Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Via NPR this morning:
March 12, 2008 · A cleric in Saudi Arabia thinks religious fundamentalists have finally gone far enough. He's an adviser to the Ministry of Justice and a video on the Internet showed him dancing at a wedding. That angered religious hardliners, who follow a version of Sunni Islam that disapproves of singing and dancing. In a newspaper interview, the official urged his critics to "get over restrictions imposed by ignorant people."
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Jim Downey
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Hell YEAH!
Hell YEAH!
I wonder...
...what it is with the more austere religions and their strictures against having fun? From the Puritans to the Islamic sects to the evangelicals to the ultra-orthodox Jews, a person just ain't supposed to have any fun.
In the dim and distant past about 30 years ago, I had a life-long friend who was suddenly 'born again' and became a jeebus freak. He was led to it by his wife, not entirely willingly, but once he got da spirit, he was a gawdbot, glassy-eyed and carrying a bible and witnessing to all on street corners even. He had hooked up with some evangelical cult in Rhode Island, they had a charismatic leader with a large house in Newport where all the devotees had to live. Kind of a jeebus freak commune in a mansion, ruled by this clown who owned a helicopter and yacht and limo etc. but expected them to live simple austere lives (gawd pays his minions well I guess). They were required to work every day either there at the ranch or at an outside job, and hand their paychecks over to him, and in return they got a bag lunch and a pat on the back on the way out the door, and their other earthly needs were covered, right to their laundry done.
My friend was a musician, a guitar player, and a damn good one. We'd been in bands together over the years. He brought his guitar to this commune, and the Rev told him he couldn't play music, it was forbidden--they couldn't even listen to music. His explanation was that if you were playing the guitar or enjoying music, you were being distracted from thinking of jeebus and god, you were having a pleasurable experience that wasn't caused by god or the bible or prayer.
Anyway, my bud's response was that he figgered his musical talents were a gift from god, so he was glorifying him by playing music. The Rev wouldn't stand for any opposition (or thinking?) so tossed him out of the group, and he came back to the real world.
Once away from them and their influence, he quickly returned to normal and forgot all about that born again shit. His family and friends were convinced he had been drugged, and it's quite possible they were spiking the food, or maybe it was just the 'Holy Spirit' that made him into a glassy-eyed zombie.
In the end, the Rev convinced his wife, who stayed in the group to divorce him since he was a backsliding heathen troublemaker, and my friend tried to sue the 'church' as causing alienation of affection or something, turning his wife against him--nothing came of that. I don't know what ever happened to the so-called church or their leader or all the little gawdbots. Perhaps Reverend Stevens (or Stephens) sailed over the horizon on his yacht, waving goodbye with fistfuls of money at his followers on the beach.
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