Damn Blasphemers

Its Spring now. My camera is broken. Will get it fixed. Akiva is doing Taikuandou. Both boys are practicing baseball with Haga at school. They started swimming lessons. I will get my butt to the bird-and-flower market to get some seeds and do some planting.

I have not posted about my new company / job… more on that later. But this post is not about the life around me, but rather is a political rant.

I hate blasphemy and, to a lesser extend, idolatry. I don’t mean garden variety blasphemy. I’m not talking about taking the Lord’s name in vain. I’m not talking about crazy speculative fiction about the nature of our religions (ie. Da Vinci Code). I’m not talking about the likes of Monte Python and South Park (my favorite show BTW).

I’m talking about those pig fuckers who say they have knowledge of the Divine Will. And I’m especially talking about those who would claim that the Lord of Mercy, the Heavenly Father (or Mother, if you will), would bring misery onto a people because of the supposed sins of their co-religionists, or because of the sins of others of the same nationality. This is blasphemy because it assumes a deep, specific understanding of the plan of the Creator, which the prophets do not even have. Furthermore, it implies that the Creator plays favorites with his children, like a really bad parent. It denies the idea that G_d is love. It implies that the Creator practices collective punishment.

Its funny that I would be so bothered by the blasphemy of others; I’m not 100% sure I believe in a Supreme Being. Or, I should say, only some of the time I have that faith, and most of the time I don’t. I’m terrified about the prospect of Void and the prospect that we are all just bio-mechanical machines put on this Earth for not greater purpose. But as long as a part of me sometimes believes in a higher power, that part of me knows that the Power does not bring suffering onto us because of our sins. We bring plenty of suffering upon ourselves and others without needing divine retribution.

We Americans have a pretty good idea who many of these Blasphemers are. al-Qaeda and Westboro Baptist Church should probably win awards for most ostentatious displays of blasphemy. I would also include comments by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell after 9/11.

Now I would like to point out the recent comments of a few other butt-heads.

• Captain of the Seasheppard, and Dolphin-rights activist Paul Watson, who wrote the poem below for publication on Facebook on March 14th:

(this is taken from www.sankakucomplex dot com/2011/03/14/sea-shepherd-quake-is-divine-retribution-against-japan/ …. I’m not linking this because site very very NSFW and I want my parents to think I’m relatively wholesome and they may not understand what I did with the URL above)

• Shintaro Ishihara, current Governor of Tokyo City, former movie actor, and denier of the Rape of Nanjing said:

“America’s identity is freedom. France’s identity is freedom, equality and fraternity. Japan has no sense of that. Only greed. Materiality greed, monetary greed.This greed bounds with populism. These things need to be washed away with the Tsunami. For many years the heart of Japanese always bounded with devil. Japanese’s identity is greed. We should avail of this tsunami to wash away this greed. I think this is a divine punishment.”

(above is found on the Wiki page linked above, but became known to me through other sites such as Sankakucomplex)

• And finally, 29% of Americans who believe that natural disasters are often punishment from G_d.

In the case of Ishihara, I’m actually happy; I used to think Japanese were smarter than Americans and would never a stupid loudmouth neo-fascist good-ol’-boy. Now I can feel that, as an American, I’m not intrinsically stupider than Japanese people.

In the end, all this blasphemy means nothing…as long as people don’t believe in it. I’m not going to change anyone’s opinion on the nature of Providentialism here or anywhere. I believe people will say hurtful things and believe vile ideas until we have collectively uplifted ourselves to a higher level of consciousness and moral intelligence. I just wish that would come sooner than later.