Here is an essay by Penn
Jillette (Pen & Teller)
entitled, "There Is No God"
(http://www.npr.org/templates
/story/story.php?storyId=5015
557).
Morning Edition, November 21,
2005 ·
I believe that there is no
God. I'm beyond atheism.
Atheism is not believing in
God. Not believing in God is
easy -- you can't prove a
negative, so there's no work
to do. You can't prove that
there isn't an elephant
inside the trunk of my car.
You sure? How about now?
Maybe he was just hiding
before. Check again. Did I
mention that my personal
heartfelt definition of the
word "elephant" includes
mystery, order, goodness,
love and a spare tire?
So, anyone with a love for
truth outside of herself has
to start with no belief in
God and then look for
evidence of God. She needs to
search for some objective
evidence of a supernatural
power. All the people I write
e-mails to often are still
stuck at this searching
stage. The atheism part is
easy.

But, this "This I Believe"
thing seems to demand
something more personal, some
leap of faith that helps one
see life's big picture, some
rules to live by. So, I'm
saying, "This I believe: I
believe there is no God."
Having taken that step, it
informs every moment of my
life. I'm not greedy. I have
love, blue skies, rainbows
and Hallmark cards, and that
has to be enough. It has to
be enough, but it's
everything in the world and
everything in the world is
plenty for me. It seems just
rude to beg the invisible for
more. Just the love of my
family that raised me and the
family I'm raising now is
enough that I don't need
heaven. I won the huge
genetic lottery and I get joy
every day.

Believing there's no God
means I can't really be
forgiven except by kindness
and faulty memories. That's
good; it makes me want to be
more thoughtful. I have to
try to treat people right the
first time around.

Believing there's no God
stops me from being
solipsistic. I can read ideas
from all different people
from all different cultures.
Without God, we can agree on
reality, and I can keep
learning where I'm wrong. We
can all keep adjusting, so we
can really communicate. I
don't travel in circles where
people say, "I have faith, I
believe this in my heart and
nothing you can say or do can
shake my faith." That's just
a long-winded religious way
to say, "shut up," or another
two words that the FCC likes
less. But all obscenity is
less insulting than, "How I
was brought up and my
imaginary friend means more
to me than anything you can
ever say or do." So,
believing there is no God
lets me be proven wrong and
that's always fun. It means
I'm learning something.
Believing there is no God
means the suffering I've seen
in my family, and indeed all
the suffering in the world,
isn't caused by an
omniscient, omnipresent,
omnipotent force that isn't
bothered to help or is just
testing us, but rather
something we all may be able
to help others with in the
future. No God means the
possibility of less suffering
in the future.

Believing there is no God
gives me more room for belief
in family, people, love,
truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O
and all the other things I
can prove and that make this
life the best life I will
ever have.

I've always admired Penn &
Teller and I can dig what
he's sayin'here but I think
his argument is vague and
confusing. Penn is notorious
for his pranks so I guess you
have to take this for what
it's worth. Let's have a
critical examination of this
essay because this is the Guard Against Santana Proliferation blog and the sole purpose is to substantiate artistic freedom and protest the dull, conformist, commercial world of Santanaganda with satire and humor.

Penn states, "Not believing
in God is easy -- you can't
prove a negative".
OK a better way of putting
this would be to say THERE
ARE NO ABSOLUTES. God may or
may not exist and there may
or may not be an elephant in
my car. PLEASE REFER TO THE
HITCH HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE
GALAXY for further analogies
of probability.
As far as proving a
'negative' I'm not sure how
to interpret this. But
consider the following:
If red is not blue and blue is not red and at least one balloon is bluethen not all balloons are red
This is called inductive
reasoning where a conclusion
can be drawn from several
facts. The statement 'not all
balloons are red' is a
negative statement at least
in syntax.
Next, Penn says that in order
to seek existence of God we
must wipe the slate clean.
"Anyone with a love for the
truth outside of herself..."
What Penn is basically saying
is that in order to find the
path to enlightnment we must
first shed the skin of all
that has been learned thus
far.
"She needs to search for some
objective evidence of a
supernatural power."
I am pretty sure that Santa
Claus doesn't exist but I
can't say 100% because I
can't prove it. Not one lung
cancer death can be directly
associated with smoking
cigarettes but common sense
tells us it is bad for our
health. I don't need
objective evidence to live my
life, to believe or
disbelieve. So what is Penn's
deal anyways?
"I have love, blue skies,
rainbows and Hallmark cards,
and that has to be enough."
"It seems just rude to beg
the invisible for more."
I get the feeling that Penn
is being a little satirical
but he raises a good point:
Why do we need to question
the existence of God? Why
can't we simply live our
lives and enjoy fruits of
nature?
Ever thought about the
possiblity of going
"unrecognized"? What if your
entire life every good deed,
every clever utterance, everyfunny joke went completely
unnoticed, well we'd feel
pretty miserable. Penn's
argument is that he is so
humble and happy with the
moment that to him-- he's
already in heaven.
But the study and celebration
of a higher power provides
our restless brains with
fortification because we are
sentient mortals and we
desperately need structure
and discipline to combat the
chaos and anonymity of
nature.
Religion or spirituality
colors our lives with
familiar places reassuring us
that we are not alone and we
are part of a greater whole.
You may think that a flower
is beautiful. Your friend's
may think that it is
beautiful but does IT know
it's beautiful?
We can't truly own anything
because we don't have the
reassurance or the objective
evidence that whatever object
of materialism recognizes our
existence. Therefore we must
organize a pretense in order
to establish precedence.
"Believing there's no God
stops me from being
solipsistic."

Had to look this one up in
the dictionary. Ok and I'm
out of time so we'll have to
finish this disussion after
Christmas.
Merry Christmas everyone...
be on the lookout for Santana
Claus!

GASP alert 12/16/2005

Today is Friday. A sad day for many as we bid farewell to Howard Stern on terrestial radio. He's leaving this world and going out to space-- The digital overworld where biological reverberations are transformed into a series of 1's and 0's and then transmitted back to 'our world' by electric pulses where a mechanical device reinterprets the pulses into audio waves which travel and crash into our brains and thru a series of small yet intense chemical explosions we form thoughts that recognize the one and only voice of Howard Stern. And people say the Matrix isn't real.
Speaking of 1's and 0's let's talk about BINARY OPPOSITION. Red state vs Blue state, Democrat vs Republican, liberal vs conservative, gay vs straight, black vs white, prochoice vs prolife, you get it right? With only a select number of choices it's easier to control people and label them so that they fit into a specific mold. That way there is no unified majority. That would be scary for the minority of ghouls that depend on controversy and hype to keep the masses opposed and at opposite ends of the sociopolitical spectrum.
People are either to scared or to lazy to create their own choices. THat's why Bush said after 9-11 "You're either with us or against us". He ultimately forced us to be the right kind of patriot or the wrong kind. THAT IS EVIL. Bush is NOT VERY BRIGHT. HE HAS writers dictate beforehand what to say to us therefore the "With us or against us" doctrination came from someone who knew perfectly well what they were doing and how to capitolize on a tragedy.
A lot of people think we have too much freedom of speech. KIds and their rap music! Up on stage grabbin my nuts! Bring on the noise! What the hell are they yellin?
It's funny how people derive their own opinions based on what they see and hear. What ever happened to listening to the little voices in your head? I'd rather be a lunatic than a host of vermin.
So Howard is gone. What about that FCC, huh? That whole Janet Jackson fiasco. What a way to get people on both sides of the line. What cacophony pile of guano. Independent radio stations like WRFL, 88.1, "All the way to the left", in Lexington KY. airs "Democracy Now" every week. One story I remember well concerning the FCC crackdown after the preverbial tit shot told how a lot of indie stations were raided and shut down because they were antiwar and anti Bush and the whole FCC mess gave them the power to do it in the bat of eye.
IF ANYONE OUT THERE IS READING THIS, I WISH I COULD DO THE RESEARCH AND FIND OUT THE DETAILS ON THIS. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT THIS WHOLE MESS PLEASE RESPOND.
Anyways, commercial radio sucks and has sucked for a very long time. Most cities have two rock stations-- one playing NEW rock and one playing CLASSIC. Once again I am FORCED to choose "1" or "0". But I choose "2" independent radio. But even that is becoming stagnant. Internet radio, MP3's, have transformed the way we get our music. Oh the humanity of it all!
I've been listening to NPR for about ten years now. They tend to be a voice for the "liberal" community and yet again they get a lot of their funding from corporations like Walmart. Go figure. Well, at least they dont SCREAM AT YOU!
It's mad, mad, mad. That's why I'm doing this here blog: Guard Against Santana Proliferation. On one hand it's a satirical statement against activism-- because I'm a total slacker who's just trying to get by-- I got no time to save millions of starving babies-- does that make me a bad person? No. I don't profess to "know it all " either. Humor is the most effective means of protest I can think of and for me, fighting the invisible evils of the material world begins with ridiculous commentaries against causes that really have no merit.
Get up stand up. Stand up for your right. Don't give up the fight.
Join the Guard. Stop Santanaganda, now.

GASP alert 11/22/2005

Greetings GASP activists and welcome to a very special Thanksgiving edition! In this edition of GASP we have blogs from some very ordinary, unsupernatural, peoples who absolutely hate Santana and what he stands for. wE HAve a new code for GASP members to learn when attending GASP rallies or when you recognize a GASP member in the SS ( Santana Sector). We also have a Santamber alert out there for tonight's American Music Awards But first a little quiz.

Is Carlos Santana...
a. A communist
b. A walking fashion statement
c. A shaman
d. An enterprising bastard who 'smoothed' his way into mainstream radio and who now is relentless in his pursuit to stain every new pop act with his 'supernatural' sound.

If you answered "a" you are wrong. Wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt at the Oscars is dumb. Wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt anywhere means you're just asking for a good ass kicking! If you answered "b" you are wrong. See above. If you answered "c", well you could be right because obviously Santana put some kind of spell on us, why else would he be so popular? But "D" is the rightest answer here. Now let us examine some blogs from real Santana haters:

Charlie Bravo at KillCastro has the whole sordid story of Santana and how he stuck up for his che tee shirt, despite the impact on his intelligence. Despite the dressing down he got from Cuban American greats on the music scene. He just sucked up harder to che. Making matters worse, he BADMOUTHED the Cuban-American community sin verguenza. Carlos Santana, you are vile. I will buy no more Santana records. Not ever.
FROM: http://www.killcastro.com/blog/2005/08/carlos-santana-rides-his-donkey-again.html ...

Bravo! I'm not a KISS fan, I don't own any of their albums, but they had a huge following for years and some great hits - what is Carlos' problem? Is he pissed because less talented musicians are popular and making money in the music biz? Carlos needs to worry more about his own music - I heard his new (boring) album a couple months ago, it sucked and he knew it... so he held back the release 3 months trying to make it into something listenable. Sorry Carlos, you failed...... rehashing the ingredients of your last two albums with special guests and not the Santana band. You really need make a SANTANA album - we haven't had one of those in quite a few years, we miss the real deal. FROM: http://guajirodreams.com/blogs/suenos.html

I DONT MISS THE REAL DEAL. THAT'S WHY I STARTED THIS PSEUDO NEWSLETTER, IN ORDER TO GIVE UNBRAINWASHED PEOPLES A CHANCE TO VENT THEIR FRUSTRATIONS AND BE HEARD!

STOP SANTANA PROPAGANDA NOW! Hey!

I just had a great idea. GASP members will now communicate in a new language when in public. Examine the following demonstrations and you will catch on:

Santana+propaganda= SANTANAGANDA + RAMADAMA

or... SANTANA+SANDANISTA= SANTANDANISTA
or... SANTANA CLAUS
or... ATLANTANA + GAMADANA

Instead of saying, "That's fantastic" say, "DAM DATA SANTANA FANATICA-- DAT'S SANTANICA."

having canned ham for the holidays? Nuh-uh. You'll be having... "SANCANA HAMAJAMA"

Ever thought of going to Montana with your girlfriend and taking some pictures with your panoramic camera? OK...

"HANDAMA MA BANDANA JAMA, GANNA MONTSANTANA-A-LAMA AND DAMA DAT SANTANAORAMA CAMA!"

OK. That pretty much wraps it up. BE WATCHING FOR A SANTANA SIGHTING ON TONIGHT'S AMA AWARDS. ORDER A SANTANA VOODOO DOLL NOW! JUST $45.95 PLUS SHIPPING AND HANDLING.

MAIL TO: DAM! DATSA DANDY SANTANA SCAMA!
1450 WOOSTER BLVD., UNIT 110 A STE 2
BEAVER CITY, PA. 15218-0014

ORDER NOW AND WE'LL SEND A COPY OF GASP NEWSLETTER TO A SOLDIER OF YOUR CHOICE IN IRAQ! WHAT AM I GETTING OUT ALL THIS? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING... EXCEPT THE $45.95.