D.B.Tarpley's Amazing Ass Blog-9/28/18

Greetings and salutations people and peoplettes, D.B.Tarpley here playing with the devil’s ink. Today I am going to talk about the one topic you are never supposed to bring up – religion. I would like to begin by stating that religion should first and foremost be an individual choice. What a person believes is a very personal thing and that should be between them and whatever they believe in. To provide an example I will quickly relate some of my own personal journey on the path to what I believe. I am an atheist, which contrary to popular belief, is an actual system of belief. I believe very strongly that there is no God or grand designer of the universe we occupy and that any mention of such is a creation of man to satisfy their disturbing lack of knowledge – a tool to sooth the bruised ego. The spark for this belief was born when I was twelve years old. I remember the moment very clearly. I was living in Pennsylvania, walking the long tree lined path from my house to the bus stop. It was early winter or late fall and the morning was cold, light blue, and crisp. The trees lining the road were all barren and haggard, like skeleton fingers reaching over the road. My mind was wandering that morning as it is always want to do and the notion entered my head in one simple sentence. What if there is no God? I was brought up in a southern Baptist/ Protestant environment and went to Sunday school every week. So that question entering my mind unprovoked was enough to blow it to smithereens. It was an epiphany. That one question was all it took to set me on a journey of self exploration. I have, since that time, read the King James Version of the bible from cover to cover three times and the New Living Translation twice. In addition to this I have read the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, and a variety of academic books on modern theological theory. I say this not to impress that I am smarter than you but rather to point out that I have been active in the shaping of my personal belief and have done what research I felt necessary to shape it as best I can. I do not claim to be right. Personal belief is not about right and wrong because until we die the answer will always be out of our grasp and given this variable I have to respect everyone’s ability to pursue personal spirituality and answer those troublesome mortality questions as best they see fit. I genuinely think religion does a lot of good for a lot of people. My main problem or pet peeve comes from my perception of most members of the world’s major religions and their willingness to be blindly led by another and virtually scoop out their brains, hand them to this person, and say “please tell me what to think.” I see this as the height of laziness and the root of many of the world’s evils. When you justify your hate or fear of things strange or abnormal to your known way of life through your religion then you are a part of the problem and not a part of the solution. What brought this into crystal clarity for me has been the recent media buzz surrounding the current Pope’s reshaping of the Catholic Church’s stance of such major hot button issues as sexuality and evolution. While stopping short of endorsing gay marriage he did say there was merit in same sex partnerships or relationships where previously they had been classified a sin in the eyes of The Church. In similar fashion he recently declared the Big Bang theory and evolution to be a completely valid tool of intelligent design. This is a rationalization I have heard before, “What is a day to God?” etc… And being more of a liberal minded person in my political slants you might think my reaction to this would be positive. But it is most definitely not. To my eye, anything which bends the rules to conform to populist movements of the day points to the ‘God – a construct of man’ theory rather than the converse. And to use this to further cement a belief in God is to say… so long as there is anything in God’s declarations which is contrary to my own personal beliefs I will be uneasy in my faith. These revelations by the current Pope speak to the man-made nature of God more than anything else could. I think we will all agree that an omnipotent God’s voice and words should be infallible and eternal. The Pope is, to my understanding, supposed to be as close a direct conduit for these words as is present on Earth in the Catholic Faith. If that is the case, then why does Church policy change and reshape with nearly every Pope throughout the history of the Church… often not as glaringly as the changes of late but almost always, and in some fashion. If God is speaking through all these men then what does that mean? That he changes his mind to conform to the thoughts and popular sentiments of the day? Doesn’t that go against all logic brought about by faith? I have heard people say that faith is without logic but this simply isn’t true. Everything in existence has its own rules… its own logic, faith included. Either you bite the apple or you throw it away, you can’t do both. Once you take that first bite you have bitten it and that is it. An every changing message is in direct contradiction to the simplicity which faith brings to many people’s lives. And yet these things happen all the time only to be pushed out of believers’ minds with words like ‘mysterious ways’ and ‘not for man to understand.’ It is this sheep-like dogmatic quality, seeming to seep into places which cause trouble for the rest of us, that drives me crazy. If you have a personal belief based on thoughtful introspection and consideration of the variables and elements which you have experienced in your life then I have all the respect in the world for you. If you believe every word (printed in a book picked by men over a thousand years ago as being ‘of God’, men like the Pope who might pick other books… other words today to represent God’s message) to be intractable, infallible, and indisputable – even in the face of common sense – then you have nothing but my pity. Let the men of your day lead you. Check your brain at the door. You have my prayers. I wish you no harm; I only wish you the blessing of independent thought. And if you are spiritual of your own accord then peace be unto thee. I would never tell you what to believe and I appreciate the same courtesy. But if you are one of those people who would tell a gay child they were living in sin and make them feel bad about their natural feelings and their place in society, even to the extent of sending them to a camp to ‘turn them normal’ or disown them and kick them out of your house at your pastor’s request in an effort to show ‘tough love’… then you can fucking die. Unfriend me please. Shun my heathen buttocks. I beg you. To everyone else, this is just food for thought and one man’s humble opinion. It is my creation and should be judged by its man-made merits alone. Never take my words at face value without thought. Like all others, they are just words… letters strung together by human fingers. Until next time keep reading, and have a blessed ass day.

Edit