The Adventures of Superior Man and Lesser Girl

You know what drives me crazy about talking to reasonable religious-types? The fact that, more often than not, they remain reasonable through some sort of herculean effort in which they split themselves into two entirely seperate people.

There are some beliefs, primarily dogmatic in nature, that are simply impossible to defend except on morally vaccuous or simply tautological grounds. Homosexuality being a bad thing, for instance, or the idea of anything but monogamous marrital sex being immoral. I don’t care what you do, or how you choose to live your life (of course assuming you’re not hurting anyone else in the process, I’m talking about pretty closed-system stuff here*) but arguing that the fact that what other people are doing is wrong without justification just frankly pisses me off. The bible says so isn’t sufficient, and if you believe different than that you’re a fucking idiot**.

I digress. Listing off the ridiculous things a huge number of Christians believe or do simply isn’t even remotely difficult and so much of the internet spends so much time doing that, so I’ll stop wasting my time.

No, I’m talking about the educated stealth nut-jobs. The ones that, despite a liberal arts education and being generally smart people, have simply decided that certain aspects of religion are true despite all reason. You’re talking to them, and then, suddenly it slips that they’re something really weird for an intelligent likeable person, like… being Catholic or something. Ok, fine, whatever. I’m not sure how you can reconcile these two things (being a pretty awesome person and being part of an organisation actively involved in the progress of AIDS in Africa), but hey, I’m open-minded, I’ll try.

And, you know what? Every single time, that blessed reconcilation simply never materialises. They only remain really cool on purely secular, non-dogmatic issues. But the instant one of their bat-shit-crazy ideas comes up, its like some sort of superhero transformation, running into the nearest ideologue-booth, about to give science a good licking. It’s scary, frankly and I’m not sure what to do with it.

And what can you do? It’s like someone deciding that one of the fundamental fallacies is now true. Why? BECAUSE.

* Which, to be fair, there is hardly any, but who you put your penis into or whatever is simply not my problem if its all consensual and happy. It’s weird that I bring this up, because I’ll probably go on a rant later about hardly anything being closed-system.

** I’m not arguing taking value or meaning from literature is inappropriate, but taking ANY as some sort of absolute statement of truth without support is nuts. Also, given that Leviticus, other than arguing that homosexuality is evil (20:13), also gives very clear rules about what you’re allowed to eat (kosher laws) as well as telling the reader to stone to death people for almost any conceivable reason, from cursing your parents to adultery to blasphemy. Really, this is one of the only places to get anti-homosexuality stuff and the majority of it is wholesale ignored by all the Abrahamic traditions.

We aren’t. Welcome back, us.

PS: Updates are happening on Tuesdays now.

So, now that we’re sorted through meatware, software, and hardware malfunctions (being, in order, plague, photoshop, and then fire) we should be back to regularly updating. Yay, I’m sure I can hear the masses calling.

Also, we’ll be on a Tuesday-night release schedule from now on, given GTB’s habit of erasing his (and, sometimes, my) weekends in an orgy of rotten fruit, wheat, and vegetable juice.