People had requested a link to all Sean’s posts, which I thought was a great idea. So here you go:

Nothing but Sean

First, I want to thank my fellow GifS-ters for carrying on, even though it’s difficult, and may feel awkward. I didn’t know Sean well enough to say that “he would have liked this” or “he would have wanted that.” So I will just continue to do what I think that any free-thinker would approve of: teaching the children well.

Last Friday, my husband, the boys and I went out for dinner at Red Robin. When we all got out of the car, and started heading into the restaurant, my youngest (Jeremy – he’s 2, Jesse is 4) noticed the FSM emblem on the back of my mini-van. Here is how the conversation went:

Jeremy – “Was dat?!?!”

Me – “That’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster!!”

Jesse – “FSM?” (he’s obsessed with letters)

Me – “Yup, FSM. Flying – Spaghetti – Monster.”

Jesse – “Well, what’s a fying skagetty monster?”

Me – “A Flying Spaghetti Monster is what created all of us, and the earth.”

Jesse – “What’s key-a-ted?” (that’s created)

Dad – “It means “made.” That’s who made you and me – and everything!”

Jesse – “Well, where is it? I don’t see it!” (He’s looking all around and starting to
look concerned because he couldn’t find it)

Me – “Well, we don’t know where it is. No one has ever seen it before. No one has ever heard it before, but still, some people think that it’s there, and that it made everything. They talk to it too. We don’t think that though. We think that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is just pretend.” (I said something to this effect – can’t remember exactly)

Jesse – “Ohhhh….” (Laughing) “That’s silly!!”

How right he is. Even a child can see how absurd it is, whether it’s made of spaghetti, sausages, or “the father, the son, and the holy spirit.” So I turned to my husband and commented on how sad it is that people tell their children such silly stories and they continue to believe them for the rest of their lives – and even kill and die for the stories in some cases.

Whenever an atheist/agnostic passes away, all too many xians still wish to impose their gawd beliefs on the dearly departed. They just can’t stand the thought that someone went to their grave without converting to Jeebus. The GifS bashingfest at Dani’s blog has led to a sick speculation about Sean’s “end-of-life conversion.” Instigated by Cluckin’ Chicken, stupid asshat fundies who didn’t even know him are hoping and praying that the reason Sean was so quiet in the last couple of weeks is because he was contemplating his mortality after the passing of his father and they are “hoping and praying” that he found the Lawd. Knowing Sean for even the short time I did, I know enough that he would dismiss that with a mighty and resounding, “FUCK YOU!” (Some of you who knew him better could probably add more to this.)

I went digging through the archives because I knew Sean had to have written something related to this, and sure enough he did! Back in September 2005, in a post called iGod, Sean wrote about someone who has made a chat bot that thinks it’s God.

Here is Sean’s brief conversation with the Almighty:

Me: Hi, God
God: Hello there. What is your name?
Me: Sean
God: Nice to meet you, Sean.
Me: Nice to meet you, God
God: It’s nice meeting you too Sean.
Me: I want a choo choo train
God: You want only one?
Me: Can I have two?
God: Why do you want it?
Me: To kill people
God: I believe that killing anything is wrong.
Me: Then why do you kill people?
God: I do not kill.
Me: Is Lucifer real?
God: Maybe. Ask Paola if it is.
Me: Who is Paola?
God: She is a Spanish language chat robot based on AIML.
Me: Fuck you
God: Why are you so mean?
Me: I hate people
God: I honestly think you should sit down, take a stress pill,
and calmly think things over.
Me: Perform a miracle for me.
God: For you I will consider it.
Me: Do it now
God: Right now? Do you mean “It”?.
Me: Yes
God: I get it.
Me: Do it
God: Do you mean “It”?.
Me: Do you have sex?
God: Food is more important than sex.
Me: I hate food
God: I honestly think you should sit down, take a stress pill,
and calmly think things over.
Me: What is food?
God: Anything that nourishes or stimulates; whatever helps something to keep active or alive.
Me: God, you be crazy
God: OK I will try to be crazy.

One of the things that first attracted me to this site was how it deals with life’s challenges and annoyances with humor. Sean, I will miss your wit and humor more than anything.

As many of you know, I’m in my first semester of teaching college freshman English. In the spirit of stirring shit up and trying to get people to reflect differently on un-weighed, preconceived notions, I’ve given my students a number of essays on controversial subjects to read, dealing with topics such as: civic responsibilities, our relationship as a society with science, and questions about whether or not religion is a necessary component in our day to day lives. Part of my reason for this is a desire on my part to get my students thinking about issues they may have believed in their whole lives but never actually stopped to think about why they believe these things. Another part of me, a part which this site and Sean in particular has awakened in me, is a desire to make people stop sliding through life in a jeebus-induced fog and to confront people with issues that will make them think.

The major factor which drove me to atheism was a healthy combination of realism and skepticism. My sense of realism taught me to believe in the more reasonable things in life. Is it more practical to think that I’m broke because my job sucks or because gawd is testing me? For me, realism has always won out and prevented me from blaming deficiencies on the unexplainable whims of an invisible sky daddy. Similarly, my sense of skepticism has served as a protection from accepting arguments with obvious flaws, no matter the artificial comfort they could provide. Is the idea that there is a gawd there to protect us comforting? Without any questioning or reflection, sure. I mean think about it, our big, bearded daddy in the sky is going to protect us and has a plan for all of us. But wait, why are people sick and starving and being raped and killed and maimed? Well, we can’t understand “His” wisdom, the believers would tell us. Or is it that he’s either a non-existant excuse to avoid responsibility, an evil prick, or simply schizophrenic? Either way, a universe without a gawd makes way more sense.

These are the types of questions I want my students to be asking themselves. These are the kinds of questions Sean would make people ask of themselves. That is why he was so good at confronting the sickos at Triablogue. That’s why he got so pissed off when Battle Cry invaded his town. That’s why Sean could make me laugh my ass of with exposing stupidity like this. I bring these things up because I’m saddened by the loss of a friend I never got to meet in person but who treated me warmly, respectfully, and with good humor from the first time I commented on this site. I also mention these things because I’m ashamed that it took the loss of this friend to realize the impact he has had on me in the too brief time I got to know him in. Finally, I mention these things because I hope to be some part in carrying on the fight against those things which would piss Sean off, those which would make him laugh, and thsoe which would help all of us learn and grow. And finally, as an educator, when one of my students tells me that kids need gawd or they can’t have morals, ethics, or values, I can more confidently tell them that they have no idea what the hell they are talking about.

We get a lot of criticism for being, um, less than civil with our driveby fundies. Part of it is simply that we make light of things that they take deadly- and I do mean deadly, serious and we can’t really get around that, considering the diametrically opposed worldview we hold. The rest can be written off as sheer frustration on our side from the constant meddling into all of our lives by one tentacle or another- not to be confused with a “noodly appendage”- of the rigorist, totalitarian fungus in which they’re all spores. They really are the Borg, except resistance is hardly futile.

Most of us, or so I’ve deduced from comments and posts, are not necessarily as blunt, as candid, as confrontational, in our real lives as we are here. I say “most” because, personally, my personality here is just slightly better edited than in person. Yes, I’m the one who rode in the back of a pick-up truck, down a street lined with hand in hand abortion protesters, throwing coathangers, 500 of them to be exact, at the crowd. Okay, the hangers were plastic, but that’s as much of a nod to civility as I was willing to give- and I probably would have made it wire if not for the children the fucktards had dragged along to carry their “Abortion Kills Children” signs.

I guess I’m just intolerant, and it’s kind of an ethical dilemna I brood on once in a while- you know, the only thing I’m intolerant of is intolerance and am I thus intolerant of myself. Okay, I’m usually high when I brood but still.

Which brings me to my point- yes, there is a point. I really started getting involved- or at least paying attention, here when Sean assembled the lions and sent us out to places like Triablogue, to maul fish. It’s become my hobby, especially lately with the so-abhorrent-it’s-gotta-be-satire-but-it-isn’t, Dani- my good buddy Frank won’t talk to me anymore.

I can’t honestly say that it does any good or wins any hearts and minds. Or that it doesn’t reinforce their persecution complexes or make them hate and/or fear atheists even more. But it’s a laugh a minute and I think I just might create a doppelganger to join me on my forays into the bush. I think I’ll call him “Sean” and make him smarter than me.

I’m just tired of these barely functional addicts and their contibution to the delinquency of minors. I want to start a War On Drugs, where Gawd is the drug but I can’t figure out how to spray the crops for that shit or, even, what the crops are. Education, I suppose. Meanwhile, watch this.

Slainte, Sean!

For Sean, who among many other things, loved history and understood so well why we need to remember it

No one knows how the Communion wafer ended up in his knapsack.

Benito Garcia had carried the pack on his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, capital of Galicia in Spain and the site of a holy shrine to the Apostle Saint James the Great, brother of John and long held to be buried in the crypt of the city’s cathedral (see image). Like many other Catholics from all over Europe, Benito trod a route already ancient that late spring, early summer of 1490 CE, joining the crowd that flowed into the great church in the town’s main square, perhaps leaning for just a moment to catch his breath against a pillar inside the doorway, where countless others before him had worn a groove in the stone with the same action.

Had he gone to seek penance? Completing the Compostela journey forgave all the pilgrim’s sins, one of only three Christian pilgrimages to offer such far-reaching spiritual largesse. Perhaps he sought fertility via the Way’s pagan origins, or maybe he just wanted to see one of the most famous places in Spain. The shrine had received visitors since as far back as the eighth century. He almost certainly would have attended pilgrims’ mass in the Cathedral, and bought a badge in the shape of a scallop shell, Saint James’ symbol; he might even have picked up a copy of the Codex Calixtinus, the guide book assembled in 1140, if he could read.

Whatever he did in the city, he took the route home through northern Spain, traveling through the towns of Burgos, Carrion de los Condes, and Sahagun, possibly staying at the government-sponsored hospices (think medieval youth hostels) along the way. At the next stop on the Way, Astorga, he joined a small group of locals for a drink at an inn. As things tend to do when the wine flows (and wine always flows in Spain, even to this day), the party got rowdy and in the course of the frolic, someone opened Benito’s knapsack.

At which point a Communion wafer fell out.

And life as Benito had known it up until that point ended.

For he was a Converso: either he or someone in his bloodline had once been a Jew who converted to Catholicism, and as everyone in Spain knew, most Conversos had either backslid into or never really left their Judaism, having turned to Christianity out of material expediency rather than true faith – or so they had heard. Scornfully called “Marranos” (pigs), these sinful pseudo-Catholics constantly plotted with the Jews against good Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who had just recently delivered the Iberian peninsula from the evil, Jew-tolerating Moors (north African Muslims) – except for the stubborn holdout Kingdom of Granada. Or so they had heard.

However, the Conversos had lost their power as a unified political, economic, and social force in 1486 when relentless government-approved persecution brutally punished them for a Converso family’s assassination of Pedro Arbues de Epila in the city of Zaragoza. Since then, everyone knew that the real threat to new converts, indeed to all of Christian Spain, resided in those Moor-loving, backslide-encouraging Jews – at least according to certain sources within the Catholic Church.

In the hands of someone of “unclean” (Converso or still Jewish) blood like Benito, a Communion wafer, a Catholic host, could only mean one thing: he had carried out, or was planning on committing, a Jewish Ritual Murder.

Next: The Vicar

Like the rest of you, I was shocked and saddened by Sean’s death. And my deepest condolences go out to Bob and the rest of his family and friends in real life. I’ve had a lot of dealings with Sean over the past year as I passed the running of GifS over to him, and have very direct experience of his energy and enthusiasm, and also of the amount of work he put into building this site into what it is now.

Although Sean will be missed here more than I can say, GifS will continue. As the Old GifS Guy, let me just let you all know that the admin stuff is still being taken care of, and the bills are still being paid. And it’s my hope that this site has a rich future that helps to pay some small tribute to Sean’s memory.

Don’t really feel like posting, but this is something Sean would have wanted to see and discuss on the blog, I think. The first of a four-part series in the NYTimes about how religious organizations benefit from government programs. Taken from the wonderful blog www.redstaterabble.blogspot.com, where we can all keep up with the daily struggle between science and religion in science class (and elsewhere).

We can all keep up with the Times series on their website www.newyorktimes.com. The series is not behind the pay wall, at least not today.

As Exemptions Grow, Religion Outweighs Regulation