A brief hiatus again - this time broken by the departure of spring clouds, leaving my extracurricular life exposed under dusty blue skies of summer. I have taken up the bike, and punctured as it may be by the forces of neglect, I'll return to cranking the wheels in no time. I have returned to photography, and after a significantly successful partial solar eclipse, I'm looking forward to the June lunar eclipse and venus transit. I have taken up writing the blog once more, or at least this post, before I'm distracted by something else. Not to mention doing research at full speed. I might even return to climbing - but I doubt I have the time.
But pish tish and vibble, as Stephen Fry would say, to the point. Yesterday I caught the BART, stepped on, and sat down. In front of me were pamphlets - of the religious kind to be precise. god and jesus, and love and wonderful things like that. So as a dutiful Berkeley atheistic, left-wing, science loving, hippie, maniacal, gay, chinese, islamic, voodoo-worshipping, satan-screwing liberal, I got to work vandalizing divine property. To be serious, I saw the pamphlets stuck up on the seat in front of me as a forum - a paperboard for dialogue between the faithful and the sane. One-sided as it may be, perhaps some other BART patron could be amused/enraged by a mundane leaflet covered in red ink scribbles. By the time I was done, it looked like the following:
Let me be clear - I'm not a militant atheist. In no sense would I want to waste my time proselytizing ignorant believers in god to ignorant believers in 'science' whatever that may be. I wanted a bit of comedy and rationalism - if anyone is offended by what I have done, the offense is entirely intended. I have nothing against christianity any more than I am against other religions. They're all primitive. If anything, our models of the universe are a belief system in a sense - the only thing differentiating religion and our models is that our models are constantly changing depending on evidence, while religion is a constant bedrock of useless, outdated and often harmful ideas on how people should live their lives (with a bit of caveman cosmology thrown in).
The first sheet ended up:
It's hard to read so here are excerpts:
1) next to Jesus Christ, Son of God : "great to see God upholding family values," Joseph [sarcastically]
2) All things were created - Including "him"?
3) john 1:3 - I'd love to prove the Riemann Hypothesis by quoting an antiquated book of oral history
4) Christ died for our sins - I'm pretty sure he died from Roman persecution
5) rose again on the third day - trendy survival skills there
6) stop ridiculous capitalization and a little repetitive maybe? (the entire book suffers from these diseases)
7) [citation needed] - citing the bible is like citing wikipedia (worse - no correcting bots)
8) he is condemned already because he has not believed the name of the son of god- you just told us he's Jesus Christ. We got it. Free pass to theme park heaven please?
The second leaflet was yellow and ingeniously folded into the seat edging. On one side was a rather cheesy letter from god as this father figure addressing his 'children' :
More excerpts:
1) I know when you sit down and when you rise up -> Creepo!
2) I loved you before you were born - ew
3) daddy issues
4) his [jesus'] death was an expression of how much I love you - wait what? you killed your other child to show me how much you love me? that's extreme. How do I know you won't kill me to show someone else your love?
5) I'll throw the biggest party for you - 80's god. I prefer classical.
6) Love, your Dad - WHERE IS MOM?? .. what have you done with mom?
I was running out of time on the reverse side:
1) as he ascended to heaven, so are we - tenses!! tsk tsk
2) as he arose from the heaven, so are we - dude….
3) as he died to self (?), so are we (??) - dude!!! LEARN ENGLISH!!
4) too much b.s. to edit on a 45 minute train ride.
Meh - it was amusing and everything, but not a serious argument or consideration of the existence of a divine power. I plan on writing a more in depth analysis of Spinoza's god, Einstein's ideas about belief, harmony and atheism, and Gödel's proof, and I will post that when I have the time.
The sleepy impish vandal himself: