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Happy Star Wars Day!
J:
May the fourth be with you! If you didn't really see this until the
fifth, Happy Cinco de Mayo! May the fifth be with you!
This week I've been learning a little Java programming (and drinking
too much java) and learning how to make clay pots.
The big news is that our friend Terry Aquino is visiting from
Australia! We saw her at Rizolda's rehearsal and wedding; then the New
Deal Friday night (Terry gave all
the Greenbelt Geezers presents from Pete, who stayed back in Australia); and again
tonight, when I was also visited by two siblings, two in-laws, and five
little unklings. Busy night.
Last week I was a lunatheist. That word just wasn't working out though,
it was a bit clunky. I also found out that my arguments for lunatheism
appeared condescending to some (to say the least), a quality that might
be impossible to remedy. So I took the page down, and left a placeholder page that among
other things expressed a desire for another word. Ask and ye shall
receive. Thanks to Steve Johns for coining imagatheism, as in "I think each
theism is in the imagination of the beholder." I don't know if Steve is
an imagatheist, but it was nice of him to come up with a word for me.
I'll try it out for a little while.
Meanwhile I've been rewinding and fast-forwarding my brain, trying to
figure out this occasional yet intense need to badger people with my
thoughts and arguments regarding religion and gods. I think that it's
partly a need to try my inner thoughts out in the real world, but still
there's always a catalyst. This anti-religion mood has hit me before,
always after attending some religious ceremony. I don't regularly go to church
anymore, of course, but weddings and funerals do happen, and I attend
them to give support or sympathy to the family and friends, and to
celebrate life and love.
But these types of ceremonies are two-edged swords, one side being an
innocent gathering of community, the other side an
advertisement for religion X. It doesn't
matter what the religion is, its advertisement
always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I realize that some people
relish the religious stuff, but I'm an imagatheist, so I'd rather stick
to what the event is really about and avoid the commercials entirely.
You might feel the same if you attend a funeral for a friend and right
smack in the middle of it someone gives a long speech about how Santa
Claus will bring you a microwave this year if you just want one bad
enough. And then later at the reception, whether or not the deceased
actually believed in The Loch Ness monster, someone invariably claims
the deceased always wanted to ride Nessy's back into the bottom of the
Loch, so isn't it nice that finally happened? And three quarters of the
listeners will smile and nod. Ugh. After years and years of this sort
of thing, you might end up like me: able to attend; able to offer your
compassion; able to respect everyone's rights and desires to believe
and proclaim whatever they want; but finding extreme difficulty dealing
with the absurdity of these beliefs held by many intelligent people.
So I go to these events— I
need to go and I want to go, because I want to support my friends and
feel their support. And all the while I filter out the hymns and get
past
the sermons, and push my fight-or-flight feelings way way down so they
don't come out until a few days later when they suddenly explode in
their own creative fashion. See?
This week I've started to decompress a little. I had some good
conversations and insights into my imagatheism with several people.
Some of the best conversations were with my most scientific brother
Eric and (oddly
enough) with my dad, who is an extremely knowledgeable and very
religious Roman
Catholic, and who enjoys discussing practically anything. Thanks Dad!
Speaking of commercials, here are some apropos quotes that are taking
the edge off my buzzing psyche this week:
"Time spent
arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted."
—
Christopher Hitchens
"I
do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have
expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called
religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the
world so far as our science can reveal it."
—
Albert Einstein
"The
fool says in his heart: 'There is no God.' The Wise Man says it to the
world."
—
Troy Witte
"Religions
are all alike—founded upon fables and mythologies."
—
Thomas Jefferson
"Freedom
of religion means any
religion."
—
Anon
"Freedom
from religion means every
religion."
—
John W Cooper
"The
way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."
—
Benjamin Franklin
"It
will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it
is apt to lead to Infidelity."
—
Abraham Lincoln
"How
can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the
roller of an electric typewriter?"
—
Woody Allen
"An
atheist is a person with no invisible means of support"
—
John Buchan
"And
God Said: Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me,
and let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan"
—
John Wing
"Calling
Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."
—
Don Hirschberg
"Properly
read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."
—
Isaac Asimov
"God
is real, unless declared Integer."
—
J. Allan Toogood
"Ridiculous
claims acquire ridiculous evidence."
—
John W Cooper
"If
God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."
—
Voltaire
"I
don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her."
—
Arthur C. Clark
"God
said to Moses, 'I will be what I will be,'"
—
Exodus 3:14
"To
assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as ridiculous as a
claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin."
—
Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galileo in 1615
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THE HEAP
where we wade the web
kidnapped
by ufos?
dustball's
play swf
shift
trike bike
e=mc2
centenary survey
time
traveler convention
an exqïsite
corpse
join the party party
whorled
pogonia
small
whorled pogonia
church
of critical thinking
douglas
adams interview
google
sightseeing
jeffery rowland's lj
mo
money mo problems
genocide
and a hero
heavy
trash
geiger
counter data
ivory-bills
sighted
crows
& exploding toads
project
alpha
alien
hand syndrome
bijou
paintings
theocracy watch
the battle
for your mind
true
believer syndrome
the ipu
temple
what
the (bleep) were...
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