The Wayward Willis My Life Without Faith

9Dec/111

Dear Catholic League

JT Eberhard recently posted a story about an "Adopt-an-Atheist" program proposed by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. I, like many others, think this is a great idea! I'd love to have the Catholic Church send a few unsuspecting saps my way to try to justify the behavior and beliefs of the Catholic Church, its clergy, and the whole of Christianity. If you're an atheist and you want to be adopted by the Catholic Church, you can fill out this contact form and let them know.

Come at me, bro

Seriously, Bring It!

Here's my invitation:

Dear sirs,

I recently got wind of the "Adopt-an-Atheist" program proposed by Bill Donohue and want to congratulate you on such a wonderful idea! As an atheist activist myself, I'd like to let you know that I'm effectively orphaned from gods and as such up for adoption. Since no gods have contacted me as yet, I avail myself to humans to rescue me from my spiritual broken home and make me feel wanted again.

You see, I've personally been guilty of anti-Catholic bias. More accurately, I'm biased against all untestable, unfalsifiable claims to the supernatural and the people in leadership positions who exploit the gullibility of other human beings. It's not just Catholicism, if you want to know the truth. It's all forms of manipulation, greed, abuse, oppression, ignorance, violence, intolerance, and bigotry. It's a bias against people who enable others to harm children by looking the other way. It's a bias against those who avoid responsibility for their actions by claiming that a cosmic "good guy" forgives them unconditionally so long as they apologize telepathically. I'm most certainly biased and I think the only way for you to show me the light is to adopt me and put some real time and effort into helping me see exactly why all of this is OK. You certainly have your work cut out for you.

I suppose the worst that could happen is that I talk some sense into whomever you send my way and you lose a tither. In that case, you shouldn't look at it so much as the Church losing money but as the world gaining one more rational, responsible, compassionate human being. I said before that your idea is wonderful and I mean it. Send us some Catholics! We love the challenge.

You can reach me any time at jon(at)willisweb(dot)com or via my contact form on The Wayward Willis, http://willisweb.com.

Yours truly,
Jon

If they get back to me (their contact form says they have a high volume of requests so they may not answer all e-mails), I'll most certainly be posting up the results here. I doubt anything will come of this because the religious community seems to be all talk and no action but you'll hear it here first. Stay tuned!

29Jun/110

Who Do You Believe?

Sitting in Sunday School and church, you're constantly confronted with the idea that man's knowledge is not only flawed (a point with which I wouldn't necessarily argue) but foolish.  For example, 1 Corinthians 3:19 states:

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness"

Whenever this comes up in a lesson or a sermon you always hear a resounding, "AMEN!" from the congregation.  While I was a believer I never really thought about the implications and I doubt that many believers really do.  In the light of debates over evolution, the Big Bang, and the ever-narrowing god-shaped gap in our knowledge it's nice to be able to point to a verse and say, "See?  The things you think you know are utter nonsense in the face of god's wisdom!"  The Bible is a never-ending source of derisive rebuttal to anything even remotely logical.  That's why I loved it so much as a kid.  No matter with whom I was talking, I could always feel confident that my god considered them fools and I was right.

6May/110

Born Christian?

I was indoctrinated into Protestant Christianity from birth and accepted Jesus as my Lord and savior at the ripe old age of four.  I don't remember much about my childhood but I still remember that evening and the place of worship in Panama we called "The Home."  It wasn't a formal church and I imagine it was more like what you would have seen in the Apostle Paul's day where believers gathered in homes to praise god together through song and prayer.

A quick aside: on my blog I'll never capitalize the word "god."  It's not a proper name.  If I use a proper name like Jehovah or Jesus or Allah I'll capitalize it as per English grammatical rules.  However, since I commonly refer to "god" you can assume I'm speaking of the Biblical deity known as Jehovah or Yahweh.

Almost as sweet as forgiveness.