In a sarcastic post on the Comic Book Galaxy message board, in a
response to a post that mentioned some consider Preacher
anti-Christian, I gave the dictionary definition of a bigot, and said
in regard to xtianity, "Damn, guilty as charged." This resulted in a
scorched-earth demand from Johanna Draper Carlson that I apologize to
her and either stifle my opinions in perpetuity, or she would leave
the site. I apologized for offending her personally, and told her that
I have always respected her and regretted if my remarks and opinions
hurt her personally. But I did not, and never would, agree to restrain
my opinions or co-opt my freedom of speech. Especially not on a web
site I created.

She now refers to me as a bigot, which has really prompted me to
examine the question of what is a bigot?

Kurt Busiek made a good distinction between discriminating against
someone for what they are born as -- gay, black -- as opposed to what
a grown adult has chosen to believe.

Am I bigoted against xtians? It would be more accurate, if I were
trying to remove all humour and sarcasm from the discussion, to say I
am bigoted against xtianity in general. As a philosophy. As a way of
controlling people and their money. As a manner of destroying the
individuality and spirit of people and crushing their passions and
intellectual capacity.

Sure, there have been individual xtians I have been friends with; one,
right now, is one of my best friends, a radio news director named Joe.
He's a catholic. Catholics consider themselves xtians, or as they
prefer to spell it, "Christians."

Growing up in the deep south, as a student of Berean Christian Academy
and a member of the Berean Baptist Church, one of the things I was
taught, from a variety of pastors, was that catholics are all going to
hell. We were taught to pity them, because they were idol-worshipping
pagans. Southern Baptists see catholic standards like statues of Mary
and such as idolatry. Bible verses were taught to us to back up this
opinion. We were taught that the catholic bible, containing the
apocrypha, is evil.

This is quite typical of the fear-and-hate (or as they abbreviate it,
"faith")-based philosophies of most of the xtians I have known
personally. On my personal web site, The Ministry of Disinformation
and Popular Enlightenment, in the True Stories section there is a
story called Radio Antichrist. It's about a former boss of mine who
tortured those under him mentally and physically, had numerous sexual
affairs while married, resulting in at least one illegitimate child,
stole thousands of dollars in merchandise from the radio station by
selling commercials to clients and taking cars and furniture in trade,
playing the commercials on his show, and never telling the station
about ANY of it--and was perhaps the most pious, bible-thumping man I
have had the displeasure to known personally in the past 20 years. He
has also been suspected by family members of molesting his young
step-son, and he tried to molest co-workers both male and female. He
ends every radio show with "God Bless."

As Dave Barry might say, "I swear I am not making this up."

The very principles of "faith" state that you should not question
authority--whether it is your pastor, diocese, or the ultimate "higher
authority," Jesus H. Christ or his Holy Father, the endlessly
compassionate G-O-D, who created H-E-L-L so YOU can BURN for ALL TIME
if you don't capitulate to his endlessly amorphous demands as spelled
out in The Bible. Whichever Bible you happen to have placed your faith
in, of course.

My feelings on faith are spelled out pretty clearly in an essay called
"The Rush to Mysticism." It's in the essays section of Elution web
site. The essay was written over a year ago, and has recently been
called "a fairly thoughtful essay," by Kurt Busiek. So for the
endlessly self-righteous and CB Galaxy-obsessed "griffinmill," a guy
named Jason, to imply in his message board post "Does Tom Brevoort
Know About Your Opinions?", that I have somehow been trying to pull
the wool over anyone's eyes is more than a bit disingenuous. I have
been more than willing to engage in a dialogue about xtianity and
faith online since I first got Internet access five or six years ago,
and have done so numerous times. There's no way anyone can claim my
opinions have somehow been hidden or obscured.

I despise mysticism. I despise oppression. Religion, organized
religion, is all about those two activities. I hold freedom to be the
highest good, and the greatest of humanity's aspirations and
achievements. Organized religion is diametrically opposed to freedom,
except the free ride they get because they've hoodwinked the
government into allowing them to operate tax-free.

This does not mean I am against spirituality, or that I don't believe
there might be more to the universe that it would at first appear. I
happen to believe that genuine religious epiphanies and paranormal
phenomena such as so-called alien abduction and visitor experiences,
are all reflections of the same experience; humanity somehow touching
the next level of our development as a conscious species. I can
recommend some books on this topic if you're interested; e-mail me if
you are.

Organized religion, on the other hand, has for thousands of years,
especially in the Western Hemisphere, been used by opportunistic
vultures to line their own coffers ("tithing") and secure sexual
partners through the use of predatory sexual practices (Jim Bakker,
for example, or Jimmy Swaggert, or the catholic priest of your
choice). Organized religion certainly backs up the theory that most
people, most of the time, are worried about either survival (cash) or
reproduction (sex), whether they realize it or not.

The fraud and oppression of organized religion, especially "The
World's Tragedy," xtianity, is well and thoroughly documented. The
evidence is there for all to see, at least, all who are willing and
capable of seeing. Jesus Christ never lived; he was an amalgamation of
previous pagan gods--the stories, the myths, no matter how they
resonate with us subconsciously, remain myths. A powerful myth is
still a myth. A powerful lie is still a lie, no matter how pervasive,
or how badly people might want to believe it.

So, am I a bigot?

I don't hate anyone, anywhere, for what they were born as. Do I hate
xtianity? Yes. I hate other forms of ignorance as well (don't even get
me started on the brutal, primitive, lucrative practice of doctors
forcing circumcision on gullible parents all too willing to mutilate
their sons; or daughters, if we talk about some parts of Africa), but
xtianity was the one we were talking about on the message board, and
it's the one I chose to discuss here.

Do I hate individual xtians?

Only the ones that give me a reason to. Does that include Johanna
Draper Carlson? Of course not.

I am extremely disappointed she chose to bolt from the site after only
the most superficial discussion of what could have been a very
interesting and enlightening debate. She clearly will not tolerate the
diversity of opinion that is the goal of the Comic Book Galaxy. But it
should be noted, I never censored her, or anyone else. I will tolerate
just about any opinion on the site or on the message board, even
though ultimately I have the power not to. I'm open-minded enough to
believe that there is value in discussing differences of opinion. That
a self-professed "Christian" would not be willing to do the same comes
as no real surprise, and only reinforces my overall impression of the
xtians I have personally know as small-minded, fearful, doubtful
little creatures living in a very fragile world where the first sign
of a cloud on the horizon results in plywood on the windows and weeks
in the basement to ride out the shitstorm.

Recommended reading:

The Christ Conspiracy by Acharya S
The Breakdown of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
The World's Tragedy by Aleister Crowley
Man and His Gods by Homer Smith

Alan David Doane
Editor-in-Chief
Comic Book Galaxy

[snip anecdote about nasty coworker]

Anyway, I didn't really want to get involved in this discussion, but
I've said my piece and I'll re-lurk.

There still living their lives based on a fraudulent religion, though.

---

It's quicker.

Hate the xtianity, not the xtian, that's my new motto.

Alan David Doane

: It's quicker.

The reason I ask is because it reads, whenever you use it, almost as if it
is intended as an insulting term.  If it isn't intended that way, that's
fine, but you might take that into consideration.

: Hate the xtianity, not the xtian, that's my new motto.

As a christian, I can say that there is a lot of supposed "christianity"
today that I too despise, so I can't find complete fault with that motto.

I wish!

Take care,

mrcreeper

(My favorite recent PC story?  An Olympic correspondent referring to
an athlete from, like, Zaire or somewhere, as an "African American.")

No offense to either Alan or Johanna, but I think we've seen enough
posts about the comicbookgalaxy situation for people to have made up
their own minds about whether Alan, Johanna, both, or neither were right
or wrong in statements and actions taken. I believe the initial posts
are still up at the site as well.

My point being that this has quickly moved beyond the somewhat comic
related reviewer leaving a comics reviewing site and both sides giving
their version of events to the relatively generic "Christianity: Threat
or Menace/Christianity: Salvation or Good Set of Teachings" thread. While
normally it's not worth net.copping threads that drift beyond an initial
comics setting, past Usenet experience shows that this is the sort of
thread drift which can both go on for a *very* long time, and which, as
seen by this specific thread, start spinning off into other threads and
posts which can overwhelm a newsgroup (see rec.arts.sf.written for a
current example of how political threads, which the generic religion
threads act similar to, are making the group hard to use).

Note that I'm not saying either side is wrong or right or in what percentage
thereof. I just want this and related threads which have turned into
pure religion arguments to stop.

Or at least go over to rac.other-media just to see how that'd influence
the CFV. :-)

After reading Alan's CBG comments and "essay" yesterday, it occurred to me
that if I'd read them on a newsgroup I'd have killfiled him as a troll.
Having read through this post to see if he had anything more to add, I've
become convinced of this.

ObComics:  In the Byrne/Claremont X-Men, The Beast was once shown
reading this (holding it with his foot).  Duty called and he threw the
book down, saying something like "I'll wait until the movie comes out."

David Welsh
--
"The writer of this article is the owner of one of the most remarkable
black cats in the world-- and this is saying much; for it will be
remembered that black cats are all of them witches."
Edgar Allan Poe