September 30 is International Blasphemy Day, and I celebrated the occasion by making some blasphemous shirts for the Bulletproof Heeb, and then keeping one for myself. I’ve been wearing it around town, and people have largely ignored it. Good for them.

But this day isn’t really about protesting the angry fire-and-brimstone types. Those people are easy enough to offend; we don’t need a day for it. It’s about protesting the well-meaning but suicidally stupid belief that everyone’s religion should be respected at all times. I’ve been guilty of this in the past (less so recently, I’m happy to say), and most of the people in my life are guilty of it as well. I know that if I write about atheism — and who are we kidding, we all knew that’s where I was going with this piece — it’ll alienate half of my friends, and so I’ve avoided writing much of anything for months.

Well, fuck that. It’s Blasphemy Day, and there are no renowned religious leaders in sight. Luckily, I’ve got lots of other shit to blaspheme. Time to get out the ol’ Book of Grievances, and go over some actual arguments against atheism made by my friends and acquaintances, who totally think I’m great except…

“If you’ve actually given it some thought, that’s fine. But if you’re just a kid rebelling against Christianity, then I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to reject religion.”

I will remind you that we’ve all gotta start somewhere. Teenagers don’t rebel in a vacuum; if a kid hates sitting through church, that same kid probably disagrees with the values of his community, or at least those of his parents, and has spotted the parallels. Although surly teenage arguments against conformity are unsubtle and inarticulate, they still reach a level of sophistication that many adults never achieve. They are still a form of inquiry, and express a desire for something beyond the obedient and incurious mindset encouraged by religion. If they seem to unfairly target Christianity over other faiths, it is only because you’re limiting your focus to the United States, where Christianity is nearly unavoidable. I’m sure if another religion managed to get the same level of influence over Congress, teenage goths would be just as angry at them.

“Evangelical atheism is just as bad as…”

I’m gonna cut you off right there. Yes, it is “as bad as” evangelical Christianity, or anything else that goes out and tries to convert people. But my position is, those things aren’t all that bad. Many sects of Christianity consider witnessing or evangelizing to be a major part of their faith, like attending church or ignoring all but four Gospels. I can complain about it, which achieves exactly nothing, or I can offer a counterpoint, which might achieve slightly more than nothing. I have no holy obligation to make my case, nor am I working in the service of any organized group, but if I see bad ideas or faulty logic, I’m going to point them out. If a belief works for you but not for me, I’m not going to pretend that discrepancy doesn’t exist. If a religious system appears to have a set of coherent rules, I am going to ask about those rules, and yes, I am going to attempt to examine and critique them. If I’m evangelizing, that’s because I’m pressing believers to make their case. They have a hypothesis about the nature of the universe, and I’d like to know it.

“Well, I think all efforts to convert people are wrong.”

No, you don’t. In all likelihood, you adopted that position defensively after someone called you out for making fun of Christian evangelists, as a means of deflecting future accusations of intolerance. We all say this — even I say it sometimes — and we are all full of shit. So go nuts. Mock whoever you want, and feel free to focus on things that are relevant to you (angry street preachers), rather than abstractly criticizing things that will never, ever come up (angry street rabbis).

“If science is so certain that [religious/mystical belief] doesn’t work, why don’t they test it?”

Okay. You ever see Cosmos? Carl Sagan? Go watch it. All of it. It’s on Hulu. Pay special attention to the part where he says that modern astronomy exists because of scientific inquiry into astrology. It won’t be hard, since he says it in almost every episode. Likewise, much of modern science rose out of the failures of alchemy and similar systems. We, as a species, came up with science because the alternative wasn’t working. Books have been written, studies have been published, and science has no obligation to start over from square one just because some random dude who wasn’t paying attention asked them to go over the old material again.

“Well, that doesn’t mean you have all the answers.”

That’s true, but I won’t just assume there’s a supernatural explanation until someone proves otherwise. I believe we are capable of finding any answer, as long as we have half an idea what the question is. Some people consider that view reductive, but come on — don’t you want to say you were there when they discovered something? Really give those great-grandkids a legacy to live up to? We can’t let that thieving prick Edison get all the glory!

…And that’s about it. I suppose if I had planned this better — or just had Blasphemy Day to inspire me last year — I could have turned the above text into a whole series of posts, and spent today writing about the actual value of blasphemy instead. If anything, it’s a good excuse to celebrate again next year.

Recently, Pat Robertson claimed that if gay marriage is legalized, it won’t be long until we legalize sex with ducks. We all rolled our eyes, maybe got a couple laughs out of it, and then went on with our lives.

Then this happened:

This video’s been making the rounds for the last week, so there’s not much I can add in the way of commentary. Nonetheless, I have two thoughts on the matter.

One: I’m incredibly happy that all the funny people are in favor of gay marriage. To be fair, it’s entirely possible that someone’s trying to make an anti-gay marriage comedy video right now, but I’m having a hard time caring. I can’t even muster the energy to Google it.

Two: I am conflicted. I agree with this song’s message. I support legalizing gay marriage, and I definitely support using satire against idiots like Pat Robertson. And yet, I could easily throw away all my progressive credibility by writing a single sentence.

Specifically, “This video makes me wish I was a duck.”

Well, it’s Easter. The day Jesus Christ rose from the dead and absolved us of all our sins, but not really. Technically, the absolving-of-sins happened when he died a couple days before Easter; the resurrection was more like the religious equivalent of a showboating touchdown dance. Issues of good sportsmanship aside, though, this day is all about forgiveness, assuming you follow a certain major religion.

That’s right! According to the Christians, Jesus sacrificed himself around 2000 years ago, washing away the sins of mankind in the process. Anyone born since that time can have their own sins washed away, simply by believing that this was indeed the reason behind Jesus’ death. Pretty sweet deal, right?

I’d like to pause here to relate a story.

A few years ago, I was waiting for a bus when a profoundly creepy gentleman approached me and introduced himself as “Shablinky”. Before I could say a word, he began ranting at me, telling me that Jimi Hendrix was a hack who had stolen all of his ideas, demanding I maintain eye contact with him, and just generally making me feel like I was about to get stabbed. After a few minutes of shouting, and several unsuccessful attempts to bum a cigarette, he stepped back, waved his hands arhythmically, and insisted I now owed him a dollar as payment for this “dance.” I didn’t want to get stabbed, but I didn’t want to give him a dollar either, so I stupidly tried to reason.

“How can I owe you a dollar?” I asked. “I didn’t ask you to dance. You just did that out of nowhere and started asking for money.”

He repeated: “You owe me a dollar.”

“I don’t think I do. That’d be like giving someone a gift, and then giving them the bill for it. I mean, it’s technically allowed, but it’s kinda sleazy.”

“You owe me a dollar, fucker.”

“Look, the dance wasn’t even that great,” I said, then trailed off, filled with a renewed fear of stabbing. Could I have been in the presence of a very creative but incompetent mugger? Was he really crazy enough to attack me in broad daylight, surrounded by witnesses? Should I just give him the goddamn dollar?

All my questions were rendered irrelevant just a few moments later. Shablinky spotted a man crossing the street and chased after him, hurling accusations of interracial sodomy at his presumably baffled new victim. When I related the story to my friends later that evening, many of them replied with stories of their own — they too had encountered this man, and been charged a dollar for his unsolicited (and very lame) dance moves.

The Easter season always makes me think of Shablinky. Except instead of getting stabbed, you go to Hell. Happy Fucking Easter, everybody!

It’s been pointed out on occasion that when things are tough in the United States, church attendance tends to increase. This is mostly because, when people are desperate, they’re more susceptible to believing in any sort of ridiculous hogwash that offers a glimmer of hope. Sure enough, reports have been coming out all month, during this (buzzword alert) global economic recession, that churches, particularly those of evangelical Christians, are seeing a swelling in their ranks.

A similar phenomenon is occurring in Japan, but in their case, rather than begging for mercy, they’re looking for someone to blame. That someone is Bimbogami, the Shinto God of Poverty. Shinto practitioners interested in driving Bimbogami away flock to a special temple, where they can hit a statue of the god with a very large stick.

I’ll say this for polytheism: it does wonders for the division of labor. When a supernatural system has hundreds of deities, each in charge of only a small sector of life, one can choose their own priorities for worship at any given moment, and have some sense that they’re at least talking to the correct department. In contrast, when one believes in a monotheistic system, there is only ever one god to pray to, and that makes just about any prayer seem petty and selfish. If you don’t believe me, just look at the following two phrases, and think about which one seems stupider:

#1. “Hey God of Poverty, fuck off!”

#2. “Hey God In Charge of Everything, help me re-finance my mortgage!”

Doesn’t seem so silly now, does it Westerners? Now if only the Japanese could combine their love of polytheism with their love of robots, we’d really be onto something. Coming soon to a temple near you! Interactive Artificially Intelligent Robotic Idols! You could collect them. Like Pokemon, but with gods.

In 1972, an odd little documentary called Marjoe made its way into American cinemas — but was kept away from the Bible Belt. It took home an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, ran on TV here and there, got a VHS release, and then quietly disappeared until 2005, when a restored copy of the “lost” film was screened in New York as part of a series hosted by the IFC Center. And if it hadn’t been lost, we probably could have saved outselves a lot of trouble over the last 30 years or so.

IMDB and Wikipedia have the basic information on the movie — little more than what I said in that first paragraph — and director Sarah Kernochan has written at length about the effort to resurrect the film on DVD, so that spares me the trouble of going into any of that here. Instead, I can focus on what matters: one of the greatest religious scams ever captured on film, and the charming bastard who pulled it off.

That charming bastard was Marjoe Gortner (pronounced just like it looks), who rose to fame in the late 1940’s and 1950’s as “the world’s youngest preacher.” He was ordained — and had begun officiating at weddings — at the age of four, and spent much of the next ten years on the road, preaching at revival meetings. The Gortner family was able to rake in the donation money with their adorable, Gospel-spouting toddler. The cute factor drew a crowd, but little Marjoe’s talent as a preacher helped his family make a very nice living.

After introducing us to the Littlest Preacher, the movie cuts to the early 1970’s, where Marjoe, now in his late 20’s and looking every bit the hippie, sits down for a series of interviews in which he admits that he doesn’t accept the Christian ideas of sin and Hell, that he spent years resenting his parents for pushing him into preaching, and that he’s not sure he’s ever felt a sincere belief in God. Then he slicks his hair back, puts on his suit, and gets up to preach in front of a revival crowd, where he once again brings the house down.

Such was the life of Marjoe Gortner in the early 70’s: spending half his year preaching to tents full of ecstatic evangelicals, and the other half as a groovy 70’s dude with money to burn. He wasn’t a subversive or a performance artist, and he wasn’t trying to bring down the evangelical movement from the inside. There’s nothing in his preaching that would make you doubt his sincerity — he testifies, speaks in tongues, lays hands on the sick, and takes big, fat donations with the earnestness of a man who truly believes he’s doing the Lord’s work. Then he sits down with the crew back at the hotel, admits it’s an act, and describes some of the techniques he uses.

He had to give up preaching once the movie came out, of course, but that had been his plan all along. He was coming out of the closet as a nonbeliever, and brought along the film crew to take his confession. It’s easy to dismiss Marjoe as a con man, but what does that say about the preachers he worked with? Donations make sense if you’re running a proper church — there are salaries to pay, youth groups to run, tracts to publish, and a large building to maintain — but what about the revivals run out of tents? What about the preachers like Marjoe, who travel from place to place speaking in other people’s tents, with no real overhead of their own? At the end of the night, the people in charge of the revival are more than happy to hand him a stack of bills taken from old ladies’ purses, which he giddily dumps onto his hotel bed and counts, cameras rolling the whole time.

The only difference between Marjoe and those other preachers is honesty, at least when he drops his preacher persona. He’s willing to admit, for instance, that “speaking in tongues” is based mostly on peer pressure — once everyone’s doing it, you feel a little safer faking it, not knowing that nearly everyone else is faking it as well. He flirts with cute 70’s girls in a bar by explaining the tricks behind faith-healing, and the girls seem truly impressed.

In short, he does everything Matt Taibbi did when he went undercover at John Hagee’s church last year, but he did it 36 years earlier, in an Oscar-winning film. If that film, and its remarkable subject, had received the exposure they deserved and stuck around through the intervening years, we could have had a much cooler country. Try to imagine the rise of the Christian Coalition, or George W. Bush, or Sarah Palin, in a country where everyone had seen Marjoe. Those things still would have happened to some extent, but there would have been a whole lot more people calling bullshit, and that’s all you can really ask.

Slogging through the Digg cycle this evening, an article from BBC News caught my eye, as it has to do with many things dear to my brain: English teachers, esoteric knowledge, and complaining about dumb kids. The article in question is titled, “Students do not know the Bible,” and features an interview with UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, who also occasionally teaches college-level English courses. Motion, it seems, feels that students need to know more about the (Judeo-Christian) Bible then they currently do, but here’s the kicker: Andrew Motion is an atheist.

And here’s where it gets cool, because Motion doesn’t appear to give a damn about the Bible in a religious context. No, his concern is entirely involved with the literary applications of Biblical texts (and other mythological texts), and how a strong background in such ancient texts aids comprehension of classic literature. In an interview with the BBC, Motion said,

“I’ve always been concerned about the levels of not-knowing since I started teaching, but quite recently I had a very bad experience of trying to teach some of my, in other respects, extremely good students about Paradise Lost. They knew so little about the context in which the poem was written and about the references that the poem itself makes that it was very difficult even to get beyond go in talking about it.”

Now, I’m all for keeping children away from religion, but Motion makes a good case. So much of our culture, both pop and canon, is saturated with references to earlier literary works that were once as commonly-known as Simpsons references are today. For example, while watching the new Neil Gaiman film Coraline, I was impressed that one scene featured acrobats reciting the “What a piece of work is man” speech from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I thought it was pretty cool, but my girlfriend quickly pointed out that it probably went over the heads of 90% of the screaming brats sitting in the auditorium, and that this, therefore, meant that those who enjoyed the reference were a severe minority. If they taught the Bard in kindergarten, we wouldn’t have this problem.

Motion is quick to point out that a Biblical/mythological education doesn’t have to mean a religious education:

“If people say this is about ramming religion down people’s throats, they aren’t thinking about it hard enough. It is more about the power of these words to connect with deep, recurring human truths, and also the story of the influence of that language and those stories.”

And beyond that, I’ve always been of the opinion that most people who claim to sincerely believe in the teachings of the Bible haven’t actually read the damn thing. If anything, a thorough reading of the Bible might serve the twin purposes of increasing contextual literary insight and encouraging atheism. Because, dude? The Bible is fucking crazy.