In my ongoing efforts to find the wild, the weird, the diverse (I rather enjoy pissing on the shoes of the Young Earth creationists as much as the next infidel, but let’s face it: fish in a barrel is the adage that comes to mind), I present unto you that most unique of perspectives, the atheist that changes her mind.

How I stumbled across this, I cannot say or recall. One hundred clicks later, one wonders to himself, “How did I arrive here? What onramp on the information highway did I take?”

I dug into this website, hoping perhaps there was some new, unusual content, perhaps actual evidence, perhaps a new methodology to explore, perchance an angle I’d missed over.

It’s…strange, I’ll give you that. Some of it old hat (I’ll demonstrate that in a touch), some of it just…perplexing.

One A.S.A Jones at Ex-Atheist.com (I wonder what the initials stand for? ‘A Satanic Asshat’, perhaps?) goes on at length about her ‘re-conversion’.

First, the personal account:

I was raised a Roman Catholic in a home where the name of Jesus Christ and God was never mentioned. I was encouraged to attend catechism and church every weekend, but the concept of God was never made completely real to me. I entertained the notion as any child would, but I just wasn’t into the imaginary friend scene and by the time I was thirteen, I had concluded that God was merely a vicious adult version of the Easter bunny. I abandoned the lie, informed my upset parents that I would no longer be attending church, and began seeking truth.

In the absence of a religious belief to answer life’s questions, I turned my mental energy to science. Science had an awesome track record of solving many problems and its resulting technology had provided tangible benefits to all of mankind. Science was the answer! I reasoned that if we could educate our populations and continue to make advances in medicine, agriculture and energy production, we would one day have the mythical Eden as our reality.

I threw myself into my studies, determined to become a scientific messiah who would one day deliver people from the bondage of disease. At the age of sixteen, my IQ and my grades made me eligible for my high school’s early release program and I began my studies in biology and chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh.

So far, so good.

Humanity had become nothing more to me than an organized network of molecules and enzymes. I viewed people as mere organisms going through their daily routines of metabolizing nutrients and expelling wastes, ovulating their eggs and ejaculating their semen. I knew the psychology of humans almost as well as their anatomies. The hidden things that pulled them this way and that were very evident to me. They were like guinea pigs, only more predictable, and my chief form of entertainment was to see how skillfully I could manipulate them. I knew that I was supposed to care about them, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. If mankind’s goal was to alleviate its own suffering, a bullet to the head was more efficient and made more sense in my thinking than screwing around with medication or disease control.

What was the point of prolonging any one life? What difference did it make if a girl didn’t live to marry or her mother live to see it? Of what value were temporary emotional experiences? They were simply the biochemistry of the brain reacting to sensory input and, upon that individual’s death, any remaining memory of that experience would be thrown away along with the person who had experienced it. My extreme point of view had reduced people into throwaway metabolic units; I had become as cold and indifferent as the logic that I exalted.

My first response was, “Oh, wow.” Second was, “Oh my.” A bullet to the head? I see the gibbering monkeys of madness gnawing away at the fringes of this person’s psyche.

I’m skipping a few paragraphs here (not trying to strawman this, just an overview), so forgive me.

That was fine with me. I was prepared to live my life by this truth and discovered that the prospect of a life without meaning can be a very freeing experience. I set out to take advantage of moral relativism and effectively destroyed any of my remaining conscience. Friends, let me tell you, I fell far, far away, but I didn’t know it. I busied myself with one diversion after another, trying to fill my life with meaningless activity in order to forget how meaningless it was. In my desperation, I grew self-righteous and indignant. I was secretly envious of the morons who seemed blissfully unaware of their own meaninglessness. I wanted to shake them awake and get them to see how worthless their lives really were.

My jaw dropped. WTF?!? So you missed that personal touch of the supernatural (that vast, unprovable ‘what if?), and elevated yourself above the hoi polloi via your imagined intellect?

The worst idiots were the Christians. I hated them because, in their ignorance of naturalism, they failed to see that there was no reason for the rest of the world to believe in their god, live by their standards or give a damn about what they had to say, yet there they were, acting as if they had a copyright on truth. Their pretentiousness sickened me, despite my being equally pretentious toward them. After all, I was justified in my pretentiousness! At least I could give logical reasons for not believing in the supernatural. I would challenge them to give reasons for believing in something that couldn’t be seen and they would reply, “You can’t see the wind but it’s there.” I would then try to explain to them that wind was created by differences in pressure and that there was plenty of scientific proof for the existence of wind but none for their god. Even the most intelligent Christians I knew had a difficult time articulating their reason for faith.

Interesting.

Most of the explanations I heard rested on the Bible’s authority. “The Bible says… the Bible says… the Bible says.” Who cared what the Bible said? I certainly didn’t. “It’s all a bunch of made up, superstitious baloney. Can’t you see?” and I would then go into pagan origins, etc., and try to demonstrate that Jesus was a manufactured myth. I ended up knowing the Bible inside and out just to be able to debate against it.

My anti-Christian arguments became my ultimate diversion to a hopeless life. I learned that religious debate wasn’t as much about truth as it was about language and presentation. I began seeing flaws in my own logic while trying to demonstrate certain instances of Biblical errancy, but that didn’t keep me on the bench. To justify my desire to destroy Christianity, I had to find reasons to discredit it. I railed against its hypocrisy, the behavior of its followers, the wars fought in its name and I questioned the motives of its bloody god and the religion’s effective outcome. In short, I began seeing it as the supreme evil, despite the fact that my own view of moral relativism did not permit a logical defense of the concept of evil.

Here’s the thing: not all atheists are moral relativists. I know I’m not – it’s morally bankrupt. I rail against religion on a personal level, because humanity has been lied to. Well, that and the fact that most Christians are a tad overly anxious to share, whether any of us like it or not. Oh, and the efforts made to infiltrate our lives on multiple levels. Otherwise, you want to live a lie? That’s your business, none of mine. Until you make it my business.

Snip:

The Bible didn’t make sense to me. But why did it make sense to others? What were they seeing that I didn’t? Did they so desperately want there to be a God that they had deluded themselves into thinking that there was one? It was New Year’s Day, 1998. I made a resolution to read the entire Bible again, only this time I was going to read it as I would poetry or fiction, and not as a proposal of fact.

I confess, dear readers: the bible actually does make a lot of sense to me. I fancy I do understand the major themes, the cultural environment it was written in, the undertones, the allegory and parables.

Comprehension is NOT the equivalent of agreement.

Snip:

In the months that followed, I kept my resolution and I began noticing a change in my way of interpreting the Bible. Intellectually, I found that my mind could logically accept two very different interpretations of almost everything I was reading. One interpretation of any verse or passage would render the whole story as nonsensical. But the other interpretation allowed the whole story to make sense.

(Note to self: moral relativism is a BAD thing.)

Continued:

If my mind was capable of accepting interpretations that allowed the whole book to make sense, then what was it in me that wanted it not to make sense? This book was reading me as surely as I was reading it. Every time I found fault with its god, I ended up finding a fault of my own. What was I doing when I condemned this god for commanding Moses to kill? Was I arrogantly making my morality superior to that of the being who allegedly authored all of morality? Was I condemning the actions of an entire nation, which was trapped in a kill or be killed situation? What was it in me that wanted to express outrage at Jesus Christ for telling me that I had to give away everything to be considered worthy to follow him? Was it my own selfishness?

The book was reading you? Bad news: if a fictional book is reading you while you’re reading it, then I suggest therapy. It’s not a living being – personification is the word that springs to mind.

The moment I was made aware of my despicable nature, I realized that Jesus had died for me. I never had recognized sin and, therefore, thought that Christ had died for nothing. But this man was able to see the horrible nature present in all of humanity and yet he had sacrificed himself to save us from ourselves. In a very real sense, my sinful nature had caused the death of an innocent man. I never believed in hell prior to this, but one of my first thoughts, after seeing how hellish a person that I was, was that I deserved to be in it.

Talk about issues. A secret envy of mentally challenged people? Why are they happy, and you not? The rest of the testimonial descends into predictable drivel from there.

And the debate methodologies are contemptibly skewed – see here.

And get this:

In trying to find quick answers, I turned from the library to the Internet and ran smack into J.P. Holding’s Tekton Apologetics Ministries. In my opinion, this guy is the most thorough researcher and honest apologist I have ever read. His website is a treasure to any Christian who is bothered or entertained by debate. The anti-Christian crowd is fond of dismissing Christian apologists for telling ‘what could have been or the way things may have been’, but there is no denying that Mr. Holding’s research illustrates what actually was and the way things actually were.

Holding? You’re…kidding me, right? The guy in the glass house who throws stones? If I were a Christian, you bet your bottom dollar, I’d most strenuously object to him on multiple levels. Yeah, I’d pull a Scotsman on him on a moment’s notice.

I found this to be especially repugnant:

When a Christian did the impossible or the outrageous or lived out the extreme philosophy of Jesus Christ, these were the things that caused me to take notice and offense. No amount of talk about God’s Law could have made any difference with me. The only time that caught my attention was when a Christian acted extraordinarily in the Spirit of the Law.

Hey, ya know what? When someone does behave in the manner most pay lip service, I can respect that. I may disagree with their epistemology, but I’ve managed to make a Christian friend or two via the internet. One of them actually throws me some web work on occasion, despite our obvious differences.

I get hot and lathered when the concern becomes some sort of coercion. I get ‘rabid’ when some wackjob like Cho goes postal and blithers about Jay-sus. I get bent out of shape when some woman excuses her husband for microwaving their baby by blaming it on Satan. I get pissed off when some drooling imbecile decides that his gawd is going to call the shots for the rest of us. The laundry list is long, and stomach-wrenching.

These, then, are the wages of original sin. That some imagined flaw fashioned into our clay by a cosmic babysitter is our fault (Tsk, tsk, let’s not blame the parent for how fucked up the child is, shall we?), that must be washed away by baptismal blood sacrifice (the bloodlust of this phantasmal being is beyond anything that could be termed ‘loving’).

It beggars the imagination that anyone could even remotely consider this acceptable.

Two other analyses can be found here and here.

Final analysis: my eyes were somewhat crossed, and glad this person isn’t batting for our team.

(Note: I will email her, so have any notes ready.)

Do you remember when a “pop quiz” caused panic in your whole body? Not anymore – “pop” now stands for “popular culture”. Women’ magazines have been publishing them for years. We’ve learned what makes men tick, what lipstick color looks best, and how successful a hostess we are. Light and fluffy, entertaining – but largely irrelevant…

Now the ‘tubes are full of them. Which SuperHero are you? What car is a perfect match for your personality? And some are so weird, you have to question the sanity of the designer: Which Founding Father is your soul mate? (Mine is James Madison; his wife, the vivacious Dolley, was quite an unusual woman; thankfully I didn’t draw George Washington – those teeth!)

Let’s get started.

Do you know which candidates for president most closely match your views? Of the 26 (!), which one could you depend on to guide our country to your satisfaction?

Democrat? Republican? Libertarian? Green? Boston Tea Party?

Do you know who Mike Gravel is? How about Jim Gilmore? Elaine Brown? Kent McManigal?

Take the SelectSmart quiz and see for yourself.

It appears my candidate hasn’t surfaced yet! “Theoretical Ideal Candidate” scored 100%; Obama 91%, Kucinich 89%, Edwards 85%, Biden 83%, and so on. Gore came in at 9th; Richardson 10th; the Green 12th.

Who is your match?

***

What kind of atheist are you? Thanks to this quiz on AtheistSelf, I am a “Scientific Atheist”. (I was surprised to find I wasn’t an “Angry Atheist”!) This one is the best True/False quiz I’ve ever taken – it allows for the possibility for some gray-areas. So if your answer is some of both, click the circle between T and F. If there’s a tie for final determination (mine was 83% for three types), you’ll be offered a tie-breaker question; just choose the one that is MOST true of those offered. By choosing “the burden of proof is on the believer”, I moved into the “scientific” column.

Tell us what kind of atheist you are.

***

And finally…

There are some vestiges of “belief” left in most of us. Perhaps it’s a weak spirituality (or strong); maybe you’re more agnostic than atheist; you could have some New Age stuff still lurking in your psyche. With the Belief-O-Matic quiz, from beliefnet and SelectSmart, you can determine what religion might fit you. If any. Or none. It turns out that I’m…wait for it…a Secular Humanist, at 100%.

If I ever decided that I need a gawd, Liberal Quakers (90%) should be my first choice. (*mutters: that’ll be the day!*) Last place? Jehovah’s Witness (27th)! At just 9%, I find that I’m quite out of sympathy with them. But, then, we already knew THAT! Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, at 22% (26th and 25th) were way above JW’s. Mormon was 22nd; Scientology 13th.

***

Now, for some juicy gossip! Did you know that Karl Rove is not xian? Eric Kleefeld reports –

Could the “architect” of the political success of George Bush and the GOP — which relied heavily on cultivating the support and loyalty of Evangelicals, Christian conservatives, and megachurches from coast to coast — actually be an atheist?

So says none other than Christopher Hitchens, a sometimes-admirer of the White House’s Iraq policies and the author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. And he claims to have it straight from Rove himself. Asked in an interview with New York magazine if anyone in the Bush administration had ever confided in him about “being an atheist,” Hitchens replied:

Well, I don’t talk that much to them — maybe people think I do. I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”

I find that deliciously ironic!

This is one of the strangest stories I have ever read! It’s heartbreaking, frustrating, uplifting – in short, it has every element that Hollywood loves! But it’s not fiction.

What it is, is an indictment of, among other things: inbreeding and religion. Not incest – just “closed societies”, marrying only “your own kind”…

(Mennonites are an Anabaptist Protestant church; they trace their origins to the Swiss Brethren [1525]; they first emigrated to North America in 1663, with a large emigration starting in 1683; Horse and Buggy Old Order Mennonites came from the main series of Old Order schisms that began in 1872, and stress closed, “separation from the world.” Old Order Amish is a schismatic offshoot of Mennonism, led by Jacob Amman in 1693; they are also “separate from the world” and adhere to their German language both in the home and in their church services; Amish do not have a sub-sect like the “Automobile Old Order Mennonites”!)

In a rural Pennsylvania small-town, there is a clinic that is cutting-edge: the Clinic for Special Children. It is situated closest to the largest concentration of patients who need it: Mennonite children with Crigler-Najjar syndrome, a rare liver disease that is always fatal – unless a child lives long enough to receive a liver transplant.

There are about 110 known cases of Crigler’s worldwide, including about 35 in the U.S. About 20 are among the Amish and Mennonite in Pennsylvania. There is no medicine that will cure or even control the syptoms. Just the “blue-light boxes” – the children, from infancy, must sleep in the box, uncovered, with a fan blowing on them, to dissipate the heat from the bright blue lights that shine on them all night long.

Crigler-Najjar is not the only genetic disease that the clinic treats. Other rare disorders include; maple syrup urine disease (found only in Mennonites), glutari aciduria (found only in Amish), pigeon breast disease and pretzel syndrome. (You’ll have to read the article to solve the “maple syrup urine” mystery…)

And, still, more babies are born! What is it about fecundity and faith?

In order to afford this medical miracle (albeit a stopgap measure) and the liver transplant up the road and the anti-rejection drugs (for, most likely, the rest of their lives), they have had to overcome their “revulsion” for government assistance. The parents of Amy, age 15, estimate her total medical costs have amounted to over $1 million! Amy’s brother, Derek, 17, had a much easier time with his transplant…

Call me a curmudgeon – but wouldn’t it make sense to be sterilized, if you and/or your spouse had DNA that would kill every child you have? And wouldn’t it make sense to allow some “new blood” into your cult?

For extra credit (and a fascinating read, for the wonky), read Pediatric Medicine and the Genetic Disorders of the Amish and Mennonite People of Pennsylvania, first published in 2003 in the American Journal of Medical Genetics. “Over a 14-year period, 1988-2002, we have encountered 39 heritable disorders among the Amish and 23 among the Mennonites.”

No, I don’t know that religion is an issue…

Dateline: Tulsa Okalhoma, Thursday, May 17, 2007

Tot critical after bound at day care The 2-year-old Tulsa boy is on life support after a worker allegedly put masking tape over his mouth and bound his hands because he wouldn’t be quiet for nap time.
[Note: The child died Friday; he had no brain activity and was on life support, according to the arrest report.]

The child was taken to St. John Medical Center in critical condition and later transported by helicopter to St. Francis Hospital in critical condition, Tulsa Police Officer Jason Willingham said.

Vicki Leigh Chiles, 42, was arrested and booked into the Tulsa Jail on a felony complaint of injury to a minor child and on an arrest warrant that was filed Wednesday charging her with abusing a different child.

Chiles was the only worker present at the day-care home, located at 2648 E. Third St., at the time, and a total of eight children, ages 7 and younger, were present, Willingham said.

Police contacted parents of the other children at the day care after Chiles’ arrest, Willingham said, and arriving parents could be seen giving their children long embraces.

Chiles told police the boy would not be quiet for nap time and that she used masking tape to bind his hands and cover his mouth to keep him quiet, an arrest report states.

Chiles told investigators that she then left the boy unattended for a few minutes and came back to find him lying on the floor unresponsive, the report states. She said she called for an ambulance and tried to perform CPR. [...]

While the emergency was unfolding, Oklahoma Department of Human Services workers arrived at the house to conduct an inspection of Chiles’ day-care home, Willingham said. [...]

Unrelated to the 2-year-old’s condition, a charge of felony abuse of a minor child was filed Wednesday against Chiles by the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office, and the warrant was issued for her arrest.

The charge alleges that Chiles struck an 8-year-old child multiple times with a fly swatter on April 10.

Chiles signed a written agreement with DHS on Thursday stating that no children could be under her care and that her day care would immediately cease operation, Leaver said.

Because DHS’s investigation into Chiles’ day-care home is ongoing, Leaver would not speak specifically about the case, but she did say that all reported incidents at day-care facilities are investigated.

“When we receive any type of allegation against a day-care center, it’s taken seriously and looked into,” Leaver said.

Normally, day-care centers are inspected by DHS three times a year, she said, but if allegations of wrongdoing have been raised, a center is inspected more often.

Hmmm…on April 10, she uses a flyswatter on an eight-year-old; on Wednesday, May 16, felony child abuse charges are filed against Chiles; on Thursday, May 17, a child dies in her custody; while police are investigating the death, ODHS workers arrive to do an inspection…

Someone forgot to “lock the barn door”. Why did it take five weeks to order an inspection?
And now a child has died.

It’s somewhat bothersome that Pat is actually being brought up on hate speech crimes, but I think this video already contains a sufficient defense.

Pat, if you ever need representation, I’ll be sure to sign up…

Über-virgin Ben Shapiro sings the praises of anti-gay hate:

Democratic tolerance means tolerance for secularism, but absolute intolerance for religion. Democratic tolerance means tolerance for their supporters, but absolute intolerance for their political opponents.The proof is in the pudding: The House Democrats are currently pursuing policies that would criminalize religious thought and crack down on political speech. On May 3, House Democrats voted to create extra penalties and additional investigatory funding for crimes committed against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, transvestites and others with statistically deviant “sexual orientations” or “gender identities.”

This bill is aimed at quashing traditional religious thought. No one advocates violent attacks in any case – all this “hate crimes” bill does is stigmatize anti-homosexuality religious principle. All “hate crimes” are thought crimes, designed to more harshly punish offenders for their racism, sexism or religious bigotry. By lumping in “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” with categories like race and religion, House Democrats seek to legally enshrine homosexuality as morally legitimate.

It will not be long before Democrats apply the same principle – homosexuality as protected status – to federal housing and employment law. The day is close at hand when church organizations are forced to hire homosexuals, when parochial schools are punished for firing Mary-formerly-known-as-Bob.

Ben’s got quite a point. Do you want to live in an America that isn’t free to discriminate against people because of their consensual sexual practices?

Consider what we’d lose…

If I join a religion that considers reproduction by Republicans to be an abomination, why should I be forced to hire such perverts as Mitt-formerly-known-as-Willard? He’d certainly understand, since he advised the Archdiocese of Boston on how to discriminate against gays:

“Ultimately, legislation may need to be filed to provide an exemption based on religious principles,” Romney said in a statement released after the meeting.

What’s especially perverse about Ben’s argument is that he’s not couching it in libertarian free-speech terms, probably the only front on which a civilized person might plausibly argue against hate-speech laws. Nope, he’s expressly defending the hate, standing tall against those who would “stigmatize anti-homosexuality religious principle.”

I wonder if Ben’s all-in on this. Will he defend other principles from the Bible, like the wholesale destruction of almost every living thing? Because if those pesky Democrats want to keep you from doing that, they’re seeking to legally enshrine not killing almost every living thing as morally legitimate, and that would be an insult to the statistically deviant entity known as “God.”

Fortunately, we can assume that Shapiro’s rantings are just a fringe position, sure to be repudiated by cooler heads in the Religious Right. This bigoted advocacy only appeared on townhall.com. And freerepublic.com. And worldnetdaily.com, The Conservative Voice, libertypost.org, humanevents.com, and in the hannity.com forums (warning: every time you click a winger site, a devil gets his ad revenue).

1700 years of papist nonsense and you’d think they’d have something good to report. Noooooo, not yet. While in Brazil this past week Bene had this to say. “Indigenous peoples silently longing for Christianity had welcomed the arrival of European priests who ‘Purified’ them”.

Many indigenous rights groups regard the conquest as ushering in a period of Disease, Mass Murder, Enslavement, and Shattering of their culture.

The following is a report about it:

Brazil’s Indians offended by Pope comments
Mon May 14, 2007 3:15PM EDT
By Raymond Colitt

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Outraged Indian leaders in Brazil said on Monday they were offended by Pope Benedict’s “arrogant and disrespectful” comments that the Roman Catholic Church had purified them and a revival of their religions would be a backward step.

In a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Brazil, the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

They had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were “silently longing” for Christianity, he said.

Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, through slaughter, disease or enslavement.

Many Indians today struggle for survival, stripped of their traditional ways of life and excluded from society.

“It’s arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs,” said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, chief coordinator of the Amazon Indian group Coiab.

Several Indian groups sent a letter to the Pope last week asking for his support in defending their ancestral lands and culture. They said the Indians had suffered a “process of genocide” since the first European colonizers had arrived.

Priests blessed conquistadors as they waged war on the indigenous peoples, although some later defended them and many today are the most vociferous allies of Indians.

“The state used the Church to do the dirty work in colonizing the Indians but they already asked forgiveness for that … so is the Pope taking back the Church’s word?” said Dionito Jose de Souza a leader of the Makuxi tribe in northern Roraima state.

Pope John Paul spoke in 1992 of mistakes in the evangelization of native peoples of the Americas.

Pope Benedict not only upset many Indians but also Catholic priests who have joined their struggle, said Sandro Tuxa, who heads the movement of northeastern tribes.

“We repudiate the Pope’s comments,” Tuxa said. “To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening.

“I think (the Pope) has been poorly advised.”

Even the Catholic Church’s own Indian advocacy group in Brazil, known as Cimi, distanced itself from the Pope.

“The Pope doesn’t understand the reality of the Indians here, his statement was wrong and indefensible,” Cimi advisor Father Paulo Suess told Reuters. “I too was upset.”

In my opinion the Pope and all the churches have lost any relevancy that they had. The 21st century finds us caught between the ways of superstition and the ways of reason. The churches fail to realize that the indigenous rituals of worship are no less meaningful than a Sunday worship sevice. Yet the leadership of such churches have diminished and demonized those very rituals while carrying on with their own. We as Atheists are often dismissed as being hateful and angry. The truly hateful and angry people however have assembled themselves against any and all forms of ritual that they find offensive and have gone so far as to murder and kill the people who engage in such practices. They wilfully lie about it as well.

The Pope just confirms that to me when he goes out and rejects, offhand, any other way of living. Which includes living by the advances of science. Considering this Pope’s anti-family planning agenda and nonsensical attacks against contraception, is it any wonder that so many have had enough.

We often hear about the genocides of atheists Stalin And others. What the religious leave out is that the genocide that was conceived of by 14th century European Popes and Kings is still going on. A unified world politic with world wide religious approval. What could be more hateful than denying the poor a means of rising out of poverty. They are kept in check by superstition of religion or by brute force of government. And no the Papacy has never apologized for their tacit approval of Hitlers Holocaust. So how can we expect any good to come from a class of people who will not recognize the mistakes of the past and work to correct them. We can’t.

To learn more about the “Pillar of Shame” go here:
http://www.aidoh.dk/art_and_events/pos/brazil/ukposbrazil-parliamentletter.htm

Department of Irony-Challenged

Lambert, Edwards and Associates issued a prospectus on Church-Construction Financing Futures (2005-2010) on April 1, 2006 (I’d love to think it’s an AprilFoolsJoke but I don’t think it is…):

We believe the annual financing opportunity for the church construction market currently stands at $28 billion annually. We anticipate this market will grow at a rate in excess of 40% over the next five years to $40 billion by 2010, according to our proprietary church finance market (CFM)™ model.

Our forecast is driven by three primary factors: Exponential growth in church attendance within specific segments of the non-denominational and evangelical church population; the trend toward non-traditionalist, unconventional forums of worship, highlighted by the rise of the modern “mega-church” and; the marked growth in financial contributions to churches, specifically within certain non-denominational sects characterized by a younger, upwardly-mobile demographic commonly found in suburban or newly developed localities. [...]

Non-denominational membership doubled between 1990 and 2001, according to our analysis. We believe the growth in attendance at non-denominational churches marks the emergence of a broader trend in which denominational affiliation is perceived as an unnecessary limiting factor in attracting new members. We believe the notable success of non-denominational mega-churches throughout the country is supporting evidence of this trend. While church attendance at the average American church increased by 12% between 2000 and 2005, average church attendance at mega-churches across the country increased by an astounding 57.3%.

Growth in mega-churches closely tied to “non-denominational reformation”. In recent years, the notion that church could serve as both a house of worship as well as a social destination throughout the week has experienced a revival within the non-denominational community. Importantly, we believe this revival has been manifest in recent church construction projects, where the church is designed to serve as a multi-use facility. This trend is evidenced by the rapid growth of mega-churches. According to a study conducted in 2005, there were approximately 1,210 mega-churches in the United States, nearly twice the number that existed just five years ago. By definition, mega-churches have attendance of greater than 2,000 people on a weekly basis, greater than four times the average Christian church in the United States. We believe this segment of the church finance market will continue to provide additional opportunities for lenders into the foreseeable future, primarily given the strong attendance rates and robust financial contributions from membership.

Financial contributions to churches continue to rise, particularly within specific pockets of the Christian community. Church attendance is not only a key barometer to the spiritual health of a church body, it can also be a good indication of a church’s financial health. In 2005, church attendance hit a 7-year high at 45% of the domestic adult population, a net-positive for church giving trends. According to our estimates, annual giving to U.S. protestant churches is $93 billion. [html here; pdf.doc here]

Holy cash-cow! $93,000,000,000.00!

Yes, it’s a sales prospectus. Yes, it has to be rosy. But, cripes, I hope they take a bath!

Oh – why did I google “US+church+income+2005“? Only because Falwell was up in arms about the $8billion porn industry…

Just saying…