OK, so as an atheist, I can't play with God. I don't think he'd have much of a sense of humor, if he DID exist, anyway. Still, there is fun to be had, by watching and listening to the believers. Or reading some of the things they say on the internet, in newspapers, and so on. Here's a collection of a few fun things I've come across recently. I'll add new items as I get them in.
My son went to church the other day - an atheist friend if his was forced to go to church by parents who think spending time in church will lead to a conversion.
So for a Palm Sunday sermon, the preacher decides to convey to the congregation a long, drawn-out description of the result of not being Christian.
As my son related it to me, he started off, talking about the experience of some generic person who died and went to hell. He described how painful it is in hell. He said that said dweller of hell hoped the pain would stop after a few minutes. But those minutes became an hour. He hoped the pain would end after a couple more hours. But those hours dragged on into a day. You can imagine how a good Baptist preacher in the South could draw something like this out.
Next, he started getting quite Roman, as in Virgil. He talked about a little bird, pecking at a brick of the church. Imagine how long it would take for a bird to peck apart one brick with its beak. Imagine how long it would take to peck apart every brick in the church! - That would be just the beginning of eternity! Imagine that little bird, taking up a beakful of water from the Atlantic Ocean, and carrying it to the Pacific Ocean! Imagine how long it would take it to empty the Atlantic Ocean and fill the Pacific (the concept is still making me chuckle)! That's a glimpse of the length of time called eternity! You could spend that amount of time in the torments of hell, if you're not careful!
I saw a preacher in the TV last Sunday, talking about prayer. He quoted the verse where Jesus said "Anything you ask in my name will be given you." Then, he asked, "Does this mean literally 'anything'? Yes, it does." I couldn't believe my ears! He was saying that Jesus had given believers a blank check from God! Naturally, the preacher wasn't finished.
He next quoted where Jesus says "If you who are evil are able to give your children good gifts, how much more so is God able to give you good gifts." He then went on to say that God only gives things believers pray for that are good for them. So God got an "out" from the preacher on the blank check promise. But the preacher wasn't finished! He started talking about how God sometimes says "no," but he also sometimes says "wait," implying that something you ask for that's good for you might take who knows how long to get to you. So now, we had gone completely away from "anything you ask for;" moved to "some things you ask for" (not logically possible to reconcile); then on to "some things you ask for, but it might take a lifetime to wait for."
In the space of two minutes, we had taken Jesus's "blank check" and changed it to a "blank check drawn on limited funds" and further on to a "blank check, drawn on limited funds, with fund availability subject to waiting periods of indeterminate lengths." The odd thing about this was that the preacher (and I expect his congregation) were fully convinced that all those statements taken together made perfect sense. No wonder folks like these are fully convinced that their Bible has no contradictions. They are taught at all times to accept contradictions as truth whenever God is concerned. The only things they won't accept are statements that come from other sources that go against the things they have accepted from their chosen sources of authority. Screwy, ain't it?
In the Old Testament times, people who wanted to know what God wanted them to do would cast lots. In other words, they tossed the dice (sometimes literally)and assumed that God controlled the way the peices fell, telling them what they should do. It's a perfectly reasonable assumption, considering that these people also thought God controlled the weather, earthquakes, the motions of the stars, sun and moon - basically everything that they were unable to do anything about. They made up this idea that a god was somewhere, maybe up on some mountain, making all these things work the way they did. One way to communicate with this being was to cast your dice, and let him do the talking that way.
But in the New Testament times, the founders of the early Chrstian church were too shrewd to fall for that idea. After all, if there was something they wanted, they had no intention of giving a set of dice the chance to fall against doing what they wanted. No, voting became the way to determine what God wanted to do. And after all, they were setting up shop in the home of Western civilization, where democracy was the norm - tossing dice would look absolutely barbaric in Greek eyes.
But what is the logic behind voting to decide a course of action? When I was in church, I was told that everyone was to pray for God's divine guidance, and he would make sure that the vote would come out according to what he wanted. Ummmmmmmmm... excuse me? Have these folks thought logically about this concept? What does this say about the people voting on the losing side? That they aren't being led by God's spirit? Maybe their votes were controlled by the devil? Don't laugh. People were killed because they voted against the doctrine of the trinity, unsing this very concept. What if God wanted the vote to go one way, but Satan controlled enough minds to sway the vote the other way? I remember church votes where the outcome was quite close. Was God only sort of interested in the outcome? Maybe he was only sort of leaning towards the winning side? Or were nearly half the congregation voting with the devil's interests at heart? What if only part of the congregation was truly Christian and under God's control, while the rest were controlled by the Devil - maybe enough to command a majority of the votes?
Maybe there will be some people who are afraid to vote, now that they realize some of the ramifications of religious voting. Maybe Satan is tugging at your heart to vote, knowing you could accidentally vote the wrong way and help his cause. Maybe dice are better. Who knows?
Last night, I tuned in to my local "Amen" channel (All GAWD! All the time). There was a preacher talking about the blood of Jesus. He mentioned "the seven times Jesus bled" in the Bible. Apparently, each time Jesus lost blood, it was a sign of something else, according to this person. Tonight's subject was the sign of the wounds in Jesus's hands. Apparently, the preacher thought that this was a sign of dominion, which he then claimed was the reason for the practice of laying on of hands.
He went on to say that the Bible states that Christians can establish God's power over a place by walking around that place (Jesus's wounded feet apparently were a similar sign). So this led to the idea that Christian teenagers could make their schools safe by walking all over their school grounds, praying and speaking in tongues. Speaking in tongues was mentioned specifically. He also encouraged those listening (I assume he meant those who were listening without laughing) to lay their hands on the buildings themselves, and lay God's power on the building, so that no voilence would happen in the schools.
Suddenly, I had an insight into the quality of the contents of the Bible. As silly as a lot of it is, as brutal and stupid as much of it is, the text has a markedly higher quality than what the average preacher is able to dream up on his own. Imangine how far it would have gotten if it had such weird instructions like "God's power can't be on a place unless you put it there by walking around it." Would you follow a religion that has texts claiming you can keep evil away from a building by touching it and praying over it?
June 17. 1999
There was a local preacher on my cable system's TCT network station the other day. He was preaching about how America is going to hell in a handbasket. Interestingly, he was comparing present day America with the crumbling last stages of ancient Rome. He described how the last of the Roman empire was falling apart due to internal decay and problems with external pressures. He referred to the history of this period written by Gibbons - he called it (repeatedly) "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire." I was reminded, by the way, of the Dickens novel "Our Mutual Friend," in which the illiterate Nick Boffin called it "Decline and Fall off the Rooshin Empire." (Gibbons' book, by the way, is "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" - for those who are curious!)
Anyway - he was preaching hard all that time, talking about how the Roman society was all decayed, and how it couldn't have stood, because they didn't have GAWD! in their lives. All that time, I sat there chuckling. I love irony, especially when it gets about a foot thick, like this. The interesting, ironic fact that this preacher failed to mention in his comparison with Rome was that starting with the reign of the emperor Constantine, the Roman Empire was officially a Christian nation! During the last centuries of the decline, they got their spiritual guidance from the only Christian church in existance at the time - the Roman Catholic Church! For some reason, it doesn't appear to have helped them much. I wonder why this preacher thought it would make a difference now?
July 4, 1999
Today was a Sunday, and (quite naturally) almost every religious program was patriotic. I watched a little of the sermon from D. James Kennedy, the pastor at Coral Ridge Ministries in Florida. He was preaching, and working on convincing people that the United States was founded in Christianity (which is a popular lie for fundamentalists). So he brought out a pretty big whopper to give his congregation. He told them (with a straight face, no less!) that a survey of the population in 1776 indicated that 99.8% of "the people in America" - these were his exact words! - considered themselves either Protestant Christians or Catholic Christians. This was the evidence he used in support of his statement that America had begun as a Christian nation.
I was pretty flabbergasted at this obvious lie. The questions I would have challenged him with were many: Where did your figures come from? Who conducted this "survey"? Where were the subjects found for questioning? I doubt there were many polling organizations in existence in 1776, and we all know that random sampling was not considered in polling until after the 1948 election, when the pollsters got it wrong, predicting Dewey over Truman.
Of course, the tragi-comedic thing about it was that Kennedy knew that no one would raise any point to challenge him in his own pulpit in his own church. What better place to lie in?
July 4, 1999
My father is an inoffensive old atheist. He tends his garden as best he can, bothering no one, and minding his own business. He told me that the other day, out of the blue, some idiot missionary types arrived on his doorstep, wishing to introduce him to Jesus, using a free video tape. We're talking an 80-minute VHS cassette, with a professional-looking box and label and everything. These people are trying to save souls as impersonally as possible these days, and I suppose in a highly-charged, emotional world that we live in, it might be safer that way. You never know when you'll run into a buzz-saw (like me, for instance) who will tear the faith right out of an inexperienced sheeplet like these people were.
Being a decent person, my dad told them he didn't want their free video, and shut the door. Afer all, there were quite a few other souls on the block, several of which were also in need of saving. He gave them the opportunity of saving the cost of the tape for their organization, which is more than I would, I'll tell you!
The funny thing is that when he went out to get his mail, he found the tape in his mailbox! This impressed him. He took the gift from "heaven," and is using it tonight, to tape his favorite shows, just in case he falls asleep while they're on. Of course, he had no thought of watching the pre-recorded show on the tape. What would be the point?
While in Great Britain this summer, I saw a few interesting things from a religious point of view. First, while my family and I were at the Tower of London, we spotted a street preacher. He had stationed himself at a railing overlooking a footpath near the entrance, and he was bawling out his version of the gospel to the hundreds of people passing to and fro. Among the crowd of people in the vicinity, there was just one person who had stopped to listen. I found this sight quite amusing - the preacher shouting his sermon to his attentive audience of just one man. I know that not everyone who was ignoring this spectacle were atheists, but it's always heartening to see such idiocy being ignored.
On a similar note, there was the experience we had the following Friday evening. After a hard day or tramping all over London, my son and I found ourselves walking through Liecester (pronounced "Lester" for some reason) Square. The place was crammed full of people, and a party atmosphere pervaded the area. There were at least two, maybe four bands playing music quite loudly, there were street artists, jugglers, and so forth, apparently having the times of their lives. As we made our way through the press (on our way to the Pepsi Trocadero), we noticed one group of people at a table that stood out from the crowd. They were Christians, preaching to the people around them, telling them that they were going to hell. Of course, no one bothered about them that we could see. I was tempted to take a little time to harrass these spoil-sports. It was particularly hard to keep walking when I heard them shout, "Jesus is HERE!" I mean - how often do you get a perfect opening like that? However, we were on a mission, and the night was getting on. Maybe next time I'll hear that line and have the time to go up to such a person and ask to speak with Jesus - I have a few questions I'd like him to clear up while he's in the neighborhood.
I recently finished up a stint of work living in Jackson, Mississippi. Every weekend that i was in the state, I would drive to Louisiana to purchase lottery tickets. (side note: this was about the most exciting, exotic and legal activity available to me in Jackson!) Another interesting aspect of this activity was my "Atheist-mobile." My dear old Honda Civic was a perfect machine for the display of my collection of magnetized bumper stickers. The collection was large, having been purchased over the period of several years and accumulated to allow me to express a variety of messages to my fellow-drivers.
Anyway, one Saturday morning, I went over the state line to make my regular purchase. On the way back, I had an interesting experience. I was in the fast lane of I-20 and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something strange. A car from Louisiana was passing me, but I couldn't see the driver. The reason for this was that she had taken a Bible, opened up the pages and pressed it against her window so that I could see her reaction (I suppose) to my car's display of heresies!
I got a good 10-15 miles of laughter out of that. My only regret is that I didn't have a copy of "Atheism: The Case Against God" to display in her diection.
Back in North Carolina, I'm having more interesting run-ins with God's "brain trust." At my place of work, I have discovered the fun of bible tracts. how fun is that, you ask?
Every week, without fail, some person will be sure to deposit at least 2 tracts with the "plan of salvation" into the men's room where I work. So far, I've seen mostly silly single-sheet tracts, though he has on occasion left some booklets from Jack Chick. The odd thing about this person, whoever he is, is that he seems convinced that there are people at his place of work who are "unsaved" (well, he's right, of course) and who are likely to take his idiot tracts seriously. That is an assumption I find deeply hilarious.
Of course, I pick up every tract and keep them for my personal entertainment. No doubt, there will be some who read this and think I'm abridging this mystery man's right to free speech. I personally don't see it this way. In my opnion, this person is leaving items in public for anyone to pick up. I have a perfect right to take these gifts and do with them as I please. The fact that I read these things for the purpose of laughter might be disappointing to this clown, but I'm not interested.
What I am interested in is two facts. First, this fellow appears not to fully agree with what some of his tracts say. He has a habit of adding his own little notes (no signature, natch!) to the tracts, completing the theology he thinks should be given out. Second, he appears to monitor the bathroom's tract content as regularly as I do. I've seen tracts re-appear only hours after I "harvest" them. If I ever find this person, I'm going to have to hand him my favorite tract: Kissing Hank's Butt.
In the winter of 2003, I was assigned to a new project at work, and I thought that would be a good time to rededicate myself to doing some serious exercise. So I signed up for access to the exercise room at work so I could get in and work off some fat during my lunch hours.
After I had been going down there for only a couple of weeks, I had another encounter with God's Army of Idiots. This time, I was on an exercise cycle, pumping away and minding my own business. Then, a fellow walks up and takes a seat on the cycle next to me, which I thought was a little odd, because I hadn't seen this particular person use this equipment before. The times I had seen him, he was a big-time weights man.
So he joins me and starts apparently watching the TV monitor with me, and all is well. Temporarily. After about 5 minutes, while I'm in the middle of huffing and puffing, this guy looks over at me and says, "What do you think of Jesus Christ?"
At the moment, I couldn't think of a pithy reply, so I told him straight out what I thought. That he was a religious and political zealot who gained a following of other zealots. The fact that those followers built a cult around him after his execution, that later grew into a major religion is one of the most unfortunate events in human history, but one can hardly blame him for that.
There are two other responses I've come across since that time. First, I thought a subtle reply would be to say, "Hi! I'm Eric." This could be seen by an introspective person as meaning that I think anyone who blurts out such a question is pretty rude, not even bothering to introduce himself. Then again, anyone who tries such a sledgehammer approach t the subject is pretty unlikely to be introspective. The other response (given me by a Lutheran pastor) would be to ask, "Who? You mean that new Hispanic guy down in the mail room?"
Needless to say, I haven't gone back there for exercise since then.
