How did your Zombie Jesus Weekend turn out? Personally I stuffed myself with food and partied way too hard, but it’s pretty much the only way most people I know tend to celebrate. In fact, it looks like most of New Zealand has no fucking clue what the holiday is actually about. According to a super unscientific survey they did, kids are generally ignorant as to the history and purpose of Easter. It’s hilarious:

The 10-question survey, which asked basic questions about Christ’s death and resurrection, returned a mean test score of 5 out of 10…The question as to whom betrayed Christ confused a number of others, with one young respondent believing it was his dog who was disloyal. Another was hazy about the entire concept of Easter.

I remember that part in the Bible when Old Yeller betrays Jesus too. Bastard.

A 16-year-old believed Christ was referred to as “King of the World”, and was crucified wearing a “halo made of bunnies”.

A halo made of bunnies.. How does that even work?

All of this is a positive sign that no one really gives a damn about Christianity enough to pass on their stupid stories to the next generation. So while some may lament about this, the rest of us secularists can take comfort that the world is slowly losing its religious flavor. It might take a while, but it looks like we might be on the winning side after all.

The Evangelical world may not be as coherent and homogeneous as some would lead you to believe. For one thing, they can’t seem to properly contain the apostasy of Pastor Robert Bell, who has been preaching from Mars Hill a theology that takes special efforts to exclude Hell.

Bell credits a conversation he had about Ghandi. When a parishioner kindly reminded him he was slowly roasting in the fires of Hell, something changed in him, according to this Time article. He wanted to believe in a God who didn’t send people to Hell. What, the author argues somewhat saliently, is the point of believing if it doesn’t matter anyways?

If, in other words, Gandhi is in heaven, then why bother with accepting Christ? If you say the Bible doesn’t really say what a lot of people have said it says, then where does that stop? If the verses about hell and judgment aren’t literal, what about the ones on adultery, say, or homosexuality? Taken to their logical conclusions, such questions could undermine much of conservative Christianity.

It’s not just the conservative side that gets bent out of shape once you expose people to the real nightmare that is the Bible, and the poisonous undercurrent of its theology. Given the authority society has granted this book, rather uncritically I might add, the Bible becomes the tool of bigots, racists, and sexists alike. We then find it surprising when the power and authority they command through their religions allow for the continued mistreatment of women, minorities, and the emotional, physical and sexual abuse of children.

Some, like Bell, have resolved to make the texts fit their own perception of the world. With delightful impunity he denies Hell, aware this idea alone –  eternal torture of the innocent for the crime of having chosen the wrong god – is morally repugnant. He attempts to save his favorite deity by endorsing the idea that everyone has been retroactively saved due to the torture and martyrdom of a middle-aged Nazarene some two thousand years ago. Asking why such a barbaric act is necessary in the first place is not something he’s yet ready for, since this too taxes a belief system already strained by the capricious and cruel blood thirst of Bell’s Abrahamic god.

With Bell’s attempt to stretch the foundations of his faith to encompass individuals outside his own organization, he in effect weakens the redemptive message evangelical preachers rely on to terrify their flock from questioning doctrine. What he and his cohorts fail to understand is for some, it’s the fire and torment they like. The “lovey-dovey” stuff is for sissies and liberals in their eyes. For many in the Evangelical right, it is the intensity of their hatred of people on the “outside” of their tight little Jesus circle-jerk that fuels their hellish fantasies. Recall in their eyes, we’ve already made our choice not to believe in their intellectually void ministrations, and the heavenly reward that supposedly awaits them includes the pleasure of watching the eternity of our torment for so much free-thought. If love was really the issue at hand, how could the so-called “righteous ones” not rebel against their God at the though of so many suffering in pain forever?

Of course that’s exactly the kinds of morally repulsive conclusions Bell has reached, and so he seduces those within Evangelism who have tired of the “brimstone mandate”. They are more numerous than the churches would ever admit. It is yet another kink in their already fading aura of supposed invisibility. Keep up the good work, Robby. Your attempts to civilize your religion will end up destroying it from the inside.

A recent article on haveyoureadthebible.com* on missionary work left me both angry and disgusted. If you’ve got the time, I highly recommend reading it if you want your blood to boil a little (especially the pictures of these morons on dune buggies and hiking trips).

I never grew up in a particularly religious environment, thanks largely to my anti-theist father, so my interactions with missionaries occurred only in my young adulthood. Until then I never really thought about what it was all about. No doubt if I had met any in my youth, they would have filled my head with romantic images of the struggling humanitarians trying to “save the souls” of the damned to create a better world.

The reality of missionary work, however, differs vastly from the carefully crafted image religions try to portray. The problem can be understood this way: any actions intended to change the mind and culture of another society comes with a number of risks. The first, and most obvious, is the corrupting influence of wealth; for how can an African child, offered a piece of life-saving bread at the edge of starvation, not be unduly influenced by those giving out their aid? At the least sinister (and this is rarely the case), charity alone pressures those receiving food or shelter to play along for their own good. Much more often, the gift is a bargaining chip to entice converts, and a strong deterrent for departure.

The danger lies also in the twisted reason for their pilgrimage. Rather than a result of merely the kindness and goodness of their hearts, the missionary is on an ordained mission from God, told by scripture to spread the word, regardless of its consequences. The influence of which has transformed Africa into a proxy war between Christianity and Islam. Conflict follows religions wherever they go, since their own ideologies require a totalitarian control over the entirety of existence. It isn’t enough they control the actions of millions of people, the externalities of belief demand even family members turn on one another. Like Matthiew 10:21 so clearly opined,

“brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.”

*(Update: The site no longer exists)

When it comes to the right to practice their religion the way they see fit – which includes complaining whenever they aren’t allowed to openly discriminate against gays – Conservative Christians take that shit pretty seriously. Unfortunately, they’re also a bunch of annoying hypocrites who think every other religion is dangerous idolatry, even when it’s a bunch of innocent people dressing up like characters from Star Wars or Lord of the Rings:

Fans dressed as Wookies and vampires will be among the throng to hear passages from those bibles of fantasy The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter at a “Sci-Fi and Fantasy Friendly Church Service”.

But traditionalists have slammed the service’s irreverence and lack of emphasis on scripture…”I don’t have a problem with people enjoying sci-fi, but church isn’t the place to encourage escapism and fancy dress,” Mentone Baptist minister Murray Campbell said.

Wow. So your average church service, complete with a dude in a dress waving around burning incense and encouraging his flock to pray to an imaginary being, doesn’t encourage escapism and fancy dress, huh? Take a look in the mirror, morons. If you weren’t so used to all the weird stuff you do to please your vengeful God, you’d think it was just as ridiculous as the rest.

While the service is meant to introduce more people to Christianity, I think at the end of the day everyone coming out of this kind of service will realize it’s all just a bunch of fairytale nonsense. What better way to erode faith than to show how common and utterly played-out these stories are. If you think the story of Jesus is original, you’re just lucky modern copyright law wasn’t around at the time, otherwise the early Church fathers would have been sued by the Egyptians, Babylonians, and every other culture they blatantly plagiarized.

There’s a storm-a-brewin’ in Australia, and a controversial church group called “Catch the Fire Ministries“. Their leader, a nutjob by the name of Daniel Nalliah, is crazy enough the Family First Party asked him to step down as a candidate after he published brochures that said God would destroy “Satan’s Strongholds”, which included mosques and Buddhist temples.

Nalliah’s big problem right now is the Prime Minister of the country is an atheist, and this, according to him, is putting the country in grave danger:

Dr Nalliah, a former Family First candidate who was asked to leave the party for his controversial views, has already blamed the Queensland floods on Kevin Rudd speaking out against Israel.

He also blamed the Victorian bushfires on that state’s liberalization of abortion laws.

“How many more disasters will it take before our nation, starting from the Prime Minister, would fall on our knees and ask for God’s protection and turn back to Him?”

Yes, believers are never struck with natural disasters. Even if they are, it’s totally the fault of sodomites and people with different political opinions.

You know, there’s a part of me that envies their crazy delusion. As far as they are concerned, the real cause of human misery isn’t due to the fact  we’re on a cooling ball of rock with a moving crust and a complex atmosphere, it’s because you touch yourself, or some other such nonsense. They truly believe if everyone just capitulated to their arbitrary rules, a male god would reward them with eternal protection. Cuz you know, that worked so well for the Jews, right?

(Update: The site is no longer active)

I can accept the fact that some people are just going to flat out detest people who don’t believe exactly what they do. It’s well within someone’s right to be a selfish dick, but I draw the line when the person in question has a job that requires requires them to forgo their petty, xenophobic tendencies.

I’m fairly confident you’ll agree a governor should be someone who places the good of the voting public above his private beliefs, but unfortunately it seems as though not everyone shares this attitude. In Alabama, the new Republican governor Robert Bentley had a special message to those who didn’t believe in his bearded hippie God:

“I was elected as a Republican candidate. But once I became governor … I became the governor of all the people. I intend to live up to that. I am color blind.”

“But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.”

Bentley added, “Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother”.

Wow, you’re color blind, Robby? How enlightened! It must almost feel like you’re a good person when you claim not to judge people based on the color of their skin. Too bad you don’t seem to take the same attitude regarding their beliefs, you close-minded prick.