Seven Things I'm Not Giving Up For Lent

As many of you know we are currently knee-deep in Lent. From Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday many Christians give up certain activities in remembrance of Jesus' supposed fasting for 40 days and nights in the desert before starting his ministry.

Being an atheist as well as a contrarion this post is designed to proclaim to all what I'm not giving up during this season of Lent.

7. I'm not giving up eating Five Guys cheeseburgers.

In the spirit of confessing all that is bad in my heart - and the list is fairly long - I have indulged recently in Five Guys cheeseburgers. The problem is that the local shop is located right by my gym. So after sweating out the calories I have been known to drive up to Five Guys and order a double cheeseburger with the works. Afterwards I feel dirty... happy and dirty.

6. I'm not giving up thinking it's OK to use contraception. 

Even though it's against the Catholic Church's Every Sperm is Sacred policy  I think they would make an exception in my case. I've already been able to procreate twice. Do they really want more people in the world with 50% of my genetic material mucking about? I think not.

Complicit in her own subjugation.

5. I'm not giving up thinking women are equal to men.

Regardless of what Yahweh thinks I hold onto the novel idea that people should be judged on the content of their character and not whether or not they have a penis. Call me crazy.

How do you spell evil? P-o-p-e

4. I'm not giving up the idea that Papal infallibility is a load of bullsh*it.

Oh, I know that the Pope can be fallible when ordering, let's say, a medium rare burger (I'm sorry, I'm thinking about burgers right now due to #10) when what he really meant was medium. The Papal infallibility is limited to a doctrine concerning faith or morals. To paraphrase Dr Who (the 4th Dr played by Tom Baker) infallibility sounds a lot like unsinkable... Said the iceberg to the Titanic... 

Here is the original bit when the Dr points out the folly of thinking anything is a sure thing.

3. I'm not giving up nutritious and delicious beer.

They are going to have to wrench the beer out of my cold, dead hand!

2. I'm not giving up thinking that Christians should be ashamed of the Bible.

I was reading a post this morning on Debunking Christianity, and whole heartedly agree with John Loftus' thoughts on Yahweh.

Biblical scholarship destroys any notion that such a God exists. Let me give my readers just one example from Jaco Gericke's chapter in The End of Christianity titled, "Can God Exist if Yahweh Doesn't?" Dr. Gericke takes us through the Bible to show that Yahweh is nothing more than a tribal god among other polytheistic cultures who is reflective of what ancient people thought about kings who ruled their subjects, since that's that only model they had to work with in describing a deity. Their musings are indistinguishable in many ways from what the ancients thought about their culturally accepted deities. And so Gericke rhetorically asks if God can exist if Yahweh doesn't, and the answer is that it is not likely in the least.

1 . I'm not giving up the idea that our Constitution had the right idea of keeping religion and state separate.

No matter what Rick Santorum thinks, the Establishment Clause found in the First Amendment is fairly clear on this topic.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

And the point that the Constitution is against the idea of religion infecting the state (and vice versa) is highlighted in the No Religious Test Clause found in Article VI, paragraph 3.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

LiP