First, I personally don’t think Tebow is a class act. Sure, he’s not sexting like Brett Favre. But at least Favre was doing what he does in private.

Tebow doesn’t do anything in private. He’s what the Bible calls a hypocrite. He makes his faith a public spectacle.

Think about it. Tebow believes there’s an all powerful, and all knowing, magical being that bends the laws of physics to help him win football games if he puts on a public spectacle.

As an atheist I think Tebow’s belief makes him out to be an idiot.

As someone with deep faith, I’d be outraged that Tebow believes that God is taking time out of his busy day to help him in such trivial pursuits. It’s such an ego trip. It’s like a four year old boy yelling out, “I’m important because I have a big brother who can kick your ass.” Only a lot more offensive to theists and atheists alike.

So, I do not believe that Tebow is a class act. His shtick, his spectacle, his pandering, is highly demeaning to nearly everyone. Everyone except for that minority of theists who find comfort in believing that God helps devotes win football games while letting children starve.

And furthermore, Plaschke’s piece is simply poorly argued. At one point Plaschke criticizes people who forget Tebow’s victories while focusing on his beliefs. In other words, criticizing people for focusing on the very spectacle that Tebow performs at every game.

However, Plaschke then argues that Tebow should be praised for his “strength born of faith.”

Look, Plaschke, you can’t criticize people for focusing on Tebow’s faith and then demand that Tebow should be praised for his faith.

And second of all, if Tebow’s “strength” was based on empiricism, instead being born of faith, he’d still be a quarterback in the NFL. In other words, faith doesn’t matter. Real world results do.

So, Plaschke, to answer your original question, if Tebow can’t find another quarterback job in the NFL, it will have nothing to do with his faith or the classiness of his shtick. It’ll be because he’s simply is not good enough.

Update:

And here’s the last reason Plaschke piece was asinine. He argues that Tebow is a worthy quarterback but that the NFL will not accept him. Well, he’s already been proved wrong on that. Apparently the Jets want Tebow fever. Plaschke, it makes no sense to argue that Tebow is a worthy quarterback but won’t be allowed to play. The NFL doesn’t care about a person’s faith. Only if they can win. And clearly Tebow has proved that. It’s just that Manning has more proof.

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I went to her house to take her out, a movie or something, I can’t remember.  However, while I was waiting in her parents’ living room for her to get ready, I lit up a cigarette (filter-less, because I’m a badass).  I couldn’t find an ashtray, but I found this little old trunk in the next room so I brought it out into the living room to put my ashes in, big mistake.  Little did I know that the chick’s grandfather was an archaeologist and he stole the trunk from the Nazis.  It turned out to be the Ark of the Covenant. Upon opening it the forces of Yahweh were released.  It didn’t go medieval on everyone’s ass, it went biblical.  Everyone in the house had their souls sucked out of their eyes.  Except for me.  Being a soulless atheist, I was left alone.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  After everyone was killed and had their souls sucked to hell, the entity separated into God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.  They had nothing to do, so we all went to a local bar and got blasted together.  God can really fucking drink.  And Jesus can really make some good wine.  (Although the owner was pissed we were drinking for free.  That bastard starting charging us for the water to make the wine.)  The Holy Spirit was just freaky.  It’s just an ethereal cloudish type thing.  If you look right at it, you can’t see it. You only sort of feel its presence when you glance at it out of the corner of your eye.  I don’t know for sure, but I swear every time I went to the bathroom it’d come in and watch.  Freaky.

At first it was fucking awesome hanging out with the creator of the universe.  He had the best fucking stories. Like, I bet you didn’t know that dinosaurs farted helium!  God thought that if farts were lighter than air, they’d float away and we’d never have to smell them.  Awesome, right?  But after a while God started talking about how he loves “fucking with the jews.” “I enslaved them in Egypt, I got them lost in the desert, I gave them fucked up dietary laws, I killed 6 million of them, and I never even gave their belief system a heaven, but they still pray to me.  Suckers.”

It got kinda weird after that, so I tried to bring Jesus into the conversation and asked him why there is always so much suffering in Africa. God interrupted Jesus and loudly said, “Oh, I just fucking hate niggers. Worst fucking mistake I ever made.” He then stood up and thew a heavy glass pitcher of beer at a waitress killing her instantly.  He yelled out, “I gave you life and I can take it away, bee-atch.”  He tried to give me a high-five, but I pretended like I didn’t see his hand up.  He sat back down and glared at me.  If I had a soul, I would have been so dead right then.

I looked over at Jesus.  I could tell he was really bothered by his dad.  He sat there with his head bowed down sobbing a little bit into his hands.  I asked him if he wanted to get out of there.  We went to a restaurant I knew about.  We were sitting in the back and just shooting the shit.  Talking about his life and some really cool stuff.  But finally he got real quiet and starting crying.  He finally looked up at me told me that God sent his mom to hell. 

I asked, “I thought she gave birth to you without sin?”  He replied, “Oh she lived without sin, but she died without being baptized.  I tried to talk dad out of sending her to hell, but he said, ‘rules are rules.’  So she’s in hell now and every day she’s forced to drink lava until she horribly melts away. I try not to think about it.  It’s just horrible to watch.”

Jesus kept talking, “The reason why there’s so much suffering in the world is because my dad’s a first class ass.  You know why the dinosaurs died off?  Because he wanted to watch ‘em die.  He thought it would “funny,’ his exact word.”  Jesus then asked if he could crash at my place because he wanted to get away from his dad for a while.  Of course I said yes.  He stayed about a month before going to back to heaven.

While he was living with me he taught me some pretty cool guitar licks, although I’ve long since forgotten most of them.  (I really should have recorded them.)  However, one sounded almost exactly like Stairway to Heaven, but it was played in a different key.  He was really proud of it, so I didn’t say anything about him ripping off Jimmy Page.  He also made me a dog out of clay.  It only lived a few months, though.  I still have the clay packed away in the attic.  I wasn’t sure if I should have buried it or not.  It seemed kind of weird burying clay.

I really felt bad for him, having such an ass for a father, but I was kind of glad he finally left.  You wouldn’t believe the trash he’d bring home to fuck.  The guy has no standards at all.  I still have nightmares about that last threesome he talked me into. 

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I’ll give an example. Right now I have no empirical evidence that my truck is still in the parking lot. But I have a belief that it is still there. That belief is faith, as it is not supported by any empirical evidence. So it’s quite apparent that having faith is not a bad thing. We would be unable to function without it. However, it can be a bad thing when it’s taken to an extreme.

There are two possible extremes. The first is a complete skeptic who believes in nothing, contrary despite evidence. The second is a dogmatist who believes in something, despite contrary evidence.

There are two types of complete skeptics. The first would be someone who never believes anything without empirical evidence. That would be someone who parks his car and immediately stops believing in it when he can no longer see it. I personally don’t know anyone like this. And I’m actually skeptical that such a person could function outside of a mental institution.

Another type of complete skeptic would be what I’ll call a philosophic skeptic. That’d be a person who doesn’t believe in anything even if he does have empirical evidence. He’d refuse to believe in the existence of his own vehicle even if he saw it first hand. He’d argue that the mere fact that he can see it is of no consequence because he can see objects in his dreams or in hallucinations that do not exist. Such a person could also not function in our society outside of a mental institution or a philosophy department at an Ivy League university.

The other extreme is the dogmatist who continues having faith despite empirical evidence to the contrary. These people exist all around us.

Imagine visiting a friend. You pull into his empty driveway and park your car. You go into his house and start talking to him. He starts talking about his new muscle car parked in his driveway. You tell him, “There is no muscle car in the driveway, Other than my car, it’s empty.” He argues that it must be there because he received a letter from the dealer saying it would be delivered by then. He refuses to investigate the missing muscle car himself as he relies completely on his faith in the dealer’s letter that it’s there.

Since he refuses to go outside with you, you go out and take a picture of his driveway. You show it to him and he says, “That’s not an entire picture of my driveway, my muscle car could be parked behind you.”

So you go out again and take a picture of the entire driveway. You show it to him and he says, “My muscle car could be behind your car.”

So you go out, move your car, and take a picture of his completely empty driveway. You show it to him and he might say, “That’s a pretty good photoshop of my driveway, but my muscle car is still there. My faith in my dealer’s letter is unwavering.” Or he could get even crazier and say, “Wow, your evidence is so amazing. Your evidence proves that my new muscle car is invisible! Thanks a lot!”

However, as I’ll show, that “crazier” response is more common than you would think.

Ask yourself; wouldn’t that visit with your friend be sort of frustrating? If you didn’t just give up and leave, you’d at least stop talking about his muscle car to avoid any further nonsense. Now you know why it is considered impolite to have real discussions about religion with believers. It’s pure nonsense. Now you also know what it’s like for an atheist to debate with a Christian or any other theist over dogma or the existence of god. It’s very fucking frustrating.

A Christian will say, “How else can you explain how we got here? Clearly the only answer is that God created and put us here.” A scientist could answer that question and show the empirical evidence supporting evolution to that Christian, but it won’t matter. The Christian will either dogmatically refuse to believe the evidence or will completely accept the evidence and say something “crazier” such as, “Evolution is how God operates to create our world. Thanks for proving the existence of God for me.” The atheist would be pulling out his hair and screaming, “You asked for a system in which we could exist without a God, I provided evidence of such a system, but yet you turn it around as proof that there is a God?! How does that make any fucking sense?!”

This has happened in the past. The Bible specifically states that there is a firmament, i.e., a physical wall, separating earth from Heaven. However, there is no firmament in the sky and there is no physical evidence for Heaven. But there was a time when it was considered heretical to say that.

However, nowadays hardly any Christian believes there is a firmament. And because science has disproved any notion of a physical Heaven, Christians now believe that Heaven is not a physical place in the sky, but is an ethereal “place” which could never be proved or disproved by empirical evidence. These Christians are exactly like the guy above who thinks his new muscle car is invisible. “Thanks for proving to me there is no firmament. That proves my point exactly, that Heaven is not a mere physical place, but is a magical wonderland which could only be created or understood by God.”

If you’re a Christian of strong faith, that’s fine with me. I have no problem with your faith at all. But you might want to ask yourself if you really want to be that hypothetical muscle car owner from above. Especially like that crazy guy who believes his muscle car is invisible.

Update – April 10, 2012:

A great comment to a Dear Margo advice column. A woman wrote in with, I’ll admit, a petty complaint. Her friend was finally able to conceive three children because of medical science. The woman was annoyed that the friend was not giving credit to science, but was calling it a “miracle.”

Now certainly it was not a miracle. An event which occurred as planned cannot be considered miraculous if the term is to retain any meaning.

But Christians don’t care about such things. Someone left a comment saying, “You object to her saying that it was a miracle! Well, it was. Thank God for modern science.”

I’m sorry, but that is idiotic. If God wanted the woman to have children, he could have allowed her to have children through his pure will. The only reason she was allowed to have children was because of medical science. Thus, it deserves the thanks, not God.

People used to pray for future events to occur in a favorable way. Some people realized that prayers weren’t working. So they set out to fix their own problems. Some of it was BS, e.g., alchemy. But, some of it actually worked. Through trial and error, which eventually developed into the scientific method, infertile women can now give birth to children.

Praising God for the results of this hard work demeans the scientists and medical professionals who made it possible. As well as the original egg donor.

If the woman wants to delude herself into thinking God did it. That’s fine. But she should give thanks and credit to the men and women who made it possible.

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Well, moderates did take a stand, in the Middle East nonetheless…

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon.

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So why did Christians want to keep Christmas out of the tollbooths? Well, they didn’t. But they got exactly what they asked for.

You see, they originally complained about tollbooth operators putting up Halloween decorations. So the Florida Department of Transportation did a favor for those who are easily offended and banned all holiday celebrations in tollbooths. Merry fucking Christmas, indeed.

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Of course this could be a joke or a scam. Here’s the school’s website.

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Beck and crew cited 2 Thessalonians 3:10 in the King James Version of the Bible, “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” Beck used this as a jumping off point to say, “That is the point. That is everybody’s problem with government handouts. Get a damn job. Now if there’s no jobs, I am there to help you out, but there’s nothing beneath anybody, no job beneath anybody, no job beneath anybody, there’s not, there’s not, and that’s a problem with humility and that leads to destruction. That is the answer. That is the problem with government welfare and everything else, get a damn job. If you’re not willing to work, then I am not willing to give it to you. The government is, and that’s the problem. That’s the difference between the government enslaving people and people giving charity.”

Thank you Mr. Beck for saving your country and its citizens. Those lazy unemployed fucks should just get a “damn job.” And of course this “damn job” will provide enough to pay their mortgages, save up 20K a year to pay for health care, provide sufficient food and clothing, and allow them to save up for their kids’ college educations.

But of course these unemployed citizens will unfortunately wake up from your retarded fantasy and continue living in the real world. But during that fleeting dream, you’ve made us feel just a little bit better. And for that I give thanks. Thanks, Glenn Beck, for sharing your retarded fantasy-world with us.

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Anyway… the whole WWJD concept is simply asinine. First, let’s assume that Jesus is actually the son of God. Assuming that, he simply does not face the same moral issues that we face. It’d be as asinine as basing your live on what Superman would do.

Jesus was never laid off from work. He never married and never raised kids. He does not need to eat, so he’s never been hungry. And even if he does get hungry, he’s able to make fish out of thin air and wine out of water. And not only is Jesus a virgin, he was never even tempted by sex.

And even when Jesus does lose his temper and starts physically assaulting money changers (or killing fig trees for having the audacity to not bear fruit out of season), it’s OK, because he’s only teaching us a valuable lesson. One that we should never actually do ourselves.

So let’s go through a few moral dilemmas and see how this WWJD formula works assuming that Jesus is the son of God.

Were you fired from your job and you need to feed your kids? What would Jesus do? Grab a can of tuna and turn it into a few pounds of salmon. You and your family, on the other hand, would starve.

Does your son need medical attention you cannot afford? What would Jesus do? Well, Jesus never had a son, so that situation never came up. But if it did, he’d simply perform a miracle and save his son’s life. Your son, on the other hand, would die.

Are you mad at your bank? What would Jesus do? Start assaulting his banker. You, on the other hand, would serve some time in jail.

But let’s assume that Jesus was not the son of God, he was just a man trying teach us lessons about how to live. Certainly he could still give us guidelines about how to live our lives, right?

Not really. Even without the miracles Jesus is still a man who never faced our problems. He still never married. Still never had sex. Still was never tempted by sex. Still never raised a kid or supported a family. On and on and on.

There’s also the fact that Jesus never faced our time’s problems. Combine those two together and you’ve got this:

So what would Jesus do if he was tempted to sleep with the chick in the office next to his? It simply never would have happened.

So what would Jesus do if his 16 year old kid took his car without permission and totaled it? We could not possibly know that. That situation never could have come up.

The ethical problems we face today simply did not exist in Jesus’ time. And here’s the important part, the ethical problems that were faced by Jesus in his time are irrelevant now.

For example, in Matthew 5.21 Jesus equates being angry with your brother to murder.

Who nowadays actually believes that being angry with your brother is in anyway synonymous with murdering someone? No one.

In 5.27 Jesus broadens the rule against committing adultery to “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully.”

Who seriously believes that lustfully looking at women is synonymous with sleeping around on your wife?

In 5.31 Jesus says a couple of bizarre things. First he says the sole valid basis for divorce is unfaithfulness. He then says that if a woman divorces her husband for any other reason, like maybe he’s beating the fuck out of her every night, she’s an adulteress if she remarries.

Once again, no on in our time believes that crap. It’s nonsense to even the most die-hard Christians.*

So let’s stop this WWJD nonsense and try to find a new method for making moral decisions. I for one use, “What Would Don Knotts Do?” That makes so much more sense than either Jesus or Superman.

* Update – April 8, 2010:
Apparently there are still nutjob Christians who believe that wives should not leave husbands who beat them. It just goes to show you, never overestimate Christians. Somewhere out there there’s at least one group who will prove you wrong.

Hey, wait a damn minute. I figured this out.

A wife cannot divorce her husband unless he commits adultery, right? Jesus changed adultery to include lustfully looking at another woman. Thus, any guy who looks at porn is committing adultery.

I’d guess that somehow the church leaders would not accept my impeccable logic.

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I’ve always thought of the story as a philosophic exercise into what love and duty really are. If you love someone because of what they do for you, then you don’t really love them. You love what they do for you. If someone else comes along with a better offer, you’d switch your love to them.

That interpretation makes sense when you’re merely pushing ideas and concepts to their logical conclusions for the fun of it, but in the real world it doesn’t make sense.

For example, in the real world we have love and have a duty to our wives, but when they try to fuck us over, we divorce them. We have a duty to our commanding officer, but if they betray us and lead us into an unjust war, we go to Canada. We have a duty to our boss, but when a better offer comes along, we take it.

Simply put there is no lesson in Job that we can use in the real world. So either it’s a compete mental masturbation into the meaning of “love” and “duty” or it’s something else.

I finally figured out what that something else is. The story of Job is satire. The easiest way to view it as satire is putting into the context of a vaudeville sketch.

Imagine Abbot as God, Costello as Satan, and some other poor slub as a farmer.

In vaudeville, the high-falutin guy is always a putz who lacks common sense, whether he is a professor, a politician, a boss, or a deity.

So God would be that pompous putz who needs to be brought down a notch.

If this story only had a farmer as a second character, he would be the person to give God his comeuppance. But farmers and other slacked jawed yokels become objects of ridicule when they’re combined with another character, the self-made smart-aleck, e.g., bugs bunny.

In this sketch Costello is playing Satan. He’s the guy who told his high-falutin boss to take a hike and set out on his own. People love that character.

So here’s the scene. God and Job the farmer are on the stage. Job is exaggeratingly telling God how much he loves him. God then gives him a bountiful crop. Job grovels some more, and God gives him beautiful wife (with fantastic cleavage, remember it’s vaudeville). This goes back and fourth and on and on….

Satan is on the side looking at this love-fest with a joyful disgust. He’s looking over at the audience gesturing, “Can you believe these retards?”

Finally, he can’t take anymore and he decides to fuck with them, i.e., he tries to break up the moronic lovebirds.

Satan tricks God into screwing over Job time and time again. The audience certainly knows that Satan is playing God like a fiddle, that he’s making God do exactly what he wants. The audience laughs at the pompous putz who is completely unaware that he’s being played.

In the end the hayseed is completely fucked over and God screws over the one person on earth that really loved him. And it was all done by a that plucky upstart who we all want to be.

When put into that context, the story is hilariously entertaining. It’s no longer mental masturbation that only a few eggheads would enjoy, it’s something nearly everyone would enjoy. That’s why the story survived. It was funny.

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I should point out that I first noticed this back when my son was 7. All of his friends love South Park and Family Guy and watch horror movies such as Saw. But I won’t let my kids watch them. Why am I the one acting like a bible thumper?

I certainly do not think watching South Park will turn any kid evil. He’s not going to start kicking his baby brother like a football because he watched a cartoon. And even if he did, that only means he’s already a sociopath, which had nothing to do with the TV programing other than a show giving a bad kid a bad idea.

And I’m certainly not a prude. For example, I have nothing against profanity. In fact, I cannot understand why anyone would be offended and upset over sounds used to form nonsensical words.

Take “fuck” for example. If I say, “fuck this” I’m not making an imperative, “Have sex with this object now.” What I’m really saying is that “I’m really pissed.” Why would anyone be offended over that? It makes no sense to me at all.

And I have no problem with my kids listening to any form of music, even satanic music. (Knights in Satan’s Service dude!)

In fact, the so called offensive content in shows such as South Park is not actually the reason my kids can’t watch them. It’s that I’d prefer my kids to watch kids’ shows. Why? Because they’re still kids.

As Lisa Simpson famously said:

It’s because they are kids! And so are we! Come on, Alex, we’ve only got nine, maybe ten years tops where we can giggle in church, and chew with our mouths open and go days without bathing! We’ll never have that freedom again.

As kids they can still enjoy the simple pleasures of shows such as Phineas and Ferb. They’ll have blast watching Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I just see no good reason for them to turn into teenagers before their teens.

If 8 year old kids are watching shows such as South Park and movies such as Saw, what are they going to find enjoyable when they’re 16? Tijuana donkey films? As far as I’m concerned, that can wait until college!

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