Best birthday ever!

MERRRRRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE :)

Hope you all got what you wanted!

Far from an insult, this is an enlivening portrayal, celebrating the immense depth of the man that was (apparently) Jesus Christ. Bless his vast bowel.

If you're offended, you should probably calm down, then click here. and here. And here too.

Then pray for me. I like that. It gives me a tingly feeling.

Poise...

Click the top image to see the whole layout at this res.

Snuffed by churchies

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by a believer friend (rare breed) to join a Facebook group called 'Christ, culture, relevance.' Like a good (deluded) atheist, I decided to join the discussion, and attempt to pry open a Christian mind or two. Futile is an understatement...

This is how the discussion is run:

Topic: The place of truth (There are many others, but I thought I'd cut to the chase.)

Then he pastes in these quotes from a guy called Tim Willard.

My cultural call to arms, then, is this: Christians, embrace dialogue, thought and search for that elusive frame of mind in which, as Lewis describes in The Abolition of Man, the love of truth exceeds the love of power. Do not sit back and join the choir of carefree criticism that dominates our culture. (Tim Wallard)

Mark Noll is right to warn, in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, "If we take this action by inaction, we are saying that we want our lives to be shaped by cultural forces—including intellectual forces—that contradict the heart of our religion." To be passive in a culture that seems to define progress as the destruction of traditional truth seeking will surely be our downfall" (Tim Wallard)

Me: (trying to fit in with the evangelical theme)

I'm not sure who Tim Willard is, but I'm quite surprised by his approach. I've never heard a Christian call to 'embrace thought and search for a frame of mind in which love of truth exceeds love of power.' Isn't that quite a scientific approach? Embracing thought means thinking beyond the safety of our holy scriptures. It means asking questions, carefully scrutinising all possible answers to those questions, and then asking new questions...

A love of truth is not compatible with our faith because our faith requires ignorance, and truth seeks to diminish it. If we were given incontrovertible (ie agreeably truthful) evidence that God and Jesus in Heaven existed, we would not need faith any more would we? For we would know. Where does that leave us?

Well, it leaves us at a place where we have to make a choice between faith and truth. If we really want to honestly seek truth, we need to understand that our faith will probably not survive the journey. If our faith does seem to have survived, then the journey could never have originally been undertaken.

I must lastly speculate that, for a Christian, to seek truth has be the greatest possible sin, because the truth has been handed to us through the Gospels, and to doubt the Gospels is to doubt the word of God, and therefore the very existence of Jesus. It's also known as 'heresy', and was punishable by death in many parts of the Christian world until fairly recently in human history.

Gone are the good old days. Thank God.
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Jonathan Trusler (London) replied to your post17 hours ago

"A love of truth (Jesus) is not compatible with our faith because our faith requires ignorance, and truth (Jesus) seeks to diminish it." Doesn't make a lot of sense does it? It becomes more fun doing it for the rest of the post especially the last paragraph :)

"Jesus saith unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

Jonathan Trusler (London) wrote17 hours ago
Jesus said "I am the truth." And the postmodern said, "What is truth?"
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Me again:

Thank you Jonathan Trusler of London. You volunteered to be the prime example of how incompatible faith and truth will always be. As can plainly be seen, you are not interested in truth at all. You are interested in Jesus. But what you really should, but don't seem to realise is that your entire interest in Jesus is based on Faith. Faith is what's required in the absence of evidence (and some might say knowledge). It's otherwise defined as 'trust' or 'belief' - in your case probably less trust and more belief. To say that Jesus=Truth is merely stating what you believe. It doesn't answer any questions. It doesn't even pose new questions. It's a stated belief.

I think it's time people start to realise that JUST BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING, DOESN'T MEAN IT'S TRUE. Truth is something many of us will spend our whole lives in search of. Some people - like Mr Trusler here - will never look beyond the scriptures for truth (other than maybe a few Christian writers, probably CS Lewis), and that will be enough for them. But for those of you, like myself, who have a great nagging need to ask questions... well, it actually all sorts itself out you see, for (and I'd say to your benefit now, though for larger parts of history your more serious and extreme detriment) the church won't tolerate you for very long :)

Since we all love quotes so much, I'll end off with one:

"Blind faith is an ironic gift to give to the creator of human intelligence."

Anonymous

The next time I logged on both my posts had been removed from the discussion, but the morons left JT's response. Such is the regard of the religious for truth, or at least 'open discussion'...

The Poisonwood Bible

I recently finished reading a very profound novel called The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver. It's written from the perspective of the wife and four daughters of a fanatical southern baptist preacher who drags them into the heart of the Congo, just before the so-called Congolese "Independence", to try to convert the savages and save their souls, only to find that it's a completely fruitless exercise in the context of the Congolese world (as in many...). The book makes many statements about the absurdity of dogmatic beliefs.

Anyways, here's a small excerpt I hope she won't mind me sharing - The simple realisation of one of the daughters in the book (who happens to be a cripple twin):

"According to my Baptist Sunday-school teachers, a child is denied entrance into heaven merely for being born in the Congo rather than, say, north Georgia, where she could attend church regularly. This was the sticking point in my own lame march to salvation: admission to heaven is gained by the luck of the draw. At age five I raised my good left hand in Sunday school and used a month's ration of words to point out this problem to Miss Betty Nagy. Getting born within earshot of a preacher, I reasoned, is entirely up to chance. Would Our Lord be such a hit-or-miss kind of Saviour as that? Would he really condemn some children to eternal suffering just for the accident of a heathen birth, and reward others for a privilege they did not earn?"

Great question - would love a Christian perspective on this one...

It's shit like this...

... that personally makes me wanna hurl, yes, but specifically this a true reflection of the bullshit of rigid belief systems. Only a person of staunch religious conviction (aka Jesus freak) could put this much faith in the power of spamming. To me, this is blasphemy infinitely worse than "God is an arsehole" or "Jesus swallowed for new moccasins." Whoever made this is not going to hell. They're in hell. Sad fuck! Oh well.

There's a bit of evil everywhere

The church up my road No. 2 - Kneelling?

The church up my road No. 1 - Truth decay

This is the first of what will become a collection of weird & non-sensical, yet bitterly ironic examples of how out-of-the-box the church folk in my neighbourhood can be when it comes to sharing their faith...





Stay tuned for more...

Father Fetish - Who u kidding?

If this offends you, why not visit jesus-is-lord.com. Although the site's run by crazies too... Funny how much Christians can hate each other.

Aah c'mon, religion isn't THAT bad... is it?

Check out this article in the papers yesterday about a self-proclaimed pastor who 'sired' 3 children with his own daughter...

A couple of key quotes from the article:

The man raped his daughter between 1998 and 2006 after telling his wife, three sons and daughter that God had told him to fulfill his promise as a "descendant of Benjamin".

He testified that he slept with his daughter so that she could "see the kingdom of heaven" when she died.

The pastor further testified during his trial that he had never heard the word "incest" until he appeared in court and that he'd never seen the word in the Bible.

He had quoted many Bible verses in an attempt to back up his plea of innocence.

And here's the kicker:

He told court that a man like him WOULD NOT SLEEP WITH HIS DAUGHTER UNLESS IT WAS FOR RELIGIOUS REASONS.

I rest my case. For now.

Yay! God loves weed!

Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it (that's gotta include pot right?). They will be yours for food."

Genesis 1:29

Hmmm... Although considering that god's also into slavery, where the hell does that leave us?

Gotta love the bible...

"When a slave-owner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave survives for a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property."

Exodus 21:20-21

Happy Easter!

If you find this offensive, you should visit whywontgodhealamputees.com

Giant blind church midget... vectorised.

I have a dream...

Father Fetish - no lube

Father Fetish - Nothin like a nun on a sunday!

Somewhere god forgot to wipe...

Father Fetish - lines

Father Fetish - funeral

notice the little movement marks aside his right arm.