- "If he [Hugo Chávez] thinks we're trying
to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.
It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil
shipments will stop."-Pat Robertson
-
- "Muslims want to rule the world. They want to take
over the whole world. That's their evil purpose . . . Most of them are
very harsh. There's no tenderness or love."
-
- Question asked by Rose Aguila: "Where do you get
your information about the war?" Answer of Mary Fowler, 54, Oklahoma
housekeeper: "The Bible and the 700 Club. I also listen to preachers
who know what's going on. Pat Robertson."-Excerpted from Rose Aguila's
blog, Stories in America: Conversations at the Gas Pump
-
- http://storiesinamerica.blogspot.com/2005/08/
conversations-at-gas-pump.html
-
- Listen up, Reverend Robertson, Mary Fowler and every
last one of you Apostles of Perpetual Psychosis, it's time that you were
called out.
-
- The time is long past due the rest of us ceased our cowering
and stood up to you Christo-fascists bullies. The hour has come round that
we look you straight in your bulging, true believer eyes, and told you
that we've had it with your smugness, with your blood-drenched crusades,
with your victim mentality-and with the madness begot by this cracked-brain
belief system of yours, which all began (according to your sacred delusions)
more than 2,000 years ago, when, at the behest of a wicked cabal, a mob
of mammon-worshipping, blood-lusting rabble went on a cosmic killing-spree
and murdered your god.
-
- First off, let's get one thing straight: No one ever
killed anyone's god (not Jews, nor Romans, nor Geeks playing Dungeons and
Dragons)-although it's time somebody nailed you, you collection of conflated
failures at Christian martyrdom, to a metaphysical cross of reality.
-
- It's high time someone told you outright that you must
be suffering from holy water on the brain, if you think we can't see you
for what you are: a klavern of counterfeit prophets waxing psychotic for
other cretinous hypocrites. Also, you can cease playing the persecuted
party, whenever someone stands up to you, because we're no longer buying
that ploy. Remember, you're the ones who threw the first epitaphic stones.
It was you who labeled us a mob of Hell-bound, Satan-pimping sodomists
. . . Although-as much fun as that sounds-I must ask you, where do you
get the unmitigated gall to make such insane claims? When did the golden
light of the sun abandon its position in the eastern horizon and begin
rising, each morning, from out of your silly, neo-Iron Age asses?
-
- And tell me this, you medievalist simps, you delusional,
retrograde dip-shits, how is it possible that you became privy to such
timeless truths-that the mind of the "One True God" is available
to you, and that God's words and wishes resonate through yawning millennia
to be understood only by you and you alone?
-
- Looking back on the rise of you Christo-fascist bastards,
I'm mortified as to how it came to be socially and politically acceptable
for you to bandy such vicious and demented assertions in the public arena,
without them meeting with the derision they deserve . . . And don't bother
going into one of your pat victim-swoons over being called on it, because
when you go so far as to claim that you alone have been bestowed with the
secrets of boundless creation-and that anyone who chooses not to buy into
your version of events will be condemned to the torments of eternal damnation-then
you can bet your fatuous asses that your asinine assertions will be ridiculed.
What in the blue blazes did you expect, for us simply to fall to our collective
knees before you?
-
- Yet, I fear that's exactly what you expect from us.
-
- Could I suggest an alternative idea? Would you simply
let the rest of us be? Would it be possible for you to keep your life-defying
delusions to yourself-keep them within the airless confines of your bigotry-riddled
churches and the cramped quarters of your own minds?
-
- If that's the way you choose to spend the passing hours
of this finite life, it's fine by me. But when you start your habitual
proselytizing, then you should be prepared to be told that a great many
of us think your cosmological conceptions are a steaming pile of elephant
dung.
-
- And, while we're on the subject, for the longest time,
I've been wanting to tell you this: If Jesus died for my pathetic sins,
then he flat-out overreacted.
-
- What makes this situation all the more unsettling is
you believe these creepy, death-enamored myths are literally true. Instead,
I suggest you try the following: Rather than attempting to commune with
Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Holy Ghost (or Casper the Friendly Ghost) or
the Lucky Charms Leprechaun, why don't you attempt to channel the departed
spirits of Voltaire or H.L. Mencken? There will be no otherworldly conjuring
(or con jobs) required to perform this miracle: simply go to the public
library and check out their books.
-
- Once there, you might want to stop by the science section,
as well, where you could happen upon a few delusion-decimating tidbits
such as the following: While your bible tells you that the earth is a shade
over 7,000 thousand years old, the actual figure is (approximately) 4.6
billion years. How do you account for the slight discrepancy of say . .
. 4,599,993,000 years? And that number is derived when calculated against
the approximated age of the earth-not that of the universe, which is estimated
to be between 10 to 20 billion years old. You can do the math on that one,
all you reality-challenged Children of the Lord.
-
- And those aren't the only things in your bible that just
don't add up. In your Book of Joshua (10:13) it is stated that God commanded
the sun to stand still in the sky . . . Really now? Pardon me . . . but
how is it possible that this omniscient god of yours, whom you believe
created the earth and heavens, all by his divine lonesome, didn't realize
the simple fact that the sun doesn't revolve around the earth?
-
- Furthermore, he was apparently ignorant of numerous smaller
details as well, such as, where in Matthew (13: 32) he identified mustard
seeds as "[ . . . ] the smallest of seeds." How can it be that
the creator of the universe could have had such an embarrassing lapse of
basic knowledge on the subject of botany?
-
- And what about the many other lapses in logic (flights
of fantasy that are insane by any standard, with the exception of the sublime
logic found in the realm of cartoons), such as the one about the fellow
who survived, for three days and three nights, in the stomach of a monstrous
fish (Jonah 1:17)-and what was up with that wacky, talking donkey in Numbers
(22:28)? We're in Looney Tunes territory now, all you highly suggestible
Idiots of God. Plus, in a cartoon universe, such as the one described in
the Book of Exodus, why didn't the Almighty, instead of leveling plagues
and pestilence upon the guilty and innocent alike in Egypt, simply, drop
an ACME anvil down from heaven on the head of Pharaoh and be done with
it?
-
- Which brings up the subject of the deplorable cruelty
of your deity of choice. Ergo, isn't this a lovely little passage from
Deuteronomy (32:23-25)? "I will spend mine arrows upon them . . .
The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man
and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs."
-
- Then there is this lovely bit of divinely inspired baby-killing
and faith-based rape from Isaiah (13:9,15-18): "Behold, the day of
the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger . . . Every one
that is found shall be thrust through . . . Their children also shall be
dashed to pieces before their eyes . . . and their wives ravished. Behold,
I will stir up the Medes against them. . . . [T]hey shall have no pity
on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children."
-
- Worse, your striving to make these pathological ravings
manifest have resulted in tragic consequences. As is the case with your
current, genocidal adventure in Iraq, where you believed the vengeful ghosts
of the Crusades could be dispatched, dissolved in the beatific light flaring
from the bombs that your holy (armchair) warrior, commander and chief ordered
dropped from Kabul to Bagdad . . . In your madness, you believed you could
make the citadels of the New Jerusalem manifest in Mesopotamia. Upon every
bomb detonation, you were certain that the heathen hordes cowered before
your righteous fury, that ghost and demon would flee back to Hell, and
the wicked would tremble before your sacred fury. Now, of course, that
all worked out just like you saw it in your head beforehand, didn't it?
-
- As we speak, your Armies of the Lord (who more closely
reassemble a collection of economic conscripts) wince and stumble, blinded
by blown blood and squalls of searing sand . . . The desert wind taunts
you true believers; your visions of conquest evaporate, as the pitiless
sun glares down upon the folly of yet another legion of hubristic Crusaders,
who came to free the heathen hordes from their brutish ignorance by way
of relieving them of the confusing burden of their untapped wealth.
-
- Of course, the only small recompense you ask from these
monumental ingrates is unfettered access to their oil. And the only reason
for that is a purpose as exalted as yours requires a great amount of energy
to sustain its radiant glory; such a selfless enterprise of holiness demands
a few rewards for the long suffering Christian martyrs on the home front-because
American's God-kissed flocks of pious consumers must be permitted to sit,
in perpetuity, high above the roadways of the land, serene within their
oversized pick-up trucks, SUVs, and RVs-their junk food-bloated countenances
must never be darkened by want, doubt, nor self-reproach.
-
- In accordance with this self-referential lunacy, you
sermonized that Satan's earthly emissaries, such as Hugo Chávez,
should be righteously slaughtered because they and their ilk scheme to
deprive American drivers of their God-given right to the oil, which, inconveniently,
happens to be located beneath lands belonging to inconsequential people.
Those brown-skin, oil hoarding wretches, down in Venezuela and their false
idol-clutching counterparts in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, must be taught that
God, seated upon his golden throne, scorns the sight of their iniquitous
ways. The Kingdom of the Lord stands before us, you proclaim. If we listen
closely, we can hear the voice of God above as he counts his money. Furthermore,
the era of George W. Bush has brought a new revelation: If America's plutocratic
class had even more blood money, then the Baby Jesus would smile.
-
- The Reverend Pat Robertson, Mary Fowler-and every last
one of you Apostles of Perpetual Psychosis-listen up. Given the self-evident
fact that your beliefs bring little relief to your own troubled souls and
have, on the whole, served to engender tragedy worldwide, don't you think
it's time you gave it a rest for awhile. In other words, this is a polite
way of suggesting to you that you shut your pie-in-the-sky hole and take
stock of the things you're saying, because your utterances are becoming
sicker and sadder, by the hour.
-
- If not, you could, at least, in the words, of Tom Waits,
"Come down off the cross-we can use the wood."
-
- _____
-
- Phil Rockstroh, a self-described auto-didactic, gasbag
monologist, is a poet, lyricist, and philosopher/ /bard, exiled to the
island of Manhattan. He maybe contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com
-
-
- Comment
Alton Raines
8-30-5
-
- Ah, more typical rhetoric of those who are anti-christ.
Nothing new or surprising. And, as usual, they can't limit their attack
to the crazies like Pat Robertson, no, they have to slander and attack
all people of faith and blaspheme God in the process. It simply reveals
their inherent inability to judge righteously. They are what scripture
calls "those who sit in the seat of scoffers." Once again, one
of these mouthpieces for darkness draws examples from the Bible they do
not and cannot understand -- nor will the writer ever understand, being
blinded; this writer clearly despises the Holy, Almighty God already. His
blindess is appropriate. And anyone who would find fault in Christ referring
to the mustard seed as the smallest of seeds, wrangling his words to an
exacting measure when clearly Jesus is trying to make a point, not give
a botany lesson -- the salient point of this PARABLE (the writer clearly
doesn't understand what a parable is, or that it does not have to conform
to realistic specifics) is the Kingdom of God, and of faith. Parables are
for teaching a lesson, they do not deal in exacting proportions.
-
- After reading Animal Farm, would we argue over whether
pigs could really talk? After reading Les Miserables, would we scurry to
French prison records to find whether there really was a Prisoner 24601?
Do we get hung up on whether it was scientifically possible for things
to turn to gold when King Midas touched them? Or do we simply think about
the stories, ponder the analogies and learn the lessons? When God says
the descendants of Abraham would "number as the sands of the sea,"
is anyone really going to set out to attempt to count the sands? What idiocy!
This is a foolish objection. Jesus does not say the mustard seed is the
smallest seed in the world - he says it is the smallest seed in the gardens
of first century Palestine. And this is true. People of that time and region
commonly referred to the mustard seed as the smallest of seeds. But culture
be damned, when it comes to condemning the words of Jesus, right? Context,
history, structure... all go out the window when the spirit of anti-christ
starts penning yet another slobberingly hateful rant against the Creator
and those who love and worship Him.
-
- And, additionally, the Bible doesn't tell us the earth
is 7,000 years old -- it tells us the rough family tree extending from
Adam forward is, in human years counted, 7,000 yrs give or take. Proof
here that the writer is listening to backwater preachers with an IQ of
20 or less and deliberately applying it to all Christians/Christianity
is demonstrated by the words of the simple fisherman Peter, who clearly
comprehended the massive age of the earth as well as certain dynamics of
physics with which today's science concur: "(scoffers in the last
days will be saying) 'Where is the promise of his coming? for since the
fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning
of the creation.' For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the
word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the
water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed
with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by
the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire..." (2 Peter 3:4)
-
-
- Comment
Waddie Greywolf
- 8-30-5
-
- I'm really tired of Christian apologist like Alton Raines.
While I don't agree with all of the authors rant, I'm more prone to feel
disgust for Mr. Raines, tired, unremarkable rhetoric that bases the content
of his argument on the scriptures. What hubris that he assumes everyone
who disagrees with the rabid right wing loonies are doomed to perdition
because, "it is written."
-
- "See Cletus, h'it say right there in the Good Book,
I kin sell my daughter, Brandine, into slavery if'n I wants to." (Leviticus)
-
- Give me a break! Many people don't believe everything
in the bible is God's holy word. Many Christians don't believe in a literal
interpretation of the scriptures. Even Mr. Raines begs the consideration
of time and place for the metaphor of the mustard seed. But wait, if you
believe that, Mr. Raines, you have to believe the bible shouldn't be taken
literally at all. I think a great number of fundamentalist would disagree
with you.
-
- So, how does his argument apply to those who don't believe
the way he does? It simply doesn't. His argument has no basis in reality,
which was exactly the point the author was making in his essay. Raines
vomits forth the basic, hell fire/ damnation argument organized religion
has used for centuries to keep believers from thinking for themselves and
admonishing the nonbelievers if they don't clean up their act and join
them in their delusion, they will suffer greatly by the terrible swift
sword of retribution by an angry deity.
-
- Mr. Raines and folks like him push me further away from
religion every time I read about "Intelligent Design" (which
isn't) or an insipid, uninspired rebuttal like Mr. Rains.' It makes me
consider, if they're the people who are going to heaven, I don't really
care to be a part of it. What a wretched place that would be. Mr. Raines
preaches only to the choir. Stop thumping your bible, Mr. Raines, and
show me proof! As for me, I'm happy to remain a devout Pastafarian; a
follower of His Noodliness, The Great Flying Spaghetti Monster.
-
- Waddie Greywolf
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