Conversations with the religious by K.T. Ligesh
In a
May 2008 blog post,
Lxlabs owner
K.T. Ligesh described his encounter with a group of Family members in India (while he doesn't specifically state that they are Family members, his description makes it pretty obvious). The way I found this post was that on Saturday night someone exploited a bunch of
security flaws in the HyperVM software developed by Ligesh's company to wipe out data and
take down over 100000 websites (including a dozen or so web sites I was hosting on two VPSes) on servers run by
Vaserv. While it's not clear to what extent the Vaserv attack prompted his actions, shortly afterwards Ligesh
reportedly committed suicide. While waiting for my servers to come back up, I began to look into this tragic development and found Ligesh's blog posting where he talks about his awesome tatoo and his interesting conversation with Family members in India performing a skit at the mall on Christmas. His death is indeed tragic, as despite the many security flaws in his software, he seemed to be a pretty brilliant guy with some great ideas.
K.T. Ligesh wrote:
Conversations with the religious
As a rule I never discuss religion with any of my dates. It is simply impossible to have a sane discussion on religion with a guy sporting a tattoo that says �God is a fucking idiot�, and my dates recognize that. Seldom have any of my conversations veered into the realm of religion. No, it is not that all my dates are atheists. Quite the contrary, I am yet to meet a girl who can be categorically considered as an unbeliever, and I have indeed dated women who were seriously religious. In a woman, religious belief and the attendant delusions are part of the female mystery and adds to the overall charm of being a woman. I find religiously oriented males extremely creepy, however. Even Christian Fundamentalist females seldom broach the subject of religion in conversations with me. So my first encounter with some earnestly religious Jesus folks who were actively intent on proselytizing bordered on the surreal.
I stumbled on them while I was at the mall on the Christmas day where they had staged a skit on the life of Jesus. The show was pretty much amateurish and I was amused by the overtly histrionic enactment of some of the incidents in the New Testament. I was a bit surprised though. The show had semi-naked girls dancing in a very provocative manner, and was altogether a bit too ribald for something that was purportedly about Christianity, since Christianity is the only religion on this planet that has made sexual repression � especially of females � the central tenet of its dogma.
[...]
So it was quite strange to see the purposeful sensuality exuded by the females in the skit, and I later learned that these people were not mainstream Christians, but rather a cult with provenance in the Hippy culture of 1960 California, and they espoused quite unconventional notions of sexuality, that deviated not only from the Christian absurdity, but even from the mainstream society norms. Talk of irony.
Getting back to the story: there was a huge crowd, who were obviously enthralled by the performance, though I am certain that if you asked a guy in the audience who is Jesus, you would be greeted with a blank stare. But who cares about Jebus anyway. Pretty girls dancing provocatively, and it is simply impossible to not to impress the unwashed masses.
I hung around, since, given the nature of the show, my tattoo was obviously attracting attention, and I was amused by the expression of the people around there. A lot of people were glaring at me, and I am a guy who thrives on negativity, and so I was feeling quite good: I had managed to rile up a lot of idiots, and that was always good in my book.
The performers themselves had no issues with me though, and after the show ended, the Jesus girls, who were distributing some pamphlets came to me:
God loves you, you know. One of them said.
That's irrelevant. I am going to kill god.
That was something they didn't expect at all, and they retreated, shocked. But after sometime, another more determined girl came to me:
"God loves you, you know."
Hey, I already told them, god's love is irrelevant as far as I am concerned, since I am going to kill him anyway.
"Kill God? You are joking."
Heh, it is quite trivial. Where's Thor, Odin and Zeus? They are all dead. Only Yahweh and a couple of hundred of Hindu Gods are left. A god dies when people stop believing in it. When I say I am going to kill god, what I mean is that I will make it impossible for people to believe in God.
"Is that so. Did you read the Pamphlets we gave you?"
Hehe. I know everything. I have seen the entire fucking universe. I am actually omniscient. I have read the entire Bible. I have a new theory that all successful religions are based on legitimatizing rape.
"OK, if you know everything, what's my name?"
"Err. I only know what's worth knowing"
It didn't end there. Later I met some more of the same Jesus people. The conversation continued in the similar vein.
"We will pray for you."
The person who is in dire need of prayer is God and not me since He is going to get killed by me. So you should pray FOR god, and not for me. And anyway my sole ambition on this planet is to kill God, so praying for me to God would be logical contradiction, and if you do it earnestly enough, I am sure the Universe is going to disappear in a puff of logic..
As you can see, there is a good reason why I don't discuss Religion with anyone. It gets a bit too weird for comfort.