have you recently given away god? (religiohumorant)

here's something I know by heart... i've no idea what it means, but I know it because it's in a Jam & Spoon track "Muffled Drums" from "Tripomatic Fairytales 2001" and I've listened to that album at least a hundred times, possibly a few hundreds of times... apparently it is the opening paragraph to a book ... i keep forgetting what the book is called.....

muffled drums beat out a nerve scratching rhythm and red lights flickered hypnotically in the underground temple of Hades, where five thousand ragged worshippers knelt and abased themselves and ecstatically pressed foreheads against the cold and gritty cobbles as the trance took hold and the human venom, rose in them.... the drums...

these people are praying to what god I don't know, i've not read the book..... I think of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when I think of this image, you know, the scene where that guy gets his heart ripped out..

I never really had a "real" religion - because Music is my religion. I claimed *music* as my religion, possibly even before I was ten. Jesus just wasn't cool enough, Jesus didn't give me goose bumps down my spine when I heard the opening seconds of a song I was really in the mood to hear. Indiana Jones is far cooler than Jesus. Don't get me wrong, Jesus is cool, but Indiana Jones, *way* cooler...

Jesus and his sky daddy failed to move me spiritually, but The Eagles, The Doors, Boston, Split Enz, Australian Crawl... I shall read now from the book of "Sirocco" where our beloved brothers, Higgins and McDonough said

"You think it's going alright
You think it's going fine girl
You think there's nothing in it for you
I hope you don't
I hope you don't mind
Gonna get you come around baby
Wanna see you through it
Not makin' any promisses maybe
That's only in the movies, movies

Things justa
Don't seema
To be going right"

o' yea...

but back to the whole praying from that book i quoted, I see that scene as a metaphor for christianity, or any religion that demands that it is better than everyone else's for that matter ... kneel down and submit to this god being? i was taught to be humble which supposedly was from a christian teaching, so if anybody were to kneel down and pray to me i would be embarrassed! so an all powerful being who knows they are all powerful, why would they want to be praised other than to stroke their egos? ... maybe god ejaculates every time you stroke his ego when you jerk off pray to him? is that why it's always raining somewhere on earth?

oh wait.. what was the blog about again? giving away god... ok...

you don't *have* to give away god, you know .. you don't have to throw away the teachings of Jesus, or Buddha or Muhammad or whoever it is you used to pray jerk off to, they should just be a part of who you are - analogy: you read a fucking book, you don't go dwelling over the contents of the book for the rest of your life, everyone has their opinions - take what you like from religion and ignore the rest.... you can just drop the label and carry on as you were before when you let go of religion.. nothing should change...

if the Gucci label falls off your favourite outfit, does it stop being a Gucci?

and as to the matter of god - *ultimately* there's always going to be a point where god has to be invoked ...

except I don't invoke god, not really, my god is "I don't know" - whenever I say "I don't know" it could mean that god did it, but I'm at about 99% sure that it was not god, but I won't be so arrogant to exclude the possibility completely.. and I'm certainly not so naive and arrogant as to believe what some religion says about god!!! fuck that - I'm just a *little* bit smarter than people from two millennia ago...

the only true answer you can give for any question about god, is "I don't know".. does god love me? I don't know.. did god create the universe? I don't know... does god rah rah rah?? I do *not* know...

but more importantly - i do *not* care

seriously don't kid yourself about what god wants.. the christian bible is severely limited in it's applicability to modern day society... sorry, but here's an blunt anecdote:

a couple find out their kid is going to be born with some fatal genetic condition, something that can't easily be fixed, eg. half a brain, no legs and no arms, with it's heart on the outside, all of which you can find lovely pictures of on the internet should you care to search for them, so if the mental image of those words are not enough, you can always explore further. Now this couple choose to have this child, regardless of the extreme likelihood the child would be still-born, or the natural birth process (mother refuses caesarean) would traumatise the child and kill it soon after birth anyway, point is... the kid isn't going to live long and if it does, it's going to be in horrible pain or it will need care 100% of time for the rest of its life...

Now that sort of situation wouldn't happen often but it *does* happen, so with that in mind, if you were god, what would you be up there saying to this nice christian couple who seem to think that all life is precious?? If life is precious.. you wouldn't call a life lived in pain precious, would you? that's not life, that's torture...

Would you expect me or anybody else for that matter to live a life of utter agony and pain - *just* to appease your moral compass? well then, fuck you if that is what you believe.

I'd be saying "Look the tech is right there available to you!! I gave you lot brains to figure out how to look after yourselves so you can prevent this sort of shite from happening! it's called SCIENCE people!!" .. but heyz, that's just silly ol' me... what do I know about being god? for a start if i'd been around forever i'd certainly have used that time to think about how I could trick everyone into being nice to each other.. .


from Futurama "Godfellas"

BENDER - I bet a lot of people pray to you huh?

GOD - Yes, but there are so many asking so much. After a while you just sorta tune it out.

BENDER - Y'know, I was God once.

GOD - Yes I saw. You were doing well until everyone died.

BENDER - It was awful. I tried helping them. I tried not helping them but in the end I couldn't do them any good. Do you think what I did was wrong?

GOD - Right and wrong are just words. What matters is what you do.

BENDER - Yeah I know, that's why I asked if what I did - forget it.

GOD - Bender, being God isn't easy, if you do too much, people get dependent. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket.

BENDER - Or a guy who burns down the bar for the insurance money.

GOD - Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing. When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.

I agree, any god worth it's heavy metal head-banger weight in gold would be so clever as to make sure we've got no way to tell one way or the other if it was god or not... it's a *god*, right? I just wouldn't know *how* to let people run amok and do whatever the fuck they wanted and have them praise me for doing nothing in the here and now.. I would be embarrassed to be the christian god...

oh but back to Indiana Jones and how they were mining for those sacred rocks? .. I mean what was the point? weren't those rocks going to bring forth Armageddon or something? see.. just like praying to the christian god?

By praying to Jesus, you are in fact preparing for the death of everyone on earth. So... do you *want* Armageddon to happen, do you? do you want all those people not privvy to this little known fact where people have little to no christianity, that you have to give your soul to Jesus by name in order to be saved for all eternity?

if the end of the world came right now, like when global warming happens two days before the day after tomorrow (adobe, where's my sarcasm font?), that's 4 billion people into the lake of fire... Satan would spend years refurbishing the Halls of Hell after the sudden influx of party goers, might need the Chinese to induce a snow storm in Hell just to get it back to the regular searing flesh temperature.

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
--[Friedrich Nietzsche - German philosopher (1844 - 1900)]

gotta luv Nietzsche, the only philosopher I made a point of to "study" - so I began to read his stuff and it was like, "wait a second, that's how I think" ... "god is dead, and *we* killed him" it's not about us killing god literally, it's about us not being true to these principals that *we* created, and yet we pretend that we have adhered to them... ??

so i thought i'd rather explore all of the philosophy thing myself - as it was too boring anyway... better off making up my own philosophy!

this is one of many reasons why i don't have a problem with giving away or not being involved in the religion thing in the first place, I don't think I live up to the standards of christianity anyway, but then again I don't go around telling people to kill themselves for being so "stupid" as to not give my soul to Jesus, so there's no way i want to be associated with people like that, so it's a win-win situation.... i'm not good enough to be a christian but i'm better person than a lot of the loud christians so it doesn't matter. And that's not bragging, it is easy to declare oneself better than someone who is an utter cunt of a person.

but it just doesn't matter....

and you may feel bad about "sinning" down here on earth, but you won't be even thinking about that "sin" in heaven let alone actually doing it... god let's shit slide down here, at least for the time being, but in heaven, different story my lubblies... he *knew* Lucifer would betray him, just from a stray thought wasn't it? i can't control my brain, I'd be out in a second simply for thinking about something that would eventually lead to thinking about a sin... oopps.. do we have free will in heaven? so uhmmm.. i bet there aren't many people in heaven, I bet it's just one Mexican dude with a broom standing around going "Oh I so dired, oh I so sleeepeeee" ..

no i'm not drink.. drunk even

can you name me one feeling you like here on earth that you can take to heaven, and why do you think it'll be ok in heaven?? can you take your lust to heaven? your sloth plus your twenty dozen other vices? is there going to be music in heaven? there won't be booze, drugs, what are you going to talk to god all the time, are you, what are you going to talk *about*? you and everyone else going to take turns talking to god?.. you going to be with the perfect partner in heaven? nope, what about all those people that died at a young age who thought they were going to be with their honey's in heaven forever? what if your hunny went on and found someone else? what if what if what if what if?!?!

maybe this is why marriage is "sacred", you know? hmmm - it worked out so much better when the parents arranged weddings because then you get to find your perfect partner first time out onto the factory floor and then you marry them, fuck them, haves kids with them, and then stay with them forever until death do you fucking part? and if you do lose your partner at a young age, you might as well close up shop and not bother looking for a new love because ya hunny is waiting for you in heaven ...

ooppps... that's if they got in, that is...

I mean it's always possible that they didn't - so you could end up wasting your life here on earth waiting to get old and die so you can see your hunny but then when you get to heaven it's a matter of "oh no i'm sorry Mrs Jones, your husband ate pork on Friday once.. so sorry.. but not to mind we wipe your brain and all your emotions as that's the only way you can possibly enjoy heaven now"....

welcome, to the nice vegetable patch in the sky ...

you don't need to give away god... you need to kill it..

the true god is waiting for you, whatever the fuck it is... and Jesus... his teachings were cool, but so was Gandhi, John Lennon, Buddha, Star Trek, Star Wars, Galileo, Hawkings, Sagan!! but that bible, none of it was written by Jesus at all, was it?

when i was a kid, I'd read about legends, like King Arthur, Robin Hood or books from Tolkien later on in life ... it'd be so great to be able to "beam" the stories into your head as fast as the brain can handle them, that'd be so trippy to "read" the Lord of the Rings in half an hour...

but things in the bible, those things were written down decades after the events, and there is no very clear history of early christianity, so in fact, the bible has its very authenticity in question as entire books were removed at the command of some Pope millennia ago... there's a Book of Thomas kicking around... Thomas aka Judas Thomas aka Jude Thomas aka The Twin aka the twin whose other half was Jesus... hey that's what wikipedia told me

and half the new testament, was written by some dude who claimed he saw god, and named himself a disciple of Jesus, but it's actually very likely that this dude probably never even met Jesus for any length of time, and yet half the christian bible's new testament is written by this dude, just where did he get all this shite from? I don't care if it's 100% good stuff - who the fuck is Paul and why is it called christianity? that's so funny, I'm thinking I'll start to actually laugh about it... in about a decade..

At best the bible can *only* be third hand information, you should know that, by the way...

god -> prophet -> scribe -> bible -> idiot misinterpreting bible

there's three degrees of separation in there somewhere ... but it's much worse than that, there was no such thing as English two thousand years ago, you know? .. and only clerics and other godly people were taught to read back in the day, so only the god damn priest could read the bible to you anyway, right?

why do you think all the scientists of yesteryear got into so much trouble for teaching what we commonly know today? Religion was what allowed these people to study and teach their blasphemy to the masses, ironic that the Church funded a lot of educational institutions back in the day. Galileo studied and taught in Christian universities .. imagine being up against the whole schbaggle of fundie christians when they are the idiots in power??

it's not really that long ago we were in the dark ages... and much to my disdain the dark ages linger in pockets all over the world... and i make reference to the fuck sticks that think space is an ocean, that the earth is the centre of the universe, that the planets travel around on invisible rails with god at the fucking wheel and the only reason that the planets don't slow down, is because god has his foot on the gas pedal...

you should hate god, hate *their* god to death if you must, say, "fuck you god" "fuck you and your god".. and when it doesn't smite you down as suggested by its believers, you will know the truth, because just how *can* you know anything about the real god?

and when you say fuck you god, if there really is a god and it's listening to everyone's thoughts simultaneously, i'm pretty sure it would laugh and it would know you aren't talking about it... i'd be actually tempted to find believers and get them to hold my hands and then I'd chant some blasphemy and then say "STRIKE ME DOWN GOD!!" and wartch dem sqwirm...

and if there really is no god, then that actually makes the universe so much more fucking completely fantastic, because that means that the universe made itself..

my god is "I don't know" .. which, according to Lt Cmd Data, saying "I don't know" is the beginning of wisdom ...

ps. this is *so* not what I first thought about when I had the idea for the blog, in the other room... it was something to do with... analogies of something... i think... if i remember i'll write that blog later


this is a rant that i can't be bothered to make make sense... (legit use of a double "make"??)