The former shouldn’t be surprising — a huge fraction of young people don’t even remember what religion they’re supposed to be and simply say “spiritual but not religious,” which inadvertently tricks their mates-to-be into believing that they’ve found someone compatible. (“Why, I’m also spiritual but not religious! What are the odds?”)

The second shouldn’t be surprising either. Once they get married and are forced to affiliate with a church (or synagogue, or mosque, or Hindu temple, or Mormon temple, or Scientology Celebrity Center), they have to start grappling with the fact that they believe horrifically incompatible things:

When Joseph Reyes and Rebecca Shapiro got married in 2004, they had a Jewish wedding ceremony. He was Catholic but converted to Judaism after they married, and they agreed to raise any children in the Jewish faith. However, after their daughter Ela was born, Reyes began to worry about the fact that she had not been baptized. “If, God forbid, something happened to her, she wouldn’t be in heaven,” he told me.

Naturally, this led to divorce proceedings and a hilarious legal battle involving photographs of secret baptisms, judge’s orders prohibiting exposure to non-Judaic religions, and lawyers insisting that there aren’t any “sharp lines between Judaism and Christianity.”

Now, if I were the one writing the article, it probably would have occurred to me to ask, “why would someone who believes that the unbaptized don’t go to heaven be willing to convert to Judaism? Why would he agree to raise his daughter in a manner that (according to his worldview) ensured her damnation? What sort of devil’s hold did this Shapiro girl have on him?”

Because this is an interesting question. If my girlfriend believes that the world is coming to an end in 2012 and that we should be hunkering down in the backwoods of Montana with lots of guns and gold and groceries and learning to generate our own electricity and grind our own flour and live off-the-grid (don’t tell her I told you she thinks that!), then if I don’t want to move to Montana I shouldn’t marry her. This has nothing to do with religion, it’s pure common sense (but I repeat myself).

This tension between “religion doesn’t matter to me” and “religion is very important to me” is something you see in a lot of people, and I found myself wishing that the article had dug deeper into this topic, which is a lot more interesting than dating advice from Lee Strobel.

I should confess that in the past I actually have dated religious people, and that most conflicts (e.g. “can you stop leaving your E-meter on the kitchen table?”) were pretty simple to resolve. Nonetheless, there were never any kids (or Kid-E-meters) involved, and things typically went awry as soon as the girls realized that my references to “your imaginary friend” and “your stone-age beliefs” and “that moronic house of morons that you and all those other morons go to every Sunday” weren’t intended affectionately.

You see, thanks to a combination of disingenuous Mayans, misunderstandings involving the Temples of Syrinx, the teachings of self-styled “gurus” like “the guy who killed all those people in a sweat lodge to unleash their ‘inner warriors,’” and John Cusack, people have started believing that the world is about to end. To disabuse them of this idea, we put together a Frequently Asked Questions about the “Mayan Prophecy of 2012.”

Unfortunately, an overzealous editor took some of the vim out of our answers (most of my drafts included the word “moron”), and the whole page now reads more like it was written by the government than by NASA. Nonetheless, this is a pretty awesome thing for NASA to be working on, and it certainly beats the hell out their standard fare of “adding a spare bedroom to the International Space Station” and “putting a chimp on the moon” and “forcing Howard Stern to move his show to satellite radio.”

Thanks to the success of this “2012″ project, I’m hopeful that we’ll soon get the go-ahead to use NASA to debunk other religious beliefs.

Mormonism:

Q: Is there a planet or star called Kolob that is closest to where god lives?

A: Kolob, like the rest of Mormonism, is a hoax perpetrated by Joseph Smith. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Kolob was real, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist.

Scientology:

Q: Was there an interplanetary nation called Helatrobus that existed around 40 trillion years ago, and that implanted the Gorilla Goals?

A: What are you, a moron?

Hellenism:

Q: Is there a “Counter-Earth” that was placed between our planet and the fiery hearth at the center of the universe in order to prevent us from seeing Zeus’s throne?

A: Yes, there are things in space that were put there in order to prevent us from seeing “Zeus’s throne.” Also, babies come from the cabbage patch, and if you put a tooth under your pillow a “fairy” will come at night and bring you a shiny new quarter!

Judeo-Christianity:

Q: How do our spaceships not crash into the solid vault of heaven?

A: If I say “magic,” will you promise not to ask any more questions?

And if these end up being popular, I’m sure I’ll get permission for my “Peace Corps FAQ on Islam” series.

Of course, around these parts every day is Blasphemy Day, so today we’re actually focused on celebrating the anniversary of when a thetan was reborn as Jenna Elfman.

Nonetheless, we like to think that we have some expertise in things blasphemous. In that spirit [ha!], here are some celebratory tips:

• participate in the CFI’s contest to come up with the best 20-word-or-less blasphemy. I am unable to write succinctly enough to participate; therefore, you are welcome to my idea of rhyming “Medina” and “vagina.” If you are less strict about your rhymes, “Jesus” and “penis” could work too. Let me know if you come up with anything good.

  There’s also some sort of essay contest for college students, which I am unfortunately too old to enter. Based on my hazy recollections of college, I’m pretty sure a good strategy would involve writing about Ayn Rand.

• give gift copies of Your Religion Is False, the Official Book of Blasphemy Day. (Note: not actually associated with Blasphemy Day.)
• using the internet (or any other computer network), download your favorite slashfic (I myself am partial to Dumbledore/Snape pairings), recast it into a first-person narrative, and “confess” it to a priest.
• create some B.C. cartoons featuring Mohammed. This is doubly blasphemous! Also, as they are “B.C.” cartoons, there’s no need to make them funny. Perhaps Mohammed could be climbing a mountain to ask a question of some wise ascetic, like “oh, great guru, at what age should I deflower my child bride?” The guru could then come back with a pithy retort, which you can write yourself. I’m not going to do all your work for you!
• aerosol cheese + Most Precious Body of Christ = yummy! (Also, fruit + sugar + Blood of Christ makes for a refreshing, linguistically-authentic sangria.)
• rent a hot dog cart and set up shop right outside a Hindu temple. Offer special prices on the “100% all-beef Brahmin Dog.” As there might be Buddhists hanging around, you should also stiff your customers and use the “change comes from within” joke.
• make “Jesus is coming, so” jokes on Twitter. Suggested punch lines include “look busy,” “close your eyes and open your mouth,” “grab a towel,” “tell the cameraman to zoom in on her face,” and “don’t be surprised if you feel a burning sensation. That’s normal. Totally normal. We promise. Mention this to anyone and you’re dead!”

Above all, make sure to have fun!

• carbon dioxide
• third-world “kleptocrats” trying to usher in a “New International Economic Order”
• cow farts
• Marxism
• meat-eating
• Swiss prayers
• sunspots
• the earth’s increasingly-hot molten core
• nothing
• the Industrial Revolution
• government funding for studying global warming
• power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might, looking to disguise their influence

And now, noted climatologist Benedict XVI has proposed a new theory: religious disbelief:

In fact, “when ‘human ecology’ is respected in society, environmental ecology also benefits.” Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where is existence is denied? If the human creature’s relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the “final authority,” and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.

Of course, this theory is as nonsensical as all the previous ones. If anything, the non-religious are more environmentally responsible, because they don’t have to participate in earth-destroying religious rituals!

How many greenhouse gases do traditional open-air Hindu funeral pyres emit? Where is Greenpeace standing up against ritual animal sacrifice? Why haven’t Catholics retooled the sacrament of Anointing in order to lessen our dependence on oil? How many resources could be saved if the Hajj was held via teleconference? What about Zoroastrian Fire Temples? All the trees that are chopped down to make Shinto Ema? The precious fertile topsoil eaten by Juche practitioners. The paper wasted by Scientologists to artificially keep Dianetics on the bestseller list?

Not to mention the filthy polluting smoke used as part of every papal election? If that’s not an “inconsiderate use of creation,” I don’t know what is!

And probably you wondered why there were no Protestant mutual funds. Well, a couple of Oklahomans had the same idea, and are launching ETFs to capture that unaddressed demand:

FaithShares Trust, established by Tom Phillips and Garrett Stevens, will offer shares of exchange traded funds based on indexes that track recommendations of organizations representing Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist and nondenominational Christian groups. The funds will include large-cap stocks, excluding those that conflict with core beliefs of the various denominations.

Do the doctrinal differences between the various groups suggest substantially different investment strategies? Apparently so:

For instance, the index designed for Baptists will invest no money in companies that produce alcohol of any kind, Phillips said. For Catholics, companies that make beer and wine are allowed, but not those that produce distilled alcohol, he said. The Methodist fund will not invest in any company that produces more than 10 percent of its revenue through alcohol production.

This reflects, of course, the Methodist teaching that god doesn’t want you to earn more than 10% of your income in alcohol-related activities (for instance, bartending, stripping, and long-haul truck driving).

If you look through the prospectus, you can tease out other denominational variations as well. For instance, Baptists are adamantly opposed to “defense,” Catholics like to invest in “human dignity,” Lutherans don’t want their money going toward nuclear weapons (though biological and chemical are presumably OK), Methodists look to invest in companies that “nurture community,” and non-denominational Christians refuse to make money off “anti-personnel land mines.” (I assume pro-personnel land mines remain acceptable.)

The problem is that pretty much every conceivable stock pick is offensive to some religion or another. Scientologists don’t want to invest in companies that provide mental health benefits to their employees. Jains won’t invest in companies that make mousetraps or flyswatters or those cool blue electric bug zappers that hang in the mess hall at summer camp. Deists won’t invest in companies whose founders take an ongoing role in management.

That’s why, just to be safe, I’ve got my portfolio 25% in gold, 25% in canned vegetables, 25% in Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and 25% in Beanie Babies. Although now I’m starting to wonder if hanging on to that mint condition Forky the Devil is such a good idea.

Unfortunately, once I clicked through I discovered that they simply allowed two local religious leaders to give insipid stock answers for a few paragraphs each.

First we have Reverend Fran Cary:

I do not believe that God has allowed evil to succeed. Many will disagree with me when they think of the likes of our current economic crisis and crime rates. I will concede that evil does hold a major place in our world today; however, what we see now will not always be.

We can sum this answer up as “the Bible says things are going to get better in the future, therefore evil has not technically ‘succeeded’.”

This is a clever trick that I hope to use in my own life:

SYDNEY
Why do you treat me so terribly?

JOEL
In the future I’m going to treat you better, therefore I don’t actually treat you terribly.

For an alternative point of view, we visit Rabbi Mark Levin:

Knowing the divine mind is always tricky business. If we primarily know what God is not (via negative), then how can we possibly claim to understand God’s purposes for creation?

[...]

God, who witnesses the big picture over centuries rather than our limited time and space perspective, understands how justice plays out when we do not.

We can sum up this answer as “Evil doesn’t succeed, it only seems like it does, mostly because of your poor cognitive skills.”

This is also a clever trick:

BOSSMAN
Your report doesn’t even make sense!

JOEL
It makes complete sense! You just don’t understand it because of your limited time and space perspective.

It’s too bad that they didn’t ask the question to a broader variety of faith traditions, as it would have been more enjoyable reading answers like “because people aren’t sufficiently diligent about exorcising their body thetans” and “because naturally-occurring emotions like pain and anger inexorably lead to Bogan, the dark side of the Force,” and “because you didn’t sacrifice enough goats.”

Maybe I’ll write a letter to the editor. (“As a practicing Jedi, I’m quite disappointed in your latest column…”)

One of the central tenets of the health care legislation under construction on Capitol Hill is a mandate that every American be protected by some kind of medical insurance. There’s one exception to the mandate, though: people opposed to buying health coverage for religious reasons.

Whether you’re a Scientologist who thinks that a good beating at the hands of David Miscavige is all the healing you need, a Jain who considers bacteria-killing antibiotics an affront to the teachings of Mahavir, or a New Age weirdo who prefers the non-insurance-covered medical art of shamanic healing; this is your one chance to speak up.

And if those faiths are too farfetched, why not start your own? If a treasure hunter and a Klutz and the “wickedest man in the world” could all do it, then surely you can too. Except that they‘ve anticipated that move:

To get the exemption, taxpayers must provide evidence they are members of a qualifying sect that has been in existence continuously since 1950.

Why 1950? Possibly to commemorate the creation of Beetle Bailey or maybe the birth of Billy Ocean, or perhaps even the Jayuya Uprising. Or maybe just to screw you out of your clever “religious” excuse.

And if that arbitary deadline makes you unhappy, just imagine how the Scientologists must feel!

Argument for:

hit song “Blood on the Dance Floor” violates JeWit interpretation of Acts 15:28-29

Argument against:

kicked out in 1987 for “suggestive dance, dress, and grooming”

Muslim Hell

Argument for:

inclusion of Mohammed caricature on Off the Wall album liner

Argument against:

professed Shahadah at Toto keyboardist Steve Porcaro‘s house in 1998

Jewish Hell

Argument for:

followed heretic “Kosher Sex” teachings of Shmuley Boteach

Argument against:

Judaism doesn’t really have a hell

Scientology Hell

Argument for:

failed marriage to Lisa Marie Presley

Argument against:

history of OT-VIII-caliber insanity

Catholic Hell

Argument for:

boy-touching

Argument against:

boy-touching

Now, there wouldn’t be confusion if there weren’t similarities. Both involve lots of Latin buzzwords. Both are very unpopular with Scientologists. Both require you to tell your secrets to some weirdo in a dark room. And both present the danger that the weirdo will take advantage of those secrets to touch you inappropriately.

Nonetheless, as the Vatican points out, there are important differences:

Keep them straight, kids!

Ever since 2006, when Muslims worldwide rioted over newspaper cartoons picturing the prophet Muhammad, Western countries, too, have been prosecuting more individuals for criticizing religion. The “Free World,” it appears, may be losing faith in free speech.

We can probably thank Tom Cruise for this one:

British citizens can be arrested and prosecuted under the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act, which makes it a crime to “abuse” religion. In 2008, a 15-year-old boy was arrested for holding up a sign reading “Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult” outside the organization’s London headquarters. Earlier this year, the British police issued a public warning that insulting Scientology would now be treated as a crime.

But more often it’s the Muslims:

Under an Austrian law criminalizing “degradation of religious doctrines,” the 51-year-old politician was sentenced in January to a fine of 24,000 euros ($31,000) and a three-month suspended prison term.

And also the Muslims:

In May 2008, Dutch prosecutors arrested cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot for insulting Christians and Muslims with a cartoon that caricatured a Christian fundamentalist and a Muslim fundamentalist as zombies who meet at an anti-gay rally and want to marry.

And occasionally it’s the Muslims:

And in India, authorities arrested the editor and publisher of the newspaper the Statesman for running an article by British journalist Johann Hari in which he wrote, “I don’t respect the idea that we should follow a ‘Prophet’ who at the age of 53 had sex with a 9-year-old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn’t follow him.” In India, it is a crime to “outrage religious feelings.”

If there is an upside to all this, it’s that maybe I’ll get to meet Brigitte Bardot.