Sunday, November 13, 2011

Speaking Sense On Sunday


From America's Finest News Source:

PRINCETON, NJ—According to a new report published this week, researchers at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study have definitively concluded that it—all of it—is some kind of sick joke.

The comprehensive study, which carefully analyzed fields as varied as physics, theology, history, economics, sociology, and philosophy, is said to have found overwhelming evidence that it is all just one big sham specifically designed to humiliate us and cause us as much misery as possible.

[...]

"The question we're ultimately left with is what kind of a savage and twisted god would find this funny?" theological scholar Meredith Hemphill said. "Unfortunately, the only thing we can say for sure is that we're not dealing with a benevolent deity or even a detached and unfeeling maker, but apparently some unknowable force that takes a perverted, I would argue psychopathic, pleasure in watching its creations struggle and fail."

[...]

"There appears to be no escaping the feelings of humiliation, emptiness, and despair this barbaric joke exacts on everyone," said Nobel laureate and professor emeritus of psychology Daniel Kahneman. "However, trial studies show humankind is far better off when we push it all into the back of our heads, try not to think about it, and just trudge mindlessly toward death."

"And let me remind everyone that the joke does indeed have an ending, one which generally occurs much, much sooner than we expect," Kahneman added.


The fact that, regarding the triple threat (all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful) god of the Christian right, I've said as much in all seriousness, makes it no less funny; nor, despite coming from a satirical source, is it any less true.

And maybe this is as good a time as any to comment on Penn State.

In particular, I find it astounding, nearly unbelievable except that unbelievable is what belief is about, that Joe Paterno, and, later, members of the board of trustees there, said we should pray for the victims. To whom, for gods' sake? The god who let ten year old boys be raped? Who, in his all-powerful lovingness, gave that coach a hard-on and let him shove it up the rectum of a child? That god? It's he to whom we should direct prayers? So he'll do what, now, suddenly, after decades of abject failure? Bring peace of mind to the children he abandoned? Why? Because more people are begging him now than merely the several victims back then? Those little boys didn't pray hard enough, or were there just too few of them to cross the celestial ego-threshold?

Sickening, at all levels.

At the game yesterday, the teams met midfield to pray for the victims. What pathetic pretentiousness. What willful ignoring. If the god they're praying to answers prayers, then he let the serial rapes happen and doesn't give a good god damn; or he doesn't exist. Either/Or. Take your pick, and save your breath.

Pray for the victims. As if that'll make it all right, get everyone off the hook, including god. That's the greatest immorality of all. And the sickest joke.

7 comments:

  1. Sid, can't belive I'm actually agreeing with you...
    besides we both think that Patrica Neal was the Bees Knees in "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
    its like whenever you here about some altruistic Coach/Teacher/Priest being struck down in there prime by the ALS/Cancer etc..
    I always say, "Serves em right, there probably a GD Child Molester or something"
    I mean did you ever watch "Pride of the Yankees", pretty creepy stuff, Lou Gehrig with that dying kid alone in a hospital room...
    But seriously, I thought y'all supported Gay Anal Sex?
    I know, only between "Consenting Adults"...
    So if the little kids were 10 years older and consented, what he did would be Kopa-kosher-scetic?(I made that up)
    I have the feeling Coach Jerry will have plenty of Consenting Adults to pick from, for the few weeks until he's murdered in prison...

    Frank

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  2. Thank you for putting into words what I felt but could not identify when I saw the teams praying for those poor little boys. Pretensious is exactly the right word.

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  3. here's a thought
    Organize an Occupy Penn State movement--this cover up has been about preserving the flow of money generated by the football program for the economic, ego and power benefit of a select few individuals.

    If one is to pray for anything it should be for the Board of Trustees to have the balls to cut every bit of this infected mass out of the school hierarchy as an example for others to consider.

    BTW what about the DA reported missing in 2005 and recently declared dead, who was reported to be hot after this investigation?

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  4. I agree with you to a certain extent, but I think that pretentious would have been if the guys who were in power ... the guys who could have done something. the guys who make football the end all be all ... had prayed. but the guys on the team? c'mon. They are almost kids still themselves. A lot of kids in my neck of the woods (northern Delaware, my daughter's first boyfriend included) who dreamed of going to Penn State ... this is a tragedy. And those kids on the football team? They are innocent. They may not be victims, but they are still innocent.

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  5. Well, I think making a show of public prayer, no matter who it is or what the reason, is pretty pretentious. But my larger point was that it seems strange to pray for the kids, when the god to whom they're presumably praying wasn't much interested in protecting them at the time.

    Difference in point of view, I guess.

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  6. God does not make men rape boys. God does not stop human beings from committing acts that harm others.Those behavior choices are what we humans refer to as 'free will'.

    If men in our society cannot distinguish sex from violence or dominance or aggression, that has nothing to do with religion, or god. It reflects a lack of personal, moral and social "evolution" on the part of many men who still look at other human beings (i.e. women, men,and apparently children) as objects for their sexual gratification.

    God or religion or praying in public has nothing to do with that mind set.

    "Pretentious" is adult men thinking a game and the almighty dollar it generates is more important than a crime against a child. What you call praying in public is a weak attempt by PSU to acknowledge that not everyone at the university aided and abetted the Pedophile Coach Jerry for over 20 years.

    God didn't make Joe Paterno or the other cowards who saw Coach Jerry using children for his own perverted sexual pleasure, keep silent. Their own lack of moral conscience did that. In the absence of God's lightening bolt coming down to stop Pedophile Jerry those nearest to the situation could have done so at any point. Humans are accountable. God is not.
    DD
    from Pennsylvania

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  7. I agree completely, DD. Which is my point: prayer is pointless. If there is a god (doubtful) who didn't intervene to prevent the rapes, why would he respond to prayer? He's either in charge of everything, ie there's no free will; or he's completely either non-existent or intervenes not at all.

    Because if you posit that he responds to prayer, then it must follow that he decides what does or doesn't happen. If he responds to prayer, then he chose to allow the rapes to occur; and there's no difference between allowing it and causing it if he could have intervened but didn't.

    I realize that's a hard concept for believers; but there's no in-between. God is either entirely absent and has no ability to affect events, or he is able to affect events when he chooses, and, therefore, when he doesn't intervene it's because he chose not to.

    Well, okay, I suppose there's a third option: he doesn't always pay attention. I could accept that, but then you have to agree he's not omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-loving.

    ReplyDelete

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