This is long, it is about religion and non-religion and it may piss you off if you make it to the end...but try and be a freethinker.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has decided that the legendary Virginia and all young children, as well as adults, be aware that there is no God. The Foundation explains on their site why they felt the need to buy advertising on 100 Seattle Metro buses to share their belief system with the rest of Seattle and of course as Seattlelites all ready know the way Seattle trends, so trends the rest of the country (okay we only believe that way because of Nirvana and the whole grunge thing and maybe the Microsoft stuff).

This morning as I drove groggy headed along First Avenue to work on a dreary Seattle Tuesday morning near Safeco Field I spotted a bus with a large waving Santa (yes like the one above) along side of me. I had plenty of time to study the sign because we were stopped at a red light. My long ago abandoned Fundamental Christian background rose up from the dark and I thought, wow that's really offensive. Who can really say flat out there is no God? When was that scientifically proven? I read Dawkin's book(s), did I miss that page? The light changed and I pulled away from the bus and the sign left me and I started to think about serious stuff like I had to stop for cereal and milk on the way to work.

Later this afternoon as the mid-day bleary eyes set in I Googled TFFRF site and read about their foundation. They were founded back in the 1970's and they are about 14,000 members strong. Okay 14,000 members is a very small group, not all that impressive, half a mega church in Texas. Yet, it counts among its followers the likes of Richard Dawkins and Ronald Reagan (the younger of course, the elder according to some sits at the right hand of Jesus, who sits at the right hand of the non-existing God). To be a member of this cozy group it will cost you around 40 dollars (plus the opportunity to buy witty bumper stickers, t-shirts and I love Darwin items, see more and more like a mini mega church as I type), because whether you believe in God or you don't believe in God it cost money to promote your beliefs or lack there of.

I don't really care what people believe, I don't care if you go to heaven if there is one or hell if there is one or you rot in the ground and worms feast on your eyes for their high tea, really what the hell is it to me? What I don't like are preachers like Richard Dawkins who for whatever reason he has ( which is most likely he wants the rest of the Atheist in the world to man up and come out of the closet and announce their allegiance to the non-theist) insists on pounding on people who claim to believe in God. Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and I have never seen him sober even on the written page Christopher Hitchens are the Jerry Falwell, Pat Roberts, Ted Haggard and James Dobson of the Fundamental Atheist. In my opinion they all need to shut it up and sit it down and give it a rest. Well, Falwell actually did shut it up and lay it down and the one true thing we know out of all of them at this point is that Falwell is the only one who actually knows for sure if there is or isn't a God.

As far as this statement on the our purpose page of the TFFRF: The history of Western Civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by people free from religion." Yes, yes, I know and religion has destroyed everything that is good and right in the world and people who believe in God are morons and backward idiots, like C.S. Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, Rev.Martin Luther King, uneducated dolts, I know the talking points.

I detest organized religion, I detest what people do in the name of God, It sickens me that passages from the Bible are twisted, by both sides of the aisle to make fit whatever they choose to do or say that is reprehensible to everything Christ lived and died for. However, Fundamental Atheist are no better than Fundamental Christians in the way they go about trying to think for other people.

Yes, Virginia there may or may not be a God, but you need to decide that for yourself in your own lifetime and for you to do so would actually make you a freethinker. This logic will probably never catch on because it way too long for a bumper sticker.

I heard this poem on the way to work this morning and thought it was pretty wonderful and wanted to share it

The Retreat

by
Henry Vaughn

Happy those early days, when I
Shin'd in my Angel-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white celestial thought:
When yet I had not walk'd above
A mile or two from my first Love,
And looking back—at that short space—
Could see a glimpse of His bright face:
When on some gilded cloud, or flow'r,
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity:
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My Conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to ev'ry sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.

O how I long to travel back,
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain
Where first I left my glorious train;
From whence th' enlightned spirit sees
That shady City of Palm-trees.
But ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way!
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move;
And when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came, return.

The Promise - Tracy Chapman

Do you think of me once in a while....

Just in case you think Cedar should post more I give you this and you can be all...meh...no maybe not.

I like a good cookie. Who am I kidding I like a bad cookie. If someone gave me a cookie that was hard as a rock and I could chip all my front teeth biting into it. I would soak that cookie in milk for days to get it soft enough to eat.

Cookies are like the ultimate comfort food. They are like God hugging you and saying, yes there are terrible things in the world, but here, have a cookie (wait God sounded a lot like my grandmother there). I do however prefer my cookies to be somewhat plain, not too busy. Perhaps a nice butter cookie or a vanilla wafer the occasional chocolate chip. Those fancy cookies like oatmeal, raisin, cranberry, pecan nut, coconut flakes with orange zest...not for me.

A cookie, like a good relationship, should just not be that complicated...if it is, really why bother (yeah I know I said I would soak a rock hard cookie in milk for days to eat it, but that was like you know you are on a desert island and a wooden box floats ashore and there is a box of cookies in there and they are stale, but you know they are the only cookie on the island and you are a cookie addict so you got to eat the cookie no matter what. Why do I always have to put this stuff into perspective, more things in life like this should just be understood (wow this is a long () thing is this even close to being grammatically correct?) )?

Yeah, so, anyway, because of my lust for cookies I don't keep them in the house, but today I wanted a cookie so while I was at the store buying health food, like...okay I went to the store for cookies. I bought a roll of bake them yourself chocolate chip cookies. I figured I could bake four cookies have them and then have them again another time.

So I come home with my cookies, my half pint of milk and a pack of logs and I am going to start a fire and have cookies and milk and be living the high life. I then realize I don't have a cookie sheet, so I flipped over the broiler pan and shove four cookies in the oven. They came out flat dark brown burnt stuff. Surprisingly enough unlike burnt popcorn, burnt cookies suck. I threw the burnt cookies down the garbage disposal and laid out a sheet of aluminium foil and tried four more. Nope, no good burned them again.

After the two failed attempts I read the instructions; who knew, I thought everything was cooked on 450 so I reset the oven as instructed and threw in four more cookies. I guess I should have waited for the oven to cool down a bit. I waited around, drank half the milk played with the garbage disposal and then threw four more cookies into the oven.

Screw it. I have no idea what the hell is wrong with the oven or the cookie dough crap, so I decide to eat the rest of the cookie dough raw, which probably amounted to four more cookies and drink the rest of the milk. I am eating the cookie dough and I am reading the side of the package and it says, DO NOT EAT RAW COOKIE DOUGH. Ah, why the hell not?

Google. Oh, seems eating raw cookie dough may be connected to E-FRIGGEN-COLI. Okay, I have been eating raw cookie dough since I was a child. Grant it 99.9% of it was homemade raw cookie dough, but the occasional store processed cookie dough has slipped into my mouth, now they are telling me after 50 some years that eating raw cookie dough can possibly kill you or at the very least make you wish you were dead.

People, somewhere in time we have slipped pretty much unnoticed into another freakish dimension that while it may resemble the dimension where we once lived is really nothing like the dimension where we once lived...to shorten this babbled on sentence the Twilight Zone show of the 1960's is now the reality of the 2000's. but more like Twilight Zone on Crack. We have entered (bom, bom, bom) The Crack Zone.

We have entered a sad time when a child can no longer eat raw cookie dough. Next we will have to boil ice cream before eating it. Or there will be a warning label on the side of chocolate bars: this product may cause homicidal tendencies.

Really, what do we have left? Our food is all chemically altered, our minds are chemically altered, our clothes are even made out of fabics that exist no where in nature, our air isn't even made out of stuff that exist in nature. Where the hell does it all stop? Couldn't they just have stopped at the chemical additives in cigarettes and went on to discover...I don't know the cure for the common cold or something? No, that would have been too easy, we had to go for the freakin bomb and then screw with the cookie dough. Humans are cruel and sadistic bastards. Just saying.

p.s. oh it may just have something to do with the raw eggs..hmmm never mind.

p.s.s. this doesn't take away from the fact that humans are cruel sadistic bastards, because there is still the bomb and all that other crap.

Don't worry we are just having a country wide collective moment...no wait, maybe you should worry most of us own guns!

I have started a few post on a number of topics, but I keep coming back to the same topic in my mind and that's basically : What the hell is going on in this country? Have we lost our collective freakin minds? Should we be less worried about the Swine Flu epidemic and more worried that our country is having a mental illness epidemic? Really, just about every time I turn on my computer and read the headlines someone has shot up some place or done some other equally insane thing.

I won't list them all here, you all read the headlines, listen to the news you know what is happening in the U.S. so I have to ask you people who don't live here do you all now look at us as the crazy family member at the holiday party? Come on admit it to you all we're all Uncle Joe ranting and raving about seeing strange lights coming at him in the sky one night when in reality his drunk ass was past out on the side of the highway. Or are we the bully that made your high school days a living hell? Do you all want to collectively kick our asses? Have us committed? Take away our guns?

If this is any solance most of us have that deer in the headlight look and we are just waiting for another person to say "what the fuck?" so we can say, "yeah, I know you think Canada will let any of us move up there without a full psychiatric evaluation?" I know if I were the president of any country in the world, even like Columbia or something, I would say : Let's keep the Americans out...they're some scarey crazy people and besides they have no more money left to by the cocaine so who needs them?

Here is how most people will start a conversation when talking about America now, "Well you know I believe this is the greatest country on Earth, but..." And then they tell you how scared they really are and if they are a parent of young children they wonder out loud if maybe it would be better to take their kids to another country. When some young man in his early 30's tells you he is thinking about taking his family and moving to Mexico, America has got issues. Seriously if I were anywhere near young again and thought I could find a job I would move to Canada. No Canada, really I don't own a gun and I am quirky, not crazy, I have therapists, psychologists and a doctor who will back that up. Of course I am an American, I will probably need Xanax for the first six months or so, but after that I would be good to go.

I live here and I am afraid, but I'd be more afraid to be in another country. I mean we got a lot of big weapons as a country and as individuals we can buy guns and ammo in some states at the quickie marts when we stop for beer. Just think about being neighbors to people with massive weaponry and mental illness running amok. Maybe it is safer to be living in the crazy neighbor house than to be the sane neighbor. Not that some of you all don't have your loon moments, it just seems now we are on a mission from...no not God, definitely not God.

In all seriousness, I am concerned about the country that I was born and raised in, it's like a family, no matter how dysfunctional, it is still your family and leaving it to find another family doesn't always work. Or does it? Or are the other families just as bat shit crazy as yours? I think I am going to start to read foreign newspapers so I can see what sort of things are happening in other civilized countries, if people are running into former places of employment and killing people or driving stoned and drunk with their children in the car and killing them. Has any other country had an astronaut drive hundreds of miles while wearing a diaper to kill their lover's spouse?

Look, we'll get it together and we will try not to hurt anymore of you all in the process, but if you hear rumors that the U.N. is getting together and there is talk about putting Thorazine in our water supply, just let it go, it couldn't hurt.

P.S. This one you can't blame on the gays America it's you crazy ass straight people doing all this crap.

P.S.S. Yeah it is probably in bad form to rant about your own country on the Internet, but why act like you don't think anything is wrong. Isn't that the kind of thought process that got us in a lot of this mess, because we all allowed 8 years of the Cheney Administration? Come on America, own it. And put down the fucking guns.