On Calvary's Bigotry

On the bus ride into work this morning, I noticed an interesting sermon listing on the billboard for the local Calvary Church. The upcoming sermon is "God's Word on Same Sex Marriages". Now, being the inquisitive person I am, I wanted to know their stance. Naively, I thought that this would be one of the churches that has embraced ALL of their members, and preaches love and tolerance. It is not. According to the Calvary Chapel's "beliefs" page they are quite against same sex marriage. Not only are they against it, they use 2 of their 18 talking points--more than ten percent--to speak against same sex marriages.

One statement about love, two against homosexuality... They have wonderful priorities!

Due to these statements, I have no problem calling the Calvary Church a bigoted organization. Additionally, everyone who holds these same beliefs is a bigot.

The interesting thing is that as I was researching the Calvary's position, a nice-seeming gentleman who was peeking over my shoulder asked me what I was doing. I explained that I had seen the billboard, and was interested in what the church thought. Luckily, he corrected me, and explained that it is not what the church thought, and that it was actually God's word.

On Miracles

So, every once in a while, a friend of mine will post a link to a sweet story about how God saved someone, or how a prayer saved a life... Really just about a Miracle Something, similar to this:

On Blag Hag and Dogs

As you may know, there are a lot of assholes on the internet....

I know, this may come as a shock. I'll give you a moment to recover. 

Now one of these assholes has created a list of the 42 things wrong with American women. Luckily, Jen, the author or Blag Hag, (one of my favorite blogs) expertly destroyed his arguments and made him look like the sexist asshole he is. Unfortunately, she didn't emphasize perhaps the most important point of her article. There was one point of her article that has perhaps changed my life forever. She introduced the Seattle Dog. Now, Don't get me wrong, the struggle to eliminate bigotry and morons from our society is one of my highest priorities in life. But.... Seattle Dog..... 

It has cream cheese....

On Smiles and Kicks

So, as you may or may not know, this week (August 5th to 11th) is National Smile Week. To assist you in smiling, here is a cute penguin...

It is SOOO Cute!!!

And if you don't want to smile, I'll kick you in the face. With a boot. I'd assume that to be the response of Todd Bentley at least.... Mr. Bentley has gained a bit of fame from his work in the Lakeland Revival. He is best known for his faith-healing work with a "physical" bent. For instance, when a member of his congregation claimed to have colon cancer, Mr. Bentley shared the "Power of God"with a swift knee to the man's gut. And then the man fell to the floor....probably because he had been kneed in the stomach. In another case, he pushed a man so hard that the man lost a tooth. In yet another case, he "assisted" a woman....

“The Holy Spirit spoke to me, the gift of faith came on me, and said, ‘Kick her in the face with your biker boot.’ I inched closer and I went bam!”
(Because you're not speaking about him, I wouldnt have this set apart as a quote)He then adds, “Just as my boot made contact with her nose, she fell under the power of God.”

On Karma

So,

I saw this on my Facebook feed:

With the title "Karma is a b****".  

Now, I'm all for teh lols, but the issue I have with karma is that it is so widely held as true in our culture. According to Trans4Mind.com (I know, such a reputable source)

Karma is based on logic. It is an unavoidable consequence of our creations. When we create anything, we also create other things which might not be what we intended.

So, this information is false, wrong and just plain (to take from Tim Minchin) BULLSHIT! Just to make myself clear, there is no evidence, no proposed mechanism, no science, no statistics, nothing more than a cool idea and some anecdotal evidence to support the concept of karma. For some reason, people think that karma is an actual thing, and that it is based in natural laws. IT'S NOT. It's a comforting thought, but outside of Reddit, karma is the same religious dogma as any other belief not founded in reality. 

Now, you might ask, what is the harm in believing in karma? It's just a cool idea; what comes around, goes around, right?

On 1,000,000 r/atheism/ subscribers

So, as I am writing this, r/atheism/ on reddit is almost at 1,000,000 subscribers. Now, while I have mixed feelings about this community as a whole, there is no denying that it is one of the most powerful online tools that atheists have to feel connected to each other. And that is a pretty awesome thing.

Congratulations to all godless redditors!