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RE: Help Me Answer My Evangelical Aunt's Most Recent Email!
December 29, 2011 at 5:01 pm
This Aunt has deleted me several times, and then apologizes subsequently. She usually sends me a message once a week about how Jesus is ready for me anytime I am ready for him, but she always adds a reminder that I could die in 10 minutes and I will suffer in hell eternally. The only reason I have to not want to piss her off is that she goes and tells my grandmother, who gets upset easily, and is in poor health.
When my grandmother passes, I will tell her how I feel about her, and how I feel about her upsetting my grandmother for no other reason than to instill guilt in my heart.
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RE: Help Me Answer My Evangelical Aunt's Most Recent Email!
December 29, 2011 at 5:04 pm
(December 29, 2011 at 4:55 pm)popeyespappy Wrote: What I do remember though is a Muslim being fired from a job at Dell right here in Nashville because management wouldn’t arrange his breaks around prayer time.
Fair enough if you ask me. Prayer, what the fuck is that, it has no place in a productive working day.
Quote: I also remember Christians protesting the construction of a mosque. Not at ground zero in New York but down the road from here in Murfreesboro. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to build a house of worship on land they own?
Because worshipping invisible sky dictators is ridiculous?
No more churches or mosques should be built - just keep the remaining ones for the decreasing number of deluded folk.
You are currently experiencing a lucky and very brief window of awareness, sandwiched in between two periods of timeless and utter nothingness. So why not make the most of it, and stop wasting your life away trying to convince other people that there is something else? The reality is obvious.
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RE: Help Me Answer My Evangelical Aunt's Most Recent Email!
December 29, 2011 at 5:08 pm
(December 29, 2011 at 4:55 pm)popeyespappy Wrote: Who has denied Tebow the opportunity to pray at a football game? I seem to remember seeing him praying the last time I watched the Broncos. Who has denied anyone the right to pray at a private sporting event? There is a public prayer offered on national TV at the beginning of every NASCAR race. I don’t remember any lawsuits or the police dragging the preacher off after any of those.
What I do remember though is a Muslim being fired from a job at Dell right here in Nashville because management wouldn’t arrange his breaks around prayer time. I also remember Christians protesting the construction of a mosque. Not at ground zero in New York but down the road from here in Murfreesboro. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to build a house of worship on land they own?
I didn't know you lived in Nashville still. I thought you used to live here, but moved elsewhere. I remember all of that. The Murfreesboro thing was really alarming. I grew up in Smyrna, which is the little town beside M'boro, in the same county, and although I was disgusted, I was hardly surprised.
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RE: Help Me Answer My Evangelical Aunt's Most Recent Email!
December 29, 2011 at 5:37 pm
(December 29, 2011 at 2:58 pm)aleialoura Wrote: Crazy Evangelical Aunt Wrote:Leigh, you know I like to answer these things privately because I dont ever want to appear to be ridiculing you in any way because I am not but others might think so and I don't want to even take the chance on that. So hear goes...
Since you are an atheist and that is your right and I am certainly not going to use this platform to try and convince you otherwise. I do however think that I should explain to you a little bit about God and prayer and the gifts and talents that God gives us. All good gifts, in this case Tim Tebow's gift is a great football player, should all be used to further the Kingdom of God. The 'platform' that God has given to Tebow, is the football field. Tebow has a desire in his heart to give God thanks and glory because he knows that God is the one that has given him his talents, he also has a responsibility as a Christian to show the world that he recognizes God as his Lord and King. All of us are given platforms to spread the good news of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ some are just more public than others. Unfortunately many Christians fail and are not bold in their worship of the one true God. Tebow isn't and that's why everybody is talking about him. It should be such the norm that the talk would be about the Christian that doesn't give glory to God. There are other 'professed' Christians standing on that field with Tebow... my question is why aren't they bold enough to kneel in praise and glory of the mighty God they claim to believe in.
The media and the most americans readily accept muslims worshiping in their workplace and schools when Christians are not even allowed to speak the name of Jesus in many of these places... even you can surely see the injustice in that.
I don't want to come off as arrogant, antagonistic, or rude... so basically, I don't know what to say.
What would you say?
Aside from telling her to stop getting her facts about christianity from FOX News, I would remind her that Christians are free to practice their faith in all the same places that muslims are and if anyone tells her otherwise, then they are lying.
I might also be tempted to tell her that the other football players are probably not as deeply reliigous as teebow is.
If you really wanted to get into it, I might ask her about why god chose to give Teebow the gift of really good football instead of giving starving chidlren of the world food, shelter, and sanitation.
I'd word them all to sound like legitimate concerns and avoid sounding like a prick as much as possible consdering that she is family (not saying that's a problem with you, but I would conciously put a lot of care into the way I said the above) because you can bring these points up and have a discussion - but obviously you don't want to come off sounding superior, which can be very easy to do in these kinds of discussions even if it was absolutely not your intention.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
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RE: Help Me Answer My Evangelical Aunt's Most Recent Email!
December 29, 2011 at 5:48 pm
(This post was last modified: December 29, 2011 at 5:48 pm by Oldandeasilyconfused.)
Dear Aunt Gwalter*
After receiving your last email I have reluctantly concluded that as well as a deluded old hen you are also a hateful bigot. Being deluded is harmless and tolerable. Being a bigot is neither.
Should you send me ANY further emails about your obnoxious personal superstitions,I am going to say some very unkind things.
Have nice a day kicking puppies.
*'Gwalter' is a real name for a girl,the 'g'is silent. I kid you not.
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RE: Help Me Answer My Evangelical Aunt's Most Recent Email!
December 29, 2011 at 5:52 pm
(December 29, 2011 at 5:48 pm)padraic Wrote: Dear Aunt Gwalter*
After receiving your last email I have reluctantly concluded that as well as a deluded old hen you are also a hateful bigot. Being deluded is harmless and tolerable. Being a bigot is neither.
Should you send me ANY further emails about your obnoxious personal superstitions,I am going to say some very unkind things.
Have nice a day kicking puppies.
*'Gwalter' is a real name for a girl,the 'g'is silent. I kid you not.
That's.... PERFECT!
I haven't sent a reply yet. Thank you all for your advice, and suggestions. Mucho appreciato.
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RE: Help Me Answer My Evangelical Aunt's Most Recent Email!
December 29, 2011 at 5:53 pm
(This post was last modified: December 29, 2011 at 5:54 pm by Cyberman.)
(December 29, 2011 at 5:48 pm)padraic Wrote: *'Gwalter' is a real name for a girl,the 'g'is silent. I kid you not.
Like the silent 'p' in swimming pool.
(NB this is a pun, or play on words.)
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Help Me Answer My Evangelical Aunt's Most Recent Email!
December 29, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Here's another point I haven't seen brought up:
Fighting between football fans gets heavy enough without bringing a thorny subject like religion into it.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
![[Image: harmlesskitchen.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/yxR97P23/harmlesskitchen.png)
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
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RE: Help Me Answer My Evangelical Aunt's Most Recent Email!
December 29, 2011 at 6:11 pm
No fucking doubt, Rev. Rye!
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RE: Help Me Answer My Evangelical Aunt's Most Recent Email!
December 29, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Quote:No more churches or mosques should be built
Well, I find McDonalds and yet another unnecessary shopping mall far more offensive than a mosque or a church .The local exception is the massive Mormon temple.White marble,with a gilded statue of Artie Shaw playing his clarinet on the roof. "Tacky" ?You ask. Put it this way;,it would make a spiffy casino on the Las Vega strip. Fortunately, it's about 3 miles away,so I can't actually see it from here.
Do I like churches? A few; some in England and Europe are stunningly beautiful.Most here are fucking ugly,intrusive and lower property values.THAT is my objection,not their use, which is none of my business as long as they obey the law.
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