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Showing posts from January, 2023

A Terribly Frighting Book . . .

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  Many years ago I was a young Fundamentalist Baptist Young-Earth Creationist Christian, in my early 20's.  I enjoyed collecting Christian books that (obviously) supported my religious beliefs.  But stepping back a few years earlier (50 years ago) for just a moment - when I was in my early teens, before I was a Christian, I remember going on a school field trip with my science class to look for fossils along the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, at the Calvert Cliffs State Park.  The fossil shell impression below is one that I found that day: I carried my discovery to my science teacher and he told me that it was a scallop or clam fossil that was about 12,000,000 years old.  I was thrilled. The transformation from science loving student to science denying young adult began when I was 17.  I am not exactly sure what the motivation was.  I was regularly attending a teen youth group at a local non denominational church - under no pressure from my parents, who w...

The things that Christians say, again . . .

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  Eric Hernandez , of Eric Hernandez Ministries , has a YouTube channel, like most everyone else on the planet, but I don't fault him for that because I like (hate) YouTube.  I somehow manage to waste an inordinate amount of time there, and often I waste time listening to the thoughtless and erroneous things that Christians say. This morning, while washing a sink full of last nights dishes I decided to listen to Rev. Eric's most recent video:  Answering Popular Atheist Objections . Around the 9:45 mark in the video Eric makes a horrible mistake (proof that all the Christian education in the world can help only so much).  It is a very common mistake that I hear Christian apologists routinely make when they try to come up with a reason why there are such a thing as atheists, or why atheists give the reasons that they give for not believing in bible god  - he says: " Why do I think atheists have bad objections to Christianity or God - I think it's a numbe...

Amen

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  We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your moldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this-year's-fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years. Robert G. Ingersoll The Gods and Other Lectures (1892) ~  ~  ~ Ya know, I get so damn weary of Christians, when asked ( or when not asked ) to present some evidence ( I usually ask for their best single favorite bit of evidence and I am always let down ) for the existence of their god, they usually (...

"You were never . . .

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  . . . a true Christian to begin with !" In other words, for 25 years, going to church, praying, tithing, praying, tithing, studying the bible, fellow-shipping with other  True® Christian - because I left Christianity and no longer believe in God or Jesus, I was never a  True® Christian to begin with? ~ ~ ~ Wouldn't it be great if Christianity issued you an ID card when you became a True® Christian?   Of course some cults would likely figure out how to make fake ID's and when they were out in the neighborhood door-knocking and were accused by some Baptist as not being True® Christians the cult member could just smile and pull out their True® Christian ID - argument settled, nuff said. Unfortunately this is not how Heaven decided things here on Earth would operate, and as a result, it is entirely up to any self-righteous believer to gleefully inform me that I was deceived into thinking all those years that I was a True® Christian.    But I do...

The things that Christians say . . .

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  . . . and do they really believe that? I knew Nathan (Nate) Currin when he was a child, back in the mid 1980's. His father was (is) a Christian evangelist / preacher. Nate's younger brother is a church pastor, and Nate is now an accomplished singer / song writer and a web designer .   Nate likely would not remember me, since he was quite young when our families associated.  I moved away when he was likely 5-7 years old. Going on two years ago I watched a video in which Nate was a member of a small informal panel of Christian believers (along with his preacher brother), and the title of the video was: Should a Christian Attend a Homosexual Wedding? If I remember correctly, Nate was the only one on the panel who did not object to a Christian attending a gay wedding, and he admitted that he had gay friends.  But near the end of the discussion, almost as if he was trying to redeem himself in the eyes of his fellow Christians, Nate said this:  "Anything t...