I Pray for Your Soul
It may surprise you to hear that when I was in my early teens, I wanted to be a minister. In a way, I guess I still do. Either fortunately or unfortunately, however, I have lost all faith in organized religion having the answer to anything except maybe how to torture and kill those who oppose you in the bloodiest and most grotesque fashion. It gives me physical pain to see those who use the beautiful teachings of Christ, Mohammad, and Moses (there are others, but these are the big three) to further their own goals. They're taking a solid moral foundation and a wonderful mythology and twisting it into something grotesque just as (in some of my other favorite fiction) Sauron did to the Elves in order to create Orcs. Maybe Tolkien was onto something after all.
Is it just me, or does it escape everyone else that all these people who hold these books as the holiest of holies; the direct and incontrovertible word of God? It doesn't matter which, if any, of them are right. SOMEONE is going to pay the price for them twisting the words of their deity to further their own ends. Their "Ha! I told you so!" is only going to last about as long as it takes their deity to throw them into the very pits of Hell. I would love to have the chance to ask them, as they simmer in boiling pits of their own offal and are tormented by whatever demons their faith has invented, if it was worth it to remain uneducated and blind to the real world around them. Are they happier now that they know that they were right (even though they are in Hell), or do they wish they had treated their fellow man better and allowed their deity to "judge the living and the dead"?
With that in mind, let's take a look at the Orcs of our world. I'm sure no one would argue whether or not terrorists fit the bill. They are quite clearly working on a different model of their faith than, say, the Muslim programmer I work with on a daily basis. It's as abhorrent as the Orcs in my old home state (Kansas) who have dragged the Theory of Evolution back into court just so their kids don't grow up to question their religious beliefs like I did. Then there are the Orcs that dragged their feet and kept Terri Sciavo alive for ten years that she would have rather not spent on this Earth (I mean, really, the woman didn't even want to live as a FAT PERSON, can you honestly say that she wanted to be kept alive as a FUCKING VEGETABLE??). It seems to me that the sane Humans on this planet are overrun.
But wait! There's more! The Orcs that added the words "under God" to the pledge of allegiance 50 years ago now have offspring who want to insist that the United States is a Christian nation. Where in the name of all that is Holy did they get an idea like that? And what part of "Congress shall make no law in respect to the establishment of religion" (it's a paraphrase...go read the constitution if you want to see just how plainly our Founding Fathers laid this out) don't they understand? Tax exemptions for organizations that are solely religious in their nature are unconstitutional. Seems to me that they probably owe billions of dollars in back taxes. Maybe they can start paying for their Holy War in the Middle East instead of expecting ME and my children and my children's children to do it for them.
And that's not all. There are the money-worshipers like our esteemed (snicker) Vice President Dick Cheney. Let's just say he's the best insurance policy against assassination since Dan Quayle.
Of course, the other side of the aisle is chock-full of Orcs, too, or we wouldn't be suffering through the current administration like we are. I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Professional politicians are the cancer of democracy." I wonder if they could qualify as a whole new kind of evil...they've sold their souls willingly, instead of simply being twisted into the grotesquery that they are by their parents and community.
Yes. I blame the parents and the community. We're United Statesians, after all. We have been taught from an early age that the rational men who founded this country wanted to leave us room to question ANYTHING. Whether they like it or not, that includes giving each and every child in this country the freedom to choose his or her own religion or lack thereof. If you wanted to get downright technical about things, Christians in the United States are all traitors. I'm not saying we should line them up and shoot them or that we should even hang them (both of which are acceptable punishments for treason under the Constitution of the United States), but we MUST do something to remind them that IN THIS COUNTRY, GOD DOES NOT COME FIRST. It's much better than they'd do for the rest of us if we allow them to continue with their coup.
Do you think they'll be merciful and kind to those who don't share their faith? Do you think it would be any different than another Inquisition or Salem Witch Hunt? This country was founded on checks and balances, and I, for one, do not want to see the fundamentalist Christian element gain the power to upset that to the point that we find out whether or not their intentions toward the non-Christians in this country are as altruistic as they claim.
So I do what I can. In my own way, I pray for the souls of the fundamentalists, no matter what stripe. I want them to be safe. I want them to return to sanity (or at least as close to it as we can come in this mad, mad world). I want to be able to one day embrace them as brother and sister Humans and not worry about whether or not they're going to stone me for heresy, burn me at the stake for a witch, or torture me until I confess to whatever they want to condemn me for.
And I'd give ANYTHING to see it happen.
Is it just me, or does it escape everyone else that all these people who hold these books as the holiest of holies; the direct and incontrovertible word of God? It doesn't matter which, if any, of them are right. SOMEONE is going to pay the price for them twisting the words of their deity to further their own ends. Their "Ha! I told you so!" is only going to last about as long as it takes their deity to throw them into the very pits of Hell. I would love to have the chance to ask them, as they simmer in boiling pits of their own offal and are tormented by whatever demons their faith has invented, if it was worth it to remain uneducated and blind to the real world around them. Are they happier now that they know that they were right (even though they are in Hell), or do they wish they had treated their fellow man better and allowed their deity to "judge the living and the dead"?
With that in mind, let's take a look at the Orcs of our world. I'm sure no one would argue whether or not terrorists fit the bill. They are quite clearly working on a different model of their faith than, say, the Muslim programmer I work with on a daily basis. It's as abhorrent as the Orcs in my old home state (Kansas) who have dragged the Theory of Evolution back into court just so their kids don't grow up to question their religious beliefs like I did. Then there are the Orcs that dragged their feet and kept Terri Sciavo alive for ten years that she would have rather not spent on this Earth (I mean, really, the woman didn't even want to live as a FAT PERSON, can you honestly say that she wanted to be kept alive as a FUCKING VEGETABLE??). It seems to me that the sane Humans on this planet are overrun.
But wait! There's more! The Orcs that added the words "under God" to the pledge of allegiance 50 years ago now have offspring who want to insist that the United States is a Christian nation. Where in the name of all that is Holy did they get an idea like that? And what part of "Congress shall make no law in respect to the establishment of religion" (it's a paraphrase...go read the constitution if you want to see just how plainly our Founding Fathers laid this out) don't they understand? Tax exemptions for organizations that are solely religious in their nature are unconstitutional. Seems to me that they probably owe billions of dollars in back taxes. Maybe they can start paying for their Holy War in the Middle East instead of expecting ME and my children and my children's children to do it for them.
And that's not all. There are the money-worshipers like our esteemed (snicker) Vice President Dick Cheney. Let's just say he's the best insurance policy against assassination since Dan Quayle.
Of course, the other side of the aisle is chock-full of Orcs, too, or we wouldn't be suffering through the current administration like we are. I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Professional politicians are the cancer of democracy." I wonder if they could qualify as a whole new kind of evil...they've sold their souls willingly, instead of simply being twisted into the grotesquery that they are by their parents and community.
Yes. I blame the parents and the community. We're United Statesians, after all. We have been taught from an early age that the rational men who founded this country wanted to leave us room to question ANYTHING. Whether they like it or not, that includes giving each and every child in this country the freedom to choose his or her own religion or lack thereof. If you wanted to get downright technical about things, Christians in the United States are all traitors. I'm not saying we should line them up and shoot them or that we should even hang them (both of which are acceptable punishments for treason under the Constitution of the United States), but we MUST do something to remind them that IN THIS COUNTRY, GOD DOES NOT COME FIRST. It's much better than they'd do for the rest of us if we allow them to continue with their coup.
Do you think they'll be merciful and kind to those who don't share their faith? Do you think it would be any different than another Inquisition or Salem Witch Hunt? This country was founded on checks and balances, and I, for one, do not want to see the fundamentalist Christian element gain the power to upset that to the point that we find out whether or not their intentions toward the non-Christians in this country are as altruistic as they claim.
So I do what I can. In my own way, I pray for the souls of the fundamentalists, no matter what stripe. I want them to be safe. I want them to return to sanity (or at least as close to it as we can come in this mad, mad world). I want to be able to one day embrace them as brother and sister Humans and not worry about whether or not they're going to stone me for heresy, burn me at the stake for a witch, or torture me until I confess to whatever they want to condemn me for.
And I'd give ANYTHING to see it happen.