WELCOME!
It's time for the 5th installment of Thursdays with Seth. This week, I, Seth Coster, finance director of UNIFI, have a few things I need to get off of my chest and into your face. Get your popcorn ready, bitches.
CATHOLIC BLACKMAIL!
My good buddy Nick Covington posted a link to
this article on Facebook today. The basic premise:
The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.
Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.
In other words, if they are forced to
stop discriminating against a minority group, they will punish an unrelated group consisting of thousands of people. Hey, that sounds a lot like a fucking
hostage situation! They are holding the well-being of about 60,000 D.C.-area poor people at ransom unless their demands are met. This is completely unsurprising, considering the Catholic Church has a history of
being a bunch of total douchebags. Practically every freedom we have today has had to be won from the Catholic Church (or some closely related religious institution).
And the ironic part is that the poor are the most likely to be against same-sex marriage. As most of us know, people are less likely to be religious as they become more educated. And as people become less religious
and more educated, they have a tendency to not be as big of assholes when it comes to treating other people with respect. So this total dick move is actually punishing the group of people who are statistically the most likely to be in support of the Catholic Church: the poor. I don't need to say much more about this, as the bullying and lack of compassion exhibited here are blatantly evident.
SAVE THE GAYS FROM THEMSELVES!
"If I saw someone unknowingly walking in front of oncoming traffic, and if it were in my power to stop them, I would save them without hesitation."
We can all agree with that statement. This was the message of compassion shared during Grab a Brew, Share Your View as some of us hung around afterward. However, this statement was presented as an analogy to explain why it is morally right to oppose gay marriage. By denying homosexuals basic rights, religious people
claim that they are helping to prevent the homosexuals from being tormented in hell for eternity. I call bullshit. I am reminded of a quote that I chalked during Blasphemy day:
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all of the same people you do."
I can't remember who said it, but it's perfect.
Whether it is legal or not, gay people will still be gay. If we made it illegal for people to be taller than 6 feet, well, it wouldn't change a god-damned thing. People are what they are. Tall, short, gay, straight, black, white, whatever. Homosexuality isn't an action; it's a state of being. You can't change what someone
is by trying to change what they
do. If you force a tall person to duck down his whole life and pretend to be short, he'll just end up with back problems down the road, and he'll still just be a tall guy ducking.
One of the core arguments against homosexuality by religious bigots is that homosexuality is a choice. It is quickly
becoming even more apparent that homosexuality isn't a choice, but even if it were, I have one question: SO WHAT? One's religion is a choice, and religious institutions get tax-exempt status!
Outlawing gay marriage is just one of many examples of religious institutions attempting to force society into following a code of immoral standards through bullying and fear-mongering. The laws of a society are determined by the morals of that society, not the other way around. People will soon wise up and realize that the "way things have always been done" hurts people and is completely immoral. As a culture, we are becoming more conscious of our actions, and we can't shrug off accountability much longer, no matter how hard religious institutions try to force us into it.
GOD HATES BABIES!
The discussion about homosexuality soon turned to the question of what happens to babies who die before they can accept Jesus. As we know, most Christians will declare that their god is all-loving and just, but the only way to get access to that love and justice is by accepting Jesus into one's heart. So what happens to babies?
This is where the Christian version of god terrifies me. Well, okay, the idea terrifies me all around, but this case is especially horrific. Let's consider an infant who dies shortly after childbirth. Thinking back to the idea of saving someone from oncoming traffic, here we have an all-powerful god who had the ability to prevent the death of the baby in the first place. Being all-powerful, he could have saved the child with no effort whatsoever, yet he did nothing. Not only does the child then die, the parents and family suffer from emotional trauma.
But it doesn't stop there! Even though God could have saved the child but didn't, the child must now be judged. But wait! God has decided that unless someone accepts Jesus into his heart, he cannot be forgiven for his original sin, which stems from that one time when Eve ate that apple that God could have just not put in the fucking garden in the first place. So God sits back and watches the baby be born with some sort of problem, and then he sits back still and watches the baby die. So how does God judge the baby?
The obvious answer: God sends the baby to hell to be tortured for all eternity to repent for its sins (of being born).
As a Christian, you may disagree with this statement. However, you would be hard pressed to reconcile your disagreement with your scripture. After all, we are all born as atheists, and all atheists go to hell. Period. There is no wiggle room. I get told that quite regularly.
So then how do you have an all-loving god who allows babies to be born with problems, allows them to suffer, allows them to die, and then demands they be tortured for all time? You can't. When it comes down to it, the Christian version of god is not all-loving; he is all-asshole. He is omni-douchebag. He is a dick. He has the power to end all suffering in the world through no effort of his own, being all-powerful, and further, he could reveal himself to anyone at any time to save that person from going to hell. Yet he sits back and does literally nothing. Immoral? You bet! I am thankful, though, that if God did exist, I would have drastically higher moral standards than he would.
FACTS CAN ONLY BE TRUE IF I LIKE THEM!
The great thing about reality is that it doesn't care what we think of it. Things just happen, and whether we accept it or not, the world just keeps on keeping on. The goal of science is to figure out how and why these things happen so that we can better our existence through a greater understanding of our environment. So we ask questions. A lot of questions. Sometimes, the answers to those questions make us uncomfortable.
For instance, it was once thought that the Earth was the center of the solar system. Everything had to rotate around the Earth, we thought, because we were very important. Plus, it just looked like that. Unfortunately, we were slightly off. Not only is the Earth not the center of the solar system, it is not even remotely close to the center of anything
at all. We sit at the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy, which hangs out at the edge of the universe, off in some far-off corner. We are sitting on a tiny speck that is one of trillions in the
known universe. If the entire Earth were to explode right now, in the grand scheme of things, nothing would change.
In the history of Earth, modern humans have been around for about 150,000 years. The Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years. Our species has only been around for .003% of the time the Earth has existed. What I'm driving at is that we don't really matter to the rest of the universe. We are a blink in time. Does that make us uncomfortable? Maybe. Does our uncomfortability discount the facts? Nope! No matter how much we don't like it, that doesn't make it any less true.
However, some people would disagree. One of those people is Lucas Hewitt, opinion columnist for the Northern Iowan. As a Christian, he has published an article about atheism, and he has another on the way. In
his first article, he explains that if "atheistic evolution" is true (that no gods exist), we have no reason to live. He therefore concludes that, if we have no reason to live, we should just do whatever gives us the most satisfaction as soon as possible before we die. He then explains that the things that give us the most satisfaction are rape, murder, and theft. His conclusion starts with, "But the good news is that it isn’t true!" And then he starts talking about how God gives Christians purpose, because the purpose of being a Christian is to worship and glorify God.
Oh, thank you, Lucas! After the past 150 years of scientific research, with evidence piling up all around us and with thousands upon thousands of scientists in agreement that evolution is a real, natural process, finally someone has the balls to just throw it all out the window with a flippant comment! I'm glad you have taken the time to really do your research, take a stand, and defend it with real, hard, evidence. Now we can stop wasting all this time trying to understand the world around us, and we can finally put our efforts back into mentally fellating our egotistical imaginary friend with self-image issues.
Sarcasm aside, this article was pathetic. It completely misrepresented both evolution and atheism in such an obvious and stupid way that a four-year-old wouldn't be convinced by it. Luckily, we get to look forward to Lucas's next article coming out tomorrow, where he follows up this last one with even more stupid comments, such as this one:
I was accused of writing that people only do good to receive award and to avoid punishment. I do not and did not support this view. What I meant by “What will be the point of not raping or murdering or stealing?” is not that since there is no Hell, then you should do anything but that if you want to then you could go ahead and do it and not be afraid of consequences. There is no obligation to do good if you don’t feel like it.
I'll let you sift through that and figure out how ridiculous it is.
But what it comes down to is that Lucas has rejected the facts of reality on the basis of one condition alone: they make him uncomfortable. I have some news. Our existence is an uncomfortable one. We are here and then we're gone, and probably nothing we do will have consequences beyond our own solar system, which is nothing but a microscopic speck in the universe. We are the Whos in
Horton Hears a Who. But just because we are insignifcant does not mean that we should treat each other badly, as Lucas suggests. A person's a person, no matter how small.
