What are they so pissed off about?
Conservatives.
In any religion.
Let’s concentrate on the big two; Xianity and Islam.
We’re stuck with them through nothing but historical accident. In the case of these two they are not primarily indigenous religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism or along with the bazillion tribal religions (like Mormonism, eh?) which are mostly dominant only in the culture and geography where they were dreamed up. We are stuck with them mostly because of conquest.
Dreamed up. That’s not a colloquialism nor demeaning hyperbole, its a purely descriptive term. All religions were dreamed up. Much of what modern Xianity is today is due to the visions of Paul, he never met Jesus, he had visions, and nobody tied his name to writings that claimed to be from a follower of Jesus. And Mohammed’s one-man manufacture of an entire conquering religico-political system was all his own, solely from his own visions, like the classic dream where he was transported from Medina to Jerusalem and then whisked off to heaven on a winged horse (mule?) and chatted in Heaven with Moses and the boyz about such mundane items as how many times a good Muslim should pray daily.
And Joseph Smith managed the same feat in America as did L.Ron Hubbard a century later… and they both said they intended to do it! They dreamed up a religion all by their lonesome: no corroborating gospels and epistles needed for Muhammed and his two American emulators. Dreamed up.
“Everybody else’s prophet just heard voices in their head… but not yours.” Right.
So why are the guys above so pissed off? Cuz somebody somewhere is not behaving according to the rules of their religion. Most folks in any religion worldwide aren’t that uptight, most don’t know shit about their own religion, if they really did, they would be likely to finally see it from the outside as they do all other religions and realize what a preposterous set of myths and repressive injunctions it really is. Most former religionists, former Xians at least will tell you it was because they actually READ the Bible and saw all its absurdities, contradictions, fantasies, cruel ideas, patriarchal intolerance and violence. I haven’t read enough yet to make a similar claim for Islam, I don’t know if the data will support that as the main reason for infidels who have walked away from Islam (more on that later).
So its the Conservatives that lead the charge in the Moralizing, defined as to:
“Formulate universal principles and punish those who don’t conform… maintain purity and remove contamination of a divine essence.”
So religionists the world over, especially the Big Two, work real hard to make all of us conform to their ideas of right behavior, under at very least pain of eternal fire in their gods hell, ostracization and ridicule by your family and social group, limiting your personal rights and freedoms, maybe jail, maybe death.
All brought to you by the Religions of Love and Peace. Isn’t that just special?
All because of somebody’s dreams… are you kidding me?
People we need to outgrow this nonsense. And soon. We don’t just have spears anymore to skewer the infidels or stick the spear into the ground instead of their intestines and tie ’em to it so we can burn the heretics at the stake… we have sniper rifles, drones, chemical and nuclear weapons now.
And the Big Two want us to maintain Bronze Age claims for purity and Medieval thinking for submission.
People have their lives ruined or are killed every day, all over the world. They are ridiculed and imprisoned, formally or more often within their own families or communities. Try being a woman, a gay, a non-believer, a freethinker in Islam or Xianity, depending how conservative the religion is in the culture around you, you’ll reap the benefits of belief in Paul and Mohammed’s dreams.
And the moderates, the liberals within any religion are no help, they are not off the hook, they are not free of blame because they promote the legitimacy of their Book. Their religion is of course the true one, their prophet(s) REALLY REALLY did talk to god. Uh huh. And the conservatives have a field day with it, while the liberals claim “that isn’t my Xianity.”
Oh yes it is. IT IS ALL IN YOUR BOOK.
It may be as subtle as being told you are to be quiet or to eat after the men are done, or to submit to your husband or not to teach or have authority over men, or not to follow your sexual interests if they don’t conform to the believers of the dreamers and their Books.
A buddy of mine who happens to be gay from a rather conservative Xian area of KY, recently experienced a charming little episode of The Arrogance of Religious Thought™. Waiting in line at a retail store a woman remarked to her daughter next to her, quite out loud and well within earshot of the rather obviously gay clerk (most gay folks I know have pretty accurate “gaydar”, better than most of us straight folks):
“Well if this faggot would learn to do his job” Ya gotta love it right? It gets better. My friend, fed up as most of my gay friends are of being constantly under discussion and opinion of the Xians in this country (think recent Phil Robertson flap for a prime example), lost it (in his words) and retorted something just as loudly to the effect that:
“Well lady, why is it you resemble something that just crawled out of the abortion bucket.”
A double stab to the overly Xian among us, yes?!
The manager came over and asked both parties to leave if they couldn’t behave themselves.
A few observations:
1. At least it is better than being in Uganda where thanks to the evangelism of some Pentecostal groups one can now get a life prison term for homosexual behavior. Homosexual behavior is illegal in some degree in 37 African countries and another half a dozen or so Islamic countries the penalty is death. So glad we have these Religions of Peace and Love, yes?
2. If you are offended by my friends clever remark about “crawling out of an abortion bucket” (I’m still laughing about it, the balls to say that out loud!) think of what the woman said, and the gay clerk in no way provoked it. She shot her mouth off and got an instant retort which says loud and clear “You can’t get away with that bullshit anymore” She has the freedom of speech to be as bigoted and obnoxious as she wants, but you can’t hide behind religious justification anymore and not get an equally free response.
3. The lady in question may be otherwise an admirable human being. She may be a great mom, a terrific grandma, charitable to the poor, what have you, maybe not a saint, prolly not terrible person, but just an average citizen, usually polite and accommodating to kin and strangers every bit as much as the rest of us are. And that’s the point.
Her religious beliefs are probably what motivated her to shoot her mouth off, not unlike Phil Robertson.
Its in the Bible; faggots and their behaviors are abominable (OT) and deserve death (NT). So as a real Xian she was fully justified, right? Just following what she was taught, its in the Book isnt it? Betcha she wasn’t born homophobic, she learned it somewhere along the way and in Western KY, there’s a whole lot of folks that learned the same thing, and they dont like folks behaviors that dont conform to the purity of their divine laws.
4.What if she had said, “Gook“, “Nigger“, “Spic” or (since I’m Italian) “Wop“, instead of “faggot“? Would the manager have immediately asked her to leave for insulting her employee instead? Would the crowd around her be more incensed at a racial slur?
5. Would she have been likely to be that nasty to a salesclerk for any other group he belonged to, for any other reason than her justified religious one?
6. That lady was a most likely a moderate. Living in America we will give her the benefit of the doubt she wouldn’t want the “faggot” imprisoned, tortured, or killed. But denigrating him in public was AOK. This is what religion does to people. And dehumanization, placing someone in an outgroup is the first step to real discrimination. Just ask any black person.
7. Ask yourself if you wouldn’t be real tired as so many of my friends are of being the subject of denigration by the conservative Xians, but also of the no less incessant and constant but oh so sincere speculation by the “liberal” ones as to what the Bible really means about what to do with the gays?
“Should we ignore all the clobber passages like the secularists ask us, and just forget about thinking in terms of anyone’s sexual preferences?”
“Should we hate the Sin but love the Sinner?”
“Should we commit them to reparative therapy, like many ministers admonish?”
“Should they be imprisoned for the common good?”
“Do the Islamist states have it right and death is the best option, its in our Book as much as theirs?”
Wouldnt you be fucking sick of people discussing you and your behavior and what should be done with you?
I would, I don’t know how they put up with it.
My buddy didn’t.
So check out the map of religious distribution here.
Most religions are dominant where they originated, and the Big Two spread beyond that due to conquest; Islam spread to the left and right of the Arabian peninsula and Xianity with a 500 year head start was first to spread out of the Middle East. And riding on the coattails of the Roman Empire’s prior subjugation and spread to Europe, it was transported without much competition to the New World. This shows us all how arbitrary our religious upbringing is given the accident of our birth.
Here’s the numbers on the Big Two and the Reincarnation religions and the Unbelieving Scum™, gleaned from 1/2 dozen websites and based on an estimated 7.1 billion humans alive on the planet today:
Xians around 2 billion.
Muslims 1.5 billion.
Buddhists and Hindus combined: 1.4 billion.
Non-Believers/Unaffiliated 1.2 billion.
So even if you are a member of one of the Big Two, please try to remember that 70-80% of the rest of us don’t read your book.
We will never pick one up to look for guidance in our lives, won’t give it second thought, will never go to your church or attend one of your rituals, and won’t convert on our deathbeds, EVER.
Get over your arrogance in thinking you got it all down and we will of course one day “see the light“. The only light the rest of us see is the holes in your claim for having the one true religion because your guy of course had REAL revelations and everybody else’s prophets just heard voices in their head.
Us secular folks are now vociferously, stridently, pointing out ALL religions are based on the same absurd and arrogant claim.
It’s only been a couple hundred years since the Enlightenment and barely ten since this New Enlightenment took off, we can put a real dent in the arrogant and unfounded idea that some guy’s dream has any external validity at all.
All prophets just heard voices in their head.
Dreams don’t reveal any ultimate reality. They’re just dreams. It is time that the dreams of a select few charismatic males in history stop destroying the dreams of uncounted millions because they sanction the arrogant moralizing of the liberal, moderate, and pissed off conservative adherents of religions worldwide.
Such is The Arrogance of Religious Thought™.
My buddy was pissed off too.
And to my liberal Xian friends:
B
THIS IS IN YOUR BOOK: Do something about it.
(959)
