Smoking from the Pulpit

Kirk Cameron= What you are about to see was not planned. There was no script, there were no writers, there were no cameras, no production crew, no lighting, no graphic artists, and no editors. The entire program just happened. There was a big bang in our production studio, and here we are.

Ray Comfort= Could you believe that? Of course you couldn’t, nobody in his right mind could, and yet many evolutionists would have us believe just that, in the name of science. There was no creator, no space, no energy, no matter, there was nothing, and then there was this big bang, and out came the sea, and the land, and birds, and flowers, and trees, and elephants, and giraffes, and horses, and cats, and dogs, and of course man, and woman, and this took countless, of millions of years.

This little dialogue of simplicity begins the infomercial for The Way of the Master an evangelical tool created by evangelical tools to further their belief that evolution is incorrect. It stars Kirk Cameron from TV’s Growing Pains, and the Boner to his Mike, Ray Comfort (although Comfort could be viewed as the Mike to Cameron’s Boner, depending on your perspective of which came first the moron or the televised moron.)

Now as you can see from the exchange quoted above, neither of these monkeys knows anything about science, which is evidenced by the fact that they routinely equate the evolution of species and the big bang, as if they were part of a single “theory”.  One discipline involves Biology and one involves Physics, a fact which becomes perfectly clear if one does even a rudimentary investigation into the details of the sciences involved, or…you know…glances at their notes or class schedules from high school. Here are some of the mystifying techniques that are used in the rest of the video to argue the invalidity of evolution;

Ray asks questions of “Evolutionists” in an effort to stump them, which of course he does. That is because the people he confronts are College students whose majors are in fields other than science. He asks stupid, inane, and at times even rhetorical questions about the specifics of evolution that English and Business majors are unable to answer with authority, which he claims as victory in the debate.

Kirk sits with a monkey, in an effort to show that there are similarities between primates and shitheads. Kirk does a series of facial expressions that are mimicked by the monkey, which somehow proves that though they are similar, God made them both… I don’t how. I watched it three times and I still don’t know how or why he does this, it’s like a riddle used to achieve enlightenment. The only thing it proved to me is that Kirk Cameron may be the “missing link” between the two different species.  

In order to prove that man is in no way “related” to primates Ray calls different airlines to see if he can buy a seat on a plane for his “relative”, a monkey. The CSR says that a monkey can only travel in the cargo hold of the plane with luggage and other pets; the audience concludes the same thing about Ray

Kirk and Ray then take the monkey to lunch to prove that it isn’t civilized like people are. The monkey reacts to having to sit through a meal with Kirk and Ray in very much the same way I would, by eating everything in sight, tearing the table apart and occasionally throwing the discharge of his incessant masturbating, like some kind of primate “Multiple Miggs”.

It entirely escapes them that the crucial element to evolution is that species DIVERGE from common biological ancestors, which accounts for their commonalities. We didn’t evolve from monkeys because monkeys didn’t exist. They have evolved to become monkeys, just as we have evolved to become humans. Our common biological ancestors may have been more like monkeys then we are, but they were also more like humans then monkeys are. Ignoring this foundational premise of evolutionary biology exposes statements like this one: “You don’t get orangutans forming themselves into an orchestra, you don’t see them establishing a court system to meet out justice to their fellow creatures” as nothing more than the ramblings of half-wits who were held back in school because they continually failed their science pre-requisites.

There is nothing I can come up with, which displays what and who these two idiots are, more effectively then the following exchange

Kirk= When you learn to speak to a person’s conscience you are able to circumnavigate their intellect.

Ray= This is real good news for people like me because it means I don’t have to be an expert in the “fossil record” (thank you!!!!) it also means I don’t need to learn to use words like Rhinorhondothackasaurus.

Kirk= Now are we trying to be anti-intellectual, not at all!

          No, not at all Kirk, how can you be opposed to state of mind you can’t conceive.

When they say they speak to a person’s conscience, what they are saying is that they wish to Con Science. I have nothing more than a layperson’s understanding of biology and physics, but my intellect cannot be circumnavigated by the likes of THEM and I do not believe that yours can be either, gentle reader. I do however believe that one can circumnavigate “conscience” and learn speak about the creation myth of Genesis with intellect.

The Old Testament, as we know it, is the product of multi generational additions and revisions which were translated from Chaldean Hebrew and given a compiled form during the Hellenic age at the behest of the ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 BCE), in a manuscript known as the Septuagint. The very same sort of organization theoretically happened hundreds of years earlier during the period of Babylonian exile. I say theoretically because we have no physical evidence of this. It is a belief held by scholars who label these expansions the “Priestly” or “P” revisions.

The earliest copies, (which physically exist today) of what is called the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures by Christians, are fragments of the Septuagint from the 1st and 2^nd centuries, so everything pre-dating these, is given context by the historian’s application of deduction through reason. As I have said before, we cannot, and will not, ever know when the Hebrew Scriptures were written, or how. We can only fumble around clumsily like a jock with a cheerleader’s bra strap caught between his fingers.

 The P texts were a revision of the “E” or Elohist writers who were the first revisers of the original text, which we now call “J”, for the German spelling of Yahweh; Jehovah, which is the name of the God used in the original texts of the bible.

I know it’s kind of confusing so here is a timeline of what I’m talking about;

 961-922 time designated as the reign of Solomon

950-900 The Book of J the origin of the bible containing early versions of what later became Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers.

922 United monarchy divides in two, becoming the kingdoms of Israel and Judah

850-800 The E revision of J text done to incorporate the northern traditions into the southern story

722-721 Fall of the northern kingdom Israel (Samaria) to Assyria

650-600 The book of Deuteronomy is added

587-538 Fall of Jerusalem, the Babylonian Exile

550-500 The P revision

538 the return to Jerusalem

520-515 the rebuilding of the Temple

250-100 The Septuagint

Yahweh in the Book of J is far more anthropomorphic then the God which he later became. Each revision stripped him of the quality of his character until finally only glimmers of the fantastic muckraking asshole extraordinaire he once was are seen. However through scholastic deconstruction, attempts have been made to draw J out from the texts as we now possess them, the most notable attempt being the translation by David Rosenberg which Harold Bloom supplied commentary for. In this wonderful interpretation we are given a very eastern mythical picture, one that bears the mark of the civilizations influencing it. We do not see the creation sequence found in Genesis chapter 1, instead J begins with an account similar to Genesis 2:5-7. It is as follows;

Before a plant of the field was in earth, before a grain of the field sprouted – Yahweh had not spilled rain on the earth, nor was there man to work the land – yet from the day Yahweh made earth and sky, a mist from within would rise to moisten the surface. Yahweh shaped a man from the clay of the earth and blew into its nostrils the wind of life. Now look, man becomes a creature of flesh.

          This passage reminds me very much of a piece of text that was found written upon a 4500 year old tablet within the Royal Archives of the ancient city of Ebla, in modern Syria, which was translated as:

          Lord of Heaven and earth: the earth was not, you created it, the light of day was not, you created it, the morning light you had not yet made exist

          They both possess an element of anticipation; of forethought. They reflect upon, not only upon the moment of creation, but also the moment before creation, as if the act is answering the nothing that preceded it. That most philosophical of civilizations the Greeks, overtly allegorize this concept by having Prometheus, whose name means forethought, be the god who “Molded men out water and earth” as the mythologist Apollodorus states.

          Clay is an often used base substance for the creation of humanity within mythology. The following example is taken from Mesopotamia and predates the Biblical account by about a thousand years

          That which is slight he shall raise to abundance; the work of God man shall bear! The goddess they called to enquire, the midwife of the gods, the wise Mami: “Thou art the Mother-womb, the one who creates mankind. Create then Lullu (the 1^st man) and let him bear the yoke! The yoke he shall bear, the work of God, man shall bear! Nintu opened her mouth, saying to the great gods: “With me is the doing of this not suitable; with Enki is the work proper! He purifies everything. Let me give him the clay, and then I will do it!” Enki opened his mouth, saying to the great gods: “Let one god be slain, and let the gods be purified by emersion in his flesh and blood. Let Nintu mix clay, god and man let them together be mixed with clay. Unto eternity let us hear the drums.” Nintu counts the months, in the 10^th month they call the mistress of destinies. She opened her womb, her face brightened with joy. That which was in her came forth. She blessed it. “It is I who created it…I made it.”

          This is a remarkable passage! Here the man Lullu is not molded from clay, but is made incarnate within Mami by Clay being mixed with the blood of a slain god and then placed within the womb of the mother goddess. Perhaps the blood reddens the clay the same hue as the red clay used to form Adam, whose name means red earth. It is a curiosity that this is a naturalistic creation scene and yet clay is still the base substance for the formation of primordial Lullu. Why?

          Clay is the combination of earth and water, as Apollodorus astutely mentions. It must be tempered in fire to hold its shape, fire, or breath as Yahweh does. Breath is heated air; it is the combination of fire and air. Thus Adam (or indeed any “First man”) is molded by water and earth, and quickened by fire and air; he is a substance of the intermingling of the 4 elements. Now as I have said I am in no way, “well versed” in evolutionary biology but my understanding of the explanation for the creation of Life on earth is that it was the result of an intermingling of elemental substances. It seems to me that if examined Genesis provides an excellent allegory of the evolutionary theory for the origin of the species, not an explanation mind you, but an allegory worthy of meditative contemplation.

          Since Kirk and Ray seem to be the “intellectual” leaders of their movement we can pretty much assume that the average Modern Creationist (which is what they are, despite referring to themselves as “Intelligent Design-ists”) will believe that the Big Bang theory is the same as evolution, so I would like to turn our attention to the first chapter of Genesis (where the cosmological creation is described) and attempt to interpret the text with a more-or-less scientific frame of mind.

          First God made heaven & earth.  The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.

          Already this E text lacks the reflection before action that we encountered in J, which gives the reader the distinct impression that before God made the heaven & earth there was nothing, no movement at all. Was the creation of the heaven & earth the first thing this God ever did? If it is, then how can God be distinguished from the nothing that preceded the action?  I am reminded of a saying contained within the Tao Te Ching which poses the question; whose child is the parent of the universe?  The question of the beginning of E’s Genesis seems to be; does creating heaven and earth, cause God to be? Re-read it; it all just…BANG…happens; heaven & earth, matter and anti-matter. No reflection and no initiation seem to have been necessary, unlike every subsequent act of creation that follows after.  It’s like when your alarm goes off in the morning. It requires no thought or effort to hit the snooze button, but every single action after that requires every bit of your strength and will.

 God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.  And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

You see! Here God COMANDS ‘let there be light’, it isn’t just done as with heaven & earth; the action requires momentum, it must be spoken to be accomplished. It is the will of God asserting itself for the first time. In fact the momentum seems to surprise God into reflection; it recognizes that what is happening is good. It is a momentous occasion in the life of an infant when they determine that crying can be used to achieve their goals. When one is born they cry, to cry. But as one discovers impulses (hunger, discomfort, exhaustion) they discover that vocalization can manipulate those surrounding them into producing the desired result and the infant determines this to be good. Action is good as opposed to inaction; duality is good as opposed to singularity, light & dark, day & night, crunchy & smooth, pee-pee & va-jay-jay. Where there was one state of being there is now two, where there was space, there is now space and time. We are witnessing the self discovery of God, which seems to imply that before creation God did not possess self awareness. Without self awareness, can an entity that is pure consciousness be said to exist?

God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

Notice the expansion, the further defining that is happening here, the dividing of the states of matter between the waters above the firmament and the waters below, or between liquid and gas, if you rather. The narrative is following a step by step progression. Despite apparent omnipotence, the God of Genesis chapter 1 is unable to create in an unordered way; he must follow the “natural order” of things, as Oprah does (sorry to invoke the Grand O, but “She Who Consumeth Worlds” was the only other omnipotent being I could think of). It is this initial division of “waters”, that allows for the possibility of a third state of matter, solid, which develops next, as we see on the 3^rd day of creation, with the appearance of land

God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

The above can be regarded as referring the formation of the Earth itself, or earths in general. Mater divided into three states allows for the possibility for the formation of planetary bodies with dry land, which in turn allows for the possibility of the formation of early forms of plant life. This is how every planet in our solar system and every other throughout the universe was theoretically formed. Mater is drawn in by the gravitational pull of a star, and begins to orbit. As it is orbiting more mater collides into it which begins to increase its mass and chemical composition, until it becomes planetary. This was once a widely debated theory until it was proven by NASA scientists analyzing ore samples retrieved during a drilling expedition on the eastern hemisphere of Rush Limbaugh.  

God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

As planetary bodies stabilize so too does their orbit around the star at the gravitational centre of their solar system, allowing for day and night to become more or less fixed for each planet. Notice that we are told that stars are appearing, which means that the stabilization being described in what becomes our own solar system, is occurring everywhere, increasing in number as the universe expands.

God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

Life forms become more complex moving from plants to marine animals, to non-marine animals which reproduce externally by laying eggs in the same manner as marine animals (ie. birds), until at last on the sixth day we have non-marine animals who reproduce internally, mammals. Watch carefully the advent of mammals in the following passage. It seems that all the “let-there-bes” have left God feeling alone once again, for the first time since the very beginning of the chapter. It must be loneliness; why else would he desire a being made in His own image, it’s so Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Notice also that when God turns his attentions towards man he no longer “makes”, God now “creates”, it’s like when you say “I love you” in a relationship; after that you no longer fuck the shit out your partner, you make love to them.

God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. ²⁸ And God blessed them….And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.

          God created humanity in the image of God. Now that doesn’t mean that he looks like the aging hippie who runs your local head shop, with the long white hair/beard combo; reviewing the above 26 or so verses, the image of the creator that is given, is one of self reflection. God is made aware by reviewing what he has done (It is good), and setting in motion what he has yet to do (let there be). God is self-reflective thus we are self reflective. As humanity is the final accomplishment of God on the 6^th day I believe we are being told that humanity is intended to be a helpmate, carrying on and accomplishing the tasks of creation that have yet to be done. I also believe it speaks to the moment when the very first humans reached sentience and began to normalize the practice of walking erect above all other creatures. They were aware of the uniqueness of what they were doing, and it was good to them, so they went about distinguishing themselves further. This is how I read Genesis, and when I learn that I am misinterpreting an element of the science, I adjust the way I read it.  

Faith is about interpretation and is therefore fluid, in the same way that science is about observation and is therefore fluid. The author(s) of Genesis chapter 1 was using observation of the natural world, and the “scientific/philosophical” theories of the time in which they were writing, to frame their creation story. They were expanding on the common mythology of the original account of the Book of J in an effort to make Yahweh more God like, and less human. Intelligent Design, or Modern Creationism, seeks to do the opposite; by attempting to frame scientific observation through biblical interpretation they are limiting the divinity of the God of creation, only allowing him to create in a way that humans can understand, as if our limitations were Gods limitations. In doing this they are indulging a thought process that is in no way scientific or Biblical, just small and foolish.

            I recently had the honor of spending a day with the cast of the re-mount of the award winning Toronto production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot . I had the time of my life sitting at the table with them, discussing that most vile of sinners and I thought it might be fun to expand on that discussion in written form. As (a twisted sort of) luck may have it, the story of Judas is a cornerstone of the Antisemitism that has existed within the hearts of Christian literalists for 2000 years, and so this entry can still be placed within the general purpose of this blog series, namely the dispelling of fundamentalist myths.

I shall begin here as I began there by saying that I believe Judas Iscariot to be an entirely fictional character. That being said, Judas for a great many years was somewhat of a stumbling block for my faith. I had difficulty understanding his role as a villain within the story. Jesus knows what will happen to him when he enters Jerusalem, he knows he has to be executed and he goes to great lengths to ensure that it happens.

1^st by entering into the city in the manner of an eastern King, riding on a donkey through crowds waving palms, which to a Romans eye would look very much like a Triumph.

And

2^nd by openly confronting Temple authority by questioning their taxation policies by overturning the table of the money changers; these were people who took roman coins in exchange for temple coins so that tax revenue held in the Temple treasury wouldn’t bear the image of Cesar.

However in both cases the bait is not taken by the authority it is intended for, largely due to the sizes of the crowds he draws. So another way had to be found, one that was quick, private, and prophetically significant; a betrayer was required.

The whole push of the story, is towards Jesus OVERCOMMING DEATH so why do we look at the one person who helps him to complete this final task with contempt? Who is this Judas Iscariot?

If one does a comparative analysis of the accounts of Judas as they are found in all 4 gospels, one finds four distinct individuals who either;

Betrayed Jesus for a sum of money

Or

Betrayed Jesus under possession by Satan

Mark says in chapter 14 of his Gospel that;

Judas Iscariot one of the twelve went unto the chief priests, to betray him unto them and when they heard it they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought how he might conveniently betray him.

When read carefully, this passage withholds a motive for Judas. Note that it is the Priests who OFFER money AFTER he has made it clear to them that he wishes to betray Jesus. The author of Matthew must have noticed the very same thing because he seems to clarify this in his version of the story, found in 26:14-16;

Then one of the twelve called Judas Iscariot went unto the Chief Priests, and he said unto them “What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted him for thirty pieces of silver. And from that time he sought an opportunity to betray him.

Notice how the Priests are not “glad” when confronted in Matthew. They are officious, “covenanting” rather than merely promising, and unlike in Mark, where it is an indeterminate amount of “money”, here they are giving a very specific 30 pieces of silver, that exact sum being the price of a slave in the Old Testament. Matthew seems to be telling us plainly that Iscariot is more of a traitor than a conspirator, and that the Temple hierarchy was merely doing business as usual, entirely by the (good) book. Luke is the first evangelist to offer an entirely different perspective on Judas, which may be found in Chapter 21 of his Gospel;

Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot being of the number of the Twelve. And he went his way and communed with the Chief Priests and captains, how he might betray him unto them. And they were glad and covenanted to give him money. And he promised and sought an opportunity to betray him unto them in the absence of the multitude.

This account more or less absolves Judas entirely. The Chief Priests are “glad” once again and willy-nilly with their wallets, while for the first time, Satan is pulling strings like Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate. Where is the betrayal? How can it be that the traitor of traitors is unaware of his treachery? John follows along with this tradition, going into greater detail than his predecessor by showing us exactly how and when Satan enters into Judas saying in 13:21-22, 26-27;

When Jesus had said thus, he was troubled in the Spirit, and testified and said “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. Then the Disciples looked, one on another, doubting of whom he spake….Jesus answered, “He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it.” And when he had dipped the sop he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, “That thou doest do quickly.”

Here we have Judas once again possessed, but it seems as if it is Jesus who arranges it. Instead of having his disciples draw straws or cast lots for the dishonor of betraying him, he gives the sop to his personal choice; the one who will complete this most necessary of tasks. In every other moment in every Gospel, demons, and even Satan himself flee in the presence of Jesus, yet here Satan takes Judas right in front of him. Are we being told that Jesus is at his weakest here, allowing Satan the opportunity to slip in and take a victim, or are we being told something else, perhaps that Jesus is orchestrating his own betrayal?

Why would John absolve Judas so entirely from the corrupt act of selling his master to the enemies? Earlier in his Gospel he calls him a thief!

Mary took a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped the feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then said one of his disciples Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him, “Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?” This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.

Is it possible that Jesus spiked Judas with Satan as retribution for embezzlement?

Judas either

Sought to betray Jesus and accepted money for it

Sought to betray Jesus FOR money

Was possessed by Satan before being GIVEN money to betray Jesus

or

Was chosen by Jesus to be possessed by Satan as punishment for stealing money from the group purse.

In a court room this variety of motives would constitute the beginnings of what is referred to as reasonable doubt. If Judas was a real man who actually committed the betrayal that is attributed to him, just as we are told, then why is there no agreement on his motivations? Surly the details of such an act of cowardice and greed would be remembered with a certain degree of accuracy. But if he is not based on an actual member of Jesus’ entourage what is he based on? Let’s see if we can’t look elsewhere to find out, like say, in a name.

According to the Jerome Biblical commentary there are three possible derivations of the name Iscariot;

Isqriyot or Man of Kerioth (which would make Judas the only non-Galilean of the Disciples)

Sicarius (from Sicarii a sect of Jewish nationals named after the blade they killed with)

or

Isqarya (Aramaic for the traitor)

The 1^st possibility, “Man of Kerioth”, is described as being “intrinsically not too probable” by the commentary despite being the most traditionally accepted. The editors instead came down in favor of either the 2^nd or the 3^rd explanations.  Since “the traitor” isn’t a terribly cryptic name let’s focus our attention on possibility #2.

The Sicarii were identified by Josephus as being an extremely violent group of radicals who would move through crowds gathered for festivals and stab people from behind with a curved blade which they were named after. The Sicarii were unlike the other liberation movements of the 1^st century in that they are (like Judas in most accounts) relatively motiveless. They were thugs, no more, no less. Think of them as an Al-Qaeda cell called “The Sword “operating in modern day Iraq; they were more interested in destabilization and profit than self determination and normalization.

The problem with this group being identified with Judas is that according to Josephus they seem to become active sometime around 50-60 CE, not in 33 CE when the events of the Passion are said to have taken place. This doesn’t, however, disqualify entirely the association between the Sicarii and Judas. As we discovered in way back in entry #3 of this series, the Gospel of Mark was written sometime in between 62 and 72 CE that means that he was writing during the period of time that the Sicarii were terrorizing Jerusalem.

Within the accounts of Josephus relating to this time period there are no groups who are more antithetical to the message of Jesus than the Sicarii were. Where he would turn the other cheek; they would literally stab in the back. Perhaps Mark is allegorizing this by casting a Sicarii as the Betrayer. Further light can be shed on this possibility by looking into the death of Judas.

In the Book of Acts it says

This man (Judas) purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in the proper tongue Aceldama, that is to say the field of blood.

We are told about Judas’ suicide by hanging in the Gospel of Matthew, where he writes that Judas:

Cast down the pieces of silver in the Temple and departed and went out and hanged himself.

But Luke who is the author of the Book of Acts is the sole holder of the intriguing detail that Judas “burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowls gushed out” thus inspiring the name of the field of blood. Now I am in no way a physician but unless he is saying that Judas shit himself, which is a possibility, I can’t see how bowls could burst through the thick layers of muscle, fat, and skin without an incision first being made, possibly with a curved blade, like those carried by Sicarii,. Surly Luke WHO WAS a PHYSICIAN must be alluding to something cutting open Judas’ stomach to release his insides, if not a Sicarii knife, then what?

This passage indelibly links Iscariot to the Sicarii in my mind, and since (as we discussed earlier) the Sicarii were apparently a non-entity in 33 CE, Judas as he exists in the four Gospels must be some kind of literary construct, which I personally think was being used to comment on the political developments of the time in which it was written, sometime between 62 and 72 CE

I said at the beginning of this entry that I believed Judas Iscariot to be a fictional character, and I hold that to be true. However I also believe that Judas may well be the most important “person” in the advent of a new and sustainable Christianity.

Jesus is often referred to as the “Lamb of God”; it is an image that is very much a part of the Western consciousness. This title is used to envision his sacrifice upon the cross, and it originates in the sacrificial customs of the ancient Israelites. I think a similar association must be done with Judas Iscariot.

In Leviticus 16:7 one finds the sin offering of the scapegoat, where in the priest was to bring two goats to the door of the tabernacle, one was slaughtered on the altar, as a sacrifice to God and its corpse would be roasted and eaten in a communal meal. The other goat was released into the wilderness as an offering to Azazel, a demon of the wild and early archetype for Satan, where it would die alone in whatever manner that it died, so that its blood could feed the ground.

I think of Jesus dying the death he sought, in the presence of his mother, his wife (presumably), his beloved disciple (whoever that may be), and finally his God and Father. Though he suffered unto death he did it with confidence that he had loved and that he was loved. Then I think of Judas; alone, repentant, possibly even unaware of HOW he betrayed his master, only aware that he HAD. I think of him wondering the field in the wild that he bought with his blood money until he came to a tree. I think of how he tied a noose to the tree, which he tightened around his neck. I think of the sorrow he must have felt as he took his curved Sicarii knife, and cut deep into his own stomach, and how as his strength left him, and how as he fell headlong with his bowels gushing onto the ground, he looked down and in his last moments he saw no faces of loved ones because he was alone, and it doesn’t really matter if he is real or not, my heart breaks for him.

If every Christian alive were to unilaterally open their hearts to the love of their neighbors and enemies they would still have one more person whose trespasses would need to be forgiven. It doesn’t matter that he is a fictional character, for years he has represented the wretchedness of treachery, let him come to represent the grace of redemption, surly this would be what the person he “betrayed” would have wanted. The duel sacrifice of the Sin offering has been completed; can we not now gather the bones of the Scapegoat, to bring them in from the wild to burn them on the altar of God along with those of the Lamb? Only when we have overcome our notions of heroes and villains, will we begin to build a reality where we are possessors of the inner divinity of forgiveness. Let us start with the re-imagining of Judas.

Before I begin I have to say that after re-reading my last entry I have realized just how much this is becoming a form of exorcism for me. The 1^st 2^nd and 3^rd entries were preparation, in the same way that a priest would recite a psalm or a litany of the saints, and the 4^th entry was focused on trying to name the Demons, so that they can be expelled. We’re now moving into the showdown stages so I have to warn you that it may get a little intense as I expunge.

With that in mind enjoy entry 5

Have you ever noticed how any time an innocent gay man or woman are beaten to death by a group of worthless Hayseeds, a gaggle of vultures gather at the funeral to make the grief stricken family aware, through the tasteful poetics of “picket signage”, that their loved ones are in Hell.

Let me say that if there IS a Hell. I am 100% certain that these cowardly pigs will burn there, while having their swollen assholes torn as they are sodomized eternally by Satan’s 32-inch WIDE flaming cock.

(I warned you.)

Gay rights are one of the final battles in the war for a truly just society, and any person who stands in opposition to them is just plain wrong. There are no exceptions. There is no viable reason for one person to oppose the existence of another, and anybody who does is a bigot who has negated having the rules of society apply to themselves, in very much the same way that a murderer, rapist, or financial reporter does.

The fact that for almost three decades now there has been an open and organized debate concerning the legalities of who a person couples with is “Orwellian” to say the least, and the question it is essentially breaking down to is Are homosexuals human? If they are, then they are entitled to the same rights as any other human being, if they are not, then it is clear that God, Jesus, and Uncle Sam hate them so it is OK to legislate against them. The most recent face of this debate has been over whether Gays and Lesbians should be allowed to marry one another, and while we in Canada were able to clear this hurdle in civility rather quickly, our neighbors to the South are still very much entwined in the ballyhoo.

The current legal rambling and meandering will no doubt continue for some time, largely due to the nebulas constitutional ground on which the issue exists. The equal rights amendment allows for indiscriminate protection under the law, and therefore guarantees that gay and lesbian couples receive equal treatment and considerations as heterosexual couples. It does not however accommodate the notion of equality within conventions, and as Marriage is a societal convention used to “legitimize” relationships, the gay and lesbian community has been allowed to be cast aside. The wrong legal argument is being used.

The World wide Anglican Communion (of which I am a part) is in the process of tearing itself apart over this issue. Parishes of the third world are rallying together in protest over the allowances made for the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Episcopalian Church of America, to ordain and marry gays and lesbians. During the 2008 Lambeth Conference the Archbishop of Canterbury attempted to cave to these bullies by asking for a brief hiatus in North America on all Gay based initiatives while the church as a whole reflects on the changes. The North American bishops agreed to think about it, and in the 6 months or so since Lambeth they have been steadily moving towards normalizing the practice. This means that a large American religious institution is not only comfortable with the concept of Gay Rights, but is also willing to let its church be torn apart to ensure that those rights exist.  There are Anglican/Episcopalians priests, and ministers from a great number of other progressive denominations who are willing perform the marriage ceremony on Gay and Lesbian parishioners who wish to enter into one of the five sacred sacramental covenants. For the State (or the voters) to insist that such a marriage be made illegal, it must directly violate the guarantees of religious freedom found in the 1^st Amendment of the Bill of Rights. (I know that the same argument can be used to allow for Mormon Polygamy. But to be perfectly honest, I’m FOR Mormon Polygamy. Think about it; many children of many women impregnated by a single Father will erode the Mormon gene pool until they’re nothing but a giant mass of kids wearing hockey helmets to school, and sitting at the back of class. If you think inbreeding works out in the end, take a closer look at the entire Royal Family.)

What is it about Gay marriage that sticks in the craw of these people? Are they afraid that Gays and Lesbians might somehow trick them into it? If that’s the problem then we need to remind these people that Gay marriage also means Gay divorce, so if they are somehow roped into marrying a person of the same sex, they need not worry, it will all work out in the end (you might want to word that last phrase a little differently, so it sounds less like “getting worked out in their ends”)

I find the Evangelical female perspective particularly baffling in regards to this discrimination.

Think about it.

 The “traditional” definition of marriage demands a dominant man, and a subservient woman (check the “traditional” vows for the woman to recite in the ceremony and you’ll see the word obey, as in “love, honor, and OBEY”.) This is because “Biblically speaking” women rank somewhere between cattle and land in property value to men. To put it another way, if a “traditional” man in the Bible were to list his financial assets, his wife would NOT be considered his most valuable POSSESSION. In a “traditional” marriage ceremony the father of the bride walks down the aisle holding his daughter’s hand. When they reach the front of the Church the father gives his daughter’s hand to the priest or minister, who then gives the hand to the groom. This is a transfer of ownership from father to the church to the groom. This is what is envisioned by the traditional definition of marriage.

There are more passages in the Bible condemning a woman’s anatomical functions, then there are even remotely mentioning homosexual practices, which means that the founders of these “traditions” had a bigger gripe with their wives’ “Flowsies”, then they did with hot guy-on-guy action. The fact that Christian Fundamentalist women would place any LITERAL ADHERENCE to a book which, if taken literally, endorses contempt for them, is what makes their perspective on the issue so laughably delicious.

Unless Ann Coulter wants to voluntarily leave the tribe every time she is visited by “The Curse” she should probably re-evaluate the use of a 3000 year old conception of what is and is not Taboo, as her justification to call another person a degenerate.

Conversely I feel it is necessary to draw the attention of the African American Evangelical community to the HISTORICAL FACT that about 150 years ago White Southern Baptists were using every book in the Bible as the justification to hold their Great-great-grandparents in bondage. Slavery is not only permissible in the Bible; it is often encouraged as an appropriate form of restitution. Passages condoning slavery outnumber passages condemning homosexuality at least 10 to 1 by page 54 (of 1575,) which is when I stopped counting! Slavery is such a moral certainty within the Bible that the Confederate States were able to obtain from it the spiritual will to sacrifice 600,000 of their countrymen simply to preserve the institution. Yet we all NOW agree that slavery is repugnant.

If the Religious Right wishes to be allowed to commit legislative Gay Bashing, simply by virtue of the fact that the Bible tell them to do so, then I demand that they first;

Force the women amongst them to relinquish their right to vote, own property, and menstruate at home.

And

Have everyone who has an ancestor who was slaveholder (shouldn’t be too hard finding these in the congregation) turn themselves over to the descendants of their family’s slaves as a restitution.

If they aren’t willing to do this, then the green light should be given to start planning tastefully decorated wedding receptions where the Crantinis flow like water!

A person cannot become tolerant one group at a time. That’s not tolerance; it’s merely a suppression of the hatreds that societal conventions have deemed inappropriate. If the same basic argument is used as a means of suppression against different groupings of people, then the invalidity of the argument as it applies to one group must extend to all the others. It is an act of cowardice to only hate those who you can get away with hating, and until these people learn to TRULY tolerate the sub-division of humanity living around them, we can assume that they are bigoted against everyone except the other white fat ass sitting next to them in the pew.

There is simply no room in a modern society for this type of religious persecution. In response to this they will often say that people are killed for being gay in other countries, so ours isn’t all that bad. But since when is the measuring rod for acceptable behavior the tyranny of oppressive Theocracies?

Religion is meant to serve people, it is meant to MINISTER, whenever it becomes exclusionary it ceases to be relevant, and the history of religious upheaval bears witness to this (it’s pretty much why Jesus was willing to get tacked to the cross.)

In the entire Bible there are 4 passages in total which concern homosexuality.

4

This is what the prosecution has come to trial with? Out of the hundreds, nay thousands of passages which are used to form the Old and New Testaments they can only drag out 4 to base their argument on!?! These people treat banality like it is some kind of Zen State!

These are four selections

Genesis 19:5 And they called unto Lot and said unto him, “Where are the men which came into thee this night? Bring them out unto us that we may know them!”

Leviticus 18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is an abomination.

Leviticus 20:13 If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surly be put to death; their blood shall be upon them

Romans 1:26-27 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, the men likewise gave up natural relations with women, and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their errors.

Let’s start by looking at the passages from Leviticus since they constitute the most overt condemnations in the Bible, but before we do, here is a list of abominations, compiled by using the same Levitical legal standard that is used to call homosexuality an abomination:

Sea creatures without fins, and/or scales, who move about the waters (Leviticus 11:9-12)

 Eagles, Osprey, Vultures, Kites, Ravens, Owls (little and great) Hawks, Swans, Pelicans, Storks, Herons, Bats. (Leviticus 11:13-19)

Locusts, Beetles, Grasshoppers. (Leviticus 11:21-22)

Every creeping thing that moves upon its belly across the earth. (Leviticus 11:41-44)

Seeing a family member naked (even accidentally since there are no exceptions listed. (Leviticus 18:6-17)

Having sex while the woman is menstruating (Leviticus 18:19)

Adultery (Leviticus 18:20)

Eating 3 day old leftovers (Leviticus 19:7)

The following is a list of offenses that result in death in addition to homosexuality.

Committing abominations (see above list)

Cursing at ones parents (Leviticus 20:9)

Adultery (Leviticus 20:10)

Threesomes (Leviticus 20:14)

Bestiality (Leviticus 20:15) both man and beast are killed

Blasphemy

Entering the tabernacle if you are unclean, like if you plant different crops side by side (like in a vegetable garden), or touched the skin of a dead pig (like a football) or have acne (pimples are blemishes which fall into the category of leprosy in the Bible.) or are menstruating

These are NOT the standards by which a MODERN society must conduct itself. These are the remnants of the time when the Ancient Hebrews first began living under the auspices of a foreign imperial structure. The Priests and Rabbis wished to ensure that their occupied/displaced people would have a cultural center to unify them, in order to maintain a national identity even though a nation no longer existed. That center became a story, a cultural story that reminded Israelites and Jews of whom they were and where they came from. Within the story they laid out a list of rules which when followed, would guarantee a cultural autonomy for the people of Israel and Judah while living under a foreign empire, with foreign customs. Hence we have lists of what to eat, how to farm, who not to fuck.

The City centers of the foreign world were like running around in Hugh Heffner’s id, so there are rules telling the Jews not to engage in the same activity. This is what kept them Jews, and why they survived when every other “minor” culture around them simply became assimilated, within the “major” culture that conquered them.

The Book of Acts tells us directly what needs to be done to the Levitical Laws that no longer serve to propel the faith, you ignore them. If St. Peter can eat pig and St. Paul can end circumcision then surly St. All-of-Us can stop thinking of Homosexuality as an abomination? American Evangelicals have certainly become Ok with Eagles despite their being biblical abominations, so why not gays and lesbians? Let’s take a closer look at the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to see if we can find an acceptable answer (don’t worry, we won’t)

Here’s the story for all of you who don’t want to go and read Genesis 19:

Once upon an as yet very new concept, time, Yahweh was feelin’ blue. Now in the old days (or are those “the young days”) when Yahweh got stuck in a mood he would decimate a species, or expel something from somewhere, but in this particular instance all he wanted to do was stay in his pajamas and watch a couple lackeys wreak a little havoc on his flat screen HD TV (if you’re impressed with how the divine watched some tube back then, you should see what he uses now. It’s why we haven’t heard from him for a while.)

Yahweh sent his angels to the twin cities Sodom and Gomorrah to see if they couldn’t drum up a little action, but when they got there it looked like the violence would be a no-go. The angels (who were dressed like dudes) where hoping to just walk into town without an invite, which was a sure fire way to start something up in the ancient world. You see, any stranger who wanted a respite from the dessert would have to submit themselves to the community they wished to enter, and let’s face it the quickest and most definitive way to prove submission is to allow anyone in the community to rape you…which they would…frequently…because it was a savage time.

When the angels got to the town limits they met up with an old guy named Lot who invited them over to his house for his wife’s pot-roast (which was way too salty). Lot was not a particularly popular guy in Sodom, probably because his cousin Abraham, who pastured the field just outside of town, had recently become a military presence who had chosen to ally himself with the King of Sodom’s rival Melchizedek King of Jerusalem (see Gen 13-14).

When the men of Sodom saw the two strangers going into the house of the family they didn’t trust in the first place they decided that they were owed a little taste, and so they demanded that the newcomers be made to submit to the community before they be allowed to stay. Lot refused to allow this but he did offer to let the crowd rape his two virgin daughters as an appeasement. The crowd, being driven by a fear of the strangers in their midst and not by lust for their hot angel bods refused this disturbing offer and repeated their demands to have the newcomers submit to rape, either one at a time or all at once, whatever worked best for them.

This was enough for the angels to get angry… Christian Bale angry. They opened Heaven and rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah the ancient equivalent of an Enola Gay mission.  Lot and his family fled to safety as their former city burned behind them, and just when they thought that everything was going to be OK the angels snuck a cherry for their carnage sundae by paying Lot’s wife back for the shitty diner, turning her into a pillar of salt. Lot and his two daughters fled to the mountains where they assumed they would be forever alone. The daughters, who were deeply afraid of going through life barren, realized that the only man who could knock them up was their father, and so they decided to slip him some rufees in his wine and rape him…twice.

I don’t need to deconstruct this any further; the sin of Sodom is the distain they show for strangers/neighbors, it has nothing to do with homosexuality. It has to do with rape, and it’s not even a condemnation. It’s more of how-to guide, since the daughters in the “righteous family” are offered as victims for rape before they become offenders themselves…I feel kind of cold.

What insight can Paul offer us? The quotation in the list above seems like a pretty outright condemnation of homosexuality, until you look at the passages which precede it:

So they are without excuse; for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men, or birds or animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.

Now let us add the verses cited earlier

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, the men likewise gave up natural relations with women, and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their errors.

When you put the two together it seems to me that Paul is talking about Greek Bacchic ritual orgies. The claims of wisdom and the darkening of their minds are reminiscent of the enlightenment that the Bacchanals said occurred in states of wine induced inebriation. The Romans despised these cults, and were offended by the drunken sexual excesses of their rituals. Furthermore there were associations being made between Bacchus and Christ in Rome, so what better way to begin proselytizing then by disassociating one from the other, and riffing on their well known and disliked practices. Paul knew how to work the crowd and that’s what we see him doing in these passages. He’s pushing buttons, but they are buttons that no longer exist and can’t be transferred. It’s an obsolete passage, very much reflective of the climate of the time it was written. Interesting? Yes. Relevant? No. 

Very much like the fundamentalist perspective on this issue.

The final thing I’ll say about this is that in the gospels Jesus of Nazareth is absolutely silent on the homosexual practices which were certainly going on in the Hellenic world around him, but he is quite vocal about brothers coming together in love. The real Christian perspective seems clear.

          In Revelations John writes that the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death, I say they are Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Every Jehovah’s witness who has ever interrupted me while either eating or masturbating, and the bulk of Salt Lake City Utah.

Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons are the four pillars of North American Christian Conservatism, which means that by and large these are the people who have been stirring up shit since the 80s. We lump them all together but in reality they are vastly different from one another, so different in fact that they typically attack each other with more spittle and bile than they do everyone else, almost like the Skeksis from the Dark Crystal when their emperor dies.

As different as they are, these four groups constitute the lion’s share of what Harold Bloom refers to as “The American Religion”, a variation of Christianity that resembles the unsuccessful Gnostic movements of the 1^st and 2^nd century far more than it does the normative traditions of European Protestantism and Catholicism. It is intensely individual, ascetic, and dependent upon a certain ecstatic invocations and associations with the “Holy Spirit” which tends to inspire them to conceptualize the trinity as God the Spirit, God the Son, and God the Father, rather than the traditional ordering of Father, Son, and then Spirit.

It is this individuality and personal association with the divine that gives The American Religion the bulk of it’s ire, by offering the possessor a sense of absolute certainty which CANNOT EXIST within matters of Faith.

Any God who communicated directly to the greasy, used car salesmen, mother-fuckers on TV who SAY they talk to God, is unworthy of prayer, devotion, and a Sabbath, let alone the shekels these assholes routinely ask for as offerings. It is fine for a person to “communicate” with their notion of divinity through meditation, contemplation, or prayer, in fact I do it every day, but I pledge here and now that if at any point God talks back to me directly I will commit myself to the nearest asylum . Literally hearing the voice of God telling you to torment women as you picket outside an abortion clinic is akin to hearing the voice of Satan in your dog telling you to shoot people in their cars, yet we rarely refer to the “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz as being “devout”.

The American Religion is also intensely millennial, giving greater emphasis to the book of Revelations and apocalyptic traditions in general, than any other branch of Christianity that came before it, with the exception of sects which existed during the 1^st century (when the world as they knew it was literally coming to an end.) They view Biblical Prophecy through the prism of a supermarket tabloid horoscope page, tipping their hands to expose a Royal Flush of ignorance yet again.  

The Prophets of the Bible were in no way Soothsayers (like Nostradamus) giving a prediction of future events.  They were Social commentators/Stand up Comedians (like George Carlin or Bill Hicks) telling truth to power (and anyone else who would listen,) in concise, well written monologues. The Prophets were concerned with what was happening around them, not with what was going to happen after them. The reason that their “prophecies” are transferable out of the time in which they were written, is that they poeticized archetypes of the Human Experience as they were experiencing them. The people of Israel /Judea/Palestine/ endured the conquests and occupations of every single Empire in the ancient world, and they witnessed the collapse of each and every one of them, whenever a competitive neighbor rallied behind a conquering King. As a permanent “lesser” power they were given the perspective of observers from the sidelines of each of these Imperial contests between “greater” powers. The Prophets arguably understood the machinations of Empire, better than anyone alive at the time in which they wrote, thus they could speak with certainty about the falls of Nineveh and Babylon, and Persia and Greece, and eventually Rome. They had seen empires fall before, and they expected to see others fall again, and this insight was interpreted by them as God revealing himself in times of turmoil. The world was as God willed it to be and so each time he raised a conquering king it was either a Messiah to redeem his chosen people like Cyrus of Persia, or an Anti-Messiah to persecute them, like Antiochus Epiphanies of the Hellenic Seleucid dynasty ruling Syria.

The author of the Book of Revelations (let’s just keep calling him or her John for the sake of simplicity) largely followed this literary tradition, diverting from it only by giving the idealized King figure a personal identification in Jesus. In doing this John illustrates the possible large scale global implications of the message of Jesus as opposed to the small scale individual implications contained in his Gospel (yes I think they were written by the same person).

The complexities of Revelations fascinate me, so much so that I translated the entire thing from the original Greek, in order to experience it more directly. I think my enjoyment of the poetry of Revelations directly contributes to the irritation I feel when douche bags co-opt and corrupt it. I see it as the direct ancestor of the epic imaginations of Dante, Milton, and Blake, not as the source for the utter fucking banality of the “Left Behind” series. There will always be signs of the apocalypse, and contenders for the role of Antichrist, because John wrote it to keep people assuming that it is speaking to their time, and that Gods revelation is imminent. The Gospels say “Sleepers awake, for you know not when the time in at hand”, The Revelation says “Sleepers awake, there’s a ten headed monster behind you!”

The third unifying characteristic of the American Religion after Gnostic association with the divine and an apocalyptic world view is a preoccupation with the conversionary experience of being “born again” or “saved”. I have never been a subscriber to the belief that a person needs to be “born again” in Christ, despite what John says in the Gospel. I kinda think I got being born right the first time around thanks, besides, the emphasis of John is that one must be as a child to accept faith, meaning open and receptive. I have had moments of clarity concerning my own faith, but I don’t identify or commemorate them as the beginning of my spiritual walk through life. To do so would make it seem as if the experiences which preceded them had made no contributions to my evolution as a person.

Evangelical conversion experiences, whatever they may be, carry stamps of finality upon them. There is no room for further growth because the optimum state of being, is as a “born again” or “saved” believer. Self reflection becomes no longer necessary and the attention of the “born again” or “saved” believer can be directed outwards on the masses that have yet to receive their own conversionary experience. Resistance is futile!

Having examined the fundamentals of fundamentalists let’s turn now our attention to the characteristics which distinguish each of these four sects.

Baptists

Physical Characteristics: Identified by their red faces, multi decibel speaking voices, and 46 inch waists.

Unique Beliefs:Only full immersion is acceptable when baptizing, and a person must reach a certain age of maturity before they qualify. Additionally one must never be baptized until at least 30 min after they have eaten, and be sure never to run near the side of the baptismal font in case they slip and fall.

Famous Baptists: – Pat Robertson - popular religious broadcaster/asshole who over the course of his career has

Claimed that he had the power to steer the courses of hurricanes Gloria (1985) and Felix (1995) with his prayers

Described feminism as a “socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become Lesbians.”

Stated that the acceptance of homosexuality could result in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombings, and “possibly a meteor” (1998)

Stated that Scotland was a “dark land” overrun by homosexuals (1999)

Stated that people who have too much plastic surgery “got the eyes like they’re Oriental” and then Miley Cyrused his eyes to show what he meant (February 7 2007)

claims on his web site that through training and his “Age-Defying energy shake”, he is able to leg press 2,000 pounds

Rev. Jerry Falwell – The popular American Evangelical leader who sued anybody who publicly said anything mean about him, stated that the attacks on September 11 2001 were caused by “Pagans, Abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, the ACLU and the People for the American Way”

Also said

“The antichrist will arrive in a decade and of course he’ll be Jewish” (1999)

That a Tele-tubby was a gay icon

Fred Phelps - preacher and founder of God Hates Fags, from Topeka, Kansas  who organizes the Christ-like activity of picketing the funerals of Gay people, most notably Matthew Sheppard. If Judas is in the mouth of Satan himself within the center of hell as Dante insists, then it’s only to keep the spot warm for this incubated sock load.

Charles Colson- Watergate operative, Nixon administration insider; Chuck Colson became a popular “born-again” speaker and author after his release from prison proving that evangelicals become “born again” after they “turn to Christ” when they fuck up so bad down here that nobody else will talk to them.

Strom Thurmond - Senator from South Carolina. Oldest senator to hold office, and former member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Jesse Helms - Conservative senator from North Carolina (1973-2003) who famously opposed funding for HIV/AIDS.

Newt Gingrich - former Speaker of the House (U.S. House of Rep.) founder on the Neo-conservative movement that resulted in George W Bush.

Trent Lott- U.S. Senate Majority Leader until 2002, when he was ousted from leadership for being too racist for Republicans (stop and contemplate that)

Tom DeLay - Republican congressman from Texas; former House Majority Leader forced out of Congress in disgrace for attempting to sell the House of Representatives to lobbyist Jack Abramoff. I think of Tom Delay as the ball cancer of representational democracy.

Gary Condit- U.S. Representative from California; suspected of murdering intern Chandra Levy.

Personal reason for distain: When I was a little kid I went to a Baptist service and they told me my dad was going to hell because he smoked cigarettes. I remember thinking that they were going to hell for saying that to a little kid.

Pentecostals

Physical Characteristics: Identified by intense writhing about the floor while uttering nonsense “in tongues” which usually sound like Jumby incanting Mech-a-leck-a-high-mek-a-hi-nee-ho on Pee Wee’s Playhouse, they attribute this to the Holy Spirit, I attribute it to a denominational frontal lobotomy.

Unique Beliefs: One is only saved through Baptism in the Holy Spirit, and the evidence of this is in the speaking of tongues. There’s no joke here other than the fact that they are speaking in tongues, but that’s their joke, not mine.

Famous Pentecostals: Oral Roberts – controversial and popular American televangelist, who claimed to have visions of a 99 foot Jesus who commissioned him to cure cancer, this was in the mid 80’s …we’re still waiting. Founder of Oral Roberts University, many of whose graduates have been involved in scandals, largely revolving around Oral (both giving and receiving.)

Ted Haggard - Colorado pastor and head of the National Association of Evangelicals; who was caught having sex with a gay prostitute while tweaking on crystal meth.

Jim Baker - once popular PTL televangelist who was ruined by a sex/financial scandal, involving future playboy centerfold Jessica Hahn. On August 28^th 1989 Baker was found guilty of 24 counts of fraud, and sentenced to 45 years in prison, where he has found out first hand that it is easier for a rich man to get needled in the camel hole than it is for him to get into heaven.

Jimmy Swaggart - televangelist; instrumental in exposing the Jim Bakker scandal; soon thereafter scandalized himself after being repeatedly caught with prostitutes. Over the course of his career he has said the following:

“Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. Only atheists could accept this satanic theory.”

“I get amazed, I can’t look at it but about 10 seconds, at these politicians dancing around this, dancing around this, I’m trying to find a correct name for it, this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men.”

“I’m gonna be blunt and plain, if one (a gay man) ever looks at me like that I’m gonna kill him and tell God he died.”

“If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell.”

“Sex education classes in our public schools are promoting incest.”

Tammy Faye Baker - former wife of Jim Bakker and PTL co-leader; featured in film The Eyes of Tammy Faye and the generation defining talk show Jim Jay and Tammy Faye with Jim Jay Bullock.

Benny Hinn- televangelist; TV faith healer

John Ashcroft - U.S. attorney general (2001-2004); former senator from Missouri; U.S. congressman; constitutional rapist; singer of “Let the Eagle Soar”.

Personal reason for distain= I deeply resent the complexity of the Christian faith reduced to babbling and gyrating. Whenever I see them doing it in a movie or on TV I get douche chills.

Jehovah’s Witnesses

Physical Characteristics = Identified by the pale white they turn, while refusing blood transfusions in the emergency room.

Unique Beliefs:

They believe Christ died on a stake, because they say that the image of the cross is pagan; I say so were the Romans who crucified him.

No holiday celebrations of any kind, not even birthdays

They are not allowed to have blood transfusions, and if they do they can be thrown out of the church in a process called disfellowship.

No interfaith activities. (That’s right! They can annoy us but not associate with us. Well fuck them, I’m taking the gloves off then!)

Hubris Fun fact

They incorrectly believed the world was going to end in 1925, and 1975. Not really surprising since their founders were all Millerist Adventists, a group who predicted that the end of the world would be sometime between March 21 1843-1844, and then on April 18 1844, and then October 22 1844, and then in April, July, and October 1845.

Famous Jehovah’s Witnesses: Michael Jackson- nuff said!

Personal reason for distain= I hold them personally responsible for the destruction of the Rain Forrest, through the distribution of Watchtower magazines. Although I am impressed at the restraint they have shown by not becoming more of a presence on-line; the entire idea of SPAM seems tailor made for Jehovah’s Witnesses. This particular sect is by far the most apocalyptic, and quite frankly, I can’t trust people who are looking forward to the graphic torment and horror of Revelations to LITERALY happen.

Mormons

Physical Characteristics : Identified by the fact that they travel in twos, dress the same (even wearing special underwear called Temple Garments) and look too neat, as if they are hiding the fact that they are five alarm, six flags, rootin’-tootin’ crazy, not that they are mind you, that is just an example off the top of my head of the type of thing they could be hiding by their excessive clean cut appearance

Unique Beliefs: While there are many differences between the individual beliefs of each sect we have discussed, none are quite as different as the Mormons, who in actuality are about as close to Christianity as Islam is to Judaism. Their beliefs are largely framed by traditional Conservative principles and the interpretation of the visions of their founder/prophet/god Joseph Smith.

Famous Mormons: Joseph Smith –The founder of Mormonism and the author of its core documents. Their compositional timeline is as follows:

In 1832 Smith said that as a fourteen-year-old in 1820, he had received a “theophany”, or an appearance of God to man, which is commonly called the 1^st vision. Smith recorded several accounts of this experience, and the version later canonized by the Mormons was first publicly revealed in 1838.

Beginning as a youth in the early 1820s, Smith was paid to act as a “seer,” using seer stones in mostly unsuccessful attempts to locate lost items and buried treasure. Smith’s contemporaries describe Smith’s procedure to hunt for treasure as placing the stone in a white stovepipe hat putting his face over the hat to block the light, and then “seeing” the information in the reflections off of the stone.

His preferred “seer stone”, which some said he also used later to translate the golden plates, was chocolate-colored and about the size of an egg, found in a deep well he helped dig for one of his neighbors.

During this period Smith said he experienced a visitation from an angel named Moroni (a name so close to the word Moronic that I find myself going into irony seizures) who directed him to a long-buried book, inscribed on golden plates, which contained a record of God’s dealings with ancient Israelite inhabitants of the Americas. This record, along with other artifacts (including a Breastplate and what Smith referred to as the Urim and Thummim), was buried in a hill near his home.

On September 22, 1827, Smith said that after four years of waiting and preparation, the angel allowed him to take possession of the plates and other artifacts. Almost immediately thereafter local people tried to discover where the plates were hidden. (surprisingly no one was successful)

Smith and his wife moved to Harmony Pennsylvania with the financial assistance of their neighbor Martin Harris. Initially Smith told a few family members and Joseph Knight that he had retrieved the plates, as well as the Urim and Thummim. Harris (without seeing them) was convinced that the plates were genuine, and he began acting as Smith’s scribe while Smith “translated” them by “examining” the “Urim and Thummim” or “seer stones” in the bottom of his hat.

From April 12 to June 14, 1828, Smith and Harris worked consistently on the “translation”. A curtain divided the two men as Smith used “Urim and Thummim” or “seer stones” as “interpreters.” All the while keeping the “golden plates” safe from Harris’ view.

The result of their work was the “translation” of 116 pages. After relentless requests by Harris, Smith reluctantly allowed him to take the manuscript to Palmyra to assuage the growing skepticism of Harris’ wife Lucy. When Harris returned, long overdue, he told Smith that the manuscript had disappeared. (like the tablets)

On September 22, 1828, he slowly resumed translating with his 1^st wife Emma (who also had yet to see the tablets) taking the dictation.

The pace of the translation greatly increased after April 7, 1829, when Oliver Cowdery arrived in Harmony. Cowdery was a school teacher whose family, like Joseph’s, had engaged in treasure seeking and other magical practices, and Cowdery had taken an interest in Smith’s story while in Palmyra.

Smith dictated most of the Book of Mormon to Cowdery between early April and late June. Shortly after they said that “John the Baptist” came to them and  they were “ordained” by him. They then baptized one another in the Susquehanna River.

In early June 1829, Smith and Cowdery moved to Fayette New York to complete the “translation”, and Smith began to seek converts. When people believed, they did not just subscribe to the book; they were baptized. But as Joseph began to become known, the question of credibility had to be addressed again. Joseph knew his story was unbelievable. He finally had a “revelation” that others, known today as the 3 “Witnesses” and the 8 “Witnesses”, would bear “testimony” to the “existence” of the “plates”—which they did in early July 1829 (without having actually seen the plates).

Smith claimed to have “translated” other “ancient” documents by receiving supernatural direction “whether a text lay before him or not.” From the early 1830s came the Book of Moses, as well as an attempt to revise the Bible. Smith also collected his earlier “revelations”, which believers had already begun to treat as sacred texts, and published them in 1833 as the Book of Covenants, but my favorite of all Smiths “Revelations” occurred when he acquired a piece of papyrus from a peddler with Egyptian Hieroglyphs written on it. Smith “determined” through his “translating ability” that the document was a lost book written by none other than Abraham. When the very same document turned up in an auction in the mid 1970’s the Mormon Church claimed vindication, forgetting that there are people who can ACTUALLY read and translate ancient Egyptian, which of course happened, determining once and for all that the document was in fact a section of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Brigham Young – The successor of Joseph Smith and Moses of Mormonism, Young led his followers through the dessert to found the New Jerusalem, Salt Lake City. Also remembered for:

Marrying 55 wives.

Producing 57 children

Revoking the rights of priesthood from black Mormons

Having himself crowned Lord of Heaven on his deathbed by his inner council.

Personal reason for distain: Disappearing golden tablets? Temple garments!? Polygamy?!?  Baptism of the Dead!?!? Mitt Romney?!?!? I just…I mean….I….There is no way to not judge this, it’s just too stupid. HOW DOES ONE LITERALLY BELIEVE THIS!?!?!?!?!? Look, I admit that normative Christianity is pretty out there if taken literally, but what the fuck? Honestly somebody please help me here! HOW???!??? You know what? Fuck it, I’m done!

In fact I’m done with this entire fucking post. I need a shower just from writing about these scumbags individually. I stand by the philosophy that one must know their enemy and I yes even forgive them, but if I have to keep writing about who these pricks are, and what they’ve said and done, and how they have made everything so much harder for everyone else to co-exist, I’m gonna be sick, so let’s…let’s just stop here. I’m going to go calm down. I stared into the eye of the abyss for a little too long there and something started staring back at me, but I’m cool again. I just have to remember not to think about these people all at the same time; it makes me a little 28 days later.

I think a crash course on the basics will be the easiest way to begin this little endeavor. In no way am I attempting to proselytize, so please do not receive it as such. The information contained in this blog series has been gathered by a variety of sources, all of them scholastic in nature. I see no danger in information of any kind, and as religion in general and Christianity in specific don’t seem to be going anywhere what’s the harm in seeing what all the fuss is about?

Before it existed as the most successful religious movement of the Roman Empire, Christianity was an upstart little social club of Jews trying to get their own piece of the Judean pie in a time of political chaos. They had as the platform of their campaign, two stump speeches,

The “good news” of their founder’s message.

And

The “good news” of his “resurrection”.

Now I think that by and large we can all rally behind the bulk of the sayings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth within the synoptic Gospels; Matthew, Mark, and Luke (synoptic meaning “seen together”)

John is problematic because of his theosophical musings and an anti Semitism that stiffens the wood on Mel Gibson’s “cross” every time he reads it. But that is of no issue here. John’s gospel was the fourth in composition and is entirely independent of the material used commonly by the synoptic gospel writers. This source material is a collection of sayings found within all three synoptic gospels which biblical scholars have called Q, so named because it was written by a malevolent and omnipotent alien entity in between his adventures pestering the crew of the USS Enterprise on Star Trek (The Star Trek where the gay guy is an android, not an Asian)

          The Q sayings represent the earliest material in the Gospels and some may even have been the actual sayings of Jesus of Nazareth. They are visions of compassion and love. They are wisdom sayings in the tradition of the near and far east, and are worthy of intellectual contemplation, just as any other contributor to the formation of western thought would be.

In that spirit I have compiled sayings which are concurrent throughout the three synoptic gospels and the non canonical Gospel of Thomas. I then translated them from the original Greek texts as they were written by the author of Matthew, choosing this Gospel because of references made by the early Christian historian Eusebius to a gospel of Matthew used by the Jerusalem church which was made up of only the sayings of Christ. The Jerusalem church was headed by St James, the brother of Jesus, and was most rooted in the apostolic traditions which originated, in theory, with Jesus himself, so I felt this made it a nice candidate for the possibility of containing authentic sayings and traditions.

Eusebius also lists the (sayings) Gospel of Mathew as being the first of the four composed, a little under a decade after the crucifixion, which would mean that the material predates even the writings of St. Paul, who is typically considered the earliest Christian writer. The following is my translation from the Greek text of my version of either The Q Gospel, or if you want to believe Eusebius, the true unaffected Gospel of Matthew used by the original Jerusalem church. (I know all this is a pain in the ass but honestly reading this stuff will help you to confront the arrogance of Christian zealots in or around your life permanently. It may even make the swell up as they are allergic to facts.)

Happy are the spiritually poor, for they are to receive the kingdom of heaven.

Happy are those who lament, for they are to be comforted.

Happy are the hungry and thirsty for justification, for they are to be satisfied.

Happy are those who are persecuted on account of righteousness, for the kingdom is theirs.

You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt becomes tasteless, in what way shall it again become savory? No one is able, that is not thrown out, and trampled upon by man.

You are a light on the earth. A powerful city concealed upon a hill cannot stand. None would light a lantern and place it beneath a bushel, but upon a lamp stand to shine in the entire house.

I say to you, resist the wicked, but if anyone strikes you upon the right cheek, turn the other also. And if one wishes to sue you and take your tunic, remit unto them your cloak also. And if anyone compels you a mile, withdraw from them two. To all who ask, give, and those wishing to borrow from you, refuse not.

I say to you love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, in order that you come to be sons of your father in heaven; He that raises the sun upon the wicked and the good, and who sends rain upon the righteous, and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what rewards have you? Is not the same done by tax gatherers? And if you greet your brothers only, what have you done that is over and above? Is not the same done by gentiles? Therefore be complete as the father of us in heaven is complete.

When you are alms-giving, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

Store not for yourself a treasury upon the earth, where moths and rust hide from sight and where thieves dig in and steal. But store for yourself a treasury in the heavens where moths and rust hide not from sight and where thieves neither dig in nor steal. For where your treasure is, there also is your heart.

The lamp of the body is the eye. If then your eye is simple, the whole of your body is in bright light. But if your eye is evil, the whole of your body is in darkness. If then the light in you is in darkness then the darkness is full.

No one is able to serve two lords, for the one they will hate, and the other they will love, or they will be devoted to one and despise the other. One is not able to serve God and Mammon.

I say this to you; do not worry about your life, “What will I eat? What will I drink?” nor your body, “What will I put on?” Is your life not more than food and your body than clothing? Look at the birds of the heavens, which neither sow nor reap nor gather into granaries, and your father in heaven nourishes them. Do you not excel more than them? But which of you, by worrying, are able to add a single measure to your age? Why worry about clothes? Consider carefully the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, nor spin, but I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed as these. But if the grass of the field is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace by God, will the same not clothe you much more, you of little faith? Then worry not, saying “What do I eat? What do I drink? What do I wear? But seek first the Kingdom and the righteous and all things will be given in addition to you.

Judge not, that you are not judged. For in the judgment you judge with, you will be judged. And in the measure you measure with, you will be measured.

Why do you see the twig in the eye of your brother, but you perceive not the timber beam in your own eye? How do you say to your brother “Remit that I may draw out the twig in your eye.” When behold, you have a timber beam in your eye!

Ask and you receive. Search and you will find. Knock and the door will open for you. For to all who ask is given, and who search will receive, and who knock will have the door opened. Which is thereof out of you men who, if your son asked for bread, would you give him a stone, and if he asked for fish, would you give him a serpent. If you then know to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good things to those who ask?

Can one gather from the briars, a bunch of grapes, or a fig from a thistle? All good trees bear excellent fruit, but all rotten trees bear evil fruit. A good tree is not able to bear evil fruit, nor a rotten tree to bear excellent fruit.

Anyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them is like a wise man who builds his house upon the rocks, and rain comes down, and rivers come, and the winds blows and dashes the house, and it falls not, for it was founded upon the rocks. All who hear these words of mine and act not upon them are like a foolish man who builds his house upon the sand, and down falls the rain, and the rivers come, and the winds blow, and dash the house, and it falls, and the fall is great.

          These are the basics, the foundations for everything else in Christianity. These sayings are how I can call myself a Christian. They make the myth in which they are entwined, worthy of exploration. To understand these is to understand the faith itself, so let me boil them down further into a single, easy to remember adage: Be nice stupid!

By becoming familiar with these sayings, you will have a greater command of The New Testament then the majority of evangelical Christians that you meet. The beauty of these texts is that almost every one of them stands in opposition to the notions of religious fundamentalism, theocratic oppression, and intolerance of the “other”. They are the Hammer to bludgeon the sanctimonious gasbags who never cease to stand up and tell you what you’re doing wrong, and what’s going to happen to you because of it. Shame, guilt and fear are fundamentalist tactics, it’s real fun to throw it back in their faces…you know… if you’re not up for “turning the other cheek”.

The resurrection is a little trickier to explain, and/or justify.

Before the story of the passion was written and recited every year at Easter, there was essentially the phrase “Jesus is Christ, He has risen”; fairly straight forward when you have the contextual narrative of temptation, trial, torture, crucifixion, and resurrection stamped on your sub-conscience, after years of Sunday school (or even worse; years of the kids you played with across the street, telling you about Sunday school), but how would one process the statement if they were unaware of the details of the later developed story. Let’s take a closer look at it;

“Jesus is Christ, He has risen!”

I suppose it would mean that a man named Jesus had either

Physically risen.

Or

Spiritually risen

(Whatever that could mean.)

If it were referring to a physical resurrection, why not say so in the jingle from the get go? Why beat around the burning bush? Something like ‘Friday the Good part 2, Jesus Lives!’ Or ‘Return of the Living Christ!’ would have been much clearer. The phrase’s lack of context makes it feel like it is part of a larger discussion, perhaps a discussion from the time in which it was used. It is possible that it means exactly what it has been taken to mean for the past 1600-1800 years, but I have an alternative that has a historical link to one of the most divisive theological/political debates of Roman occupied Judea, which was going on in the period before, during, and after the time of Jesus’ life.

          The 1^st century Judean political landscape was primarily divided between three factions; the Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes (think Republicans, Democrats, and Greens/Independents.)  In the same way that the key divide in American politics is between pro-life and pro-choice, the disagreement of this era was over the existence of an afterlife, so it was more Pro-life after death against Pro-choice of affordable burial.

The Sadducees were traditionalists who adhered to the belief, that the soul or spirit within a person was as perishable as their flesh, which pretty much meant that to them when a person died, they were gone for good. The Pharisees and the Essenes on the other hand were influenced by the spread of Hellenic culture which occurred after the conquests of Alexander the Great. They held onto the Greek and Egyptian notions of the existence of an imperishable soul or spirit, which left the flesh to decay after death and entered a realm of the dead. The word that the 1^st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus used to describe this journey of the soul was resurrection. 

          With this context in mind let us re-examine the proclamation discussed earlier;

“Jesus is Christ, He is Risen!”

Is this a report of literal fact, or is it a statement of philosophy, akin to saying life begins at conception, in today’s political climate? Were the first Christians telling the people around them that their executed master had physically gotten up after sleeping off a crucifixion hangover in a tomb, OR were they saying that their martyred master had a soul (or spirit) far too great, to simply rot away with his broken body, and that he stood as the proof of an imperishable soul, since God would not allow something so pure to pass into oblivion.

          This is how I view the resurrection. Not merely because it means that I don’t have to suspend my disbelief by accepting the notion of a dead man returning back to life, but also because it reasonably fits into the picture of the philosophical landscape painted, by historians OF THE ERA in which all this came to pass. I do not believe the resurrection is a historical event, it is a personal one, whereby one is inspired by the ultimate sacrifice to raise the message of love and acceptance of the “other” up from the pages of the book and carry them into their day to day life. The Gospels, as entertaining and indeed thought provoking as they are, never claim to be in any way, shape, or form, documents used for the recording of history. They claim to be purveyors of truth in very much the same way that a sacred or philosophical text would, whereas Josephus claims authority over history alone.

Should our “Historical” views not be shaped by historians using historical methods, while our “Theological and Philosophical” views are being shaped by Theologians and Philosophers, using theological and philosophical methods?

I think they should, and for most of us they are.

Using evidence and a less then judicious helping of reason, one can actually construct a meaning for the resurrection myth that no longer defies both, evidence and reason, yet comfortably denies dumbassedness and biblethumposity.

          Do you have a ruddy faced aunt and/or uncle who annually force prayer on you at the family dinner table before allowing the lab specimens they colorfully refer to as children     to ravage the carefully prepared meal laid out before them, in a manner more befitting a pack of wolverines, than the chosen people of God?

          I can help you.

Have you ever been channel surfing and stopped briefly on a televangelists broadcast to really listen to the utter shit he or she me be spouting about gays and/or abortions and wonder if they themselves may not be gay or aborted?

I can help you.

Was your science class ever stopped, so that the creepy “religious” kid (the one who wore corduroys and cardigans every day, even when it was hot outside) could get up and usher his/her pimpled ass  out of the room so that his, her, or it’s flaccid mind would not become infected by the heretical nature of FACT? (I’m just assuming the ass was pimpled based on the observation that his/her face, neck, shoulders, arms, and legs are quarantined acne fields)

I can help you.

Is the sanctity of your home ever defiled by Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, rat-a-tat-tatting on your door, peddling their petty notions of divine wrath written upon disappearing golden fucking tablets, or watchtower pamphlets?

I can help you.

Are you a person who has a fleeting, yet remaining faith in aspects of the religion of your childhood, which you hide away, for fear that by indulging your religious inclination you might turn into one of the above mentioned dickheads?

I can help you.

Come to me my people. Let me quell your pain. I am one of you, and you are one with me.

I have always had an active spiritual life. I attend church regularly and have done so for the whole of my adult life (and a large part of my childhood as well). I am of the Anglican tribe, a textbook member, being theologically progressive, but liturgically traditional. I enjoy the immersion within the biblical poetry that exists within the Anglican order of service. I like hymns written before 1900. I do not believe that faith and a liberal social conscience are mutually exclusive states of being. The Anglican Church has always suited me for these reasons. It is of aesthetic comfort to me as I contemplate the notion of the expansiveness of divinity, and since high school I have known that I would someday enter the clergy.

Now I can almost hear the sound of the secular humanists out there turning away from the page they are reading, even as I write it. So let me take a little time to explain the paradox that they no doubt, believe exists within me. It is possible to possess both reason and faith, as a matter of fact a large majority of the people responsible for the advent and promulgation of reason throughout history, have BEEN people of faith.

Evolutionary biology is sound science and I believe in it, additionally theoretical physics is sound science and I believe in the big bang. I do not however believe that these sciences invalidate the idea of God, or even the idea of creation. One simply needs to conceptualize it in very much the same way that Chaos theory finds order in randomness. To ascribe a human notion of consciousness to an entity that transcends humanity in every possible way is oxymoronic. A true God of the universe would neither will day to be, nor find it good, it would never break the momentum of creation for such reflection; it would simply continue to create, thus the universe would be ever expanding, which according to the most current scientific theory, it is.

I see God as that very momentum which allows for progression, or creation, or evolution, not in an effort to anthropomorphize science, but merely to simplify it down into a genre that is conducive to my own reflection. I am not equipped with the vocabulary or intellectual capacity that men like Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, or Stephen Hawking possess. Does that mean that I should be prohibited from exploring the possibilities of the infinite? I read Genesis not only because I enjoy poetry and storytelling, but also because I understand poetry and storytelling.

I share a world view with a scientist in the same way that an architect shares an appreciation for a building with a foreman of construction. One person values the aesthetic of the buildings lines, while the other appreciates the nature of its composition, neither are wrong. I describe the world with poems, they describe it with equations. Both are valid.

That being said, it hasn’t always been easy for me to be a person of faith. Indeed it has taken a great deal of time for me to come to terms with the notion of myself as a Christian, not from a doubt of my own concept of faith as much as from a desire to be disassociated from the segments of intolerance existing across the denominational lines of the Catholic and Protestant Christian Church.

I became socially aware in the 1980s, which was the decade that saw the 2^nd “Great Awakening” of the American Evangelical Spirit. It was the era of Pat Robertson the televangelist mouth of religious inspired intolerance and Jerry Falwell, its lobbying/avenging right arm.

I witnessed the rise of the Religious Right as a dominant political entity with its standard bearer at the helm of the American State, evangelical Ronald Reagan, a man who had regular consultations from religious leaders on the scriptural/prophetic significance of American foreign policy in the Middle East (which essentially meant that he was for protecting the Jews in Israel from the Muslim world, only so that Jesus could return and kill them all together.)

This was also the era where the sub-sections of the human experience decided that the mainstream no longer had any control over them. Women and Minorities began to assert themselves and claim a voice within the assembly, and no minority more so than the Gay Community. I suppose it is natural that when a change in what is conventional occurs, there are segments of the masses which oppose that change with all their might, but why must there be opposition to changes in convention that have absolutely no effect on the masses. The only change that occurs en-masse in these circumstances are an increase in awareness of the “other”, and so I ask the question; what is it about further awareness that threatens these people so much?

The Great Awakening of the 1980’s was nothing more than the conservative branches of religion in general (Christianity in specific) concerning themselves in the affairs of others. It was a crusade against the rights of the individual that continues, more or less, to this day. Whereby congregations of the faithful impose their will on everyone else, telling us all;

What we can watch, read, or listen to.

What we can consume in our own bodies.

What we can classify as science.

When we MUST give birth.

Who we MUST NOT love.

Conservatives on the far right began to rob society of the notion of Civil Rights, and the Christian Faith was the gun they used to commit the crime.

My own crises, or more accurately shame, of Faith was linked to this. How could I possibly believe in the same things they did? Where we both Christians? Was I something else? Where they? These questions led me to searching through ancient and sacred texts in an effort to understand the theological or at least scriptural basis for the hatred displayed by evangelicals and fundamentalists.

I came to determine that there were no foundations for their claims in scripture which could be used under any reasonable standard of evidence. There are incidental references within the texts of the Bible that would suit just about every possible immorality as an endorsement of righteousness if one gleans through it.

          The Bible (as wonderful a book as I feel it is) is from a different age. Several different ages to be more precise, so many ages in fact that by the time you get to the later books, you find that God Himself has decided to do away with much that had already been said in the earlier books.

It bears the mark of the numerous civilizations that contributed, through the machinations of empire, to the culture, or rather the people, the Bible claims as its own; Israel. At times it reads like a Babylonian epic or kings list, other times it could easily be a Greek history or philosophical treatise, and it’s chosen people are a faith based society not unlike the inhabitants of the Nile Valley, that most religious of ancient cultures, the Egyptians.  

          As we have not retained the laws, customs, diet, medical practices or political organizations of these ancient cultures, why must we hold on to their prejudices?

If the Bible were littered with passages condemning ONLY gays, drug addicts, Howard Stern, and doctors who perform abortions, I would have to accept the fact that the religious right had a theological basis for Hatred, BUT IT IS NOT!!! I am therefore left with the conclusion that the congregations who hate in the name of God are pimps, and their churches are whores, and it is up to the progressives within the faith to stand up and say so.

          I am saying so.

          I intend to stand idly by no longer. I will not allow these snake oil salesmen in their cheap shoes and pink convertibles, to foul up the temple of my God! I will over turn their tables wherever I encounter them starting here and now.

This is about combating ignorance with information to expose these people for what they are, bigoted hypocrites.

This is about reclaiming the Faith in the name of social progression, so that it may once again seek to establish a world built upon a foundation of love for the other.

This is about allowing the idea of God to become more than just a petulant asshole sitting in the clouds bitching and moaning every time somebody stays in bed and masturbates on Sunday morning instead of schlepping out into the cold to make the 8:30 service.

This about ending the Culture war we are currently battling, so that we may live in a society that preserves the interests of the individual as its methodology for maintaining the cohesion of society as a whole.

Religion was made for man, not man for religion. It is a conduit through which humanity expresses and explores its unforeseen potential. It allows us to walk into the unknown with confidence and meet adversity with resolve. It even occasionally offers us brief moments of pure inspiration, through which we encounter truth in its unobjective form. I have come to cultivate my own individual theological identity. I contemplate a notion of God no doubt quite different from the picture painted by the articles of religion of the church in which I pray, but that does not mean that we are incompatible. I think if one were to poll every member of every congregation of every denomination of every religion on the planet as to how they each conceptualized “God”, one would encounter as many variations in the answer as there were people who were asked the question. God is individual, just as we are individuals, and it many, just as we together are many. This is how we exist in God’s image, and how God exists in ours. I must work to free this God from within the scriptural captivity of fanatics.

This is God’s work, and to God alone (whatever he, she or it may be) do I answer for it. For the sake of the rest of you I promise to include dick jokes.

What I propose is simple. A guidebook/manual/manifesto to use as a primer for any and all who read it, to smack down any Christian Conservative who tries to piss in your sandbox. I can share my secrets on how to make Jehovah’s Witnesses actively avoid your house after a single visit. I can establish the bullet points to discuss in order to trigger a Mormon crisis of faith. I can explore the myths from other cultures that contributed to the traditions in the Book of Genesis which are the foundations of Kirk Cameron’s education. I can do a Levitical Law Review to determine who we can and cannot stone to death for menstruating.

I have been haunted by thoughts of the Christian fundamentalist conditioning of children, which was focus of the Documentary Jesus Camp. The woman who operates the camp in the film is on a crusade to essentially raise an army of evangelists to spread her hatful perversion of Christianity, like theological AIDs.

 The world will need a vaccine from their virus, if people like her continue to orchestrate outbreaks.

 In the height of the inquisition, a document was released by the church named the Compendium Malificarum, or the Witches Hammer. It was a guide book on how to identify and execute witches and other demoniacs, or more accurately, on how to persecute undesirables within societies midst. Let’s take a page from their playbook and see if we can’t draft our own “Evangelical Hammer”.