The God-forsakin' Blog

  Conversation that I had with an Evangelical today: Her kid has an assignment from school to answer this question: “Is it ever ok to lie? They have to show that they have thought about this. Some examples thrown out in class; those who hid the Jews (later clarifying, hid the Jews from the Nazis). Rahab hiding the spies. Those who smuggle God's word into countries. When someone asks you how they look in an outfit? When people with dementia are thinking you're a loved one? As a guest eating food, do you like it? Is your answer just an opinion or do you have a source for back up?”   I responded: With the dementia patient example, I tend to use "creative honesty". For instance, if they ask where their husband is, it would be pointlessly cruel to keep retraumatizing them every day by telling them "Your husband is dead"... but also cruel to tell them "Sure hon, he's on his way." So I go with "I haven't seen him. But if he calls I wi...

  Yet again, one of my wife’s childhood friends who is a conservative Evangelical made a post on social media saying conservative Evangelical bullshit. And so yet again, I don’t want to call them out on it because it’s unfair to my wife for me to alienate her friends… but yet again, I really NEED to write about why what they posted is bullshit. Here’s what they posted: “The government sells fear so they can become your savior. Christ says, “Fear not”, because he is your savior. I choose Christ”.   My response: *silently screams in Exvangelical*   The response I would make if I didn’t mind starting a fight that could alienate my wife’s childhood friend: Sure, I hate when the government tries to make people afraid of Latino immigrants so they can spend billions of dollars on a useless wall. I hate when the government tries to make people afraid of Muslims so they can spend trillions of dollars on a series of unwinnable wars. I hate when the government trie...

When Evangelicals talk about Jesus, they don’t talk about the Christ who wandered the cities as a homeless street preacher, calling out the hypocrisy of the powerful and especially the hypocrisy of powerful religious conservatives. They don’t talk about the Christ who claimed that not just individuals, but also nations and their rulers, would be judged by how they treated the poor. They don’t talk about the Christ who proclaimed woe unto the rich, or whipped bankers, or told rich people they must give away all they owned in order to follow him. They don’t talk about the Christ who demanded that his followers should heal the sick and feed the hungry for free. They only talk about the Christ crucified. They talk about a bloody, torturous death, which was necessary to pay for the infinite and horrifying sins that every one of us have committed. They talk about guilt and expiation, about sin and redemption, about death and resurrection. They talk, in short, about a Jesus that makes the...

Tonight an Evangelical FB friend posted something about how convicted they felt reading the Bible. This passage, in particular: He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” Mark 7:20‭-‬23 They went on to say that we (presumably meaning them and their fellow Evangelicals) often ignore certain sins like greed, envy, deceit, slander, arrogance, and folly, while today's world seems to ignore other sins like sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, and lewdness. They then asked "Do you pick and choose which of God's words to follow and which words are beneath you?" Now, this person is my wife's old friend, not mine, so I don't want to alienate them by calling them out on their page. But, DAMN, I need to talk a...

Today, I spoke with a female colleague who told me that, because of the way she was raised, she believes that a woman should not be in charge of the country. She hated Trump, but voted for him in 2016 because she couldn’t vote for a woman to be in charge of the country. This woman is a manager. Her manager is a woman, her  manager’s  manager is a woman, the current CEO of our company is a woman. All of them kick ass. All of them get, and deserve, respect for the work they do. All of them rightly expect their staff, regardless of sex or gender, to do what they say. But because she spent her childhood being told by preachers that her  opinion wasn’t as valuable as a man’s, she still believes it. She also said that her husband makes the decisions and “wears the  pants”. Now, I know this guy, and I know he’s not the kind of man who makes demands of people and expects to be obeyed. He’s the kind of guy who, even when he’s certain he’s right, still gets input from ot...

A few days ago I wrote about what I would say to the god I was raised to believe in, if he turned out to be real and I had a chance to confront him. Now, it had passion and anger behind it, but I don’t actually believe a word of it. I had 40 years of practice at pretending a god exists, so it’s very easy for me to re-capture that feeling and write convincingly from there. But the reality is it makes no more sense to be mad at gods for not existing or for not keeping their promises than it does to be mad at Santa Claus for not existing or keeping his promises. I didn’t get any presents from a fat Dutchman (who’s an ascetic Turkish bishop really) because he was a story my parents told me when I was little - partly in order to inspire wonder, partly in order to get me to “be good” by telling me someone was watching my behavior even when they weren’t, but mostly because that’s what their parents told them at the same age and they didn’t think of questioning the moral or practical implica...

Let’s be honest about the Evangelicals’ real motivation for fighting against abortion, whether they themselves realize it or not (and to their credit, I don’t think most of them DO realize what really drives them): It makes them feel morally superior. And that feels fucking AWESOME. Once you convince yourself that everyone outside your in-group is in favor of “murdering babies”, then there is absolutely NOTHING you can do that will cause you to lose your sense of having the moral high ground. How amazing is the feeling that you are a crusader for Truth, and Right, and The Way Things Should Be, and God Himself? How amazing is the feeling that the Author of the Universe has a special plan that requires you personally to participate? How amazing is it to know that the Standard of Right and Wrong is a person who hates almost everyone so much that he intends to slow-roast them for all eternity, but has decided to spare YOU personally because YOU made the choice to join his Army of...

 I remember being a seven year old in Sunday School and being told that if a baby dies, they go to heaven because they are innocent. Also that children reach an age of accountability – the age at which you’re old enough to know better than to commit a sin, is the age at which you’re accountable when you do sin (and apparently, we as seven year olds were therefore already eligible for damnation, so we’d better repent and accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior). So, these same people believe that a fetus is already a human being that has a soul. They believe that if that fetus dies, it will go straight to heaven, but if it is born then within a few short years it will start sinning, and the overwhelming majority of sinners will go to hell because they don’t pray to the right god in the right way. Straight is the gate and narrow the way to life, and few there be that find it. 100% chance of heaven if that fetus is aborted, and very poor odds of heaven if we force the ...

One of the greatest sales tactics that has been perfected by religion, especially by Evangelical Christianity, is to make up a non-existent problem and then offer a solution that involves giving them your time and money. Everyone knows to laugh at this kind of schtick when we see it on the Shopping Channel. “Right, I need a left-handed grommet remover that can be operated in the dark, for $19.99 plus shipping and handling, of course I do…” But a large percentage of the population doesn’t recognize the technique when they’ve been subjected to it by the same people every Sunday morning since before they were old enough to think critically.   Non-existent problem: People are poisoning Halloween candy, and dressing up as evil things will turn your kids evil. Solution: You can’t trick or treat anymore, but you can have a harvest party at church.   Non-existent problem: Rock music is evil and a gateway to demon possession. Solution: You can’t listen to good music at home...