The door to door evangelizing mission my parents' church did ended last week, at least for now, and the guest speaker left this past Sunday. I'm so glad about that I no longer have to listen to his bigotry and obnoxious arrogance and ignorance. Last Sunday, the guest speaker said that if your friends aren't Christians, then you're supposed to get new friends. Someone please explain to me how if they believe in evangelizing the gospel, how you can even do that if you cut off everyone in your life that is not a Christian? I wonder what would have happened if he had specifically said "If you have any friends who are Jews, you should get new friends", if that would have gotten as warm as a reception as using the term non-Christians. I don't go around cutting off any friendships I have with non-atheists.

It doesn't even matter to me if someone is a Christian or not. I'll still be their friends anyway and I haven't reconverted simply from having friends who are Christians. If I can have friends who think differently than I do without losing my atheism simply from interacting with people who are not the same as me, I fail to see why fundies can't do the same as well. Not only is it insulting to non-Christians, it makes their faith sound really weak that they can't handle being friends with someone who doesn't think like them without having their faith being shaken from merely interacting with someone.

I found my dad's copy of the tract that teaches you how to evangelize the gospel and I found the whole thing to be unconvincing and not to mention blatantly dishonest. For one thing, it pisses me off with the analogies they use to describe how Christians should be. In one paragraph, they use the analogy of going to war and start off asking when was the last time you saw someone go to war because of fear. My immediate answer to that was "the Iraq war?". They try to draw this analogy that Christians are supposed to act like they're going to war and should be brave like warriors and non-Christians are enemies to be defeated. In another paragraph, it uses the analogy that non-Christians are like customers at a store and Christians are the salesmen. At least they're admitting they're snake oil salesmen, but it pisses me off that they only see me as an enemy to be defeated for Jesus or as a customer to sale a product to. I have to wonder how many people would convert if they read what this tract was like first to know what they thought of them. They said if you start off asking the person "What would you do if Jesus came back today?", then you can control the conversation and controlling the conversation is key to winning the person's souls.

They only care if I follow their pre-planned script and are not genuinely interested in e as a person. They insist that you have to keep the conversation about Jesus and the plan of salvation and if I ask any questions that go off-topic, to ignore them and to keep the conversation on Jesus, even if it's an important question that I need answered in order to believe. This also pisses me off because it makes it seem like they don't genuinely care about what I have to say. And why do you need a planned script to talk about religion? That just makes it seem like the whole thing is being rigged.

I don't use a planned script when I talk about religion with my friends and I'm able to confidently make my questions without a script, so why are they unable to? I've never used a script and I mostly just ask questions and whatever I'm discussing about religion with goes along just fine without a script. They said if someone says they used to be a Christian but is no longer one, you're supposed to ask them where they went to church and ask them all the things they used to believe and what was taught at their church. You're supposed to pretend to be genuinely interested as you ask them while you're really mentally preparing yourself to prove them why their church got it wrong and they're the only ones who are right. At the same time, the tract says not to compare churches, but to present the gospel, yet they equate the gospel with their one true beliefs, which is the same thing as comparing churches which they just said not to do.

If you're going to compare churches, then be honest that that's what you're doing. You don't have to pretend to be doing something you're not just to get me to listen to you. If you want to evangelize to me and I'm in the mood for it, go right ahead; I'd be glad to debate you. But please be honest that that's what you're doing because if there's one thing I can't stand, it's this dishonest form of evangelizing where people pretend to be genuinely interested in someone yet are only interested in winning brownie points for Jesus and only see me as an enemy to be defeated, not as an actual person. And this tactic just reminds me too much of the whole "you were just hurt by a false church" argument fundies love to use.

They say you don't have to know a lot about the bible to present the gospel or be a bible expert to evangelize to someone, but what happens if you try to evangelize a biblical scholar who's spent their lives studying the scriptures? They never explain what to do if you meet someone who knows more about the bible than they do. They just say to ignore the question and presume the person will convert regardless and have their question answered simply if they convert. The tract also never explains what you're supposed to do if someone says they were in the same church as the Christian evangelizing but left the church because they're gay. They briefly bring up people who don't believe in God yet drop the subject and never say how you're supposed to evangelize to atheists, other than by quoting the prepared bible verses they say is supposed to convert you but I can already find numerous holes in the arguments they used to prove their beliefs.

I just don't get why they can't be honest when evangelizing. I might be able to understand if they were in a more liberal area of the country where evangelizing is generally looked down upon, but in the south everyone is always very open about their beliefs. Asking where you go to church is practically a cultural greetings and most people already presume you're some form of conservative Christians, so I don't know what they're paranoid about.

Last night at my parents' church they had a guest speaker who's helping with this door to door evangelizing campaign who gave a two hour sermon on hell. The guest speaker joked and laughed with glee about how there are no atheists in hell but it's too late for them now and he made fun of Madalyn Murray O Hair being murdered. Carl Sagan is also burning in hell too it seems and they ranted about how all our problems are the fault of Madalyn Murray O Hair because she got rid of prayer in schools. He also said that we can't complain to God when bad things happen because it's our own fault because of our sins when it does and every bad thing that happens is our fault. And he argued that watching porn will lead to a downward spiral to promiscuity, pregnancy, and abortion. They also claimed God had created Satan and that Christians who believe Satan always existed are going to hell and that Satan planned his temptation for us decades before we were born and Satan made everything happen to lead up to us sinning. Isn't that borderline Calvinism even though they also claim to believe in free will? At least I never heard this growing up in my parents' church. Growing up, they never really talked about Satan's origins very much other than that he was a fallen angel that defied God's authority. And why is it that it seems like the only famous atheists most fundies know about are O Hair and Sagan? Why don't they at least rant about someone more relevant to society today like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens?

I had my first day back in college today. I woke up this morning at 8:15 a.m. to eat breakfast and left around 9:20 a.m. My sister and I barely made it in time for class because almost all the parking spaces were taken. My first class at 10:00 a.m. was my math class. We just did an overview of everything that we would be covering and the teacher gave us some homework to start on. After that I went to my Personal College Success class where it was also just a brief overview of the subject. Then I went to lunch and had pizza to eat. Normally I would only have an hour long break in-between my second and third classes but since my second class got out early today, I had a two hour break. I would have started on my math homework, but nobody has any copies of the new textbook because the publishing company screwed up on some of their info and we're not getting copies in until September 9th. But they would give you this password to let you sign onto the site so you can download the old textbooks online and print the pages you nee out and then turn in a voucher to get the new books when they arrive, so I called my mother up on my cellphone to let her know I needed to stop by the bookstore after school.

After I ate lunch, I just browsed through my English textbooks some to see what it would be on. I love that my English textbook is randomly anti-creationism. It referenced the belief that Intelligent Design is an equal alternative theory to evolution as an example of an opinion in an essay. You would never see a high school textbook say anything like that. We never even studied evolution in high school. Anyway, after that I went to my English composition I class. The professor never showed up for some reason but they had somebody else come in to introduce everything. In English class, you get to write essays to prove argumentative points and then debate them in class, so this should be interesting, so it's more like a debate class but with English essays. After class, my mother and I went to the college bookstore to get the voucher thing and password for my math textbook. I stayed after school to do my homework in the library where there's no distractions and I printed out some copies of the pages from the book and then I headed home.

Current Mood: tired

The other day I got a cellphone so I could call up for a ride to pick me up since my college classes end later than my sister's do. I just got a basic phone so it doesn't have any fancy Internet features or text messaging. The torrent of subbed Digimon 02 episodes I've been downloading from isn't working right now and I was near the end of it too. I hope it'll still work.

I keep forgetting about my LJ account so I need to start updating it again. Next week will be my last week of summer vacation before I start back to college. I still need to get the textbooks for my other classes. I've already got my textbooks for English but they were out of copies for the other books although they said they'll get more in next week. I'll have to be sure to post in my LJ more often.

I keep meaning to posts more updates but I'm always too lazy to do it, so here's what's been going on. My birthday was towards the end of last month, on February 2th. I'm now 24 years old. For my birthday I got the Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex DVD boxset, the new limited edition re-release of Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence, and Religiulous on DVD. When I got the Religulous DVD, at first it didn't work on my player at all. I kept getting this message thing that said the disc was dirty, so I took the disc back to have it exchanged for another copy, but it still didn't work. I tried cleaning the disc and my player and I managed to get some parts of the disc to work. Like sometimes it would play and I was able to get the entire movie to play, but then when I tried viewing the extras, the extras didn't work. I'm pretty sure my player wasn't screwed up because all my other DVDs worked fine. I tried playing the Religulous DVD in my sister's player and it played just fine on hers. So, I took it back again and they said most likely I need to get a new player because they said sometimes newer discs don't work on older players.

I had talked to my dad about it and he said I could get a new player. I tried to ask if I could get a Blu Ray player since most likely Blu-Ray will end up phasing out DVD in the next few years, but he said that Blu Ray players were still too expensive. The week before we had some problems with the Internet. I have no idea how it happened but apparently we were somehow missing a driver, and we couldn't connect to the Internet any, but we took it to BestBuy and they were able to fix it. We had some random drama at home last week. Last week on Friday my mother got a call from some people at my dad's work who said my dad had been in a wreck while riding his bike to work and he was at the hospital. My mother was about to head down to the hospital but then we got a call and it turned out that it wasn't my dad at all who was in the wreck. It was some other guy and somehow the people at my dad's work got confused. I have no idea how that happened.

OBAMA WON, YAY!

Current Mood: excited

This morning our preacher at church started on a rant about how society thinks they're too sophisticated for god and how atheists have no humility for thinking that they can define their own purpose without god. I don't know about them, but I think it's the epitome of arrogance to think only you and you alone know the one "true" way, to think you're the center of god's universe, and for someone to think they're god's special favorites that god cares about more than everyone else, but that's just my opinion. I also don't understand where they get this idea that society thinks it's too good for god when the majority of America is Christian and atheists are still the most hated minority group in the U.S., according to these surveys. http://atheism.about.com/od/atheistbigotryprejudice/a/AtheitsHated.htm It's like they're acting like that the mere existence of atheists suddenly = oh noez, society is corrupt because some people dare to think differently! I swear these people are the most paranoid people on the face of the Earth. It makes me wonder what their blood pressure must be like. What's ironic is that the sermon was about how we shouldn't worry and everything is in god's hands yet they worry more than anybody does.

Current Mood: irritated

I don't always agree with everything the New Atheists say, but I thought this was a really good article by Sam Harris about why the world will be doomed if Mccain/Palin win the election: http://www.newsweek.com/id/160080/page/1 I especially liked this one part here, "Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated."

Anonymous is now going after Sarah Palin and not just Scientology: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/17/palins-email-account-hack_n_127184.html I love you Anonymous! Anonymous for president!

Apparently, in whatever alternate universe Fox News lives in, Mr. Rogers is an evil man for teaching kids to find value in themselves because children have to "prove" their special (aka they have to agree with whatever Fox News says is right and brainwash themselves): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29lmR_357rA What I think is amusing about all this is that the people at Fox News has a bigger self-entitlement complex than anyone. But of course in Fox News' universe, it's all those evil liberals who are the fault of society's woes because they say so.

Updates: It looks like the studies done on this are bogus, after all. Why am I not surprised? http://www.wpxi.com/news/13635478/detail.html

Current Mood: angry

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2008/08/sarah_palin_on.html There's officially no more hope left for our country. Apparently Mccain's vice president candidate choice wants to teach creationism in public schools. I don't get why people think they should teach both in public schools. Over half of America already believes in god and if you haven't heard the Genesis creation account by now, you've been living under a rock. I don't see what benefit they can gain from teaching both other than shoving religion down our throats. Whatever happened to respecting the separation of church and state? And why don't fundies follow what the bible says? Titus 3:9 " But avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and useless." Oh yeah, that's right. Apparently in fundyverse, the bible only exists so that everybody else must follow it but Christians are the only ones who don't have to actually follow the bible. What's going to be next? Should they teach flat earth theories in science class to kids in order to please flat earthers? And yes, there is an actual Flat Earth Society, so it's a valid comparision: http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/

Recently at my parents' church, they've started up their monthly devotionals where they get together at people's homes to study the bible and fellowship. Usually I try to skip if I can, but I had to go last month. We were talking about people's obsessions with worship service traditions and usually I try to stay out of discussions, but I couldn't help adding in my input. The person who was leading the group devotional later asked me if I read my bible a lot and he said he could tell I knew more about the bible than most Christians do. Tonight when I had to go to church, after bible study class, the teacher talked to me about it and he randomly asked me if I would like to teach class sometime. o.O I had to decline because I'm an atheist and they don't know that yet because I'm still in the closet, that and even if I was a Christian, I would have felt too uncomfortable and nervous taking on such a huge responsibility. I just thought it was kind of amusing and ironic that these fundies thought I was an expert on the bible and actually wanted me to teach their class when I'm an atheist.

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0263390/ I hate it when people have to ruin things for others just because they can't handle harsh criticism. If the last two movies are canceled because of complaints from Christians, I hope they realize that they're only proving Phillip Pullman's point about religion. *goes away steaming because His Dark Materials is his favorite book series*

Current Mood: angry

I'll be leaving to go to my grandma's tomorrow for the 4th of July and I probably won't be back until Saturday. See ya guys when I get back!

Gay marriage is legal in California now, woohoo! http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/us/15cnd-marriage.html?_r=1&em&ex=1210996800&en=5d922aa6fa2307e3&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin Hopefully with two states that have legalized it now, it'll eventually lead to other states legalizing it. I don't understand why fundies are so obsessed with banning it. It's not like legalizing gay marriage is magically going to turn everyone gay and it's not like banning it is going to somehow stop people from having sex. In other news, my Internet connection had been screwing up lately. It kept disconnecting every five minutes and then it finally wouldn't come back on any. We finally called up Comcast to have them fixed it and found out we had to replace our Internet modem. I'm glad that's been solved and it seems like our Internet connection is actually faster than before. Shutsumon-sama and I have joined this Digimon LJ community where we'll be re-watching the episodes and discussing the episodes from the beginning. I'm really looking forward to this since I missed out on the opportunity to discuss Digimon like this when it first came on since I wasn't very active in anime forums/blogs back then.

Current Mood: excited

Happy birthday to Shutsumon-sama and happy belated birthday to S-chan!

Last Friday, I went to the dentist to have one of my wisdom teeth pulled. It wasn't really that painful since they used the laughing gas on me. I didn't even feel it when the tooth was removed. The only part that I didn't like was afterwards when my mouth was still bleeding after having it removed and I had to keep using a gauze on it until the bleeding finallly stopped. On the bright side, I got to have a milkshake that day. I'm just glad that tooth is out of the way but I'll have to go back again sometime later to have another one removed.

Current Mood: content