Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Animal

Prager sends us all a Holiday missive from his happy vacation home.

Dennis Prager, National Gift to Humanity:
There is a ‘Worst Sin’: Evil in God’s name

Happy belated Solstice everybody. As we approach the remainder of this holiday season, many of us have an increase in stressors and frustrating moments. Whether it be placating racist Uncle Steve so that your dear old mother can have an altogether happy Xmas memory, suffering through stampeding crowds of crazed last-minute shoppers as a retail employee, enjoying very occasional placations of your actual faith maybe, perhaps… well, they put a menorah on the Christmas tree, so, that’ll just have to do, you sinner, or enjoying a Very Disowned Xmas meal dinner, the Holiday season is not always the festive occasion the relentless advertisements strewn about the web (and in that boring analogue world) make it out to be.

Now, some of us may be lucky in that we’ve got somewhere to go and have actually pleasant interactions with people we love or at least a sweet week or two of vacation time to burn.

But for the rest, I bring you an extra gift to get you through this blizzard of forced merriment and cheer.

Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):

  • Ugh, you know what the worst is? Asshole religious types who will gleefully dump all their hate and violent actions on some higher power to avoid responsibility. I mean, let’s look at the Christian Bible, it doesn’t say, be good and loving, unless you can really delude yourself that God really hates those bastards over there…. um… wait… what words are coming out of my mouth right now? Uh, not me, I’m talking about filthy muzzies and atheists who don’t even follow the Christian Bible! Yeah, that’s the ticket. Ah, cognitive dissonance, you bail me out once again.

That gift being the oh so wonderful lack of self-awareness that allows articles like this.

Oh, these mangos are ripe with only the most bitter of ironies, my friends.

The Ten Commandments is the most morally influential piece of legislation ever written.

Hammurabi’s code? The Magna Carta? The Articles of Confederation?

Pfft. All pale in comparison to a document that wasn’t ever really a formal code of laws, isn’t exactly ten long, treats people as exactly akin to property, and mostly consiststs of a bunch of petulant whining about how God is the best you guys, stop being mean and love him and only him because that is worship-worthy and not the sign of a temper-tantrum bully fully willing to commit the genocide of children if he doesn’t get his way.

Totally, sure, why not. I mean, after all, if we ignored them, we’d miss key information like how God doesn’t want gifts of gold, but rather all your burnt animals and they better be on a Bobdamn stone slab or so help me, I will kill all of you ungrateful little-

For a good idea of how relevant each of the Ten is,

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry, don’t mind me, it’s a medical condition where I devolve into heaping gasps of peeling laughter when I encounter something that fucking stupid. Pfft, yeah, relevant, uh huh, sure…

Pft, when even the religious people are like, yeaaaaah, they’re great and all, but hey, look over here at this other stuff and they were doing that back in the Middle fucking Ages, I think you can stand to admit that maybe the old rocks are a bit dustier than you’d prefer. But hey, I think we can all agree that not coveting our neighbor’s ass is a timeless piece of advice. Bob damn fitness buff with perfect cheeks, rakafraskin.

take the Third Commandment, one of the two most misunderstood commandments

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.”

That third one, or the one most people skip to:

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”

I’m going to guess the latter because I imagine that’s the one that makes the little Christhumpers feel a little worrisome when they go to sleep.

Which might be why it is listed as “controversial” and misunderstood because that’s the only way you can convince yourself it doesn’t mean that assholes on the ground should really stop claiming to speak for God and argue that this mythical sky daddy totally just happens to agree with everything you think about the faggots and the bitches and the jews.

Oh, this little tragedy of fail is going to be so wonderful, I can practically taste it.

(the other is “Do Not Murder,” which I explained previously).

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, just a minute there. “Thou shall not kill” is “the second-most misunderstood passage in the Bible… I… how… I feel like there is a deep dark pit here of desperate defensiveness over enjoying a good rogering to the soundtrack of Dr. Strangelove and I don’t feel I really want to go much further into that… mess

Eh, fuck it. I wouldn’t be in this line of work if there weren’t hazard pay for eventualities like this. And containment suit on…

A brief interlude to failure past:

Shorter:

  • You know, when God told us not to kill, he only meant, you know, real people. Not like some criminal types if you know what I’m saying or dirty foreigners, just nice rich white Christian men like me. In fact, God wants us to kill lots of people, because it’s downright immoral to let an immoral person live and we know how many godless degenerate sinners there are out there, don’t we, hint hint.

… Memo to self, request better suit next time. On an unrelated note, does anyone know how to treat a fifth degree burn?

Is there such a thing as “the worst sin” — one sin that is worse than all others?

Well, seeing as how we’ve already ruled out murder for reasons of war-boners, it would seem unlikely, but sure why not. I’m sure it’ll be something on the lines of insulting God by existing while faggoty or daring to have a vagina in the Lord’s presence or something.

In fact, there is.

I am aware that some people differ. They maintain that we can’t declare any sin worse than any other. “To God, a sin is a sin” is how it’s often expressed. In this view, a person who steals a stapler from the office is committing as grievous a sin in God’s eyes as a murderer.

Yesss, that’s usually the excuse for horrendous behavior on behalf of the “Godly”. Oh, well God says a criminal is a criminal is a criminal and a sinner is a sinner is a sinner, so of course it makes sense to murder children for being of a “criminal” skin color because I’m sure they stole something once or just weren’t being deferential enough to white people and of course it was okay to give that trans* woman a good ol’ fashioned beat-down, I mean, after all, isn’t she sinning against God by rejecting her God-given body? Surely this deserves as much if not more of God’s wrath than some poor Christian soul like Anders Breivik who is just a nice Christian boy led astray by our modern sinful society. Can I get an AMEN?

Which may be why I’m expressing a slight bit of trepidation on where you are going with this “some things are worse than murder” tangent.

But most people intuitively, as well as Biblically, understand that some sins are clearly worse than others. We are confident that God has at least as much common sense as we do.

Well, seeing as how the being you call God does not so much have resemblance to any mythological or religious being as it does to the ranting voice in your head that starts ranting about whores whenever you see a skirt above the ankles, I’m going to have to agree with this. Your God has just has much common sense as you do.

The God of Judaism and Christianity does not equate stealing an office item with murder.

You hear that, Milton from Office Space? God has given you his personal reprieve.

You can thank the fact that Dennis Prager considers his embezzlement on par with “stealing an office item or two”.

So, then, what is the worst sin?

That does seem to be the question… maybe you should spill it already instead of trying to filibuster your own article like Leslie Knope.

The worst sin is committing evil in God’s name.

… Wow!

There you go ladies, gentlemen, non-binary individuals, and fluberts around the world. My gift to you all wrapped in a shiny little bow for you to just roll around your mouth like the finest chocolate.

I mean, what can you even add to this? The raw lack of self-awareness, the way it leaves little to no room for him to not condemn his very marks, the empire on which he has built his fortune. Mwa, on every detail, it is just pure unrelenting irony and schadenfreude for us to gawk at and mock.

This, my friends, is the point where the target learns how to mock itself, requiring no further input from the likes of us dusty snark merchants.

I mean, just wow. Bellisima!

How do we know?

From the Third of the Ten Commandments. This is the only one of the Ten that states that God will not forgive a person who violates the commandment.

What does this Commandment say?

It is most commonly translated as, “Do not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. For the Lord will not hold guiltless” — meaning “will not forgive” — whoever takes His name in vain.”

Oh hey, turns out I called it up above. Go me.

Because of this translation, most people understandably think that the commandment forbids saying God’s name for no good reason. So, something like, “God, did I have a rough day at work today!” violates the Third Commandment.

But that interpretation presents a real problem. It would mean that whereas God could forgive the violation of any of the other commandments — dishonoring one’s parents, stealing, adultery, or even committing murder — He would never forgive someone who said, “God, did I have a rough day at work today!”

Mmmhmmm, what? Is this two for one day at the All-You-Can-Eat Dissonance Barebeque? Cause wow, he’s just working away at the loose tooth that is his fealty to an absolute literal interpretation of a frequently mistranslated and millennia-old text, specifically the early part that is mostly horrendous moral lessons, snuff porn, and boring regaling of ancient heraldry law and it’s oh so delicious to watch him come dangerously close to “hey, this supposed guiding text seems at odd with any modern understanding of morality and ethics” and have to veer away at the last mnute.

Which is kinda the central problem with desperately torturing a poor old book into simultaneously being a literal and inerrant piece of religious truth, while also conforming to modern prejudices against modern issues, while also somehow relating to the moral code that people feel is more accurate based on day to day life. And it’s what leads to bizarre contortions like trying to argue the world is only 6000 years old and the sea was literally in the stars because just ignoring the fucking stupid and worthless stuff and moving on is just too damn fucking difficult apparently. But I will contain my snarky atheism for a moment.

Let’s be honest: That would render God and the Ten Commandments morally incomprehensible.

Oh, you just had to make that difficult, didn’t you? Must. Not. Make. Easy. Joke…

As it happens, however, the commandment is not the problem. The problem is the translation. The Hebrew original doesn’t say “Do not take”; it says “Do not carry.” The Hebrew literally reads, “Do not carry the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

This is reflected in one of the most widely used new translations of the Bible, the New International Version, or NIV, which uses the word “misuse” rather than the word “take:”

“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.”

This is much closer to the original’s intent.

So… against things like this then…

… For example.

What does it mean to “carry” or to “misuse” God’s name? It means committing evil in God’s name.

And that God will not forgive.

Why not?

Okay, I might as well note this here, because it’s telegraphed rather strongly. One of the reasons that this post may drift dangerously close to actually being self-aware and introspective is probably due to the fact that Dennis threw a few half-finished scribblings to the most disgruntled rent boy in the stable on his way out the door for the Holidays. The whole article is woefully overstretched with filler and pauses like this that happen to take up multiple paragraphs. Because the point is to send in something with the required length to cash the paycheck and go home early because no one cares.

And that’s what makes it tragic as well, because the unfiltered delivery means it gets the closest any Dennis Prager credited product will ever get to some theological and societal worth.

It is rather abhorrent how the “Godly” feel no shame in borrowing the Lord’s name they supposedly hold so hallow and using it as an excuse and as a cudgel, with no thought to any claims of morality other than trying to make their own bigoted rants seem more universal and supported than they are.

It is even more abhorrent how we let these desperate assholes hold so much sway in our society, letting their momentary obsessions of how God really does hate abortion or gay rights or ending slavery in order to get their way in any given era and make their ignorant hates seem somehow noble or worthy of equal treatment and respect (if not more) than the lives of real people.

So many people have gone hungry, live on the streets, go without familial support, go without necessary medical services, and go without any form of societal protection because some asshole somewhere blamed their bigotry on an Angry Sky Abuser in the sky who also would kick the queers out of their homes and piss on the homeless (which is I guess how they figured the little faggoty love everyone hippie Jesus ended up on Earth in their version of their religion).

And here we get close to someone noticing and maybe having a chance to break the pattern. But they won’t, because it’s just a slightly less bigoted intern in a throwaway Christmas piece.

When an irreligious person commits evil, it doesn’t bring God and religion into disrepute. But when a religious person commits evil in God’s name he destroys the greatest hope for goodness on earth — belief in a God who demands goodness, and who morally judges people.

As I said, it’s what makes it hilarious, but also tragic. But sadly, all things can’t last and I assume cognitive dissonance kicked in at one point, and so we must endure the violent jerk back into that safe delusional world where tax cuts really are a cold-fusion machine for money.

The Nazis and Communists were horrifically cruel mass murderers. But their evils only sullied their own names, not the name of God. But when religious people commit evil, especially in God’s name, they are not only committing evil, they are doing terrible damage to the name of God.

Mmm, yes, the Nazis never did anything bad in the name of God so long as we scrub all the Christianity off the war paint… ugh, it’s amazing how well this propaganda trick worked just by repeating it enough times and our society wanting it desperately to be true so we didn’t actually have to examine the anti-semitism deep in the heart of right-wing Christianity.

In our time, there are, unfortunately, many examples of this. The evils committed by Islamists who torture, bomb, cut throats, and mass murder — all in the name of their God — do terrible damage to the name of God.

And of course, the Muslims, because damnitt, that kettle is black, and every honest pot must let the world know, less they get away with it.

It is not coincidental that what is called the New Atheism — the immense eruption of atheist activism — followed the 9/11 attack on America by Islamist terrorists. In fact, the most frequent argument against God and religion concerns evil committed in God’s name, whether it is done in the name of Allah today or was done in the past in the name of Christ.

And of course, we get the real reason this wandering got so close to self-awareness in the first place. Which is the fact that the snarky bastards of atheism are right in that a lot of terrible things have been done in the name of religion (and lately a lot of horrible things have also been done in the name of atheism as well, because apparently that’s what happens when you let Libertarian fedorakin infest the halls). And a lot of people have been abandoning the particular fundamentalist subculture that has held so much sway over the suburbs for so long, because it has too many personal costs. Too many people having to choose between forcing themselves to ignore literal facts or reject the faith they were brought up in. Too many people disowned for being queer or for being outspoken or for choosing a different faith or just not hating their friends and family with the same passion as their parents and pastors.

Modern Christianity has given itself an impressive black eye and its the very culture that Prager has profited off of that is responsible for that. And like any good scam artist, he’s worried about the result this smaller pool will have on his finances.

People who murder in the name of God not only kill their victims, they kill God, too.
That’s why the greatest sin is religious evil.

That’s what the Third Commandment is there to teach: Don’t carry God’s name in vain. If you do, God won’t forgive you.

You can see this commentary, animated with text and graphics, at www.prageruniversity.com. It was released, along with the other nine commandments, this month.

I wish my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy Chanukah. And remember, just as evil in God’s name is atheism’s best friend, goodness in God’s name is theism’s best friend. So make a donation to the Salvation Army. They do immense good in God’s name. There is a red kettle at my website www.dennisprager.com.

After all, if there are no young fundamentalists left to be shipped off to a Prager University style fake school, then where will Danny Boy get his rent boy money?

And isn’t lacking that the true greatest evil of all?


‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. But seriously all, stay safe and practice self care this Holiday season! We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


 

Comments: 24

 
 
 

The Nazis and Communists were horrifically cruel mass murderers. But their evils only sullied their own names, not the name of God.

The Communists not so much but the Nazis? The guys who marched into battle with “God is with us” (Gott Mit Uns) on their belt buckles?

Tell you what Prager. Go count how many references to God and Christianity herr Schicklgruber made in his speeches and get back to me.

 
 

Right at the center of Prager’s latest piece of delusion are two sentences which sums up the whole dishonesty of his entire life’s work:

“It is most commonly translated as, “Do not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. For the Lord will not hold guiltless” — meaning “will not forgive” — whoever takes His name in vain.”

Did it never occur to him that “holding guiltless” and “forgiving” are in no way the same thing at all? On the most mundane level, you could easily forgive someone for stealing something, without forgetting that they stole it. That happens thousands of times every day all around the world, even with us mere mortals who have trouble holding two ideas in our minds at the same time.

And this willful confusion is central to the entire argument he is trying to make.

I’ve been listening to right wing talk radio, and now reading right wing websites, since the 1960’s and I have to tell you that I have believed for at least half that time that Dennis Prager is the single most intellectually dishonest person in the entire pack. And here is a little more evidence.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

How about a working WordPress for Christmas?

Felicidades, amigos!

 
 

To the few Christians who hang out here : Merry Christmas. To the rest of you heathen bastids : Happy Holidays.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Have a lovely Christmas, Suezboo!

 
 

Merry Christmas everyone. Hope your packages got there.

I’m trying to figure out how to get home from Memphis since none of our planes are flying Christmas day.

My options are:

A: Try to hitch a ride on Delta and take a chance of getting stuck here or in Atlanta.

B: Suck it up and do the 9 hour drive to Columbus.

I’ll see how I feel after I get a few hours sleep under my belt.

 
 

Merry Christmas (or Happy Thursday) to you all.

[BTW, that was me posted the Sean Hannity link under the last thread under the alias “Nequam”– which is one I use at other forums. Sorry for the confusion.]

 
 

The Nazis and Communists were horrifically cruel mass murderers. But their evils only sullied their own names, not the name of God.

The Communists not so much but the Nazis? The guys who marched into battle with “God is with us” (Gott Mit Uns) on their belt buckles?

Tell you what Prager. Go count how many references to God and Christianity herr Schicklgruber made in his speeches and get back to me.

Our conservatives’ relationship to fascism and World War Two… is very much in the same vein as their relationship to segregation and the civil rights struggle. It was a fight that they opposed as, at best, a dangerous distraction from the real enemy (e.g. the kind of people who march for civil rights and volunteer to fight for Spanish democracy), and at worst, a direct assault on fascist/segregationist institutions that they were very much fans of. But now that those fights have gotten enshrined in American history as Good Wars and the enemy as wrong and evil, they work valiantly to capture those myths and pretend that they were totally on the right side and the bad guys were actually total lefties.

Thus, Neville Chamberlain was a faggy liberal appeaser rather than a Conservative MP, the West was slow to react to the rise of fascism only because of pacifists with no balls and not because so many Westerners thought the fascists were a Godsend as street muscle against the filthy left wing, and the Nazis themselves were totally godless atheists and left wing socialists just like Stalin… much like “the Democrats were the ones against civil rights,” “MLK was a Republican,” and “MLK would have supported Iraq and Afghanistan and opposed gay rights and affirmative action.”

 
 

“So make a donation to the Salvation Army. They do immense good in God’s name. ”

Fuck those assholes – they do “immense good” while still being howling bigots:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zinnia-jones/the-salvation-armys-histo_b_4422938.html

For a followup, somebody should ask Prager if all the “Jeebus would totes be OK with torture” fuckers will snap, crackle, or pop when they hit the lake of fire.

 
 

Merry holidays and such as and what not. Remember, axial tilt is the reason for the season!

 
 

Made it home.

It may handle like a big barge (because it is a big barge) but if all you’re looking to do is cover a lot of miles comfortably that Lincoln Town Car I bought is tough to beat.

 
 

Glad you made it home OK, Major. Merry Christmas.

 
 

I like “There’s nothing in the ten commandments about gays. God is more angry with you for lusting after your neighbor’s wife than He is with the gays.”

Interesting to read this Prager crap after I just finished God’s frauds.

my emphasis in this excerpt

Contrary to what so many fundamentalists believe, outside of the emphasis on the Ten Commandments, sins aren’t ranked. The New Testament doesn’t proclaim homosexuality the most heinous of all sins. No, every sin is equal in its significance to God. In 1 Timothy, Paul, or whoever wrote it, condemns the disobedient, liars and drunks. In other words, for evangelicals who want to use this book of the Bible to condemn homosexuality, most frat boys in America are committing sins on par with being gay. But you rarely hear about parents banishing their kids for getting trashed on Saturday night.

 
 

happy unspecified winter holiday greetings to all!

 
 

What ? You don’t care about us Summer Solstice people? Hmph.

 
 

What ? You don’t care about us Summer Solstice people? Hmph.

That’s my birfday! Well, on this side of the equator.
.

 
 

Prater is quite wrong in his translation and interpretation of the Third Commandment. The name of “Yahweh” was not even to be uttered or written out in full, much less used in a non-religious sense.

That being said, I can’t fully disagree with Prager’s subsequent argument… people who kill or torture in the cause of some religion, ideology or misguided sense of patriotism are the worst sinners.

It’s bad enough for some deranged racist with a gun to kill a black person for no reason, like George Zimmerman…

But when that deranged racist with a gun who kills a black person for no reason is a cop, like Darren Wilson, I believe it is arguable that he has in fact committed a greater sin.

Why?

Well, the latter is supposed to be a representative of our society, our laws and our morality.

When he murders an innocent person, he has not only committed a crime but also betrayed the very things he is supposed to represent.

 
 

Season’s greetings to you all! Fwiw, I think OBS hit on a great band name for a band: Axial Tilt.

Now let’s see if I’m “posting too fast”….

 
 

Hey, Fenwick.
Based on extensive research (TV and Internet), I seem to have picked up a Significant Anomaly. It seems that when USians want a cup of tea or coffee, they fill a kettle and heat it on the stove. Personally, an electric kettle was one of my first investments and remains a pillar of my sanity.Do you not have electric kettles over there or what is this all about? Explanations sought.

 
 

We have electric kettles in the States but I don’t know how big a thing they are. I actually have one, which my husband uses for tea and I use for hard-cooked eggs.

 
 

Hmm. I’m definitely finding this weird. Nobody I know (if connected to the electric) uses the stove to hot water, Electric kettles are ubiquitous.I never thought of the egg angle, though. Might be worth a try. Thanks, Nym.

 
 

Many kettle models I’ve seen are rather narrow at the top, so you have to find a nice wide model. Basically, put in 1 or 2 eggs (careful not to have one crack on the kettle bottom or you probably will get a burst-egg mess in the kettle), fill with water to cover (about 1″ above eggs), turn it on. Mine auto-shuts-off when the water has reached boiling, so after that I just run the timer (15 minutes for nice hard-cooked; if you like soft-cooked time it less).

Good way to quickly reheat broth too.

 
 

These Kettles intrigue me. Seems like with one of them, a Toaster oven and hot plate, the bachelor gourmand or student has the makings of a nearly complete kitchen.

Anyhoo, New one up! Multiple target Vectors and thus lengthy by my usual standards…Enjoy

 
 

“Off to Chicago, the day after Christmas: The Navy Pier hosted a holiday gathering called Winter WonderFest. During the party, 100 to 200 black people fought, raged, rampaged, destroyed property and fired guns.”

Which, as everybody knows, is totes terrible because there wasn’t any SPORTZBALL or SHOPPING involved.

 
 

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