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 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.