The Proletariat Congress

Sure, gathering together on Sunday with a bunch of people in order to pray and pay lip service to your God may make you feel like you’re doing something. That you’re offering something to the world. But, let’s face it, you aren’t. A Christian going to church to pray and attend service is as useful to the world as a screendoor on a submarine. It achieves about as much as me sitting around on my Atheistic ass, playing video games. The only difference is I know I’m being lazy. I know I’m not making a damn difference in the world, and I’m not afraid to admit that sitting on my ass playing video games is just that, doing shit all. Prayer merely deludes folks into think they’ve made a difference, when all it is, is just a venue for hypocrisy. You think you’ve made a difference because you kept some poor starving African child in your prayers, or you’ve prayed for someone to “get better”, or you pray for the end of the war. One of those “feel good” kind of things. In reality, you’ve made no difference and have wound up wasting your limited time on earth on something that in the end achieves nothing.

Two hands working will achieve more than a million hands praying.

The Vatican, everyone’s favourite moral authority is once more working to ensure that we don’t keel over and bow into the temptations that come with arrogance. They’re only looking after us, and the new American presidency when they warn against using one’s power of authority to determine life or death. After all, it has the interests of the American people at heart when it warns President Obama over his decision to restore funding to Planned Parenthood and other pro-choice organizations.

One Vatican official warned against the “arrogance” of those in power who think they can decide between life and death.

Of course, it seems to me that they are the ones who are equally as arrogant since they too are determining life or death with different religious edicts. By restricting the flow of information, they too are playing ‘god’; an act of blasphemy in itself. After all, information is simply information until it is acted upon.

The stance of the Vatican stems beyond simply being anti-abortion; it’s anti-birth control, and thus, it puts birth control methods in the same category as abortions. Family planning falls into the same “sinful” category as abortion, and any birth control methods are sinful since it prevents life. Yet on the flip side of the coin, by denying access to it, it endangers a life that already exists; the life of the mother, who may very well have a child and can’t provide for another.

The Vatican is just as wrong; they too toy with the alleged “sanctity” of life with their anti-birth control policies. Hypocrites through all levels of that oppressive backwater archaic patriarch religion. Or at least in the Vatican where they are prevented from being in tune with reality and the nature of the real world, not in the land of make believe with talking frogs and little magical elves who were cute little hats.

Vatican attacks US abortion move

Or at least that’s what the Halton Catholic School board would have you think. And that the slightest challenge would drive the faithful to question why they believe in their religion. For this reason, certain books must be kept from the hands of children lest they think for themselves, something that is evidently contrary to the mantra of church indoctrination.

The book in question today is not one of the seven books of the Harry Potter canon (though Dumbledore’s sexuality has caused quite a stir) but of the His Dark Material trilogy (Golden Compass) by Philip Pullman. A trilogy labelled as tripe written by an Atheist (as if somehow this discredits him as a person; nothing more than a bias; discrimination if you will) and the books as anti-religion, anti-god and anti-Catholic characters and plot.

There was some concern that if students were exposed to the contents of the trilogy it may cause them to lose faith – Marianne Mazzorato, superintendent of the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

Well, if children would lose their faith, did it ever occur to these zealots that it’s not because of the book itself but because children are able to think for themselves and able to see through the farce that is religion? That maybe they just aren’t buying the church’s line about salvation and the threat of hell for being different.

Of course, it could very well be that these people have never actually read the book, much like the anti-Harry Potter brigade, who was more than happy to throw about allegations that the series encouraged delinquent behaviour, despite that if you actually read the books you’d see some very wholesome themes, ie: good versus evil (with good winning), friendship…

Meanwhile, another Catholic school board, the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board is reviewing it and placing labels on the book due to Halton’s choice to ban the books in question.

The label reassures the reader that the book is indeed fiction; fiction much like the Bible.

Representations of the church in this novel are purely fictional; the council, the officials and the God in the novel in no way represent the reality of the Roman Catholic Church to which we are blessed to be members.

Younger people know it’s fiction, too bad the adults can’t tell the difference. But what does one expect when someone has been indoctrinated in their youth, given no alternative to that mind-numbing tripe that the church passes off as the ultimate truth?

Golden COmpass becomes cautionary tale

As a person who enjoyed the Harry Potter series, I was intrigued by His Dark Materials trilogy. I have all three books and I’m reading Golden Compass, and I have yet to see the problem that these people are bellyaching about. Perhaps maybe I am immune to it being an Atheist myself and having no problem with the themes of this book. It could also be that I see this as purely a work of fiction and something to be enjoyed.

You know, if you’re worried about a book shattering someone’s faith then your faith is too shaky to withstand the test of time without a lot of strong-armed tactics. If a person’s faith is strong then a mere work of fiction shouldn’t be able to shake that foundation. If it leads someone to question their faith, then that faith was weak in the first place and no amount of censorship will change that.

From the second clause of the charter:

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.

This clause is an important element to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. It guarantees each Canadian the right to make their own choices about what archaic, draconian religion they wish to blindly devote themselves to, while they are mocked by those of us who enjoy the freedom that comes with not being bound to meaningless rules spelled out by some invisible cloud faerie.

If people want to acquiesce themselves before some egotistical, childish megalomaniac self-centred deity who hasn’t an iota of confidence then that’s their problem. Don’t waste my tax dollars to pay the politicians who want to pray at the start of the parliamentary session. The legislature does not need to be blessed nor do these people need to pray to some invisible sky faerie on my dollar.

In the Ontario provincial legislature, it’s common practice to recite the Lord’s Prayer despite that there are many different beliefs. The Lord’s Prayer based on Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4 is strictly Christian, though the most common prayer and shared by all the different sects of Christianity.

The topic was breached by Ontario Premier, Dalton McGuinty, the leader of the Ontario Liberals, who felt that it was time to “update” the Lord’s Prayer for the 21st century, as the last update in Ontario for this had occurred in 1969.

“The members of the Ontario Legislature reflect the diversity of Ontario – be it Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or agnostic. It is time for our practices to do the same. That is the Ontario way,” McGuinty wrote.

So, we still need prayer despite the existence of this diversity? Last I checked, Agnostics didn’t pray, and what of Atheists, Deist et al who don’t buy into this horse manure?

Wikipedia defines prayer as:

Prayer is the act of attempting to communicate, commonly with a sequence of words, with a deity or spirit for the purpose of worshipping, requesting guidance, requesting assistance, confessing sins or to express one’s thoughts and emotions. The words of the prayer may take the form of a hymn, incantation or a spontaneous utterance in the person’s praying words.

So, if our politicians need to seek assistance from a higher power, maybe they shouldn’t be holding office then. Maybe we should have people in office who don’t need to turn to some invisible cloud faerie for ‘assistance’ and ‘guidance’.

After all, the provinces of Quebec and Newfoundland Labrador (the only existing ones) don’t engage in such frivolities, and they appear to be able to govern their respected jurisdictions sans the whole God shtick. Why should others do it?

Lord’s Prayer review ordered