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Today I had a peculiar experience. I was discussing religion with a coworker and, for the first time in recorded history, he backed down from an argument. This gentlemen, in addition to being my coworker, is also quite a bit smarter than I. Why would a man who could ordinarily debate circles around me yield to my arguments?

Because, he stated, the ideas I expressed were dangerous.

The opinions being vocalized were harmless from my perspective; that is, from the perspective of someone who has no fear of posthumous retribution. What I said was not new (that God murdered more people in the Bible than Satan) and it wasn’t nearly as important to me as his reaction.

He clammed up. He didn’t want to continue because he felt fear and he told me so. Not for himself but for my soul because, according to the Bible, his God has a special corner of Hell reserved for blasphemers like me (Matthew 12:32, Mark 3:29, Luke 12:10). Whether or not my words at that particular moment were blasphemous may depend on your definition of the word. If you consider questioning an obvious and important paradox in the Bible blasphemous, then consider me guilty as charged.

Call me crazy but I’d like to know the nature of God before I use him to calibrate my moral compass. This is typically Christian: deeming certain lines of questioning as blasphemous, unforgivable sins because one’s own beliefs won’t stand up to their scrutiny. If God exists, then he gave you a mind with which to think. Start using it.

Several weeks ago at the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, Colorado, a guest speaker suggested to his audience of high school students that they “have sex and use drugs” (article). Joel Becker, a professor of psychology at the University of California, was quoted as saying,

“I am going to encourage you to have sex and encourage you to use drugs appropriately. Why I am going to take that position is because you are going to do it anyway,” he continued. “I think as a psychologist and health educator, it is more important to educate you in a direction that you might actually stick to. So, I am going to stay mostly on with the sex side because that is the area I know more about. I want to encourage you to all have healthy, sexual behavior.“

As expected parents, teachers, and school board members are furious about this open invitation for their children to explore the wonderful and exciting world of sex and drugs.  I give Joel Becker a lot of credit for having the guts to make such a statement in the forum in which he did. The reaction, though expected, simply proves his point: many parents and educators take an unrealistic stance on sex and drugs by exclusively advocating abstinence rather than responsible indulgence.

When the school board discussed the issue one parent speaker was asked to stop reading the transcript of Becker’s speech because the language was “not appropriate.” Perhaps the problem with America’s youth is not that people like Joel Becker are telling them they don’t have to feel guilty about their natural urges; but rather that parents are afraid of words like “masturbation,” “ecstasy,” and “we ate some ’shrooms and then I gave her the old ‘Cleaveland Steamer!’” These people are parents, mind you, which means they must have had sex at one time in their lives.  I’m guessing from this article that it occurred at gunpoint.

Abstinence doesn’t work, and I don’t think anyone needs to see statistics to understand that (but here they are if you want them). You can make as many promises to God as you’d like, but at the age of 16 you’d burn down a convent full of nuns just to watch their titties bounce as they run out the door.  It’s easy to have convictions when no one is testing them.

If you’re a parent, be responsible and talk to your kids realistically about sex and drugs.  If this means you need to conquer a few of your own hang-ups, then so be it.

As I read yet another refutation of Pascal’s Wager, I’m reminded of a conversation I had with my father yesterday.  For those of you not familiar with Pascal’s Wager, it goes something like this:

1. If you believe in God and God exists, you will be rewarded with an eternity in Heaven.
2. If you believe in God and God does not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing.
3. If you don’t believe in God and God exists, you will be punished with an eternity in Hell.
4. If you don’t believe in God and God exists, you will gain nothing but lose nothing.
5. The only logical choice is to believe in God, because it is the only choice in which you may be rewarded and always avoid punishment.

Of course there are already a plethora of logical arguments that blow Pascal’s Wager out of the water, but if you already accept some religious path based on faith, logic isn’t going to convince you.  Below is a recollection of the conversation I had with my father, which helps explain why Pascal’s Wager just doesn’t work in practice.

A Conversation with my Father
Yesterday my dad and I had a heart to heart about religion and it proved to me why Pascal’s Wager doesn’t work in practice, let alone under the scrutiny of logic.

After telling my dad a story about my previous night’s activities (which included going to a strip club, a bar, and nearly getting arrested for climbing up a building because I was drunk and it was fun), dad started crying.

You would think a good Christian father would be crying because of how far my life seems to have strayed from the path of Christ, but that’s not why dad was crying.

He explained that the tears were cried out of jealousy; my father envies my life because I’m able to live my life for myself, I get to taste the pleasures forbid him as a young man, and yet I remain a good person. Dad grew up not knowing the most simple pleasures because they were “sinful” in the eyes of the church and an ultra-indoctrinated family who never questioned the church’s reasoning (if there was any).

Pascal’s Wager fails because there is plenty to lose by accepting any religious doctrine that Pascal just disregards. I cry for my father that it took 50 years of living to finally get it.

It was only a matter of time until I decided the world needed to hear my thoughts about Michael Richards. My time has finally come; and yet here I am, not entirely sure of what I want to say about it. Right now I’m torn between which side of the argument frustrates me more: the racist comedian or the hypocritical clergy.

If you’ve been living in a cave for the last three weeks (no offense Osama!), here’s a brief synopsis of the situation.

• Michael Richards, better known as Kramer on Seinfeld, does gig at comedy club.
• Richards gets annoyed by loud audience members, is told he’s “not funny” by one black man.
• Richards flips out; three-minute racial outburst is caught on video phone. Video finds its way to the Internet.
• Richards apologizes live on The Late Show with David Letterman.
• Someone digs up old Seinfeld clip that I find hilarious within the context.
• Richards goes on the PR warpath, apologizes to black civil rights leaders.
• Richard’s victims appear on various T.V. shows along with lawyer.
• Victim’s lawyer puts apology in terms of dollars. Makes mockery of situation in my opinion.
• Jesse Jackson advocates boycott of Seinfeld DVD purchases.
• Some feelings were hurt, now civil rights leaders think we should ban words, specifically the “n word.”
• Civil rights leaders inflate one man’s outburst into national problem; pit factions of country against one another; exacerbate racial tension they’re trying to heal.

Apparently big-shot Christians like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson can conveniently forget about Christian values when their ethnic pride gets attacked. I’m not saying what Richards said was right or that they have any reason to forgive him, but I find it hypocritical that two men who both claim the titles reverend and civil rights leader now find themselves not only unwilling to forgive, but waging war to ruin the man who wronged them and attacking free speech as well. Maybe they should boycott the works of all celebrities that use the “n word,” and see where that gets them.

Not only have they promoted a ban on the word nigger (that’s right, I said it; I just wanted to get it out once before its illegal to choose distasteful language), now Jackson is calling for a boycott of Seinfeld Season 7, which just recently was released on DVD. Let’s get something straight Mr. Jackson: Michael Richards made a big mistake; not Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julie Dreyfus, or co-creator Larry David. Richards wasn’t reading a Seinfeld script when this happened. Why boycott Seinfeld? Its absurd when you consider that Jerry Seinfeld is one of the few comedians left to not use racial slurs, not joke about racial issues, and to not sell out his own people (I’m talking to you, Carlos Mencia).

I agree: Michael Richards is a bigot and an asshole. But when I heard a white lawyer cry the blues about the pain and suffering that Richards’ black “victims” were put through that night and the monetary compensation they deserve, I lost most of the pity I felt for them. Is taking Richard’s money away and putting it in the hands of black men going to heal his racism? Maybe in “Bizzaro World!” Richard’s just self-destructed his career. He’ll never have another black man in his audience; in fact he may never have another audience. And you know what? He deserves that.

As for what “he owes” his victims, I propose the same punishment I’d get if I told a group of black guys they were niggers: a fierce beat-down. Give these men a free pass to visit Michael Richards and kick the shit out of him, in private. No hidden cameras, no civil rights activists, no national racial tensions: just an idiot getting his ass kicked.

Back when I was being brought up on Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, nobody told me there was a more adult side to Mark Twain. I was introduced to some of the philosophical issues regarding morality in Huck Finn during a college philosophy course but even then, quite surprisingly, the fact that Mark Twain was such an opponent of Christianity was never mentioned.  In fact it wasn’t until a friend recommended Letters from the Earth that I had any notion that Twain wrote about topics more enduring than slaves on rafts and less trivial than white-washing fences.  Go ahead and call me an uncultured dolt; the only mistake you’ll be making is uttering such a gross understatement.

Letters from the Earth is not your typical atheistic rant: you won’t find a bulleted list of reasons that God cannot exist nor any logical proofs to that conclusion either. Rather than rehash the same classical arguments against religion, Twain’s Letters from the Earth doesn’t aim to prove anything.  Instead he holds up a mirror to the Christian faith and forces the reader to view it in all it’s absurdity.  Letters is written as a series of fictional correspondences from an archangel on Earth to his peers back in Heaven. What I believe makes the letters so interesting is that they are written from the perspective of a being that already knows the nature of God, the universe, and man’s place within it. The archangel’s transcendental knowledge of mankind at times gives his observations of humanity a very sarcastic, often comical twist.  He already knows that Christianity is wrong in almost every way it could be, and finds a sick amusement in reporting back the details of it’s misguided theology.

One might wonder about Twain’s choice for the author of these letters. They are written by Satan, but the Satan of Letters from the Earth is not necessarily identical to his biblical counterpart; of course, neither is God or any of the other characters in the story. Twain’s Satan is one of God’s right-hand men whose loose tongue lands him a short suspension from his duties; not the classical fallen angel, antithesis of all things good Satan that we all know and love. As the story progresses, Twain’s Satan uses his time off the job to check in on our quaint little planet. Letters from the Earth is the full report of his findings.

I enjoyed Letters from the Earth too much to do the story justice in a single blog.  Now that you know the premise I hope you’ll come back tomorrow to hear the book’s unique story of creation.  Through the next few days I will devote a full entry to each chapter.  Tune in tomorrow for the next installment!