…and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been born into lives of poverty, violence, and neglect, they could make a world shine. Let me dispel a myth here. Women (the overwhelming majority) who get an abortion do not do so lightly. Nor do they regard abortion as contraception.
Sometimes, it is just not viable to continue the pregnancy to the stage where there is a viable human being.
Terry Pratchett writes some of the funniest books ever. The Discworld series is utter genius. One of the things that makes them so brilliant is that they aren’t just incredibly, wittily, ridiculously funny, they are searingly, bitingly observant. I give you an excerpt from Hogfather:
Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?
Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
Susan: They’re not the same at all.
Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what’s the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?
…a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
Now, I have nothing against reasonable Christians.The non frenzied, not convert everyone, not demand it taught as scientific fact in schools types. They exist, but the loud nutjobs ruin it for the others. I respect your beliefs, UNLESS you start demanding I live my life by them. Like these people, or these, or these.
Idiots seeking to impose their bleiefs on others. Yes, idiots. One believes there is a splinter in your eye, zealots. And your stone throwing is inappropriate, as is your picking the bits of the Bible that suit, ignoring the fun in Leviticus, for example.
By the way, feel free to apply that rule of loathing fundamentalists on any belief system, be it religious or political. Fundamentalists are completely abhorrent absolutists who will impose their will on others, and that is just wrong. Democracy, people.
So in honour of the irrational ones: Top Ten Signs You’re a Fundamentalist/Extremist/Crazy Christian. 10
- You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by
other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of
yours.
9 - You feel insulted and “dehumanized” when scientists
say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem
with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
7
- Your face turns purple when you hear of the “atrocities” attributed
to Allah, but you don’t even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah
slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in “Exodus” and ordered the
elimination of entire ethnic groups in “Joshua” including women,
children, and trees!
6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify
humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have
no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then
gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then
ascended into the sky.
5 - You are willing to spend your life
looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of
Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing
dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and
guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
4 - You believe
that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those
who share your beliefs — though excluding those in all rival sects -
will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider
your religion the most “tolerant” and “loving.”
3 - While
modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to
convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking
in “tongues” may be all the evidence you need to “prove” Christianity.
2
- You define 0.01% as a “high success rate” when it comes to answered
prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you
think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.
1
- You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do
about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call
yourself a Christian.
I love history - a serious addict of it. So I was stoked to find that the BBC has released an interactive Timeline of British History . Fantastic for people like me, with interest in the subject, all the way through to scholars, no matter how potentially reluctant:)
Enjoyed watching Tom Cruise and the Scientology video making the rounds? Well, I hate to break it to you, but that was serious. Seriously. Seriously serious. But, I can has cheezburger has obtained the followup video, and it is even more - serious. Even more seriously.
Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York’s Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897.
“DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?”
VIRGINIA O’HANLON. 115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
[1] Summed up best as don’t be a jerk. It’s a bit facile, and pretty well has missed the whole thing of atheists DON’T have beliefs, but hey, I like the don’t be a jerk bit:)Points for intention!
Look, I know I have probably linked to it before through bookmarks, but it is Christmas. Give of your time. Learn new words, show off the ones you know. For every word you get right, ten grains of rice feeds someone hungry. Dammit people, it takes so little effort to help, how much more simpler can it be? You don’t even have to move your butts!
…I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
Oh, for vast amusement, and mind numbing intolerance and closed mindedness, I can only commend to you the excrutiatingly pathetic ‘reasoning’ of one Chuck Norris, reviewing The Golden Compass. Oh my. It must HURT to keep your eyes closed, your fingers in your ears, and keep saying “LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU”. Bizarre.
…that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But it does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
