In case you haven’t noticed, I have a bit of a tendency to get worked up over religious zealotry and the whole, y’know, way these extreme folks aim to blindly organize a complete system of bodily, spiritual, and intellectual cages to control us with.
Anyway, I’ve never read Mark Morford (of the SF Gate) before and apparently he’s an avid Burner. His words make me wiggle with happiness that others like him are courageous enough to step out and poke a bit of reasonable fun and sense into the bloated voracious giant called organized religion.
The article that caught my eye, as it cheekily mentions Burning Man, is a spot-on bash of contemporary charlatans invoking the name of god for their own ridiculous ends. His article tips the notion of god coming down to inspire fanatical nonsense into a sort of contemporary dream of savvy humor, goddess worship, and common sense:
God commands you to read this / Honestly, I wont mind if you dont. But the Lord visited me personally. Do it
[Morford to god]…”Look, You know better than anyone that Roberts is nothing more than a flea on the great sheepskin rug of human belief… As for the gaggle of students in his cultish thrall, well, I’ll absolutely keep doing everything I can to inspire them to wake up one day with a Burning Man ticket in one hand and a well-licked copy of Rumi’s collected poems in the other, shuddering with mad desire to drop some ecstasy and join in a dawn fire ritual and see, well, the real You.”
Having enjoyed this so much, I could not resist Morford’s other pertinent ditties on religious nuts in our day.
One is about the silly stuffed teddy named Muhammad and the deadly blind will of a few-but-loud extremists to exploit and harm in the name of their god:
Let us kill all the teddy bears
Note to radical Muslims: I’ve now named my favorite coffee mug ‘Muhammad.’ Hope that helps
For now, I shall do my part to defuse the raging drama of perceived blasphemy in the world by naming my favorite coffee mug Muhammad. I suggest you do something similar. Spread God around. Unlock the cage. Defeat toxic zealotry. After all, is God not everywhere, in all things at all times in every possible way? You bet She is. Really, why save her for just the teddy bears?
The last article is a smart look at the recent religious right uproar surrounding the supposedly heretical underpinnings of The Golden Compass film trilogy. If anything points at the utter stupidity of faith-fanatisism it’s the duplicity in raging against science and rational thought by demanding “intelligent design” be taken seriously in schools, while simultaneously rejecting any views labeled as atheistic. Reason to Hypocrites: you can’t ask for one and not get the other in turn!
Ironically, deeply crushing hypocrisy such as this is exactly what Philip Pullman’s His Dark Matter trilogy is hanging out to dry. Would that zealots see beyond their fanatical noses and understand this discussion strengthens people in mind and belief, religious and otherwise:
Jesus loves ‘His Dark Materials’
Shrill Bible-thumpers boycott ‘The Golden Compass’; world’s children grin devilishly
No, the nefarious thing the books aim to kill is, well, religious authority. It’s about the destruction of dogma. It’s about power, about who wants to control and manipulate life on Earth; it is about blind, ignorant, even violent adherence to insidiously narrow codes of thought and belief and behavior, sex and desire and love.
This, of course, is the God of organized religion…
Indeed, if humanity is to flourish, to get over its addiction to war and guilt and fear, this is the false God that should — that must — die.
Just as with the Burn, if the religious freaks hate something, it must be good!
Dear Mark Morford, you’re my new hero. Thanks for the good work!
