BNFree / Bloomington-Normal Freethinkers

Last week I had a revelation. I was in a gas station bathroom projectile vomiting from eating a green hotdog “cooked” in the very same gas station (I was hungry and I will eat just about anything, though I won’t be eating any green hotdogs from that gas station anymore) when I saw a pamphlet that changed my life. I can no longer, in good conscience, call myself an atheist. I am now a devoted follower of BIFF (Best Imaginary Friend Forever).

I read through the pamphlet like six times before I rushed out and bought myself a Great Books of Wonderous BIFF. The pamphlet made me realize that, alone, I am not good enough, but with BIFF by my side, I will always have a friend looking out for me wherever I go.

The pamphlet quoted a passage from Letters 6:9 “And BIFF say unto thee ‘ In thine house, thou shalt be comfortable, wearingeth no pants, thy shall be free.’”

What powerful words. BIFF loves us so much, that he instructs us to go without pants in our house so that we will be comfortable. It almost brought me to tears. If BIFF cares about such a seemingly trivial thing, then he must care a great deal about the big things.

I am going to quote a few verses that stuck out in my mind while reading through the Great Book of Wonderous BIFF, but I am not going to comment of them because I want you to be able to feel the power as the words flow through you. continue reading…

Well, it’s official. I’ve been indefinitely suspended from religious belief. You show up to church drunk one time and accidentally vomit into the sacramental wine and yell at everyone that you are going to steal the little wafers and test Jesus’ “flesh” for DNA and they kick you out. Of course, that was after I wet myself and passed out in the corner. I think I had a proud momma that day*.

So, I figure in this blog post I would expound on my last blog post and maybe explain the meaning of “Jay Pea’s Indefinite Suspension”. First of all I should point out that I am not an “intellectual” atheist. I’ve been told that I’m a smart (ass) guy, but I’m not very good at discussing evolution or debating the many arguments for the existence of God. What I can do, however, is make less sense than the person I am talking to and I have found that if you make negative sense people just assume you know what you are talking about because the human brain did not evolve to deal with that sort of thing. I guess that explains the spread of Scientology. Now, having said that, I am going to do my best to explain myself with the intellect that Pretend God gave me.

At certain work places and schools if you do something really bad or do many small things wrong, you can be indefinitely suspended from work or school until such time that the powers that be determine that you can return. That’s kind of how I view my lack of religious belief. I was a Christian, but because there is no evidence to the contrary I no longer believe. If, at some point, irrefutable evidence should arise, I will give it serious thought and return to belief. I feel I am in no danger of that happening, but I, Jay Pea, have been Indefinitely Suspended from religious belief. So that’s the meaning of that. continue reading…

This is the second version of this blog entry that I have gone through. Second title, too. The first version sounded (to me at least) more like a college English essay rather than a blog post. There is nothing wrong with a blog that is professional sounding, but that’s not me. The first title was “Atheism and Agnosticism” and I think I fell asleep twice while typing it. Blah. So I decided to start over. I will be quite honest, I am not familiar with blogging outside of having read a few, so I am just going on the assumption that the first blog post sets the tone for the rest. A “prim and proper” first blog post would not be in my best interest since I am not “prim and proper” and I do not want to get stuck with such a label. I am not that kind of guy. So, I might as well just be upfront about this…I am an agnostic atheist.

But, that’s not possible, is it? An agnostic is just the middle ground between an atheist and a believer (for the sake of simplicity I will refer to theists, those who believe in some form of a god as “believers”), so you can’t be in the middle and on the end, right? In spatial terms, this would be correct, but when dealing with philosophical concepts, nothing makes sense.

I grew up in a Christian household and accepted Jesus into my heart at a pretty early age and then did it again in my mid teens. And again in my early twenties. I may have been raised in a Christian household, but that doesn’t mean they taught me anything. I guess I thought I could lose salvation, but I have come to find out that you can only lose your salvation if your denomination says you can. What I did learn was that atheists were bad, agnostics didn’t know any better, and Christians were good. The point in relaying this information is that, while I have no doubt that my parents loved me and had only my best interests in mind, they didn’t really teach me anything about the faith. I think that’s why not many people understand what agnosticism is, even those who grew up in an atheist household. I would assume anyway. continue reading…