Where to begin?

So last night I wanted Bill Maher's Religulous. Overall, great movie with great points. A couple of things I did not like about it: 1) it was obviously clipped together in a way that made the interviewees look uneducated and dumb. If Maher's point was really "doubt" and that nobody knows the truth, he should not have set out to make religious people look as ridiculous as he did. It went against his proposed point. 2) I did not like his portrayal of Islam. He very much attempted to show it as being an incredibly violent religion. I don't think he did justice to the faith, and I also don't believe he drew as many parallels between Christianity and Islam.

I was a big fan of the movie overall. Despite my critiques of it, I do believe that it had quite a few good points.

One of which was similar to the one I made in a conversation I recently had with an old friend. We were discussing religion, and the current state of the environment came up. I have a large problem with religions predicting the end of the world because it seems as though a lot of religious people are saying that the current environmental problems could be the beginning of the end of the world as predicted by their religions. HOWEVER, with this comes a lack of responsibility for each of our roles in the degredation of our world around us. That's one of my biggest problems with religion. A complete lack of responsibility for actions.

I mean let's take Christianity. God knows that we are all sinners. That's why she let her son die: for our sins. So as sinners, it is ok to sin as long as we repent and still believe that Jesus is the son of god. Well, you know...I take major issue with this. It is SO easy to say that we are all going to sin. No one is perfect. The only perfect person was jesus. That allows us to sleep at night. We don't have to be responsible for our actions. Now don't get me wrong, I have fucked up my fair share of times and did things I should not have done, but I have to deal with what I did. I don't trun to some go to ask for forgiveness. I deal with it within myself.

I am learning that there is a lot of power in my atheism, and I do need to be more vocal about it than I have been in the past because it is something that I feel quite strongly about.

So today, I was incredibly excited because I don't have to be at work until noon, so that means I get to watch the View! However, I turned on the tv to see that the cast of the View was at Disneyland, and Cinderella was right there with them. Now I did not even watch the entire show because I was so frustrated. Cinderella was standing behind the other girls, and she did not say a single word (except Thank you as she walked off). That's my EXACT problem with Fairy Tales. Any woman that I have respect for has a VOICE! She has an opinion on something. She speaks.

And this goes beyond stupid fairy tales (which I have TONS of problems with), I have realized that I enjoy surrounding myself with people that stand up for themselves and have a voice. I spent a lot of my life trying to be everything for everyone else, and for all intents and purposes, I had no voice. However, I have worked REALLY hard over the past few years to develop and explore my voice. And I enjoy people who have done the same. I don't care if a person's opinions are the complete opposite of mine, I just respect people who have some sort of an opinion and voice.