Howdy y’all!
I just posted the Peaceful Sundays audiobook in a playlist on youtube. It’s a freebie. Link is below the photo.
Hope y’all enjoy it!
Jimmy Pete
Please don't feed the author. Beer is fine.
I just posted the Peaceful Sundays audiobook in a playlist on youtube. It’s a freebie. Link is below the photo.
Hope y’all enjoy it!
Jimmy Pete
If Richard Dawkins made this, then I’ve just lost some confidence in his logic.
Theism and its opposite — atheism — have little to do with a belief about whether there is a god or not.
Theism is not simply the belief that there is a god. Theism is the belief that there is a god who can be influenced by his human believers. (What good is a god who doesn’t change stuff anyway? Can’t make any money on that kind of god, can we?)
Atheism, on the other hand, is not by definition the belief that there is no god. Atheism is only the belief that no matter how much you sing, dance, grovel on your knees, cry, weep, scream, shout, mutter under your breath, or swing incense, there ain’t no god who is giving a single shit about it.
So, that doesn’t mean that atheists must believe there is no god. It just means that if there is a god, atheists believe he’s not listening to you. He doesn’t give a shit about you or your prayers. He doesn’t engage in do-overs. He doesn’t come to your rescue. He doesn’t give you your daily bread, or cure your illnesses, or decide who wins your goddamn football games.
To an atheist, the likelihood of the existence of, for instance, the God of Abraham, is approximately equal to the likelihood of a giant tortoise carrying the earth on its back, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Zeus, or Apollo, or any other of the thousands of deities we’ve created, or any other random explanation made up of whole cloth from zero evidence by illiterates sitting around a campfire.
But whether such a disinterested deity exists or not doesn’t actually matter. An uncaring, unresponsive god has absolutely zero effect on the laws of physics, and thus, it has zero effect on our lives.
So an atheist does not have to believe there is no god. An atheist only has to believe that there is no god who is subject to influence by human believers.
Weddings were a pagan invention. The church deemed weddings to be sinful, because they inevitably led to sexual intercourse between consenting partners.
But when pagans started showing up at churches to ask the priests bless their new pagan marriage, the priests would do it for a fee “in facie ecclesiae” – literally, at the front doorstep of the church.
A blessing of a pagan ceremony could not be done inside the church, lest it contaminate the holy space.
But eventually, the church realized that weddings would be a revenue boon, so they appropriated the pagan ceremony, just like God appropriated the pagan week when He created the universe. (The week has seven days named after the seven special celestial objects visible to the naked eye – Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn.)
Today, “in facie ecclesiae” is still used in wedding ceremonies, but it is mistranslated to supposedly mean “in front of the congregation.”
A deist believes in a creator who set the universe in motion and walked away. His laws are immutable and he does not respond to supplication. There would be no purpose to studying such a deity, as nothing could come of it.
A theist, however, believes in a creator who set the universe in motion and stuck around to tweak mistakes (the flood, etc.) and respond to supplications (daily bread, etc).
Theology is the study of the latter god, not the former.
The historical purpose of theology is to discover and refine certain rituals that will avert earthquakes, disease, famine, war, personal misery, etc, and/or grant an afterlife to the theologian, by pleasing this deity.
Such rituals are prescribed by some theologians five times a day, and by others, once a week. They both have the same success rate.
Theology is similar to the study of a broken clock, and declaring it to be correct twice each day, because certain rituals were performed in advance to make it happen. Except in the case of averting earthquakes, disease, famine, war, personal misery, etc., the results are not as predictable as a broken clock’s. Ergo, God works in mysterious ways.
Psychologists studying chicken behavior taught chickens to peck a button for a food pellet reward. Then they taught a second group of chickens to peck a button for a reward that only arrived once every third peck. And finally, they taught a third group of chickens to peck a button for a reward that only arrived randomly.
Then they stopped delivering the rewards.
The chickens who were used to receiving a reward for every peck gave up first. The chickens who received a reward every third peck gave up next. The ones who received rewards at random kept pecking, and pecking, and pecking….
God works in mysterious ways….
It always amazes me how people with life threatening illnesses can go through MRIs, CAT scans, radiation, complex surgical procedures, and IV drips of scientifically designed drugs, and then say Jesus cured them.
Where was Jesus when their grandparents were sick?
(It is also interesting to note that a deity which does not respond to supplication also does not ask for money. Apparently that deity is financially stable.)
My first novel Peaceful Sundays is now available on
But if you want a free copy, it’s right here.