Vatican Conference on Condoms

The hierarchy of the Vatican has convened a conference this week to craft a position statement on the subject of condom use. This is like an assembly of midgets crafting a strategy for winning NBA basketball games. Considering that the Catholic Church has only recognized the value of women for less than 100 years, we should not look for a lot of wisdom from the Vatican on this, or any other aspect of human sexual behavior. It's all about pomp and show.

The "Lazarus" Dilema

As long as I'm offending all my Christian friends, including most of my own family, I need to ask about Lazarus. My questions is: whatever happened to him? Help me out, here. Is Lazarus still alive today? Or did Jesus raise him from the dead, and then bump him off sometime later, after his public relations value had diminished? And if the latter is the case, then it raises this question. How much Godly compassion is shown when you make a man die twice? You see my confusion here?

Invisible Day of Judgement

Last Saturday's predicted day of judgement and Rapture was a bust, so Harold Camping tried to save the day by proclaiming that the judgement had taken place, but was "invisible." Hey, why not? Let's see. You've got an invisible super being who lives in an invisible heaven, and who watches and guides human lives invisibly. According to legend, a junior version of Mister Super died on earth, and then invisibly rose from the dead a couple days later. Nobody actually witnessed this resurrection (it was invisible), even though the whole point of it was to achieve maximum, long-lasting notoriety. This was done, so it's claimed, to atone for an invisible original sin, but nobody ever saw that original sin being committed in the first place although all of us are said to be guilty of it. Not sure how this works. So it makes perfect sense that the final judgement would be cloaked in a mantle of invisibility. Religion is all about seeing how many invisible things you can get somebody to believe.

What’s So Good About Good Friday?

A week from today is Good Friday, a day which always puts a smile on my cynical lips. On that day, supposedly Jesus Christ sacrificed his life to atone for my sins and the sins of all mankind. You with me so far? And supposedly, Jesus was the earthly incarnation of an infinite and all-knowing god (all-knowing is the operative phrase, here). So here’s what I don’t get. If you believe the fable about the all-knowing power of Jesus, then that means that at dawn on Good Friday, J.C. knew he would get the cookies pounded out of him that day, but he also knew that 48 hours later he would be back on the streets, good as new, and no worse for the wear. So if you sacrifice your life for a cause— any cause whatsoever— then how much of a sacrifice really is it if you know that you won’t actually have to stay dead for more than a day or two? And is that really a sacrifice at all? Isn’t that more of just an overly dramatic temporary exhibition? How about just calling it a stunt? And is an overly dramatic stunt enough to atone for the sins of all mankind? Who makes this stuff up, anyway?

This World’s No Place to Live

Bluegrass picker, John Duffy, sang that, “This world’s no place to live— but it’s home.” Problem is, the “hominess” seems to diminish with each passing day, and this makes writing a cynical blog like The Stonecypher increasingly difficult.

2011 has been simply the worst and it’s not even Easter time yet. Writing should result in something that’s fun to read. From my viewpoint, the fun comes from absurdity, and the absurdity usually comes from stupidity. But stupidity is never funny when it’s tragic, and 2011 has (so far) been mostly about tragedy. Oh, to be sure, there have been bright spots. Charlie Sheen isn’t funny, but watching major networks devote large segments of prime news time to interviewing psychologists about their interpretation of Sheen’s You Tube postings— that’s absolutely hilarious because it makes the “farce factor” meter peg out at the max. And of course, Sarah Palin is always entertaining for “farce factor” value. She doesn’t even need to speak. All she needs to do is hold one of her kids or grandkids up in front of the microphone, and we all get to wonder how big and heavy will the kid need to be when she stops doing this. That’s funny.

But Arab dictators are not funny. Citizens facing fatal gunfire in the mistaken belief that somehow there’s safety in numbers— that’s not funny. Mexican drug cartel violence isn’t funny, especially for Americans along the southern border. Global unemployment and homelessness are definitely not funny. 9.0 earthquakes are not funny. Thirty foot tall Tsunami waves are not funny. Radiation leaks are not funny. But when the radiation leak is in Japan, and hysterical Californians stock up on iodine tablets to protect themselves— that’s funny, at least in a snickering, condescending kind of way. It’s all about the reading on the “farce factor” meter, and god knows I’m certainly not above a little snickering condescension.

I look forward to the day when we can all get back to just watching the fast track canonization of John Paul II. For sheer farce and absurdity, it’s hard to beat Catholicism, especially when it involves sainthood for JP2— a man who kept clerical pedophiles working their evil in parishes for 22 years when he had the power to stop it. It makes you wonder about all the other Catholic saints. How messed up were they?

Staying Safe the American Way

I guess there’s no way to explain the lack of critical thinking skills in the American population other than to say it must come from lousy education in the public schools. Case in point. Americans drive down the freeway at 70 mph while texting, and think they’re safe in doing this. Then they feel the need to pop down iodine tablets to protect themselves from Japanese radiation. Give me a break.

Looting in Japan

It’s been three days since the catastrophe in Japan, and now it’s time to look at the incidence of looting and violence there. We all know the familiar pattern. After a devastating calamity— whether in the United Sates (Hurricane Katrina), or Haiti (the 2010 earthquake), or South America (the mudslides in Brazil)— the widespread looting begins even before the first bodies have been recovered. It’s probably just a coincidence, but the U.S., Haiti, and Brazil would all say that their primary religion is Christianity. So how much looting has taken place in Japan? Zero. Zilch. Notta. In three days there hasn’t been a single reported incidence of looting. Not one. And it’s a sure bet that, if it takes a decade to recover from the destruction there, the looting incidence will still be zero ten years from now. Japan is a Buddhist society.

Buddhists don’t believe they will have everlasting life because they’ve been “born again” (whatever the hell that means). Buddhists don’t believe they’ve been “saved” because they’re washed in the blood of the Son of God (I don’t get the meaning of that, either). And Buddhists don’t believe there has been “atonement” for their sins and the sins of all mankind because some self-righteous, self-proclaimed messiah got the cookies pounded out of him by a middle-level Roman bureaucrat two thousand years ago. So what DO Buddhists believe? They believe that it’s wrong to go into somebody else’s home or place of business and take stuff that doesn’t belong to them. Furthermore, they believe that if something is wrong, then you just don’t do it. Period. In their belief system, there’s no divine forgiveness or atonement or any of that crap.

I suppose it was to be expected, but already a few Evangelicals are saying that Japan’s troubles are God’s retribution for their failure to accept the Savior. If you can buy into the Jesus thing, you can convince yourself of anything.