Preface: All Religions are Evil, Muahahaha.

No, they're not, but why be picky?



Before you get preemptively annoyed, I warned readers of this blog quite some time ago that there would be a series of “Evil Religion” blog posts, and that it wouldn't be what you think it is.



Guess what, it's still not going to be what you think it is.



I am sick and tired of the ignorant Bill Maher's of the world automatically blaming religion for everything wrong in the world. Guess what, Bill, people will still be stupid, with or without religion. I'd even make a case that people are dumber without religion, unless they replace it with philosophy – and there are fewer philosophy scholars than there are theologians.



The atheists I know personally are better people than I am, but then again, they tend to think; which is more than I can say for Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or Bill Maher. I'll see if I can slap those three around at some point—since, let's face it, atheism is a religion too, and they want to be the high priests when they grow up.



I would include Christopher Hitchens in here, if I could take the man seriously. Most of his arguments are anecdotal, personal rants that are more about him than about theology or religion. It's less about atheism, and more about him being an obnoxious Brit ... which is redundant to me (I'm mostly Irish by background, I have to make fun of the British. I think it's in my contract somewhere.)



By the way, for the record, the only atheists I intend to drag into this mess are professional atheists, like Dawkins, Harris, or Maher. Because they make a living off of it. Because, in some parts of their philosophy, they really should know better, and because they're jerks.



Thus endeth the preface.  The war starts soon.

Rapture: Hawking says there is no Heaven. Good.

Last week, high priest of atheism Stephen Hawking said there was no Heaven. He couldn't find it, and couldn't prove it was there. Therefore, there isn't any.



Good.



Why good? Well, before I answer that, I should point out that Hawking also said that he couldn't prove Heaven wasn't there, which is honest of him. Considering that Heaven, should it exist, is a metaphysical location, should Dr. Hawking find anything resembling Heaven, I would be seriously worried.



It's sort of like if someone could point to a box and say "There's God."



I'm sorry, but for something to claim to be my deity, it would have to be unlimited in scope... ie: God doesn't fit in a box.



Besides, Hawking is not in the religion business, no matter how many ways he tries to interject himself into the matter. Were he to fall back on a supernatural explanation for anything, that would be bad science. God doesn't fit into an equation, can't be experimented on, tested, retested, or submitted to any version of any scientific method.



For example, there's the Big Bang. There is evidence for such an explosion to kick-start the universe. Communications satellites have picked up signals that are, in essence, "echoes" of the Big Bang. However, the amount of things that we know about the big bang aren't accurate; most of what we know about it is supposition. People have theorized about what happened based on the results: as in "in order for X to have happened, Y must have occured at Z seconds within the event itself."



If any scientist says "We think there's a God, because we can't figure it out otherwise," that is a cheat. That isn't science. The best a scientist can get away with is "It looks like a bloody miracle, but give us time, we'll figure it out." Using God as a placeholder in a theory is cheating.



However, in the case of Hawking, I object when he objects his atheism into his science.



Hawking has come up with several theories on how the universe started; from what I can recall, all of them throw out the Big Bang. I think the simplest way for me to explain it would be to say that the universe is a self-sustaining temporal loop where the Universe simply goes and starts itself repeatedly...



I think I heard that theory on Star Trek once, only they made it sound more believable.



Self-sustaining temporal loops? Really? It's a theory that tosses out a basic principle of science, namely "cause and effect." It's a theory that has no evidence, and not even his mechanical voice box can make me believe it. It's bad science. Why would Hawking say something so stupid?



The sad thing is, the only reason I could come up with is that, if there is an effect, like the Big Bang, there must be a cause. And, right now, the best guess could be, hmm, God.



A suggestion to Dr. Hawking: make a better guess. You've thrown out what scant evidence there is that points to the origin of the universe, and you've stolen a plotline from a science fiction show for a replacement theory. Fail.  You're a physicist trying to deal in metaphysics. Major Fail. You should not be able to succeed. If you are honestly putting mental energy into this, you do have better things to do with your life.



Seriously, if a PhD in philosophy tried to pass himself off as an expert in quantum physics, he would be laughed off the stage. Why Hawking thinks he can get away with the reverse is beyond me. Even Hawking's (Catholic) wife told him, "Oh, Stephen, leave God alone."



And, should Hawking find a place and call it Heaven, I'll believe that like I believed the rapture would come last Saturday. And how did that work out for everyone?



Anyway ... I think the below is a better use of science than Hawking wasting his time "disproving God." And, this is a lot cooler. Thanks go out to the lovely and talented Rebekah Hendershot, of Masks for showing me this one.

Twitter Trolls: Writing in the Electronic Age

Should you want to become a writer, you're going to have to live with the Internet. You're already on the net, since you're reading this, but if you're just a casual user, get ready for culture shock. There are nut jobs all over the Internet. Normal, reasonable people, added to the Internet, seem to become quite psychotic. And I don't mean a little nuts -- because that can be any Friday afternoon after a busy week and you're stuck in rush hour -- I mean frothing at the mouth rabid, violently deranged.

If you want to go into writing, the Internet will be your friend. And your worst enemy. Probably at the same time. You will need it to sell your book. Interviews, book tours, podcasts, guest blogs, book reviews, all of it, are done online. It will be a valuable tool. Statistics seem to indicate that casual viewers of your material will not comment, one way or another. I have posted some stories from the blog for A Pius Man on another website, and have been rewarded with some glowing reviews of my work. One story got me three reviews in a matter of hours -- but only after nearly two thousand people had already read the story.

On this blog, some of the more viewed blog posts have come with people who have seriously, seriously hated me and everything I said. See the Lent post, if you don't believe me.

But, people are complicated: You could, for example, look at Matt's website. Matthew Funtime, artist for all of the good artwork on this blog, is an atheist. And I don't mean the casual "I don't believe in God, thanks, bye" sort of atheist. He's a bit of a die hard. And, if you look at his posts on religion, you might think he falls into the above rubric. He really doesn't. Unlike some people, who are reasonable until you lodge a disagreement, Matt seems to be in full Keith-Olberman-without-his-medication-mode to start with. However, if you lodge a simple, civil disagreement, he will politely disagree with you, and have a conversation.

Matt is a sane, reasonable person if you are a sane, reasonable person.

There are some that aren't so sane....



Long-time readers will remember that I dislike politics because the moment I have a label put on me, I have other people telling me what I think. I can't finish a sentence, or explain my long, thought-out, nuanced position, political philosophy.

Apparently, that's not even limited to politics anymore. Apparently, it's called the entire Internet

For example, there is a twitter exchange I had with one entity who made a casual mention about the Westboro Baptist Church -- that if they really hated gays, they should be outside the Vatican....

Now, after last week, you know my position on that particular cliche: it's overdone, overblown, and somewhat stupid. I figured I could take a swipe at him, or casually correct what he was saying. I could also call him out on the insult to gay people -- he was using the term "fag," and not referring to a cigarette or a piece of wood -- but he probably wouldn't get it.

So, as a lead in, I gave him a little counter attack, which was:

APiusManNovel JohnK
@GASmithIV Actually, if they wanted pedophiles, that's what the teacher's unions are for.

Yes, it's provocative. I wanted a reaction. When he asked for clarification, ("Are you saying that public school teachers are pedophiles?") I gave him

@GASmithIV Public school teachers had over 300K vics in the 90s, vs 10K for priests (1950-2002). So, yes.

@GASmithIV Teachers: http://tinyurl.com/y3423mc Priests: http://tinyurl.com/32oq9q

That was the total extent of it. Notice, if you would, that the numbers given only refer to numbers of victims. Nothing else. Yes, there are bad teachers, but there are still bad priests. The most I could make of "an argument" is that the priesthood isn't the only institution with a corruption problem.  The numbers in the report on teachers (cited last week) was that there were over 300,000 complaints registered against public school teachers over the course of more than a decade, and only 1% were investigated, or given any credence.  And that one in ten children go through the public school system and get abused at some point. From 1950-2002, there were only over ten thousand people who made accusations, and only 3% of those accused (the accused were about 4% of the overall priests during that time period) were convicted of anything. For a correction rate, 3% of 4% isn't bad. If you go by The New York Times, that boils down to only 100 bad apples over half a century.

Granted, 100 bad apples that should suffer horrors that would make GITMO detainees want to be water boarded, but still, for a corruption record, it's not that bad.

Now, I figured that, when this fellow read through the footnotes, the most he would do was correct me that the report cited above doesn't paint all teachers with a brush of child abuse -- a perfectly valid correction, one I would have easily accepted. We would smile, nod, and depart with an agreement. The sole premise: the Catholic priesthood might not be the most evil entity on the planet.

Then, in a reply peppered with foul language, this particular person on twitter said that was only because the Catholic Church hid everything. Muahahahaha .... okay, there was no evil laughter, but it would have been preferable to what he did say.

So, I blinked a few times. Wait a second. I cited a perfectly valid John Jay University study that examined the situation with science, psychology, statistical breakdowns and a full, nuanced report. John Jay U, an institution that deals heavily in criminal justice and related professions. It is a secular, impartial authority. You have to get up pretty early to pull the wool over their eyes. Since most Bishops don't get up until 8am, that discounted most Catholic clergy.

Hoping to prompt this fellow into reading the darn report, I decided to go the sarcastic approach, and underline the part I was certain he missed.

@GASmithIV Yes, because John Jay is in the pocket of the Catholic Church. #brilliant

Okay. Certainly, that would get him to read everything I had just sent him, right?

Not really. From the violence of his response, you would think that I had insulted every beloved relative he had. It took up three twitter replies, and the language was certainly R-rated.

The only salient point was that his reply was a little deranged. He wouldn't debate me on twitter, etc, etc, and there was a whole bunch of violence thrown in.

I went for the assumption of Godwin's law. He went postal, he lost. I told him so.

He proceeded to go even more postal. He suggested that I be hung from a lamp post, with every priest ever born, all of my twitter followers, and my little dog too.

I only had two answers for him.

@GASmithIV So, you approve of public school teachers as pedophiles? Good to know it's not the action you hate, just the priests.


@GASmithIV U do realize the only implication was that there r other groups with corruption issues? U jumped straight 2 lynching. Good job.
19 May via web

Yes, it was a little childish stab at the end, but after the homophobic, Catholic-phobic, and generally delusional replies, I figured I was owed the jab.

Now, for those of you who are wondering: "Why did John only post his own replies?"  Good question. The answer is that I have no idea.  As I write this (Sunday, May 22, 2011 -- if it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done), all of the various and sundry comments made by GASmithIV have evaporated into the digital realm, yet all of my replies are still on my twitter feed. I have no idea why this is, or how, just that it is.

Unfortunately, there is a part of this story missing because it's my fault. Someone tried to get cute with me, and posted on my blog about the numbers I posted on Twitter. The moron read the numbers of victims as the numbers of the accused. He also told me not to debate him, because he was right, and I was stupid. So there.

Since he obviously didn't read anything I had posted, and he posted the comment in my Neil Gaiman post, I deleted it -- I mean, heck, he could have posted it in the appropriate slot in the cliche post. But he couldn't be bothered looking for that one. In retrospect, I should have saved the comment, but it didn't occur to me to write this post until after I deleted it

It was interesting. Without making any argument at all, I was subjected to a whole slew of death threats, ranting, raving, and general carrying on cranky.

So, welcome to the Internet. Lessons you should learn:

1. Don't feed the trolls.

2. No matter what your argument, people will disagree with you violently. Possibly because they have nothing better to do.

3. If you don't have an argument, people will fill in the blanks just so they can disagree with you violently. In all likelihood, because they want to be angry.

4. Don't go looking for attention from morons unless you know they will be morons in advance and you're ready for them. For example: when I had a twitter conversation with the Phelps spawn, I knew they would be morons in advance, and I spent most of my time laughing at them. I concluded they had no sense of humor. At all.

5. When they tell you not to debate you, laugh at them. A lot. Perhaps maniacally.

Illegitimi non carborundum

Neil Gaiman, Minnesota, and Writer's Mistakes.

Writers make mistakes.



This is probably not a good topic to discuss on a writer's blog, but it's the truth. And I try to serve the truth as often as possible without getting myself into even more trouble than I find naturally. People can learn from mistakes, even if those mistakes are performed by other people.



Neil Gaiman is a British author with a couple of novels to his name, and several tv episodes. I only enjoyed two works by him – Neverwhere, and The Graveyard Book. The one other book of his I truly enjoyed is called Good Omens, and there is nothing he can say or do to prove to me that Terry Prachett didn't take over the book entirely.



Recently, Mr. Gaiman (I prefer to pronounce it Guy-mun, not “Gay-man”) spoke at a Minnesota public library. He made a four-hour public appearance, for which he was paid $45,000 dollars.



Yes, he made over $10,000 per hour.



Harlan Ellison, an author who has been writing since the dawn of time … or at least the dawn of modern science fiction … makes $10,000 for an entire convention appearance, and Gaiman isn't half as interesting as Ellison. Trust me, I've met Ellison, and I've seen Gaiman.



A Minnesota politician has referred to Gaiman as a “pencil-necked weasel-thief” for walking off with that much money for a measely four hours.



Gaiman, in his defense, has said that he wanted to charge far less. The library claimed that the money was earmarked for library events, and the earmark expiration date was almost up. They could either use the money, or lose it. So, he took the money, and gave some to charity, some to his agent, etc.



Now, after the politician made noise, Gaiman has turned around, and started exchanging insults with Minnesota, at least on his Facebook page, as he tries to defend his honor (or honour, if you wish to go British). And he's whining that he's being put on a Republican “hate list”....



Now, I don't know about you, but there's something wrong about the whole thing.



For instance, should I ever become interesting enough to be invited anywhere to speak, I'm going to wonder at being offer forty-five grand.



I can imagine the conversation going as follows.

“Hey, we really liked your book, A Pius Man. We want you to come speak here. We'll give you $10,000 an hour. Please?”

Me: [Blink, blink, blink.] “How much?”

“About $45K. Is that not enough?”

Me: “I didn't think I was that interesting. Why $45K?”

“Because that's our event budget. We have to use it, or we're going to lose it.”

Me: “By 'lose it,' do you mean it will spontaneously combust? Fall down a rabbit hole and disappear? Turn to ash?”

“No, the state will just take it back.”

Me: “So, gee, you can either give me all of the taxpayer's money that you still have in your budget, or you can actually let the taxpayers actually have it back? Gee, I'm so happy I can give you an excuse to spend money for the sole purpose of spending money, in the middle of a major recession. How about this: get stuffed. I want nothing to do with you idiots.”

But, now, Neil Gaiman is the persecuted one. Huh. Really? One, it's Minnesota, how many people would know anything was up if it weren't for Gaiman's replies? I know I wouldn't. Two, this sounds like the library wanted to burn through the cash it had, and claim "We used our event budget this year, give us the same next year."

So, an open letter to Neil ....



Dear Mr. Gaiman.



I know you're not from the United States, so let me give you some pertinent information about Minnesota.



Number one: Minnesota is odd. This is a state that gave the position of governor to a former pro-wrestler named Jesse Ventura. It also made a clown one of their senators – a man named Al Franken.



In terms you can understand: Politically, Minnesota is Lewis Carroll country. They have fallen down a rabbit hole, and they have have yet to come out again. These people make Wonderland seem reasonable.



Number two: You took the money. I don't care what you did with it, you took taxpayer money. In the middle of a recession. You claim you would have attended the event for far, far less. Did they make you take it? Did they hold you up at gunpoint and force a check on you? I don't care how you redistributed the cash, this was taxpayer money. If the public library couldn't burn through it in the time allotted, that was their problem.



Didn't you think it odd that a public library paid you more money than bigger talents would get for an entire science fiction convention? They used you to aid and abet government waste in a recession. You were an excuse to burn cash. Why? Best guess: In all likelihood, if the public library didn't spend the money, their budget next year would have been cut to match what they spent this year.



Number three: You're Neil Gaiman. Why are you getting into the muck and mire with hacks from Minnesota? Why? You did nothing illegal. Some Minnesotan called you names … highly unoriginal names … and you, you poor widdle baby, are up in arms over it. You declare yourself on a Republican “hate list.” Really? You're going to play the Nixon card? Let's avoid the fact that there must be more than one person for there to be a list. Also, just because the politician is a Republican, you're not a target of the Republican National committee. You're not Bill Clinton; there is no vast, right wing conspiracy out to get you. As far as I can tell, there's just one guy – one guy who you have decided to make far more interesting by engaging with him.



You, sir, are a writer. You should have a thicker skin than this.



In conclusion … What the hell are you doing? While I question the wisdom of taking the cash, and thus exposing yourself to this idiocy, you are now actively diving into the muck and mire that is the cesspool of Minnesota politics. Do you think that a guy from Minnesota will affect your popularity in any way? If you hadn't decided to engage, I probably would have never heard of the quote, the politician, and I might have been safe from hearing anything about Minnesota until the next time Al Franken ran for political office.



This isn't your problem. Whoever paid you the money “just to get rid of it” shouldn't have burned through the money because it was there. That person should be fired. While I question your wisdom in taking the cash, you did nothing against the law. Why are you defending yourself against a gnat?



Stop playing silly buggers with rejects from the madhouse. Just tell these idiots that you didn't set the price, and if they're going to insult you, tell them to hire Terry Prachett as their speechwriter.



Thank you.



PS: The only Republican I know who may have an opinion on you is President George W. Bush -- and that's only because he liked Babylon 5: a show you wrote for.

A Writing Rant: Cliches you may have never noticed.

I suspect that this, at the end of the day, qualifies as a rant. But it's a rant about writing, so I think this makes for an acceptable blog post. Comment if you think it doesn't.

*******

I live in a family of readers. We tend to write TV episodes as we watch them on television. Obviously, we record everything, otherwise we'd never hear a word. Sometimes, the writers out-think us, sometimes we like our endings better than the ones on the screen. And then, sometimes, we catch only an image, and we sigh, and we know exactly where everything starts to go downhill...

Have you ever wandered into a TV show, and without knowing anything of the story thus far, a mere thirty seconds can tell you more than you wanted to know? In fact, you know so much from that brief glance, you can, without any hesitation, write the entire episode?

This is pretty much how it goes in our house whenever we see a almost any Christian clergyman on television. If it's some sort of religious figure, he's the murderer / pederast / psycho / bad guy. In fact, if there's a guest star who shows up as a priest, the only way my family is surprised is if the priest is not guilty of something. Also, if there's a choice between an old-fashioned, grouchy priest, and a hip, young good-looking priest filled with charisma, we know whodunit—the old guy, because killers are never charismatic, are they?

Now, unless someone can correct me, this rule only applies to some variety of Christian group, but, more often than not, it's a Catholic priest. Even on the television show 24, where Muslims terrorists were involved (literally) every other season for the first six years, no Imams were involved. I have never seen a Rabbi involved in a crime anywhere on television.

Under the heading of “these and other stupid things,” there are some interesting facts.
[More below]

Osama's death. One week later.

If you are sick and tired of listening to anything to do with Osama bin Laden, I recommend my short story from Saturday, "One Way to Stay Out of Jail." It has action, humor, and staying one step ahead of both cops and robbers.  Enjoy.

Now, onto this week ......

As more and more details leak out about Osama bin Laden's death, the situation becomes more, um, interesting.

I will, for the moment, ignore conflicting reports.  One report had Osama using a wife for a human shield. Another said he was simply shot outright, and the wife was still alive. We had help from Pakistan. Pakistan knew nothing about it. Pakistan supports our efforts, Pakistan threatens to blow us out of the sky if we ever do that again .....  One report by Eric Holder said that bin Laden's assassination was in "national self-defense." Bin Laden wasn't olding launch codes to a nuclear arsenal, and, to some accounts, didn't even have a weapon inside the mansion he was living in. If this was "national self defense," it must have been a "preemptive strike."  Or it was simply an assassination. So, we'll see exactly how the details shape up in the long run.
[More below the break]

FCBD Story: One Way To Stay out of Jail.

If you are new to the blog page in support of my novel A Pius Man, welcome.  If you've been here before, welcome back.

Today's free comic book day story has been brought to you ... with a lot of last-minute photoshopping.

This is basically how Sean A.P. Ryan, self-described mercenary and lunatic, manages to collect enough partners to

This story is called, simply  "One Way to Stay Out of Jail."  The star of this story is one Sean Ryan, who appears in A Pius Man and has already had a few short stories all his own: The Pirate King, the surprisingly popular Boys of the Old Brigade, and God Hates .... Superman?.  He's one of my more colorful characters.  Unlike Scott "Mossad" Murphy, who likes to go unnoticed, Sean has a tendency to leave behind evidence of his presence.  One can usually follow him if one just runs towards the screaming.... Oh, wait, wrong blog.

And, for the record, the complete list of stories is here.

Also, hang around for some of our trailers, below the story.

And here we go...

One Way to Stay Out of Jail



A trailer for the book proper.






Thanks to the Gepetto Project for this one:




My character, Scott Murphy .... he's around the site. You'll enjoy him. [Thanks again to http://www.matthewfunti.me/ for the voice work.]