Atheists beat mystics on religion quiz

It will come as little surprise that we atheists obliterate the mystics at their own game.

In a new poll by the Pew Research Center, atheists and agnostics and Jews and Mormons (yuck) smashed the Protestants and Catholics at an understanding of world religions.

And (equally of little surprise) the more educated you are, the more you know about religions.

The reason I say "little surprise," of course, is that if you have talked with any number of Christian mystics, you know that they know bupkis about their own myth book.

They don't know that the four so-called Gospels can't even agree on who was outside Jesus' tomb or where his carcass walked after being dead for three days or who was at his crucifixion or what he said to whom or what he preached on the mount or that there are two entirely differing accounts of Adam and Eve or ...

In the survey, almost half of Christians didn't know the name of the first book of the Bible, only two-thirds knew the names of the four alleged Gospel writers, less than half know that the Dalai Lama is a Buddhist, less than half of Protestants know who Martin Luther is, barely half of Catholics know that they are allegedly literally eating the body and blood of Jesus when they take communion. The list goes on.

You'd think that any human being that commits himself to a fundamental philosophy/viewpoint of the universe and morality would steep himself in the ideas and words of that philosophy, to show at least some respect for the knowledge that is the foundation for his worldview.

No, not Christians. They remain doggedly consistent in their irrationality and remain haughty about their alleged "truth."

I'd have no problem with this if they didn't vote away my individual rights. If we lived in America under a supremely rational constitution, then we rational people could blissfully make fun of Christians without worrying that they will vote away more of our rights, without living with the knowledge that the mystic slaves insist upon us being slaves to their government.

Alas, that day of reckoning for the mystics is coming -- hopefully in my lifetime.

Whoopin' their ass!

As I've said before, I've got some friends on Facebook that are old high-school buddies and acquaintances from times past, and every once in a while I get invited to some seriously crazy shit.

So today it was an invitation by a high-school woman friend to a popular Facebook site called "My parents didn't put me in time-out -- they whooped my ass!" The site has more than 600,000 members -- no doubt, most of them Christians, who salivate over "spare the rod, spoil the child" -- no doubt as recompense for having already sold their souls to mysticism and getting beat up psychologically for it.

Anyway, as y'all know I'm an unschooler and I'd rather cut off my toes than once strike my child. It has never even entered my head to strike her -- or anyone else, for that matter, except for Keith Olbermann and the soccer mom going 45 in a 55-mph zone while chatting away on her cell phone.

So, when I become president of these here United States and institute a rational constitution with rational laws, I'll grab my popcorn and watch a night of public beatings of parents who "whoop the ass" of their children. It'll bring out the redneck in me, as I'm sure I'll be screaming with delight, "That's right, keep on whoopin' their ass!"

The living, the living dead -- and a poem

(poem below)
I allow some mystics (they refer to themselves as "Christians") to become friends on Facebook because they have been generally nice to me and have some values I share. But sometimes they forget themselves and ask me to join some mystic endeavor in a foggy-rotten universe of "discussion." This time it was "intelligent design."

And so it happened this a.m. on my fourth sip of coffee while reading emails. Had the defendant caught me just two sips earlier, he would've heard nothing more than muted swearing from a night-befuddled brain. Alas, his message found me on or after my third sip as my mind gains clock-speed. He was tried and convicted in a court of facts via a Facebook message that referred, in moments, to zombies and mystics and pristine sips of coffee and never-never-little-Johnny-are-you-to-do-that-again.

The mystic did, however, awaken the Fact Giant and stirred FG's previous ruminations upon the subject of the living dead among us reality mongers. And so goes the following:

In the beginning, swirling dead birthed life,
Tiny beings alight on edged knife.
All is to win, and this is all -- a world,
Fuming, venting, a DNA unfurled.
Then it comes! Whence, yet still, we do not know,
A wiggle tail and a spangled torso.
In dark shallows, a billioned great spawn,
A meteor, a raging sun, then gone.
And yet, not gone, a few, yes, they the strong,
Stay, remain, survive anew, fast and long.
We, their virile progeny, though unlike,
We, the human, from chimps and trilobite.
How far is father time is length in change,
For the world is stage we now rearrange.
Some is for good, even so, some for naught,
Rational life is fight for is and ought.
"No it is not!" say low creatures of mind,
"We are but insects to divine divine."
The trilobite laughs and the chimp chuckles,
"Who's this new fool who on death suckles?
"Did we not give life, for we had no choice?
"Did we not give you a mind to rejoice?
"Your greatest poet, we did not believe,
"When he proclaimed, 'What fools these mortals be.'
"We have but little choice now than to see,
"That many of you become us and we.
"Bit by bit, we marched forward in time, space,
"Yet you go backward, you, the human race.
"To rejoin your brethren in bloody toil.
"Rather, please listen, we must be your foil.
"Don't be us, and think not of things not so,
"Know what you are, and more, know what you know.
"It is what it is; it ain't what it ain't.
"You have brain, but we offer no complaint.
"You have senses, as we did and we do.
"But you have sensibility sinew.
"Please refrain from things not seen, felt or heard.
"You are alpha-omega, the mind-bird.
"If worship you must, then here's what to do:
"Get a mirror, yes, and see, it is you."