Lay Theism

To help you celebrate Easter next year, here is a wonderful batch of Easter greetings for your loved ones… 

A friend of mine sent me a couple of these irreverent e-cards that definitely got a chuckle out of me.  These folks don’t seem to sit firmly in the non-belief camp, but whomever wrote these cards doesn’t take religion too seriously:

Let’s just relax tonight and watch The Passion of the Christ

 

There are few former carpenters I admire more than Jesus Christ and Harrison Ford

 

I hope the abundant Easter symbols of fertility and rebirth will remind us to fuck like bunnies

 

Sorry the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise means I’m saved and you’re not

 

Adorable candy will help distract us from the astounding horror of a man being nailed to a cross

 

The Easter Bunny still scares the living shit out of me

 

I’d love to decorate Easter eggs with you or a slightly better artist

 

Happy Easter from one lapsed Catholic to another

 

Please join us for Easter dinner unless you’ve already committed to Satan

 

Let’s resume everything we gave up for Lent without any newfound spiritual insights

 

Easter may be the wrong time to tell my parents you’re a Jew

 

Drag a pagan to church this Easter

 

After Jesus, you’re my second-favorite Jew

 

I wish the resurrection of our lord and savior was deemed important enough for a day off work

And the only one that actually made me laugh out loud (not Easter themed):

Have a happy Hanukkah, Hannukkah, Chanukkah, or however the fuck you spell it 

Thanks someecards.com — keep up the good work.

I wanted to blog on this real quick before it gets stale.  To honor my parents, I went to church today… it was utterly painful.  My parents live in another state, so it has been fairly easy to avoid church on major holidays for several years. To be in an Easter service for the first time since I am a confirmed* atheist was fascinating.  We attended one of the small-sized Methodist churches in my area, as I have several times, but this was the first time in this church.  They had removed most of the decorations from the sanctuary to symbolize the day Jesus died as well as covering the cross with a black sheet.  Then after some singing and Bible scripture recitation, with the organ music swelling, they brought everything back in and pulled the cloth from the cross on the wall… RESURRECTION!

Then the pastor proceeded to weave this tale about how the women that went to the tomb looking for Jesus were looking in the wrong place.  He tried to create these clever ideas to indicate that they should have never expected him there.  Duh!  He’s the son of God…  why would his broken body be lying in a tomb?  But then again, why didn’t he rise where everyone would see vs. in cover of night??  Wouldn’t that have solidified the event once and for all? But it was odd because he painted the picture of how implausible all this was as if to say, “… and because it’s so completely implausible makes it that much more miraculous!”  He confirmed for me that it’s all simple-minded mythology created by early man with virtually no understanding of the natural world.  That makes SO much more sense.  Think about it.

Anyway, I won’t belabor this as it was tiresome enough sitting through it…

The one bright spot is that as we are riding in the car, out of the blue my wife says, “I can’t believe people believe that crap.”  To which I said, “I know… it’s all very weird.”  Then we proceeded to have a light conversation about how wasteful and counterproductive it is to believe that god has a plan, and that everything happens for a reason, and all the silly shit that religious people believe.  We never really talked a lot about religion before we married, but we have come along to our current state of non-belief at about the same pace.  It’s really interesting, because we rarely talk about it, but when it comes up, we always seem to be in the same place.  I love her very much and having put religion (mostly) behind us has freed us up to concentrate on much more productive, earthly pursuits.  If we only have to attend church every few years while our parents are still with us, then so be it.  Worst case, it’s a nice refresher on why we don’t attend church.

Good luck to you on your quest for meaning and happiness.  You might try this as a starting point.

*If you haven’t been keeping up, I finally woke up within the past year and realized that I don’t believe one shred of the supernatural mumbo-jumbo that has been spoon fed to me since I was born. As far as my confirmation, after doubting for years and then studying non-belief by reading many of the excellent sources available, I became convinced… and that pretty much confirmed it.