Where is that Christian Love?

The 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.