Funereal

It may be just a cheesy repost from PZ, but honestly, can anyone ever have had a more enviable send off than this?

It's funny and sweet and profound, a hilarious reminder of just what it means to be human: how what we do and who we love are what matter, not any amount of submissive posturing to imaginary sadists in the sky. That may be kind of fun if you're into it, but reality is what matters. In all its dirty unpalatability, in all its grim unbearable truth.

I sort of understand why so many people can't deal with reality and seek refuge in infantile fairy tales -- hell, I love weakness, it's maybe the single most important aspect of human consciousness, the thing that separates us from the animals -- but in this particular manifestation it makes me incredibly sad. Religion is an embrace of fuckwittery, a sickness of the mind spread from one to another not by accident or mischance but always in a deliberate campaign of psychological warfare. We wouldn't put up with this shit from commercial interests, and we vilify any individual whose behaviour, however accidentally, spreads biological disease, but somehow theistic indoctrination has special status and must be accorded undue respect.

And yes, by Zeus, by Odin's beard, in the names of the Morrigan and Coyote and Anansi, by Moses and Jesus and Mohammed and L. Ron fucking Hubbard, I know that religion is and always has been an important part of our various cultures, I know it has inspired beauty and occasionally even truth, I know it has been a source of great solace to innumerable peoples as they suffer at each other's hands, but that just locates it as exactly the opiate of the people that Karl Marx -- just another fucking messiah, as it turned out, provider of scriptural antigens to the susceptible population -- diagnosed. Accept it, respect it, understand it, yes. Grant it any kind of authority? No fucking way.

Hmm. Okay.

That went places I wasn't expecting. But it's not out of place. How about this example of parodic modern apologetics?

Isn't this fun? Where would we be without YouTube? There's so much of this stuff out there, just begging to be absorbed. But, since time is short, let's go back to the gospels:

Words to live by.
Posted by matt at July 9, 2008 10:28 PM