MORMON SONG

 (May be sung to sorta a combination of “Davy Crockett” & “the Beverly Hillbillies”)

 

Hear the story of Joseph Smith

Snake oil salesman who wrote a myth

About a book on sheets of gold

Very sacred—very old.

 

Written in an ancient tongue

A tale of Jesus yet unsung

The angel Moroni helped him translate

Those sacred words of racial hate.

 

So now we have our latter saints

And men can now have several mates

In the holy words of Brigham Young

“Just bring ‘em now and bring ‘em young.”

 

Brigham found a lake of salt

Where the Mormons’ march could halt

His people built a temple there

So their message they could share.

 

See them go out two by two

Bringing Joseph’s truth to you

Join up now and you can save

All your people in the grave.

 

CHORUS:

Drink no coffee, drink no tea

Mormon truth can set you free

You too can Mormonism find

If you disconnect your mind.

 

by Edwin Kagin

July 5, 1996

Lake Hypatia, Alabama

 

ON COMPETENTIATING CHILDREN

 

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Holy Bible

 

…Your children are not your children…And though they are with you yet they belong not to you…You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.  You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you, For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday…

Kahlil Gibran

 

Hoping to one day get it right, your narrator, in his day job, practices law.  In this capacity, he, as do others of this too often justly vilified and too often unjustly maligned vocation, sees much others do not want to notice or know.  Lawyers, like clerics, prosper on the misery of others. What would lawyers do if everyone became peaceful, honorable, and just?  What would the preachers do if the Devil was saved?  Among the insights attained in trying to help people get out of their self-made problems is the realization that messed up kids become messed up adults—and that messed up adults create messed up kids.

While the bible may say the sins of the fathers (in a politically correct world read “parents”) are to be visited upon the children, we can be better than those bronze age nomads who thought the earth was flat and that pi equals 3.  The godless Constitution of the United States forbids “bills of attainder.”  Look it up—don’t have space to explain it—it’s some more of that legal “mumbo-jumbo” that define our freedoms (if you don’t understand it, be thankful someone does and don’t glory in your ignorance).  It means the sins of the parents are not to be visited on the children, no matter what the bible says.

So what are children anyway and what does one do with them? The English romantic poet Wm. Wordsworth prosaically opined “The child is father of the man.”  This meaningless observation is found in his much overrated poem, tightly titled “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Earliest Childhood,” a name befitting the poet’s musings and ramblings on reincarnation and other supernatural nonsense therein contained, and meriting recognition in your author’s contemplated “Secular Humanist Anthology of Eupraxophy and Other Plain Speaking.” Wordsworth thought children came from god in purity and innocence, uncorrupted by adult thought, and “trailing clouds of glory…,” whatever that means.   Others of his time thought storks brought them.  Wordsworth had not read “Lord of the Flies.”  Neither he nor the others had read Dr. Ruth. Either view of human children—arriving in glory or by stork—is a blueprint for architecting screwed up kids.  There are ways of thinking about rearing (not raising—one raises horses) children that avoids petty piety, banal barbarism, and pretentious psychobabel.

Children can be taught (shown) the power of inner strength that permits self-control and empathy. They can come to think of themselves as worthwhile human beings who are entitled not to be hurt and who do not wish to hurt others.  They can grow up knowing they are loved unconditionally.  Young human beings can learn not to be afraid, that life involves taking certain risks, and that the meaning of life is to live it.  Children can be taught to be competent.

Children are little people, not possessions.  Regrettably, children do not come with instructions.  Generally, big people learn how to deal with children from the behavioral examples of those who dealt with them as children. And lawyers and therapists continue to prosper, as faith in biblical teachings cause their professions to thrive as growth industries.  If you think beating a kid physically or emotionally hurts you more than your victim, there are ways one could test this theory on you, if such treatment was not considered unlawful when applied to an adult.  In blasphemous indifference to the moral teachings of the bible, humanists have made such violence unlawful when applied to defenseless children—at least in this country.  In some countries infected with Mother Teresa morality, surplus kids are shot as vermin.  But for god’s sake don’t abort them.  Keep repeating the mantra “god loves little children.”  Who are you to let reality get in the way of religious imperatives?

If holy writ says to beat the kid to save his soul, who are you to argue?  You could wind up no better than those secular humanists.  If the child asks your reason for some unreasonable command, simply say it’s because you said so.  Questioning is bad.  The important thing is to obey.  That’s god’s way, isn’t it?  And don’t forget to constantly remind the child that in your view he or she is unattractive, burdensome, clumsy, lazy, incompetent, selfish, and stupid. That liberal self-esteem nonsense can come later.

It is said that if you want to make god laugh, tell him your plans.  If you want to make him laugh harder, tell him your plans for your children.  You will almost certainly be wrong, and if said child or children follow your dreams for them, they will not follow theirs, and they will probably live miserable unhappy lives.  You can then have a whining pity party for yourself and wonder wherein you failed, and what you did to deserve this, when it was your own neurotic needs that caused you to teach dependency and to foster insecurity.  How, you might wonder, did you fail?  Bernard Shaw observed that there is no worse villain than the person who tries to mold a child’s character.  You did not teach your children to be competent.

There is another way—the humanist parenting way.  One can teach children they are people of worth and able to make sound decisions, that they are not inherently bad and in need of salvation, that morality is not based on authority or absolutes or decree, that morals are manners and manners are subject to change, and that authority changes its mind.  We now learn from Roman Catholic authorities there is no Limbo.  Belief grounded in authority must now figure out whence went all those little unbaptized souls that the same authority had for centuries taught were in fact in Limbo. Teach your children to see absurdity and not be destroyed by it.  Teach them to laugh.

Tell those whose ideas of proper moral conduct involves the use of the bible as authority for forcing Christian prayers, and other aspects of their private belief systems, on public school children to tread carefully.  Let them know intelligent adults trying to raise competent children have read their book, and will resist, and will teach their children the morality of knowing how to defend themselves with knowledge, weapons, and will.  And that such people will know that Jesus forbade public prayer, and that there is no biblical evidence a single apostle, including Paul, ever prayed at all.  Let them know their own weapons can be used against them in defense by those who decline to be their victims.  Reading the bible, Mark Twain noted, gives one a sinfully unfair advantage over those who believe in it.

Righteousness and self-righteousness are different words representing very different things.  Teach this to your children.  Let them know it is sometimes more moral to waive the rules than to wave the rules.  When someone tells you they are a born again Christian, thank them for the warning.  Such people are often even more distasteful and dangerous the second time around.  Teach your children the bible for their own safety’s sake and as inoculation against its venom.

Let your children know that morality did not originate with the bible or any holy writ, no matter what believers believe.  They should understand that the strength of a belief has nothing to do with the correctness of that belief.  Morality developed and evolved as human beings learned that the consequences of certain actions are so awful that the behaviors should be avoided, forbidden, and sanctioned.  Humans had noticed some good while before the bible was put together that it is not a good idea for people to murder one another with impunity. Teach your children we have gotten a good deal beyond bronze age biblical morality, or your son may worry that, if you find him to be rebellious, biblical morality requires that he be stoned to death as god ordered.  Before becoming moral, people create gods in their own image.

The bible is the stuff of nightmares, not a work to which children should be exposed.  It is filled with depraved behavior and fails to provide examples of moral conduct worthy of emulation.  God was either wrongly quoted or is not a moral god.  He sanctions things a just society abhors and punishes with prison.  We have a right to expect our teachers of morals to be at least as moral as we are.  If you would not drown all the little children of the world in a flood because their parents did things you didn’t like, how could you possibly teach your children that a god who did just that should be seen as a good moral compass?  Teach them to distinguish between logic and fallacy, between science and superstition, between things believed and things proved.  They should learn how to tell the difference between a horse chestnut and a chestnut horse.

Your children will be competent when they can survive, thrive, create, empathize and interact justly with others, free of pain, fear, and guilt—without gods, without religion, and without you.  If they can be thus brought to self-reliant adulthood, they will not need the gods or the religion, and they will not miss them.  If you have done it right, they won’t need you either.

But they will miss you.

Edwin Kagin

New Year’s Eve

December 31, 1997.

 

My Name is Edwin.

 

My name is Edwin Kagin, not Edward Kagin.

This should be clear from the signature on my writings on the subject currently under discussion.  And from all of my writings that can be found on the Internet in various places.

My name is Edwin.  Not Edward.  Edwards are far too common.

That last comment was meant to be humorous. It was not intended to make fun of, or to demean, anyone named Edward.  Some of my best friends are named Edward.  This should also be considered humorous.  It is a deliberate play upon, and a mocking of, such oft heard comments as “Some of my best friends are Jewish, or whatever.”

Now, should I become upset with those writers who have called me Edward rather than Edwin?

Are they indifferent to my sensitivities?

Should I assume that they are Edwinophobic?  Many are, and it is okay if you are.

Should the writers be upset that they have offended me by using the very name I was trying to distinguish myself from?  Actually, I was not offended.   Well, maybe in a tiny little way, but nothing worth writing home about.

Even my blog proudly banners the correct name of Edwin Kagin.  Not an Edward in sight there.

So, why do so many readers call me Edward instead of Edwin?

And should I reject those who called me Edward from my catalogue of allies? After all, they did not research the topic or they would have readily, and easily, learned that I am an Edwin not an Edward.

How can I trust you if you did not?

After all, you should have called me Edwin, because that is my correct name.  Or so I believe.  It is hearsay.  I got it from my mother.  That was a joke.

It may be (heaven help me here—another joke) that the erring writers had no real hostility toward me, but rather misread, or too carelessly read, the writings   (this is meant as humor—there is no real anger here, and those who would have real anger are being mocked).

Or, dog help us (a play on words), some of the comments may have been grounded in a reading of the comments, not of the colloquy.

NB.  The entirely of the foregoing is intended as humor, particularly humor involving the genres of satire and parody.

Edwin Kagin

A Reader’s Guide to “On Homosexuality”

I have no idea what LOGBTQA means.  This was placed on my blog by an unhappy reader who didn’t like that I used the terms “homosexual” and “gay,” and suggested that LOGBTQ be used instead.   For the moment at least, I have decided to use the term (if a term it be) GLBT.   At least I think I know what it means.

Please do not confuse ignorance with bigotry.  One may seem bigoted because they are ignorant.  This does not mean they are bigoted, it just means that they are ignorant.  Of course they can also be both ignorant and bigoted.  “By their fruits shall ye know them.”

My blog post “On Homosexuality” has suddenly drawn more negative responses than has any other of my writings.  This should get my attention.  And it has.

The work is a reprinting of my essay “On Homosexuality,” written in 1995 or before, and published in my book, “Baubles of Blasphemy,” originally edited by Ed Buckner and published by the Atlanta Freethought Press, in 1995.  The work has gone into a second printing, edited by Frank Zindler and published by American Atheist Press, in 2009.  You can order a copy, if interested, at atheists.org or amazon.com.

There has been a pleasing amount of praise for this book by some and much criticism of its contents by others.  Indeed, there have been specific criticisms of the essay “On Homosexuality,” but the comments have most commonly expressed outrage that I was supporting “gay rights” in any way at all.  I was deemed to be a secret homosexual who was in the pockets, if not the pants, of those promoting the imaginary “Homosexual Agenda.”

Then, in 2012, seventeen years at least since the essay was written and published, in the idealized visionary hope that it might do some good to those of our fellow mortals who were GLBT, the work was republished in Freethought Blogs.

To my stunned amazement, there followed an avalanche of negative comments accusing me of being homophobic and insensitive to the feelings of those I was, in the greatest of good faith, trying to help in combating the same type bigotry that is still occurring against GLBT(s?) and atheists.

I still do not, after much thought, understand fully what is upsetting to those who wrote as they did.  Whether or not I understand the emotions of the writers on this, I do understand that a certain portion of my essay has hurt them deeply.

I have just researched LOGBTQA and learned that LGBTQA means “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning, and Allied, but I have not been able to learn what LOGBTQA means.  Might be a typo.  It is easy to make such mistakes; mistakes which should be readily forgivable and fixable.

Being thus admonished and educated, I shall henceforth (at least in this writing) use the term (if term it be) LGBTQA.  Am I an Allied?  I would certainly hope so.

I will readily concede that it is indeed possible to be unconsciously bigoted toward a group such as  LGBTQA, even while writing in support of their rights.  I do not believe I fit in this category, but it is pretty hard to know just what one might be unconsciously thinking.  What are you unconsciously thinking right now?

The snake bite joke (for joke it was and is), that forms the frame for the essay was, consciously at least, nothing more than a mocking of people who actually felt that way.  I am an Eagle Scout.  Of course I know that snake bite kits and making X cuts and sucking and spiting poison from a snake bite wound are to be avoided because doing such will inevitably cause even graver injury.  Such a conversation never happened.  It was a made up story thought, at the time of writing, to be useful in making from humor a more serious point.  If a friend of mine was in a life threatening situation, I would do anything possible to save that friend, even if it meant risking my own death.  Embarrassment or sexual phobias would have no place in such a situation.  I would do what was needed, no matter how unpleasant such actions might seem to be to me or to anyone else.

Yes, my writings are intended to offend—but not to offend those they are trying to help.  If the use of the snake story offended you, I sincerely apologize.  Please know, and hopefully understand, that such was not intended.  What was intended was to offend those who might actually act in conformity with such “moral” principles.

The misunderstanding comes, in part I think, from generational differences.  Before many of you were born, I was active, and under fire, in a variety of activities that achieved greater civil rights and open housing for those then self-called “colored people.”  I was condemned as a “Communist” by my U.S. Representative, and I was called a “nigger lover” by my minister father. It was unthinkable that any decent person (meaning white person) would favor going to school with them, or, perish the thought, marrying one of them.  Both going to school with the “colored” and marrying a person of “the colored race” were crimes in most states.  Homosexuality was an unthinkable crime and was unlawful.  In some places, it could be punished by death.  I clearly remember such horrors as separate “white” and “colored” drinking fountains.  You could easily tell which was which.  The “white” one was a nice water cooler.  The “colored” one was a pipe with a faucet.  “Separate but equal” indeed.

It is perhaps impossible for persons who did not live in a certain time to understand the emotions of that time.  Nor is it possible for one person to fully understand what may offend another person who holds a different view, be that on race, religion, atheism, or sexual orientation. Particularly if they are from different generations.   When I was in law school, everyone smoked.  Even in class.  It would have not been possible then to imagine a world where no one smoked.  People of the present generation might well find it impossible to imagine a society in which almost everybody smoked.

Similarly, it is probably impossible for some of those who have written accusations of homophobia to understand just how far things have come in the past generation.  Those who do recall, or understand those times, should try to appreciate just how daring it would be to advocate any rights whatsoever for persons thought to be deviate.  Persons the law had declared criminal.

I am honored indeed to be given a spot on FTB, and I do not wish to do or say anything that might seem retrograde to the entire spirit of the undertaking.

I have published all comments that I have seen.  It is within my power on the blog to delete any comment I wish.  In that I believe in free speech, I have deleted none of them.

Edwin Kagin, by dog.

 

Omitted Reader Comment

The following writing apparently had not been approved for posting.  That is because I hadn’t seen it. A writer of such clear vision and such artful use of the language should in no wise be ignored.  So here it is.  Edwin

 

Caine, Fleur du Mal says:

14 January 2012 at 2:42 am

My comment to Kagin is awaiting moderation. It may or may not show up, so here it is:

What’s going on in your little universe that you equate saving someone’s life with sex? I have a bit of news for you – sucking venom out of a body part is not a blow job, nor is it sex.

For you to say something like this is, indeed, homophobic and it’s also amazingly stupid. Personally, I am disgusted and dismayed to see such utter shit posted at Freethought blogs.

Exactly why were you and your friend discussing such a situation in the first place? Playing a game of “I’d suck you here to remove venom but not there?” And you honestly didn’t bother to give any thought to this idiocy?

Kudos to your stepdaughter, in spite of your asinine descriptor of liberated who recognizes homophobia when she sees/hears it.

I’m sure it feels good, Mr. Kagin, to have your head so firmly lodged up your anus, but you might want to pull it out for a bit. Get some air.

 

Edwin.

Thought Police of Freethought

 

There seems to be a danger of Thought Police in the world of Freethought. You know, those know what is wrong with everything and want to tell you about it, regardless of the effect of their pronouncements on the future of our ability to say and do.

When this blog first got going, it was announced that there would be something on the blog to offend everyone.  This has been proved to be the case nicely and has inspired some to put fingertips to keyboard to criticize about everything touched upon thus so far.  This is an equal opportunity blasphemy.

Some of the writing on my blog has already been condemned by, among others, those who are frequently wrong but never uncertain.

To fully appreciate Edwinian writing, it is necessary for you to know that everything you think you know about a given Edwinian writing, together with your understanding of the motives of the author, is almost certainly wrong.

Readers would probably find it useful, and therefore well advised, to become acquainted with, at least before speaking, the literary concepts and devices of satire, humor, parody, metaphor, allegory, irony, sarcasm, and wit before providing their opinions so loudly and so often.

Edwin.

On Homosexuality

 

I don’t care what other peoples’ sex practices are, so long as they don’t practice them in the streets and frighten the horses.  Oscar Wilde, I think.

 

Some years ago, on a camping trip, my friend Joe Ray and I resolved that should one of us be unfortunate enough to be bitten on the penis by a venomous serpent, and oral suction by the other was the only life saving measure available, then the afflicted party would simply have to die.  My liberated stepdaughter finds this view “homophobic,” meaning fear of homosexuality.  I don’t think so.  I am not afraid of homosexuality;  I simply find the idea of people of the same sex having sex unaesthetic and curious and do not understand why up to ten percent of the world’s population wants to do that.

But there are many things I find annoying, don’t understand, don’t want to do, and don’t know why anyone else would want to do, like being left-handed.  Why, I wonder, would anyone choose to be left-handed?  They look funny when they write, and their hand moves across what they have written.  Also, lots of manufactured artifacts are most unhandy for people electing this deviation.  Parents sometimes force their children to be right-handed and normal.  In the superstitious past, such maladapted persons were thought blessed or cursed, depending on prevailing local mythology.  Kids forced to alter their basic nature became psychologically scarred.

We are more enlightened now.  Left-handed people are accepted and their rights acknowledged.  Sports stars and Presidents can be left-handed, as can anyone else, and special goods are manufactured accommodating their variance from the much larger right-handed population.  Their condition is seen as a result of the roll of the genetic dice, having no moral or pejorative implications.

Homosexuality appears to have been an aspect of the human condition forever, praised by some societies, condemned by others.  Because of the “Judeo-Christian” tradition, American culture has feared, condemned, and criminalized this left-handedness of human sexual drives.  To the followers of Yahweh and St. Paul, sex has been suspect anyway, the source of original sin, and tolerated only to create new believers.  Homosexuality was viewed as a practice permitted by the unsaved heathens whose science and culture Christianity destroyed.  The Bible specifically condemns same sex erotic love, but then it also condemns women and gives instructions on repressing them.  One might muse darkly on what those twelve apostles did together on long nights in the desert, without women, or why the woman-hating apostle Paul lavished such affectionate words on his young disciple Timothy.  Anyway, the religious right wants homosexual acts to stay criminal and sees the practice as a sin, not as the genetically predisposed state of being it appears to be.  Because of this sin myth, homosexuals have been banned from the American military, and, if not made criminals elsewhere, have been denied the rights to live together and constitute a lawful family.  They may not behave as heterosexuals in love because their sexual orientation is mythologically viewed as immoral and wrong.  They appear to be not only loathed but feared.

The fear comes from the belief that homosexuality is voluntary and contagious.  Bigots believe gays and lesbians choose to be that way and that they try to convert others to their perversions.  As is usual in matters of religious certainty, if the facts contradict the myth, the myth wins.  The existence of homosexuals in the military is unsettling to many, proving that the perceived immorality is not confined to the arts and the priesthood.  We will not expend space here in prolonged discussion of the obvious hypocrisy of priests practicing that which they condemn as sin and absolving those sinners through the power of God.  That many religious leaders do “unnatural acts” is known from the confessions of nuns who have kicked the habit and from the confessions of priests in open court to the criminal molestation of same sex children.  If gold rusts, what will iron do?

The matter of gays in the military has brought our social myths on sexual orientation into sharper focus.  Gays have always been in our military, and in every military since society started resolving their differences through organized violence.  The Greek way was not confined to the armies of Alexander, and has been accepted, if not condoned, in all ancient and modern land and naval forces, except in those who insist, despite all proof, that the myth is right and reality is wrong.  The armed forces can function with homosexuals in their ranks because they have so functioned and continue to function, despite official denial.  Gays and lesbians have served with distinction, flying planes, running hospitals, manning artillery batteries, and so on.  Many have risen to high command rank without their sexual preferences interfering with duty and good order.  A well-disciplined conscientious gay in the military is certainly to be preferred over a sexually misbehaving heterosexual officer harassing female subordinates or a priest molesting choirboys.

If the sexual drives of the homosexual are propelled by forces within put there by his Creator, whose creations are perfect and whose will is unknowable and unknown, then prejudice against him is theologically unsound.  If homosexual behavior has a biological basis, then one so predestined did not choose his orientation any more than heterosexuals choose theirs, and the idea that such genetic drives are somehow catching is as absurd as a fear that left-handedness may be acquired by proximity or persuasion.

If gays and lesbians voluntarily choose to practice a lifestyle of deviation from mythical standards of proper behavior, they must be severely masochistic individuals.  Imagine choosing to be rejected by family members you love, risking shame, imprisonment, loss of career, and being denied the ability to publicly express affection, obtain housing, or serve one’s country.  Does it seem reasonable that a military person who adheres to rigid standards in rules of conduct and discipline would, in the sexual area of life, elect to destroy all that has been worked for, and risk beatings, private scorn, and public disgrace merely to flaunt freely chosen homosexual behavior condemned by others as repulsive and perverted?  Barry Goldwater correctly observed we should be more concerned with whether they can shoot straight (he probably intended none of the possible puns).

The notion that homosexuals are seeking special rights is in the same category, and is maintained by the same people, as was the idea that blacks were seeking special rights when they wanted to vote, buy a home, or ride at the front of a bus.  What is so special about wanting the same human and civil rights enjoyed by people who have a genetically ordained yearning for the opposite sex?  Actually, I am glad I was not born gay.  Heterosexuality has caused me quite enough problems, thank you.  Sometimes I think the Almighty erred by inventing it.  But I can accept that which I cannot understand without fear of being converted.  I do not believe my left handed paralegal, daughter-in-law, or President are likely to cause me to write in their strange way.  It seems equally unlikely that I could be persuaded to substitute my excessive fondness for warm, soft, perfumed women for attraction to hairy legged males.

Oh, yes, I bought a snake bite kit.

Edwin Kagin (c)

 

 

RESPONSE TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN WATCHMAKER POEM

 

Now most people know that watches in pockets,

Are made of different stuff than eyes in eye sockets.

A watch doesn’t have wings, or flippers, or feet,

A watch isn’t something another watch might just eat.

A watch doesn’t live in a nest, cave, or hive,

And that is because a watch isn’t alive.

If you can get that small detail resolved,

You can see why it’s dumb to say life hasn’t evolved.

And  pretend that making a watch for a wrist,

Is just like making an arm or a fist.

And pretend people were made and clearly designed,

Because life is complex and sometimes refined.

Life didn’t happen by magic or plan,

Like thinking some dirt was turned into a man.

And some folks believe, and this is no fib,

That the first woman was made from first dirt man’s rib.

Evolution happened and it isn’t true,

That people were made by some god from some goo.

Let’s say that you took about ten quillion rabbits,

All alike in their looks, and their hops, and their habits.

And that about half were colored bright snerfell,

And that about half were colored dark murfell.

And if they made babies those snerfells and murfells,

Some of those babies would be colored snerfell.

And some of those babies would be colored murfell,

And some of those babies would be in between.

In some brand new colors no rabbit had seen,

Maybe some would be colored a pleasing snerplean.

Or maybe some awful disgusting murgreen,

And some might be lovely and some quite obscene.

And if the rabbits thus colored should make some more rabbits,

With only those rabbits with their color habits.

A new color for rabbits would finally evolve,

And the colors they started out with would dissolve.

And be completely replaced after enough time,

With snerplean or murgreen not made out of slime.

And enough time and enough rabbit ranges,

Could make in those rabbits amazing new changes.

Until they perhaps were no longer rabbits,

But maybe some new type of postrabbitodabits.

A new kind of life we could not invent in our mind,

As new as a timepiece some watchmaker might wind.

But made from the life force creationists mock,

Who think life is something as dead as a clock.

So don’t be confused by people who lie,

Who think truth is found in a book from the sky.

If it weren’t for science we wish they could see,

We would all have to use candles to watch the T.V.

Edwin Kagin

On Prayer pour Petri

                                                                         

                                              Lord, what fools these mortals be!  Puck.

 

Be glad you are not a bacterium.  If you have an identity crisis, if you don’t know who you are, or your place in the universe, and this upsets you, while no one else cares, then be comforted by considering the plight of bacteria.  Some authorities consider bacteria plants; others think they are neither plants nor animals, but a completely separate life form.  All authorities consulted agree they are not animals. If a choice  be forced, they are flora, not fauna. If they were on the ark, they were stowaways.  Most people care less about them and their problems than they care about you and your problems.

Divine intercession has been sought for bacteria.  It had to happen.  Faithful readers perhaps recall that we have, in these pages, considered many events that may seem to us extraordinary–visits of the B.V.M., custody fights over frozen fetuses, satanic plots to stop abortions, public prayer as the cause of social disfunction, together with diverse other matters too numerous to recount–yet never, for all of our commentary, uncritically perceived by some as blasphemy or religion bashing, have we had occasion to reflect on so curious an idea as praying over bacteria in petri dishes.  We didn’t dream this up.  We saw it in a T.V. documentary, so it has to be true.  A secular humanist couldn’t have concocted  a fantasy so funny.  The hysterical reality of this event sprang unprompted from the creative energies of certain of those numbered among the righteously saved.

It came about in this wise.   Many have long maintained that prayer changes things, and that, upon proper petition, god will supernaturally intervene in human affairs to alter the course of events that would, without prayer, proceed according to the laws of nature.  It is alleged that this divine intercession extends to the healing of sick people.  If one prays for the sick, god will heal them or at least make them better.  Without the prayers, god will simply let the sick suffer.  Many believe this and have offered narrative proofs.  There have been “studies” of questionable reliability done to demonstrate the power of healing prayer.  The research results showed, to the satisfaction of the faithful, that people who were prayed over did better than those not so favored.  The data were challenged by certain of those cynical sneering religion-bashing secular humanist skeptical-of-everything godless types that religious faith knows so well and would be so much better off without.  These scoffers thought that maybe the mere belief that prayer worked caused the improvements, if any, and that the results sprang from the mind of the believer, not from the intercession of divine providence.  Equally effective, claimed the critics, would be any other conviction the stricken might believe would cure them.  By way of example of this principle, our household, for some years now, has remained free of the scourge of leprosy by avoiding the eating of possum.  To prove prayer, not placebo, worked the miracles, and to eliminate insofar as possible, as religion likes to do anyway, the menace of the mind, it was decided to test the effects of prayer on experimental and control batches of bacteria.  Guess what?  The occupants of the prayed over petri plates did better (whatever that means) than the prayerless petri plates.  Proof positive to shake to their very foundations the demons of doubt.

While this research and its results have not been published, to our knowledge, in any learned journals, nor have we learned of its details, nor heard of its replication, the implications, apart from proving the truth of religious faith, are awesome indeed.  We need no longer waste money in secular medical research trying to cure such things as cancer or AIDS.  Biological research labs can now close.  Departments of microbiology can now become departments of miracles.  Imagine if the human race had this knowledge when we were struggling with smallpox, polio, typhoid, malaria, and even the bubonic plague.  Think how many innocent rats could have been spared with this new knowledge.

But no use lamenting the mistakes of the past.  We must press forward into the new frontiers of faith.  To this end, the following is suggested as a petri prayer.  You are welcome to use this sword and shield of the spirit, at home in your closet, in the certain trust that it will prove divinely beneficial against anything biological that might prove bothersome.

“All mighty and all powerful god, maker of all things visible and invisible, maker of the mighty beast behemoth, and of the bacteria found in the bowels of behemoth, and of all of those least of thy plants that trouble thy creation man, hear, oh lord, this our prayer of supplication and grant intercession unto us.  We most humbly confess we have, in our blindness, followed other gods.  We have sinned against thee and forsaken thy path.  We have blindly ignored thy eternal truths, and forgotten thy ways that are above our ways, as we have sought to cure the sick through the teachings of the false gods of science.  In our weakness and folly, we have followed and whored after the medicine of man.  We repent of our error, and ask thy divine forgiveness, as we now reject those idols of the mind that have separated us from our god, the only true source of all good and perfect gifts of  healing.  Stretch forth thy mighty hand and smite the plants of thy creation that are unseen. Remake, oh god, the bacteria you made.  Remold their tiny forms to forms less harmful.  In dish, in dessert, in duodenum, they ravage us.  Restore to them the innocence they had before the sin of our first parents, before our fall from grace.  Render them, we pray, harmless to us, and, in thy infinite mercy, cure us, and protect us from them.  We are weak, and they are strong.  Nevertheless, oh god our strength and our salvation, not our will but thine be done.  Amen.”

Please let us know if this works.  It should.  Can’t think of any reason it shouldn’t.

Edwin Kagin (c)

 

Atheist Edwin Kagin’s Poem on Creation and Evolution at the Public Schools of the Butterflies.

Ode to the Butterfly Mind

 

The Parliament of Butterflies

Was racked by deep division

Questions of what to teach the young

Demanded their decision.

 

It had been known and taught and thought

Since butterfly life began

That butterflies in glory rose

From their creator’s mighty hand

 

Now some few who this truth mocked

Had attacked faith’s very pillars

“All butterflies,” these scientists claimed,

“Came from caterpillars.”

 

This indecent theory spread

Into butterfly education,

Until this “caterpillar cult”

Threatened creation’s revelation.

 

The faithful sought to restore the truth

About the origins of butterflies;

And to build an absolute moral base,

To stop the metamorphic lies.

 

“Believe you  descended from some worm

And wormlike you will be!”

Reasoned those who’d seen faith’s light

And knew there was nothing left to see.

 

“We see no proof,” some butterflies said

“That we are all come from cocoons–

Unbelievers who would teach this tale

Are all immoral loons.”

 

Some said the metamorphous lie

Was laid  by “the enemy,” they believed,

Set, like candle flames and windshields,

To destroy all who were deceived.

 

The matter was at last resolved —

Both theories must be taught — how fine!

Now all youth can simply decide the truth,

Each in their own simple butterfly mind.

 

 

Edwin F. Kagin

PO Box 559

Union, KY 41091-0559

(859) 384-7000

Fax: (859) 384-7324

E-mail: edwin@edwinkagin.com

http://www.edwinkagin.com