This article about the vatican giving it's blessing to Harry Potter got me thinking about the documentary Sheri and I watched last weekend. Hell House is about the most famous (and probably the first) christian run 'haunted house'. It features tableaus like 'Family Violence' and 'Rave/Rape' all designed to show people what living in sin can do to you.

It's an excellent documentary and really portrays why these people are so commited, and the bubbling over repression that motivates the teenage actors who do the scenes. However, it sort of got me thinking about why it's so hard for me to relate to christians at all. Essentially, I consider myself a moral person and not at all above a little preachiness myself at times, but I find most people with strong religious beliefs a little repellent when they start to talk about them.

Mostly, I just don't think it makes any sense. I'm a very big fan of Occam's razor. Simply put, all things being equal, the simplest explanations are usually true. Obviously that's not always the case, but it's a fairly useful tool for confronting the world. As for religion, it just fails the test.

First of all, there's the whole variety thing. It seems to me (to borrow an analogy from Bruce Lee), if once religion was any better than any other, there would only be one religion. Second, just about every religion talks about punishment for unbelievers, but for every religion you can find a country where it is persecuted and I haven't heard of any rains of blood lately. Third, the age of miracles is always over. In every religion there was a time when gods walked the earth and gave clear signs to their believers. Not like, suddenly a country you dislike has economic problems signs, like showing up and being hundreds of feet tall signs. But no more. Why not now? Fourth, people are crazy. People believe all sorts of things in direct contradiction to evidence right in front of them. I was reading an article about UFO abductees a while ago and there were all these reports by people who tell stories of being floated out of thier buildings into alien spacecraft in the middle of Manhattan! I have yet to turn on the radio in the morning and hear about a traffic tie-up on the George Washington because of a glowing saucer vaccuming up people.

I'm sorry if I've offended anybody, but if it comes down to me either believing in invisible super-heroes who live in outer space, or that people are just nuts, that's no choice at all for me.   ¶ 10:35 AM

  So, I haven't posted in over a week, because I got some kind of midnight tropical attack flu whose symptoms included but were not limited to hundred degreee fevers, flop sweats, loss of appetitite, dizziness, temporary paralysis, a small portal to hell in my left lung causing me to cough like an asthmatic four mouthed demon after a righeous bong hit, skin palpitations, kidney depression, liver explosion, a certain longing for yams, bleeding from the pores, being unable to pronounce 'hopscotch', jungle rot, and occasional death.

Feeling better now though.   ¶ 9:04 AM