an ignorant hayseed to a professional-ah poller! You tell that egg-ah-head about eternal damnation!"

Damn, And I Spent The Weekend Getting Loaded and Watching Football

But I just prayed last year!

Ever wonder why church and state go together like orange juice and toothpaste. A re-mixed 2007 Proclamation for the National Days of Prayer and Remembrance might provide a clue:

"During this year's National Days of Prayer and Remembrance, we honor the thousands of victims who died in the brutal and ruthless attacks in New York City, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Our Nation remembers with gratitude the firefighters, police officers, first responders, and ordinary citizens who acted with courage and compassion to save the lives of others, and we pray for the families whose loved ones were taken from them. Yes, still.

Never forgetting that terrible day, we remain determined to bring let our enemies to evade justice so long as they remain in Pakistan, defy mirror the terrorists' ideology of hate, and work to make our world safer a more profitable place for multinational corporations. We honor use the members of our Armed Forces who died while taking the fight to our adversaries unrelated parties as a shield from criticism, and we are grateful for continuing to pile on extended tours of duty and shorten the off-time for those who continue to protect our Nation and our Hunt Oil and Petroleum's way of life. Their courage, sacrifice, and dedication help preserve our freedom electoral chances. We pray for their safety, for all those who love them, and for the peace perpetual occupation we all seek.

We remain a hopeful deeply pessimistic and jaded America, inspired by completely indifferent the kindness and compassion of our citizens and our commitment tired, by-the-numbers campaign speeches purporting to advocate freedom and opportunity. During these days of prayer and remembrance, we reflect on all the Constitutional guarantees we have lost and take comfort in each other (because the government will do fuck-all to help them) and in the grace non-existence and mercy seeming indifference of our Creator, if you want to assume that he exists for whatever reason. May God guide us, give us strength and wisdom for once, and may He continue to bless our great country, although I don't know how much more in the way of blessing we can take.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States five conservative justices and an electorate that's dumber than a bag of hammers, do hereby proclaim Friday, September 7, through Sunday, September 9, 2007, as National Days of Prayer and Remembrance. I ask that the people of the United States and their places of worship mark these National Days of Prayer and Remembrance with memorial services thinly veiled paeans to the power structure, the ringing of bells 350-year-old hymns with impenetrable lyrics, and evening candlelight remembrance vigils, so long as it's not for the poor, dispossessed, or incarcerated. I also invite the people of the world to share in these Days of Prayer and Remembrance turn from their phony-baloney Gods and get with Jesus Christ, the A-Number-One Supergod.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of September, in the year of our Lord two thousand seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-second twenty-sixth."

My favorite re-mix is still from 2005 (re-printed in its entirety below the fold), as the meaningless incantations to an imaginary Creator and his mythic goodness stood in direct and stark contrast to the gargantuan Katrina fuck-up.

"Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst natural disasters in our Nation's history and has caused unimaginable devastation and heartbreak throughout the Gulf Coast Region. A vast coastline of towns and communities has been decimated. Many lives have been lost, and hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans are suffering great hardship. To honor the memory of those who lost their lives, to provide comfort and strength to the families of the victims, and to help ease the burden of the survivors, I call upon all Americans to pray to Almighty God to stop fucking destroying things. I mean, how much longer are we gong to make excuses for this guy? 'I'm clumsy and I fell down the stairs' doesn't really cut it these days, does it?

As we observe a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims of Hurricane Katrina, we pledge our support for those who have been injured and for the communities that are struggling to rebuild. We offer thanks to God (because that's what he apparently wants after his little psychotic destructo-binge) for the goodness and generosity of so many Americans who have come together to provide relief and bring hope to fellow citizens who have been previously harmed by his alcohol-fueled wrath. Our Nation is united in fear of this omnipotent being who seems to conjure up gruesome, meaningless ways for people to die. We will strive together to integrate this terrible knowledge of random, medieval mass murder with some sort of delusional fairy tale about divine plans and eternal bliss... and we will prevail until the next senseless disaster hits.

Americans are reaching out to those who suffer by opening their hearts, homes, and communities. Their actions demonstrate the greatest compassion one person may show to another: to love your neighbor as yourself, huddled together in this unjust, terrestrial foxhole while the Almighty lobs mortars at us in the form of disease, natural disasters, and genocide. Across our Nation, so many selfless deeds reflect the promise of the Scripture: "For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was minding my own business and you killed off my family and pets with a tropical fury that covered my house with a toxic sludge." I encourage all Americans to respond with acts of kindness in the days ahead. By contributing time, money, or needed goods to a relief organization, you can make a real difference in their lives. And by praying for the survivors and those in recovery efforts, we can produce no appreciable results whatsoever, as shown by double-blind studies, while fostering an insipid, child-like, patronizing belief in the omnibenevolence of the Sky Fairy that just fucked everyone up.

Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath resulted in a considerable loss of life. We pray that God will bless the souls of the lost, so long as they conformed to a particular belief system that will not result in their eternal damnation and suffering. Hopefully, the surviving family and friends of the unbelieving departed will not take seriously the insane prospect of eternal damnation, because that's really no comfort at all, is it?

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution As I Understand It and Godly Laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Friday, September 16, 2005, as a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims of Hurricane Katrina. Notice I didn't say "Prayer Or Rememberance." IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of September, in the year of our Sadistic Tormentor two thousand five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirtieth."

"My Father Touched My Butthole.. And That Made Me Thirst For Knowledge"*

"Why not 'So Easy, Even a Therapist Could Do It'?"

Jeff Jacoby, in a typically disingenuous attempt to establish the primacy of religion even in scientific pursuits, decided to pull a little Paul Harvey in his weekly Unfrozen Reactionary Caveman Column in the Boston Globe. No, the little boy that nobody liked didn't grow up to be Roy Cohn... rather, that eccentric English professor who wasted a good portion of his life fussing about with obscurantist religious nonsense and who thought the Earth was only 6,000 years old was none other than... Steve Coogan Sir Isaac Newton. Believe me, I read the whole "System of the World" trilogy by Neal Stephenson, and it was pounded into my head through about 2,500 pages of dense prose that Newton was a grade-A kook by modern standards.

Allow me to explain: there are certain scientific disciplines that have cropped up in the intervening 350 years; among them deep-space cosmology, nuclear physics, paleontology, and about 50 others. We've also discovered a number of other countries and been exposed to their traditions and religions. Therefore, one's belief in an Earth younger than many cave paintings in the year 2007 would, in a relativistic way, make you significantly fucking dumber than your 17th century counterpart. In addition, those seeking to get their master's thesis in the transmutation of lead into gold will find an academic path riddled with significant obstacles.

Well, I saved y'all (and myself) some vertical blog-space with that relatively quick and pithy dismissal. So let's see a couple of new hamster videos!

* An actual line uttered by Paul F. Tompkins, playing Newton, in a 2nd-season Mr. Show sketch

When 92% Of The American Population Just Isn't Enough!

Berkowitz, huh? Don't sound much like a follower of the One True Risen Lord!

Excerpts from The New New Atheism by Peter Berkowitz in italics, my pithy rejoinders, borne of a hatred of love, goodness, and family in the regular type. Personally, I'm sure I don't care for much of the self-aggrandizement of Dawkins, Hitchens, et. al., but there are a number of spurious arguments of a quality several pegs higher than the swill peddled by Michael Gerson that need addressing:
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"There is nothing new under the sun," proclaims the Book of Ecclesiastes. The rise of the new new atheism confirms this ancient biblical wisdom.

It's weird, Ecclesiastes is one of the only books that's halfway readable and that makes a decent amount of sense. However, I'm not sure what new atheism is, much less new new atheism. Does it still have that unmistakable scent of fresh vinyl and heresy?

Of course the famous words of Ecclesiastes should not be taken in a slavishly literal sense, a technique that is all-too-common among those who think they can refute belief in God by showing that the Bible abounds in demonstrably false and self-contradictory statements.

Or in a bipolar concept of God, or in the numerous genocides, or in the untestable and silly claims of everlasting life, or...

[rundown of atheist books' sales figures] Profitability is not the only feature distinguishing today's fashionable disbelief from the varieties of atheism that have arisen over the millennia. Unlike the classical atheism of Epicurus and Lucretius, which rejected belief in the gods in the name of pleasure and tranquility, the new new atheism rejects God in the name of natural science, individual freedom and human equality.

The DASTARDS!

Unlike the Enlightenment atheism of the 18th century, which arose in a still predominantly religious society and which frequently went to some effort to disguise or mute its disbelief, the new new atheism proclaims its hatred of God and organized religion loudly and proudly from the rooftops.

You'd think somebody that's risen to the rank of a fellow at a prestigious think tank and a professor at a law school with a Cinderella basketball team would know his Latin prefixes. A- means "without"; anti- means "against." Therefore, hatred of something that doesn't exist, apart from its ghostly remnants in the corporeal realm, doesn't quite make sense. As for hating organized religion and the 18th century, I'm not sure many of our non-churchgoing Deist Founding Fathers had a whole lot good to say about organized religion and superstitious ritual.

And unlike the anti-modern atheism of Nietzsche and Heidegger, which regarded the death of God as a catastrophe for the human spirit, the new new atheism sees the loss of religious faith in the modern world as an unqualified good, lamenting only the perverse and widespread resistance to shedding once and for all the hopelessly backward belief in a divine presence in history.

Either I'm witnessing a first in terms of conservative, religious praise for Mr. Syphilis, or my "Nietzsche for Dummies" book (a/k/a "The Gay Science") is really, really off.

[A bit (i.e. much, much) more in the extended entry...]

The case for the new new atheism has been restated most recently and most forcefully and wittily in "God Is Not Great" by my friend Mr. Hitchens. It must be said that Mr. Hitchens is simply incapable of uttering or writing a dull sentence. And it should be added that only a very daring or very foolish person would throw down the gauntlet on an issue so close to Mr. Hitchens's heart.

Like I said in the Gerson fisking, Buddha help us if Hitchens becomes the face of atheism. For somebody who doesn't believe in the possibility of everlasting life for hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, he's entirely too chummy with all the wrong warmongering douchebags.

But his arguments do not come close to disproving God's existence or demonstrating that religion is irredeemably evil.

Fine. Hitchens sucks. Let's move on.

Consider Mr. Hitchens's contention, elaborated at length and with gusto, that religion by its very nature compels people to behave cruelly and violently. According to Mr. Hitchens, religion educates children to hate nonbelievers, encourages grown-ups to engage in slaughter and conquest for God's greater glory, and obliges the "true believer" to restlessly circle the globe subduing peoples and nations until "the whole world bows the knee."

We GET it already. He pathologically overstates everything like some sort of swaggering, perpetually drunk asshole. We KNOW. Come ON.

[Another eight paragraphs about Hitchens, and then...] As for his claim that the Bible abounds in falsehood and contradiction, Mr. Hitchens makes great sport with an old straw man. Yes, traditions teach that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, yet the Pentateuch refers to Moses in the third person and tells the story of his death. Yes, Matthew and Luke disagree on the Virgin Birth and the genealogy of Jesus. And so on. The literalness of Mr. Hitchens's readings would put many a fundamentalist to shame.

You know, given the fact that the only thing religion can offer me (as opposed to chocolate ice cream) is life everlasting strongly suggests that the books it's based on weren't... you know... otherwise unreliable or perhaps cobbled together from fourth person accounts several centuries later for political reasons. If faith be blind, give me Lavender Venusian Unicorn. With sparkles.

However, isolating the supposed religious significance of the Bible from the communities and interpretive traditions that have elaborated its teaching is invalid.

Fair enough.

It is like deriving the meaning of the Constitution today by reading its provisions without reference to "The Federalist Papers," which provides authoritative commentary on its principles...

But those came prior to the Constitution. Which other texts are we talking about?

... without reference to the two centuries of cases and controversies through which the Supreme Court has sought to construe its meaning...

You mean the unbroken consistency and humanity found 1500 years of Catholic Church edicts?

... and without reference to the two centuries of experience through which the American people have sought to put the institutional framework it outlines into practice.

You mean the inquisition and the genocide of native populations?

[two more fucking paragraphs about Hitchens] Playing into the anger and enmities that debase our politics today, the new new atheism blurs the deep commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals that binds atheists and believers in America.

Like I said before, I'm perfectly happy to work towards shared political goals with anybody, regardless of the type or existence of Sky Fairy that inhabits their waking dreams. If God tells somebody to advocate against the death penalty or unnecessary wars, or for civil rights, I'm all for it. I'll conveniently ignore that my imaginary afterlife is being shat upon by their made-up beliefs if they can deal with the recurring indignity of my not believing the same thing they do.

At the same time, by treating all religion as one great evil pathology, today's bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American citizens and the militant Islam that at this very moment is pledged to America's destruction.

And here we go. I didn't realize that implementing sensible foreign policy and common-sense homeland security measures was being constantly undercut by people of non-faith. Are we making moderate Muslims wonder why they should even bother? I mean, I know Jerry Falwell* blamed us for the 9/11 attacks. That's pretty good company, right?

Like philosophy, religion, rightly understood, has a beginning in wonder.

I too was awe-struck by Space Mountain until I realize that I was neither in space nor inside of an actual mountain.

The most wonderful of creatures are human beings themselves. Of all the Bible's sublime and sustaining teachings, none is more so than the teaching that explains that humanity is set apart because all human beings--woman as well as man the Bible emphasizes--are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).

[eyes glaze over]

That a teaching is sublime and sustaining does not make it true.

[eyes double-glaze over]

But that, along with its service in laying the moral foundations in the Western world for the belief in the dignity of all men and women--a belief that our new new atheists take for granted and for which they provide no compelling alternative foundation--is reason enough to give the variety of religions a fair hearing. And it is reason enough to respect believers as decent human beings struggling to make sense of a mysterious world.

[goes blind; end column]
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* The same Falwell that thought that Berkowitz and other Jews are going to hell.

I'll Give It The Old College Try

[Busy day. Ax Da President and Friday videos, posted last night, are below.]

Come on, look at Gerson and tell me there's a God.

What Atheists Can't Answer by Michael Gerson (in italics) with my inexplicable answer, as at least a situational atheist, in regular type.

British author G.K. Chesterton argued that every act of blasphemy is a kind of tribute to God, because it is based on belief. "If anyone doubts this," he wrote, "let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor."

Thor is a panty-sniffing degenerate who likes to diddle goats. It pains me to say this, being of Norwegian descent, but it's true. His mystical hammer is filled with candy and is quite harmless.

Proving God's existence in 750 words or fewer would daunt even Thomas Aquinas. And I suspect that a certain kind of skeptic would remain skeptical even after a squadron of angels landed on his front lawn. So I merely want to pose a question: If the atheists are right, what would be the effect on human morality?

It's weird, even the miraculous appearance of Roma Downey and Delta Reese on tens of millions of television sets didn't even convince me! But really, that's kind of a straw-seraphim. Kind of like saying that eight years of governance by the most unsuited of incurious dry-drunks and half-cyborg corporate raiders SHOULD have disabused anybody of the notion of Divine Providence.

If God were dethroned as the arbiter of moral truth, it would not, of course, mean that everyone joins the Crips or reports to the Playboy mansion. On evidence found in every culture, human beings can be good without God. And Hitchens is himself part of the proof. I know him to be intellectually courageous and unfailingly kind, when not ruthlessly flaying opponents for taking minor exception to his arguments.

You know, I was always a little uneasy about Hitchens being on the side of the non-theists. The fact that he's receiving praise from a squirty little douchebag of a Bush speechwriter tends to confirm it.

There is something innate about morality that is distinct from theological conviction. This instinct may result from evolutionary biology, early childhood socialization or the chemistry of the brain, but human nature is somehow constructed for sympathy and cooperative purpose.

On further reflection, I'm beginning to think that he's about to pose a question I can't answer, insofar as going to be totally heavily sprinkled with circular, reactionary logic and unsupported by anything resembling a factual assertion.

[The denouement, with some choice words for the author, is in the extended entry...]

The dilemma is this: How do we choose between good and bad instincts? Theism, for several millennia, has given one answer: We should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we love and respect requires it. While many of us fall tragically short, the ideal remains.

And we should also heed his example by killing all women and children in particular villages and constructing crude sulphuric hailstones to rain down on enemy camps with catapults when the Sky Fairy is otherwise occupied.

Atheism provides no answer to this dilemma. It cannot reply: "Obey your evolutionary instincts" because those instincts are conflicted. "Respect your brain chemistry" or "follow your mental wiring" don't seem very compelling either. It would be perfectly rational for someone to respond: "To hell with my wiring and your socialization, I'm going to do whatever I please." C.S. Lewis put the argument this way: "When all that says 'it is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains."

Oh, to explore the mind of the supine, authoritarian-leaning political hack. Critical reasoning, ever replaced by fear and need to obey someone or something. Being a results-oriented person, I personally don't care whether it's Jebus, Buddha, or a fear of prosecution that prevents somebody from bashing my head in, so long as it remains unbashed.

Some argue that a careful determination of our long-term interests -- a fear of bad consequences -- will constrain our selfishness. But this is particularly absurd. Some people are very good at the self-centered exploitation of others. Many get away with it their whole lives. By exercising the will to power, they are maximizing one element of their human nature.

The irony of a Bush Administration official profiting off of the 9/11 carte blanche giving us a lesson on the selfish desire for power is a bit rich. And sometimes, when they have the religious 3-iron in their golf bag of power-mad tricks, it paves the way for such action.

In a purely material universe, what possible moral basis could exist to condemn them? Atheists can be good people; they just have no objective way to judge the conduct of those who are not.

There's no need to condemn them, just fight or imprison them should their actions physically injure or impinge upon the enumerated constitutional or international rights of others. This is a natural impulse and flip side to a child needlessly dying: there's gotta be something else on the other side for them, because I feel bad if there isn't. Unfortunately, this pacifies people as often as it springs them into religious action.

Atheists and theists seem to agree that human beings have an innate desire for morality and purpose. For the theist, this is perfectly understandable: We long for love, harmony and sympathy because we are intended by a Creator to find them. In a world without God, however, this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution, but destined for disappointment, just as we are destined for oblivion, on a planet that will be consumed by fire before the sun grows dim and cold.

Apart from the fact that there are probably several billion theists who share none of this idiot's optimism or childlike belief in their super-specialness (undercut by his rhetorical service in a particularly un-Christian, greedheaded, war-mongering Administration), I have never considered familial obligation, charity for my friends or strangers, or a lack of criminal activity in a highly structured society to be a cruel joke. I may need legal guidance and even advice from my friends and family every once in a while, but I definitely don't need the self-interested interpretations of ancient texts from a fearmongering asshole in order to live.

We Dumb. Dumb As Hell.

Here, America. Play with these "dolls."

Just go ahead and give up already, professional educators:

A. Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, is: Definitely true (18); Probably true (35); Probably false (16); Definitely false (28); No opinion (3).

B. Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years, is: Definitely true (39); Probably true (27); Probably false (16); Definitely false (15); No opinion (3).

Leaving aside that only one in 6.67 Americans is willing to completely dismiss the idea of special human creation within the last 10,000 years* (a belief which would in my idea world get you institutionalized), there's another mathematical problem: according to my Microsoft Windows calculator, the definitely and probably trues added up to 119%; that is, 19% of people surveyed think that human beings probably evolved over millions of years and were created at the same time (an alternate poll, released on the 11th, is here).

Our God is an awesome, time-traveling, prankster God.

* Aren't there cave paintings several times older than that? What the holy hell is happening?

Why Are You Hitting Yourself? Huh?

When swords are outlawed, only televangelists will have swords.

I've been perusing the "On Faith" blog that's being put out by the Washington Post and Newsweek. Apart from three glowing tributes to the life of professionally bigoted dynamo Jerry Falwell, there's a lot of inside-baseball stuff concerning interdenominational fights, actualizing your inner potential through harnessing the Invisible Supernatural Financial Planner, and of course of a "Don't Blame God... HE Didn't Do It!" musing on the Virginia Tech massacre.

Of course, I agree with Pastor Rod Parsley, to the extent that agreeing with a money-grubbing poisoner of minds doesn't make me want to wash of the uncleanliness with a sponge dipped in battery acid. The Purple Unicorn of Triton didn't cause the Indonesian tsunami, the volcano goddess Pele doesn't cause a bunch of cruddy Tori Amos albums to get released, and Zoroaster didn't get your favorite TV show canceled. That last part was due to short-sighted television executives.

In fact, I think that blaming a non-existent Sky Fairy, like its cuddlier cousin "prayer," really does harm in terms of causing people to divert their energy away from actually creating a social safety net that treats rather than incarcerates or releases people with mental illness. Or, in modern parlance, "coddles sinful people":

After more than 30 years of ministry, I’ve learned that understanding situations like these is unfathomable without the knowledge that God created each of us with the freedom to choose His leading as well as the freedom to opt for our own path. Choosing a world view that excludes God and disregards the value of human life makes the unforgettable scenes from Virginia Tech possible.

Apart from being slightly off on the facts of the case, I think that including God and disregarding the value of life are not necessarily mutually exclusive, if an abortion bomber in Supermax and a gaggle of fundamentalist Saudi men with pilot training are any indication.

What we saw Monday morning is nothing less and nothing other than the result of one young man’s sin – his determination to do what he wanted to do, rather than what His Creator would have him do. It’s a choice each of us faces daily. The only difference is that Cho Seung Hui’s choice led to historically tragic consequences and the attention of a horrified world.

I... I just don't have the energy. Of course, you could have just read this rejoinder in the form of a Godman comic from Tom the Dancing Bug and saved yourself the Parsleyisms. And don't worry, that bizarro Newt Gingrich commencement lecture and Falwell eulogy is on my radar screen and may merit a comedic re-mix.
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UNRELATED BONUS: Some vinyl pics I snapped during my "enforced rest."

Click on the thumbnails for mostly crap!

Now Take Your Demented, Leg-Pressing Partner With You

Jerry Falwell, 1934-2007. Which part of this do you want to use for the headstone?

JERRY FALWELL: And I agree totally with you that the Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil and by far the worst results. And I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And with biological warfare available to these monsters -- the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the Arafats -- what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact -- if, in fact -- God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.

PAT ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system...

JERRY FALWELL: Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang "God Bless America" and said "let the ACLU be hanged". In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time - calling upon God.

PAT ROBERTSON: Amen.

Battered Humanity Syndrome

Oh no you di'nt, Gary Larson!

I was sorely tempted to break my micro-sabbatical in order to respond to this column concerning the relationship between atheism and memorial services entitled "Where Is Atheism When Bad Things Happen?", but then I noticed that (a) it was written by a despicable, liberty-hating cretin who has fallen from his status as conservative wonder-boy to a columnist for AOL and (b) the most effective rebuttal is substituting the term "Non-Existent Omniscient Deity" for "Atheism."

Also (stolen from some comment somewhere): if there are no atheists in foxholes, then does that mean that religion/the religious cause wars? That ought to produce some pointless comments! [Minor update: Well it didn't! Have I over-purged?]

UPDATE: Evidently this is a relatively elementary point, because even TBogg made it. I ask of you: would I have so obviously plagiarized something from a much more popular website, even down to the Larsonesque cartoon? Don't make me quote Had A Dad lyrics from Jane's Addiction!

No Milk Chocolate Today, Our Savior's Gone Away

Behold your new prophets! Lock up your lovely daughters! They're into something good!

I know that some of you are just salivating at the prospect of another 'Ax Da President' remix as he fumbles his way through another set of relatively easy questions about Operation: Serge Gainsbourg, Operation: Purge-atory, and Operation: Grecian Formula #22. However, I feel that I've reached the limits of what anal probing... er... fleshing out the subtext of the petulant Presidential idiocy during press conferences can teach us. If you're really jonesing for some medicine, just take a look at the last three or four entries in this category; they're all pretty much substantively the same, only the lame puns and comical misspellings change from post to post. If you want a substantive rundown of all of the stinky desperation exuded by the President, here's your post.

Instead, I'm going to continue to disrupt the dinner table by fleshing out some themes from this weekend's taxpayer-funded Bible study post, especially as it pertains to the incoherent set of metaphysical beliefs packing the head of our average American jackass. The Biblical literacy tests have already determined that most professed believers think that "I got mine, don't worry 'bout his" is one of the Ten Commandments, that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the names of Herman's Hermits, and that transubstantiation is when Jesus turns into milk chocolate and is shouted at by globby charlatans from the Catholic League.

Imposingly enough, the Newsweek article I'll be using is entitled "Poll: 90% Believe in God." As long as we're dealing with subjective, undefinable terms, might as well start at the top. Specifically:

-- Christians far outnumber members of any other faith in the country, with 82 percent of the poll’s respondents identifying themselves as such. Another 5 percent say they follow a non-Christian faith, such as Judaism or Islam. I wonder what happened to all the "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual" crowd? I guess they only exist as stereotypes for benefit of articles in the New York Times Magazine.

-- Nearly half (48 percent) of the public rejects the scientific theory of evolution; one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact. 73% of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view. And yet, we need more BIBLE STUDY elective classes in our public schools. Right-o!

More in the extended entry...

-- Although one in ten (10 percent) of Americans identify themselves as having "no religion," only six percent said they don’t believe in a God at all. Just 3 percent of the public self-identifies as atheist, suggesting that the term may carry some stigma. I think that a lot of people like picking the "agnostic" camp because it carries with it the idea that one doesn't like to affirmatively think about questions that are largely nonsense to begin with.

-- Nearly half (47 percent) of the respondents felt the country is more accepting of atheists today that it used to be and slightly more (49 percent) reported personally knowing an atheist. Man, this is funny. I can't wait for the "some of my best friends are atheists" card to evolve in the upcoming decades.

-- Six in ten (62 percent) registered voters say they would not vote for a candidate who is an atheist. Majorities of each major party — 78 percent of Repulicans and 60 percent of Democrats — rule out such an option. Just under half (45 percent) of registered independents would not vote for an atheist. Fine, we didn't want to participate in your crummy political process anyway, even if it means big money!

-- Still more than a third (36 percent) of Americans think the influence of organized religion on American politics has increased in recent years. But the public is still split over whether religion has too much (32 percent) or too little (31 percent) influence on American politics. And this is why we have the silly seasons on dumb hot-button issues... the least they could do is ask the "too little" crowd whether they think the churches have "too much" tax exemption.

-- In the poll, 68 percent of respondents said they believed someone could be moral and an atheist, compared to 26 percent who said it was not possible. Then why in the hell don't you want them running for office? Are the politicians where you live required to make honest blood sacrifices or recite some ancient Hebrew text that prevents us from being destroyed in a fiery hailstorm?

We live in a very strange country.

When Sunday Schools Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Sunday School

"St. James!" "The Vulgate of St. Jerome!"

Time Magazine, in its American version only, makes the case for teaching the Bible in public schools. The rest of the world gets to read about how the rich in Muslim spirit are being rewarded with the implosion of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Of course, they haven't really covered the attorney purge either, so let's give them credit for consistently not worrying our pretty little heads. Excerpts from the original article in italics, selected commentary to follow...

These new [constitutionally permitted] curriculums plus polls suggesting that over 60% of Americans favor secular teaching about the Bible suggest that a Miss Kendrick may soon be talking about Matthew in a school near you.

The beginning of the article talks about such an elective being taught in New Braunfels, just an hour down the road from Austin. One wonders, given the state of public education in Texas, what other religious electives are being given. Well, don't. We can barely get science books that include the discovery of DNA or history books that know how the Korean War ended.

[Advocates] argue that teaching the Bible in schools--as an object of study, not God's received word--is eminently constitutional. The Bible so pervades Western culture, it says, that it's hard to call anyone educated who hasn't at least given thought to its key passages.

I'm not entirely sure that anything outside of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament is particularly germane; what's left is probably the Thomas Jefferson conception of the New Testament, with the ethical teachings of Jesus minus the supernaturalism being at least a decent course. How could this sustain a whole semester's worth of material?

Marc Stern, general counsel for the American Jewish Congress, says, "It is beyond question that it is possible to teach a course about the Bible that is constitutional." For over a decade, he says, any legal challenges to school Bible courses have focused not on the general principle but on whether the course in question was sufficiently neutral in its approach.

I mean, they could easily do a rundown of all the religious texts the Bible has ripped off, perhaps talk about ethics generally going back to the Greeks (I don't think Plato was enthusiastically reciting a bunch of sadistic genocides, like the Old Testament does), or talk about shared teachings, maybe even as a way of enlightening children about how other people around the world live... well, who am I kidding?

[more lunacy in the extended entry...]

In 1995 a federal appeals court upheld the overturn of a death sentence in a Colorado kidnap-rape-murder case because jurors had inappropriately brought in extraneous material--Bibles--for an unsanctioned discussion of the Exodus verse "an eye for eye, tooth for tooth ... whoever ... kills a man shall be put to death." Who's most at fault here? The jurors, who perhaps hadn't noticed that in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus rejects the eye-for-an-eye rule, word for word, in favor of turning the other cheek?

So they should have let him go? What a ridiculous mishmash of worthless teachings when it comes to the practical running of an orderly society!

According to Religious Literacy, polls show that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the Bible holds the answers to "all or most of life's basic questions," but pollster George Gallup has dubbed us "a nation of biblical illiterates." Only half of U.S. adults know the title of even one Gospel. Most can't name the Bible's first book.

ALl the more reason to inherently distrust people who say that they're taking some sort of extralegal approach to human rights or civil liberties, or to expose most Americans as charlatans... not for schools to take up the duty of megachurches who are more interested in turning profits and influencing politics.

In a 1992 survey of English teachers to determine the top-10 required "book-length works" in high school English classes, plays by Shakespeare occupied three spots and the Bible none.

That's because it's largely unreadable, filled with bewildering anachronisms and cruelties, and a mish-mash of incoherent authors. The author of this article then tries to compare these two works of fiction, using as a tiebreaker the number of people each book/author has comforted. What, the ignoramuses who don't even know what it says? How does that work?

Evangelical pundit Chuck Colson favors Bible-literacy courses. "Would I prefer a more explicitly biblical Christian teaching?" he asks. "Of course. But you can't do that in public education. What you can do is introduce the Bible so that people are aware of its impact on people and in history and then let God speak through it as he will."

OK, the felon, uncloseted authoritarian, and pre-emptive war enthusiast wants it. Any more questions?

All such discussion, of course, assumes that the two sides of the culture wars are duking it out over impressionable young minds. Prothero rejects the premise. He says he has never seen a Bible-literacy course change anyone's faith one way or another.

Oh, the guy selling his cirriculum. Does Time just offer senior departmental writing gigs to every millionth subscriber or something?

In late 2005, Stetson unveiled The Bible and Its Influence, which was vetted by 40 religious and legal scholars, including Jews, Protestants and a Roman Catholic bishop.

Wow, Bible believers! I'm seriously getting a headache now.

A BASIC QUESTION: WHY TEACH THE BIBLE and not comparative religion? It may not be necessary to provide Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism with equal time, but it seems misguided to ignore faiths that millions of Americans practice each day.

Sure, being false religions, why WOULD they get equal time? Fortunately, he ends with a lengthy anecdote from the one high school he visited, and assures us that everything will be fine in the Constitutional neighborhood. He ends with...

And, oh yes, there should be one faith test. Faith in our country. Sure, there will be bumps along the way. But in the end, what is required in teaching about the Bible in our public schools is patriotism: a belief that we live in a nation that understands the wisdom of its Constitution clearly enough to allow the most important book in its history to remain vibrantly accessible for everyone.

The most important document in this nation's history is the Constitution, and it's only retrograde nostalgia-addicts who see Norman Rockwellesque one-room schoolhouses who are trying to impose this unnecessary solution that makes up for the gradual sceularization of America that churches are unable to deal with.

If I Wanted My Fingers Rapped, I'd Use Sister Mary Stigmata

You are such a disappointing Left. I prayed so hard for you!

I'll stop writing posts like this when I stop getting lectured for something I or my fellow travelers aren't doing. From now on, you can call it "the angry, apathetic agnostic reacts negatively to another Jesused-up Beltway insider who are whining for no particular reason because some unnamed people were mean to (a) their sacred beliefs and (b) their attempt to inject their sacred beliefs into the political realm for no good apparent reason." In fact, you can pretty much read everything I'm going to say here with this post.

First of all, there's the title for the group blog: God's Politics. This, of course, is about as meaningful to a fictitious omnipotent Sky Fairy as "The Second Division Welsh Football Team God Roots For," "God's Three Preferred Pizza Toppings," or "God's Favorite Third World Child Who Will Die In Poverty." However, I have nothing against the content itself: exhorting people of faith to catch the new Michael Apted movie about the ending of the slave trade in England, encouraging people to donate their time in a still-devastated New Orleans, explaining the importance of Lent using a bunch of nonsense terminology. It's all good. If a nun is at an anti-war or anti-death penalty protest, what do I care? If somebody finds an obscure passage in Thessalonians concerning progressive income taxation, fantastic. You see, I'm inclusive by my very nature, even of metaphysical gibberish.

Then comes Mr. Wallis, with all of the hallmarks of another simultaneously self-pitying and purging column against the "Secular Left." The deal he strikes with this construct (remember, I'm only the Left, I have no idea who the hell this is, although Daily Kos seems to be a temporary stand-in) is as follows:

How about if progressive religious folks, like me, make real sure that we never say, or even suggest, that values have to come from faith – and progressive secular folks, like you, never suggest that progressive values can't come from faith (and perhaps concede that, in fact, they often do).

I'm perfectly willing to abide by the first part of this deal, insofar as I'm sure that I've never seen a non-theist claim that progressive values can't come from faith. It may be crazy and unnecessary, but it's been proven on a daily basis. The parenthetical confuses me, though. Is there some progressive value that has its entire genesis and justification rooted in faith? If so, please enlighten me.

The rest of the article (and the comments) are consumed with his unwillingness to name the bigoted secularists on The Left who have turned him into some sort of 21st century supermartyr and have been losing elections for the Democrats... assuming one ignores the results from 2006 or learns actual lessons from their own shitty campaigns. But this is classic victimology and self-aggrandizement. Evidently every religious column-writer seems to see him- or herself as some sort of perfect stand-in for all left-of-center Christians, Jews, etc. If secularists think that the columnists themselves are disingenuous assholes, then The Left must hate religious people in general and enjoy losing national elections to reactionary millenialists!

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. You can read his twin columns here and here in order to pick your favorite thing to mock, as is your Phariseeical right! It may be difficult to top Hecate's comment to the second post (although it needed more quotation marks):

Wallis needs to perpetuate the notion that "some" un-named liberals hate religion or he won't get paid to "show" liberals how to "appeal" to "values voters."

Equal Opportunity Metaphysical Mockery

Channel your energy to create multiples of yourself!

I don't want to give everyone out there the impression that, which it comes to religion, the fundamentalists are the only bane of my existence. I also have a special contempt for New-Agey, fad-riding, BMW SUV-driving, mineral water-drinking, so-called spiritualists. To the extent this eclectic group of people in the luxury townhomes of America have a leader, it would have to be noted flim-flam artist Deepak Chopra*.

Actually, I have nothing to say about him and his bewildering stream of gobbedly-gook that is inexplicably published on a regular basis in the Huffington Post. I hereby delegate that particular function to Dr. PZ Myers. However, I did see a fantastic advertisement in our free weekly paper for one of his seminars** entitled World Wellness Weekend at the Austin Convention Center. Fools and their money can be parted to the tune of $35-55 at the door, nearly ten times the cost of the record convention. At least you can get something useful their, like dust sleeves or a Leo Kottke live double-disc.

The featured speakers sound like their topics have been authored by people who are specifically trying to make fun of them: T. Harv Eker (is this an anagram? Vat Reekhr?) tells us about "The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind." Janet Atwood grants us admission to "The Passion Test." David Koons, in bitter competition with Mr. Eker, has something entitled "Let Your Millionaire Out." My advice to anybody holding a millionaire hostage: this totally defeats the goal of getting a fat ransom payment. Dr. Robert Tennyson Stevens (I swear I'm not making these names up) chats about "Mastery Systems." If you can actually summarize what this is using this page as reference material, I'll give you a shiny quarter***.

All I know is that some honkey on a sitar is probably going to be involved, so I'm going to take a pass on this year's gathering.

*Shut up! We atheists get tagged with Stalin all the time, you get Chopra!
**I'm not sure if he organizes them or just lends his name to it, much like Krusty the Klown does for children's products and ladies' mustache-trimmers.
***You'll get nothing and like it!

If You Want a Friend in This Business, Get An Atheist Dog

It's faith! Hooooray faith!

There's been a lot of virtual ink spilled over the last several days from a throw-away line by GOP Presidential candidate and crazy, plate-wielding seraphim worshipper Mitt Romney: "We need to have a person of faith lead our country." As it stands, however, this worthless one-liner was delivered as his weird theological beliefs were being attacked by hecklers wielding their own fundamentalist dogma. A few points:

1. Of course, the option of choosing a faithless person in this Presidential cycle is not available. Everybody has or will latch on to some phony-baloney belief system to cater to the masses, letting them know that their decisions are informed by secret wisdom beyond the confused mishmash of wonky policy choices they've hashed out in focus groups.

2. As it stands, atheists are less popular as a hypothetical Presidential choice than adulterous douchebags who discard wives like changes of clothing, the really old, and EVEN HOMOSEXUALS. It's a good thing they didn't through cannibals or people who have seen all four Scary Movies, or I might have gotten really depressed.

2a. We also know, deep in our heart of hearts, that "person of faith" as used in a Presidential campaign does not really mean a Muslim, Buddhist, Shinto, Hindu, Zoroastrian, etc. unless they are specifically mentioned.

3. It hardly needs to be pointed out that having people of faith in the White House does not strongly correlate to national success in domestic or foreign policy, given the fact that we've had a committed Skull and Bones Baal-worshiper in the Oval Office for the past six years.

4. Were any of y'all planning of voting for Romney anyway? And, on the Democratic side, I can't pretend to really muster outrage when whatever candidate mouths the empty platitudes to peel off a few soft-headed independents in our miserable, two-party system. As long as they leave that bizarro genocidal shit in the Old Testament alone and maybe focus on helping the meek ("I'm glad they're getting something, they have a hell of a time."), then fine, blather on about your invisible friend and all the good things he pretends to do all you want.

After all, being despised builds character, my faithless droogies!

More "Sky Fairies" Per Paragraph Than Legally Allowable

In solidarity with a recently dispossessed atheist (swarm of generally unfriendly coverage detailed here), I offer up a few examples of why I am uncivil and unfit for popular consumption by poring over my religion archives for pithy soundbites generated over these past three years.

As I once prophesied back in 2006: "I don't really give a flying fuck whether the statements of me and my blasphemous ilk are considered drags on the Democrats who are desperately seeking to peel off people who want to deny emergency contraception to woman or who are looking to set up tax-free child-beating wilderness camps. Master Shake was not put on this Earth to listen to meat, and I was not put on this Earth to help a floundering political party that can't make significant inroads even when the opposition party has fucked up in every conceivable way." And now, for the rest of the hits...

-- The good news is that many world religions have managed to flourish without my respect for their core metaphysical teachings, and will probably continue to do so (the better news is that, in America, the whining is generally confined to privileged New Agers and crypto-Protestants attending megachurches). And don't get me wrong: I can pretend to respect the hell out of any unverifiable claim about an imaginary concept if the consequences for not respecting it are dire enough.

-- According to some crazy lady who probably prays to Jesus to unclog the drain (Peggy Noonan writing about the tsunami), America mocked God once too often with our epidemic of gay couples who say "Happy Holidays" and who abort their cloned babies. Meaning that the Sky Fairy in her mind is the equivalent of Begbie from Trainspotting, throwing his divine empty pint of lager over the balcony to come crashing down on a Sri Lankan girl's head.

-- (Katie Holmes' conversion to Scientology) It strains the limits of credulity to think that somebody who formerly maintained who formerly believed in the actual transformation of bread into the physical body of Christ when placed in one's mouth could make the leap into the delusion that each and every human on Earth is inhabited by thousands of Body Thetans (the souls of an ancient alien genocide by the galactic ruler Xenu).

-- Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. With smooth, refreshing Rockstar Energy Drink, now supplemented with caffeine, echinacea, St. John's Wort, crystal meth, expertimental Human Growth Hormone from a secret Russian laboratory, lamb's blood, neutralized Ebola virus, and Chemical X. Side effects may include rectal bleeding and instant death.

-- The scientifically sound theory of Divine Sky Fairy Intervention postulates that failure to invoke the name of God in the meaningless morning rituals of schoolchildren will, over time, cause God to become bored and disinterested with the offending country. This causes, ipso facto, the nullification of the Holy Protection Racket, allowing flaming meteorites infested with alien bacteria, hurricanes, and Journey reunion concerts to afflict the land.

-- I'm talking about a corrupt organization full of hypocritical homophobes, and not for the civil rights of individual American Catholics to be stripped because of the dictates of some musty text detailing the insane exploits of a bipolar Old Testament God.

-- Colorado Catholics who have ever conspired with a politician to support abortion rights, gay marriage, stem cell research, or death with dignity must do the right thing and deny themselves communion. Communion, of course, is a necessary function of the One True Church in acting as the primary agent for administering the eternal rewards of salvation on behalf of an invisible, red-robed sky fairy.

-- The entire organization [the Catholic Church] is like the world's largest Ponzi scheme, exchanging purported alleviation of the fear of death for cash and unblinking fealty. Of course, the next layer of the pyramid is the crapload of kids you're supposed to have, filling the bloody world up with bloody people you can't afford to bloody feed.

-- Sorry to break it to you, godless Democrat heathens, but the Bible is a wholly owned trademark and intellectual property of the Republican National Committee, and as such, may not be re-broadcast, re-transmitted or otherwise used without the express written permission of a Council of Hooded Elders.

-- (Katrina Day of Prayer) To honor the memory of those who lost their lives, to provide comfort and strength to the families of the victims, and to help ease the burden of the survivors, I call upon all Americans to pray to Almighty God to stop fucking destroying things. I mean, how much longer are we gong to make excuses for this guy? 'I'm clumsy and I fell down the stairs' doesn't really cut it these days, does it?

-- In the Gospels, Jesus: (1) Touched lepers and literally cured them, but only of their crippling depression (2) Touched lepers in an inappropriate manner, which they demonstrated on leprous little dolls (3) Touched lepers and said "grrrrody!" (4) Encouraged the provincial Roman government to stop subsidizing leprosy-causing behavior in his libertarian magazine.

-- Mary: (1) Was a virgin chosen by God for her child-bearing Nazarene hips. (2) Was made pregnant with Jesus by a Roman soldier, played by a sociopathic Sean Penn. (3) Conceived Jesus with Joseph out of wedlock at a drive-in stoning. (4) Mary, why ya buggin'?

-- Would you marry a non-Muslim? (1) Are we talking Claudia Schiffer? (2) OK, are we at least talking Jami Gertz? (3) It doesn’t matter to me, nobody seems to like Muslim Star Trek geeks. (4) It's quite likely I will marry the first fine piece of ankle that comes along.

-- How often do you pray? (1) Well, you got to pray, each and e-ver-y day. (2) Five times daily, plus the bonus fantasy football team prayer. Donovan McNabb, peace be upon him, please throw for 3 TDs. (3) I generally don't pray. Wait, did I just say that out loud? (4) I talk to God often. That's why I got fired from Subway.

-- Crosses are a powerful symbol that show that you mean religious business, i.e. you require acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ as the exclusive personal savior and redeemer. Give your cartoon Calvin truck decal something to kneel before!

-- I also love the idea of papal infallibility, especially when a college of cardinals who would rather shuffle pedophile priests to progressive more backwater locations, cover that shit up, and make hush-hush payouts confer this most miraculous of characteristics upon one of their own.

-- Judges 16:1 "Then went Samson to Gaza, and saw there an harlot, and went in unto her." I think that Marvin Gaye, a preacher's son himself, must have given this passage a brief nod with the unreleased demo "Let's Get It Up On In Unto You."

Don't worry, I'm sure we'll have an agnostic or atheist candidate for national office any time soon, and then it's $$$$$ for me.

I'm Only Humoring The Talk Show Host, People

A graphic representation of the activation of the evangelical base.

Thanks to Mustang Bobby from Bark Bark Woof Woof for at least getting me to think about some of the crazy rhetoric many 2008 GOP Presidential candidates will have to use in order to appeal to the loonies in the primaries. I don't know what the field is going to look like at this point, but I'm fairly sure that there's only one pro-choice candidate (Guiliani); the others (Brownback, Romney, McCain, Huckabee, Santorum(?)) will have to go pretty far in getting the base to believe that they are the prophesied cultural messiah alluded to in The Book of Revelation.

However, if you were to hear one of these chuckleheads on a semi-respectable Sunday morning political talk show, you'd think that they were just good ol' fashioned church picnic-attendin', humble, Jesus-lovin', super-tolerant paragons of American inclusiveness. Putting aside the theological arguments as to whether the New Testament Jesus would encourage tax breaks for multinational oil companies in lieu of helping to provide health insurance for sick children (I think he's leaning "yes"), the amount of amateurish code used by one of these mouthbreather wranglers is really laughable. Take, for instance, the following excerpts from Arkansas Governor Huckabee's Meet the Press:

-----------------
MR. RUSSERT: I want to ask you a couple things that you said earlier in your political career... There's this: “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.” Would you, as president, consider America a Christian nation and try to lead it as—into a situation as being a more Christian nation?

GOV. HUCKABEE: I think it’s dangerous to say that we are a nation that ought to be pushed into a Christian faith by its leaders. However, I make no apology for my faith. My faith explains me. It means that I believe that we’re all frail, it means that we’re all fragile, that all of us have faults, none of us are perfect, that all of us need redemption. We are a nation of faith. It doesn’t necessarily have to be mine. But we are a nation that believes that faith is an important part of describing who we are, and our generosity, and our sense of optimism and hope. That does describe me.

TRANSLATION: Majority rules, Tim. Maybe the Hindus are more tolerant of leaders who don't pander to them constantly, using passages from the Bhagavad Vita to justify government pre-screening of objectionable cinema, but there are no elephants or Festivals of Light in Little Rock.
---------------------

A few more excerpts, with appropriate de-coding, in the extended entry...

---------------------------
MR. RUSSERT: But when you say...

GOV. HUCKABEE: I’m appalled, Tim, when someone says, “Tell me about your faith,” and they say, “Oh, my faith doesn’t influence my public policy.” Because when someone says that, it’s as if they’re saying, “My faith isn’t significant, it’s not authentic, it’s not so consequential that it affects me.” Well, truthfully my faith does affect me. But it doesn’t make me think I’m better than someone, it makes me know that I’m not as good as I really need to be.

TRANSLATION: Religion is a lot like performing as Borat or Ali G. If you only take it half-way and break character, you lose the audience. As for its specific influence on my policy, let's just say that it's one of those eternal mysteries so I don't have to answer that question.
----------------------------
MR. RUSSERT: But when you say “take this nation back for Christ,” what does that say to Jews, Muslims, agnostics, atheists? What...

GOV. HUCKABEE: Well, I think I—I’d probably phrase it a little differently today. But I don’t want to make people think that I’m going to replace the Capitol dome with a steeple or change the legislative sessions for prayer meetings. What it does mean is that people of faith do need to exercise their sense of responsibility toward education, toward health, toward the environment. All of those issues, for me, are driven by my sense that this is a wonderful world that God’s made, we’re responsible for taking care of it. We’re responsible for being responsible managers and stewards of it. I think that’s what faith ought to do in our lives if we’re in public service.

TRANSLATION: I'd phrase it a little differently if I knew that any of those unpleasant people were actually attending one of my combination tent revival/political fundraiser. But if you ask me one more question about my excluding intolerance, I'll accuse you of being intolerant of the intolerant voices in my head.
------------------------------------------------------
MR. RUSSERT: South Dakota had some proposed legislation to outlaw all abortion except saving the life of a mother, no exceptions for rape or incest. You said you’d sign that. Why?

GOV. HUCKABEE: Well, I always am going to err on the side of life, Tim. I believe life is precious. But I think the issue for many of us who are in the pro-life camp—and I have been since, you know, I was a teenager. This is not something that I’ve been all over the board on, it’s consistent. It’s because of my view that God is the creator and instigator of life. But I think those of us in the pro-life movement, we have to do also some growing and expanding. We have to remind people that life, that we believe it begins at conception. It doesn’t end at birth. And if we’re really pro-life we have to be concerned about more than just the gestation period. As a pro-life person, as a governor, look at my record. Yes, did we pass pro-life legislation? We did. But we also did things that improved the environmental quality and the conservation issues that would affect a child’s air and water. We also made sure that he had a better education, that access to affordable health care would be better. So I think that real pro-life people need to be concerned about affordable housing, we need to be concerned about safe neighborhoods, access to a college education. That, for me, is what pro-life has to mean.

TRANSLATION: Well, there's no way I can nuance my way out of the first part, so I'll cop to it. Of course, in the entirely foreseeable instance that my corporate campaign contributors demand that I drop advocacy of any of my post-birth pro-life initiatives, I will do so immediately and without hesitation.
--------------------
MR. RUSSERT: But if you outlawed abortion, what would happen to the doctor who performed an abortion? What, what would happen to the woman who had an abortion?

GOV. HUCKABEE: Well, I think the question is, would I sign the bill in South Dakota? Do I think it’s the best only bill that ever could be signed? The question still comes back to this is a debate that’s been so divisive, and what we really need to be doing is having the discussion center around how can we create a culture where people value and celebrate life. The fundamental difference between the United States and our enemies in terror is that, regardless of whether one is considered pro-life or pro-choice, the one thing that—that is unique to America, or certainly characteristic of America, is that we celebrate life. We believe in it; we cherish it. We may have different definitions of it, what it means and how extensive we want to protect it. But the enemy on the other hand celebrates death. That’s where we need to bring this debate, is to remind ourselves that we still are a nation that elevates the concept that life is precious and important. And I hope that we can center on those topics rather than on the, the fine points that sometimes separate and divide.

TRANSLATION: I would imprison the doctors, because they're not a big enough lobby. However, I would leave the mothers alone, because they're a larger voting bloc and I don't really believe my own rhetoric.
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MR. RUSSERT: But, as president, you would seek to ban abortion.

GOV. HUCKABEE: I would seek always to promote the view that life is precious and should be protected. Would I be able to singularly do that? Of course not. But I think it has to be won on, on a battlefield of one heart at a time rather than pieces of legislation at a time.

TRANSLATION: Yes.
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MR. RUSSERT: You said this to the Des Moines Register: “Let’s face it. In our lifetimes, we’ve seen our country go from ‘Leave it to Beaver’ to ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ from Barney Fife to Barney Frank.” Why, why include Barney Frank, a gay congressman, in that reference?

GOV. HUCKABEE: I think it was a matter of a rhetorical device to talk about the different cultural shift that we have, and it wasn’t any particular attempt to be derisive of him. But, but there has been a huge cultural shift in this country, Tim. And I think that’s why many Americans are seeking leadership that has a positive and optimistic spirit, that wants to take this nation—what I call vertical politics rather than horizontal.

TRANSLATION: Because, when it really comes down to it, nobody likes fags kissing, Tim... or, for that matter, child molesters like Floyd the Barber. Props to Dick Armey for that "Barney Fag" so-called slip of the tongue. And I'm sorry about that double entendre in my actual answer.
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MR. RUSSERT: But some would suggest by including Barny Frank in that reference you are tearing a gay man down. You’re against gay marriage, you’re against gay civil unions. Is—do you have a problem with gay people?

GOV. HUCKABEE: No. I have a problem with changing institutions that have served us. And I, I think I would rather characterize not what I’m against, but what I’m for. Before we change the definition of marriage to mean something different, I think our real focus ought to be on trying to strengthen heterosexual marriages because half of them are ending in divorce. That’s a real problem in this country. There are a lot of kids who are growing up in a very, very confused and conflicted world because—not because we have same-sex marriage, but because we’re seeing a real failure in the tradition heterosexual marriage. That’s where our focus needs to be. Because if we want to end poverty, get a kid through high school, let him grow up in a stable, two-parent home and make sure that that child doesn’t have a child before he’s 21 and has a full-time job. That’s a 93 percent chance that child will never grow up in a single day of poverty if those are the criteria.

TRANSLATION: Yes I do, Tim, and I think you do to. Nobody likes being fondled by a guy against their will... am I right?
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MR. RUSSERT: Should gay couples be allowed to adopt children?

GOV. HUCKABEE: That’s a question that, that I think, again, goes back to the heart of what’s best for the child. Unfortunately, so much of this argument has been framed about what, what the same-sex couple wants. But the real question needs to be child-focused, not couple-focused. And, Tim, that’s true for whether the couple is same-sex or whether they’re heterosexual. In our state, as in most, the criteria for adoption is always what’s in the best interest of the child. That ought to be what’s front and center.

TRANSLATION: God knows I'd try to if I had the power, Tim. But there's just enough people who seem to care more about the welfare children than some obscure Old Testament passage about buggery to get me to take action.
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MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that you’re born gay or you choose to be gay?

GOV. HUCKABEE: I don’t honestly know. I really don’t. I think there are—there are people who would argue vociferously on both sides of that. But I think that the point is, people are, are who they want to be, and we should respect them for that. But when they want to change the institutions that’ve governed our society for all the years of recorded human history, then that’s a serious change of, of culture that we, we don’t just make readily or, or hurriedly. It has to be done with some, some deep thought.

TRANSLATION: Why would God genetically do that to us, Tim? It doesn't make any sense!

"Stop Being So Happy! It's Not Normal!"

A rare early painting featuring young Mitt Romney (center)

Is American ready for a Mormon President? Wow, what an exciting topic! Personally, I don't think that anybody with such a jacked-up first name "Matt?" "No, Mitt." "Milt?" "No, dammit! MITT!!" could be elected to such a high office, much less make it through the grueling Republican primary season, where one is beset by the craziest of the provincial culture warriors. Of course, professed atheists, who neither believe in eternal hellfire for 90% of the world's population nor the existence of posthumous harem-planets, will get elected right around the 15th of Never. For shit's sake, there's a Muslim in the House of Representatives! Errr... I mean... congratulations to Mr. Ellison.

But it's always interesting to see the spectacle of people with plainly absurd supernatural delusions rag on the plainly absurd supernatural delusions of a slightly less popular religion while eschewing the most elemental basics of self-recognition. Actually, all you have to do is go to this Scientology v. Catholicism post and substitute the craziest-sounding theological aspects of Evangelical Protestantism vs. Hardcore Mormonism. As for why I personally wouldn't vote for the relentlessly gay-baiting, hypocritical asshole (as if there was some question), you can read this post.

UPDATE: More on the underlying point of competing kids' stories with this post at Pharyngula, including some good points about leprechauns and their adherents. If you're really interested in Governor Romney's plan to become electoral roadkill by pandering to people who think he is going to hell, check here.

No Regard! No Regard, I Tells Ya!

CONVERT!

I've previously explored the subject of whether somebody's religious beliefs are inherently entitled to respect; it was necessitated after some backlash from my introduction of the viral "Sky Fairy = God" meme in late 2004. I tried a legalistic approach recently, asking why it was that voluntary religious belief should be in the same category as sex or race in terms of protection against discrimination. In other words, if you're in an at-will state, an employer could fire you for (the unspoken reason of) your believing in predestination just as easily as he/she could shitcan you for picking the Lakers over the Clippers as the NBA team to root for. Of course, these abstract and inflammatory ideas of mine are always immediately tested by reality. And then I turn into a liberal simp and root for the underdog.

I realize that there is the tendency for a disproportionate amount of respect to be ladled on exotic (i.e. non-Christian) religions. While I believe that a Sikh is eventually going to be entitled to more protection against discrimination in America because of the ethnic/country of origin components, the traditions behind or strangeness of the religion itself does not accord it some sort of magical immunity from critical thinking. In other words, the tradition of Divine Name recountenance makes precious little sense to me, but the fine tradition of sharing and rights-based protection of all creatures is a fine addition to any society. In fact, I wish that many Christians and quasi-unaffiliated types I know would convert to Sikhism and become more peaceful, charitable, and gender equity-minded. Unfortunately, they waited too long to market that stuff in America; now Republican Jesus is just alright by most people, even if they don't attend church or give him much thought or follow his teachings.

The good news is that many world religions have managed to flourish without my respect for their core metaphysical teachings, and will probably continue to do so (the better news is that, in America, the whining is generally confined to privileged New Agers and megachurch-attending crypto-Protestants). And don't get me wrong: I can pretend to respect the hell out of any unverifiable claim about an imaginary concept if the consequences for not respecting it are dire enough. Unfortunately, that just speaks to the popularity of brutish religions, even if thinly veneered in some sort of phony love-message.

Just Wait Until He Kills Voltron

"A cartoon version of the life of Pope John Paul II, telling the story of his life and death in animated form, is to be released on DVD by the Vatican... The story is narrated by two white doves and animated versions of his personal diary and fountain pen." Fortunately, the inside spies at the HFPST advance episode acquisition team have managed to snag episode summaries for the first four shows...

1. 2.
3. 4.

Episode 1: "School Daze." Young Karol Wojtyła finds himself at seminary with a moody Latvian student who bears several disfiguring birthmarks. During the annual Sadie Hawkins Dance, an elaborate prank is played on the ugly student to make him Queen of the Winter Carnival, only to humiliate him with a village pig. The student hides his face under a throw rug and... I don't know... gets bitten by a snake to become Cobra Commander.

Episode 2: "Thousands of Years Ago..." The inner workings of the Vatican selection process are revealed as he is thrown into a battle ring with Cardinal Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past to determine who the next pope will be. He is forced to listen to boring, pointless stories that go nowhere before short-wiring the Cardinal C.G.C.P.'s circuitry with a good old-fashioned logical paradox, as the Catholic Church has about 12 million of them.

Episode 3: "A Sperm in the Hand..." Ratings-hungry sex doctor Simon Bar Sinister plans a nefarious plan where he is going to fly a zeppelin full of condoms over developing countries. Further details are sketchy, but I'm told that some Fantastic Voyage-style minituarization is going to take place.

Episode 4: "I Pity The Pope." The Pope is dismayed when Mr. T., after lecturing several children on his animated show about the importance of drinking one's milk after ceasing their jibber-jabber, goes into a lengthy harangue about how only crazy-ass fools like Murdoch would believe in something like literal transsubstantiation or the infallibility of church officials. The Pope then blots out the sun, the source of Mr. T.'s power, until he relents and kisses his ring in contrition. The two doves take a shit on his shiniest medallion as a reminder that JP2 ain't nothin' to fuck wit.

The Good News Manifesto

It's Sunday, so you get some preachin':

1. Who cares whether somebody's Unitarian? They might as well tell me that they prefer shopping at the outlet mall in San Marcos over the newly opened one (soon with IKEA!) in Round Rock. Or, better yet, that they're taking a remedial macrame course down at the community college.

1a. I don't like this "God is everywhere and everyone is right" crap; it makes me very nervous and paranoid.

2. I don't think that I'm going to grant somebody's Muslim beliefs any more respect than I do the practitioners of any other monotheistic religion, or polytheistic religion, or even some of those weird little pantheistic religions. I mean, I'm not going to go out of my way to disrespect any individual person, but I've got a whole bag of "that's crazy."

2a. I never feel constrained as a privileged white male from dropping a "that's crazy" on the prevailing wisdom in a Third World country so long as the practice derives not from local custom (let's face it, our ceremonial garb and traditions in this country are bland as shit), but rather the invisible commands written down by somebody hundreds of years ago as a means of social control. Mutilating little girls to satisfy the God of the Forest, denying condoms to disease-sensitive populations to please Jesus, or covering women in canopies because some 8th century Muslim scholar couldn't get any isn't going to fly on this lo-traffic blog.

2b. How come there are never any duotheistic religions? At least ones that I care about?

3. There must be some religion out there whose Sky Fairy considers the absence homosexual activity an abomination (what about those Spartans?). I wholeheartedly encourage a cult to set up their own town next to somewhere in West Virginia and do battle with the snake-handlers.

4. I don't really give a flying fuck whether the statements of me and my blasphemous ilk are considered drags on the Democrats who are desperately seeking to peel off people who want to deny emergency contraception to woman or who are looking to set up tax-free child-beating wilderness camps. Master Shake was not put on this Earth to listen to meat, and I was not put on this Earth to help a floundering political party that can't make significant inroads even when the opposition party has fucked up in every conceivable way.

5. But keep my unequivocal anti-religion ravings a secret! They still think I'm cementing an alliance with the Islamofascists!

Well, they can always have fun in their taxpayer-funded anarchy-discrimination zones while reading the brilliant musings of a lesser Baldwin brother.

Science is For Hellbound Poindexters

Some stirring words from somebody who has a billion followers:

Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday warned modern societies not to let faith in science and technology make them deaf to God's message, and suggested that Asia and Africa could teach the wealthier West something about faith... "People in Asia and Africa admire our scientific and technical progress, but at the same time they are frightened by a form of rationality which totally excludes God from man's vision, as if this were the highest form of reason."

By all means, let us not put our faith in science:

The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by AIDS not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk. The church is making the claims across four continents despite a widespread scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to HIV. A senior Vatican spokesman backs the claims about permeable condoms, despite assurances by the World Health Organisation that they are untrue.

Leading to this:

Sub-Saharan Africa is more heavily affected by HIV and AIDS than any other region of the world. An estimated 24.5 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2005 and approximately 2.7 million new infections occurred during that year. In just the past year the epidemic has claimed the lives of an estimated 2 million people in this region. More than twelve million children have been orphaned by AIDS.

What does it profiteth a man to acquire a simple sheath developed by secularists to protect against the transmission of a disease that produces painful death and region-wide destabilization, but to lose his soul?

People Who Think Like Me Get Better Coverage

Salon is continuing with its series of interviews with people on the subjects of religion (or irreligion), science, and faith by talking to Michael Shermer, a professional skeptic and somebody whose worldview is much closer to mine. As with the last interview with Dr. Frances Collins, I'm removing anything remotely scientific or biological from my discussion, and keeping the excerpts dealing more with the more irrational aspects of organized human thinking (my limited comments are italicized at the end of each Q/A pair):

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(1) Q: Do you think the impulse to believe in God is the same as believing in astrology?

Yes, it's a similar foundation of magical superstitious thinking. And our need to be spiritual takes all forms. Given that traits vary in populations, it's natural that some people will gravitate toward New Age spiritualism and others toward conservative Christianity. Even secularists believe in all kinds of transcendent things, such as "mind." This is the Deepak Chopra school. He says, I don't believe that Christian conservative stuff, but the universe is intelligent, it's alive, it knows we're here. What? You're goofier than the Christians!

I'm semi-convinced that the story of human history and trends is based on flawed argument from authority. I propose using the Panhandling Guy Spouting Nonsense Test: if you heard somebody like that say what Dr. Chopra does, would you be inclined to believe it on its merits?
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(2) Q: Do you call yourself an atheist?

A: I prefer not to use the term. Although I guess I am an atheist. I just don't believe in God. I've always liked Thomas Huxley's term, "agnostic," by which he meant it's an unknowable, insoluble problem from a scientific point of view. By my personality, I'm comfortable with not having the answer to everything. I'm perfectly happy going through my day, thinking, I really wish I knew the answer to that but I don't. I have a very high tolerance for ambiguity. Most people get cognitively dissonant about having uncertainties and need to close that loop and have an answer.

As an apathetic agnostic, I bristle at the term atheist because it tells me that I've taken a stand on a question I don't think has any meaning or should be asked by rational people to begin with.
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(3) [excerpt from longer answer that veers into Collins' interview] So, OK, Francis, what else have you got? The virgin birth? I mean, come on. The resurrection? Now we're talking about mythic events, we're not talking about science. What he's doing is rehashing old theological arguments that have been hashed out by evangelicals for a long time. The bit [from C.S. Lewis] that Jesus can't have been a liar or a lunatic and so therefore he's the Lord? That's not science, that's creating straw men you can knock down to leave the one standing you already believe in. It's an example of the hindsight bias we're all susceptible to. We've already made a decision and then we go back and justify it. Scientists like Collins are just particularly good at it.

See point #1 again. I suppose it's why we trust Michael Jordan's Vlasic pickle endorsement, surely the man who lit up Craig Ehlo to win that playoff game must know something about the dilling process and vinegar quality.
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(4) Q: What's your best answer for why there is no God?

A: ...On the other side, the best evidence that there probably isn't a God is that belief in God is so deeply culturally embedded. When you study world religions, it's obvious that, throughout time, all of these different people are making up their own stories about God. If you lived 1,000 years ago, hardly anybody would be a Christian. If you were born in India, you'd likely be a Hindu... Christians today might say, I don't believe in Zeus, that was a silly superstition. Yet for many people that was a real god. So it turns out there are 10,000 gods and yet only one right one. That means we're all atheists on 9,999 gods. The only difference between me and the believers is I'm an atheist on one more god.

Obviously there is more to that question, because the believer in a closed feedback loop can easily get away from that last question, famously articulated by... I don't know... was it Bertrand Russell? However, I do believe in the Greek gods more, because they divinely inspired Ray Harryhausen to animate much of Clash of the Titans
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[A few more clips are below the fold...]
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(5) Intelligent design boosters say that if life only develops by random chance, as Darwinists say, then we're living meaningless lives.

Right, that's the moral meme. But they're confusing human meaning with natural meaning. There is no natural meaning in the universe. Nobody, Christian or otherwise, would look at a star and go, What's the meaning of that? It doesn't mean anything. It's a bunch of atoms...

In the end, you don't need a top-down entity to give life meaning. If anything, if nobody is out there, it is much more important to find meaning ourselves. Instead of this world being a mere staging for the next world of eternity -- meaning it doesn't really matter what we do now -- it's better to realize there is no eternity, that this is it. In that case, we better be careful what we do, make our choices consciously, treat people kindly and be moral because this life is what really counts.

I just thought I'd leave this in place. After all, who can talk about meaning in a world that produces the kind of Top 40 hits this one does?
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(6) Are you trying to talk people out of their faith by showing them the science?

No, just the opposite. First of all, I don't think you can talk people out of their faith. It's an utter waste of time. I learned that from Darwin himself. He said he learned early in life to stay out of those kinds of public debates. The only thing you can do is promote good science.

I think that the role of the apathetic agnostic, like Shermer, is fundamentally a little bit passive-aggresive. We all have to be careful of the public/private divide; some are just more sensitive and a little overbearing on where that line is drawn.
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(7) Why do you think scientists who have studied anthropology and science believe in God?

Because they believe for non-smart reasons. Smart people believe weird things because they're better at rationalizing the beliefs they arrived at for emotional, psychological or personal reasons. The No. 1 predictors of anybody's religious, political or social attitudes are those of their parents and the home where they were raised.

This also gets back to the point of admiring the non-scientific pronouncements of scientists, or the non-acting pronouncements of one of the Baldwin brothers, or (especially) the religious or moral pronouncements of politicians.
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(8) What do you believe in?

I believe in the indomitable human spirit and the amazing capacity we have for understanding the world; for love, joy and happiness. Science not only does not take away any of those things, it adds to the sum of human knowledge. When I look through my little telescope in my backyard at the planets, moon or Andromeda galaxy that is 2.9 million light-years away, I can enjoy the beauty of the night sky and appreciate it on an emotional level. Then I can think that the photons of light that are landing on my retina left 2.9 million years ago, when we were just barely bipedal hominids in Africa, and are just now arriving tonight. Boy, that's just awe-inspiring.

Well, maybe I'm a little more immune to awe than I should be, but it's still a nice sentiment.