When Vincent Triola and I met, we found ourselves kindred spirits in our iconoclastic and blasphemous attitudes and beliefs regarding many matters. Not the least of these was our disdain for the idiocy and ridiculousness of magical thinking manifesting itself throughout our culture: From “pull yerself up by your jockstraps” to “Jesus is my very best-est buddy” from “The Superbowl is the most significant event in all of western”… no, make that “HUMAN history” to “If you just work hard enough you too can become a trillionaire.” Still, nothing prepared us for the blowback we’d get by asking people who believe that their “savior” could walk on water, grow limbs back on lepers, had flowing gorgeous blond hair (“we’ll get to your sins in a minute, for now, can you tell me what conditioner you use?”) and Paul Nema BLUE eyes, despite being born in A-rab country.
Sartre is famously quoted as saying that “Hell is other people.” The election of Donald Trump, the rise of evangelical Christian political power, along with the regressive backsliding of MAGA madness into racism, homophobia, misogyny, and a host of other fuckin’ stupidities, infecting modern American culture have proven Sartre’s maxim. But even observing the legitimacy of this valid view could not prepare us for the vitriol and loathing generated by responses to our writings about a few minor problems with Christian thinking, conduct, and obnoxiousness.
One would think that any belief system so impervious to reason and rationality, so profoundly sure of itself and its Platinum-Studded 110% Guarantee of an eternity of blissful, comfortable happiness, would protect a believer to at least some minimal degree from doubt and rage and hate.
One would be mistaken.
How could we have guessed that the same kind of energy and mentality that hundreds of years ago had “heretics” burnt alive, “witches” dunked to death in Salam Mass. to prove they weren’t banging Satan out in the woods at night, the Crusades, a hundred years of war to decide whether Christ’s mom was an angel/saint, or simply a virgin giving birth to God’s only kid whom Big Daddy-o had sent down to die for all our as yet uncommitted sins etc., how could we have guessed that this kind of mentality could still drive people bat shit crazy? But if we imagined otherwise . . . WRONG again.
You doubt this?
Please enjoy this collection of responses by loving, devout, faithful Christians to our modest proposals regarding Christian faith belief and our humble suggestion that such belief is clear proof of mental retardation or plain old vanilla personality disorders.
