Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Season's Greetings!
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
--Jacob Marley, from "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens
Happy Holidays!
Anson
Monday, December 6, 2010
Spirit of Christmas from an Atheist Point of View
Ironic how Christmas is thought of by many as a Christian holiday (and that it's under "attack" by those godless pagans), even though most of the traditions associated with the holiday (gift giving, Santa Claus, decorated trees, etc.) are pre-Christian and pagan in origin. More ironic still, is that celebrating birthdays and decorating with trees is considered idolatry in some Christian traditions--i.e. celebrating Jesus' birthday with trees is breaking a commandment. The fact of the matter is that Christmas as a holiday is "Christian" in name only (it really has always been just a mixed up jumble of cultural influences).
Similarly the "holiest" of "Christian" holidays- Easter, is named after the ancient Germanic goddess of fertility, Eostre-- and to this day the symbols associated with Easter (Spring, eggs, rabbits) are all about fertility. Again, a mishmash of cultural traditions.
Halloween's wearing of masks and costumes and emphasis on the dead is also pagan in origin.
I don't believe in deities or spirits, Christian or otherwise, although I find the old traditions associated with Christmas and Halloween enjoyable and fun. I even enjoy much of the old traditional Christmas music, even with all it's Jesus-y themes in it.
The "Christian" aspect of the holidays doesn't weigh in any more or less to me than any of the ancient pagan stuff does, although the many of the entitlement claims by many modern Christians really does get up my ass sometimes.
--Anson Jew
Friday, October 8, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Who are the Teabaggers?
You always hear the teabaggers or "9/12ers" talking about the "original intent" of the constitution. This country already had that argument. It was called The Civil War. If you look at the Confederate Constitution, it would be a teabagger's paradise: almost identical to the US Constitution, except it removed the part about "promoting the general welfare" and replaced it with "invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God." It also diminished federal powers relative to state's rights, and restricted the vote only to native born citizens. In spirit, the teabaggers are really just a bunch of Confederate sympathizing sore losers.
Here's a real Confederate flag waving nut at a tea party:
I would never try to characterize all tea partiers as extreme as the people in the above video, but if you look at a lot of what the tea party movement espouses (or even just the right in general) it's reallly not much different from what the Confederacy stood for.
Here's a funny video of Sam Seder interviewing some people at Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally that took place on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech:
-Anson Jew
Saturday, August 21, 2010
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