But now, we have long since harnessed electricity and made it light our rooms as well as do a zillion other things. It’s not some crazy supernatural idea anymore. It’s not something only perhaps some divine power can do. It’s something that through many discoveries we’ve found how to do ourselves, that such a power already exists in the natural world.

Then there’s the electromagnetic spectrum. We can only see visible light, but of course the spectrum is a hell of a lot bigger than that, with all the microwaves and infrared, and on the other side ultraviolet and ionizing radiation. But we have little to no way of knowing these invisible wavelengths are there without special technology. Before such a thing was known, if the idea of undetectable waves flying around were suggested, you’d seem crazy, like you’re believing in things you can’t prove. Although, as we now know, more accurately that statement would be “things you can’t prove YET”. Up until that point, the idea of such invisible energy was perhaps… a supernatural concept.

All that said, I do tire of religious people using “there’s so much in the universe we can’t explain” to essentially mean “so there must be a God!” Um, no shit there’s so much we can’t explain. Earth is the only part of the universe we know all that well and can live on (as of right now anyway), and even here on our own planet there’s so much undiscovered. Even as far as we’ve come, we’ve barely even left tiny scratches in the surface of all there is. But that doesn’t translate to “God did it”. It translates to “we just haven’t discovered it yet”.

But with that said now, hey, they might be right in a way. God and souls and afterlife and all that jazz could just be more stuff we haven’t discovered yet, even if vastly different from how we imagine it. They don’t violate the laws of physics but rather exist in some area yet undiscovered in it, such that, based on what we know now, it seems supernatural and impossible.

And that’s our instinct, isn’t it? That what is yet unreachable is divine. The Greek gods lived atop then-unscalable Mt. Olympus. Some gods live in or are the sun. We humans see uncharted territory, places we cannot go, and wonder there is something amazing there. We imagine alien races far out in outer space. So we pay NASA billions to check that shit out! What was once some nocturnal chick named Selene who likes to rape sleeping shepherds we now know to be a big orbiting rock on which we’ve walked and into which we’ve stuck our flag.

It’s Chief Wiggum saying “What IS your fascination with my forbidden closet of mysteries?”

It’s like Mt. Olympus could have been called Schrodinger’s mountain. Until anyone got to the top to see what’s actually up there, it could house the gods, right?

Of course, while it’s incredibly silly to assume we know all the universal forces there are or know the only forms they can take, it’s also incredibly silly to pretend we know anything specific about any forces yet undiscovered, such as, say, how these forces expect us to live our lives. Might there be some personal God-like being that cares about us individually? Sure. But lacking any tangible evidence to go by, this knowledge or theory is really only any good as a personal feeling, nothing that really, well, involves anyone other than yourself nor is a very stable thing into which to put any faith.

It’s why I’m not an atheist. Though mainly it’s because of my way of thinking, that supernatural just means “not discovered yet” and that everything has a scientific mechanism. I read the Harry Potter books and find myself wondering the underlying scientific basis of their magic spells, despite the fact that it being “magic” implies there isn’t one. Despite the fact that for the spells to work a certain way, there must be! Gah, confusing!

My theism comes from acknowledging that God, like all other theorized but not proven concepts, most likely does exist in some form, mostly since, as said, we only know a tiny tiny tiny bit about the universe and what’s even more ignorant than believing in things that don’t exist is insisting there is nothing more than we know. There will be shit in 500 years that we can’t even imagine now, that if suggested now would seem utterly ridiculous. Hey, who knows how long before we can travel through dimensions, discover warp speed, and bust our way into heaven and God/Buddha/Vishnu/Zeus/Galen/whatever will be like “finally!” Or not. But what now is only hypothesized or assumed to be a delusion might be in some way real. We just haven’t found it yet. We probably will. Along with lots of other neat stuff!

Including Flying Spaghetti Monster, of course!

“Just look at us now, part of it all. In spite of it all, we’re still around! So wake up the kids, put on some tea, let’s light up the tree. It’s Christmas Day!” -Neil Diamond, You Make It Feel Like Christmas

Here we are again. It is Christmas Day! Through another year since the last one, we have lasted. Yay!

As usual, yesterday was another run of Christmas Eve, the longest day of the year. The Christmas Eve runaround leading up to the relative lull that is Christmas Day. Started with waking up, running to work to change a temperature chart, back home, wrapping presents, watching specials, listening to Christmas music, etc. All the way until around 7pm when once again my family went to my mom’s Greek friend’s Christmas Eve party. Ate lots of delicious food as usual, then I went to the 11pm Christmas Eve service at church like always. Wearing my Santa hat.

And listened to the sermon, which was about It’s a Wonderful Life, which the priest admitted to only recently watching all the way through the first time (iknorite?!) even though the church had been doing some activity before then supposedly about the movie. So, in other words, the priest admitted to professing to know about something that he in fact knew little about. Bizarre!

Well, part of surviving a church service when one has ideologically pulled away from Christianity like I have is to look at the whole thing as just some story everyone there is making a celebration of. Pretend nobody actually takes this seriously but that this is all just for fun. Hey, for most of the people there, that may actually be the case!

Once more, after communion, we all held candles, turned out the lights, and sang Silent Night. With joy.

And once more, upon the choir walking back down the aisle, we all sang Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Which I felt tempted to finish with a loud cheerful “Hell yeah!” But I resisted. Sorry.

Then I talked to the priest, who’s known me for a while. I told him my realization about O Come All Ye Faithful.

Then I thanked him for not being Fred Phelps, and he took that as a compliment.

Went home and prepared last few gifts.

And the NYRA website, which had been down for several horrible days, had at last come back. Just in time for Christmas! Christmas miracle.

Then went upstairs to my living room, on which I had put my colored lights. I gazed out at the divine night sky, watching for Santa…

And off in the distance, under a tower with one of them blinking red lights…

I saw a star.

I think. A star there in the night sky on Christmas Eve…

Or, no, it was actually the big electric star that on a tower that some nearby company puts up every year.

Hmmm… what a time to first notice I’m able to see it from my house!

So I unplug the lights for the night and go to bed.

And in the morning…

It’s snowing.

Ever so lightly. No real accumulation. I wondered just what does and doesn’t qualify as a White Christmas. Do Christmas morning flurries count? Does it count if it’s leftover snow from several days ago? Does it count if it doesn’t snow until later in the day?

In any case, I drove to my family’s house with the tiny Christmas snowflakes whirling around me, and arrived at the house to my very excited little brother, who got a fancy new train set, and is right now running that train round and round and round and round…

And has been using the new saucer sled he got from Santa as a flying saucer full of aliens attacking the train!

And we had our feast, our feast of roast beast.

What does Christmas have in common with the United States?

They’re both crazy mixtures of stuff from a crapload of different cultures… yet white Christian conservatives seem to think they belong only to them.

And the Dallas Cowboys lost. Sweet.

Christmas.

Yeah.

I was watching the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol this evening, and when Scrooge is with Christmas Present he’s watching his nephew and the Cratchits in church. Where everyone was singing O Come All Ye Faithful. And then I just got this feeling, that this movie from 1938, about a story written and taking place in like 1850 or so, features a church service where they are singing O Come All Ye Faithful. The very same O Come All Ye Faithful I’ll be singing at a church service on Christmas Eve here in 2010.

Times like this I understand more why people cling to their religions and/or traditions. Not so much necessarily any ideological reasons, but that belonging to some long-running chain of events, that makes one feel part of that something bigger, yet in a sense that each one of us is significant in it. Something like that.

When I went to London last year, I visited Saint Paul’s Cathedral, which has been there for like over a millennium. Or, more accurately, since it was rebuilt after that big ass London fire in like 1666 or something, but in any case, that site has been used for religious purposes for that millennium or so. While I was there, they did a quick afternoon service and some choir was singing. And I thought while sitting there that here I was, witnessing yet another service in the countless number of them that had been going on there since so very many centuries ago. Neat.

Christmas songs are perhaps my favorite thing about the season, what with embodying all the traditions have been swept into the veritable Katamari that Christmas is, as well as the general joy. And music is fun anyway!

And I wonder that a century from now, two centuries from now, they’ll still be singing Silent Night and Angels We Have Heard on High, as well as the newer but just as fun and meaningful songs, and the even more Christmas songs that have yet to be composed. Now that’s what I call seeing Christmas Past, Present, and Future!

Did I ever tell you the one about Santa’s ninth reindeer, Rudolph? He was born with a glowing red nose, and the other reindeer bullied him over it, until one foggy Christmas Eve, when Santa couldn’t fly anywhere because magic sleighs and flying reindeer are no match for ordinary fog that apparently covers the entire world, they realized Rudolph’s red nose makes a fine fog light, so they were able to go out after all.

Did I ever tell you the one about Frosty the Snowman? He was a snowman who came to life and started dancing around once a hat was put on his head because Christmas snow is amazing like that.

Did I ever tell you the one about Ebenezer Scrooge? He was some miser who hated everyone and everything until three Christmas ghosts visited him and convinced him he’s a dick, so he changed his ways just in time for Christmas morning.

Did I ever tell you the one about Jesus? His mother Mary immaculately conceived him, since he was the Son of God, and she and her husband Joseph traveled all the way to Bethlehem and delivered him in a stable, which made a big star appear in the sky, because this meant that everyone would now be forgiven for regretted wrongdoing…

Oh, crap. It just got real.

There’s no problem decorating our houses with Santa Claus and snowmen or nutcrackers, or putting up Dickensian houses on our living room tables. That’s normal for this time of year. We tell their stories and make them symbols of this lovely holiday season…

This is all despite the fact that these stories are widely accepted as being fictional.

Yet when it comes to Jesus, there’s an annoying fork in the road. One way means you believe the story about Jesus to be 100% historical fact and then you include him in all your decorations and songs and activities. The other way means you do not believe the Jesus story to be true at all and therefore leave him out entirely of the decorations and songs and activities.

I really don’t want to do either. Can’t I just be someone who doesn’t feel it matters if the story of Jesus is true or not? Yet at the same time, can’t I still accept that story as part of Christmas just like the others, given no special treatment? I mean, why do we listen to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with the idea that it’s just a cute story while listening to The First Noel with the expectation that one has to believe this story as true? To me, they’re all nice songs that tell nice stories, whether the story is a generous saint who flies around the world on Christmas Eve or about a miraculous birth signifying universal divine forgiveness.

To quote Santa Claus (from a story I wrote, LOL), “Oh, please! Jesus is great, but he’s only ONE part of Christmas.”

I get to choose my own religious identity. You do not.

You know how annoying it is for people to decide for you which religious (or any other for that matter) box you fit in? Especially when it is contrary to what you have explicitly stated?

Some people fit in the neat little box of Christian, Jew, Muslim, Atheist, whatever. But not everybody does, in fact I’m certain most people don’t. And that’s where people get confused.

While I don’t really consider myself non-Christian, lately I’ve been going by Secular Theist. When asked what that means, I say “I believe God exists but I don’t believe in doing anything about it.”

And people totally just nod and say that’s cool…

Oh, wait, no they don’t. They instead insist I’m really agnostic.

Fuck you, I’m not agnostic. I do believe God exists. Agnostics believe there’s no way to know and may or may not lean either way. I do know God exists.

Or then I get called a Deist. No, I’m not damn Deist, either. Deists believe God created the universe. I do not believe God had anything to do with that. So, no, not a Deist.

Then they get really confused that I don’t believe in a Creator. So that must mean I’m really an Atheist!

No! I’m not an Atheist. What did I just say? I DO believe in God. Just because I may agree with most atheists when it comes to religious fundamentalism run amok, such as the God in School entry a few days ago, doesn’t mean I’m an atheist myself. Just because my belief in God doesn’t take the same form as that of most other theists, doesn’t mean I’m not still a theist.

Or then I get the “oh, you just THINK you aren’t an atheist but you totally are, lulz!” Funny, if I were an atheist, wouldn’t I then be smart enough to be able to have a better idea of my own religious identity than YOU? That must mean I’m either a stupid atheist or an intelligent theist. Can that idea sink into your mind? LOL PARADOX!

Or can you try the idea of not assigning useless labels to people based on what specific ideologies they may have? Or is that too hard?

Dear God,
Why do you allow so much violence in my school?
-A Concerned Student

Dear Concerned Student,
I’m not allowed in school.
-God

Okay, hold still while I feed you this tuna sandwich, full of omega-3s to help your brain heal from that.

This is the sort of thing your average social conservative may nod along with, believing a “healthy dose of Jesus” is the cure to everything. Because if only these kids had good old religion in their lives, schools (and everywhere else) would be a haven of peace and love!

First thought that might come to mind is that most violence in history has been influenced by religion, but, while true, I don’t think that’s the case with school violence. School violence exists for many reasons, but most have to do with the students’ lives absolutely sucking ass! And most of these students already have religion in their lives (yes, that is possible without schools having morning prayers or eschewing evolution, who’d a thunk it!), and many of them are miserable and violent anyway!

Hell, schools already have a sort of prayer every morning anyway. It’s called the Pledge of Allegiance, and thanks to insecure religious morons like the ones who surely came up with the above exchange, God has been plugged into it.

Of course, when it comes to talking about how awesome religion is, it’s often more about how awesome your own religion is, as many of these people probably do not consider Buddha or Vishnu to really be holy nor their followers truly religious. So it’s another form of “there will only be peace so long as everyone falls into the same little group I do”. And while it’s these differences, or more specifically, the insistence on focusing on these differences, that spurs the intolerance that leads to violence, messages like the above only exacerbate it, only spread the “I’m right, you’re wrong, you cause problems in schools because you’re wrong and not like me” which is the exact type of mindset that divides people (even if those who say it may think they’re trying to be inclusive) and allows violence to continue.

Not to mention that, if the God you’re promoting is truly so omnipotent, the idea you make him out to be unable to intervene in, well, ANYTHING just because of the perceived notion that he’s not wanted there, what kind of believer are you? Just more proof this isn’t really about God.

So if you truly want these school violence issues to go away, how about putting away the useless God crap, since with or without God by whatever definition, school violence will still be there, and actually get off your ass to make the actual conditions of the school and its community better? Hint: it’s not something that can be solved with Bibles.

She pressed on, wondering if something had happened to me or if I’m against prayer. I told her I’m not against it but that I just believe it to be pointless, that God is going to do whatever the hell he wants regardless of what we say. She said that we should still give thanks anyway, and I was like “but if God’s going to do what he wants regardless, why do it?” Who would we be thanking? She couldn’t really come up with any suitable answers to those questions, but kept on with the whole “I can’t believe you!” charade. Whatever.

Funny how people tend to not know the difference between being against something and non-participation.

I’ve heard it suggested, and I think I sort of agree, that there isn’t much difference between praying and witchcraft. Both involve saying special words in the hopes that a supernatural being or phenomenon will perform some action.

Prayer is also a miniature form of meditation. A few years ago, I heard advice that when angry, one should pray first, and that’ll help the anger. It’s true, it would, but mostly because it’s the same basic tactic as counting back from ten, that you’ve distracted your mind for a minute or so and that calms your rage and, funnily enough, brings you back to rationality.

Of course, prayer before Thanksgiving dinner is still pointless because, as said, I don’t think God gives a shit what we do or say to him, and it’s no time for meditation because I’m fucking hungry!

Basically, a 9-year-old girl in Brazil was raped by her stepfather, and she got pregnant with twins. Doctors determined she wouldn’t be able to survive the pregnancy so they had to terminate it to save her life. Even to prolifers like me, sounds reasonable. Rape and the mother’s life being on the line are generally the exceptions to the “abortion is wrong” idea, and this is clearly both. Unfortunate, yes, but obviously necessary, and honestly, there is just all around nothing whatsoever fortunate about this situation.

Then the Catholic Church decided to chime in. Brazilian Bishop heard about this little life-saving abortion and shat brix. He told the little girl’s mother and the doctors “GTFO my church!” and so they were excommunicated.

So basically, the people who were banned from Catholicism for being such abominable, unforgivable sinners are the doctors involved with this abortion, and the mother of the pregnant girl for consenting to the procedure being done on her daughter. Not the girl, because she’s nine, still a child, not yet confirmed, etc. Well, that’s good. But, wait, isn’t there someone else involved here? I mean, the poor girl got pregnant somehow…

Oh, yeah! The asshole rapist stepfather. Surely he too was excommunicated for having forcefully violated this girl, and in doing so left her in the life-threatening state that resulted in the now-damned doctors even having to extinguish the unborns in the first place. Right? RIGHT???

Um… no.

Well, surely this Brazilian bishop must be some crazy rogue. I mean, I know being anti-abortion is like the staple of being a Catholic, way above shit like feeding the hungry, spreading love, ending violence, and all that unimportant stuff, but certainly even the guys in the Vatican are saying “Bishop, you crazy!” Right? RIGHT???

Um… no.

Seems the guys in the Vatican are totally on board with this bishop’s choice of excommunication, not thinking he left anyone out of it or anything. I mean, why excommunicate a man for a little thing like rape of a child when the doctors who aborted the babies he forcefully impregnated her with committed MURDER? Oh noes! Horrible doctors, they should have done the honorable thing and just let the girl’s forced pregnancy kill her (AND the babies! they were dead either way!) because that’s what Jesus wants.

This has been said for like two thousand years but it bears repeating. These people are fucking nuts. They put their spurious ideas of holy purity, which doesn’t actually mean DICK in the real world, ahead of any real good or positive accomplishment.

For people who go on and on about how precious and wonderful life is, how it’s a wondrous gift from God or whatever, they sure do everything they can to ensure life is as LAME as possible! Pope John Paul II a couple years ago lamented all the abortions and whatnot as being part of some “culture of death”, which is cute considering devout Catholicism seems to require living in a culture of shame and misery! And for what?

I mean, I’ll give them some credit. They do very slowly come around on ridiculous things now and then. They’ve accepted evolution as at least being plausible (just need to get past that “plausible” and realize Genesis is just a STORY, that we have as much proof of Adam and Eve’s existence as we do of that of Bilbo Baggins, that proof of course being “I read it in a book, LOL!”). They’re easing up ever so slightly on their strictness about contraception, and I do mean slightly, considering their recent bullshit with “oh noes, don’t give out condoms in Africa to prevent AIDS, condoms are bad and evil and though we base this on absolutely nothing, they’ve been known to cause AIDS, eek!”

True, many, if not most, Catholics don’t actually give a shit what the “official” stance of the church is on a lot of things. They do use their own judgment more than most religious people are given credit for. Catholicism to them (as Alex pointed out a few years back) is more about identity than belief or adherence to what a guy in a tall funny hat says. They still eat meat on Lenten Fridays and have premarital sex with condoms and the pill and do a lot of other shit that’s technically forbidden. And many, hearing about this shit in Brazil and the “condoms cause AIDS!” thing, are just rolling their eyes like “ugh, STFU papalfag!” A fact which, ironically, can restore one’s faith in God and humanity!

But as for the so-called Catholic authorities, and their sizable following who do actually believe their word is God’s, seriously, STFU papalfags! If you’re going to be excommunicating people, especially so unevenly, they ought to wear that excommunication proudly. Who’d want to be in your crazy club after that anyway?

And an amazing thing happened.

Well, okay, it’s not that amazing. Anyway, near the end of the service, after communion, came time to sing Silent Night. Usually, with the lights low and everyone holding candles and the general mood of it, one can get a little emotional and teary-eyed. Not this time!

Good. Getting emotional like that is a minor loss of self control. Instead of the message being an emotional one, now the same tune and words, they brought happiness and a smile. Why? Emotions are weakness and a vulnerability. What good is being an emotional idiot over some religious passage? None. Instead, the words meant pretty much nothing, and there was merely a triumphant smile.

Yeah, Jesus is born, here to save us, blah blah blah… whatever. I do what I want. So I’m happy! And it’s the only way good can get done regardless of motivation. It’s a nice story, sure, and whether or not it’s true doesn’t really matter that much to me. That’s all fine and good, but the real question is what specifically I’m supposed to do about it. If anything, no different from what is done already. So what difference does it make?

Okay, one difference. And I’d rather be happy and smiling.

Merry Christmas!

Oh, and I didn’t feel like doing another gay ass video this year.

Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute!

It’s a sort of “common knowledge” tidbit about the Bible that gets circulated around. Everyone is all like “ooh, Mary Magdalene was a hooker and then she found Jesus and was changed.” It gets believed she was the woman they were throwing stones at when Jesus made his famous declaration that only he who is without sin may cast the first stone at her.

But if you actually read the passage in the Bible (it’s in Luke somewhere), you see the woman there is not named.

So where are you people getting this?

I mean, it makes for a bit of an inspiring little story that even this unclean whore could still rise up to being one of Jesus’s disciples, in an unofficial sense. Or his wife depending on who you ask. But that is just not what’s in the story, whether the canon gospels or the lost ones.

Hell, isn’t there enough made up shit in scripture as it is? Must we add to it?