Via Brother Blackford, a funny column from the Onion:
The South—Parishioners of Pastor Theo Leobald’s First Congregational Church of Holy Christ In Heaven will not meet next Sunday morning for a coffee social and morning Bible study as they do every week, gathering in fellowship and offering thanks and praise to God on high. The reason for the cancellation? Simply the fact that, according to Leobald, God does not now, has never, and will never exist.
The Church of Holy Christ In Heaven will soon change its name to the Church of Imaginary Make-Believe Land.
When asked why he is convinced of God’s nonexistence, Leobald became visibly irritated with reporters.
“What’re you, an illiterate peasant? Aren’t you familiar with 20th century thinking at all? Christ, read a book, or maybe just think about the idea for a minute. Pretty ridiculous, huh?” he said.
When pressed, however, he sighed heavily, and explained that thousands of years ago, tribes of nomadic desert peoples made up God because, being incapable of scientific reasoning due to caveman-like existences, they had no other way of making sense of things like sunshine, rocks and pork-transmitted trichinosis.
“They made it all up, and they were ignorant, unwashed, half-naked pre-historic barbarians,” Leobald said. “So who are you gonna believe: Carl Sagan, and the pantheon of the world’s greatest scientific and intellectual minds, or some guy who measured wealth by how many goats he had?” . .
And lots more, including this:
For those who still want to worship, if not God, but just something, Leobald has started a Sunday morning group called The Church of Imaginary Make-Believe Land, where churchgoers will have their choice of nonexistent beings to submit to. Some of the worship selections include Poseidon, super-agent James Bond and fabled storybook character Peter Pan. “I’m worshipping Peter Pan,” Gladys Fye, 108, said. “I do so love his adorable little pointed green shoes. Oh, that Tinkerbell with her magic dust!”
It’s amazing that all this stuff is true, but seems so funny.
I reposted that one on Facebook yesterday, too. It was too funny not to, even though I think made a few religious friends angry. Sorry friends, the truth is funny sometimes.
I’ve FB’d much worse, and yes, I did actually have people, including my aunt, unfriend me. The remaining ones either have a sense of humor, are closet atheists, or just tolerate it because we really are friends.
Oh my goodness! This is so cruel, strident, and uncivil! Why, those Onion kids are mocking people’s most cherished and deeply-held beliefs!
*clutches pearls, faints dead away*
Blockquote fail… 🙁
I can tell you, they aren’t laughing. One wrote me to ask why I was so hostile toward believers, and she assured me that believers were not all idiots and fools.
(Actually, I would agree that she’s no fool, except perhaps about religion.)
This is indeed the most intriguing question for me. It’s the intellectual dissonance that Jerry has talked about many times, most notably seen by people like Francis Collins and Ken Miller. Why is it that they can go about working as very successful professional rationalists, but then come to this one realm of their lives and just go about happily picking and choosing which supernatural claims to accept, pretending like it’s not a such a completely insane task? I think I’ve heard this type of question put directly to Collins at least once or twice and he basically waffled and then said that for him, ultimately, it came down to personal experience. Bleh!
Well, it always comes down to something like that. I certainly understand that people are generally logically inconsistent, but if someone points to something like that in me, I will spend some time reexamining those beliefs. I don’t think religious people do that very often when it comes to god, even if they do it for a living in non-superstition space. Good question, Chris.
And even though we’re all irrational in some ways…having an irrational belief in a magical person is as it were up a level.
We can only hope this is real and that it is only the 1st.
In real life, the church -which -no-longer-believes-in-God would either just affiliate itself with the UU’s, or come up with a bunch of rationalizations on why one’s faith and love of God become even stronger and better when you elevate your understanding of the sacred divine above the need for literal existence, and think more spiritually.
Cool…so the more abstract the god-thingy becomes, the better and higher and more spiritual it is to believe in it?
Well Karen Armstrong certainly seems to think so!
It’s the homeopathic approach to religion. The more you dilute it, the stronger it is. That’s why atheism is really a religion. 🙂
That’s great. “The pantheon of the world’s greatest scientific and intellectual minds” is kind of an infelicitous phrase though.
Hmm, to me this actually reads like a (not particularly malicious) satire/parody of how “militant” angry atheists allegedly engage their religious counterparts with ad hominem and strawman style arguments. It seems to be poking fun at atheism rather than believers… Maybe I’m reading too much into it.
Oops, upon closer inspection, I realized that the piece is 15 years old, so it was probably published before these issues became quite so public. My interpretation may therefore have been a bit anachronistic.
Yet it could so easily be recent.
La plus ça change…
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HERE, HERE! Pastor Theo!
Where? Where?
There! There!
Paster Theo is a dog?
Oh, you mean, “Hear! Hear! Pastor Theo!” 😉
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Critical people merely speak a reflection of themselves, often they don’t realize that.
Even in jest.
The Onion is a news parody website. Everything written on their website is not real. It is comedy.
Yes, I think we all know that.
Thanks for your sage advice!
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Despite the mountains of evidence, I refuse to believe Onion is a parody website. I believe the story to be true. It is a deeply-held personal conviction.
You mean there’s no Abortionplex either?!?!!!
Fuck! Fuck! Fcuk!
I’m soooooo fucked now.
I’m still not sure abour that one. Is trichinosis really so much worse than other diseases contracted from poorly cooked meat?
I like the competition-for-resources hypothesis better. Pigs are simply not ecologically and economically sound sources of food in the Middle East. Unlike say up North, where they could simply be put out to fatten up on their own in the then abundant forests.
” … and pork-transmitted trichinosis..”
Sounds like some new form of artificial insemination.
An evem likelier origin is simple cultural distinction, shibboleth-style, rather like with circumsicion. The problem with most other hypotheses is that they fail to explain why only the Hebrews, and not other groups living in the same region, had that particular dietary rule.
Certainly was good for a laugh, but it also dates from 1996 … If only it was true … And if Christians would actually thing about why they are being lampooned.
This story reminded me of Bishop O’Neill in the Father Ted episode: “Tentacles of Doom”.
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… which also dates from 1996.
Coincidence?!
Yes, probably.
I know Father Ted DVDs are available in the US, but I’m not sure if it was widely broadcast there. I doubt that a series that so openly mocks religion would’ve been popular. But US folks – anyone who hasn’t seen it before – should definitely check it out.
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Says uploader has not made it available in our country.
Oh, that’s a shame.
You could try one of those location-shifting services on teh interwebz. It’ll be worth the effort, trust me.
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What? So now each christian has Their own custom god? Will they be throwing out Their personal gods then?
A christian is Their own god, they create It in Their brain with Their own image, that changes to suit Their purpose.
…and yet 150 years after Darwin’s theory of evolution belief in God remains as strong as ever. Richard Dawkins himself thinks there is a 99% chance that there is no God that started it all…that leaves a 1% chance. But I wonder why 99% and not 95%? The more I ponder these things the more I think that in the face of the evidence we have the only thing we can say is “I don’t know”. And I am ok with that…for now.
If you are going to include the “we” you should be more specific which gods are included in “I don’t know”. Of all the god-ideas that I’ve heard of, there are no gods that don’t have strong evidence against Their existence.
I would consider a simple “I don’t know” to be cowardice. You certainly know that any of the christian gods are vanishingly unlikely to exist. I don’t know how anyone would knowingly want to worship such disgusting creatures.
“…and yet 150 years after Darwin’s theory of evolution belief in God remains as strong as ever. ”
Not in Europe it isn’t.
And that is where the Darwinian proposition started.
Gawd the onion does “so funny/so true” perfectly.
Best line:
“Big deal. He’s just saying the same thing Neil Peart’s been saying for years.”
🙂
Vaal
Wait – something true was in the Onion? I thought all they did was satire.
This one has some of the rough-around-the-edges quality of the very early Onion stuff, as compared to their later dedication to thorough imitation of a journalistic style (where suitable). The main sign of this is locating the story in “The South”, rather than a specific town.