God and Politics: Like Peanut Butter and Chocolate, Except Horrible

The United States of America was created for two reasons: King George III was a dick, and we didn't like paying taxes on tea. But once that was over, our Founding Fathers realized that we could get something good out of this country. Then we got our constitution on, a document I think we can all agree is pretty swell. We did not found this country on religious freedom as some would lead you to believe. The colonies founded by the pilgrims were established because English protestantism was seen as too loose by those particular uptight assholes, but most of the original colonies were founded as profit ventures for companies. Of course the Founding Fathers, or Kickass Old Guys as I like to call them, realized that England had meddled in the past with religious affairs, so they tried to ensure that politics was kept out of religion. Now in the 21st century, we are no longer concerned with politics meddling with God, we are concerned with God infiltrating politics.


Indeed, politics and religion have become like two parasites, feasting on the shit of the other. The Republican party was first to exploit the fundamentalist sects of America for political gain, resulting in a party now more concerned with stem cells and what gays do in the privacy of their own home than, you know, issues that actually matter. Yes, I'm sure in a world stricken with poverty and infested with violence, the first thing we should do is stop legitimate scientific endeavors and dudes that like it in the ass. Jesus would want it that way.

Now we have a president that sincerely believes in the Rapture. This guy believes that when the Jews start a trailer park in Palestine, America and Iran are going to have a showdown at Armageddon, resulting in carnage enough to fill a valley with blood. Then Jesus shows up saying, "whoa whoa guys, hold on. I'm back. Chill out."

Seriously. I am not making this shit up.

With people so devoutly entrenched in the gospel of crazyland, it's hard to see how this won't effect foreign and domestic policy. Hell, it already has affected policy. We've got people advocating the teaching of creationism in schools. We're balls deep in bullshit in the middle-east. We have our own propaganda network. Look at Fox News. Fox news is Al Jazeera for white people. America has a 24-hour news station dedicated to pushing a far right wing christian agenda. What the fuck. If George Washington's corpse were reanimated and armed with all the powers of the 2nd Amendment, he would put a bullet hole in the ass of American Politics so big the fucking Canadians would feel it.

I am a terrible person for laughing at this.

Church and State sleeping together does nothing but riddle American culture with the STDs of extremism. Big fat, bloated boils of fundamentalist religion are oozing off the twisted member of freedom. And within those leaking pustules resides the goo of intolerance. We already hate Muslims, and we only like the Jews for their involvement in the coming apocalypse and their aptitude in accounting. America is being corrupted by religion and those that would exploit it. America is becoming Iran for chrissake.

In the muslim world, politics and religion are the exact same. Identical. The only secularists that rule in the middle-east are dictators. When given democracy, the people vote for religious radicals. And their batshit fuck loco leaders believe in their own bullshit rapture. They believe that once Israel is a smoking crater, Iran and America fight at some other prophetic location, and the conflict is ceased by the second coming of imam, or the easter bunny, or whatever fluffy anthropomorphic deity they pray to. Then everybody comes back to life and rocks out with their cocks out for eternity in heaven. In order to achieve this aim, one must embrace our glorious leaders, then strap a bomb to our chest and blow up some fried chicken joint in the middle of bum-fuck alabama. Or maybe snag some C4 and take out your local fish n' chips stop. Either way, the taint of delicious, grease filled capitalist food must be destroyed to usher in the new age.

This is what happens when the lies of politics mix with the deceit of religion. Our favorite eateries get torn up by some guy that has never experienced the pleasure that is pork.

May we as a species escape the vice like grip of fundamentalism, lest our tastiest treats be sacrificed to the gods of absurdity.

Now I'm hungry. For Freedom.

Religion as Rebellion: God is the new Hot Topic

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Getting Political: Fundamentalists Make Me Glad I Don't Believe in All This God Bullshit

If you didn't catch the three part CNN special God's Warriors by Christiane Amanpour, you probably missed out on the most intelligent, enlightening, and inadvertently terrifying piece of journalism that has come out of the mainstream media in the last eight years. An investigation into the fundamentalist sects of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the report detailed extremist groups and their unique takes on the religious crusade.

Whenever I learn something new, I feel like I have to celebrate my fresh wisdom with discourse. In honor of this, I will be posting a series of blag entries to detail my feelings about religion, both moderate and radical, in its relation to a variety of topics. This is hardly a grand undertaking, since I can talk out my ass with the pros, but I hope it will prove at least marginally interesting to all three of my readers. How did you even find this site? It's not like I'm making it easy for you.

As my first post on the topic, I feel like you should know where I'm coming from. I'm an Atheist, but certainly don't fancy these new fangled neo-atheists, or as I like to call them, Evangelical Atheists, these mother fuckers that can't stomach the idea that someone may disagree with them. Richard Dawkins can go fuck himself. Whats up with all this Meme shit anyway? And this whole "Coming Out" campaign? You mean to tell me that instead of holding my own convictions private, I should publicly proclaim my beliefs and berate those that don't agree with me? I didn't realize that being an Atheist was synonymous with being a dick. Also, if I see you wearing these shirts around town, I swear to God I will be disappointed in you.

Protip: The A stands for "Asshole"

On to my origins. My own personal experiences with religion are neither heartbreaking, nor heartwarming, nor all that exciting. When I was young my parents brought me to church for a few boring hours, I would drink my Juice brand Juice Box, and scamper between the pews to get to the bathroom in time. Not all that special. When I got home, I would tear off my stuffy clothes and dive right into Sonic the Hedgehog accompanied by delicious chicken teriyaki. I remember one day, we just stopped going to church (the same time as my parents divorce) and I was pleased as the dickens to have Sunday mornings empty and free for my own dalliances. Riding bikes around the block, surfing at the beach, playing Mechwarrior 2 until Kerensky came home. Those were good times. Although I still held a belief in God, I was not at all active in his pursuit. I knew the ten commandments in the same way I know all 150 Pokemon, less as dogma and more as trivia. As I grew older, the basic idea of a God seemed natural. It was there since I was born, and I assumed it always has been. Although me and my family were officially Presbyterian, nobody really went to church and I only read the bible between BattleTech and whatever bullshit E-Z Reader crap my parents were trying to force me into. No, I don't give a shit about Spot, nor do I give a shit about Timmy winning the fucking baseball game. I would much rather be reading over the trials of Frodo and the Fellowship as they journeyed to destroy the one ring. The precocious reader that I was, my family eventually capitulated to the fact that I really don't need to be stifled by the basics. While most kids were watching Thomas the Tank Engine and Barney the Homosexual Dinosaur, I was engaged by Jedi, the starship Enterprise, and Babylon 5.

Even so, my belief in a God never waned, in fact it was strengthened by Tolkien's none so subtle allegory. Then my mother decided it was time to go back to church. Now I could actually digest the sermon, and was struck with a nausea familiar to practitioners of seppuku. None of what this guy was saying felt right. And I don't mean to imply that through my unequivocal powers of deductive reasoning that I, as an 8 year old, managed to sort through this god bullshit. Rather, I was just unnerved by what he was saying. I need Jesus to feel loved? I need a personal connection with God to save my self from the evil's of this world? What the hell is up with all this eternal damnation stuff? Wait, everyone I know will be forever forsaken by God simply because they do not believe in this crock of shit you're spouting? I call bullshit. Being subjected to the preacher corrupted my rather benign view of God. God had changed from a good natured omnipotence with voyeuristic tendencies to a vindictive prick. But I still believed. I guess I just had it wrong. This guy knows all about this God stuff, it's like his job or something.

I stopped going to church when I learned to say "no". I naively misunderstood the implications of such an all-knowing asshole, thinking of him as just a big-ole-doody head. Then I became a teenager.

It all seemed to click for me in 2002. Some political speech was on Fox, with some guy yammering on about how God is on our side so on and so forth. But something caught my ear. He was saying that God wanted us to kill terrorists. I'm no theologian, but I distinctly remember there being something about not killing in the bible. I think it was on a big fucking stone tablet given to Moses by a burning bush. And I don't think it said, "don't kill unless..." I think it said don't kill. I think it said: Thou shalt not kill. Actually, it said: You shall not murder. But whatever, the concept seems simple, don't fucking kill. Easy enough. Yet this man makes a statement that hey, we should fucking kill.

I am noticing a contradiction.

Epiphany. Humans are fallible. God does not own a typewriter. Therefore, the Bible was written by Humans interpreting the messages of self-proclaimed prophets, who were also Human. So what we have here is not some divine doctrine from OUTER SPAAAAACE!!!! It is the voice of men that thought they could make the world better by saying hey, don't be a douche. Others said: Why? They said: ...isn't it obvious? Others said: No. They said: Ummm...an invisible man will kick the shit out of you if you don't.

And the world was saved.

Or was it?

BUM BUM BAH!

Tune in next time for another edition of: Wow what the hell is wrong with fundamentalists?

Next Episode: Religion as Rebellion, The Recruitment of the Young