More - Why Religion Sucks

Americablog is really good at keeping tabs on what the crazy people are up to. Today we have more religious craziness, and lesbians, and hate mongers. All the essential pieces of a good story.

What is really interesting in the whole discussion is the idea of how something become "conventional wisdom".

For instance, conventional wisdom says that the Republican party is the party that "supports the troops", and is the "moral party", and is the party of "family values". As has been demonstrated on my blog and countless others, the truth is quite the opposite, yet the uninformed masses believe it anyway. One lesson to take is that if you yell something loud enough and long enough, it becomes the truth regardless.

Now, what is hard to wrap our heads around is the notion that religious people are the most immoral people on the planet. Why? Because for thousands of years we have been told that they are the righteous and the moral. Quite the opposite is true.

What is the definition of "moral" anyway? That's part of the problem. The word is generally related to sex. For instance, a woman that would have sex on the first date would be considered "immoral" by the religiously oriented usage of the word. I don't believe morality has anything to do with sexuality. In fact, most guys, if they were honest, would call that girl "fun" rather than "immoral" and the vast majority would be pretty pleased with a woman that puts out on the first date.

The public face a person protrays when relating morality to sexuality is quite different then what they actually believe. Human beings just like to pretend a lot I guess.

So what is "moral" then? I think it relates to honesty and integrity - but more than anything else, morality relates to how you view and treat other people. Which brings me back to religious people.

The fundamental tenant of religion is that "my group is right and yours is wrong", and "if you are not like us you are immoral". That's it in a nutshell. That applies to every single religion that defines itself with a name.

That very simple logic seems to be lost on the vast majority of people. They don't even realize they are less moral then a homeless guy on a street begging for spare change. After all, that homeless guy would take a buck from me - but Pat Robertson would not. The homeless guy doesn't make a value judgment about me and cast me as less a human being then himself.

By it's very nature, that's what religion does. It places oneself above others by mere definition. That is a basic assumption in all religion. That is the essence of immorality, and it has lead to all manners of horrors through the ages.

So naturally we have a prime example of that or else I wouldn't have written all that crap. It also involves more Jews for Hitler syndrome, and I'd really like somebody to explain to me why that happens. I don't get it.

WASHINGTON -- The highest court in the Methodist Church yesterday defrocked a lesbian minister in Philadelphia, and reinstated a Virginia pastor who had been suspended for denying congregation membership to a gay man.

The decisions amounted to a clean sweep for conservatives in the church who believe homosexual activity is a sin and want to enforce a Methodist rule against ''self-avowed, practicing" homosexuals in ordained ministry. They were the latest in a series of recent defeats for liberals in the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination who have sought to be more welcoming toward gays and lesbians.

Here we have the Methodist Christian church essentially saying that gays and lesbians are less than human, and undeserving of equal inclusion in God.

Is there anything worse that the Methodist church could do then to say that millions of people around the world are, by mere definition, less then human?

I honestly ask that question. I want to know what greater immorality there could be in the world then to simply define people as subhuman. That is exactly what the Nazi's did to the Jews, and that is what the United States did in importing slaves, and that is what Iran did last week when calling for Israel to be destroyed. It is the process of the classification that is the evil, not just the acts of violence against the condemned group.

Yet - religion carries on it's "conventional wisdom" that they are the moral people, and I just don't get it.

The quote, "clean sweep for conservatives" is all the language I need to equate "conservatives" to "evil" and "immoral".

The quote, "defeats for liberals" simply tells you that liberals place gay men and woman on the same moral plane, and gives to them the same human dignity as themselves.

You cannot find a more clear cut contrast of "conservative" and "liberal" as it relates to morality.

The test of my analysis is quite simple really. To every conservative that reads this that thinks I wrong, I would say that if chance had only been different, and you were gay, you would think exactly the way I do. Every gay person who doesn't hate themselves does. Every single one.

But when a conservative thinks about that for a moment, it's easy for them to rationalize it all away and just say "I'd never be gay" when in fact it's all a matter of chance. It is simply that - chance. It is the chance of being born black, or hispanic, male or female, healthy or sick, heterosexual or homosexual. It is all in the statistics of biology. And that is why the policies of religion toward gays is the same as if they told a black woman born with a birth defect that they could not be a minister.

So now we get to the part where we find out whether self identity is more important to a person then the cult of bat-shit crazy. Which do you think will win?

The answer should be obvious before you even read it..

The court rulings, which are final, put an end to the Rev. Irene ''Beth" Stroud's hopes of remaining an ordained Methodist minister. Stroud, 35, said she thought she ''was prepared for whatever might happen," but found it impossible to master her emotions today. ''It's been tears off and on all morning," she said.

Stroud said she intends to continue working at Philadelphia's First United Methodist Church of Germantown as a lay minister, which means she cannot preside at communion and baptisms but still will run the church's youth group.

That is the power of the evil. It is so intense that it can tell a person they are less then human, and that person will believe it. How else to explain this person staying in a church that would strip away her basic dignity and leave her bare?

I believe it takes an intense self loathing and fundamental sense of guilt for a person to fall into the trappings of religious fervor in the first place. The Catholics are particularly good at telling a person they are a huge pile a shit even as they leave the womb. It's that original sin. They grab hold of your soul before you even take your first breath in this world, and twist it to the point that you will smile at those who would destroy you for being the essence of yourself.

Well, that's not me.. and I'm not the sort that lets a person fuck with me. Jesus may not be terribly pleased, but I consider the acts of the Methodist church to be on par with genocide on the order of Hitler exterminating 6 million Jews. The thinking that a gay person is not human enough to be a minister is the exact first step to justifying genocide on the less then human.

There have been any number of web sites that have compared Hitler to main-stream Christianity, and the parallels are self evident.

Rev. Irene Stroud may be willing to lay down before those that would execute her, but I am not. If anyone fucks with me, I will kick them in the balls so hard their inbred children will feel it.

And maybe if the Jews had that attitude, there wouldn't have been 6 million of them murdered. Well, maybe there still would have, but at least they would have retained the honor of going down swinging.

According to Thomas, Johnson turned away the gay man for membership because the man was in a same-sex relationship and refused to see that as a sin. As a result, Thomas said, the pastor did not believe he could honestly administer the first vow of membership in the church, which is, ''Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?"

It is not a sin, and those that think it is are the moral equivalent of genocidal murderers.

Still feel like going to mass next Sunday?