Tuesday Tonic - Purpose!

Tombstone da Deadman 

Sit back and take in some inspiration on a Tuesday morning.

Easter "Joy"

Even when I was a practicing Catholic, I never quite wanted to "celebrate" the Christian remake of Easter. I was happy to celebrate spring, rebirth, flowers blooming, days getting longer, the Easter bunny and coloring eggs to symbolize fertility and new life - in short, all the aspects of the ancient festival of Eastre that most people enjoy celebrating at this time of the year. But the human sacrifice myth that Christianity grafted on to Easter has always repulsed me.

I think one of the most puzzling and disturbing things about theism is that belief seems to alter the human mind so that otherwise rational, good and decent people are able to accept a doctrine of "salvation through human sacrifice" without apparent discomfort.  In fact, Christians not only embrace this doctrine as the truth, but they consider it to be a beautiful proof of the love of the Biblical god.  Without any apparent irony, most Christians regard the story of the torture and execution of the son-god, Jesus, as the very zenith of joyful good news.

Oh happy day -?!

In any other context, human beings who think bloody human sacrifice is acceptable, let alone good, would be considered sociopathic. An entire culture of them would be considered monstrous. Yet, human sacrifice to gods - bloodshed for religion - is accepted as a normal part of human culture even to this day in some parts of the world. Only in a religious context is such depravity considered not only acceptable but laudatory.

The concept of redemptive blood sacrifice disturbs me on many levels.  It disturbs me that people are told that humanity is in need of redemption - that we are sinful, "filthy rags" condemned by our very nature to an eternity of torture in hell unless we seek "salvation"from a deity - when it is the deity which they also believe created our human nature in the first place. More important is the chilling reality that people accept this vile, self-loathing doctrine. I wonder at the twisted psychology of a faith that teaches little children that they are sinful, hell-bound creatures, and then goes on to tell them that their only path to salvation must be through a bloody human sacrifice that allegedly occurred 2000 years ago.

It disturbs me that the deity that millions of people worship is believed to require a blood sacrifice to expiate the sinfulness of its own creation at all. It seems incredible that an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving god - whose alleged desire is to welcome humanity into its presence - would deliberately create humankind with a curious, independent and impulsively immature nature and then subject the first humans to a life or death test which requires incuriousness, unquestioning obedience and experienced maturity.

It disturbs me that millions of people worship a god that would condemn all humanity for all eternity because of the inevitable failure of the two prototype humans to pass that impossible test because of the limitations of the very human nature with which that god endowed them.  It could make sense if people acknowledged that the god is a viciously manipulative tyrant which only fear kept them worshiping, but instead Christians insist that the mythical monster is a "loving" god.

It disturbs me that the cruel, capricious, psychopathic behavior which is the nature of the Biblical god - it is evident throughout holy scripture that God is all that and worse - must be called just, holy and glorious by its worshipers. Believers never seem to wonder why their omniscient and omnipotent god would require total, abject obedience in the first place nor why it could not - or would not - think of a more humane way for its followers to avoid eternal hellfire for the "sin" of being what they were created to be. It never seems to occur to believers that the deity they truly believe in is actually awful, even evil.

Christians refer to the Passion and Resurrection stories as the most "joyful" part of scripture.  I understand that they think it is the most important part - indeed it is the very foundation of the Christian faith - but I do not understand how people can remain so uncritical of this "salvation".  I find myself wondering how people can suspend normal human horror at such violent cruelty in this one celebrated instance,  calling it necessary and good. Their insistence that a god that can do anything somehow needed someone to die a violent, painful death to satisfy its thirst for vengeance and that this capriciously cruel demand is the greatest love humankind will ever know strikes me as very sad.

Human beings fear death more than anything else. Al Stefanelli writes that through most of history, the horror of dying spawned many versions of the Savior story.  Probably human beings then, as now, felt an awful impotence in the face of their inevitable demise and that sense of impotence may explain the continued acceptance of a doctrine of human failure leading to misplaced faith in irrational belief.

But, while fear and a sense of impotence may explain the willingness of believers to accept a savior myth, I feel that it is early religious indoctrination and psychological manipulation which leads people to sublimate their normal, healthy human aversion to wanton cruelty and to accept the meanest of human impulses - in the guise of Godly judgement - with hardly a murmur of protest.  Cruelty is called kindness, evil is called good and contempt is called love. Such is the bizarrely twisted Christian moral compass.

I suspect that the early Christian conquerers co-opted the pagan Eastre celebrations of springtime fertility not simply to 'win over' pagans to Christianity (they generally achieved this through intimidation and persecution anyway), but to make Christianity more palatable to the masses by entwining the terrifying and immoral doctrine with the more hopeful, joyful celebrations that most psychologically healthy human beings naturally prefer. By fusing the repugnant with the refreshing, Christianity keeps its adherents off-balance and confused about what ought to be the clear difference between goodness and evil.

I do not believe that the Biblical god - or any gods - exist, but I do think that the idea of such a god - and the repulsive religious doctrines built around it - ought to be resisted by all morally healthy people with every ounce of vigor that they can muster.

Replica of torture/execution device is the universally beloved symbol for the religion of "love".

Isn't That Just Ducky!

I am an early riser.  I am up with the sun, up with the sky, up with the tides.

I love to walk near the sea. I love it so much that I bark to go out as soon as the sun is up!

I love the sun. I love the sky! I love the sea!

Isn't that just Ducky!

Equal Pay, Schmequal Pay

I am up to my neck in company and cooking this weekend -  yes, that's it!  That is a great excuse for not posting! - but I had to just slip this one in here.  Daniel Finke at Camels With Hammers on FTB posted about the latest shot across the bow of the ship of equal rights. That leaky old vessel is looking worse for wear lately.

This time, it is the Wisconsin legislature, headed by the deservedly embattled Scott Walker, which has rolled back the calendar on yet another milestone in the history of women's rights.  The Wisconsin house, voting along (Republican) party lines, voted to repeal the 2009 law which tried to address unfair, unequal pay practices in the state.  Huffpost article here.

Looks like, with a possible recall looming over his head, Walker is determined to do as much damage as he possibly can to the state of Wisconsin before June.  Naturally, he also seems keen to polish his credentials with the GOP - perhaps he is planning on a federal run if the people of Wisconsin throw him out of the Governor's office - by firing off as many destructive missiles at women as he possibly can, too.

The Republican War on Women:  coming soon to a state near you.

Thank Gods It's FreyaDay!

Good Morning, Humans.

In a moment, I am going to ssstttrrreeetttccchhh and then wander out to the kitchen for my breakfast.

In a moment, I am going to meow loudly and hop lightly to the floor because I am awake!

In a moment, I am going to lie in the window and watch the birds fly by.

Good Morning, Humans. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

To Understand Newfoundland

Sunrise in St. John's, Newfoundland

Writer's block is a bastard!  I have at least ten posts in the pipe in various stages of incompletion, and two nearly done but damn it, they are just not ready to go up yet.  And I am fresh out of words at the moment.

Luckily, I have a small stock of really great stuff to show people when this old hag descends. Today's selections include a nice little write-up about my birthplace complete with an impossible-to-pry-loose (grrr!) video featuring Simon Calder (I'm sure I've heard that voice before - on Planet Earth perhaps?),  and a video of a walking tour of St. John's, including lots of video of hiking a (tame) part of the East Coast trail system.

The NiftySpouse picked up the secret SOS signal I emitted around noon-ish -  we atheists can send secret SOS signals (via evil mind waves, of course) to our significant others (bet you didn't know that, hm? Come over to the dark side - we have SSS's!) - and he sent me the link to a story post haste as a restorative. It did the trick! Read and enjoy!

And, since I was unable to rip share the video from that link above, I found an even cooler one for your viewing pleasure.  I have some hiking/climber friends who would enjoy some of these trails.  I also walked the Signal Hill one with a California friend and our assorted offspring -  it was fun walking along that low cliff edge - thoughtful of the city to provide that handy rope to hang onto in the places where the ledge is only a couple of feet wide!

Watch and enjoy!

Dust That Sings

P Z Myers posted this on his blog this week and I've only just had time to view it.  It is amazing.

Beautiful, thoughtful, and utterly amazing.

Please take twelve minutes to watch this.  It is worth your time.

Hillary 2016? Hell, Yes!

This week, I will indulge myself imagining Hillary Rodham Clinton as our future president.

Former president Bill Clinton talked about the possibility - however remote at present - that Hillary could still be persuaded to serve her country once more, after she steps down as Secretary of State later this year.

Hillary 2016?

Attention Supreme Court: The People Will Decide

Another in the long line of inexplicably "surprising"  revelations that seem to be coming fast and furious these days:  a Pew Research Council poll shows that public disapproval of the U.S. Supreme Court has tripled during the hearings regarding the Affordable Healthcare Act.  The American people have registered their awareness, once again, that conservative lies criticisms about progressive trickery are more often than not breathtakingly brazen projection.  The "activist liberal judges" we have heard so much about for so many years have failed to materialize in any powerful way, while the United States Supreme Court has been stocked with activist Republican conservatives. Finally, the American people seem to be waking up to this reality.

The religious right and the libertarian wing of the Republican party have long accused "the left" of a litany of evils ranging from the myth of the "liberal media" to the incredible accusation that "godless socialists" were bent on destroying this country. For years, the fiction that these "dangers" from the left not only exist but are a threat to all patriotic Americans has been promulgated and, unbelievably, accepted by a majority of conservatives and even some liberals in the USA. Always prominent among these false claims was the suspicious accusation that the left was somehow packing the judicial benches across the land with "activist" judges.

Even while their own churches and business leadership were busy organizing followers to do their bidding in the voting booth, even while powerful conservative backers were financing the establishment of a network of schools and colleges to produce an entire generation of dedicated workers for their pro-religion, anti-social cause, even while libertarian billionaires and billionaire churches planned and financed a scheme to infiltrate every school, every influential profession and every level of government, right-wing American leaders and their followers continued to accuse the left - that scary, elitist, monolithic left - of trying to do the very thing that they were actually doing.

Patrick Henry College est. 2000

It was the uncertainty and unease felt by the great American middle class following the social and sexual revolution of the 1960's that set the stage for the right wing's greatest opportunity, and its leadership did not waste it. Acting quickly to fill the void that social turmoil often brings to the collective psyche of a population, the religious right shifted its proselytizing and church-planting into high gear. Money was poured into the establishment of Christian schools and "colleges" which popped up all over the country seemingly overnight.  Massive infusions of cash from the coffers of wealthy churches and like-minded wealthy corporations enabled the construction of old-looking, brand new campuses, to give the air of legitimacy to institutions created for the singular purpose of graduating a generation of ideologically-driven businessmen, lawyers, doctors and politicians to fill the leadership positions in the future, theocratic, conservative America of their dreams.

Yet, notwithstanding such a well-financed and determined strategy, the right-wing has found it an uphill battle to beat down and crush the independent American thinker. The traditional wide band of moderate Americans in the center of most policy debates throughout our modern history has been eroded far more slowly than the so-called "moral majority" might have expected given their relentless religious and political proselytizing.  Even at the pinnacle of their power in 2004, the extreme right was only able to grab the top ring of political power with a surprisingly small margin, barely heaved over the finish line by an incumbency that was only made possible by an activist Supreme Court, disturbing voting irregularities and the fear and uncertainty of war.  The fact that - even with a well-funded, carefully-planned, long-term strategy to undermine and further weaken the American social contract using religious indoctrination and inflammatory political propaganda - right-wing conservatives have only managed to thoroughly convert roughly 30% of the population to their extreme ideology says something encouraging about the resilience and independent toughness of the moderate American center.

Polls taken last week indicated public support for the Affordable Healthcare Act is split along partisan lines, but that support is rising as the provisions of the Act are beginning to go into effect. A small majority want the bill struck down by the Supreme Court - many because they think the Act goes too far, but some because they object that the Act does not go far enough. This comes in spite of the fact that, when questioned about specific provisions of the law, a much larger majority of respondents actually support many of them!  While the libertarian arm of the Republican propaganda machine (via conservative-dominated media) has seemed to succeed in muddying the waters in the short term, it seems that the American public is beginning to smell a rat. The Pew Research Council poll may be the proverbial canary in the mine: an early indicator that deep in the heart of America, a sense of the fundamental inappropriateness of an unelected body potentially striking down a law which was passed by democratically elected representatives of the people is beginning to reassert itself.

David Frum had an interesting take on the role of the Supreme Court in the election (!) last week on the Daily Beast.  Frum believes that, this time, even a high court stocked with hand-picked conservative ideologues might not bow to partisan pressure to use its unelected power to influence a hugely important matter of public governance - not even to bolster the flagging fortunes of the current crop of Republican primary contenders.  The nine justices may actually perform their constitutionally-defined duty, and nothing more, to the frustration of the conservatives who expect obedience from them,  and to the relief of progressives everywhere.  It is the American people who hold the right to decide in November whether they are satisfied with the work of the current congress.

Out of an apparent "going for broke" recklessness, virtually all of the Republican leadership has openly joined in this intensely partisan and miserably destructive strategy to polarize the American public in order to eke out political victories by small but sufficient margins to retain power. I suppose there may be a cleverly hidden strategy behind this latest spectacle.  What appears to be the disintegration of the GOP might in fact be the birth pangs of yet another well-orchestrated power play, but from where I sit it looks like a nuclear, if temporary, implosion.  They did their worst,  but the extreme right-wing could not completely win over the great American middle. The Pew poll seems to suggest that any attempt by the Supreme Court to interfere politically on behalf of the Republican agenda will be viewed with disapproval by the American public, particularly by progressives and independents.

And that is very good news to me.

* Update: Maureen Dowd's column Men in Black on this topic is a must read.

Tuesday Tonic

Some days, you just need a little Hitchens.  For all his flaws,  Christopher Hitchens' clarity of thought, command of the English language and passionate advocacy for the dignity of humankind was unrivaled.

Here is a short memorial video that was presented at the Reason Rally.