Picture of the Moment—A personal relationship….

A billboard in San Diego County, surprisingly, or not, out here in the boondocks:

There are five points that I can identify on my journey from religion to atheism, which some say is a religion in and of itself.

The first was a period of seven years attending St. Gertrude’s Catholic Church in Kingsville, Texas, with my wise old grandmother. After church, little groups of people—cliques—would gather and catch up—gossip—on all the news about anyone and anything from the past week. I think I was fortunate that my wise old grandmother was not a member of any of those cliques. I only heard things as we walked from the church to our car. I thought it the height of hypocrisy to be gossiping in the church parking lot after church….

The second was as a freshman at Texas A&M University. I was living Puryear Hall, a ramp-style dorm. Each weekend, a group of us, led by a guy from Nigeria, would visit a different church—Jew, Catholic, Mormon, Lutheran, Methodist, Unitarian, Church of Christ…. No religion was out of bounds. That was when I realized that each of these religions could not each be the true religion….

The third was a couple of years after I graduated from Texas A&M University. I was living in Houston, and the woman I was dating, a senior at Texas A&M, was from Houston. She was a Catholic, so I had no problems saying “Yes” when she asked me if I wanted to go to church with her one weekend when she as home. Her parents lived about ten miles from me but the church was just a couple of blocks away from me, so she offered to pick me up. Mass started at 11:00 a.m., but she didn’t arrive until 11:30. We got to the church in five minutes but she spent ten minutes driving around looking for a parking spot, and when she found one, she backed into it. I asked her why she was backing in since it takes longer to park that way, and she said she could leave faster when church was over. Whatever….

The fourth was when I was dating a woman in College Station, Texas, in 1987. She had a personal relationship with her God, so personal that he was telling her when to call in to work sick, when to take vacation, when to eat, when to come see me. One Saturday she was at my place where I had my home office. I was working in the living room and she was back in my bedroom on the bed, with my two dogs Penney & Sugar, studying her Bible lesson for the next day. At 11:00 p.m. I decided to take a break. I went to my bedroom and asked her if she wanted to take the dogs for a walk with me. She rolled over, looked at me ever so sweetly, and said, “No. The Lord has not told me to take the dogs for a walk with you.” I broke up with her a couple of days later.

The fifth was a period from April 27, 1993, to February 15, 1994. I arrived in San Diego on April 15, 1993, and spent two weeks orienting myself before deciding to study the world’s great, and not-so-great, religions to determine if there was a religion that was fully accepting of an openly gay man. Only the Metropolitan Community Church came close, but it was based waaaaaaay too much on the traditions and tenets of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, it didn’t really bring anything new the table, all things considered….

Those 10½ months of intense studying convinced me that I had everything I needed to lead a productive life, to be a viable, contributing member of society. Perhaps I got everything from my upbringing in the Mormon and Catholic churches, but whether or not I did, I do believe I would have learned everything I needed without religion.

Some might say that the people around me, brought up in their own religions, influence me, and that quite likely is true. Thus, as I like to tell people, I have no problems with you practicing your religion if doing so helps prevent you from raping, murdering, and stealing.

For me, at this point in my life, I have a personal relationship with reality and don’t need any religion.

Did God help USC beat Penn State in the Rose Bowl yesterday?

Long-time readers know that I’m not much into religion. Haven’t been since 1993 when I spent 11 months studying the world’s great, and no so great, religions to see if there was a place in any of them for a newly out gay male. There wasn’t. Still isn’t. There are some that are, perhaps, tolerant, until a certain Sunday sermon comes along, and then it’s a little awkward to say the least.

Even if there were an all-knowing all-powerful god, if s/he is sitting around watching football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and all the other sports where some person on the victorious team thanks Jesus and God for letting them win, s/he is not the type of god that I would want to be associated with. An all-knowing all-powerful god should be putting an end to children’s hospitals, natural disasters, and accidents that take these people who are “too young to die.”

On the other hand, if God is in Ocean Beach fixing people’s cars so they don’t get into accidents, well, I’m all for that.

 

I took that picture on Monday, January 2, around 10:30 a.m., which makes me think that it was closed because God had gone up to Pasadena to watch the Rose Bowl and help USC beat Penn State…………….

I’m so confused over religion and war

When I was 10 and told my wise old grandmother that I wanted to be either an anesthesiologist or a history teacher, she advised me to become a history teacher. “How come?” I asked. “Because I don’t know what the other one is, but I know that if you study history, you won’t have to repeat it.”

She had been born in 1911, so she suffered through the Great Depression and World War II, and saw her oldest son go off to the Korean War and youngest son go off to the Vietnam War.

I quit wanting to be a history teacher once I found out how much money teachers made in Texas. I knew being a teacher and making that kind of money would not allow me to escape the poor and low-income families that I had been with for my first ten years of life. Yes, at the age of 10 I was able to determine that one needed money in life….

Nonetheless, I always have enjoyed reading about, and studying, history, especially war history. I find it fascinating what people will do to other people in the name of patriotism and religion…. crucifixions, beheadings, drawn and quartered, iron masks…. all sorts of unique ways to torture and kill.

Ever notice, though, that the sons and daughters of the wealthy and privileged never go off to war. There’s always some sort of exemption for them.

In the book that I just finished reading about Confederate General Stonewall Jackson (►), one of the themes that ran through the general’s life was his religion. He loved his war, though, believing that everything he did in his life, including killing people, sometimes even his own soldiers after he judged them guilty of whatever sin they had allegedly committed, was directed by God. His god, of course.

So I found the beginning paragraph in Chapter 43 quite interesting. It’s a long paragraph so I have broken it up here to make it more readable:

“Eighteen months after the first shot at Fort Sumter, there were certain truths that the soldiers had come to know. Death in war was neither picturesque nor peaceful, and dying bravely didn’t make you any less dead, or mean that you would not be dumped into the cold earth of a mass grave with everyone else, brave and not brave. Nor was there likely to be anyone to hear your last miserable words.

“People of the era cherished the idea of a ‘good death’—a peaceful, dignified passing wherein God was embraced and sins repented and salvation attained, preferably in your own bed with your family gathered devotedly around to hear your last murmurs of Christian resignation. War made a mockery of all that. War made a mockery of the idea of a benevolent God. It replaced the family home with the rank, power-scorched horrors of the battlefield. These were the new truths.

“In war you lived outdoors like a wild animal. You lived in blistering heat, drenching rains, and knifelike cold. You were exposed and vulnerable. The majority of men who died did not even have the honor of dying in a fight. Two out of three were carried away by diseases that killed them just as surely as minié balls. Those who survived did so on a quarter pound of bacon and eighteen ounces of flour a day—one-third the regular meat ration—with the infrequent small issue of rice, molasses, or sugar. (The rice ration was an ounce.)

“Men lived without shoes or coats or blankets. Food was short all over the South. Soldiers hunted up sassafras buds and wild onions to ward off scurvy. Horses died for lack of forage. In Richmond, where much of the eastern army’s far was gathered and transshipped, there were bread riots.“

I have never understood why an all-powerful, all-knowing God needs men to fight wars for it. That certainly does not sound like a benevolent God. Wouldn’t a benevolent God make sure that his warriors had shoes and food, the basic necessities? I’m so confused over religion and war.

And yet, get this, the beginning of the second paragraph:

“In spite of these hardships, which seemed to multiply as the war dragged on, many of the men in the Confederate States Army remembered the winter of 1862-63 as one of the most extraordinary times of their lives.“

Say what?

People are weird, which is probably why there never will be peace on Earth, not unless country boundaries and religion cease to exist.

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Doomed to a continued existence of fighting and killing each other

I have always been fascinated by history, particularly the history of wars. Right now I am reading Rebel Yell by S. C. Gwynne, subtitled “The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson.” It’s a serious tome—575 pages of reading, 45 pages of notes, and 13 pages of bibliography. The copy I have is an “Advance Reader’s Edition.” Sadly, I seem never to read these privileged editions until well after the book has been published, in this case October 2014. Nonetheless….

Stonewall Jackson was one of the Confederacy’s greatest generals during the Civil War. The first book I ever read that was dedicated solely to Stonewall Jackson was Mighty Stonewall by Frank E. Vandiver (1925-2005), published in 1957. Dr. Vandiver was president of Texas A&M University from 1981 to 1988.

When I heard that a history professor had been named president of my alma mater, I was fascinated and immediately turned to finding out more about him. That was when I discovered his Mighty Stonewall book. Dr. Vandiver was a foremost authority on the Civil War, and he is mentioned several times in the notes and bibliography of Gwynne’s book.

I am barely halfway through Gwynne’s book, but it is obvious what the “violence” and “passion” in the subtitle mean. Jackson was extraordinarily violent, even going so far as to shoot his own men when he deemed it necessary. The passion comes from his dedication to “Providence.” He had a firm belief that he was fighting for God. Since I haven’t finished the book, and Jackson died two years before the end of the war, I don’t know where “redemption” comes from.

Jackson died on May 10, 1863, of complications from pneumonia which set in after he had been wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville. I would have liked to have heard how he reconciled losing the war if God was on his side and the side of the Confederacy.

Therein, though, lies part of the problem that still exists in the world, a problem that has existed forever and probably will exist forevermore: a belief in a magical guy in the sky who wants humans to fight for him. If only everyone could believe in the same magical guy, no one would have to fight. Of course, we could also ask, “If that magical guy is so all-knowing and all-powerful, why can’t he fight his own wars?”

Religion was humanity’s first attempt at explaining the world and universe. Mankind’s first attempts at doing anything are bad, some of them notoriously bad. Religion was not very good at explaining things, relying on myth, superstition, magic, mind control, etc. It’s not religion’s fault. Humanity and science simply had not evolved to the point where the universe could be better understood without making up things. It is religion’s fault for not getting with the times.

As long as there are people willing to believe religious dogmas written thousands of years ago instead of using logic, reasoning, science, facts, etc., to understand the universe, and to kill in the name of that religion, humanity is doomed to a continued existence of fighting and killing each other.

A few more of my favorite memes collected from the Internet, and I make no apology to my Christian friends. That’s what’s wonderful about America—people are free to believe what they want, or not to believe at all, and to criticize each other for their beliefs, or lack thereof.

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Seek and ye shall find (accompanied by flower art)

A fellow blogger asked me about my “irreligious views.” He said he thinks I’m agnostic. According to Wikipedia: “[A]gnosticism is the view that humanity does not currently possess the requisite knowledge and/or reason to provide sufficient rational grounds to justify the belief that deities either do or do not exist.” I think he’s right.

I have no problem with religion per sé. If religion helps someone refrain from raping, stealing, killing, etc., then by all means, go for it. However, when religion exercises mind control over its followers — Mormon, Islam, and Jewish religions, for example — then I do have a problem with it. Blindly following a religion simply because you were born into it is, in my humble opinion, a little strange.

I find it entirely plausible that people of old — i.e., prior to the Age of Enlightenment — needed a way to explain thunder, earthquakes, the sun, the moon, eclipses, falling stars, rain, snow, volcanoes, earthquakes, clouds, the desire to kill each other, life, death, etc. Enter religion. However, once people became enlightened, and science was able to explain all those things (except, perhaps, the desire to kill each other), I find it interesting that they still need to believe in a deity in order to explain those things.

Some of my friends ask, “What if there’s an afterlife?” What if there is?

If I spend my life helping the poor, the hungry, the sick, the homeless, the disabled…. and someone’s God doesn’t want me, I’m okay with that because I don’t want that God either.

If someone’s God will take the rapist, the killer, the thief…. simply because he says as he’s dying, “I repent of my sins and accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior,” well, I also don’t want that God.

Some of my friends don’t believe that the Big Bang “just happened.” My response is, “How did God happen?” That usually ends the conversation.

My wise old grandmother, a devout Catholic, often said, “Seek, and ye shall find.” I think she was on to something.

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