Charity... anyone

I spent Sunday in downtown Kansas City and spent a while sitting in a chair near a chocolate shop. A black guy was on the corner and asking for change. Most people made the usual lame excuses and walked on by. Then an Amish family walked by and, when the beggar asked for change, the father said that he could not give because it was Sunday.

WTF ? You can't give money on Sunday? When did this become a rule. Didn't the priests criticize Jesus for healing on the Sabbath? And didn't Jesus tell them that he was minding God's business and they should piss off? Maybe it's just me, but not giving a couple of quarters to a beggar because it is Sunday seems like a rather perverse distortion of religion.

The Secret ? You are the center of your own little universe

Last week I watched the documentary of "The Secret" and was, quite frankly, appalled by this so-called "spiritual" film. It is quite clear that this is a variation on the old "Prosperity Gospel" where people pray for wealth. This theology is still very much alive in Christianity, but The Secret offers us a New Age version of this idea. It is, of course, a simple fact that if you work hard and have an optimistic view of life, your happiness will tend to draw more happiness. In reality this is simply a psychological effect--it is not "The Universe" reshaping itself to your will. People who believe in "The Secret" also believe that The Universe will find parking spots for them near the front door of Wal-Mart. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

In a bit of unintended humor, the film shows a man in his 20s who locks his bicycle to a metal poll for safety, only to come back later and find that his bike has been stolen! This poor guy is an example of someone who has not learned "The Secret" and so The Universe is not helping him.
A major idea of The Secret is the (unspoken) view that poor people deserve the bad luck that they seem to attract. It's not the fault of family, or bosses, or anything else but their own ignorance of The Secret, which they desperately need (so go buy a copy, stupid!).


Later on in the film we find a young boy who uses the secret. He prays (or meditates, hard!) on getting a new bike. He focuses on pictures of the bike he wants and opens himself to The Universe, which--surprise! surprise--is all too happy to get him a bike. In his case, he doesn't actually have to work hard to earn money to buy a bike. No, the Universe doesn't seem to work that way. In one of the more bizarre scenes in the film, a door opens and an old man (presumably his Grandpa) stands holding a bike. The kid is overjoyed that "The Universe" has given him what he wished for. Of course the film leaves out the scene where Grandpa takes a pair of bolt cutters and steals the bike belonging to the guy in the earlier scene.

The best summary of The Secret was given to us by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius--
Ben Franklin said:
"Early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man healthy wealthy and wise"

Lately I have read the advice given to William Randolph Hearst, when a young man, by his father:

"Go downtown at noon and rob the other fellows of what they have made during the morning.”

This is the real meaning of The Secret--enjoy your happiness no matter how many bodies you crawl over to get it.

The Seven Republican Dwarves

The South Carolina Republican debate was like a movie of the Seven Dwarves: two moral dwarves, two mental dwarves, and three insane dwarves--making, in all, four.

Tim Tebow, Football player and believer

One of my friends who attends a local evangelical baptist church said that the church members gathered to watch Tim Tebow's latest game. They were shattered by his loss, which apparently caused a bit of religious doubt among them.

Of course we all know why Tebow lost.

God probably caught him masturbating ... again. Or maybe he was just dancing with himself... hard to tell while looking down from Heaven.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1024017-tim-tebow-without-a-girlfriend-sexless-and-tearless

Ray Comfort is a popular evangelical author who spends a great deal of time attacking atheists and members of other religions.

Here is how, Ray says, you can know you've got the right god.

-you have guilt.
-the ten commandments says stuff.
-the conscience produces guilt about not following the ten commandments.
-this guilt is a product of our impending judgment.
-It's true whether your believe it or not.
-the Bible says Jesus suffered to take away your sins and guilt.
-The Bible promises you won't feel guilty anymore if you repent and trust Jesus.
-Then, we won't feel guilty for anything - lust, adultery, etc.
-No other religion can wipe away the guilt you feel for doing bad stuff.
-all those false religions still have sacrifices through prayer, doing good works, etc.
-Not Christianity! Once we trust Jesus and repent, we're literally not guilty anymore of doing bad things.
-This is so simple a child could understand it. "Obey the gospel, and guilt is replaced by absolute assurance of everlasting life"

Frankly, I find all of this a little sad. So fear of punishment is the primary motive for becoming a Christian? Feeling guilt and the promise that you won't feel guilt if you are "saved" (actually, this is a lie because Christians feel a tremendous amount of guilt all the time) are signs?

God and the Joplin Tornado-- F 5

We were driving east along Highway 44, near Joplin, Missouri, a week after the F5 tornado tore through the south side of the city, cutting a mile wide swath through houses and businesses. The tornado destroyed several schools, churches, apartment buildings, and basically gutted St. Johns Hospital.

As we drove along highway 44, my wife noticed that almost every exit had a porn shop, or sometimes two. She said, "Why would God destroy a hospital and leave behind all these porn shops?"

I explained, "God has no problem with porn shops. But hospitals actively defy his will. God makes people sick, but hospitals make them well--thus defeating God's plan for this individual. It only makes sense that he destroy hospitals. Similarly, schools teach about science, and these ideas tend to weaken the faith of the masses (I almost said "ignorant masses" but that seems redundant in this case). Similarly, churchs preach about salvation, and God is all about punishment-- after all He did create Original Sin."

Update: I later found out that God also destroyed Christie's Toy Box, which is just north of the IHOP on Rangeline in Joplin. I guess God loves pancakes and hates sex toys. By the way, I'm also trying to imagine the facial expression of the guy, living just east of Joplin, who finds a pink rubber dildo embedded in the crotch of their elm tree after the storm.

What the Right-Wingers Really Want

In an interview on MSNBC yesterday, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal (now that it's owned by Rupert Murdoch, it should change its name to the Wall Street Urinal) declared that the federal government should have let GM collapse and be broken up. He did not see the bailout as benefiting anyone except the unions.

Frankly, this sort of honesty is unusual. He and his cronies at The Urinal were more concerned with trying to destroy the unions than with saving the many of thousands of jobs that would be lost if GM had gone under.

Their agenda is to destroy the American middle class, and undermining the unions is a high priority in achieving this goal.