Thursday, October 29, 2009

Let's All Wear "God Sucks" Buttons to Work

I have an idea – let's get a bunch of big, red "God Sucks" buttons, pin them on our chests, and go to work! If you work in a grocery store, or a bank, or at the welfare office, or maybe even as a Justice of the Peace ... no problem! I'm sure your employer won't fire you. Offend shoppers? Piss off welfare recipients? Horrify the couple you're marrying? It's your right!
Don't believe me? Just listen to this attorney about an identical case, defending her client:
"There are federal and state laws that protect against religious discrimination. It's not like he was out in the aisles preaching to people." – Kara Skorupa, attorney.
But you know, I have a pretty good feeling Skorupa wouldn't take my case if I got fired for wearing a "God Sucks" button. Like many conservative religious people, Skorupa and her client,Trevor Keezor, probably think the law should protect Christians (I'm guessing he's a Christian) who violate their employers' policies, but if an atheist or Muslim did the same thing, I'd be willing to bet they'd sing a different song.

Keezor was fired for violating Home Depot's dress code, which prohibits any and all buttons and badges, except those issued by Home Depot. He took the job knowing full well what was expected of him, and Home Depot's dress code is 100% legal under the US Constitution, yet he thinks that he should be exempt, just because, "I support my country and God."

This is another great example of a "proselyzation meme," a technique that religions have developed down through the centuries as they evolved and mutated in the "survival of the fittest" battle we call cultural evolution, or memetics. Cultural evolution treats ideas as evolutionary raw material, and uses Darwinistic principles to predict how they'll reproduces, mutate and evolve.

It's a lot like sex, in fact, it's exactly parallel. In biological systems, each creature has to have a way of making copies of itself in order to carry on. Whether it's a bacterium splitting, or two whales mating, we all gotta do it! Otherwise our species goes extinct.

And the cool thing about sex is that we like it, because all of our ancestors, every single one of them, liked sex too. If even one of them didn't, well, we'd have never been born.

Religions are like that too. Any religion that doesn't have a way to spread itself, both across society and down through time, will quickly become extinct. More importantly, the religions that have the strongest proselytizing efforts (i.e. the memes that tell members to "spread God's word") are the ones that steal members from other churches and thereby gain memberships.

With sex, the ones who like it the most are the ones who have the most babies, and generation after generation, their descendants will inexorably grow at the expense of those who like sex less.

It's identical with churches. The ones with the strongest proselytizing memes are the ones that grow. Think about the Mormons, for example: They're the fastest growing church around. When was the last time a Catholic knocked on your door? The Catholic church is losing ground as a percentage of our population, and most other Christian churches are shrinking even faster than the Catholic Church.

So it's no surprise that most religions have a strong meme that says their members should actively spread God's word. And Mr. Keezor was just helping his Church with the memetic version of sex: spreading the memes, helping them reproduce, making sure that his particular branch of religion will survive in the endless Darwinian struggle of my-God-versus-yours.

15 comments:

  1. When you don't trust in God you become really rude and obnoxious, don't you? Your web site shows us how hateful people get when controlled by bad spirits.

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    1. Seriously???? Your controlled by hateful spirits for taking the time to read a site written by evil spirits.. how does that sound to you. The only rude and obnoxious person here is you for not honoring other people's beliefs. I think it's a great story and that person should be fired whether or not you support god... don't break the dress code.

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  2. (Bangs head against keyboard)

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  3. While I agree with you in general, there is a fair difference between saying "I support Atheism" and "Your God(s) suck". I would personally said if it's part of the dress code then neither should be displayed on those grounds and those alone. If for some reason this guy gets off easy then we should be fully free to wear pins that say "I support Atheism 100%", though.

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  4. Anon - Rude? If you want to know what rude is, try being a non-Christian, and see how Christains treat YOU in this country. Did you read my Atheists - Get Out of the Damned Closet blog? Check out the responses, it's the Christians in this country who are rude.

    You mistake parody for rudeness. I would NEVER advocate ANYONE wearing a "God Sucks" button to work. Nor should anyone wear a "God is Great" or "In God we Trust" button, unless their employer permits it. I was making a joke. Get a sense of humor, life will be more fun!

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  5. Locri - Thanks for the comments. I pretty much agree with you ... see my previous reply to Anon above. It's never OK to insult anyone or their beliefs. My "God Sucks" buttons were just a literary illustration, a way to show what the legal outcome will be if the attorney and her client win their case. Which means, as you point out, that if they DO win, maybe we will have to wear those buttons just to get the point across!

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  6. If people really want to promote tolerance then they should accept that we should be tolerant of criticisms as well.

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  7. Locri commented: "If for some reason this guy gets off easy then we should be fully free to wear pins that say "I support Atheism 100%", though."

    I don't see any difference between christians wearing "God is Great" buttons and atheists wearing "god sucks" buttons. They are both equally offensive!
    Both groups should legally be allowed to openly criticize the other. Both should be forced to stand on their own merits in the public arena.

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  8. I like Craig's comments. It's seems I'm not the only one with fiery remarks toward religious BS!

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  9. Here's what people (including the lawyer) don't understand:

    It has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the button.

    The button could have been blank, for all it matters. All that matters is that the button was not issued by Home Depot and was therefore in contravention of the employee dress code.

    If some religious symbols, but not others, were allowed, then he would have a case for a religious discrimination claim. But that's simply not what happened.

    (PS: I seem to remember the same thing happening with Disney. Since Disney considers all theme park employees to be in "costumes", not "uniforms", they have among the tightest dress codes in the country. And they don't exempt religious symbols either.)

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  10. Anon- Do you honestly think we are controlled by "bad spirits" because we don't "trust in God"? First, we can't trust, nor be controlled by, something that isn't real. Second, I control my life, as do all other Atheists. We stand on our own merit. And as for accepting criticism, we are very used to it, and use it to prove our points. And we do it without spirits, gods, and blind faith.

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  11. The notion some God is all knowing and powerful is too funny. All that is good is attibuted to the supposed "lord" while all that is bad is not. Must be fantastic to play on a team that never loses. Religion is the greatest scam this world has ever known. Vague enough for people to interpret whatever they need to justify their actions and broad enough to enslave millions more. Hollywood couldn't write a better script. If there really is some god, that "being" is a piece of corn in my stool. Some phony puppet who had a hippie son that got nailed up like a prom night virgin. Yeah, and Wile E Coyote will catch the roadrunner too. To all you christian sheep I ask this: when will you ever hold your "god" responsible for the mindless suffering? The innocents? The only true god today is the dollar, even je-sus would be giving knob jobs in todays economy.
    Hitler killed millions and was correctly deemed a murderous physcopath. This supposed god you christian morons worship does that in a week and you file into church to say thanks. Take all the greatest scams and hoaxes this world has ever seen and it still pales in comparison to this religious fiction.
    God is just a backwards dog-- period.

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  12. Yeah, what a wonderful god. This god wants to what one sinner, so he reaches his invisible hand into a bathtub and whoosh you get the Boxing Day Tsunami, killing 199,999 innocent people. I guess he don't care about collateral death. Imagine if we Americans dropped a nuke to kill Osama bin Laden and blew up 200,000 people like a bunch of radioactive disco records. The world would be outraged. But why not at the lame god for the same thing? And the offending sinner surely didn't commit 3,000 counts of murder. How about sinking New Orleans with a hurricane attack?

    Oh, here's a fun item for believers in this god. Guess who's the most prolific abortion doctor? Why, the god, of course! A miscarriage is simply the god performing an abortion. Why don't some anti-abortion nut try to assassinate the god? Apparently, the god despite lots of practice, he still don't always get it right. After all, a stillbirth (baby born dead after full term) is a botched abortion.

    A hilarious item is people believing in a pre-end rapture. Now, be careful what you pray for Christians. An asteroid is scheduled to make a close fly-by of the planet but if it passes by JUST RIGHT (i.e. pass through a very narrow launch window) you'll get your Armageddon. What if the Rapture happened and NOBODY was worth the bother? GWB made a great candidate for an antichrist. All we need is that rock to come by, make a few laps around the sun, and smack. Be careful what you pray for, you just might GET IT, god or not.

    It seems that if this god exists, he is a psychopath with weapons of mass destruction that'll make Osama bin Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad utterly jealous. That's to say nothing of all the suffering he would cause if he existed outside his prolific terrorism.

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  13. The problem is that according to Bible, god is using satan to do his dirty jobs. God can not do those things because he is "good" so he has his servant, always ready do stick it here and there.

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