At Mother’s breakfast table we were always encouraged to talk about stuff. That was a given. It was how families operated in the 60’s and 70’s. Mom and Dad not only listened to the mindless drivel coming out of the childish mouths of me, my two sisters, and my stinky little brother, but they also tended to hold forth about things they wished to teach us. We learned Methodist-Church-flavored Christianity and Eisenhower-Republican values. Ike had been president when I was born and got most of the credit for the post-war boom in the economy. We were middle-class people with solid middle-class values.
And then I had the bad sense to grow up and start thinking for myself. Nixon had let me down big-time when I was in high school. I had defended him against my McGovern-leaning loony liberal friends. My best friend was a preacher’s kid, a Methodist preacher’s kid. His father actually believed in progressive nonsense about sex-education for children and helping to feed the poor. And then Nixon turned out to be a liar, a coverer-upper, a cheat, and a bad-word-user. I suspect, though my Dad never admitted it, that he may have voted for Carter over Ford. It was my first time voting, and it actually felt good to use my vote to strike back at the party that betrayed my trust.
Religion, too. In the late seventies a man named Carl Sagan put on a TV show called Cosmos. The man bedazzled my father and I with Science. He taught us that every molecule of us was composed of atoms that could only have been forged in the cosmic furnaces in the centers of stars. He showed us how spectroscopy of the stars could show us what they were made of. He showed us the meaning of Einstein’s special Theory of Relativity. He pulled the universe together for us in a way that could not be undone. And he did it without calling upon the name and blessings of God. But he pointed out that we are connected to everything in the universe and everything is connected to us. To me, that seemed to define God. My religion was changing from Christianity to Saganism. Of course, Mom heard that as “paganism”. Breakfast table talking changed into early morning arguments. We didn’t exactly throw chairs at each other, but some pretty heated and pretty large ideas went flying through the air. Religion and politics became the banned topics at the breakfast table.
So that brings me to the Paffooney points for today. This blog has turned into a place where a disobedient son, a horrible sort of “free-thinker” type of radical hippie pinko goofball, can talk about the loony-liberal progressive ideas that have taken over his good-little Eisenhower-Republican little-boy mind. I spent the last post talking existentially about my religious beliefs. My conservative, old-fashioned friends and family call me an atheist now, but I truly believe in God. It’s just, I recognize the factors behind Christian myths. I bow to the wisdom of Scientists like Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Stephen Hawking… as well as hippie psychologists like Alan Watts… and literary heroes like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S, Lewis.
I am proud to be an Iowegian (a Mickian word for being from Iowa), yet my birth-State produces gawd-awful Tea Party politicians like Steve King and Joni Ernst. The stuff that comes out of their mouths doesn’t even make good fertilizer. But they are comedy gold. Will Rogers would have pointed out that the jokes will write themselves. All the humorist would have to do is consult the front page of the newspaper. I also live in Texas where the debate over secession from the United States still goes on with new Governor Greg Abbott, a man who is a Rick Perry clone, except that he hasn’t bothered to put on glasses as much to make him smarter. And Texans are looking forward to the next Republican president in 2016. Both Rick Perry and Ted Cruz are running. That doubles Texas’ chances, right? With Global Warming not being accepted as a real thing, the need for giving all our money to the Koch brothers and the Walton family being recognized by both parties in Congress, and looming war with foreign nations that have the bad sense to be “Muslim in nature”, the future looks kinda bleak. But it is a great time to be a humorist, and I am guessing I won’t be doing very much talking at the breakfast table for a while.
Catch a Falling Star 
Sunday Sermons in More Innocent Times
There are definitely tendencies in those of us who are really atheists and non-believers in our heads to look back fondly at a time when God and religion filled our childish hearts every Sunday Morning. I have been told that idiots like me with a penchant for writing humor ought not to indulge in making fun of religion and politics. But I look at modern humorists making fun of both those things with impunity and too often end up admiring their success. Because, not only does the the subject of religion provide an easy target for satire and mockery, but we can’t really keep something sacred in our porcelain and breakable human hearts for very long without making sure it is fire-tested. That’s why I intend to take a flame-thrower to it in today’s Sunday Sermon. And I don’t mean I will only make fun of belief in God, but making fun of belief in atheism as well.
Here is a piece of music that gives your heart peace that you might need to play in the background if you really plan to read this purple-paisley-prose post. It is Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, a very spiritual piece to play for peace of personhood and a pinch of paradise.
Now, of course, the first thing to acknowledge in this idiot’s Sunday sermon is the idea of God Himself.
Is there a God?
Remember, I pass the test for believing what atheists normally believe. That should disqualify me from making the following statement. But remember too, I also identified myself in this essay as an idiot. So, I will say it anyway.
There is a God, not in Heaven, but in us. There has to be. I talk to Him all the time, and He answers me. And I keep asking Him, “If you don’t exist, then how can you be answering me?”
“Well, Michael, you are an idiot. And things don’t have to make sense for you to believe them. But also, I am the part of you that never gives up on you even when you have given up on yourself.”
And I try to look as intelligent as I can as I say, “What…?”
“People, Mickey, my son, have a secret power inside of themselves that, when they are in troubled times and dire dangers, they can reach deep into their souls for it and pull it out to save themselves from the situation in the best way possible.”
“So, if people use this power correctly, say the right words and everything, they can save their lives in any situation and even live on after death?”
“I know you are an idiot, my child, but try not to be quite so idiotic all the time.”
“But people who are very religious believe in eternal life of some kind, don’t they?”
“You are not the only idiot out there, my beloved.”
“So, we don’t get eternal life for praying the right things and doing the right things and fulfilling all the elements of the Live Forever Spell?”
“There is no such thing as eternal life nor eternal torment. But you exist. And existence is eternal. There was no life before you are born, and there is no life after you die. But once you exist, you always exist, even outside of the time-frame of your mortal life.”
“That’s why I call myself a Christian Existentialist, right?”
“You are, indeed, that flavor of idiot, yes. But the Christian part means you have to adhere to Christian values. And not the ones Christian Fundamentalist idiots interpret from the Old Testament. The real ones based on choosing love over hate.”
“So, is that all I need to bring this sermon to an end?”
“Well, you should probably thank William Bouguereau for providing most of the internet images you illustrated this thing with. He died before you were born, but he still exists.”
“Thanks, Billy B. You paint lovely naked angels.”
“And you should recognize that this idiotic thing you have written is not a sermon, but, rather, a fantasy dialogue. And then stop adding more to it like a good little idiot.”
“Amen.”
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Tagged as atheism, Christianity, religion, satire