www.associatedcontent.com/article/8611/appalachian_americans_the_invisible.html

There’s plenty more, courtesy of Google.

I do realize that I’m well outside the Appalachian Mountains now, not to mention middle-class.  But this is where my mother’s family comes from.  Rural Appalachian Kentucky.  And what really sucks is, we’re the most scorned minority in America.

A lot of the culture showed in the article I’ve seen in the lessons my parents taught me.  “Don’t get too big for your britches.”  Don’t get a fat head.  Oddly enough, my family *does* have a history of diabetes.

So if we’re whites who just happen to be poor, why are we the worst off of all minorities?  We’re portrayed as uneducated (read: stupid), inbred, and generally unhygienic.  For most “true” Appalachians, that’s not true at all.  My mother’s family has a good bit of money.  We’re educated.  We’re definitely not inbred.Any other minority facing such a charge would sue and protest in the streets  for centuries or until somebody paid the price.  But it’s okay to be bigots against white trash in the mountains, because they haven’t “risen above” achieved the “American Dream”.  I bet any black or Hispanic person would tell you that it’s hard to “rise above” when you’ve been dealt a crap sandwich from birth.  Despite being the Social Darwinist’s dream, the United States isn’t a place where any poor kid can grow up to be some freewheeling billionaire.  Sure, it happens.  But for most, it doesn’t. Part of it’s because of property tax, which is an archaic and totally useless way of funding schools- ever wonder why, if the United States is such a wonderful land of equality and opportunity, there are poor crumbling schools just a few miles away from rich state-of-the-art schools?

Nobody believes I can be a minority because I’m middle class and white.  Do black people not have their culture?  Don’t Hispanics have one too?  Appalachians certainly do too.  All three groups have their own cultures, their own histories.  So why is it unacceptable to spout bigoted nonsense about blacks and Hispanics, when it’s perfectly OK to do the same to Appalachians?  I might be a middle-class white kid from eastern North Carolina, but my roots are in the Appalachian mountains.  And really, it’s time to stop the utter stupidity and the mistreatment of Appalachians, and actually give them a bloody chance to advance here too.

I jsut found out that I am a minority.  I can’t believe I’m getting so pissed off over this.

I’m amazed.  I forgot my pasword, well actually WordPress forgot it and I had to come up with a new one and now I hope I don’t forget my new one.

Nothing much has happened recently for me, actually, since Christmas.  Just the same old crap… over and over and over.  I’m not kidding, very little new has happened.  So much for a new year, it’s exactly like the old one, it just has a different number.

I need something to post about.

If you’ve been reading Slate lately, you might have seen Christopher Hitchens’ article about the moral and aesthetic nightmare of Christmas.  And I have to agree… I’m getting sick of the red and green crap too.  I’m getting sick of the fake snow and everything being about snow– which is more of a Winter Solstice thing rather than anything to do with Christmas (particularly where I am, I live in an area that very rarely gets snow).  I’m tired of the generic Jingle Winter Santa’s Reindeer Bells Wonderland songs.  (I swear to any God/dess out there, I will go nuts if I hear “Jingle Bell Rock” or “Little Drummer Boy” one more frigging time! )  I’m sick of stores switching back over to “Merry Christmas” simply to get more fricking money.  I’d much rather Christmas be a religious, stay-at-home-with-the-family holiday where everything is closed, people stay home and hand each other small gifts, then go to church and sing pretty hymns.

And I’m a bloody freaking atheist.

Nobody can argue that Christmas is a moral nightmare.  It’s a commercialized, overplayed and meaningless waste of a perfectly good December (and last week of November).  And then some uppity religious folk do what they do best and blare music praising the “Dear Leader” and decorate everything with the Dear Leader’s face to prepare for his birthday.

(To be honest, this was the only part of his article I didn’t quite agree with.  I may post on Ex-Christian frequently, but I don’t go out of my way to bash Jesus.)

However, some religious folk want to put “Christ” back in “Christmas”.  Which is cool.  Fine by me (as long as they don’t shove it down my throat).   Some go a little out there.  They’re stupid and should GTFO.  It’s when they actively bash atheists for doing what more liberal Christians have been doing: commercializing Christmas.  Okay, so the U.S. is mostly Christian.  I get that.  But Jews live here too, and Pagans, and Buddhists, and Muslims, and atheists, and other people.  Don’t attack us atheists for not celebrating your holiday.  Don’t attack us for celebrating a slightly different version of your holiday that isn’t the way you like it.

But… I think atheists should just shut up.  Yes, I’m saying atheists should shut up.  I’m telling myself to shut up, thank you.  Christmas is a “Christian” holiday.  It’s the day Christians celebrate Jesus’ birth.  Okay, so Jesus was most likely born in spring, and Pagans already had winter solstice and the Christians moved their holiday to December 25 to stamp out the Pagans and yada yada yada yada yada.  So what if the Christians are wrong?  Why don’t atheists get all pissy over Easter?   Or Hanukkah? Or Passover?  Or Ramadan?  Why is it just Christmas?

It doesn’t matter what religion you are or aren’t.  It doesn’t matter what you think December 25th is.  Whether you think it’s a trite, commercialized waste of a December, a holy day to celebrate the birth of the Savior, a day to celebrate the Winter Solstice, a non-religious day to celebrate family, a good day to go to the movies, or just December 25, celebrate it your own way– and shut up and leave others alone.

Happy Holidays!

1. Band.  God do I wish I was brave enough to say this in person.  It’s not going well at all… poor attitudes and brattiness prevail, and it’s not entirely freshmen.  It’s the seniors.  You know, after the whole fiasco that was the old band director getting fired to having to work with a fairly unpopular band director, I was hoping we could recover from this.  Apparently not.  Thanks a lot.

2. “White Girl.”  It’s a BBC movie about how a girl, Leah, moves from Leeds to Bradford.  Her family is Catholic and moves to a Muslim neighborhood.  At first Leah isn’t pleased about being surrounded by Muslims, her mother being absent and having to receive Muslim religious education and having her dad stalk her family.  Then she’s fascinated by Islam and eventually converts, leading to her parents’ violent reaction, her moving in next door, and her dad being an overall douche at the end but the family does  bond (albeit in a weird way).

3. School.  High school sucks.  This has been proven by generations and generations of people.  The faux college bullshit they’ve got going on in the 2000′s?  Sucks even worse.  No wonder teen suicide rates are up.

4. Other: Religion is a drug.  It’s addictive.  It’s like pot (being said by someone who has ever tried pot and doesn’t have any plans to do so… besides, pot isn’t addictive or really deadly anyway until you start mixing it with stuff… actually, this analogy works).  Pot isn’t addictive, but some people think they need pot to have fun (which I can say is not true, there are plenty of ways to have a good time sans pot).  Religion isn’t physically addictive in itself (I for one have suffered no physical ailments since leaving Christianity, actually I have but they are in no way related to leaving Christianity), but people can be addicted by thinking they need it.  Even as something as harmless as a little prayer puff, or going into a stoned-off-your-feet crusade for the faith, people feel they need to have a good life.  I’m not saying religion is bad, nor am I saying pot is bad.  (Both in fact to have benefits to some extent, and pot is not nearly as dangerous as people say it is).  Bah, I fail at this analogy thing.  Basically I’m saying, like an ex-stoner misses his pot, I miss my religion, dammit.  Even though I know I don’t need it, I know I should stay away.

More on this at 11 on Channel 16 News: Your blog, your news… your right to read the rambling.

So, in moving on, I’ve finally gotten around to posting something I’ve been wanting to post about: Genesis.

At first sight, Genesis looks like a load of male bovine feces.  When put into a modern context, it is.  Come on, we have science now.  We’ve had science to explain how the Earth, the universe, and life formed for… what, 200 years now?  So of course, that anyone disbelieves science is a bit odd.  But… such is religion.  Religion provides comfort, even if said comfort consists of ego-stroking.  I’m not bashing Christians here, I’m just bashing those who believe that a personal deity created them superior to all other animals.  Humans are in fact animals, people– Kingdom Animalia.  We just evolved to become more intelligent, to recognize patterns more easily, use language… we’re still animals.  But I digress… Genesis was written thousands of years ago, when there was no actual science.  It could have passed off as deep, rational thinking back then… now, in the face of science, particularly geology and biology, it’s male bovine feces.

I should mention that those who still prefer the Creation myth are those who claim to take the entire Bible literally.  I should also mention that most Christians cherry-pick the Bible like crazy.  In fact, all do.  There’s not so much cherry-picking of the New Testament as there is the Old Testament… or maybe there is and the Old Testament cherry-picking is just easier for me to see.  But, when Christians claim to follow God’s laws, they’re cherry-picking, even if they are (and most are!) upstanding members of society.

Face it.  Anyone who has read the Old Testament knows that most of the stuff in there is not followed today.  Like stoning, burnt sacrifices, and dietary laws.  It’s quite obvious that most Americans don’t do any of those three… particularly the last one >_>

So why is it used as an excuse to be bigotted against homosexuals and deny them equal rights?

(“But this is about Genesis!” you say.  Well shut up, I’m getting there!)

Because it’s God’s Law.  Yes people, this is the classic example of cherry-picking.  God says it right there in Leviticus, that homosexuality is an abomination.  And so is cutting your beard, wearing “clothes of two fibers”, and eating shellfish.  And guess what?  Millions of American men rant about how those evil gay people are corrupting the youth of the nation and going to hell… while shaving their chins and picking out what cotton/polyester blend shirt they want to wear when they meet their wives at the local seafood restaurant.  American women, who have no beards, just spend hours picking out what cotton/polyester blend shirt they want to wear when they meet their husbands at the local seafood restaurant. Oh, and they’re thinking lobster.  Mmmm.

This is a prime example of why people should not believe Leviticus.  That and if all of the rules about sabbaths, shellfish, clothing, shaving, purification, diets, yada yada yada aren’t supposed to be taken literally, why should the verses about homosexuality be true?

So now we’ve debunked Leviticus.  One book down, 65 more to go!

So a lot of where “God’s Law” comes from has been debunked.  so now what?  One book in the Bible has been proven false– the one that’s been cherry-picked the most, probably.  If Leviticus and the rest of the Old Testament are ancient myths… how is Genesis an exception?

Jesus is suing MySpace for taking the name of what He calls everything around you.

There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures the Lord has allowed to live.

Jesus doesn’t wear a watch, He decides what time it is.

Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy. It’s a Christtatorship.

Okay, seriously. Who is this Jesus hero everyone talks about? Perhaps there IS a ctrl button on Jesus’ computer, maybe Jesus has no problem with FailSpace at all, there actually is a theory of evolution, and America is not a democracy (it’s a REPUBLIC, people!) nor is it a Christian nation. But he does do some pretty wicked stuff. He cures blindness by spitting in the dirt and then rubbing it in a guy’s eyes. He raises the dead. Shoot, He gets nailed to a cross and spends hours in pain and agony and anguish. That’s pretty badass, even if he did die. You know what’s even more badass? He only stayed dead for three says, which is when he went to Hell (cuz he had a Master Plan the entire time!) and cancelled everyone’s reservations. Then he resurrected himself, rolled this BIG FRICKING ROCK away from his tomb, and showed his stuff to some of his female followers. Oh, not to mention he wanders around in wilderness for a few weeks and gets tempted by Big Scary Evil Dude (who goes by the name of “Satan”) and basically tells the villain to fuck off. And why did he do it? He did it just for you. And you. And even you! But not you, you’re too gay. Not you either, you like Harry Potter too much. But he did do it just for… YOU!

Not to mention, he’s the son of this frickin’ all-powerful deity who is also him and they’re both this weird ghosty thing…. but whatever. So *that’s* where he gets it from! Glory!

Okay, okay, so I’m getting preachy. You’ve heard all about Jesus at church, yeah, whatever. You’ve heard about Him more than you have about Paris Hilton’s sex tape. But what’s with these facts? Where did they come from, do I have magical prophetic powers? Do I have a special link with God/Jesus/divine ghosty thing? How exactly do I know that Jesus doesn’t wear a watch? How the heck do I know that Jesus is always in control? Did I suddenly see The Light? Did I finally give my poor, confused heart over to Jesus?

Hahahaha, no. My heart isn’t poor or confused. the only light I see is from the lamp in my room and my computer screen. I don’t have “divine prophetic powers”. I don’t have any link to some wacko deity and his son or some weird holy ghost. so how did I get these facts?

What I did was, I went on Chucknorrisfacts.com and changed some of them from “Chuck Norris does not A, he does B” to “Jesus does not A, he does B.” Seriously, look at the similarities between Jesus and Chuck Norris. They’re both super-heroes, going around kicking evil’s ass. Chuck Norris has become an ageless god, Jesus is in fact the son of an ageless god (or somehow said ageless god… well, “His ways are not our own!”) But all of these facts about Chuck Norris are pretty much myths (they’re all impossible anyway), spread around by his fans for giggles and grins. They’re there on the Internet. But what about Jesus? All of his miracles are impossible. Dude, seriously, his mom was a virgin. There wasn’t artificial insemination back when Jesus was born. Yeah, one “fact” gone down the drain. He got nailed to a cross, suffered, and died. He didn’t heal, he doesn’t heal. Jesus is simply a 2,000 year old Chuck Norris.

Perhaps 2,000 years from now, our descendants will be hearing about how Chuck Norris waits rather than sleeps, and will go onto the internet archive of chucknorrisfacts.com and bask in the glory of the Beard. And Chuck Norris will be another Jesus.

Yeah. Also, Jesus wears a “What Would Chuck Norris Do?” bracelet. Yeah, some god he is.

So this entry was going to be about the YouTube clip “Jesus Camp Highlights”… but I decided to do what The Other Rain Man said and look up the whole movie on YouTube.

What I saw was scarier than the short clips I’d previously seen.

So the movie was quite political. Which was cool. Kids+politics+religion=a good mix… when you’re trying to get people to stop mixing the three. For those who still haven’t seen Jesus Camp, “Kids On Fire” is basically a Pentecostal, charismatic, and evangelical kids’ ministry camp to basically get kids on fire for Jesus, indoctrinate them, and train them for life as one of God’s soldiers.

The camp scenes were pretty creepy. Preaching to children about abortion… is just creepy. “ABORTION IS WRONG”. Dude, these kids are about 12 years old or younger. They don’t know what abortion is. They don’t understand what it is. And the adults are basically exploiting them to take to protests and preach… how wrong is that?!

The movie consisted of nothing but adults exploiting their innocent sons and daughters. Nothing but preachers manipulating children. It’s quite obvious to see that they’re not interested in the kids’ welfare at all. They want to spread their hateful and poisonous brand of Christianity around the world… to make these kids literally lay their lives down, literally die for Jesus. Becuase that’s what Islam does, and they must defeat Islam.

Most of the kids, I saw, were homeschooled. They were force-fed creationism, not even getting a chance to think for themselves. Levi’s mother believes Creationism is the answer to everything… their kind think that public education does nothing but tell us that we are but animals and products of natural processes. Well according to science we are… but it puts us in our rightful place. We would not be here if it weren’t for nature. We have similar functions to other animals– monkeys, horses, cats, raccoons. Of course we’re more intelligent. But that’s what sets us apart. Nothing else does. We are of the earth, a part of it. To believe God did it all steals credit from nature, from science and the brilliance of the human mind, separates us from the earth. We don’t have to take care of it, God will provide. that’s not the way it works.

And the bit in the cafeteria about Harry Potter… oh forget it, that was just completely ridiculous.

Becky Fischer is perhaps one of the most dangerous people in America. she’s in control of hundreds of kids. She’s brainwashing them, indoctrinating them, to become politicians and preachers jsut like the ones we have today. What will happen when these poor kids grow up? will they become just like their “mentors”?

Good Lord, I hope not.

So… lately I have been inspired. I’ve been thinking about doing video-blogs every week or so, perhaps on Friday. It might keep me blogging and then maybe you’ll get to see how little I think before I speak… I mean… uh…

Anyway. so, expect a new blog sometime soon (“sometime soon” meaning if you haven’t seen updates around here by October, I’m either in band or dead) and a video early Friday (I have to be at a football game).

Don’t worry, guys, I’m perfectly fine.  I didn’t reconvert or turn to Wicca.  Sadly, I didn’t get kidnapped by Tuomas or Emppu.  School still hasn’t started (whoohoo!) I’m still alive and I no longer have writer’s block… which is why I’m writing now.

All I have to say is… it’s very odd that my near-reconversion almost coincided with Brother Jeff’s.  It’s always far easier when someone you know is going through the same thing… sorta.  So for now I am still an atheist.

When trying to get back to blogging I got quite confused as to what to write about.  At first I was going to on about how if the homophobic and sexist laws in the Old Testament were outdated and symbolic, why follow Genesis then?  But no, I got sidetracked and started on other stuff… I forget what I was finally going to blog about, but it got changed.  You see, I was goofing off on X-C and came across a video of Jesus Camp highlights.  This quite disturbed me.

So now I’m blogging about Jesus Camp.

I should admit right now that I have never actually seen Jesus Camp.  I’ve heard about it nearly non-stop from the atheist/non-Christian circles I’ve been in.  However… I never once saw it.  I never even saw so much as a clip of it.  Well, the video on Youtube quite educated me.  Here’s the link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac

I’ll comment on the separate parts.

“It is our firm belief that there are two types of people in this world: those who love Jesus, and those who don’t.”  This is…actually true.  “But what about those of us who are indifferent?!” Well, if you’re indifferent, you don’t love him, now do you?  I don’t love him– I’m indifferent.  The crazies in the video are a tad obsessed with him.  On one hand it sounds crazy and hateful-it’s probably meant that way too- on the other hand, it actually makes a bit of sense.

The second part freaked me out a little.  Most of the kids in the video look about 10-11.  To my understanding some are as young as 6.  I don’t know how old the oldest ones are, but they seem about 13-14.  (Wikipedia says nothing of their ages!  gah!)  the main thing that stuck out to me was that they were praying in tongues.  I should re-state that I come from a somewhat-Baptist family, and Baptists generally don’t do the whole “speakign in tongues” thing.  It was a bit unsettling to see a bunch of 10 year olds crying, raising their hands to the sky, and shouting something to the effect of “ALSOIRWMMLASDODMV AOEIPOQWMVLF SLDFKSOSF!” (I now have a very evil urge to “translate” what they’re saying… but I won’t.)

The part about Harry Potter is frankly, bullshit.  “Harry Potter would have been put to death!”  Okay, Jesus tried to get people to listen to him and did a bit of magic (water to wine, resurrecting people, killing fig trees) and he got put to death in a very horrible and painful and bloody manner….but that’s the New Testament.  But what about Moses?  Moses spoke to a burning bush, parted the Red Sea, struck a rock with a stick and made water flow out of it… and he’s a hero.  In the Old Testament, no less.  Harry Potter waves a  stick around, yells stuff in Latin/Greek/Aramaic (same languages the Bible is written in!)  and shoots water at people, dangles people upside-down in midair, stuns his enemies, and changes the color of his eyebrows.  And get this– if you look at the Harry Potter story, it’s actually about the struggle between good and evil and is in fact quite Christian.  Dumbledore=God, Voldemort=Satan, Harry=Jesus.  If somebody ever runs into Fischer, please tell her that I said she should get her head out of her arse and actually READ THE FREAKING BOOKS.

(Sorry about that– it’s jsut that reading Harry Potter is the main reason I stopped going to that last church.)

Then there’s the part where Fischer says “If you’re one way at church and another outside of it, you are a phony and a hypocrite and you have no place in God’s army!” Yeah, way to go, BITCH.  Just tell a bunch of 10 year olds they’re fakes and phonies and sinners and God hates them.  That’s a lovely thing to beat into children’s heads!  She then commands them to be washed in the “water of Your [God's] Word” which she pours from their hands from a freaking water bottle. How fake is that?!  Once I got over the utter silliness of the water bottle, I became deeply unsettled.  These kids were absolutely sobbing– curling up on the floor bawling their eyes out.  It’s scary what these kids are taught.  I nearly cried with them.  In about 15 years these kids will either be in therapy for horrendous self-esteem issues, anorexia, bulimia, depression… or worse, dead because they committed suicide.  It’s terrifying and appalling.

I watched the video twice.  the first time I just couldn’t watch past that part.  I don’t think I’ll be going to see the full documentary anytime soon.  I’ll comment on the rest of the video later, so that nobody dies of tl;dr… or so I don’t wind up further depressing myself about this.

What’s going on is, someone over at Ex-C just reconverted to Christianity.  While at first I was like “WHAT?!  ARE YOU INSANE?!?!?” I decided that if I’m so open-minded and tolerant, I shouldn’t have a problem with this… and I really don’t anyway.  What’s really  bothering me is, despite how caustic and vitriolic I often found him, he was really cool.  I found him to have very good points against religion.  And now he’s Christian again, and I don’t know what to think.

To be honest, I have no idea what to do now.  I have no idea what to think.  Occasionally over the summer I get depressed, possibly as a result of extreme boredom.  In this bout of boredom/depression, I turn to religion.  So I’m already beginning to question my beliefs (which I suppose really isn’t a bad thing to begin with) but now I’m really beginning to seriously question everything.  Is Christianity right after all?  Is any religion right?  What about my dabbling in Wicca?  Is Wicca right?  Is any religion right?

It’s crazy how I thought I’d never be stuck in this phase again.  And now that I’m back in it, I have no idea what I should do.  Should I think that this Ex-C’er is an idiot and move on?  Or is there something to this?  My mother and my sister have been asking about my atheism lately.  I like to think these are coincidences but… I’m really not sure.

Maybe, just maybe, I’m just being silly.  I don’t know.  I’m so confused.

While I’m not *too* thrilled about the name of Brother Jeff’s site, it’s a good thing that I’m on a blogroll.  I like that people know about my blog, and that they may possibly look at it.

*dances*