I pick on Joe the Plumber because he so perfectly embodies what the current Republican party has become.

The radical change in the current Republican party can be most visibly noticed in foreign policy. Republicans and conservatives have traditionally been the party of a modest foreign policy. Our founding fathers frequently warned of “entangling alliances,” but beyond that, Republicans generally viewed a bold foreign policy as too economically costly. Even the Godly Ronald Reagan was fast to withdraw troops from Lebanon as he realized the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. But the most notable shift was after 9/11. President Bush (the title of President is for life) campaigned against Al Gore in 2000 on the premise of a “humble foreign policy.” His campaign argument was that the United States was far too involved in the affairs of foreign countries.

But after 9/11, the Bush Administration’s foreign policy took a sharp turn, and adopted the radical “Bush Doctrine.” To paraphrase, the “Bush Doctrine” simply states that the U.S. is able to take military action against any country hostile to its interests. Sounds harmless and logical, right? Wrong! This is an overly vague statement that left the law open for abuse. The Bush Administration invaded Afghanistan (which may have been the correct move at the time), Iraq (which was illegal based on international law), backed the Ethiopians as they invaded Somalia (and we also allowed North Korea to illegally sell weapons to Ethiopia), sold weapons to Taiwan in a move that clearly escalated tensions with China and would have loved to invade Iran if they would have been able to. The tension between the United States and the rest of the world could easily be felt, even among our strongest allies.

As for economics, the remaining conservatives were ditched long ago for the dogmatic ideology of tax-cuts championed by Ronald Reagan. As soon as President Bush took office, he passed massive tax-cuts through Congress. Now don’t interpret my writing incorrectly, President bush inherited a recession, and it is clearly the economically sound policy to cut taxes during a recession. Tax-cuts generally relieve the pinch tax-payers feel, and also generate economic activity through spending and investment. But to cut taxes for an entire term, and then to renew them in his second term was simply irresponsible. It defies the laws of economics. While cutting taxes during a recession is smart policy, taxes are generally supposed to be raised eventually, as spending increases and economic activity picks up momentum.

But the Bush Administration somehow managed to renew his tax-cuts until 2010, when they are set to expire. Does anyone want to know the total cost of these tax cuts? An estimate (which will differ depending on where you retrieve your information, but will be in the general vicinity of the number provided) is around $860 billion.

Does this remind anyone of a number recently being thrown around Capitol Hill? It is fairly close to President Obama’s $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Republicans were violently opposed to it on the grounds of the bill violating their principles of fiscal discipline. I am understanding of 9/11 changing the principles of a political party’s foreign policy (although I strongly disagree with Republican foreign policy), but to hear the Republicans argue so vehemently against this bill simply made me feel ill. I will explain why.

Tax cuts are not a genuine strategy. It was claimed to be a strategy that would generate more revenues than taxes would, but we now know that was not true, because our deficit is the highest it has ever been, approaching $1 trillion fast (if not already there). The rationale behind the strategy was that people would use their tax-cuts to either create economic growth through investment or generate revenues by spending them in the consumer market.

Is anyone comfortable with an economic strategy that is so vague?

To make matters worse, President Bush slashed the capital gains tax in half. This may have seemed like a good move, slashing the capital gains tax in half is clearly an incentive for people to make money through investment, but this simply led to a massive orgy of irresponsible investment. Yes, this is all connected with the housing bubble, failing investment banks and subsequently (and currently) collapsing global economy. The bottom line is that the President has a powerful podium that can influence, literally, the atmosphere and mental-state of the country. President Bush’s policies led us down a road of irresponsible investment that has permanently scarred our reputation as the most trust-worthy country with regards to banking and investment.

Now we hear the Republican Party up-in-arms over President Obama’s stimulus package. They mock it as “wasteful government spending.”

Here are the proponents of the stimulus package:

1. $288 billion of tax relief.
2. $144 billion of state and local fiscal relief.
3. $111 billion of infrastructure and science.
4. $81 billion of protecting the vulnerable (uncomfortably vague for me, personally).
5. $59 billion of healthcare.
6. $53 billion of education and training.
7. $43 billion of energy.

It seems like President Obama’s stimulus plan is a REAL strategy for the direction in which he wants to take the country. President Bush’s strategy (which is still dogmatically embraced by the Republican Party) is simply cutting taxes, and hoping people use them to do what is best for the country.

President Bush’s (and the Republican Party’s) strategy seems like “wasteful government spending.”

Let me be very clear. I do not hate conservatives. I wish we had some genuine conservatives with power in the Republican Party, because as a voter, I want a genuine choice.

To be continued, if you made it this far, thanks for sticking with it. Feel free to comment on this, but try to exercise a little class….

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That said, I now return you to our regularly scheduled program…

At first glance, comparing religion to steroids can seem a bit bold and even offensive to a lot of people, which is understandable. That doesn’t mean the comparison isn’t a reasonable one…it only means people just don’t like it when religion is scrutinized.

So…onward to why I have decided to compare religion to steroids.

The main reason this idea came to mind was the total lack of honesty involved with this recent steroid controversy in Major League Baseball. You have guys like Alex Rodriguez that lied to a national audience on 60 Minutes and then gives a half-assed apology when he gets caught. You have other guys like Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds who you know are just as dirty as Rodriguez, but continue to deny the reality of what they had done.

Where does all of this tie into religion? Well, I think the same dishonesty exists among the religious that claim that god is real.

It takes a great deal of dishonesty to convince yourself that an invisible being interacts with your life by helping you out, teaching you lessons, and shunning your enemies when there is no evidence whatsoever outside of the individual’s mind. It’s dishonest to reject evidence that may conflict with your belief just because you want to maintain said belief.

The more I started to think about the parallels of steroids and religion, I realized that religion can be viewed almost as psychological cheating. Not only are you trying to trick your mind, but trusting in religion is like getting the answers when you haven’t done any of the research yourself.

It’s like completely relying on someone else’s cheat sheet for a final exam. The worst part about it is that religious folks automatically assume that the person they got the cheat sheet from can be trusted. There’s no outside fact checking to make sure this cheat sheet is legit…just a complete submission to it out of laziness, naivety or just plain dishonesty.

Most religions allege to have every answer you’ll ever need in your life within the pages of their holy book. In other words, there’s no need to go out into the world and figure out for yourself how the world came to be, because it’s already written there for you.

It’s a shortcut.

I could see it if it were acceptable to take the long route and find things out for yourself, but it’s mandatory in most religions that you accept this shortcut as the truth and don’t question it. That’s like a Major League Baseball team condemning a player that wanted to play ball without steroids through conditioning and practice. No matter how possible it would be to become a great player without the roids, the team would make it very clear that any effort made to “play clean” wouldn’t be tolerated.

A lot of people object to steroids due to the health risks they pose, but you can count on one hand the number of baseball players that died from using steroids, while you can check the front page of CNN.com at any given moment and find some sort of death via religious conflict. I’d go out on a limb and say that you’d probably live longer regularly injecting yourself with Human Growth Hormone than you would walking through a muslim town with a picture of Mohammed on your shirt.

Then there’s the moral objection to steroids, which really just goes back to the dishonesty issue.

People morally object to steroids because it’s unnatural and dishonest. I won’t go as far as to say that religion is unnatural — since religion is a naturally occurring phenomenon, regardless of whether gods actually exist — but I will say that religion is extremely dishonest.

I can’t count how many times people have run away from questions about religion that they simply don’t want to answer. Why is there such an almost violent aversion to talking openly about religion? Why are objections to the religion avoided like the plague?

I think there’s only one explanation to such an unhealthy avoidance of candid religious discussion: That these people are being dishonest with themselves, and any real discussion about it would have to draw them further toward being honest with themselves…and that honest truth is something they want to avoid at all costs. What they think that honest truth is, I don’t know, but I do know that it’s being avoided everyday by everyone that refuses to give their own beliefs a reality check.

One last comparison and then I’m done…

I look at a baseball player that is able to hit 50 home runs in a season and I’m in awe of his ability. The moment I find out he’s juicing, that awe flies out of the window when I realize he may have hit 20, maybe 30 without doping [see: Brady Anderson circa 1996]. So, I have much more respect for someone that is able to hit even 40 home runs the natural way, than someone that is able to hit 70 or 73 by sticking needles in their ass.

Well, the same goes for religion.

I have a load of respect for the person that is able to lead a happy life without the aid of religion. Anyone can convince themselves any religion is real and trick themselves into believing that an invisible person is watching over you and will reward you with eternal bliss in return for your undying worship.

However…

It takes a special human being to face life head on to deal with the reality of our situation and find joy in it. I have the utmost respect for these individuals because they don’t carry the crutch of religion with them wherever they go like a syringe with HGH.

It takes a strong athlete to stand up and do it the natural way especially when everyone around them is doing it, just like it takes a strong person be honest with themselves when it comes to god-belief. I applaud both individuals, and hope that we’re moving toward a more honest society with both issues of steroids and religion.

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It’s no secret that people still have strong feelings against interracial marriage — specifically between a white and black person. We’ve obviously come far in these past hundred or so years where it was against the law to where a mixed-race person is our president, but we still have quite a ways to go if a man would have a strike against him if he wed a woman that had the same skin tone as his mother.

I find that a lot of the opposition would undoubtedly come from black women who, in my experience, are the most outspoken detractors of interracial mingling. Why the opposition? I can’t exactly say, although I do have my own suspicions that I outlined in my post Black women and ‘The Swirl’. To put it bluntly, the main reason why black women are so up in arms about black men’s indiscriminate choices in women is because they simply don’t have anything in common with anyone else. Either that, or just fear of ridicule from your peer group. Either way, the issue doesn’t lie with the man that decides that something as superficial as skin tone should be held against someone you choose as a mate.

At any rate, I don’t think black women alone would solely be responsible for Obama’s demise as a presidential candidate, nor do I think that they would represent the largest group in number. What I do think is that a severely disproportionate number of black women would have stayed home on election day compared to the number of whites that would have switched their vote. In other words, my guess is that 90% of black women would have changed their view of Obama compared to maybe maybe 40% of the rest of the population. Those numbers are pulled out of my rear end, so feel free to disagree with me.

The only reason why I continue to single black women out in discussions like this is that I can’t — not for the life of me — understand the continued discrimination by blacks when so many claim to face discrimination in their lives seemingly everyday. I expect the folks that have never had to face prejudice a day in their lives to continue to act like idiots, but to crawl through life moving through an obstacle course of discrimination and then to do that to someone else is inexcusable and incredibly hypocritical.

We all have some growing up to do with this whole race issue to finally mature to realize that people are people regardless of your family lineage or how dark your skin is. It’s interesting and very telling how braindead people really are when they talk so much about race being about a shared history or lineage, but these same people would say a guy like Obama would be betraying his lineage by wedding a white woman — who, according to this whole mixed up ‘race logic’, would be from the same lineage as his mother.

Anybody want to chime in and explain why your views would change of Obama if Michelle was white? Even if they wouldn’t change, I’d love to hear your view on this topic in general. Why do people still care about dating or marrying someone that doesn’t look like they could be related to you?

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For the non-believers, when they ask how these folks are so certain of our impending doom, they are responded to with biblical prophecies. Some come from Isaiah and some come from Revelation, but the general tone is almost always the same. It consists of the believer damning the ways of the non-believers as morally corrosive, and also offering the ultimate solution, accepting Christ as your lord and savior. This is an automatic ticket into the heaven that all believers are guaranteed to experience after death.

We are lectured about the biblical significance of the increase of sexual immorality in our culture. We are warned about abortions, the “cashless” society predicted in Revelation, the “200 million man army” from the “Far East” and many more scary predictions made by the bible that are definitely going to be fulfilled. There is no way they cannot be fulfilled, after all, the bible is the “infallible word of God.”

I was even told by a dear friend, who happens to be Christian, that President Bush’s seeming inability to be articulate did not bother her, “Because God is on his side, and God is so much bigger than him.”

But how do we know god is on his side? How are they so certain that his stance on certain social and cultural issues bring god to his side?

My answer is that they do not know. They just THINK they know, and such is their stance on the implications of sex in our culture.

Why was the “Abstinence” agenda pushed so zealously by George W. Bush viewed by so many as the moral high-ground? Is it morally superior to teach young people to deny themselves of the desires of their raging hormones when we could instead be teaching them to indulge their raging hormones safely?

Does anyone ever wonder if the biblical predictions that have so much influence on our society were written in a manner vague enough to always SEEM valid and true based on societal conditions?

Have Christians always believed we were in the “end times?”

Is fear not a common tactic used by people who want to control the masses?

There are many questions that should be examined regarding religious predictions. When examined objectively, the verdict becomes quite clear: interpretations of religious predictions by religious folks are very often incorrect. I will provide specific examples.

“Sexual promiscuity is on the rise, and sex is generally treated as less sacred than in the past,” we so often hear. This claim is simply untrue. As early as two-hundred years ago, most women did not have a genuine choice when it came to who they slept with. Sex was simply an experience in which the man sought gratification, and the woman complied with the man’s wishes, and maybe she was lucky and enjoyed it. Women were extremely vulnerable to STDs, as many men slept with multiple women, unprotected. Now when we go even farther back into history, women were raped as a law of war, with the women of the losing side suffering horrible sexual mistreatment at the hands of their conquerors. Many of these women were forcefully impregnated and abandoned by barbarous war-mongers. Does anyone still think there is more sexual deviancy in our contemporary world? For those who do, I offer some statistics:

All statistics in this piece have been taken from The New York Times article titled “The Myth of Rampant Teenage Promiscuity.”

“Today, fewer than half of all high school students have had sex: 47.8 percent as
of 2007, according to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, down from 54.1
percent in 1991.”

“A less recent report suggests that teenagers are also waiting longer to have sex
than they did in the past. A 2002 report from the Department of Health and
Human Services found that 30 percent of 15- to 17-year-old girls had
experienced sex, down from 38 percent in 1995. During the same period, the
percentage of sexually experienced boys in that age group dropped to 31 percent
from 43 percent.”

‘“There is a group of kids who engage in sexual behavior, but it’s not really
significantly different than previous generations,” said Maria Kefalas, an associate
professor of sociology at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and co-author of
“Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage”
(University of California Press, 2005). “This creeping up of teen pregnancy is not
because so many more kids are having sex, but most likely because more kids
aren’t using contraception.”’

That last statistic is of particular importance, because religious folks generally promote the omission of contraceptives. “Abstinence is the most effective way” to prevent teen and unplanned pregnancies, they say.

But the topic of teen pregnancies is very important, because it was common practice in the past for men to pursue much younger girls with the intention of impregnating them as soon as they became acceptably fertile. In this type of atmosphere, why are we to believe that teen pregnancy is a new phenomenon?

How many people honestly believed that young people would be having sex in greater numbers now when compared to fourteen years ago?

There will be a part two to this article, in which I discuss in detail several specific examples that prove Christians believed we have been in the “end times” during many different periods throughout history.

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I have to preface this by saying that I don’t currently believe a god actually exists, but since I haven’t ruled out the possibility all together — you know, the whole open-minded thing –, I’ll give my reasons as to why I’m not shitting my pants out of fear I might go to hell: Because if I have any ‘faith’ at all, it’s that god is more like my list below than the tyrant depicted in the Bible.

So, if god exists…

1. It would favor reason and intelligence over blind faith and complacency

It just makes sense to me that intelligence wins out over ignorance in terms of basic survival. No matter how strong or ‘faithful’ a person is, the person that knows how to build a gun will no doubt win every time. The intelligent person is more likely to find a cure for a disease, find better ways to clothe and shelter themselves, and find better ways to store and cook food.

All of these things tell me that god if god exists, that it wants the people that use their brains to survive than the ones that ‘have faith’ and ‘hope’. It would prefer people think for themselves than rely on someone or something else to guide them. I guess you could say I would believe in a god that wants us to be individually responsible. Crazy, right?

2. It would not care about worship

The most humble people the world has ever known are the ones that continually say they don’t want any thanks for the great things they do. They don’t want the spotlight. They find an inner sense of gratification based on their actions rather than needing external praise from people. They do it because it’s the right thing to do and not because they want people to bow down to them.

Well, it only seems reasonable to think that god would be like these people, but even better.

If god created us, I don’t believe it did it because it wanted to win an award, or to be famous, or to have people kiss its ass for all eternity. Only people want that crap done to them…very, very narcissistic people.

I think a world created by an egomaniac would look a little different than it does now. It would look exactly like it did in the Bible: Anyone that didn’t comply with the vain god’s orders would be instantly terminated. At least the Bible was consistent with the demands of the egomaniac god and his actions: He demanded worship, and if he didn’t get it, he would either destroy the entire creation, or he would destroy individual villages or people. Supposedly, this ego maniacal god still exists, but he just stopped throwing tantrums I guess.

Well, rather than read the Bible and think that god is so vain as to send people to suffer eternally for non-worship, I’m just going to go ahead and say that if god is real, he would never demand worship in the first place. People blashpheme today and do the same things that got people turned into salt back then, but I see no repercussions. Either I’m to conclude that god just changed his ways, or maybe god was never like that in the first place and the Bible was fiction.

3. It would base any possible eternal reward on reason, kindness and overall contribution to society than worship

We all know that working together produces better overall results than an ‘every man for himself’ philosophy. If god created the world this way, then this must be what it wants us to do. If that’s what it wants us to do, then the people that work toward doing that would probably be in the best favor of this god.

4. Morals would come from our sense of compassion and reason and not from the god

This goes along with the using your brain, which god obviously wants us to do. Depending on what your goals are, it’s easy to come up with a moral system that accomplishes that goal the best. If your goal is to increase everyone’s happiness while decreasing their suffering as much as possible, a lot of things would be considered morally corrupt in that system: murder, theft, rape, infidelity, etc.

If god exists, there’s a reason why it gave us brains. We’re more intelligent and capable of coming up with our own brilliant set of morals then religious people give us credit for.

I think I’ll write more as it comes to me, but for now, I’ll just leave it with those four.

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Something like 80% of people in this country consider themselves to be Christian, and yet by my own estimation, I’d say about 2% of this segment (yes, I’m saying only one out of 50 Christians) will actually openly discuss their religious beliefs.

I get the sense that most people don’t think that’s odd in the least.

I just think about what a country would be like if 80% of the country were football fans, or even sports fans in general, how easily people would talk about their favorite sports with anyone and everyone that shared an interest in it, even if it was to discuss how much your team stunk. In fact, that’s the beauty of sport: You can openly discuss how much each of you hate each others’ teams while you finish off pitcher after pitcher of beer, and at least most of the time, no one gets hurt.

Why is religion so guarded?

I recognize the difference between religion and sports, but religion is basically a set of beliefs that someone holds to be the truth. I would think religious people also believe that gravity is real and would have no problem discussing why they believe it to be truth. Many religious people also believe that it takes water to make a plant grow, and I couldn’t imagine anyone that wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to tell someone how nuts they are for even questioning it.

Why then, if their belief in god is so real and true, would there be such an aversion to discuss this very real truth? Why would you not entertain a discussion regarding someone’s objections to the veracity of god the same way you might entertain someone’s ridiculous objections to plants needing water to survive?

I look at it the way I do someone that doesn’t want to talk about their loved one’s shortcomings, since that’s exactly what Jesus is to a lot of people: a loved one. There are so many people that “love them some Jesus” that they wouldn’t stand for anyone to talk bad about him. I understand that. However, that doesn’t mean that Jesus and this entire belief system doesn’t need to be talked about. It only means your emotions won’t allow you to deal with this situation clearly.

Here’s the thing: I realize that my time on earth here is limited, and I have decided that while I’m here, I should use that time wisely and make it worth something. I could easily sit back and coast through life and simply ‘exist’ like most people do, or I could stand up and act when I see something about this world that isn’t right.

I’m not trying to place myself on the same level as the many people that came before me that fought for what they believed in, but I see certain things about the world I live in, and at the very least, I’d like to discuss these things with others in hopes of a change. If people stayed silent about genocide, slavery, and even their views on the shape of the earth, we would probably live on a Jewless, massa-havin’, flat earth right now.

How can we ever know what we’re doing is right if we never entertain the notion that we may be wrong? How are we allowing ourselves to be the best we can be if we are shutting the door to any other possibilities?

My way to finding out the truth of this matter is to engage as much of the opposition as possible. I welcome people to pick apart my beliefs and ideas because that’s the only way I’ll know if they’re bullshit. Only cowards claim to know the truth and turn anyone away that might disagree. If you hold the truth, what’s up with the automatic hostility toward anyone that claims you’re wrong? If your shit is in order, you shouldn’t have to worry about what someone else is going to bring to the table.

Not openly discussing religion stunts our growth as humans. Luckily there are some of us who weren’t satisfied with the answers given in the Bible about our universe, or we wouldn’t know any of the things we do about other stars and galaxies. It’s because someone decided to question the ‘truth’ of the Bible that we know these things. We know how to kill certain bacteria and cure certain diseases because someone was tired of trusting the Bible (Acts 28:8-9) when it says prayer can heal the sick.

Who knows, maybe if I had a ton of money and I could relax on an island for the rest of my life, I probably wouldn’t care about talking about these things…although I doubt it. I just see communication as the bridge to continue to move forward. When communication breaks down, we cease to move, and in most cases we actually move backward. Religion just happens to be a massive area that is nearly 100% cut off from any real discussion.

If religion is true and at all useful, then we would find that out through our discussion and we could lay it to rest for a while. It’s not as if people continue to debate plants needing water everyday since we’ve come to a consensus that that makes sense. If god is real, then it would follow the same route. How are we to know if we are never permitted and willing to talk about it?

If I had the truth, I would no doubt want to share it with the world, especially to those folks that I knew and cared for that needed ’saving’. Not trying your damndest to save someone else from eternal damnation is like watching someone get hit by a bus when you could have pushed them out of the way. It’s actually worse than that, since apparently hell is like getting hit by a bus over and over in one endless loop. To me, it says a lot about someone that believes in heaven and hell and does nothing to save other people from that hell. What kind of selfish person do you have to be to have the power lead someone to be ’saved’ but you choose to sit back and do nothing?

It just comes down to whether your only concern is your own comfort while you’re on this earth, or if you have any interest in the state of the world after you’re gone. It may be hard to convince me that Christians are more concerned about the latter when they believe that this life is merely a stepping stone to a more glorious one that actually has more significance. To them, this earth is like a holding cell where you wait and put on your best behavior while the people in charge decide to set you free or throw you in a real jail.

I wouldn’t care much about future generations either if I believed in god. I would just do what was asked of me so I made sure my ass was taken care of.

Instead, I have a little more respect for what goes on in the world around me and feel I need to take a more active role in it since I don’t believe in an invisible person that takes care of everything for everyone. Call me crazy. If I feel like gays are being treated unfairly, I think it’s best that as many of us as possible speak out against it to make sure we correct that avenue of our society ASAP. Same goes with non-believers. If I live in a country where nearly half of its citizens wouldn’t vote for a person just because he doesn’t believe in god, how do you think that makes me feel as a non-believer? Should I just use my time here on earth being a good ‘house nigger’ and play the game, or should I do something about it?

Wrong is wrong, and for someone to convince me that what I am doing is wrong by engaging people in discussion about a topic that has been 2,000 years overdue for one is lunacy. If you’re content with the world you live in, sit back and watch your American Idol and Soaps until it’s your time to go. If not, grow a pair and do something, anything about it. My mild attempt is this site. If anyone wants to join me, you’re more than welcome.

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When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain’t the way.

Now I’m pretty sure that Stevie didn’t mean the song to have any religious implications, but…they most certainly do.

Superstitions come in all forms. Personally, I used to have superstitions when I played baseball. In fact, if you’ve ever seen a baseball game, you’d notice how rampant superstition is in the entire sport. You’d see players leaping over the foul line, adjusting their cups and batting gloves after every pitch and wear filthy hats and helmets — when they could easily get new ones — all because they think that there is some sort of correlation between this behavior and their performance on the field.

Well, there ain’t.

Their perception of the correlation may affect their outcome, but that has more to do with self-fulfilling prophecy than the actual correlation between a dirty, sweaty hat and striking someone out.

I think superstition is a natural way to find a correlation between our actions and our desired outcome. It’s a kind of our natural trial-and-error method. If you want your plants to grow strong, you might try a couple different things before you realize what’s best for them. The same applies to getting a hit in baseball or praying that your friend or relative overcomes an illness. But once you realize that the plant is wilting, you go hitless in your next 20 at bats and your loved one doesn’t recover, it’s time to try something different.

There’s nothing wrong with trying different things to find the best way to reach a desired outcome, but it becomes superstition when you continue to the behavior after no correlation is found. Superstition is literally defined as :

1. An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome.
2. A belief, practice, or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature or by faith in magic or chance.
3. an irrational belief arising from ignorance or fear

I used to do superstitious things myself when I played baseball, and I even prayed every once in a while when I was younger just to see if that had any effect on the outcome like I heard people say it would.

Well, it didn’t.

The only thing that allowed me to see that prayer had no effect was that I wasn’t afraid to come to the conclusion that prayer might be bogus. Once you overcome that hurdle of fear, you’re open to then explore other possibilities in reaching your goals that may be more effective.

When someone does something like pray and their prayers aren’t actually answered, what else compels someone to continue this behavior other than fear? I mean even a rat would recognize that taking a certain route through a maze doesn’t get them to the cheese, and they would eventually stop taking that route.

The truth is that prayer makes people feel good. Is it irrational? Hell yeah it is. Is it being dishonest with yourself? Hell yes it is. People know good and well that this superstition has nothing to do with getting a job or allowing someone to be healed, but they feel good believing that someone is up there taking their prayers into account when deciding whether they’re going to get the job or heal their loved one — as if god is someone interfering with the employer’s free will to make them want to hire you or something.

No one can possibly believe that prayers are actually answered. I mean seriously? Everyone has had a prayer or fifty go unanswered and thought at one point “I’m either doin’ this wrong…or this is all bullshit.” They either continue on hoping that one day they’ll ‘do it right’, or they continue with the prayer because they don’t want to face the reality that this is nothing more than a superstition. There’s just no other reason to continue to do something that doesn’t work, time after time. Of course, those times when you do pray and it actually happens also contributes to the perpetuation of the superstition, but once you see someone that didn’t pray get the same result, you should probably realize that there’s no correlation at all. Even if you prayed, and that thing happened, how can you see other people doing the same thing without prayer and continue to think that your prayers have anything to do with your outcome? What’s worse is seeing that people that didn’t pray reach your desired outcome while you continue to pray without reaching it.

Why the dishonesty?

It’s not superstitious to pray, it’s just superstitious to continue to pray after the thing you have prayed for doesn’t happen. Lying to yourself by saying ‘God works on his own time’ doesn’t make prayer any more effective.

I won’t go as far as to say that people with superstitions ’suffer’ like the song says, but I think in the end, we all do. What if we were all focused on finding the real answers instead of the guesses that we’ve come up with so far? Aren’t seven billion heads better than one? My point is that if we’re all on the same page with trying to find the truth, we’ll get there faster than if only a few people are concerned with it while the others are focused solely on what makes them feel good — drawing the false assumption that the only joy to be had is through their superstition. Even if you do find bliss in your ignorance, have the balls to recognize that it’s ignorance instead of masquerading it as your own personal truth.

The quicker we collectively recognize that these superstitions don’t amount to anything outside of our own minds, the quicker we can actually move on with curing all of the nasty things that cause us to run to these superstitions in the first place. You may want warm fuzzies for yourself, but I want people to generally stop the petty divisiveness and general ridiculousness, and no, superstition ain’t the way to get there.

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Well, here it is in a nutshell:

When someone says something extraordinary, we don’t believe them unless there’s a compelling reason to do so. That’s it.

When I say ‘we’, I mean Christians included. No one can be perpetually naive and gullible as to believe everything anyone says. Humans naturally use discretion…some are just more consistent with their discretion than others.

That’s why people don’t believe in god. Not because they want to worship the devil, or smoke dope, or make fun of god. Someone has said something, and we don’t believe it. Period.

If I told you that bigfoot was real, you wouldn’t believe me and that would make you an abigfootist. It doesn’t matter how many times I told you that “bigfoot is love” or “if you don’t believe in bigfoot, you’ll suffer forever in bigfoot hell”, you would never believe me and you would probably think I was crazy.

When someone makes a claim, it’s up to them to give us a reason to believe it. The more outrageous the claim, the more evidence they’re going to have to come up with to convince a rationally thinking audience. Christians are no different. If someone told you about some other god, you would need a massive amount of evidence to believe that it was real, but the same doesn’t apply to your own belief. It’s terribly inconsistent and it would be hard to function in this world being that inconsistent with everything.

Atheism and non-belief is nothing more than someone saying “you need to come up with more evidence in order for me to believe what you just said”, and that is all. If you want to add on your own characteristics to what non-belief is, then that’s something you’ve come up with in your own mind. Non-belief is strictly not believing someone’s claim, and I can’t say that enough.

Please Christians, climb down from your horse and stop drawing these imaginary characteristics to non-belief. Just because your pastor tells you that non-believers are heathens that just want to blaspheme and say “screw you god”, that doesn’t make it so. Your pastor has everything to gain from keeping you under his control since that’s his source of income. On a side note, I sometimes wonder what church would be like if there was no tithing or “offering”.

Anyway, if you want to know about the lives of non-believers, talk with a non-believer and not a biased preacher. Everything I know about Christians and Christianity has come from Christians and their text. It only makes sense to me that if I want to know about someone, I’m not going to get it from someone that has a problem with that person. That’s called bias, and you’re going to get incorrect information.

This stuff seems so simple it shouldn’t even have to be mentioned, but apparently some people don’t have a firm grasp on how to keep life simple. The more and more I talk to Christians, the more I realize that it really is all based on fear. I’m more than open to hearing from others as to why it is they believe what they do, but when you continually hear contradiction after contradiction, it’s just very symptomatic of someone scared out of their mind. What other conclusion should I draw at this point?

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I’ve seen a couple of his movies and they were actually pretty funny but that’s got nothing to do with the fact that these two TV shows — House of Payne and Meet the Browns — are beyond trash.

I gave House of Payne a couple different chances to try and live up to the TBS hype and out of about two full hours of watching — and I’m talking about watching the show even after I felt like changing the channel, just to give it a chance — I may have laughed mildly about twice. I don’t care who you are and what type of stuff you find funny, but if you give anyone two hours to say something funny, you’re bound to laugh at least twice. That doesn’t mean they deserve a TV series.

I heard a radio spot about Meet the Browns today and it was just one bad stereotype after another. Then I decided to look online to see if there were any clips of the show and found two: Sneak Peak One and Sneak Peak Two. Normally, sneak peaks are supposed to draw the audience in with some sort of tease or reasonably funny line or something but…what the flyin’ fuck? If anybody found any part of those funny, do me a favor and leave a comment along with the name of your dealer.

This reminds me of a time when the only way blacks were allowed on television was to be somebody’s sidekick or to play some stereotypical role that only reinforced viewers’ opinions on blacks as poor, fat and ignorant. Tyler Perry is doing a good job of bringing those ideas front and center again. I’d be a lot more worried about these shows if we didn’t have other outlets like the internet and other decent TV shows with black folks, but it’s still worth calling this guy out on his lazy effort with these shows.

I grew up watching buffoonery, so it’s not necessarily buffoonery I have a problem with: it’s weak buffoonery. Martin is still one of my favorite shows ever and between Sheneneh, Roscoe, Mama Payne, Dragonfly Jones and Jerrrrome, he might just be the greatest buffonist to ever grace this earth. When you’re great at being a buffoon, there’s nothing wrong with the label, but if you’re up there acting a fool and nobody’s laughing, you’re just making an ass of yourself and it’s embarassing. That’s what’s going on with Tyler Perry’s TV shows where he’s just playing on stereotypes without being funny. It’s just a bunch of black folks looking like idiots and that’s just the last thing anyone needs right now.

If TBS plopped a suitcase full of money in front of me to put some garbage show together, I’d do it too. Tyler Perry’s got money though…I don’t. Why is this guy putting this stuff on TV when he knows good’n well that it’s not funny. I refuse to believe that whoever wrote that shit was sittin in front of a computer somewhere writing “I went to the sto’ Cora, and a bought the whole DVD box set of This Old Hood” and was bustin’ a gut like the fake audience was in the background. Is that what it takes to make money nowadays? To just throw some tired, recycled jokes on some paper and act a fool?

Anybody that wants to work on Zaki’s House of Tired Stereotypes and Wannabe Martin Lawrences with me, let me know because I can almost guarantee watching my 2-year-old nephew for six seconds could make me laugh more than watching this stuff for hours on end.

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“You really should consider taking an SSRI. So many of my patients have had wonderful results on them. It’s just a temporary crutch to help get you through the hard times and really get the most out of your therapy. It’s not forever, it’s just a few months.”

I could not help but wonder as I sat there, how many other patients had been given a similar speech that week? How many other people were hearing it in offices across the country that very hour? And how many people were getting just as angry and defiant as I was? At least a few, I hoped. Because it certainly was the last thing I wanted to hear and I was not about to give in without many questions and, if necessary, a respectful fight.

I had previously discussed my past experiences with these medications with my doctor at length, many times over. Paxil, Zoloft, Lexapro, Celexa…to me, all synonyms for “zombie”. At age 18, my then-doctor ran the gamut of pretty little happy pills with me and all with the same end result. I would feel exhausted, jittery, experience nightmares, gain weight, pace the house, and enjoy numerous other fun side effects. The most unsettling side effect was what I refer to as the “fuzzy-headed numbness”. For someone trying to overcome anxiety, feeling like you are having an ongoing out-of-body experience that you cannot escape does not exactly have a calming effect. In fact, for an over-thinker such as myself, it does quite the opposite. I began looking up my symptoms online, researching the medications I had begrudgingly agreed to consume, and finding information I was not expecting and certainly did not care for.

“Suicidality and Antidepressant Drugs”. A glaring headline atop every page of the antidepressant Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors’ (SSRI) websites, this (at first) surprised me. Why would a depressed individual be prescribed a medication proven to occasionally cause suicidal thoughts and, less frequently but more disturbingly, suicide attempts? Aren’t we going through enough with our mental distress? Do we really need a medication to speed up the downward spiral?

This was a lesser-known phenomenon when I was prescribed my first SSRI. Fast forward to eight years later, and it has become impossible to take even a quick glance at the side effects of these medications without seeing the warning: “Studies have shown that a small number of people (especially people younger than 25) who take antidepressants for any condition may experience worsening depression, other mental/mood symptoms, or suicidal thoughts/attempts.” I suppose that the term “small number” is supposed to be comforting, but sitting here as a twenty-six-year-old who is being asked to consider one of these medications, I am anything but comforted. Sure, I’m one year past the “at risk” mark but somehow this does not put my mind at ease. Does a few extra months on the planet really help my brain understand NOT to send the horrible thoughts? That would certainly be nice, but the human body does not work that way. The potential side effects of an antidepressant should, by its very nature, not be a variety of things that would only increase one’s depression.

Upon doing a little research, it was far too easy to find several disturbing statistics for these drugs. The first thing I discover is that Americans are ingesting 66% of the world’s supply of SSRI medications, followed by ALL of Europe at 23%, and the rest of the world at 11%. (Source) This is more than I expected, but when you consider who has the drugs readily available and the doctors willing to prescribe them, it becomes a no-brainer. It seems we are a group of sad, pill-popping citizens. I discovered a survey claiming that 9.5% of Americans meet the diagnostic criteria for some sort of mood disorder. (Source) So nearly 10% of us are screwed up enough to be medically diagnosed as such? No wonder doctors throw prescriptions for these drugs around like they are candy. But wait, it gets better.

Anyone reading this can likely deduce the reason for the over-zealous prescribing of SSRIs – the almighty dollar. A study shows that “in 1985, sales of antidepressants in the US totaled roughly $240 million, but from September 1, 2003 to August 30, 2004, sales rose to $11.2 billion, according to IMS, a health care tracking firm”. (Source)

This is a money-making industry, that is for certain. The pharmaceutical companies have made a killing off of people like me, and they don’t seem to mind that their product can sometimes lead to actual death at the patient’s own hand. If I had a hand in making a drug that led to such severe side effects, I might find it a bit hard to get a good night’s rest. Wait…that’s a side effect! I kid, but this is very serious business. It seems to me that either the drugs need to be altered to cause fewer depressive effects or patients should have to undergo at least one psycho-analysis before being prescribed one. Out of the four SSRIs that I have taken, only one was prescribed by a psychiatrist, after a thorough evaluation. The others were given to me by a family physician who did little else but ask how my moods were and scribble a few notes. And the side effects I experienced were not only unpleasant but at times could have been classified as severe. Weaning off of Paxil, without very close supervision, can be akin to metaphorically flushing your brain down the toilet and feeling every swirl. Now, I know that the majority of people taking these drugs will not have such severe side effects, let alone attempt suicide. I am very aware that many people do benefit from them and take them without any problems. But the question becomes, am I willing to play Russian roulette with my brain in the hopes of obtaining a little more happiness?

I do not know the answer to that question today. As I sat in my therapist’s office, listening to his diatribe about asking for help and trusting his judgment, the effects of this decision flooded into my head. Could I really deal with the weight gain, decreased libido, insomnia, night terrors and plethora of other symptoms of these drugs? That remains unseen. I understand that I am a stubborn person, to an admitted fault, and I realize that that is the main cause of my indecision. But there is deeper concern lying just under the surface. I have been enjoying what my doctor and I call “moderate success” at overcoming my anxiety disorder. I have made numerous baby steps, some grand strides, even a few leaps…and of course, my fair share of tumbles backward. But I have been doing it with MY brain. I do take a medication for my panic attacks, but it is a quick fix, not a long-term solution. When I finally do stomp this problem into the ground, I want to know that I did it of my own accord, albeit with the help of my (usually) wonderful and understanding doctor. I would hate to look back and think that I only succeeded due to a chemical change in my mind, a false sense of happiness found only in swallowing a little yellow pill. I need to know that I can do it, and I do not think that is too much to ask. My doctor may disagree – in fact, I know he does. He would prefer that I simply trust him and fall backward into his arms…and into the arms of a drug that does not just bother me, but outright scares me. And what if I do find relief, only to wean off the drug and go right back to my old ways? That would be a greater disappointment than any I have endured thus far.

There are many questions to ask and many facts to consider. For one, I rather enjoy my dark, cynical side. I have spent many years perfecting it and have become quite accustomed to it over the past decade or so. It is a part of me and a large part of what helps my creative process. Being a non-thinking zombie does not often lead to success in journalism, or life for that matter. If I did not spend a great deal of time pondering the state of the world and the people who make it up, would I become yet another sheep? Unabashedly, I prefer my way. I think, I rant, I discuss, I grow. These are not things I will give up without an impressive fight. Kicking and screaming could be involved.

How much of myself would I be sacrificing in order to gain a bit more control over the anxiety that sometimes accompanies such cynicism? If I do take a pill and support this industry of making people happy at the expense of “a small number of people”, I don’t know how will that make me feel. The word guilt comes to mind, but in therapy, one must release one’s guilt and give in to treatment. Will I give in to this new treatment? Only time will tell. But one thing is for certain – I WILL overcome this disease, one way or another. I will come out on the other side with a grand sense of accomplishment and a smile on my face. I simply hope that the smile will be genuine – not chemically-induced.

These are my personal views and I am in no way condoning or condemning any course of psychiatric treatment. Anyone dealing with a mental disorder deserves options, facts and respect. I urge anyone in need of such care to do the necessary research and understand the risks and benefits of their treatment.

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