{"id":23522,"date":"2020-08-12T17:25:39","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T21:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=23522"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:42:46","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:42:46","slug":"thoughts-large-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2020\/08\/thoughts-large-70\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts @ Large: 70"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2022\u00a0 I thought I had invented a new word, charmogram<\/em>, as in, “He knew that he had said the wrong thing, so he sent her a charmogram.<\/em>”\u00a0 Sadly, Winx Club already thought of it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 I don’t know how leaders of other nations are viewed by their citizens, but when it comes to our president, Americans seem to have unrealistically high expectations.\u00a0 We are always looking to elect President Superman.\u00a0 But we usually wind up with hapless Jimmy Olsen.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 Here’s a story that has been buried by coronavirus coverage.\u00a0 On July 29, as reported in The Wire<\/a>, a 15-year-old Pakistani teen, Faisal Khan, got past three security checkpoints at a Pakistan courtroom and gunned down Tahir Naseem, a U.S. citizen arrested in 2018 for blasphemy.\u00a0 As a local cleric explained, Naseem “kept saying things like, \u2018I\u2019m a messiah or a prophet,\u2019 and that caused great trouble in our village.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khan, the shooter, has been hailed as a hero by many fellow Pakistanis.\u00a0 Lawyers across Pakistan offered to “defend Khan for free, to support what they see as the justified killing of a heretic.”\u00a0 Needless to say, I find this shocking and sad.<\/p>\n

So, how long ago did we more civilized people end our blasphemy trials?\u00a0 400 years ago? 1000 years ago?\u00a0 Try 1928…\u00a0 I don’t mean 1928 years ago but the year<\/a> 1928 in the U.S.A.\u00a0 That is when Charles Lee Smith was convicted of blasphemy in Arkansas for distributing atheist literature.\u00a0 Even better, he was not allowed to testify on his own behalf because he refused to take an oath on the Bible!<\/p>\n

We may not condone stonings in 2020, but there’s still plenty of blowback when a person says the wrong thing to the wrong person about religion (as well as many other subjects).\u00a0 Americans like to bluster about how much we cherish freedom, but far too many of us still don’t take kindly to people who don’t look like, talk like, or think like we do.\u00a0 So let’s not over-congratulate ourselves on how unlike Pakistan we are.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 I had to laugh at Trump’s recent insinuation that electing Joe Biden would “hurt God.”\u00a0 If God could be hurt by Joe Biden, he (Biden) must be more powerful than we all thought.\u00a0 Powerful enough to pre-ordain the outcome of the election, I would think.\u00a0 This suggests that God and Trump are both in trouble come November.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 In most countries, the god is elected by popular vote, not an outdated electoral college.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 As a side note, if God can be hurt, it means that God feels.\u00a0 But how can God feel or sense anything without nerves, neurons or substance?\u00a0 I suggest that God — at least the popular conception thereof — requires far more explaining than how nothing became something.\u00a0 There you have it, my gender-free atheist thoughts for this year.\u00a0 No stoning please.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 I have seen many red skies in the morning and never once has the warning come true.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 Boomer Mystery Quiz: In the 1966 song “No Milk Today<\/a>” by Herman’s Hermits (lyrics by Graham Gouldman), why was there no milk today?<\/p>\n