Stump Lane

Update: There are more BAT posts here. Click over to our special Blog Against Theocracy category to see them all.

Let’s officially start our official involvement with Blog Against Theocracy with some comic relief. For where are we without laughter?

Quick disclosure, then the yuks:
Your Montag isn’t a believer. Not for lack of trying, though. At a young age I asked my parents to take me to church, and they did. I went Methodist for several years only to come to the realization at the age of twelve or so that “hey, I don’t buy it.” I didn’t feel or observe, in any way meaningful to me, the presence of God in my life. Those conversations I was having in my head? That was just me thinking.

I started calling myself an atheist, (TNG would classify me as an “agnostic atheist.”) But guess what. That day when I was twelve— standing in the tall grass, telling my Dad I didn’t want to go to church anymore because I thought I was an atheist, and thinking I detected the slight betrayal of a sense of relief in him —I like to think I didn’t become a godless amoral boy-devil without a conscience or any sense of empathy. No. I prefer to think I was, and still am, thoughtful and respectful to others. I struggle constantly to gain fuller understanding of the nature of morality, and try to live a good life without harming others — helping them even, when I can.

Know what else? While I have some regrets, I have done nothing in my life for which I believe eternal infernal damnation is a justifiable punishment. If you are among those that believe that the inner workings of my thought process is grounds for the forever anguish of burning flesh, then I think your god is an asshole.

The rejection of theocracy is not to destroy religion, or to diminish anyone’s faith. Among other things, it is to allow all people, even non-believers like me, to find their sense of morality in their own way.

Now back to the post:
There are arguments to be made for Richard Pryor or Lenny Bruce, but for my money, Bill Hicks is the funniest dead guy around. His corpse, which Your Montag likes to imagine smiling mischievously, is still probably funnier than what all too often passes for comedy now-a-days. He was a true genius in the world of stand-up comedy. “Another dead hero,” to quote the liner notes for the Tool album Ænema.

We don’t often embed video here at Stump Lane because not everyone’s internet connection can take it. And the code that You Tube gives us doesn’t validate. However…

Here Hicks was; expressing concern over a Bush administration with theocratical tendencies. (Sadly, we’ve come back round to this as a timely concern.) Hicks then goes on to challenge the way of thinking/belief system that excludes many good people from the ranks of ‘the worthy.’ He does this, of course, in a brilliantly funny way.

Too bad the creative forces of the universe (if any) took him from us so too early.

Without further ado, here is Bill Hicks with a bit on evolution*:

* Hicks often used the term “evolution” loosely; at least not always in the scientific sense of the word. He spoke of “evolving ideas;” and, I think, thought that moving toward a more tolerant, peaceful society and away from some of our more violent and oppressive tendencies was ‘to evolve’ in a positive way. As if to point out the inconsistency in walking upright, yet still dragging our womens around by the hair and clubbing our inferiors to death with extreme prejudice.

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