The Trouble With Organized Religion

The problem with organized religion is that it can create fanatics out of otherwise normal people.  Most people live their lives normally and without conflict, however there are some issues that become so heated that despite their church “attendance record” people inexplicably fall back on religion in their arguments.  While I will not argue that the Christian bible has some good life lessons in it, tales that we can all use to guide our lives and teach our children, it is a dangerous concept to create an entire belief system from this book.

Dictionary.com defines a “cult” in the following way:

1. a particular system of religious worship, especially with reference to its rites and ceremonies.
2. an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, especially as manifested by a body of admirers: the physical fitness cult.
3. a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.

Now, of course I chose the word “cult” for a specific reason; most people associate it with a negative connotation, however it is just a descriptive word as is shown above.  And as these definitions clearly show Christianity, and all other forms of organized religion, clearly fit.  Word choice is very important, as people associate specific words together very easily, which can become rather confusing, especially in the English language as it is so very flexible and cleverly twisted.

I do not disparage anyone having a belief system, however, attempting to force it upon others is a vulgar act.  We, as human beings, are free thinking beings and as such should be allowed to form our own thoughts on issues without overbearing advice.  The Christian bible is very often misquoted or, even worse, quotes are cherry picked from the text to serve someones argument with no thought to context.  Pulling a line of text out of such a vast volume to support an argument makes as much sense waggling your hands in your ears and sticking out your tongue to convince someone.

Throughout history there have been many wars and other acts of violence based around religion; who is right and who is wrong.  While just as petty, issues such as: oil, wanting more land, or conquest, make more sense than fighting over a belief system based on something you cannot prove or hold.  I am reminded of Dr. Suess’s book, The Bitter Butter Battle in which two nations go to war over the simple argument of whether to butter the top or bottom side of the bread…  seems rather foolish now doesn’t it?

Religion really is used by so many as a crutch when they have no better opinion to put into a discussion.  And it is a hard argument to counter as the discussion can become very heated and has the possibly of becoming a physical altercation.  Not to mention it is very hard to counter an argument that is based on the belief in faith without proof.  I truly believe George Carlin put it best with the following statement on religion. (George Carlin on Religion)

So yes, I think organized religion should be done away with, its time is long past.  We as a species no longer need the “eye in the sky” watching over us, dictating to us how our lives should be.  Issues such as homosexuality, abortion, premarital sex, education, and the like need to be left to the individual to decide upon, not have thoughts forced upon them.  We argue and fight over things because of our “religion”, because of what is preached to us every Sunday morning.  Intolerance comes in many forms and organized religion is by far the worst of them.

And as if it was not bad enough with church sessions, religion is now moving into our governmental system and we are allowing it, despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution was created with the idea of keeping church and state separated.  I do not care what your beliefs or thoughts are, just consider this, IF the Founding Fathers had intended America to be a Christian nation don’t you think they would have interwoven it more these important documents than they did?  I mean honestly, do you really think these intelligent men forgot?  I can see it now, 10 years after the Constitution was fully integrated into the nation and Thomas Jefferson wakes up one morning going:

Oh shit!  We forgot to put religion into it!  What a fail we are!

Related articles

• Look forward to the death of organized religion: Richard Dawkins – Vineet Gill – The Times of India (richarddawkins.net)
• Why We Should Tax the Churches – big think
• What’s The Real Reason The Catholic Church Wants To Keep Gays Oppressed? – The New Civil Rights Movement
• What the Bible Says – And Doesn’t Say – About Homosexuality – Soulforce
• Our Founding Fathers Were NOT Christians – BibleTrash.com
• Why do people join fundamentalist religions? And why do they stay in them? (michigantelephone.wordpress.com)

Time to Rein in the Politicians

I am not sure what they have been putting in the water that the politicians drink lately, but holy smokes, they need to stop already.  Some of the vileness coming out of their mouths makes me wonder if they really understand the issues and the American people at all.  While I can understand that politicians are people too, if they expect to be elected to office they need to apply the old brain-mouth filter.

While it has come to be understood that we have no trust in politicians at all, whether our local mayor or all the way up to the President, this current crop of have taken offensive to a whole new level.  The ads and comments that have come out are outrageous and are something you would expect to see in a skit on Saturday Night Live as opposed to the political scene.

It is hard to decide where to start with this, so I think I will make it simple and just put in some quotes from various politicians and then add in my own comments on those quotes.

Paul LePage (R) Maine Governor: “if you take a plastic bottle and put it in the microwave and you heat it up, it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen. So the worst case is some women may have little beards.”

This is just one of the lovely quotes from our governor, and as with every other one it just goes to show how out of touch he is with the issues people are bringing to him.  He has no idea what it is the people of this state really want and he insists upon shoving his own agenda down our throats; to the point that he has threatened to close the schools on May 1st if the legislature does not approve his proposed cuts to DHHS & Mainecare, the state funded health care that many rely upon to stay healthy.

Stacey Campfield (R) Tennessee State Senator: “Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall,”

Really?!?!  Oh come on Mr. Campfield you cannot honestly be that ignorant, can you?  It is this type of thinking that caused the AIDS epidemic that we have now.  There is documentation of AIDS/HIV going all the way back to the 30s with the cause being from a monkey bite in Africa.  This is a serious epidemic that needs someone with at least the ability to think critically and assess the information that is being presented to them.  This senator gives a bad name to his state which already suffers from a misnomer of everyone being a hillbilly.

We also have Newt Gingrich, I am not going to pick any specific quote for this character.  All I am going to say is this is clearly a man that cannot be trusted, someone that wants to roll our nation back over 150 years with his policies and beliefs.  Newt would be a very poor choice for us to elect as President, however I do think he will win the Republican nomination and I can only hope that there is a serious Independent candidate for the people that do not want to vote for Obama.  Here is a man that is on his third wife and trying to preach to us about family values…  where is a good faceplam when I need one?

The last politician I want to talk about here is a relatively unknown one, but once the Super Bowl is over he will be known.  Of course I am talking about Randall Terry, that moron that has put the very offense anti-abortion ads on TV and has promised to show more during the Super Bowl.  While it is perfectly fine for a politician to have a personal feeling on an issue, you do not alienate the people of this country in this manner.  Even those that are against abortion are going to be against this clown because of his ads.  Where the hell is his campaign manager in all of this?

Maybe I am just becoming to cynical as I age, however I expect more from the politicians that are claiming to represent me.  I fully expect not to agree with them on every single issue, but I want them to take a solid stand on an issue and I want them to be sensible about it.  This extremist crap really needs to stop, we have become an evolved nation and it is no wonder the rest of the world sees us as a joke with the leaders we have representing us.

Related articles

• Christie: African-American Civil Rights Should Have Been Put Up To A Vote (The New Civil Rights Movement)
• GOP Senator: “Virtually Impossible” For Heterosexuals To Contract AIDS (The New Civil Rights Movement)
• Debate heats up over proposed MaineCare cuts (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• MaineCare recipients decry proposed budget cuts (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• GOP Senator: “Virtually Impossible” For Heterosexuals To Contract AIDS (The New Civil Rights Movement)

Abandoning the Google Ship

 

It took me some time, but I have finally given up on Google.  For more than a decade I have used and enjoyed their services, but their recent nonsense has just gotten to me to much and it is time for me to leave them.  As I have a long standing and established e-mail address through Gmail I will retain that, however I have deleted both my Google+ and my Blogger from there; hence why I am using WordPress now.  This has not been an easy decision for me as I have used the services for so long, but to put their own interests before their customers is very disrespectful.  I rarely used my Google+ at any rate as I do use Facebook and Google+ was not friendly towards the way I prefer my social networking experience to be.

However, as this is the internet there are always many options out there available for people to utilize for whatever services they need.  For me coming over to WordPress was great as the tools here are far superior to Blogger‘s.  I use Bing for my search engine now and it works as well as Google ever did and I becoming accustomed to its own style.

This is by no means an endorsement for any product or company, choose what you want to use and what suits your needs better.  For me, moving away from Google was in my own best interests.

Related articles

• How To: Escape From Google’s Clutches, Once and For All [Google] (gizmodo.com)
• How Will Google’s New Privacy Policy Affect You? (gizmodo.com.au)
• Google is Terrifying: Privacy Policy Shift “Consolidates Google Experience” (thekenyonthrill.com)

That Old Abortion Issue

I had an epiphany the other day that I really need to evaluate and perhaps adjust my stance on abortion.  However, just as abortion is not a simple topic to discuss, neither is coming to a decision on how you stand on the issue.  It came to me that this is not just a pro-life/pro-choice issue, it is much to intricate to be labelled so simply.  And as such, I have decided it is time for me to redefine exactly what my stance is on abortion, however before I am able to do that I think I need to analyze some of the phrases and arguments used when discussing abortion so that I will enable myself to create a more clearly defined stance.

I think first it will be beneficial to figure out the sides of this issue.  It has come to my attention that it is more than just Pro-Life and Pro-Choice we are talking about.  There are a variety of stances in between those two titles.  I used to think I was Pro-Life but I have come to realize that it is not quite that simple, I have found that I fall more on the scale of being anti-abortion.  While I do place a great value on life, I do not agree with the idea of having a child born into a home where because s/he was not wanted they could face neglect or abuse.  As much as I do not want abortion to be used as a form of birth control, I would much rather have to live with the fact of legal abortions than abused and/or killed children.  I still stand firmly with my belief of not using abortion as a form of birth control, women should not be able to get multiple abortions.  While infallible, there are many other forms of birth control out there that work quite well when used as they are supposed to be used.

I do not agree with Pro-Choice, specifically because that choice is negated when people agree to engage in sexual intercourse, it should simply be renamed to Pro-Abortion.  This is by no means a slam against women or misogynist in any regards.  It takes two to make a baby and if you are going to hold a man accountable, i.e child support, for when a woman gets pregnant, then goddammit that door swings both ways!  And just why is it that a man legally does not have  a say when a woman has an abortion?  This is a ludicrous concept because men do not have that same “out” that women do when it comes to a child.  A man cannot simply sign a waiver saying he wants no part of the child’s life, nope, once the woman gives birth he is required to pay child support or face serious legal implications.  I will grant it is a woman’s body, however, the act that put that child in her was not done solo.

This is a very difficult topic, that much is clear.  However, we cannot create double standards in our society.  Why is it a woman can stop her husband from getting a vasectomy with threats of divorce?  And why is it that when a woman wants to have a baby it is a baby, yet when she doesn’t it is just a cluster of cells?

As for the legality of Roe v. Wade, well here is where most are going to dislike me.  The Supreme Court was wrong to rule on this issue.  Now, read that carefully, I did not say their decision was wrong I said it was wrong for them to rule on it at all.  The case should have been sent back to the state level where it belonged and ruled upon there.  Would that have created a system where abortion was legal in some states and not in others?  Yes it would have, but we have plenty of instances of things like that already happening in this country from small issues, all the way up to Same Sex Marriage, however, this country was set up in the way it was so that the National Government would not rule over us as a whole.  In closing I am gonna provide an interesting link for ya to keep in mind, not going to describe it at all, just post it.  I will say it would behoove you to read it.

The Famous Jane Roe

Why I Am Against SOPA/PIPA

The issues surrounding these two congressional bills have a lot more to do with just stopping piracy and censorship.  What it boils down to for me is further eradication of our personal freedoms.  While it is necessary to prevent online piracy, there are already laws in place for handling those situations.  Creating a system where the government and/or movie & music companies can shut down entire web sites only leads to a system of governing that was not the intention of the Founding Fathers.

The ability to share information through the internet is a very valuable tool that we can not allow to be handicapped in anyway.  The internet allows for all people to be included in discussions and to express themselves in a variety of ways.  If the restrictions suggested by SOPA/PIPA are to be put into place, the ability of this self expression is seriously compromised.  The corporations will have the power to remove any images, video clips or excerpts they choose without limit.

There is a huge difference between pirating an entire movie and using a picture of Mickey Mouse as your forum avatar, however these corporations refuse to see the logic of that and only care about filling their bank accounts at the expense of free speech and personal expression.

Even more of a threat to the music and movie industries than online piracy is the companies themselves.  These companies become rich and powerful through the work of the artists, the same artists who see only a small percentage of the money earned from their works.  It is time for the government to put a leash on these corporations, and all other corporations that attempt to influence governmental action to the detriment of us, the citizens.

Stand up for your rights, let the government know that they work for us, the citizens, the voters, not for the corporations that fund their campaigns.  This government is supposed to work for and protect its citizens and for a long time now it has been failing miserably at its one and only job.