Jesus Strikes Again

Damn, I was doing so well at living a secular life. So I'm on a plane today sitting next to a cute girl from Chile, and next to her was another cute girl. Chile girl and I are talking, and she is apparently comfortable enough with me to talk about how she's a bit overwhelmed and lost since graduating college. I know the feeling well; while you're in school your goal is to finish and get out. There aren't too many paths to take or choices to make, and the goal is the same. Then you're out in the world, and the freedom can be frightening. She seemed to be a bit lost philosophically and was reading some Indian religious book and was into it and the mix of cultures she experienced working for a couple of months at Berkley.

Somewhere in there Chile girl mentioned she was raised Catholic and later mentioned she was looking for answers in various cultures and various religious writings. I had been supportive of her multicultural experiences although I wasn't particularly a fan of any religion. I assured her that there are choices to make, and they have consequences but that generally there aren't wrong decisions about which way to take your life. The cute Jesus girl next to her jumped in and asked her why not search the Bible for answers? Then they had a long conversation about God and Jesus and faith and challenges and such and I got some sleep after trying to listen to for a bit.

As we were deplaning cute Jesus girl told cute Chile girl she would pray for her. I'll be thinking about them tonight, but it's not exactly praying.

I just realized a cooler title for this post would be Jesus on a Plane: Get this motherfuckin' Jesus off this mutherfuckin' plane!

Critical Thinkers

So I'm driving around in Southern California and stumble across a shop in a business center called Critical Thinkers. Boy was I excited. Was this a meeting place for atheists? A shop selling atheist "propoganda" or somesuch?

Unfortunately it was simply a normal teaching supplies store. Oh well.

Several Years Behind

Hey everybody, I know it's been quite a while since I've blogged but you know life steps in sometimes and I've been mega-busy with one thing or another. And since I'm the first one to blog in quite some time I'll give you an update on Faithinate and PraiseNull.

Faithinate has started her own business that keeps her more than busy and that's on top of the 3 kids. So I know she's going to try to start posting again too.

I haven't talked to PraiseNull about his posting, but he took a job that takes him out of state most of the time so he's pretty damn busy himself. But I'll talk to him and try to get him on track again too. But I'm going to try to start posting every weekend if I can because I want to keep this going.

So now on to my topic...

It seems to me that almost everyone I know is a few years behind me in many thought processes and Faithinate has finally started to come around in one. She's already a strong athiest, but xtians never really bothered her before. She just let them exist along with her without much minding. However, the other day she was on the way home from her friend's house and she got smacked in the face with how many churches there were on the way. She started getting offended and weirded out at the same time. That's not really the right word for it, but scared probably isn't either. It's that same nervous feeling you get when you go somewhere and you notice you're the only type of one person there. Nobody's going to do anything to you, but you do get slightly nervous when you go to a restaurant and you're the only one there who's not vietnamese or mexican, etc.

The ridiculousness of the number of churches suddenly hit her and she didn't like it. Well, I've been like that for years and it's good she finally came along on her own. But I tend to lead efforts like that. We've known a few people in our lives that I've pegged as assholes or lazy, or something shortly after meeting them and everyone always thought I was just being my normal way. But within a year or so everyone was on my side. I'm not attributing any special powers to myself, I'm just more cynical than everyone around me so I come to these conclusions faster than they do.

So I'll say under so uncertain terms that we've got more churches in our metroplex than we do gas stations and I would hazard a guess that it's one of the highest church areas in the nation. We counted recently, and we've got 6 churches within easy walking distance from our house. And I mean easy walking distance. We've got one intersection a few blocks that has a church on 3 of the 4 corners. Go ahead and tell me that's not ridiculous and more than a little offensive.

I'm also relatively offended when someone uses the title 'reverend'. It's a fake and bogus title. You don't see guys making business contacts refer to them as 'pokeman champ' do you? Because it's about the same level of study and science. They're both childish pursuits and to legitimize something like religion with a revered title is like giving a PhD to someone for telling campfire stories. People who study fictional literature for a living are called literature professors, not reverends.

So let's stop legitimizing these pretentious assholes by referring to their titles. All they do is suck the life out of society by burning books and blocking legitimate scientific legislation that will actually improve the common good.

So you may think it necessary to beg for respect by forcing everyone to call you reverend, but personally, I'd respect you more if you were a grand wizard thingy in D & D.