Oh, for the love of God!!!

I wish sometimes people could step out of the world and take a look at it from the outside. Really! It would make a great comic routine and they can have a nice hearty laugh. And hopefully come to their senses. I betcha it would beat Friends and Seinfeld and the Simpsons put together.

What the f*** is this whole uproar over a buncha fr****** cartoons!!!

Read the following objectively and tell me it doesn’t make a good story line: A Danish paper publishes some innocuous cartoons of Muhammad. There’s a whole series of riots where people kill people. Then a group of Muslim radicals release obscene cartoons of the prophet to add fuel to the fire!! And now, a paper in Iran plans to retaliate by publishing cartoons of the holocaust.

I don’t know about you, but I think the silver lining is that radical muslim clerics actually broke their shackles enough to publish obscene cartoons of Muhammad. They must be getting progressive! (I do acknowledge that the rest of humankind may not share my enthusiasm at this latest development).

In any case, as a religion outsider, I am looking at all of this and having one helluva good laugh (except for the loss of human life because if there is one thing I will never understand it is the ease with which people trade an existing, real human being for a non-existent, fantastical entity that someone made up for the heck of it).

And this is not the first televised parody in the name of religion.

I remember watching with a great deal of amusement people staging an all-night vigil to protest the removal of the ten commandments from the Alabama state judicial building a couple years ago. First, my bewilderment was directed at folks that think a piece of rock is worth losing precious sleep over. But secondly, who the hell cares if a loony judge wants to display religion in the lobby of a courthouse? Inside, you swear on the bible for crying out loud! If you don’t care for religion, let it just sit there as a piece of art. The only thing that whole episode achieved was kindle among the religion-soaked masses, a reverent respect for the man – yeah, Roy and his Rock are quite a phenomenon now, and he’s running for Governor. And no points for guessing who’ll win in the logic-blinded state of Alabama. So, the secular radical liberals have basically taken a judge whose sole purpose was to bang his gavel from time to time and put him on the legislative playing field, where he can do some real damage. Just what America needs. Another religion-obsessed, blind politician.

Another comic character in this ever-intriguing field is Mike Newdow, who spent millions of hours and hundreds of dollars filing lawsuits just so his daughter would not have to hear a thousand other kids say “under god”. I am equally amused at both ends of the spectrum. Much as I am awestruck by atheistic, radical elites like Newdow, I have to say that protesting it so vehemently is almost just as asinine as being fanatically obsessed with it. I mean, if you don’t believe in it, don’t say it! [Or better still, get a slot on national tv and say a lot about it (vive la Maher :))]

Then the whole furor over The Da Vinci Code. Easily, in my opinion the most fascinating book ever written (the only thing that comes close to beating it is Dan Brown’s own irreverent prequel to it). But no, these religious fanatics can’t take a well-written piece of literature. Who the hell cares if the facts have been researched and spun through a polygraph and who the hell cares if Christ had a wife or a son or maybe a whole family in Alabama (take a moment and think what this could do for your party – not just a family but generations of Christ’s descendants, who could campaign for a half-witted republican to come to power so they can hear him say “God bless America” on tv!!!)

Trey Parker and Matt Stone had it right all along -- taking what people do in the name of religion and moral-values and putting it on celluloid, with a splash of added color is more hilarious than anything a humor writer could dream up. I’m surprised they even have to try so hard. I can just laugh at it in its crude human form, though, for the record, I do love the bright yellow hair and perfectly round faces :)

Update

Found this on another blog, quoted from Metafilter, and thought I'd re-quote it cos I couldn't say it better:

Religion, all religion, needs to be mocked in a free society, for the embarrassment it is. Religion deserves freedom, but it doesn't deserve "respect", quite the opposite. And the more [backward] and insane the adherents of any religion are, the more they demand that unbelievers have to respect their tiresome [idiotic] beliefs, the more those beliefs deserve to be mocked. This [isn't just] for Muslims, the more Jerry Falwell, George Bush, etc. demand we all pay lip service to their ugly superstitions, the more necessary it becomes that South Park and Kevin Smith and Andres Serrano and Marilyn Manson and Richard Dawkins, etc, etc, step up their campaigns to mock and denigrate these outdated beliefs.