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.
What follows is a letter my mother wrote to the editor of the Bryan Times It was published May 7, 1969. I am hoping this letter will provide a glimpse of the type of home I grew up in. I was 11 years old when this letter was written. 12 days later, this letter was also published in the Toledo Blade.
Bryan Times:
In view of recent student uprisings, revolts, demonstrations, anarchy and lawlessness on college and university campuses in these United States — I, an American taxpayer and mother of three children, urge a PUBLIC Congressional Investigation into the colleges and universities that fit the above and an investigation into the SDS, its leaders, motives, and followers.
Either local authorities on campus or the government must stop this outrage or there should be a taxpayers’ revolt. I, for one, do not care to support such so-called institutions for a so-called higher education. Why don’t parents of these students cut off funds? Why doesn’t the government cut off funds to such institutions and cut off student loans to such students?
Now, summer approaches and Americans are wondering and waiting to see whether the riots in our cities will resume. Many of these same students will be taking to the streets this summer. Rioting has become a habit, a thrill. I have heard the remark, many riot all day and run home to watch themselves on the 6 o’clock news.
Many Americans are justifiably living in fear. I have heard remarked that only a dictator and a police state will be able to protect American citizens from anarchy and lawlessness. Is this what we want? I ask you to ask yourself, what can I do? What can or should our duly elected government officials do? What can or should our tax supported institutions do? Let your universities and government officials know how you feel. It is time to stand up and be counted.
I had thought that with a new administration (Richard Nixon) we might begin to enter into a period of law and justice and might once again go back to majority rule upon which this country was founded. How can a handful of 50 students completely subdue a college campus and its authorities?
I used to think a college education was an ideal goal for a youngster. Now I am very skeptical of sending my children to such an educational institution. Have you ever asked yourself why the students on the large and small campuses of Bible colleges and other religious institutions are not rioting, or are you trying not to think, period? (now that was one snarky line, Mom)
Did you ever stop to think that the students who do not like their teachers, courses, university rules and regulations have the freedom to go elsewhere? Perhaps a trip to Vietnam might give them the proper perspective. While our boys fight and die to preserve freedom, the students usurp the freedom and rights of others to an education in a tax supported institution. Teachers not going along with students are being intimidated as well as their families being threatened. Some even have had bomb threats in the name of freedom.
To all college and university authorities, to all judges and law enforcement officials and to all government officials: in regards to the students, I say Amnesty-NO, Prosecution, Expulsion-YES.
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-third 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-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-eighth 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.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Save it for a Sunday by Jessica McYorker.
bop pa di da pa di da da da da da…
you don’t fool me
and you know it
what makes me nervous is you sound so sure
there you go again
i swear it never ends
it’s starting to feel like i’m not even in this room
with youuuu with yooouuuu oohh
oh di dum di dum dum (ooh) di dum dim dum dum doo dum di dum oohhooh
i’m not saying
i won’t listen
it’s just that i don’t seem to get through
i won’t ask you
to take me seriously
as long as i don’t have to believe you
hope you buy half of all the things you say
but for now please save it for a sunday
ba di dum pum da dum di dum
This is the twentieth 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 Touched by an Atheist by George Carlin.
Warning, many of the comedy bits in this series will contain profanity. You have been warned.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
This is the seventy-eighth 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.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is The Skeptic in the Room by Eddie Scott.
I’m always amazed that some people believe
things that defy common sense
How do they accept the bizarre and the odd
for which there is no evidence
Sure, some people say that it’s harmless
And I wish I could just let it go…
But it’s not what we know that makes trouble
It’s what we know – that just isn’t so.
It’s always such a drag to be the skeptic in the room
I state my case and watch the room grow silent as a tomb
‘Cause I’m the one who always says “How’s that supposed to work?”
Which makes me end up sounding like an overbearing jerk
Yes, it’s a drag to always be the lonely skeptic in the room
I have to speak my mind when pseudo-science starts to bloom
Although I try to hold my tongue sometimes I just can’t make it quit…,
‘Cause people sure believe some crazy shit!
I have a friend, her name is Laura, loves to talk about her aura
Every time she’s off her game: her dented aura is to blame
She says everybody’s got ‘em, cameras have been known to spot ‘em:
Magic, mystic aural energy
One day I just had to ask her, Laura, make it clear…
How’s it all supposed to work? Please tell me – I’m all ears!
How’s an aura get created?, tell me how’s it’s generated…
is there a hypothesis for how an aura can exist?
Maybe you’re just having mood swings, which you blame on magic woo things
That’s the last time Laura talked to me!
My friend Dennis he’s a scholar; his tech skills earn him top dollar
just a few short years ago, Dennis saw a UFO!
Now he says they’re all around us; Aliens in fact surround us
Probably they’re living right next door!
I say “Dennis, tell me buddy, help me understand…”
How can there be flying saucers, buzzing ‘round the land?”
How come every single sighting seems to come in lousy lighting
I guess I’d accept the truth, with valid photographic proof
But when you saw those lights a blinking – had you maybe just been drinking?
Dennis doesn’t call me anymore!
Britney is a modern lady, rather green and quite new-agey
Claims her latest malady, was cured by homeopathy!
She says it has magic rules, just take some wholesome molecules…
dissolve them in the purest H2O!
Britney took this grand concoction, and her pain was fixed.”
“Come again,” I had to say, “just what was in that mix?”
If it works well what would then be – water has selective mem’ry?
Knows the good but not the shit, that ever was dissolved in it.
Thanks to science here’s what we know, really it’s a big placebo…
Britney told me just where I can go.
I have a friend, no doubting Thomas, quite devout and really honest,
Says despite what we’ve been told, the Earth is really not that old.
He will brook no whys or wherefores, that’s what holy books are there for
Earth was born six thousand years ago.
To contradict you, Thomas, I admit to feeling grief
But maybe there’s some evidence to counter your belief!
Like chemistry, biology, astronomy, anatomy,
astrophysics, botany, geology, zoology…
molecular biology, physics, physiology
Thomas says “So what?” they’ll burn in Hell!
My young neighbors Dave and Tina, talked about how they had seen a
Former Playboy pinup queen, shouting out about vaccines.
Now they think its realistic – so that no one grows autistic
Not to vaccinate their little kids.
Dave, please listen now before it really is too late
Don’t take health advice from one to whom you used to masturbate?!
Beauty queens have certain assets; science really ain’t their strong set
you should get a good assist – from a freaking scientist!
Guys, I won’t speak gingerly – ‘cause this could cause great injury
The right thing is what Dave and Tina did!
So…it’s…not… always such a drag to be the skeptic in the room
Sometimes I state my case and find that people will consume
Though I’m the one who always says “How’s that supposed to work?”
It doesn’t have to mean that I’m an overbearing jerk
No it’s not bad to always be the lonely skeptic in the room
Bu I’ll still speak my mind when pseudo-science starts to bloom
Although I try to hold my tongue I know I’ll never quit…,
‘Cause people do believe …
And man do they believe!
Yes, people do believe some crazy shit!
