In the foreseeable future, there will probably be a lot of what appears to be "religion bashing" on my blog. Actually, I don't have anything against religion, other than it's irrational, and mere irrationality is not sufficient to rile me up enough to go around bashing it. Atheism, too, is irrational, but you won't see much "Atheism bashing" on here because empirically, atheists don't tend to use their atheism as tools for causing misery on others the way religious people tend to do. Atheists may, of course, still cause misery upon others, but the manifestation of the misery won't involve atheism, so the topic never gets brought up when I bash them.

Not all atheists are good, and not all religious people are bad. I've got a good handful of religious friends, some of whom I'll admit are much smarter than me (which is a big deal, given how arrogant I am). This post is going to be a celebration of one particular religious person: Mr. Rogers.

Mr. Rogers is famous for being the host of a children's television show. I watched it as a kid, and he seemed like a nice guy, if a bit uncool and boring. He didn't tell many jokes or have exciting plots or anything like that, so I eventually got bored with his show and went on to Sesame street, G.I. Joe, and I forget what else.

I recently read a blog post about him (I guess he died recently?), though, which said he was a presbyterian minister. I don't know how much of the post is true, but for the purpose of my post, I'm going to assume all of it is true.

Despite being an ordained Presbyterian minister, and a man of tremendous faith, Mister Rogers preached tolerance first. Whenever he was asked to castigate non-Christians or gays for their differing beliefs, he would instead face them and say, with sincerity, "God loves you just the way you are." Often this provoked ire from fundamentalists.

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When the government wanted to cut Public Television funds in 1969, the relatively unknown Mister Rogers went to Washington. Almost straight out of a Capra film, his 5-6 minute testimony on how TV had the potential to give kids hope and create more productive citizens was so simple but passionate that even the most gruff politicians were charmed. While the budget should have been cut, the funding instead jumped from $9 to $22 million. Rogers also spoke to Congress, and swayed senators into voting to allow VCR's to record television shows from the home. It was a cantankerous debate at the time, but his argument was that recording a program like his allowed working parents to sit down with their children and watch shows as a family.

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Once, on a fancy trip up to a PBS exec's house, he heard the limo driver was going to wait outside for 2 hours, so he insisted the driver come in and join them (which flustered the host). On the way back, Rogers sat up front, and when he learned that they were passing the driver's home on the way, he asked if they could stop in to meet his family. According to the driver, it was one of the best nights of his life – the house supposedly lit up when Rogers arrived, and he played jazz piano and bantered with them late into the night. Further, like with the reporters, Rogers sent him notes and kept in touch with the driver for the rest of his life.

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He got into TV because he hated TV. The first time he turned one on, he saw people angrily throwing pies in each other's faces. He immediately vowed to use the medium for better than that. Over the years he covered topics as varied as why kids shouldn't be scared of a haircut, or the bathroom drain (because you won't fit!), to divorce and war.

Sounds like a great guy.

There are good parts and bad parts to every religion I've encountered. The good parts are stuff like "Love everybody" or "don't murder people". The bad parts are like "beat up homosexuals" or "it's okay to rape women, 'cause they're second class citizens".

It perplexes me when certain (religious) people believe that one cannot have morality without religion. They seem to think that the human mind is too simple to be able to pick and choose which rules they should abide by to be a "morally good" person. What they seem to fail to realize is that they, themselves, are picking and choosing amongst rules (since many religions will have self-contradictory rules). Take the Bible, for example. It says somewhere in there (paraphrasing, of course) "Love everybody" and also "beat up homosexuals". So which is it? You can't both love everybody AND beat up homosexuals. You have to do one or the other.

So Mr. Rogers chose "Love everybody", and the bastards that I bash chose "beat up homosexuals". If the bastards justify their beating up of homosexuals by "the bible told me to", then I mention that, and it sounds like I'm bashing religion. If the bastards are atheists justify their beating up of homosexuals by "I hate homosexuals", then I don't mention religion at all, and it sounds like I never bash atheists people.

Really, I'm just bashing irrationalness. In the above example, it's irrational to justify your wrongdoings on religious texts.