Category Archives: Social

The Jaws of God

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Bethany Hamilton is a true hero. At age 13, while relaxing on a surfboard, a 15 feet tiger shark attacked her, severing her left arm just below the shoulder. She almost bled out before she reached the hospital where the doctors saved her life.

This week, she won the Women’s Pipeline professional surfing championship. She has shown the world that you can overcome incredible odds, trauma and even loss of limb if you are strong enough.

Unfortunately, though – although this does not diminish her achievement – she’s not strong of reason. In her book Soul Surfer she wrote that the incident was a divine inspiration and that she did not die that fateful day because God had something else in mind for her.

Bethany, the doctors saved your life, not God. And your achievements are entirely yours, not Gods. Don’t diminish yourself.

You are the inspiration.

A bad trend

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The Guardian has an extraordinarily well written report on a disturbing trend where french girls are brought to England to be mutilated in the horrific tradition of ‘female circumcision’. This monstrosity, officially called ‘female genital mutilation’, is banned as a crime against humanity; the ban is sharply enforced in France. The fact that parents take their children to England to have it performed there casts a dim light on the UK and their handling of human rights. This is a trend that has to be stopped now.

In the report Dr. Emmanuelle Piet says that

tiptoeing around religious or social traditions has no place in the FGM debate.

I fully agree. But this leaves an important question: where does it have a place?

Nowhere where people are subjugated, hurt, or exploited.

The EU should take note, and finally pass strong legislation to end FGM in Europe.

Experience vs. Learnings

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In an interview, Swiss National Councilwoman Barbara Schmid-Federer commented on her religious views:

As a child I experienced first hand what it means to be a member of the catholic minority in the reformed city of Zürich. That is why today I’m committed to supporting religious minorities. [translation: cf]

Aww, too bad. So close, but still a miss. Barbara did experience religious discrimination, but didn’t learn anything from it. Minorities of all kinds need support, no doubt. Yet, the reason for her past discrimination wasn’t the fact that she belonged to a religious minority – it was religion itself. Had she learned from her experience, she wouldn’t fight the symptoms. She’d fight the cause: religious indoctrination and intolerance.

The Go(o)d Tax?

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Only two things are certain: death and taxes. In Switzerland, this is also true for companies. Nothing new here. Also not surprising for a highly efficient and organized country, Switzerland’s churches are financed via Church tax (a more apt name would be ‘God Tax’).

An interesting wrinkle is that this tax also applies to companies. This is interesting because – perhaps to my superficial understanding – taxes are levied to pay for some kind of communal service: say roads, or infrastructure in general. The service that Churches provide are, well, special. They provide a service for your soul: redemption, but only if you believe that. So anyone in Switzerland can refuse to pay Church tax on grounds that they don’t believe in gods.

Unlike companies – they are forced to pay Church tax no matter what. Which is no small matter: the taxes collected from companies in the Canton Grisons (Graubünden), for example, make up 90% of the Catholic church’s total income. Now, nobody has ever accused a company of having a soul, or of being religious. The service rendered to companies in return for Church tax is, therefore, zero. Or when was the last time you shared a pew with a company?

And so, in swiss democratic tradition, the people of Grisons will vote on February 9th to decide if this taxation law is going to be changed. Not very surprisingly, the church is opposing the proposal, and is campaigning heavily against it – with a budget ten times (almost literally: $110’00 vs. $15’000) of that from the proponents. You’d not be the first to note a ‘David vs. Goliath’ situation.

In church tradition, the campaign is funded via Church tax. This means that in this case, the companies are forced to fund a campaign against their own interest. By the church. Whose services they can’t, by definition, use.

Because the Church, lest we forget, has the moral high ground.

‘… the whole Bible’

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Every once in a while, I encounter one of the most presumptuous, condescending, pompous, and ostentatious comments a Christian can make while arguing their belief:

To understand, you need to read the whole Bible.

I usually encounter it as a reply to a (perhaps snide) quote from the Bible I make. The comment is ostentatious because it insinuates that the one uttering it has read the whole Bible (usually it turns out that they haven’t). It’s presumptuous because it assumes I didn’t read that book in it’s entirety. It’s stupid because even after reading it, at least one of us hasn’t understood it – plus, it’s certainly news to the Jews who can make do with essentially only half of it: the Old Testament. And it is condescending because whoever says it believes that not only have they understood, they believe they have read the only correct version.

So why do people try this when they are forced into a corner? The comment is designed to stop the average Christian from further discussions: 99% of all Christians haven’t read the Bible. But why is it that so many Christians haven’t read the Bible?

Because it’s boring.

Most who try are already sound asleep long before all the begetting begins.

Sarah Palin: Taking the road less traveled

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How do you annoy a Christian? Give him Sarah Palin’s “Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas”. Giving it to an atheist will garner you a wink and a wide grin: it’s purest atheist porn. Of course Palin is stupid enough to bring up Hitler, Stalin and Mao, and of course she asserts that only religion has god-given morals. Her single-digit IQ ensures fresh perspectives on common things, and it is exhilarating to read how she mixes guns with Christmas and the message of Jesus. Personally, I’m not sure she hasn’t accidentally confused the ‘Peacemaker’ Colt with Jesus, but I digress.

To her, the ACLU is a hate group, and ‘the seculars’ are so godless (go figure) that they are personally responsible for the american disease of hyper-correctness that make people say ‘happy holidays’ instead of ‘merry christmas’. As expected, the book’s a light read, consisting of only simple words, simpler ideas and only two colors: black (secular gun-hating peaceniks) and white (Sarah Palin). In her love for God & Guns, she quotes JFK slightly out of context – and blithely forgets that he, I suspect, would probably also be gun-averse today. But, again, I digress.

So, yes, in many ways, this book doesn’t disappoint: Just like we expect her to, Sarah intellectually wanders the roads less traveled, and makes the arguments most people try to avoid. The laughs begin even before you can open the book:

The cover shows an Advent wreath. If Sarah knows that the Advent wreath is an ancient pagan symbol that was lit around winter solstice in anticipation of spring, she sadly fails to point this out in her book. But she does make the point about Christmas being on solstice – even though her wording mysteriously makes it sound as if she’s somehow managed to look down history the wrong way: in her mind those godless liberals are trying to supplant holy christmas with a newfangled solstice celebration.

There’s something in there for everyone – even the cynics get a good laugh – and, they too, don’t have to wait long:
In a somewhat surreal introduction, Sarah first recounts how great and loving Christmas has been for her in the past, only to serve up the heart-warming story of Christmas 2012 when she gifted her husband a gun, finishing off this cute-as-a-bunny bon mot with a pun about her tits:

Last year, however, I think I was able to pull off a good one for him. To combat the anti-gun chatter coming from Washington, I surprised him with a nice, needed, powerful gun. I then asked him for a metal gun holder for my four-wheeler. Not only was this small act of civil disobedience fun, it allowed me to finally live out one of my favorite lines from a country song: “He’s got the rifle, I got the rack.”

Jeez, that’s Christ’s message of peace right there! Even better: that ‘anti-gun chatter’ she was talking about? That was the backlash over the Adam Lanza school shooting that happened a week earlier and left over 20 children dead.

Comic gold.

No more happy endings?

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Recently I watched a movie depicting a dystrophic future. A line from one of the protagonists stuck with me:

There are no happy endings any more.

Ultimately, there never is, and never will be, a happy end. In the end, we will die. It has always been that way. There never were truly happy endings. People don’t like this, and they are afraid. That explains why so many people become religious: they crave a happy ending. But deep down they know perfectly well that there isn’t going to be one.

And so they play make-believe. They waste inordinate amounts of time preparing for the end. And doing that, they become miserable and miss the great time they could have had. When you obsess with your end, you quickly stop living and start dying. That’s the real tragedy. We all know that the end will come – but it will be neither happy nor sad. It will simply be the end.

Stop focusing on the end. Enjoy the brief time we have here before the end.

Live.

Becoming the Lord of the Flies…

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An abominable fundamental Christian book on raising children – written by a pastor and his wife – advocates corporeal punishment using plastic hoses (because they leave fewer marks, but hurt as much as canes do), cold showers, exposure, and ‘a little starvation’ to train children to be as obedient as, well, trained dogs. The book is distributed by churches in the US.

Small wonder that a number of children have died as a result from parents that adhered too closely to this horrific book.

The book states that it’s our job to toughen up our children so they can face a cruel and heartless world.

That’s not our job.

It’s our job to make this world less cruel and heartless – for them and everyone else. Because one thing is certain: if there was a God, he didn’t bother to do so himself.

Meena

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Meena sits in a chair.

“My brother used to tell me that the place for a woman is either at home or in the grave”, she says. “My brother told me to carry out a suicide attack.”

“They attached a bomb to my [9 years old] sister Nahida.” A single tear runs down her face. “She told my brother the bomb was heavy and she could not walk. He said she would be comfortable once she was sitting down in the car. I heard my sister saying: ‘Where is Meena? I want to see her.’ But I didn’t have the strength. My heart couldn’t take it. My mother fainted when they put her in the car.”

Meena is 13.

Her brother, a Taliban.

Official: Majority of Republicans are stupid.

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It’s official: the majority of american Republicans are stupid:

Today, 43% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats say humans have evolved.

While the Democrats aren’t looking too smart either, this means that less than half of all Republicans acknowledge the facts; the rest lives in some scientific la-la-land. Note that this is actually a regression – a few years ago fewer republicans believed in the idiocy of a literal biblical genesis.

In 2009, 54% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats said humans have evolved over time.

I guess this is home ‘schooling’ showing results… Or perhaps we are seeing the very first signs ever of devolution.

As an aside: It’s not that you ‘believe’ in evolution. You either believe in religion, or are convinced by the facts that evolution is real.