"I don't want to attack religious people..."

Catholic Weddings

A former colleague of mine got married over the weekend, and her husband's family is quite religious. The ceremony took place in a church, and although this was one of many Catholic weddings I've attended, I found myself feeling frustrated in a way I really hadn't been at other religious wedding ceremonies. The focus of the ceremony was not on my friend and her husband to be. The focus was on God. The ceremony lasted about an hour, maybe 10 minutes of which was centered around the actual bride and groom. I wished I could have heard more from his and her families, more from the bride and groom themselves...more about their journey to the altar, complete with advice from parents and friends who had been married before--not from a priest, who by Catholic law must never marry, who was simply reciting words from ancient texts as though these words were the "one size fits all" solution to what makes a happy marriage. There were so many times during the ceremony where I noted hypocrisy so clearly evident. While the priest spoke about the sacrament and unbreakable bond of marriage, both the groom and bride's parents, who were all divorced and remarried, looked on. I cannot imagine how they must have felt, being judged for "failing" to make their first marriages work. It made me sad, this generic approach to what is often one of the most important days of a person's life. I know that my own wedding will be replete with anecdotes and advice that are fitted specifically to me and my future husband, and that the uniqueness of the day and how my wedding ceremony will be different from anyone else's will be what really makes it stand out.

Secular subway?

I live in New York, and I have to applaud the MTA for this disclaimer on one of the ads that I'd seen posted in the subway,

Can a 3 question math quiz determine whether or not you believe in God?

According to this article, "People who are more disposed to analytical thinking, the hypothesis goes, are less inclined to believe in a deity.

In 2012, in the journal Science, social psychologists Will M. Gervais and Ara Norenzayan published the results of five studies suggesting this might be the case."

I don't necessarily agree with the study, because I believe there are many complex factors that affect whether a person gets the correct answer that aren't necessarily dependent on how religious a person is. One of these factors is surely access to education, though it's certainly not a foolproof way to determine someone's religiosity. I'm atheist and college educated, but at first, the answers seemed obvious to me, too. Yet, I knew instinctively that the easy answer was the wrong one. Why was it that I second guessed myself?

Was it because I've been studying for the GRE Exam and expect test makers to try to trick me with deceptively easy questions? (On an honest note, math has never been my strong suit.) Or, was it just because all my years of formal schooling taught me to think about things in more complex ways? Or was it, simply, because as an atheist, I'm just "more disposed to analytical thinking", and my education had little to do with my ability to understand how to answer the questions. In other words, does being atheist make you smarter, or does being smart make you more likely to be atheist?

To make matters even more confusing, I have several friends who are significantly better educated than me who still insist that they believe in God, so, illogical as it may seem (and it does to me, too), I don't think one's level on education is always a good indicator of whether one is religious.

Nevertheless, the results are interesting. Take the quiz and see how you stack up! :)

Horror Story Author, H.P. Lovecraft, on Atheism

Though religious themes were common in his written works, a letter written to Robert E. Howard in 1932 confirms the following:

"All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don't regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine. In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist.”

Hasidic Jews Pressure the City of NY to Accomodate Their Religious Traditions

Photo Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times

"Needing to abide by their tribe’s traditions of modesty, Hasidic women want the city to post a female lifeguard during a women-only swim session at a municipal pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and have lobbied a local councilman to take up their cause.

On another front, Hasidic matzo bakeries, citing ancient Jewish law, have insisted on using water from groundwater wells rather than from reservoirs in preparing the dough used for matzos and have found themselves tangling with health officials worried about the water’s purity.

And on a public bus service that plies a route between the Hasidic neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Borough Park, Brooklyn, men sit up front and women in the back, hewing to the practice of avoiding casual mingling of the sexes, even after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg condemned the arrangement.

While these episodes may not have reverberated beyond New York’s Hasidic enclaves, taken together they underscore a religious ascendancy confronting the city’s secular authorities in ways not seen in decades.

Says {deputy general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty,} Eric Rassbuch, "Because of differing birth and adherence rates, the future of Judaism in New York City increasingly appears to be Orthodox.”

Y
ou can read the full article at the link above.

You'd never know it looking at most people.

The happiness of credulity.

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.”
―George Bernard Shaw, "Androcles and the Lion"

"We are dust and shadows."

"Pulvis et umbra sumus." What else is there?

-Cassandra Clare "Clockwork Angel"

Is God ashamed of us?

Phillip Pullman, renowned English fantasy author and author of the book, The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ, has something to say about whether God really approves of his followers' behavior.

“I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them.”
―Philip Pullman

Why are religious organizations tax exempt?

I've always felt that the good works that churches do can't make up for the billions lost in tax revenue that could do so much more. Imagine if churches paid taxes and still went on missions to rebuild homes and donate clothing and organize food drives. We'd all be so much better off.

I am my own God.

Henry Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-born American poet, novelist and short story writer."

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” ― Charles Bukowski

Good advice.

I have to remind myself of this...

OFTEN.

Too good not to share.

That's not love...that's ABUSE.

Freedom to hate...but not to love.

Karen Smith Totally Gets It

There's life, and then there's LIVING...

“It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Hate is not an option, love is the only way.

I found this somewhere and I resonated with me, so I'm sharing it:

"I feel as though I have to say something here.

Nobody should ever feel alone, but truth is, many of us will at one point or another, whether or not we show that to those around us.

There is never an excuse for bullying. Not being able to accept someone for who they are is one thing, criticizing them because they aren't you or who you think they should be is another.  

Words will forever resinate with a person, and the hurt has the ability to serve as a reminder for the rest of someone's life to not socialize, trust, or even love freely.

Take the time to get to know a person before you judge them.

It is up to an individual who they choose to love, what they aspire to be, how they want to eat, and whatever they might do with the rest of their lives. It is easy to say that your words can either make or break someone's vision of his or her dream.  

I urge each and every one of you to go out and introduce yourself to someone that doesn't look like the typical person you'd socialize with.  This can be anywhere: the coffee shop, in line at the grocery, or even telling the person at the gas pump across from you "hope you have a great day".  

Realize you can be that one person to change a person's life, and maybe even save him or her from oneself."

Hate is not an option.  Love is the only way

The skeptic.

"The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found."

-Miguel de Unamuno