M.A. Drake's Blog, page 3

Religious tantrum continued!!

The thing about religion is that from an outside observer, religion seems silly. And I don't just mean from the outside perspective of an atheist or an agnostic, I mean from anyone who is an outside observer of any other religion. Baptists think Mormons are silly for thinking Christ came to America after his death and visited the Indians, and for the whole Magic Underwear thing-- because it is silly. People from the Far East think the whole Santa/Christ thing is silly-- because it is silly. And everybody reads the history books and read stories of the Greeks and Romans and their multiple Gods living up on Mount Olympia coming down from the sky and cavorting with people and thinks of them as stories you turn into cartoons. Zeus used to take all sorts of forms of all sorts of different creatures and trick people into having sex with him. Everybody recognizes this as silly, because it is silly.

But here's the thing. The Greeks and the Romans believed this stuff. They didn't just tell these stories to each other to amuse one another the way we tell their myths. They built statues to their Gods, prayed to them. This was their lives, yet we laugh at them because they're silly, and rightfully so.

Yet people don't see their own silly, ancient myths as being exactly the same silliness as everyone else's myths. We discount ancient religions as myths-- because they are-- but we somehow take our own silliness as the gospel to not be questioned. What about Zeus coming down from the skies and tricking a woman into having sex with him is any sillier than God taking the form of a burning bush to tell Moses to write down 10 rules, most of which were probably already being practiced regularly by civilized society? What's sillier about Mitt Romney thinking Jesus and the Devil were brothers, when Mike Huckabee believes the Devil and God basically had a bet going on over who could fuck Job's life over more?

Social networking religion profiles

One of the social networking websites I use has a section on everybody's profile that you fill out for various things about yourself, height, weight, ethnicity, things like that, and of course there's one for religion. And when you click "religion", there's another box that you can check for how powerfully you feel about it. So you might see somebody that has a profile that says "Christian, and I'm very serious about it," or you might see "Jewish, but not too serious about it."

Of course, there's also atheists and agnostics, but what amuses me is when somebody has it set to "Agnostic, but not too serious about it."

Well, no, you wouldn't be very serious about it. Pretty much by definition. "I am not sure if there is a God, and I'm holding out for proof. Still, with the right argument and philosophy you might be able to get me to change my mind, although I doubt it. I'm open minded either way. But I will totally kick a person in the nuts for disagreeing with me. People who disagree with me are not allowed to marry my daughter. Fence sitters only!"

Conversely, sometimes you'll see somebody that's got it set to "Atheist, and not very serious about it." Actually, that makes you agnostic, asshole.

Another religious post. Take heed.

For some reason, religion has decided that it has exclusive rights, as I've said before, to spirituality, but also to optimism. The religious of the world believe that their faith is what gets them through the day, that it is their guide, and without it they would be lost. They feel that with their God on their side, no ultimate harm can befall them-- which of course isn't true at all, because bad things happen to good people all the time, but it is an interesting aspect of religion. Religious people honestly believe that without faith, a soul is ultimately doomed to misery, failure, and to be lost in life with no direction. According to their way of thinking, the path of God is the only path of optimism.

Yes it is this very group of people-- especially those that belong in the Big Three, that is, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, believe that someday, this very being they claim has infinite compassion for everyone will, in some fashion, wipe out the entire population, separating the wicked from the righteous, whether they be brothers, lovers, or mother and child, and casting the wicked into some form of eternal pain and torture. But that's not even the weird part. The weird part is that religious people look forward to this event. Christianity looks so forward to it they even decided to call the end of everything there ever was "The Rapture".

This is the single most pessimistic philosophical worldview I've ever heard. I can't imagine how anyone other than a sociopathic nihilist could have so much disdain for the human race as to actively wish the judgmental annihilation of it. Yet religion does it with such reckless hope, anticipation, and reverence. And people who don't believe in God are pessimists?

Here's the thing: Agnostics and atheists believe the world could end one day-- could, not will-- and, as a rule, this event as seen as a bad thing. People who do not see this as a bad thing are, outside of religious context, disregarded as being fucking crazy-- and rightfully so. In this case, the only difference is that one form of insanity has been around for a couple thousand years.

You know what else pisses me off? This happened today.

I'm not the kind of person who likes to talk to live operators when I call up businesses. Generally speaking, I just want to pay a bill or check my balance or order a pizza or something, and I abhor long hold times or dealing with employees who want to rush me along because they're busy. But occasionally I do need to speak to a live person, and what's the first thing the recording says when you choose to speak with someone? "To help direct your call in an efficient and timely manner, please enter your account number." Fine, whatever. Then it wants the last four digits of your social security number. Cool. So you wait your long-ass hold time listening to bad music and commercials for the business you've already called (stop trying to hype me! I'm already here!), and when you finally, finally get to a live person, the first thing out of his mouth is "Can I have your account number please?" And then he asks, for security purposes, the last four of your social security number. And then he asks for your address on top of all that! This is supposed to be "efficient handling" of my call? Asking for the same information over and over? Did you think that someone needed desperately to get into my electric bill account so, at gun point, put the phone to my head and forced me to enter my information, shot me dead, then put himself on the phone, but forgot to ask me for the information before doing so? Because besides that scenario, I can't think of how anyone would have the correct information and then, five minutes later, have incorrect information.

People allow this?

You know what bugs me about society as a whole? We're too willing and accepting of being screwed. There are certain systems that are set up where the customer has a distinct advantage. You might not think so, but think about how many times you've worked any retail store with a very generous, airtight, no hassle return policy to your benefit. But there are other industries and systems that are so heavily built on completely fucking the average person, yet we graciously accept it as if we should be so privileged as to be allowed to be fucked so hard.

Credit cards are one of the worst scourges ever to be brought to consumers in western society. 40 years ago, there was no such thing as credit cards, let alone the idea of a "credit rating" that affected most parts of your life and was inescapable, yet people still managed to do things like rent apartments, put a down payment on a house, or, you know, do anything. And your response to that might be "Times were different in the 1960's." And you'd be right. The economy wasn't in a near-depression, the national debt wasn't the highest in American history, and the average American didn't have several thousand dollars in credit card debt.

What's frustrating is that everyone knows what credit cards do; yet they all willingly line up to have more. Max out a card, get another one. Pay off your card just so you can fill it right back up. Get a new credit card to pay off other credit cards. Yet if you talk to the average person, they make excuses for it. "Well," they say, "if you're smart with your credit card, they can be enormously beneficial." This is true, but it is also true that you can form a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship with the mafia. You know, if you're "smart".

Making excuses for credit card companies doesn't make sense; especially considering just a little less than half the country has some form of credit card debt. "That's because people are stupid" might be your retort, but when credit cards have been obtainable to the mass consumer for around 30 years, and now half the country is indebted (and if you check your bills right now, I'll wager you'll discover that half isn't exclusively the stupid half), maybe it's not the people we should be blaming.

Religious post... look out.

As I've grown older and pondered my position with religion-- my growing disgust and utter bafflement-- it's become very obvious to me that I'm agnostic, and always have been, ever since I was a child and the things about God that were told to me did not match what I observed with my own two eyes or flat out made no sense.

You couldn't tell me God doesn't exist. It doesn't make any sense to me that there could be no God. Looking at all the similarities between all living things, it baffles the mind. You couldn't tell me there was no guiding hand behind it all. But I don't believe in religion. Religion is man-made. Created to put people in line, to brainwash them into thinking what someone more powerful. Religion was designed with power in mind, and with it has come horrible, horrible atrocities that still go on to this day. But with that said, religion-- all of them-- were created at a time when people needed it. Primitive people who could get wiped out from a simple flu contagion needed that kind of structure, that kind of control. That kind of brainwashing. Or else the entire world would have descended into chaos. As it is, look at how close and how often mankind has been to total chaos since our creation-- and that's with the benefit of a vice-like grip of power of religion over humanity.

I despise religion nevertheless, in all of its forms, because today, I feel like it's an antiquated idea that mankind needs to permanently shake off so we can finally put all of our energy in one forward-moving direction, instead of having the bullshit that comes with religion; you know, wars and hostile territorial disputes, racism, homophobia, and just about every single thing that's wrong in the entire world.

It's not that I don't understand the need certain people have for structure in their lives that religion often fills. But, for some reason, spirituality and religion often get mistaken for being mutually exclusive, yet this is not true. People in the military, in karate, or even just practice yoga will often describe the same kind of spiritual oneness, sense of happiness and purity that religious people claim to exclusively have. Think about it. For every testimonial on PAX where someone claimed they used to do drugs, were unemployed, wanted to commit suicide, but then found Jesus who personally saved their life, there is an athlete on ESPN who will tell you that dedication to basketball saved them from the ghetto. Spirituality does not have to be involved with religion. If the whole world simultaneously said "sucks" to religion, the world would still be as spiritual place as ever.

I am agnostic in that while I believe there is a God, I don't focus much effort on him or my relationship with him. I can't believe in a God so full of himself, so egotistical, that it would require complete and total devotion to him. I don't think God cares whether you worship him or not. I don't think God cares if you say Goddammit. What kind of parent would expect that kind of total, irrational devotion? What kind of parent doesn't want their children to live their own lives?

Agnosticism. I feel like I've come to the conclusion that this is what I am through logic and soul searching. I believe in God, I just don't believe anything I'm told about him. And why should I? What makes one person supposedly more intimate with God? What makes one person holier than someone else, and able to teach about God? Certainly people are more qualified to teach the gospels, but God? And since I don't know anything about God, his relevance seems like something I wouldn't know why I would necessarily go out of my way to bother with. He is what he is. I am what I am. We both exist.

Agnosticism. If I didn't feel the way I do about religion, God, and Jesus Christ, I would be annoyed by the kind of bullshit, non-committal answer that is agnosticism. At least Atheism has the balls to believe in not believing, but agnosticism wants to have its cake and eat it too. "Well, I'm not crazy enough to be religious, and I'm not cynical and cold like an atheist," it seems to say. Agnostics are the obnoxious fence-sitting "undecided" voters that seem content to wait until the two that have actually made up their minds duke it out, and then choose whichever side that won. The one group that, if the rapture ever does come, even though never having actually believed it would come, could never have been proven wrong, because hey, when did I ever say God couldn't do it? And where does it say in the bible that Jesus wasn't a Raptor?

Location, location, location.

Part of my problem with humanity is that I feel like I'll be unhappy anywhere I go. Everywhere I've ever lived-- and I understand that I've only lived in a handful of places, most of them on the west coast, but the thing is, I think I've got a better grasp of human beings than most other people, and they all tend to be the same. They all tend to fall into one of several very specific categories. I mean, people in marketing know it, politicians know it, the only people that don't seem to know it are the people themselves. And every one of those groups of specific categories is assholes. Every place I've lived I've either been unhappy or outright hated, yet I have never had any desire to be anywhere else than where I was. This is because I feel like no matter where I go, there will be assholes. Cities are full of shallow, trendy people. Rural areas are full of ignorant, racist people. Other countries are rude and do nothing but drink. This country is rude and does nothing but drink. I mean, I disliked Phoenix. For one thing, it was too hot, but that was not really Phoenix's fault, it can't really help where it is in relation to the poles. But the drivers were terrible, and I mean terrible. There was a disturbingly high drug problem. The people were insidiously stupid and disgustingly trendy; the remaining were conservative religious nuts and/or rednecks. But whenever I think about where else I could move, my mind just kind of ends up in a quandary-- where else could I go? If I manage to find a place that doesn't have any SUVs and better drivers, it'll be a place full of closet racists who will call the cops when a black man walks down the block. If I find a place that's not as trendy or where people actually strive to have a unique identity, I won't be able to find a job because the economy is so bad. This is what annoys me about the idea of moving with the intention to get away from it all. The only thing that separates the assholes of the world is the type of meat they eat.

My take on declining intelligence.

I've mentioned functional illiteracy on the Internet before. I don't understand how someone who obviously doesn't enjoy reading or writing-- the only two skills needed to use the Internet-- would spend so much time using it. And yet, a quick perusal of any place an assortment of people like to post will reveal vast numbers of people who do not have any idea as to how to communicate with one another using anything resembling a language, and this number raises exponentially anywhere young people post.

The thing is, we, as a country-- actually, I'll take it a step further and say we as a species-- are quick to point fingers at the easy target. And the easy target, in this case, is the education system.

Now, I have seen first-hand just how the education system can go wrong, especially with inner-city kids. I used to live in the poorest part of Phoenix, AZ. I had a neighbor who told me about the neighborhood school. There were teachers who taught entire classes in Spanish because it was easier for the students to understand. Once, his English teacher called out sick, the substitute that they sent didn't actually speak any English, and a friend had to translate everything for him.

Despite knowing what can go wrong in the public education system, I don't blame it for the functional illiteracy of today's youth. Saying that education is letting our youth down is completely true, but also only part of the bigger picture. The real, bigger problem is that we, as a society, are raising an entire generation of kids that don't care anything about learning. It's not that they are necessarily being taught poorly-- obviously, in some cases they are, but the question is, why are young people intentionally ignoring what they are taught in school?

Our problem can't be solved on a larger scale with vouchers or better school lunches or private schooling or, perhaps the absolutely worst idea, home schooling. The problem we need to address is how do we get students to care about learning? How do we get them to want to learn? How do we get them to know that reading and writing in complete sentences exercises their brain, and is beneficial to them in the long run, whereas no literacy skills creates a lazy brain, just as not using your body for physical reasons creates a fat, lazy body. How do we get them to understand that math skills are good for all parts of their daily life, and that ignoring it creates a person less prepared for life than someone who didn't ignore it? How do we teach the same of kids for science and social studies? Making schools better will help, but all it will do is educate the people that want to learn more than they're already learning. Once we figure out exactly what we're doing wrong as a society that is dissuading kids from learning to educate themselves, then we'll have the key to making our school systems better. Until then, however, we're going to continue to lose our youth to ignorance.

You might hate me, but I hope you will respect me

Of course I support gay marriage. In my mind, it's not even an issue. But I want to be honest about it to prove a point. On a personal level, something about gay marriage makes me uncomfortable. And I don't think it's entirely just my own prejudices, although I'm not so pig-headed as to think that might not have anything to do with it. There are a couple troubling issues when it comes to gay marriage that I definitely think a smart person, regardless of how passionately they support gay marriage, should consider.

For one thing, domestic abuse amongst gay couples-- an issue that gay rights activists very rarely bring up-- is statistically much larger than in opposite-sex couples; startlingly so amongst lesbians. Gay couples also have an extremely high rate of infidelity, and when combined with gay men's much higher rate of contracting STDs, this in particular becomes very troubling.

I also worry about children growing up in this environment. When children are brought up, gays often say that their children will not grow up gay, because they themselves were raised by straight parents, but did not turn out straight. This reasoning doesn't really hold water, unfortunately. Let's say the population is 10% gay. That means that 90% of all straight parents have straight kids. Meaning, more than likely, 90% of gay parents will have gay kids. However, I'm not worried about gay couples having gay kids, so long as the child is happy, and really, that's what any parent ultimately wants. But I do worry about that child in social circumstances. Kids will be kids and they will always be assholes. But it's one thing when a child is teased about something that's not true, and it's another thing entirely when a child is made fun of for things that are true. I think that in 10-20 years, we're going to see a lot of young adults with very specific social issues that will come up from being raised in a gay household.

Of course, none of the issues I've brought up should necessarily be impediments on gay marriage. They are my own personal discomforts, and to be blunt, my own discomforts don't really matter because I'm not gay and I was not brought up in a gay household. All the same arguments were said 40 years ago during the civil rights movement. Whites and blacks shouldn't marry because blacks are much more likely to be involved in crime (this is true, but misleading, and ignorant). White and blacks shouldn't have kids because their kids won't be socially accepted (hell, my own family taught me this one). And none of these supposed issues that people were so serious about at the time ultimately mattered as time passed. People will love who they feel like and you can't stop them from fulfilling their lives how they see fit. What's so frustrating about America is that there is-- and always has been-- this gigantic group of people that, despite living in the supposed melting pot of tolerance, cannot distinguish between personal beliefs and the rights of another human being. A federal law protecting gay marriage just makes sense regardless of personal beliefs or religious nonsense or any glorified image of the sanctity of marriage that never actually exisited.

Here's an example. Let's say two women live together and consider each other wives, although they never officially are married because the law won't let them. And let's say they decide to have a baby by natural means. Whether or not you have a problem with this is completely irrelevent-- people will do this. People will have children. Now let's say when the child becomes 10 years old, the biological mother falls ill and dies. Now, because they were never legally married, the remaining mother suddenly has no rights as a parent, despite that she is the only living parent the child has ever known. The court then has the legal right to put the child in the home of a close relative, or worse, a foster home.

This scenario makes absolutely no sense, but it happens. If there is a parent that is perfectly willing and able to raise a child they love and that loves them, then their child should never be taken away from them. But because of a bunch of selfish idiots who don't think of the ramifications of their beliefs stopped them from being able to get a slip of paper saying yes, the two women were married, and yes, the nonbiological mother would like to adopt the child. This sort of thing happens all the time in hetero marriage; people get married and the nonbiological parent adopts the child from a previous relationship. This isn't just symbolic. This is done so that if something happens to the biological parent, the remaining parent still maintains their rights as parents. It is common sense to keep a child with the only parent they've ever known in case something happens, but it's a common sense that is not afforded to homosexuals.

Yes, on a personal level, I do in fact have a problem with homosexuals getting married. I don't like to admit it because I don't want to sound like I'm close-minded, but I honestly do have a problem with it. But frankly, I also have a problem with stupid people getting married and having kids, I have a problem with people who don't love one another getting married, and I have a problem when parents raise children that they do not want or love. I think these families create much worse mental instabilities in children than a happy homosexual couple would, and I think they are more of a blight on the "sanctity of marriage" than people who want to get married that are also of the same sex. When people mention that the US Constitution wasn't written with the idea of same-sex couples getting married in mind, they're right. But it also wasn't written with blacks or women have the right to vote or to be elected for office in mind. Luckily, the founders of our country had the foresight of allowing the consistution to be amended. However, suggesting that the Constitution should be amended to outlaw gay marriage is a farce, and quite an offensive one. The US. Constitution has only been amended to take away someone's right's once, during the Prohibition Act, and that was repealed in less than two decades, proving how well Americans take to their rights being taken away.

Debating the un-debatable

I'm not sure when it happened, really. It might have been when the Bush administration stole the election and the government simultaneously was controlled by a neo-con Senate and House. Or it might have been when, with a vice-like grip of fear over the country, Bush convinced the idiots of America that we needed to go into an illegal war of first resort under false pretense with Iraq. But somewhere in those years, the doors were opened for lunatics demanding equal time in "debates", when the issues at hand were not debatable.

There was no clear and present danger in Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no connection with 9/11. These are the facts, and they have always been facts. It has been illegal to go to war with a country unless there was a threat since WW2. Furthermore, the United States has never had a preemptive strike on another country even when there was proof that the country was in danger. And yet, even when the government acknowledged our pretenses for war were fabricated, Conservatives still demanded (and got) equal time to this issue, as if it was an issue that was still debatable. It was absolutely mind blowing turning on the television and, even though the White House admitted the documents were false, here were people unembarrassed, very eager to support a war built from the ground up on non-facts!

There was also the intelligent design nonsense that was suddenly given credence when our buffoon of a President said that if we taught evolution in school, we ought to teach intelligent design also. No, Mr. President. I'm sorry. We ought not teach intelligent design in schools, because it has no facts behind it. Evolution, on the other hand, is based on facts. This is the reason we teach it in schools. Many believers in intelligent design believe that man lived with dinosaurs. This is not true. There is no reason to teach non-truths in school for the sake of "alternative answers". There is no debate. One is arguing fact, the other is arguing fish. There is no reason to give them equal time.

Then I turn on the television, and people are talking about the legalities of the government spying on the American people, and how much torture we should give a prisoner before it should be illegal. How much torture? If it's one thing I can safely say without a shadow of a doubt, it's that America is based and founded on not torturing people. This isn't a question. You just don't torture people. Period. And yet, apparently, we live in a Bizarro World where grown, official men-- often elected official men-- are on television, comfortable enough with their insanity to talk about not whether we should spy on Americans and torture our prisoners-- which should be an obvious no-- but how much.

Which brings me to the reason I decided to write this. When I was in Arizona, our legislation sat down one day to discuss a new law that would be put on the ballot, allowing pharmacists to deny certain medications (specifically the morning-after pill) to patients for religious beliefs. As a compromise to opponents, pharmacists denying medication would have to recommend a pharmacist that wouldn't deny them.

The problem is that there is no compromise when one side is wrong. Pharmacists aren't medical doctors. They don't get to make choices about patients, they can't, in most cases, prescribe medicine to a patient based on judgement, and they cannot unprescribe a patient-- they don't even have patients. They have customers. And if they disagree with a product the retailer they work for sells, they can find a different job.

The argument, of course, is that if a doctor can refuse an abortion, a pharmacist should also. This makes no sense, because pharmacists are not medical doctors. You don't need a doctorate in medicine to be able to measure various powders and to be able to pour them into smaller receptacles. I'm not trying to say that pharmacists don't have an important job. Incorrect measurements can cause horrible reactions in people, or even death. Furthermore, pharmacists often know more about pharmaceuticals than doctors do. But they aren't medical doctors. They can't give out anything based on a judgement call. A doctor can. The reason doctors can refuse abortions and pharmacists can't is because they are two totally different jobs, with totally different job specifications, with different qualifications. One takes the Hippocratic Oath, the other takes the Oath of Maimonides. There is no argument or debate because one side's argument is completely nonsensical and baseless. If we wanted pharmacists to make decisions based on judgement, they would have to have medical doctorates.

To put it into perspective, imagine that I, a liberal pacifist (rather than a conservative religionist, the people trying to argue this into law), am a pharmacist. And let's say a hunter and his buddy were out hunting, and one of them accidentally shot the other. And let's say they need medicine to help heal the wound. If I turned this person down because I'm a pacifist and didn't believe in guns, would that be alright? Of course not. It's nonsense. And yet here we are, this very issue taken all the way to state legislation, as if it deserves the same consideration as something that does make sense, as if it does have base and merit, as if there were some sort of argument for it founded in reality. There isn't a debate here. Just insanity.