You wish to APPEAR in this spectacle?

So I'm enjoying The Amazing Race last Sunday night, as I do. There's this team of two guys who were Olympic snowboarders. One of them looks like David Soul, and the other like Bjorn Borg. They have run a good race so far, making good decisions, roshambo-ing to figure out who does what challenge (cracks me up), taking at least a little time to appreciate where they are, that kind of thing. They're pretty hilarious, and had become my favorite team so far.

Until ... [sad trombone] ... it comes out that they're Jesus-jumpers. And just like that, I'm completely off of them. I don't hate them or anything; it's just that what I took for general enthusiasm for adventure and whatnot is suddenly revealed to be religio-based, and therefore (to me) less organic, more deliberate, and therefore inauthentic and suddenly annoying. Why? And what does that say about me? Ugh.

But even worse, they were one of several teams who had misgivings about one of the challenges -- they had to disassemble this Buddhist model shriney thing, take it to another location, and reassemble it (basic memory/stress challenge). But the Christianists among the group (which I swear was half of them, gaah), all expressed -- on camera -- their feelings that what they were doing was bad or wrong or ... something, with the clear inference that they thought that putting their hands on, and moving around, the tchotchkes and knickknacks of another religion would somehow infect them with that religion, leading them astray (and doubtless into hellfire and eternal damnation yada yada yada). And while they're all whining about this, I'm thinking, "If you're so sure of your god, why would this stuff be any more than JUST STUFF to you? How little power does your god have, that touching another god's trinkets & gewgaws would be able to interfere?" Still don't get it.

And on that note, about religious people and reality shows: I have long thought that Survivor ought to do an Atheists v. Christians season -- you wanna juice the ratings, that'd do it. I'd go to the CBS website and buy the stupid buff for THAT shit. Of course, you'd have to endure death threats, possible firebombings of regional network ad sales offices, those Westboro asslinings, and endless condemnatory bullshittery from Repuglican presidential "candidates," but like I said: Think of the ratings!