#Ask the Atheist

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jim Underdown

Published: Jan 11, 2023

Ask the Atheist

Is it true the late pope was buried in multiple caskets?

R. Tarsi,

Egg Harbor, WI

No one who’s ever been to – or even seen pictures of – the Vatican should be shocked that former Pope, Benedict XVI, was buried in three (that’s right three) different coffins. St. Peter’s Basilica, with its gold accoutrements, bronze columns and doors, and priceless art is the very definition of excess, so why chintz on the pope’s funeral? Vows of poverty be damned!

[ Inside St. Peter’s ]

Jesus (had he ever lived) would have been appalled at the garishness of it all, I’m sure.

When I first heard about the triple coffins, I was incredulous. What? They’re going to chop this guy up and spread him around?! Holey moley! What kind of messed up ancient ritual is this? Are they punishing the guy for resigning before the Grim Reaper could get him? Is he finally going to get his just due for being in the Hitler Youth in the 1940s?

[ List of popes in St. Peter’s ]

I grew up Catholic for a bit and have heard plenty of their wacky ideas over the years – transubstantiation, limbo, the trinity, to name a few – but hacking a guy up seemed extreme even for the Catholic Church. They must be splitting the body up to send it on tour to raise money was one of my early thoughts.

Then I read that the coffins would be nested inside each other like those Russian Matryoshka dolls – which is a bit less gruesome but still excessive. Ok, that does make more sense… than dismemberment.

Here’s how it went.

The first box was made of cypress and, along with the pope’s body, contained bags of gold, silver, and copper coins. The cypress symbolizes humility – you know, of the guy who’s being buried in 3 caskets as a part of a multi-million dollar funeral.

I’m not making this up.

The second box was made of lead and had a skull and crossbones carved into. Ok, that’s actually kind of cool. But lead? The guy who carved the decorations into the lead will no doubt soon follow the pope to the pearly gates… or at least have some cognitive issues. I’d bet Superman sleeps in a similar sarcophagus – probably with his “S” logo on it instead of the skull and crossbones.

The third box was made of elm which evidently represents dignity, and housed the other two caskets. To reinforce the humility theme from box #1, the elm coffin was sealed with gold nails, which any carpenter – even Jesus – would tell you won’t do jack to hold it shut. Gold has terrible tensile, compressive, and yield strengths compared to a common steel nail. Not to mention they’re expensive as hell…

Each of the coffins was sealed with wax and wrapped with silk ropes. Surely the wax will keep grave robbers from all those coins. Again… tensile strength people! Are there no engineers on the Vatican payroll?

If they actually told us about the 3-casket extravaganza, what are they not telling us?

I wonder…

Was he buried in three pairs of underwear under his robes – one Jockey™, one Mormon, and one Orthodox Jewish – just hedge his bets to get into heaven? Those ought to help him get through the pearly gates, though St. Peter will ask him about the Hitler Youth thing. And God is very detail-oriented, you know.

Did each of his hands have 3 pinky rings on it – all perhaps donated by guilt-ridden Mafiosi over the years?

How many of the 135 Swiss Guards will it take to carry that heavy-ass triple load down to the catacombs?

I also wonder if the money bags made it all the way to the tomb. I sorta hope one of the workers palmed the coins before that casket got sealed up. Seems like a waste to bury perfectly good money with a guy dressed in silk and ruby slippers.

==

Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin was far less obscenely ostentatious. And the UK is actually real. For a former CEO of a corporation selling imaginary treatments for imaginary diseases, and imaginary travel to imaginary destinations...?

[bruciemilf]

Idk if you've seen this before, but I think you'd like it. In a comic, where Bruce was a teenager, his priest told him to go to confession daily because the priest believed that he would die/get murdered at any moment. Bruce believed like he was sinful, rotten, and irredeemable, so he acted like it.

It's just gshsidnsfxusnsshs. I love Teen Bruce so much. Babygirl, you're not fundamentally doomed or evil. You're just 15

HEY???????

only priests in Gotham, man. Well. And every red state.

[brucewaynehater101]

Tim finds tv tropes, Tim starts to notice some patterns popping up in his life, Tim gets genre savvy

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, Tim is now constantly comparing his life events to genres?

When he's undercover in a female persona and, during a fight scene, his dress rips, does he mutter curses under his breath about tropes?

When he notices the only way out is via air vents, does he roll his eyes?

When Red Hood continues to dance on the periphery of the Bats, does Tim mutter about "aloof allies"?

Is the TV Tropes wiki website his holy text that he scours nightly?

[frobby]

I think it would be really funny if rin was the more helpful one around his house. Like u would think rin would be the disrespectful one who always bails on housework or mass but its actually yukio who would always have an excuse not to go or forget about chores to the point that rin just does them instinctively now

[attackfish]

So I reported this asshole and IP blocked them, for their intense and blatant antisemitism, but I'm screenshotting and posting this ask because it's a perfect example of what I talked about here: [Link] on my other blog.

I am really open about being an atheist. I am of course really open about being Jewish. I frequently talk about the two in conjuction, and when I talk about Christian cultural hegemony in atheist spaces and antisemitism in atheist spaces, I am talking as a Jewish atheist. But the first thing any gentile atheist who doesn't want to think about antisemitism and Christian cultural hegemony does, is erase my atheism and paint me as the outsider religious person attacking atheists.

And the same thing happens when queer Jews bring up antisemitism in the queer community. Our queerness is erased, and it's "Oh the Jews are such bigots, attacking queer people!" Every time. Intracommunity discussions of antisemitism in communities we belong to, over and over are shut down by gentile members of those communities, painting us as outsiders and interlopers trying to atrack the community. Thank you, Nonny, for providing a perfect example.

[wrexkinghxvoc]

Benjamin Alire Saenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe // Grimes, from Oblivion // Marya Hornbacher, from Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia // Sylvia Plath, from a journal entry featured in The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath // Kaveh Akbar, from Calling a Wolf a Wolf // Euripides, from “Orestes”, An Oresteia (trans. Anne Carson)

[ave-immaculata]

fellas we're once again wrestling with imperfect vs. perfect contrition and why imperfect contrition with a firm resolution to not sin again and promptly receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation doesn't save

[t00thpasteface]

When doing it weird style, does Hawkeye describe getting railed by Mulcahy as receiving the grace of god?

YES. because he IS. hawkeye is straight up having a religious experience getting that dick (and honestly mulcahy is having one giving it too). he has no idea how to articulate whatever the fuck is going on there as a nonpracticing jew hooking up with a catholic priest, because he's sure as hell not converting and he really doesn't feel like grappling with any theological implications, but thankfully he can just slap the catch-all wastebin-taxon label of ✨agnosticism✨ on it and get right back to business.

i don't think of hawkeye as having a priest kink specficially, but i do think he's very turned on by the idea of bringing anyone out of any oppressive power structure (see also his encouragement of houlihan breaking out of her military brainwashing). he has an antiauthoritarian kink; nothing gets him going like knowing he just pried another cog out of the colonialist war machine. and so help him, he WILL get mulcahy out of the church... the only way he knows how... (by telling mulcahy he doesn't need external validation from an oppressive power structure to be worthy of love)

this ask maybe got away from me. I HAVE THOUGHTS!!

[balkanradfem]

i wanted to answer your poll about religion, but my experience doesnt really fit and its kind of fun so you get an ask.

so i was raised catholic in a catholic majority country: baptism, religious lessons, confirmation, and church every sunday.

i believed til 13/14 but i always hated going to church because i had to wake up early. and my mom would always berate me for it.

one sunday morning at 14 i was in bed and my mom told me to get up to go to church and stop being lazy. i was still sleeping so i told her "im not lazy, im an atheist" and... she told me "ok, its fine then" and she never forced me to go to mss again. what is funny is that she never went to mass again either.

now im over 30 but i still havent asked her about it. the leading theory is that she is atheist too and gave all her best to make me hate the church and catholicism xD

That is HILARIOUS, one comment from you and church was cancelled forever, for everyone?? You need to be appointed a religious authority and cancel it for everyone.

I'm sorry you had to go trough the entire religious upbringing before you finally found the magic phrase to set everyone free. I think you are the true prophet (of atheism) (I'm joking)

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Atheists like you should be gassed. Hopefully Trump goes far enough to make that legally while I disagree with Nazis on many things getting rid of scum is a good idea

Wow, that must be all that love and morality we hear religion imbues followers with.

The fact you feel totally comfortable and believe yourself to be on the higher moral ground shows how poisonous religion is.

Ladies and gentlemen, gather around and look at it. Look closely at it. This is religion. This is what it does to you. Pity it, laugh at it, remember it, take it as a cautionary tale. #ReligionNotEvenOnce

But most importantly, make no mistake that this is what is out there, what we have to contend with. And remember it when you ask yourself whether it matters if we oppose this poisonous superstitious drivel. Because this is what they promise. And when people tell you who they are, you should believe them.

What's interesting though is that you've been in my inbox before, and I both mocked and blocked you. Yet here you are stalking me again. You clearly have an obsession with me, perhaps even all atheists.

"Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite." -- Christopher Hitchens

Sounds more like you're a self-hating closet atheist. It's only a matter of time.

And people ask me why I say that religion is a mental illness. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️

P.S. Reported for making direct threats.

[captainjonnitkessler]

You know a lot of American anti-atheist sentiment derives directly from atheist organizations fighting Christian hegemony, right? Like the number one reason atheists are stereotyped as “angry evangelical atheists” isn’t because some people are annoying on reddit, it’s because atheists and atheist organizations are constantly suing cities and schools and companies to get them to stop shoving their religion in everyone’s face and people fucking hate us for it.

You would not believe how hard atheists have to fight to get city councils to stop opening meetings with Christian prayer, to stop high school sports events and graduations from including Christian imagery, to stop companies from coercing their employees into Christian prayers, to get towns to remove crosses from their town crests, to get government buildings and courthouses to take down their Christian monuments. Atheists have been fighting this fight constantly for decades.

And the reaction is always, always, incredibly vitriolic hatred and death threats from every conceivable quarter, including otherwise progressive and liberal people. I’ve seen high school students called “evil” by their own state senators for trying to get prayer removed from their public school. I’ve seen city council members get death and rape threats for giving humanist invocations in place of prayer. It is always framed as “those angry atheists trying to force their atheism on everyone else”. It is always framed as “overly sensitive atheists getting angry if anyone even mentions religion”. It is always framed as “atheists who can’t just let people live their lives”.

If atheists are vocal about fighting religious hegemony, then we’re angry bitter militant evangelical atheists. If we’re not, we’re cultural Christians who are supporting Christian hegemony. It can’t be both, so which is it?

[wombpala]

Meg and Ruby's wildly different attitudes towards Sam is wild when comes season five and we learn, oh, wait, apparently Meg is pretty religious, too! "Your god may be a deadbeat, mine walks the Earth" and all that. Ruby seeing Meg possessing Sam as profane and sacrilegious, Meg seeing it as trying to be closer to their shared god? Meg having a religious awakening only after Lucifer rises, and by virtue of having not been a believer, had no qualms about possessing Sam, and thus wound up in some ways closer to Lucifer than most demons ever got? All I'm saying is, I think there's something there, and if Supernatural didn't hate women so much multiple of them couldn't exist concurrently, we could have gotten something cool.

LITERALLY. society if women were allowed to interact with each other. I also just love the idea of sam as a catalyst for all this religious tension / object of faith. something about worship as a vector for dehumanization something about Andrei Tarkovsky "I want to do things. Stop turning me into a saint." ruby/Lucifer using sam's body for some grand meaningful preordained religious ritual versus meg just being petty and spiteful. is it more violating to be used for a Purpose or on a whim.

[murdercamelinplacesitshouldntbe]

murder camel shouldnt be seeing christmas stuff in SEPTEMBER

Cmon people its september im ok with the halloween stuff but CHRISTMAS

[ocd--culture--is]

autistic+ocd culture is switching between "im hyperfixed with religion! /pos" and "im hyperfixed with religion /neg"

[theshoesofatiredman]

“Idk call me crazy but I don't think you should worship a god who says you can't kiss someone before you're married.”

He literally didn't tho??

Same with drinking (which God didn't outlaw), and people still misread “being an alcoholic isn't that great of an idea” to start the Prohibition.

Like, what book did you read, bro?

When I was a Christian, I did not believe that you couldn't kiss before marriage. But I knew some Christians felt that way. I made this post after I had a long conversation with one such person. This person genuinely believes that not only is the kissing prohibition sound theological practice supported by scripture, but that he heard the voice of God tell him this directly. Hard to compete with that kind of revelation by asking for him to show where he gets that from the Bible.

However, perhaps a more salient point is that I'm an atheist - to me there is no existing divine revelation. God hasn't said anything. So it doesn't matter to me whether it's in the book or not, because real flesh and blood people sincerely believe it and let it impact how they live their lives. And I think those people should ask themselves if it makes sense to listen to the edicts of someone who cares so much about where they put their lips but doesn't seem to lift a finger to stop the rampant suffering and loss of life that's present the world over.

I assume from the wording of your ask that you are a Christian, in which case you are able to say: "God didn't say that." I will continue to ask: "why worship a God that says that?"

[asterdeer]

i know there are already posts about it but it's so cute how most of the companions are kind of apathetic about each other in act 1 but when elminster shows up and gives gale his ultimatum everyone is like. hold the FUCK up. his goddess sounds like shit and gale can do better. shadowheart and lae'zel have their first agreement over it and it's "wow i can't imagine what it must be like to serve a goddess who sucks so bad :/ he should leave her before he wastes himself trying to earn her favor" CAN YOU HEAR YOURSELVES. mystra's real magic was getting this crew of merry assholes (and wyll and karlach) to unite as a Save Gale Dekarios committee