Friday, March 23, 2007

Where is that Christian Love?

LouseThe Gainesville press has a good article on the recent free hugs event at the University of Florida. They set up a table in Turlington Plaza, where sidewalk bible-thumpers tend to preach fire and brimstone. One such thumper, Frank Zaccaro, was approached by the atheists and offered a hug. He jumped backwards, shouting, "No, I don't want that!"

Oooh! Atheist cooties!

This is just yet another example of that wonderful Christian Love I keep hearing about. When will honest bumper stickers going to come out, that say, Jesus Loves Me. Not You. Or the honest bracelets that say, Who Would Jesus Hate?

Theists have a well-developed blind eye. They can ignore the darndest things! A tornado rips through a trailer park, killing one family and sparing another. Does the (religious) surviving family question God for killing their neighbors? Probably not. If they're like most survivors, they thank God for letting them live! No blame. All praise. I wish my job worked like that.

One of my bigger pet peeves is when atheists are accused of not having any morals. Now which morals would those be? The ones from the bible -- where you are instructed to kill your children if they don't respect you? How about killing wives that aren't virgins? Or not touching women for a week after they menstruate, until she sacrifices two birds? But ok, enough about bronze age behavior. What about present day?

I really only have to give one example. Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church picketed Mr. Rogers' funeral! Mr. Rogers! The nicest guy in the entire universe!

Need more? Well, we have pastors that sexually abuse their own children and fondle six year old girls' privates. If you get your morals from the bible, pastors are therefore the experts at moral values, right? It must be even more so in the Catholic church, where priests are thought to have a hotline directly to God, as they are able to speak on behalf of God to forgive sins, etc. Surely God would have said something to them about the estimated 1,400 cases of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the US in the last 22 years.

Christian Love is a big enough problem that there are groups like Stop Baptist Predators, and Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Most of us aren't facing this kind of problem -- my condolences if you are. Most of use see the Frank Zaccaros of the world. Stardust has been toying with talking with a theist (that goes by "Big Sucker"!) on a Gods4Suckers thread. He's (or She's?) relatively harmless, but a good example of what we face on a regular basis.

atheists always make me laugh. can’t ever make up their mind about evolution. .... atheists don’t pay attention to REAL science (law of biogenesis), just conjecture with no PROOF. ... Nietzsche believed that blacks and jews were subhuman….great guy.

Just ignorant taunts. Though, for being relatively harmless, he's still trying to be a thorn in our paw. (yet too mis-informed to really make me want to respond! Take a look at the full post to see the unbridled ignorance.)

Unfortunately we also see a lot of middle ground. Poor PossumMomma had a bitter response to her thread on a newspaper blog site -- looking for fellow atheists in Austin. As she put it, she "attracted a few fundies." Here is a sample:
PM- I don't care where you go. Just get the hell out of here. This is gods town and you can take your family with you. We dont need are kind mixing with your kind. I read your blog. Same bullshit. Different libral. Tolerance is overated.
- Dick

How beautiful, that Christian love is.

It's so bad, in fact, that even theists joke about it. So to wrap up this long post, here's a funny story.

We had an amusing line from kiddo #1 tonight at the dinner table. He's a couple of months shy of his third birthday, very talkative, and quick to repeat whatever we say -- in the possessive two-year-old style. We were discussing a children's book, Rolly Poly Olie, which is about a robot built of circular shapes.

Auntie: In one story, new neighbors move in, and they're all robots made of square shapes. They...
Mom: Burn a cross in their yard?
Auntie: No [snicker] it's sweet. They learn about discrimination.
Kiddo #1: I want to burn a cross in the yard!
[ much laughter from all ]

We're still learing to watch what we say!

Apparently, so are the theists.

9 comments:

vjack said...

I love the image of a "Jesus Loves Me - Not You" sticker. A little truth in advertising, huh? I'll never understand the motives behind flaunting one's religion.

Anonymous said...

Since the article doesn't elaborate, maybe the theist just doesn't like to be hugged. I'm in that category. It wouldn't matter who was doing the hugging, except for one of my kids--I hate to be hugged. It was the way I was raised, and I've never gotten over it. As for the intolerance of fundamentalist Christians, yes, they are generally extremely intolerant.

Terra said...

David,
Great post. Really nicely brings together a lot of the absurdities under one heading. (hypocrisy)

Vjack-motive behind flaunting a religion? To feel superior. Xtians (and I'm sure other religions) are constantly told they're saved, loved unconditionally (no matter how horrible of a person they are Monday-Saturday) forgiven, encouraged to see others as deserving of their pity and generally just superior in every way to us godless. That feeling of belonging & superiority is a powerful drug, I'd imagine.

I think there's a bumper sticker along the lines of "Jesus loves me, but he thinks you're an asshole."

Terra said...

Sorry. I just looked it up. It's:

Jesus loves you, everyone else thinks you're an asshole.

I guess that doesn't really fit what you were talking about, David, but it's still hilarious to me, because I do usually tend to make the association in my own head with "Jesus Loves Me" bumper stickers and "asshole". Based mostly on past experiences.

David W. said...

Hi Jude! I agree, there are people that just don't like to be hugged by strangers. But still, I think jumping and shouting is an overreaction at best.

"Jesus loves you, everyone else thinks you're an asshole."

I wish I had a pocketful of "me" and "I'm" stickers to slap on top of that whenever I saw one. :-)

Naomi said...

As the resident "Goddess of Images" at GifS, I have to say that, right now, I'm a jealous goddess! That cootie is a cutie...and you found it first! Dang!

That said, you've posted a very thorough and righteous rant on "theistic multiple-personality disorder and cognitive dissonance"! Also their lack of senses of humor, irony, nuance and balance.

Pretty good for a new blogger with only 19 days on the 'webs...

Congratulations, David!

PS: I'm heisting it and taking it home with me...

David W. said...

Thanks Naomi! :-) I didn't find it, I made it. After writing the "Atheist cooties!" line I knew it demanded an image. I got lucky finding the perfect image of a louse, drawn by none other than Robert Hooke! I didn't realize how perfect that was until I did some more research on Hooke.

Hooke, the brother of three ministers, was a great 17th century scientist. He was the one that discovered cells. But he had much wider interests.

He was also the first to observe Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the first to theorize the wave theory of light, and was the first to theorize that fossils represented extinct species. Hooke, 250 years before Darwin, realized that fossils were a record of the changes of the planet's organisms over time.

Naomi, and anyone else, you're welcome to use the image!

Naomi said...

Now I know who to go to with image problems! If you've seen some of my best on GifS, you'll know that I search until I find the.perfect.one!

The LRonHubbard I found on google.images and is super. And I stumbled upon a photo of Laura Bush looking very-Stepford, with Pope Ratzi holding what looks like her remote controller! (It's really a gift box for Laura, containing a rosary...how dull!)

See Il Papa Ratzi in talks with President Godsend:
http://gods4suckers.net/archives/2007/03/24/il-papa-ratzi-in-talks-with-president-godsend/

That is fascinating about Hooke! If they'd had the 'webs then, he might be the one vilified now by the IDiots. Or--

--we'd have this stupid struggle behind us. And Bush wouldn't be president!

Power of positive-thinking? No, that makes me angry and sad...

The Rev. Jenner J. Hull said...

Great post!

As far as I can tell, "Christian Love" only exists in complete darkness, under the covers, and with a vastly disproportionate amount of guilt.