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April 13, 2008
1:44 p.m.

williepitt ( no real name given ) says...

Carl, I agree with you 100%, pretty much in your whole attitude toward Christianity and other religions.

I find it intriguing that the same Gazette issue also contained a letter from one Dave Hart taking you severely to task for your anti-Christianity writings. He seems particularly exercised by thinking that you couldn't say the same about (for example) Hasidic Jews without being declared anti-Semitic.

My approach to that possibility is consistent, I think: I consider ALL religions to be myths, unworthy of belief by modern humans. I'm not against any specific religion, but all of them.

None of those loudly defending Christianity has ever proved its validity to my satisfaction. I even got some mailings of allegedly probative literature from one true believer, but everything he sent was self-serving or otherwise unconvincing.

I believe what I experience, and I gather that you do too. So far, I have experienced nothing that would make me (again) into a Christian - despite the fact that I was raised as such. And this "Bibleman" stuff is just too silly to think seriously about.

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April 13, 2008
4:44 p.m.

cstrock ( Carl Strock ) says...

I think the letter-writer asked a good question: I poke fun at Christians, why not at Jews? Please watch my column in the Daily Gazette for my answer. Coming soon .... CS

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Strock’s insight on Christianity revealing

    I read interesting columns by Carl Strock, a debunker of bogus religiosity, in your paper. With respect to religion, he insightfully explains that people should back up their claims with evidence — empirical, I assume.
    What a philosophical revelation! This very clever argument will certainly turn the religious community upside down. Maybe the religious will again bring up that silly basic tenet of mysticism that explains that God has to be seen with the “eyes of the heart.” Well we all know the heart has no eyes. Thank you, Mr. Strock; no evidence, no fact. Ground-breaking, brilliant!
    I would appreciate if your fine paper could engage the columnist’s extraordinary debunking skills to consider Judaism: A prophet parted the sea to save the Jews? Or the Islamic claim that the Koran was revealed by God and the whole book written by an illiterate prophet who directs his followers to abide by strict laws. The Koran’s writings are sometimes said to be misinterpreted when followers are encouraged to blow up buildings and kill people on the street. What a wonderful contribution it would be if Mr. Strock was able to clear up that misunderstanding of the Koran.
    Once more, I thank your paper for providing Mr. Strock with the forum for pointing out the hokum of Christianity specifically and religious beliefs in general. He makes it all very clear! Please encourage him to move on to other religions now. We all, the whole world, could use the enlightenment.
    ROBERT CARLOS
    Cohoes

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Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE
Why rag on Christians, not on Jews?
Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.

    I have been taken to task by a reader for poking fun at Christians — what the reader calls my “usual tirade” — when I don’t poke similar fun at Jews, which he says would surely get me labeled anti-Semitic if I tried it, and I have to admit he raises a good point.
    Why don’t I talk about “hokum” in the synagogue, the mosque or the Hindu temple? Why don’t I mock Jewish, Moslem or Hindu “gasbags” the same way I mock Christian “gasbags?” Surely it’s not because there is any lack of them.
    Well, here’s my defense: This great country of ours is awash in revivalist, evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity as it is not awash in any other religion.
    Organizations like the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family, which subscribe to the most primitive and exclusive of Christian doctrines, have ready access to government and are terrifically influential in guiding public policies, whether on stem-cell research, birth control or global warming.
    Plus, you can hardly drive a road in this country without seeing a billboard advertising Jesus. With bad enough luck someone will even knock on your door and urge you to believe.
    This is hardly true of Judaism or any other religion, even though Islam in its native haunts is undergoing a retrenchment more fearsome than any other so-called faith.
    Orthodox Jews, whatever the quaintness of their beliefs, don’t browbeat the rest of us into accepting those beliefs. Nobody is lobbying Congress to outlaw the mixing of meat and dairy.
    Also, the reader of any subtlety will have noticed that I use the word “Christian” in a gently ironic sense, turning it around on those zealots who appropriate it for themselves to the exclusion of more sedate Lutherans, Episcopalians and Presbyterians.
    We constantly hear about Christian this and Christian that — Christian radio, Christian rock, Christian Yellow Pages — when what is meant is not Congregational hymn-singing but fundamentalist Bible-thumping. That kind of Christianity. Up-hollow, the-Bible-is-theinfallible-word-of-God Christianity. Waiting-for-the-Rapture Christianity. I’m-going-to-heaven, you’re-going-to-hell Christianity.
    So I turn it around, and when I talk about these enthusiasts, I call them what they call themselves. I call them Christians. I do it with tongue in cheek, but they don’t get that part of it. They just hate it. How dare I make fun of Christians? they ask. Why don’t I make fun of Jews?
    But why should I make fun of Jews? It’s not comparable at all.
    I do grant: It would be in poor taste for me, as a gentile, simply because of the long and gruesome history of Jewish persecution, whereas, having been raised more or less as a Christian, I feel freer to rag on those of that persuasion.
    As for Islam, despite my support for the two Albany Muslims who were set up by the FBI, I regard the fanatical variety of that religion as even more pernicious than fundamentalist Christianity, more primitive and more neurotic, and if there were major organizations in this country lobbying Congress and the president to impose sharia and to insert the name of Allah and the Prophet into textbooks, and sending “Koranman” around to perform in strip malls, I guarantee you I would have as rich a time with them as I have with Christians.
    But it’s Christians who do those things. It’s Christians (in the aforementioned sense) who are dominant in this country, who attempt to impose their hokum on the rest of us, and that emboldens me to poke a little gentle fun at them from time to time.
    That’s my defense.

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Argue with Strock, but don’t try to censor him

    Re April 13 letter by Dave Hart, “Strock should stop disparaging Christians,” he argues that it’s wrong for Carl Strock to make disparaging comments about Christianity and singling it out from other religions in the process.
    I find it disturbing every time I read this idea. Any religion is open to criticism, even insult, in a free society because this is one major way we separate ourselves from dictatorial theocracies like Saudi Arabia or Iran.
    Strock has every right to criticize and single out any belief system he feels fit to, if indeed this is even what he is doing, and my advice to Dave Hart is to do what I do in response to disparaging statements against who I am and what I believe. Simply disagree with what they say and counter their criticisms or insults. Just because a majority of people may hold the same or similar beliefs does not make these beliefs immune to criticism, even if some remarks are not very popular. In other words, you combat disparaging remarks against your beliefs by using your right to speak out in opposition, not by telling people that they can’t express certain opinions simply because you might find them insulting. Any religion worth believing in will hold up to any criticisms on its own merit and the followers should welcome open dialogue and even scrutiny.
    If you don’t agree with what Strock says, rebut and debate and point out why his contentions are wrong. Any individual, or group of people or religious institution has the right to do this. But silencing any dissenting opinions, even ones that single out a belief system held by the majority, sets a dangerous precedence of censorship that does not live up to what the United States stands for. This is why a free society works and why people from all over the world flock to the West and not to Saudi Arabia or Iran.
    ERIC MIX
    Scotia