Westboro Baptist Church vs. Comic-Con

It's one thing to protest military funerals and the gays. It's another thing to bring your traveling dickwad show to Comic-Con.

These geeks are prepared.

Check out the full set of images at Comics Alliance.

What Happens When We Die?

Andrew Sullivan has been hosting a spirited back-and-forth on the topic of faith, religion, and death, with readers of his blog and Kevin Drum's chiming in with their thoughts. Nothing like a game of philosophical volleyball between atheists, believers, and everyone in between to illustrate my speck of existence within the galaxies, guys.

Judging from reader contributions, few are on the fence when it comes to what happens when we transition from the living to the dead. There are a lot of comments like, "I'm not sure what occurs, but here's what I hope it all means."

From it all, I see demonstrated an undercurrent of hope (or futility) that what we believe while alive somehow influences events when we're not. That seems to infer an element of control over the universe that I'm not willing to acknowledge, regardless of which side you're on. I can't even get the dog to poop in the back yard consistently, so what makes me think that I get a vote in my afterlife?

This reader observation struck a chord:

Sharing Kevin's sense of never having felt the need to believe in God, perhaps my answer will be of interest.

I have always felt that when I die, I am dead and gone, my conscious life will end, my interactions with others will end, and I will be simply GONE. I don't know what causes consciousness (call it spirit, call it soul, I don't mean to pick sides with my words), but I expect that it will end. My afterlife will be in the memories of those I knew, those who loved me, those who carry me on in their hearts. I, myself, cease to exist.

This gives me a beautiful, shockingly beautiful sense of the Now. Being in the present, the here and now, is the ultimate reward of life. I am constantly gobsmacked by the minutiae of life; I stand in awe of the things around me right fucking now. There's no reward, no judgment, no heaven, no hell. I live right fucking now.

That pretty much sums up where I stand on the topic, although it's arrogantly presumptuous to assume that anyone gives a rat's ass what I think. But it's my site, and you came here voluntarily (or via some Google magic), so there it is.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Religious Reminder for Immigration Zealots

Via Andrew Sullivan, a helpful reminder from all those Christians with their knickers in a bunch about illegal aliens and immigration:

Leviticus 19:33-34 (NIV)

When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt.

Bible burn!

'The Simpsons' Supports South Park

Via The Daily Dish

Save Stephen Baldwin

What is it with those Baldwin boys, anyway? You'd think with all of their trials and tribulations that they would have exited Hollywood a long time ago.

But poor Stephen learned that the 90210 is a cruel mistress once you accept Christ as your savior. Steve's been knocked on his ass.



At first, the whole thing didn't ring true to me. Hello? I'm The Skeptimist. But then I read a couple of entries from the FAQ section of the movement's web site:

Q- Why does Stephen need personal wealth?

A- Stephen’s influence is in Hollywood. Hollywood worships money and without it you are seen as a loser and cannot be an effective influence to this group.

Q- How much money does he need?

A- From what I read in public court documents Stephen needs several million dollars to pay all of his creditors but he deserves hundreds of millions for his Job like faithfulness in the face of relentless loss and persecution.

Well, hells to the yeah. Makes perfect sense to me.

If Stephen deserves that kind of scratch, I'm opening a PalPal account for myself. My belief in the FSM has resulted in the NBA refusing to take my calls. It can't be because I'm an short, old white guy.

Adam Savage's Speech to the Harvard Humanist Society

It starts out funny and gets better as it goes:

I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to read my speech from my new iPad.Yep. 

I'm not only a humanist, I'm also an early adopter.

Adam continues with some insightful comments:

By what route does anyone come to believe what they believe? We all like to imagine that it's based on a set of logical facts, but it's often a much more circuitous route.

For me it was pretty simple. I'm actually the fourth generation in my family to have no practical use for the church, or God, or religion. My children continue this trend.

I thought that Savage would take an anti-religion view, based on that introduction, but that wasn't the case:

Prayer doesn't work because someone out there is listening, it works because someone in here is listening. I've paid attention. I've pictured what I want to happen in my life. I've meditated extensively on my family, my future, my past actions and what did and didn't work for me about them. I've looked hard at problems and thought hard about their solutions.

See, I order my life by the same mechanism that I use to build things. I cannot proceed to move tools around in the real world until my brain has a clear picture in it of what I'm building. The same goes for my life. I've tried to pay attention. I've tried to picture the way I want things to be, and I've noticed that when I had a clear picture, things often turned out the way I wanted them to.

I've concluded by this that someone is paying attention—I've concluded that it's me. I've noticed that if I'm paying attention to those around me, to myself, to my surroundings, then that is the very definition of empathy. I've noticed that when I pay attention, I'm less selfish, I'm happier—and that the inverse holds true as well.

The rest of the piece is similarly introspective, especially the realization that as an adult, you soon learn that the heavy lifting is your responsibility. You can check out the entire transcript here.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

MoDo: Help Help! I'm Being Oppressed!

Leave it to Maureen Down to jump on the Catholic church after they are already so bent over from continuous pummeling that she doesn't need to leap very high.

It's not that I disagree with Mo's opening comments. They ring true. But has she been in hibernation for the last forty years?

When I was in Saudi Arabia, I had tea and sweets with a group of educated and sophisticated young professional women.

I asked why they were not more upset about living in a country where women’s rights were strangled, an inbred and autocratic state more like an archaic men’s club than a modern nation. They told me, somewhat defensively, that the kingdom was moving at its own pace, glacial as that seemed to outsiders.

How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination?

I was puzzling over that one when it hit me: As a Catholic woman, I was doing the same thing. 

Remember, Maureen. Only the good die young.

Rapist Priests Suffer Like Jews?

Joe Sudbay @ AMERICAblog:

So, that latest ploy for victimhood from the Vatican has backfired, big time. Yesterday, at Good Friday services, the Pope's priest, Raniero Cantalamessa, gave a sermon comparing criticism of the church over the child rape scandal to the worst of what happened to the Jewish people. Stunning really. The Vatican has tried to distance the Church from those remarks. But, the priest gave those remarks in front of the pope and his words were reported by the Vatican newspaper. That would be like Robert Gibbs making a statement in front of Obama, which was also posted on the White House website -- and have the White House say Gibbs wasn't speaking for them.

I don't have anything enlightening to say about the whole Catholic priest pedophilia legacy. It's wrong, it's been tolerated and covered up, and people are fed up with both the crimes and the hypocrisy.

Let's hope there's a special section in Hell reserved for everyone who either abused or failed to protect our young people.

Brit Hume Gives Really Bad Advice to Tiger Woods

Why? Because Christians have never cheated on their spouses before. That's why.

Matt Taibbi - Onward Christian Warriors

Over at True/Slant, Matt Taibbi does his usual fine work in completely decimating David Brooks over his Obama's Christian Realism column in the New York Times.

Taibbi opines that Brooks is painting Obama with the very same religious warrior brush that he used on George W. Bush not long ago.

Brooks is a perfect example of the kind of spineless Beltway geek we always see beating the war drum at times like these. It’s because nebbishly little dorks like Brooks and Paul Wolfowitz and David Frum got their books dumped in high school that we end up dropping daisy cutters on Afghan sheep herds and shipping working class American kids halfway around the world to get their nuts blown off. That sounds like a simplistic explanation, but anyone who doesn’t have a keen ear for the pencil-pusher’s eternal quest for macho cred is going to have a hard time understanding Washington politics. Brooks’s columns have always been the easiest way to take the pulse of that particular dynamic, and it sure seems now that bureaucratic momentum for intervention and more intervention is re-inflating the chests of these Beltway generals.

Let's hope that Taibbi isn't misreading Obama, because the last thing we need is yet another administration that believes the US has a religious mandate to kill people in other countries.

Image via dullhunk's photostream on flickr
 

Ricky Gervais on The Book of Genesis

Via Effect Measure

Christianity: Yeah, That Makes Sense

Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him 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 magical tree.


Image by JL Outdoor Photography via flickr

Science: It Works, Bitches

Faith can be a wonderful thing, adding depth and meaning to a life that might otherwise be overwhelmed by the immense nature of our universe and the role that we play in it for the brief time we're here.

Not everyone believes the same things, nor should they. It's our disparity of thought and quest to find answers in a myriad of ways that keeps the human race plunging forward. Faith (and religion) play a role here, too, although as science advances and begins to provide plausible answers to previously puzzling queries, a friction has developed between those who believe in science, those who believe in faith, and those stuck somewhere in the middle, trying to reconcile the two.

Isn't there enough science available to convince nearly everyone that the earth is not 6000 years old? We may disagree as to whether the correct age is 10 billion, or 500 million, or even 1 million, but 6000 seems completely off the mark.


That's why it is so distressing to see people in government quote the 6000 year number as their rationale for either supporting or opposing programs that deal with scientific matters.

Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen, (R), used the statistic in a hearing before the Arizona Senate’s Retirement and Rural Development Committee, where she advocated for more uranium mining in Arizona because the state needs the money, and 6000 years of history has shown that uranium isn't bad for people.

As noted in the write-up, it's through the science of uranium's radioactive decay that we know that the earth is billions, not thousands, of years old.

When faith and religion stand in the way of our leaders making common-sense decisions that affect us all, that whole separation of church and state thing starts to make more sense.

Image via Tim Van Gorp

Noam Chomsky on Religion

Waterboarding - WWJD?

Via The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, there's finally an answer for those conservatives who have posited that Jesus would have been in support of waterboarding.

So let’s just ask the question right off the bat: should Americans use torture–sorry, enhanced interrogation techniques?

Jesus Christ: Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword

Science: The Dumbest Religion Ever

For Love, Not Law

Via Andrew Sullivan, a spot-on look at a recent Pew survey on religious flux written by Courtney Martin.

Money quote: "About half … became unaffiliated, at least in part, because they think of religious people as hypocritical, judgmental or insincere. Large numbers also say they became unaffiliated because they think that religious organizations focus too much on rules and not enough on spirituality, or that religious leaders are too focused on money and power rather than truth and spirituality."

Religious Truths