The God-forsakin' Blog

  I've read a few short articles about how originally, Yahweh was not the chief or only god of Israel, but one of a pantheon of 70 children of El, the chief god worshipped in Canaan at the time. He was a minor storm god, and there was no omni-anything to him. He made mistakes, he changed his mind, he wasn't all-powerful or all-knowing and certainly wasn't all-loving. He was just the guy in charge of making sure it rained (but not TOO much). And he was at the same level of power and importance as his brother Baal. Yes, THAT Baal. The one that he keeps telling the Hebrews to stop worshipping, and punishing them when they don't obey. The Baal whose priests were challenged to a "whose god is the real O.G." contest by Elijah, where Baal's priests couldn't get any results but Yahweh sent a fireball to consume offering, altar, and all. And according to the story, the Israelites killed Baal's priests and followed only Yahweh after that. And I wonder... may...

  Whenever anyone makes a valid criticism of Christianity based on their own experience with shitty Christians, you'll invariably get someone responding "God didn't hurt you, people did." And, yes, that's true. Because gods don't exist and people do. But let's grant their premise for a moment, and go back to pretending that their god exists. And their god is a perfect heavenly father. A father who has never once done a single thing to stop his children from hurting each other. A father who has never once corrected his children's misbehavior, never once provided for their needs, never once tried to teach them anything, never once shown up in any way at all.  If you have a father like that, then I have news for you:  Your father did indeed hurt you.  And you do not need to defend him.

  Our country currently spends over $800 billion on "defense" annually. Imagine if an individual budgeted like our country does. Spending more on weapons than on food, water, shelter, and healthcare combined.  It'd be like someone living in a single-wide they don't own, living on Ramen and whatever food the Dollar Tree is selling, dying of diabetes, but having a wall full of Armalite rifles.  So what I'm saying is, America is just like the average Trump voter and everything makes sense now.

  Someone in a Facebook group brought up how beautiful the song "O Holy Night" is despite being religious, and that brought up a core memory for me: When I was ten and a devout Evangelical, there was a T.V. special called "Christmas in Washington", hosted by the Reagans. Sandi Patti and Johnny Cash both sang, along with several choirs, but the moment that stuck most in memory was Clamma Dale, an opera singer, singing O Holy Night. It was the first time I'd ever heard the song. And for ten year old me, seeing this heart-rendingly beautiful black woman on stage, hearing this soul-searingly beautiful voice rising in power, declaring boldly in song "Truly he taught us to love one another, his law is love and his gospel is peace; Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease"... I felt to my core "This is what it's about. This is what Christianity is for. Breaking chains so hard that the grand-daugh...

  Imagine thinking that Christians being wished a "happy holiday" instead of a "Merry Christmas" is an offense against the Christ-child; but Christians voting for the party that would have built a wall to keep baby Jesus and his parents from seeking refuge from Herod by sneaking across an international border... is NOT an offense against the Christ-child.

  I've written before about how religion is inherently a thing that causes problems rather than solving them. But there's another super-obvious way that religion makes problems worse: It keeps us from finding ways to make problems better. If we've settled for untrue answers to questions - questions like "Why do humans suffer?", "How did the universe come into being?", "How do we cure diseases?", "How can we get humans to behave better?" - then we will never find the TRUE answers to those questions. If our answer to all of these is "pray about it", then we stop THINKING about it.