Fields: The Liberal God’s Vengeance On The GOP
BY SAM FIELDS
A Satire
Religious faith is a great system for forming core beliefs without the pesky requirement of evidence.
The loudest voice for religious faith in America is the Christian Right.
Central to Christian Right’s faith is that liberal ideas will cause god to visit suffering upon America.
The religious faith of Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy says that gay marriage means god will destroy the USA. [Apparently his god gives a pass on things like Black slavery and Indian genocide.]
The Christian Right believes that AIDS is clearly God punishing homosexuality.
Conservative Christian faith makes clear that weather, particularly catastrophic weather, is not a result of the Sun, barometric pressure or, heaven forbid, the big lie of climate change. No, hurricanes and the like are god’s vengeance for sinning. Pat Robertson (who once personally redirected a hurricane) and Jerry Falwell informed us that Katrina was visited upon New Orleans because of sinning in The Big Easy. Further, based on who Katrina killed, Christian faith holds that god really hates Black folks.
So why should Christians conservatives have a monopoly on religious faith?
What follows is the credo of liberal Jewish religious faith:
For the second time in a row hurricanes have interrupted a Republican National Convention.
In 2008 it was Gustav that caused the first day of the GOP Convention to be cancelled. It was obvious that this was the hand of God. But the Republican idolaters chose to ignore this clear sign.
This year it is Isaac that for one day silenced the voice of those who have betrayed God.
Like the Ten Plagues that were sent to punish the Pharaoh and the Egyptian people, God sent Isaac to silence the GOP and the speakers that were scheduled to speak Monday—Rick Scott and Ann Romney.
The Lord sent us the singular word with the one Bible.
And what happened? Spitting in the face of God, Christian betrayers of the Lord claimed he got it wrong and needed a second book that they dare call The New Testament.
Now comes Mitt Romney and his Mormon heretics who proclaim that the Almighty needed a third draft of His Word. They further tell us that god is 6’2” and lives on a planet called Kolob.
Listen Mitt, the Word of the Lord does not have second and third drafts. God is not a space alien.
Isaac, bearing the name of the son of Abraham, has been visited upon those who have chosen these false Gods. Yet, once again they have ignored this sign from heaven.
The time to repent grows short.
Show your love of God. Vote Democratic.
September 2nd, 2012 at 2:50 pm
Truly, He is a vengeful God. He sent us Sam Fields.
September 2nd, 2012 at 4:45 pm
In another boring post, Mr. Fields again attacks religion, faith and the Republicans. The man needs a psychiatrist. I wonder what he will say on November 7?
September 2nd, 2012 at 7:42 pm
Its because of idiots like you that is so one minded and biased that I may change my party from Democrat to Republican. Unlike you I can tell is I vote for who I feel is qualified NOT what party affiliation they are. Get a brain knucklehead and star thinking like a man not a sissy that you are
September 2nd, 2012 at 9:22 pm
From Sam’s mouth to the devil’s ear; will you ever tire of reading your drivel in print? Come on, Buddy, enough is enough.
September 2nd, 2012 at 11:35 pm
Dear Christians;
In the following argument of nine premises, I will aim to convince you that Jesus of Nazareth was a fictional character, and not a real person. I do not intend to sway the beliefs of many of you, nor even budge them – I know this to be an impossibility, for if the religious mind is well-trained at anything, it is circumventing rational argument. I only intend to sew seeds of doubt, in the hopes that perhaps some of you will nurture them and let them grow. Here goes.
1. Much, if not most, of the Bible is arguably fiction. Quit being so intellectually dishonest, Christians – this is the twenty-first century. That means the burden of proof is on YOU. If you make a claim about the universe, it is up to you to prove it is true, not the other way around. It is not up to us, the rest of the world, to prove your claims false – that is not scientific thinking, that is anti-scientific thinking. Because I am a man of my times, and believe in correcting ignorance, what I am doing here is out of courtesy to YOU, just as if I were to argue publicly that there is a Flying Spaghetti Monster orbiting Venus preparing to blow up Planet Earth, one of you would probably, out of simple human decency attempt to correct me and point me towards the truth. This is my way of doing that. Now, back to the Bible being fiction… that part’s easy. Find me a snake with vocal chords, water that is dense enough for a human being to walk on, or a chemical process that converts complex carbohydrates to fish. Until then, you’re out of luck, sucker. The evidence wins, and the evidence sides with me. These are invented stories… fictional dramas meant to impart some moral lesson. They are not real.
2. Following point two: from an objective, scrutinizing view, there is no reason to believe one story in the Bible over another. We cannot honestly engage shades of truth here – either the books in the Bible are historically true or they are not. Since they almost ubiquitously contain material to make the scientific person skeptical, we can chance to say the same is true of the entire book: either it happened, or it didn’t. Therefore, it is no less plausible to disbelieve the Jesus myth than the myth about Enoch the nine-hundred year old man or the creation myth wherein God pats the first humans out of clay. Here’s a hint: humans, like all other complex organisms, reached their present condition by millions of years of natural selection through the self-preservation of certain greedy genes. We can observe this happening today; anti-biotic resistant bacteria are a good example. Plus, we’ve mapped the human genome – we know our ancestry, and it’s simian. Even Pope John Paul II said evolution is a historical fact. People did not come from clay.
3. By definition, intellect, or “reason” is the ability to revise one’s beliefs in light of better argumentation. Taking simple, empirical data from the the world around you should make it easy to determine that the physical laws of the universe DO NOT CHANGE. It therefore stands to reason that “miracles” can only possible be one of two phenomena: A, an outside agent actually interfering with the laws of the universe; or B, hyperbolized coincidences. Considering the Bible was written in a time when allegory was the most common form of journalistic reporting and most people still believed spitting on a wound was an appropriate way to cure it, it is far more reasonable to assume the latter.
*Side note: Seriously Hoss, let me clue you in on something: things that are impossible to do now – like walking on water, resuscitation after days of biological death, and wine magically turning into blood – were just as impossible 2,000 years ago. There’s a much greater power in the universe than “belief.” It’s called “observation.”
4. To believe these stories, you must create strange rationalizations that do not hold up to true intellectual scrutiny. This brings us to the issue of honesty. Without deluding yourself, can you honestly answer the following questions? Such as, why doesn’t God heal amputees? He heals everyone else miraculously, right? But neither you nor I have ever seen an amputee grow back a leg. Oh wait, God has a special plan for them. But isn’t he supposed to be loving and just? What’s with the discrimination, man? Or how about Jonah surviving in the belly of that whale? Wouldn’t he be partially digested after three days? Maybe Baby Balooga had a slow metabolism?
5. Following four, and this one is my favorite: if Jesus is the one true messiah, the only God, whom you shall hath no other gods before him, yada yada, how come so many gods DID come before him having nearly identical biographies? There are no less than two dozen god-men of the ancient Mediterranean whose birth was heralded by a bright star in the East (Sirius, for those who don’t practice astronomy), who were also adored by wise men, walked on water, fed the hungry, resurrected the dead, were crucified and rose again, etc. Many even had the same birthday as Jesus – December 25th! Not coincidentally, this was the Roman Holiday of Saturnalia centuries before the clergy decided to call it Jesus’ birthday. Surprise! Christians plagiarized earlier religions. I cannot spell it out any clearer than that. Knowing that, how can one believe anything Christian doctrine teaches? How do you even begin to separate what was invented from what was borrowed? You don’t. The cold, hard truth is, it was an old story then, and it’s an old story now. These messianic archetypes – the man that is god, the man who conquers death – existed long, long before Jesus came around. They were old news when soap was a cutting-edge technology, before written language was even invented. They are ancient fucking history. Jesus was not the antitype of these messianic figures, he was their distillation.
7. Following point 6. If you are skeptical of this information (and you should be, as doubt is the seed of all knowing), investigate the matter for yourself. One hugely recurring problem I find when debating with Christians is that they either know very little about other religions or are ignorant of their existence entirely. This is counter-intuitive to me, and perhaps my own fault in failing to understand the religious mind. Shouldn’t it be fairly crucial to make the most educated decision in choosing a religion, if practicing the “right” one is important to you? For example, you wouldn’t want to choose a religion based on plagiarism, would you? Or one that literally absorbed every earlier belief system it encountered through endless politicizing or the diplomacy of the sword? Well, better crack those books then – there’s a whole heap of gods who fit the Christ mold long before Christ. I suggest you begin by researching Mithra of Rome, Attis of Frigia, Dionysis of Greece, Krishna of India, and Horus of Egypt. The last should be of particular interest to you, as his mythology is almost an exact carbon copy of Jesus’, right down to the twelve apostles and three-day rebound time after being murdered by jealous clergy. Though, I should point out that Horus was worshipped nearly 1000 years BEFORE Christianity began spreading through the Hebrew-populated Roman colonies. This should come as no surprise to you, as it’s written right in the bible that the Hebrews came out of Egypt.
8. On a more serious note. Western civilization may have been “built” on Judeo-Christian values (at least the “don’t kill” and “don’t steal” parts), but we have become a modern society and have adopted the scientific way of thinking. While the aforementioned values have indisputable merits, maintaining the dogma in its entirety is no longer necessary, especially when we consider the violence and segregation it has caused throughout the ages. Furthermore, philosophically speaking, Christian ethics are severely outdated. Since the Enlightenment, the Western World has seen far superior ethicists to Jesus of Nazareth. Kant and Mill, for example, created life-affirming ethical systems that can be applied to a wider range of people without destroying their culture or beliefs about where the universe came from and what kind of sex they should consider perverse. Truly, there is no reason to cling to the old way any longer. We have adopted science and reason in every other aspect of our lives… yet somehow we have retained Bronze Age ethics? It makes no sense. Why should we continue to believe it is better to be tribalists than to be humanists? This mentality is not compatible with a just, egalitarian society. Besides, Jesus may tell us to love one another, but he also says we should maintain the Old Testament in its entirety – no cherry-picking – which means we technically must condone rape, incest, slavery, and genocide (!). If we can do away with these parts (and we have), why not do away with the whole thing?
9. In the grand scheme of things, it would be generally permissible for one to believe in Christian ethics if it were readily understood that Jesus was not a historical person, and the story is allegory. However, if you are a Christian, you probably do believe that Jesus was a real human being. This is a threat to both the advancement of science and the absolution of religious conflict in the world, two issues that are paramount to our survival as a species as our planet nears carrying capacity and is dangerously on the brink of overheating. It creates too slippery a slope for other theocratic nonsense to take hold; for example, tthe mindset that human beings can literally live after death (how many soldiers would we send to die if everyone believed this is the only life?); or that preserving the existence of cell clusters which bear no conceivable human traits is somehow a better aim than alleviating actual human suffering; or that sex is harmful, but killing, bigotry, and total obedience to clandestine authority are healthy practices; or that blood sacrifice is a value modern societies should endorse. But Jesus WAS a real person, you say! There’s a plethora of evidence! No, not really, outside of the gospels. And those hardly count as “evidence.” They are secondary sources at best. Here’s why: if a historical Jesus really lived and died between 0 and 33 CE, then we know beyond a doubt that at least forty years passed before the earliest gospel – the one written by Mark – was scribed. Because the aforementioned gospel discusses the destruction of Solomon’s temple, we know it was written in or sometime after 70 CE. Given the lifespan of the period, that means the author or authors were at best infants or young children when Jesus of Nazareth was supposed to have been crucified. Moreover, the gospel writers are not themselves mentioned in the gospels, and they make no claim to actually having met Jesus. None of the apostles who walked with Jesus nor anyone who even met him wrote accounts to that effect. Granted, there are certain mentions of a “Christ” in the writings of Mediterranean historians from that period (not Justin Martyr or Pontius Pilate – sorry, but those are proven forgeries). However, if are a serious Christian, these should be of little consideration to you, as you know “the Christ” is really a title that simply means “the Anointed,” and was taken up by many rabbis of that time. In not ONE of these documents is a man named Jesus, or Yeshua of Nazareth mentioned.
In conclusion, the gospels which discuss the life of Jesus of Nazareth are at best hearsay, almost certainly hyperbolized, and at worst complete fabrications. What we can determine beyond a doubt is that for at least four decades after his death, everyone in the world, including his sworn followers and students, simply forgot their messiah existed. If that doesn’t cast on you a serious shade of doubt, then nothing will, and perhaps I’m not “the fool”.
CL
September 3rd, 2012 at 9:53 am
Chaz,
That’s a great post, but you did get one thing fundamentally wrong in Point 1, and I see this all the time.
Science can NEVER prover something true; the scientific method can only be used to show what is NOT true. All scientific “truth” is contingent on being true only until the next empirical finding that comes along proves it false.
On the other hand, as a avowed follower of the FSM, I get it.
September 3rd, 2012 at 10:07 am
Dear Norm,
I’m a “sissy”?
That’s not what you said last night.
I should have known it was mistake to let you on top.
September 3rd, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Somrbody is clearly off his meds…
September 3rd, 2012 at 5:36 pm
The best part of Sam’s stuff is how the irrationals respond
September 3rd, 2012 at 5:38 pm
Sam Fields I don’t know what you smoke but believe me if I was and trust me I am not gay you would be the last person I would even consider. You are a total jackass
September 3rd, 2012 at 8:45 pm
Chaz, you aren’t at all correct when you say that incest has been done away with. Check out the following links regarding consensual adult incest:
http://cousincouples.com/
http://marriage-equality.blogspot.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_regarding_incest
Note, for example, that consensual adult incest is 100% legal in New Jersey, France, Netherlands, Spain, Russia, and many other places. Note also that in Sweden, half-siblings can legally marry each other.
September 4th, 2012 at 9:03 am
Dear Norman,
I know that you feel you have to keep our forbidden love a secret.
I understand and forgive your public attacks on me.
Dear Lois, Sham and Lawyer,
Unable to refute my writings you spend your time with ad hominin attacks and calls for Buddy to censor me.
I treat your comments like vitamins. Keep it up!
September 4th, 2012 at 9:56 am
Sam,
I don’t want Buddy to censor you. I actually look forward to your nonsensical diatribes. And although I like to point out the error of your ways, you, better than anyone else, demonstrate the emptiness and hate of your positions.
FROM BUDDY:
Sam The Sham, you have no idea how offensive some of Fields’ writings are when they are turned in.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:00 am
Sam, what the heck is “ad hominin”?
September 4th, 2012 at 1:52 pm
u r right sam is a jackass but an interesting one for an ex new yorker
September 4th, 2012 at 2:55 pm
Dear Lois,
It means a “personal attack” and is inan 11th grade vocabulary
September 4th, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Sham
As you latest comments make clear, you don’t point out the “errors”. you just call me names.
As for Buddy’s comments please note he never says they are not true.
To know Buddy is to know a fussbudget schoolmarm.
September 4th, 2012 at 7:31 pm
No, Sam, you are an idiot. The term is ad hominem, not ad hominin; as always, rather than considering that YOU are in the wrong, you attack the one who questions you. You are such an incredible JERK! Have a great time in Charlotte.
September 5th, 2012 at 4:10 pm
dear lois,
Does this mean the engagement is off?
September 5th, 2012 at 5:46 pm
Sam, you sure have all kinds of sex on your mind lately, ‘though I cannot imagine who/what would want you.
September 5th, 2012 at 6:12 pm
@CAI
Consensual incest in New Jersey?
Perhaps they should consider changing e state motto to “It’s okay to fuck yer sister here.”
September 5th, 2012 at 6:49 pm
Lois,
Perhaps Sam just needs to take a long cold shower….with a hot brunette….
September 5th, 2012 at 7:56 pm
The Lord must look unfavorably upon Democrats, too. Its outdoor rally with Obama was cancelled due to thunderstorms, an Act of God. So Fields liberal sarcasm has fallen flat.
September 13th, 2012 at 6:47 am
The religious right has the right to be wrong. Just don’t pass laws that force me or others to obey your religious tenets. I believe what I believe and don’t force any religious views on you. This is supposed to be America and I will believe what I will without your help. I would have to be swallowed by a whale before i BELIEVE YOUR RELIGIOUS VIEWS AND THAT IS MY RIGHT. That goes for any religion. Get off my back and let me live my life without you forcing me to live mine by your ideoligy. I have3 my own