more thoughts
The Pope, on the 10th Anniversary of September 11:
“the tragedy of that day is compounded by the perpetrator’s claim to be acting in God’s name. Once again, it must be unequivocally stated that no circumstance can ever justify acts of terrorism. Every human life is precious in God’s sight and no effort should be spared in the attempt to promote throughout the world a genuine respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of individuals and peoples everywhere.”
seriously?
SERIOUSLY?
and, to quote a personal hero of mine, Matt Dillahunty’s response:
“Why, thank you Pope. That’s great, except that you’re a liar we need look no farther than your own holy book for example in Leviticus 24:10-23 where a man blasphemes god and they set him aside and then Moses and them go and ask god what they should do about it, and god says “hey, get everyone together and stone him for blaspheming” and they do and they carry this out. It becomes, I don’t know what else you could CALL that except an act of terrorism. It’s certainly not the idea that every life is precious in the eyes of god, when you’re god sanctions that sort of thing. I believe that the Jewish and Christian god, like other gods, is a fiction – a monstrous fiction spawned from ignorance and superstition of ancient peoples. The character of god, fiction or not, is immoral. Your god, real or no, isn’t deserving of respect, admiration or love. It’s deserving of pity and enmity. Anyone who’s humanity hasn’t been poisoned by the vile instructions offered by those religions and by that gods name should be willing to offer nothing less than forthright opposition to the tenants of the religions spawned by those instructions. The pope and other modern christian leaders can try to paint their religion with rose colored brush all they want, but they look foolish, as we still have the historical records of the actions sanctioned by that religion and others such as the crusades, slavery and witch burning, but also right there in their own sacred texts, as I mentioned. Contrary to the pope’s lies, terrorism is justifiable in many dogmatic religions which rely on the authority of ancient scriptures and petty gods. No one could ever use humanism as a justification for the atrocities committed in the name of religion. It simply isn’t possible. There are few things more virtuous than reviling corruption and blaspheming those ideas which prey upon humanity’s fears to encourage divisive and cruel actions. So I’ve been blaspheming your god for years and I will continue to blaspheme your god who I believe is a fiction and vile, and is deserving of blasphemy and cursing and everything else – yes I’m mad at a fictional character, I guess. I’m mad at the concept, and I’ll blaspheme it until the day I die. Because your gods are powerless to do anything about it. Your ancestors knew this, which is why they wrote the prohibitions against blaspheming in there, or else why would you need to get the city together to stone people. If god’s so worried about people blaspheming, why didn’t he just take him out himself? They’re feeble and weak, these ideas. And so I will continue to blaspheme, and those of you who don’t gather up stones to throw at me (which I would hope would be the large majority of you) should take a moment to consider why you DON’T. The point is, someday you’ll recognize that it was a secular enlightenment that dragged christianity kicking and screaming into an enlightened era. That put a muzzle on the vilest aspects of your religion, and while other religions haven’t been similarly muzzled, they may yet be. The solution isn’t religion – it’s humanism, it’s secular enlightenment. Some day you’ll realize that you’re better than your god, and that you deserve better and that the world deserves better