Pagan/Piggin

Yesterday was an interesting day. Someone, upon reading my Easter blog, was upset and labeled it “sacrilegious.” I think sacrilegious is akin to blasphemous, which means having a gross irreverence towards those things or people that are held sacred.

I wasn’t really raised in a religious house, although we did go to church on Easter (sometimes) and Christmas Eve (again, sometimes), so my attitude towards and belief of God was not drilled into me from a young age (insert obvious tasteless joke about Catholic priests and child molestation here). This has left me as an adult struggling to find where I stand on the whole “big guy in the sky with a flowing beard” issue.

"I'm telling you for the last time, Sarah Palin is not MY FAULT!"














I sincerely apologize to anyone who may have been offended by my Easter/Schmeaster posting, but I have had a bit of an issue with organized religion and its many fables for years. Frankly, whether or not there is a supreme being is beyond my pay grade: I simply have no idea. But I do know this – if there is a God, I don’t think he (or more likely, she) is reading my blog and putting me on his or her shit list, planning on keeping me out of heaven or even worse, making me clean the toilets once I get there.

Even if there is a God, how am I supposed to know which religion I am supposed to embrace? There are countless varieties of organized worship around the world, many of which hold diametrically opposing views. So, by nature, my religion’s views might think that your religion’s views suck. That’s sacrilege, right? If I have irreverence towards what is important to you (and you towards what is important to me), I have crossed the line into a dangerous area called “blasphemy” which is a harsh sounding word that connotes very bad punishment if you are found to be doing it. Blasphemizing, I mean. Again, no, that is not a word, but this is my blog and if I want to invent new words I can do so.

Assuming we have a Creator above and beyond random physics and luck, I have got to assume that the Creator knew what they were doing when they gave humans the ability to question, reason, cook, and be funny. I think the Creator, if reading my blog, would be glad to see that I am having trouble making sense of the whole “Christ came back from the dead after three days” story.

It is interesting to me that so many of us become so upset when our chosen religion is questioned, challenged, or mocked. Mocking seems to get religious people up in arms the most. The Pope made some sort of off-hand statement last year that Islam was a religion of violence, and after some initial furor the controversy died down.

However, the Danish cartoonists who dared mock Mohammad in 2005 with their clever/evil pens are still subject to a Fatwa and continuing death threats. That’s right: some people are so fanatical about their religion that they think you should die if you try to make a funny about it. Hmmm. That just doesn’t seem very nice to me. I thought deity worship was supposed to make us nicer to each other. It certainly hasn’t worked that way for Fred Phelps. Mr. Phelps is the lovely “God hates fags” guy who protests homosexuality by picketing the funerals of soldiers with signs that say “God loves dead soldiers.”

I’d love to be even more profound, but I have to pack for my birthday trip, which brings me to my last point as I sit and ponder where my bathing suit is: a friend of mine emailed me yesterday very happy that she and her husband had lost a significant amount of weight on a new diet. The diet consists of eating 500 calories a day, so I don’t find the fact that they have lost a lot of weight surprising. I do, however, find it amazing they haven’t killed each other or eaten their children, because that’s what I would do if someone only gave me 500 calories a day. 500 calories just gets me through happy hour, frankly.

Anyway, my friend suggested this diet to me and my first reaction was to have very hurt feelings. After all, you wouldn’t suggest a diet to a thin person, right? That would be akin to offering Rogaine to Rod Blagojevich.  Madeleine says I am being too sensitive, which is weird, because I never take things personally!