One of the tools of these stories is the magic workers’ book of spells. Known by many names, a Grimoire, The Book of Shadows, The Book of Naming, The Key of Solomon, and many other titles. The book is always a collection of spells, incantations, potions, and talismans that the practicing witch can use to work the magic. The books are revered and protected and are always considered a source of great power. It would be laughable in our modern age to actually attribute any real power to these tools of fiction.

It is also an unfortunate fact of life that for some, it is not a joke.

The modern practitioners of magic are generally, quiet subdued, and practice for themselves. They do not stand out in public casting spells, and they keep their magic and beliefs private. They may hold public ceremonies at certain holidays as a demonstration of alternate beliefs, but in all the modern-day witches, Wiccan, druids, or pagans live quiet lives of personal contemplation. But there are some that cannot seem to help themselves when it comes to publicly casting spells. And they can really get on your nerves.

They will not call it witchcraft, of course. That is after all evil, of the devil, and leads straight to hell. As you can probably tell I’m referring to the 21st century’s accepted form of witchcraft, Apologetics. And in my predominately theistic country, these hucksters make an awful lot of tax-free money doing one of the very activities they condemn. Christian or Muslim makes no difference. The Apologists for both are just as crafty.

Consider the following; a witch recites a spell to convince a king to end a war. An Apologist recites verses from their sacred text to convince a president to end a medical practice they don’t like. Both believe in what they cite, both are convinced of the power of their magic words. Yet, the first is from a fictional story, the second happens every day in the United States. It would be hilariously funny if it was not so damn pathetic. And the fact that the second scenario has actually happened, makes it that much more dangerous.

American Christians are obsessed with wielding power over others. Many firmly believe that they are in a full-blown war of good versus evil. They want the magic, they want to be special and they WANT THAT POWER. The Apologetics and Christian Nationalist movements in the country are more than happy to spur these people on, lie to them about their sacred book, and take whatever tax-free money they can get. And they cast their spells from the big book of fiction to justify their actions. The danger comes when the magic doesn’t work when the spells fail, and reality remains unchanged. When their incantations fail to convince others of the correct way to think, things can get ugly.

There have already been threats made by those in power, and who want power, about what they want when their magic words do not work. They have deemed it necessary that we live as they want, even if we don’t believe as they do. Go out to YouTube and search for Christian Nationalism, you’ll find them. They are not even hiding their desires and plans any longer. It is all very public, and very frightening. And they justify it with their big book of fiction and their magic spells.

Muslim Apologists are just as goofy, and deluded. Fortunately, because Islam makes up less than 1% of the US religious landscape, they don’t have any real power. But that does not stop them from casting their spells and working their magic as prescribed in their own big book of fiction. They make the same fallacious arguments, recite the same silly verses, and continue to expect that by doing so, they will change minds and reality to their will.

Both Muslim and Christian Apologists employ the same arguments to go along with their magic spells. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Teleological, Otological, Moral, Design, Fine-Tuning, or Watchmaker arguments, they all fail for exactly the same reason. Arguments are NOT evidence. When pushed to actually demonstrate their deities or supernatural claims, they cast spells and cite arguments to try and cover for their failures. Again, it would be a great joke, if it was not so pathetic. And when you point out that they ARE practicing witchcraft, the fur starts to fly.

To compare a Christian or Muslim of any stripe, to witches, Wiccans, druids, or pagans, pushes a button in them that they can only turn off by casting more spells. Even when you demonstrate that they are doing exactly what modern-day pagans, or fictional witches, are doing, they will scream and recite more of their sacred text ( magic spells ) in an attempt to change your mind or reality. They believe so strongly in their big books of fiction, that they cannot see that their actions are no different from the fictional wizard or modern witch.

Fortunately, there is a silver lining to this bad joke. Theism in the United States, and indeed around the world, is in massive decline. The numbers of followers of all major, and most minor religions are doping like stones. The Internet has been a boon to those of us who expose the silliness and failures of the magic workers. We use the power of information, discovery, data, and research to point out, loudly, that there is no magic. That their spells do not work, their big books of fiction are fiction, and they have no real power outside their vote.

We can laugh at the antics of weather witches like Kat Kerr, or “prophets” like Robyn Bullock and Hank Kunneman every time they fail. The Internet is forever, and the failures of Apologists like Frank Turek, William Lane Craig, J. Warner Wallace, Lee Strobel, Ray Comfort, Greg Koukl, and Todd Friel are recorded for posterity, and our research. So that we can always call these fakers out, by reminding them of their failures, and the powerless nature of their magic spells.

We are living in a wondrous age of information. Where science is discovering answers to questions many of us never even thought to ask. We are pushing the bounds of our knowledge further and further with each passing year. The advancements we have made as a species show that we can think, build, and discover almost beyond the limits of our imaginations. We have learned and discovered so much in the last 100 years. Imagine what we will have learned 100 years from now.

Magic is fun in books and movies. We have no need for it in reality. Don’t let the pious cast their spells without guilt. They need to be laughed at and reminded that if they cannot demonstrate their claims, then their big book of fiction has no power over reality or minds.

Tell them it is time to grow up.

On April 4th, 2023, I thought it was just another work day. I had a ticket to take care of that night, and it had been a relatively good day at the office. My GIRD was acting up but I thought nothing about it. That was my first mistake. I have had bad GIRD flare-ups before, but this one would take a turn for the worse. By 5 pm I was in serious trouble.

My second mistake, I called my wife. I was not thinking clearly. Thinking became very hard for me. I had never in my life experienced such pain. During my Coast Guard years, I suffered hypothermia a few times. I thought the pain of warming up from that was the worst you could feel. I was wrong. If nerve endings starting to feel again was a 10, this cranked it up past 500. My wife made the call, and the boys in the big red trucks were at my door in just a few minutes.

My wife arrived home a few minutes after the fire department. When she asked what was wrong, they told her, “It looks like a problem with his heart.” Less than 15 minutes later I was wheeled into the ER where it was confirmed, I was in the middle of a massive heart attack. My brain screamed that I could not be having a heart attack.

See, I had been to a cardiologist in November of 2022. They ran every test and took every reading required for a full cardiac check-up. I was given a 100% clean bill of health. I had a pristine heart. So, how in the hell could I be having a heart attack?

Well, it happens. I lay there in the ER as they prepped the cardiac catheterization lab, and tried to reach my cardiologist. During that time the doctors kept pumping me full of morphine and fentanyl. There may have been a few more drugs in that mix, but I don’t remember. All I know is I was HIGH. Yet still in agonizing pain. When they finally pumped me full of drugs enough to where it looked like I was doing better, a nurse asked me, “What’s your pain level now?”

My reply was, “I know I’m still in pain, but I don’t care. So make it a 2 or 3.”

Then they took me to the cath lab. I remember a nice male nurse saying, “I’m going to shave you now sir.” Manscaping, such a new experience. The next thing I remember is feeling a jarring pain, sitting up on the table, and saying to those around me, “DON’T DO THAT AGAIN!” The next thing I knew, I was in the ICU, my wife sitting near the bed, and a nurse watching me.

I called my wife by her name and watched her start to cry. The nurse said, “That is exactly what we want to hear,” and she left the room. I was still high, but the massive pain was gone. My wife was crying because she realized I would live. That is when she informed me that the doctors had to restart my heart 3 times during the procedure. After they were done and moving me to the ICU, the lead surgeon told my wife that April 4th was the day I was supposed to die. It was that bad.

Oddly enough, that was exactly 40 years to the day after my mother died. (Not this time, bitch)

Now I’m almost 5 months past the event. On September 1st I will end my cardiac rehab. I will be returning to my office shortly after that. My manager and co-workers have been very accommodating and encouraging during this time. And now, I have finally found the time and motivation to write again. I have a story to finish, documentation to write, and a loving wife who would like me to spend more time with her as her husband, not her charge.

It has been painful coming back. Physically I have had to work very hard to get my heart back in shape. They put 2 stents in the blocked artery and we are treating the other one with drugs. Hopefully, I will not need more stents. Psychologically and emotionally, it is going to take time for me to really come to terms with what happened. But for now, I am alive. Everything else is negotiable.

So, I’m finding time to write, to live, and to be myself again. I’ve learned a great many lessons from this little adventure. Despite all we do in the pursuit of health, we can crash at any given moment. That is what is making my life so much more precious to me now. April 4, 2023, was almost my last day.

Time to find time to pack as much living into my days as possible. (And get my stories done)

Being a resident of one of the nosiest states in the mid-terms, and a state that EVERYBODY was looking to as if we were somehow the answer to both sides' problems, I’m disappointed. I knew it would happen, it always does. Mid-term elections are the bastard step-children of the election process. Turnout is always low, and generally, no one pays attention to the mid-terms anyway. It has always been a problem, and most likely will always be a problem. But this time, a lot hung in the balance, and Arizonans failed miserably to step up and really show intuitive and civic responsibility.

With 100% of the precincts reporting, the number of ballots is in. There are currently, according to the Secretary of State office, 4,143,929 registered voters in this state. 2,307,807 voted. Or, 55.69% of the registered voters in this state bothered to actually vote. That is SICK. It is a pathetic number and an embarrassment to our state.

The country was watching us, and this is the best we could do?

Sure, Mark Kelly is still our senator, thank goodness. Sure, it looks like Kari Lake will NOT be our governor, thank goodness. And thank goodness Mark Finchem will NOT be our Secretary of State. But these races and others still being looked at were far too close for comfort. Kathy Hoffman running for Superintendent of Public Instruction, you know, the schools, is ahead of the GOP crackpot by just over 8000 votes. This is too close for a position that has the power to decide what YOUR children are going to learn. And if Tom Horne were to win, your children would be learning lies and revisionist history.

I do not care what your excuse is. I do not care that morons dressed in camo and carrying guns were watching drop boxes. I do not care that the media, YouTube, Facebook, and whatever other social media sites you visit filled your head with tapioca and told you it wasn’t worth it. You, YES YOU, have a civic duty to keep this country from failing. YOU are the people in the preamble of The Constitution where it says, “We The People, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility. Provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty, to ourselves and our posterity. Do ordain and establish this Constitution for The United States of America.”

Yes, YOU are the people that carry that responsibility. The 2 million odd registered voters of the state of Arizona couldn’t be bothered to even mail in a ballot. The rest of us did what we had to do in order to make sure that the fascist, theocracy-dreaming liars did not get into power. But we really could have used your help. This is not a joke, this is not something you can just blow off and then bitch about later. YOU have an obligation to protect the democracy that we all live in. For yourself, your children, and your grandchildren. And yet you couldn’t be bothered. More than 2 million of you were too damn lazy to even give a damn about your state and your country.

You need to do better. You need to give a damn. I don’t care who you vote for. I don’t care if you are a Democrat, Republican, Independent, Green, Communist, or UFOist. I don’t care what your political leanings are, or what you think about January 6th, 2021. I care that YOU VOTE. We, the registered voters of the state of Arizona, are supposed to be an example for the younger generation that will one day be of age to vote.

That is if elections are still free and fair when those children turn 18. That is the burden you carry. Start acting like it.

America, you are in trouble and you do not see it. This trouble has been coming for a long time, starting in the early 1980s. You did not see it then; now the problem has deep roots and will be very hard to solve. We are on a march. A march that will lead to the total and complete loss of our way of life. The United States of America is on a march toward theocracy. And if you think that is a good thing, you are a domestic enemy of the Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution, which is THE document that actually established the United States, not The Declaration of Independence, is a secular document. Nowhere in it will you read the words, “Jesus”, “bible”, “Christianity”, “church”, or “god”. Despite the claims of many pseudo-historians, the founding document of law in the United States is a wholly secular, non-religious document. In fact, Article Six of the Constitution prohibits any religious tests for holding public office:

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

This is the only place in the Constitution where you will find the word “religious”. The First Amendment was added AFTER the Constitution was ratified by the states. The Constitution was ratified on June 21, 1788, and the Bill of Rights, with the First Amendment, was adopted as part of the Constitution on December 15, 1791. So when I say the “no religious test” in Article Six was the only place you would see the word religious in the Constitution, that is a factual statement. The Bill of Rights is separated from the Constitution by three years.

The point is, THE UNITED STATES IS A SECULAR NATION! Yes, because of the First Amendment we have people of all different faiths, and no faith, living and working in this country. The founders knew that mixing religion with government is a bad idea. They made sure that the rule of law in the United States was free from the entanglements of religious dogma with civil law.

So, what happened?

This is what happened:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH1e0xxRRbk&ab_channel=lifetodaytv

And look who is sitting right there, soaking it all in. Ronald Reagan became president because the Radical Religious Reich pushed their way into the Republican Party. It started with Richard Nixon and his “Southern Strategy”, and it worked. Once the RRR had a grip on the GOP, all bets were off. Other big-name Liars for Jesus joined in the march. And as that march grew, more would join.

Jerry Falwell Sr. and his “Moral Majority”, which was neither. Pat Roberson, and his “Christian Coalition of America”. James Dobson started “Focus on the Family”, which does not and will not actually focus on families. James Dobson also formed the wrongly named, “Family Research Council” in 1981, a group that has done more to damage rights and civil liberties in this country than most others. And the list goes on. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a whole list of RRR organizations and groups that are hell-bent on one goal, theocracy in America.

The goal is simple actually, using the power of Republicans in office, force religious laws and edicts onto the American population. Whisper in the ears of the members of the GOP what you want to be done, and they will do it. The RRR has billions in tax-free dollars on hand, and if you don’t think they are using that to keep Republicans in office, you have turned a blind eye to the problem. These groups and the churches that support them are working with the GOP every day to force their idea of a theocracy onto all of us.

The empirical evidence of how successful they are happened in June 2022 when the Supreme Court of the United States decided that government knows better than people what should happen to YOUR body. And make no mistake about it, the overturning of Roe v Wade has more far-reaching implications than just a women’s right to choose what happens inside her body. The march toward theocracy has gained steam, is moving faster, and it is about to run you over.

They won’t stop at Roe, not by a long shot. The RRR is coming for your other very personal rights. At this moment, various factions of the RRR are moving to once again remove your right to marry whomever you wish. They are working hard to force THEIR religion onto YOUR kids in the schools. The tax dollars you pay both local and federally are already being reallocated to support religious education that indoctrinates other people’s children, and takes money away from the public school systems, thereby weakening our public education even further.

And their intrusion into your bedroom and doctor’s office is only just starting. Roe was the first step, soon, all family planning options will be illegal. They are coming for The Pill, all of them. They don’t want you to be able to buy condoms. And the whole concept of “death with dignity”, being able to decide when and how you die if you are suffering, forget it. They won’t let you make that choice. A theocracy has only one goal, control of the masses.

George Orwell and Margaret Atwood are wonderful writers. The problem is, we’ve forgotten that “1984”, and “A Handmaid's Tale” were written as warnings, not how-to manuals. Make no mistake, if we do nothing, we will have no control over our own lives. If we sit back and simply watch, our rights, liberties, and freedoms will be curtailed and removed. Do not kid yourself. The Radical Religious Reich in all its various forms is very dangerous to the rule of law in the United States.

And now, with the rise of their foot soldiers in the likes of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Patriot Front, The Three Percent, and all the other anti-government, white nationalist, “militias” that have popped up ever since Barack Obama won the White House, the RRR has an army. Most of these white nationalist groups are also Christian nationalists. They believe fully in the lie that the United States was “founded on Judeo-Christian values”. That we are a Christian Nation and should be ruled by the laws in the Bible, (a book none of them have ever actually read).

Make no mistake about it, The Radical Religious Reich is organized, well funded, well-placed, and now, armed. They will continue to push forward in the march toward theocracy. They see no reason to stop now. They have Congress because they know the Democrats will basically do only the minimal work they need to. We currently have a weak president in Joe Biden. And they have the Supreme Court. The plans they made back in the 1980s and the work they started then have all come to pass. They are on the move, and all that stands in their way are the people of the United States.

Are you scared yet?

Are you terrified of what they will take away from you next?

We have a chance, a very slim chance, to stop the march. But it will take all of us working together. We can no longer be silent observers laughing at the absurdities of the clowns on the right. Those clowns have power, we gave it to them. Now, it is up to us to take that power away from them. And we must do much more than just vote them out. We must expose them for what they are.

Call them out. When they do or say something that is harmful to the good of society, call them out. Demand that they demonstrate their actions are actually able to enhance well-being and reduce suffering. When they get all “well the bible says”, shut them down. Remind them that the bible is a book and NOT the rule of law in the United States. For every Bible verse they quote, quote an article of the Constitution. Learn what our founding legal document says, and use it against them. Ridicule them for their belief in a mythical deity, and force them to recognize the lies they have been told. Take every legal way possible to force the issue that you will not be a part of their theocracy.

Do this, and we may have a chance to stop this march toward theocracy. Ignore the warning signs at your own peril. They are coming for your rights and liberties, even if you do not see it now, they are coming.

What are you going to do to stop it?

So you can imagine my heartbreak when I look around the IT-sphere today, and everything has become a specialty. What used to take a team of 2–3 people to manage, now requires teams of 35–50 people, and each one of them lives in their own little world that they refuse to venture out of, and no one is allowed into. And worst of all, the glut of middle management that work feverishly every day to justify their existence in the company, by micro-managing the IT staff into padded rooms. I would retire, but for some reason, I just cannot seem to let go of my passion for technology. (And no, the doctor assures me I am perfectly normal. The inflatable furniture is for the safety of those other people on my team)

As an example, the very large financial institution that I currently work for decided at the first of the year that they want to make some changes. The first is the ticket/request system. Second, the HR database and associated systems. And last, implement Agile. There is a rather derogatory word for this, a word that starts with cluster and ends in something that rhymes with truck. If you have spent any time in IT, (30 days or less), you will know exactly what kind of problems these kinds of changes can create. Throw in the demand for 5 new priority ONE projects, (they are always priority ONE), and you can get a pretty good idea of what this year has started out like.

I have just been tossed feet first into a new, Priority ONE, ETL project. For those of you that do not understand that acronym, ETL stands for Extract, Transform, and Load. Basically, pull data from one or more sources, make it look like some other kind of data, and load it into another source. Normally, back in ye olden days, I’d write several scripts and stored procedures, load them into the various servers and databases, write a couple of cronjobs and go home. Not. Any. More.

First, there is the team that designs what they want for a back-end database. Then, the data Subject Matter Experts have to weigh in on what data comes from where and what it should look like before being loaded. Then I have to work with the database team to get access to databases. There is also the ETL Utility Team, who I have to try to get to grant me access to the ETL servers and all the tools, drives, and storage they control. Add to this the managers of all these teams, plus my own manager, and lastly the user community that will somehow, access the finished data.

Did I mention that all of this, even for development, has to run through the ticketing system? You know, the NEW ticketing system that still does not work as advertised?

Yeah, and people wonder why folks in IT have drinking problems. And, let us not forget, we have to follow the Agile process for all of this. Every move requires a story, and every story must be in a sprint, and there are endless meetings added to the calendar for each step of the Agile process.

In fact, I spend more time doing work to support Agile than I do actually working on the projects. And all of this, in the name of streamlining the process, working smarter not harder, getting everyone involved. World peace, happiness to all, a land of lollipops and unicorn farts. In other words, welcome to the land of make-believe.

It would not be so bad if it were not for all the bureaucracy involved in every step. The fact that IT has now come to a point where if it is not beat to death in meetings, and a ticket for every time you went to the toilet, nothing gets done.

I spent 8 years in the US Coast Guard. A military organization with the goal of saving lives. Of course, you still had all the bureaucracy of the military, the masters of “hurry up and wait.” But now, I long for the days of triplicate forms and having to do a procurement request 3 times before you got someone’s attention. It was so much easier in those days; you filled out the form, handed it in, slipped into your CO’s office that night and pulled his copy from the trash can, putting it back in his in-box, and slipped a 20 to the storekeeper to make sure that your request got processed in a “timely fashion”. If I could do my job now as I did then, I’d be so productive my boss would not be able to keep up with me.

It is my firm belief that now when a company fails, it is not due to some scandal or a change in the market. Companies fail now because they try to streamline a process that has worked perfectly for more than 70 years. They want more forms, more meetings, more (Agile, Six Sigma, TQM, whatever it will be called next year), and 15 more middle managers all breathing down my neck to “hurry up and wait”.

You don’t have to worry about socialism replacing the free market in the US. Bureaucracy will kill capitalism faster than anything else. And you will only have the board to blame for that.

Theistic apologists seem to have this innate desire to tell other people what they think and believe. Check out YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or any other popular social media platform and you will find dozens of well-known, and not so well known, theists claiming that they know better than anyone else exactly what atheism is and what atheists believe. The funny part is, their claims never seem to match up to reality.

So, what is atheism?

Well, I am a writer by trade. I make my living using words. So, let’s dissect the word:

A = Not or without something

Theism = Belief and/or practices with emphases on deities and/or the supernatural

Theist = A person that practices some form of theism

It becomes pretty clear, quickly, that atheism simply means not theism. An atheist would then be a person who practices NO form of theism. THAT IS ALL! There is actually no belief involved as an atheist is not a theist, a person who practices a theism. Belief only comes into play when a person IS a theist as theism is a belief or practice with emphases on deities and/or the supernatural.

So, what did some theist say that pissed me off today?

Pretty simple, they claimed that atheism is “the belief that god does not exist.” This is ludicrous based on what the word actually means. Now, the reasons people are atheists are as varied as are the sands on the beach or clouds in the sky. The problem is, theists, do not ASK why a person is an atheist. They automatically assume that the atheist believes god does not exist. This is silly.

Asymptomatic means without symptoms, not that the asymptomatic person believes there are no symptoms. Asymmetry means without symmetry. It is not a belief that there is no symmetry. When it comes to deities, lacking belief in any of them is not atheism. If that were true, Buddhism would be atheism, as Buddhists do not believe in deities. Yet, Buddhism IS a form of theism. Atheism is simply without theism, nothing more.

Both atheism and atheist describe a lack of something, not an active belief. The failure so many apologists and theists make is the automatic assumption that if a person says they are an atheist, they are claiming a belief that something does not exist. I am an atheist because I practice no form of theism. I see no need to practice any theism, nor have the arguments used in vain attempts to convince me that I need to practice theism, convinced me of that need. And just once, I’d like a theist to actually ask me WHY I do not practice theism.

This, of course, will never happen. Apologists have a script to follow. They believe their script to be infallible and the best way to convince someone that what they are offering, everyone needs. When the apologists run into someone, that will not play along with the script, the apologist will get very frustrated and accusatory. Shortly after that, depending on what type of apologist you are talking to, the empty threats and promises to “pray for you” start flowing. This is when you know they have abandoned the script and are hoping to beat a hasty retreat.

So, a friendly piece of advice for when you run into an apologist or theist that thinks they know what is going on inside your head. Laugh. Laugh long and loud. Make sure that you get the point across that their attempt to read your mind is one of the funniest events to happen to you that day. And when they ask why you are laughing, inform them that they have no idea what you think, what you believe, and what goes on inside your head.

And, if the day ever comes when a theist actually asks you why you are an atheist. Smile and tell them truthfully, “because I am NOT A THEIST.” When they ask you what you mean by that, open up on them with every reason you have for why you are not convinced to be a practicing theist. Do not let them dictate the script.

And do not let them define what you are. That is your job, for yourself.