MAGA Christianity

Some Christians use their religion as a way of helping others or tapping into their inner life. Then there are those who support Donald Trump.

For MAGA Christians, their religion appears to be just another competition, where life is made up of winners and losers, where one group's gain is another group's loss.

They like being Christian because it is the one true religion. All others are false, complete with false gods to be rooted out. Even within the religion, a specific denomination is the "true church" while others are the false church or the Whore of Babylon or whatever they're calling their religious competition these days.

Trump fits right in with this mentality. He always wants to win, and if he doesn't win, he'll lie and say he did. They really like his idea that he'll make them all winners like him. And if they see that their Christian religion is becoming more and more unpopular (and it is), then maybe Trump can Make Christianity Great Again. Like it was in the Dark Ages.

Christians being in love with Donald Trump, someone who seems to be in direct contrast to Jesus, confuses many liberal Christians and liberals in general. But it isn't that confusing. God sent Jesus so his believers can win. Jesus does stuff they can't do, like self-sacrifice or be empathetic, so that they don't have to, but -- more important -- he's going to get them into Heaven, and to Hell with everyone else. Similarly, God sent Trump so they can win. Trump does stuff they can't do, like be openly racist without repercussions or own golden apartments, but -- more important -- he's going to get rid of all those people who don't belong in this shining city upon a hill known as the United States. Then they can take it back.

If what Trump says seems unbelievable -- such as the idea that most Mexicans are rapists and murderers or that he can keep them out with an impossible-to-build wall -- just remember that these Christians wake up every morning with the unshakable knowledge that people can return from the dead, two of every species on earth can fit into a boat , and the problems of humanity can be traced back to cursed produce and a talking reptile. After believing what Christianity teaches, they don't have any trouble believing the relatively-mundane things this con man says in his rallies.

Trump will root out the bad guys (whoever they may be this week), just as God rooted out the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, and all the other godless parasites. He'll make room for the good people to win. There will be so much winning, you'll get tired of winning. It's a message, of course, intended for absolute losers.

Yes, it's true that Donald Trump, though Christian, doesn't attend church, doesn't pray, doesn't ask forgiveness for sins, and instead is comically-immoral, seemingly doing all of the things Christians have been telling the country not to do for ages (sleeping with a porn star right after your wife had a baby comes to mind). And it's true that Kamala Harris is a church-going Baptist, Joe Biden is a devout and outspoken Catholic, and Hillary Clinton is a Sunday School teacher. But MAGA Christians know who their guy is by his fruits. He, unlike those others (who they call "ungodly"), "says what we're all thinking." And what "we're" (really "they're") all thinking are that white people are superior to other races, men are the ones who should hold power while women should be submissive to men, homosexuality is immoral, being transgender is perverted and confusing, and the country we live in is the best country but only when it is run by straight, white, cis-gender, Christian-presenting men who want to instill conservatives values into this country, like the values we had before women could vote or before black people could do things that wasn't approved by the master.

Donald Trump is an unapologetic wrecking ball for MAGA Christians. He'll break whatever he wants, including democracy itself, because he's never faced repercussions in his life and he doesn't seem to be facing them now. He's magic somehow, just like Jesus. God bless Donald Trump! (He has. He has.)

Maybe these Christians simply overlook the traditionally-immoral things Trump does, claiming "no one is perfect" or "we all sin." Maybe they're so ignorant and delusional that they believe the NFT superhero version of Trump that he puts out and don't think of him as immoral at all. Maybe they compare him to the figure of Cyrus from the Bible (whether they knew about him before or not), saying that "God can use anyone." Maybe they actually like the immoral things Trump does and get a kick out of it. It doesn't matter. He's the one who (they think) is going to get them what they want, which primarily involves the suffering of others so that they can "win," and so therefore he was chosen by God himself.

"Jesus Is My Savior, and Trump Is My President," and the two are blurring together more and more every day.

Trump Calls for National Day of Prayer to Stop Pandemic

Sure, why not? In fact, go ahead and pray to every god.

Pandemic is a Greek word, so pray to the Greek gods for sure. Asclepius is the Greek god of medicine. Panacea is another good one, of course. We've got a few to choose from, just from this area alone.

Need some more? The Aztec god of medicine is Ixtlilton. Jengu is an African water spirit who cures diseases. The Irish goddess Airmed can even bring you back from the dead, if it comes to that.

Obviously this all started in the first place because the Chinese didn't give enough attention to their Li Tieguai, one of the Eight Immortals who can heal with his magical gourd.

Whatever works for you, and they all work the same. I've always favored Ningishzida, the Mesopotamian god of the underworld and patron of medicine, but that's just me.

The Religion Show

I have a TV show now. It's called The Religion Show. It's not like the God Blog, and I'm doing a character, but it is about religion. Two episodes are up already. Enjoy!

Thoughts and Prayers and Sacrifice

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Rusty's Halloween Chick Tract

I made this by cutting together a bunch of Chick Tracts, adding a few drawings of my own, and replacing the text. Happy Halloween!

Mother's Day Church Services

Once upon a time, someone had a seemingly good and obvious idea that eventually turned out to be horrible: "Why don't we honor all the mothers in church tomorrow for Mother's Day?"

A simple "Happy Mother's Day" from the pulpit, I suppose, would have been fine. However, what we now have in many churches (ask around if you don't know what I'm writing about) is a weird, time-consuming rose-based game show that looks very much like reality TV's The Bachelor.

"I have a handful of roses up here at the altar. Some of you will receive them. Some of you will not." The entire church gets to find out who the mother with the most kids is, who the newest mother is, who the oldest mother is, who the youngest mother is... often through some sort of elimination sit-down game. You can begin to see the problems with this already, I hope, and we haven't even got to the bad stuff yet.

There have been many articles (thankfully, though apparently not effectively) written about this bad stuff, which includes exclusion, insensitivity, ignorance, and a general stirring of painful emotions caused by the church that make many women dread the Mother's Day church service. A short list of who these articles mention include stepmothers, women who cannot have children, women who have had pregnancy loss, women whose children have been adopted, and women whose children have died.

Things can be uncomfortable at these services no matter what. For example, being a non-mother at all having to sit through such a ceremony can be weird, since so many dumb expectations are put on women to "be fruitful and multiply." Society in general does this (pay attention to movies, to get a taste), and the church plays a big part. A writer in one of the articles I mentioned described herself as feeling like an "empty shell" when sitting among the standing mothers. (The church also weaves in their goofy judgments concerning abortion, the importance of having children with a husband, their stance on gay people adopting, etc.)

I suppose the happiest mothers during Mother's Day services are the ones who don't think of any of the above and are just pleased as punch to sit on a pew with all of their children present. But what happens when (for a completely random example) one of those kids becomes an atheist and leaves the church altogether? Train up a child in the way he should go and... ah, never mind.

So what's the solution?

I can't say I agree with the articles that want to confront the negative feelings head-on during the services with lines from the minister like, "To those who experienced loss through miscarriage, failed adoptions, or running away--we mourn with you. To those who are single and long to be married and mothering your own children--we mourn that life has not turned out the way you longed for it to be." This seems, to me, like yet another road to Hell paved with good intentions.

The only solution is to stop the nonsense altogether. If you're someone in charge of the church, do what you gotta do to cut it out. If you're not someone in charge, you can make it happen eventually by not showing up to the (apparently) third-most attended holiday of the year (after Easter and Christmas). Tell your church pals you're not going, and tell them why. Guys and gals both: just an all-out boycott of church on Mother's Day if they insist on this game show. Then let the free market decide if it continues.

Because it is, ultimately, a distracting game show instead of, you know, a church service. Okay, so there are mothers in the audience. Who gives a shit? Don't you have a god or something to worship? I know that, when I used to be a church-goer, Mother's Day was always the day I could count on for zero percent spiritual edification. We all had to give up God for a day to serve the almighty Hallmark and 1-800-FLOWERS. The Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, yes, but those corsages weren't going to pin themselves.

So just stop it. Do the Mother's Day stuff in your homes in the privacy of your own whatever.

And, before I go, a theory. Ever wonder why Father's Day isn't a big church event while Mother's Day is? My guess is because every day is already Father's Day at church. We have Big Daddy God the Father, of course. Most of the church leaders are "Fathers." Within Christianity, men still hold most of the power. But these men still count on the women of the church to pump out all those future tithes-payers (or future companions in Heaven, if you want me to be a little less cynical), so Mother's Day is their time to honor them. To patronize them. To throw them a bone.

A bone in the form of a rose.

Alternative Facts

Reacting to side-by-side photographs released by PBS contrasting the massive crowds of Barack Obama's inauguration to the poorly-attended inauguration of Donald Trump (as well as other data provided by crowd scientists), White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer declared that Trump had the "largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period." When Meet the Press's Chuck Todd asked Trump's counselor Kellyanne Conway why Spicer would "utter a provable falsehood," Conway dismissed Todd and said that Spicer was merely providing "alternative facts."

This little story would be all fine and hilarious, except that "alternative facts" seem to be winning the day. During the Obama administration, we had conspiracy theorists convinced that Obama was a "secret Muslim" (whatever that means) who was born in Kenya, intent on taking our guns and forcing Sharia Law on America. During the Bush years, Stephen Colbert had to invent a new word -- "truthiness" -- to describe the phenomenon of "feeling" the truth rather than relying on facts.

If our newest incarnation of the battle for reality is frustrating to you, then you have a pretty good idea of how atheists feel most of the time.

It's easy to make fun of Kellyane Conway's phrase "alternative facts," but it happens to have essentially the same definition as the word "supernatural," the idea that there can be something beyond nature itself: an alternative to the real world. As Chuck Todd said, "Alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods." Similarly, super-nature is not nature; it, too, is a another apologetic name for a falsehood.

The supernatural is what we are expected to believe in when the actual facts are stubbornly not available. There is no evidence for God, but he is apparently beyond evidence. He is beyond nature, beyond science, beyond our comprehension. He is not accessible in the same way facts are. We are simply supposed to "feel" God, to "know deep down in our hearts" that he exists. We are meant to have "faith" in him, to go against all reason, logic, and common sense and "just believe."

Trump wants desperately to believe that he had a large crowd at his inauguration. He needs to believe it, similar to many theists. ("I want to believe," as Mulder says.) "Trump is a very popular president" is part of the grand story he is telling himself, the false universe he has created. Because his ego is so large and delicate, he is attempting to force this false narrative and alternate universe onto all of us. He needs us to believe as well. Trump claims that any news (including polls) contrary to his personal belief is "fake news." He tweets out what he wants us to think the truth is, attempting to contradict and circumvent reality itself. To erase it and replace it.

If you are curious what the successful end result of such an aggressive reality-altering strategy is, you could read Nineteen Eighty-Four, I suppose, but that is just a book. For an actual example, just look around you. Religion has already created a functioning alternative reality, often having used (or still using) the harsh methods described by George Orwell in his novel. After these methods are successful, believers -- now feeling that they are only under the influence of their own decisions -- are happy to evangelize so that the false reality becomes self-replicating. Belief in the supernatural becomes so widespread and part of the texture that it becomes "normalized."

But it isn't normal. Nonsense is still nonsense, even if the majority believes in it. We all know Trump is speaking nonsense when he claims that millions of people voted illegally. We wouldn't dare swallow such unfounded statements. Yet we can easily swallow the even more nonsensical claim that humans have inherited this thing called "sin" that can only be removed by believing that a god-man died and came back to life three days later and that we can all go live with him in the sky (or an alternate dimension), in a paradisal afterlife. If we're taking bets on which of the above could be proven first, I'd bet on Trump's claim.

Belief in the religiously supernatural is one of the few delusions humans can have and not be called insane. Even many secular people, who don't "believe" any of this, will accept it as normal human behavior. Many simply prefer not to think about religion at all, even though it affects their everyday lives in profound ways, just as many citizens prefer not to think about politics.

So I do try to think about it, about how weird it is that people are functioning as if invisible creatures are all around us, about how abnormal it is that there's a church everywhere I look in my town, established to promote and sustain these peculiar anti-factual traditions, people singing songs and raising hands to something that -- by all objective appearances -- is not there.

I know what it's like to live in a fake reality, because I lived in one most of my life. Like most people, I was handed my deeply-held beliefs at birth, and it took me over thirty years to claw my way out of the made-up world of gods, demons, ghosts, spirits, and angels. After I escaped, I realized that I hadn't been just living in a pretend world; I was living in someone else's pretend world. At least Donald Trump gets to live in a land of his own make-believe. The fantasy world I lived in was created thousands of years ago by ancient religious cultures, shaped and refined by time and place, saving itself from extinction over and over through adaptation and aggression. This evolving survival machine called "God" found a place for me and tried its best to make me comfortable so that I would never leave it. I nearly never did.

Even after struggle, I didn't really escape religion entirely. No one does. I still have to play by its rules, still have to survive within the structures religious people have created. As the saying goes, it's their world; I'm just living in it. For a harmless example, I am expected to behave as if it is perfectly normal when someone closes their eyes and says they are about to speak to the creator of the universe, when of course no such thing is really happening. I am expected to behave this way, in part, out of politeness and respect. For a more serious example, we all have to deal with those who hate, discriminate, destroy our environment, deny science, misunderstand reproduction, and all the other garbage we have to deal with from the worst segment of religious people, all because of something they "believe," eternal "truths" they "know," based on knowledge that is about as real as the alternative fact that Donald Trump has been on the cover of Time magazine more than anyone else.

Because of Trump (and those who promote and believe his false narratives), we are currently involved in a fight for reality itself. It's pretty serious, and the consequences if we lose the fight are severe. So will we be able to live based on observable facts, or will we give in to a fiction created by the state? Will two plus two equal four, or will it -- as I'm hearing it from a lot of people now, big league -- equal five?

I don't know, but I can't say I'm hopeful. In the meantime, atheists are already used to this kind of gaslighting. Atheists say (often rather quietly) that God doesn't exist, and a majority of the country responds (sometimes lovingly, sometimes not) with "What if you're wrong?" or "You're just thinking about God in the wrong way" and makes every attempt to call us the crazy ones devoid of morality: you know, the ones who don't believe in the invisible guy whose idea of social order was murdering our neighbors with rocks.

If it weren't such a painful experience to be subjected to yet another round of post-factual politics and Orwellian absurdity under Donald Trump (the worst case I've seen in my lifetime), I might even say it's refreshing that someone else gets to experience what a forced alternate reality feels for a change.

Donald Trump and Christianity

Do you know what it tells me about yourself if you say you are a Christian? Next to nothing.

It doesn't tell me anything about your morality or about your politics, and it doesn't even tell me what the word Christian means to you.

Before the election of Donald Trump, Christians were desperate to convince other Christians of who Jesus would vote for and what the proper "Christian" decision would be. Many of the articles one found online were by the Christian Left explaining how the words of Donald Trump do not line up with the words of Jesus. Meanwhile, the Christian Right did what they always did, which was say the word abortion endlessly and drape dead fetuses around their opponent's neck.

The Christian Right certainly had their work cut out for them this time. Most Christians like to think of themselves as nice people, and Trump decidedly was not a nice person. In fact, Trump was a shit person, barely a person at all.

Of course, Republican politicians are often not-very-nice people, but they are better at faking it and codifying their hatred than Trump was. Mitt Romney could have been your friendly next-door neighbor when saying things like (actual quote), "Call me old fashioned, but I don't support gay marriage" Aw, shucks.

Donald Trump, however, as many have pointed out, was the Frankenstein's monster that the Republican party created. He was their pure id, and the racism, sexism, xenophobia, and the rest of the garbage that modern Republicans have always stood for was there for everyone to see: unfiltered, every night, using the most vile vocabulary and imagery we've ever witnessed publicly from someone running for the highest office in the land. "Aw, man, now everyone knows what we really look like underneath these smiling game show host masks," one could almost hear the Republican leaders lament.

Alabama Science

The Alabama State Board of Education has recently written inserts for science textbooks that cover evolution. I have provided the text below (italics), in full, and have also spelled out the subtext for you.

The word “theory” has many meanings. Theories are defined as systematically organized knowledge, abstract reasoning, a speculative idea or plan, or a systematic statement of principles. Scientific theories are based on both observations of the natural world and assumptions about the natural world. They are always subject to change in view of new and confirmed observations.

Subtext: Scientific theories may change, but God never changes.

Many scientific theories have been developed over time. The value of scientific work is not only the development of theories but also what is learned from the development process. The Alabama Course of Study: Science includes many theories and studies of scientists’ work. The work of Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein, to name a few, has provided a basis of our knowledge of the world today.

Subtext: It is wonderful that God provides us with scientists to understand his creation better, even if they don't always get it right. God, however, will always be right.

The theory of evolution by natural selection is a controversial theory that is included in this textbook. It is controversial because it states that natural selection provides the basis for the modern scientific explanation for the diversity of living things.

Subtext: We recognize that evolution explains a lot of things that we previously thought God did, and we're not comfortable with this.

Since natural selection has been observed to play a role in influencing small changes in a population, it is assumed that it produces large changes, even though this has not been directly observed.

Subtext: Rather than reading about evolution ourselves, we got other religious people to explain their understanding of it to us.

Because of its importance and implications, students should understand the nature of evolutionary theories. They should learn to make distinctions between the multiple meanings of evolution, to distinguish between observations and assumptions used to draw conclusions, and to wrestle with the unanswered questions and unresolved problems still faced by evolutionary theory.

Subtext: Because studying evolution might make students not believe in God, we want them to distrust science. Any time science cannot quickly and simply answer a complicated question, we want our students to be brave enough to suggest "Maybe God did it?" We want student to feel that doing so is a tough intellectual endeavor fought against mammoth persecution.

There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life. With the explosion of new scientific knowledge in biochemical and molecular biology and exciting new fossil discoveries, Alabama students may be among those who use their understanding and skills to contribute to knowledge and to answer many unanswered questions. Instructional material associated with controversy should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

Subtext: We can't prove that God exists, but we hope that our future scientists will look for God in everything they study. If they look hard enough and believe hard enough, they will find him. In the meantime, never lose your faith that he exists!

"How To Suck At Your Religion": A Lengthy Rebuttal

The Oatmeal is a web comic that, a couple of years ago, did a piece called "How To Suck at Your Religion." It bugs me. It may seem late to be bringing it up now, but it still pops up in my Facebook feed and other places and -- according to his website -- is one of The Oatmeal's most popular comics, so I need to handle it.

Just so you know, I'm mostly indifferent about The Oatmeal in general. I'm annoyed more by its fans than it itself, since they gush about it a bit more than it deserves. I admit that it deserves something, since it's mostly okay and sometimes even funny or clever. However, even the harmless comics he does -- like ones about grammar (correct use of the word literally or how to use a semicolon) -- seem to only make those laugh who already know these things. I doubt that it actually educates those who don't.

This "How To Suck at Your Religion" comic is similar. It seems to be written to make atheists (or perhaps liberal believers) laugh and share it on their social media walls. It's (probably) not going to teach anyone to not suck at their religion.

There have been a handful of Christian rebuttals written about this comic. These rebuttals contain a mix of valid points (some of which are probably mirrored by me) and they also have stupid points that rise as a result of their religious beliefs (sorry, guys). So one reason I'm writing this is because I haven't seen too many rebuttals from atheists.

Also, mine is incredibly long, and things that take a long time to read is what internet users crave the most.

The Great Pumpkin

A Charlie Brown Christmas had Linus reading from the nativity story in order to combat the commercialism of the Christmas holiday. Charles M. Schulz's Christianity was right there on millions of television screens, a quiet and holy and beautiful answer to Charlie Brown's (our our) holiday depression. It was and is a wonderful thing.

But anyone who has read Schulz's comics knows that he can be satirical and even brutal about religion, especially his own. (I highly recommend his comics created for the Christian magazine Youth, a criticism of religion from within its own walls.) The most famous example of this satire is his use of the Great Pumpkin, a holiday deity only believed in by Linus.

One day I'd like to write about every appearance of the Great Pumpkin in the entire run of the comics, but for now the TV special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown will do.

At the beginning of the special, Linus demonstrates his belief in animism when he is horrified that Lucy has stabbed a pumpkin to death and removed its guts in order to make a jack-o-lantern. ("You didn't tell me you were gonna kill it!") Linus's horror is further explained when we later find out about his belief in the Great Pumpkin, Lucy's now-dead pumpkin being -- presumably -- one of its earthly avatars.


Linus, of course, is already at this point in Peanuts history (this is 1966) known by fans as the religious scholar among the Peanuts characters. His knowledge of the Bible, his overall intelligence, and his generally kind nature makes him one of the more positive characters. But he also clings to a security blanket and sucks his thumb. And, it turns out, he is clueless enough to have somehow conflated Halloween and Christmas, pumpkins and Santa Claus.

Literally!

The Three Camps
We've all heard the question of whether or not the Bible should be taken "literally." The answer seems to be "yes" if you are (a) a fundamentalist who believes everything the Bible says no matter what reality it clashes with or (b) an atheist.

The group that wants to say "no" or "not always" are the more moderate believers of the Bible (or liberal believers or mainstream believers or whatever label you prefer), those who recognize that the Bible often says things that do not jive with reality and therefore must be metaphorical in nature. In fact, some of these moderate believers -- because fundamentalist and atheists both tend to read the Bible literally -- declare that atheists are "no better than" fundamentalists for failing to understand the nuances of this special book.

What fundamentalists and atheists have in common is the attempt to honestly face the reality of their world, but the reality of an atheist is the actual world, while the reality of a fundamentalist is what is written in an old book.

So atheists can recognize that the universe is billions of years old, for example: a fact that is proven in the real world with overwhelming evidence. Atheists can then read the literal words of the Bible -- which says that the earth and everything on it was created by a god in six days -- and know that this book is an artifact from a pre-scientific age when then-unanswerable questions were addressed with supernatural stories--which no one faults the ancient writers for writing.

Fundamentalists read in the Bible that the earth was created in six days and believe it, on "faith." When confronted with the fact that this simply isn't true by people who observe the real world, fundamentalists defer to their "reality" (the Bible) and deny that the actual reality exists.

You can, I hope, see the difference between these two camps.

Chapter 12

What if the Bible, instead of starting with the first eleven chapters of Genesis, started with Chapter 12?

This isn't as unusual of a question as it might seem. The first eleven chapters are almost purely "mythological," while the rest of Genesis is "historical." This means that the first eleven are interesting to humanity in a universal way, while the rest of the book (and most of the rest of the "Old Testament") simply isn't. Beginning the book with Chapter 12 would start the book more properly, without misleading us into thinking it's about something that it isn't, and it would help eliminate many of the needless "controversies" surrounding education, science, and the way we think about and live our lives.

As a reminder of what occurs in the first eleven chapters, Genesis 1 gives us the famous six day creation story. Chapters 2-3 gives us an almost completely different creation story involving Adam, Eve, the serpent, and the forbidden fruit. Chapter 4 is Cain killing Abel and other murder stories. Chapter 5 (not mythological) is the lineage of Adam to Noah and his sons. Chapters 6-9 is Noah's ark and the re-boot of humanity after the flood. Chapter 10 (also not mythological) is the lineage of Noah's sons. Chapter 11 is the Tower of Babel and the scattering of people and languages, with some additional non-mythological lineage thrown in at the end of the chapter.

These scant chapters of Genesis (only 8 1/2 if you take out the lineages) are some of the main things we remember and care about when we think of not only this first book but of the entire Bible. In these chapters, we learn where the world and humanity come from (two versions: take your pick, or force-merge if you like), where sin and evil and death come from, the notion that the planet -- at one point in its history -- became so wicked that it had to be destroyed by water and begun anew, where rainbows come from, where language comes from, where races come from, and more.

Unfortunately, the book of Genesis -- in a rush to get to what it really wants to talk about (which I'll explain soon) -- rushes through all of these large ideas haphazardly, confusingly, wrongly, ignorantly, immorally, and every other negative "ly" you wish you add. So now we live with the God-given "facts" that the universe (which apparently only reaches to the visible sky) takes a week to make and is only a few thousand years old, evil and death come from a magic fruit that we ate, "sin" is something we're born with and inherit, women come from a man's rib, man is the ruler of woman and animals, a sampling of every species in the world once fit on a boat and were saved from a world flood, different languages are punishment for humanity working together to make a great city and building, and so on.

We're stuck with these idiotic ideas, even after the Age of Enlightenment, even after Darwin, even after we landed on the moon, even in the 21st century where the Bible is proven false while science fiction novels become truer every year. If these unnecessary eleven chapters were gone, we may not have some of these stupid problems and misguided notions--or at least not to such a degree.

I Chose To Be Gay Just Last Week

I'm more surprised than anyone about this recent turn of events. Up until last week, I was a heterosexual man. Then I chose to be a homosexual one afternoon. It was much easier than I thought.

Let me start from the beginning.

It was in Kindergarten that I first remember finding a girl aesthetically pleasing. I'd already heard about girls and how I, as a boy, was supposed to like them, but I was too young to really think about it. But then this girl named Michelle was just standing there in class, and I looked at her, and I thought to myself, "Wow, she's really pretty. Wow, I guess I like girls. Wow, I guess I get what everyone's been talking about." I didn't even need to do anything about it right then: it was enough to know she was pretty and that I could look at her.

Later, of course, as early as second grade and certainly by fourth grade, I had painful crushes on girls. I would think about them, desire them. Maybe I wanted to kiss them or hold their hands, but mostly I wanted them to be my girlfriends.

These feelings got even stronger as I got older and, in seventh grade, I had my first real girlfriend. What a spectacular experience. I still remember how neatly everything worked: I liked a girl, she liked me, and we got to be together and to be called ("officially") a couple, with all the privileges afforded couples--holding hands and kissing in public, going to dances together, trading meaningful trinkets like Swatch watches to prove to the world that we were going together... and, yes, we even got to break up. I even remember that part fondly. It was the most beautiful breakup I would ever have, and it was definitely part of the experience.

Future relationships, though sometimes more painful, only grew deeper. In these many relationships, there was true love, there were tears, there were fights, there was discovery of ourselves and our bodies, there was a different kind of friendship, we introduced each other to our favorite TV shows... we shaped each other's personalities in unalterable ways forever.

Eros: A Valentine's Day Gift

For most of my believing life, probably the #1 reason I believed in God was that I thought I felt him. That was my "proof." But what had really happened, of course, was that I felt feelings that I was told came from God. Once I realized that God was not necessarily the source of these special feelings, I was eventually able to drop him... and still have the feelings, of course.

Now, think of when you've felt romantic love: maybe especially as a very young person feeling it for the first time or (especially especially) as a teenager. Then imagine your parents or priests or whoever swooping in and telling you, "That's Eros you're feeling. He has hit you with one of his gold-tipped arrows, and now you are uncontrollably in love with this person until the poison wears off." This authority figure might even follow up with, "And I'm sorry if the person you love doesn't return the affection. It probably just means that Eros has hit that person with one of his lead-tipped arrows."

We can all see the ridiculousness of these statements, since we're now taught Greek mythology in high school (mythology here meaning, of course -- as Joseph Campbell quipped -- "other people's religion") and can easily recognize the allegorical nature of the mythological characters. It's especially easy to see metaphor in Greek mythology when the gods have names like Ocean, Night, Sleep, and Death or when they're gods "of" something (of war, of wisdom, etc.). It's a little more difficult in the Abrahamic system when all of these nicely-divided deities become lumped into one male figure who eventually becomes so powerful that not only is he "a god," but his name actually becomes God.

So, back when I was feeling "God feelings," those feelings could have been anything since God is everything. God is love, after all, but he's also a jealous god, an angry god, a god of mercy, a god of righteousness, and whatever else. He's a shepherd and a king and a rock and a father and even a mother hen. No matter what I did or felt or experienced, God could be blamed for it.

Was I a Jehovah's Witness?

I wasn't raised as a Jehovah's Witness. The church I grew up in considered itself "nondenominational," though it was part of a large collective of members all across the world that called themselves the Body of Christ. Like every other religious group, we knew we were special and that everyone else got it wrong. Indeed, we had many beliefs that I thought were unique to us. Much later -- after I left it all -- I learned more about the Jehovah's Witnesses, and -- whaddaya know -- they had many of those same weird doctrines. Was I a secret Jehovah's Witness without knowing it?

Here is a (not comprehensive, but pretty decent) list of beliefs that my church and the Jehovah's Witnesses shared. It will give you an idea of what I used to consider the most important stuff in my life. Behold:

Trinity -- There is neither a trinity nor a "oneness." God the Father is a spirit but also a "person," an intellect. The Son of God is another spirit-type person who eventually came to earth as a human named Jesus. The Holy Ghost isn't a "person" but instead is some sort of power of God or something like that. More like The Force. You can talk to the Father and the Son, but you can "have" the Holy Ghost. Jesus was filled with the Holy Ghost from birth, so he had powers that other humans didn't have (though, after he died, we were allowed to receive that power). Two persons, one "thing": none of them a part of each other.

Jesus -- The Son of God (before he was the human Jesus) was the first creation of God. God then created nothing else, which is why the Son is the "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." The Son is the one who created the universe and is the one who has a personal relationship with you. God is only gotten to through the son. The Son appears in the Bible in his pre-Jesus form as the angel Michael, the concept of Wisdom, and the concept of the Word.

The 144,000 -- Only 144,000 people will reach "perfection" and enter Heaven. You don't just go to Heaven because you're a good person who dies. These 144,00 are called the Bride of Christ and will serve as the government for the eventual New Earth, an earth (this same earth we're on now) which will always have humans and which will eventually be free of sin, making the world free of death, disease, etc. The Bride members will be able to go back and forth between Heaven and Earth. Many or most of this number already exist, so seats are limited.

The Resurrection -- Eventually, those who have died will get another chance, in a bodily resurrection, to do good and live on the New Earth as immortal humans. These will be the people who make the earth look the way God intended in the first place, before the Fall. You only have one shot, however, in this first life to make the 144,000.

Satan -- Satan and his fellow fallen angels torment humans and try to make them turn from God. But, one day, Satan will be bound for one thousand years, then unleashed again, then eventually destroyed for good (along with his underlings) in the Lake of Fire (which was created for this purpose and is not to be confused with Hell).

Hell -- There is a Heaven, but there is no Hell. God is happy to reward you for doing well, but he's not going to punish you for making poor decisions, since you didn't ask to be born, after all. Instead, if you're bad, you just die and that's it. The soul, therefore, is not necessarily immortal, but can be snuffed out like a candle.

Eve -- The wife of Adam was actually an evil dark-haired woman created by Satan to torment and destroy the first human. However, the Son of God managed to make her good (and blonde) through the power of the Holy Ghost. Still, Satan had a trick up his sleeve and turned himself into an old beggar woman who offered Eve a poisoned apple, which she took and also gave to Adam, causing them to slowly die and also discover their genitals. (Okay, that's actually a mash-up of the Eden story, Snow White, and the Smurfs, but I had you going for a while.)

So there. Obviously, of course, I wasn't really a Jehovah's Witness. Unlike them, I celebrated all the holidays, would have taken a blood transfusion if needed, didn't go door to door with Watchtower magazine, etc. But it's odd to me that these two belief systems that seem to have nothing to do with each other arrived at the same specific conclusions. And maybe it's the remnants of my brainwashed mind talking, but I still think that -- as a comic book style mythological system -- the above still makes more sense than most "mainstream" Christian doctrines.

Religion: Facebook Official

A few years ago The Washington Post published a semi-interesting (as these things go) article about the little box on Facebook where you get to type what your religion is. As the article pointed out, it's kind of daunting when you've got "Religious Views: _____" staring at you, knowing that whatever you write is going to potentially influence how people think about you (even if you don't write anything).

I think I left mine blank when I first got the account. But eventually I decided to put something there. "Atheist" doesn't accurately describe my "religious views," and why would I willfully reveal to hundreds of friends and friends of friends of friends the fact that I eat babies? What else could I write? "Former-Christian"? "Myth-Lover"? "Ask me when I'm dead"?

I took a cue (once again) from William Blake: "I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's." I came up with my own:

SPELLIANISM

(I named it after myself.) This is its description: "The prophetic writings of William Blake, the Joseph Campbell approach to myth, a marriage of humanism and mysticism, absolute liberty for others, and the necessary blasphemy of tricksters. (Major texts include William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Joseph Campbell: Thou Art That, Christopher Hitchens: The Portable Atheist, Paul Radin: The Trickster, and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.)"

If Spellianism were a religion (and it isn't), you couldn't join it. It's just for me. Even more exclusive than "God's chosen people."

I feel the description of Spellianism does a pretty good job of at least pointing you in the right direction. It's easy enough to unpack all the authors, terms, etc. and put together a decent starting picture of how I think about religion. Most important, no one has ever said a word about it to me, so I think that means it has done its job. Or it means that no one looks at these things anyway.

My political views on Facebook were a lot easier to answer. One word: "Angry."

UPDATE (2018): I CHANGED IT TO JUST "ATHEIST." IT'S BEEN THAT WAY FOR YEARS NOW. STILL SAYS "ANGRY" FOR POLITICAL.

The Ten Commandments

Introduction
Many are taught that "The Ten Commandments" are ten simple "thou shalt nots" that spell out how to live your life, written by God himself on tablets of stone. But, in addition to the Commandments having little to do with our lives and modern sense of ethics, there are other problems and confusions that occur concerning the commandments when you examine the text of the Bible. There are more than ten commandments, first of all. There are hundreds. And it's difficult to say which ones, if any, were written on stone. The Bible does eventually give us a list of ten commandments, but they are not the popular ones we sorta kinda think we know. There is much to sort through and discuss concerning this topic, so we'll walk through it slowly.

The First Ten (Or So)
It begins simply enough. God allows Moses' people to escape slavery by bringing ten plagues upon Egypt and then killing their pursuers in the Red Sea. Moses makes it to Mount Sinai, where God comes down in the form of fire. Moses' company is instructed not to touch the mountain or get too close or they'll die. There's lots of thunder and trumpet blasts. It's all very Wizard of Oz, and it sometimes seems as if Moses is just making things up, saying that the words are from God, and asking everyone not to pay attention to that man behind the curtain. But, of course, we're supposed to imagine that God himself really is saying and doing these things, so that's what we'll do.

At this point God begins to instruct the people, giving what are commonly known as "The Ten Commandments," even though the book doesn't call them that here and I'm not so sure they add up to ten. They are as follows, with commentary by me. Since I've heard over and over that the Ten Commandments are the basis of many contemporary laws, including those of the United States, I'll discuss them in relation to the current laws of our country. Penalties for breaking these commandments are also worth noting, so I'll list those. If you want to read along with me in your preferred translation (I'm, as usual, using the New Revised Standard Version), you can find "The Ten" in Exodus 20. They appear again, slightly modified, in Deuteronomy 5.

A Father's Blasphemy

I can't walk into one of these empty places
Without thinking of Philip Larkin's "Church Going,"
And I certainly can't write about going to an empty church
Without Larkin's ghost poking me on the shoulder
And telling me, "I've already been here. Move along."
But I'm not moving along. I'm staying. I used to live here.

And so here we are: me and my daughter,
Who has only been walking on this earth a few months,
At the entrance of a church, a respite from downtown shopping.
She is banging on the baptismal font and laughing at the echo.
"You bang away, sweetheart," I tell her.
"You'll never have to be water-boarded in one of those things."

She runs from pew to pew, more giggling at novelty,
And I only make sure that she doesn't rip the hymnal pages.
Otherwise, I let her run free and sinless in the aisles
As I become distracted by wall paintings of Peter, Paul, and Mary,
Which remind me of the children's song "Puff the Magic Dragon,"
A bittersweet song about putting away nonexistent childish things.

After the baby grabs my finger to climb onto the platform,
She whacks and scream-laughs at the wooden pulpit.
In her size four purple Sauconys, she runs roughshod over this space,
Like a little trickster who knows she is defiling the sacred.
But it is her ignorance of sacrilege that pleases me most,
That odd word invented by penis-owning homo sapiens.

I imagine that my daughter will change the world one day.
I won't allow places like this to tell her that she can't.
I won't let them tell her that she needs a dead man to marry her
Or that to have a vagina is to be a second place human
Or that my sperm contained the gene for original sin,
Passed down to her along with my eye color and penicillin allergy.

When she lifts her arms for me to pick her up,
I think of those who will fill the sanctuary this weekend,
Crying and raising their hands, like babies in a crib,
Toward a father who isn't around or maybe has his headphones on.
As for me, I can pick up my girl, tell her I love her, and leave this place.
In this way, I'm a much better dad than certain folk I'm not allowed to name.

Catholicism Reboot: The Forty-Five Theses

Now that the pope is retiring, it's time to bring in some changes to the papacy and the Catholic Church in general to make it more up to date for the 21st Century. Here are my Forty-Five Theses. (Martin Luther had just under a hundred. I'll go just under fifty, since I know we have less time on our hands than they did in 1517, what with all the screen-based activities we have to do.)

1. The dogma of papal infallibility should be abandoned.

2. Bishops should be allowed to move in other directions besides diagonally.

3. In order to improve upon the other-worldly quality that Latin provides, the Mass should be performed in Klingon or Elvish.

4. Baptisms should be optional. Also optional in baptisms: the use of water. Green slime preferred, especially to attract the youth.

5. Popes should not be considered important political figures or otherwise have any political power.

6. Popes should be chosen at random: slips of paper with the names of all Catholics will be placed in the hat of the previous pope and pulled out by whoever is the current host of Let's Make a Deal.

7. Rather than believing in the trinity, the new doctrine should allow for a fourth person of God -- a female -- because that actually makes more sense. (If the word "Trinity" is something that wants to be kept, then simply remove the Holy Spirit from the lineup.)

8. Rather than white smoke announcing the election of a new pope, a firework that forms the shape of the robot from the 80s television show Small Wonder should be shot into the sky--because why the fuck not?

9. Any social works -- such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, etc. -- should be recognized as something anyone can do without getting it all tangled up with the supernatural.

10. Anyone who finds the baby in a king cake no longer has to bring the cake the next year. Instead, they have to bring the condoms to the new Catholic swinger parties.

11. Priests should not be allowed to rape children. Any church authority who finds out about a child molesting priest should not consider themselves above the law and should turn over the criminal to the police, rather than moving them to another diocese where they can rape more children. This practice should, within a reasonable time, be thought of as "common sense."

12. On Ash Wednesday, instead of ashes, maybe some garlic shavings--which will have the added bonus of warding off vampires.

13. Transubstantiation -- the belief that crackers and wine served in communion are literally the body and blood of Jesus Christ -- should be replaced by a belief of things that happen in the real goddamned world.

14. Catholics should stop forbidding birth control and realize that allowing women control over whether or not they have babies is a sure-fire way to help solve the poverty problem. (Poverty should also be considered a problem, not a fetish object.)

15. Priests should be allowed to marry and otherwise engage in healthy adult sexual activities.

16. Catholics should be much more clear that the "immaculate conception" actually refers to the Virgin Mary being born without sin and filled with the "grace" given during baptism, that it does not refer to the virgin birth of Jesus. Once this clarification truly sinks in, this and similar doctrines should be abandoned, for fear of sounding like one is arguing over who would win in a fight between two comic book characters.

17. Women should be allowed to be priests. Men should be allowed to be nuns.

18. Nunsense should no longer be thought of as a musical that hilariously breaks the fourth wall.

19. Priests, bishops, etc. should begin dressing like artistic depictions of Jesus, not like Liberace.

20. Anointing the sick should be replaced with visits to a qualified physician.

21. Any pope who accepts the title, after chosen, should be immediately martyred. Any pope who refuses his title, after chosen, should decide a new, non-religious career path.

22. Lent should no longer be a creativity contest for what to give up.

23. The "Final Judgment" -- in which God decides who goes to Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell -- should be a game show in which Catholics can live out this fantasy doctrine, since it likely won't happen when they die.

24. The church should pay taxes, and at a higher rate than billionaires to make up for lost time.

25. Instead of Lent, Catholics should just think about spiritual things each time they clean the lint screen in their dryers.

26. Rather than wishing to go to Heaven, all Catholics should just go ahead and take that long, expensive vacation to another country they've been talking about for years.

27. Confession booths should become masturbation stalls for repressed priests.

28. The practice of confessing to a priest to be absolved of sin should be replaced with individuals taking responsibility for their lives and facing the consequences of their actions. In most cases, however, there should be no need to confess anything, since the concept of "sin" will be recognized as a human invention and a tool of oppression.

29. Marriage should be allowed only for same-sex Catholics. Men and women who want to marry will have to undergo what is known as a "genital-interlocking ceremony" and keep their union hidden from the public until they reach age 85, by which point it will be viewed as adorable.

30. Boys should no longer have to kneel in front of priests.

31. All sacred images, candles, crucifixions, stained-glass, and other beautiful objects should be given to museums, where Indiana Jones would prefer they be.

32. Rome should admit that it stole and worsened Christianity just as it stole and worsened Greek culture.

33. Prayers for the dead should only be allowed when the dead person specifically requests it. (Requests made while still living do not count.)

34. The church should admit that (for reasons that should be obvious) it has no business deciding matters of morality.

35. Catholic Schools should have a "Whack a Nun Day" during which schoolchildren hit nuns with rulers in memory of the days when nuns used to do that to children (which, if they still do, should be abandoned).

36. All Catholic dogma should be replaced by Lars Von Trier's Dogme 95 philosophy of filmmaking.

37. The Vatican should be sold off brick by brick and the money should be donated to charities aiding victims of childhood sexual molestation.

38. Catholics should, each time they want to say "God" or "Jesus" or the equivalent, replace it with a god they don't believe in, just to see how it sounds to the ear.

39. The pope should no longer be considered the successor of St. Peter.

40. St. Peter should no longer be considered "the first pope" or a saint or anything else special, since he seemed like one of the stupider disciples among many stupid disciples.

41. The Virgin Mary should heretofore be referred to as "The Sexually-Active Mary."

42. The priesthood should be dismantled, and Jesus should no longer be recognized as the son of God.

43. The Catholic Church should admit that it is not the "one true church" and should help elect a new "one true church" every four years (coinciding with the Olympics), starting with the Mormons.

44. The church should apologize one more time for that Galileo thing.

45. All Catholics should become Protestants, try that out for a year, dabble in Buddhism (preferably during a year off after college), and then realize it's just as well to become secular and live a real life.