Karma
I severely injured a squirrel the other day while playing disc golf. I think I hit the little fucker with my driver and broke his leg. I decided at the time that he probably fell out of a tree, but in retrospect, the coincidence is just to much to accept. I am now reconciling it by saying that it was the same injury my cat had a few years back, and he healed up just fine. So old squirrely will recover 100% in my mind.
I ran over a squirrel 11 years ago, and most likely killed it. At the time, I felt that I made amends by rocking out to”The Divided Sky” on my way to work at Napoli’s. (I used to smoke a ton of pot) But this time I am hoping that actually admitting to it, anonymously on a blog, will serve as the karmic balance I need.
Old white man changes mind, billion-baby fire extinguished
Limbo doesn’t exist anymore. The Pope has decided that babies of Hindu parents who died of dyssentery at age 4 days will no longer be subjected to the eternal hellfires of damnation. (Isn’t that God’s decision?) When I was a kid, my mom stopped sending me and my brother to bible school at my neighbor’s house because she believed that. Score: Mom 1, Psycho Baptist-lady 0.
Limbo wasn’t hell, exactly, but it wasn’t heaven either. It was the place where you went when your only sin was not being Catholic. You gain a tremendous competitive advantage on spots in heaven by being Catholic, you see. As long as you eat a little wafer once a week, you can rape as many little boys as you want. But be born in a third world country and die of starvation after 2 weeks? Forget it, Brownie.
That’s all changed now. Oh you can still rape little boys and St. Peter will welcome you with open arms (have some wine with that cracker!), but having Muslim parents is no longer a one-way ticket to the Lair of Beelzebub. I wonder how millions of dead and dying Christian fundamentalists feel about this? “Oh great, I’ll be sitting up there in heaven, walking down the streets of gold, and a bunch of little towelheads will be crawling all over the place? I didn’t sign up for that! You call this paradise?”
Yes the line just got a little more blurry. The Catholic Church, raping and repressing for centuries, has admitted a flaw in it’s knee-jerk dogmatism. I wonder how Catholics feel about that? How can the opinion of one guy trump eons of practice, or more directly, what an individual thinks? Are people that easily swayed? Are millions of Catholics no longer going to scour the globe, looking for little heathen babies to baptize? This could be a huge development for missionaries…your work just became a lot less relevant. And what about 281 Popes before old Benny? Were they all just plain wrong? What does that say for the credentials of the current occupant of the Vatican?
Will anyone who believes in the crap spewing from the mouths of world religious leaders take a second to weigh the implications of this kind of pronouncement? Clearly God has not really been holding people like Galileo and Ahmed bin-Raziz Muhammed Jihad al-Ramadan (aged 2 days) in limbo/purgatory/hell until the fallacy that is the church recognizes it’s own error; those people have bene in heaven all this time. Will anyone consider that maybe the church is wrong on a lot of other things too? Will anyone stop to re-evaluate their positions in life? Christian: “Maybe I should do what Jesus said, not what Benny Hinn and James Dobson say? Muslim: “Maybe ‘Thou shalt not kill’ doesn’t contain an exception for Jewish schoolchildren, and let’s face it, anyone who disagrees with me?” Jew: “Maybe the Savior isn’t waiting for me to exterminate an entire populaiton of impoverished olive farmers to make His appearance?”
Somehow I doubt it.
Let’s form a church
…and make Sean Hannity look like a flaming liberal.
As a commenter notes, this page is probably not "work safe." Fortunately most of my readers are unemployed.
Another religion post
One of the five channels I get is TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network or The Bible Network as I call it). I just watched my favorite Commentator, who devotes a half hour to explaining why the Rapture is imminent by quoting Scripture. He was taking us all through the process of accepting Jesus, when I began to wonder if it was really necessary. I remember being a kid and going to Bible School across the street, from a woman who if I’m not mistaken believes that unbaptized 5-day-old Pakistani babies who die of dysentery go to hell (Southern Baptists?) We accepted Jesus all the time. Probably on a daily basis. In fact, I remember being so scared I was going to Hell that I would sneak under the covers at night and quietly beg Him to “come into my heart.” Now when I do that it has an entirely different meaning.
What I want to know is, did He leave? When I officially gave up on religion about 10 years ago, did He decide to spend His spiritual capital on a more deserving soul, or is He still kicking it down there? I was baptized, confirmed, I carried candles and played saints and lambs in Christmas plays. Does that still count? What if old Jack is right, and one day pretty soon the great white light will shine, will I be among those Left Behind? Or will I be Saved, thanks in full to my past indoctrinations? I think technically I meet the criteria for infidel. But did Jesus just give up on me and leave my heart? What kind of Savior would do that? I would honestly like to know the Pope’s official position.
Among the reasons I bring this up is because I am thinking about attending a Unitarian service. Any thoughts?
Us and Them
“Behead those who insult Islam”
-Muslim street, 2006
“…if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.”
See the difference?
More Islamic idiocy
I’d like to hear one of the apologists out there try and justify this. Please try. Setting people ablaze and beating children to death over a fucking catroon printed 5 months ago 10,000 miles away. Great religion you got there, just great. I respect it more and more every day.
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerian Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked Christians and burned churches on Saturday, killing at least 15 people in the deadliest confrontation yet in the whirlwind of Muslim anger over the drawings.
It was the first major protest to erupt over the issue in Africa’s most populous nation. An Associated Press reporter saw mobs of Muslim protesters swarm through the city center with machetes, sticks and iron rods. One group threw a tire around a man, poured gas on him and setting him ablaze. …
Thousands of rioters burned 15 churches in Maiduguri in a three-hour rampage before troops and police reinforcements restored order, Nigerian police spokesman Haz Iwendi said. Security forces arrested dozens of people, Iwendi said.
Chima Ezeoke, a Christian Maiduguri resident, said protesters attacked and looted shops owned by minority Christians, most of them with origins in the country’s south.
“Most of the dead were Christians beaten to death on the streets by the rioters,” Ezeoke said. Witnesses said three children and a priest were among those killed.
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Quote of the day
“If we resort to violence, it’s very, very difficult to have any sort of dialogue.”
–Laura Bush, on this week’s reason for Muslim rioting
Wonder where she got a crazy idea like that?
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Circular logic
Pious Muslims in the Middle East are protesting the depiction of their prophet, Muhammed, as a bomb-yielding terrorist by attacking innocent civilians. Actually, any depiction of their prophet is blasphemous, and CNN has decided not to show the cartoons (did I mention it was a cartoon?) “out of respect for Islam.” I, meanwhile, have no respect for Islam,* so here’s one that I found particularly apt:
You can find a whole boatload of them here. Thanks to TSS for the link.
UPDATE: Now they are killing each other.
*I have no respect for any dogmatic religious institution, but Islam is particularly vile.
UPDATE (best of addition): I don’t know what happened to the picture. It was of Muhammed with a bomb for a turban.
Thanks for clearing that up, Pat
Dover, a suburb of Harrisburg, PA, recently voted out 8 school board members who had injected Intelligent Design into science curriculum. I guess voters felt that the Christian Creation Myth does not belong in a taxpayer-funded science program, much the same way the Mayan or Inuit Creation Myths don’t belong there. But wait! That’s not what Intelligent Design is, right? All it says is that the complexity of the universe indicates some sort of “intelligent” driving force! It’s non-demoninational, it doesn’t have to be Christian, it could be more like Star Wars! It doesn’t refute evolution, it strengthens it! (disclosure: that is pretty close to my personal belief). Well why then, if ID is not simply Christianity in a lab coat, do people like the Honorable Reverend Pat Robertson make statements like this:
I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God; you just rejected him from your city. And don’t wonder why he hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for his help because he might not be there.
So, if, for example, a hurricane strikes Dover, that is the Creator of All Things, Master of the Universe, expressing His displeasure at a local school board election. (if God cared, couldn’t He just manipulate the election? Or force people to vote His way? Or just about anything He wanted? Why would He wait to use some Godly influence?) And don’t expect any pleas for disaster relief help or donations from Pat’s minions, because you all deserve to die.
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Joseph Smith was called a prohpet…
If you haven’t read Under the Banner of Heaven: a Story of Violent Faith,
by Jon Krakauer, I highly recommend it. It is a candid and therefore
disturbing examination of the history and reality of Mormonism. It is
unfortunately, however aptly, referred to as the only true American
religion. Turns out that South Park episode was pretty spot on. One of
the more surprising things to me was all of the major sports leagues
owe royalties to the Latter-day Saints (lawsuit to follow):
…the Saints had little interest in associating with Missourianswho
remained too ignorant or obstinante to grasp God’s plan for mankind.
Joseph preached something he called “free agency”; everyone was free to
choose whether to be on the side of the Lord or the side of wickedness;
it was an entirely personal decision–but woe to those who decided
wrong.
I have a healthy dose of contempt for most organized religions, but
these people are beyond the pale. I find true Mormonism, based around
polygamy (the “fundamentalists”), to be about as offensive as Islam and
Southern Baptism, but how so-called mainstream Mormons can ignore their
history is beyond me. Polygamy was one of the most importnant founding
principles of Mormonism. If you pick and choose the messages of your
prophet that you will adhere to, you’re more of a cult than a religion.
One of my Jewish friends once said to me that Reform Judaism basically
ignores everything that sucks about being Jewish, you know, like that
silly kosher diet. My question is, why bother?
Jalalablog 
