GMG: Preachy Snow Statues

So this is another "Grinds My Gears" style post, I'll try to keep it brief, and leave out the whining. Here's what gets my goat: Preachy snow statues. This year, there were two such statues, and it bugged me that anyone would be that in-your-face about religion.

My beef is not with the religion itself, i respect it's right to exist. Nor do I have a problem with free speech, anyone who reads this blog will realize that I'm a big advocate of free speech. It is often said that free speech is not respected when you shout fire in a crowded theatre, but it is also not acceptable to yell 'fuck you' in a crowded room. This issue is not safety, nor is it really quality of life. Its a question of prudence, manners if you will.

It is true, that technically your right of free speech allows you to draw obscene pictures in chalk outside the post office. But you don't do it, because it accomplishes no good and does only harm. Basically, you don't do it because you're not an asshole.

So lets move on to religious statues. What's up with that? Most of the churches along college ave opted to do statues, and guess what? They were religious. That i get, what else would they do? What i don't understand is putting a religious statue on a public bit of land publicly putting a religious slogan publicly in front of that public bit of statue. To borrow a phrase from Mr. Webster: "What...the...hell?"*

Why do this sort of thing? I don't go around posting my beliefs in public. If they are publicly displayed (such as this blog) it is an optional read and has minimal in-your-face effect. The statue captions could have been so much more benign if prefaced with: 'We believe'. Instead, there's a only a blatant sentence, as if anyone who does not agree soon will after reading enough religious statements. This is extremely narrow minded and blatantly offensive. This would be akin to me making a statue of a finch with the caption 'God does not exist'. Of course i would not do such a thing, and if i did, i would be assaulted on all fronts. Take a look at the photos and just think about the juxtaposition that would be created if i committed an equal and opposite act. Ask yourself, what's up with that?


*See Webster's dictionary, edited for context.

GMG: Escaped Plane Crash Victims

This is a "Grinds my Gears" style post. So here's what grinds my gears.

First off, I don't like it when planes crash. That's a big bummer. Second, I don't like it when there are fatalities, especially if all the passengers fall under the aforementioned condition. The whole thing is sad, and awful. But what grinds my gears is when that one guy is flying home to his family, and he misses the flight, and does an interview with some bullshit news station.

The guy tells the story of why he's late, and then mentions that he "had a funny feeling". And then it always cuts to the wife and she talks about her "funny feeling" and how she felt when she heard that the plane crashed. (Whether she knew her husband was on the flight or not.) Then, invariably, we go back to the husband and he says that he thinks that God was watching out for him.

That's the part that really steams me. What exactly does that mean? Does this imply that God was not watching out for the other passengers? That's an odd statement to make, considering God is supposedly omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent. If you go with the "It was God's plan" defense, then why would you say that he was watching out for you? Wouldn't that mean that you're just part of the plan? Maybe he's got you scheduled for a train wreck next week, does this still mean that he was 'watching out for you'? This is akin to claiming that Jesus helped you win a Grammy, or score a touchdown. Does Satan help every time you do not score a touchdown? Every time a QB is sacked behind the line of scrimmage, the devil was at work?

So religious folks, if you make your god a petty squabbling and predictable being (Zeus) then go ahead and by all means attribute your daily events to this god or that god. But if you follow the Abrahamic god, then stop saying he saved your cat, or kept you off the plane or helped your record go platinum. You don't know what He's up to, you never have and you never will, so stop going around and saying ignorant things like "I think God was watching over me today". The statement renders itself nonsensical by its very nature. Making you sound like a moron by your very nature. So take some advice from one of my people: "Be silent, or say something better than silence" -Pythagoras

Archimedes Redux

A friend of mine recently posted a quote and it read: "Find a place to stand and move the world"

At first i thought that she had misquoted Archimedes ("Give me a place to stand and a long enough lever and I will move the world")

It's not particularly deep or encouraging or insightful, but i thought it was a good thing to say, and I'm all about saying good things.