"MarkA" <manthony@stopspam.net> wrote

I told one of the people that attends that church that if I
belonged to a church that caught fire, I'd change religions.

I hope for your sake that you're kidding.

MarkA <manthony@stopspam.net> wrote in
news:pan.2006.05.05.11.28.35.557472@stopspam.net:

On my way to work this morning, I passed a local church that had a sign
out front: "Be Careful What You Read and Believe".

This is the same church that suffered a major fire a few years ago. I
told one of the people that attends that church that if I belonged to a
church that caught fire, I'd change religions. She replies, "I never
thought of it that way." I don't know if she still goes there or not.

Seen in a nearby neighborhood:

A mobile home with one of those PVC pipe bible-quote signs out front:

"Our Lord is a Cleansing Flame"

Next door: a burned-out mobile home.

Never had my camera up and ready when I passed it :/

MarkA:

On my way to work this morning, I passed a local church that had a sign
out front: "Be Careful What You Read and Believe".

*hysterical laughter*

*rolling on floor gasping for air*

*wiping tears of laughter from his eyes*

I don't know if she still goes there or not.

Maybe she's still busy rebooting what passes has her brain? *eg*

Can an atheist be a fundamentalist?
AC Grayling
May 3, 2006 11:06 AM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ac_grayling/2006/05/can_an_atheist_be_a_fundamenta.html

It is time to put to rest the mistakes and assumptions that lie behind
a phrase used by some religious people when talking of those who are
plain-spoken about their disbelief in any religious claims: the phrase
"fundamentalist atheist". What would a non-fundamentalist atheist be?
Would he be someone who believed only somewhat that there are no
supernatural entities in the universe - perhaps that there is only part
of a god (a divine foot, say, or buttock)? Or that gods exist only some
of the time - say, Wednesdays and Saturdays? (That would not be so
strange: for many unthinking quasi-theists, a god exists only on
Sundays.) Or might it be that a non-fundamentalist atheist is one who
does not mind that other people hold profoundly false and primitive
beliefs about the universe, on the basis of which they have spent
centuries mass-murdering other people who do not hold exactly the same
false and primitive beliefs as themselves - and still do?

Christians, among other things, mean by "fundamentalist atheists" those
who would deny people the comforts of faith (the old and lonely
especially) and the companionship of a benign invisible protector in
the dark night of the soul - and who (allegedly) fail to see the
staggering beauty in art prompted by the inspirations of belief. Yet,
in its bleeding-heart modern form, Christianity is a recent and highly
modified version of what, for most of its history, has been an often
violent and always oppressive ideology - think Crusades, torture,
burnings at the stake, the enslavement of women to constantly repeated
childbirth and undivorceable husbands, the warping of human sexuality,
the use of fear (of hell's torments) as an instrument of control, and
the horrific results of calumny against Judaism. Nowadays, by contrast,
Christianity specialises in soft-focus mood music; its threats of hell,
its demand for poverty and chastity, its doctrine that only the few
will be saved and the many damned, have been shed, replaced by strummed
guitars and saccharine smiles. It has reinvented itself so often, and
with such breathtaking hypocrisy, in the interests of retaining its
hold on the gullible, that a medieval monk who woke today, like Woody
Allen's Sleeper, would not be able to recognise the faith that bears
the same name as his own.

What provisions do insurance policies on churches have for "acts of
god?"

On Fri, 05 May 2006 11:28:31 GMT, MarkA <manthony@stopspam.net> wrote:

On my way to work this morning, I passed a local church that had a sign
out front: "Be Careful What You Read and Believe".

This is the same church that suffered a major fire a few years ago. I
told one of the people that attends that church that if I belonged to a
church that caught fire, I'd change religions. She replies, "I never
thought of it that way." I don't know if she still goes there or not.

What provisions do insurance policies on churches have for "acts of
god?"

On Fri, 05 May 2006 11:28:31 GMT, MarkA <manthony@stopspam.net> wrote:

On my way to work this morning, I passed a local church that had a sign
out front: "Be Careful What You Read and Believe".

This is the same church that suffered a major fire a few years ago. I
told one of the people that attends that church that if I belonged to a
church that caught fire, I'd change religions. She replies, "I never
thought of it that way." I don't know if she still goes there or not.

What provisions do insurance policies on churches have for "acts of
god?"

On Fri, 05 May 2006 11:28:31 GMT, MarkA <manthony@stopspam.net> wrote:

On my way to work this morning, I passed a local church that had a sign
out front: "Be Careful What You Read and Believe".

This is the same church that suffered a major fire a few years ago. I
told one of the people that attends that church that if I belonged to a
church that caught fire, I'd change religions. She replies, "I never
thought of it that way." I don't know if she still goes there or not.

What provisions do insurance policies on churches have for "acts of god?"