I'm not a big tattoo fan. Quite the opposite, actually. I wouldn't say its a sin, but its certainly not something I'm interested in. To me, most tattoos are expressions of feeling or belief that would be better expressed in real life rather than in ink-on-skin format. Take, for instance, the criminal with his daughter's name tatooed across his leg. Maybe just being a better dad and not ending up in jail may have been a better way to express your love for your child. Part of it is that tattoos are just such and easy way to express something that is, often times, hard. People get their partners' name tattooed on them rather than, you know, actually work at the relationship.
Plus, I believe that if you live your life by your own coda two things will happen: One, you'll get scars, and scars are real-life tattoos with actual stories and meaning; and two, you'll be known for your beliefs rather than having to express them in ink on your skin.
The one possible exception I would make would be for the original tattoo group; you know, the people who got tattoos when it actually meant you were a dangerous outsider. Now, a tattoo just means you have a tattoo, and some free money lying around.
So I nodded my head when I read the first part of this article. But then it went in a weird and unexplainable place. The author jumps from an explaination of tattoos and various downsides - the cost, pain, semi-irreversibility, time - to somehow deciding that people get tattoos because they spend too much time on Facebook. Without a lick of evidence. The way the article ends suggests the entire piece was a bit of a joke. But if that was the intent, the first part of the article didn't imply such. Maybe I just missed it.
Dingbats
I use this term lovingly and to be funny, not in the prejorative sense. I'm not entirely through the article yet, but this piece on a new book, Bad Religion, is interesting. From one of the first graphs:
I think I speak for a lot of secular liberals when I confess my lifelong skepticism that anyone could make a rational case for such old-fashioned ideas. And yet, you’ve done so. One thing I hope we can accomplish in this conversation is to explain to Slate’s readers how you’ve done that, and how your approach differs from what’s often understood to be the mentality of the “religious right.”
The title, Bad Religion, captures your argument quite well. Secularists look at many of today’s preachers and theocratic politicians, such as Newt Gingrich, and conclude that religion is the problem. Conservative Christians listen to those politicians and conclude that secularism is the problem. You’re articulating a middle ground: The problem isn’t that all religion is bad, or that religion is under threat of extermination—it’s that some kinds of religion are bad, and these corrupt versions are replacing the sort of religion that’s healthy and authentic.
Not much in this life should be considered actually, legitimately evil, in my view. Mostly its just stuff that infringes on another's rights. Murder; Theft, evil. I see nothing inherently evil in religion. In fact, most religions have at least some good take-away points. Mostly, religion is a way for an individual to make their way through this world, and who am I to say their way is any better or worse than mine; until theirs starts interfereing with mine, that is.
