Holy Shit

Dear mother, dear mother, the Church is cold;
But the Alehouse is healthy, and pleasant, and warm.
Besides, I can tell where I am used well;
Such usage in heaven will never do well.

I just came back from watching Bill Maher’s RELIGULOUS, a documentary on the ludicrousness and danger of religion.

I don’t normally like Bill Maher.

I think he’s a pompous blowhard with a face that reminds me of a bad rubber mask of Ronald Reagan.

But he won me over.

Not for his commentary, but because he let the extremists and bullshit artists speak for themselves.

With a few simple questions, he got priests, rabbis, mullahs, senators, and scientists to humiliate themselves by expressing beliefs the educated members of my generation would gladly take a steaming shit on.

Like Bill Maher, I’m half Catholic and half Jewish.

Though he was raised Catholic, I was raised a Reform Jew.

Because my mother never converted, I’m not considered Jewish by the anal retentive gate-holders of God’s Chosen People. After over five years fruitlessly throwing myself at the gate, I, wounded, bloody, and missing the taste of my mother’s adobo, gave up, and now, like Bill Maher, am an Agnostic.

He’s never claimed to be Agnostic.

He claims he doesn’t know, and has no way of knowing, if there is a God or not.

It is the ultimate in religious and philosophical cop outs, and it is the way of the Agnostic.

Ernest Renan (1823-1890), a French historian and critic, succinctly portrayed the Agnostic creed with the following:

“The agnostic’s prayer: O God, if there is a god, save my soul, if I have a soul.”

Now unlike Bill Maher, I do not discount religion.

Two of my dearest friends are Orthodox Jews, and they are the kindest, most noble people I know.

Is it because they’re Orthodox Jews?

I don’t know, and I don’t care.

When it all boils down, they’re good people and that’s what matters.

Religion encourages ignorance.

The Catholic Church, The Fundamentalist of Latter Day Saints, Fundamentalist Jews, and Islamic groups actually have lists of books and films that ‘good’ Christians, Jews, and Muslims are not supposed to watch, read, or enjoy.

Books on the Catholic hit list include, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet and all because they questioned or mocked the directives of the Church or encouraged non-Christian concepts.

The Catholic list of films include Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and The Magdalene Sisters, a true story about the abuses of young women that occurred in Ireland in a home for “fallen” women. The movie, according to reviews, glosses over the worst physical, sexual, and emotional abuses of innocent women by the so-called Sisters of Mercy, a bunch of sadistic nuns who thought they were doing the work of God, and these girls a favor, by “correcting” their sinful behavior.

God help us when they come out with a film on the Boy-Raping-Priest-Protection-Program.

The Fundamentalist of Latter Day Saints has banned the works of black writers and musicians because blacks aren’t welcome into their so-called Kingdom of Heaven. Same goes for Mormons.

The Islamists shat their pants in response to Salman Rushdie’s book, Satanic Verses, and began demanding his head on a pike. One cartoon by a Danish artist caused massive riots where an angry mob, at the encouragement of their religious leaders, demanded the artist’s death.

Organized religions don’t want their beliefs questioned because, let’s face it, religion is a business. Bad publicity is bad for business, and authorities from every fundamentalist, or “fundie”, group don’t want members to see that their church is fallible, and that, like all men, their leaders are human and just as prone to corruption.

They need your money, and will shill out a pound of bullshit for every dollar you send. And rest assured, bullshit is something they have aplenty, and it fucking stinks.

And this is a business that incites people to violence.

Mayans and Incans engaged in human sacrifice.

Catholics and Protestants burned witches.

Extreme Fundie Christian groups in the States openly encourage the killing of innocent people.

Why?

They’re gay, or black, or simply not Christian, so they had it coming.

One group in the States creams their jeans every time an innocent person is brutally murdered for their sexual orientation. Muslim countries openly execute them, and there are some Jews out there who believe AIDS is God’s punishment to gays for anal sex.

As a proud member of the Back Off My Gay Friend Or I’ll Back Straight Over You In My Car group on Facebook, I don’t think I need to explain my standpoint there.

And religion doesn’t just encourage hatred against gays, ethnicities, and non members.

They also hate women, who, by the by, now make up 54% of the world’s people.

The Catholic Church and many Protestant Evangelical Groups make women out to be nothing more than brood mares for their congregations.

They must lie back, spread their legs, and have missionary, orgasm-free sex in order to pop out babies.

According to Carolyn Jessop, former member and author of ESCAPE, in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, a woman’s ONLY way into heaven is by total obedience and subservience to her polygamous husband. He may do with his wives what he wants, even if that includes rape and abuse, and a lot, if not all of the cops in their power centers are members, so the women have no way out.

The sad thing being that one could argue that Jesus was a feminist, because he welcomed women into his band of Merry Men.

And speaking of Jesus…

He said

“do unto others as you’d have others do unto you”, but how does that apply to a masochist?

I’m pretty masochistic.

If I convert to Christianity, do I have carte blanche to beat the shit out of people?

It’s almost enough to convince me.

Fundie Jews in the Satmar, Chasidic, Lubavitch camp won’t let their women work, or get a non religious education. I can’t speak for all the communities, but I know that in Montreal, spousal abuse has become so severe in the Satmar community the group had to open a battered women’s shelter.

There are those among my half brothers, who don’t necessarily practice religious Judaism, but tend to think like fundies. These people celebrate and sometimes encourage violence against Muslims, be they fundie or not, classifying them simply as “Ay-rabs” who are necessarily anti-Israel and against Jews.

And let’s not forget the groups of Chasidic Jews who celebrate the deaths of their own people as punishment for taking the land of Israel before God was “ready” to give it. I kid you not, there is a group of Jews out there who actually believe that as far as the Holocaust is concerned, we had it coming! It was punishment for our sins! These guys will actually go out and embrace terrorists who incite violence against jews.

In Muslim camps, where politics and religion are having a big sticky 69, women have it the worst.

In the Muslim fundie world, women distract men from the path of Islam, and as a result, should, and are treated like second class citizens.

In Saudi Arabia a woman was gang raped, and rather than hunting down her assailants, they sentenced her to a hundred lashes because she dared defy her religion and go out with a man who was not a relative.

The courts in Saudi Arabia maintained the sentence, arguing that it was in accord with the tenets of Islam. The court only suspended it in response to pressures from American President Elect Barack Obama, and a few Republican candidates, whom at the time needed support during the primaries.

In Nigeria, a woman was gang raped by men at her father’s encouragement. She got pregnant, but according to Islamic authorities in the country, she was the one at fault, and was sentenced to a hundred lashes with a cane.

That sentence was carried out.

In Taliban controlled Afghanistan, women were banned from an education, seeing male doctors, and showing face or limbs in public was punished with amputation. Right now, the Taliban are killing doctors teaching women’s sexual health… and all in the name of Allah.

What a bloody God they have.

Men and their families murder women to preserve the family’s honor in the name of Islam. Never happens to the men.

Despite the message of equality in the Qu’ran, women are constantly victimized in its name because no one can separate the co-opted tribal practices of Muhammad’s time with his actual message.

It’s even sadder because Muhammad’s campaigns depended on the financial backing and support of his wife Fatima, who at the time was more powerful than he, and arguably, the first Muslim feminist.

And one can’t distinguish between Islam and the policies of Islamic countries because the two have been fucking since the religion’s inception.

Sorry.

I recognize religion’s importance as a source of comfort for people in need.

When you’ve got nothing else, belief in an invisible and all-powerful, all knowing helper seems like a pretty groovy thing.

I know that for many people it acts as an ethical guide that encourages people, like my friends, to be the saints that they are.

But let’s face it; the religions of today are pretty out of date.

The values of Moses, Jesus’ time, and Muhammad’s times are NOT the values of today.

We don’t see women as livestock, we don’t keep slaves, and we don’t stone people for saying the wrong thing (Saudi Arabia aside).

We can’t add anything to the existing Holy Books, and we can’t write our own.

Any attempt to do so, and we get accused of lunacy, Scientology, or Mormonism…

…Actually, when you think about it, those three are kind of the same thing…

So it’s clear we don’t need any more religion.

What we need is a simple book ethics that everyone can live by.

Because I’m an egotistical bitch, I have made my own list of rules people can live by without any extreme story telling.

And I’ll make it sound Biblical—just for fun.

Thou shalt not kill

Thou shalt not reject universally proven and accepted scientific facts just because they piss you off

It’s a short list, and it covers all the bases.

And if you want an even shorter list…

Don’t kill

Don’t take other people’s stuff

I acknowledge that the extremists who read this will want my head on a stick.

They will want me sued for the every penny of the twenty bucks I have.

And I don’t care.

Your rage and anger just shows me how tenuous your faith really is.

If you’re offended by this, it’s because your faith in religion is so weak that any attack on it will make you consider walking away and you’re terrified of the consequences.

You’re convinced that questioning and demanding proof of your religion, and responsibility from your leaders will condemn you to some miserable afterlife, and that’s religion’s Catch 22.

You’re human, and you have a brain made to want answers, but if you ask for them you’ll be condemned and banished for all eternity.

The sooner we accept mortality, and that we have brains made to question, the better.

We don’t need religion except as a source of ethics, and if it helps you to be a good parent, friend, or partner, by all means…

Get thee to a church!

But if you don’t need it, give my rules a shot or join the Church of Oprah.

You’ll be just as happy, and you won’t have to attend any boring sermons.

Oprah be with you.

Amen

-Samantha R. Gold

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