The Battle Goes On

A financial website I subscribe to has a sub-category called "The Coffee Shop" where anything other than finances are tossed around. One of the sub-categories is "Religion." I started making a few comments about religion and the response I got from the "good Christians" was....well...unchristian-like. Below is my reply to a guy who calls himself "wavery" who attacked me for my views. I have heard we should never match wits with an unarmed person. Why not? At my age I need to pick the easy fights. See wavery's comment and my response below.

"You exceed any evangelical I have ever met in your zeal and determination to convert others to your religion of atheism. I call it your religion because that is obviously what it is. -- wavery

I am not trying to convert anybody to anything. What I am trying to do is get people to think. If there is a god he/she/it will not punish you for using your 1400cc brain. I would also like to see you stop contaminating the minds of your youngsters before they can develop critical thinking skills on their own.

I have a proposition.

Starting today lets all refrain from mentioning any of our gods to our children. After the age of 20, we can lay out the plethora of choices before them. By then they will have developed enough critical thinking skills to make a wise choice. If Christians truly have faith in their one true god they will embrace my plan.

The following summarizes a few of the choices on offer today.
1. Mormonism, one of the newest religions, brought forth by a semi-literate con man named Joseph Smith who wrote the book of Mormon by looking through some magic reading stones…which if anyone else dared peek through… would die instantly. If we had started my experiment 20 years ago, we could point out that many of our highly intelligent and important leaders of our government have embraced Joseph Smith as their founding prophet. They include Harry Reid, Democratic leader of the Senate, and former Republican leader Orrin Hatch. In addition some 12 congressional members are convinced that Smith did indeed come into possession of the magic reading stones along with a book of Egyptian Hieroglyphics made of gold, which produced the book of Mormon. Don’t forget to mention former Governor Romney who has amassed a personal fortune and wants to be our next President. He will have a decided advantage over other Presidential hopefuls because he is privy to a revelator (see previous post on revelation) who regularly gets messages directly from god, which he then dispenses to the troops. It’s a cushy job. It goes by seniority. Presently it is held by Thomas Monson who took over after Gordon Hinckly expired back in 08.

Monson lives in a $600,000.00 condo in SLC. Its might be a great career opportunity. Oh…be sure to mention to the boys that ol’ Joseph had 33 wives. (Do not mention that to the girls.)

2. Catholicism; a religion anybody could buy into. Again, like Mormonism, we can find some very powerful people who are Catholics. The VP for one. And six of the nine Supreme Court Justices. Most of you won’t be able to name all twelve of them but they are easily recognized around Easter by the black spot on their foreheads. They all believe that if they eat a little wafer and drink a little grape juice (after appropriate words have been intoned over them by a priest) that it will literally…..not figuratively…literally…turn into the blood and flesh of a long dead religious zealot. Adherents are required to consume this….stuff… at intermittent intervals in a ritual known as communion.

This will probably be the hardest selling point to a 20 year old who might consider the idea of eating flesh and drinking blood, well...icky. But a 5 year old? It’s a slam dunk. Once stuffed into their innocent little heads it will be there forever just like it is with our Veep and the Justices. But for the more discerning 20 year old, there is some sugar to make the medicine go down. You see, the priests, the guys who dole out the crackers and grape juice? They have these little dark closets where you can go and they will forgive your sins. They have been given full authority to do that. Its great! Rather like a credit card of sin without any limit. One last thing. The subject is a little indelicate, but in the interest of full disclosure, you would be remiss if you failed to bring up the fact that the Church founded on the Rock of Peter (or something like that) has spent over 2 billion dollars defending priests who have been in the business of humping little boys. The Pope was furious! Not because of the humping part, but that his minions let the secret out.

The Pope is dead set against birth control so if your 20 year old chooses Catholicism you can expect to have a lot of grand kids. Just keep a close eye on them and everything will probably be o.k.

3. Islam. Islam came along some 600 years after Christ. It was founded by a guy who got it from…you guessed it…revelation. In a cave. Without any witnesses. Apparently the god of Islam has a hearing problem since Muslims pray five times a day. For some reason they are required to face toward the birthplace of their religion; Mecca. One must presume the prayers follow the contours of the earth until they reach the holy spot in the middle of the square, a small, cubed building known as the Kaba. It's estimated that some one billion Muslims are of prayer age. That means 5 billion prayers each day slam into the thing. Muslims, both men and women are required to journey there at least once in their lifetime, providing it doesn't crimp their budget.

You will need to kill a goat.

Everybody is required to walk round and round the Kaba. Seven times. Counterclockwise. Originally, the tradition was to throw a rock at a portion of the wall representing Satan. But with tens of thousands of pilgrims pulsing round the center of their universe at the same time, all hurling rocks, that got a little out of hand so now it is permissible to just point at the devil as you waltz by.

Here is a comment lifted from a website explaining the ritual:

I have a degree in science and spent time in the USAF in their R&D programs. There is a story that said Neil Armstrong the astronaut while circling the Earth noticed an energy beam or field of radiation of some sort coming from the Earth. Later as his space capsule was vectored over to that area again he took down the coordinates. When he got back to Earth the coordinates were looked up and came from the location of the Kaba. I have heard that NASA put this information on their website but took it down a short time later. There indeed is something very special about this place.

Special indeed. One might even say magical.

If your 20 year old is a straight male, you need to explain to him the 72 virgin option. Blow yourself up along with a few infidels and you will be rewarded in heaven with 72 virgins in a huge rent free mansion with all the milk and honey you can drink and eat. (Just dip it up out of the rivers)

Allow me a personal observation. I am 74 (be 75 on Dec 25th, Christ’s birthday!) I cannot think of a fate worse than to have to spend eternity with a palace full of virgins. One or two maybe…but 72! Virgins tend to get a little cranky after a couple of weeks lying around the house with nothing else to do but wait to be deflowered. And when it dawns on them they are tied to me for eternity!! My god! Can you imagine? And rivers of milk and honey? I tried living on milk and honey once just to see how long I could do it. By the fourth day I nearly vomited when the honey jar came out.

Just tell your boy to be careful what he wishes for. I have no idea what you would tell your girl. If your boy is gay, probably be a good idea not to mention the Muslim option.

4. Hinduism. Now here is one that offers a plethora of choices when it comes to gods. As Mark Twain said, the woods are full of them. I don’t know much about Hinduism but I have a good friend who has been practicing psychiatry for over 30 years. He was raised in India. He knows a lot about Hinduism. In fact he has written a book about it. He says they are big on Shiva Linga. (Google it after the kids are in bed.) Shiva is the one they think is involved with the big upside down icicle (stalagmite?) in the Amaranth cave way up in the Kashmir Mountains. The one that roughly resembles a penis. (see my previous post) After you Google Shiva Linga you will understand.

Back in 2007, the Indian government proposed dredging a passageway between the southern tip of India and the island of Sri Lanka. I was particularly interested in that because it would save a full 24 hours for cargo vessels and at the time I was invested in a shipping company. The proposal so enraged Hindus that they rioted all over India, holding up not only car traffic but rail traffic as well. Two people were killed. The reason? Well, you see one of their gods (Ram) had built a 28 mile long sacred land bridge (now sunken) connecting India and Sri Lanka. He built it to rescue his princess who had been kidnapped by another god. He built the bridge using the labor of an army of dedicated monkeys.

Hindus double-dog dared the government to sink a steam shovel into their beloved sunken bridge. I sold my stock.

5. Christian Protestants: Here we have even more choices. According to ARIS, the go to people on religion stats, there are some 36,000 choices world wide. Like weeds, religions pop up and die out almost on a weekly basis. They all share a common belief; that a virgin, who was blessed with a one way vagina, got pregnant and popped out a son who would allow us in to heaven. All we had to do was believe in him. Easy. Nothing else required. Who wouldn’t go for a deal like that? On the face of it, it looked like a heckava deal. But then on closer examination, we find that after 2000 years of effort, only one out of three people have bought in to it. One possible explanation is that people are beginning to smell a rat. For example Jesus told his disciples that he would return “before some standing there tasted death.” We all miss appointments occasionally, but two thousand years!! You might want to mention that to your 20 year old.

As for me, if someone were to put a gun to my head and force me to choose a religion, I would have to go with the Hindus. The reason? I have never seen a dead man come back alive, but in Las Vegas at the Follies Bergere I saw a monkey show and it was unbelievable what the trainer had those little guys doing. A simple task like carrying a rock for over 25 miles near the completion of Ram’s bridge would have been child’s play for them.

Footnote: I'm still obsessing over the virgin thing. Just for the sake of argument, lets suppose that 1 billion Muslims killed 1 billion infidels. That would require 72 billion virgins. What the heck! Is there a huge virgin manufacturing plant somewhere in Muslim heaven, cranking out virgins 24-7? It's a mystery!