(no subject)
Okay, so I seem to have incited a (small) response, and not the one I was aiming at. To be perfectly honest, I started out wanting to write a journal entry, and ended up turning it into a rant that completely missed the point it was aiming at. I got close, but no paydirt.
See, fair readers, that wasn't directed at you. (Well, not all of you. If it was directed at you, you'll find out in the near future via the blasphemy and corruption spewing forth from my journal.) So, because I enjoy beating a dead horse, let's see if I can further obfuscate the point.
Let's start from the beginning. The earliest part of my life, even before my own memory, was spent reading anything and everything written in english I could get my grubby little paws on. Fact, fiction, you name it. Being then the whimsical boy I was, I had an interest in outer space. Much of the study of outer space, for the uninitiated or religiously ignorant, is the study of history. One of the funny things about that highly mathematical and minutely detailed area of study is the sheer amount of pyrotechnics. In space, a LOT of shit gets blown up. But I digress. Point is, one of my earliest memories is of myself in kindergarten, sitting in the auditorium, reading a book on outer space, an an article on the creation of the universe entitled, appropriately, "How the Universe Was born." Someone asked me what I was doing reading such a big book. being the hyper and massively social kid I was prior to the social reaming I got in grammar school, I blurted out at the top of my excited and powerful lungs "I'm reading about how the universe was born!"
What do you suppose happened? In a public school, that theoretical bastion of early childhood development and learning, an entire auditorium full of not only students, but teachers as well, erupted in laughter. There was apparently some joke I was missing. Eventually a nearby kid from a higher grade clarified: "the universe wasn't born. God made it." I had no rebuttal. I really had no way to respond to this. I was of course familiar with that notion, but I thought of it in the same context as the tooth fairy and the easter bunny. They were all equally plausible and fantastical, in my eyes. That same year, a pair of well-meaning and altogether friendly, good-sorted Mormon missionaries converted my mother, and since I was six and my brother five, that meant that the two of us were now mormon as well. I have no idea how the transition happened, But gradually, the judeo-christian (and those of you out there who just went into apoplectic fits because I mentioned mormons in the same breath as 'judeo-christian' probably need to stop reading and take me off your friends' list for a number of reasons) worldview and scientific method (the rest of you may now go into apoplectic fits, though rest assured, that was pure, home-grown sarcasm) began to coexist with science as I had heretofore understood it, end eventually replaced it.
I did not go quietly into that dark night, however. All throughout my rearing, I was constant hell to my sunday school teachers, who had to answer endless questions about the creation myth and how idiotic is seemed in the face of modern knowledge and understanding. Eventually, I learned to shut up about the subject and just kinda roll with the punches.
On into my teens, I had taken the bait gladly, hoping for a little acceptance from my peers, or who I understood at the time to be my peers. This, of course, never happened, but I took u the cause of the Martyr Denomination with a vengeance, Probably mostly because it was just plain fun to verbally spar with the much more indoctrinated but wholly incapable children at school who decided they wanted to get their theological circuits scrambled. And oh, was I ever a stick-in-the-mud. If anything smacked of a Word-of-wisdom violation (google it) or anything remotely resembling normalized biological relations with the opposing gender (to say nothing of my intolerance for other religions, especially the other christian denominations), I was there with my flaming sword of righteous fury. Mostly, this was manifest in my own mind and attitudes toward the people in question, though on a great many occasions I swung that templar sword over my head whist I stood on my soapbox.
Eventually, though, I started to slip. did you know that to the mormon religion, masturbation is a sin? To crudely quote a friend of mine, in most circumstances, if you shake hands with a guy, you're touching his dick secondhand, so to speak. In a mormon church, however, it's different. You're about 90 - 99% percent sure to be shaking hands with a man who's never pulled his own pud. Quoting the same friend, that's a degree of self-control I don't want. Ever.
Ahem. Back on-topic. Turns out I slipped quite a bit a few times. the mormon version of Confession makes the Catholic version look like... Well, imagine bumper cars. Now imagine NASCAR, but prior to the race every driver is required three shots of tequila. Yeah, they're that different. Catholic: More or less anonymous, go in, to out, reparations take about a half-hour, and that's if you robbed a bank at gunpoint. The mormon version: You call your Bishop and set up a special appointment, usually about a week down the road. Then, you go into his office and tell him what you're here to tell him you did. Usually this is some kind of sexual sin. If it involves sex, it's a sin, unless you're a married couple churnin' out Crusaders For Jesus. And then you still have a fairly narrow definition of what your sexual identity is allowed to be. Anything else has to get confessed. Then there's your punishment. For teenage boys, this can be very, very traumatic and embarrassing. If you're a male between the ages of 12 and 18 or so, sometimes older, you're expected to help pass out sacrament (Lord's Supper, communion, wine and crackers, grape kool-aid and cheezits, whatever), or prepare it beforehand, or bless it during service. Part of your punishment for having a libido is being excluded from that, which can lead to a good eighty awkward conversations a Sunday for at least a month. After your sentance is pronounced, you get some fatherly advice or whatever.
This led to way more guilt and confusion during my high-school years than was necessary. And it took me years to find out sex is healthy, fun, and a good thing (when not being stupid). I blame the relative dullness of my junior and senior prom nights on the mormon church. But in all fairness, i also credit it with saving me from three relationships that would have taken my life down some scary paths.
All this, and I still strove to be a good little mormon boy. What changed that, you ask? A number of things.
Suffice it to say that I am scientific minded, and the only shred of Mormon I have left in me is a slightly mild-mannered and conservative appeal that makes conservative people believe that I might share their values, or something like that.
Let me just set that record straight. I am extremely liberal. That is not to say I'm a Democrat. That is to say that I proudly wear a ponytail and a kilt, and I'm an anti-marriage, pro-family, pro-choice, anti-theocracy, pro-First Amendment, pro-gay-marriage agnostic, ethical, hedonistic, horny, moralistic, empathic, environmentalist, bisexual, pacifistic, open-minded, outspoken, free-thinking patriot. And not necessarily in that order, but damn proud of them all for one reason or another.
And if your views on any of these areas of thought. differ from mine, I'll support your right to call me an idiot with my dying breath if I have to. I'll talk with you about them, too. But if you go all religious zealot on me I'll give you a verbal noogie that your grandkids will be able to feel. About the only thing I can't tolerate in someone else's worldview is intolerance. And for the record, I don't like it any better in my own worldview. Though I may and usually do generalize for the sake of expediency, I do my best to never take anything for granted that I don't have reasonable evidence and/or precedent to justify, and even then I'm glad to be proven wrong.
Obfuscation complete. Short version: I'm a scientist and a hippie. I am under no circumstances to be held to a Christian or other religion-induced morality. I like mine better. A surefire way to piss me off is to attempt to bring up a religious moral system or pseudoscience in relation to myself or the world at large.
There. I've said my piece. And from here on in, I make no apologies, on Livejournal or in person, for who I am, what I do, why I do it, or what I believe. Explanations, however, will cheerily be given on request.
You have been warned. Names and details may rarely be withheld to protect the innocent, but as they say at faire, "if your kids get our jokes, it's not our fault!"
See, fair readers, that wasn't directed at you. (Well, not all of you. If it was directed at you, you'll find out in the near future via the blasphemy and corruption spewing forth from my journal.) So, because I enjoy beating a dead horse, let's see if I can further obfuscate the point.
Let's start from the beginning. The earliest part of my life, even before my own memory, was spent reading anything and everything written in english I could get my grubby little paws on. Fact, fiction, you name it. Being then the whimsical boy I was, I had an interest in outer space. Much of the study of outer space, for the uninitiated or religiously ignorant, is the study of history. One of the funny things about that highly mathematical and minutely detailed area of study is the sheer amount of pyrotechnics. In space, a LOT of shit gets blown up. But I digress. Point is, one of my earliest memories is of myself in kindergarten, sitting in the auditorium, reading a book on outer space, an an article on the creation of the universe entitled, appropriately, "How the Universe Was born." Someone asked me what I was doing reading such a big book. being the hyper and massively social kid I was prior to the social reaming I got in grammar school, I blurted out at the top of my excited and powerful lungs "I'm reading about how the universe was born!"
What do you suppose happened? In a public school, that theoretical bastion of early childhood development and learning, an entire auditorium full of not only students, but teachers as well, erupted in laughter. There was apparently some joke I was missing. Eventually a nearby kid from a higher grade clarified: "the universe wasn't born. God made it." I had no rebuttal. I really had no way to respond to this. I was of course familiar with that notion, but I thought of it in the same context as the tooth fairy and the easter bunny. They were all equally plausible and fantastical, in my eyes. That same year, a pair of well-meaning and altogether friendly, good-sorted Mormon missionaries converted my mother, and since I was six and my brother five, that meant that the two of us were now mormon as well. I have no idea how the transition happened, But gradually, the judeo-christian (and those of you out there who just went into apoplectic fits because I mentioned mormons in the same breath as 'judeo-christian' probably need to stop reading and take me off your friends' list for a number of reasons) worldview and scientific method (the rest of you may now go into apoplectic fits, though rest assured, that was pure, home-grown sarcasm) began to coexist with science as I had heretofore understood it, end eventually replaced it.
I did not go quietly into that dark night, however. All throughout my rearing, I was constant hell to my sunday school teachers, who had to answer endless questions about the creation myth and how idiotic is seemed in the face of modern knowledge and understanding. Eventually, I learned to shut up about the subject and just kinda roll with the punches.
On into my teens, I had taken the bait gladly, hoping for a little acceptance from my peers, or who I understood at the time to be my peers. This, of course, never happened, but I took u the cause of the Martyr Denomination with a vengeance, Probably mostly because it was just plain fun to verbally spar with the much more indoctrinated but wholly incapable children at school who decided they wanted to get their theological circuits scrambled. And oh, was I ever a stick-in-the-mud. If anything smacked of a Word-of-wisdom violation (google it) or anything remotely resembling normalized biological relations with the opposing gender (to say nothing of my intolerance for other religions, especially the other christian denominations), I was there with my flaming sword of righteous fury. Mostly, this was manifest in my own mind and attitudes toward the people in question, though on a great many occasions I swung that templar sword over my head whist I stood on my soapbox.
Eventually, though, I started to slip. did you know that to the mormon religion, masturbation is a sin? To crudely quote a friend of mine, in most circumstances, if you shake hands with a guy, you're touching his dick secondhand, so to speak. In a mormon church, however, it's different. You're about 90 - 99% percent sure to be shaking hands with a man who's never pulled his own pud. Quoting the same friend, that's a degree of self-control I don't want. Ever.
Ahem. Back on-topic. Turns out I slipped quite a bit a few times. the mormon version of Confession makes the Catholic version look like... Well, imagine bumper cars. Now imagine NASCAR, but prior to the race every driver is required three shots of tequila. Yeah, they're that different. Catholic: More or less anonymous, go in, to out, reparations take about a half-hour, and that's if you robbed a bank at gunpoint. The mormon version: You call your Bishop and set up a special appointment, usually about a week down the road. Then, you go into his office and tell him what you're here to tell him you did. Usually this is some kind of sexual sin. If it involves sex, it's a sin, unless you're a married couple churnin' out Crusaders For Jesus. And then you still have a fairly narrow definition of what your sexual identity is allowed to be. Anything else has to get confessed. Then there's your punishment. For teenage boys, this can be very, very traumatic and embarrassing. If you're a male between the ages of 12 and 18 or so, sometimes older, you're expected to help pass out sacrament (Lord's Supper, communion, wine and crackers, grape kool-aid and cheezits, whatever), or prepare it beforehand, or bless it during service. Part of your punishment for having a libido is being excluded from that, which can lead to a good eighty awkward conversations a Sunday for at least a month. After your sentance is pronounced, you get some fatherly advice or whatever.
This led to way more guilt and confusion during my high-school years than was necessary. And it took me years to find out sex is healthy, fun, and a good thing (when not being stupid). I blame the relative dullness of my junior and senior prom nights on the mormon church. But in all fairness, i also credit it with saving me from three relationships that would have taken my life down some scary paths.
All this, and I still strove to be a good little mormon boy. What changed that, you ask? A number of things.
Suffice it to say that I am scientific minded, and the only shred of Mormon I have left in me is a slightly mild-mannered and conservative appeal that makes conservative people believe that I might share their values, or something like that.
Let me just set that record straight. I am extremely liberal. That is not to say I'm a Democrat. That is to say that I proudly wear a ponytail and a kilt, and I'm an anti-marriage, pro-family, pro-choice, anti-theocracy, pro-First Amendment, pro-gay-marriage agnostic, ethical, hedonistic, horny, moralistic, empathic, environmentalist, bisexual, pacifistic, open-minded, outspoken, free-thinking patriot. And not necessarily in that order, but damn proud of them all for one reason or another.
And if your views on any of these areas of thought. differ from mine, I'll support your right to call me an idiot with my dying breath if I have to. I'll talk with you about them, too. But if you go all religious zealot on me I'll give you a verbal noogie that your grandkids will be able to feel. About the only thing I can't tolerate in someone else's worldview is intolerance. And for the record, I don't like it any better in my own worldview. Though I may and usually do generalize for the sake of expediency, I do my best to never take anything for granted that I don't have reasonable evidence and/or precedent to justify, and even then I'm glad to be proven wrong.
Obfuscation complete. Short version: I'm a scientist and a hippie. I am under no circumstances to be held to a Christian or other religion-induced morality. I like mine better. A surefire way to piss me off is to attempt to bring up a religious moral system or pseudoscience in relation to myself or the world at large.
There. I've said my piece. And from here on in, I make no apologies, on Livejournal or in person, for who I am, what I do, why I do it, or what I believe. Explanations, however, will cheerily be given on request.
You have been warned. Names and details may rarely be withheld to protect the innocent, but as they say at faire, "if your kids get our jokes, it's not our fault!"