I Need to Vent

College campuses have recently been a hot-spot in the media thanks in part to Virginia Tech and other shootings or less drastic phony threats for shootings or bombings. Where there's media attention you're sure to draw wackos wanting to grab some of it for their own selfish purposes. My campus is no different. The week of the Virginia Tech shooting we were invaded by a fundamentalist group of born again Evangelical Christians, or as I like to call them "The Jesus Camp People." To make a long story short they were literally run off of my very liberal campus by a mob of angry students inciting a debate about freedom of speech and delivering the media attention that the group was looking for. To make matters worse that particular day was also the gay and lesbian day of silence and that was one of the issues that the Evangelicals were being very vocal about.

This year we already had one group of Christians with pictures of aborted fetuses that the women's center quickly responded to by standing in front of the images with umbrellas (to block the pictures). The "Repent America" group that showed up last year is scheduled to make a return next week. There's a lot of paranoia and preparation going on on both sides and any way you want to cut it it's an absolutely ridiculous waste of time. They want us to react, that's the reason they're coming. I know they're border-line retarded but I have a hard time believing they think they're going to convert one person to their hypocritical mess of a religious belief system. I don't think I need to spend any time explaining just how extreme and confused these people are. They just want to feel important, they want to feel like they belong to a greater whole and a greater good. Everyone wants to feel wanted and they enjoy the power to band together and bully people who practice things they find offensive or disgusting all the while acting as if they're the group that's being oppressed.

To them colleges are a cesspool of sin and liberalism making them feel as if they're some enlightened moral intellect in a sea of wrong-doing. If they followed what Christianity truly preaches then they wouldn't be harassing people. They're supposed to be in a religion of tolerance and forgiveness but in reality they're hateful bigots who aren't intellectual enough to question themselves. They've used circle logic to make themselves believe everything science has learned is wrong while they live comfortably in the technology driven United States leaching off the gifts of science which they do nothing but complain about. And it's not that they really, truly believe in what they're preaching either. They just want to be part of a group that makes them feel special and more important, especially important on a cosmic level. The belief comes later after they convince themselves with group think that they're the stewards of the undeniable truths of the universe. They have trouble understanding their own bible or text books not written for one of their creationist home-schooling programs so I highly doubt that.

And don't get me wrong, it's not as if atheists are any better. They've turned their hatred of religion and their own special blend of intolerance into a religion of its own. They have their own literature that they live and die by and conventions with buttons and fliers and of course they stage their own protests in front of people who don't give a flying-shit and would like to get on with their daily lives without someone telling them that God is dead every five steps. All they're doing is playing a game, out for group acceptance while getting off because they're part of a group of like minded individuals out offending people that they've all painted with the same brush. Both sides are crusading for a religion even if they don't know it or understand it themselves. They look at the whole world as being one extreme or the other because they lack the will to chose their own philosophies, instead gathering a circle of extremist friends to both form and validate their opinions on the inner workings of the universe. Nobody wins, ever.

If both sides would put this much effort into solving the world's real problems instead of waging a name-calling war like a bunch of elementary school twats then maybe they'd actually be able to help people. Nobody has the answers no matter how hard they want to believe they do. If we all started using a little common sense or at least stopped to listen what the other side has to say once in a while maybe we'd get somewhere. Even though we'd still disagree we can at least learn to respect ideas. Without our own thoughts we're not even human.