Chapter 3 "Religion"

Chapter 3 Religion

Chapter Three

 

Religion

 

My grandfather on my Dad’s side was a successful business man and engineer.  During WWII we worked for Lockeed-Vega designing aircraft.  He built houses, owned trailer parks and was almost a millionaire when he died.  I hated grandmother, as did my father.  She had two girls and when dad was born.  She was very disappointed it was a boy.  She dressed him in girl’s clothes and kept is hair long and curly.  Sort of like naming a boy Sue.  He grew up a very tough man.  She in fact named him “Laurie” after the lead male in “Little Women.”  It’s a traditional old southern male name.  She wanted him to grow up and be a total gentleman just like the character in the book.  Trust me; no one can screw your head up better than your mother.  She was very religious and thought that any woman that wasn’t a school teacher or a nurse was a whore.  There’s that wonderful Christian charity for you.  She hated my mother for being a waitress and an Okie.  She didn’t like me much either. 

 

She watched religious TV constantly and her biggest hope was to live long enough to see Jesus return.  (Don’t hold your breath.)  She built one chapel for our church and later built another one.  She was donating to Oral Roberts and Jimmy Swaggert.  By the time they finally took her checkbook away she had burned through at least a half million dollars.  My brother and I would be a lot better off now if the bitch hadn’t done that.  She also was responsible for paying for my wonderful private Christian school torture. 

 

Mom was part of the conspiracy too.  They wanted to send me to Ambassador Bible College to become a preacher.  When the son of the founder got busted for making people sign over their life savings and fucking the wife; I could not stop laughing.  When Oral Roberts came on TV crying and saying Jesus would take him home if he didn’t raise a million dollars I just about died from laughing.

 

I finally got them to stop making me go to church when I was thirteen.  I felt relieved and liberated.  I pointed out in the Bible that a child was considered a man at age thirteen they had no out.  Either you believe in the book or you don’t Mom and Grandma.  I wanted to stay home with Dad and watch football.  It was the only thing we did together.

 

So it is: with my jaded eye of Sauron I will turn my gaze this subject.  There is no safe tree here.

 

I spoke to a Rush subby one day.  His name was Mark, not the British guy;   the one from Texas.  I got the call screener to let me through by proclaiming I was a conservative atheist.  I queried if there was enough room in the big Republican tent for a conservative that does not worship Jesus.  Mark had no problem with this.  He is a great interrogator.  He didn’t even need a waterboard.  Mark got me to admit that I am not an Atheist, I am a Deist.  The founding fathers of this great nation were Masons and Deists.  Definition of terms:  Deists believe that the Master Clockmaker built a clock, wound it, sat in his/her chair, lit his/her pipe, and watches the clock run. Nothing more. God watches the clock run, that’s why she built it.  Curse or praise him/her it makes no difference.  Pray on your knees or rage at the heavens; there is no lightning bolt to strike you, nor grace to save you.  The silence is deafening.

 

I only know what I know.  Evolution happens, every goddamn day. There are those that nature chooses to be fruitful and multiply, and there are those that are chosen for extinction.  If you are a successful species you will pass on you genes to the next generation.  If you are not….well….

 

There should be no doubt the Big Bang occurred. The CBR (cosmic background radiation) satellite predicted exactly the resonance frequency (including for decay) for the heat of the big bang.  Any reasonable person with a modicum of scientific knowledge should know this.  There are three levels of truth in science.

 

One: Hypothesis, I believe this to be true.

Two: I have found evidence and performed experiments to back up this belief.

Three: Law.  With this hypothesis and evidence to back it up, my peers in science have found my experiments repeatable.  Take the Law of Gravity for instance.  If you doubt this law, try not falling down.  Gravity works.  There is no question that the big bang occurred, the only question is: who lit the damn fuse.  I recently read an article in a conservative website that the Earth was exactly 6,120 years old.  They also sold books about the “Lie of Evolution.”  Please! people of faith or no faith, hear me.  Faith ignores reason.  It makes people blow themselves up and take a bunch of innocents with them.  Like anything else Faith has a light and dark side.  God gave us a fucking brain, do the math.      

 

That is not in the scope of this treatise.  A customer in my humble jewelry store question whether I had been forgiven for my sins; had I been saved.  I responded that I have been baptized but only God could decide the rest.  THAT, is my point of contention.  No man or woman can judge me.  Even God has no right to judge me.  Walk a mile in my moccasins, then you might have that right.  Not that I’d care about your stinking opinion anyway.

 

Back in the day when the first monkey became self aware, the definition of who or what God was/is became a debate.  Mr. and Mizz Caveperson argued this over their first fire and first barbecued rat.  God was all that was not understood.  God was: fire, thunder, lightning, rain, flood, death, disease, leprosy, earthquakes, tsunamis, gout, headache, PMS, crotch rot and crabs.  It was all God driven.  Over time God got smaller and smaller.  As our scientific knowledge grew, God became less and less significant.  God began to receive less blame, and less credit.  However, this presented mankind with a conundrum.  If God is an all powerful loving god, then why in Job’s name must we suffer so?  Therefore to go along with God we invented the Devil.  The Devil is like God’s spiteful ex.  Jealous to the point of stalking their child custody project: us humans.

 

God is not all good, or not all powerful. Only one can be true.  Bad things happen to good people.  Tragedy happens.  Either God is powerless to prevent it, or he/she allows tragedy to occur.  We can blame the Devil for the horrors that occur in this world.  But again, would an all powerful, all loving God allow the Devil to even exist, let alone be allowed to tempt and abuse mankind?  I believe that God built a clock where all the gears just don’t quite mesh.  If you think this universe is all by design you are as sick as the motherfucker that created it.  I would like to give God a break on this one. However, if you believe the Bible is total fact and believe in creationist history; then you have to justify why God is not all good, or not all powerful.  You have to justify: in a world created by an all powerful, all loving God, why does evil even exist.

 

Religion is not the sole property of the spiritual.  The zealous belief in something extends far beyond that.  At this writing our President is Barrack Obama.  I hope that the change he wants to bring to my beloved country is good change, but I seriously doubt it.  I always respect a sitting President no matter how much I might disagree with their policy.  But you cannot even disagree with the man without being dismissed as a racist.  There has actually been videotape showing people PRAYING TO OBAMA.  Well Ziech, my fucking Heil. 

You have GOT to be kidding me.  This is just another bur under my camel’s saddle.  Fundamentalist Christians are so sure of themselves there is no room for honest debate.  Even Jesus himself would oppose that.  Fundamentalists of all color (Muslims, Christians, Wiccans, Taliban, Baptists, Methodists, Mormons, Lutherans, Democrats, Republicans, ACLU, College Professors, teachers at any level) are all the same: they all lack a sense of humor.  Nancy Pelosi is the poster child of self-righteous liberalism.  They just cannot understand why anyone in this world could possibly even think to disagree with their utopian values.  The Taliban cannot understand why we don’t want our women to wear Burkahs.  Heaven forbid the scientologists get their way; we will all be as nutzo as Tom Cruise and as dead as John Travolta’s son.  Give the Germans their due.  They might have started a world war or two, but they had the common sense to outlaw Scientology in their country.

 

Ya see Christians ain’t the only ones to piss me off.  Wiccans, Vegans, Cabbalists, people that believe in reincarnation.  THAT one really pisses me of.  Every time I hear somebody proclaim they were reincarnated they were in their last life; either and Egyptian Princess or a High Priestess of Atlantis.  People even pay good money to get hip-mo-tized in regression therapy.  Yada yada yada, Atlantis, Egytian Princess yada yada, that will be $400 bucks.  Have a nice next life loser.  I will believe in regression therapy the first time I hear someone say “I think I see my previous life.  I’m looking at the ass end of an oxen, and pushing a stone plow.”  When I read some of this happy horse hockey in a chat room I said as such.  Why are only the beautiful people reincarnated?  I opined that I believe in MY last life, I died a tragic death in Auschwitz.  Ya’ shoulda heard the room.  (Oooo, That’s sad, were sorry, God bless you Jack, Lachaim) Yeah, I said “I was reloading my machine gun when I fell out the guard tower and:

 

BROKE MY FREAKIN’ NECK!!!

HOWZ THAT FOR YOUR LAST LIFE MEMORY!!!!??!??!??!??**

 

I got kicked out for life in Yahoo and AOL chat rooms. (NAW, No Way, ME? How could I possibly offend someone................…?)