Lay Theism

This is the real undoctored web site

Deals to Good to Be True!  But, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch…

Millions in prizes at Corpus Christi church this Easter, but at a price.

“The Ultimate Giveaway” sounds like a promotion at a car dealership or a department store, not a contemporary, non-denominational church, but that is (in fact) the name of the Easter service series at Corpus Christi’s Bay Area Fellowship, where they’ll award $2 million to $3 million in prizes this weekend. It’s meant to sound worldly and materialistic so that they can draw in local unchurched populations, Cornelius insists. The church says it has only heard complaints over the campaign from fellow Christians. Well, you can officially register my complaint. Organized religion is already distasteful enough.  If the promise of everlasting life doesn’t do it, just give away cars!

The “twist” is that the real Ultimate Giveaway was John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
– John 3:16 (New American Bible)

Ugh…  please.  This mythology is so old and tired.  The story is fraught with so many issues, and using Easter as a marketing opportunity is giving plenty of people heartburn.  The price of course is the cheapening of everything.  Being a good Christian is now something people need to be tricked into… wait a second.  I guess things really haven’t changed, they are just more up front about it now.

Stop the madness… and don’t even get me started on the mess the Catholics have gotten themselves into.

Atheism, History, Politics, Religion belief, Christian, church, faith, holiday, jesus, jew, myth, skeptic

Truth conquers all…  I wish.  Clearly this is one of those maxims that requires its own brand of faith to believe.  The difficulty of the problem is compounded by the sheer number of “truth-tellers” that do little else than to spread myths, half-truths, and downright lies. 

I certainly have faith that this human race will slowly become enlightened.  The number of rational thinkers currently on this little blue marble FAR outnumber those at any prior period in human history… and that number continues to increase not just in absolute terms, but also in relative terms.

That’s all I have for today… thanks for reading.  Incidentally, do me a favor and let me know you stopped in by dropping me a comment.  I enjoy doing this for the cathartic effect, but wouldn’t mind an intelligent discourse on occasion as well.  Cheers!

Atheism, History, Religion faith, human, latin, myth, roman, superstition

I just watched Frank Miller’s ‘300′ again today.  It truly is an impressive work.  This story is impossible to tell without the extreme violence.  To the filmaker’s credit, they tone down the gore and blood quite a bit by stylizing the spurts and splashes into mostly dark brown droplets.  There is hardly any bright red in the movie other than the capes worn by the Spartans.  It’s very artful, clever, and historically significant (if not 100% accurate).  This is an important chapter in human history that occurred a mere 2,500 years ago and it was about freedom.

What caught my attention more than the viseral imagery and over-the-top Persians was the story and the characters.  King Leonidas, his wife Queen Gorgo, and Dilios are fantastic characters.  Xerxes the outlandish megalomaniac scoffs at the idea of a few hundred Spartans stopping his advance. 

And so the Spartans and the Persians meet at Thermopylae.  I won’t drag you through the whole history, but except for the dramatic visualizations, the movie brilliantly tells the tale of several incredible days of battle for freedom.  See Wikipedia for an impressive retelling of the Battle of Themopylae.

My point in bringing all this up is the quote by Dilios at the end of the film.  It is now a year later and the Greeks are several thousand troops strong and resisting another invasion by the Persians.  In the final moments of the movie, he says:

This day we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny and usher in a future brighter than anything we can imagine…

What a shame that things didn’t quite work out that way… but imagine… what if we could rid the world of superstition and myth?  Truly, that would be the dawning of a future that I look forward to and desperately want to be a part of.

Atheism, History, Religion freedom, imagination, inspiration, justice, liberty, movie, myth