Mitchell Surprenant

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Here’s your change, sir. Have a wonderful day.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Uh… sure,” I replied, knowing that it probably wouldn’t end well.

“Are you a believer?

“In what?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Well, I believe he existed, but that’s as far as I feel like going at work. Maybe catch me after work.”

I get asked questions like that all the time. Growing up, my answer to the question of “Are you a believer?” would be, “Yes. Jesus Christ is my Lord and personal savior.”

Which is all well and nice. I really enjoy my parents’ church, and the pastor and his wife & kids are probably the strongest (and coolest) people in their faith that I know, next to my friend Eric.

But I’ve grown out of the church as of late, mainly because my chosen place of worship was 200 miles away when I went away to school. That’s a terrible excuse, and I know it’s a terrible excuse, but it’s the truth. I’ve grown accustomed to the secular society.

It’s fun, and I don’t live in fear of the Judeo-Christian God that most of the people in this town seem to know.

So, what, are you an Atheist?

Pardon the expression, but hell no. I’m what you’d call an Agnostic. There’s nothing that any religious person can present to me that could prove beyond a shadow of doubt that their God exists. Similarly, there is nothing an Atheist could present to me that could prove beyond a similar doubt that a god exists.

In the words of Bill Maher, I don’t know! I don’ t know if there is or isn’t a god. I don’t know if there is a heaven or a hell, and I don’t know what happens when we die. Neither do you.

So, I use the generally moral teachings instilled in me by my parents to live my life. Even though I’m not a believer of the Judeo-Christian God, I’m not a murderer or even a rapist. I’m actually a moral human being.

Which reminds me of another point. The ultra right-wing co-worker of mine tried to convince me once that irreligious people cannot be moral. At all. Morals, he believes, must come from a fear or belief in a higher power. What’s your take?

You like my drawing? I dig it. © Mitch Surprenant 2009.

I can’t listen for too long to Glenn Beck, because the last time I tried, he had some words on the chalkboard with arrows between them, then decided to erase whatever word was at the top and replace it with “OBAMA.” Yeah, because political concepts are interchangable. Clearly SOCIALIAM = FASCISM = COMMUNISM = MARXISM.

But I had a conversation with a coworker the other day about, among other things the fact that the United Nations assesses the USA the most money in dues. This coworker brought up an interesting point about Glenn Beck. Beck closes his show (apparently?) with a phrase similar to “every day, I find myself becoming more libertarian.”

Heck it’s even in this transcript on Beck’s own website where he talks with Bob Barr:

[Beck:] Bob, I appreciate you joining me, sir. I’m kind of in a quandary here. I don’t know exactly what to do and I find myself becoming more and more libertarian every day because I just don’t see us solving any of our problems unless we solve our problems here at home first, which is spending out of control, you know, getting the dollar back on track and then also going for our own energy.

So why is good for the left? Because the libertarians are already an established third party. Beck himself and many will no doubt vote for Republican candidates in the 2010 elections, but a good number of his listeners and viewers are going to look in to the libertarian movement, which may very well appeal to them. They sure as hell won’t vote Democrat (the party of on-demand abortions and forced sodomy), so the libertarian party will take from where these people would normally vote — that is, the Republican party.

I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as a complete vote splitting situation, but I think it’s going to hurt Republicans’ chances of winning as many seats as they want to in the midterms.
GO GLENN!