on biblical brutality

After having made it through most of the Christian bible’s Old Testament, perusing now Isaiah, I see what many people with whom I’ve spoken say about the beauty and kindness contained within said book’s pages. There are fantastic passages that seem to tell the reader to be merciful and good. I also see, however, how someone reading this ancient text could soon become radicalized and filled with righteous hatred.

Psalms 137:8-9 (Good News Bible, Today’s English Version) for example says: “Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy is the man who pays you back for what you have done to us - who takes your babies and smashes them against a rock.” The Old Testament abounds with such language, with pleasure gained from the suffering of innocent victims, with pleas to Yahweh that the reader might rejoice when the children’s children’s children of this foe or that enemy are punished for his misdeeds. Taken out of context, of course, such words would horrify any modern, rational, sane-minded individual. 

Why, though, are such hateful and despicable passages still in the text? Why have they not been excised? Why does the Christian bible still contain parts that call for finding joy in the suffering of others, kids and other innocents alike? Anybody who recites the Nicene creed must believe in the Old Testament, including that: “Intelligent people talk sense, but stupid people need to be punished” (Proverbs 10:13). Punished by whom, though, and when? By an armed teenager, today, or by a bloodthirst god thousands of years ago? Keeping such destructive and terrifying language in one’s holy book encourages weak-minded and easily excitable individuals, who seek guidance from Bronze-age belief systems such as the Christian bible, to harm others. The bible has been changed before, for purposes political and power-related. Why not change it again and take out all the hate-mongering and schadenfreude? While it’s not a perfect system, anyone looking for a different and more peaceful path might turn, for example, to Buddhism, a code that contains within itself far fewer calls to abject violence against persons who cannot defend themselves.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

on getting news

The man got his news from one source, and one source only. He didn’t need to diversify his sources, because “This is America, daggonit, and as an American in America I’m allowed to do as I please.” The talking heads appearing on his favorite conservative-leaning television station told him everything he needed to know, and he liked it that way.

He also listened to his wife, of course, who sometimes passed along knowledge and advice gained from her circle of friends and family. Which meant he got news from at least two sources. He also listened to the pastor of his church, of course, and read such bible verses as appeared on the mobile application a grandchild had installed on his phone. Which meant he got news from at least four sources. He also listed to some of his conservative-leaning friends, whose opinions tended, at times, to match his. Which meant he got news from at least eight sources.

And yet, when pressed, he insisted that he got his news from one source, and one source only. The man was fearful, you see, and stubborn. He had learned to stick to his guns no matter what. Even if it meant being wrong, and lying to himself, and riding roughshod over the gut-knowledge that he was acting foolishly. Even if it meant being cruel to others, and attacking them personally because of their views. Because, in America, where the gentle nonconformist gets steamrolled daily by ten million angry yes-men, corporations don’t profit when people are open-minded or learn from mistakes.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

rapid and furious

In the prayer room of a local hospital, a man was caught stealing and otherwise abusing copies of the Quran, Islam’s holy book. Accepting of most viewpoints and bursting with forgiveness, the chaplain in charge of the prayer room finally figured out who had been violating the sanctity of the sacred spaces in his care. Instead of having the offender arrested for the hate crimes he’d been committing, however, the chaplain merely alerted hospital security, who in turn approached the offender and gave him a stern warning, whereupon he pledged to cease his hateful, criminal assault. The man claimed he had been desecrating the translations of the Quran out of concern for the spiritual safety of his Christian neighbors. In his mind, it appears, the Muslim teachings promote only death and hatred - leaving no room for celebration, compassion, or love.

Imagine for a moment that this scenario had played out the other way around, that a non-Christian had been entering local chapels to steal, ruin, and similarly abuse the Christian holy books stored therein. Imagine he claimed he was doing it to protect the minds of children from the influence of Yahweh, the Christian god, who orders his followers to kill homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13); to murder people who work on Saturday, the Sabbath (Exodus 31:14); and to end the lives of those who don’t believe in him (2 Chronicles 15:12-13). Oh, how swift would be his likely judgement, how brutal the townspeople's reaction. Such an offender would probably rot in jail for months until he faced a hostile judge and jury; then, he’d go back to jail for the maximum period of time allowed by law.

Why did hospital security not take steps to prosecute the Christian who was abusing Qurans? Why did they not do everything in their power to protect the persons working in or visiting the hospital from the openly violent ways of a religious extremist? To this author’s eye, it seems that the original offender was given a pass because he was a Christian who chose to abuse the Muslim holy book. If this scenario had played out any differently, the outcome would have been one of rapid and furious action in the pursuit of justice. The area in which these hate crimes occurred is predominantly Christian; it is therefore not surprising that a person who would act in the manner of a Christian terrorist should receive not his due punishment but a mere slap on the wrist. When justice is kept blind, mankind has the chance to achieve greatness; when those who deserve her wrath are instead allowed to roam free, their minds poisoned by prejudice and hatred, the human race is doomed to wallow in fear-soaked failure.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

front yard manger

As soon as my neighbors had taken down their cheap, little Chinese-made flag sets showing pumpkins and corn, scarecrows and bounty, mangers began to appear. Some were outlines of figures cut from plywood and painted a uniform color, mostly white; others were elaborate scenes with electric lighting, hovering angels, quality clothes on life-like figures, and real hay strewn about. As I am no longer a Christian but was raised by a pair of them, one of whom was clergy, I know that there are at least four different tellings of Jesus' birth myth, each one wholly different from the next, each one with different players, places, and progressions. I also know that some of the stories don't mention a manger at all and that others don't speak of beasts of burden, that, in general, there is in fact little uniformity and therefore much room for interpretation most everywhere one might care to look in the Christians' bible.

What I struggle to understand is why people feel the need to haul a bunch of props out of storage and hammer them into their lawns, year after year, time and time again, and why they then read the same stories over and over, boredom and mischief spreading like wildfire amongst any assembled youth, the lack of personal progress or group ingenuity glaring and obvious to anyone who might care to see it. We Americans go to market and buy fresh fruits and vegetables to eat, not old and stale ones; we overhaul and streamline our business processes constantly, allowing exhausted methods and worn-out ideas to fade into obscurity so that better ones might take their place; and yet we cling to highly stylized and professionally-commercialized versions of a religion that – due to its inherent absurdity and tendency to promote mistrust for and violence against All Things Strange or Unusual – should have been jettisoned from the annals of history during our all-too-short Age Of Enlightenment. The lessons of that age, however, appear to have been fallen before the idea that we are to search for salvation in the mouths of our preachers rather than in the stillness that comes when the animal and the human spirits are unified within.

The people who erect elaborate mangers depicting mythical scenes from the brutal past (young Mary and her husband Joseph were, after all, fleeing systematic infanticide) probably think of themselves as good Christians. In reality, however they rely heavily on the magic of modern technology for much of their comfort and success, on telephones and motor-vehicles, on paved roads and postal services, on well-pumps and central heating, on electrical lighting and printed books, on Constitutions and charters, and on no one else reminding them of the hypocrisy of their living fat and happy lives in air- and rain-tight houses with a car for each inhabitant parked in the driveway while most people on Earth shiver and starve. At least some neighbors merely staple yard upon blinking yard of seizure-inducing lights to their homes' gables and window-frames without making any sort of religious statement, wasting the output of coal-fired electrical plants on garish light-shows, pouring out our precious fossil resources merely on secular, non-partisan attempts to celebrate this, the Season of Excess. I, for one, shall refrain from celebrating an unassisted birth held in a grimy sty, and stick to bitching about those persons who do. Oh, brother, how stupid can I be. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

on public worship

Why do people go to churches in order to pray to their god? Why has congregating with one another in groups become the baseline method, the normal state of affairs for Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Mormons, animists, and wiccans? I am merely a lay person, and an ignorant, worthless whorphan at that; therefore, I can only present here my own poorly-conceived thoughts, offering them up freely upon this, the altar of public opinion.

I believe that churches are a stubborn hold-over from earlier times during which the great majority of people could not read. During, say, the European Middle Ages, the individual had to physically enter a church in order to hear such words as he thought were his god's teachings, words which his under-educated and stunted mind accepted, without question, as Fact. Since our governments have forced their citizens to become educated to a certain standard, and since the literacy rate in most western industrialized nations (WINs) sits at nearly 100%, we should no longer need these bastions of foul old organized religion, as we can now all read our Bibles and our Korans and our Bhagavad-Gitas by ourselves, and in the privacy of our own homes.

Among the primary factors contributing to the survival of churches and other places of worship is the fact that these communities act as meeting-places at which different people can share resources with one another without going through the hassle of trawling for useful acquaintances among the general population; it is assumed that anyone who manages to stay within the church without pissing off too many people and who is witnessed to perform the community's shared rites and rituals is a trustworthy and generally good chap upon whom one can rely to accompany the kids alive on the biannual canoing trip. Another reason is that these communities are self-perpetuating, with new parents retreating to the bosom of Mother Church as soon as they hear their child's first screams, just as their parents did when they were born; having suddenly tiny people around – the sanctity of whose souls are, for some reason, in doubt – seems to drive both man and woman back into the clutches of organized religion, where they and their children become ensnared, so that when the children become adults and have kids of their own, they return to tug on the apron-strings of corpulent, silken-shirted charlatans who profess to know more about freely-accessible books than other people do.

I find it curious that people feel the need to worship in public, where they will be spoken to by the holy man and quietly shunned by their fellow parishioners if they do not perform their group's rites and rituals according to its rigid standards. It seems to me to be a very petty thing indeed, putting on expensive clothes in order to perambulate in the midst of other well-dressed people, everyone bowing and scraping and singing and tapping themselves on the head and torso in rigid adherence to a highly-ritualized ceremony meant to bring people, in some mysterious fashion, closer to the god that they think created them. If there were a god such as YHWH, the Christians' foul deity, an omnipotent, omniscient being that felt spited if it were not prayed to enough times or in the correct fashion, I think that that god would be able to discern whether its supplicants were performing correct rites in the correct way without them having to all get together and sing and wail and moan at each other in fancy, multi-million-dollar places of worship. In my opinion, it is by far preferable to pray in the privacy of one's own home, so that any mistakes one makes will not be seen as failures-to- adhere-to-policy, but, rather, as the steps that any fallible and self-aware creature must take on the path towards its own betterment and enlightenment.

In America, churches are built and refurbished and re-roofed regularly, financed by supposedly good people whose cash donations should instead be used to improve the lives of chronically poverty-stricken, perpetually hungry persons livingin the Third World; then again, however, I am little more than a spoiled, worthless whorphan – what the deuce do I know?

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

on the TX board of education

Truth is under siege in this nation, dear friend, and it is being attacked by such loathsome persons as the conservative members of the Texas board of education. Just this week I was reading about the actions of these dangerous individuals, and of their attempt to keep nearly 5 millions of school-children in the dark about one of the most important figures in the history of our American republic, Thomas Jefferson. I did not attend the sittings at which these religious fanatics attempted to spread their hatred, and, thus, I did not personally witness their evil ways, but anyone who tries to keep from the eyes of our young people information about the man who wrote our most important of documents, the Declaration of Independence, should be stripped of his or her power and pilloried.

The actions of these confused, sad little people were likely taken to obscure from view some of Jefferson's other writings, such as his version of the Christian bible, one from which he removed any mention of such foolish nonsense as virgin births, talking snakes, burning and talking bushes, and people flying magically up to or down from the heavens, keeping however the core of its teaching intact, that being the Golden Rule, which states that you should do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. (Christianity is but one of many religions that teaches the Golden Rule, since nearly every other major world religion builds upon this exact same teaching, among them Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and Pastafarianism.) Things would not be nearly so bad if the Texans kept things to themselves and taught their children whatever lunacy they decided were best (such as their lionization of McCarthyism and their efforts to replace mentions of democracy and freedom with the word republic), but many other boards of education in our Union follow the Texans' lead, buying such textbooks as they design, preferring to let the Lone Star folks go through the hassle of deciding what should and should not be taught instead of doing their own fucking jobs and figuring things out for themselves. Of course, it is not the Texans' fault that other boards of education copy their efforts, but these their most recent offenses against the standards of historical preservation and common sense highlight the recent efforts by the more fanatical religious organizations in this land to hijack our founding documents and to try and justify their religious zealotry and their plans to overthrow our secular government on grounds that ours was somehow founded as a Christian nation.

In the words of George Washington and John Adams, writing as they did to those present at the signing of the Treaty of Tripoli, words ratified unanimously by the contemporary Congress: “the Government of the United States was not, in any sense, founded upon the Christian religion.” There we have it, plain as day, simple and unequivocal, that the persons who risked Life, Liberty, and sacred Honor to found this nation did not do so in order to create upon these lands some sort of shining New Jerusalem where everyone would pray at the alter of a white-skinned, straight-haired Jesus. (If he existed at all, Jesus of Nazareth, an Aramaic-speaking Jew, would have stood under five-foot six-inches tall, having a light-brown complexion and nearly black, wiry hair). How do we stop these religious fanatics and their war against everything that America stands for, and how do we protect our history from those who would seek to destroy it, from people such as the conservatives who sit on the Texas state board of education? We start, dear reader, by critically analyzing everything we see and hear, by keeping the head on a swivel, and by fighting the threat of theocracy wherever it should arise. Stay frosty, and mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

on b.i.b.l.e – 2

A month ago, I wrote a piece ridiculing a bumper-sticker that read: B.I.B.L.E. – Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. Upon further consideration, the Christian bible does in fact contain a few passages in which the god of the Christian sect, a god called YHWH, spells out in fairly simple tones exactly how people are to comport themselves (if one actually believes that this god dictated to the members of a long-since-vanished desert tribe his outlines for living a good and a virtuous life, which I do not believe). The primary passage is found in a chapter called Leviticus, in what the Christians refers to as their old testament, under heading number 20.

In Leviticus 20, god YHWH (who is supposedly also his own son as well as a spirit known as holy) is said to demand of his followers that they murder homosexuals, people who engage sexually with animals, and those claiming to be mystics or spirit-mediums. The teachings of this bloodthirsty god furthermore demand that his followers slay in public young girls who are found not to be virgins on their wedding night, and that they put to death persons guilty of worshiping idols other than those of the Christian's own triumvirate. YHWH commands this in no uncertain language; this god makes these demands using clear and simple words; these are basic instructions by which the true Christian might prove to the member of his sect that he should survive the forthcoming progroms; they pose a way by which he might prove to his god that he is worthy of going to the sect's Happy Place In The Sky.

Please, believers in YHWH, carry out the clearly worded mandates of your god, and stop standing around bitching and moaning about abortion and the separation of church and state. If you do come at us, however, we rational, open-minded, freedom-loving people shall defend ourselves, our bodies, and our property with terrible purpose, with righteous fury, with passionate rage, and with any and all weapons at our disposal, including yours.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on B.I.B.L.E

  Last night, in Hollywood, I saw a bumper sticker that read: B.I.B.L.E – Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. Next to this statement was the NOTW gang sign of those loosely affiliated neo-Christians who do not consider themselves to be part of this world. A book more than a thousand pages long, a work so self-contradictory that within the first few paragraphs it makes two separate and conflicting claims of how this world was made, the Christian bible is not simple, basic, or easy – it is a confusing monstrosity too easily used to keep the weak and the spineless in line, too easily manipulated by incorrigible and vile televangelists. (Furthermore, if the supposedly faithful were to follow the orders of their Yahweh, they would be killing homosexuals and sodomist in the streets, as they are told to do in subheading 20 of a chapter called Leviticus.) I despise the NOTW crowd primarily because they lack the courage to just kill themselves and get to their Other Place already. If you can read these words, you poor born-again fools, you are of this world, and not song nor prayer shall change that.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on the pagan power of capitalism

  Capitalism, with all its evil and all its ills, has had one definitely positive affect on American society: to rid our pagan holidays of religious contamination. Neither morality nor meaning matter in the eyes of capitalism – the only thing that matters is making more money. For example: capitalism has freed the ancient holiday of goddess Eostre from the clutches of biblical oppression. As a holiday that once celebrated that goddess who makes women fertile (and the land grow green again), the festival we now know as Easter was high-jacked by religious forces and co-opted for their own narrow uses. In the last half century, however, the ever-grasping paws of capitalistic greed have freed Easter from the Shackles of Scripture, so that we once again celebrate lustful procreation (symbolized by the rabbit) and the return of the teeming things (symbolized by daffodils and other such flowers).

  Similarly, the holiday of the winter solstice, an occasion that has been marked throughout the centuries with lights mounted on pine trees. This holiday was taken hostage by the forces of Christianity, forces that bastardized the logical marking of the passage of time and tied it to the fictitious birth of a fictitious god in a land far removed in time and space. The passing of the winter solstice was only recently liberated by the uncaring hand of capitalism – an emphasis on Santa Claus and the profuse giving of gifts has replaced, thankfully, the (biblically) unspecified day upon which a young lady gave birth, in a (biblically) unspecified structure, in an (biblically) unspecified place, to a male child. (The story of Jesus is a precise retelling of the story of Horus, an Egyptian god born of a virgin who died only to arise from death after three days.) Now, instead of worshiping some stagnant and foreign godhead, during the darkest days of winter we celebrate the coming-together of loved-ones, and shower them with presents as a sign of our affection. Gone are the days of the churchly mandate – capitalism has finally, and for good, removed Christ from Christmas.

  And, most importantly (to me, at least), the uncaring and voracious greed of capitalism has removed any shred of religiosity from the delightfully pagan holiday of Halloween. What started as a heathen ritual to mark the beginning of winter was commandeered by Christian forces, who turned it into All Saint's Day, on which day only the dead of that religion were praised (in effigy). After centuries of suffering under the cruel, stifling blanket of this biblical slavery, Halloween has been dragged from its prison by the ever-hungry maw of monster-capitalism. Gone are the days when Americans celebrated the Christian dead – arrived are the days when we Americans celebrate inventiveness and the ability to take a good scaring, when we shower upon the children of the land many sweet gifts, when we might, for one short night, become someone other than our boring normal selves. (The proliferation of Halloween as a national holiday was made possible by profit-hungry corporations that recognized in it a way to sell cheap, Chinese-made costumes.)

  While I generally abhor capitalism for its tendency to make only a small portion of the American people rich, I celebrate it now for freeing our shared and common history from the clutches of religious oppression. We can ill afford to live according to the rules of a lost tribe of desert people, so it is fitting that the forces of our chosen economic model are wiping our history clean of religious contamination.

  The next time you are carving up a lamb on Easter, remember horny old Eostre, and give your spouse a long, lingering kiss. When you find yourself stringing lights on a tree, remember to go outside and enjoy the longest night of the year. As you are putting the finishing touches on an elaborate and dazzling costume, remember that its job is to scare away the sickness-bringing forces of the impending long cold darkness. Thanks to the religious impartiality of our capitalistic system, you can enjoy these events without being forced to fear the wrath of some jealous, vengeful godhead.

  America is not a Christian nation, nor was it in any way founded upon the Christian faith. Neither easter nor the winter solstice were originally Christian holidays – these pagan rituals were commandeered in order to facilitate the spread of one set of religious teachings. Just how non-Christian is America? We honor the Roman god Saturn on Saturday. On Wednesday, we remember the Norse god Wotan, and on Thursday, his son-brother Thor. In the harbor of New York there stands a large statue of the Roman goddess Libertas (whom we call Lady Liberty), a goddess who holds in one hand the Torch of Progress, in the other a representation of our most treasured of documents, the Declaration of Independence.

  Everywhere in this great land we witness the chaotic jumble of different faiths and systems of belief, all tumbling together and jostling to retain the slightest shred of relevancy. May the uncaring grasp of our institutionalized greed continue to keep American society free of religious one-mindedness! Thank you, lustful and rapacious Capitalism, you old sport, for doing you part to keep America jumbled, confused, and oppression-free.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on dominionism & al-Qaeda

  In certain respects, the movement known as dominionism resembles the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. Both are extremist religious movements made up of fanatical zealots with whom can be neither argued nor bargained. Both have the goal of dismantling the rightfully elected governmental structure that currently presides over these United States of America. Both seek to destroy the Constitution, whereas al-Qaeda acts to annihilate it, and the members of the dominionist movement plan merely to enslave it to a totalitarian theocracy allegedly spoken about in the Christian bible.

  I have read most of the Koran, Allah be praised, and the majority of the Christian bible, Amen, and from neither text was I able to glean a clear mandate to impose upon the foundations of modern, enlightened society the restrictive policies of long lost civilizations. (Such mandates can be pulled from any text, let alone religious ones, so long as pastors, imams, and priests are willing to ignore teachings of love and compassion and focus on righteous fearfulness and calculated xenophobia, as happened during the Iranian Revolution.)

  As we fight al-Qaeda around the world, the blood of our brothers and sisters pouring out on distant sands and in foreign lands, let us remember that religious fanatics are at work here in the motherland, in plain view of the American people, zealots who wish to see one of their own elected to the Presidency, all the while praying with every thing they've got to dismantle our Constitutional republic and to erect in its place a system of theocratic dictatorship. Our brave, proud troopers are battling religious extremists abroad: it is up to each American living here at home to defend the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, from any and all who may wish them harm.

  Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

p.s. Ghadhafi is deposed! Praise be to the Libyan people for their hard-fought, righteous victory.