Daily Archives: 03.10.2012

Atheist Shoes (VIDEO)

Posted on by
Reply

Now, I realise that some of you haven’t the foggiest what an Atheist shoe is. And, admittedly, an atheist shoes sounds like a peculiar idea. But we think a shoe is a lovely, understated way for atheists to out themselves and to be less shy about their godlessness. And we also think our Bauhaus-inspired, 1930s-infatuated shoes will be a welcome antidote to the samey junk pumped out by the big sneaker corporations – not only do we feel our designs are prettier, but we know that the care, craftsmanship and quality of materials going into our shoes are superior to those invested by N**e, *onver*e and Ad***s.

Read more, and watch video here. . . .

Catholic Church [A Renowned International Child Raping Organization] punishes California homeless over shelter director’s personal views

Posted on by
Reply

Unbelievable. Another strong-armed bully tactic from the Catholic Church.

The Sacramento Bee is reporting the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento has pulled the plug on funding the Francis House homeless services agency in Sacramento. Described as “largest homeless services agencies in the Sacramento region, serving upward of 25,000 people,” the non-denominational agency has enjoyed grants as large as $10,000 from the diocese for decades.

What changed? They hired a new director in April, Rev. Faith Whitmore.

Whitmore, a United Methodist minister, took over leadership of Francis House in April after the sudden death of longtime executive director Gregory Bunker. Within her own denomination, she has been a strong advocate of same-sex marriage. In 2008, during a short period in which gay marriage was legal in California, Whitmore openly defied church law by marrying same-sex couples. She has said publicly that she supports a woman’s right to obtain an abortion.  In an interview Wednesday, she called the diocese’s decision to discontinue its support “surprising and disappointing.”

. . . It’s time for the Church to admit they are not a charity, but a political action committee[!]

Read more . . .

Banks foreclosing on churches in record numbers

Posted on by
1

Banks are foreclosing on America’s churches in record numbers as lenders increasingly lose patience with religious facilities that have defaulted on their mortgages, according to new data.

Since 2010, 270 churches have been sold after defaulting on their loans, with 90 percent of those sales coming after a lender-triggered foreclosure, according to the real estate information company CoStar Group.

Read more . . .

Since Christians pray for me, and in return, I think for them, I thought it considerate to leave them with a passage written in a book by subliterate desert dwellers for an audience that is illiterate at worst, limited and literal-minded at best. This should bring solace to those that find themselves without a tax-exempt house of worship due to a foreclosure that an apparently incompetent, omnipresent, omnipotent celestial dictator was unable to prevent.

My poor non-thinking fellow homo . . . sapiens, I leave you with Matthew 6:5-6:

5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

According to The Book for Dummies, the foreclosing of one’s church is really a non issue.[MSH]

Yes, life without God can be bleak. Atheism is about facing up to that.

Posted on by
2

Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right. Can you really tell the parents who lost their child to a suicide after years of depression that they should stop worrying and enjoy life? Doesn’t the appropriate response to 4,000 children dying everyday as a direct result of poor sanitation involve despair at the relentless misery of the world as well as some effort to improve things? Sometimes life is shit and that’s all there is to it. Not much bright about that fact.

Stressing the jolly side of atheism not only glosses over its harsher truths, it also disguises its unique selling point. The reason to be an atheist is not that it makes us feel better or gives us a more rewarding life. The reason to be an atheist is simply that there is no God and we would prefer to live in full recognition of that, accepting the consequences, even if it makes us less happy. The more brutal facts of life are harsher for us than they are for those who have a story to tell in which it all works out right in the end and even the most horrible suffering is part of a mystifying divine plan. If we don’t freely admit this, then we’ve betrayed the commitment to the naked truth that atheism has traditionally embraced. . .

And so we [atheists] don’t just get on and enjoy life, we embark on our own intellectual pilgrimages [emphasis added], trying to make some progress in a universe on which no meaning has been writ. The journey can be wonderful but it can also be arduous and it may end horribly. But there is no other way, and anyone who urges you to follow a path that they promise leads to a bright future [i.e., salvation] is either gravely mistaken or a charlatan [emphasis added].

Read more . . .

Deckle Edge in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Posted on by
Reply

The deckle edge dates back to a time when you used to need a knife to read a book. Those rough edges simulate the look of pages that have been sliced open by the reader. The printing happened on large sheets of paper which were then folded into rectangles the size of the finished pages and bound. The reader then sliced open the folds.

Paper knives, variants of letter openers, were used for this purpose. Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, which speaks directly to the reader and describes the reader’s experience reading the novel, makes extensive reference to these literary knives:

“This volume’s pages are uncut: a first obstacle opposing your impatience. Armed with a good paper knife, you prepare to penetrate its secrets. With a determined slash you cut your way between the title page and the beginning of the first chapter.”

Opening a book can already feel like opening a gift. Armed with a knife and freeing the pages and the story hidden beneath the folds, it becomes something more, “a penetration of its secrets” and an act of discovery, shot through with a suggestion of violence and danger or of the painful gestation of the words themselves.

Read more . . .