Mormonism, it seems to me, objectively, is just a little bit more idiotic than Christianity is. It has to be; it is Christianity *plus* some very stupid ideas
Sam Harris
featured image from https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/0*zcpHl1Uailr9UG8i.jpg
God Almighty, the Alpha and Omega, the Omniscient, the Omnipotent Creator, the Exceedingly Beneficent, the Gentle, the Boundless, He Who Is Able To Do Anything, the Supremely Exalted, the Lord of Majesty and Generosity, the Owner of All Sovereignty, &c.
Those titles (and many more) are His, and nobody can doubt their accuracy (for it is written).
So here’s a question for the religious amongst us, given God’s undoubted perfection:
Why is God the Magnificent and Super Duper Excellent (etc.) so obsessed with… hair?
Sikhs can’t cut their hair. To protect it, they wrap it in a turban. And they grow their beards their whole life. If you’re a woman and really want to show how holy you are, you too can wear a turban!
Muslim men also must display a beard. But shaving off the ‘tache is fine. Conversely, Muslim women need to cover their head hair, and any beard they grow is irrelevant to the glorification of God. Male hair = good, female hair = bad??
Christians have to cover their hair in church — but only the women!
Jewish men grow beards, like Muslims, and Jewish women must cover their hair in Synogogue, like Christians. But Hasidic Jewish women shave their hair off and put on a wig. Jewish men must grow curly, long sideburns. They also need to cover their hair! …But only the crown (I think this is more to cover the bald spot).
Rastafarians must mat their hair into dreadlocks. The holiest type is where all of the hair has matted into one long lock.
Aren’t there more pressing moral issues than how to display or conceal one’s hair? Things such as rape (Gen 19:5-8), child abuse (2 Kings 2:23-24), genocide (1 Sam 15:2-8, 15:18-19), oppression of gay people (Lev 20:13), and so on. And grown-ups mutilating the genitals of helpless children, because God commanded them to (Gen 17:10-11).
So again, I ask: given the multiplicity of problems that beset mankind, problems that seem to be on the exponential increase:
Why the hell is God so obsessed with hair?
Over to you, people of God.
© 2015 Bryan A. J. Parry
featured image from https://quran2hadith.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/allah_names_with_english.jpeg
image from http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2006-05-18
It was only a matter of time before the contrarian intellectualist backlash against Charlie Hebdo began. The body of Charlie Hebdo‘s murdered editor Stéphane Charbonnier is barely even cold, and incredibly not even buried yet(!), but none-the-less one of the original founders of the magazine, Henri Roussel, felt compelled to criticise Chabonnier’s decision to post the now infamous cartoons.
What made him feel the need to drag the team into overdoing it? He shouldn’t have done it, but Charb did it again a year later, in September 2012 … I believe that we [were] fools who took an unnecessary risk. That’s it. We think we are invulnerable. For years, decades even, it was a provocation, and then one day the provocation turns against us … I know it’s not done … [but] I really hold it against you [Charbonnier]. [link]
This is, of course, bollocks. Nobody deserves to be shot dead for printing or saying anything. Roussel, could you have not waited a respectful period before spouting this nonsense (e.g. after the funeral, perchance)?
Luckily, organised religion is always nearby to save the day when mankind is in need of sanity. The Pope said this:
If my good friend Dr Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others … There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity … in freedom of expression there are limits. [link]
That’s right, folks: the Pope used the same justification that rapists and wife-beaters employ the world over. Well, look at how high her dress is: she was just ASKING for it! The stupid bitch MADE me do it!
Organised religion, you fail. Again. Why is organised religion never there when we need it, but always there AFTERWARDS to do the handwringing and soul-searching?
Yeah, we WERE complicit in the Holocaust, both directly through our support of the Nazi regime and indirectly through our constant stirring up of anti-Jewish feeling which exists EVEN IN OUR FOUNDATIONAL TEXT (!) [see the Gospel of John], but, ya know, we feel we’ve really grown from this experience.
Some half-senile old crank cartoonist can criticise whoever he wants. He’s wrong, of course. But the spiritual and political leader of around a quarter of the world’s population, a man who wields both spiritual and temporal power as a head of state, a man who rannks among the most influential on the face of the earth — he should know better.
The thing is, organised religion is like all good scams. The pope and all his kind can say or do whatever they want and the mud just won’t stick. He kisses a deformed man once, and apparently he’s flawless.
Dear Francis:
You did not say that the Charlie Hebdo staff deserved to die, I grant you that. But by saying that nobody has the right to criticise religion, you (1) declare your ignorant pre-enlightenment mindset which has not quite grasped the basics of what makes a free and prosperous society possible, and (2) you offer extenuating circumstances to those terrorist, murdering scumbags — you do, in fact, offer the same justification as the rapist and the wife-beater. You are therefore both spiritually and intellectually incapable of being a leader to billions — although, ironically, perfectly suited to being head of the Roman Catholic church — and you gravely let down mankind with your unhelpful and hindersome words.
featured image fromhttps://res.cloudinary.com/the-news-hub/image/upload/v1411278325/sbzxjc7ncshusfczjhov.jpg
© 2015 Bryan A. J. Parry
Introduction
This is probably the poem of mine that I am most proud of. It’s riddled with flaws, yes, but I think it has a little merit, too. Either way, I thought I’d like to share it here. I already posted it on my YouTube channel.
It’s my reading of Ecclesiastes 3:19-21 (in the Bible, if you don’t know what I’m going on about) in the light of my Epicurean mindset (as in Epicurus). Like all poems, this one is abandoned not “finished” (that is, I tweaked and tweaked and tweaked until I just stopped and never went back to it).
After Reading Ecclesiastes 3:19-21 Again
by Bryan A. J. Parry
The reason Nature seems to test mankind
With cold and stone-hard stares, and unmoved mind,
Is just to make him see what’s plainly true:
He’s like an animal, nay, is one too.
You don’t believe me? Why then, let’s just think.
As man is born, so is the beast, then blink
Your eyes, and both have died, caught in some snare,
Or else disfigured far beyond repair
So soon thereafter breathe the final breath,
Dispatched to earth, the source of life and death.
So man has no advantage o’er his brother,
As wretched death claims one, he claims the other.
Did I say “wretched”? Actually, it’s worse.
The brilliant mind of man can seem a curse;
Illumination, yes, but searing heat,
So awestruck man performs a wondrous feat:
He stoops, then squints, and fumbles in the gloom,
So hastening through his misery his doom.
But animals, whose brains are dim, live thus:
They flit, they drink, they eat: no sordid fuss.
A man of reason can’t conceal his mirth:
Poor man is heaven-bound, yet beast to earth!?
Kind Nature’s given beasts to simple pleasures.
If only man would use his mind: it measures
Out every thing that he could ever need.
They are: to flit, to drink, to love, to feed.
This recognition of kind Nature’s goal
Produces gladness, elevates man’s soul;
The joy and pleasure transcend mortal frame:
This soaring spirit ills can never tame.
featured image edited from http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jMyo8OMjLcI/TbbH-mcqRhI/AAAAAAAAA2U/lRaYT6u5_9k/s1600/kjv1611.jpg
© Bryan A. J. Parry
There are so many reasons to get the hump these days.
But no issue inflames passions to the same extent as the “common era” system of dating historical events…
What, sorry? That doesn’t inflame you? You don’t know what I’m talking about?
I am “of course” talking about the habit, now nigh-on universal amongst academics, of giving dates in the form of 2014CE, where CE means “Common Era”. This is opposed to the “usual” way of writing “AD” (which doesn’t mean “after death”, as some suppose: it means anno domini “in the year of our lord”).
Basically, academics have realised (because they’re so deep and insightful) that the system of dating things “BC” (before Christ) or “AD” comes from Christianity… and is therefore not really appropriate for objective, neutral, and politically correct purposes. Unfortunately, the genius solution (irony alert) they have adopted, of using CE and BCE (before Common Era), is… still derived from Christianity.
How’s that?
Because 2014 CE is… 2014 AD. And 1066 CE is… 1066 AD. And 54 BCE is… 54 BC. So, despite the cosmetic changes, they are still using the same dating system! It’s like calling a “shovel” a “spade”; it’s still the same thing. And yet these egg-heads parade their intelligence and flaunt their superiority by using their hokey (B)CE system. I’ve even been reprimanded for writing BC/AD instead of (B)CE in a university essay!
The funny thing is this: I’m an atheist. That’s right: I don’t even believe God exists(!) So the chances of me being a Christian, or pushing a Christian agenda, are almost nil. And yet I say: let’s keep the BC/AD system! Why change it? I mean, it works well, we know what we’re talking about when we say “2014 AD”, and who cares whether the acronyms really mean “before Christ” and “in the year of our Lord”? Are we renaming the days of the week because they are named after heathen Gods? [1] Wednesday: Woden’s Day; Thursday: Thor’s Day; and Monday: Moon day — and the moon’s not even a god, it’s just a big lump of rock!
We’re not French here, for heaven’s sake! (note: unless you are French, that is) So why should be go around binning stuff just because it doesn’t fit in with our ideology? Look: BC/AD works, everyone gets it, so why change it?
But you know what, if you are going to change it, let’s do it properly. Instead of this stupid (B)CE system — which is just the BC/AD system with a facelift — let’s make up a new system which is truly global, neutral, and objective.
God, this is exciting! I know!
We need to pick an event that has global significance, not just significance “local” to any particular group — such as the birth of Jesus.
One of the most significant events in recorded human history, something that changed it all, something that literally made recorded human history possible: the invention of writing. Writing allowed poetry to be passed on over thousands of years, business accounts to be “cooked”, lewd graffiti to be scrawled in public toilets, and thousands of Hitler ‘taches to be drawn on countless page three girls up and down this green and pleasant land since c. 1965 AD/CE.
This glorious moment, the invention of writing, happened in around 3100 BC(E). So there we go: blammo! Welcome to the year 5114 WrE (Writing Era), A.K.A. 2014 CE/AD. Or anno, err, scriptorius… whatever.
Having said that, let’s not be wankers. Let’s just keep BC/AD, you stupid brilliantly stupidly intelligent egg-headed moronic genius dimwit boffs!
But having said that, if you do insist on changing, change to my system, for it is better, yea, and do yield unto me a monthly tithe for use of my system. Yea.
© 2014 Bryan A. J. Parry
References and Notes
[1] Oh God, I might just have planted the seed in their twisted, egg-headed heads! Oh wait, no I haven’t; nobody reads my blog. Huzzah!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22277955
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/8737038/To-BC-or-BCE.html
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excited man image from http://spiritualhealingsource.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Excited-Businessman.jpg
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