Atheist » Heaving Dead Cats

I Didn’t Get Struck By Lightning

So I didn’t get struck by lightning when I went to church this morning. But I do feel like I’m catching a cold from the exposure to all those christian strangers. I guess I’ve been smote by the rhinovirus of GOD!

The first thing I noticed was 2 cops directing traffic. Butch commented on taxpayer resources being used for such a purpose, but they were definitely needed. This was a big church with lots of cars. The building looks more like a school than a church, if you ask me.

Here’s where we went: Chestnut Ridge Church. None of us got a good estimate of how many seats there were. It was set up like a theater with a big stage, a 6 piece pop music band, 2 giant screens where they put the words to the songs and the bible verses from the sermon, and movie theater seating. The control booth is state of the art, like you’d find for a rock concert.Free coffee was served before people went in and each seat had a cup holder like in a movie theater. There were no crosses, no crucifixes, no representations of Jesus at all, nothing that made it seem church-like. It was very casual, very relaxed.

Everyone was very pleasant and nice. We had to shake hands and everyone made eye contact. Children were all well behaved and not too many babies cried much. The TV monitors counted down to the start, then they just basically began with a rundown of the schedule, then everyone said hi to their neighbor then 3 or 4 songs which people were encouraged to sing to, with the karaoke lyrics on the screens.

People seemed to enjoy the music which was very loud. The audience had very little lighting, just enough for me to see my notebook and for people to see if they wanted to get up. But the stage had concert lighting including a smoke machine. The babies didn’t seem upset by the incredibly loud music and the bass was really cranked up on the drums. People seemed to enjoy it but no one got “into the spirit” or did anything crazy, just a bit of keeping time and singing, stuff like that, maybe a bit of clapping when prompted.

We guessed the seating to be around 1500 but that’s a very rough guess. It was about 85-90% full, mostly young people (teens to 30′s, as a rough guess), about 99.9% white. One of my heathen friends saw one black man in African garb in the parking lot when we were going in. Other than that, I only saw white people. Then again, West Virginia is very white if I recall the statistics, so it doesn’t mean too much. Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday Looms Menacingly

I don’t want to go to church on Sunday. The last time I was in church was for a wedding. Miraculously I wasn’t struck by lightning when I looked up at the huge 15 foot tortured Jesus bleeding on the cross over the doorway and said, “Jesus! WTF!” Then I proceeded to bite my cheek and bury my head in my lap to keep from laughing hysterically all through the service after Butch pointed to the fat lady who was singing some horridly off-tune song and said, “I guess that means it’s over.” It was not a pleasant experience.

Before that, I’d have to go back to my troubled religious youth to remember being in church. Sitting uncomfortably in straight backed pews; singing vapid, falsely cheerful songs of unworthiness and worship to an invisible sky daddy; sipping grape juice and eating stale bits of savior; getting baptized 3 times in 3 different churches to ward off eternal damnation and gnashing of teeth in the sulfurous, burning pits of hell; dealing with fake smiles on fake faces adorned in Avon makeup and festooned in Sears and Roebuck Sunday best outfits; parroting bible stories carefully cherry-picked from the sordid pages of a book filled with murder, slavery and hate.

None of it was all that pleasant. All of it was forced. No one ever seemed genuinely kind or compassionate. When I learned about hypocrisy at the age of 12 I promptly called bullshit on the whole mess of religion and refused to go again. My parents were furious, but in the end they gave up on me, content that I’d eventually get my just reward in the fiery lakes of hell.

This Sunday we’re going to the mega-church about 45 minutes away. I don’t want to go but my local group wants to experience it. Since I’m the Official Cat Herder, I feel like it would be a good thing to go along. Part of me wonders what it’s like in a mega-church. What is the feel of the place? Something I thought church should do for people is give them a sense of belonging, of community. How can you get that in a huge auditorium? I have no idea how big this place is. So it’s only fair that I actually experience it, I guess.

I have some questions that I want to answer on Sunday. Feel free to comment with other questions I can try to answer as well. Here’s what I have so far. I will take notes while I’m there. Read the rest of this entry »

Great Reason or Atheist or Science Quotes Needed

I need your help. I’m going to church soon with my Religion of the Month Club (a subgroup of Morgantown Atheists) and I have the idea of putting an envelope in the collection plate when it comes around. In the envelope I want a few really AWESOME quotes from brilliant people. Preferably not nasty, but very smart. I am asking for your suggestions! Which reason/atheism/brilliant/freethinker quotes should I put in the envelope?

Another Fine Atheist Service

We’ve all heard of Eternal Earth-Bound Pets and their awesome service of saving pets after the rapture (I wrote about being Rapture Ready here). Well, the other day I was contacted by another fine atheist service, Rapture Orphan Rescue: A service providing the Ultimate No Child Left Behind.

Here is their Mission Statement:

We are a Rapture-proof service that will ensure that your youngest family members will be given the religious instruction that you would have wanted them to receive. More than just letting your rapture-orphaned sons and daughters [know] that you love them, we will witness to them so that they too may be Saved and reunited with you at the end of the Trials and Tribulations.

This is based on biblical verses that state that we are all born in sin and that we have to reach the age of reason before we can be saved. The site goes into detail on the home page explaining why your baby is born an atheist and isn’t guaranteed to be raptured.

The problem seems to be that the children christians will leave behind will then be taken in as wards of the state, and then might be marked with the sign of the beast. This service will take the child before that stage and make sure they are never marked, which would be a bad thing according to Revelations 20:4. Read the rest of this entry »

Atheists: Have You Ever Had A Mystical Experience?

I’m reading a book called The God Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper. Mostly, I think it’s a pretty interesting book. (there’s one thing that really bugs me about it, but otherwise it’s a good read). Anyway, he talks about how mystical experiences are found across cultures, which implies that there is a genetic component to them. In other words, every culture in recorded history talks about having mystical experiences so it must be something happening in the brain that is genetic. There must be genes associated with the way the brain works in certain circumstances that cause that phenomenon in people around the world.

Let’s define a mystical experience first. Dan Merkur, author of Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions, lists the five most common symptoms of a mystical experience (from The God Part of the Brain, pg 134)

a sense of unity or totality
a sense of timelessness
a sense of having encountered ultimate reality
a sense of sacredness
a sense that one can not adequately describe the richness of their experience

I was deeply religious as a child, from about age 4 to 12. I was so terrified of burning in hell that I was baptized 3 times in 3 different churches. I went to Sunday school, church, bible camp, I sang hymns, I prayed, I studied and read my bible, and had bible lessons for a short while. But in all those years, I never once had a mystical experience. I never felt god. I never felt the touch of the divine. Read the rest of this entry »

Unexpected Friendship With A Palin Lover

Sometimes you can learn something when you least expect it.

My sister-in-law (we’ll call her Martha) has been dating this guy who we’ll call Steve. I met him the night that she and Steve were reacquainted at the high school reunion last year. It was one of those big affairs where 10 years of classes were invited. Anyway she and Steve have basically been dating ever since. She hasn’t had the best luck with guys in the past but she’s head over heels in love with him and is very happy, which is good.

The night I met Steve, I mentioned to him that I was reading a great book called Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life. It’s a fantastic book that I highly recommend. Butch was there and chimed in that it’s all about evolution, which it is, in a very cool, observable way. Steve rolled his eyes and scoffed. Scoffed! I didn’t want to get into it since we were heading home but I immediately found myself feeling cold toward him.

So, when Martha brought Steve to a family BBQ the next day I was polite but really didn’t have anything to say to him. He seemed nice enough though.

Time went on and I learned from him that he likes Sarah Palin. He thinks she’s got some good ideas. (I think I just threw up a little in my mouth there) Martha told me he’s a full on conservative republican but that they don’t talk about politics. As I do with most people, I was also refraining from political – or religious – talk with him as well.

To this day we’ve stayed clear of those two topics. But we’ve gone out to dinner quite a few times, hung out at family gatherings, and he even invited us over to watch some MMA on a channel we don’t get next month (Woot!) He’s a genuinely nice guy. He’s not stupid by any means, can hold a conversation, has a good sense of humor, and seems to be making Martha extremely happy.

Why am I talking about this? Well, to me, Sarah Palin is a stupid, vapid pentecostal nutcase with only enough brain cells to rub together to help her wink and flap her mouth when someone pulls her puppet strings. The fact that people give her 2 seconds of their time, combined with her views on Armageddon and the end times, makes her extremely dangerous. Usually when confronted with someone who likes Palin, I run the other way. Read the rest of this entry »

A Bit of Dawkins

One of my Facebook friends posted this to his feed today. Richard Dawkins waxing eloquent:

‎”The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces …us that the time we have for living is quite finite.”

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

“An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. As has been said before, we are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” Read the rest of this entry »

I Didn’t Get Struck By Lightning

Sunday Looms Menacingly

Great Reason or Atheist or Science Quotes Needed

Another Fine Atheist Service

Atheists: Have You Ever Had A Mystical Experience?

Unexpected Friendship With A Palin Lover

A Bit of Dawkins

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