Hepatic Failures Inc.

Yesterday I was talking to my friend and in the course of our conversation I sent her this link. She laughed her ass off and forwarded it to a few people from her contact list. The reaction of one of them was immediate. "I know all about it, I'm a Discordian myself, it rocks! Hail Eris!".

This made me think about religion in general. I've been an agnostic for quite a long time (I'm deeply convinced that no rationally thinking person should ever declare being an atheist). All-powerful spiritual beings may or may not exist, and humanity will never prove either point. That's the main idea of faith - if you truly believe, you needn't seek evidence; if you don't, nothing will convince you to change your mind in that matter.

The above does not occur to everybody though, and not only to religious fanatics. Some atheists tend to surpass in their orthodoxy even extremely religious people. Pushy anti-religious propaganda is sometimes more ridiculous than professor Maciej Giertych's revelations about mammoths living during the Gold Rush. There is a term "kindermetal" in Poland, describing people (mostly teenagers) who consider themselves "dark", wear black, cut themselves and listen to heavy metal/rock (a bit emo-ish if you ask me). Most of them are also atheists of the aforementioned type. That is why I distinguish between atheists, and "kinderatheists".

Kinderatheists are funny creatures, because while they declare they don't believe in spirituality, they still behave like braindead cultists. A kinderatheist says there is no God, no spiritual life whatsoever, but if you ask him/her about the reverse pentagram on their neck they answer swiftly: "This is for my lord, Satan". If you tell a kinderatheist about Discordianism: "Ooo, yeah, it's so cool - I'm a Discordian too!" - you hear in answer... The pit of confusion even grows when you decide to ask a kinderatheist why doesn't he believe in God: "because priests are bad, they only take money, molest children and build expensive churches"... Um, whaaa? Okay, that is a point in certain examples, but what priests have to do with God (assuming he does exist)? Apparently kinderatheists posess a variation of the Malkavian 1st level Discipline of Dementation: they can see nonexistent connections between facts and objects (mechanics: spend 1 Black-nail-polish Point and roll a Difficulty 4 Perception+Concrete Test to see something that is actually not there). It's hard to determine wether this is really funny, or really sad.

Hopefully a simple fact will be understood one day: there is no difference between a Christian, Muslim, Jew or atheists - if they don't take the time to think about what they believe in and why, they can all be equally amusing/dangerous.