Is That Old Time Religion Good Enough?

Seven female Muslim suicide bombers killed themselves and dozens of others while wounding hundreds in the mean streets of Baghdad and Kirkuk last Sunday. The killings took place on the same day that the traditional gospel song “That Old Time Religion” was sung in dozens of churches across this land.

It was good for Paul and Silas, it was good for for our dear mothers,
It was good for our dear fathers, it’s good for you and me!
Give me that old time religion, give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion, it is good enough for me.

But is it? We once had a war lasting a hundred years between Christians. We have had a number of wars between atheists and Christians and atheists and Bhuddists.

“Religious” people are still doing terrible things to one another in the name of religion and to those without any.

Perhaps we need a new kind of religion based on what the Gods and gods thought instead of what popes, imams, priests, ministers, monks, nuns, and shamans think.

In the long history of religious wars man has revealed he is capable of any hideous, despicable, horrendous act while invoking God’s name.

In the Iraq-Iran War of the 1980’s, basically a war between Sunnis and Shiites (sound familiar?), both sides used teenage boys to clear minefields by convincing them they could become religious martyrs if they stepped on a mine and cleared the field for troops. So the young boys walked in rows across battlefields, clearing a path for the troops and tanks to follow to attack the enemy.

Like the male suicide bombers of today, the boys were taught they would have the pleasures of 72 beautiful virgins awaiting them in Paradise.

I guess the female martyrs do not have the pleasures of the flesh to motivate them. The Muslim imans are always a little hazy about the rewards women get for becoming martyrs. And they certainly must be running out of virgins. More on this aspect later.

Is It Good Enough for Me?

In the Bosnian War of the 1990’s, in the mess known as Yugoslavia, horrible things were done to both Christians and Muslims. These people hated each other with a passion beyond any mosque or church.

Two Bosnian cousins were convicted of war crimes when in 1992 they massacred 70 Muslims ranging in age from 75 years to two days by barricading them in a small house and setting fire to it. Flaming people who tried to get out of the house were shot as they tried to escape. Two weeks later the two Serbs repeated the same atrocity in another town.

Another Serb forced Muslim “detainees” to beat each other with clubs and forced relatives and friends to perform sexual acts on each other. Such activities were always conducted in front of large groups of Muslims.

When the Role Is Called up Yonder

A common method of execution of rebel soldiers in the religious, cultural, and race war in the Sudan is blowing off the genitals of prisoners with gunshots until they bleed to death. These atrocities are committed by the “janjaweed” militiamen who also use rape as a weapon of war. They also burn whole villages so residents are forced into refugee camps.

Good for Our Dear Sisters

Sally Jeffs, one of the wives of Warren Jeffs who is serving a 10-year-to-life sentence for being an accomplice to rape of young girls, is now living in a San Antonio suburb in a rented four-bedroom home with her 15 children. She still has her three oldest daughters with her (17,18,19) who all have children of their own. Shouldn’t this be called a religious atrocity also?

To be kept dumb, unhappy, barefoot and pregnant in those Mother Hubbard dresses may not be a physical death caused by fire or gunshot, but it is certainly the death of spirit so men can “earn” their way into the Mormon heaven.

Give Me That Old Gospel Singing

In the war crimes trial of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia and former buddy of the Reverend Pat Robertson, originator of the Christian Coalition, it clearly shows in a Harper’s Magazine article the the lover of cashmere sport coats had no religious effect on the diamond-hunting Taylor.

Taylor’s men are certainly perhaps the most vicious in history—directly because of the orders of Taylor. To cow the rebels in Liberia, Taylor’s men would place human heads on car bumpers and drive around the country implanting fear. At checkpoints on roads they would use ropes made of human intestines to stop cars.

Taylor also started a unit called No Baby On Target whose job it was to kill babies of rebels. A witness’s statement at the trial will suffice: “It is not difficult to kill a baby. Sometimes you just knock them on a wall, and they are dead. Sometimes you throw them into a pit, and they are dead. Sometimes you just throw them in the river, then they are dead.”

The witness testified he would cut open the bellies of pregnant women with a pen knife and kill the fetus on orders of Taylor. If these orders were not followed the man would be executed, his family killed, and all of his property confiscated.

In this case Robertson was more interested in getting some of Taylor’s diamonds than he was in his salvation. I have always been curious about a line in Deuteronomy: “Unto a stranger, thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shall not lend upon usury.” Was Pat following the strictures of this line which approved of screwing strangers but not family?

I’ll fly away, O glory!

Boy, do the Christian fundamentalists have a hot deal for you! If you know you are going to be Raptured; that is, suddenly flying to Heaven on the wings of an angel minus all earthly possessions, including clothing, you may still contact your relatives from Heaven who didn’t make the flight.
For $40 you can have the website “You’ve Been Left Behind” contact relatives and friends six days after the Rapture by e-mail or with addresses you provide. In the encrypted portion of your Web account, you will give access to your bank and brokerage accounts, places where you have hidden your valuables, and powers of attorney. (After all, you have no need of your property anymore and you don’t want the Anti-Christ to get it.)

Some of your rascally relatives and friends left behind will end up with your property. Remember that your body is gone so probating your will might be a problem. I love the last line in the website: “This is one last chance to bring the unsaved to Christ and snatch them from the flames.”

I suspect this is a Robertson or James Dobson scam, but if you think you are going to be Raptured, it might be a good investment!

Atheists do terrible things to their fellow beings also, but they probably have learned evil from the religionists.

Zhiang Meizhi’s brother was executed for opposing Mao in his rush to take China from Chiang Kai Shek, and his tongue was cut out and sold for use in China’s traditional medicine. Zhiang was imprisoned for forty days during which her two-year-daughter starved to death. And Mao’s henchmen knew it would happen.

Our early religionists did not take kindly to one another either. Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote this about his religious rival Anne Hutchinson’s miscarriage: “She brought forth not one but ...thirty monstrous births at once; some of them bigger, some lesser, some of one shape, some of another, few of any perfect shape, none at all of them…of human shape.” Fathered by Satan, of course.

Why humans treat each other so badly after reading the Good Book may rest on the fact that humans share about 40 percent of their genes with eggplant and 98.5 percent with chimps and great apes. Many humans, some with religion, some with none, lean toward being eggplants. That may be the new religion. Perhaps we should all become pantheists and worship plants.

Many humans, some with religion, some with none, lean toward being eggplants. That may be the new religion. Perhaps we should all become pantheists and worship plants.