God, guns and gobbledegook

Sorry for the long hiatus, I’ve just been busy with work and other things, and to be honest, I haven’t had a whole lot new to say. But after the horrific school shooting in Connecticut, I feel like I should add my 2 cents worth.

One theme we’ve been hearing, from such people as Mike Huckabee, is that the reason for such shootings is that we’ve somehow managed to “take God out of the schools,” as if an omnipotent being could be kept out of them (some people have suggested that God is a “gentleman” who doesn’t go where He’s not wanted — but do they really think that when someone came in with a gun and started shooting children, not a single one of those kids was asking for God? Seems like they’re really saying that God’s not a weakling, He’s just a passive-aggressive dickhead. But I digress …)

Even though I’m generally loath to weaken our Constitution, I might be willing to make some compromises in the name of reconciliation and in scientific, empirical evaluation of methodologies.

Here’s my humble suggestion to religious types who think putting God back in schools makes more sense than, say, regulating guns or working harder to identify and treat mental illness:

First, we’ll try it your way. We’ll institute mandatory prayer in all public schools, and do absolutely nothing to ban or regulate guns or provide improved access to mental health diagnosis and treatment.

But if that doesn’t work — if there’s another school shooting, even with God on the job — then we’ll ban the prayers, ban the guns, and the fundamentalist fucktards will have to shut their goddamned mouths and keep them fucking shut.

Do we have a deal?

Joining the club

Sometimes people ask me if I feel “left out” at this time of year (full disclosure: nobody asks me that, I just said it as a way of introducing this post). My reply (full disclosure, this “reply” is entirely in my imagination) is, “On the contrary, this is the time of year I feel most included.” Here’s why:

At this time of year, there’s a big to-do about a magical being who knows if you’ve been bad or good, who sees you when you’re sleeping, knows when you’re awake, etc., and who can do magical things like visiting billions of homes in a single night, defying all the known laws of physics.

And it’s pretty obvious that there are lots of people who actually believe in this magical being. And everybody kind of gets the message that it would be really uncool to tell these people that they’re wrong, or even to express the opinion that these people are wrong. There’s a very strong sense that we should all just play along, so these people don’t get disillusioned by having their mistake revealed to them.

In other words, the holiday season is when everybody over the age of about 8 gets a taste of what it’s like to be an atheist.

Happy holidays, everybody!