a fantastic comic that Sean turned me on to. monthly comic is published on the Atheist Community of Austin website.

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the meat and potatos of this post.

this weekend is Pentecost (Sunday). for those not brought up “in the know”, Pentecost is a day to celebrate when the holy spirit of the Christian god was sent to earth. in a nutshell, the apostles went out on a prothletising rampage speaking in tongues and everyone they met could understand their speech.

it is a stolen holiday occurring on the same day that Jewish  folk celebrate god giving the Torah to moses while he was up hanging out on mount sinai.. day is called shavuot. but stealing holy days is nothing new, so lets drop that for now.

why bring this all up right before world prayer day / pentecost?

in the  three years since that comic was written, the standard attitude of x-tians has not changed. there are plenty of exceptions, followers of christ that are mellow down to earth people who deserve my respect. the stereotype is the topic here though, not the exception.

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for those of you who might run across this and be angry in any manner. before you post and bitch me out, go read this fantastic sermon by Pastor Harry Mueller. i suggest reading the whole thing as it is pretty wonderful rhetoric, but if you just want a sample, read below.

http://stpaulref.org/sermons/?p=141

Good jokes, like good stories… Like the stories we read every Sunday from the scripture…. need to be told over and over again and enjoyed. One of the jokes I’ve retold over the years when I try to explain that there are bad ways to read the bible. Especially of you take a verse here and a verse there, out of context, and just apply it to anything.

So there was a man who thought he’d read a verse each morning at breakfast as a thought for the day. The first day he opened his bible and ran his hand down the page to the verse, “and Judas hanged himself.” He didn’t like that as a thought for the day so he closed the book and opened it again to another page. This time the passage was, “Go and do thou likewise.” He slammed the bible shut not liking that either. A third time he opened the book and came to rest on the verse, “What so ever thou doest, do quickly.”[...]

the largest problem i have with christianity as a whole is the groups who take the text of the bible literally. spouting text and quotations. as if they mean anything with out the context of the previous verses. they dont. they are only dogmatic drivel when taken away from the stories and background in which they are presented.

they still eat shrimp though,  even though leviticus states it is as bad as butt-fucking a dude, but hey, could god really have meant it?.. lets conveniently forget about this bit of the “word of god”.. it was nine chapters earlier in leviticus than the butt fucking, so it must be less important.. sweep sweep sweep it under the rug.

anyways, i am really off topic and digressing fast..

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Tracie Harris is a graphic designer in Austin, TX. Raised in Orlando, FL, she received her BA in Liberal Studies from the University of Central Florida. Her long, slow recovery from a rabid fundamentalist upbringing led her to the creation of Atheist Eve.

text of the comic strip:

christian:
if you’re prochoice you’re a baby killer! arrest somebody!
gays and lesbians are unnatural abominations! stop them from getting married!
atheists are amoral agents of satan! put god in the schools and courts! show them we’re a christian nation!
somebody ban this obscene “art” exhibit!

atheist:
if you want to believe in god and teach your kids about christianity, that’s your right. please let the rest of us make our own choices, too.

christian:
stop persecutingme! stop disrespecting my beliefs! why are you waging a war against christianity?