why don't those christians who are crazy learn to read???

I got myself into a little argument the other day. I was sitting outside talking with a friend, and within the confines of our conversation, I said "there's another of those goddamn Hummers" as one passed in front of us. This otherwise intelligent looking young dude comes over to me and asked why I took the "Lord's" name in vain. I responded that I was pissed off that people could pollute the earth with little or no consequence to themselves. That set him off.

"Isn't blasphemy pollution?" he asked.

I agreed that it was, but first of all, I don't believe that there is a god or gods in existence. Second, I asked him why he thought a word had the same power of blasphemy as, say, incest, theft, or murder. Or burning churches or something.

"It's one of the commandments, and we must follow god's law."

I asked if he believed that a god could speak through translation. After all, the "word of God" has come to us from many seperate translations of ancient texts that were lost, recopied, transliterated, mistranslated, or modified to suit the contemporary needs of the translator. Is it not then man's laws that we are talking about? Isn't it vain and overly proud to speak as though one knows "God's" intentions. After all, since this god of the christian tradition is supposed to be beyond human understanding -- hence the need for faith above reason -- then how can a single individual attempt to speak in its stead?

"The word of God is holy," and so he sat down beside us.

Ok, but what is the word of God? I asked. I thought that the word of God is creation, as evidenced by old testament scripture in Genesis. Consequently, to blaspheme is to do damage to creation, as in what the science tells us about the excessive oil consumption demonstrated by the Hummer.

So taking the earth's health in vain is to take the Lord's name in vain, under my reading of Christian doctrine. But hey, I'm no Christian.

"It's pretty clear to me. You can't swear, or it's a sin," he said.

So I asked if it was a greater sin to actually wreck the earth, rather than to utter a few frequencies that under a certain linguistic tradition can mean a reference to god (that my statement actually referred to the christian or any other god is itself questionable, but I don't want to get into semiotics here...). Would a being who had the power to create and destroy all of creation really be worried about a few words???

Scientific evidence tells me that our actions are more important in terms of damaging creation. While I certainly could have used any combination of words to parlay my disgust towards wasteful and ecologically damaging decisions that humans make, I still feel justified in damning the Hummer to a god's fury. After all, we do seem to be messing with the earth's biosphere pretty substantially, and in fact seem to be attempting to usurp the power of god or gods in that respect.

So this pious little Christian said he would pray for my soul, and walked away. In passing I asked if he could pick up a few pop cans that he passed and deposit them in the recycle bin at the end of the street. He ignored me.

Good works, Christian saviour. What would Jesus have done in a similar situation? Jesus would have picked up the fucking cans.

Gotta love superstitions, like how they stop people from actually thinking about things. That's great. Goddamn great, in fact.