The Proletariat Congress

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

Here lies the daughter,
here lies the father,
here lies the sister,
here lies the brother,
here lie husband and wife,
and yet there are only two bodies in the grave
16th Century French poem

Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims will be the first to tell you that God created man and woman; two people named Adam and Eve. They will tell you that these were the first humans that God created.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. — Genesis 1:26-27

This is a fine starting point for their beliefs. These groups are happy with this. Now, in the same tale, we learn that the firs two humans take God’s advice, hop behind a nearby bush and fuck like bunnies, thus producing Cain then Abel. So far this makes sense. You’ve got the plug and the outlet, thus producing electricity because the wiring is there. Now, here’s where the problem arises… Cain kills Abel, who didn’t have any children. Yet, Cain is able to find a woman and have a son by her and find a city.

Where does this mystery woman come from? There is no name mentioned. One theory says that God didn’t create just Adam and Eve. He created two others; two nameless ones in Genesis 1:1-31 and creates Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:1-25… Yet this is ignored and it is said that the first two people created were indeed Adam and Eve. If this is so, where the hell does Cain find a woman to have raunchy pre-historical caveman sex with?

At this point, you may be inclined to ask, what does this have to do with anything?

If you recall, last year there was a publicised case of two German siblings separated at birth, who met later in life and wound up having two children before the state interfered and took the, away. There is another case now, a British couple had their marriage declared illegal by a justice, who annulled the marriage.

Parted-at-birth twins ‘married’

The former Liberal Democrat MP [Lord Alton] raised the couple’s case during a House of Lords debate on the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill in December.

“They were never told that they were twins,” he told the Lords.

“They met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage that they entered into and all the issues of their separation.”

Two consenting adults had their marriage declared invalid because of their blood relationship.

Followers of religion would say that it is because God wouldn’t want it and that incest is a sin. Yet 2 Peter 2:7-8, Genesis 19:15 and Genesis 19:32-36 do not condemn it and even go as far as to show God’s seemingly silent approval. He didn’t condemn it, yet he damned the folks of the city.

Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven — Genesis 19:24

This happened after Lot fled with his family. After he lay with his two virgin daughters; he knew them he did. Yet no condemnation is noted in this segment of the Bible.

The place where the loudest condemnation is heard from, is Leviticus, the “everything’s a sin” book of the Old Testament. See Leviticus 18:6, 20:11-12, 20:14.

When laying out what relationships are forbidden, no one seems to take into account that Genesis doesn’t have anything condemning incest; it even features it as part of the moral story. Once again, selective learning at work.

Morality interfering with the privacy that people deserve in their lives.

The view we take here is that there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. — Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau

This was the statement given when the late Prime Minister was still the Minister of Justice, who led the movement to remove laws regarding homosexuality from the Criminal Code of Canada. Now if only laws regarding incest were removed. There are laws that prevent people in a position of authority from misusing that authority. There are also rules protecting minors; the same laws that govern the age for consensual sexual relations.

The sky didn’t fall and civilization didn’t fall to its knees when homosexual marriages were legalised.

The sky didn’t fall and civilization didn’t fall to its knees when homosexuals were permitted to adopt.

Popular belief, supported by science says that people with close blood relation are more likely to produce offspring who are born with deformities or some kind of disease. Yet, society permits those who possess hereditary diseases to reproduce because it would be discrimination if we didn’t let them, yet it’s not if we tell others they can’t.

Or those mothers who don’t take care of themselves during their pregnancy and drink or smoke… They’re still allowed to have their children, even if the child is a burden on the system the rest of their natural lives.

If there is a worry about incest, then end anonymous sperm and egg donations; our world is one little cozy global village these days. What difference does it make? We have DNA testing. But then we’ll have people suing others for child support, and there will be fewer donors over all. But at least then you’ll know who your daddy is. Oh and those proponents of “privacy” rights of the mother and the child…

And the list goes on.

Think about it, no less than fifty years ago, it was common to think of interracial marriages as offensive. They were taboo. You didn’t want your little precious white bread daughter marrying some dirty, filthy mud man. This isn’t to say humanity is over this childish stage; there are still people who think like this, but would be laughed out of wherever they went.

When will the double standard end? Probably when people get over the ‘ick’ factor…

John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic to have been elected to the oval office in the USA. When he ran for the presidency in the 60s, he asked that voters judge him as an America and not a Catholic, and that is exactly what the voters did, before Lee Harvey Oswald decided otherwise in Dallas in 1963, when he assassinated JFK. Now, in the 21st century, we have another candidate pushing the same envelope, except now it’s for Mormonism, and not Catholicism. Mitt Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints (LDS; Mormons) is borrowing a page from JFK’s campaign book and asking the same thing of American voters.

Too bad for Romney this isn’t the idealistic 60s and he isn’t Kennedy because he managed to blow a perfectly good line by adding in a plethora of ignorance that is designed to make the secularists, humanists, deists, atheists and agnostics feel left out in the cold because we are ‘heathens’, those who are not Christian nor Jew; lacking faith.

I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith, nor should he be rejected because of his faith.

This seems innocent at first glance, and it’s easy to take this at face value, until one takes a closer look at the next parts of his speech, in which he proceeds to alienate part of the voting population.

We should acknowledge the creator as did the founders in ceremony and word. He should remain in our currency, in our pledge, in the teachings of history and in the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places.

The majority Founding Fathers of the United States of America only acknowledged a creator as far as Deism is concerned, with some clocking in as agnostics, atheists and only one or two as practising Christians. In Deism, a god-like figure or entity is rather superior entity is absent in all aspects of life after sparking the initial bust of energy that started life. Deism doesn’t concern itself with ritualistic prayer nor reliance on God for guidance in life.

Too bad Romney flunked American history or he would have known this little fact. The Founding Fathers wouldn’t have wanted ‘God’ to be in the public the way modern evangelical Christians do. They would have opted for a true separation of church and state, and not merely the symbolic one that some Republicans and Christians are opting for in the modern sphere of public life in America.

The pledge; the oath, it never had any mention of God in it before the emergence of the Soviet Union following the end of WWII in an attempt to set Americans apart from the seemingly godless commies who controlled the USSR. Religion wasn’t outlawed as a result of state atheism in the USSR, but rather as a result of the authoritarian nature of Stalinism, the ruling ideology of the nation at the time.

As for the display of religious symbols, sure Judaic ones aren’t forbidden in any of the Judaic scripture, but in Matthew 6:5-6, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus ordered his followers to be humble and to not pray in public, for God could hear prayer even in private; that public expressions of faith lessened the significance.

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

If your God is really omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, why does he need to be on the currency, in the pledge and forced down the throats of everyone? If God is everywhere at once, why does he need some little sheep to remind everyone…?

But I digress, moving onward.

Romney has taken a low blow at those who would remove any acknowledgement of God from the public light.  What’s the matter, don’t have the guts to represent the people who opt to have no faith?  It becomes apparent here that he will not defend all faiths.  This is painfully obvious to those of us who opt to be free from any faith.

We are a nation under God, and in God we do indeed trust.

America is not one nation under God just because a gaggle of self-righteous Christians have decided that this is the way things ought to be. America is a nation of many people who hold many faiths that do not embrace a singular god, nor any gods. The polytheistic faiths embrace gods that the monotheistic faiths reject. Christians, Jews and Muslims are one God away from full blown Atheism.

‘I will serve no one religion’ U.S. presidential candidate vows

Romney vows to defend all faiths