I was making some mac ‘n cheese tonight, watching the pot of water heat up just before the point of boiling.  All along the bottom of the pot, small bubbles of air formed and held steady spots while even smaller bubbles danced between them.  Then, as often occurs, the larger pockets released and rose to the surface of the water where they then swirled and joined with other similar pockets.

As I observed all of this, I thought about the complexity of everything I had just witnessed and realized that, in some ways, my atheism is just as “faith” based as most people’s belief in a higher power.

Some believe that God must exist because our world is so incredibly complex.  They can’t conceive of any of this happening on its own without guidance from one infinitely powerful.  I, however, can’t believe that any being could be so infinitely powerful as to conceive of the rules required to govern the behavior of heated water.  That is, I can’t conceive of any being capable of building systems of such complexity.

Speaking of religion, I was reading an article today about a local man who recently sold a rather extensive collection of Nazi correspondence relating to the Holocaust.  One of the reasons he started his collection was that he wanted tangible evidence in order to refute those who claim the Holocaust never happened.  This is “speaking of religion” because I thought it bizarre that people would rather believe in the divinity of Christ, who has no direct descendents that we’re aware of and whose existence is no more corporeal than, say, Harry Potter’s, yet they would sooner believe that than believe a Holocaust survivor standing in their presence.

Damn, this better be some good mac ‘n cheese.

Brandy and I sometimes like to discuss the possible origins of the phrase “donkey balls”.  Part of this is because it seems like a ridiculous thing to use as a comparative statement.  The other part is that Brandy enjoys stating that something “sucks donkey balls”.

We still don’t know the origin of the phrase, but perhaps the mention of donkey genitalia in the Bible plays some part in its history.

It has been a blissfully long time since I’ve been in the thrall of Catholicism. Being threatened by old men with a week’s worth of Hail Marys held no appeal for me. One can therefore understand if I’ve fallen behind on the various papal edicts offered forth by the pontiff.

Thank God in Heaven that I spent the weekend with two nearly lapsed Catholics or else I would have never heard about the new 10 Commandments for cars, released to Catholics the world over as part of a 36 page document titled “Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road“.

So what is it the Pope asks you to not do while behind the wheel of a Satanmobile?

1. You shall not kill.

That one is rather redundant, I would think.

2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.

Communion in the form of community and communication? Why yes, just the other day somebody communicated to me with a single finger. Communion in the form of the eucharist? Does eating a burger from McD’s count?

3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.

That’s not really a commandment. Regardless, being nice to other drivers does not mean one of them won’t hit you.

4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.

Pick up hitchhikers.

5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.

There we are, another reason to condemn Hummers.

6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.

I’ll donate $50 to Jerry’s Kids if you don’t drive drunk tonight.

7. Support the families of accident victims.

… By myself? Or do I get to draw from the Catholic coffers on this one?

8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.

“You fucking smashed in my entire front end!” “I know, and I understand your anger, but could you see it in your heart to forgive me and get money from the Vatican to cover your repairs?” “Yeah, alright.”

9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.

Squirrels, opossums, woodchucks, deer, and skunks.

10. Feel responsible toward others.

“It’s my fault you drive like an ass.”

Thanks Catholicism! I look forward to the roads being a path to sainthood. With as many Catholics as there are in the US, this should result in real measurable change. Unless they blow these off like they do the biblical 10 Commandments and just figure they can make it up later in confession.

After every news outlet spent the last three days talking about the heightened security around shipments of the new Harry Potter book, one guy with one copy and one digital camera is now responsible for the book being in the hands of several thousand people as I type this.

Yes, he (I’m guessing he… man hands) took photos of every page of the book, and then somebody else put them all together in a PDF file for easy reading.

Well, okay, not easy. The photographer wasn’t exactly great about making sure the pages were flat, so there are lots of unreadable spots.

So… Did I read it? About 10 pages of it and then stopped. My UK edition will be on its way soon enough, so I don’t have a burning desire to squint at my monitor to read the Americanized version (in the UK, it would have been “Americanised”). Plus, the pressure I received from my wife was just unbearable. I was warned that any revelation of plot line contained therein would be grounds for divorce. Also, I was informed that I was a dirty law breaker who had no sense of decency.

Sure, okay. Except that we’re going to have two purchased copies of the thing in our house within the week. I don’t feel so bad about having a copy slightly early. It’s not piracy so much as it is a preview (in full) of what we’ll be receiving.

It isn’t as though this leak is going to make a lick of difference. The book will still sell every single copy it was going to sell before this PDF surfaced. No crappy computer flip book is going to keep people like the fine young ladies pictured right from walking home with the final Potter tome.

J.K.’s future is secure.

Speaking of fans, if you’ve never watched Harry Potter Parking Lot, you should. Right now. Do it while you’re torrenting the book.

Following up a bit on yesterday’s post, I once was trapped in a van with somebody who was incredibly religious and figured out a way that God gave the okay to shoot people with a glock if need be.

This guy’s wife also liked sex “on top”, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, we got into a discussion regarding God, faith, evolution, and atheism. He was doing his best to figure out why it was that I didn’t believe in God when, at one point in my life, I was doing puppet ministry and was the favorite teen in the local Methodist church.

When we somehow got to the death of my father, he pounced: “Do you blame God for your father’s death?”

“No, I blame his 30 years of chain smoking. He died of lung cancer.”

In fact, I never once thought, “Why, God, why?” It was so patently obvious that my dad poisoned himself over a very long period of time and suffered the consequences. I’m not saying I don’t miss him, but I’m sure not about to try to place blame elsewhere.

The same will probably happen soon with my mother who is overweight, diabetic, suffers heart palpitations, and continues to smoke. No anger need be directed towards the heavens if that passing comes to be.

During our conversation, we were hitting on creationism vs. evolution. I found myself saying the following: “Have you ever thought that maybe evolution actually happened and was set in motion by God? If you go with that slant, then we can all just agree to study evolution and not worry so much about its point of origin.” Yeah… I went and applied intelligent design “theory” before even having heard the phrase. Go me. I differed a bit from ID in the fact that I was suggesting that evolution still took its own course after its supernatural jumpstart. I wasn’t suggesting that humanity was a known goal.

My point, really, was to make this guy think that maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t thought about all the possibilities. That, to me, is the first step in free thinking. Our conversation didn’t have any long term impact on him, though. The guy drove like a maniac, so I wasn’t keen to get stuck in the van with him too often in order to reinforce these new thought patterns. Plus, he had a glock.

When I was a teenager, I attempted the same thing within my own family. I one day asked my at the time very Catholic mother, “How do you know that the Bible wasn’t written by Satan just to mess with you?” The reaction to that was not pleasant. Role playing games were thrown out, heavy metal music and paraphernalia was destroyed, and I was no longer allowed to skip church. Had she stopped for a moment, she could have realized that such a scenario relies upon the existence of Satan which, ostensibly, means there’s a God to which we would have to answer regardless. But no, the reaction was that such a thing was not possible because the Bible is the word of God. And there was no questioning that.

That was the moment when I stopped believing in God.

I put on a fine act for several years after that, counseling at church camps, making puppets talk about Jesus, joining the friggen choir. I professed to be “born again”, attended Christian music concerts, and was active in youth groups. At one point, a minister told me he thought I was destined to be a minister myself. Mostly, I just wanted attention. What kind of godly child would have his camp kids wear bras under their shirts all day only to end the evening with a rendition of “The Bra-dy Bunch” wherein they remove said bras and fling them over their heads? (And, equally terrible, I had to cajole female campers into lending them to us.)

Hmmm, probably shouldn’t have admitted to that last bit.

I ran into a cousin of mine while picking up photos at Wal-Mart last night. This particular cousin, without fail, always tells me that the resemblance between my father and me is stunning. He mentions this largely because my father has been dead for 17 years, half of my life.

As we talked about how our respective families were doing, how our jobs were, et cetera, he stopped to say that my father was likely looking down at me from above, proud of all that I’ve done.

I smiled, nodded politely, and muttered, “Yep.” What I really wanted to say was, “Well, I don’t think there’s an afterlife, so he’s probably just dead. And the only person that I really need to be proud of me is myself.”

Don’t get me wrong. Folks that know me know I’m an attention whore so it seems like I’m constantly fishing for approval, but as I explained to Brandy last night, that’s really a case of running around saying “Look how awesome I am!” and not “Do you think I’m awesome?”

Anyway, there’s usually little sense in making somebody feel bad for trying to be nice, so I let those things slide. But for the record, I feel the same way about people that say “Bless you” when I sneeze. I don’t really require a blessing every time I clear dust from my nasal passage. Nobody blesses me when I fart or belch.

Speaking of atheism, I finished reading Hitchens’ “God is not Great” last night. My one line review: not nearly as intolerable as Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”. I’ve now moved onto lighter reading - the rise and fall of Commodore computing.