Heaven
2008-07-20 12:00:00
So it turns out there is a Heaven
after all. Yeah, I know... I was pretty surprised about it too.But there I was one morning, in a gleaming light breathing that thin and unsatisfying oxygen you get at the top of mountains. I saw a long, white fence, so I started to walk towards it. I figured it was heaven, but something was a bit off - up close and personal, the Pearly Gates weren't really all tha
In memorium
2008-07-13 12:00:00
I first started this strange journey into internet-based religion rabble-rousing about two and a half years ago. It started for me with the madhouse that is Yahoo! Answers' Religion & Spirituality section. Well, it wasn't so much of a madhouse back then, just a repository for people with very confused beliefs about religion. Having reached a certain clarity regarding religion after a lengthy,
In praise of XTC
2008-07-06 12:00:00
I wanted to take a moment here to thank Andy Partridge, a man who inspired me and comforted me in my spiritual journey when I was a child."Who?", you might ask. Rightfully so. The English band XTC is marginal at best - known mostly to people 'of a certain age' (which, sadly, I now am) and of a certain musical inclination. They never exactly tore up the pop charts. Or the rock charts. Or the Latin,
Christianity simplified
2008-06-29 14:00:00
In the beginning, God made a bunch of rules. Those who followed them went to heaven and those who broke them went to hell.But they were really difficult rules, so God decided to send Jesus to the world. Jesus was God's son, but he was God Himself, too. Plus the Holy Spirit. And the "Word made Flesh". And many other things too.Jesus's mission was to spread the word of God, his Father (i.e. Himself)
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, simplified
Einstein's coffee
2008-06-22 14:00:00
I love coffee. Dearly. A life without coffee is just a life not worth living. Of course, not everyone everywhere in the world is as pro-coffee as I am – or, at least, as pro-good coffee. On occasion, I am forced to endure the indignity of the highly artificial chemical compound called 'Nescafé'. However, as someone with an instinctive ability to look for silver linings in black clouds, I can ad
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Unlawful eviction
2008-06-15 14:00:00
Good afternoon, ma'am. Welcome to Legal Services. My name is Ken. How can I help you?Well, our landlord's kicked us out on the street. My husband and I don't have anywhere to go.You've been evicted? Have you been paying your rent on time?No sir, we don't pay rent.You don't pay rent?No, sir. My husband is the superintendant. He looks after the garden and in return we get free accommodation.Oh, I un
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, eviction
Sola fide and the Bodhisattva Vow
2008-06-08 14:00:00
Sola fide is a central tenet - or maybe even the central tenet - of almost every branch of Protestantism. As far as I can discern it, it comes from an interpretation of Romans, it literally means 'faith alone', and it refers to the concept that only by believing in Jesus as our personal saviour are we saved...Please note that I don't speak out of disrespect; it's merely my personal attempts to rec
When good marriages go bad
2008-06-01 14:00:00
I'm really at my wit's end these days... I really don't know what to do. Sometimes I figure maybe I should just run away and start a new life - just me and my son. I mean, I may be a little over the hill but I'm still beautiful for my hundred years. I'm sure I can find someone who will love me and my son...My so-called husband has just come back from the mountain. He took off a few days ago with m
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Confounding their language
2008-05-25 14:00:00
And in the land of Shinar, they started building a tower to the heavens. Seeing this, God got worried that "now nothing will be restrained from them". So, he vowed to stop it. And these were his words: Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language
, that they may not understand one another's speech. (Genesis 11:7) Or, at least, those were his words as recorded in 1611 in the confounded
Miracles
2008-05-18 14:00:00
So I was in an intercity bus going from one place to another when it started to rain. I was thinking about how rain is a part of a phenomenally complex weather system. I was thinking about how it was raining where I was but not yet raining where I was going - how the rain falling on our bus was just one of many 'localised events' that happen at point A while point B is completely oblivious. I thou
The God gene
2008-05-11 14:00:00
I've spend a lot of time recently fighting against the hypocrisy, prejudice, arrogance and illogic that often springs from god-belief. I think that this is a worthy thing to do. I've been shocked at how much of it exists (I never knew before I started reading people's thoughts on the internet), but I'm slowly coming to realise that the world is not quite the place I thought it was. I thought that
An introduction
2008-05-04 14:00:00
Fresh from the frontlines of the so-called 'religious war'... actually, this is not a blog that aims to be belligerent, angry or unnecessarily offensive. It is, however, a blog that refuses to be put down or condemned. This is a blog that is proud to be secular. This is not a blog that chooses its enemies based on their theism; it is a blog that welcomes and accepts open-minded non-judgemental the
If the Tortoise and the Hare were scriptural
2008-08-02 12:00:00
When I was a child, I used to think of the stories of Æsop and the stories of Genesis along similar lines: interesting stories with frequently positive morals, but not to be taken seriously. Not once in my whole childhood did I encounter anyone - relative, friend, teacher, old homeless man - who suggested to me that, for example, Adam and Eve should be taken more literally than, for example, the
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Chicken heads for the soul
2008-07-27 12:00:00
This is the story of how a chicken head showed me that the soul is a myth...Okay, my tongue is ever-so-slightly in my cheek. But, still, let me explain. I've never had much to say about the whole 'can atheists be spiritual?' topic. When I first understood I was an atheist, I discarded the idea of a soul without giving it much thought. Later, in university and thus going through one of those 'exper
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In the beginning...
2008-08-17 12:00:00
Typical boring argument: Theist: “But how could the universe have just existed forever? Obviously someone or something needs to have created it, right?” Atheist: “Well, but how could God have just existed forever? Isn’t that essentially the very same question?” Theist: “Hmmm… grumble grumble, alpha and omega, er…, exists out of time, uncreated, uh… holy spirit, scoffer,
The Blaise Pascal Casino
2008-08-10 12:00:00
So I picked up a copy of Blaise Pascal
’s “Pensées” the other day. Quite literally, in fact, as my neighbour had left out on the lawn a box saying “Free Books” and containing said tome tucked in alongside owners manuals for old cars, V.C. Andrews books and Audobon Society birdwatchers’ guides.So I didn’t actually have to pay any money for this groundbreaking testament to the Christia
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The wanderer
2008-09-07 12:00:00
Through these years, I’ve seen so many people in desperate and intense longing and prayer for the gift of eternal life, or if not eternal life then at least a little more time.Time… it’s often been said down the years that people rarely have any idea what they truly need, what is best for them. A cruel god would be one who would grant these foolish people their wish, lest they learn what a b
Entropy
2008-08-31 12:00:00
As far as I can see, the basic tenet of the ‘argument for design’ is, roughly speaking, a certain reading of the law of entropy. People will quote the phrase ‘second law of thermodynamics’ without really understanding what it is or entails. To the supporter of ID / creationism, ‘entropy’ is an important concept because it suggests that, in a ‘natural’ situation, things will fall ap
Between a rock and a hard place
2008-08-24 12:00:00
You know, if I were a Christian, I’d be an obnoxious jerk. There. Contentious statement out of the way, let me explain what I actually mean by that. It seems that belief brings out different qualities in different people. Some people seem able to speak of a compassion motivated by their love of their saviour Jesus Christ, while other people seem to thrive on the vilest, basest forms of hatred
On foxholes and prisons
2008-09-28 12:00:00
The first time I heard the phrase, 'there are no atheists in foxholes' was also the first time I'd ever heard the world 'foxhole'. Unaware of its military meaning, I was intrigued by this aphorism-cum-koan and found my thoughts turning to fables of foxes or documentary-style canine 'fun facts'.Turns out, of course, that the underlying message here is 'there's nothing like getting shot at to put th
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A confession
2008-09-21 12:00:00
It's been said before that it's not the finding in life that matters so much as the searching. By and large, I'm inclined to agree with this. For the past several thousands of years an uncountably large amount of people have gone on quests to find God. As a disbeliever I am, of course, bound to believe that not one has succeeded – at least, not succeeded on the main quest. However, I believe tha
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Death contradicts thee, babe
2008-09-14 12:06:00
I wrote this a while ago, when I was playing around with the subtle are of anagramming and had found a webpage devoted to it. I just liked the random 'meaning' that anagrams provide: it's no Kabbalah-style belief in hidden messages or meaning or anything, just an appreciation for randomness. What I did was to take each line of the first verse of the Tao Te Ching and anagram it into a new form. Th
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