“If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others… There are so many people who speak badly about religions or other religions, who make fun of them, who make a game out of the religions of others. They are provocateurs. And what happens to them is what would happen to Dr. Gasparri if he says a curse word against my mother. There is a limit.” —Pope Francis
Can you imagine an eight-year-old ghetto kid standing in court beside an 80-year-old Vicar of Christ because both imagine that a “Yo mamma…” insult necessitates a violent response? Such is the shallowness of ghetto, Catholic—and Islamic—morality, yet they all agree that, as an atheist, I cannot be a moral person.
Religious people from one religion tend to hate those from other religions, yet they share an interest in censoring anyone who shows disrespect for any religion. That those who regard religion as a force for evil feel don’t feel such respect, or that religious people don't reciprocate the respect that they demand, is considered irrelevant because, as religious people see it, religious values come from God, and secular values from Satan. In his remarks, the pope did say that violence in the name of God is an aberration, but given his words about there being “a limit” to what one can say before an assault becomes necessary, along with his personal threat to assault anyone who curses his mother—much less his religion—it appears to be an aberration that he shares.
“One of Charlie Hebdo’s founding members blamed the slain editor for being murdered, calling him a “blockhead” and saying, “I really hold it against you.” —The Telegraph
If this “founding member” is consistent, I can but assume that he blames rape on women who wear short skirts, burglary on people who buy new stereos, and pedophilia on toddlers who kiss priests because, god knows, if the victims aren’t to blame, who is, their assailants bearing no responsibility?
The common ground to both of these news items is that people had damn well better back-off when it comes to criticizing religion because if they don’t, they can expect to come to a violent end, and it will be their own fault. Where does this leave me? I often criticize religion in ways that would get me fined, killed, or imprisoned in the 44% of the world’s countries that have laws against the defamation of religion. So, what do you think? If I should come to such an end, would you say that it was a travesty of justice by a people that despise free speech, or would you say I have no one to blame but myself?
When I hear about the latest Islamic atrocity, I often recall the centuries during which Christianity was no better, and I wonder if the world might not see a return to those times. When I heard the pope's latest stupid remark, I reflected that he and Islam are a lot closer than he and I when it comes to the ease with which they rationalize violence as a reasonable recompense for opinion.
*If you want to send your own message to the pope, here's the link: http://vatican.com/contact#
Until my last couple of posts anyway, it was my impression that many readers assumed I was a liberal. After all, I’m an atheist; I vote Democratic or Green; I support gay marriage and abortion; I’ve been in an open marriage and even a group marriage; I favor socialism over capitalism; I left the most conservative state in the Union for one of the most liberal; and am a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Yet, the truth is that I’m not an across the board anything, and many of my values would be offensive to both liberals and conservatives. For instance…
I favor early euthanasia for those who are born so
severely retarded that they will always require 24-hour care. When I
worked in a group home with such people, I would see 50-year-olds
sitting bent over and drooling on themselves while strapped into
wheelchairs, and wonder why the hell we were keeping them alive.
Likewise, I favor euthanasia for anyone whom, later in life, has an
accident or illness that reduces them to such a state—people with
advanced Alzheimer’s for example.
I think prison overcrowding could be reduced with
creative punishments. Specifically, I would favor less imprisonment and
more humiliation. For example, teenagers who were caught going down the street knocking out car windows could be placed in
prominently located stocks while wearing dunce caps.
I strongly favor gun control, yet I own guns. Some are hundred year old single shot shotguns that don’t work, but I also have a couple of handguns that do work, and when Peggy and I go camping to a remote area, or hear a bump in the night, I get one out.
If people are on welfare, I think they should be made to give something back to society. Under our current system, they can go on welfare, never hold a job, and run up their welfare checks by parenting a houseful of children whom grow up to be as parasitical as themselves.
I don’t support people who demonstrate against what they consider racism on the part of police. Sure, I think criminals have rights, and that all people should be treated equally regardless of race, but the only situation I see people demonstrating against that involves obvious abuse is the one in which the man was killed with a chokehold, and even there, I don’t see any evidence that he was a victim of racism. But the biggest problem I have with these demonstrations is that instead of narrowing the racial divide, they’re widening it.
My only objection to capital punishment is that the wrong
person might be killed. Aside from that, I could work as an
executioner. The first criminal I would like to kill is the Boston
bomber. If he’s found guilty, I would be quite happy to hang the bastard
upside down by one ankle in downtown Boston and leave him there. I
would do it in warm weather so he would last awhile, and I wouldn’t let
anyone hurt him (so he would last awhile). I’d just let him hang, and
when he died, I’d throw him in the garbage.
I oppose late term abortions in the absence of a pressing medical need.
I don’t regard panhandling as having anything to do with “freedom of speech,” and I don’t regard groups of kids who block sidewalks while loitering downtown as having anything to do with “freedom of assembly.” Neither do I think that people have a “right” to sleep in cars in front of my house or camp along the creek across the street.
I hate Islam, my politically incorrect opinion being that the crimes of Islam far exceed the actions of fanatics—unless you classify the citizens of every country run by Moslems as fanatical. Bombs, guns, female “circumcision,” the isolation and oppression of women, the persecution of homosexuals and non-Moslems, and the absence of freedom of speech are prominent among the fruits of Islam in the lives of millions of Moslems. I see it as a barbaric religion, and would be pleased if we didn’t have a single Moslem living in America. (After the recent murders in Paris, I planned to make a post consisting of cartoons about Mohammed, but Peggy asked that I not do so, it being the only time she ever requested that I forgo a particular subject.)
I don’t “honor diversity” (a common bumper sticker here) because the more diverse the diversity, the more likely it is to be divisive. It’s one thing to live next door to someone who speaks English and moved to America from a country that holds similar values, and quite another to live next door to a houseful of Moonies, a black family that hates white people, a house crammed to the rafters with non-English speaking Hispanics, or a bunch of Moslems who despise the West and practice Sharia law. One of the pluses of moving to Oregon was the lack of diversity, but what did I find when I got here but people with no experience of diversity promoting diversity.
I’ll stop here with the thought that I’ve made my point. I’ve often felt badly that readers viewed me as something I’m not, but at the same time, I couldn’t think what to do about it. What inspired the answer was a recent remark by a liberal reader: “From Mississippi, are you? Please do not come near my blog again.” I considered his remark so stupid that I thought he was joking, but when I realized he wasn’t, it brought up for me the anger I have often felt toward people who make a point of boasting about how unprejudiced they are, how much they honor diversity, and so forth, only to have them turn around and trash me because I have a Southern accent.
I came here from conservative Mississippi because I believed that liberals really did have a better way, only to find that I was forever running into people who couldn’t wait to tell me what an undereducated bigot I was, this without them knowing anything whatsoever about my schooling or values. These haters of bigotry were so overflowing with bigotry that they figured they knew everything they needed to know just from hearing my accent or having someone tell them where I was from. Clearly, not every liberal is this way, but a great many are. I even had a friend tell me that she didn't want me to meet her husband because he would make fun of me because I was from the South. When you run into that kind of thing enough, it makes you wary of liberals, and so it is that my opinions have been formed. Not all, or even most, liberals are notable for their bigotry, but enough are that they’re prominent here in Oregon, often in high positions. I'll say more about this in my next post.
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