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A letter to Marc 2008-01-19 09:31:00 Dear Marc,Your recent manic postings on this site have been quite entertaining. Thank you for making the site more popular and more interesting by demonstrating so wonderfully well how religious delusion can severely cripple and hobble the rational ability of a person's mind.Marc, you said this: I post for these people dear WM. I have told you before that I will not stop shouting to the world about the reality of God. Unless you remove this site from the Internet, or force people to become members of this site, I will continue to post.Marc, you are quite insane. There are literally thousands and thousands of Catholic websites out there spreading your message. Do you really think this one little website is more powerful than the combined influence of thousands and thousands of Catholic websites, the prayers of all the saints, and your magical godlett? You really need help. You actually believe your god needs YOU to help defend the world against one little ole' website? HA HA HA HA HA ...

Update: Baptist pastor Gilyard arrested for sex messages to teens 2008-01-19 07:33:50 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (ABP) -- Once touted by Southern Baptist leaders as the nation's next great African-American preacher, Darrell Gilyard was arrested Jan. 14 for sending lewd text messages to underage girls. Dogged for 20 years by dozens of allegations of extramarital sex with parishioners, Gilyard, 45, resigned Jan. 4 as pastor of Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church, a 7,000-member megachurch in Jacksonville, Fla., that he has served for 15 years. It is the fifth church position that Gilyard has been forced to resign from over charges of sexual misconduct. Gilyard was charged with lewd and lascivious conduct. He will be arraigned Feb. 5. Police have been investigating a Nov. 29 complaint filed by a member of the congregation claiming Gilyard sent sexually explicit text messages to her daughter. At least one other girl allegedly received similar text messages. One of the mothers produced a journal detailing her daughter's sexual relationship with the pastor, the police said. The ...

How do you escape a cult when it is all around you? 2008-01-19 06:52:55 Sent in by LaylaLike many others here I was raised in the way that Christianity wasn't presented to you as a choice; it was a lifestyle. It just... was. Even if you didn't go to church. It wasn't that you weren't a Christian, you were just a backslid Christian, in need of a little prodding, belittling, but all in the name of God's good works, you see. We weren't really church goers, my sister, brothers and myself might go every now and then but that was mostly just to hang out with the other kids. I never "felt" what I was "supposed" to. If anything I was always a little weirded out by church, everything about it vaguely resembled a sideshow if that makes sense. Old ladies in their best flowery dresses, a loud round man shouting from the stage about hellfire and damnation. People shouting left and right agreeing with everything the pastor says. I felt sick inside sometimes, I still do when I think of it. Still even with every nagging doubt in me , I never let myself question ...

Religious Idiocy 2008-01-19 06:30:28 By ReligionIsACrutchAtheism is inspired by one thing most of all: honesty with yourself. If you look at ALL of the evidence and make an honest decision without clouding your judgment with fear, guilt, love, duty, or anything else, you will come to one logical conclusion: There are no gods. Even if there were, they have made no contact with humans or even claimed to exist at all. The only evidence there is, supports the conclusion that gods are fictitious and no more likely to exist than elves, fairies, gnomes, trolls, ogres, goblins, sprites or pixies. ...

Pastor and wife split 2008-01-18 12:22:48 In divorce court: Megachurch pastor Jamal-Harrison Bryant and his wife of 5 1/2 years, Gizelle Bryant.She filed in Montgomery County on Jan. 9, alleging adultery. She states in court papers that the pastor makes more than $350,000 a year.He filed in Baltimore City the same day. His complaint says nothing about cheating. It does state that "there is no hope of reconciliation.""This is a private matter between Dr. Bryant and his wife, and we'd like to keep this matter private," said Jimmy A. Bell, lawyer for the Empowerment Temple pastor.The couple have three children, 1-year-old twins and a 3-year-old.The big question: Who gets the Bentley?STORY LINK ...

Tony Dungy’s Christian Dilemma 2008-01-17 20:37:09 By Brian Worley of ExMinister.OrgLife must be great when you are the head football coach of the defending champions Indianapolis Colts and when you have a book that ranks amongst others in the best selling charts. Such is the life of Tony Dungy, so what is the problem here?The problem is that Tony Dungy, as a Christian, has a call of God upon his life that only those who have personally had that same calling can fully appreciate. That heavenly call, call it the divine purpose, or the reason that you feel that you have been placed here upon the earth takes precedence over whatever else stands in its path. Standing in Dungy’s path is honoring a coaching contract he signed years ago. Someone needs to remind this “Christian giant” of James 5:12 admonition “but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation”. For the third year in a row, the Colts are left “twisting in the wind” wondering if his “yea” is really a “yea”. Tony has fallen into l ...

Has Satan been feeding my daughter lies? 2008-01-17 20:23:48 Sent in by DKMy family is extremely fundamental, evangelical –- most of them missionaries. I let go of my beliefs about two years ago, but in order to not rock the boat, have stayed low key and have not come out of the closet yet.Over Christmas, my 27-year-old daughter told my 81-year-old mother that she believes the search for truth is revealed from within and you must follow your own heart wherever it leads even if it doesn’t lead to Christianity, because one must be true to oneself. Here is my mother’s comment: “Sorry about what *** wrote, but at least we know where she stands. We are fervently praying the Lord will open her eyes. She doesn’t know her heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Also Satan is the father of lies and he has been feeding her lies and she has been believing them. We pray she will believe Jesus, who is the way, the truth and the life.”How close-minded, arrogant, and judgmental. I feel sickened ... but not at all surprised.DK from Atlanta ...

Religious Irony on Dallas Top 40 2008-01-17 14:04:17 Posted by Dr. Zach"Kidd Kraddick in the Morning" is the morning show for KHKS 106.1 "KISS" FM, a popular Top-40 station here in Dallas that's also popular with my wife for their support of her favorite musician, Elliot Yamin. As such, it graces our clock radio and tends to wake me on a regular basis.Although there's usually some ridiculous conversation in progress when the alarm trips, this morning's was especially interesting and ironic. The group was discussing the recent viral video of Tom Cruise blathering on about Scientology, which they had placed on their website. Show member "Kellie Rasberry" [sic] was defending his comments in the video, with the argument that all religious people think that they have the Answer, so she didn't think he should be criticized.That alone tickled me awake, but then she offered the following case in point, which I'll paraphrase:"Everyone thinks Tom Cruise is crazy for thinking that aliens live inside each of us, but as Christians we believe tha ...

Ex-pastor preaches evolution 2008-01-17 10:11:11 Michael Dowd speaks in tongues, and when he's not doing that, he's talking almost nonstop about why Christians should embrace evolution.As a Pentecostal-background pastor who finds salvation in accepting that the universe is 14 billion years old, and who believes our behavior can be accounted for by not only the apes but also the lizards in our ancestry, he's a popular oddity on the lecture circuit.This week and next, the author of Thank God for Evolution! will be giving several talks in the area."I come out of the Pentecostal, charismatic style," he said. "I'm all over the place. Nobody gets bored at these meetings."Mr. Dowd grew up Catholic but later converted to spirit-filled Pentecostalism and began to speak in tongues. Early on, he also believed the biblical accounts of creation to be literally true and fervently rejected evolution.But through the years, he encountered Christians who believed that evolution and faith could be reconciled.In February 1988, he recalled, he attend ...

Is Religion a Force for Good or Evil? 2008-01-17 06:49:26 The recent debate at Caltech between Dinesh D’Souza and Michael Shermer. In this debate on what are arguably two of the most important questions in the culture wars today: Is Religion a Force for Good or Evil? And, Can You be Good without God? The conservative Christian author and cultural scholar Dinesh D’Souza and the libertarian skeptic writer and social scientist Michael Shermer, square off to resolve these and related issues, such as the relationship between science and religion and the nature and existence of God. This event was one of the liveliest ever hosted by the Skeptics Society at Caltech, mixing science, religion, politics, and culture. Dinesh D’Souza is the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Investor’s Business Daily called him one of the “top young public-policy makers in the country,” and the New York Times Magazine named him one of America’s most influential conservative thinkers. Before joining the Hoover ...

Westboro Baptists come to Camp Lejeune 2008-01-17 06:31:51 This just sent in from a member of the U.S. Marine Corps stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.These idiots are coming to the front gate at Camp Lejeune to protest the Marine Corps. They are also going to our Beruit Memorial Cemetery to celebrate the deaths of all Marines who have been killed in action. All Marines and Sailors on base have been ordered not to go to the protests or interact with them for any reason. That's probably a smart order, because I have a mind to go there with a platoon of Marines, all carrying baseball bats. That would probably just invigorate them all the more, though. These are the same ass-clowns that protested the funeral of a Marine a couple years ago who died in an I.E.D. blast. They were carrying signs saying "God loves IED's." Stupidity never ceases to amaze me. ...

I honestly believed in the Christian god. No longer; no more. 2008-01-17 06:11:51 Sent in by JakeSometimes, I miss being six years old and really believing that there were fairies and dragons and wizards out there somewhere, with the dinosaurs that maybe, just maybe lived in places of the world no one had found.When I was little, I dreamed of being an explorer and finding those places. I ran around as kids are wont to do, pretending to be storybook characters, exploring lost temples and forgotten jungle civilizations with Indiana Jones, slaying dragons with King Arthur, fighting off hordes of space invaders with lasers only I could see and all manner of other imaginative forms of self-amusement.It was a great dream, and as I was an only child of a poor family, typically the only reliable entertainment available to me. Someday I might just write books about it all. They'll be categorized as fiction, and I'll fondly keep copies of them on my bookshelves, to eventually read to my children/grandchildren, provided I ever have any.To arrive at my point, there's nothing ...

Bishop Paulk pleads guilty 2008-01-16 18:35:03 Bishop Earl Paulk pleaded guilty to felony perjury in Cobb Superior Court Wednesday. Judge Frank R. Cox, chief judge of Magistrate Court, sitting in as assisting Superior Court judge, said he fined Paulk $1,000 and put him on probation for 10 years. He ordered Paulk to pay $32 a month in probation fees.Cobb County Sheriff's OfficeEarl PaulkRELATED LINKS:• Photos: Scandal surrounds Earl Paulk• More DeKalb news• More Cobb news Paulk, formerly a prominent minister, was charged with perjury for lying during a deposition last year in a sexual misconduct lawsuit against him. He turned himself into Cobb County authorities at 8 p.m. Tuesday and was sentenced about 18 hours later. Cox said District Attorney Pat Head and Paulk's attorney arranged the sequence of legal events. Louis Levenson, the attorney for the couple suing Paulk, said the plea should serve as a warning. "I hope that people will take a page out of this book and see that whatever their relig ...

Youth Pastor Accused Of Sex Crimes 2008-01-16 05:31:13 "Think about getting hit in the stomach unexpectedly and getting the wind knocked out of you."That's how Pastor John Anderson describes his congregations reaction after one of the East Tucson Baptist Church youth ministers was arrested for several sex crimes.Anderson said, "Shock, anger, denial rationalization, all of those are taking place right now."Taking place because Christopher Decaire was arrested on Friday and charged with nine felonies. He's accused of sexually molesting a 13-year-old girl from the church."We're still numb, we're speechless."The alleged victim told a relative who then called police.This is the search warrant officers served the church on Friday. It shows police got swabs of Christoper Decaire's mouth for DNA. Other evidence they looked for included pieces of flooring, couches, curtains and other furniture found to contain biological material when viewed with a forensic light source.Police say those materials would indicate they suspect some of the acts of ...

Rejecting John 3:16 2008-01-16 04:49:47 By AstrejaSo, let me get this straight: A god sacrifices its only son, purportedly so that it (an ultra-powerful god) will be in a position to forgive us (comparatively powerless humans) for something called "sin".I don't think so.I really and truly don't think so.Imagine for a moment that you've put a lot of work into your yard, and it looks fabulous.You put up a sign that says "Keep Off the Grass".Along come a couple of people who don't know how to read. They not only walk across your lawn, but sample a raspberry or two off the bush on the north side of the walk.You get annoyed.No; you get angry.So psychotically angry, in fact, that you lock the great-great-great-grandkids of the trespassing raspberry thieves in your basement, turn on the garden hose, and drown them all. (All, that is, except for a dozen or so kids who were out at the lake that afternoon.)The survivors go on to raise families, and many generations later you send your son to chat with them. As you're omniscie ...