Imagine.....This......

Let us just say hypothetically, for the sake of the exercise, that The United States would have been set up by the Puratins from NE, or the Quakers of PA, - Virginia was of it's own brand-or the whatever the hell they were in those original thirteen mini theocracies.

If there was ever a miracle it was that men of reason (think Thomas Paine) could transcend all of that and come up with a founding document guaranteeing all of our personal beliefs.

And, after creating that document they had the foresight to make an ammendment. The first one. It wasn't the first one by accident.

Having said that, consider this. What would it be like if one religion had gained control and the Bible, and their interpretaion of that Bible would have become our founding document?

More Breathtaking Hypocrisy From The Fundies:

This upcoming Saturday, Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego will be filled with tens of thousands of rabid Fundies for a fun-filled day of fasting and prayer, aimed at getting Proposition 8, the ballot measure that would ban gay and lesbian marriage in California, approved. Among other evangelical luminaries, Focus on the Family founder and chairman James Dobson will be attending.

Here's a promo for this demented event:




The evangelical group that's putting this event together maintains that it's a "prayer for a spiritual awakening", not a political rally.

BULLSHIT.

If this was a sincere "prayer for a spiritual awakening", they wouldn't need to rent out Qualcomm Stadium. They wouldn't need to build a big-ass stage to hold all the hypocrites proselytizing about the evils of gayness. They wouldn't need to charge attendees parking fees of $15.00 ($45.00 for buses and RVs).

No, if these jackasses were sincere, they could pray and not eat in the privacy of their own homes and churches. I'm pretty sure their magic sky daddy will hear them, even without the benefit of Qualcomm Stadium's PS system.

You know, I can't help but remember that the magic book that these hatemongers purport to put so much stock in had a few things to say about such behavior...

Matthew 6: 5-8, 16-18

5 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.

6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.

8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

16 "When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.

17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face,

18 so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

If only there were some Christians who would actually read their Bibles and follow these teachings...

Oh, wait...there are! On 10 AM on Saturday, there will be a "Making the Right Call service" held at St. Paul's Cathedral, 2726 Sixth Ave., San Diego. Admission is free, and they aren't charging for parking, either.

You can find more information on this event here: www.noonprop8.com.

(Yes, that's right...the ones who actually heed God's edicts are also the ones who are working to defeat this hate legislation...go figure...).

Ray announces his "winner", and out-Poes himself yet again.

Well, kids, Ray has announced the winner of his purulent little atheist essay contest...our very own Kaitlyn.

Kaitlyn, I don't know whether to congratulate you or offer my condolences, but I'd like to caution you against giving Ray your mailing address, as he requested in his post. That, of course, goes for all the Raytractors. I certainly would want any of the unbalanced Bible-thumpers over at AC to know my mailing address...

Anyway, in his post, Ray offered an interesting analogy to Kaitlyn. I imagine he thought he was making some point of his clearer, but the analogy he chose was particularly ironic, given what he represents:

Kaitlyn, here is a not-very-good analogy for you: A doctor held out a cure to a deathly sick patient and said, "You will be dead in seconds if you don’t take this cure. You need to take it now!" The dying patient ignored the cure...

Now, to be fair (and to try to avoid any accusations of "quote mining"), I feel I should point out that Ray's "analogy" goes one for 99 more words. However, in the interests of conserving space, I have only quoted the first 36 words. Anyone who is interested in viewing the analogy in its mind-numbingly stupid entirety can do so via the link I have provided.

Myself, I didn't want to waste time and energy pointing out why the analogy is so fatally flawed, as I'm sure that's as painfully obvious to the rest of the Raytractors as it is to myself. I just wanted to point out the exquisite irony in Ray choosing as the subject of his analogy a sick person refusing medical treatment, considering how many innocent children have died needless, horrible, painful deaths because their Fundie parents refused proper medical treatment, instead trusting in their Magic Sky Daddy to swoop in like the damned eagles from Return of the King and deliver a miracle in the nick of time.

It's a good thing that Ray has built up an immunity to his own irony...

Plugging a Fundie Friend's Blog

Hello again!

I have a good friend who became a fundie shortly after September 11, 2001 and ever since, he's been trying to convince everyone that they are not "real xians".

Well, he put up a blog about 6 months ago and I went to check it out. He seems to have a couple stalkers but not nearly enough.

One of my favorite entries was the scientific "evidence" in the bible.

Plus he said: "you have a conscience therefore you have a creator". Precious.

So...head over and read all about it! Athiest, christian, anyone. I am sure he'd like the company.

Here is the site.

Credulity

Hi guys,

Well, I have been waiting for a set of long posts by Dan "debunking atheists," and he is finally done with it.

Now, before you jump to Dan's blog to destroy his arguments, this is what I really want to share with you today:

I started blogging to Ray because I saw the "evolution" video. I felt furious because these guys were lying blatantly to the Christians, and I could not believe it. Well, this is what I detest, the way the likes of Ray, Kirk, Ham, the whole of answers in genesis, and all, abuse the trust of the fundies.

In the case of Dan, well, the guy does an awful job mostly because what he does is ... he trusts these guys! So, he simply copies from some creationist web site whichever propaganda he finds. Thus, he does not even understand properly what he is posting (he admits to it), and yet, he expects us to just believe that he gave us a good "debunking." Setting aside how foolish this is, the guy exposes himself to ridicule, and when I warn him about this possibility he thinks I am insulting him, which he often calls an ad hominem.

So, where is this going? Well, Dan is an excellent example of why I detest Ray and the like. There you have it. A guy who candidly posts stuff that has already been shown to be fallacies and lies, thinking he is doing a good job. The guy gets a good beating, but seems not to notice, but I bet he will notice one of these days (though he seems to forget what we say from one thread to the next, so this might take a while).

I do not know, maybe I am too compassionate, but I truly think Dan is somewhat naïve, and that in his innocence he is risking to have his trust in humanity destroyed because, if you cannot trust those you should be able to trust (aren't Christians supposed to be guided by high standards of morality, especially if the issue is their deeply held beliefs?), then what is left? Those "amoral" atheists? (unless he also gets to understand that atheism does not lead to lack of ethics).

Dan does not seem to be brilliant, but he tries to be honest. Still, either he will become a cynic, just like Ray and the like, or he will understand. What is your bet?

G.E.

Are you reading?

OK, I did not think too much about what would be my first post about. But I am truly curious:

Would people who just read stuff tell me if it is worth doing this much effort to debunk the same all same, already debunked, and re-debunked crap that the likes of Ray post? I know the fundies do not listen, so who does? Does this help you when confronted with fundies in real life? Do you have any experience confronting fundies and got stuck because you did not know how to answer but now you know better? Did your understanding of evolution get better? Do you learn something new because we make these efforts?

So what do you think guys?

G.E.

Ray's definition of a real christian

When mudskipper asked:
Can someone tell me how I can experience God experientially?
I want to have an experience like Ray had"

stranger.strange.land gave a standard reply invoking guilt and fear. And then added:
"But this is a crucial point. You will then either harden your conscience to what you have experienced, or you will be broken and see Jesus (through the preaching of the gospel) as your only hope."

stranger is correct. The kind of emotional breakdown that follows the understanding of the christian concept of sin and guilt, and the release from that because of jesus' sacrifice brings about an overwhelming emotional response. I know because I have experienced it, and I suspect, so have some of the Raytractors.

Interestingly, at the baptist church I used to attend we were warned against relying on feelings and emotions. We were taught to put faith first, and feelings would follow. if we chased the feelings we would eventually be disappointed and, like relationships that founder after the first bloom of romance is gone we could spend out time forever searching to recapture that emotional "rush".

After years of being deeply entrenched in fundamental Baptist doctrine, a slow drift away from the church and its influence allowed me to re-assess. I saw that I was basically no different from your average joe in the street, and yet I was supposed to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The internet, atheist blogs, and particularly Ex-Christian.net allowed me to break free from a guilt-ridden, supersticion-based way of living.

But here a core doctrine of Ray Comfort and his Rayniacs. I was what they would call a "false convert" How can they ever know if they will turn out to be false converts too? the parable of the sower gives examples of plants that grew up healthy before they were choked with weeds. On top of the guilt must be this constant fear of loss of faith, of backsliding.

On the one hand they accuse us of being blind because we can never know jesus personally like they do, of not having faith. And yet they must also be aware that because of the failings of our minds and senses, "knowledge" based on the emotional, based on things we have "felt" must be the most fragile, and ephemeral of all.

The Feeding Frenzy

So, we have a supposed Rose, a moderate Christian, writing to Ray in "Shame on You!" Of course the Post is probably contrived, as Ray normally does. Although Rose does not actually make the point, Ray is once again looking for targets to demonize, one of the first signs one is dealing with a cult. The religion/ faith cannot stand on it's own without their victimization of almost every organization/ religion on Earth.

He doesn't address her questions, but throws her to his pack of ignorant uneducated Bibliolators.

How nice. They are back into their arrogant state and dealing out pablum by the car load. Now, thirty eight comments later and virtually no unbelievers commenting. the crazies are back in charge of the nut house, so to speak, which is a good thing. This establishes a baseline to see if Ray will pick up any stray atheists ready to shoot down their irrational ideas.


I checked out Joshua Black's blog, Day by Day. He is quite the prolific writer of irrelevent everyday experiences that he constantly attributes to a miracle of some sort or another and now he is begging people for money to send him to a missionary camp in the Bahamas. With Josh we see a totally extremest attitude accompanied by one of the worst cases of cognitive dissonance, and dedicated to isolating himself from the real world, another cult-like sign.

People of that ilk will not accept any natural thing unless Ken Ham or a couple other small group of authority figures that they feign over tell them to. The disdain of everything scientific and the charged emotional eperiences that they imagine are surely a symptom of some mental disorder/ inability to deal with reality.

Now, in the latest Post, Ray again tries to compare a painting or a building with designers to what we see in nature. He can't see the difference in that nature replicates itself and buildings and painings do not (Or do paintings and building fornicate and perpetuate their "species?")

One thing I have come to understand that Religion and superstitions are pervasive, along with fortune telling and astology, etc, etc, etc. There's some superstition available to any nut case that wants to opt out of reality.