I remember when I was in elementary school they forced us to take “Bible” from a rather disgusting and self-righteous bully of a man, and I remember dreading it, hating every second of it.  We’d go to the band hall where this guy would preach Southern Baptist theology to us kids, a captive audience, and I remember going home angry because I was not a Southern Baptist and I had serious objections to that brand of theology.  Many of you may not realize this about me, but when I was a kid I took my Christianity very seriously, and I studied it, thought about it, and I knew it well.  I was  raised in the Church of Christ, and one would be hard-pressed to find a more fundamentalist, literalist, version of protestantism.  The Church of Christ held that in order to be saved, one must be baptised by full immersion.  Such was absolutely essential.  Without it, Hell.  This bully bible-teacher, though, preached the Southern Baptist idea that baptism was optional, that all one really had to do to be saved  was to ask Jesus to enter his or her heart.

I’d go home fuming.  I told my grandmother about it, and she’d get angry that we were forced to listen to the Southern Baptist dogma.  Mom and Dad, too, were displeased.  They did nothing about it, though they could have sued and won if they had had the wherewithal, so I spent much of my elementary years dreading going to school because I hated going to Bible class and resented the Bible teacher for being a false prophet.

In the Church of Christ, women are never permitted to speak when men are present.  Women cannot lead prayers, cannot lead singing, cannot do anything at all but sit there.  This is because  of this verse in Timothy:

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. I Timothy 2:12.

If I was still  in my hardcore Church of Christ days, the woman’s prayer at the preschool program would have been highly offensive to me.  I would have been angry about it.  A woman is simply not permitted to pray if men are in the audience.  Didn’t that woman read her Bible?  It is spelled out clear as day.  Women are required to keep their mouths shut.

So, one doesn’t have to be an atheist to find prayer in public places off-putting.  There are so many flavors of Christianity, so many different interpretations, so many different ways people do things, there is just no way that one prayer can suit everyone.  I know there had to be members of the Church of Christ in the audience, and I can promise you that those people took offence to a woman giving a prayer.  There were also at least two atheists in the room who find prayer sort of silly and embarrassing.

You know how all of this can be avoided?  Don’t pray in public state-sponsored places.  Don’t put it where it doesn’t belong.  That night was about the kids.  It was not a church service or anything remotely connected to church.  Don’t assume everyone in the audience agrees with whatever version of Christianity you happen to practice.  And for Christ’s sakes, stop forcing it on my children because you have at least one atheist father who is very close to raising some Hell.

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One of those mundane tasks is shaving.  I used to look at shaving as a joyless task that took time away from things I’d rather be doing.  I’d mindlessly drag a razor across my face and get it done as fast as possible.  That has changed.  Now one of the most satisfying and enjoyable parts of my day is taking a hot shower and having a good close shave.  A good shave makes me feel good and readies me to attack the day.

In the following, I will show you the tools that have made my shave so enjoyable, and I will detail my shaving method.  I will show you how to shave better and cheaper.

The Tools

My guess is that most men use an electric razor or a cartridge-based system such as the Schick Hydro of the Gillette Mach 3 and the like. If you use and electric razor, my advice is to throw that contraption into the garbage can.  Electric razors are rough on your face, and they provide an exceedingly joyless and inferior shave.

Cartridges are fine, especially if you are in a hurry, but they are expensive, some costing as much as $20 for just a few cartridges.  They are excellent, though, when you are running behind schedule and have to shave quickly.  When I am pressed for time, I use the Schick Hydro 5.  It is forgiving and provides and exceedingly close shave.

If I’m on schedule, I use a safety razor (also called a double-edged razor).  They are things of beauty.  The German-made Merkur is probably the most popular safety razor, though I am partial to the Parker 99r. That is the razor pictured to the left.

The benefits of a double-edged razor are many.  It is quite beautiful, a shiny and heavy piece of equipment. Compared to a modern cartridge-based razor, you will pay more money on the front end, about $35 give or take, but you will save money in the long run, and you will have a razor that, with care, has the potential to last a lifetime.

The double-edged razor blades are far cheaper than cartridges, and you have a wide variety of brands from which to choose.  You can buy a sample pack of razors from Amazon for $20, which might seem expensive, but keep in mind you get 100 blades, an amount that will last for years.  I get a kick out of the variety of razors that come from all over the world, from Russia, to Eqypt, to South Korea, to Germany, and all places in between.  The sample pack is also a good idea because all razor blades have subtle differences, so you can test different brands and find which one you like best.

Even if you find the idea of a safety razor unappealing, one of the most important changes you can make to your shaving routine is tossing out the canned shaving cream and switching to a shaving soap.  Shaving soap is superior to anything found in a can, it is far cheaper, lasts longer, and you’re keeping a steel can out of the landfill.   Van Der Hagen makes an excellent shaving soap that is readily available at Wal-Mart and most drug stores.  I recommend the shea butter variety for a particularly smooth and rich lather.

You will want a high-quality badger hair shaving brush to whip up the lather and apply it to your face.  I recommend you not skimp here and pick up a nice brush.  It will last for years, and come on, they are just cool.

For nicks, pick up a styptic pencil.

Lastly, buy a stand for your brush and razor.  This is important because it allows your brush and razor to air dry, thus prolonging life and usefulness.

The Method

It is worth restating that I still use cartridges when I am in a hurry because they are more forgiving.  I can scrape the Schick Hydro across my face and be done in a couple of minutes.  If I am on schedule, I use the safety razor.  I cannot rush when I shave this way or I end up with a nicked-up face.  This method makes me slow down, pay attention to what I’m doing, and the end result is a very satisfying shaving experience.

First of all, take a good hot shower and thoroughly wash your face.  This softens up the beard and makes shaving easier.

Use hot water to wet the badger brush and with brisk circular strokes whip up a thick lather.  The thicker the better because this is the best protection from nicks.

Next, use circular strokes to lather your face.  The brush will put the lather around each and every whisker, which is another advantage over using the canned stuff and applying it with your hands.  The brush gives you a thorough coating.

Now it is time to shave.  With double-edged razors, you will always get the best shave with a new razor.  You don’t want to milk the life out of these razors like you might be tempted to do with the expensive cartridge razors.  Two to three shaves per razor is what I recommend before changing blades.  These blades are cheap, so you can feel guilt-free about slinging them around.

Wet your razor and get to it.  Slow down and take your time.  A safety-razor is not as forgiving as a cartridge razor, so you do not want to rush.  I can’t stress this enough:  Let the razor do the work.  You do not want to apply pressure, but allow the weight of the razor to do the shaving.  I’ve found this takes practice, especially if you are used to dragging a Schick or Gillette across your face.  These things are heavy for a reason, so use that weight.  Much like you let a hammer drive the nail, let the razor shave your face.

Shave the cheeks first with downward strokes.  Shave downward on your face, shave upward on your neck.  Use long strokes instead instead of quick pecks.  This will help you avoid nicks.  Avoiding nicks takes practice, especially if your face is bumpy like mine.  And sometimes despite my best efforts I get one or two nicks anyway.  That’s why it is important to have a styptic pencil on hand.  Wet the pencil and dot the nicks with it.  The bleeding will stop instantaneously.  Don’t dot your faces with bits of toilet paper.  That looks silly and it is ineffective compared to the pencil.

For a particularly close shave, lather your face again and shave a second time.  The second shave is the difference between an good shave and a great shave.  Your face with be smooth as a baby’s butt.

When your are finished shaving, switch to cold water and rinse your face.  The cold water tightens the pores.

Lastly, apply a high-quality aftershave.  With regard to aftershaves, there are two schools of thought.  Some people argue against alcohol-based splash-on aftershaves because the alcohol dries out the face, but I enjoy the stinging sensation.  On the other hand, alcohol-free lotions also proliferate in my medicine chest.  The lotion nourishes the face and is also soothing in its own right.  I use either one depending on how I feel that day. In winter, when my skin is already dry, I prefer the lotions.  In summer, I enjoy the cooling sensation of the splash-ons.

I recommend you forget the drug store aftershaves and buy the good stuff.  This is where you can add some luxury to your routine.  The shaving products by Taylor of Olde Bond Street are world-class.  I buy mine from amazon, and I am fond of the sandalwood varieties.  The scent is subtle and masculine and soothing.  For a splash-on, I enjoy the Royall Lyme Bermuda line of products, particularly Royall Spyce.  Experiment to find what you like best.

You are done.  You smell good, look good, feel good.  You just shaved as well as a billionaire, and you saved money doing it.  Get dressed, get going, and attack the day.

Shaving with a safety-razor forces me to slow down and enjoy an otherwise mundane task.  It takes something most of us take for granted and transforms it into a exceptional experience.

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And lest I step on anyone’s toes, I want to add that I add my name to this recipe only because I reverse engineered it.  In other words, I have never seen the actual recipe for this potato salad, but I recreated it, over the course of many, many batches, from the information I collected from my taste buds.  Perhaps the gods will take that into account.

All of that said, and now that I’ve committed to committing this horrible sin, let me provide some background.

As far as I know, It originates in Tupelo, Mississippi, at the defunct TKE drugstore, which was one of those soda-fountain drug stores in which one could get his or her medications, a sandwich, and a vanilla Coke. It closed well before my time, but the potato salad that was served there is preserved today at Finney’s Sandwish & Soda Shop in Tupelo.  Finney’s is about as old school as it gets.  No fancy-pants deli, but white-bread sandwiches such as pimento cheese, chicken salad, and tuna fish, among others.  There one finds his fresh-squeezed orangeade and lemonade, milkshakes and malts.  But one doesn’t eat at Finney’s for the soft drinks or the sandwiches.  One eats there to have what I can only call the best potato salad in the known universe.

Its uniqueness comes from its consistency and texture. This potato salad more closely resembles mashed potatoes.  It is silky smooth, pastel yellow, flavored with onions, peppers, mayonnaise and mustard.

Ingredients:

7 or 8 Russet potatoes, peeled and cubed. (I’ve also made it with Yukon gold potatoes, to great effect)

2 medium yellow onions, minced

2 stalks of celery, minced

1 bell pepper, minced

1 4 oz. jar pimento peppers

7 or 8 heaping tbsp. Mayonnaise (Dukes if you can get it)

3 or 4 tbsp. Yellow mustard

Freshly-ground black pepper

Salt

Procedures:

Peel and cube potatoes. Mince onions, celery, and bell pepper. In a large pot, add potatoes and boil them in salted water. About five minutes into the boil, add onions, celery, and bell pepper. Boil for another ten minutes or so until the potatoes are falling apart, thoroughly cooked. Let sit for about fifteen minutes in the water. Drain and return to the pot or to a large mixing bowl. With a potato masher, mash the hell out of the potatoes and vegetables, as though making smooth mashed potatoes. Add mayonnaise. Stir. Add mustard. Stir. Add freshly ground black pepper, lots of it so that it is good and speckled throughout. Drain pimentos and add them.  Stir.  Add salt to taste. Stir.

The potato salad should be smooth and creamy. It can be eaten  immediately, or it can be chilled and served cold. It is delicious either way. To really knock socks off, make it the day before and let the flavors marry in the refrigerator.

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Deandre Poole, a professor at Florida Atlantic University employed an activity from a textbook in his course about cultural studies.  The activity asked students to write the word Jesus on a piece of paper and then stand on the paper.  Assuming that most students would balk at such a request, Dr. Poole would then have an entry to discuss the power of symbols.

One might think that such is rather benign, a fairly run-of-the-mill critical thinking assignment that might have sparked interesting classroom discussion. Perhaps students walked out of the classroom that day with a deeper understanding and awareness about the power of symbolic representations in their lives.

But Ryan Rotella, a Mormon student in Dr. Poole’s class, would have nothing of it. He refused to stand on the paper (which is how students were expected to react), and “claims he was punished by being suspended from the class” for his refusal. We know this because Mr. Rotella took his complaint to the media, which was quickly snatched up by the right-wing blogosphere and turned into a national story.

The story was brought to my attention by means of social media. Linking to the story, a Christian friend was outraged, absolutely outraged, that students would be forced to step on a piece of paper with Jesus written on it.  Look at how badly Christians are persecuted, my friend claimed.

Immediately, though, I recognized that something about this story was amiss. It just made no sense. After all, secular colleges and universities are places of learning, places to try out different ideas and different perspectives. Individuality, critical thinking, are encouraged. I could not imagine a student being suspended from college for exercising his individuality, for disagreeing with with a professor, or for refusing to do an activity. It didn’t add up.

So, I did some digging, and sure enough there was more to the story. According to Dr. Poole, not only did Mr. Rotella refuse to do the activity, he asserted that being asked to do the activity was an affront to his Mormon faith.  Rather than make his point respecfully and participate in the spirit of collegiality, Mr. Rotella accosted his professor after class.  He repeatedly punched the palm of his hand and told Dr. Poole that he wanted to punch him.  Dr. Poole did exactly what I would have done.  He reported the encounter to campus police.

None of this, that the student accosted and threatened the teacher, as far as I’m aware, was reported in the right-wing media, which is easy to understand. In this story, one gets almost all of right-wing boogeymen in one tidy package.  One gets the godless liberal Democrat professor intent on dismantling Christianity and persecuting Christians.  Never mind that the student was far out of line.  Never mind that Dr. Poole is a devout Baptist who was just doing his job.  People who believe such narratives must have no idea what actually happens in college classrooms.

Such stories circulate with some regularity because they stoke the powerful persecution meme in Christians.  The memes concept, first articulated by biologist Richard Dawkins in his The Selfish Gene, likens ideas to living organisms.  Like living organisms, ideas are subject to evolutionary pressures.  The fittest among them survives while the weakest go extinct.    The persecution meme is particularly fit because it keeps Christians on the defensive.  The persecution meme  was taken up by Craig A. James in his excellent book The Religion Virus.  In my review of that book, I write:

In America, everyone is free to practice religion, and Christians are the majority religion and have astounding power and voice in our culture, yet it is never enough.  They continually claim they are persecuted because they can’t erect monuments on courthouse steps.  Gay people are a threat to their marriages.  Schools can’t sanction prayer, which means they are persecuted.  They can strike out to any group which disagrees with them with impunity, but if one fights back, he or she is persecuting.  This meme keeps them on the defensive, in a continual frenzy.

Of course, Dr. Poole’s objective that day, to show students the power of symbols, was demonstrated with astoundingly unreflective irony by Mr. Rotella, yet I’m sure Dr. Poole wishes the point hadn’t been made quite so well.  He has endured all manner of harassment, from calls that he be fired to threats on his life. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education:

“He said he has received hate mail and death threats, some of them coming in forms particularly hurtful to an African American. ‘One of the threats said that I might find myself hanging from a tree,’ he said.”

On the positive side, the attacks on Dr. Poole have brought him support of the faculty and has inspired vigorous support for academic freedom.

Academic freedom is a concept that ought to be easy for most people to understand. Simply put, academic freedom is the freedom to inquire, to ask questions, regardless of how unpopular those questions might be. Without academic freedom, the creation of knowledge is hampered and stifled, if not made outright impossible. Galileo Galilei is often cited as an example of what happens when academic freedom is restricted. Galileo noticed that the Biblical view that the Earth was the center of the universe was wrong, and when he published those findings. that put him into conflict with the Pope. He was tried by the Inquisition and found guilty of heresy, forced to recant his findings and imprisoned for the rest of his life, all for asking a question about the universe and coming to the right answer.

It is an age-old problem.  There are those who advance knowledge, and there are those who want to prevent that advancement, and unfortunately, those who have sought to stop the advancement of knowledge have often done so on religious grounds.

In my career, I’ve had the honor of working with many fine, smart, and dedicated teachers who want nothing more than to teach their students to become better thinkers, more savvy participants in the world of ideas. I know many dedicated teachers who love their students, who challenge them and guide them toward appreciating and understanding a complex world.  Only once have I encountered a teacher who, in my view, committed a serious ethical breach that should have gotten him fired.

Years ago when I had just started my career, I had dismissed my class and I was walking the hallway on the way to my car.  As I passed a classroom, I overheard a teacher say, “Philosophy proves, over and over, that God exists.”  Naturally, such a claim piqued my interest, so I stood outside his door and listened.  If this teacher had the proof of God, I had to know what it was.  It was a philosophy class, and the teacher was explaining the cosmological argument for the existence of God.

I was aghast. No philosophy teacher worth his salt would ever make such a claim. The cosmological argument has some serious flaws.  Furthermore, anyone who has taken philosophy 101 (from an ethical teacher) knows that there is no airtight philosophical proof for God’s existence, yet there he was, this instructor, telling his students that there was such a proof.   And so, those students walked out into the world that night believing something that is  not true. That is not to say that an airtight philosophical proof for the existence of god won’t be worked out some day, just that it hasn’t happened yet.  Students had the right to get the truth about that, but what they got was a lie.

I waited until he dismissed the class and I confronted him about it.  I asked him, “I overheard you tell your students that you had a philosophical proof for the existence of God, and I’m very curious about what it is.”  To which, the instructor bobbed and weaved and never gave me a straight answer. I let it go, and later I learned that he was a pastor at a church and was teaching philosophy part-time. Imagine that. A preacher unable to separate his role as preacher from his role as teacher, a preacher willing to do whatever it takes to foist his beliefs on his students, even if he had to lie.

And that is what strikes me about all of this mess, from that lying preacher, to my Christian friend’s over-the-top reaction, to the death threats Dr. Poole has received, to the idea that this lesson was “insensitive” or “offensive” and should never have been done in the first place.   Such reactions betray an astounding lack of faith. Any Christian, any Muslim, any Jew, anyone with religious faith, should welcome critical inquiry and support academic freedom with passion. After all, if one has deeply held faith and conviction in Christianity, no amount of questioning, no amount of standing on paper with Jesus written on it could possibly shake that faith.  Anyone who objects to standing on a piece of paper on religious grounds is telling the world that his or her faith is precisely as fragile as that paper.  His or her faith is paper-thin.

And if one’s faith cannot stand up to a trivial classroom exercise, what does that say about it?

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But the essence is just this:  Harris has been misquoted and misrepresented in a deliberate attempt at defamation, for no other reason than speaking the truth with clarity and precision.

What strikes me about the attacks is that they are unscrupulous and dishonest, but it was this post by Lean that made it clear to me that those who attack the so-called new atheists on ridiculous trumped up and baseless grounds have absolutely no interest in helping the Muslims who are poor victims of “Islamaphobia” (what a ridiculous term).  This is all about defaming the vociferous and brutally honest new atheists. Sam Harris, the face of new atheism, has endured the brunt of those attacks.

Harris is a man I deeply admire because he is an academic in the best sense.  He takes academic honesty, academic integrity, seriously.  In every word he writes, it is clear to me that he lives those values.  Those values are at the core of his identity.  He reminds me of Socrates, who was no respecter of persons, and, as a friend of mine is fond of saying, without the protections afforded by academic freedom, and in the United States the freedom of speech, Socrates always drinks the hemlock.

There is no such thing as god.  Everyone knows this, and I’ve long maintained that view.  No one with a good working brain really believes that the invisible sky-god exists.  No, I find that the truly devout fall into three categories:

1. The stupid
2. The desperate
3. The emotionally stunted

We might as well have a debate about the existence of Santa.  Anyone with a normally-developed brain knows the emperor wears no clothes.  Harris recognizes this, which is why his writing doesn’t address the validity of god-belief, but the horrible ways people behave in the name of religion.  I myself have tired of arguing about god with stupid and desperate and emotionally stunted people.  It is settled.  God-belief is ridiculous, and few people really have it.  Religion is all about the trappings, the community, the powerful memes that exploit our human herd instincts.  Nothing more.  For those reasons people defend stupid ideas and do horrendous things.

I am tired of people who can’t be honest with themselves.  That is not my problem.

It is the horrendous things that I want to make the central point of this piece, and from here I can make it rather briefly.  My argument is just this:  All around us, we find hatred.  Our arguments are mispresented and misquoted.  We are defamed.  We are libeled.  We are the subject of unmitigated hatred because we tell the truth.

Atheism activists who waste time debunking creationism, for instance, are wasting their time by picking the low-hanging fruit.  Nothing is to be gained by arguing with stupid people about things that have already been settled.

How many of you have received death threats for being an out atheist?

How many of you have lost friends and family?

How many of you have suffered from bigotry and discrimination?

Atheism activism has to start focusing on our rights to basic human dignity, to respect, and to acceptance.  We have to start fighting against libel, against hatred, against bigotry.   Our cause, I’m convinced, has to make human rights its focus.

I believe that sooner or later, as the fundamentalists become more and more irrelevant, and therefore more dangerous, we are going to see an escalation of violence committed against atheists.  Christianity is, at it’s core, a violent religion with exceedingly stupid, desperate, and emotionally stunted adherents, and combine that with the dishonest charlatans, the unscrupulous commentators, who gladly lead the herd to do ridiculous things, and I foresee a real disaster on the horizon.  We have to fight for our dignity.  We have to focus our energy fighting for our basic rights to exist, and to speak the truth, to an irrational world.

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I’m the guy that people call when their computers go on the fritz.  I’ve been working with PC hardware for twelve years, I build all of my own PCs (currently there are four of them humming away in my house), and I’ve yet to encounter a problem that I couldn’t solve, one way or another.  Going back to my first build back in the year 2000, I’ve drifted toward Linux as my operating system of choice, and then quickly hauled ass back to Windows.  I’m not proud of that fact.  Linux is the choice of the PC enthusiast, the guy who really knows what he is doing.  That guy can take the command line and make a PC sing.

Except, I have a strong aversion to the command line and the learning curve it takes to get good at it.  There’s not much I’d want to do with a PC from the command line.  No, I need a good web browser and a good word processor, and that’s about it.  Give me a computer that can do those two things well, and I’m happy.

But Linux.  How many hours of my life have I wasted so that I could tweak it to my liking only to have it lock up, stop running graphics, or just any kind of odd and quirky screw-up you can imagine?  I’d labor at the command line for hours trying to fix, say, the graphics server, only to get so damned infuriated that I popped in my Windows install disk and said, “fuck it.”

Well, apparently I’m a glutton for punishment because I am at it again.  I am writing this on a PC running OpenSuse, and it is working, as of this very second, just like I want it to.  In fact, of the distros I’ve tried over the last few weeks, OpenSuse is my favorite because it is stable.

In the following, I look at the five distros I tried and explain how OpenSuse won the day.  Ranked according to my preference.

1. OpenSuse - Looks really good, but networking didn’t work out of the box, so I had to screw with it to make it connect to the wifi.  That wasn’t too difficult.  This irritated me because all of the distros I tried worked right out of the box with the wifi.  It is also an RPM based distro, which means eventually you get into RPM hell (dependencies, dependencies, dependencies), but to this point, software installation hasn’t been an issue.  I’ve had Opensuse running for a week now, and it is rock-solid.  The fonts look good, I have all the software I need installed, and I am happy.
2. Mageia – I love Mageia, but it wouldn’t turn on the screensaver.  I mean, never.  The fonts also look like shit.  It is also an RPM based distro . . . RPM hell.  It lacks the smooth feel of Opensuse and Sabayon.
3. Sabayon – has a goofy package manager (Rigo) but aside from that, it has good fonts and it works well out of the box.   It just has a good and slick feel to it.  I’ve had it break the same way twice.  Fool me twice . . .
4. Linux Mint (KDE) – There’s a lot to like about Mint, except the fact that I would get it just like I like it and it would lock up.  I’m not installing crazy software, mind you, just things like VLC and Filezilla.  The thing would just lock at random.  Add to that I’d wake up every morning and it refused to come out of suspension.  MATE Mint doesn’t seem to have those problems, but I want a KDE distribution because I enjoy the Plasma widgets.
5. Fedora – I didn’t like the new gnome look, and that was enough.  It seemed stable, though, and maybe I’d give it another shot with KDE.

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Let us follow the sin “logic”:

1. God knows everything that was and ever will be.  He is also all-powerful and can do anything he wants (which I assume is why he can break his own commandments).
2. God created Adam and Eve, and since he knows everything that was and ever will be, and since he could have chosen not to create Adam and Eve (he’s all powerful), he knew that Eve would get tricked by the talking snake and eat the forbidden fruit.
3. When Eve does what God already knew she would do, He punishes Adam and Eve by kicking them out of the Garden of Eden, giving them the harsh life.
4. Not only that, but all of us must pay for what God already knew Eve would do (life ain’t easy for most of us).  So, God created people just so that they would suffer.
5. Throwing people a salvation lifeline, God sends his only begotten son to die on the cross for everyone’s sins (meaning, Adam and Eve’s sins).  God already knew he would do this.  So, God created the problem and he created the solution.
6. Except, billions of people who reject Biblically-based religions, or simply don’t know about them, don’t get the salvation, so they go to Hell (God already knew this).
7. God has a particularly old-school predilection for animal and human sacrifice.  I do not know why the slaughter of his son would be the cure we need for the disease He created, other than He-Just-Said-So.

In sum, God created all things, knows all things, so God created sin.

God punishes people for doing what he already knew they would do, what he created them expressly to do. (Sin).

If people reject the clear absurdity of all of the above, he burns them forever in Hell (which means God is not just, but that is an article for another time).

God already knew he was creating the vast majority of people to burn in Hell (therefore, God is not good.  He’s actually kind of an asshole).

Why do I waste one iota of my energy on explicating things that are clearly absurd?

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If you managed to get through that first paragraph, let me lighten my rhetoric and explain how it sounds to a non-Christian by asking my Christian readers:  How do you think “I am so blessed” would sound to the starving Ethiopian child pictured above?  Exercise your naturally human sense of empathy and answer that question.

You see, you are not blessed, Christian reader.  You are lucky.

This child in the picture above is not only starving to death, he is going to burn in Hell because odds are he is not a Christian.  He is suffering the terrible life of starvation just to go on suffering in Hell.  Christian reader, that is what you believe.  Admit that to yourself.

If you were born in Ethiopia, you would be doomed to the same fate as that starving child.  You are lucky you were born in America, where food is plentiful, and Jesus is found on every street corner.  You are so “blessed”.  My question is, why does your god not bless that starving child?

Every single day, on Facebook, I see something like this:

My cancer is in remission, and I just thank God for blessing me.

Dear Christian friend, you are not in remission because of God.  You are in remission because of the diligent work of scientists who invented and who are continually refining cancer treatment.  You are in remission because the United States has the best medical system in the world.  You are in remission because of those incredible nurses.  Give credit where credit is due.

And furthermore, understand that there are plenty of your Christian and non-Christian brothers and sisters who were not similarly blessed.  Thousands.  Millions.  Show some decency.  Show some basic human decency.

You are not blessed.  You are lucky.  You are lucky you were born in the United States instead of Africa.  You are lucky you were born in a time of exponential growth in the sciences (even though many of you do not understand science and in fact oppose it at seemingly every turn, biting the very hand that feeds you).

Humility.  Learn the concept that your savior expects of you.  Next time you tell the world how blessed you are, realize that that starving African child, innocent and hungry and dying, deserves to be blessed, too.  Where is your God?  Why doesn’t he do something?

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