The lot that I usually park in at the high school was full this morning so I parked across the street at what looked like a large church. I checked in at the school office to make sure that was okay . . . “I couldn’t find a space in the lot out front so I parked across the street,” I said to the woman at the desk. “Is that okay?” “Did you park on the street or at the church?” she asked. “I parked at the church . . . I asked myself, ‘What would Jesus do? Would he tow my car just because it doesn’t belong there?’ No, because he’s all about forgiveness and love.” “Jesus doesn’t love you when you park in that lot. You need to move your car.” Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Religion
People Who Don’t Want Me to Know Things
What I want to know is why there are so many people who don’t want me to know things . . . What the 1% Don’t Want Us to Know Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About 20 Terrifying Facts Food Companies Don’t Want You to Know 11 things the Koch brothers don’t want you to know What hospitals don’t want you to know about C-sections 5 Things Hackers Don’t Want You to Know The Sad Secret Successful People Don’t Want You To Know 7 Rip-Offs Corporations and the Wealthy Don’t Want You to Know About Something Most Christians Don’t Want You to Know 11 Secrets Supermarkets Don’t Want You to Know Conspiracies: Five things they don’t want you to know The 25 Shadiest Things Drug Companies Don’t Want You To Know 11 Secrets Pilots Don’t Want You To Know Bottled Water: 10 Shockers “They” Don’t Want You… Read more →
It’s All Part of God’s Plan
Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so goddamn lonely anymore. — Kurt Vonnegut
Killed by Prayer
A woman on Facebook a couple of days ago asked everyone to pray for her seriously ill father. Today, he died. Go figure. Had he made a miraculous recovery, we would have said that prayer “worked” . . . but what does it mean when you pray for someone to live and he dies? I had a college professor . . . his exams were graded by a graduate assistant, but students had the option of appealing grades to the professor. That’s not unusual, but most professors will either raise the grade or leave it as is. This guy, however, would either raise the grade, leave it as is or lower it. Risky! Maybe God operates on the same principle. When you put someone’s fate in his hands, he retains the option of saying “toodle-oo.” Read more →
Giving Clergy the Benefit of the Doubt
Seattle Archdiocese to pay $12 million to settle child sex abuse claims — MSN News Giving them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they didn’t know that sex with children is wrong. Read more →
If There’s One Thing I Can’t Tolerate, It’s Intolerance
NEW YORK (AP) — A&E has declined to comment on new video of “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson reviving past anti-gay remarks. His comments are included in a sermon delivered at his church in West Monroe, Louisiana, on Easter Sunday. Robertson includes homosexuals with other groups such as thieves and adulterers as hell-bound sinners. — New anti-gay remarks by ‘Duck Dynasty’ star emerge – MSN TV News Oooh, new anti-gay remarks. I’m trying to get appropriately offended about this but I can’t do it: As previously noted the last time he said the same thing, he’s not ad-libbing those remarks, he’s quoting a bible verse: Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Be not deceived: Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the… Read more →
I’m Done With the NBA
I’m choking to death on all the pious platitudes re Donald Sterling. I hope that TMZ will make a recurring feature out of providing glimpses into the private lives of NBA executives, coaches and players. The level of sanctimony amongst these juvenile moralizers will drop off a cliff. To cite an obvious example: The Clippers are currently in a playoff series against the Golden State Warriors. The coach of the Warriors, Mark Jackson, describes himself as “an African-American man that’s a fan of the game of basketball and knows its history and knows what’s right and what’s wrong.” He goes on to encourage people to boycott Clippers games and says, “We cannot allow someone with these feelings to profit.” Jackson is an ordained minister. He and his wife run the True Love Worship Center in Reseda, Ca. Jackson was also, a couple of years ago, the victim of an extortion… Read more →
Pope John Paul II Just Killed a Guy
Man crushed by giant crucifix dedicated to Pope A man has been crushed to death after a giant crucifix dedicated to Pope John Paul II collapsed, just days before a historic Papal canonisation in Rome. The 30-metre-high (98ft) wooden and concrete cross fell during a ceremony in the Italian Alpine village of Cevo, near Brescia. Another man was taken to hospital. The structure was dedicated to John Paul II on his visit to the region in 1998. — ITV News It’s clear to me that the Pope intended to kill this man. What’s the rule? Does this cancel out one of his life-saving miracles? If you believe that a dead person can be the agent of unexplained happenings on Earth, then you’ve got to take the bad with the good. If the Pope gets credit for a miracle when a woman’s health improves after seeing his picture in a magazine,… Read more →
It’s Not That Hard to Be a Saint in the City
Pope John Paul II is being canonized this weekend because of 667,302 prayers for divine intervention, he miraculously answered two, years after he was already dead. What sort of evidence is required to certify that an earthly phenomenon was caused by a dead person? William of Occam would have pointed out that there are simpler explanations for a sick person getting well, e.g., The disease responded to treatment. The disease went into remission. The patient was misdiagnosed and did not really have the disease in the first place. I assure you that if 667,302 people with diagnosed medical ailments prayed to my dog, in at least two of those cases (and more likely, thousands), something unusual would happen. Years ago, a lower GI series revealed that I had a golf ball-sized (4 cm) tumor in my colon. The doctor did a colonoscopy a few days later and the tumor was… Read more →
EppsNet at the Movies: A Serious Man
When the truth is found . . . to be lies. And all the hope . . . within you dies. What then? Life is bleak. If you try to lead a good life, bad things happen. If you yield to temptation, worse things happen. Religion offers no more wisdom, insight or consolation than a Jefferson Airplane song. P.S. I know the lyric should be “joy” and not “hope” but in the movie the rabbi says “hope.” Rating: A Serious Man Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg Larry Gopnik, Richard Kind Uncle Arthur, Sari Lennick Judith Gopnik, Fred Melamed Sy Ableman IMDb rating: ( votes) Read more →
See You in Hell: The Fritz Pollard Edition
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] The head of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which monitors diversity in the NFL, expects the league to institute a rule where players would be penalized 15 yards for using the N-word on the field. — NFL expected to penalize players for using racial slurs in games – ESPN The N-word. Let’s see . . . the N-word is “National,” the F-word is “Football” and the L-word is “League.” Wait — what?! I’m now being informed that the N-word in this case is “nigger.” That’s what the Fritz Pollard Alliance wants to penalize. OK, that’s a great idea, Fritz Pollard Alliance, and by “great” I mean “bullshit.” Has anyone at the Fritz Pollard Alliance read the Harry Potter books? In the Harry Potter books, Voldemort is known as He Who Must Not Be Named. He’s so powerful… Read more →
He Moves in Mysterious Ways
There’s a story on the TV news about a fire that burned down a local preschool, owned by the same family for 44 years. Fire investigators suspect arson. The owner is being interviewed. “The Lord will get us through,” she says. “I’m surprised the Lord let someone burn the place down to begin with,” I say to my wife. “You can’t look at it that way.” “I can’t?” “It’s just something that happened and the Lord will get them through it.” “I don’t see how the Lord can be given credit for anything that happens as long as it’s good, but when something bad happens, well, it’s just a random incident that he couldn’t do anything about. Where’s the accountability? Is the Lord making things happen in your life or isn’t he? Well, the preschool burned down, that was regrettable. The Lord must have looked away for a moment. But… Read more →
Thoughts on a Turbulent Flight
I can’t sleep on planes. I’m afraid the damn thing will crash and I’ll miss it. I don’t believe in anything. I wish I did. It seems comforting to imagine holding the plane aloft with prayer. I’m not a good person. Why shouldn’t something terrible happen to me? Read more →
Japan, Day 1: Osaka Castle, Todai-ji Temple, Kiyomizu Temple
Osaka Castle The main tower of Osaka Castle is situated on a plot of land roughly one square kilometer. It is built on two raised platforms of landfill supported by sheer walls of cut rock, using a technique called Burdock piling, each overlooking a moat. The central castle building is five stories on the outside and eight stories on the inside, and built atop a tall stone foundation to protect its occupants from attackers. The Castle grounds, which cover approximately 60,000 square meters (15 acres) contain thirteen structures which have been designated as Important Cultural Assets by the Japanese government. In 1583 Toyotomi Hideyoshi commenced construction on the site of the Ikko-ikki temple of Ishiyama Hongan-ji. The basic plan was modeled after Azuchi Castle, the headquarters of Oda Nobunaga. Toyotomi wanted to build a castle that mirrored Oda’s, but surpassed it in every way: the plan featured a five-story main… Read more →
We’re Supporting Tolerance and Inclusion by Telling People to Shut the Hell Up
“Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson has been put on an indefinite hiatus from filming the smash hit A&E reality series following inflammatory remarks about gay people he made in an interview with GQ magazine. . . . In the interview, which appears in the January issue of GQ, Robertson, founder of the Duck Commander family business of duck calls, referred to gay people as “homosexual offenders” who would not “inherit the Kingdom of God.” He also said a woman’s vagina was “more desirable” than a man’s anus. — GLAAD slams ‘Duck Dynasty’ star Phil Robertson for ‘vile’ remarks – latimes.com LET’S ENCOURAGE TOLERANCE AND DIVERSITY BY MAKING THIS GUY SHUT THE HELL UP! Here’s Robertson’s full quote on “homosexual offenders”: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers — they won’t inherit the kingdom of God.… Read more →
Waving Bibles at Scientists
The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that a public school district was legally justified in firing science instructor James Freshwater, who waved a Bible at his students, distributed religious pamphlets and talked about creationism in evolution lessons. Personally, I’d fire him just based on the look of smug, benevolent certainty on his face. He doesn’t look like a man who struggles with doubt, which is the essence of science. Read more →
How Effective is Prayer as a Tornado Survival Tactic?
Take that, liberal heathen! She’s not “supposed” to pray in a school but she did it anyway! And that’s why she’s alive today! It would be useful to know for the purpose of assessing the value of prayer as a tornado survival tactic, how many of the 24 people who didn’t survive the Oklahoma tornado were praying at the moment of their death. Of the 10 children who were killed, were any of them praying? Maybe God said to himself, “Okay, change of plans. I was going to hit Rhonda Crosswhite with this tornado, but since she’s praying out loud in a school, I’ll redirect it into those 10 kids.” Read more →
In the desert, an old monk once advised a traveler, the voices of God and the Devil are scarcely distinguishable.
Word of the Day
so·te·ri·ol·o·gy \suh-teer-ee-ol–uh-jee\, noun: spiritual salvation, esp. by divine agency. the branch of theology dealing with this. Read more →