Religion and crazy people seem to go hand-in-hand. For some reason, religion acts as a natural adhesive to people who are just, for all intents and purposes, insane.
As we turn our attention to the upcoming Christmas holiday, there is something comforting in knowing that religious nuts are out in full force. It is almost as if all is right in the world. Can’t you feel the warm blanket of religious tomfoolery gripping you tightly?
Take the rollercoaster ride life of Jaycee Dugard, for example. Kidnapped in 1991 at age 11 in plain sight near her home in South Lake Tahoe, this story continues to get weirder. Who else but an alleged sexual deviant and self-proclaimed evangelist would keep a girl in captivity behind his house for 18 years?
The story itself is bizarre, but focus for a minute on Phillip Craig Garrido, Dugard’s accused abductor. In his blog “God’s Desire Church,” Garrido wrote that he believed he could control sounds with his mind.
“I, Phillip Garrido, have clearly demonstrated the ability to control sound with my mind and have developed a device for others to witness this phenomena. … I have produced a set of voices by effectively controlling the sound to pronounce words through my own mental powers.”
Garrido is currently in prison awaiting trial, while the government tries to run tests determining his mental health. It is pretty obvious what the shape of Garrido’s mental health is — and I’m no doctor. He remains just another religious sycophant who has done terrible things to an innocent girl.
Religion, like Tanqueray gin, is meant to be enjoyed in moderation. People who take too much inevitably end up drunk, brainwashed and controlled by its stranglehold.
Religious insanity is not just demonstrated in single bad apples like Garrido, either.
Each religion has its own rules, many of which remain rather antiquated for today’s society. Kosher Jews aren’t supposed to eat pork; members of certain Hindu castes can’t eat cow because of its “sacred” nature; and many Muslims have to wear clothes covering almost every part of their body because of an ancient religious text.
I’m not against those who follow such religious rules; I’m just struggling to figure out why. I was raised Jewish and don’t need a book, or a rabbi, to tell me what I can and can’t eat.
In a world where people pride themselves on being rational and logical, there is quite a lot of irrationality and illogicality coming mostly from religion.
Just last weekend Pope Benedict XVI met with numerous artists in the Sistine Chapel and, according to Reuters, proclaimed, “Beauty … can become a path toward the transcendent, toward the ultimate mystery, toward God.”
Well thanks for that one, Benny, but does anyone in this day and age really need the Pope to tell them that art is meaningful? Leave it to the Pope to speak the obvious and then be praised for it, as if it was his original idea.
Another religious incident occurred last weekend, as reported by Breitbart.com, when “hundreds of Muslim protestors burnt Christian-owned shops in southern Egypt and attacked a police station where they believed a Christian accused of raping a Muslim girl was being held.”
I don’t know what’s more stunning about this situation; the fact that the rioting Muslims were actually standing up for a young woman’s rights, or that their violence this time actually wasn’t directed toward Jews.
Palestinians made up for that the same day, however, when they fired a rocket into Israel. There were no casualties or major damage.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — in modern society, religion really is an archaic salute to the preconceived notions and misconceptions of the so-called “old days.” Religion does have its perks, no doubt, but do the problems outweigh the positives? Each and every year my answer to this question gets closer and closer to a resounding, “no.”
Like Tony Sinclair, the fictional socialite spokesman for Tangueray, says, “Always in moderation.”
Gerry Wachovsky is a graduate student and columnist for the Daily 49er.