Does your atheism come as a package?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The Westboro Baptist Church believes this. 

The Westboro bastards believe in aggravation and annoyance to provoke reactions and result in ligation for profit. Das geld is their god.

[SuperSentient]

The Westboro Baptist Church believes this. 

The Westboro bastards believe in aggravation and annoyance to provoke reactions and result in ligation for profit. Das geld is their god.

But they can't be God's chosen people if they aren't attacked and ridiculed, being oppressed like the people of Israel.

[MR. Macabre 666]

The only "package" that I came with when I realized decades ago that I've never believed in any god(s) is my love for anything related to Halloween, Satanism, witchcraft, the occult, horror, cemeteries, black and death metal music, tattoos, etc.
I'm the only atheist in my family, and the only fan of anything I've listed as interesting to me.
9 years of catholic school might have something to do with it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The Westboro bastards believe in aggravation and annoyance to provoke reactions and result in ligation for profit. Das geld is their god.

But they can't be God's chosen people if they aren't attacked and ridiculed, being oppressed like the people of Israel.

As far as I know no mainstream religion will claim them. They just in it for the money.

[LinuxGal]

The Westboro bastards believe in aggravation and annoyance to provoke reactions and result in ligation for profit. Das geld is their god.

But they can't be God's chosen people if they aren't attacked and ridiculed, being oppressed like the people of Israel.

Westboroids appear in William Gibson's novel "The Peripheral" thinly disguised as fictional.

...They’d started out as a church, or in a church, not liking anyone being gay or getting abortions or using birth control. Protesting military funerals, which was a thing. Basically they were just assholes, though, and took it as the measure of God’s satisfaction with them that everybody else thought they were assholes...

[SuperSentient]

But they can't be God's chosen people if they aren't attacked and ridiculed, being oppressed like the people of Israel.

Westboroids appear in William Gibson's novel "The Peripheral" thinly disguised as fictional.

...They’d started out as a church, or in a church, not liking anyone being gay or getting abortions or using birth control. Protesting military funerals, which was a thing. Basically they were just assholes, though, and took it as the measure of God’s satisfaction with them that everybody else thought they were assholes...

Someone needs to protest their church with the pride flags and stake a pro-LGBT sign nearby and watch em lose it.

[The Valkyrie]

No.

My atheism comes with boobs.

[FrustratedFool]

Some Christian theological traditions don't believe in free will either, God has predestined his chosen to heaven and the rest to damnation. The Westboro Baptist Church believes this. 

It makes you feel more special because God has chosen you from the beginning out of billions throughout history who exist just to be damned to hellfire.

Indeed, various forms of Calvinism don't believe in freewill.

It's a fairly mainstream teaching that some are predestined to salvation, some to damnation. It's a Pauline thing, going through Augustine, right into modern Protestantism.

To what degree you have freewill over other choices varies a lot.

At one point I was a Calvinist. At another an Open Theist. Went from one extreme to another trying to make the bible, theology, morality, and reality cohere and make sense together.

[Ahriman]

Some Christian theological traditions don't believe in free will either, God has predestined his chosen to heaven and the rest to damnation. The Westboro Baptist Church believes this. 

It makes you feel more special because God has chosen you from the beginning out of billions throughout history who exist just to be damned to hellfire.

Indeed, various forms of Calvinism don't believe in freewill.

It's a fairly mainstream teaching that some are predestined to salvation, some to damnation.  It's a Pauline thing, going through Augustine, right into modern Protestantism.  

To what degree you have freewill over other choices varies a lot.  

At one point I was a Calvinist.  At another an Open Theist.  Went from one extreme to another trying to make the bible, theology, morality, and reality cohere and make sense together.

You actually don't get to decide if you're going to Heaven or Hell. But everything else is up to you.

[FrustratedFool]

Everything else seems kind of irrelevant in comparison to eternal torture or eternal bliss.