I keep running into religious people who aren’t religious the way I expect them to be. Two examples: a Buddhist who didn’t seem to care about the Four Noble Truths (i.e. desire causes suffering), and a Christian who didn’t think that accepting Christ as one’s personal savior is a prerequisite of the faith.
“But that has to be a prerequisite of the faith,” I said. “It’s what makes you a Christian.”
“That sounds too narrow to me.”
“Well, if you just believe in God without the Christ bit, that makes you more of a Deist, don’t you think?”
“You’re just throwing around a lot of terms you learned in a religious studies class. You’re also trying to be logical. Religion is about faith. How do you feel?”
“I feel hungry.”
And then they refuse to keep talking to me, and I find myself still confused as well as really wanting a snack.
I thought deists were all those dudes in the tight leopard-skin pattern pants and long blonde hair who worship mr snyder from twisted sister. I may be getting my music appreciation and religious studies classes confused, but we did eat a lot of peyote in that seminar.
yeah well, you really can’t fill up on The Host, so the snacking thing is probably going to be a lasting problem.
finally a Christian i don’t want to run away from.
but why spend time talking about faith when you can gossip over whether or not jesus was married to someone who for centuries people have thought was a prostitute? that’s an infinitely much more fun topic i think. especially if you mix in some of dan’s peyote. :D
i love thinking about jesus gettin’ some. makes it all more real.
so does snacking and hallucinating.
if you want to start a religion based on food, i’ll be happy to be a bishop or somehing. i’m imagining some ceremonial clothing that’s made entirely out of edibles.
So you are looking at maybe starting Calzonianity? Or possibly Doritoism? Either way, I’m in. I’ll even write like five or six of the Commandments.
that’s whacked; regular, not wiggedy
I met a passive-agressive Buddhist once - he was one of the angriest people I’ve ever come across. So much for all that nirvana bollocks.
I always had trouble reconciling:
Buddhists who burn themselves alive to make a political point.
Christians who burn and kill others to glorify the Prince of Peace
Moslems who kill Moslems. The Koran says they can kill non-Moslems who won’t convert, if I remember it correctly.
But I like your new religion: burgers grilled to a crisp as a religious offering! yum
Fear not. Kababism is here to satisfy your every need, spiritual and gastronomic.
My dad knew a member of the Communist party who had only two objections to the Party philosophy: the atheism, and the prohibition of private property. Um, what’s left?
To me, that’s the quivalent of a Unitarian Universalist “church”. It’s just a building with people in it.
“Kababism fosters open communication and quickly gets to the root of problems between family members. “You don’t like Dad’s Kabab? C’mon, what’s really bothering you?”
Proving once again that there’s a web site about everything.
There is this GIGANTIC church near where I live that is the mecca of all that is wrong about Christianity. I went there once about 10 years ago just to see it and they actually had an entire Sunday service that was about how much money each of the preachers had personally donated to the construction of the church and if THEY could donate that much surely YOU could donate more.
This church is a joke. It seats something like 2,000 people, has a STARBUCKS and is basically a pageant of the wealthy showing their “faith” so that they can run for mayor or whatever… whenever anyone asks what I have “against” Christians, I point them in that direction.
Oh Thank You Geese Aplenty for bringing me face-to-face with kababism, a religion I belonged to for years without knowing it. (Actually, I’m a member of a splinter sect, BBQd chickenism)
Some guy’s dog died and he told me to come here. Is there gonna be a service or something?
Reminds me of an experience I had at Taco Bell the other day. While I was shoveling the Nachos Bell Grande down my throat as fast as I could, the workers were busy discussing the food chart one of them had that listed the fat content, calories, etc., of the items on the menu.
They were shocked. Shocked. At how unhealthy the food they were serving was. Meanwhile a whole room full of customers are trying their best to ignore the employees loudly bemoaning the fact that we were committing suicide via refried beans.
At the risk of sounding completely ignorant, what’s a deist?
Also, I read that Mary Magdalen (sp?), was actually a spiritual leader for a different religion that was monotheistic, and not accepted too warmly by the general populis at that time.
A friend of mine also told me that the reason Mary Magdalen was thought to be a prostitute is that her role in her particular religion was to help couples that couldn’t conceive become fertile, and that part of this process included sleeping with her. Or something. I haven’t been able to back this up, but it sounds so dramatic and exciting, and why not spread some biblical gossip?
Deism is simply the notion that the fact of creation means the existence of a creator; it’s a belief in God that doesn’t carry any of the specific Christian apparatus such as the holy trinity, the resurrection, door-to-door knocking, etc.
“The mecca of all that is wrong about Christianity” LOL Mia, you’re too funny.
Also, what’s with having a Starbucks in a place of worship? Those frappuccinos are the furthest thing form religious experience imaginable.
Remember Max Von Sydow’s character in Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters”?
“If Jesus came back to earth today and saw what was being done in His name, He’d never stop throwing up.”
“Hannah and Her Sisters” was also the film debut of comedian Lewis Black, who grew up where I did, in Silver Spring, Maryland, and who has a great routine about how he’s seen the end of the universe: a pair of Starbucks right across from each other in Houston, Texas.