Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Forgive me Father Firesmith, For I Have Sinned

Early one morning, as in somewhere around three, I was talking to a co-worker while waiting for the road crew to start work again. A piece of machinery had died, and they had another on standby, but it would take an hour or so for it to arrive.

“I don’t really believe in God,” he said in a near whisper.

As the only atheist most people in south Georgia have ever met, I was used to this sort of admission. In the four different offices I had worked out of in my career, three of them had at least one person to tell me their faith was for show, and in an office where I worked temporarily, two people sought me out to tell me they lacked faith.

None of these people were willing to go public with this information, and I wasn’t going to out them.

Most people who confess, or unconfess, enjoy their life the way they are living it. They like going to church functions, they like the friends they’ve met while there, and they hope their kids grow up to be part of the same community they are involved with.

They simply do not believe.

“I never have believed,” the co-worker continued. “It’s never made sense to me.”

And this is how it happened with me, too. I never have bought into the whole supernatural thing. It’s like at Christmas when you hear the older kids talk about finding presents hidden in the store room, or suddenly the store room door is locked all of the time, or some kid wakes up to the sound of a bike being put together on Christmas morning. After a while, Santa Claus seems implausible, and finally, impossible.

The problem with Santa is parents realize threatening their kids into good behavior over his visit works. The same holds true for religion. It’s not a question of actual belief but rather having a system in place to guide behavior. Sin is bad because God said so and that’s the end of the debate.

It works, to a degree, or at least enough people pretend to believe, and that also works.

The wild thing about Christianity is you can judge people harshly for not believing, and trust me here, being honest about not believing in south Georgia has no benefits whatsoever, is that the same people most condemning of atheism are the same people who have the most trouble staying faithful in the marriages. Adultery was common among the men I worked with, and some of them were the most ardent fans of going to church every time the door opened.

Oh, but no worries, they are forgiven.

Martin Luther changed the way Christians looked at the ethereal world when he nailed his writings on the church door. At the top of the list his disapproval of people being able to pay the church to forgive their sins. Yet what does American Christianity do but call people good simply because they show up for church? They pay to keep the lights on, to keep the widescreen televisions blaring out the image of the high paid preacher, they have a place to go on Sunday morning to pay to be forgiven for what they did on after work during the weekdays.

Nothing has changed since 1507, has it?

Take Care,

Mike

Posted on by Mike Firesmith

All Preachers Are Grifters

Watching the cursor blink, waiting, waiting, the first sentence was going to read, “I don’t like preachers” which would have been accurate, but imperfectly so. Let us try this, shall we:

I dislike preachers.

Yes, that’s more to the point, stronger, and says what I want the sentence to say.

This morning, zero early hours, I’m in the waiting room at the doctor’s office to give blood for my yearly checkup. I hope I don’t have rabies. After almost dying a couple of years ago or so, I’m more than a little paranoid about getting looked at once a year.

            The waiting room fills up, like a wading pool of sickness and injury, and the room may or may not be a launching pad into the Great Unknown.

            A man is talking to a woman, and he’s loud. Loudly loud. He has a spiel. I’m under the impression these two have never met, but he keeps telling her how “blessed” she is and how “blessed” he is, and how “blessed” it is to be here, bless his heart.

            He laughs every time he finishes a sentence, as if he’s a comedian. And the laugh is the same laugh every time. It has four syllables, like Ha ha ha HA! With the last syllable accentuated. I stop reading to watch. He’s talking loud enough for everyone in the room to hear him, and when any preacher does this, he’s sharpening his knives.

            He asks the woman questions, “Where do you go to church Ha ha ha HA?”

            “Oh, I go over there on the west side of town, it’s Unified Christian Hypocrites, and. . .”

            “Do you like it there Ha ha ha HA?”

            “Oh yes, it’s a good church, we…”

            “Who is your pastor? Ha Ha Ha HA”

He’s not only pumping her for information, getting her to talk faster and faster to keep up with him, he’s also making her feel more and more like she should. Used car salesmen use this technique to work people into buying a car. It’s fast, effective, and slimy as the feel of a preacher’s hand on your shoulder.

But this is minor deception, a sort of exercise, warming him up for bigger game, and I can feel it. The only difference between a preacher and a homeless person lying to get a few bucks is the homeless person has to be somewhat honest; preachers tell the biggest and the most lies than anyone you will ever meet, and their livelihoods depend on their ability to be great liars. This man is good.

“Mr. Marshall?” the receptionist calls, and the preacher stands up, makes a fuss about saying good by to the woman and have a blessed day.

“I’m Reverend Marshall,” he says with just a trace of that judgmental tone of voice that she should have known that was his title but she was too sinful to be aware. I’m sitting close enough to hear him. So were you, if you were in the same zip code.

“Reverend Marshall, you’re a new patient, we’re going to need cash, or a credit card, or a cashier’s check for your first visit,” the receptionist tells him. There’s a sign on the wall that has this information on it, at eye level, in a 48 font, bold. I’m also sitting close enough for the fumes coming off Marshall to choke me. He’s wearing some sort of perfume, cloying, sweet, and powdery, like cotton candy scented drywall dust.

“The Lord takes care of me,” Marshall says loudly.

The receptionist is a woman who has heard it all before, even if she hasn’t heard this before, it doesn’t matter.

“Yes sir, I’m certain he does. You’re a new patient, we’re going to need cash, or a credit card, or a cashier’s check for your first visit,” she repeats, and doesn’t bat an eye.

“The Lord takes care of me,” Marshall says loudly. “Ha ha ha HA!”

The receptionist sits there, counts to ten, silently, and then repeats what she’s already said.

Marshall laughs and waits.

The receptionist cocks her head to one side, and waits.

Marshall pulls out his wallet and says, loudly, “Money is the root of all evil, ha ha ha HA!”

“Thank you, sir,”

I give three vials of blood to the phlebotomist, while Marshall is talking to a guy who looks older than me by half again. Marshall is doing his rapid fire question routine but the other guy is hard of hearing, and hilarity ensues.

I pick up my paperwork and leave the medical professionals to the circus that’s come to town.

Take Care,

Mike

Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Cottonmouths and Santa Claus

When I got involved in Snake Identification in Facebook groups, I had no idea there was a culture, and subculture, that revolved around snake myths, and snake identification. I should have known, for if you get ten people together in a room for a week, by the end of that seven days, you’ll find narratives that have no basis in fact at all. Three people will believe the narrative, three will accuse the first three of lying, three will be indifferent, and one will have never heard of it.

Even before we are able to fully understand our mother language, as infants, we are fed the myth of Santa Claus. Every year, as we grow up, we see photos, videos, movies, hear songs, listen to adults and other children talk about Santa Claus, so we believe, because why wouldn’t we? Why would all of this be based on a lie?

But it is a lie. It’s not a misunderstanding, or some tightly held religious belief with no evidence, no, it is an outright lie.

Whether you want to admit it or not, whether or not you think it matters or not, parents teaching their children about Santa Claus is teaching those same kids, once they discover the truth, that lying is acceptable, and even more desirable, than the truth. To use a lie to modify someone’s behavior, like parents do when they tell their kids if they misbehave Santa won’t come, is perfect.

Here’s the fallout: Children will so reverently believe this lie they’ll repeat it to other children, and among the kids, will be stories of how one or the other, or some group, stayed up late, or got up early, and actually saw Santa. Others will see something in the sky and know, really know, deep down inside, they truly and honestly saw a red nose, brightly leading the sleigh through the sky. Moreover, as the kids get older and the lie gets harder to defend, and the truth becomes glaringly clear, both parents and children will pretend to believe, as to keep the lie alive, for just a little while longer.

Gee, Mike, that’s certainly a buzz kill, but what’s any of this got to do with Cottonmouths?

Here in The South, as I was growing up, I was told the tale of Hoops Snakes who would grab their tails in their mouths and roll like a hoop to chase you. Then there was the story of how Coachwhip snakes would chase you and whip you with their tails. And rattlesnakes had a poison dust in their rattles that would kill the unwary. Snakes hypnotized birds to catch them. And if you killed a rattlesnake, its mate would hunt you down by the next day. And there was the story of the water skier who fell into a nest of moccasins, and as rescuers tried to drag the lifeless body from the lake, the snakes were still hanging on!

Also, Cottonmouths would chase you.

None of this is true, of course, and most of these myths have slowly evaporated as videos become more and more ubiquitous, and the evidence for such snake activity becomes more and more impossible to prove.

Yet the one myth that seems to be the hardest to dispel is the one of Cottonmouths chasing people. In ID groups, long and irritating threads will stretch on and on, with the person claiming to be chased never relenting, never giving an inch, but yet never producing a photo or a video that their claim is true. They grew up hearing about people being chased, and they feel they are not part of their own culture if they do not produce a story about nearly being killed as they barely escaped the deadly fangs of the moccasin.

Yet there are issues here, and those issues are based in reality. The truth of the matter is while these snakes do strike swiftly, on land they are remarkably slow. The Cottonmouth got its moniker by its eponymous mouth agape position, showing its fangs. But it is impossible to chase anyone from this position as it is a purely defensive posture! Moreover, there have only been four recorded deaths from Cottonmouth bite in the United States. If these animals are so dangerous, and they do chase people, why is it so few people have been killed? Why is it so few people are bitten? Why is it we have no videos, why not hundreds of them, if the myth is not a myth?

The truth is we have “The Santa Claus Effect” here. People have been fed a lie, by people who were fed the lie, and each generation passes it own without thought. It’s true not because it happened but because it’s part of the culture. People lie about it, and find a ready audience for their lies, because they have already told the lie themselves. To argue this point is to find a group of people emotionally invested in what they are telling, and what they have been told.

If you really want to piss people off, tell the truth. Tell a four year old child the truth, Santa doesn’t exist and watch their parents explode in anger. It’s magic, the parents will tell you, it’s wonderful, that is, until the bill comes due after Christmas and all the fake snow and tinsel has really brought is credit card payments and a child who believes no amount of toys is quite enough to keep the magic alive.

The Cottonmouth tale is much like this. People want excitement, and safe fear. They want to feel brave and heroic as they blast away at a creature that will run away if given a chance, and who has harmed no one. They want to feel like they have, once again, conquered the wild by beating to death a snake they have always heard was dangerous, and they have always told people was dangerous, without giving a single thought to the truth.

Take Care,

Mike

Posted on by Mike Firesmith · 3 Comments

The Death of Christianity

Back in high school, I began to drift away from the beliefs of my parents, my siblings, my friends, and community. It made no sense to me there might be some old white dude in a bathrobe and sandals, waving a shepherd’s crook around flinging people into Hell forever because they never got dunked in water.

The Christians I knew back then were dying out. The church was changing. There was a time you sat with your family in a hard wood pew in a dimly lit wooden church, and listened to a preacher talk for an hour, if you were lucky. Being a kid didn’t get you out of it. There wasn’t a separate place for children. Infants were held by their mothers; little kids were forced to be still and quiet.

The people in the church did things for the community and nothing was ever said about it. No one ever mentioned the fact that three or four members of the church got together and went over to someone’s house and cleaned up their yard because of sickness or poor health. People donated food because they could. Christianity didn’t need a presentation because it was a lifestyle.

Today’s churches don’t resonate with people because it’s more of a commercial than a message. There are huge television screens, microphones, piped in music, soundtracks, and all of this costs a lot of money. Churches are businesses now. There’s a contract to sign, autopay, direct deposit, and money is a big concern.

Churches have nurseries, ball fields, gyms, carpet, full kitchens, security systems, professionally designed websites, their own email domains, and it’s more of a social club than a spiritual journey.

Atheism is getting easier. Leaving the church isn’t what it once was. Now, it’s like walking away from a bar, or a restaurant. The depth of spirituality of Christians is as superficial as the strip mall buildings they’re housed in. There’s no bond of generations of families who sat in the same pews three generations ago. Convenience of parking, how pretty the lawn is, and how big the building is, yeah, that’s what the Christians are these days.

There are multi-millionaires running billion dollar industries that call themselves Christians, and there are millions of people following this in the name of a man who told people to sell their belongings and give the money to the poor.

I never truly believed. I never accepted the idea of a god of any sort, not even when Christians were good people, conscious of their beliefs at all times, and the driving force in every community. Oh yeah, the judgmental and racist churches that littered the south were a problem for many of us, but overall, I miss the Christians, those who were good people.

Christianity, if it is not dead, is on the brink of extinction. Greed, the love of political power, the raw and ugly commercialism of Christian holidays, and the idea that presentation trumps faith and service is killing the church my grandparents knew.

I always hoped to see the day religion died in America. I just never expected to be this sad about it, and I never thought for a minute it would look this goddam ugly.

Take Care,

Mike

Posted on by Mike Firesmith · 1 Comment

Christianity Is Dead

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Once upon a time, in a land called Amerika . . .

 

It was a wild gamble, and one with consequences that were easily foreseeable. Back in the 1980’s a sudden shift in the political winds saw the Republican party actively courting Evangelic Christians. It was a ploy, a false woo, but the rewards offered were, seemingly, great for both sides. The politicians would get votes, and the Evangelics would have men in office, very rarely women, who would change the laws of the land to more reflect the values of those who voted in God’s name, Amen.

 

Abortion was the hot button issue. It didn’t matter, at all, that there were far greater issues facing the country. The Republicans farmed this issue, they mined it like it was gold, and it paid off, even though they never delivered on their promise to end abortion. They truly didn’t want to, because the Republicans believed in the sanctity of life, unless it was their sixteen year old daughter, or their mistress, who needed to get rid of a pregnancy. But to stand up in front of a crowd and call abortion murder was a sure way to get elected. And bring in money.

 

Republicans took a hit, and a pretty severe hit, when they became the party who opposed gay rights. Their efforts to criminalize sexual orientation backfired, and the Evangelics should have seen the future in this issue, but they did not. They should have realized that mixing politics and religion was an anathema to both the Constitution, and the free will of Christians, but they were blinded by the power their candidates held, and there were seduced by the amount of money that could be raised.

 

Power corrupts.

 

Once the Christian Church in America began to act as a Political Action Committee for the Republican Party, they left the path of righteousness. Instead of following the teachings of Christ, they began to following the whims of the men who used them like blind whores, offering change in abortions laws, and opposing gay marriage but emptying the coffers of the churches. Feeding the poor, clothing the needy, taking care of children, healing the sick, and all of the other actions of Jesus Christ were set aside in the name of doing the bidding of the Republican Party.

 

became the religion of those who sought personal wealth and power. Mega Churches sucked the tithes from the followers, and billionaires began to pop up in the pulpits. They preached against humanitarian actions in favor of political fervor.

Churches changed to media centers, replete with wide screen televisions, surround sound speakers, wifi, ATM’s in the lobby, Starbucks in the parking lot, and at some churches, pledges were taken from church members to donate a certain amount each month, to keep the parking lots paved, the air conditioners running at 65 degrees, and to keep the private jets in the heavens.

 

But Prosperity Christianity failed many people for many reasons. It failed the poor, it failed people of color, it failed the gay community, it failed anyone who didn’t speak English well, and it fail to address the hunger for a religion that fed the soul, not the bank accounts of the men who ran the churches.

 

When Trump was elected, it was a sign, a bright orange neon sign, that Christianity could be whored out for nothing more than the promise of oppressing of minorities, banning abortion, and setting the world right again, for theocracy. Trump enriched corporations and gutted environmental laws, trampled on the rights of anyone not white and male, and in the middle of a peaceful protest, he gassed people so he could stand in front of a church, a bible raised, both upside down, and backwards, for a photo op.

 

But even before Trump, people were leaving the church. People began responding “Spiritual not religious” to polls and surveys. Paganism began a comeback, with the promise of a more ecologically friendly, and earth based belief system. Trump’s high jacking of faith has had a scorched earth effect on the Evangelics. His crassness, his lies, his lack of a moral compass, and his disregard for civility has driven decent people away from the churches who advocated for his election.

 

I told you this would happen. I told you in the 1980’s that the separation of church and state protected both sided from one another. I said, many years ago, that once religion and politics mixed, it was like stirring manure with cookie dough. No matter how little is in the mix, it still ruins the end product. But now, there is more manure than cookie dough, and there is no way to get it back out again; there are far too many people in the church selling those cookies. And far too many people buying them.

 

Christianity as most of us once knew it, is dead. In its place is convenience store religion, something that is a little more expensive, but it doesn’t require much time, and there isn’t an expectation in the quality of the product. It’s a cheap plastic Jesus on the dashboard. It’s McDonald’s for the soul. It’s bad for the environment, for families, for the poor, for the downtrodden, and basically, anyone who once believed in the Redeemer.

 

Take Care,

Mike

Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Halloween 2019 The Flood Part Four

“That man was drawn to where we were,” Ana told Paula once they returned.

“It wasn’t that he followed us; he was sent, or compelled,” Bella added.

“Michael?” Paula asked.

“No, Michael has always gone out of his way to protect us both, he always has, and he’s sworn to life his life in our defense. When our father split the family up, Michael took it hardest. It was one thing for us to be apart from one another, but it was another issue for Michael to be bereft of fulfilling his oath to us. When we were children he was like a guard dog. Michael’s dedication to us was one of the things that allowed us to draw closer together,” Ana said.

“So there is an outside force trying to keep the three of you apart?” Paula asked as she looked at the deck of cards in front of her. “And you believe your reading in the graveyard triggered some force to be sent after you?”

“Yes,” Ana said, “and the mark on the door might well be some sort of device to let those who will do us harm find the two of us. As long as we aren’t using our energy here to fight back I suspect we cannot be found. This is a very personal thing for someone. My father may now have some ally who is more in tune to the Earth than he ever was before.”

“But is he Michael’s biological father?” Paula asked. “You and Bella both refer to both sets of parents as your own. It’s hard for me to keep up with who is who, if you two are not really blood sisters.”

“It’s sometimes hard for us to sort out ourselves.” Ana replied. “We spent a lot of time in a refugee camp after the flood. All of us lived under the same roof in the same trailer.  But the reality of it is that Michael and Bella share a last name. Mine is different. There’s nothing we know for certain past that fact. We both have suspected that my father actually is the blood father of all three of us, or my mother is the blood mother of all three of us. Or both.  Our memories are the same, as if we were the same person. That’s something that is really hard to explain.”

“The University left me an email,” Ana continued, “as we suspected, there isn’t a crime they can charge us with, but they’re kicking me out of the dorm, which will cut off Dad’s overview of me. He will have to act to regain control, but as long as you allow us sanctuary here, there’s nothing he can do about it. Legally, at seventeen, he can’t force my return.”

“If he’s a part of this,” Bella said seamlessly, “he will try to extort Ana’s return in some way, and if he can coax Michael to return with him then we have to follow. But Michael has been through very much in the last for years. He may not have adapted the power yet, but that does not make our brother defenseless. Michael is known for violence.”

“Would he harm your father?” Paula asked.

“Yes,” both answered as one.

“Michael once hacked into my high school’s computer system to find one of the teachers who was trying to force her religion on me.” Ana said. “We created a police file that implicated her in a child porn ring. None of it was true, and none of the charges stuck, but the woman was suspended for well over a year. I was well on my way of ridding myself of her in a way that would not have required such dramatic action, but the point was made.”

“You think Michael might have hacked into the University’s security system to hide his mark on the door?” Paula asked.

“No,” said Bella, “that would have, I think, been over his head, and it would have eventually led back to us. I think that symbol was not from Michael. I think it has something to do with our father.”

“So, I suspect the two of you have an idea of sorts for resolution to all of this already?” Paula wondered what it might be, and wondered if she had seen only the tip of the iceberg in what might happen.

“We have to return to the site of the flood that happened in 2005. There we’ll be able to tap into some of the original energy that gave us our power. There’s something there that we have to find, and maybe something there will find us. If we go, Michael when sense that we are there,” Ana said.

“Michael will join us, and for once and for all, we three will be at ground zero of our joining. We have to return to New Orleans, to the site where we were all joined as one in the flood.”

 

End part four.

 

 

Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Halloween 2019 The Flood Part Thee

“Apparently little Miss Cheerleader decided to try Bella’s advice,” Ana began, “and when she took the Black Cohosh, she took about ten times as much as recommended on the label and got sick as a dog. That may or may not have caused the miscarriage, but she was only three weeks in so there’s no way to tell.”

“That’s going to be a difficult charge to get you kicked out of school for, certainly,” Paula said, “so I feel like there’s more. I’ll get tea, this is going to take a while, isn’t it?”

“Yep!” the sisters said in unison.

“Someone burned a symbol into the door my dorm room, Paula,” Ana said as she sipped the tea.

“It’s a symbol that isn’t well known, and only three people know what it means,” Bella said, “four now that we’re telling you.”

“And we have always wondered why Michael choose it.” Ana said.

“Yes, but what is it?” Paula asked.

“It’s the symbol for the Quaternary knot.” Bella told her. “Michael said that when we three were together we began one, which meant there were really four of us, but now we’re wondering if somehow you’ve been pulled into this.”

“You think Michael put the symbol on the door?” Paula asked.

“If he didn’t there wouldn’t be anyone who knew its meaning to us, a random act of vandalism seems unlikely,” Ana replied.

“But there’s nothing on the security feed.” Bella said, “And they’ve got security on 24/7 in that place. Someone smelled smoke and they found the symbol on the door a few minutes after that.”

“You two were here,” Paula said, “and we can prove it!” She announced this with no small amount of authority.  They all laughed, but the idea that someone had burned the symbol into the door without being seen bothered each of them.  Paula headed to bed after tea and left the sisters to themselves.

“You dad will hear about this, and he might decide to come get you.” Bella finally said. “Let’s get the rest of your stuff and leave.”

“And abandon school?” Ana shook her head. “Get jobs waiting tables and scaring the fuck out of the locals until one or both of us winds up in jail? No thanks. We have to stay. No matter what else happens we still have to operate in this world.”

“Do you think your dad might have done it?” Bella asked. “He might have seen Michael use the symbol before.”

“No, dad is more direct,” Ana replied as she got up to pace. “He’d use a hammer not a scalpel.”

Without talking about they rose and left Paula’s house and went to the dorm. There other girls were already whispering about the sisters but they were accustomed to that. No matter where they had lived, who they were or what they were was always the subject of debate. They looked at the symbol on the door; it looks like someone had taken a very hot piece of metal and pushed it deep into the wood, branding it.

“Looks like Michael’s work,” Ana said.

“Still, does he know enough to come and go without being seen?” Bella asked, “he’s always respected power but he’s never used it.”

“He knows we’re here,” Ana said. “He’ll find us. We have to be ready for whatever condition his mind is in.”

“Or not in,” Bella smiled grimly, as she traced the scorched wood with one finger.

“Let’s go,” Ana said.

The walk back to Paula’s led them past a graveyard, so they went in, without a word. Ana pulled her cover out, and spread it over the ground, while Bella lit four small candles. They shuffled the deck of cards, passing the cards back and forth between one another, and finally laying the ten cards out, and waiting. Somewhere in the night, a bird flew, an owl or some other creature that hid from the day.

“The Protector,” Ana said, as she turned over the card, “we’re being watched, but we’re being watched over.”

“Good, very good sign,” Bella added.

They waited, and finally they heard the sound of a branch falling, and Bella turned over the next card.

“Heath passing, from someone near, but not death,” Bella said.

“The card is influenced by the next two,” Ana said, “but we must stop now. Someone is coming.”

Bella blew the candles out and they heard a man’s voice cursing. “Fucking witches!” he called out. “Where are you?’

The man stumbled in the dark and hurt his leg, “I better not lose a scholarship because of you two cunts!” he yelled.

He saw a brief flash of light, and then saw a candle being lit. He charged towards the light.

“Oh there you . . .” he stopped when he saw the candle resting on a tombstone, with an empty glass jar lying next to it.

“Your mind is that jar,” Bella called from darkness. “You will forget things. You will not remember things as you should. “

“Fucking whores,” the man shouting, “I got something for you both. Bev says you told her she was pregnant and gave her poison to kill my kid.” The man laughed. “Maybe I ought to pay you for that one, but I can’t have people saying witches killed my kid.”

“What you hold most dear will now leave you, and it will go slowly, like water evaporating in that jar. When the time comes for you to calm your anger, and accept your role in this, then you will be allowed to apologize to us, and we will lift the curse. I should warn you that if you wait too long, some of it may longer for a very long time.”

“What in the fuck is that supposed to mean?” the man asked, but he sounded less sure of himself.

“Look up the phases of the moon,” Ana said. “when the same phase is active again, in 28 days, return here. You will bring an offering. We may release you.”

“I’m the backup quarterback for the team,” the man shouted, “I’ll find you can I’ll share you with my friends!” But there was no one there to answer him. On his way back to the dorm he forgot where he lived, but it came back to him, eventually.

 

End part three

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on by Mike Firesmith · 2 Comments

Church

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Back in the mid-1990’s, a friend of mine emailed me an incredibly ridiculous and obviously fabricated story about an “atheist college professor” and a student. I can’t remember the story, and I refuse to look it up, but gist of it was the college professor was challenging the faith of the student, a miracle occurred and everyone fell to their knees and prayed.

The story listed no names, no dates, no facts at all, and was vague in all regards to anything at all that might have defined more clearly when and where and who. But it was my first encounter with the the “atheist college professor” stories. There’s quite a few now.

Yesterday, I took Mama to church, and I went in hoping that for some sort of social contact for Mom. About ten minutes deep into the sermon, the preacher said, “how are we going to send children to face the ‘atheist college professors’?” and I nearly walked out.

My hostility towards religion in general, and towards Christianity in particular, is certainly a function of my personal disdain for the systemic methods of the used car salesman techniques employed by those who practice Christianity. But used cars are sold each day. It’s an effective practice, and because religion is a very profitable business, it is to be expected to find such. That my grandmother’s religion, my mother’s mother, has been turned into a commercial enterprise for men and women who have repackaged it and sold it, as a commodity, and turned churches into spiritual Wal-Marts, is more than enough for me to treat the religion itself, and the people who pretend to practice it with utter contempt.
But this goes much deeper than that. We live in a time where people openly believe the world is flat! A thousand years or so has passed since that issue was settled, yet even as we speak there’s a professional basketball player who goes in front of a national audience on social media and espouses the deepest sort of nonsense and people believe him.
Growing in popularity, is the concept that ignorance is a virtue, and belief, in and of itself, when taken to heart without substantiation or the slightest hint of evidence to bolster it, is a virtue. Worse, infinitely worse, there’s a disdain for anything educational. It’s as if the process of education itself, at any level, for any reason, is somehow heretical, or blasphemous.
This is dangerous to the extreme when dealing with people who, because they read something on the internet, believe vaccines cause a variety of maladies, including autism on children, even though there is a wealth of evidence to the contrary. Now, in the year 2019, measles, a disease all but eradicated through the use of vaccines, is spreading again. The “my beliefs are sacred even to the detriment of society” movement is gaining strength, even as it sickens and kills.
In 2006, a woman accused members of a sports team of rape. It was an easy thing to believe, that a group of young, privileged, white men, drank themselves into attacking a woman. But the DNA evidence said otherwise. The woman’s story unraveled further when one of the young men she positively identified was shown to be absent from the scene of the crime entirely. Yet when interviewing other students at Duke, this response was recorded, “That DNA stuff is just crazy, who believes it?”

We are training our citizens to choose their reality based on belief, and belief alone. What feels good, what sounds right, and what we have always thought was true, is, simply because we think it is so. Those who teach, instruct, and offer systems of thinking that counter or contradict are messengers of evil and are to be distrusted. Volume, yelling, screaming, drowning out an opponent with obscenities or untruths, intentional or not, is considered a proper method of debate. Any source, regardless of its content or origin, is considered doctrine, as long as it agrees with a beloved assertion.

Were there a simple fix, some national realization of peril even, there might be hope. But the money to be made off of the ignorant drives the desire to make sure it continues. If a man has no idea how a car operates, then by looks and how it makes him feel alone are selling points. He’ll shell out hard earned money for transportation regardless of its quality. Likewise, if you can convince a populace that education, critical thinking, facts, evidence, and peer reviewed research, all of it, is equal to belief, then you can sell them any other idea, at a premium.

We aren’t going to send our children to face “atheist college professors”. Increasingly, higher education is for those who can afford it. The rich can buy their way in, and you have to think, buy their way through, universities. This is a cycle which circles; only those who can afford college can go. Those who can go make more money than those who cannot. We’re left with less educated citizens, and worse, citizens who distrust education. I shouldn’t have to tell you what it means to have an electorate whose means of selection has nothing at all to do with how educated they are.

There isn’t a way out of this. We can’t simply wake up one day and start valuing education and critical thinking and hope people are going to flock to it because it’s a good idea. Ignorance has become a sellable condition. People will pay to become less knowledgeable. They will give money to other people who tell them education is wrong and thinking is dangerous. Our society is being sown with ideas that are unprovable, and even if they are disproved, evidence can simply be labeled as “fake news” and ignored. Go with what feels good. Believe what makes you happy. Read only from sources that agree with you. Listen to only what you’ve learn before, like your favorite music, because you like it.

What I heard in church yesterday was passive aggressive hate speech wrapped in fear mongering, by a used car salesman who told a willing audience his beliefs were what they needed to buy. The number of people willing to pay for this sort of thing will teach him to repeat it.

Take Care,
Mike

Posted on by Mike Firesmith · 4 Comments

Murder at a Funeral

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You’re not likely to remember it, you know. I don’t. I cannot remember the last time someone asked for my ID because they thought I was too young to buy alcohol. I remember being carded when I was twenty-seven, and I thought it was funny, and the woman who carded me held on to my license, as if she thought it might be a fake one, for just a second or two. I’m not talking about those places that card everybody regardless, and back in the day, I was buying when I was sixteen. Time was when a kid could go to the store and pick up a six pack for his dad and they’d sell it to him, too. But by the mid-eighties it was illegal to drink and drive, in a major way. I miss cruising dirt roads and drinking, and listening to music and not having to worry about anything going wrong.

 

I looked like a little kid when I was in my late teens. When I applied for a job in a town where no one knew me they really thought I was a runaway. I worked as a dishwasher in a truck stop and the waitresses there thought I was someone’s kid who got some sort after school job or something. I handed my ID to most of them and said “Yes, as a matter of fact I am really nineteen”. I moved in with a thirty-one year old woman and people wondered if I was her son. That really pissed her off. I aged well, at least while I was young.

 

You age the first time you have to deal with murder. Be it someone you know who kills someone or if it’s someone you know that’s dead, murder is something that changes the way you look at life. Everyone, sooner or later, has to deal with a friend who drives a car into something or gets a car driven into them, and everyone knows someone who died on the road, but murder is different. A car accident could be a lot of different things, like the couple I knew who lost a daughter when a car hit a deer and threw the still living deer through their daughter’s windshield. It’s a freak accident that leaves you breathless and bereft, but murder leaves you with someone gone, and you’ll never truly trust strangers again. It’s a difficult thing to talk about when you’re with someone who feels that same loss of that same person and you both try to make it make sense.

 

After a while, you know you’re going to lose someone to some sort of illness, and cancer is a good bet when you know someone with a family history and smoking habit. It’s more difficult to lose someone’s child, or someone young you expected to last longer than your own life. You lose a friend, and then one of his siblings, and suddenly, you start to hear the sound of those hooves behind you.

 

A friend of mine lost her mother on Sunday, and it was expected and the disease had eaten away at her, and now there is a funeral, and a viewing, and I’m getting close to not doing funerals anymore, again, ever. It’s getting to where funerals are nothing more than commercials for religion and one of these days, at the wrong funeral, and certainly at the wrong time, I’m going to beat the fuck out of a preacher at a funeral, and I assure you, it’s going to be worth every moment I spend in jail for it. Might be soon. I kinda hope so just get it over with, truly.

 

There are only two kinds of people; those when they grow older get more religious, and those of us who despise it more.

 

I drove through Valdosta tonight. It was eerily quiet, as it would be in the first hours of a Tuesday, and thirty years or so ago I lived in this town, I still work here, and know which side roads connect to the main roads, and that’s something that the mind finds comforting, the familiarly of knowing where stuff is and how to get there. It’s also a rut, where the sides get higher and higher, and the path get more and more narrow, and I wonder at this very moment if in the same bedroom where I once slept is someone who is having these same thoughts about this same town, and if they’ll find a way out. I almost edited this paragraph but something told me to keep it. It’s important.

 

Something someone said stuck with me today, and I wonder if it will still be here tomorrow. I hope so, because I’m not done with it yet. I have to keep it in my mouth, like a toothpick, and dig around with it, and use it to find things, and maybe put it down somewhere and I might need it again. We are all different people depending on whose perception is being lived. I written things tonight, or this morning, that might seem violent or heretical, to some, and maybe someone else sees them as liberating. Certainly, those whose livelihood I threaten will see this as apostasy but that has nothing to do with me at all, even though it might seem evident.

 

You’re not likely to remember the last time you saw someone. You might remember it was at their house, or in their yard, or they were at some event, but will you remember how it felt to perceive this person, how you looked at them through the eyes of someone who might have really knew this person, or maybe you didn’t. Maybe you read something they wrote and then wondered what in the hell was that all about, or maybe you wanted to ask why, but do you remember what that person was feeling when you stood inside that personal space and shared the same oxygen?

 

If you’re over a certain age then you see a lot of it coming. You see people who have drank hard all their lives and you know that sooner or later it’s coming. But there are sudden events that take people away and you’re left with a memory of seeing that person in the store when both of you were in a hurry and the last thing you thought was, “Well thank god I got away from that before it lasted too long,” which might be what the other person was thinking, and maybe it’s a thought that has more meaning that you realized at the time.

 

It bothers me that she’s dead. It bothers me that some disease they can likely cure but won’t because there isn’t enough profit in it, killed her. It bothers me that I can’t go to the funeral because there is no longer a guarantee that I won’t simply have enough at some point and say something that’s going to leave a permanent scar. Take a moment with this thought, please, that there has to be a commercial for religion during a funeral because they have to strike at people when they are at their weakest emotional state.

 

They can’t get you to believe on pure merit because there isn’t any. There has to be blackmail and threats. Imagine the kind of god that needs that sort of extortion to have believers because that is what you have, you know.

 

When someone is murdered it changes how people look at them. They become a victim, a statistic in some way, of someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time or with the wrong person, and their death defines part of who they are and who they were.

Preachers murder the dead. They have to make that person’s life connect with what they’re selling, like they are going to mention the dead person’s clothes were cleaner because they all used Tide Pods, and sometimes we’re talking about someone who hadn’t set foot in a church in decades but there the preacher is talking about how you aren’t going to see this person in heaven unless you join his religion.

 

It’s spiritual blackmail. It’s extortion. It’s a blatant lie.

 

These people do not own the afterlife and they don’t know a damn thing about what happens after we’re dead. They’re used car salesmen. They are con artists, liars, murderers of the spirit and thieves of the afterlife.

 

I can’t go to a funeral. I just might fight back.

 

Take Care,

Mike