was that my email being read on the radio? I suppose it was...oops.

Listening to an angry guest on a local radio show broadcast by our Canadian public broadcaster "CBC", I developed some rather angry emotions about the major current conservative viewpoints of "anti marijuana", "anti climate/science" and "anti homosexual", and decided to send this rather unloving, poorly thought out letter to the station.

Hemp competes with corn, cotton, and other major corporate centralized industries, as well as disrupting clear corporate pharmaceutical interests as pointed out by the guest you had on the phone.

The Harper government represents an extremist, delusional, religious agenda that, like the clerics in the Muslim theocracies, makes use of "their sacred unquestionable values" to prevent our society from making use of hemp, doing something about alternative energy research, and eroding the rights of our homosexual minorities.  Under the guise of "doing their god's will", they are, in fact, performing the will of corporate interests, because it is so easy to make the gullible religious masses believe whatever they want as long as it comes from one of the pulpits in their closed, dark halls. 

As Voltaire said, "get them to believe absurdities and you can make them commit atrocities".

Thinking to myself, ah, I got that off my chest and chances are they will never read something like that on air.  But, they did.  I didnt hear it, but my evangelical conservative mother mentioned it to me that one of her fellow churchgoing friends pointed out my "rather hateful" rant was played on the radio and asked her if that was indeed "her son??"

I should point out that while many of my posts on this blog site are very anti religious, in this case my rant is not against all religions, or even against Christianity.  For the most part, Christians are relatively benign, reasonable people with little to differentiate them from anyone else.  They largely do not dispute (or even care about) evolution or the climate issues, and generally do a lot to make the world a better place at least when it comes to helping people in poverty, and many of them probably partake in the odd toke now and again like most people.  This letter  was aimed squarely at James Dobson & Dominionism and Christian Reconstructionist politics.  I see those movements as a direct threat to our secular democracy, and its important to remember, modern democracy is not a biblical ideology in the least, it has no roots in biblical teaching - nor does a "republic" either.  This movement that somehow has managed to twist the bible into being in lockstep with 4 key principals while ignoring others that are clearly mandated in the bible.  The three are anti-hemp, anti gay, anti abortion, and anti science (evolution in particular)

The bible says nothing about hemp, drugs, marijuanna specifically.  Nothing.  The bible is also silent on abortion, except for clearly condoning it in a few circumstances.  There is no dispute the bible is anti gay, but its also anti a lot of things that are routinely practiced by James Dobson and his ilk.  (eating meat, sacrificing animals, women allowed to speak in church etc).  There was no "science" as we know it at the time of the bible, evolution was not an existing theory, and the bible is truly vague at best when it comes to the origin of the universe.

That said, the bible is EXTREMELY clear about one thing.  Poverty.  Jesus seems to have no tolerance for the rich.  He says at one point it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.  It is incredibly ironic that the greatest concentration of these "fundamentalist christians" are in the parts of the earth where the worlds wealth is the most concentrated. (Texas, New York, Southern California etc).

Anyway, the 4 non poverty related things like being anti homosexual, anti science, anti hemp, and anti climate/science/evolution play very well into the hands of the largest corporations in the world IE Exxon, Gilead Pharmaseuticals (controlled by one of the most powerful Christian Reconstructionists, Donald Rumsfeld) etc.  Hence my email.  Could I have included all this explanation and context, I would have been more comfortable hitting send the other day but I posted it here instead on the off chance some people heard the broadcast and know my blog.

Thanks for reading!

My friend is off to find a portal to the fourth dimension in the Andes.

So, my friend just stopped by and is now on his way to South America to find a portal to the fourth dimension to beseech the "White Brotherhood" of spirit beings to not unleash mother nature's menstral lava on us ignorant self centered earthlings in 2012.

Once he enters the fourth dimension, he plans on keeping in touch via telepathy, so that was nice.

I'm actually pretty sad about this. Another victim of religion / spirituality who is merely taking it to its logical conclusion. Once you start down the rabbit hole of "accepting that there is more to life than what you can see, hear, taste, touch, or scientifically prove exists", anything goes really. Billions of people believe more strongly in an imaginary place we all go to when we die than in people who live in other countries, and would see those other REAL people die before they let them insult their imaginary hope in pretend lands and beings.

Once you remove science and reason from the picture, you cant really question anything. There is no accountability, no standard by which to judge what is real and what is imagined. In church I could tell you that God told me that I should jump fully clothed into a strangers swimming pool, and you couldn't really dispute that as the Bible doesnt really address that. You could try, but without using science and reason, it would be pretty difficult without invoking a lot of mumbo jumbo yourself.

Mmmm...mumbo jumbo sounds like a delicious hot dog at this moment.

Anyway, I hope my friend discovers his sanity while he is there. Seriously. Given my past conversations with him there is less likelyhood he will find that than the portal to the fourth dimension, but I certainly am deeply saddened by his life decision to throw away a promising career as a biochemist to head into oblivion.

If anyone can offer advice as to how to address or help these kinds of people in a world totally obsessed with ignorance, spirituality and imaginary gods and monsters, please comment.

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.

Do you believe that that the above statement is in any way ridiculous? Is it
irrelevant? Is it a raving of any kind? Is its source guided by the phases of
the moon? Perhaps you feel that someone who thinks a wise men listening to
advice is something that should commit a person to be restrained and placed in
an institution.

If you take specific verses, sentences, or phrases, then yes, they can very well make sense if placed in a completely different context.

However, if you take the Bible as a whole, which I understand it is very seriously intended to be taken as such, the foundation is the premise that it is the inerrant word of god, dictated to man, largely through a mysterious inspiration process.

It has been argued for centuries by many scholars, not the least of which is famed Egyptologist Gerald Massey, that the bible was not the first to state the stories and quotes you are referring to and certainly not the only historical document to contain most if not all its "wisdom".

So, taken in that context, the whole context, it can be fairly stated that since god is imaginary, anyone claiming to literally "talk to god" or "receive direct instructions from god" to be a raving lunatic, or categorically insane.

My statement was terse but not invalid. There are far greater pieces of literature in existence that deserve much more consideration that this injustifiably revered work of fiction.

The primary difference between the Bible and Science is that the Bible starts with a conclusion, then attempts (pathetically IMO) to justify its position in light of readily observable evidence. Science the other hand, starts with a question and never really reaches a conclusion.

It is a constant refinement of position that gives the truth the reverence it deserves, that it is illusive and difficult to discover, perhaps even unknowable by our tiny species."