Anti-Religious Nutjobs

I used to not like when people pushed their religion on me, but now I get people trying to push atheism on me, and they are waaaaaayyy worse than any religious person I know. I know a lot of people are going to be pissed off at me for this; but I'm really all out of fucks to give. Now I am not super religious but I do believe in God, and have a spiritual side; I'm pretty much a lukewarm Catholic. But any reference I make to God anywhere at any time is met by, "Oh man, dude you believe in God? What an idiot." That may be; I may actually be proof that God doesn't exist, that Karma doesn't exist, that luck doesn't exist. But I have even less if you take away the hope from me; the hope that one day some of the good Karma will balance itself out and I will get what I deserve, that someday the last will be first and the first will be last, that someday proper planning will met an opportunity. I'm sorry if the idea of living a completely fruitless bullshit life only to die penniless and alone and become worm food isn't exactly an idea that makes me want to stand up and cheer.

Don't get me wrong, most people I know who are atheist don't need to prove shit to anyone, much like I don't have to prove my faith to any of you. I'm talking about the ones who go around trying to debunk other people's faiths; what the hell do you even get out of that? At least when someone preaches to me about their faith, their heart is in the right place and they want to save me or give me something to believe in. But it seems to me like atheists are just trying to prove that they are smarter than everyone, or get a rise out of people. Well, for that reason alone I can't be an atheist, you see I really don't give a shit how smart people think I am, my intelligence (or lack thereof) speaks for itself; and I really take no joy in raining on someone's parade, especially when it's obvious that their faith means a lot to them. But lately atheists are marching under a banner of, "Religion is bad, all wars would be over if we had no religion." Bullshit, mankind has been able to find reasons to hate each other since the dawn of recorded time. But even if that were true, that rhetoric you drone on about ain't neeeevvveerrrr going to reach the people who actually do kill people based on their religion. The only people who hear the shit you say are pleasant suburban families who say grace at the table and conduct funerals when the daughter's goldfish dies. You aren't exactly going to get a Nobel peace prize for tearing that down. So why don't you send that shit to people in Tel-Aviv or Al Queda people who really do actually kill people based on their faith every day?

Because, it is way easier to pick on church going families that haven't done anything wrong to anybody. These people, who fill up my Facebook wall with the latest, "ACLU victory over troops in Iraq trying to pray on government time" usually like to "debate" with people about their religion. These people just pick on easy targets. From an outsider perspective anyone who takes the side of science in a debate has a HUGE advantage. The burden of science is proof; the burden of religion is faith. In a debate you try to prove your point so the goal of the debate and science are the same; the goal of debates and religion are not. It's like using science to prove how much you trust someone. Not only this, but whoever initiates these impromptu debates have a supreme advantage; essentially you are just blindsiding someone who doesn't have notes or a prepared speech in front of them (and probably wasn't expecting to be debated). If they don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the bible, they will lose, because you already know what your argument is but they don't. This is why I think that Bill Maher barely winning a debate with an amusement park Jesus is so comical (in Religulous). He's used to doing debates with a panel of three or four people and the panel is always loaded to favor his own opinion; so debating 3 or 4-to-1 is such a chicken-shit douchebag move that you can't take him seriously. The other patron saint of atheism is the late George Carlin, as a one-time aspiring comedian I admire anyone who can be successful in such a difficult career, but I really don't think his comedy is amazing. The only bit I have ever laughed at was The Usage of Fuck, because Carlin is all about the shock value and there is really very little substance in his comedy. I saw a T-Shirt on tshirthell.com that said, "Rape is no laughing matter... unless of course you're raping a clown," that is basically Carlin's brand of humor, it's not a well crafted joke; it's 100% shock value that just catches you off guard. It's sort of like the first season of South Park; it was just shock value, but then in recent episodes they use great writing and I enjoy it even more than I did when I first saw it. I may believe in an invisible man in the sky; but I'm at least smart enough to realize that just because someone is snarky, cynical and irreverent doesn't necessarily mean they know what the fuck they are talking about.

One last point and it's a thing I'm so sick of; leave the 10 Commandments alone. It's not a fantastic iron-clad justice system, but the only set of laws I've heard pre-dating the 10 Commandments are Hammurabi's Code. Here is one of the laws that his code has, "If anyone brings an accusation against a man, and the accused goes to the river and leaps into the river, if he sinks in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river proves that the accused is not guilty, and he escapes unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser." So for anyone that accuses the 10 Commandments of being "common sense laws" Hammurabi's Code goes to prove that in those days this would be pretty groundbreaking. The only reason why they seem like they are common sense laws, is that western culture has used these as the framework for societal norms since before Constantine. And for those that say it's for the purpose of controlling people; it sounds so sinister when you say it that way. Moses wandered around the desert with the Hebrew people for 40 YEARS; you can't tell me that you can just tell everyone to be on the honor system. I've seen people lose their minds when Blizzard shuts their servers down for a 2 hour system maintenance. Besides these laws are purely of a Kantian "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" nature. It would be like me saying, "Thou shalt not piss on the toilet seat." If I said that God told me to put that, yes a little deceitful, but am I thinking to myself, "Yes, soon every quaking knee will bend, today toilet seats, tomorrow THE WORLD"? No way, I just hate it when people do that and I don't do it, but who can really even argue that that isn't a rule that everyone should abide by anyway. But ultimately, if you think I believe there was a guy trapped in a whale, or that there were only two people at the beginning of mankind, you're crazy. George Carlin said, "I wouldn't mind those folks in Alabama putting (the 10 Commandments) up on the courthouse wall; as long as they included one additional commandment, 'thou shall keep thy religion to thyself,'" I feel the exact same way about quasi-religions like atheism. I think that people who are way overboard sceptics are just as crazy as people who are overboard fanatics.