Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Stupid Computer User

Well, I'm the first to admit that I'm computer challenged. Next I'll admit that I don't much care.

My link from earlier today doesn't work. I just plain don't have the time to figure it out. I'm sure it's simple, but I'm sort of simple minded when it comes to these things. I'll get to it.

Anyway. Here's a cut and paste copy of what's been on Dr.K's mind these days. Happy reading!

Why have I been so hostile lately?

Current mood: pissed off

Hello,
One of my MySpace friends sent me a private message and asked me why my page has been so "hostile" as of late. Well, in case anyone else has the same question, here is a slightly edited version of my reply:



Like Dawkins and others, I think that organized religion is an incredibly destructive, oppressive and otherwise sad and dangerous force in the modern world. Individuals like myself who are incredibly uncomfortable with the concept of (blind) "faith" - in particular as it plays out in the religion that I am most familiar with: Christianity - are forced into a dark corner in American society today.

So many people are brainwashed at a very young age by the incredibly "wild" (yet comforting) claims of Christianity, and what's worse, these silly (and often contradictory) claims are quite effectively shielded from any criticism and attack by social norms that make it severely unacceptable to challenge a person's "faith." We have a President who believes that God told him to end the tyranny in Iraq. We have a President who believes that God put him in the White House. If President Bush claimed that Zeus told him to end the war in Iraq, or that the Viking God of War told him to end the tyranny in Iraq, we'd deem Mr. Bush thoroughly insane. The claims he makes are no less preposterous (if you really honestly think about it), yet the only reason he isn't derided for making them is that they just happen to be arbitrarily "en vogue" in our culture and protected by the institution of the Church.

Anyway, I could go on and on. The great irony, in my view, is that organized religion does far more harm than good in the modern world by forcing people to embrace a view of "truth" that has absolutely no basis whatsoever in what can be known about the universe vis-a-vis evidence (i.e., no basis in a "reality" that can be known through evidence). As Marx said, religion is the world's "general basis for consolation," it is the "opiate of the masses." Without being so drugged up on religion, I'm sure we'd be in a much better position to accomplish the things we really NEED to accomplish in order to ensure our survival and happiness as a species. The problems of violence, poverty, war, global warming, scarce resources, energy, etc. are OURS to tackle as a people. The Earth is all that matters, nothing else. If we don't have that to sustain us, we're dead in the water. But because Christianity (and other faith-based religions) tells us that we are so incredibly, amazingly "special" and so much better than everything else in the universe (which is a claim that would earn a person the title of "mentally ill" under any other conditions), we've forgotten how to live in balance with nature. And if people are under the (unfounded, loony, demented, and half-cocked) impression that Jesus is somehow going to make it okay in the end, then that, in my book, is a MASSIVE, MASSIVE world problem that may ultimately put us on a much faster, nearly ensured track to extinction.

So that's why I'm f-ing hostile. I've put up with enough scorn, derision, arrogance, belittling, anger, and hypocrisy from Christians thus far in my life. I ain't gonna sit back and take it anymore. It's the insane way of "knowing" the world (i.e., turning a blind eye to "evidence") that Christianity dumps on people that has quite obviously led to so many of my Christian (mostly Republican) associates to deny, for example, that human beings have anything to do with global warming.

But why not hold that view if evidence doesn't matter at all for truth? That's what being a Christian is all about, right? From what I can tell, it's mainly about enforcing a silly, prudish, middle-class value system and companion lifestyle that often requires ignoring scientific evidence (e.g., to show up at your lawyer-neighbor's backyard bbq, you have to own an expensive, though terribly impractical, gas-sucking SUV - maybe something like an Escalade - because otherwise you won't be able to stand around with your corporate golf shirt tucked into your Dockers shorts and talk about when you'll leave your 4000 square foot home on Sunday to go pray to Jesus to take care of homeless people). Ridiculous.Anyway, the God Delusion is doing pretty well in sales, I imagine, because lots of God-fearing folks are reading it "looking for a loophole." (Know thy enemy, right?) For those folks, I can't imagine that the book will do anything to persuade them to think anything different at all - in fact it will probably just solidify their juvenile belief in the unknowable, and then they can stand around with other fellow churchgoers and pat each other on the back and cackle about those naughty, silly, unfortunate atheists. So sad.

Screw it. It doesn't matter. What matters is that we get religious fanatics like Bush, Jr. out of the White House, maintain a strong separation between church and state, build our science curriculum in the schools, and find ways to counteract the unscrupulous, irresponsible efforts of insecure, retard-fundamentalists who try to brainwash children with goofy cartoon propaganda about how evolution is bunk. If that happens, and atheists and agnostics come together, come forward, and chip away at Christianity through vigorous reasoned argumentation, it will gradually be annihilated, and hopefully it won't be too late.

And at the very least, don't go pray for me to find "Jesus" after reading this message. Instead, think about how arrogant that is. And no, this message is not arrogant. I've heard that shit a million times. This is me finally asserting that I have a voice too among the rest.

In fact, while you're at it, why don't you just take a minute to appreciate the beauty of the world for what it really is? Why do you need all that other crazy crap? What's the quote by Nietzsche, Dave? I don't need to believe there are fairies at the bottom of the pond to appreciate its beauty...

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