Middle Man

Would it be a book? A series of short stories? Columns in a soon to be defunct magazine? A blog? Videos on youtube? Tweets on twitter? The latest religions to be created started from books, right? If the books goes electronic is scripture dead as an artform?

Seriously, suppose I'm Joseph Smith or the estate of L Ron Hubbard and I just want to create a new religious paradigm...how do I go about doing that? I figure scripture is the first step...but what's the medium?

Almost every quote from Jesus wherein he speaks of God or The Father or anything like that seems like it can be read the same as a man explaining to his children why Santa isn't coming this year (maybe the man lost his job but all the kid cares about is Santa and Christmas - or at least that's what the kid understands better than Daddy trading his time for money). In a sense, Jesus can't break the (good!) news to the others without actually talking about god. Ultimately all Christ's teachings boil down to (a) forget those laws you thought were handed down by god (because there isn't a god to hand them down), (b) live this life well (d) be kind to others because (c) you'll never be perfect so just stop expecting perfection of yourselves or others. That was, of course, before Paul and the disciples put the old religious frameworks back in place.

So was he? It seems ironic that he would be predicted by prophecy, but by the same token I see no single quote that I cannot interpret in some way that says he wasn't atheist.

Where were the religious types when all us atheists got "married"? If it wasn't a religious concept when I got married, then it isn't a religious concept when some gay couple gets married, is it? How is being gay materially different from being atheist in this whole gay marriage debate?

Why is it that on TV or radio, in the US anyway, you can say damn anything ("damn you", "damned car") but when you throw in the word God before it, the word damn gets bleeped? It seems like blasphemy sure, but if you bleep the word damn, you're still invoking the name of God unnecessarily. Why not bleep the word God?

I only really noticed this the other day when Jeremiah Wright's speech was getting so much airplay and I thought "f---? No, that's not the word they bleeped - it can't be damn, that's not really even a cuss word". I've heard it in a couple different contexts since then.

I see that in my neighborhood a new set of one candidates placards have bloomed on the local park, middle school and library property and not at all on the yards of the neighbor's home. This is California, is this legal? My own impression was that I'm paying for those spaces and I'd rather they not be used to advertise one candidate over another. What does the law say?

Seems like most things the bible calls "sin" actually have two parties - a sinner and the aggrieved. Homosexuality is the exception...or are there others sins that hurt nobody? Note, I'll stipulate that if you harm yourself with things like drug addictions you are both the sinner and the aggrieved (i.e. it's not victimless). Likewise I'll accept, for the sake of argument, that one can harm an all-powerful God but there's still no connection between homosexual acts and harm to God. Is there? I mean, I can see where a couple millenia back people thought it was important to go forth and populate every nook and cranny but I don't see where that objective really had any schedule attached to it (and man's been doing a bang up job of it regardless of a seemingly constant mix of homosexuals and heterosexuals).

First, you join a party because that's what mummy and/or daddy did. Then, you get the secret handshake and get invited to ALL the fundraisers and riots. Christians are Democrats, Muslims Republicans. "Third parties" are Hindus (Libertarian), Buddhist (Green), Wicca (Peace and Freedom), Pastafarians (Communist) and of course Atheists are independents. Anybody can theoretically vote for another parties candidate (for saint maybe in the case of religion) but the two top parties (sorry, this is horribly USA-centric) cannot cross party lines under any circumstances - they are in the death-match and cannot even switch to the other party without being disowned by their families. Everybody else can pretty much attend the other's festivities and mostly just enjoy life. And of course everybody laughs at the Wiccans and their prospects of world domination (but the Wicca don't mind because they're just in it for the society anyway).

Did I miss anything?