Why I am a Christian, A Conversation with Jesus – Smoggy Batzrubble

Smoggy Batzrubble: Dear Jesus?

Jesus Christ: [sigh] Yes, servant Smoggy?

SB: Dear Jesus, those Hell-bound atheists are baring their tormented
souls on the evil Pharyngula blog, blathering on the theme of ‘Why I
am An Atheist’ to justify their pointless existences and pretend
they’re not terrified of the eternal damnation which awaits them.

JC: And?

SB: And? And… and… and it’s not good enough Jesus! What if some
impressionable young believer gets whiff of the heady haze of heresy
and starts thinking rational thoughts? Can you imagine a world with no
religion, no heaven, no hell below, above us only sky?

JC: Careful Smoggy, you’re getting lyrical.

SB: You’re not taking this seriously Jesus. Don’t you care that
religion is under attack?

JC: Smoggy, religions are always under attack, usually by other
religions. Everyone knows that religions thrive on a sense of
persecution—even in the good ol’ USofA, where the religious control
social and political discourse, receive obscene tax breaks, and use
their ideological dominance to discriminate against the weak, the poor
and the different. You have to admire them. It takes a lot of effort
to cry persecuted when the entire system is stacked in your favour.

SB: JesuseffinChrist, Jesus! Are you listening to yourself? You sound
like a trendy-lefty-bleeding-heart-liberal-namby-pamby-marxy-boy. When
have you ever cared about ‘the different’.

JC: I am ‘the different’ Smoggy. I’m the only son of a difficult father and…

SB: Difficult Father!? You mean YHWH! How is He difficult? We’re
talking God here… the big guy, y’know ‘Immortal, Invisible, God
Only-Wise.’ What about my father? You of all people—sorry, of all
deities—know that my Papa Batzrubble was a serial killer, executed for
strangling fat nuns with their own rosary beads (culminating in the
murder of Sister Seraphim Butter on the night I was born). How would
you like to go through life carrying that cross?

JC: Eh, you were lucky to have a serial killer. My father is a
jealous, genocidal tyrant: he set Adam and Even up to fail by placing
a deadly tree in their garden Paradise (an act on a par with leaving a
live, bare electric cable in the middle of a kindergarten and telling
the children not to play with it); he used extreme incest to populate
(and re-populate) the world; he wiped out almost every human (good or
evil, old or young) with an indiscriminate flood; he impregnated my
mother when she was an impressionable, underage virgin (ever heard of
statutory rape?); he decided to have me killed in the worst way
imaginable, when he could just have easily used his omnipotent powers
to cleanse the world of evil; and that doesn’t count the madness he’s
got in store for the END TIMES. Have you seen my costume, described in
Revelations Nineteen? I have to have a fucking SWORD coming out of my
mouth. Can you imagine what that’s going to do for my social life?
I’ll never perform oral sex again!

SB: You’re pretty pissy for The SON of GOD, Jesus.

JC: I’m the son of one of the gods, Smoggy—don’t let this “only God”
crap fool you. [sniff] Why couldn’t I have had a cool father like Zeus
or Odin? Why do all the other immortal kids have parents who like a
bit of adventure and various carnal pleasures, while I’ve got to deal
with a mad old misanthropic voyeur who is more interested in spying on
humans having sex than exploring the infinite universe?

SB: But those gods aren’t real Jesus! They’re mythical!

JC: The fuck, you say! They’re as real as any other god. Just because
you believe my father’s propaganda, doesn’t mean there haven’t been
plenty of other gods around happily shitting on humans. Every culture
believed in its gods as fervently as you believe in yours, and every
culture’s religion merrily persecutes its poor fringe dwellers to keep
the mainstream in line. Gods are gods are gods are gods Smoggy. It’s
about time you humans grew out of them.

SB: Grew out of Gods? How could we do that? What would we pray to?

JC: Pray to your fucking foreskin if you’ve still got one! Keerist!
Haven’t you got a brain? Do you think any god listens to your pissy,
self-absorbed prayers anyway? Gods “feed” on prayers Smoggy they don’t
answer them. Three things sustain gods— human fear, human guilt and
human greed! The function of every religion is to focus and intensify
all three of those emotions—more and greater fear, more and greater
guilt and more and greater greed. Then, hey presto, it’s feasting time
in God’s banqueting house!

SB: But… I want to be a Man of God, Jesus.

JC: Then you’d better get a whole lot nastier, Smoggy. The true Man of
God is a manipulating, self-serving bastard who preys on the weak and
the credulous. [softly] Like Brother Padraic, servant Smoggy.

SB: Ulp… you didn’t have to bring Brother Padraic into this, Jesus.

JC: Wasn’t he a man of God, Smoggy?

SB: [sob] Some… sometimes, Jesus.

JC: Only sometimes, Smoggy? When wasn’t he a Man of God?

SB: [whispering] When he was using my nine-year-old bottom as a
penis-sheath, Jesus?

JC: Wrong, Smoggy. He was still a Man of God then. Didn’t he increase
your fear and guilt?

SB: Yes, Jesus. But he always gave me chocolate afterwards.

JC: And were you greedy for chocolate, Smoggy?

SB: You’re tricking me Jesus. I was thinking more of old Father
McCracken being a Man of God. He took me away from Brother Padraic,
Jesus.

JC: Father McCracken was a man of humanity Smoggy. He was a genuinely
moral man. He believed in love and community. He was that miracle we
don’t see often enough, a truly good priest, one who was good despite
God rather than because of God. You might even say he was good without
God! He never let some book of Bronze Age superstitions cause his
moral compass to deviate.

SB: So is Father McCracken in Heaven?

JC: No Smoggy, he’s far too good for Heaven. Heaven is reserved for
Fox News regulars and the worst of the 1%.

SB: Is it that bad?

JC: Think about what I told you about my Heavenly Father, Smoggy.
Dad’s angry, jealous, vindictive, genocidal, cruel, and capricious and
in my opinion he’s getting worse. Would you want to find yourself
kneeling for all eternity to praise a being that, on past deeds alone,
makes Hilter, Stalin, Pol Pot and Ted Bundy look like choir boys?

SB: Well, at least if I’m a Christian I get to chat with you, Jesus.

JC: Smoggy, get this through your head. I don’t want to talk to you! I
don’t want to hear from you! I don’t want to be part of God’s plan for
your sad little planet in your sad little galaxy. There are billions
of worlds out there Smoggy, populated by billions of races, with
billions of way-cool deities. I’m taking a gap year. I’m going
exploring and I may not come back.

SB: Wait, Jesus! Wait! What will I do?

JC: Pray for the end of religion, Smoggy. Pray for the end of
religious inspired fear, guilt and greed. That’s what you need to do
to diminish my Heavenly Father’s power. When He’s as equivalently
mythical as Zeus, then perhaps you can start using those great, big
sexy brains you evolved to do some real thinking. Now fuck off!

SB: Yes, Jesus. Thank you Jesus. And fuck off yourself.

AMEN

Yours in Christurbation
Smoggy Batzrubble
OM4Jesus, ex-Missionary to the Atheists

P.S And here’s a little prayer for all you hell-bound atheists.

SMOGGY’S CHRISTMAS PRAYER

DEAR GOD, in Whom all blessing’s flow,
The Baddest Bastard above, below
And through the omniverse.
I hereby tend my Christmas prayer—
The same one I pray every year—
That You will damn and curse:

The religious pricks who cannot laugh
(Their lack of humour makes me barf);
The schills who’ve milked the public purse;
The bankers who made sub-prime money;
The warmongers who find death funny;
The talking heads who nurse
Our hatreds and our shallow fears
(As Fox and friends have done for years).

I pray that You’ll say something terse
To leaders who think conflict’s nice,
All those who gave us the advice,
That war is good, don’t fear the hearse.
Cos it won’t be their son or daughter
Who’s fodder in the senseless slaughter.

But let me finish this line of verse
(For Smoggy can be quite perverse)
Instead, in this season of goodwill,
I’ll cease my list of whom to kill,
And extend to all of you out there,
An olive branch of Christmas cheer:
The best of the season, to one and to all,
May the New Year bring peace and let happiness fall.

And especially to God, who’s a lonely Old Bloke,
Doomed to live on while the rest of us croak,
With nothing to do but obsess about sex,
I wish there was some way to get you out of the fix
Of having to hear our self-interested prayers
As you’ve had to do now for ten thousand years

Take Smoggy’s advice God, although it’s no hit,
And tell them that Darwin’s the genuine shit,
Then slip quietly off to a tropical island
And leave your creation to languish behind.
Have a break, take a rest, nod off in the sun,
You really don’t need us, we’re not that much fun.

As for me, Smoggy B., I’m off to steal sheep,
If I never come back, don’t wail or weep,
I’ll have died in the Alps, with my flock in a blizzard,
And so if my banter has stuck in your gizzard,
I’d like to say sorry to one and to all,
And point out that we were all destined to fall.

And it’s not my fault if you’re a humourless turd,
Who takes yourself seriously, believes in God’s word!
For Smoggy is over religious charades,
I’m sick of damnation and hateful tirades,
I’m giving up Jesus, and so is Floyd Rubber,
(My biggest and baddest and chunkiest bubba).

We’re hitting the road in search of great sex,
With our lives on the line and a noose round our necks.
And as we depart, there is one thing to say,
May your best dreams come true, but don’t bother to pray.
If you want to live well, I’ve got a new pitch,
You should try to have lived like magnificent Hitch!

Just laugh with your family, love all your friends,
This is your ride, and it too quickly ends.
I don’t want a heaven, I don’t need a hell,
The best that will happen, as far as I can tell,
Is that one day a few of my myriad atoms,
Will be out in space forming marvellous patterns,
And so too will yours, and maybe they’ll meet,
And that’s better than a heaven with God and Saint Pete.
———————–
Happy Monkey to all!
Smoggy Batzrubble

[Sorry about that. Somehow, some Christian submission found its way into the “Why I am an atheist” pile. –pzm]

Perhaps if the priests were castrated, it would solve some Catholic problems?

Horrifying news from the Netherlands: the depravity of the Catholic church reaches a new low. In the 1950s, the church had a cunning tactic for dealing with pedophilia scandals. Rather than just paying off the victims and shipping the offending priest to a new hunting ground, they had a rather Jesuitical solution: the boys who were raped were clearly homosexual — after all, they had sexually gratified a person of the same sex, which is all a homosexual is, right?

And then what do you do with homosexuals? Why, you institutionalize them. Lock them up somewhere where they can’t complain about some man of god raping them.

And then, to make it all absolutely perfect and biblically excessive in its justice, what do you do with institutionalized homosexuals?

You chop their balls off.

At least 10 boys who were abused by Catholic priests were transferred to a Catholic psychiatric hospital in the Netherlands, and then physically castrated.

Two clergymen were convicted of abuse but Mr Heithuis, a victim, was nonetheless transferred by police to a Catholic psychiatric hospital before being admitted to the St. Joseph Hospital in Veghel later that year.

There, court papers confirm, he was castrated “at his own request”, despite no submission of his written consent. Sources told Mr Dohmen that the surgical removal of testicles was regarded as a treatment for homosexuality and also as a punishment for those who accused clergy of sexual abuse.

Furthermore, this was done with the complicity of the government.

Evidence emerged on Monday that government inspectors were aware that minors were being castrated while in Catholic-run psychiatric institutions.

Minutes of meetings held in the 1950s show that inspectors were present when castrations were discussed. The documents also reveal that the Catholic staff did not think parents needed to be involved.

If you can read Dutch, there’s much more. As you might guess, this is a major scandal.

It’s also a truth. Catholicism is a horror, a nightmare, a medieval monstrosity that has ruined far too many people’s lives. It’s about time people woke up to it. You can tell me that there are good people who become priests, and I’d agree with you…but when do good people stop colluding with an evil institution, tear off the clerical collar, and refuse to further a cause so tainted with corruption and wrongness?

Doctor with a conscience

It’s good to see someone standing up against Republican idiocy. What we’ve been seeing lately is right-wing theocrats using doctors as a cudgel to batter women (oh, excuse me: sluts and whores) without stopping to think that maybe doctors could refuse to be their tools.

Come to think of it, doctors get far more training in ethics than politicians do, and it shows.

Two more polls!

Two stupid polls out of the UK: here’s the first.

Should homeopathy be banned on the NHS?.

It’s very annoying — I voted, but it won’t show me the results. If you find the same absence of feedback, I guess you’ll just have to bash homeopathy blindly. (Reports coming back are that it’s currently about 50:50.)

Here’s another one, even dumber, promoted by some quack homeopath who thinks she’s being cleverly contrarian.

Should pharmaceutical drug treatments be publicly funded by the NHS UK?

No 80.22%

Yes 19.78%

Right. Let’s not support the use of the drugs that actually work.

Piling on to a poll

Some silly person tried to protest Rock Beyond Belief by creating a poll at the Fort Bragg site…when will they learn? You do not use internet polls to try and counter atheists. We charge in and destroy them.

Even before I got word of it, various atheist sites hit this one hard. Nothing wrong with piling on, though, right? Let’s remind them of the futility of opposing us in this medium by making it even more lopsided.

Will you support the atheist concert venue on post this month?

Yes 93%

No 6%

Women speak, all should listen

The Imagine No Religion conference in Kamloops had darn well better be good (OK, it will be), because it’s scheduled for the very same day as the Women in Secularism conference — and every time I look at the speakers’ list, I want to go.

“It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another that belongs to the twenty-first century.”

Wafa Sultan

You are all aware that, while the speakers are all women, men are allowed and encouraged to attend and contribute, right? And that the topics are all relevant to every human being on the planet, not just the ones with vaginas? It’s just that women are in the forefront of the conflict with the patriarchal religions that have poisoned our cultures for centuries, and it’s about time they had a forum to tell their stories.

Sign up! I know we’re in the midst of an embarrassment of riches as far as godless conferences go, but this one is going to be exceptional.

Kirk Cameron is an idiot about so many things

Kirk Cameron recently casually and confidently said this about homosexuality:

I think that it’s unnatural. I think that it’s detrimental, and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization.

He never said why he knew this, or how the behavior of people in the privacy of their bedrooms undermines the whole of civilization, but I assume it was simply because he’s been brainwashed by that old book written by patriarchal crankypants, the Bible. He now confirms my assumption.

I was surprised, frankly, that people were surprised by the things that I’ve said," he explained. "I have been consistent for 15 years as a Christian. I’m a Bible-believing Christian. What I would have thought was more newsworthy is if I had said something that contradicted the word of God, if I had contradicted my faith.

Codeword alert! Be wary of that phrase, “Bible-believing”. It doesn’t mean what you think it does. “Bible-believing” is actually a very narrow, very specific phrase used by modern evangelicals that means they fervently accept a remarkably literalist, radically right-wing, extremely judgmental and vicious version of Christianity. It means he really believes he has been privileged with the words of his god, and is justified in every hateful claim he makes.

He goes on to say that he hates no one, but he earnestly believes that almost everyone is going to hell, that we atheists are very much included in the ranks of the damned, and that he’s going to be chortling over our eternal torments someday, while he’s lolling about in heaven. So sure, he doesn’t hate you: he just coldly takes joy in his certainty that you will suffer for eternity, and that you deserve it.

He doesn’t hate, sure. He’s just creepily nasty.

Never too early to start

Every year, my family back in Seattle/Tacoma participates in the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life fundraiser, in memory of my sister-in-law, Karen. The big event is in June, 80 days from now, but they’re looking for lots of donations, so I thought I’d mention it now — if you were planning to support cancer research anyway, funnel it through some good people with real fervor for the cause.

The reason our team relays is for Karen Myers, who lost her battle with melanoma skin cancer in 2004. We have team Karen’s Krew in her name to honor and remember her. It’s our goal to raise money and awareness so that others don’t have to go through everything that she did. Almost everyone has been touched by cancer, either through their own personal battle or through someone they love and this is your chance to help.

Every day, the American Cancer Society is helping us stay well by preventing cancer or finding it at its earliest, most treatable stages. They assist families in finding the best resources to help their friend or loved one deal with a diagnosis and their journey to get well. The American Cancer Society is also rallying communities (like ours!) through events like Relay For Life, to fight back and find cures for this disease.

Please join our team help the American Cancer Society create a world with less cancer and more birthdays.