Doubting Timmy

Sorry I’ve been away from updating for so long, but sometimes life gets in the way, and, truth be told, while there’s plenty going on in the news, I really haven’t felt compelled to write about any of it.

It’s a damned good thing that I’m not getting paid to do this otherwise I’d have been in the unemployment line a long time ago.

Anyway, my plan is to try to find some motivation over the coming weekend and get back to regular posting starting next week.

Yesterday marked the 9th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States and there were many events held around the country to remember the events of that day.

Locally, there were a number of tea party rallies held and I decided to attend one to see for myself what the movement was all about. (I already had a good idea, but nothing beats first hand experience.)

The event I attended was put on by the Eastern Ohio Concerned Citizens and the featured speakers were Curtis Olsen of the Peoples Constitution Coalition of Ohio; Brenda Mack, a motivational speaker from Canfield, Ohio; Mike Jamison, General Manager of Ohio Operations, Rosebud Mining; Justin Wooden, Democratic candidate, 13th District Primary and found of the Summit 912 Group; Jim Kinsley, instructor, The 5,000 Year Leap series and veteran; and John Lovejoy, columnist for the website, This Is My County.

If someone were to ask me what my thoughts were about the tea party rally, I’d have to say that it was everything I expected.

As is common for these tea party rallies, the crowd was overwhelmingly white, and by overwhelmingly I mean, totally. You might not be able to see from the photo, but trust me, it was a whitewash.

Most of the rhetoric was pretty standard tea party fare: God, Bad Obama, bad immigrants, bad homosexuals, God, and take the country back.

I honestly didn’t expect the gay bashing, but admittedly, that came only from Brenda Mack – she was by far the most offensive speaker of the lot and I wish I had video of her speech that I could post. I find it ironic that people can, in one breath, say that we’re all Americans and then proceed to talk about homosexuals as if they’re diseased predators out to ‘spread the gay’ to our children.

I honestly couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a gay person standing in that crowd listening to that kind of talk – talk of a country that clearly has no place for the likes of you.

I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that while publicly the tea partiers try to act as if they’re all inclusive, many of them probably harbor that sentiment. Their motto should really be: Proud to a white, protestant, conservative, heterosexual American.

Maybe I’m being overly-dramatic, but Mack’s speech really bothered me.

The most popular theme, however,  that seems to run through this movement is the “Take the Country Back” motif, although they never expressly say from whom they want to take it back or to what point in time. I envision that whenever this phrase is uttered, the average tea partier gets visions of what I like to call the ‘Donna Reed America’ in their heads. You know, white suburban family, mom in the kitchen, gays locked in the closet and, well, Donna Reed on TV.

It’s funny because I often hear conservatives accuse liberals of wishing for a utopian society when in fact they’re guilty of the same kind of wishful thinking.

The only difference is that in my utopian society everyone is treated equally.

The anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States is rapidly approaching. I plan to have more to say on the subject in an upcoming post, but I wanted to get something off my chest that’s been bothering me for the whole day.

Today, someone (a Christian, I presume) said that we should thank god for his protection since that fateful day and, of course, to bless our military.

There are several ways to take this blessing of our military. The first (and the one in which I think the sentiment was meant) was for our soldiers who are fighting to come home safely.

The second way to take this would be that god would lend his divine support to ensure that we are victorious over our enemies – something that I think every military has prayed for since we first started warring with one another.

Another way to look at it is, “We pray that our white god is victorious over that nasty brown god.”

Another thing that bothered me about this seemingly off-the-cuff comment was the praise that god has kept us safe since the attacks. Well, not really. There have been a few natural disasters, but that’s another post.

The first question that pops into my mind is, “Where was your god right before the attacks happened?” If you think god’s hand has been keeping us safe since, what happened on that day back in 2001? Did he step out for a smoke?

Or maybe, as some evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell have postulated, we deserved it because of the gays, the feminists, the ACLU, and any other group you feel like throwing in.

I like this answer better: There is no god. Shit happens both to good people and to bad. Both to the righteous and the unrighteous.

I also like this quote from Steven Weinberg, “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.”

Guest post by Eldritchfan

Believers are very good at coming up with pithy little phrases meant to throw critics for a loop. Stuff that sounds good at first but is actually faulty in the logic department. Since debates don’t usually offer the opportunity to deconstruct the phrase, I’ve thought up a few quick comebacks that are (I hope) intellectually and (I hope) emotionally satisfying comebacks in case you run into one.

Remember: another word for “common sense” is “group prejudice.” At one time it was common sense that the sun circled the Earth: you can look up and see it.

I try to have sense, but I place no stock in it’s being “common”.

And beware analogies. Remember: a metaphor is a preening lie.

“A foolish man builds his house on sand.”

Answer: “A wise man steers his craft well in a turbulent ocean, despite which way the wind blows. He also points out to the righteous house-builder that his foundation isn’t anywhere near as firm as he assumes.”

“When people stop believing in God, they won’t believe nothing, they will believe anything.”

Answer: “It’s much more accurate just to say: “People will believe anything.” People have to be taught critical thinking, because few will stumble on it on their own.”

That’s the answer, not an all-encompassing ideology that crushes every competitor.

Unfortunately, the latter is more successful from an evolutionary perspective, and it comes natural to such an emotional and imbalanced species as humanity.

One of my personal favorites.

“Punch a relativist in the face and tell him there’s no right or wrong.”

Answer: “Punch a Christian in the nose and then tell him you’ve helped him experience Christ’s agony on the cross and he’ll thank you for it.”

So yes, there are objective constants: We’re carbon-based mammals with the same basic physical and social needs, but the values we can be trained to place on our experiences are something else entirely.

O’Brian told Winston Smith that humans are infinitely malleable.

Any other pithy little sayings and responses you could come up with?

The older I get, the more often I wonder about whether or not life has a purpose, or more specifically, if my life has a purpose.

While religions vary on what the purpose of our existence might be, there seems to be a general consensus — at least among the Big Three — that our purpose is to believe in and to love god. In essence, god created us to love him.

That idea sounds strange to me right from the get-go simply because of what the nature of god is purported to be: an all-knowing, omniscient being who exists outside of space and time. It’s certainly hard to imagine something of that magnitude and power needing the love and admiration from what amounts to worms writhing in the mud. But yet, that’s what we’re supposed to believe.

Another possibility I’ve heard is that life is a test. We were born not by choice in order to go through a test we didn’t ask to take to hopefully pass and enter an eternal paradise.

In my mind at least, it’s like dropping a rat into a maze with the notion that it’ll either find its way through to the food or starve in the process. Of course, in the case of god, he already knows before dropping that rat into the maze what the outcome will be, which begs the question: why go through it if there’s nothing to be learned?

I can sympathize with a scientist making an animal jump through hoops, and even causing it to undergo certain tortures, in order to gain insight into its behavior and thus a greater understanding of nature itself. It’s the argument for the greater good.

However, if the scientist knows what the outcome will be, and goes ahead with the process, what does that say about him, his character, and his compassion for those creatures under his power? Are they reduced to nothing more than playthings? Entertainment? Pawns?

This brings us back to life’s purpose.

Theists accuse atheists of believing that life is random and without a cosmic meaning; that we’re nothing more than the result of the luck of the draw. I admit, it sounds bleak and passionless when put in that context.

But what about the other belief? If you believe that there is a creator who knows everything past, present and future, then you have to believe that your life — and to a greater extent your afterlife — were decided long ago. You have to believe that every decision you make was known beforehand, and that you’re basically going to be in the dark as to where you’ll spend eternity until the time comes. You may think you know, but you can’t really ever know.

“Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design.” So it was with Emperor Palpatine, so it is with god.

The way I see it — at least right now — is that there’s more futility in the life of a believer than in that of a non-believer, because a believer is simply operating ‘on the rails’ so to speak.

What do you think? Can there purpose in a life decided before it has begun?

If you were ever a believer in god, then you likely believed in the idea that he had a special plan just for you. You may have also believed that god spoke to you and told you exactly what he wanted for you and your life.

God never spoke to me. At least I don’t think he ever did.

However, I know a few people to whom god did speak. He told them things like who they should marry and which career path they should take. I admit to being just a little envious of this special relationship they had with the creator of the universe; a special relationship of which I seemed to be left out.

And it wasn’t as though I wasn’t trying to be a good Christian; to be receptive to the message. Did he want me to get married and have kids? To become a pastor of a church? To go to college and get a degree, and if so, in what field of study?

However, even with all of the hours spent in prayer and in church, and the maddening process of trying to derive some cosmic meaning from everyday occurrences, the channel was filled with nothing but dead air.

I did have random thoughts pop into my head. I wanted to draw cartoons since I was a kid. Was that god’s plan or just my selfish desire?

Maybe I was to become a monk. Was that the plan or was that me thinking that’s what god would want?

I wondered why the plan wasn’t more clear; why the communication seemed so one-sided. I mean, he told my cousin to become a priest. Yep, talked directly to him. Well, to his heart, whatever that meant.

Maybe it was me. Maybe I wasn’t “right with God.” Maybe I had some unconfessed sin in my past that was preventing him from opening up his bag of blessings to shower upon me.

I searched my past, came up with every bad thing I’d done and confessed.

I still didn’t hear anything. Still had lots of thoughts, though, but couldn’t really be sure which were the voice of God and which were just being created by my brain.

Maybe god was trying to speak to me through other people.

People would say things to me, like, “You have a good voice, you should do radio.”

Was that God speaking to me? Did he send this person to me to reveal his plan. But then, someone else would say, “Just follow your heart. God created all of us with a passion for something.”

Passion? I thought really hard. I wasn’t passionate about anything, really. I had passing interests all throughout my life, but nothing that I couldn’t live without; nothing that made me excited to get up in the morning.

I wondered why god just couldn’t communicate with us by using those pop-up holograms like in Star Wars. You know, like when Darth Sidious pops up on the desk, tells you  that he’s sending his apprentice Darth Maul and that he wants that treaty signed. Well, okay, maybe not exactly like that, but you get the idea.

I started to look around the world. I read stories of babies being blown up in suicide bombings or through acts of war. Was that their special plan? I read about children who were kidnapped and murdered. Was that the special plan for their lives? I see people starving to death in poor countries where there isn’t enough water to grow food. Is that the special blessing god handed down to them?

After agonizing for months, I began to think that maybe there was no god. That we weren’t special creations, and therefore, no special plan for each of us. And if there was no special plan, then maybe I was free to create my own plan.

Once I realized that I was much happier — especially since I wasn’t trying to find the hidden meaning in pieces of burnt toast anymore.

So my questions to you are: Did you ever hear God speaking to you? And, if so, what was it like? How did you know the voice came from heaven instead of within?

And if you wanted to hear God, but didn’t, do you blame the communicator or the receiver?