For a while now, your truly has given church services a wide berth and prefers to use my Sundays to either finish a book am reading or attend Sunday school but this past Sunday was different. I was in church and no, there was no funeral or wedding. I just went, of course not alone. You know too well I wouldn’t hack.
For a very critical person like yours truly, the church service was for a source of bewilderment. I kept asking myself how is it people believe the things their pastor says and how it is that they seem not to see any problems with some of the scriptures. It is all amen to every word of the pastor. It is shocking, really, to believe that things will turn out differently on a pastor’s say so.
The music wasn’t so great though tolerable. As for the preaching, yours truly would have banged his head several times on a wall if there was one close in frustration to the nonsense tales being peddled in the name of communiqué from holy of holies.
There are Christians on the internet who keep insisting that they no longer believe as per the old testament, that Jesus Hubris Christ made a new covenant which they all now follow except they are not forsaking kin and walking in sack-clothes but that is a matter for a different discussion. I think every Christian will refer to the OT when it meets his needs and ignore any ugly scenes or those that he can’t explain.
I can never understand how a person in this neck woods would consider YHWH his god when at the early ages of creation, this god was the god of Abe, Jacob and Isaac. Here is a family god, showing preference to people all the way and someone in the 21st C believes that this is the epitome of love. Someone help me here!
I would love to understand how one would explain an omniscient, omnipotent and all-benevolent being having preference for BBQ instead of veggies, or why he prefers the sons of Jacob to the Canaanites. I would ask as the fellows in the movie, god on Trial ask, who was the god of the Egyptians, the Canaanites, the Gentiles and all other groups that the omnipotent god of the Jews did not like?
On the good news front, creationists would be happy about mitochondrial Eve whose closest relative, a man who died in SA about 315BC, is the closest relative.
And here are ten quick responses to atheist claims. Theists need not worry anymore, the atheists need to do more to critique religion.
Have a pleasant week and for those in warm climates, well, you could go nude. It’s good for your health, says the pope!
Random thoughts 
I would recommend all ministers of churches to tell their audience the story of the golden calf.
LikeLike
Don’t you think that would be ambitious on your part?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, it would be. But it might put some to consider the similarities between jeebus and the golden calf.
LikeLike
I’m nude now, even though it’s a tad chilly outside. I like how the cold makes my heathen skin tingle and my heathen nipples get all stiff. It’s as if the Hubris of Jeebus has entered me and centered itself in my manly teets. $Amen$ to nudity in the cold. And, Brother, you are a braver man than I for sitting through a mass. Can’t do it anymore. Unless, of course, it’s a mass to honor the Golden Boot and I’m the one applying it to the arses of idiots. That kinda mass I love. Once we get to hold one on TV, we’ll be tax-free billionaires. The Golden Boot has revealed this to me. $Amen$.
LikeLike
I read those ten responses to atheists’ claims. It’s a sort of weird apples and oranges debate going on:
Atheist: “Apples grow on trees.”
Christian: “Oranges grow on vines.”
A: “Oranges also grow on trees, grapes grow on vines.”
C: “Grapes are put on vines by god.”
A: “You mean they don’t *grow* on vines?”
C: “I was speaking metaphorically.”
A: “What’s the evidence of that?”
C: “The Bible told me so.”
A: “Let’s try to get back to apples -”
C: “what don’t you like about oranges?”
It all finally comes down to the first of these responses, concerning the relation between Zeus, Thor (etc.) and the Christian god: “They are products of the primeval mass and energy of the universe. The God of the Bible created the heavens and the earth”. Of course this is not any kind of response at all, it simply asserts: “God. So, you’re wrong.” And this is what they call reasoning.
LikeLike
It is a strawman all the way. And I like your apples and oranges analogy
LikeLike
Can’t for the life of me think that I used to listen to that crap as well when we were ‘believers’ Mak. Guess with age comes wisdom. 😀
Seeing me in the nude won’t be healthy for the pope, I can assure you. 😆
LikeLike
Stop that. You know I lurk as much as Violet. Now I’ll have to go take a cold shower, dammit! 😉
LikeLike
Hahaha
LikeLike
This made my morning! Can’t stop laughing.
The load of crap people swallow as believers.
LikeLiked by 1 person
hahahah Mak! Glad to hear that. 😆
Oh, absolutely! Guess it’s because they are desperate to believe in something. Why can’t they just believe in themselves?
LikeLike
After years of being told they are born of sin, they must think themselves unworthy of belief
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh believe me, those who think they’re ‘god’ really make you believe that after a time.
LikeLike
or those who claim to speak to god on behalf of men and to men on behalf god, which basically is the same as them being god.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Excactly! I knew a lot of them. Chased them out of my house time and again.
LikeLike
I once told some JW am not interested in listening to them, they didn’t seem amused. They asked to read the WT, I said I would discard them in the nearest rubbish bin I would find, they didn’t seem pleased with me after that. I think they have been praying for my soul since that time.
LikeLiked by 1 person
haha! The same here. Strange how some of them have no sense of humour! 😆 They can ‘pray’ all they want. Nothing wrong with our souls. One once told me that they’ll ‘pray’ for me. Told him he should rather spend his time praying for himself. He needs it more. 😀
LikeLike
I haven’t been in a church for about 8 years and that was to a wedding. Flipping through the TV channels I see some yelling preachers, but I never went to a church like that. I just sang in the choir. I don’t remember ever really listening to the sermons. My best friend and I would sit and laugh at the preacher. She must have listened, because she always signs her emails with IN GOD WE TRUST. 😦
LikeLike
I must say, Ladysighs, that I too once sang in a church choir. I still love to sing old great folk tunes like , “Oh, Mary Don’t You Weep,” and “Down By The River Side.” Those religious folks write some good tunes for singin’. We’ll have to bring some of the better tunes with us to The Church of the Golden Boot. We can sing ’em in harmony whilst we liberally apply the Golden Boot to the asses of the perpetually stupid. It’ll be fun. And tax-free too.
LikeLike
This gonna be fun.
I never sang in any choir but I used to do the day’s readings
LikeLike
You can do the readings as to who’s arses needed kicking and we can then sing hymns while we’re all applying the boot to the arses of the stupid. 😀
LikeLike
we have higharka to start with, she of Plato’s cave then I can populate the list
LikeLike
I think I may have quieted her, for a while at least. Haven’t heard from her since I told her she was really a him and just a brain in bucket attached to wires in my Matrix basement.
LikeLike
That sounds like fun! I’m all for fun. BUT you have to keep your clothes on.
LikeLike
I will, or else our entire congregation will be blinded by the sight of me, and I don’t mean in a good “blinded by the light” kinda way.
LikeLike
I listened to this sermon in the event the pastor wasn’t bullshitting his congregants, I was too ambitious.
I usually slept in church, a better way to spend that time. Sundays TV, unless one is a pay to view channel, there is likely to be a televangelist making noise and asking for money.
LikeLike
How about those churches where they play with snakes. That would surely keep you from taking a nap!!!!
LikeLike
my parents would not have allowed me anywhere close.
Taking a nap in church was a good thing, I left without remembering what the priest said. I did my obligations as a good christian, attend mass then go and wait for next Sunday or Saturday for confession.
LikeLike
And I bet you had a lot to confess. lol
LikeLike
Hahaha! At some point I saw there was no need, god would have to wait till I die to have the entire list, if I would manage to remember that is
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am astonished to learn that you do go to church sometimes (although I see its for study purposes, as a cultural anthropologist so to speak).
LikeLike
I looked around in the church to see if anyone doubted the pastor, on every face there was that look of agreement and hope that whatever nonsense they are being promised will come to pass.
LikeLike
My impression is that the missionaries brought a pre-enlightenment, pre-modern form of european culture to Africa. It is a reduced shrink-form of the original. Partially, they where fundamentalist idiots themselves, but in part there might be a form of racism behind it, because they did not take Africans for full. I wonder why Africans take this shit. This stupidification through religion is one of the things that keeps Africa down. What Africa needs is a large dose of enlightenment, but that is a hard battle. Here in Europe, it took two or three centuries.
LikeLike
We will need several centuries to get to where Europe is. Religion and the religious have quite a lot of say here and so many people don’t even attempt to question their beliefs
LikeLike
I read Lennox’s first response regarding Zeus and the biblical God and swore so much that the Missus came to see what was going on.
I farking detest that man – probably more than Craig. I couldn’t bring myself to read the rest. It would have been like eating a dog-turd sandwich.
When youy go to church you ought to put your hand u and ask a few questions!
“S’cuse me … er, about Adam and Eve.”
LikeLike
Lennox is just as bad or even worse than Craig.
Next time am asked to attend church, I should ask a few questions, maybe then I will be told to stay at home.
LikeLike
Far too hot here today to even contemplate a Nuddy 500.
LikeLike
The body would cool faster. You ought to try it
LikeLike
Mak, why would you self abuse yourself in such a fashion? I only regret I am too far away to pat you on the shoulder and hand you a condolence beer.
There are better ways to kick start the “why did I do that” mode. Visit family, rent a Tom Cruise movie, go to the beach on 300 lb-ers get in free day.
Just no more church…okay?
LikeLike
No more church, I promise
LikeLike
LOL! An awesome post, my Nairobi brother! I will loudly and triumphantly dance clothes free to your encouraging endorsement of going nude! 😉 You know all too well that I’m ALWAYS up for that! Now I can argue religious freedom when questioned by the police about my nudity!
As to your observation on the resounding “amens” to every scripture quoted by the clergy…proof positive that humans are so little different from sheep! Apologies to my wool-bearing friends! LOL!
LikeLike
Yep. Went to a church wedding recently and the pastor went on and on about the sanctity of marriage and the importance of spending a lifetime together in love and everyone nodded heads in agreement even though this was the couple’s 2nd marriage with many an affair in between and most of those in attendance were divorced, remarried or whatever…nobody likes to disagree in a church, just everywhere else!
LikeLike
Indeed, no one wants to disagree in church even when faced with a contradiction they can see.
LikeLike