Properly Awry

Someone else summed up my thoughts:

Christianity:
The belief that some cosmic Jewish Zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magically tree.  Makes perfect sense. 

I don't care for religion, any religion.  Religion in general is a cult, a club that survives through its never-ending cycle of brainwashing.  Think about it - if you are religious, have a specific religion - did you choose it yourself?  More likely this religion is yours because your parents chose it for you, as their parents did them and so on.  Or perhaps your spouse had an ingrained religion and now that is your religion and the religion of your children.  It's pretty rare for a person to go out and seek a religion and make a personal choice - sure, it happens, but not enough. 
I believe a club is something you choose to be part of, not something you participate in because your parents did (if your parents were in a polka club would you be?  If your parents jumped off a bridge would you?).
I consider myself fortunate to have not been brainwashed into a religion growing up - the fact that my parents came from different religious upbringings meant that we essentially had no religion in our house.  My brother and I are not baptized or christened.  I'm pretty sure I only went to church once on Easter Sunday and once on Christmas Eve, any other appearances at church were for weddings or funerals.  My summer camp was a Christian non-denominational camp, and we attended "chapel" twice a day and they gave us Bibles and tried to convince us to let Jesus into our hearts.  I refused to be brainwashed, though I did like singing the songs, and camp was fun and it was what my mom could afford, so we put up with the religion.  I do remember there was one counselor who told us dinosaurs did not exist and were made up by scientists - which, even at 12 I thought was hilarious/crazy-town.

If you feel you need religion to get through the day, to feel better about yourself, to purge yourself of your so-called sins, that's fine, that's your choice, even if it wasn't initially your choice.  But if you have children, is it fair to make that choice for them?  Baptizing or christening your child as a baby is the first step in taking choices away from them. Do you want them to grow up feeling obligated to the religion you chose for them, or do you want them to grow up feeling free to make their own choices?

I read an article today about a group (the Centre for Inquiry, Canada) that puts up "controversial" posters that question the existence of "God".  Their newest ad says Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence and then goes on to group Allah, Vampires, God, and Wizards together as examples of such "extraordinary" things (and yes, if God is a proper noun, then to me so are Vampires and Wizards, so there).


I think it's totally hilarious.

They say they want to spark discussion and debate, but come on, you just know the religious nuts are going to have a spazz about this. 

It seems that it's perfectly okay for churches and LDS posters to go up and preach religion, but a poster that questions religion?  A poster that groups God with Dragons?  That's gonna rub some people the wrong way (mostly shriveled, lonely people who rarely get rubbed).

I think it would be totally awesome if all the WoW players out there banded together in protest - Dragons, Gnomes, Elves, Witches and Wizards are all under fire here too.  Oh, and they better prepare for the onslaught of Edward-loving Twihards as well, their outrage (question the existence of Vampires will you!) may well cause the end of times as we know it.



For the record, I totally believe in Leprechauns.

I was sent an email today that read:

Do you believe that the word God should stay in Canadian culture?

CBC this morning had a poll on this question. They had the highest Number of responses that they have ever had for one of their polls, and the Percentage was the same as this:

86% to keep the words “ God Keep our Land” in the National Anthem
14% against

That is a pretty 'commanding' public response.

I was asked to send this on if I agreed or delete if I didn't ..

Now it is your turn.  It is said that 86% of Canadians believe the word  “God” should stay......

Therefore, I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess about having the word “God” in the anthem

Why is the country catering to this 14%?
AMEN!
If you agree, pass this on , if not, simply delete.

From what I can see, the above isn't even in any way true.  The recent discussion around the Canadian anthem was about making it "gender neutral" to take out the word "sons", and I think the "god" issue came up but wasn't really ever on the table.   I could care less about making the anthem gender neutral, it it really that big a deal? 

Of course I didn't forward the email to anyone, because anyone who knows me will know my answer would of course be to get the "god" out already.  There's no need for it, it would be a simple single word substitute, nothing major, and removing it is less offensive than leaving it in.  But then again, I'm the one who says if I ever had to go to court and they asked me to put my hand on a bible and swear to tell the truth, I'd either do so gladly and then lie my ass off because putting my hand on a bible means nothing to me, or, I'd ask them to substitute the bible for a copy of The Stand because swearing to tell the truth by placing my hand on a Stephen King book would hold greater weight for me than putting my hand on a bible.