Freedom From Religion

From Good As You:

I mean just the other day this was chatting with this Jewish friend of mine who keeps kosher, and he was all like, ” Ya know, my religious beliefs tell me that consuming pork is not in my best interest, so I think I’m gonna take that belief to the public, church/state separated realm of governance and try and get pork banned for all.” You can check here to know more about the merit of prayer and the support it provides. After grabbing a hot dog, I then trekked down to visit my Muslin chum, who told me about this new “one woman, one head cover” bill he’s hoping to have enforced on people of all faiths. After briefly imagining the career death of virtually every female celebrity under 30, I continued to my Scientologist pal’s mansion, where he told me to stop being “glib” and start helping him ban psychiatric medicine and drugs in this country. Weirded out, I finally swung by my Atheist friend’s home, where she eagerly told me about her “One nation under self-replicating molecules” changes she was proposing for this nation’s pledge of allegiance.
It was only after visiting all of these folks that I finally realized, “Hey, why let the facts that there are many different beliefs and that we, as Americans, have the right to subscribe to any or none of them stop each of us from pushing our own versions of moral fitness onto the public at large?” My world view has been changed at the hand of extremist religious conviction!

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Weekend Update 2006-07-31

We spent the weekend doing lots of work on the house — unpacking things on Saturday, and with the help of our friends David and Garrett we moved quite a bit more stuff from Stephanie’s house. There are still a few more loads, but the bulk of the moving is finished. Our house is pretty chaotic, but I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

To change the subject entirely… have you ever known someone for a really long time and still been mystified by the contents of their mind? Like you find out things about your friends that are a complete revelation? I’m still sort of agog at something I found out today. In a strictly metaphorical sense, if you owned a Corvette, why would you ever borrow someone else’s Yugo? The human mind is a mystery to me.

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Fundies Say the Darndest Things

New edition to my regular online reading (for as long as I can stand it):

Fundies Say the Darndest Things
A blog that watches Christian message boards, blogs and news groups and culls the most laughable, craziest things that fundamentalists say on the internet.

What’s really scary is that these folks are ON THE INTERNET, meaning they have access to real information and education. And they still believe this crap.

I think back to my CCD and CYO classes when I was a kid, and if anyone had said some of these crazy-ass things out loud, they would have been smacked down immediately. Even though I disagreed with much of what was taught there, I don’t remember anyone being this batshit nutty, ever. Which just going to show that crazy people believe crazy things, and they use religion as an camoflage for their nuttiness, so no one can say they’re wrong.

Like this guy… who said this:

When God gave permission for some of His male creatures to go take certain female creatures as captives (for the sake of procreation), do you call this rape? Call it rape if you want … but I’m not calling it rape if it’s by the will of the Creator. For only God knows what each of us deserves.

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Video of some of the figure skating from GGVII

Jay and Bradley did an interpretive pairs program of Brokeback Mountain that was really amazing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvGVQZQBwzs
Edward Van Campen did a very moving tribute to his brother, who died of AIDS. His performance included his brother’s AIDS quilt, which he then presented to the NAMES Project.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3xlkr-JoRc
We discussed creating video of Stephanie’s programs, but we decided against it because they had professional video services there. I’m hoping to track down a YouTube video of the finale of the Skating – a really moving production number tribute to Christina Aguliera’s “Beautiful.”

Continue ReadingVideo of some of the figure skating from GGVII

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