The Antichristian Phenomenon

We’re used to Hollywood portraying Atheists as cynical and bitter personalities who only need the slightest push to see the light as part of their redemption (or alternatively serve as a handy character to kill for being too rational.) Usually we can point out and avoid movies which play on those ridiculous archetypes but sometimes this nonsense comes at you from where you least expect it.

Such was my experience with Dragon Age, which after my recent escapades during its procurement, now gives me another reason to blog in relation to it. You see, this game not only features de-facto atheists as part of your band of “heroes”, not only does it feature them in a profoundly Holywood way but it goes at that extra step to make sure we get the point.

As far as I’ve progressed in the game, I’ve encountered two characters who can be rightly proclaimed as atheists. One of them is the Wild Witch Morrigan which even though is a mage shows a strong disbelief to “The Maker” (A monotheistic deity whose religion is similar to the Christian one) and the other is Shale, a stone Golem which I’ve only had with me for a bit and speaks like an agnostic but already shows strong tendencies towards atheism.

You get the religious views of those two characters mainly by having them in your party at the same time as you have the ultra religious Leliana which then strikes up casual dialogue with either of them on this topic while you’re walking in cities. From those ambient discussions, you quickly realize the beliefs of the two atheists while also getting the classic Holywood trope about atheism. Even though the discussions are quite humorous at times and entertaining in their own right, especially at the parts where Morrigan wonders why she should believe in anything without proof, they quickly turn annoying when instead of showing a person who has a solid basis in their worldview, they paint those characters as insecure and afraid (deep down).

“I’m feel sorry for how isolated and alone you must feel in your life” Leliene says at the end of an exasperating discussion with Morrigan. “Er…I…none of your business.” retorts Morrigan, making obvious to all that she does indeed feel isolated and lonely. I couldn’t help but feel why she couldn’t answer like I would.  “You’re mistaken, I’m far from lonely” or even “I like it that way.” In short, any kind of retort that an atheist who is not insecure in his life would give.

But that’s not the worst of it, far from it in fact, if that was all I wouldn’t really mind it. What really annoys me is not simply that those two are cynical, bitter or whatever but that they’re both downright evil! And this is quite the explicit kind of evil mind you, not the vague moral choices that seen from the right perspective might lead to some interesting ethical questions, but the “who cares for suffering, just give me unlimited power no matter the costs” kind of evil that only exist in the cartoonish villains of Hollywood. Morrigan is by far the worse of course, abundantly disproving when I even think of helping the downtrodden and blatantly approving of only the most vile acts (examples: -5 approval for simply convincing a merchant not to exploit the desperate refugees. +7 approval for opting to allow the evil demon to possess a child.)

Shale on the other hand openly admits in disliking humans, consider itself a far superior being, has no issue with wanton violence and is of course, quite hearless about it. This wouldn’t be an issue in itself but when coupled with it openly promoting rationalism and critical thinking, once more one tends to say “Now hold on a goddamn minute!”

Now let me here point out that I have no problem with there being evil Atheists in games. Not at all. However I’d like some basis on this evil which here simply doesn’t exist. Morrigan seems to be wishing the evil options for the sake of being evil. The excuses for the disapproval the character gives are laughable only only serve to point out the shallowness of her worldview which makes the fact that she ignores the obvious result of doing the good thing as benefiting our own mission even more annoying. For example, during a mission where I had to convince a king to help me, I reached his castle only to find that undead were pouring out of it and attacking a nearby village. It made perfect sense to protect the village during the attack and then once the undead were destroyed or lessened, I would go in the castle. Then the obviously thankful King would be more willing to help me out. However for Morrigan helping the village was a big no-no so I got penalized for doing the sensible thing.

So evil atheists are not a problem but when you have only the (blatant) Atheists as goddamn evil bastards while the theists are all little goody-two-shoes angels who approve of all the good stuff (and of course the game doesn’t give any proper moral choices, only caricaturish black&white options) and only care for helping the poor, then one can’t help but make the appropriate assumptions.

While the game could have put a nice perspective into the oppression of organized religion in the form of the templars, we’re rather told that they’re in fact right for being so oppressive since all those people they oppress are kind obviously powerhungry fucks. So again religion + authority + strict rules  = good while individualism + atheism + freethought = bad.

For me thus, the problem does not simply simply lie in the fact that some Atheists are portrayed as powerhungry bastards, it lies in the fact that all atheists are such while all the theists are, quite explicitly, good. Would it hurt to have some of the theist heroes be intolerant of, say elves and dwarves (maybe some are, I haven’t seen all of them yet). Would it hurt to have some of them disproving of alternate sexualities? And on the same track, it wouldn’t hurt if some of the atheists weren’t total bastards all the time. It really pokes me in the wrong way where either I have to make total dickish choices with my character (eat babies!) or to lose the only two characters I like since they will disapprove of me so much.

Unfortunately this is a perfect example of the Hollywood-type worldview, on games which enter the same mainstream as movies. When the budgets and risks get into the same range, only the same safe bets in displayed morals and ideas can be played and thus culture might just as well go down the same shallow drain. I’m afraid that as long as profits are on the line, morality will always remain black and white and cuddle the theists who wish to claim the moral high ground. After all, in aggregate, they have the most money don’t they?

Just a quick article from me today. Swedish newspaper Metro had a small article in the Gothenburg version this morning about how the Swedish organization JO (Justitieombudsmannen), which is a political organ supposed to function as a report system for citizens, has now postulated that it was wrong to take down pictures of Satan pooping on a cruxified Jesus at a punk rock festival in the town of Linköping.

It can also be noted that the Autotune version of Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking has now gained such popularity that it was mentioned on Nanok!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc

Embedding fails.

I wrote this in Kriegsphilosophie in relation to my views about marriage:

Ultimately I don’t believe in love, I believe in intelligence. For me, it is not the love that makes me love a person so to speak, it’s the intelligence found inside. A majority of Westerners still focus on that love is required to love in a relationship. That I happened to love someone is more of a side-effect of what I found inside a person, rather than love itself.

I guess what I really want to say is that I am aiming a social critique against the notion of how we view love. A lot of people say, “it’s nice to love”, but is it really the love we should be living for? Love, just like marriage, is just a symbol given a meaning, but I think a human being can be meaningful without symbols.

And I thought I could challenge some Christians with their view about love as a symbol as well, if you really read what I said carefully.

Love has no meaning outside a cultural context. Humans give it an instrinsic meaning because we believe in its meaning. For an animal, love is equal to air, simply because an animal cannot understand the symbolic meaning humans attach to love in their respective cultures.

If we also look at how Christians actually behave to their countrymen, it also turns out that the person they are projecting their love to is rather secondary. It rather seems to be the communal notion of love that is important than actually loving people, where the persons to whom you are projecting the love to are more important then the love you are projecting. That means that love itself becomes redundant as a symbolic carrier, and it would furthermore mean that you are more genuinely interested to those you are talking to instead of “spreading love”, and telling people how much “you love”. Because it seems what you are really after are just people who too, share this view inside a community, so in reality, it at least feels like you don’t really care about the people at all as long you have an agreement about the “love” itself.

This also holds very true in regards of what I have previously experienced. Remember, this is a challenge, not necessarily a claim I made to attack anyone or anyone’s beliefs.

My anthropology teacher gave me a very interesting angle to look at Christianity today. First of all, let me outline what my new course is about, and I will roughly translate the title of the course into English: “Worldviews, power and support”. From the title alone, I think it is pretty evident what this course is about, it will mostly deal with political and economical anthropology and how one can study these two things in a society as an anthropologist.

Then, let me outline a quote from Max Weber, a famous German who formed one of the first and well-known definitions of power:

“[P]ower is the possibility for one or for many to realize their own will in communial action, even against the resistance of others.”

Christianity then, is a huge institution both politically, economically and socially, so it is very much possible to look into the system of Christianity and come up with a conclusion about what is power, how it is used and who is using it. My teacher further eplains that the use of power is often internalized by those who who do not actually benefit from the actual practices of the one in power and he gave an example when he was doing field research in an African country whose name is probably not Zimbabwe but very close to it. His field was mostly compromized by studying an African tribe called Alyamba, but for some reason he also visited other parts of the country and thus also a school where he witnessed quite a cruel treatment of the children, not too different to how we treated our own children in school just fifty or so years ago (and in Sweden the corporal punishment of children was not banned from the Swedish national law book until as late as the 1970s, where it says that corporal punishment was allowed during certain circumstances).

He went on to explain that upon his arrival, he saw all the children of that school kneeing with bare knees (in this country all children were wearing typical uniforms, so skirs for girls and shorts for boys) on the rough pebble that constituted a majority of the campus (I understood it as some sort of pebble, I may be wrong, but it doesn’t matter much here in the terms of serving as an analogy). He was lucky being able to ask one boy what was going on and the boy replied with something such as: “We are being punished for our own sake.”  This rings a bell in me, and I think many of you understand why. It sounded an awful lot like Christianity, being punished for your own sake.  This boy further explained that this punishment happened every day so all the students would shape up and not behave as badly as they would without it, and in a very twisted way, he somehow had managed to see it as positive thing, hence it has become internalized.

My teacher then went on explaining that this is common when power is used or abused; internalizing the structure helps to maintain the current system and is often justified in this sort of manner, it is actually for our own sake we are being punished, even though from the outsider’s point of view, it is quite rediculous. A poor boy being forced to knee on sharp pebbles for gods know how long under the steaking African sun is not a very nice treatment of kids no matter how you see it and certainly does not serve any actual meaning to the boy in question. We can factually prove that this sort of treatment will not improve this boy’s or any other boys’ or girls’ behavior, and there is most likely nothing wrong with it in the first place.

It is further explained that a truly good leader will be able to mask these sort of things justifying it with reasons given above; no matter how rediculous it may seem (the Genocide, the Dark Ages anyone?). Now, what really made me start to think is to whom and why are Christians maintaining this sort of power system? Why do Christians keep insisting that they are sinners and therefore must pray or do whatever pointless ritual to cleanse themselves when God obviously is not nearby and can keep an eye on them, enforcing their behavior is so need be?

I don’t quite feel expressing that Christianity is a meme, a scheme (not to be confused with meme) or even an expression of a bunch of symbols can properly explain this. This is obviously overcourse to me right now, I simply lack the current knowledge of this sort of field to properly even theorize of what could be a cause or a reason.

Max Weber also outlines a few defintions of different types of authority, I am sure they can be meaningful in this sort of discourse but my teacher has yet to explain to us what they all mean so I will leave it for now. Maybe someone else has any ideas?

Yes, I do understand that Christians may be considered disillusional and therefore no more explanation is needed, hence, their leader (God, any priest or other religious leader?) exists but only in their minds, their punishment is primarily delivered all by themselves, but this doesn’t hold up as an explanation from an anthropological point of view. So while I definitely consider it an unserious option as an answer it’s not really what I am looking for here.

It’s interesting and I wish I could dig in it further. Maybe I can do a more proper analysis after the end of this course.

Yep, it’s that time of the year again where I approve all the journals waiting for many long months and present you with some that I found interesting.

• LeaTelamon continues her Dissection of Death Metal. More innards!
• Doomface has a rant about Giftmas and how the whole thing becomes so annoying to those poor and uncreative of us.
• Self-MadeWolf takes us on a tour of the genres in Gothic music. Interesting to see what exactly the fine distinctions are. They all sound similar to me :-/
• KhaosWolf666 brings us a very nice view on Islam from an Iran-born activist.
• And finally VampyreAngel discovers some interesting nuggets of info on Wikipedia on a bored day.

So that’s all for now. If you want to be included in the next version of the Journal Roundup, simply write an interesting Last.fm journal and submit it to the ACP group. Once I go through and approve them, I will select those which have more than 2 minutes of thought put into them for the next roundup.

I’m thinking of making this feature a more regular thing, like a carnival for the last.fm people. Of course this depends on having a decent amount of journals posted to choose from. What do you think?

I’ve recently been getting a lot of people calling me on my cell phone who spoof their numbers.  In the fall, I had some Christian Video organization prank calling me 3 times a day for weeks.  No one answered when I picked up the phone, so there was no way to complain, the only way I found out what was going on was by Googling the number.

(more…)

After c0nsulting a little with Waldheri I decided to edit this post properly to make it more cohesive and actually present the problem at hand in a more focused light. This article will deal with the problem of Christianity’s belief that God is an omnipresent being and how it contradicts Descartes’ argument of the seperation of mind and body and that Christianity is in fact, not a monotheism but a pantheism.

Anyway, let’s start off in the beginning with Genesis and the creation of the Earth:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Genesis 1:1
Nowhere does it say that God made “the heavens and the earth” out of any form of matter. This passage has in turn made the assumption that there was nothing in the universe before God’s Creation, as it is a “beginning”, before God’s Creation there was nothing. Obviously God, while omnipotent, cannot make something out of matter which doesn’t exist, so let’s just ignore that for a while and assume that it is possible that God can make matter out of nothing and that he popped the Earth out from his arse (we are in fact God’s diviniely poo!) and thus, the Earth is created. Without the need of overquoting Genesis, it is made clear that God made the Earth into what it is today and that we are all a part of God’s creation:
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27

Therefore that we can draw the conclusions that not only is the Earth immaterial but also supernatural, and that God is indeed everywhere, and in humans too:

In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God,
for whom and through whom everything exists,
should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.
Hebrew 2:10

This idea strongly disagrees with the Cartesian dualism, formed to explain the relationship of God and humans, because in Descartes’ philosophy it is not possible that the body in this case, can have a two-way relationship with the mind. But if this is not true, then it is not possible for God to be everywhere and everything and this obviously directly questions God’s omnipotence.

Now, what defines Pantheism is that there must be a force, almighty or not, present everywhere and in everything and this force should be conscious and even preferrebly, sentient. This very much agrees with the Christian God, because we are shown that God is very well possible to make demands and have emotions on his own. For example maybe the one of the most blatant examples are the 10 Commandments where God more or less demands his followers to live after these rules or they will be cast into eternal Hellfire:

1 And God spoke all these words:

2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

3 “You shall have no other gods before ^[a] me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything
in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them;
for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children
for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

6 but showing love to a thousand {generations}
of those who love me and keep my commandments.

7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.
On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter,
nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals,
nor the alien within your gates.

11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth,
the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

13 “You shall not murder.

14 “You shall not commit adultery.

15 “You shall not steal.

16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,
or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Exodus 20:1-17

God even states himself that he is a “jealous God”, I guess we must congratulate him in his truthfulness. Now, the hardest concept to maybe grasp would be that of the universe not being physical as Descartes claims it to be. The reason I have already mentioned before, namely that if God is a supernatural force, then God is also nonphysical, and since the universe is a part of God himself, then the universe too, is of nonphysical and supernatural matter. Therefore the only conclusion can be that Descartes made a false dichotomy based upon the assumption that our universe is made out of physical matter. But, but, isn’t it made physical as in that we can touch and feel it? Yes, indeed we can, but it doesn’t matter if we assume that the physical is actually sprung out of the nonphysical and even less so if assuming the physical and the nonphysical is the same or if there is a heavy communication between the two where we cannot discern when the physical ends and the nonphysical begins. Descartes’ argument rather means that there can be no communication between and therefore even the slightest union is thus, impossible. However, as shown, there is a great flaw in his logic as presented above which he failed to see, even though he based his entire theory upon Christianity itself and its dualism. Christianity is not a dualism, it’s a monism and even more it is a pantheism and not a monotheism as has been previously believed. While certainly the idea of monotheism is supported in Pantheism too, thanks to the Trinity, it actually matters little since the focus no longer lies on the Trinity and in the existence of Jesus being God’s son. This becomes rather self-evident if we are to understand that God is omnipresent and as such, we can go even a step further and argue that Christianity actually believes us to be our own personal gods since God is indeed inside of us, and this gives us the power and will to use the God inside of us to do as what we see fit; hopefully into making our environment a little nicer to live in for others.

Was this better Waldheri? I am still waiting for your reply.

I know this is a bit after the fact, but for various reasons I was not on the internet much over the holidays, mostly because my grandmother does not have internet, and that’s where I was.

By going to my Grandmother’s house over the Christmas Holiday, I was obligated to attend Mass on Christmas Eve.  She is deeply religious and my mother will do anything to ensure that I do not break her illusion of god-fearing grandchildren.  I have reason to believe she fears that my irreligous state will reflect poorly on her parenting, but that is the topic of another article.

Returning to church was somewhat of a landmark for me, as I used to attend mass very regularly throughout my childhood and through High School, but since escaping off to University, it had been a full year since I last set foot inside a church of any kind.  I did not even attend Easter Mass last year, as I did not go home for Spring Break and as a result there was no obligation.  However there was not much of an option in this circumstance.  I decided to mentally take note of how a full year of separation and a rapidly declining faith changes the impression of Mass, and create a little write-up for the ACP.  Oh yes, and this is a Roman Catholic Mass, by the way.

First, the preparation.  I do remember Christmas Eve mass used to be a very big deal when I was a young child.  My mom would take us out shopping to purchase a new outfit for the occasion (the same happened for Easter Mass), as generally I had outgrown my past year’s dress, and in years I hadn’t… what a travesty to wear the same dress two years in a row!  Also we generally attended Mass at the church in my hometown so this was my first experience with Christmas Eve mass at any church other than that one.  Getting ready for Christmas Eve Mass in the past also generally included curling hair and dolling up a bit, because God cares that you dress up for this specific Mass.  No really, he does.  You have to be a step above normal Mass because this is a Holiday, he’ll probably send you to hell if you attend in jeans without your hair styled.  At least, that was the impression that I got from my parents and the other members of my congregation…

Fortunately, my mom has been a bit lax in what I have been allowed to wear over the past few years, but since it was my Grandmother’s church, she was a bit more strict, but at least I could wear dress pants.  I sincerely hope that none of the readers here can sympathize with this sort of foolishness.  Perhaps in the future I will write an article about church “Dress Codes”…  Regardless, I was able to get away with my Thor’s Hammer necklace (I don’t think my mom understands what it means, or why I wear it anyway), a thin scarf with skulls and crossbones all over it, and simply run a brush through my hair.  That’s right, no hair spray OR curling irons.  So far, this whole church thing is not quite as bad as I remember.  I stuff Richard Dawkins’ “River Out of Eden” in my coat pocket and wait forever for everyone else to get ready.  There was a special on the History Channel about giant man-eating Anacondas to watch while I waited, which was pretty awesome.  I’m probably going to Youtube it later, it was that cool (here it is!).  Apparently Florida is having this problem with Burmese Pythons that escaped during the hurricanes and… oh yeah, church.

We helped my grandparents into our van, and drove off into the cold.  (Un?)Fortunately due to my grandfather’s current state of health we were able to use their handicapped tag and parked right next to the doors and a life-size, very ugly Nativity set.  Some things don’t change between churches and the horrific Nativity displays are one of them.  I swear they use the cheapest plaster and paint, and hire the worst sculptors and painters to create these absurdities, and then proceed to light them rather unflatteringly, to make them look even WORSE than they already are.  We helped my grandparents into the church, and as a young man (who would be the lector) opened the door for us I was nearly bowled over with an overwhelming stench, that brought back decades of anxiety and anger.  Incense.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the smell of some incenses.  If my room mates happen to be smoking cigarettes downstairs, I light up a bit of the sweet perfume in the center of my floor to drown it out and relax.  However, the Catholic Church must have some business deal with a company out there to be the exclusive provider of their full line of shoddy, cheap aromas.  A while back, the Church I attended in my hometown purchased different incense, that smelled sweet and pleasant, but since then, they have been purchasing the same disgusting scent my Grandmother’s church used that night.  I closed my eyes to let the brief nausea pass and followed my family to a pew that was in the second row from the front, in front of a smaller Nativity set, equally as hideous.  I refused to genuflect and marched to my seat near the end.  Already I was feeling a little bit uncomfortable, but I had some time to kill as we arrived about 45 minutes early to get a seat so I calmed my nerves by reading about the “utility factor” of male to female births and whether a son or daughter would be advantageous in various animal species in terms of passing down DNA and ensuring descendants.  Fascinating.  Not Church related at all either.

The building began filling up rather quickly and about 20 minutes before Mass started, a choir began to sing various Christmas carols.  I relearned exactly why I disliked organ music… Overall the music quality was sadly lacking.  At this point, my dad leaned over and pointed out that there was a random girl in the nativity scene, the first either of us had seen that was not the Virgin Mary.  She was carrying a pitcher of water, and wearing a red apron, which seemed to have the breasts emphasized with a white highlight.  Good job on being politically correct.  There was also some random half-naked Amish guy, I don’t know what he was supposed to be… a shepherd maybe?  With the cheesy nativity scene, christmas lights, trees, choir, and happy organist, I could only think of one word to describe the atmosphere, and no pun intended of course: gaudy.  And the priest hadn’t even entered the scene yet!!

I missed the Procession as my nose was still buried in Dawkins, but when I finished the page I discovered that I was standing up and the priest was giving the greeting.  The time that passed between the introduction and the first reading are jsut a blur, a testament to how good I got at tuning out the mass in the years before.  Then the lector had to go and piss me off.

He was a young, attractive man, no more than three years my senior or one year my junior.  Isaiah 9:2-7 was the reading, though I imagine it might have been edited slightly, as I have found that in-Church readings always seem to say exactly what the preachers want them to… out of their biblical context.  His voice was firm, but slight wavers betrayed his nervousness.  About the time he reached the boots of warriors and cloaks rolled in blood, his voice picked up a malicious sneer, and his eyes flashed with arrogance and blind zealotry until the last line; “The ZEAL of the Lord of hosts WILL accomplish this.” OH?  When exactly?  Last I checked, our world was still war-torn and stricken with everything BUT peace.  Oh yeah, I almost forgot, he meant after the second coming and heaven and stuff, which is apparently sometime soon, and has been “sometime soon” for the past 2000 or so odd years.  And everyone forgets why these sorts of verses were really written in the first place.  Here’s a hint, it has something to do with Jews and captivity… not Jesus.

After another really bad musical interlude, the lector stood back up on the podium, a bit more confident this time, and a lot more arrogant.  The second reading was from the Letters somewhere (of course), but my ability to tune out nonsense prevailed and all I can remember is an overwhelming desire to punch the lector in his smug face… or at least stand up and scream “BULL SHIT!” but my grandmother was there and I mustn’t make her look bad.

Then the Gospel, yay… Of course, it was some version of the Christmas story, shepherds in the fields and angels singing, and all that nonsense.  I’ve always wanted them to recount the two stories right next to each other to see if anyone notices the discrepancies…  But regardless, it was homily time.  I worked hard to pay attention, as usually this would be the time I’d imagine dragons crashing through the stained glass windows with the mission of carrying me off to fantasyland, and paying attention was really really hard.  The homily was an anecdote about the Children’s mass a few hours earlier, where he asked Children questions about Christmas and Church.  I think it was supposed to be touching and funny?  The priest made sure to lay on a bit of guilt, tell everyone they need to be reborn for the next year, try to sin less, and think about others in the holiday season.  I was pretty sure I’d heard the homily before actually, and it reminded me of the recent ACP aricle on the same topic.  He also told a mind-numbingly stupid stock story about a girl who bought a hair comb for her grandmother to illustrate some point about giving and selflessness, and finally it was over.

Which meant we moved to the second half of mass: Liturgy of the Eucharist.  Originally I had intended on not taking Eucharist, but the fact that we went to my grandmother’s church changed that plan, and I walked through the motions as I had for many years.  The beginning of the second liturgy is an excessively long series of prayers and rituals (all of which I have memorized) mostly carried out by the priest as the congregation kneels.  I refused to kneel, and instead sat forward in my seat.  I will do a number of things to maintain an image, but I will never kneel at the altar of a dead god.  The very act of kneeling is at its heart degrading.  Instead my mind wandered, storming in discust and rage at what I had witnessed thus far around as the familiar words bounced around my skull.  Nothing new.  My resentment and anger built as the rituals carried on, and I felt thoroughly gross after shaking everyone around me’s grimy, dirty hand.

When everything was prepared, and the crackers and juice properly Jesus-ified, we filed around to recieve our divine snack.   I actually have always enjoyed the taste of the crackers they dish out, symbolic caniballism aside, so this was not the most painful part of the mass, and instead of kneeling to pray afterwards I returned to Out of Eden to read about the mating habits of salmon.  The word “SEX” was printed no less than 10 times across the page, referring to both gender and the act of mating, so I hope the nice happy family behind me was approprately disturbed as they leaned half across my seat in prayer.  “OMG SEX IN CHRUCH! BLAFSMEMEY!”

Unfortunately my brother copy-catted me and pulled his book out too, so my dad quickly chastized us for our inappropriate behavior and I was left with nothing to do but listen to more Christmas carols and stare at the random nativity-scene milkmaid’s prominent breasts and wonder why the craftsmen felt the need to make them so… obvious…  Eventually the priest allowed everyone to sit again and began the closing procedure (This mass has ended, go in peace!  “THANKS be to God!”).  It seemed to end rather abruptly, but I suspect that was my incredible tune-out ability at work yet again. Regardless we went back to my grandmother’s, and ate a lot of ham.

Now a few closing comments.

One of the realizations I reached while ignoring the priest during the prayers was that every single Antichristian should attend Church once in a while.  It can be easy to forget just how real and imminent the delusion is, and arrogant lectors and homilies serve to help keep the flames burning.  I left that mass renewed, though not in the way the priest intended… instead I was renewed in my passion to move towards total eradication of such nonsense, to oppose it with every fiber of my being.  I also realized that in the short year between masses, I had gone from a mushy agnostic-atheist-kinda-still favoring some fluffy God concept and maybe-all-religions-have-a-puzzle-piece-of-wisdom to something pretty close to a miltant athiest.  That’s quite a change to mull over, I haven’t fully digested my thoughts on the matter yet, I’ll get back to you when I do.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a good Holiday season!

This past weekend, Cleric and I decided to relax and watch a couple movies… something fun, maybe kind of bad, with lots of explosions.  We’re both Sci-fi buffs, as was his friend D., who was over, so we decided to whip out the Starship Troopers Trilogy.  The first one was great; the second was a botched attempt at making the series into horror, and the third… a catastrophe—acting, lips, and special effects aside.

When religion and cinema mix, it must be a tasteful blend, or one risks alienating part of the intended audience.  It is clear that there was a distinct purpose for mixing religion into SSTIII, but it was done so distastefully that I felt the need to get up several times to get more popsicles.  Not that I was particularly hungry, or too warm, I just couldn’t stand what I was seeing… and I sat through Expelled.  What went wrong?  Lets start from the top. **Severe Spoilers ahead.  Not like you’d actually want to watch anyway, but if you do for some bizarre reason, watch before reading.** (more…)

When we talk about religion, we always see it as something cultural, even as a cultural phonomenon perhaps. Religion is however quite far from it, especially when we actually talk about religion and not so much about its practices (although we will get there too). Religion is first of all a political tool. Religion is used as a banner to divide or unite people, and it has been excused as a justification in warfare many times. Religion is also secondly a socio-political identity.

However, to understand what this means, we must first understand that religion in a political context is not always as much as believing or having faith in god(s), but merely faith in something, whether it be a divine being or not. The definition of religion is:

1. A belief or faith in something
2. Rituals
3. Rules

Suddenly the word religion gains a very broad meaning, and can span more than the world religions which be invoked in our thinking when the word religion is mentioned. As such, many of our current cultural phenomena can be seen as a religion. One of those can be the animal right activist groups. To be an animal rights activist, you should first of all share a belief that animals are equal to or better than humans, rituals might involve to not eat meat or consume any product taken from dead/living animals and lastly, rules that forbid you to say, eat meat. This is all put into an overarching system and also gives the animal right activist an identity with other animal right activists by following this agenda. Thus, to truly be an animal right activist means that you actually follow a religion of sorts, in a purely political context. The only reason why you or anyone else would declare yourself an animal right activist is only to politically prove you share the idea of these typical ethics and morals mentioned (animals are of equal or above equal worth compared to humans, you follow a vegetarian diet, you do not consider any form of research conducted on animals ethically correct etc), thus, declaring yourself an animal rights activist outside a political context is useless. Obviously, the idea also unites other animal rights activists under certain organizations such as WWF but also creates a we vs them mentality, let’s say, the evil factories that pollute the rivers and seas so fish will die.

It is also very evident that religion is also more strongly envoked upon when a political identity is needed. I saw a short three-part documentary called We Are All Neighbours today, conducted by anthropologist Tone Bringa in a small village in Bosnia. 1/3 of the population was Catholic, the remaining 2/3 Muslim. It is recorded during the early 90s, (1993) and the conflict between Croatians and Muslims over Bosnia has just begun. At first, the conflict can be heard because of gunshots and shelling, but it is only in a distance and remains so for quite a while. While the villagers are worried the war will break out and soldiers will invade their village, they still don’t understand much of the basic idea of the conflict, that different ethnical groups (Croats, Serbs, Muslims) struggle to gain politcal control over a country (Bosnia). Croats, Serbs and Muslims have lived peacefully in this village for quite some time, and they don’t understand why the fuss. Sure, some of them have different faiths (Catholics vs Muslims) but they still believe in the same god. They also openly declares they don’t understand how you can attack your own neighbour for belonging to a different ethnical group. However, as the violence draws closer it eventually escalates in a bloodbath, where neighbour stands against neighbour, and eventually the Catholics kill their Muslim neighbours when the Croatian soldiers arrive (Croatia is more strongly associated with Catholicism). We can clearly see as the violence draws closer the villagers also keep more and more to themselves; Muslims to Muslims and Catholics to Catholics, despite many of them being good friends before the war begun. They often excused their own newly gained animosity with that “they might consider me a spy” or equally farfetched reasonings. In a world of paranoia however, it doesn’t seem as impossible as it would have before the war.

Here, we can clearly see how one’s religious identity becomes more important to strengthen one’s national identity (Catholics associate themselves with Croatia and support the Croatian army, Muslims the Bosnians and Serbs). Thus, religion is merely a political construct, and when you openly declare you are this or that, you also openly declare a political stance. It might not sound very rational to claim, especially if we look at something such as Atheism.

However, Atheism maybe more than anything is a political construct and many ideas in Atheism support this. First of all, there is a “belief” in science, that at least science is more superior to any other way to view the world. Science is associated with a secular society, and in turn associated with freedom of thought. Here, we can slowly see how Atheism is taking upon more and more political leanings, since freedom of thought often reconciles with freedom of speech. Atheism also often stands for many other common ideas in secular societies, such as a more social welfare model as well as Liberalism (which has partly been mentioned with freedom of speech). Religion on the other hand, is often associated with Conservatism (in a political sense but also culturally) and then that religion’s internal structure (ie rules and rituals) will decide how a Conservative society will look like.

Of course, I am not going so far as saying it is always this way, this is merely shown to point out an example how many Atheists might actually consider themselves, and that at least in a political context, their lack of belief in a god will actually create such as strong socio-political identity that it can be considered a religion, and how the word religion in turn is merely there to express one’s raher ethical, moral and political views than actually your ideas of faith.