That three people lost their lives is a sad thing, that those people met their end in such heinous and barbaric fashion is tragic, that this tragedy destroyed young people makes it somehow intuitively deserving of a multiplier. That events such as this are so common place that stories written about them, and the pictures associated, become also-ran on a news feed, become banal in the copy-paste nature of their presentation, is debilitating.
Senselessness does not translate very easily into words because the very mechanism which necessitates communication is the need to make sense of the world around us. And so, the only comment i feel qualified to make on the actual crime is that it leaves me without words.
I should hope to call this a reflection from the events and not a reaction to them.
In such, the only statement I feel qualified to make in light of the Chapel Hill events reflects something personal that I have been forced to reflect on: the coward who was an atheist and the comments I have made on Islam.
Islam, not Muslims.
I have not known many Muslims in my life. The people that I have known and known to be Muslim were, without exception, devout of faith, and wonderful people. And, luckily for me, open and gracious with questions about their religion, religious practices, and textual readings. By no means does this make me an expert on Islam. But I have made honest enough an attempt, explicit enough an effort, and thorough enough an intellectual pursuit of it to know that if my understanding of a few things is wrong, the interpretation is not unique to me.
The doctrines of Islam can be used to justify monstrous acts of sub-humanism.
Acts such as those performed by an atheist against three Muslim people on February 11, 2015.
Here is why my stance on Islam, and my stance as an atheist, will remain unchanged: Atheism abides by no such doctrines. I can't even get my atheist friends to agree that Ernest Hemingway was an essential American novelist.
The point is that atheism is not a credo, it is the lack of one. Someone cannot be motivated into any act by atheism. It is the next step which may prove people symptomatic of faulty judgment.
In the absence of god, what set of beliefs does the individual adopt?
Personally, I identify myself as a skeptic and a humanist. Which, when cored and planted, sprouts the default fruits of believing in people though I may not believe what they say.
I believe that the pustule of a person who committed these crimes in North Carolina was, at one time, a decent human being. I also believe that because of his personhood, he is capable of the highest order of suffering that the animal kingdom knows.
And I hope he experiences it.
Despite the often hob-knobby culture of the internet atheist, atheism is not a club. We do not have to accept. We do not have to forgive. We do not practice "except." In fact we do not exist. Atheism is a point of separation, a pier of individuality, and not a beacon of common consignment.
As Christopher Hitchens points out in his essay "Abraham Lincoln: Misery's Child," "[b]efore Gettysburg, people would say 'the United States are...' After Gettysburg, they began saying 'the United States is...'" The community of atheists, the "internet atheists," even, is an "are" proposition. Atheists are able to disagree, disavow, and discourage without their atheism being shaken or taken form them by someone higher in the atheist church.
Because of this it is easy to imagine there being no appreciable link between one atheist guilty of some of the most atrocious acts imaginable, and any other atheist anywhere.
But that doesn't bring back three young people who deserve to be here.
ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.
Showing posts with label Anti-theism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anti-theism. Show all posts
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Sunday, February 8, 2015
ISIS, The Day Jake Hollow Walked By
I used to know a kid named Bobby, Bobby Movar. Bobby Movar was a little asshole. But he was second only to Jake Hollow in terms of bullying.
That's not fair. Jake was a decent kid, so long as you didn't look at him. Or speak to him. Or step on his shoe. Look, as long as there was nothing left open for interpretation, Jake couldn't take it wrong, right? That was the word in the hall, anyway.
Bobby was a spoiled rich kid with a loud mother and an absent father. He'd sit in the back of the class and throw pencils at people. He'd flick rubber bands. He'd tie people's shoe laces to their desks. All the regular assholish behaviors that you spent the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade hoping you'd manage to dodge.
Bobby used to brag about his mom, and how when teachers would call home, she would yell at them. They were discriminating, she'd say. Bobby had ADD, she'd tell them. She'd sue, you the teacher right out of her job, nay, right out of her whole damned house. For discrimination, you know?
Bobby was in my math class one year. American children aren't good at math anyway, right? And when you spend an entire period nervous about the acid content of Bobby's spitwads (known to burn a hole straight through the lacquer on the desks) well, you pay a little less attention to the great gift of algebra.
When Bobby failed, there was no real hubbub. When maybe Bobby and a couple other kids starting failing, well, it was math after all. When the class as a whole became devoid of passing grades, something had to be done. The teacher called home.
No result.
Bobby, newly empowered by his status as completely impervious to repercussion strutted in the hall during our introduction to roots and radicals, and started throwing the contents of his locker all willy-nilly over his shoulder. History had told him that there was basically nothing to fear.
Bobby nailed Jake Hollow in the temple with his Ethics book.
There probably wasn't a teacher in that building that could have pulled big Jake off of Bobby. Still, none of them even tried. Eventually, by the time the halls were lined with students and teachers and other faculty, Jake got tired and walked straight into the In-School-Suspension room and took the same chair he normally sat in. Maybe it was because of the dislocated shoulder, but I never saw Bobby throw another pencil. Or Ethics book.
What I'm saying is that ISIS is Bobby Movar. And Jordan's King Abdullah II might just be Jake Hollow. Abdullah, a 35 year military vet, was beyond shocked when ISIS released a video of themselves caging a Jordanian airman and then setting him on fire.
Abdullah has sworn vengeful retribution against ISIS until his forces run "out of fuel and bullets."
I'm not normally the type to cheer on an asswhooping in the hallway, but the way my neck still burned from Bobby's venom-spitwad, I might have silently hoped Jake got a couple good ones in for me too.
(More Religious Satire from this blog Here)
ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.
That's not fair. Jake was a decent kid, so long as you didn't look at him. Or speak to him. Or step on his shoe. Look, as long as there was nothing left open for interpretation, Jake couldn't take it wrong, right? That was the word in the hall, anyway.
Bobby was a spoiled rich kid with a loud mother and an absent father. He'd sit in the back of the class and throw pencils at people. He'd flick rubber bands. He'd tie people's shoe laces to their desks. All the regular assholish behaviors that you spent the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade hoping you'd manage to dodge.
Bobby used to brag about his mom, and how when teachers would call home, she would yell at them. They were discriminating, she'd say. Bobby had ADD, she'd tell them. She'd sue, you the teacher right out of her job, nay, right out of her whole damned house. For discrimination, you know?
Bobby was in my math class one year. American children aren't good at math anyway, right? And when you spend an entire period nervous about the acid content of Bobby's spitwads (known to burn a hole straight through the lacquer on the desks) well, you pay a little less attention to the great gift of algebra.
When Bobby failed, there was no real hubbub. When maybe Bobby and a couple other kids starting failing, well, it was math after all. When the class as a whole became devoid of passing grades, something had to be done. The teacher called home.
No result.
Bobby, newly empowered by his status as completely impervious to repercussion strutted in the hall during our introduction to roots and radicals, and started throwing the contents of his locker all willy-nilly over his shoulder. History had told him that there was basically nothing to fear.
Bobby nailed Jake Hollow in the temple with his Ethics book.
There probably wasn't a teacher in that building that could have pulled big Jake off of Bobby. Still, none of them even tried. Eventually, by the time the halls were lined with students and teachers and other faculty, Jake got tired and walked straight into the In-School-Suspension room and took the same chair he normally sat in. Maybe it was because of the dislocated shoulder, but I never saw Bobby throw another pencil. Or Ethics book.
What I'm saying is that ISIS is Bobby Movar. And Jordan's King Abdullah II might just be Jake Hollow. Abdullah, a 35 year military vet, was beyond shocked when ISIS released a video of themselves caging a Jordanian airman and then setting him on fire.
Abdullah has sworn vengeful retribution against ISIS until his forces run "out of fuel and bullets."
I'm not normally the type to cheer on an asswhooping in the hallway, but the way my neck still burned from Bobby's venom-spitwad, I might have silently hoped Jake got a couple good ones in for me too.
(More Religious Satire from this blog Here)
ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Holy Books and Holey Socks
The problem with religious extremists is they're right.
According to their ancient texts, anyway. After all, when stepping into a Church, you barely have time to admire the crucifix before being assailed with the Christian catch phrase "God, family, and (insert priority.) In that order!"
It's hard to imagine any of the Abrahamic religions, or divisions of those religions, having much different of a hierarchy. Once you've claimed a dusty book as more precious than a blood-bond, well, what's the blood of a few hundred strangers?
After that concession, the fact that the Abrahamic religions do condone slavery, do necessitate the subjugation of women, do force people to abhor homosexuals, etc. barely even needs to be raised except to point out what group is conspicuously absent in the subset of alright to abuse (hint: the heteronormative ruling class males [in other words, the guys who wrote the books...])
Fortunately, we live in a time where most people wear their religion in the same way they wear a sock that has a hole in it. When you actually take the time to look at the sock, you can see there's a hole right in the heel. But in your morning grog, you rarely investigate socks before slipping them on your feet. So you do put them on and once we get to walking around in it, your mind is on other things, and you stop worrying about the hole in one of the heels. During those times, it's a sock just like anyone else's. In fact, you imagine, it's probably pretty normal to have a hole in your heel. Everyone wears socks, right? Surely some of them have worn through as well. Someone's probably walking next to you right then, just thinking about their own holey sock.
But sometimes life happens and you have to take a corner sharply. And when that happens, your naked heel farts against the sole of your shoe and you have to look at the people around you and tell them that it's not how it sounded. But, sort of, it is how it sounded.
We live in a pretty amazing world where it is not considered wasteful to toss out a defective sock. It will probably save you a good deal of embarrassment when life happens.
But maybe you feel like you can't afford new socks. Have you ever tried life sans-socks? Even for a little bit? What are your socks, especially the bad ones, really worth to you? More than your mother? Your children? Your neighbors?
I think what I'm trying to say is don't pretend holey socks are more important than your mother. And don't kill people because of them either.
Just throw the damned things away.
ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.
According to their ancient texts, anyway. After all, when stepping into a Church, you barely have time to admire the crucifix before being assailed with the Christian catch phrase "God, family, and (insert priority.) In that order!"
It's hard to imagine any of the Abrahamic religions, or divisions of those religions, having much different of a hierarchy. Once you've claimed a dusty book as more precious than a blood-bond, well, what's the blood of a few hundred strangers?
After that concession, the fact that the Abrahamic religions do condone slavery, do necessitate the subjugation of women, do force people to abhor homosexuals, etc. barely even needs to be raised except to point out what group is conspicuously absent in the subset of alright to abuse (hint: the heteronormative ruling class males [in other words, the guys who wrote the books...])
Fortunately, we live in a time where most people wear their religion in the same way they wear a sock that has a hole in it. When you actually take the time to look at the sock, you can see there's a hole right in the heel. But in your morning grog, you rarely investigate socks before slipping them on your feet. So you do put them on and once we get to walking around in it, your mind is on other things, and you stop worrying about the hole in one of the heels. During those times, it's a sock just like anyone else's. In fact, you imagine, it's probably pretty normal to have a hole in your heel. Everyone wears socks, right? Surely some of them have worn through as well. Someone's probably walking next to you right then, just thinking about their own holey sock.
But sometimes life happens and you have to take a corner sharply. And when that happens, your naked heel farts against the sole of your shoe and you have to look at the people around you and tell them that it's not how it sounded. But, sort of, it is how it sounded.
We live in a pretty amazing world where it is not considered wasteful to toss out a defective sock. It will probably save you a good deal of embarrassment when life happens.
But maybe you feel like you can't afford new socks. Have you ever tried life sans-socks? Even for a little bit? What are your socks, especially the bad ones, really worth to you? More than your mother? Your children? Your neighbors?
I think what I'm trying to say is don't pretend holey socks are more important than your mother. And don't kill people because of them either.
Just throw the damned things away.
ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Coming Out
I have to come out because it's who I am, and it's what I do. This will probably surprise everyone who knows me because I've lived an "out life" since moving to my current city of residence. Everyone else will remember me from a time when this truth was apparently not so. But it is so. It is true.
I'm an atheist.
Before reacting, I think it's important to recognize the consequences of simply admitting my atheism. First, my 2016 presidential bid will not withstand the blow. In fact, my atheism may be the sole disqualifier (outside of age restrictions.) After all, look at the hubbub that was made of the type of Christian that Mitt Romney was versus whether Barack Obama was a Christian or a closet Muslim.
Further, statistics say that out of every 100 people I know, 80 are likely to be religious. And I'd be willing to bet the number is actually higher than that in the Bible Belt. I'm also willing to bet that out of those 80 or so, many will take their religion seriously enough to discount 29 years of evidence to the contrary and immediately believe some pretty awful things about me. Also, that there will be terrible things waiting for me upon my expiration.
Another consequence of atheism is that in the event that I ever score a touchdown or win an Oscar, I will have no one to thank first.
Penultimately, in the absence of a book of divine wisdom, I am forced to use words like penultimate in order to try to sound intelligent.
Lastly, Steve Harvey will never ever ever want to be my friend.
Are these points facetious? Mostly. But they're also true.
So what is the correct response to this? It is not to tell me that you'll pray for me. It is not to tell me that I just have yet to find Jesus. The correct response is not to threaten me with hell. The correct response to my atheism is to recognize it. Simply. My lack of a belief in god does not make me lesser, it does not make me equal, it does not make me special. It does not make me contentious. My atheism doesn't make me anything. That is not the nature of an un-belief.
(How religion is a lot like a holey sock)
Now, how is it that a literate and hardworking soul from the Bible Belt converted to atheism? If you spend as much time on Youtube as I do, and I hope you don't, you'll eventually come across a Christopher Hitchens clip where he claimed that people to not convert to atheism, they realize they've always been atheists. And the more I thought about the quote the more I realized how true that was for me.
One of my earliest memories is being mortified at the prospect of eternity. Just think of it. Forever. What if you get bored? Or perhaps imagine it this way, you're sat in front of a Mario video game and told that you have to play for 24 hours straight. So you sit down, and you beat the game in thirty minutes, right? Boom, straight through. Then you have to spend the rest of the time just running around. No bad guys to kill, or gold coins to find, or princesses to save. You just wander. Wouldn't that be awful? And that's just one day. After that, you have forever of those. Now think specifically of heaven. Is there an element of corporeal reassembly? Who does that job? Is heaven just a big dinner party? Would it be possible to meet everyone there? What if you didn't like any of them? What if my mother and sisters weren't there? I'd like to have a word with the boss if that were the case. Would that be possible? Or would god be in the VIP area?
And that's just heaven.
It doesn't take Russel Crowe fighting rock monsters to make the story of Noah sound silly. The story of the Prodigal Son sounds pretty nice. But are those really the sort of values that one can (or should) be talked into? If so, would you mind calling my father? And while you two are talking, do your best not to mention Job, yeah?
But these stories aren't meant to be taken literally, they're metaphor.
Then where is the line that separates metaphor from meta fact? Is Jesus a metaphor? What about Muhammad? Or god itself? God as a metaphor would help to explain some of the inconsistencies.
The truth is that no two people have the same religion. People don't always have the same religion at the middle of the week that they had at the beginning of the week. And how many young people bother to keep a pesky god around on Friday and Saturday nights? But sure enough, there he is on Sunday morning, ready to be worshiped and feared all over again.
But that is the fault of the sinner, not the unchanging.
So how many people repent for eating their steak medium-well? No? Leviticus would like a word with you.
Oh, Leviticus. What a silly thing for an atheist to quote, no? Leviticus is not in red letters. You know what is in red letters? Matthew 5:18, which says, "Till heaven and earth pass, not one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."
But don't I know? The only way to heaven is through the acceptance of Christ the Lord as my personal savior? Sin is inevitable. We're just made that way. Kind of like how GM makes cars without proper ignition switches once in a while. And every time god does a recall, he doesn't change the ignition switch, he just drowns almost every engine in the world and then fires up the assembly line to get more of those faulty autos on the road asap.
So what's the point? Why am I writing this and hoping that you'll read it? Because of what being an atheist means that I do.
I eat babies. I throw rocks off of overpasses. I find litters of still-pink puppies all dozing and suckling of their mother and i douse them in gasoline so that I can set them ablaze. I mean, it is important to know that it is only in the light spawned from burning puppies that one can truly appreciate the works of Anton LeVey. Some times I bake kittens. On nights that I'm not washing my hair in the blood of virgins, I like to go out and haunt graveyards. Mostly, I laugh at the misfortunes of others. I must, right? Isn't that what atheists do?
No.
I lead a life largely dedicated to letters.
I value the impact that my existence may have on others, and I hope their experiences are more positive because of me.
I love my family and my friends. I work hard every day so that I may make their existence more enjoyable.
I look in the mirror and acknowledge that time is of unfathomable value. And swear to myself to use all of mine to the best of my ability because every day is the endgame.
Because I am an atheist.
I am an atheist.
ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, and The Eunoia Review. Follow him on Twitter @adriananyway
Before reacting, I think it's important to recognize the consequences of simply admitting my atheism. First, my 2016 presidential bid will not withstand the blow. In fact, my atheism may be the sole disqualifier (outside of age restrictions.) After all, look at the hubbub that was made of the type of Christian that Mitt Romney was versus whether Barack Obama was a Christian or a closet Muslim.
Further, statistics say that out of every 100 people I know, 80 are likely to be religious. And I'd be willing to bet the number is actually higher than that in the Bible Belt. I'm also willing to bet that out of those 80 or so, many will take their religion seriously enough to discount 29 years of evidence to the contrary and immediately believe some pretty awful things about me. Also, that there will be terrible things waiting for me upon my expiration.
Another consequence of atheism is that in the event that I ever score a touchdown or win an Oscar, I will have no one to thank first.
Penultimately, in the absence of a book of divine wisdom, I am forced to use words like penultimate in order to try to sound intelligent.
Lastly, Steve Harvey will never ever ever want to be my friend.
Are these points facetious? Mostly. But they're also true.
So what is the correct response to this? It is not to tell me that you'll pray for me. It is not to tell me that I just have yet to find Jesus. The correct response is not to threaten me with hell. The correct response to my atheism is to recognize it. Simply. My lack of a belief in god does not make me lesser, it does not make me equal, it does not make me special. It does not make me contentious. My atheism doesn't make me anything. That is not the nature of an un-belief.
(How religion is a lot like a holey sock)
Now, how is it that a literate and hardworking soul from the Bible Belt converted to atheism? If you spend as much time on Youtube as I do, and I hope you don't, you'll eventually come across a Christopher Hitchens clip where he claimed that people to not convert to atheism, they realize they've always been atheists. And the more I thought about the quote the more I realized how true that was for me.
One of my earliest memories is being mortified at the prospect of eternity. Just think of it. Forever. What if you get bored? Or perhaps imagine it this way, you're sat in front of a Mario video game and told that you have to play for 24 hours straight. So you sit down, and you beat the game in thirty minutes, right? Boom, straight through. Then you have to spend the rest of the time just running around. No bad guys to kill, or gold coins to find, or princesses to save. You just wander. Wouldn't that be awful? And that's just one day. After that, you have forever of those. Now think specifically of heaven. Is there an element of corporeal reassembly? Who does that job? Is heaven just a big dinner party? Would it be possible to meet everyone there? What if you didn't like any of them? What if my mother and sisters weren't there? I'd like to have a word with the boss if that were the case. Would that be possible? Or would god be in the VIP area?
And that's just heaven.
It doesn't take Russel Crowe fighting rock monsters to make the story of Noah sound silly. The story of the Prodigal Son sounds pretty nice. But are those really the sort of values that one can (or should) be talked into? If so, would you mind calling my father? And while you two are talking, do your best not to mention Job, yeah?
But these stories aren't meant to be taken literally, they're metaphor.
Then where is the line that separates metaphor from meta fact? Is Jesus a metaphor? What about Muhammad? Or god itself? God as a metaphor would help to explain some of the inconsistencies.
The truth is that no two people have the same religion. People don't always have the same religion at the middle of the week that they had at the beginning of the week. And how many young people bother to keep a pesky god around on Friday and Saturday nights? But sure enough, there he is on Sunday morning, ready to be worshiped and feared all over again.
But that is the fault of the sinner, not the unchanging.
So how many people repent for eating their steak medium-well? No? Leviticus would like a word with you.
Oh, Leviticus. What a silly thing for an atheist to quote, no? Leviticus is not in red letters. You know what is in red letters? Matthew 5:18, which says, "Till heaven and earth pass, not one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."
But don't I know? The only way to heaven is through the acceptance of Christ the Lord as my personal savior? Sin is inevitable. We're just made that way. Kind of like how GM makes cars without proper ignition switches once in a while. And every time god does a recall, he doesn't change the ignition switch, he just drowns almost every engine in the world and then fires up the assembly line to get more of those faulty autos on the road asap.
So what's the point? Why am I writing this and hoping that you'll read it? Because of what being an atheist means that I do.
I eat babies. I throw rocks off of overpasses. I find litters of still-pink puppies all dozing and suckling of their mother and i douse them in gasoline so that I can set them ablaze. I mean, it is important to know that it is only in the light spawned from burning puppies that one can truly appreciate the works of Anton LeVey. Some times I bake kittens. On nights that I'm not washing my hair in the blood of virgins, I like to go out and haunt graveyards. Mostly, I laugh at the misfortunes of others. I must, right? Isn't that what atheists do?
No.
I lead a life largely dedicated to letters.
I value the impact that my existence may have on others, and I hope their experiences are more positive because of me.
I love my family and my friends. I work hard every day so that I may make their existence more enjoyable.
I look in the mirror and acknowledge that time is of unfathomable value. And swear to myself to use all of mine to the best of my ability because every day is the endgame.
Because I am an atheist.
I am an atheist.
ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, and The Eunoia Review. Follow him on Twitter @adriananyway
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