This is the twenty-fifth installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.
Today’s bit is Living With Religion by David Cross.
Warning, many of the comedy bits in this series will contain profanity. You have been warned.
Another family member died. He was 50 and suffered greatly for over 20 years.
Maybe death was a release for him, I don’t know. The preacher at his funeral said it was. All I know for sure is that he is dead and he ain’t coming back.
People say his suffering is over. They speak of him being in a better place.
He can’t speak for himself on these matters. He is dead.
Maybe he would be willing to suffer as long as that meant he could live another day.
Maybe he would choose this life, the only reality he has ever known, over a promised, never-seen, life in a better place.
All of us seem to think that we know what the dead would have wanted.
Have you ever thought about what it means to be dead?
I have.
Perhaps I am a bit morbid, too introspective for my own good.
I have had those moments in the still of the night, moments when I think of being alive one moment and dead the next.
The reality of non-existence.
In a split second, going from a living, conscious, thinking human to nothing.
I am a glass half-empty kind of person, a pessimist and a realist at heart,
Instead of focusing on all my relatives and acquaintances who have lived 70, 80 or 90 years, I focus on those who haven’t.
Dad was 47 when he died, Mom was 54.
I had several cousins who died in their early 50s.
One of my uncles, in his 30s, was murdered.
My sister-in-law died in a 2005 Memorial Day motorcycle accident, She was 43.
My best friend’s sister, a girl I went to school with in the 1960s, died in her early 50s.
I could go on and on…
These deaths are poignant reminders of my own mortality.
Even if I live to age 70, I have 11 years of life left, just short of the amount of time we have lived in our present home.
I don’t think I will live that long. Maybe I will. I certainly hope so, but my body tells me not a chance.
Despite the pain and increasing loss of mobility and cognitive function, I still want to live.
Maybe there will come a day when I won’t want to live any longer. Maybe not.
Today? I want to be counted among the living.
The truth is this: I fear death.
Death is the one experience that no human, including Jesus, has ever come back from to tell its story.
I fear the darkness and finality that death brings.
Fearing death is quite normal.
Who wants to trade a living existence for the emptiness of the grave?
Someone is sure to say, I hate my life, I wish I were dead.
Fine, kill yourself.
I thought so…
Yes, life can suck, life can be unbearable, and life can bring agony and suffering at every turn.
Yet, we still want to live.
Religion exists for the purpose of calming our fear of death.
Forget all the doctrines, religion is the antidote for the frightening reality of death.
Evangelicals Christians love to talk of being ready to die. Take me Lord Jesus when it is my time to go, they piously say.
They speak with big theological words about not fearing death because of Jesus who conquered death for them.
They speaking of their readiness to die for their faith if called on to do so.
Yet, few Christians seem to be in a hurry to die.
Christian want to live just as everyone else does. Don’t listen to their words. Watch how they live.
I find no comfort in religion, nor do I find any solace in thoughts of returning to the collective universal consciousness when I die.
All I know for sure is that dead is dead and I am not ready to become an urn of ashes scattered along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.
As the Petra (a Christian rock group) song says, I want to live until I die.
This is the twenty-fourth installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.
Today’s bit is an ABC interview of David Cross on his use of religion in his comedy routines.
Warning, many of the comedy bits in this series will contain profanity. You have been warned.
This is the twenty-second installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.
This is the twenty-first installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.
Today’s bit is If Football Players Were Atheists by College Humor.
Warning, many of the comedy bits in this series will contain profanity. You have been warned.
This is the seventy-sixth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
[My church believes heaven and hell are real places.]
[Mmm. Uh huh.]
[And uh, guess which one you are going to if you keep this up?]
[I don’t know how we can fix a world where people have been so convinced that they are doing the right thing out of compassion and love and trying to help people when it is absolute poison. When it is absolutely destructive.]
Now who’s the one that is responsible for how the world is?
Who’s the one that is responsible for how we all live?
Who takes the negative influences and poisons all the kids
So they just repeat the stupid shit that you and I did?
Who’s the species that wallows in this puddle of mud?
Who’s the one that painted the planet in buckets of blood?
Who’s the one that begs a god for forgiveness of sins,
Then turns right around the next day and does it again?
Who’s the money hungry monsters that poisons the air,
Kills his own kind and steals the land ’cause he can’t share?
Who points the finger at a devil trying to shift the blame
And hides his hands because he knows that they’re covered in blood stains?
Yeah it’s just as you assuming it’s nothing but these humans
Would like to blame mythology for everything they doing.
They pray for non-existient gods to clean up the mess,
But never take responsibility just claim it’s a test.
See, that religion you’ve been given is shit and it’s all poison
And it’s partially the reason we’re bleeding it’s all poison
Yo, your worldview is poison and your outlook, is poison
You can deny it all you want but the truth is it’s all poison
That religion you’ve been given is shit and it’s all poison
And it’s partially the reason we’re bleeding, it’s all poison
Yo, your worldview is poison and your outlook is poison
You can deny it all you want but the truth is it’s all poison
See, as long we keep believing in demons, devils and goblins
We’ll never see a reason to tackle problems and solve ’em
‘Cause we gonna keep on thinking it’s part of divine prophecy
And we don’t have to solve is cause one day Jesus will stop it, see?
Many of y’all invested in living life after death
And nobody’s ever proved that we even have a soul yet
So while everybody’s speculating, lots of ya’ll are hesitating
Praying with your fingers crossed and hoping there’s a heaven waiting.
So sky daddy’s only talking to your group, huh?
And everything in your holy book is the truth, huh?
And we gonna burn if we don’t listen to you, huh?
Well, every other group is claiming that too bruh.
So don’t be coming at me unless you got some evidence
And use some reason and logic to make it make sense.
I think it’s evident that ever since I start asking for evidence
They stuttered like they got a speech impediment.
See, that religion you’ve been given is shit and it’s all poison
And it’s partially the reason we’re bleeding, it’s all poison
Yo, your worldview is poison and your outlook is poison
You can deny it all you want but the truth is it’s all poison
That religion you’ve been given is shit and it’s all poison
And it’s partially the reason we’re bleeding, it’s all poison
Yo, your worldview is poison and your outlook is poison
You can deny it all you want but the truth is it’s all poison
I still get asked fairly often, Bruce, do you believe in God? Even though I self-identify as an atheist, some people doubt that I really, really, r-e-a-l-l-y believe that there is no God.
When it comes to the God question, I am agnostic. I can say with great confidence that I don’t believe any of the current deities in the human panoply of Gods is God at all. Could some sort of deity show up on the scene in the future? Sure, it is possible. Is it probable? No.
So why then do I self-identify as an atheist and not an agnostic?
First, I got tired of having to explain what I meant by the word agnostic. Saying, I am an atheist is pretty straightforward and less likely to misinterpreted.
Second, I live from day to day with no thought of whether a deity exists. I don’t do anything in my life that remotely says to someone else, Bruce believes in God (and I have met a lot of Christians who are just as atheistic as I am). Morally and ethically I do my best to live according to humanistic principles. (See The Humanist Manifesto III.) My concern is with how I live in the here and now. I have no thoughts of Heaven (or hell), no thoughts of eternal life, and no thoughts at all about anything beyond the grave.
That said, when I look at the natural world I can certainly see how someone might adopt some form of deism. While I do not find deistic arguments intellectually satisfying, I do understand how someone might come to such a conclusion. Most of the deists I know are every bit as atheistic as I am. The difference between us is that they hope that there is some sort life beyond the grave.
Even if I grant the premise that it is possible/likely that a God of some sort created the universe, there is no plausible way for me to make the jump from this nonspecific, ambiguous God to the Christian God of the Bible. Believing that a God of some sort created everything is one thing, but believing that the Christian God of the Bible is that creator is a leap of faith I cannot take (and I wish Christians would admit that when they use the word God, it is not a generic God they are talking about).
At the end of the day, atheism and evolution offer the best explanations for what I observe in the natural world. Do they provide ALL the answers? Of course not, but I no longer need certainty. I am quite content to live with ambiguity, and not knowing everything is a humble reminder that I am human. While I still thirst for knowledge and understanding, I know that my quest will never reach a place of certainty or infallibility.
Originally written in 2009. Edited for clarity and grammar.
Sin.
According to the Bible sin is transgression of the law.
Let the debate begin.
Which law?
Old Testament?
New Testament?
Both?
Christianity teaches that sin separates us from God.
Sin is what sent Jesus to the cross.
We are all sinners.
Born that way.
We sin because we are sinners.
Sin will ultimately land us in hell unless we trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins.
Sin is the problem and Jesus is the solution.
Our hearts are black, but Jesus can make them white through his blood that he shed on the cross.
Without sin, I wonder if Christianity would exist?
For those of us who are not Christians, sin takes on a different meaning.
Since there is no God to offend, and no God to give an account to, sin does not carry the force that it does for the Christian.
The list of sins, according to the Bible, according to the pastor, according to each Christian, is quite long.
Every person has his or her own sin list.
No two sin lists are the same.
As an unbeliever, my “sin” list is quite short.
And it gets shorter every day.
Since I reject the Bible as an objective standard of right and wrong, how do I determine my morals and ethics?
Do I need a god, church, or pastor to tell me what my morals and ethics should be?
Do I need a Bible to tell me what is right or wrong?
According to the Bible, all the law can be summed up in two commands:
Love God
Love your fellow man
My morals and ethics are based on the premise that I should love my neighbor as myself.
I should treat people like I would want to be treated.
I should not do things that would harm other people.
I should value my relationships with my family and my fellow human beings to the degree that I live in such a way that my actions cause them no harm.
God does not enter the picture. My only concern is the relationships I have with others. When I live in a selfish, unloving, unkind, unjust manner then I am “sinning” against my fellow human beings.
My “sin” does not bring the judgment of God, but it does hurt the relationships I have with others.
My “sin” causes personal loss and pain.
If what I do does not hurt others or damage my relationships with them then it is not “sin.”
This makes life much simpler for me.
I am still a “sinner” but I am much less a “sinner” now that I have abandoned Christianity.
Losing God, the Bible, and the complex, never-ending, sin list has allowed me to realize, for the first time in many, many years, that it is okay to be human.
After living a lifetime of denying who I am, I am now free to be Bruce. In many ways, I am still finding out who I really am.
I suspect I will always have a Christian sin hangover. A lifetime of being beat over the head with an angry God, a dying Savior, and a rule book called the Bible, has left a lot of deep wounds. In the time, the wounds heal, but the scars remain.
This is the time of year when Evangelical soothsayers, psychics, and Nate Silver (ESPN 538) make predictions for the coming year. I thought, in keeping with the spirit of the New Year, that I, the atheist version of Carnac the Magnificent, would make a few predictions of my own. Here’s my 15 Astounding Predictions for 2016.
Richard Dawkins will say something stupid.
Neil deGrasse Tyson will say something brilliant.
The Pope will not get laid.
Evangelicals will continue to say the rapture is nigh.
At least three Evangelical preachers will be arrested and charged with molesting children and 25 others will be accused of sexual misconduct.
Evangelicals will continue to say atheists hate God and secretly want to have wanton, immoral sex.
Franklin Graham will be exposed as a cross dressing transvestite.
Evangelical Calvinists will continue to say their critics don’t understand Calvinism.
Donald Trump will say bat-shit crazy stuff and his followers will love it.
Evangelicals will continue to think that Christianity is under attack and that secularists are trying to make Christianity illegal.
Tea Party Republicans will continue to think that the lame stream media controls America and that Muslim socialist Barack Hussein Obama is coming to take their guns.
The day after Thanksgiving, Fox News will say that there is a War on Christmas.
One Million Moms will continue to be outraged over nudity, cursing, and gay kissing on TV. This year they will find their lost remote and learn that if they push the channel button it changes the channel.
Democrats will win the presidency, a sure sign that the Antichrist is preparing to usher in the new world order.
In 2012, tens of thousands of skeptics, secularists, atheists, agnostics, and humanists gathered in Washington DC to give testimony to the rise of American secularism. This was, for many secularists, a coming-out party. This was godless Americans telling Christians that they were no longer willing to stand idly by while the religious right trampled on the US Constitution and the separation of church and state. Most of all, it was a public statement of solidarity, a reminder that secularists can be found in virtually every walk of life.
Four years later, American atheist and humanist groups are gearing up to host another Reason Rally. The Rally will be a multi-day event, Thursday, June 2nd through Sunday, June 5th, culminating with a huge gathering at the Lincoln Memorial from 8 am to 5 pm on June 4th. You can find out more about the 2016 Reason Rally here.
Several readers have asked if I plan to attend the Rally. They would like for me to be considered for one of the speaking slots during the four-day event. While I would never recommend myself to be a speaker, It certainly would be an honor if I was asked to do so.
Roy Madewell, a long-time friend and reader of this blog, asked if I would please encourage readers to suggest to Rally planners that I be considered for one of the speaking slots. Fearing the wrath of Roy and his merry band of atheists, I have acquiesced to his request. If you would like to suggest to planners that I speak at the Rally, please contact them here. (link no longer active)
Originally written in 2009. Edited for clarity and grammar.
