My favorite Bible passages.

Timothy 1:4

Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies

Whelp, that pretty much does in most of the Bible, and so much for the genealogies in Genesis 10, Chronicles 1-9, and Matthew 1.

Job 7:9

As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away: so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more.

Dead is dead.
So much for afterlife.

Psalms 88:10

Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee?

Ditto.

Well, there you go.
Even The Bible says The Bible is bullshit.
Thank God for that. ;)
I mean, who knows, someone might've taken that stuff too seriously, and all sorts of awful things might have happened. Read More......

History of the internet part 4- Shmegalamonga!

So, after awhile on RD.net, Sharon talked me into blogging, and I dragged my feet on it for a helluva while, but I caved in, and made this joint.

And, I'm glad she did, I've really enjoyed it so far. Good place to vent and express myself, hope everyone else has enjoyed it.

Blogs are great, you can start with pretty much nothing, pick away at it, and after a month or so have a pretty good little site going.
Heh, and when you look back at that first entry, nothing is what I had.

The one entry, the profile with no picture, a plain text title, and after the first couple days, one friend link.

So, yeah, I've enjoyed these first few months of this little blog.
It's come together quite nicely.
I'm happy with it.
Hope you folks are too.
:) Read More......

My Batman moment.

At least that's my term for it.

See, Bruce Wayne had that moment when a bat flew into his window, and he knew the costume would be a bat, and then and there, he knew he was going to be Batman.

At essence, it's that moment where what you're going to do, and how you're going to proceed becomes crystal clear.

The Batman moment.

I had mine at RD.net.

Long boring story, I'll try to condense it...



I guess we start with David Robertson.

He's the author of the anti-atheist tract, "The Dawkins Letters", and it's a crappy book, and he's a little crap weasel of a person who's trolled the board there since before I ever got there.

I could ramble on about the horrible crap he's said, and the lie after lie, but...crap weasel sums it up.

Well, the one instance that always jumps out at me was the time he claimed to have consoled some couple whose baby had died, and then used that to segue into saying atheists wouldn't care, because "atheism sees the child as a disposable survival machine".

Not a nice guy.

Okay, now we get to Richard Morgan.

Well, he was one of the regular posters when I got there, and he seemed like a nice likable guy.
He was fairly well liked, part of the circle, pretty popular.

Well, one fateful day, he starts posting at David Robertson's board, whining about what big meanies the atheists are, and he can't believe what awful treatment poor David gets, and blah, blah, blah, and atheism is so depressing, blah, blah, blah, but he just can't bring himself to believe in Christianity because of what he knows, but he wishes he could, and could somebody help him, blah, blah, blah, and wah, wah, waahh.

And we're all fucking gobsmacked back at RD.net.
We can't believe this bullshit is coming out of him.
Whining what big meanies we were to not just David, but HIM, when we were always awesome to him (Richard) and were the best of friends to him.
And David? He got back what he dished out, he wasn't no fucking victim of anything.

So, the next day, is where the worm really turned, next day, he posts at Robertson's site about how he's all filled with joy, that he had this mind-blowing epiphany experience, and he's rediscovered Jesus, and he was there all along, and la de da de daa, and kissing David Robertson's ass sloppily and noisily, thanking him for "being in the right place, and the right time", and of course, Robertson is happy as a pig in shit, like, this is the ultimate coup for him, so he's grinding it all in, and being a total smarmy grinning twat.

It was just disgusting.
But whatever.
Screw drama.
And drama was what I think he wanted making it a spectacle.

We were disappointed, but like, fine, this makes you happy, Richard, we wish you well, bye bye.
Y'know?

Well, dude didn't stay away, kept trolling, and pulling bullshit, and we ended up telling him off, and parting on less friendly terms than the first time.

He still pops up every now and then.
Never pleasant.

But anyway, after his epiphany, I had my epiphany.

It hit me like a bolt of lightning, a violently strong sense of resolve and certainty, that that's it, that's the line carved in reality right there, those are the stakes, that sad frightened old man, or sanity.
That's what crawling back to theism looks like.
No going back. Ever.
My atheism snapped into sharp focus.
There was never any doubt in my conscious mind, I was never gonna go back to Deism, or definitely not Christianity, but, it clarified for me, I couldn't even retreat into the comfort of the fuzziest of superstition, not luck, no saying "please please, please", with my fingers crossed, nothing.
Cuz I saw the perfect illustration of what that retreat looks like.
It looks like Richard Morgan kissing David Robertson's ass, and it's horrifying and gross.
Like a woman with two black eyes taking her man back.

And with that image in mind, I knew I had to oppose with my thoughts and words all forms of bullshit.
The whole ball of wax.

I've been called to it.
Not mystically, but however.
In my genes, my upbringing, my experiences, the fabric of who I am.

My destiny snapped into focus then.
And there was no going back.

Every time I doubt, I think of the alternative, the opposite, and it's always Richard Morgan.
No, *head shake* no fucking way.
No fucking way.
That gave me Rocky determination.
I'd rather die than run away from reality like that.

Cuz that's the stakes.
That's what the world looks like when you let superstition take over.
Richard Morgan.
A big fucking bowl of Richard Morgan with David Robertson standing over it laughing and counting money.
No fucking way.
Nuh, uh.
No.

And I not only have my days of doubt if it's a worthy mission, but I have my days of doubt if it's hopeless, and Quixotic, and that if the fatalists are right, and humanity is a piece of shit, and the status quo is indestructible, and just shut up, and keep my head down, and live my dumb little life, and live it selfishly, and scrape for money, and buy toys, and say "fuck it", to everyone else, like the fucking greed-mongers of our culture do.

*Head shake*
No.

I couldn't wake up in the morning.
I have to be stubbornly optimistic, or I just can't fucking live.
And that's just that.

If it gets rough, I just think of Richard Morgan, and the rest is easy.
It's a stare into a dark abyss that shocks me back on track every fucking time.

Read More......

At what price comfort??

Comfort.

Religion is good because it gives comfort to people.
Ya hear that a lot.

This comfort component to religion is why atheists typically get blasted in the face as some kind of soulless bloodless demons for trying to mess with it.

I dunno about mess with, I think I only lay out the case for why I believe as I do.

I dunno, maybe I could leave the thing alone, and let people have their warm little fantasies,...but...that's not all it ever does, all the other stuff always comes with it.

Especially the whole Hell mess, and I believe I made my thoughts and feelings clear on that whole bit of business.

So, holding that aspect in my mind, that always makes me ask the obvious next question...

At what price your comfort?



I mean, just think of all the fear Hell has caused throughout the centuries.

All the childhood nightmares.

All the tears.

Was your comfort worth the tears of one child?
I'm not seeing it.
Someone's going to have to explain that one to me.

I'm no economics major by any means, but it seems to me the price of Heaven is way too high.

A system based on fear of torture, that's wow...if it were any other ideology or thought system, the horror would be instantly obvious to anyone.

It ought to be obvious when it scares children.
That first tear back in whenever BC should've been the wake up call.

But..apparently, people are SO damned scared of death, and thus crave Heaven so deeply, they'll pay that price.

But how much is too much?

Where does it stop?

Clearly the tears of children didn't shake the idea free.

And the inquisitions weren't enough.
And the crusades, and the conquistadors, and the witch burnings, and....

At what price, this comfort?

Is death REALLY that mind-numbingly terrifying?
Well, as I've shown, I don't happen to think so.
Seems to me the process treats us just fine.

The process of dying is the bitch.
But Heaven doesn't protect us from that.

So what's really being feared?
Non-existence?
Why fear that?
You don't feel anything.
That's the point.
And it's inevitable.
We're all going to do it someday.
May as well fear going to sleep.
That's a little slice of non-existence.
Who could live fearing sleep?
Sounds like another one of those Hell things.

Maybe it's the final loss of control.
That people won't be exerting their will on their surrounding universe anymore.
Maybe that's why people have all these elaborate wishes for the removal of their remains.
Cremated in a viking ship, mummified, frozen, etc.

One more last thing to make people do.

Yeah, if it were even just stuff like that, I could leave it alone, and shut up.
Go get fat on pie or something.

But...it never is.
It never stops there.
Start with fear of death, then you get Heaven, then there's a price of admission to Heaven, then it expands into a little set of rules, and the writers of the rules are always the sort of people that want a big fucking burial structure after they die, and you have to build it, and it just goes from there.

And then different tribes have different Heavens, and different rules, and so they fight!

At what price your comfort?

You open a history book, or just watch CNN for an hour or so, and it just bites you in the ass.
"No, this costs too fuckin' much".

Aren't we better than this?
Aren't we better than a system that threatens torture?
That frightens our youth?

And for what?
Comfort?
Are you fucking kidding me?

I dunno, maybe there really is an equation that connects those two things together.
Funny that it's not taught in every school.
Seems like a useful thing to know.
Geez, could you imagine if that formula were applied to our economic system?
That would fix up a few things.

Yeah, I'm not going to wait for it to appear.

The price is too high, fuck comfort.
Fuck comfort.
I said it.

How about love? How about family? How about friends? Isn't that comfort enough?
And isn't life precious enough all by itself?
Why does there have to be this cosmic "meaning", bestowed by the universe?
Doesn't your life have meaning all by itself?
You can't love the people around you without this stuff?
Without this extra bit of magic dust?
This magic dust that costs a fucking fortune in blood by the way.

That's the part that sticks in my craw.
If it were just sad, baleful, wish-thinking, and fear, and insecurity, I could almost let it go.
I don't know for sure if I really would or not, it would still certainly make me sad, and frustrated, and disheartened.
But I could maybe let it go.
Maybe.
But that price tag, son of a bitch.
And we all pay it.
And no one asks.

And you're a bastard for piping up about it.

(Does scales gesture with hands)
Yeah, blood, war, fear, lies, shame, lies, lies, fear,....comfort.
Something's out of balance here.

Hey, maybe it's me.
Like I said, maybe someone could explain it to me.
No one has yet.
I begin to doubt anyone can.

But, maybe I peer into this stuff too much.
It is my nature after all.

Maybe you're supposed to "let life just wash over you", and don't worry about the puppetmasters.
I've thought about it.
Can't do it.
Ain't wired for it, there's no going back.
So, these are the thoughts I have, and this is what I see.

A world out of whack, out of proportion, full of bullshit, and I take notes on the whole thing.
And they accumulate in rants like this.

Rants with cheery messages like "fuck your comfort!!".

Why aren't I embraced to America's bosom?
Shocking.
;)


Read More......

Why the whole "Hell", idea perturbs me.

The whole idea behind the whole Heaven/Hell fantasy seems to be this primal notion of justice.

And most people who believe in Hell just imagine the little watered down cultural meme we've had drilled into us by movies, and cartoons, et cetera, of some dead guy who pisses us off, say Saddamm Hussein, getting a hot foot, and a pitchfork poke in the bum by a cackling dude in red pajamas, and we smile, and go about our day.

But...like most things in this doofy culture, when you really stop, and really think about it....what a bunch of bullshit.

When you REALLY think about it, there's no "justice", to be had with this little fable, and it erases even the alleged purpose for having the idea.

Justice?? Nothing of the kind.

Lemme give you a visual fix on the problem...



Imagine a solid steel ball in the middle of the Sahara desert.
Let's make it, oh, 10 miles in diameter let's say.

Big fuckin' ball.

And let's say every few decades to a century, the jet stream is just right, and sends a migrating bird off course, and into the path of this ball.

And let's say every few thousand times, a bird passes close enough to the ball, that it gently brushes the ball with the tip of one of its wings.

By the time this wing brushing action GRINDS THE BALL AWAY, it will only be the BEGINNING of eternity.

Now imagine a giant gumball machine dispensing new balls to continually renew the cycle.

Then imagine a giant trailer truck full of these gumball machines.

Now imagine a warehouse packed full of such trailer beds.

Oh yes, STILL only the BEGINNING of eternity.

And this is how long Hell fucking lasts.

Now imagine the worst crime you can imagine, eh, let's say The Holocaust.

Hitler was a pretty bad customer, let's go with the common Christian assertion "if Hitler doesn't deserve Hell, no one does".

All right, fine, Hitler in Hell.

Now, have you ever burned your finger on a candle, or a match, or a piece of hot metal, say a stove burner?
Remember how much that really, really, really fucking hurts??
Imagine that all over your fucking body.
It's mind blowing to try to fathom.
Some people don't need to struggle to imagine, there are a lot of burn victims out there.
It's really fucking horrific.

And this is what awaits in Hell.
None of this "in separation from God", bullshit, right there in the bible, "lake of fire", look it up.

Now, go back to those steel balls, that's how long you fucking burn.

Okay "Hitler deserves it", you say?

All righty then, how about your generic crime of passion murder?
Same as the holocaust?
Come on now.
We lose justice right out of the gate with that leap of illogic.
The convenience store robbery that goes wrong gets the same sentence as the fucking Holocaust?
Come on.
Okay, let's be really liberal, and say...a human life is so precious, that to take one equals...a thousand years of fire up the asshole.
Regardless of circumstance.
Accident, misadventure, cold calculated murder plot, no matter what, a thousand years of fire up the asshole.

Well, add up all the people Hitler killed, not just in the holocaust, but let's get greedy, and blame every death of WWII on the motherfucker, Soviets, Japanese, Brits, American, everybody, and round it upward, let's say he gets a sentence of 30 billion years.

Okay, my math is no doubt sloppy here, but let's just go with this number.

30 billion years of fire up the asshole for Hitler.

That ought to cover it, shouldn't it?

People change in regular jail for regular sentences.
I should think 30 billion years of fire up the asshole would be a fucking transformative experience for even Hitler.

After 30 billion years of fire up the asshole, I would think Hitler would be really, really, really, really, REALLY sorry.

Fuck, I bet he'd hit that point around week one of that shit, tops.
TOPS.
Probably MINUTE one.

But no, Adolph, you haven't burnt enough to slake our infantile bloodlust yet, roast for 30 billion years, then we can feel good about ourselves.

Okay, so 30 billion years, he's suffered enough by even insane mathematics, and he's pretty much forsaken his doofy ideas of national socialism, and Aryan blood purity, and he's really fucking sorry now.

Ah, but no, the steel ball clock awaits, and eternity still sprawls before him.

See what I'm getting at?

There's literally nothing a human being can do to deserve this.
It's injustice.
In it's most pure and smash-you-over-the-head-obvious fucking form.

And that's Hitler, just think of all the other regular shlubs who are supposedly going to this place.
The adulterers, the shoplifters, the fatasses, the chronic masturbators, and on and on.

Think of all the people day in and day out that are genuinely wished to Hell by some fundie nut.

Now imagine the mindset of the people that really do wish this on people.
For petty fucking shit.
Petty childish fucking shit.
Not returning the hedge trimmers for a month.
Not writing a "thank you", card for the Christmas fruitcake the person didn't even want because your fruitcake fucking sucks.
On and on, terabytes of wasted neural impulses poured into this Hell crap.

And if you call it lunacy....there's something wrong with YOU.

And this is where we're at in our development I guess.

But come on folks, when you reason it through like that, it just SCREAMS OUT so fucking OBVIOUSLY that not only is this is an idea that human beings thought up, but primitive humans, who didn't think this shit through too hard, and given that they were primitive, were governed by VERY childlike and vicious passions.

Heaven & Hell are not a system of justice, it's a loony tantrum-reacted revenge fantasy of a primitive people.
An angry suppressed people on top of that.

It's a nasty fable that has no place in the 21st century.

If you want justice, let's bend over backwards to have it here in this life.
Want everything Hitler stood for annihilated?
Make sure Nazism never rises to power again.
Cherish liberty.
Protect it.
And use it.
Speak your mind.
Don't let fear stifle you.
Especially not of Hell, or someone who threatens you with it.
And don't be emotionally blackmailed by the fear of others, that's just as bad.
That's the worst part, the control these ideas have become a self fulfilling prophecy of tyranny.
Cherish your liberty, and use it.
And don't bow to fear.

Who knows, something like Heaven might arise.

Read More......

Meditations on a dead squirrel.

Another old RD.net post.
Didn't get a big reaction at the time, and I lost confidence in it, and let it sink into the archives.
But...dammit, I like this story, and what it meant to me, and I didn't want to retype it from scratch, so...


When I was about 5-6 I watched a dead squirrel in our back yard slowly get eaten away to nothing by bugs over the course of a summer.

I found it endlessly fascinating.

Led to a chain reaction of what in hindsight, I can see were childish scientific inquiry.

Where was the squirrel vanishing away to?

Well, into the bellies of those mites, maggots, and bottle-flies.

Where did all those squirrel nibbles go away to?

Well, bug poops.

Hmm, howcome you never see bug poops anyway?
Too tiny I guess.

Where do the bug poops go?

Well, the previous summer, I'd watched a dog turd slowly turn white, and crumble away, into what I assumed was "sand".

So, the bug poops are too tiny to see, and vanish into "sand", or dust anyway.

So, everything dies, so this must happen to everything, and everybody.
Even those pesky creepy bottle-flies.

But where does the SQUIRREL go?

Poops, dirt, and even a nibbled on carcass isn't a squirrel anymore, where did HE go?

Well, I noted his disintegrating carcass wasn't too much different from the rusting away Honda Civic in our yard he was immediately adjacent to.

At about 2-3 I'd anthropomorphized the car, and named "him", "Boo-Boo".

If "Boo-Boo", rusted all the way away, where would "he", go?

Nowhere, Boo-boo is/was just a car, "he'd", just be some metal.

"Boo-Boo", was really the people inside, and my imagination.

Was it like that for the squirrel?

What made the squirrel a squirrel?
What made me me?

Got me thinking of souls for a few split seconds, but it didn't wash.

It occured to me, if I died, became a spirit, and left instructions for my carcass to be left rotting in our yard, I could watch the whole thing.

But...I couldn't poke it with a stick or nothin...

Cuz...if ya could, where was the squirrel ghost?
Didn't he realize the show he was missing?

And if that carcass was just his house, why didn't he just get back inside, and drive off those darned bottle-flies working his eye out from the inside?

So much for being a ghost.

So, it instinctively occured to me "he", was still in "there", somewhere, in that carcass, in a deep, deep, sleep, blissfully unaware of being munched on.

And it occured to me, a sleep that deep, there wouldn't even be dreams, no thoughts, no memories, no nothing, it'd be like it wasn't even happening.
Nothing would bother you at all.

How wonderful.

Your mind fades away to nothing, and then your body fades away to nothing.
You sort of literally dream away.

Didn't horrify me at all.

Course, later on, well intentioned relatives gave me booster shots of the Heaven/Hell bullshit that I had to slowly unwind from my ganglion, but I realize I'd had it all sorted out back then with the rotten squirrel.

What was my point..?

Oh yeah, either that nature can never be objectively "nasty".

...or else, I was a weird fucking kid....
Read More......

Thought of the day.

In the Ayn Rand rant, I voiced my personal misgivings about the line between confidence, and ego, and how it applied to my own art thusly...

"And this "low self esteem", shit bugs me.
Again, what if you are a fucking hack, and you think you're fucking great, and you don't fucking care?
Ayn Rand offers no antidote to this.
Indeed, such a person doesn't exist in Ayn Rand's world.
If you made money, that's good enough.
If someone paid you, you must be good.
If you're rich, you must be really good.

By that criteria, Britney Spears is the greatest singer who ever lived.

But anyone with taste and a fucking brain fucking knows better.

There's no answer on offer for this in Ayn Rand land.
None.
Her black & white choices are be a dick waving egoist, or accept your doom.
And if you're one who frets about if they're a hack, AND doesn't get rich on top of it, then you must suck.
And that's it, that's all you were worth, throw yourself in the garbage.

The only cure is blind ego, by fiat, from nothing, and if you were paid, then it confirms that ego.
And that's it.
That's all there is in Rand land.

Go around the loop as many times you like, that's the only answer you'll ever get.

For a guy like me loaded up with angst, it wasn't a fun trip.
All I got for my troubles was dizzy.
And depressed.
And still with unanswered questions".

Well, today, the depressing answer occured to me, that the sort of answer I'm looking for will never come, because absolute metaphysical certitude about my abilities will never come.

Well, depressing for awhile, until I considered that....as horrific as it is that absolute metaphysical certitude will never come....the alternative is...the horror if there were a source of absolute metaphysical certitude.

If some fucking God patted me on the head and arbitrarily called me worthy, while people I love and respect aren't.

Nope, couldn't live like that, and I'm glad the universe doesn't work that way.

Still, tch, damn.

Yeah, I know why people look for that objective standard, it sure is tempting.

But...I refuse it.
Like all the other supernatural security blankets.

Given the choice, I'll take the artistic angst.

(Addendum) Read More......