Christians and premarital sex

Why is it so important to wait to marriage? Well, back when the bible was being written (and up until recently) there was no way to tell for sure if a child was yours. Women were property, their main value derived from their ability to have children. They were property used by men to beget more men. Marriage was primarily a financial transaction where the husband buys a wife from the wife’s father. The father then walks his daughter down the aisle and “gives” his daughter to the other man. It’s all about property. Thus it was important to the men that their “property” not be previously “used”.

The theology behind it was just whipped up out of early church father’s utter disdain for woman and the human body. St. Augustine for example hated women and sex, and from this hate centuries of boys and girls were brought up to be ashamed of their bodies and desires. Your body and desires are perfectly natural and there is nothing wrong or dirty about them. Believing they are can lead to all types of sick disorders and self-loathing.

Besides these side effects, waiting to marriage can have some disastrous consequences. There are plenty of young evangelical men and women who are now rushing into marriage way to early, and for the wrong reasons. They’ve been told their entire lives that they can’t give in to their strongest urges until they’re married, and so these young adults are diving into marriage in their late teens, early twenties, just so they can have sex. They might not have ever dated anyone else seriously, and they aren’t fully ready to support themselves. Financial stress is one of the leading causes of divorce, and these kids just aren’t set up well enough on their own two feet to be in a marriage.

Here are the divorce rates among Christians, Jews, and Atheists:

Religion	% have been divorced
Jews	30%
Born-again Christians	27%
Other Christians	24%
Atheists, Agnostics	21%

(I wouldn’t be surprised if  Born-again is so high up there because the kids rush into marriage just to have sex)

It’s important to experiment in life to see what works for you. You’re shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t experience all life has to offer before you die.  I have a housemate that is engaged to a woman he’s never had sex with. The woman does not want to have sex before marriage, and so he’s going to wait 5-6 years (supposedly, if they last that long) to marry her and then have sex. That’s a disaster waiting to happen. What if he marries this person and they don’t have good sexual chemistry? Then he’s shafted for life! And don’t try and say “Well, the other qualities that makes him love her should overpower the lack of sexual chemistry”. That’s naive and unrealistic. Sex matters. You can have a great personality, but if the sex just isn’t good, the marriage/relationship is not going to work.

Telling kids to wait until marriage also increases the chance of teen pregnancy. In September 2009, a study came out showing a link between how religious a state is, and the teen pregnancy rate. Here is an indisputable FACT of life that will not change no matter what any religious book will ever say: Teens will have sex. This has been true for all  time, and will continue to be true forever. Telling teens to not have sex until they are married does nothing to keep them from having sex. Abstinence only does not work. Instead they will just not use birth control and will get pregnant, which raises the number of abortions. (Hint, want to stop abortions? Teach safe sex)

When it comes down to it, sex is all about responsibility. Some people are more responsible than others at different ages. I was very responsible when I was a teenager, many of my friends were not. Now that I’m an adult, I’m even more responsible, yet I know people my age and older who aren’t. It depends on the person. Some people are emotionally mature enough to handle sexual activity in their teens, some are not. If they are ready for sex, they must be responsible enough to also use protection consistently. Diseases are out there and they do not magically disappear when you get married.

If some people feel they are not ready for sex and want to wait until marriage, that’s fine, it’s their body, they can make that choice, but don’t then go and try to tell me I should do the same, that my body is sinful and dirty, that
I should be ashamed just like them. Marriage is an outdated patriarchal institution when it comes to managing sex.

Dante’s inferno, a comparison

EA and Visceral games are putting out a new game, Dante’s Inferno, supposedly based on the work “Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri. In the game you play as Dante, on a mission through hell to rescue your hot wife Beatrice Portinari. So how does the game match up with the actual Dante’s Inferno?

Take Dante in the game:

He’s a hardcore soldier with a giant battle scythe, covered head to toe in stylized plate armor.

Dante in real life:

He’s a hardcore poet with a giant battle quill, covered head to toe in…well…pajamas.

What about hell?

In the game hell is an action packed demon strong hold, full of bad guys that stand between you and your love.

In Dante’s book, hell is more like a scary guided tour given at Disney on Halloween.

And your love, Beatrice?

In game:

In real life:

Lastly, what about story wise?

Well here the game and the book continue to radically differ. In the book Dante starts off in a forest and is given a tour of hell by Virgil. He goes down, sees the 9 circles of hell, sees various famous people, and then climbs out the other end and into the second book, Purgatorio. There is no fighting and no Beatrice. The most dramatic seat of you pants thing that happens to him is he faints. (Don’t go to hell if you have low blood sugar) She shows up in the second book. Also Beatrice was never Dante’s wife. He first meet her when she was 8 and fell in love with her, but she married some other dude and died at the age of 24.

Here is what the game has to say for itself:

“At the midpoint on the journey of life, I found myself in a dark forest, for the clear path was lost” (opening line of The Divine Comedy). In the game, Dante goes on a spectacular journey through the afterlife to save his beloved Beatrice from the clutches of evil. But what starts out as a rescue mission quickly changes into a redemption story, where Dante must confront his own dark past and the sins he carries with him into Hell. He faces the epic inhospitable terrain of the underworld, huge monsters and guardians, sinister demons, the people and sins of his past, and the ultimate traitor: Lucifer himself.”

Sounds cool. A little heavy on the “go save the helpless white woman”, but still cool none the less. The game developers also have this to say:

“Inspired by the real Dante Alighieri, but adapted for a new generation and a new medium, the hero of the game is a soldier who defies death and fights for love against impossible odds. The Italian mercenary Dante returns home from the wars to find that his beloved Beatrice has been murdered, and her soul pulled down into Hell by a dark force. He gives chase, and vows to get her back. For weapons, he wields Death’s soul-reaping scythe, and commands holy powers of the cross, given to him by Beatrice.”

If by “inspired” they mean “hey, we took his name” then yeah it’s inspired, because that’s about it. Everything else but the names is changed, including the plot and characters. As for the “for a new generation” yeah, we play video games much more than we read, but if you ever get the time, check out the books, they are pretty cool. Maybe Riddley Scott could make a movie about it :-p

Why did god allow the earthquake in Haiti?

As everyone knows the earthquake in Haiti killed hundreds of thousands in seconds, devastating the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Whenever something like this happens, people often ask “Why did our loving god allow this to happen?” Most religious people try to answer that with several possible yet unsatisfactory rationalizations. “It’s god’s will, it’s for the greater good, it’s to teach all of us a lesson, it’s so we will know how much god loves the rest of us, it was the devil and not god, it’s a test of our faith, etc, etc.”

These are all really poor explanations, and none of them true. Why did the earthquake in Haiti happen? Simple. Because Haiti is on a fault line between tectonic plates. Those plates shifted 10 miles away from Port-au-prince and 5 miles underground. It just happens. That’s what tectonic plates do. If we had perfect data measuring the currents of liquid magma causing the plates to move then we could have known exactly when, where, and how bad every earthquake would be. Same goes for every other natural phenomenon. Unfortunately we don’t have that data. Science is getting closer every day to getting it, but this takes time. Take god out of the picture and you stop making excuses for why bad shit happens.

Take the Tea Party seriously

I can’t stand those Tea bagger idiots, I don’t think the majority of America can either, yet we must not underestimate them. The represent a angry, ill-informed, “reality don’t matter” mob, but if we don’t take them head on, soon they will be in control of the government.

If they were serious about cutting government waste and minimizing government involvement then I’d be with them, but they’re not.  The poor bastards are being manipulated by very powerful corporations like Fox into screwing themselves over. Their messiah, Sarah Palin, is a complete fucking bimbo who believes Jebus is coming back in her life time, and that Africa is a country. How unintelligent can you get? Gah, I digress. I am overwhelmed with seething rage when I think of her.

What really gets me is that they claim to be against government involvement in people’s lives, yet what they really mean is “I want the government to leave my money alone, but at the same time I want it to police your bedroom, force your children to say my religion’s prayers in public schools, and generally just enforce my world views and morals on you!”

You really want smaller government? FINE. Then quit trying to legislate your religion into my life!!!!!

To be honest. I HATE the bailouts. Yeah our entire economy would have crashed, but maybe then we would have executed some of these big bankers who are still getting million dollar bonuses. Did conservatives get the message that repealing government safeguards on the economy causes this shit? Nope. This whole thing builds up under Bush and crashes on Obama’s head, and there is no way he could have come out ok. (Yeah, maybe in the long run our economy will be better for the bailouts, but I’d still sleep better at night if some bankers had been shot)

Oh, that’s another thing, they tea baggers are hypocrites. “It’s only a crime when a liberal does it!” Bush took fiscal conservatism and strangled it; brutally. Where were the tea party people when Bush took Clinton’s record government surplus and drove it straight through the ground with the multi-trillion dollar wars in Iraq (no connection to 9-11) and Afghanistan? Nowhere. They were silent because he is a conservative good ol’boy and was doing god’s will, just like Palin claims to be. Bullshit.

I also can’t stand the double speak they put out. “Freedom” is now a worthless word. It used to mean something, now it’s hollow and twisted. To the tea baggers, “Freedom” means letting pharmaceutical, insurance, and energy corporations royally fuck America. To them “freedom” means the ability to impose their social/religious views on the rest of the country. Shove gays back into the shadows, kick science out of schools, silence non christians, and enslave women in their own bodies. Sorry, but you don’t have the “right” or the “freedom” to do that.

Fighting these people will be difficult. The large majority of this country is un-intelligent, fickle, and gullible. If we could get them to agree that an idea is only as valid as how well it works in reality, then we could beat them. Unfortunately they don’t play by those rules. Has anyone ever said something so off the wall, so stupid, that you just gawk at them, speechless? That’s how I feel about the tea party people. It’s a challenge to take them on because you simply don’t know where to start correcting them. And worse, they take your speechlessness as proof they have a point!

As hard as it may be, we must meet them head on with reason and facts again and again, and constantly demand evidence supporting their positions. If this does not work then we must get out of the way and let them win. (Yeah, I know…) Things in America will then crash and the world will go to hell, but only then will the fucktards that voted them in start to make the connection that maybe, just maybe, reality does matter.

Atheism is not Intellectual?

My girlfriend made a comment the other day that Atheism just wasn’t that interesting. Now I probably misunderstood her, but I’ve heard someone else say that there isn’t much to Atheism, not much to talk about. Somebody once told me that they didn’t see much point to Atheist forums where Atheists could gather and talk about Atheism. He imagine forum would be limited to “Hey, I don’t believe in god(s)” “Really? Cool, me too!” <end conversation/> There is plenty to talk about in Atheist forums and blogs (just look how long mine is and I still haven’t run out of things to talk about)

But yes, there is nothing more to Atheism than a lack of belief in the supernatural. I believe this simplicity is one of Atheism’s greatest strengths. Keep It Simple, Stupid!. There are no great mysteries of Atheism, no “problem of evil”, no dogmatic disputes, no rival denominations.(And that’s just a few, and only withing Christianity!)

There are so many topics in religion that just don’t make sense and/or don’t fit with reality, so many “mysteries of god”. Religion has developed a long tradition of trying to reconcile these differences. People from St. Augustine, to Martin Luther, to Paul Tillich have spent their entire lives working like lawyers on these problems, trying to rationalize any explanation. Volumes and volumes have been written on mysteries of faith, the trinity, the virgin birth, creation, etc. There are entire universities devoted to turning out theologians to tackle these problems.

There is none of that in Atheism. Atheism doesn’t need it. If you take the supernatural out of the picture, everything just works.

Now some might point out the strong “intellectual” history of religion in trying to solve their problems and say that since Atheism does not have these problems, Atheism lacks an intellectual tradition. That it is this tradition that makes religion “interesting”. Well, yes and no. Unlike theists, Atheists don’t spend time trying to workout the intricacies of Atheism. (There are no intricacies) If you look at all the Atheist books ever publish, like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, etc, you will find that they deal with Atheist responses to theists.

While Atheism does not have an intellectual history of dealing with ultimately superfluous problems, it does have a history of intellectuals.  Here is something to think about. 93% of Scientists in the American National Academy of Sciences are Atheists. 97% of Royal Society fellows are Atheists. Now, is there a reason the vast majority of Ultra intelligent people are Atheists? Turns out there is a correlation. Dr. Richard Lynn, a researcher at the University of Ulster carried out an extensive study spanning 137 countries and found that the more intelligent you are, the more likely you are to be an Atheist. The reverse of that meaning the less intelligent you are the more likely you are religious.

Now I’m not saying religious people are all stupid or unintelligent. Many religious people are intelligent. (Just not as many as there are intelligent Atheists) People can find was to compartmentalize and rationalize anything. The intelligent religious are doing just that.

So yeah, Atheism might not have any “interesting” problems or internal debates, but it sure is interesting discussing how theists are affecting the world, and what Atheism’s response should be.

Christian Privilege

First let me define privilege.

Privilege is: About how society accommodates you. It’s about advantages you have that you think are normal. It’s about you being normal, and others being the deviation from normal. It’s about fate dealing from the bottom of the deck on your behalf. (Source)

This is usually (and rightly so) used when talking about Male Privilege or White Privilege.  These types of privilege are everywhere, but most evident in the media. My white male readers, stop and think about how many movie/books/video games are told either through the perspective of white male like yourself, or made with you in mind as the target audience? For many things in life, white male is the default.

I would like to argue that there is another type of privilege, at least in the United States; Christian Privilege.

America is an extremely religious country. 78.5% of the country alone is Christian. (source)  (The country’s constitution is secular, it’s people are not) Christian is the default. This is most evident at Christmas, the old pagan holiday adopted by early Christians and lately turned into a shopping orgy by corporations. Christmas Christmas Christmas! It’s EVERYWHERE! Everyone says “Merry Christmas!” as if everyone celebrated it. Nobody goes around on other holy days of the year saying “Merry _____”, just Christmas, because everyone assumes everyone else is Christian.

It’s common to just ask people if they go to church, assuming they’re Christian. Church is the norm. Our government starts meetings of congress with an opening prayer. The White House puts up a Christmas tree every year. People want to put religious monuments on public property. (What’s the problem? Everybody’s Christian right?) Anti-government tea-party conservatives want to force Christian music on children in California. The Christian god is on our money, in our pledge! Bibles are put in every hotel room and doctor’s office! Walk into a grocery store or Walmart, all the “Choice books” displayed are Christian books!

Atheists can’t get elected to office in this country. (One was, but he came out afterwards) 7 states have specific legislation banning Atheists from holding office. Political candidates where their religion like it’s a ticket to an exclusive event, or a flag. They always have to go on and on about their religious credentials. (If they don’t they won’t get elected) The US military is very Christian. Fundamentalists have been proselytizing for ages in the military. Just recently they were forced to remove bible inscriptions from sniper scopes being used to shoot Muslims in Iraq. Christian ministers are always the president’s “spiritual adviser”, they also give opening prayers at elections.

There are at least 335,000 churches in America. America is 3.79 Million square miles. That’s about 1 church every 11 square miles. (And this doesn’t count newly opening churches)

All these facts make Christians feel they are normal, and anyone who is not a Christian is not normal. I remember when I was a Christian I didn’t even learn that there was such a thing as “not Christian” until 5th grade. Even then I was only dimly aware of Jews and Muslims, but that was it. There was the Christian god and nothing else. Everybody knew that. I remember reading about Atheists in the news in highschool and thinking “Those people don’t believe in god? What the? How can you NOT believe in god!?!? Everybody knows there’s a god. They’re just crazy and luckily small in number…” For the longest time, I cringed when people said “I’m not Christian.” That was like the worst thing you could say. It shocked me when my college professor came out and said it. “That’s awful, you should keep it to yourself” I thought in my head.

Now that I’m one of those “crazy and few in number” people, I feel distinctly not normal. When you’re not a believer in an extremely religious country, you start to feel like it isn’t your country, like you’re a second class citizen. I put signs in my car window to try and remind Christians that they’re not the only ones here, but Christian Privilege is just so massive I don’t know how to fight it. Women have feminism to fight male privilege. Blacks have the NAACP to fight white privilege, what about Atheists? Trying to get us to work together is like herding cats. We have nothing in common except a lack of a belief in magical beings.

Your religion is wrong

Everyone hates hearing “your religion is wrong”. Religion is extremely important to people, and being told your entire world view is incorrect can really sour your day. I think the difficult part for Atheists is that when people hear “Atheist” they automatically think “here is someone who denies everything I love and hold true.” Well, yes, technically, Atheists do not believe in all the religious stuff you do, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to attack you for it at every instance. (Yes, there are Atheists who might seem very loud and combative about it, but that’s because we live in a society that demonizes and persecutes them. They’re lashing out because of this)

To believe one things inherently means you disbelieve another. If you say you’re a Christian, then you are also saying Muslims, Jews, Atheists, Pagans, Buddhists, etc, are all wrong. If you’re a Muslim, you believe all the others are wrong. I think the reason people don’t freak out when someone tells them they are another religion, like Jewish or Muslim, is that at least you have god in common. You might disagree on the particulars, but at least you have some common religious ground. Atheists don’t have that benefit. They are the anti-thesis to all things religious.

Yeah Atheists will disagree with you on just about everything religious, but the common ground you can find with them is in caring for your neighbor. Many Atheists, just like many believers, are normal, kind people, and there is a lot we can do together if we just get past the bickering.

Don’t use in text citations

Ok, really nerdy post, but one thing I cannot stand is in text citations. These things are HORRIBLE eye sores!

Here you are, reading along, minding my own business, enjoying the flow of the paper, then BAM!!!, an in text citation jumps up, stabs you in the eye, completely breaking your train of thought.

So what can you do to avoid this heinous crime? USE FOOTNOTES!!!!

There, look at that! Nothing to break your flow and slap you in the face. You’re reading along, hum-de-hum, you read a statement, and then there is a small little number at the end of the sentence. It’s simple and says “Hey, don’t mind me, but if you want to know where this information came from, just glance down at your leisure. Have a very pleasant day!” Footnotes are polite. The type of references that you’d be proud to bring home to mother.

Furthermore, in text citations just give you a name, possibly a year, or a page number. To find out where the hell something came from, you have to flip all the way back to the end of the document and search for the full citation. Footnotes don’t do that! They don’t make you go looking! They know you’re reading a paper, not trudging around in the jungle looking for El Dorado! They put the full citation right there at the bottom of the page! If you’re using footnotes, no need to sweat, sit back and have some lemonade, you’re doing things more efficiently.

Endnotes are the  retarded brother of footnotes. Yeah, he might look the same, but you have to flip all the way to the back of the document to find out what you need. More work than you should be forced to do, but at least he doesn’t hit you in the face.

Lastly, footnotes love you so much, they give you a present, they take up page space! Have a paper that you’re writing? Have a page minimum you have to reach? Footnotes will help you! They eat page length up! They are the hungry reference, in text citations is like that girl you only took out on a date once, the one who just quietly picks at her salad with a fork. Footnotes work for you!