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The Voice of
Sanity
THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UPSTATE S.C. SECULAR HUMANISTS Visit our web-site for current and back-issues at: www.uscsh.org
e-mail:
secularhmnst@aol.com |
CALENDAR
Our
November brunch will be on November 14th at
Denny's Restaurant, 2521 Wade Hampton Blvd, Taylors
at 10:30 a.m.
There
will be no November dinner meeting on the 4th Sunday.
There
will be no meetings in December. Our next meeting will be the January
brunch.
Secular Humorist
In last month’s issue of the Voice, I shared with the readership one of my two favorite of George Carlin’s routines on religion, namely, Religion is Bullshit. Here is the other one.
GEORGE CARLIN ON THE 10 COMMANDMENTS
from "Complaints and Grievances" (HBO special)
“Here is my problem with the ten commandments- why exactly are there 10?
“You simply do not need ten. The list of ten commandments was artificially and
deliberately inflated to get it up to ten. Here's what happened:
“About 5,000 years ago a bunch of religious and political hustlers got together
to try to figure out how to control people and keep them in line. They knew
people were basically stupid and would believe anything they were told, so they
announced that God had given them some commandments, up on a mountain, when no
one was around.
“Well let me ask you this- when they were making this shit up, why did they
pick 10? Why not 9 or 11? I'll tell you why- because 10 sound official. Ten
sounds important! Ten is the basis for the decimal system, it's a decade, it's
a psychologically satisfying number (the top ten, the ten most wanted, the ten
best dressed). So having ten commandments was really a marketing decision! It
is clearly a bullshit list. It's a political document artificially inflated to
sell better. I will now show you how you can reduce the number of commandments
and come up with a list that's a little more workable and logical. I am going
to use the Roman Catholic version because those were the ones I was taught as a
little boy.
“Let's start with the first three:
I AM THE LORD THY GOD THOU SHALT NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE ME
THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN
THOU SHALT KEEP HOLY THE SABBATH
“Right off the bat the first three are pure bullshit. Sabbath day? Lord's name?
strange gods? Spooky language! Designed to scare and control primitive people.
In no way does superstitious nonsense like this apply to the lives of
intelligent civilized humans in the 21st century. So now we're down to 7. Next:
HONOR THY FATHER AND MOTHER
“Obedience, respect for authority. Just another name for controlling people.
The truth is that obedience and respect shouldn't be automatic. They should be
earned and based on the parent's performance. Some parents deserve respect, but
most of them don't, period. You're down to six.
“Now in the interest of logic, something religion is very uncomfortable with,
we're going to jump around the list a little bit.
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL
THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS
“Stealing and lying. Well actually, these two both prohibit the same kind of
behavior- dishonesty. So you don't really need two you combine them and call
the commandment "thou shalt not be dishonest". And suddenly you're
down to 5.
“And as long as we're combining I have two others that belong together:
THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTRY
THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S WIFE
“Once again, these two prohibit the same type of behavior. In this case it is
marital infidelity. The difference is- coveting takes place in the mind. But I
don't think you should outlaw fantasizing about someone else's wife because
what is a guy gonna think about when he's waxing his carrot? But, marital
infidelity is a good idea so we're gonna keep this one and call it "thou
shalt not be unfaithful". And suddenly we're down to four.
“But when you think about it, honesty and infidelity are really part of the
same overall value so, in truth, you could combine the two honesty commandments
with the two fidelity commandments and give them simpler language, positive
language instead of negative language and call the whole thing "thou shalt
always be honest and faithful" and we're down to 3.
THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR"S GOODS
“This one is just plain f****n' stupid. Coveting your neighbor's goods is what
keeps the economy going! Your neighbor gets a vibrator that plays "o come
o ye faithful", and you want one too! Coveting creates jobs, so leave it
alone. You throw out coveting and you're down to 2 now- the big honesty and
fidelity commandment and the one we haven't talked about yet:
THOU SHALT NOT KILL
“Murder. But when you think about it, religion has never really had a big
problem with murder. More people have been killed in the name of god than for
any other reason. All you have to do is look at Northern Ireland, Cashmire, the
Inquisition, the Crusades, and the World Trade Center to see how seriously the
religious folks take thou shalt not kill. The more devout they are, the more
they see murder as being negotiable. It depends on who's doin the killin' and
who's gettin' killed. So, with all of this in mind, I give you my revised list
of the two commandments:
Thou shalt always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nookie.
&
Thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a
different invisible man than you.
“Two is all you need; Moses could have carried them down the hill in his
fuckin' pocket. I wouldn't mind those folks in Alabama posting them on the
courthouse wall, as long as they provided one additional commandment:
Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.”
View Carlin’s HBO performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkRYaMiP4K8
R. George Delamontagne
Evil arises in the refusal to acknowledge our own sins”.
-M. Scott Peck, MD - The People of the Lie p 233
“Violent emotion concerning the faults of others is practically always caused by projection, for the weakness that really gets under our skin is always our own”.
-Barbara
Hanna - Encounters with the Soul
p 125
Fundamentalists claim America is a Christian Nation. I say, this is the root of our sickness.
Several months ago she approached me, in a local store, pushing a shopping cart with two children in it, a toddler in the front and a child of about 4 in the back. She was about 20 years old, and the front of her T-shirt read, “I’m looking for a Real man”. As we neared each other, the older boy grabbed a toy from his younger brother causing the little one to let loose great cries of injustice. Without feeling, the older reacted, slapping the little one hard across the face and said, ‘don’t you cry or I will really hit you hard, next time!” Mom’s reaction was swift: with her face red and twisted in anger and disgust, she slapped the “offending child” hard across the face and in a loud voice declared, “ how dare you hit your brother, you are so much bigger than he is! You must learn to share your toys, you selfish little boy or Jesus will not love you”! She quickly snatched the toy from the hands of her first born and gave it back to the younger child. A moment later I was next to her, and she looked at me and smiled a very contented, satisfied smile. I stood frozen in my tracks, and as she passed me, I read the back of her shirt, which said, “ Real men love Jesus”.
Now a lot of information was transferred in that short exchange. What lessons were being taught? To many people with a good Christian background the answer would be that children need to be taught to share and that hitting is wrong. They would readily agree with the mother’s actions and that the older child must be disciplined.
But has Mom learned her own lesson? The child may not yet understand the concept of ownership.
Is the lesson teaching discipline: self control with honor and dignity or is it in reality teaching, “Might makes right”? This is good Old Testament stuff. You might remember Yahweh’s advice in Job 40:12-14: “Look upon everyone that is proud, and bring him low and tread down the wicked where they stand. Hide them in the dust together; Bind their faces in the hidden place. Then I will also acknowledge to you that your own right hand can give you victory”.
Maybe the lesson to be learned is to share if you are small and weak, and steal if you are big and strong. Are we free to choose to share our property and ourselves when and with whom we want, or does someone bigger, full of envy, jealously, and “righteous indignation”, have the right to demand, even force us to give him or her anything they want?
Christians would say that this is a lesson in discipline, but this girl is teaching undisciplined discipline. I have heard many women claim that men are cruel, abusive and unloving. One look at the world proves them right. I wonder: could such lessons in discipline be a possible source for the genesis of such cowardly men? In such a world the boy is father to the man. So much for growing up and leaving the garden, this would mean eating the apple and disobeying sacrosanct authority thus becoming aware, for the first time, that we are all naked. The wild deer know for sure the meaning of life: that to offend and thereby enrage god is to “surely die”. The truth is that we now know that the abused grow up to become abusers. “Spare the rod and spoil the child”/ Dysfunctional philosophies produce alienated monsters not warm, connected, just, and wise men.
Is the lesson about Jesus’ love? Or is she using Jesus, the highest model of love and human individuality, to exact cruelty and servile obedience? Is this really a lesson in love, or is the real motive just an excuse to take revenge upon the world for ancient injustices done to Mom, as a child? Mom is a vampire engaged in soul stealing.
Could the lesson be about repressing all your feelings, of not recognizing the pain, even when you are being physically harmed? Could this be why Mom does not even recognize her own demons? How can one be taught to love, when the example given in the name of love consists in acting out in uncontrolled rage and temper tantrums? How can an adult violate a child so completely: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually (using God as a weapon) and still claim to be a good and saved person? The answer is that she needs the strong emotions that the temper tantrums bring in order to deceive herself into believing that she is not only justified in her actions but also blessed. By distraction, she covers the injustice she is doing while at the same time tightly pulling down the wool over her own eyes.
Maybe the lesson is about what is expedient, about Mom getting her own way with immediate gratification, and defiantly, pridefully ignoring the consequences of her actions upon the future character of her children. Have Christian values been taught here or the very opposite?
In a truly Christian Nation one might hope, there would be few such “Real men” to meet this young woman’s criteria. Sadly, we know the reality: that the opposite is true, for now there are two more, her own sons.
Comments on the Health Care Controversy
There is a lot of controversy over whether we should let the federal government furnish some kind of health insurance. The argument against the government option is that it gives the Washington too much power over personal health care decisions. In other words we might no longer be able to decide on doctors and treatments or keep our personal and financial health decisions private. Also, there is ugly talk about life or death decisions for the elderly, mandatory abortion, and rationing. The argument for the government option says it will allow millions of people unable to afford health insurance to pay for a program competing with the private sector and bring down price. If coverage were extended to such people, steps could be taken to cure diseases in their early stages and prevent emergencies with extensive treatment, possible disability and shortened lifespan. Nevertheless, what we have today is poor information for the patient, inefficiency, and unaffordable prices for health care.
Here are some of examples of the present system:
1) Health care advertising creates the impression that citizens don’t really need to know how to stay healthy. There is a glut of advertising for products assuring us they can make us young, thin, healthy, beautiful, sexy, and, by the way, cure our illnesses. The advertising on television is somewhat reminiscent of the days of 19th century traveling medicine shows. They were horse and wagon affairs that went from town to town providing entertainment interspersed with sales of magic elixirs (containing a high percentage of alcohol) guaranteed to cure anything from warts to cancer and remove difficult food stains into the bargain. Television has done away with the inconvenience traveling from town to town with a horse and wagon.
2) The health insurance industry is not subject to anti-trust laws. They have been protected since 1945. Technically, that means companies are not bound to compete and can legally fix prices and control the market. It is difficult to understand their argument that the government would be competing unfairly by introducing lower prices, since presently, there is no competition at all.
3) Twenty to twenty-five percent of doctor’s fees go toward paying office help to sort out the complex codes describing different ailments. Every insurance company has a different way to code for every ailment. Experienced people are required to match each ailment, code and insurance company so that billing can take place. Thus, the visit to the doctor is automatically more expensive.
4) There is no standardization for the price of drugs. Different insurance companies have different prices for drugs treating the same ailments, and the new drugs are not necessarily better for patients than the old ones, but they are always more expensive. A few of the more expensive new drugs are not necessarily different in formulation. They may cost a lot more but only contain inexpensive over the counter additives to the original formula.
5) Insurance companies bargain with providers on prices all over the country. This includes hospitals. There is a different price for every contract between an insurance company and a health provider. There is no standardization. Your health care is determined by where you live and who your provider and insurance company is, not by any characteristic of the service you are receiving.
It is no wonder we are confused and frustrated at the very times when we most need care, comfort, and understanding.
Mostly taken from “This American Life” on PBS
See also “Medicine Show” on Wikipedia