mynutsitch.com

Ah, religion. A subject almost everyone has a fairly solid opinion on.

Including me.

*Warning* This blog is not suitable for viewing at work. Or at church.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with my normal style of blogging, I feel I should let you know that this is definitely not a topic I would normally cover. I have my reasons for not approaching subjects such as religion and politics very often and the main one is this:

When engaging in conversation about religion or politics, even some of the most intelligent open-minded people I’ve ever met will turn into completely unbearable pricks when those topics come up. I’ve tried, and it almost always ends up being a completely mind-numbing experience in which opinions are exchanged (but none are actually absorbed) and at least a little respect is lost for each of the participating parties.

So I just avoid it and save myself the headache.

With that said, I am certainly no expert on any sort of religion and I don’t expect anyone to take me seriously. Not that anyone should anyway.

My personal experiences were mostly in my childhood. While I didn’t grow up in a religious household at all, my best friend through grade school was Baptist and I spent a lot of time with his family. For a while I did attend church with them but I was mostly just going through the motions. Later on, one of my more serious girlfriends in high school was a pretty hardcore Christian and I got a little more involved, but just enough to make her happy.

You see, it didn’t take me very long to realize that I am a very logical type of person. Science and math. Hypotheses proven with repeatable, predictable experiments and formulas that return concrete results again and again.

Religion isn’t logical.

Yes, I realize that is a mass generalization. Get used to it, because I’m not setting out to write an entire novel here. Obviously there are exceptions to any generalization and some of the things I say won’t apply to, say, Buddhism. I’m operating under the assumption that you’re at least slightly intelligent and can see what I’m trying to say. Maybe that’s a mistake, but I guess that’s a risk I take by putting my opinion out here since the collective IQ of the internet at large is probably somewhere between that of a bucket full of walrus snot and an intern at FOX news (oh shit, someone sound the politics alarm!).

But it’s true. Religion isn’t based on logic, it is based on fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the tough questions and situations that present themselves throughout our lives, fear of tackling those questions and situations alone, and fear of the concept of spending an eternity in Hell. All of which can be solved with just a little bit of faith.

“Just join our little group and all your problems will be solved. Tough questions or situations in life? Just pray about it and it will be OK.”

I’m not going to spend a bunch of time pointing out the flaws that I see in books filled with stories of men walking on water, turning water into wine, talking to God, building and filling gigantic boats with 2 of every animal in existence and otherwise performing spectacularly amazing feats. I think everyone’s already heard enough of that kind of stuff and, as I said earlier, pretty much everyone has already determined whether they believe in it or not.

To me it all sounds like the same old crap. In my book, Christianity and Scientology really aren’t all that different.

How could I possibly think that? Scientologists are a bunch of crazy fools, right?

Well, first take into consideration that Scientology is still pretty much in it’s infancy. Specific details and beliefs aside, when Christianity was in it’s infancy they resorted to some pretty questionable tactics to “spread the word” too. As utterly ridiculous as all the Scientology stuff sounds (just google “Xenu” if you don’t know), really how much different is that from half the shit in the Bible? How much more of a stretch is it to believe a book written by a man with well documented mental problems than it is to believe multiple guys who claim to have talked to God? How much more of a stretch is it to believe a book written by a science fiction writer than it is to believe one that was originally written in a language that is all but lost and has been translated multiple (dozens?) of times, probably to the point where the current version doesn’t even resemble the original?

It isn’t. It’s just the fact that Christianity (or insert other “accepted” religion here) has been around for centuries longer and has been passed from generation to generation, infusing itself into our society.

Actually, despite everything that I just said, for the most part I really don’t give a shit what other people believe. For most people religion brings a stabilizing force into their life that they were missing and, for the most part, tends to be a really positive thing. In general religion teaches a lot of positive messages and gives people an excellent moral foundation for how to live their lives. If you want to believe that there’s a giant space monkey hiding behind the moon waiting to unleash a flock of golden butterflies from its ass on the third Tuesday following the great ice storm of 2012 that’s fine with me. As far as I’m concerned you’re entitled to that as a human and as an individual. More power to ya.

My problems begin when it goes beyond that.

I have a problem with the idea that kids are growing up in households where this stuff is being embedded into their brains from the day they are born. To most of them it is being presented as the absolute truth before they can truly even begin to try and comprehend what they’re hearing. To me this is basically brainwashing. By the time they reach an age where they can understand what it all means and the questions start forming in their minds, it is far more likely they’ll accept the vague “it’s all part of His plan” type of answers and succumb to the fear instead of asking more questions. I saw this exact thing happen with my friends that grew up in religious households when I was growing up. Rather than making their own decisions as adults the decisions were all but made for them.

I also take issue with the “holier than thou” (heh…wonder where that came from) type of attitude that seems to practically be mandatory. Obviously this is a generalization, but it really seems to happen a lot. Nonbelievers are looked at as some sort of lesser being. I’ll tell you what, guys…I’ll keep respecting your right to believe in whatever you want (regardless of how stupid it may seem to me) and how about you start respecting mine.

And that leads right into my last issue: the people dead set on converting you. If I could just get this shit to stop I’d be completely fine with everything else. Look, buddy…you aren’t going to change my mind unless you can somehow manage to feed me the facts that my brain craves. Hell, even if you had some of those shiny golden butterflies in your hand I’d probably be a tough sell.

It’s not so much the ones that will bring it up in conversation. Those ones are easy enough to just walk away from when they get overbearing. The ones that really get me are the ones that waltz up my driveway and knock on my damn door. Just the other day I came home from work and found one of these bad boys wedged neatly between my doorknob and the frame:

Are you fuckers serious?

Really?

I’m sorry, but if your main recruiting method falls directly in line with the strategies employed by vacuum retailers and somewhat decent cutlery peddlers you may want to reconsider what you’re dedicating your life to.

Although, I guess that would create some instant ice-breakers at your little conventions…

“Hey, my name is Bob! You wouldn’t believe this, but there I was enjoying a nice relaxing afternoon at home sharpening my fine CutCo knife collection and was just about to freshen up the downstairs carpet with the ol’ Kirby when, lo and behold, the message of The Christ came a knockin’ at my door! So how’d you end up here?”

“Whoa…me too!”

Fascinating stuff. You guys should all be very happy together.

As for me, I don’t take too kindly to people intentionally littering on my property. If you had caught me while I was home I could have just done the usual “Oh, great timing guys! I was just about to head upstairs and join the couple of trannies I found downtown. I’ve got plenty of coke if you want to snort some out of the kinda womanly looking one’s asscrack too. $20 a pop should cover it. Come on in!”

(Trust me, they’ll never come back after that.)

But no, instead I got a picture of “The Christ”, apparently after undergoing a recent de-hippiefication process, and a cordial invitation.

Since I didn’t get a chance to discuss my feelings about your invitation in person, I’m really hoping you guys see this. I could probably go off for another good 1000 words describing how much I would really enjoy such an experience, but since they say that a picture is worth 1000 words I’ll just post this for you instead.

I’m sorry I won’t be able to accept your invitation to “Follow The Christ”, but rest assured I was more than happy to take the time to “Jizz the Jesus”.

Or Jizzus, if you prefer.

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For those of you religious folks who aren’t currently foaming at the mouth and incapable of forming complete sentences, I actually have a serious scenario I’d like you to consider. What would your response be to this:

1. If a man appeared on earth claiming to be second coming of Jesus would you believe him? What would he need to do to differentiate himself from the crazy homeless guy who makes the same claims? Walk on water? Water to wine? Heal the lame?

- think of your answer and then consider the following -

2. Assuming he was more than convincing and developed a strong following, is your faith strong enough that, once convinced, you would follow this man without question?

- if so -

3. What if it were later revealed that this man was a master illusionist and had fooled you all with slight of hand and cleverly planned stunts? How do you think that would that affect your faith, if at all?