When I Was a Kid

We kicked cans in the street
Braved a Jart to the ribs
Thought Jesus would save us
When I was a kid.

We cherished love
The hippies their lids
Jesus played his guitar
When I was a kid.

Time passed quickly
Jesus aged as I did
He wasn’t the guy
I knew as a kid.

I returned to the scriptures
Were they always this glib?
It was never as simple
As I thought as a kid.

The Nazi’s were an anathema
Dictators? Undid
Things were quite different
When I was a kid.

Now Republican Jesus
Sells us out for a quid
That’s not what I’d figured
When I was a kid.

Enjoy.

 

 

New Year Thoughts and Plays

I pause once again to thank the goodness of my friends for helping enable the “level of success” I have achieved since returning to the US as a shell-shocked (yet surprisingly fabulous) senior citizen expat widower three years ago.  One thing I’ve learned from the experience is that there are more people out there actually paying attention to my content and concerned for my well being than I would ever anticipated. They’ve been the difference between survival and what I define as surthrival, which is at least halfway up the fourth tier on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Self actualization can only be achieved in a sunny high mountain meadow sipping fire-brewed coffee and passing one of Willie’s Reserve around the tambourine circle, but I don’t want to give away all the secret society stuff.  Come visit and we’ll talk.

The Hobo Heretic Has Arrived

I’m claiming my rightful throne as Hobo Heretic of the high mountain meadows.  It’s the direction that providence has pushed me.  A retirement position that combines talents acquired lately in the fine art of minivan living with my lifelong fight against the disruptive effects of belief in things that cannot be tested.  As always, my content will reflect that which interests or concerns me, untainted by the concern of mass appeal or monetary manipulations.  Expect a mix of the usual eclectic high mountain meadows magic, notes on van life along with the occasional political screed, because, well….just because.  (He’s guilty as shit and everybody knows it)

Enjoy.

Mysterious Ways

If you are of a certain religious bent then the correct answer to the question of “Why did the religious extremist do a heinous act?” is that God made him (it’s almost always a “him”) do it. I suspect the reason that God channels most of his most heinous acts through the hands of men is that Eve made him suspect the feminine reliability of following insane orders from men very early on.

Enjoy. 

Clearing the Air

Now that HBO has exposed Scientology so thoroughly, the world can see first-hand the evils that religious tax exemptions offer religious scammers. The quick and easy solution is for the IRS to remove their tax exempt status ASAP.  In order to abate the argument that Scientology will make about being ‘unfairly singled out’, let’s do the same with all the other religions as it is patently obvious many of them are meddling in secular affairs they shouldn’t be involved in.

Why should the tax payers be underwriting an assault on the freedoms we all hold dear?  Christopher Hitchens isn’t around to remind us that Religion Poisons Everything, but even without him around to remind us, it’s painfully obvious.

No more free rides for religion.  End all religious tax exemptions and let God sort ’em out. If they are truly blessed it ought not be a problem for them to survive. Enjoy.

Another Pastor Quits God

There’s a story floating around on the internet about a preacher who is joining the secular swim team.   Ryan Bell has come out as an atheist and rationalist after a year of ‘testing the waters’.  He’s concluded that trying to triangulate God into the equation of life is more difficult than actually doing real scientific equations!  Congratulations Ryan!

That said, I picked up this bit from an interview he did here on the subject of atheist values.

“I recoil from a one-track-minded scientism that I sometimes encounter—as though science has all the answers for every question that a person has ever asked”

I wish he would have named names because I know of no outspoken voice in the field of “scientism” (wtf?) who speaks in such certitudes.  I’m sure I’m late to the party on calling him out for this, such is the eagle eye of Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution is True, but it deserves a bit of pushback.

Ryan Bell, the ex pastor, can be forgiven for an inability to fully visualize the truth about science because he’s probably still got a lot of God slobber in his eyes.  The bedrock of modern particle physics is the Uncertainty Principle which ought to have given him some clue as to where science sets the limits!  Quick! Somebody get him some science books…. and a box of Kleenex.

Enjoy.