The Charlie Hebdo Cartoons of Muhammad

12 people were recently killed in a cowardly terrorist attack on the office of the French satirical newspaper "Charlie Hebdo".    These are the cartoons of Muhammad / Mohammad / that supposedly caused the bombing. 

Compared to works like "Piss Christ", or portraits of the Virgin Mary made of elephant manure, they're pretty tame. 

Has it occurred to anyone else that the more tolerant of religious criticism a society becomes, the more religion tends to flourish there? 

For instance, you can go to New York City and see a musical play where a copy of The Book Of Mormon gets shoved up a Mormon missionary's ass.  The Mormon Church is flourishing in the USA. 

Ditto for most other religions. 

Go figure.  Let's hope France responds with increased satire and liberty, and not with calls for censorship disguised as sensitivity. 

Ayn Rand, John Galt, and Original Sin

I just finished reading the John Galt "radio speech" from "Atlas Shrugged".
Parts of the early section are tiresome; the last half is some of the greatest stuff I've ever read.

The short section on "Original Sin" jumped out at me. For those of you who weren't raised in the Bible Belt, Original Sin is a St. Paul/St. Augustine invention which states that ever since Eve ate the forbidden fruit, we've been cursed (pre-birth) as sinners.
In the eyes of God, we're guilty as soon as the doctor cuts the cord. Here's some context from Genesis:

The Fall

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
¹⁰ He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
¹¹ And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
¹² The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
¹³ Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
¹⁴ So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
    and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
    and you will eat dust
    all the days of your life.
¹⁵ And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring^[a] and hers;
he will crush^[b] your head,
    and you will strike his heel.”

¹⁶ To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
    and he will rule over you.”

¹⁷ To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”

²⁰ Adam^[c] named his wife Eve,^[d] because she would become the mother of all the living.

²¹ The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. ²² And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” ²³ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

For most of my life, I've tried to reconcile my somewhat fundamentalist religious upbringing with the reality that I saw around me. 
I've seen that Knowledge is a good thing, as opposed to being something that is the consequence of a curse. 
I believe that Knowledge keeps us warm, fed, healthy, and happy.  
I believe that people are fundamentally good, and will help each other without being forced to do so at gunpoint. 
I've noticed that a lot of kids who weren't raised in any particular religious rigmarole seem to have fewer problems than some of those who were. 
And, of course, I've noticed that people who don't believe that most foreigners are going to go to hell....well, they get along better with foreigners. 
Here's the section on Original Sin, from John Galt's infamous "radio speech" near the end of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". 

"Damnation is the start of your morality, destruction is its purpose, means and end. Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accepts his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.


It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some explicable claim upon him - it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man.

The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.

Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a 'tendency' to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.

What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge - he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil - he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor - he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire - he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy - all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was - that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love - he was not man.

Man's fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he's man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives. They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man."

Damn. 
This book, which was the Gateway Drug into Libertarianism for a lot of people, is slowly making my head explode. 
I've read plenty of excerpts, and skimmed it a few times in the past, but reading all 1200 pages cover-to-cover has been one amazing experience. 
I think I'm going to read Paul Krugman's "The Conscience Of A Liberal", just to cleanse the palate, and then read "Atlas Shrugged" again.  This time with a highlighter. 
We have a lot of problems in the U.S.   According to some, honest accounting would prove that we have more unemployed workers in 2012 than during the Great Depression.  Team Red and Team Blue are putting on Performance Art about an idiotic "Fiscal Cliff" deal.  We're 17 trillion in debt.  Obama is sending drones to kill children, and, incidentally, create more terrorists. 

This could be improved if every industrialist, business owner, and creator were to send John Galt's message to Washington:

"Get The Hell Out Of My Way." 

The Chinese Washing Machine Story 2.0

I'm totally buried at work. 
No time to post anything new. 
There's a chance I'll be going back to China soon. 
I'm trying to put together an e-book of these stories. 
Hope you like this one.  It's a re-post from 2007.  This is how it really happened !

**********************

I've been posting old emails from my China trips any time I'm too tired to think but too wired to sleep. This one's from a little more than a year ago, when I made a Quality Control trip to a vendor called "Aifei" in Xiamen.

Wendy is Aifei's #1 sales rep., and translator.

Here goes....

Dear family, friends, co-workers, Moderate Baptists, retail booksellers, and people from the Starbucks on Camp Bowie,

I hope everyone is doing well. I still don’t have Internet access at the new apartment, and haven’t had much free time outside of working at the factory and getting moved into the new place. I’m writing from the Coffee Bar near our new apartment.

Our company apartment is bigger, nicer, and more luxurious than anything that 99% of the Chinese can afford, or have ever seen. I never doubt for a moment that I’ve been blessed, and am very fortunate to have been born where I was born.

All that obligatory gratitude aside, the apartment was designed to look like the Jettson’s. Unfortunately, the utilities were provided by The Flintstones. It’s on the 27th floor of a high-rise that’s still being built by small angry people with lots of hammers.

Let’s start in the kitchen: There is a double sink with cold water only. The left-hand side sink is about the size of a piece of photocopier paper. The right-hand side sink is about the size and depth of a shoebox. Fran will tell you that I can dirty enough dishes, forks, ladles, and colanders to fill both of these sinks just by microwaving one pack of popcorn.

To the left of the sink is the space where the microwave ought to be. But that’s the only space where I can chop up whatever small animals that I’m having for dinner. (The food suppliers, restaurants, and I have a mutual “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy....) So the microwave stays on top of the fridge until needed. There is a dual surface gas cooktop that works great.

Below that is a Thing that’s not quite a Dishwasher. They call if a “sterilizer”. When I asked Wendy why I needed the sterilizer after the dishes had already been hand washed, she said “Bad Water”. I know all about the Bad Water from the medical disaster of my first trip. She also suggested that I leave the dishes in the sterilizer at all times. I asked why. She said “Bad Air”. Considering that they’re always burning huge piles of leftover Asbestos, DDT, Napalm, Agent Orange, etc. all over the countryside, I’m taking her advice. Good Karma.

The refrigerator is small, but will keep beer cold. The only ice trays they sell here are about the size of two playing cards placed end to end. The ice is all dice-sized cubelets. Made from Sparklett’s, because of Bad Water. A minor hassle.

I’ve got two great balconies. One of them overlooks other high-rises, but the other one has a great view of the lake and the bay. That’s where I have my new washer/dryer. (All in one machine.) It has two digital dials, and about 20 buttons. The owner’s manual is only in Chinese, which I’m slowly trying to translate with a Character-Finder dictionary (don’t ask how that works, it’s too tiresome to explain. But I feel like I’m on the Medieval Committee that turned all the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew into the King James Bible.)

For reasons that I don’t understand, this Washing Machine can be programmed to wash one load for up to 20 hours. Yes, 20 hours. I think it has a similar capability for drying times, but I’m afraid to find out. I might incinerate something.

Combine all this with a safety feature that won’t let you open the door when there is ANY water or ANY heat in the machine, and it’s time for ADVENTURES IN LAUNDRY ! ! ! My first load washed for about 3 hours, and dried for about half that many. I don’t have accurate times for the 2nd load on Sunday, because there was a lot of starting and stopping involved - I’d call it 9 hours total. Every time I tried to move from washing to drying, it started a new wash cycle for a random length of time. And of course, the door wouldn’t open. Then, when I did persuade it to go from wash to dry, after about 3 hours of drying, the damn door still wouldn’t open because of the excessive heat.

It was ridiculous. My shirts were held hostage. All the crowbars were back at the factory.

Most businesses here have a little Buddhist mini-shrine/altar somewhere on the premises. They burn incense on the altar in front of the Buddha statue about twice a day. If things are going badly, they will even place sacrificial fruit in front of the statue (apples, oranges, plums, etc. etc etc. Some people try to fake it with plastic fruit, but I bet that doesn’t work as well..)

Anyway, I thought it would make for a funny photo to show Wendy if I took a picture of some fruit in front of my washing machine, as a sort of hostage exchange for my shirts. I put some bananas, oranges, and grapes on the balcony in front of the washer, and went to get my camera. When I went back on the balcony to take the picture, the door was open. The Chinese Washing Machine was apparently satisfied with my offering.

You can’t make this stuff up

My shirts had been washed so many times they were almost transparent. And they will now fit my little daughter perfectly.

The washer/dryer works very hard, and it works for long, long hours. It’s very complicated. And you’re not going to get anything out of it until it’s ready to give it to you. So I’ve named it Aifei….

My driver just showed up to take me to the factory.

There’s more to tell, like the hot water heater that doesn’t hook to either of the sinks or to the shower, but maybe is what keeps the toilet water so nice and toasty. The bed has a Chinese-style mattress - a term I wasn’t familiar with until this trip. “Chinese Style Mattress” translates into English as “If you have a Basketball, you can dribble on it.” But this email is already over-long. This coffee bar has 6 CD’s in the music rotation, and one of them is Christmas music. When “Joy to the World” comes over the speakers, the Chinese workers and customers don’t know the difference, but all the Westerners in the place look up from their laptops and smile at each other. It’s great. I’ve met people from all over the world in this place. I love this country.

Go here if you have time to read the Chinese Dog Story. 

A Biblical Defense Of Slavery

I recently found an old seminary Bible Course Syllabus from 1885.  It was written by Dr. J.B. Shearer of Southwestern Presbyterian University in Clarksville Tennessee, "For the use of schools, colleges, and private bible classes" is the subtitle. 

This book makes me angry.  Stark raving nuts. 
I have no words to describe the human misery caused by the thinking in this book.

Please keep in mind that J.B. Shearer was an educated man with a Doctorate.  His book on the Old Testament is still in print, at least in a download edition, for those of you who are interested. 

Here's the section from Shearer's Bible Course on "The Scripture Doctrine Of Slavery".

Please stay with me. I'm going to go through Dr. J.B. Shearer's doctrine, point-by-point.  Shearer's bullet points are in bold type, scripture references are in italics, and my stuff looks like what you're reading now. 

Here's the syllabus used for part of Dr. Shearer's classwork.  

1)  I'll never be able to flesh out Shearer's first point, the one about slavery as a social institution vs. slavery as a sin.  Dr. Shearer's lectures are lost to history.  His later bullet-points reveal his sympathies, though. 

2)  Slavery has indeed existed in all ages.  It still exists.  Dr. Shearer is drifting into the "If God doesn't want it to be, then why does it happen?" argument. 

3)  "Jewish slavery antedates The Theocracy". 

You can go here to read the story in Genesis 14:13-16 of some of Abraham's relatives being captured by Sodomites (yeah, you in the back row, Sodomites) and carried away to be household slaves. 

If the Sodomites used military captives as slaves, then slavery was around before God set up his Theocracy of priests, prophets and such.  All political systems in place at that time were part of God's plan.  And God wouldn't have allowed slavery to exist if he didn't approve of it.  

4)  Dr. Shearer sees slavery as a "positive", but not a "moral" institution.  I don't own the other volumes of Dr. Shearer's syllabus that he refers to. 
I do have this picture, though.   

5) Abraham's slaveholding was recognized in the Abrahamic Covenant....(Genesis, Chapter 17)

12  He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring,
13  Both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant.
14  Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

So not only was God giving them the right to your labor and effort for the rest of your life, your owners also have the right, if not the responsibility, to cut off part of your reproductive organs.  Dr. Shearer helpfully points out that this is a universal covenant (or agreement).

Slavery was acknowleged and justified in the New Testament as well as the Old.  (Galatians, Chapter 3)

27  For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
29  And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

According to these verses, whether or not someone owns you and keeps you in a cage at gunpoint, you are now a child of Abraham/God/Jesus and will earn your heavenly reward.  But it's a heavenly reward, not to be given in this life.  We've still got a lot of cotton to pick.

6)  The master's right and authority are reconized in the fourth and tenth commandments.  Deuteronomy, Chapter 4.  (Here is the 4th Commandment.)

12  Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.
13  Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
14  But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

(And the 10th Commandment:)

21  'And you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. And you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.'

The statues of The Ten Commandments that Alabama judges want to put in their courtrooms are edited to simply state "Honor The Sabbath" and "Thou Shalt Not Covet".

A useful strategy to combat that lunacy is to insist that the uncensored commandments be posted in the courts.  Commandment advocates would then have to defend slavery or explain the omissions, and that would be fun.  

7)  Moses' law forbade permanent Jewish slavery, but encouraged Pagan slavery.  Exodus 21: 2-3.  Leviticus 25:40-46. 

I included a little more of the Exodus passage because it includes some helpful information on how to treat the daughters of your slaves:

Here's the Leviticus 25 passage.  Do you see why Damn Yankee Christians had such a hard time convincing their Southern counterparts that slavery was pure evil?

2 “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything.
3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.

5 “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’
6 then his master must take him before the judges.  He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.
7 “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do.
8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her.
9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter.
10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights.
11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves.
45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property.
46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

8)  Moses' law recognized, defined, limited and defended the rights of master and slave minutely.  Exodus 21:20-32 

The logic in this law, supposedly handed down by God, was clear:  Whip your slave too hard, you take a loss, and you get punished by the community.  But if the slave is back at work in a couple of days (with an improved attitude) the process is no different than tuning up an engine. 

20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result,
21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.  

9) Captives in war were divided by Divine direction.  And in the tithing, the Lord's portion was duly set apart.  Numbers 31:28-40.

This passage from the book of Numbers explains how the Israelites divided the slaves and loot after a battle.  When the author says that certain things were to be given to "the Lord", he means Eleazar and the priestly caste.  If we were to do this in our Middle East adventures, 1/500th of the oil would go to Jimmy Swaggart, the eleven Cardinals now representing the U.S. in the Roman Catholic Church, and Thomas S. Monson, now head of the Mormons in Salt Lake City:

28  From the soldiers who fought in the battle, set apart as tribute for the LORD one one of every five hundred, whether people, cattle, donkeys or sheep.
29  Take this tribute from their half share and give it to Eleazar the priest as the LORD’s part.
30  From the Israelites’ half, select one out of every fifty, whether people, cattle, donkeys, sheep or other animals. Give them to the Levites, who are responsible for the care of the LORD’s tabernacle.”
31  So Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the LORD commanded Moses.


32  The plunder remaining from the spoils that the soldiers took was 675,000 sheep,
33  72,000 cattle,
34  61,000 donkeys
35  and 32,000 women who had never slept with a man.
36  The half share of those who fought in the battle was: 337,500 sheep,
37  of which the tribute for the LORD was 675;
38  36,000 cattle, of which the tribute for the LORD was 72;
39  30,500 donkeys, of which the tribute for the LORD was 61;
40  16,000 people, of whom the tribute for the LORD was 32.

If you aren't disturbed by verse 35 up there, the one which explains who gets the young virgins, you should be.  

10)  Slavery was in its origin a merciful system.  "Servus Quia Servatus" (The servant is saved).  The weaker were protected in the family, first by the master's interest and then by his affection.  The freemen became citizens. 

Yeah.  Well, Dr. Shearer, no one saw your Presbyterian ass signing up for a few years of picking other people's cotton in this merciful system. 

I don't have the time or desire to go through the rest of J.B. Shearer's drivel point-by-point.  Here's the second page of his chapter on slavery.  Boil it down to basics, and Shearer proves that the God of the New Testament approved of slavery just as much as he did in the time of Abrham, Isaac and Jacob. 

According to the book that we now call "Bible", God approves of slavery.  You can look it up. 

Ephesians 6:5-9: "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him."

Colossians 4:1: "Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven."

1 Timothy 6:1-3 "Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort. If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness;"

Finally, there is the story of Onesimus, the runaway slave that Dr. Shearer mentions in bullet point #12.  Onesimus was a Christian.  Paul told him to return to his former masters.  Go here.  With the exception of "Buy Enron Stock" that's probably the worst advice in history. 

The collection loosely called "Bible" is just a book.  We don't know who wrote it.  Parts of it are interesting, parts of it are incredibly dull, and parts of it are downright evil.  It doesn't hold together very well.  If God really did inspire the book of Leviticus, then he is bat-shit crazy.  I defy you to read it and tell me otherwise.  Here's part of the leprosy cure from Leviticus 14:

Then the priest shall command to take for him who is cleansed two living and clean birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop. And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. As for the living bird, he shall take it, the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, and dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed from the leprosy, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose in the open field. He who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean. After that he shall come into the camp, and shall stay outside his tent seven days.

For those who got lost, here's a paraphrase:

Get two birds. Kill one. Dip the live bird in the blood of the dead one. Sprinkle the blood on the leper seven times, and then let the blood-soaked bird fly away. Next find a lamb and kill it. Wipe some of its blood on the patient's right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle seven times with oil and wipe some of the oil on his right ear, thumb and big toe. Repeat. Finally find another pair of birds. Kill one and dip the live bird in the dead bird's blood. Wipe some blood on the patient's right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle the house with blood 7 times. That's all there is to it.

The Bible shouldn't be used as a manual for doctors.  The Bible shouldn't be used as a justification for opposition to gay marriage.  It shouldn't be used as an excuse to close restaurants or bars on the Muslim, Jewish, or Christian Sabbaths. 

It should have never been used as an excuse for using other humans as slaves. 

Perhaps some of you disagree.  If so, please remember some of us have more guns than you, and might have some cotton that needs picking.   

The Tragic Story Of Albert's Fingers

I’ve written a lot on this website about the advantages of hiring ex-convicts. By overlooking their time spent as Involuntary Guests Of The State, you can sometimes hire brilliant people, hard workers no one else is willing to take a chance on, often for half the wages that their skill levels would otherwise demand. You must be willing to tolerate Parole Officers, Probation Specialists, Drug Testers and their ilk, all calling your employees away for useless bureaucratic “counseling” sessions at odd hours. Those wanting good workers at half price will find a way to deal with the inconvenience.

If that sounds like exploitation of the unfortunate, let’s see you walk into your boss’s office with a warped colony of Registered Sex Offenders and try to get ‘em hired. Let me know how it works out for you.

About 10 years ago, my employer cooperated with a church organization called Narrow Gate Ministries, a charity which gave ex-cons a 2nd chance at jobs, housing, and society. Some of Narrow Gate’s clients were outstanding people who just happened to get caught with a nosefull of Bolivian Marching Powder. Others had a drinking problem. Narrow Gate took in thieves, smugglers of Mexican illegals, forgers, sex offenders and addicts, and tried to straighten them out. We then hired almost all of them, whether they were straightened out or as warped as the Titanic’s shuffleboard court. Lordy, it got bizarre.

One the Narrow Gate clients was a guy named Albert. (Not his real name.) Albert was a talented pianist and singer who often performed for Narrow Gate events and at the dinners for the street people that my church sponsors. The man could do gospel songs like an angel. Like many recovering addicts, he was a deeply spiritual man, a nice guy, polite and respectful to everyone he worked with, and he loved cocaine more than he loved life itself. We put him to work in the plastics shop. “I love my job, I love this opportunity, and I love this second chance The Lord has given me here,” he would say to anyone who would listen. He should have added “But most of all, I love cocaine.”

By most accounts, Albert did a good job for about 3 months. Then he vanished for two weeks of narcotic bliss, inhaling white devil dandruff. The plastics manager fired him for job abandonment.

Because he had ingratiated himself with one of the company owners, we discovered that Albert couldn’t be fired. He could only be shifted. This benevolent company owner (a great guy, friend to all) unfired Albert and had him placed at our wood shop, three miles down the road.

“I love my job, I love this opportunity, and I love this second chance The Lord has given me here,” Albert said. Some employees corrected him, and claimed that Albert was up to at least chance number three. Seventeen or eighteen if you include the rehabs, the prison stints, and the other jobs that didn’t work out. But Albert had no yesterdays, only tomorrows.

Albert worked at the wood shop for about a month and then missed five shifts because he was riding the white rails at some friend’s house on the east side. (Insert a recording of Jackson Browne’s cover of “Cocaine, running all round my brain” here.) The wood shop manager doesn’t take that kind of crap, and he fired Albert for job abandonment.

Albert’s sponsor-owner-savior unfired him some more, gave him another stern talking-to, and then transferred him to work for me at the metal shop. I had already been warned about Albert. My fellow shop managers told me that Albert was deeply religious, deeply spiritual, deeply committed to doing a good job, and even more committed to cocaine. They also told me that I would get the best two weeks of Albert’s life out of him, and that I should fire him some more when he disappeared to go a-snorting through the Bolivian Poppy Patch.

I met with Albert, and welcomed him to the metal shop.

He said “I love my job, I love this opportunity, and I love this second chance The Lord has given me here.” He went on to explain what the apostle Paul REALLY meant in the book of Romans. I don’t remember the details.

At the time, I had about 100 employees working 3 shifts. In addition to my typical homegrown sprinkling of Brothers, Homies and Rednecks, I had Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Bosnians, Serbs, and Croatians. (I’m happiest when my crews represent multiple eras of failed U.S. Foreign Policy Adventures. When the boatloads of Iraqis, Afghans and Libyans arrive on our shores to escape the devastation we’ve made of their home places, I’ll be waiting for them with job applications.)

I had two drummers, three guitarists, and one Mexican who was pretty good on harmonica.

Our entire company (wood, metal, plastic and office) had 300 employees at the time, and only one decent piano player. Albert.

A couple of weeks after Albert joined us at the metal shop, I told Albert, the piano player, to operate the shear.

A shear is a giant pair of scissors activated with a foot pedal. Mash the pedal and the blade comes down, slicing whatever is being fed to it. If you’re cutting a lot of metal into small pieces, say, 1”x4” strips, you can get a nice rhythm going, feeding the metal into the blade while marking time with the foot pedal. Chunka chunka chunka chunka chunka chunka feed it in, hit the pedal feed it in hit the pedal feed it in. Get a new strip of metal and feed it in. Chunka chunka chunka chunka chunka chunka. Do it for several hours. Chunka chunka chunka chunka chunka chunka feed it in hit the pedal feed it in hit the pedal.

Oh, and one other thing.....Keep your hands out of the blades. 

We needed some scrap sheet metal cut into 1”x4” strips that would eventually be drilled and folded into a bracket.

And I told the Albert, the piano player, to operate the shear.

By the end of his shift that day, Albert was on autopilot. Zoning out. Chunka chunka chunka chunka chunka chunka feed it in hit the pedal feed it in hit the pedal feed it in.

You know that feeling when you’re getting out of your car and your brain tells you that the keys are still in the ignition, but your brain can’t multitask and tell your arm and hand not to slam the car door with the keys inside? Weeks later, that’s how Albert described what happened next. He knew his hand was under the blade when his foot hit the SLICE pedal. There was nothing he could do about it. Chunka chunka chunka chunka chunka chunka feed it in hit the pedal feed it in hit the pedal. But remember to get your hands out of the way before you hit the pedal, remember to get your hands out of the way before you hit the ped…..!!!

I’m not going to repeat Albert’s damn explanation in any damn detail, because I’m the one who told our only damn piano player to operate the damn shear.

I was in my upstairs office when my friend Mike ran in and out of the doorway saying “You gotta get Albert to the emergency room ! He just sliced all his fingers off in the shear !!” I followed Mike down the fire escape stairs three at a time and ran toward my truck – a red Ford Ranger. Panic was dripping across the parking lot as far as I could see. Battle-scarred welders and sheet metal specialists were gathering and ungathering in conversational knots of freak out. Brent, my co-manager, was helping Albert walk in a circle, his hand wrapped in our white emergency towels. Albert was slowly wading through the invisible panic, mumbling and praying.

After getting Albert into my Ranger, they told him that I was going to drive him to the Harris Hospital Emergency Room and that he was going to be fine. Easy for them to say, because they didn’t have to drive through all the blind freakin’ panic that was spreading from the door of the Fabrication Shop all the way to the hospital. Brent handed some stuff through the window and said something about extra towels if I needed them. I put the towels between Albert and me and stomped the accelerator. We were off.

It was 4:00 in the afternoon, the time when Interstate 30, Fort Worth’s shortest distance between the two points of Work and Hospital, moves with the starts and stops of a drunken caterpillar. It was infuriating. Didn’t these people know that I had a bleeding cokehead in my passenger seat? Albert was weaving back and forth, clutching his butchered hand and singing softly...

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me….

I can still see the bus that was moseying down the highway in front of me, doing a safe and prudent seven-point-three miles a freakin’ hour, blocking my path to the emergency room. Jesus H. Christ, what was wrong with these people?

I once was lost, but now I’m found,

Was blind but now I see.

Speaking of lost, I considered going off-interstate for a while, but that area had been under construction ever since LBJ was governor. Plus, when I get turned around I sometimes can’t find my way out of a sack.
I could imagine explaining why Albert had bled to death in my truck: “See, I thought I was still driving towards Harris Hospital, but when I finally saw a familiar landmark, I realized I was about three miles from the Branch Davidian compound in Waco….” So I stayed on the interstate, moving slightly faster than the crew who had laid the original asphalt. Albert kept singing:

“Through many dangers, toils and snares,

We have already come….

We’d gone less than half a mile from the shop, God help us. I was blowing my horn and cussing the traffic. What would happen if we both started screaming? What level of panic would I hit?

And then something magical happened, something I was privileged to experience. Albert, doubled over in pain, stopped in the middle of the verse. He looked at me and said “Sing it with me, Brother Allen. Sing it with me.”

There was no rage, there was no anger. There was only Albert’s acceptance of the situation as we edged down the interstate, and his invitation for me to join him.

T'was grace that brought us safe thus far,

And grace will lead us home.

All modesty aside, I can harmonize with a chainsaw. I threw a tenor part on top of his melody. Damn, we sounded good. It was getting surreal in the red Ford Ranger.

“When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun…

Albert’s voice was that of someone who had tried his best and been defeated so many times that he saw life as something to endure rather than enjoy. Albert didn’t care if he got out of this alive. Some of us go through life with a bumpersticker that says “I Make Shit Happen”. For years and years, Albert’s bumpersticker had read “Shit Happens. To Me.” He’d carried the monkey on his back for so long, watching it grow from a cute little baby chimp - to be brought out for fun on weekends - into a full-grown hairy-assed gorilla that demanded attention and feeding and money, 24/7. Albert is the only person I’ve heard sing about heaven and sound like he looked forward to going there.

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise,

Than when we’ve first begun.”

We hadn’t covered half the distance to the hospital, and the cloth on Albert’s hand was soaked red and dripping down the truck seat. Holy Jesus, holy Jesus, let me get to the hospital. Albert was almost my height but probably weighed the Opium Diet Optimum of 130. Could I possibly abandon the red Ford Ranger on the side of the road and carry Albert on my back to Harris?

Shall we gather at the river,

Where bright angel feet have trod?

With its crystal tide forever,

That flows by the throne of God?

I didn’t want to gather at the river, even if it flowed by the collective thrones of Princess Di, Princess Grace of Monaco, or the Demon Baron Of Hell (from Doom 2.0). I wanted to gather at the Henderson exit from I-30, and quickly. I sang anyway.

Yes we’ll gather at the river,

The beautiful, the beautiful river.

Gather with the saints at the river,

That flows by the throne of God.

At this time in my life, I was coming off a crisis of faith of sorts. But I had to admire Albert’s worldview. I had nothing to hang onto. Right or wrong, Albert had something that I’d lost. I was envious. Would I give up some fingers to have it again? I dunno. Albert was armed with a Defense Against The Dark Arts, and I had nothing. If I’d fed my fingers into a shear, I wouldn’t be singing about the peace in my soul.

I've got peace like a river

I've got peace like a river

I've got peace like a river in my soul

I could see the hospital in the distance, there by the river in my soul with the crystal tide forever on the far side of the toils and snares and saints and all that other crap gathered at the river where I was blind but now, thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus, I see. I could see the hospital.

Once I turned off the interstate we made better time. The hymn festival ceased. It was time to think, time to run stop signs and red lights, time to drive on the damn sidewalk if necessary. Albert started mumbling prayers through the red Ranger roof. How in the hell does he do this? I thought. If I cut my fingers off, I would be screaming and cussing.

Getting into the parking lot was a relief along the line of the bomb squad correctly snipping the red wire instead of the blue. Albert had sweat running down his face to a degree that, combined with the blood loss, made me worry that he would pass out and leave a pile of dust in my truck seat. I pulled into the emergency room overhang, threw the truck into park, and got out to help Albert inside. Attendants met me halfway with a wheelchair. I briefly explained the situation and they told me to park the truck and come back.

“You don’t understand,” I said. “This is Albert, and he plays the piano, and….”

“Sir, do us a favor,” the attendants said. “Go park your truck.” (I must not have looked like a normal human at this point.)

“But he plays the piano,” I said stupidly.

“Go….park….your….truck !” they snarled. This was obviously not their first rodeo. They’d obviously seen guilt-stricken metal shop managers who had chopped off their piano player’s fingers before.

I parked the truck and called our Human Resources manager. I explained that Albert was now in good hands, and that I would keep everyone updated.

I went into the emergency room and the desk guardians allowed me to go into the back room where they were working on Albert. Albert was staring at his ruined hand and telling every passing doctor and nurse “No morphine. No morphine. No morphine.” Can you imagine the willpower that took? Hell, if you’re a recovering addict and cut your fingers off, don’t you get a free pass for just one day and get a little shot of something to equalize all the bad karma?

I called Mike and Brent back at the metal shop, and told them that I’d made it to the hospital and that they were working on Albert’s hand.

“Are they going to be able to re-attach them?” Mike said.

“Re-attach what?” I said.

“His fingers.”

“How can they attach his fingers,” I said.

“Allen, they can do surgeries where they re-attach fingers.”

“What do you mean, re-attach his fingers? I said for the last time. Mike was obviously speaking an Ebonics dialect of Choctaw, while I could only speak in the informal Pig Latin variant of Sanskrit.

“We gave you his fingers, didn’t we?

“When in the shitting damn hell did you give me Albert’s shit damn hell fingers?”

“Dude, when we gave you all those towels, some of those had Albert’s fingers in them.”

There were three seconds of silence on the phone. Then the sheer (I typed that the first time as “shear”, as in the slicing machine. Freudian slip.) , the sheer godawfulness of the moment overwhelmed me. I hung up without saying a word.

I ran out of the E.R. and into the parking lot. Where did I park, where did I park???

Then I saw it, my beloved red Ford Ranger. It was sitting there, throbbing, with Albert’s fingers somewhere inside. You know those movie scenes where the camera zooms in and zooms out several times, just to increase tension? My truck wasn’t doing that at all. My truck just sat there, pregnant with fingers that I was going to have to deliver.

I unlocked the truck. I reached in for the remaining unused towels in the middle of the seat. The top one didn’t have any fingers in it. Nor did the second one.

The third one was full of fingers. Yep. The fingers were wrapped in towel number three.

I picked up the towel, which was warm and squishy, and trotted back into the emergency room with it. Marched right through there and into the treatment center. They’d given Albert something (not morphine-based) for the pain, and he was in a fingerless blissful state.

I found a doctor and handed him the towel full of fingers.

“Here. Y’all might need these.” I said, and got out of there.

*******************************************

The doctors weren’t able to re-attach Albert’s fingers. It turns out that he only sliced off the tips of some of them, less than a knuckle’s worth on any of them. The stuff that Brent and Mike had given me in the towels was just some mangled finger meat of a type that I never want to handle again.

Albert eventually collected a handsome Workers Comp check. He was still able to play the piano. We lost touch with him years ago.

I’ve thought a lot about that intense, horrible, wonderful ride down Interstate 30 towards the hospital, singing those old hymns and gospel songs with Albert. I thought a lot about how Albert seemed to have something that I’ve lost. He had something to get him through the bad times.

Whatever it was that Albert had, I’ll never own it again. I can’t go back there to that childlike faith.

You see, I’m the man who allowed Albert to slice off his fingers, and then lost the fingers.

The Pew Research Religion Quiz

Go here to take the Pew Research Religion Quiz !! 

I nailed it !!!

Post your results below.  Readers who didn't grow up in Mississippi may add two points to their score, just to make it fair. 

I don't know if this link will work or not, but as a general rule the religious groups scoring the highest, question by question, were Jews, Atheists and Mormons.  White and black Protestants were near the bottom on each question. 

The average person in the Pew sample answered only 50% of these questions correctly.  If you think that's scary, check out the scores on the political knowledge tests.  Then go pray.  Or offer up animal sacrifices.  Start honoring all three major Sabbath Days.  Avoid pork. 

A strange endorsement from Don Wildmon

Here's a statement from the Faith Leaders Coalition, penned by Don Wildmon, of the Campaign for Decency:

Atlanta, GA - Gingrich Faith Leaders Coalition National Co-Chair Don Wildmon released this statement today:

Perhaps you have heard a rumor that I have changed my support from Newt Gingrich for President to another candidate. I want you to know that is not true. To suggest that I have switched my support is inaccurate.

Without question, this election is the most important in the history of our nation. Our culture has become saturated with corruption and immorality. I firmly believe the future not only of our nation but all of Western Civilization is at stake. Voters in South Carolina will help decide if we can return our nation to its Judeo-Christian roots, or continue to slide down the slippery slope?

In the past, Christian conservatives have split their votes among three or four candidates. This has allowed the moderate-liberal wing of the Republican Party to capture the nomination. It appears we might do the same thing again.

The only way to prevent this from happening is for evangelical Christians to stick together and vote for the same person. I have decided to support Newt Gingrich and I hope you will rally behind him. I believe that the former Speaker of the House is the best qualified electable conservative candidate to make the changes needed in Washington.

If conservatives split their vote three ways, then liberal-moderate candidate Romney is a cinch to win.

I fully realize there are other very good candidates in this race. But if you have not already made a decision, I hope that you will consider Newt. If we will vote as a bloc, we can defeat the moderate-liberals.

What to do with 250 copies of "The Book Of Mormon"

A Southern Baptist Witch Doctor, Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas, recently made some waves by stating that Christians shouldn't vote for Mitt Romney because he's a member of a cult.  (Romney is a member of the LDS church.  Also known as the Mormon church.) 
The Robert Jeffress publicity stunt reminded me of something that I did about 25 years ago.
 
This is an unlikely story, so I'm going to copy my friend Henry Farrish when I throw it on Facebook. 

Henry can't vouch for the buildup, but he can verify the aftermath.  And the aftermath was pure, undiluted greatness. 

Here goes:

I moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in January of 1984 to attend Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
The training didn’t take.

I dropped out of seminary because of a crisis of faith, because my heart wasn’t in it, because of The White Elephant Saloon in the Fort Worth Stockyards, and because of the discovery that God just might not have plans to torture Jews and Muslims for eternity for their lack of belief in things they’d never heard of.

I eventually went to work doing shipping and receiving for Taylors Books, a local retail chain. My last semester, the spring of ’85 (?), I skipped all of my classes except for a couple that I liked and spent most of my time working at Taylors and reading heretical literature in the seminary library.

If you ever want to know more about the Marcionite heresy, I’m your man.

While I was going through my dark night of the soul, a couple of Mormon missionaries were on a parallel track.  Customers and employees of Taylors Books could look out the store windows and see these two depressed Mormon lads on their bicycles, pedaling around the Camp Bowie Boulevard neighborhood in their black slacks, white IBM shirts and black ties, going through a lackluster routine of handing out pamphlets and hardback copies of The Book Of Mormon. I wish those boys had come in the store so we could compare notes.

The pic of a couple of random Mormon missionaries came from here. 

They reminded me of those kids who are paid minimum wage to put on a Hot Dog costume and pass out coupons for Big Dawgs House O’ Wieners. Any photo of these missionaries could’ve been captioned “So….it really has come to this”.

These boys decided that spreading the message of the late prophet Joseph Smith was a poor career choice. They eventually gave up on evangelism and quietly dumped two massive cases of “The Book Of Mormon” at the back door of Taylors Books and said “screw it”.  Maybe they would’ve felt too guilty about throwing the books into a dumpster, but figured that a bookstore might sell them.  We never saw them again, and as far as I know they took their bicycles to I-20 and pedaled back to Salt Lake City.

They left me with about 250 free copies of “The Book Of Mormon – Another Testimony Of Jesus Christ”.

What to do, what to do….

I’ve got to digress for a moment.  You won't miss much if you skip the next 7 paragraphs....

Here’s what was going on at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary at the time. They were having a Holy War.  There was a conservative faction in the Southern Baptist Convention that didn’t believe that women should be allowed to preach, or even teach men (I’m serious). They didn’t believe that women should be leaders in the church or in the home - a concept called the “subordination of women”. (This rule doesn’t apply at the national level, though, as some conservatives found enough wiggle room in their policies to support Sarah Palin, who was godless enough to run for Vice President despite owning a real live vagina.)

The conservatives claimed that every word of the arbitrary collection loosely called “Bible” is without error, they insisted on a literal 6 day creation, and that humans speak multiple languages because some people at Babel once built an offensive tower, and that gays and lesbians were sinners who chose homosexuality the way that you choose Coke instead of Pepsi.

Very few people stopped to wonder if God didn’t like Muslims, women, Jews, or homosexuals, why oh why did he keep making so many of them?

Up until that point, Southern Baptists had advocated a couple of concepts called “Autonomy Of The Local Church” and “Priesthood Of The Believer”.  I don’t have the time, space or inclination to go into those traditions here, since I no longer have a dog in that fight, but those concepts imply that individual churches and individual Christians are free to find their own way, for better or for worse.

Those old libertarian-ish traditions weren’t good enough for many of the grim young strivers of Southwestern Baptist Theological Semitary. Any system that leaves people alone, theologically or politically, is a blatant affront to those who just know what is best for everyone else. How can you pull of a successful Disney boycott or a big war if some churches and some people won’t participate in the hatin’ ??

The conservative faction was opposed by a “liberal Baptist” faction. (Yeah, roll that phrase around in your mouth for a while. There is such a thing!) The liberal Baptists were a smaller, less powerful group which has gone on to become Episcopalian.

Let’s just say that I wasn’t happy there. I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life enmeshed in those debates. I had already blown off half of my classes and was half-auditing the others just to learn more, with no intention of taking any final exams. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and didn’t have an immediate goal.

But someone had given me 250 copies of The Book Of Mormon. I took that as a sign from God, or Jupiter, Zeus, Zool, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster (who had not yet been revealed unto us, Bless His Noodly Appendage), that those books should be put to use.

Early one Saturday morning, I put on a generic denim shirt, one that could’ve been issued to someone’s maintenance crew. I got my cases of Joseph Smith’s Epistle To The Polygamists, a couple of shopping bags, and drove to school.

Other than the professorial and administrative offices, Southwestern Semitary classrooms were as open and empty as the tomb of the slain Galilean. I decided to hit the school of Theology first. I went into a classroom and propped a copy of “The Book Of Mormon: Another Testimony Of Jesus Christ” on the chalkrail of the blackboard. Front and center. It felt good. It looked right. A Hustler centerfold of Hillary Clinton couldn’t have been more offensive in that environment. I took a few steps back to admire my work, “and saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:10 )

I went from classroom to classroom, like a Utah Johnny Appleseed, spreading the Mormon Gospel of Sacred Undergarments, Celestial Marriage, Republican Governors, and large families. What were they going to do to me, throw me out of school? Plus, the only way I was going to get caught was if I kept breaking out in loud giggles.

I went to the Preaching Lab, a mini-church sanctuary with a pulpit, piano, and pews. I put a copy in the hymnal rack on the back of each pew, left one on the pulpit, and then propped open one on the piano.
Next, I entered to the chapel. Entering this room with those Joseph Smith’s books was like performing a Muslim ritual Hajj to Mecca, approaching the holy Kaaba, and then whipping out a Pizza Hut Deep Dish Pork Lover’s special (with extra bacon) just to see how it would go over with the other pilgrims. I decorated the chapel with my heretical books. Thus was The School Of Theology evangelized.

I had to go back to my truck and restock my supply several times. I worked over the School Of Education, the School Of Music, the fitness center, and the childcare facility. No Mormon has ever spread the LDS gospel to a hostile audience the way I spread it that morning, and if there really is a multi-tiered Mormon heaven with Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial kingdoms, I believe I’m going spend eternity looking down on a lot of other Baptists. I did my work better than Brigham Young, dammit.

(Here's a helpful Mormon chart showing where I shall take my rightful place in the highest circle, The Celestial Kingdom.  I'm going to get into the highest Mormon Heaven because of my good works for The Faith.)

Nobody noticed anything until Tuesday morning. (Southwestern Semitary doesn’t have classes on Mondays. This allows part-time preachers with churches in Oklahoma, Louisiana and West Texas to return to The Angel Factory on Monday instead of driving all Sunday night.)

Tuesday morning, there was a massive uproar all over campus. Outrage. Sturdy, strapping young Baptists discussed marching on Salt Lake City to plant copies of Herschell Hobbs’ landmark tract “The Baptist Faith And Message” in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir loft. Some professors declared it to be a harmless prank, while others began their classes with a prayer that all Mormons/LDS church members would listen for the Spirit’s voice, find the true path, repent of their errors, and blah blah blah freakin’ blah. (That was the approach taken by Dr. Boyd Hunt in Systematic Theology, by the way. I know because I was there for it.)

That night, I went to my job at Bassham Food Services. The Bassham’s night shift was 50% Seminary students working their way through school, and 50% bewildered stoners and neighborhood kids who were very, very tired of being evangelized by Seminary students.

The breakroom conversations were about the cropdusting of the Seminary with copies of “The Book Of Mormon”. Theories of Whodunnit were proposed. Nobody could come up with a satisfactory explanation.

I just sat there grinning, looking like the guy who knows Who Farted.

My friend, co-worker, and roommate Henry Farrish looked at me for a while. Henry and I have known each other since the 4th grade.

Henry whispered “Did you do that?????”

I winked.

Later on, we went into a corner of the warehouse and laughed and laughed and laughed. Wish you could’ve seen it.

And that is what you do with 250 copies of “The Book Of Mormon”.

"In God We Trust", but we're still going to vote in the primaries

From Roll Call, the unofficial magazine/website/playbook of the United States Congress:

Republicans Shift Focus From Jobs to God


•Oct. 31, 2011, Midnight

Republicans may be trying to focus their messaging on jobs and the economy — and hammering President Barack Obama for campaigning — but they still have time for some red meat base-baiting on the House floor.

To wit: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (Va.) decision to bring to the floor a measure that “reaffirms ‘In God We Trust’ as the official motto of the United States and supports and encourages the public display of the national motto in all public buildings, public schools, and other government institutions,” according to the resolution, sponsored by Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.).

Just think of it...The Federal Reserve is bankrupting every retiree who did the right thing and set aside some cash.  They're printing money like mad.  They're counterfeiting.  They're evil.  But they will have "In God We Trust" on a massive medallion hanging in the lobby. 

The resolution is one of three measures being considered by the House on Tuesday and is nonbinding.

Cantor’s office declined to comment for this story.

Democrats ridiculed the decision to bring up the measure.

“The last time we checked, ‘In God We Trust’ is the national motto of the United States, adopted in 1956, and China was still getting off scot-free while Republican House leaders refuse to bring up a bipartisan bill to level the playing field for American workers,” said Nadeam Elshami, spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.).

Anytime I find myself siding with Nancy Pelosi's minions, it is going to be a bad day.  I'm calling in sick before the workplace accidents begin. 

Go here for an explanation of the painting.  Dr. Ralph, eat your heart out. 

“How hard is it for the Republican leadership to reaffirm its commitment to the middle class by allowing a vote on the bipartisan China currency legislation that will create more than 1 million jobs? Apparently, they’re just too busy,” Elshami added.

In a statement, Forbes defended bringing the bill to the floor, arguing that Congress needs to directly confront “a disturbing trend of inaccuracies and omissions, misunderstandings of church and state, rogue court challenges, and efforts to remove God from the public domain by unelected bureaucrats.”

Randy Forbes, you ignorant slut.  There are a lot of us who don't want any "gods" leading the charge in your dirty little wars.  We don't want Yahweh, Zeus, Jehovah, Jesus, or Neptune to have any part of Obama's Jobs Bill.  There are no misunderstandings. 
Here's an excerpt from The Treaty Of Tripoli, originated by John Adams (Sr.), unanimously approved by Congress, and then signed into law in 1797:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims),—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

It really is that simple.  The Founders saw all the wars that began as European religious spats, and decided that they wanted no part of it.  The End.  Full Stop. 
Forbes points to a number of instances that are driving the need for the bill, including Obama referring to E Pluribus Unum as “our” motto and omission of the motto from parts of the Capitol Visitor Center, among others.

“As our nation faces challenging times, it is appropriate for Members of Congress and our nation — like our predecessors — to firmly declare our trust in God, believing that it will sustain us for generations to come,” he added.

Ok, Randy, put up or shut up.  Let's not run anyone against Barack.  Let the Fed keep printing money.  Give ACORN, SEIU, OWS, and the government bureaucracies everything they want. 
Do we have ineffective schools?  Just pray about it. 
Do we have more black men in cages than the Confederacy?  Put it in the Lord's hands. 

Trust in God. 
Somehow, I don't think you want to do that.