10 Things Jesus Should Have Said Concerning…

Homosexuality

1. The mob of Sodom was full of rapists; their sexual orientation is irrelevant.
2. In actuality, that parable was a warning about fathers offering to send their daughters out to such mobs.
3. My father just forgot to punish Lot for that.
4. Gim Him a break – He had a lot on his mind.
5. When you say, “It’s for God to judge homosexuals, not me,” that’s the same as saying you’d be okay with it if my father sentenced them all to hell – that doesn’t make you tolerant, it makes you a moral coward.
6. A benevolent god like my father doesn’t condone bigotry.
7. The very idea of “benevolence” negates all bigotry.
8. Do you honesly think who a person chooses to be intimate with makes them sinful?
9. The Apostles used to sit around watching Mary Magdalene make out with her girlfriends.
10. Come on, even I think Brad Pitt’s a handsome guy.

Jewish schmooish

It’s amazing how prevalent anti-Semitism is in prison.  One of the most common complaints when one feels wrong is that they were “Jewed” out of something.  If someone is miserly, they’re called a Jew.  If the people serving an inmate his food didn’t put a big enough portion on the tray, they’re Jews.

I don’t really care much about crass remarks like that, the equivalent of referring to all women as “bitches.”  Such things are indicative of a weak mind and maybe more, but you can make the same case for someone who uses any profanity.  Guys pick up idioms of speech, as well, without really knowing what they’re saying.  Most of the people who make those anti-Semitic remarks couldn’t tell you the first thing about the history of Jews or even why the stereotype exists at all; they’re just aping what they hear.

What’s truly stunning is the pure idiocy that comes from this type of thinking.  For example, consider that prisoners, like most men, comment on attractive women they see on TV.  If they find such a woman who happens to be Jewish, the opinions range from, “I’d fuck her but not have kids with her,” to “I wouldn’t touch a Jewish bitch,” to “Hitler should have finished the job.”  Forgive my laughter in this case, but do these people actually believe that Jews have a genetic predisposition towards…what?

Ruining economies with “their” banking system of charging interest?  For everyone out there who can’t understand the most rudimentary notions of economics, charging interest is not a bad thing.  These people seem to think that there is a limited amount of money in the world, and by charging interest, someone, somewhere ends up getting deprived of a piece of a static amount of wealth.  Okay, suppose we lived in a society where banks weren’t allowed to charge interest (you can see the real-world effects in some Islamic countries).  Who do you think would get shafted?  For starters, loans would be incredibly hard to get.  That means the average person couldn’t get a loan to buy a house.  Why?  Because if banks aren’t making any money out of lending, why would they do it at all?  They’d have no incentive to exist, and so they wouldn’t exist.  Think about it – would you lend money to a perfect stranger without any sort of incentive to do so?

To cite another example, imagine there was a law in America that anyone selling computers couldn’t charge any more than it took to create and ship the computer.  Thus, all computer vendors would make zero profit.  If you can’t guess what the result would be (no one would bother selling computers in America), just go back to mindlessly blaming the Jews.  In the meantime, you’re quite happily reaping the benefits of a free market economy while simultaneously bitching about something you’re too ignorant to even attempt to understand.

Another laughable thing I hear is that there’s some vast Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.  If so, when are they going to start?  The last time I checked, the Israelis had a tiny little state in the Middle East surrounded by enemies sworn to destroy them.  Since World War II and the creation of the State of Israel, they’ve never attacked another country or tried to invade or take anyone’s land.  They’ve never tried to set up an Israeli as a despot of another country.  In fact, I think the only truly hostile and warlike move they’ve made was to bomb Sadam Hussein’s nuclear program into junk back in 1980.  Ah, that must be part of their master plan to … defend themselves from annihilation!

To women-starved, anti-Semitic prisoners: you can ogle Jewish chicks on TV with a clear conscience, and without having to lie about it to your buddies.  I promise.

10 Things Jesus Should Have Said Concerning…

Sex

1. My father came up with the ideas for sex education and birth control.
2. Because those things actually prevent abortions, venereal diseases, and unplanned pregnancies.
3. Conversely, guess who came up with the idea that abstinence-0nly programs would work on high school kids?
4. My father really, really, doesn’t want to hear anyone complaining about masturbation.
5. My father did not make sex for the sole purpose of procreation.
6. He gets really angry when people think that, because that’s what those evolutionists believe.
7. No, my father really doesn’t care about the details of anyone’s sex life.
8. What, do you think He’s a Peeping Tom or something?
9. Being adventurous in bed will not make you immoral.
10. Being conventional in bed will not make you moral.

The reasons

Leaving aside drug addiction, my theory is that there are two principal aspects that make a prisoner a prisoner.  This is based on observations of how people act in here, and also my own experiences; I can categorically state that I suffered (and still do, to some extent) from these two missteps.

The first is personal responsibility.  This is so easy to see and very common.  It’s rare to hear a prisoner admit that they’ve done something wrong.  Even when they do, it’s rarer yet to hear them say they deserve to be in prison.  They’ll say the judge gave out too harsh of sentence, or they were treated unfairly at trial, or they were just doing what they had to, and the laws are to blame, not them.  Then the whining comes, whining about how the State owes them this or owes them that, whining about prison rules, whining about the food or the jobs or the TV.

I’ve said it before, just don’t come to prison.  And if you do, at least stop the fucking crying.  You committed a crime – that’s one-hundred percent the cause of all your woes.  At the very least, you can’t be surprised that you were arrested and that prison sucks.  You will never be an adult until you can take charge of your own life and admit that the decisions you make are responsible for how your life unfolds.  Laying blame on everyone else is a baby’s tactic.  It’s the same as screaming “Unfair!” when you drop your ice cream on the ground.

The second problem prisoners have is a lack of the ability to use reason.  Racism and sexism, two extremely common traits among male prisoners, are examples of unreasonable behavior.  There are people in the world who ascribe (superficially, at least) to the view that the amount of melanin in a person’s skin somehow determines their behavior and makes them inclined or disinclined to commit crimes, do drugs, and join gangs.  Similarly, they attribute personal value based upon whether or not someone has a Y chromosome.

This type of thinking is irrational.  Rather than using their brain, they’re allowing prejudice, tradition, and social pressure to guide their decisions.  Bigots aren’t being evil when they practice bigotry; they’re being stupid.  But this is good, because it makes the case that they’re not such bad guys; they just need to learn how to apply the method of reason to all aspects of their lives.  It also means that maybe they can be shown this stupidity, and be embarrassed by it.  Nobody likes to be shown that his or her position is stupid, so this is a good motivator for change.

A lack of personal responsibility and the ability of reason means you took the easy road in life.  Being stupid is easy.  If it were difficult, stupid people couldn’t manage it.  Blaming everyone else for your problems is easy.  Discrimination is easy.  Humans beings are social creatures.  We inherently want attention, companionship, and strength in numbers.  We want to be around people who listen to us and share the same views and agree with us and don’t argue too vehemently about so-called common knowledge.  This makes us feel safe, a neat little tribe like our prehistoric ancestors.  Then outsiders become bad.  So bad that they get blamed when bad things happen.  Not because they did anything wrong, but because it’s easier than asking tough questions and possibly finding fault within ourselves.

Again, rationality.  Reason.  Respect the truth for its own sake.  It has intrinsic value, whether you personally agree with it or not.  Break out of the safety box of being surrounded by yes-men and dare to say, “Prove it.” Ask, “How do you know that?  How can you show me the truth of that?”  Challenge with contradicting evidence.  If people are using their brains, they’ll at least listen and consider it.  If they’re not, they’ll just get pissy and angry, which should be answer enough for anyone looking for wisdom from that source.

10 Things Jesus Should Have Said Concerning…

Jews

1. Don’t waste two thousand years blaming them for killing me.
2. In case you missed the point of the whole thing, I was supposed to die that day.
3. They will not drink the blood of Christian babies or cause all the wars in the world.
4. No, a bunch of them won’t mysteriously stay home from work at the World Trade Center on 9/11.
5. Don’t blame them for killing me – this one is important enough to be repeated.
6. Don’t blame them when everyone thinks you’re stupid for believing there’s a vast Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.
7. Don’t get mad when someone invades their country and they not only defeat them, but also gain possession of some of the invader’s land.
8. And don’t ask for that land back, you sore losers.
9. Don’t ever say, “That chick is hot…but she’s a Jew.”
10. And please, please, don’t try to kill all of them.

Does might make right?

Christians are generally pro-life, which can also be seen as pro-slavery.  I’m not bad-mouthing them; I sympathize with the position that abortion is not a good thing.  But consider the alternative: Chaining women down and forcing them by law to carry a pregnancy to term.  I’m sure pro-lifers think that’s preferable to abortion, but there’s no way around it: It’s still slavery, something you’d find in a fascist state.

This is nothing new for Christians.  If we read a little bit of the Old Testament, we can see how God instructed his followers to treat the captured women of the lands they’d conquered (Judges 21 is a particularly lovely tale).  Generally this included killing off the old hags and the dirty whores who didn’t have an intact hymen, but keeping the virgins for the conquering heroes to own as sex slaves.  That’s how the Christian God rewards his loyal followers: virgin pussy taken by force.  So we know God has no problem with slavery and rape when it’s done to further His tenets.

But see, Christians say they’re against abortion because they want to preserve life.  That’s a lovely concept that many people worldwide should follow.  But my question is, if Christians want to preserve life, why do they worship the bloodthirsty murderer described in the pages of their “sacred” book?

I’m not making up the charges, and there’s nothing unjust about calling God a murderer.  He murders repeatedly in the Bible.  He admits it, He tells everyone He’s going to do it.  He has his cultists slaughter entire ethnic groups and religious minorities.  He destroys whole towns and regions.  He kills babies.  He floods the earth and murders untold numbers of people.  He even killed unborn children.  Surely, in the very least, there were pregnant women around when the Flood came?  In what Twilight Zone are these the acts of a loving, merciful, benevolent being?

No Christian denies the evil, tyrannical horrors that God perpetrated or committed in the Old Testament.  What they do is respond to them in one of two ways.

The first and most common is to say these are mere stories, or interpretations of ignorant men, and not what God really wanted them to do.  That’s great, and I’m glad these Christians have the moral courage to say that their god wouldn’t slaughter people, but unfortunately for them, this also means the Bible isn’t the inerrant word of God.  And if it’s not, then how can you trust anything it says as God’s true intent?  If there were misinterpretations and mistakes in several places here, there could be the same in several places there.  The whole thing becomes suspect.

The second and much more disturbing answer to the evil of Abraham’s God is what the fundamentalists say: “God was justified in doing all of that because He’s God.”  For these people, every worked of the Bible is true, making God a rapist, murderer, and slave-owner.  They just don’t care.  They give Him a special pass because He’s God.

In my opinion this is moral cowardice, practiced by fascists who ascribe to a Might-Makes-Right philosophy.  God’s the toughest guy around, so He can do what He wants.  Complete and utter bullshit.  It doesn’t matter if God created us and owns us.  If He uses that power to murder and abuse, He loses custody, just as a parent who abuses their child does.

Christians like to point out Psalms 14.1: “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.”  If us doubters are fools and God does really exist, then maybe we’re in trouble.  But at least we’re still standing on the moral high ground by refusing to bow to a genocidal rapist.  That’s something for which I’ll gladly face damnation.

10 Things Jesus Should Have Said Concerning…

Evolution

1. My father gave you that coccyx to test your faith.
2. My father gave you that appendix to test your faith.
3. My father gave you those muscles that appear to have once moved your ears to test your faith.
4. My father put empty yolk sacs on every human embryo to test your faith.
5. My father gave you wisdom teeth to test your faith.
6. My father gave you inherently flawed knees and backbones to test your faith.
7. My father made human childbirth the most dangerous and painful of all mammals not because of a pelvis required for walking upright and a relatively recent surge in cranial size, but to test your faith.
8. My father gave the grasp reflex to all human babies to make them cute like chimpanzee babies who have the grasp reflex to hang onto their mothers’ fur.
9. My father made your arms swing when you walk to test your faith.
10. My father wired your optic nerves backwards over the vision side of your retina, giving you a blind spot and causing doubters to question His skill at designing, to test your faith.

Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea

So many people are unanimous in their surety about why we’re in Iraq.  For the oil, of course.  The most common “argument” I hear is that a bunch of rich corporate white men invaded Iraq so they could steal the oil.

“Prove it,” I say, and not one of them can say a word.  They get mad.  They pretend like it’s obvious, and I’m delusional for not knowing the truth.  There’s a big secret out there, some inside knowledge, and I’m apparently too naive to understand how the real world works.  Therefore, it’s manifest that George W. Bush invaded Iraq so he could get the oil.

First, people need to understand that we’re in the Middle East mainly because we need to secure a supply of oil.  In a general sense, you probably could say that the war in Iraq is because of oil.  In case some people haven’t figured this out yet, we need oil.  How many people buy their food from a store?  Where do you think it comes from?  It’s delivered by trucks, which run off gas, which is made from oil.  Homes are heated by it.  Our military needs it to operate.  Airlines need it to function.  Millions of Americans need it to go to work and take their kids to school.  And it’s not just for filling the gas stations; the entire infrastructure of our technology is based upon it.  We need it to run machinery and factories, we need it to support agriculture, we need it for refrigeration. Try to think of how we could function as a society without something as simple as plastic – think about everything you own and use that’s made partly or totally out of plastic.  Now guess what you need to make plastic?  Here’s a hint:  it’s black and gooey and made from dead dinosaurs.

Energy independence is a great thing, but it’s not like we can just turn off the spigots one day and start running on wind and solar power the next.  Wind and solar won’t run our fleet of trucks and cars.  Neither will nuclear plants.  We’re not going to magically divest ourselves of oil, which means we’re not getting out of the Middle East anytime soon.  Get used to it, and stop pretending like wanting to secure a source of oil is a bad thing.

And by the way, America isn’t getting a single fucking dime of oil money from Iraq.  If you think otherwise, just produce some evidence and we’ll all indict those rich corporate white men together.  Until we see that evidence, however, you’re no different from a UFO abductee.

10 Things Jesus Should Have Said Concerning…

Witches

1. Single women, old women, women with moles, and women you don’t like are not witches.
2. Women who have property you think should belong to the church are not witches.
3. If a woman convulses and makes odd faces and strange noises while lying in bed, it doesn’t mean she’s a witch.
4. It just means she’s having a seizure – or possibly an orgasm.
5. If it doesn’t rain when you want it to, that doesn’t mean there’s a witch around.
6. Everyone floats when you throw them in the water.
7. Everyone admits to being a witch and names all their friends witches if you rip off their fingernails and shove red-hot metal in their orifices.
8. Any man who names witches is a sadomasochist with an Oedipal complex who was breastfed for too long.
9. My father enjoyed the Harry Potter books.
10. Witches aren’t real, you superstitious rubes.

Dissention

I heard what I thought was a pretty astute statement yesterday.  A friend of mine said, “Don’t hate the country just because it locked you up in prison.”  We were talking about fellow prisoners who verbally bash America as if there’s some good old boys’ conspiracy in Washington DC to keep them down.  They couldn’t possibly be in prison because of – just a guess here – a crime they committed.  No, it’s America’s fault because America is evil.

I say astute because the attitude is so ridiculously common.  Listening to some of these guys in the dayroom is like listening to Rosie O’Donnell at a Code Pink convention.  We invaded Iraq to steal the oil, there never were any weapons of mass destruction, 9/11 was an inside job, George Bush is a bigger murderer than Sadam Hussein, America is an evil empire trying to dominate the world.

Of course, there’s never any proof for any of this garbage.  It’s just accepted as common knowledge.  If you question any of it, you must be a redneck, or you must only watch Fox News, or you much hate Muslims.  Most commonly, you’re automatically seen as defending George Bush.

How about defending the freaking truth?  Defending rationalism?

I could care less about Bush.  I think we did go into Iraq for what turned out to be the wrong reason.  I think Bush isn’t fiscally conservative, and his administration bungled immigration reform and Katrina.  I think he says ludicrous things and comes across as even worse than he intended.  I think we fouled up the war in Iraq in so many ways it’s a freaking marvel that we’re still a presence.  (Disbanding the Iraqi Army…let’s put five hundred thousand young men with guns out on the street without a job.  Brilliant!)

The difference is that I tend to follow something we call “evidence.”  We’re not getting any of Iraq’s oil.  Sadam is the one who invaded Kuwait to steal its oil, remember?  We’re not making money from the war; it’s costing us billions.  No weapons of mass destruction?  The ask the Kurds what that funny gas-like substance was that killed thousands of them.  Sadam was a genocidal shitbag and fascist thug who reared a pair of rapist sons.  We’re not intentionally killing any civilians – we’re killing those gentlemen with guns who shoot at us.

Christ, make a case for the war being unjust, call George Bush incompetent, say he’s a horrible president; whatever.  Maybe it’s all true, but it doesn’t make him a murderer.  America does everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties.  We don’t conquer land, rape the women, burn homes, and steal the resources.  No, we spend billions more of our own money for rebuilding.  What kind of ignorance has to infest a mind that they can’t see the difference here?

Here’s what I want to know.  If George Bush invaded Iraq to steal the oil, if he orchestrated 9/11 to scare Americans into voting for him, if he set up the PATRIOT Act to begin a totalitarian regime, consolidate his power with the oil companies, control all the citizens, destroy the democracy of our country, and maybe giggle while yanking a puppy’s tail, why did he do such an awful job?  It’s the most horribly executed plan in history.  It hasn’t worked.

Consider:  Bush will be gone from the Oval Office in less than a year.  Everyone hates him.  People all over the world despise him and call him a murderer.  The world thinks less of America just because they don’t like him.  He was already filthy rich before he entered the Oval Office; being president hasn’t made him appreciably more money or gained him any more power.  We still have all the same rights we had when Clinton was president.  Americans aren’t being dragged off to the gulags.  Dissenters aren’t being silenced.  In fact, the media and the internet have an unprecedented amount of expression.

It’s amazing:  We live in a country where idiots continuously and quite vigorously use their freedom to dissent from the people they say are taking away their freedom to dissent.