Jackwagonaphobia
February 24th, 2015 | 
Author: I can’t stand it .
I’m just in awe that any sane person could devote so much energy and acuity to such an irrelevant discipline.
You know.
The Bible.
I mean of all the scholarly pursuits available in the 21st century, for anyone to devote this much effort to a book that they can’t even know who wrote is just spectacularly baffling. Who does that? If nothing else, has the modern world not provided ample evidence that your beliefs are hardly exclusive? That your fantasies and dogma are no more credible than those of the guy next to you on the bus eating his boogers?
How have you escaped the most notorious phenomena of the information age with all it’s cruel and hard instant truths? The relentless data forced down our necks, synced up with our every heartbeat, pulse and biorhythm for optimal consumption and ideal absorption that render your theological obsessions just as obviously obsolete as any other of today or from thousands of years ago.
How do you folks miss this?
How do you manage to escape it?
I listen to these hopeless zealots talk about and debate it and it’s fucking comedy. They sound like Trekkies at a convention. It’s all about the ‘prime directive’. Remember that SNL skit where Shatner shows up at a convention and tells them all to lighten up? Wouldn’t be awesome if Jesus did that?
Seriously, there’s science of all kinds. There’s language and communications. Psychology and sociology. Why there’s even gambling and used car sales. Finance and astrology.
Why The Bible or any other work of mere fiction? Might I suggest the Lord of the Rings? It’s got genealogy and anthropology and different languages. And it has the extra added benefit of being way less contradictory and far more sure footed in terms of a moral course.
What happens to people to make them do that?
Animal husbandry anyone?
So, fair enough. I get it. They are afraid. They are humid with panic and desperation. Searching their scriptures for solace and dignity. And in both their hearts and minds they understand that the notion of a benevolent Santa for adults is an empty fantasy. The id and the super-ego rage against the dying of the light while the ego haunts without malice or reservation. No wonder they are so goddamn confused and self righteous. I mean, that’s gotta suck. To cling to that nonsense and get kicked in the mouth every day with proof that it’s complete bullshit. No wonder in America most scientists are atheists and most Christians are either hypocrites or in jail or both.
My major malfunction is that they walk among us like they know something we don’t. Like common sense is for fools and heretics. Like we don’t know they don’t know. It’s obtuse. They prance and froth at the religiosity of the president like it has anything to do with his patriotism or Americanism. And they get away with it because we have to respect everyone’s beliefs.
Because for thousands of years the cults of theism have ruled the day.
Bullshit.
All I have to do is acknowledge beliefs.
I don’t have to respect them or their efforts to infringe on my society, my morals or my politics.
Enough of this nonsense. The lobbying. The religious litmus test for any aspect of worthiness in public life. Enough of the considerations afforded the pious and the holy and the bellicose. All the dominionist, theonazi homophobes can piss up a goddamn rope.
I’m tired of this crap. Tax the shit out of churches and temples and synagogues. Use all the money to fund planned parenthood and food stamps and welfare and unemployment and healthcare and secular education and then maybe all these jackwagons will shut the fuck up and disappear.
Jesus Christ, I gotta stop writing about religion.
Drinks for my friends.
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We really do need to have much more acknowledgement in the United States that many Americans absolutely do not preface any beliefs or suppositions or perceptions or basic rights or our behaviors on the Bible.
This a new thing for me. A new feeling. People you knew but never met, dying. I knew Andrew. We were friends. When I saw that he’d posted I went right to it and ate it up. I feel like I knew him. When he shared his thoughts he was thorough and profound. He cared. He actually really cared. He commented on my blog often. His was often the first comment. It flattered me because he was such a passionate writer. We were often on the same facebook posts. Sometimes when I was battling some asshole bigot. I never met him but I felt like he was right there sometimes. He was a force. I felt him. I’m just so sorry about this. The idea that he took his own life digs at me. I don’t know what to make of it but it scares me. The idea of it has haunted me a little since I learned of it. It’s hard not to take the world too seriously. It can be really hard. Thanks Andrew, very much. I’ll miss you for sure. All my best to your family and friends.
“And they get away with it because we have to respect everyone’s beliefs.”
NO, we don’t. We agree on that, Mr. Douglass, and I really enjoyed reading your article. If political games must be played, then the ‘Who’s A Finer Christian?’ edition must be revised to ‘Who’s A Better Person?’ The PC behavior that called for our silence to their preaching, with perhaps an eye roll on the side, made sense at first. It seemed a logical extension of basic good manners with an optimistic aim toward some sort of mutual respect. But zealots won’t move toward any middle ground with questions of scientific fact or common sense. ‘Miracles’and ‘misinterpretations’ conveniently explain away the inexplicable. Being PC was a grand deception, a tool employed by conservatives to minimize others’ credibility and to negate others’ messages. It’s worked well.
So far as I know, no line of of acceptable religious fanaticism was ever drawn, but it’s clear that the more conservatives broad-jump across it, the farther right it shifts. We’ve indulged and tolerated until we now depend on a clusterf*ck of mindless bigots to run the whole show. As with any freedom, people may decide to be just as willfully ignorant as they choose, so long as it’s on their time, their dime and doesn’t impact my own sweet freedoms. I don’t give the first damn who their Sky Daddy is or isn’t, or whether they have one. But when they start holy-rolling on my rights, I’m speaking up. And when they affect my children, they’d better start praying.
Here in NC, our schools are being privatized. They’re rapidly devolving to being religious-based organizations exempted from meeting many state teaching standards while being fully funded by millions in public taxpayer dollars. (There seems to me an unconstitutional aspect here, but I’m no lawyer. It’s likely they receive large tax loopholes, too.) A few wealthy men with close ties to our governor run blocks of these highly profitable schools. Fellow Republican revised state laws to exempt them from many public school reporting requirements, so information is difficult to compile. These schools deny established science, teach lies about birth control and re-write history itself in classrooms.
Conservatives are offended every time President Obama farts. When they scream their offenses to the heavens, followers harmoniously join in chorus. Being simultaneously offended and self-righteous is obviously emotionally rewarding in itself. But they fail to detect even the most obvious hypocrisy of their many positions. I wonder whether they’re blind to it or simply choose to willfully embrace it? For example, either Hobby Lobby is illegally making hiring decisions based on faith, or they’re openly discriminating against all employees who don’t share Hobby Lobby’s beliefs. Why doesn’t the media air coverage of the other side of the coin?
Conservatives are filling the government, the schools and the workplace with their biblical version of ‘righteousness’. The kind that has been the most malicious enemy of 51 percent of our population for about 2,000 years. The one that teaches us that women are no better than farm animals, to be bought, traded or sold into slavery, and to regularly be abused or killed.
What kind of woman embraces this ideology? I’ll never understand the masochism and self-inflicted guilt.
I’ve had enough.
I’ve had enough of male politicians who lack any knowledge of basic Biology 101 deciding my medical options based on their religious opinions.
I’ve had enough of people who promote any religion that continually covers up decades of worldwide child sexual abuse.
I’ve had enough of old white men deciding if I was ‘legitimately’ raped, and why wasn’t I grateful for this gift from God?
I’ve had enough of people using religion to tell women to marry young, have plenty of kids they can’t afford and may not want, and that we ‘deserved’ it because we’re all whores anyway.
I’ve had enough of religion telling children that theirs is the one ‘true’ religion, with its accompanying misogyny, hate and biases, and threatening kids with a one-way trip to hell if they don’t believe it.
I’ve had enough of politicians who broadcast their love of God and America one day, and then threaten to ruin our land and natural resources with flammable, oil-soaked money the next day.
I’ve had enough of religions sitting on top of tax-free mountains of gold, but getting their hands filthy in U.S. politics and doing nothing for the poor and suffering.
And I’ve had more than I could ever stomach of the conservative game, ‘I’m A Better Christian Than You.’
The time for this PC epidemic is over. If we don’t begin constantly and loudly calling out every single instance of conservative b.s., Fox Entertainment will add to their numbers. And we’ll wind up with the faith-based nation that our Founders so brilliantly strove to prevent.
You know, if you sit down and have a drink with Jesus (don’t order water and tell him do his thing, he gets real… pissy about that), I’m pretty sure he *might* be willing to make an appearance or two again.
Though… People might think hes a Communist Arab Terrorist, with the brown skin, and the rhetoric about redistributing wealth…
Where to start…G.a.Underwood, fellow North Carolinian, here. Excemment summation of the bullshit in NC government.
Michael, yet again you have summarized my thoughts better than I could articulate them. I have no problem with anyone’s religion; until exercising those religious beliefs affects my secular rights.h
Once again you shine the light of logic on a bunch of insanity … and you do it with such finesse … I love your work, please keep speaking your truth, Michael …
Everything you pointed out is exactly what I’ve been “debating” with christians, a lot lately. “The bible said this, the bible said that”! How anyone with half a brain can just swallow the Jesus “pill” and believe that there is a “man in the sky”, who will let us be graced with his presence someday, is just beyond words. Plus–if he “was” real, he’d be the most selfish, narcissistic a$$. There’s no arguing with them, though. As my smart 24-yr old son said: There’s no use arguing facts against faith. They are relentless, and exhausting.
Tax churches and save public schools. 6 min. Please watch and share
http://m.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2015/02/12/duceys-tucson-tele-town-hall-on-education
(It’s Trekkers, not Trekkies…) – but yeah, the bible and ALL religions are bull crap. I gotta stop reading about what the religious do, want to do or have done!
Well, let me see how many people I can piss off, Mr. Douglass. Just in case you missed a few folks…
“Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time!
But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money!”
? George Carlin
Your article feels like a mental life preserver to me in our current political climate. We’re beneath a tsunami of “I’m Waaay More Religious Than You”, and the driving force is more than simply an upcoming election.
While it’s a bipartisan wave, Republicans have cornered the market on wielding religion as a weapon, largely due to their shared enemies – women, truth, humanity, fairness and social equity.
Thanks, GOP, for not only amplifying the voices of the Religious Wrong, but strengthening their hand in
“taking back our country”…by two centuries. We now have Republican politicians telling us how we must – and must NOT – educate our children. That – Surprise! Ecology’s no big deal after all. That rich people
desperately need more tax breaks. And that poor women must either practice abstinence or they deserve unlimited childbirthing and child-rearing as punishment for having sex (the sluts!). It’s now legal to be a discriminating asshat in some states, and considering the homeless and poor as lazy criminals all after YOUR tax dollars is our national policy. We feel righteously vindicated in denying them access to food, shelter, safety and medical care, all in cowardly, unspoken recommendation that they just go somewhere else and quietly die. God Bless the USA.
The current bible was specifically intended and designed to manipulate and psychologically control a primitive group of people. And we’re still falling for it. This book is supposed to guide us? It’s a loosely-woven collection of carefully pre-selected scripts written thousands of years ago by people from another era, virtually another world, heavily edited, re-edited and re-written by many – all with their own selfish agendas. Google the Book of Thomas sometime. Or The Testament of Mary. These scrolls were in the same jars found in that Dead Sea cave in 1952 – the scrolls that Christians claim support the bible. These texts put a very different spin on matters of societal priorities. A spin that doesn’t mesh with the goals of the very wealthy, the Religious Wrong, or ANY religious leaders of the prominent faiths. Little wonder they weren’t included in the King James.
It’s disappointing that people have allowed, no… encouraged religious dogma to validate so much horror over so long a period. Even up to the time of Napoleon, only 200 years ago, we joyously committed
torture and murder, believing ourselves so very virtuous while torturing innocent people, burning some of them alive and hanging others, all to feel safer without their existence in our world and to feel better about ourselves, having reaffirmed our own righteousness to all present. Witness our holiness – damn, we’re good!
Some people need a purpose in life, a survival guide. They need to believe there’s a reason for it all. The bible is the poorest reference selection one could ever make – unless all you really wanted was self-validation. Pick a position, there are verses to support your opinion – no matter how psychopathic or deranged. Just ignore all those opposing verses because:
1. They were mistranslated.
2. They’re in the wrong testament. (select “Old” or “New” here)
3. Those verses don’t matter, but mine do.
Shallow be thy game.
There is hope. The Religious Wrong are rapidly turning people away from religion themselves by their shoving it in our heads, down our throats and up our vaginas. To keep people believing fiction, you have to keep them ignorant. There’s a god-shaped hole in their heads that needs to be filled with education. Access to information and the expansion of logic and critical thinking will surely one day resolve this mass delusion. While U.S. media now seems intent on maintaining their low bar, thanks to the eight or so who decide our choices, thankfully, the internet is making it a lot harder to keep people ignorant. When out of touch politicians representing Fantasyland recently decided that poor people using food stamps on cruises was a more serious problem than creating jobs, and that women wearing yoga pants was a more pressing matter than a veteran committing suicide every hour, the internet quickly reacted. The yoga pants bill, at least, has died for now. We were heard.
As for myself, after a pretty hard bout with cancer and my father’s passing, I decided it was time to climb off my agnostic fence. After a great deal of thought and introspection, I came to the only conclusion I could accept. So I’m an atheist, Mr. Douglass. Somebody said atheism is like finally taking a deep breath after wearing a binder all your life, and I can’t think of a more apt description. I’ve never felt so free and in control of my own life. I don’t need a threat-and-reward system to tell me to care about others, to not steal or murder. I figured out that I was good with that all along.
“There was this big bang once, now we’re standing on our own two feet.
There was this big bang once, we’ve been sharpening up our teeth.
There was this big bang once, why are we back down on our knees?”
(Cursive, “Big Bang”).