Humpjones

Theological Shakedowns

Posted Apr 23, 2007 8 comments

It’s a beautiful monday and I’m going to steamroll right over whatever I wrote last night.  All of the windows here at Liquid Wet studios are open and I’m running around with shorts on, learning how to walk on my hands.  Life is good, especially when I see so much positive feedback and real-world results from my lunatic artform.  I’m not talking about the naked pictures and dirty emails, which are dope, but today I’m going to look at the ongoing collapse of major religious institutions.

There might be a global War on Sex going on in 2007, but at least I’m on the winning side.

I Warned Those Fuckers

In the past, I made it pretty clear that the Vatican was long overdue for a collapse, but they didn’t take me seriously when I was 9.  Yeah, well...WHO’S LAUGHING NOW? Their numbers are plummeting...only 30% of self-professed Catholics even go to Mass these days...recent surveys in the US showed that among married Catholic couples, only 4% are using the Church-approved “natural family planning methods.”

Sensing this serious lapse in brand loyalty, the silk-robed Holy Men are frantically re-designing the product and focus testing new, hipper variations on classic Dogma.  After the previously unthinkable ban on molesting little boys—long considered an “untouchable” bedrock foundation of the Catholic faith—now it’s like, well...like nothing is sacred.  In a recent move I’m almost single-handedly responsible for, the Vatican finally had to admit that Limbo was a fib:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church has effectively buried the concept of limbo, the place where centuries of tradition and teaching held that babies who die without baptism went.

In a long-awaited document, the Church’s International Theological Commission said limbo reflected an “unduly restrictive view of salvation.”

The 41-page document was published on Friday by Origins, the documentary service of the U.S.-based Catholic News Service, which is part of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

A 41 page document? I know I’m supposed to be all cynical and jaded and stuff, but little details like that make my jaw drop.  Never fails to amaze me all over again when I see how seriously these monkeys take themselves.  Their conclusion is a marvel of Stating Bullshit With Authority:

“People find it increasingly difficult to accept that God is just and merciful if he excludes infants, who have no personal sins, from eternal happiness, whether they are Christian or non-Christian,” the document said.

“The conclusion of this study is that there are theological and liturgical reasons to hope that infants who die without baptism may be saved and brought into eternal happiness even if there is not an explicit teaching on this question found in revelation,” it said.

Yeah....you sick fuckers are toast. You could have surrendered back in 1990, you had your chance.  We’ve got dudes who can summon UFO’s and levitate now.  STEP YOUR GAME UP.

Still Relevant After All These Years

Don’t get the impression I’m down on religion or something.  I do believe the theological framework of monotheism still addresses the really important questions that we humans face today.  In that sense, the entire foundation of irrational religious faith is actually a timeless monument to what really matters.  For instance, wether or not an invisible demon who rules over a pit of fire in the center of the Earth where Jehovah sends anyone who disobeys him is responsible for physically entering into people’s bodies and making them kill. Can you really look at me with a straight face and say that’s not a universal human question?  Come on.

Anyways...I didn’t make any of the following quotes up.  This is an actual, serious, real Fox News article about the recent shootings at Virginia Tech.  The actual, serious, real headline of the article is “Did the Devil Make Him Do It?” and it’s written by their “Religion Correspondent,” Lauren Green.

Was Cho Seung-Hui schizophrenic … psychotic … manic-depressive? Or were the shooting deaths of 32 people, including Cho himself, at Virginia Tech University part of the ongoing struggle between God and Satan … good against evil … lightness and darkness?

Could Cho have been possessed by the Devil? Could that explain the massacre at Virginia Tech?

Dr. Richard Roberts, president of Oral Roberts University, shouts an unequivocal “Yes!”

“Based on what I’ve seen in the news,” Roberts said in an interview, “there’s no doubt that this act was Satanic in origin.”

Oral Roberts University is, in fact, named after Oral Roberts.  Oral’s claim to fame still stands as one of the most artistic political statements of the past 50 years: in 1987, he went onstage during his televangelism TV show and said that unless he got $8 million—in a matter of months—God would take his life. “You’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” laughed P.T. Barnum.  Oral Roberts allegedly raised $9.1 million, but who knows?  He was riding high that year...he also claimed, in Time magazine no less, that he had successfully raised the dead with the power of God.  This was confirmed by testimony from his son, Richard Roberts, who solemnly agreed he’d seen his father raise a child from death.  Yes, this is the same Rich Roberts that’s currently president of Oral Roberts University.

Roberts added that he doesn’t know if it was Satanic “possession” or “oppression.” Possession, he said, occurs when Satan takes over a person’s life, and the person’s actions are dictated by demonic possession within. Roberts says he’s seen this type and has seen the Devil cast out of a person.

Satanic “oppression,” on the other hand, is “that which comes against.” “It’s not in a person, but is coming against them, trying to put evil thoughts in their minds,” Roberts said.

He said that the evil thoughts in Satanic oppression can be fairly innocuous, or they can be harmful. And the oppression can be in the form of fear, depression or discouragement, he said, because “Satan comes to kill, steal and destroy.”

Is it signifigant that you can re-arrange the letters in “Humpasaur Jones” to form “Anus Jam Orpheus”? (It can also generate dozens of other, equally remarkable insights, like “Me Horus, Us Japan” or “MA! PA! OH JESUS! RUN!”)

As John Keel and Jacques Vallee taught us, this planet truly is haunted—there is another intelligence around here somewhere, and it loves to fuck with us.  A name is just a word—if we label this Other before we understand it, we’ll never understand it. The “Satan” trap is structurally identical to the “Illuminati” trap, where you think you understand global power which is of course, computationally impossible to model given the limitations of the human brain. 

Both of those are based upon the “Tree” trap, which tricks you into thinking you don’t need to pay attention to one of the most intelligent and diverse species on the planet, because you already know what they “are.”

Closing Words From The Holy Man

Of course, religious zealots are most frustrating to rational primates because they are right.  They are more right than they will ever know, for reasons they will probably never understand.  Satan might be a joke, but Lucifer is not—neither is demonic possession, which is (for now) a hidden epidemic of the modern world.  I’ve got to hand it to Rich Roberts: he’s a poet at heart.

Roberts says we’ll never know whether Cho was “possessed” or “oppressed,” because the killer has died. But he did leave a note blasting everyone around him, calling them “rich kids,” and “deceitful charlatans,” and then blaming them, saying “you made me do this.”

Roberts describes Cho’s writings as “just words,” and says words are one of Satan’s tools to bring about Man’s destruction.

Filed in: The War on Sex

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