Let's face it. Strong religious belief involves a kind of Stockholm syndrome. You have this all-powerful figure who you want to please because, if you do, you'll go to a paradise of figs and pussy or clouds and singing, whatever floats your boat, or, if you don't, you'll be punished with an eternity of some kind of Hell, depending on the flavor of your faith. But you, being brainwashed by years of mindless rituals and propaganda, don't just say, "That seems like a bullshit deal by from a manipulative motherfucker." No, you believe this with all your heart and, what's more, you love this all-powerful figure, this G/god, and you think that nothing happens without his (for the most part) say-so. You pray when you're told to pray. You pretend you're a cannibal. You avoid pork or beef products. Because you are thrilled to please your G/god, you'll condemn anyone who doesn't buy your faith flavor in a kind of "Fuck you, Pepsi lovers. Coke, bitches" way. You might even be so deluded that you think you need to kill people who like Pepsi. Or Jesus. Or leprechauns. Either way. And it's all because you think - no, you know - that your G/god is watching everything everyone does, thinking, "Will this get me pussy and figs or a lake of fire?" and deciding what you do based on keeping G/god smiling on you. That idea inspires you to action, for good, for bad, for stupid. And it inspires lots of people to say dumb shit.
See, if you're gonna invoke your G/god, you gotta think about the consequences of doing so.
Someone who didn't do that was Thomas Dunn, a Leesburg, Virginia, town council member. He was reacting to Phillip Thompson, the head of the local NAACP saying that "if the government hadn’t intervened, I would still be a slave in the field picking cotton" during a discussion of hiring practices at a meeting.
Dunn was outraged, as one is when a black person dares to acknowledge that there was a past. He let everyone know it. "Shame on you, Mr. Thompson, for throwing slavery into this discussion," Dunn said. "There are people who feel that . . . government is supposed to be the answer to everything, and Mr. Thompson, I don’t believe that government freed our slaves we had in this country. That was an evil that this country had. It was the hand of God touching the hearts of man that freed those slaves."
So, just to follow the "logic," such that it is, Dunn is saying that his G/god knew that slavery was wrong and "evil." Then what the fuck took him hundreds, if not thousands of years to touch some motherfucking hearts or maybe smiting a bitch or two to end slavery? If he could have done it but just didn't, your god is a big dick. And if this god of yours is all-fuckin'-powerful, why is there still slavery going on? Don't answer with not-knowing-the-ways-of-God bullshit when you just said you quite specifically knew the ways of your god.
Dunn tried to explain his comments with "I feel much of our government has been ordained and established by men under the influence of God." The Rude Pundit has read history books. He's pretty sure that much of our government was ordained and established by men under the influence of liquor, which, hell, why not, you can say God created.
It's a nonsensical thing that religious right-wingers of all stripes do, bringing G/god into an argument that G/god has no place in, If your G/god were real, he'd probably think, "The fuck I got to do with that? I made your fuckin' planet. Deal with it." Instead, we get, for example, Rep. Paul Ryan, who said in 2012, "Our rights come from nature and God, not government." How did they come from God? Or does he mean the Bible? Conservatives say this shit and don't think about the implications.
Whether it's your G/god says to blow yourself up on a bus or your G/god thinks gays getting married is icky, what you're really saying is that your almighty being is either too lazy or too weak to do shit himself. Or he's an asshole who does things on his own time. And you better shut the fuck up and smile because here's some figs or here's a red-hot anus-poker. Which do you want?
