Allah La La La Bamba!

This is a long and serious one. Brace yourselves.

One of my devoted readers, Whore, has asked on a couple of posts now, whether or not, when I said, "I pray to Allah every day..." if I was being serious. There's the short, direct answer, No. But that's no fun. So, I'll alienate probably close to everybody that reads this thing, but I'll explain why I don't pray to Allah or God or Vishnu or Zeus or whatever you believe in.

The comedian David Cross shares a lot of my sentiments in regards to religion, so if you want to hear somebody a lot funnier and a lot balder than I am explain this to you, get his CD, Shut Up You Fucking Baby.

I was talking with a friend of mine about people praying the other day. He was talking about how he was at some Bible Study and, at the end, people were praying for things. At first, he said, it was fine. Somebody prayed for somebody they knew who had cancer or something. Whatever, that's harmless. Then, the right-wing, brainwashed, "The Bible is always right" attitude started to come out. Somebody was praying that the gay people would stop "choosing" to be gay and, instead, find the Lord. Holy shit. How self-righteous and backward is that? Somebody else is doing something (that they're born into--to say they choose it is just fucking stupid--"I'm going to choose to maybe get my ass kicked for expressing my love for another human being that happens to be the same sex as me") that doesn't have any sort of impact on you at all, but just because your magical book might say that it isn't right, then that person will definitely be going to hell? It's so close-minded, but I can even forgive that because at least, in a way, this person is caring about other people. But then it got really strange. People started praying for things. Not abstract things like for somebody to get over cancer or world peace, but actual, tangible, material things. Some guy wanted the group to pray for him so that he could get a laptop computer. Yeah, I'm sure that that's high on god's priority list--to make sure that you can play minesweeper on an airplane right before you die. He said a few people asked for material possessions. I'm pretty sure that if god did exist, there's no way he'd be like your rich uncle you see once a year who always gives you a present that's way better than anything your parents give you, thus making your parents realize that their sad life is nothing compared to Uncle Chad's. God is not a rich uncle.

To me, believing that the world was created by some being with super powers, like a giant Harry Potter in the sky, is absolutely ridiculous. If somebody were to honestly tell you that they believed in Zeus and Hera and all the Greek Gods, you'd laugh at them and say that they were crazy. Why is it, then, that when somebody says that they believe in god (basically an amalgamation of the Greek Gods), they aren't laughed at either? This is only because it's the widely accepted (in the religions of the United States anyway) idea pertaining to how people got here. Science has shown that the Big Bang could have easily, and most logically, created the Universe, but, instead, people choose to think that there's some fucking wizard who just snapped his fingers and made something. People truly believe that the type of shit that happens on Bewitched is the way that the world was created. God is not Samantha Stevens.

Now, for most people, the idea of how we got here isn't why they are religious. For the majority of people, they hide in religion because they're afraid of what happens when they die. What are the consequences of the shit that they do while they're "on earth?" A lot of people suddenly "find" religion (jesus, I'm using a lot of quotation marks--understand I'm being facetious when I'm using them, I'm not sporadically quoting somebody) when they have done something horrible in their life and they want to feel better about it. This is why religion is so prominent in prisons, drug rehab centers, and in the mind of the Vietnamese prostitute lying in my bed the morning after (I get the overnight prostitutes; that's right I'm a big spender, beeeotches). A lot of people are so afraid of what a shitty human being they actually are, and they hate themselves for it, that they decide the only way they can feel better about how fucking horrible they are is by hiding all their problems in one place where it's okay to be fucked up because there's this being who will love you unconditionally. How convenient, huh? The greater part about this is that death, something normally feared for its uncertainty, is now something that's "even better than life." God is not Walt Disney.

Dude, I heard that in Heaven that, like, all you have to do is think about what kind of Slurpee you want and you'll have one, like, instantly. No matter what flavor. Seriously! God's so fucking awesome! Let's go to the child molestation booth!--Some fictitious Christian moron

One of the worst aspects of religious people are those that try to push their beliefs on somebody else. There's this guy that I used to work with who was really religious. Whenever he would bring the subject of religion up, I would try to leave. See, I try to be really non-confrontational about religion because people are entitled to believe what they want--they're just wrong. Well, this guy always talked about it and talked about how I should read the Bible (which I've read enough of to know that it's like goddamn Aesop's Fables but without animals). Then, when I'd explain to him that I won't be reading it, he'd say stuff like, "I'll pray for you." This is such a condescending statement. They can think it to themselves, write it on their John 3:16 post-it note, but to tell somebody that is basically saying, "Well, you don't believe what I do, so you're going to burn in hell for it. But I'll try to talk to god, I'm in good with him, and see what I can do for you." I can't reply, "Well, I won't pray for you" because it comes off smarmy and elitist when, in actuality, that's exactly what I'm going to do, I'm just letting them know, just as they let me know. What they don't realize is that they're actually being elitist, self-important, and "holier than thou" when they say things like that. God is not Bill O'Reilly.

See, it comes down to the question of logic versus believing that the Lord of the Rings actually happened. That's how far-fetched religion is. It may as well involve dragons, orcs and shit. Because it has no basis in reality. Those who believe in religion are those who use it as a crutch to make themselves feel better about their position in life. Whether it's to pick themselves up after murdering somebody and ruining their life or they're on their deathbed and need to feel comfortable about what's on "the other side," it's there to fill that spot in their brain that can't comprehend something. I'm not saying finding religion in these situations is bad, if it helps somebody be a better person, that's great, but what I'm saying is that people shouldn't need to be told not to be a shitty person and, if somebody's dying, whether or not they believe in God, they're still going to die and they're still going to the same nothingness that everybody goes to (it's a sad thought to those that can't handle it). God is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

The Bible, the object held in such high regard by so many Christians, is about as useful as a pogo stick to Christopher Reeve. The U.S. Constitution, something 228 years old, has been amended 27 times and still, a lot of the writing and ideas are outdated. The Bible is around 1900 years old yet the same things remain within it. The only things that change are the translations. Doesn't it seem wrong that there haven't been any changes to the ideas expressed within the Bible? Are these people saying that we, as humans, haven't evolved morally and ideologically in two thousand years? It's actually scary to think that these people, who follow something written that long ago, are in charge of the country right now. If I buy the wrong edition of a book for a science class I have, there's the possibility that that information could be outdated even though it was only written a year ago. You're trying to tell me that in two thousand years nothing has changed? Yeah, I'm talking to you! Fuck you, buddy! To put it less eloquently (I think I'm in the negatives on eloquence), that's just retarded. God is not Christopher Burke (Corky from Life Goes On).

Now that I'm the only person left that will actually read this thing, because people are so goddamn sensitive about religion, I'm anxious to see what I'm going to talk about next. I think I'll talk about my undying love for Satan since everybody knows that all atheists are in bed with Satan. So, next entry will just be me scrawling pentagrams on my computer while chanting about Beelzebub's power over myself and the world.

Made-up aphorism of the day:
The brain is like a band-aid. They both help things heal quicker, but sting like a sonofabitch when you remove them.