My journey from religion to atheism took place over a series of events and years. I was born into religion and extremely pious parents. When I was younger, I was never very religious. I tried to please my parents. I learned the doctrine and tried to feel any inkling of religious fervor. It never happened. As I got older I still attended church because I didn’t want to cause problems in the family. My older sister had rebelled against my parent’s suffocating strictness, and it took lots of time and a move across seas for the problem to work itself out.

When I left for college, I was still in a moral moratorium. I hadn’t given much thought to what I actually believed. I stopped attending church immediately, however. I never felt welcome among religious people, always feeling judged, never accepted into the community. In college, I befriended people of other religions. Hardcore Muslims and Evangelical Christians. I attended interfaith dialogues. The experience was far from solidifying any commitment I ever had to religion. Previously center to my own egocentric universe, I realized that I was not as unique as I had once thought. Save Bokononism, no religion believes it is false. How pretentious, I thought, that I believed my religion, and in turn myself, superior to others.

As I began to study history, especially myth, magic, and early religion, what was left of my faith waned. The stories of the bible had been told numerous times before. I didn’t see them as bastardized versions of Christianity or inspired by the devil, as modern-day religion contends. It was simply plagiarism. The more one studies history, not only the similarities between the texts of Gilgamesh, Osiris and Isis, and the Bible, for instance, but religious atrocities, the “divine” founding of religions, it makes it difficult to remain religious. Studying the rise of Christianity during the Roman Republic helped solidify my belief that religion was simply a man made concept. Man created God in his image.

Being gay, I saw religion as a means to control me. Religious scholars, willfully ignorant of the sciences, continue to see homosexuality as a preventable sin, one in which I could choose whether or not to act on my desires, whether or not to live an unhappy life. Perhaps unconsciously seeking answers, I majored in psychology, and learned the genetic, cognitive factors that made me who I am - someone that, though religion tried hard to have the opposite effect, I am proud of.

Religion began to anger me. It assaulted science. It waged a war against birth control and AIDS. It suppressed first women, then blacks, then gays. It was too reactionary: if it was divine intervention, why did doctrine change as did man? I began to see it as a dangerous force: one that played upon people’s stupidity to wage wars, In a world where every dilemma is viewed as fulfilling prophecy of the “end times”, religious adherents try to speed up the coming of Jesus. But the immediate and long-term problems of the world - climate change, wars, poverty - are ignored; why should we worry when Jesus will be here any minute?

Today, I don’t believe in a God. I don’t believe in an afterlife. When I die, I will die. But, to me, that makes this life all the more important to live. When I first came to this realization I was terrified, but now I find the idea romantic, even welcoming. The time that I am a conscious in the world is finite, and because of this I want to make the most of the time that I have. I’m not waiting for a grand reward in an afterlife. And, honestly, the idea of living an eternal life is just exhausting.

I was looking through my Askimet spam filter and I happened upon a post someone had left me on an earlier article. When I first read it I just shrugged it off as spam. But then I started thinking about it and it really made me worry. Now it’s all I can thinking about. Is she using a dildo because my penis is too small for her?

Recently I had a claim under “Amazon’s A-to-z guarantee” brought against me. I sell books on Amazon because I have a plethora of books and because I’m broke. So this book was bought on the 4th of May, and on the 19th I receive this email:

We recently purchased a book from you on Amazon (ISBN 9780495090793). Instead, we received ISBN 9780495093602. According to the Amazon A-to-z Guarantee, the incorrect item you sent qualifies as materially different than the item ordered.

We are an approved institutional buyer on Amazon and understand that mistakes in listing and shipping occur. As a result, negative feedback will NOT be left on your account. Please issue a full refund for the purchase price (plus shipping) for order #058-0359224-0740307 to avoid an A-to-z claim. Because of high volume and no Amazon support for return shipment cost reimbursement, we are unable to return the incorrect item to you.

We want to continue to do business with you on Amazon. However, if you would like us to stop purchasing from you, please visit our seller opt out form:

http://www.selleroptout.com/optout.aspx?id=058-0359224-0740307p142006

A reply to this message will not be received. Contact us with questions at 800-869-0366 x8150.

So a claim was brought against me, because the item was materially different. In my defense, I pointed out several stipulations that Amazon required in order for a buyer to bring a claim against a seller, notably:

If you have received a materially different item, you must contact the seller within seven (7) days of receipt to request return information.

If a seller has clearly misrepresented the condition or details of an item in a way that affects its value or utility, it is “materially different” and that seller should be willing to offer a refund or exchange within 30 days of shipment. If the seller does not accept the return of an item that is made in accordance with the seller’s return policy, you may qualify for coverage under our A-to-z Guarantee.

So, obviously, the buyer did not contact me within seven days of receiving the book. But they never even offered to return the book.

So I of course try to fight the claim for the reasons listed above. I receive an email almost immediately, which I should take as a warning sign that no one even read my response.

Hello from Amazon.com,

Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.com regarding your order 058-0359224-0740307.

Per our Community Rules for listing Amazon Marketplace items, sellers may not deviate from the product format represented on an item’s retail page, also known as the product detail page.  As we state, “When listing your item, you must do so on the page with the same item, in the same format.”  Other models or editions cannot be listed on a similar ASIN.  It is not sufficient to list the differences in the comments.

Because you listed a different item/version than the one advertised on the detail page, the item was materially different than described, and the buyer is automatically eligible for the A-to-z Guarantee, whether they return the item or not.  We always hope that sellers and buyers are able to work out a transaction before resorting to the Guarantee, but once a Guarantee claim is filed, we must take appropriate action from our end.  We have reimbursed the buyer and your seller account will be debited.

If you’d like to view our Community Rules, please visit:

http://www.amazon.com/o/tg/browse/-/537776/

Thank you for choosing Amazon.com.

—
Sastha P.
Investigator
A-to-z Guarantee Program

So after her(?) little rant about materially different items, she quickly mentions that, regardless of what the actual A-to-z guarantee page may say, the customer doesn’t have to return the item at all! I send Amazon another email. This time, Vinod (Sastha? Vinod? Where the fuck is Amazon outsourcing to?) tells me the case is closed and they won’t respond to any other emails I send.

So fuck you, Amazon. If you’re going to have rules to submit a claim, then you need to actually abide by them, you fucking assholes.

Do you know what I’m tired of? What I’m sick of? I’m both sick and tired of people complaining on the internet about how nobody stands up for their rights.

“Oh my God,” you say, “the Bush Administration is the worst administration ever in the history of the United States! Why won’t somebody stand up and do something about it? You sheep!! I am blogging about it and posting comments on message boards! I’m doing my part!”

Wake the fuck up. You aren’t doing shit. If you want to see a change, you need to get up off your ass, go out, and make a change in the world.

I respect the “silent” people more - because they just don’t care. You do care, and you aren’t doing anything about it. You write a little post on the internet and you feel like you’ve done your part. Have you gone to a rally? Staged a protest? Given a speech? No - you wrote about it online. Congratulations. I hope you feel like you made a difference.

Because school isn’t getting any easier.

Come October, devil-inspired wine coolers will be moved from grocery stores to state-ran liquor stores, where they will be taxed consistently with state pricing: wine and liquor at 61% mark-up over cost plus taxes, beer at 75% plus taxes. But it’s a sin, and should be taxed as such.

The move is intended to convince the Mormon population that alcohol doesn’t exist. Or maybe it’s to prevent underage kids from driving drunk. Personally I can only hold one or two sips from a wine cooler before I am completely shit-faced. And that’s not even mentioning how popular wine coolers are among the 16-20 year old male population. It’s their crack.

At what point in time did this nation become totally subservient to children? Must every new law passed be based upon how good it will be for the children? We have all been thinking of the children for much too long now. Why are so many of our laws based upon a person’s first few years of life when they will eventually be exposed to the world? They may be the future, but I’m the present.

Take swearing for instance. I’m an adult, and I’m just as aware as any junior high kid that people use words that are termed “expletives.” Why should any special interest group be able to deem if a word is dirty and block it from TV and radio?

It doesn’t take a village to raise a child - it takes a parent. I don’t have any children, and I shouldn’t be punished as such. If I want to relax on my front porch drinking beer and listening to someone on the radio say “fuck,” I shouldn’t be arrested for public drunkenness and obscenity. I shouldn’t have to adopt your moral code in every day-to-day interaction so little Johnny thinks the world is sweet and wholesome. If you feel the need to shelter your children from the world then lock them in your basement - don’t make me jump through hoops to get a beer.

So hiding beer and marking it up to God-awful prices may prevent underage drunk driving. And it may convince people that nobody drinks. Or it might create a culture of secrecy with every kid trying to find out why it’s so hidden from public view. And once these over-sheltered kids are exposed to this gateway drug, it’s not long before they’ll be overdosing on heroine.

People tend to look back at past civilizations and laugh at attributes that set them apart from us. Emperors in Rome, for instance, adopted themselves into Imperator lineages posthumously and were later deified after they died, which meant that nobody could speak badly of them once they passed away. How silly.

With the passing of Charlton Heston, headlines alluding to the fact that you can now have his gun due to his cold dead hands were met with criticism. Apparently, once a person dies, all the issues that you disagreed with them on should just be forgotten, and only kind words spoken about them. If you believe in gun control the time isn’t now, nor ever, to voice any criticism towards the former NRA president.

Deifying the dead is an absurd tradition that I, for one, will not take part in. In the name of free speech, yet fearing divine retribution, I will leave any mockery regarding removing the gun from his hand before rigor mortis sets in to someone else.

When he’s not shuffling the shuffle or falling off of Segways, Bush is listening to Alan Jackson or those counter-culture revolutionaries The Beatles on his iPod with them ear things on. He admits that it’s pretty high-tech stuff, but he can always push that little advance button if something he doesn’t like comes on. Like the news.

Robert Gates plans to close, or possibly reallocate, the Counterintelligence Field Activity Office, created by Donald Rumsfeld to spy on antiwar protesters. The move has brought criticism from civil liberties groups, who claim the the Pentagon is simply sending operations to other, less-scrutinized agencies.

The clandestine office, whose size and budget are both classified, was used to spy on antiwar protests at churches, schools, and Quaker meeting halls. Quakers have a long history of undermining the government. Believing rather erroneously that all people are equal, they campaigned for women, black, mentally ill, and prisoner rights. I sleep sounder at night knowing our government is keeping tabs on those terrorists.

Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes, referred to the office as a “Rumsfeld-era relic that triggered major concern about domestic intelligence gathering by the Pentagon against Americans.” Reyes refers to Rumsfeld as though he were in office decades ago, not up until 2006. I hope that name sticks, though. Rumsfeld-era. It’s like McCarthyism. Rumsfeldyism.

Many accused Rumsfeld and friends of trying to build an intelligence empire of their own, due to their suspicion of the CIA. James R. Clapper, Senior Intelligence Official at the Pentagon, recommended the office be placed under the authority of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The closing of the Pentagon’s Intelligence Unit would severely decrease the number of intelligence agencies in the United States. Now we only have the CIA, DoD, Air Force, Military Intelligence, FBI, NSA, Dept. of Homeland Security, and others - a total of 16 intelligence agencies heading numerous enforcement agencies that protect us from terrorists with box cutters and, most importantly, ourselves.

A New York Times/CBS News Poll released today shows that 81% of the country believes America is on the wrong track, and Bush’s abysmally-low 34% approval rating suggests that this issue is bipartisan. The percentage of people upset with the condition of the U.S. is higher than it has been for 20 years, which has seen 12 years of Bush’s Senior and Junior and 8 years of Clinton.

The biggest concern for respondents was the economy, amidst news of a 5.1% unemployment, more layoffs last month than in the last five years, and a failing dollar. The current administration has no legitimate plans for helping the economy, with Bush appearing carefree and laughing off reports of gas at $4 a gallon. McCain would take a Hooveresque approach, doing nothing to spur a failing economy.

But how much change will a Democratic administration bring? The newly-Democratic Congress’ approval rating is at an all-time low, worse than the Republican presidency. Their initial support for Iraq has waned in an attempt to garner more of the vote in the upcoming election. They have become Republican-lite.

Neither party has been able to show that they can bring about the change that the people want. The current political duopoly has been successful in eliminating competition, and as such find little need to offer vastly different stances on political issues. Third-party suppression and ballot access laws ensure that the next president will be more of the same - and that people will be upset with the state of the country.

People want real change, but are blocked by both politicians and their own laziness. Why read a newspaper when pop stars are beamed directly into your homes at your beck and call? Why risk being depressed about the world when you can laugh at the latest crazy thing a celebrity has done? Why become educated on issues when there exists other people who can do it for you? Mass media should be added to religion as an opiate of the people.

81% of you want change. But it’s not something that politicians are going to offer. It’s not something that is going to happen if you do nothing. Unless you’re among the contented 19% of the population, it is your responsibility to implement the change you want to see.

Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang wrote a New York Times op-ed piece showing how a recession is good for people wanting to lose weight. Huh. Being poor helps people stay skinny.

Why is there so much contention within the Democratic Party? The democrats, who were unable to produce a noteworthy candidate to usurp Bush and gain control during an unpopular war, now have two frontrunners who are winning scores of votes between themselves, but the party is becoming wary that neither candidate will concede defeat. Which makes me ask one question: “why should they?”

When did people begin believing that debate is bad? Rather than cause contention within the party, it offers the American people a greater choice in who the next president will be. Both parties have established a two-party monopoly within the country, but, fortunately for us, the Democrats have not been able to do this within their own party. That means both candidates will have to present better ideas on an array of issues to set themself apart from from the opposition.

Neither candidate can ultimately be a “spoiler” for the democrats, because both candidates are running inside the party. Unlike a third-party candidate, which is exemplary of the most radical disenfranchisement with either party, votes during primaries are being channeled to one candidate or the other. If the Democrats lose this election, they will only have themselves to blame.

So let’s drop the neo-conservative rhetoric of being either ‘with us or against us.’ Two candidates in the race can only help, not hurt, the Democratic Party. Debate is not harmful - it’s what cultivates and shapes ideas. And that’s something that until recently this country was seriously lacking.

…any thoughts?

The Desert Morning News, a backwater Utah newspaper that tailors to Mormons, reported today that the PTA of American Fork High School will be holding a forum titled “Protecting Our Youth From Serious Social Problems,” which will discuss such serious social problems as pornography and same-gender attraction.

Belinda Jensen, local yokel and PTA president, said “I think sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS are an important reason to look at this, I also believe that it is a lifestyle that is not conducive to families.” Obvious point on the latter half - Mormon’s overwhelming voted yes on Amendment 3, which banned same-sex marriage in Utah. A gay lifestyle can’t be conducive to families if you make it illegal for two consenting adults to marry. But STDs and AIDS? Last I checked pornography gave you neither, and AIDS has become a heterosexual disease more so than a homosexual one.

Jensen’s concern is over the homosexual agenda - which includes such equal rights as offering gay and lesbian youths school clubs. The forum also aims to help kids “avoid and overcome” same-gender attraction. Avoid and overcome? What, exactly, does that entail? Electroconvulsive shock therapy of yesteryear? Avoiding and overcoming will simply result in anxiety and closeting - how likely would it be for a gay youth in the area to come out after such a conference is held?

American Fork’s view of homosexuals, or any such ‘other’, is indicative of many prevailing attitudes of religious zealots and uninformed bigots, both inside and outside of Utah. The fact that Utah is so cloistered doesn’t excuse it from infringing on human rights. I’m a proponent of free speech of any kind, but if these people want to host their Klan meetings then they should do so outside of publicly-funded PTA meetings.

UPDATE: After seeing the agenda, Principal Carolyn Merrill canceled the forum, saying the entire board hadn’t agreed to include the issue of same-gender attraction. Standard of Liberty co-founder Stephen Graham circulated an email blaming it on “someone from the homosexual activist group.”

On “Are we ‘morally responsible’ for Iraq?“, Demonweed left a comment that I felt warranted its own post. His blog can be found here, and though it hasn’t been updated since January, there is a small archive offering insightful views on “What You Should Think” about a variety of topics, such as organized religion, that I’m apt to agree with. His reply is posted below in its entirety.

***

As I see it, Iraq today is the result of two historic blunders. The first was the decision to go to war. Saddam Hussein was a very bad man, but did he have to go? There must have been at least ten other regimes at that time that, if subject to forced change, would have involved spilling less innocent blood while creating a better prognosis for the development of a civilized open society.

As a humanitarian initiative, “liberating” the people of Iraq would have been an unusual priority even if the planning and execution of the venture were not the product of abysmal incompetence. Compounding this is the fact that the U.S. did have a compelling interest in bringing about regime change . . . in Afghanistan. It may just have been the ultimate “taking your eye off the ball” moment when our national focus shifted from bold counterterrorism efforts to bloodlust for an unrelated dictator.

However, so much less blood could have been spilled if there was someone with a shred of personal integrity able to get relevant facts about the world into the ear of George W. Bush. If the infamous “Mission Accomplished” moment were followed by American actions suggesting the mission had been accomplished, who can say what the prospects would be for both the U.S. and Iraq going forward from here. Instead, what was so clearly a military occupation continued to be mischaracterized as a war. Worse yet, it remains a war in which objectives are not clearly defined (not to mention a war for which talk of an exit strategy is forbidden amongst executive branch insiders.)

Ultimately it is all about saving face. Possibly the President himself does not understand how much better everything would have been if the invasion had been followed by a prompt demilitarization of our Iraq policy. Certainly he remains hostile to that lifesaving approach.

As with immigration (not to mention a host of lesser issues) John McCain has displayed his own level of personal integrity by shifting position to capture the support of the Republican base. Here it is hard to tell if he is so deeply clueless about geopolitical realities or if he is merely grasping at whatever themes he believes will motivate Republican voters to show up at polling places this November. Either way, a war hero deserves better than to be dragged into such sewers, and the United States of America deserves better than to be led by anyone who supports one of the bloodiest and most blatant follies in the history of American foreign policy.

Upset over McCain’s statement on the mortgage crisis that it’s not the government’s responsibility to “reward those who act irresponsibly,” Hillary equated McCain to Herbert Hoover, president during the Great Depression, whose inaction led to widespread ‘hoovervilles’ and did little to resolve the recession.

Is she comparing herself to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hoover’s successor, who took a more proactive approach to resolving the Great Depression? Unlike Hoover’s failed policy of lifting oneself up by one’s own bootstraps, the New Deal programs of FDR assisted nearly-bankrupt banks and “saved capitalism in 8 days” during the “First 100 Days” of his presidency through emergency banking acts.

Hillary’s proposal for solving the mortgage crisis is both progressive, costly, and akin to FDR’s program of government intervention: she would immediately allocate $30 billion to be used to help states fight foreclosures. A 90-day moratorium would be enacted on foreclosures and rates on subprime mortgages would be frozen for at least 5 years. Lastly, legislation would be introduced that would provide legal protection to mortgage services.

Now is not the time for the next president to sit back and do nothing. If we are entering a recession it will require government intervention to bring us out of it. McCain’s policy of not helping those affected, because of his erroneous belief that they brought it upon themselves, has been proven historically false.

While no one would equate Hillary to FDR in terms of charisma or oratory ability, her policies of government intervention in a time of crisis is similar to what FDR implemented during the Great Depression and WW2. It took, however, a do-nothing president before people were so fed-up that they voted in FDR, who expanded the federal government’s role in an effort to bail the country out of economic turmoil. Hopefully now only one do-nothing president is sufficient.

Senator McCain said today that “[the nation] has incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq,” and our leaving would not only cause the area “to sink back into chaos and extremism,” but would result in ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide.

This novel idea of the United States caring about genocide is news not only to Darfurians, but also to the Kurds during the gassing by Saddam, then backed by the U.S., during the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s, or the Jews in World War 2. We carry a long history of “never agains,” but for the first time in our history we are to believe that this is more than just rhetoric. Apparently McCain, and the rest of the Republican Party, actually cares about the ethnic cleansing this time.

Spending 100 more years in Iraq may seem somewhat daunting, but if it’s able to stop ethnic cleansing in the region, is it worth it? No matter how many U.S. armed forces we lose? No matter how pathetically low our international standing becomes? No matter how weakened we become as a nation?

The want to stay in Iraq is driven by two forces: (1) cheap oil; and (2) the need to appear militarily mighty. McCain’s incarceration during the failed Vietnam war is apparently still ripe in his mind. He would rather subject more soldiers to their deaths than simply cut our losses and leave. Iraq is the Vietnam War for the 2000s, and only time will tell which will be remembered as the bigger foreign blunder.

The only people who should be held morally responsible are the leaders who knowingly lied to the American public to create support for the war. The American people and U.S. soldiers should not be held accountable for lying politicians.

China is a lot like the United States. They are both large, powerful countries who couldn’t care less about human rights. With the recent turmoil in Tibet, it seems that China is winning the ‘how authoritarian and secretive can we be?’ war.

Scant protesters, upset over the Olympic Torch relay to China, have managed to make themselves seen in snippets of news clips. France has taken the lead in contemplating a boycott of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, but what, other than hurting the athletes who have been training their entire life, will this actually accomplish? Will this send a message to China?

I have an idea that will send an even greater message without hurting people who just want to perform. Boycott the entire country. Boycott the imports, boycott the exports. Cut off all trade completely. Hell, maybe even try some diplomacy first. Diplomacy is when two nations talk to each other to try and reach an agreement; I know, the last 8 years have made me forget, as well.

Boycotting the Olympics is as stupid idea as boycotting Exxon for getting some gasoline from that crazy South American socialist Chavez. It’s as pointless as changing the name of ‘German toast’ to ‘French toast’ in World War 1 and later to ‘Freedom Toast’ during the Iraq war. The only message this sends is that the global community is too stupid and childish to resolve world affairs.

The death toll in Iraq reached 4,000 late Sunday night, a number to which Dick Cheney might reply “they volunteered” or simply, “so?”. The surge was successful only in killing more U.S. forces this year than any other since the war started. The violence continues to spread, and the death toll on both sides continues to rise.

The war in Iraq has eroded our standing in the global community. Are we the world’s gestapo? Is our hand in every honey jar? The outpouring of support from the world following 9/11 was squelched once we entered into an unjust war with a country that we knew played no part in the attack on the Twin Towers and harbored no WMDs. Patriotic rhetoric coaxed a nation to attack another for its natural resources. Sure, there would be some civilian casualties, but in the end we would continue to have cheap oil.

Iraq is the biggest American foreign blunder since Vietnam. The question isn’t when we will win the war, it’s when we will cut our losses and leave. What we are fighting is a poorly planned, executed, and unwinnable war. The only thing worse than soldiers dying in vain is more soldiers dying in vain.

How much do people honestly care about what is going on in this world? Popular culture is the opiate of the masses. Even the nightly news has become an entertainment enterprise. Who can be bothered to pay attention when the news is upsetting? American Idol isn’t.

I will be on vacation until March 24th. There will be no new posts until that time.