Happy International Blasphemy Day!

I plan to celebrate Blasphemy Day in my usual fashion, by blaspheming some major
religion. I can't make fun of Judaism; they'd just scream "anti-Semitism!" and make me
feel bad. Can't make fun of Islam; one of the faithful would mosey up alongside me and
blow himself up and make me feel dead. At first glance, Hinduism looks ripe for satire, but any religion that has a god with an elephant head is already beyond satire. Ah well, I guess it'll have to be the Christians again.

Reading of my Rwanda play in NYC

Probably the high point of my literary career; from here on, it's all down hill. :-)

http://www.abingdontheatre.org/reading/upcoming.aspx#first

Monday, August 31, 7PM
Back to Rwanda
by Stephen J. Gallagher
Fifteen years after the genocide, almost no one remembers Rwanda – and those who still remember no longer care. Except for one man, a tormented hunter who lives to track down the butchers and confront them. His latest quarry: a frail, elderly nun who stands accused of unspeakable crimes against hundreds of children.

Quote of the Week 09/09/2009

"A test to know if your mission on earth is finished. Are you alive? Then it isn't finished." - anonymous

Quote of the Week 08/24/2009

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." -- Pablo Picasso

Random Quote 08/17/2009

"Egotist - a person who finds himself more interesting than he finds me." Ambrose Bierce

Many a Cunning Plan?

Far too many of the remaining Obama Faithful continue to believe (some confidently, some desperately) that what appears on the surface to be waffling, backsliding, lack of message discipline, lack of Party solidarity, and gutless course-changing at the first sign of pushback actually represents the playing-out of many a cunning plan, fiendishly clever machinations, "Art of War" political jujitsu of breathtaking subtlety, and "all part of his brilliant master plan." Maybe -- just maybe -- what we're seeing is exactly what it appears to be on the surface. Maybe -- just maybe -- he's out of his depth and out of ideas. Mind you, I say that as someone who politicked for the guy and voted for him -- and would do both again, knowing what I know now. But with every new retreat and every new compromise, I get more and more of the slightly queasy feeling that maybe -- just maybe -- the man is not equal to the times. And if that's true, then as Jello Biafra once put it, "we have a bigger problem."

Why "church" works

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what (from my rabid-atheist perspective) appears to be a firm grip by the churches of America on those who attend church. I’m beginning to understand something: it isn’t that the church has a grip on the parishioners, it’s that the parishioners have a grip on the church. See, down here in the US South, “church” isn’t just a building you go to one hour a week, it’s the centerpiece of the local people’s entire culture. It’s where you see your friends and neighbors, it’s where your kids go when they’re Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts (you’d be amazed how many Scout troops are hosted in church basements), it’s where at least two people I know met and wooed their spouses (and where at least one person I know met the person he cheated on his wife with), and at the end of it all, it’s where the living go to bury their dead, knowing with certainty that they too will someday be buried there next to generations of their own people. Vacation trips, charity drives, study groups, knitting circles, art classes, the church is at the center of all of it for the majority of Americans, and not just down here in the South.

What do we secularists have to offer in place of this richness? The sad, barren truth, without even the dubious comfort of an uppercase “T” on the word? The truth that there is no God and when you’re dead, you’re dead and you’ll never see your loved ones again? And we wonder why we have, shall we say, a bit of a “PR problem”.

Secular humanism will overcome “church” the day that secular humanism offers something better. And to be perfectly blunt, “the truth about how the world is” just isn’t perceived by most people as “better”. We need more than just “the truth”, much more. I’m not sure that secularism as currently constituted even has the potential to replace “church”, if for no other reason than the fact that it simply isn’t set up structurally to answer the same set of human needs that “church” answers.