Let’s imagine I’m walking down the block and I find a wallet on the ground.  I open it up.  Inside, I see a driver’s license with an address.  The wallet also contains $5000 dollars. 

What am I going to do? 

I’m going to contact this person and return the wallet, with the money still inside.  I’m not even going to think about keeping the money for myself. 

I know this is the right thing to do.  But why?  Cause my mother taught me to do this?  What does she know?!  She used to serve me margarine with all that trans-fat rather than butter?

This is an example of the type of sh*t you think about when you go to therapy too much and you start becoming f*cked up.  

Here’s are my current thoughts on this important “wallet” matter.  If I was religious, I wouldn’t keep the money because I would be afraid of sinning.  God would see me taking the money, shaking his head in disappointment.  I might even get karma kicking me in the ass.

But I don’t believe in any of that.  If I took the money, NO ONE would know, NOTHING BAD WOULD HAPPEN TO ME, and I would have 5000 bucks to live it up in Paris for four days, drinking champagne with lanky French fashion models.

Of course, the reason I don’t take the money is that if I did, I would feel like a SCHMUCK. This feeling is not based on any scientific fact.  It is based on some religious system of morality, of right and wrong.  And a morality without any real consequences. 

You only live once.  You need to grab what you can in life.  So, who’s the bigger schmuck?  The guy who gives the money back and gets nothing in return?  Or the guy who keeps the money, goes to Paris, has a naked French model dance for him in his hotel room, writes a terrific blog post about his experience, and then wins a Pulitzer Prize for his novel “Paris on 5000 Dollars.”

Two years ago on Citizen of the Month:  Neilochka Sez:  Boycott the Fashion Industry

Note:  Sophia suggested that I take this post down since it wasn’t in the spirit of the Holidays, especially since it is the post right after the big Holiday concert.   I did take it down, and then I remembered, from past experience, that everyone will just see it on Bloglines and Google Reader anyway, and I’ll just look like a wimp.  So, I put it back up.   Proud of me?

Unlike the Queen of Spain, who enjoys a little religious controversy now and then (see her current post), I’m a lover more than a fighter.  My point here isn’t to attack any religion, especially all you nice religious Christians and Jews who just sang your hearts out for everyone to hear, but to acknowledge that everyone’s religion is sort of weird if you really sit down and think about it.   That’s why it is called “faith.”  So, I’m not sure what Mitt Romney’s Mormon religion has to do with anything.   If I’m not going to vote for him, it’s because he’s a lousy candidate, not a Mormon.

OK, here’s the mediocre post.  It was difficult coming up with a topic after the concert, because everything I came up with seemed anti-climactic.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said he considers his rival Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith a religion, not a cult, but questioned whether Mormons believe “Jesus and the devil are brothers.”

Huckabee raised the question on his own in an interview to appear in The New York Times magazine on Sunday, and ignited a new flap in the up-for-grabs race to be the Republican Party’s nominee in the November 2008 presidential election.

Clearly, Mike Huckabee, needing to jumpstart his campaign, is insinuating that Romney is not fit to be President because of Romney’s religious background. He’s just not one of us!

Am I Republican? No.

Will I vote for Mitt Romney? No.

Do I agree with Mike Huckabee? Absolutely.

The President of the United States is the most important position in the Free World. We want a rational leader, one is is not swayed by “odd” beliefs or cultish stories masquerading as the truth. Do we want a religious “Mormon” running our country, his finger on the “button.” Of course not! Just take a “tour” of the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City on the way to Park City, like I did, and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Our country requires someone logical, someone we can trust, like a Christian or Jew, a person of religion who believes in FACT — proven historical events like immaculate conception, individuals getting resurrected, angels, and entire seas magically splitting open to let thousands of people walk through to safety.

A Year Ago on Citizen of the Month: Why a Pillow is No Substitute for a Woman

Before he got the Ten Commandments, MOSES is seen coveting his neighbor’s wife.

A couple of days ago I got into a little trouble with one of my readers because the person misinterpreted something I wrote as true.  This is not the first time this has happened.  Sometimes, I stretch the point, such as when I wrote that I "slept with Tom Cruise."  Still, there are times when I want to express something personal, and I don’t want you to dismiss it by saying, "Oh, he’s just joking around."  Why am I the only one having this problem?  And then I realized why.  Most of you use those smilies (emoticons) when making an ironic or sarcastic point.   How many times have I seen a comment written to me that reads something like this:

 "Neil, you suck. Your blog sucks.  Your mother is a moron.  Your penis is smaller than Jude Law’s.  I hate your guts." 

Oh, look — she used a smilie.  She is joking.  Ha ha ha.  I love my readers.

I’m not sure exactly why I never use smilies.  I have nothing against them.  It could be because when I was a young student, I actually used a typewriter rather than a computer (so there were no smilies yet).   (Does anyone out there remember typewriters?  Has anything become as outdated as quickly as the typewriter?  Does anyone else feel bad for the Smith-Corona company?  Will I one day tell my grandchild about using "Wite-out" and they will laugh in disbelief?  But that’s something for another post.)

Today, I have smilies on my mind.   That, and religion.  What has caused more problems in the world than religion?  Why are the three big Western religion — Judaism, Islam, and Christianity — always at each others throats?  Even within the religions, there are divisions, usually between between the ultra-religious and the moderates. 

And why? 

I think the reason is similar to the one I had with one of my readers — interpretation.  For thousands of years, men have been fighting over God’s word.  What did He mean?  Which is the true religion?  Each religion is always fighting over the interpretation of the Bible.   Thousands of years of tsuris (trouble in Yiddish), and for what? 

If only God had waited a little bit — only had been a little more patient before he released his Word — at least until the arrival of the Mac in 1984.  Then, he could have used smilies to clarify things for all of us –

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.   And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.  And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.  

And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters."  And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so.  And God called the firmament Heaven.   

And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

And God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so.  God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas.  And God saw that it was good.  And God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth."  And it was so.  The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.  And God saw that it was good.   

And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth." And it was so.  And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also.  And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.    

And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

And God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens."  So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.   And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."  

And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds." And it was so.   And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind.  And God saw that it was good.  

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  

And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."  And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.  And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food."  And it was so.   And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.