Outchurched

Larro has a knack for finding great images…

This one reminded me of a couple of stories:

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I took a couple of the youth group kids out and we toilet papered our church. The pastor privately told me that he thought it was awesome that we’d done that (the dude totally “got me,” we were good friends), but that the timing had been bad (we did it on a Friday) because there had been a wedding scheduled for the next day. Doh! I totally wouldn’t have done it (when we did) had I known…

Several weeks later, after the hullabub had died down (several members of the congregation had suggested crucifying me, almost literally), one of the retired ladies who was on a fixed income pulled me aside after a service. She told me that she’d run out of toilet paper at home and didn’t have enough cash to get more. She said that she was thinking about that when she showed up before service and that a full roll that’d gotten stuck in a branch fell to the ground as she started up the walkway.

I replied: “the Lord works in mysterious ways.”

We laughed and laughed…

I used to spend a bit of time with that lady, both because she was a solo person who didn’t get out and about much due to health issues, etc. and because she was just hella-cool to be around. We’d met at church and I was always really at ease with her because she had a great sense of humor and was really a fabulous person… really caring and genuinely kind.

One time we’d gone out to get coffee or something and I was driving her back home. She reached over and tightly grabbed my arm. I looked at her and saw a big truck whose driver had apparently decided that stop signs are completely optional and/or inapplicable to himself racing through the intersection. I slammed my brakes and barely avoided hitting him. After I made it through the intersection I pulled over to catch my breath (’cause it was a close one!) and when we’d regained our composure I said to her:

“I appreciate you trying to tell me to stop, but I think maybe grabbing ahold of my arm is not very effective. Hopefully there won’t be a ‘next time but if there is, please verbally indicate that something’s going on… I’d think it’d be appropriate to scream “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!” (I’d yelled that last bit), and she burst out laughing.

A couple of months later, right after my birthday, we were hanging out and she told me that she’d tried to get a special birthday cake for me. She explained that she’d gone to several bakeries in the Bay Area and none of them would agree to make it. I had no idea what kind of “special cake” she’d been trying to make, but she told me that several of the bakeries had abruptly “kicked her out” after she asked if they’d make the cake. She said that the lady at the last bakery she’d gone to said that they’d be unable to make it but had been pretty cool about the whole thing and that she’d offered a workaround:

The bakery lady’s suggestion was to get four cupcakes and put one letter on each… to spell out F-U-C-K.

I (rightfully) bash on church a lot… but I definitely got to know some really cool people because of it.

I’ve been posting a number of humorous lists lately (if you missed Shelly’s list in response to Wired’s Top 10 Creationist Discoveries then give it a read… outchurched.com readers rule!), but this doesn’t fit in the humor bucket.

Steve Pavlina’s "10 Reasons You Should Never Have a Religion:"

1. Spirituality for dummies.

If you have the awareness level of a snail, and your thinking is mired in shame and guilt (with perhaps a twist of drug abuse or suicidal thinking), then subscribing to a religion can help you climb to a higher level of awareness. Your mindset, however, still remains incredibly dysfunctional; you’ve merely swapped one form of erroneous thinking for another.

For reasonably intelligent people who aren’t suffering from major issues with low self-esteem, religion is ridiculously consciousness-lowering. While some religious beliefs can be empowering, on the whole the decision to formally participate in a religion will merely burden your mind with a hefty load of false notions.

…

2. Loss of spiritual depth perception.

One of the worst mistakes you can make in life is to attach your identity to any particular religion or philosophy, such as by saying “I am a Christian” or “I am a Buddhist.” This forces your mind into a fixed perspective, robbing you of spiritual depth perception and savagely curtailing your ability to perceive reality accurately. If that sounds like a good idea to you, you’ll probably want to gouge out one of your eyeballs too. Surely you’ll be better off with a single, fixed perspective instead of having to consider two separate image streams… unless of course you’ve become attached to stereo vision.

Religious “truths” are inherently rooted in a fixed perspective, but real truth is perspective-independent. When you substitute religious teachings for truth, you mistake shadows for light sources.

…

Were I a patient man, I’d wait ’til next Easter to post this. However, I’m not, so here it is:

I’d completely missed this “April Fool’s Day” post from Wired but it’s really funny, except that it’s also kinda scary because several of “jokes” are really just quotes from arguments Creationists use:

Top 10 Creationist Discoveries:

10. T. rex ate coconuts

According to experts at the Creation Museum, our favorite predatory dinosaur would have fit right in at Whole Foods.

9. The Earth is only six thousand years old

Carbon-13 and potassium argon dating are myths created by the devil to cast doubt on the existence of God.

8. Stem Cells are evil

Curing terrible diseases is not worth the trouble of sacrificing some abandoned eggs from the deep freeze at a fertility clinic.

The best part ’bout that link isn’t the actual article, though… it’s definitely the massive number of knee-jerk jackass comments from Christianists, hunters, and NASCAR fans! There’s some amazing lunacy lurking in there!

What most Creationists should be trying to discover (according to their “holy book”) is their local Jenny Craig*.

* and they should take me with ‘em.

I think this is another good example of our President’s difficulty with the English language…

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Memorial Day, May 26, 2008, as a day of prayer for permanent peace, and I designate the hour beginning in each locality at 11:00 a.m. of that day as a time to unite in prayer.

Sorry Mr. President, but the “peace” one has after beating anyone and everyone around you over the head with a stick until they’re unconscious and can’t speak isn’t the kind of peace the rest of us are talking about.

I think what he’s actually referring to is “piece,” as in “a bigger piece of the pie for myself and my corrupt friends,” because the past six years have shown that he has no idea whatsoever about what peace is, or how to go about accomplishing it. Also, while it is important to decide what one is going to do before doing it (ie- “having a realistic plan/goal”), I don’t think an hour of collective head-bowing and wishful thinking will ever do as much as taking a single step towards the goal.

Perhaps our President is a True Believer after all. He’s certainly demonstrating a lot of talk with no action to back it up.

J-Walk has another angle on this that’s worth a quick read (it’s short).

What…

… a …

… fucking …

… asshole.

Top Ten Signs You’re a Fundamentalist Christian

1. You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
2. You feel insulted and “dehumanized” when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
3. You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
4. Your face turns purple when you hear of the “atrocities” attributed to Allah, but you don’t even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in “Exodus” and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in “Joshua” including women, children, and trees!
5. You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.
6. You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
7. You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs — though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most “tolerant” and “loving.”
8. While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in “tongues” may be all the evidence you need to “prove” Christianity.
9. You define 0.01% as a “high success rate” when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.
10. You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.

(From here)

(h/t J-Walk)

I recently saw the stellar There Will Be Blood, and then found this interesting clip discussing religion as portrayed in the movie. Good stuff.

Americhurch seems quite filled with people like Eli Sunday, if’n you ask me.

Also, as far as I’m concerned, there wasn’t nearly enough blood.