Zoe’s Journal

I may have just caused myself to be disowned by at least 3 sectors of my family. At the very least - alienated. More so than I already am.

And it’s all because of a stupid email chain letter about a Muslim holiday stamp. It said:

So I said, to everyone on the stupid list (which included my mother, my grandparents, my uncle & aunt, an assistant pastor, etc…):

The United States is also guilty of many senseless bombings of Muslim civilian places in their own country (if you don’t believe me, research it). Just as there are some Christian fanatics, there are fanatics of every religion. It is completely wrong and unfair of us to disrespect their holidays and customs. Christmas has become more than just a religious holiday, like it or not. To boycott this stamp would be the exact same thing as boycotting a stamp of Jesus on the Cross because of that one christian fanatic who blew up an abortion clinic. Think about it.

FYI, I am atheist, and still celebrate Christmas. Would you deny me this traditional holiday? I’m sorry if this truth offended you. This email very much offended me. Thank you for listening.

I got one reply. I’m not going to say from who.

I am sorry you got so infiltrated with the world.
If God had not answered our prayers, you would not be alive.
If Jesus never came, How did they base all the years? No matter what anyone thinks, facts are facts even if no one believes them. You had a great, great grandma and Grandpa that you never saw. Does that mean they did not live. Just food for thought.
Do you not know that time 2007 included, means 2007 years after the death of Christ?
Do you not see all the colors of the trees? God did that.

This is impossible to reason with. Not because I don’t have reasons WHY, but because of the simple close-mindedness to logic. Because each question is so simple! Yes, I do live in the world. No, I do not live in a bubble. It’s possible that the DOCTORS and SCIENCE kept me alive - don’t they get any credit? Or were the tubes and wires only for show? Of course Jesus was a person. There are historical documents attesting to that fact. That doesn’t mean he was anything more than a person! And, DUH. I know that there have to be great-great grandparents. That, again, is science. Yes, the years are dated by the life of Jesus. I never said religion didn’t exist, or that it’s not influential. I only claim that it is not based on FACT. It is based on the fear of hell and ignorance of the scientific processes surrounding us all, like the very leaves on the tree that change color and die. That can be very readily explained in any middle or high school biology book.

But, to be nice, I replied very decorously.

Yes, I see all the things you mentioned. I happen to believe that science and reason have better answers than using the crutch of ‘god did it, end of story’. I am happy you have your beliefs. I do not share them… I hope you can accept that.

GAH! I don’t know why I even bother! Irrationality! Unwillingness to save themselves from ignorance! Why can’t they explain these things past the “God made it, End of Story” excuse? Seems pretty pitiful.

But then. I’m not trying to convert anyone to atheism. I am asking only that they, (as “god-created humans”, they believe) use their ‘god-given’ brains and actually THINK! REASON! GAHHHHHH!!!!!!!

*grumbles*

ice cream.

P.P.S. And do you know what? The so-called “Muslim Christmas Stamp” isn’t even true. It’s a stamp that celebrates TWO muslim holidays not even vaguely related to Christmas.

According to the U.S. Postal Service, a 34-cent stamp was issued in September of 2001 and October of 2002 commemorating two important Islamic celebrations or eids. They are Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. On those days, Muslims greet one another with “Eid mubarak,” which translates literally as “blessed festival.” The phrase is written in Islamic calligraphy on the stamp. The Islamic celebrations the postage stamp commemorates are roughly in November and January and are celebrations that many Muslims focus on during the Christian holidays.

P.P.P.S I am getting sick and tired of MySpace bulletins that have a subject line of “OMG, He Didn’t!”, and then an inside message that basically says “Unfortunately, 97% of myspacers wont repost this. When Jesus died on the cross He was thinking of you. If you are one of the 3% who will stand up for Him just repost this with your city’s name.”

I know it’s stupid. I KNOW it’s silly. But it STILL MAKES ME MAD.

And where the hell, do they get off saying that 97% don’t repost? About 50% fucking percent do! It’s fucking annoying.

*grumbles*

triple cherry chocolate sundae

Everyone who knows anything about music knows that the MTV Music Awards occurred a couple of days ago. But did you know about the Creative Arts Emmy Awards? While I didn’t watch the show, I did read about it the next day while perusing the news. My absolute favorite part was the acceptance speech by comedian Kathy Griffin. Upon receiving her trophy, she said:

“A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus,” holding up her statuette. “Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now.”

HAHAHA! This is awesome. But now, the Catholic church has invaded our freedom of speech! Really no surprise when you consider that religion operates by no laws but its own. As an article read:

“It is a sure bet that if Griffin had said, ‘Suck it, Muhammad,’ there would have been a very different reaction,” Catholic league president Bill Donohue said in a statement posted on the group’s Web site. He called on TV academy president Dick Askin to denounce Griffin’s “hate speech” and on Griffin to apologize.

What a dickhead. The irony? Kathy Griffin herself is a Catholic.

and here it is again.

Have you ever read the Bible? I mean _really_ read the Bible? Winston Churchill’s son Randolph hadn’t, and his reaction really gives a new perspective to those who have been schooled in it from childhood. He had been bet by some friends that he couldn’t read the entire Bible in a fortnight…

‘Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped… He is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud “I say, I bet you didn’t know this came in the Bible…” or merely slapping his side and chortling “God, isn’t God a shit!”

Dawkins explains it a bit better:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

Woah. Lots of big, mean-sounding words - but let’s take another look:

It is unfair to attack such an easy target. The God Hypothesis should not stand or fall with its most unlovely instantiation, Yahweh, nor his insipidly opposite Christian face, ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’. … I am not attacking the particular qualities of Yahweh, or Jesus, or Allah, or any other specific god such as Baal, Zeus, or Wotan. Instead I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensibly: there exists a super-human, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. This book will advocate an alternative view: any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.

So, what all of this means is that religious people believe in the God Hypothesis (whether they be monotheistic, polytheistic, or something else), and what Dawkins is presenting, the alternative view, is that IF there was a god then there has to be a reason and process as to how that being came into existence - which would be evolution since no other logical idea presents itself.

We’ll explore this all further with the next post - Polytheism.

In the previous post, we began discussing how religion is granted WAY too much respect. Here are some modern-day examples from Dawkins proving the point.

On February 21, 2006 the United Stated Supreme Court ruled that a church in New Mexico should be exempt from the law, which everyone else has to obey, against the taking of hallucinogenic drugs. Faithful members of the Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal believe that they can understand God only by drinking hoasca tea, which contains the illegal hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine. Note that is sufficient that they believe that the drug enhances their understanding. They do not have to produce evidence. Conversely, there is plenty of evidence that cannabis eases the nausea and discomfort of cancer sufferers undergoing chemotherapy. Yet the Supreme Court ruled, in 2005, that all patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes are vulnerable to federal prosecution (even in the minority of states where such specialist use is legalized). Religion, as ever, is the trump card.

It seems that if I want to commit a crime, all I have to do is claim that I needed to do it in order to uphold my religion! “God came to me in a dream and told me to rob this bank and give all the money to my church.”

Dawkins was once commissioned by the New Statesman magazine to write an article defending author Salman Rushdie, who was then under sentence of death in Iran for writing a novel. Dawkins wrote:

… The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe ‘religious liberty’.

I have run into this predicament frequently while trying to tell my religious relatives that I no longer believe in their ‘lifeline’. Their chief ‘excuse’ or reasoning, is Faith. Faith is unexplainable. Perhaps this is why it is near impossible to argue logic with religious people.

Dawkins continues Chapter Two by describing the whole episode of the Danish cartoons mocking Islam, and the riots that happened subsequently.

In Nigeria, Muslim protesters against the Danish cartoons burned down several Christian churches, and used machetes to attack and kill (black Nigerian) Christians in the streets. One Christian was put inside a rubber tyre, doused with petrol, and set alight.

I’m having a hard time imagining why the Muslims were targeting Christians, when the cartoons were published by a non-religious public press. Hmm. On we go…

Demonstrators were photographed in Britain bearing banners saying ‘Slay those who insult Islam’, ‘Butcher those who mock Islam’, Europe will pay: Demolition is on its way’, and, apperently without irony, ‘Behead those who say Islam is a violent religion’.

Maybe Islam is not violent to those who are in the ranks already… but the rest of the world had better beware! This includes agnostics, atheists, Christians, and persons of any other religion or faith than Islam. They’re coming for you with machetes and ‘Demolition’!

One Muslim attempted to explain the riots by saying ‘The person of the Prophet, peace be upon him, is revered so profoundly in the Muslim world, with a love and affection that cannot be explained in words. It goes beyond your parents, your loved ones, your children. That is part of the faith. There is also an Islamic teaching that one does not depict the Prophet.’

This rather assumes, as Mueller observed, “that the values of Islam trump anyone else’s - which is what any follower of Islam does assume, just as any follower of any religion believes that theirs is the sole way, truth, and light. If people wish to love a 7th century preacher more than their own families, that’s up to them, but nobody else in the world is obliged to take it seriously.”

Except that if you don’t take it seriously and accord it proper respect you are physically threatened, on a scale that no other religion as aspired to since the Middle Ages. One can’t help wondering why such violence is necessary, given that, as Mueller notes: ‘If any of you clowns are right about anything, the cartoonists are going to hell anyway - won’t that do?’

Yes… everyone is going to hell according to someone. The Muslims believe that everyone non-muslim is going to burn forever, while every other religion believes that the Muslims are going to hell. So we’re all good!

Dawkins concludes:

I am not in favor of offending or hurting anyone just for the sake of it. But I am intrigued and mystified by the disproportionate privileging of religion in our otherwise secular societies. All politicians must get used to disrespectful cartoons of their faces, and nobody riots in their defense. What is so special about religion that we grant it such uniquely privileged respect?

Great question… we’ll find out in the next few posts!