If you listened to yesterday’s podcast, you may have heard that we have 5 memberships to give out for free, and I decided that the first contest is to see who can have the best conversation with a Mormon. Since they are working diligently to spread their hilariously dumb message, you can go and have an insta-chat with Mormons right now if it tickles your fancy!

Now, while I can’t win my own prize, I did try to see if I could get some interesting answers out of my Mormon hosts:

Me: what is the most convincing thing about mormonism to you

Merisa: That we know that this is Christ’s true church on the earth once more, restored by a prophet

Me: what do you find is the most solid piece of evidence for your belief.

Merisa: We dont need evidence. We have faith and prayer and peace and happiness

Me: so prayer is a type of evidence for you?

Merisa: yes

Merisa: We have evidence in the way we feel Gods love in our life and since we are answering your questions will you answer ours?

Me: I want to understand people, what makes them tick, what makes them believe in certain ideas

Merisa: Ok well as missionaries we are here to taech people, so what we would like to do since you are so interested in learning is send local missionaries to help you better understand these things

Me: So far it seems as though there are two main reasons for your own belief: 1) an emotional reaction to premises you’ve accepted as true, and 2) seeing pattern or direct results of your prayer. Is that a good summary?

Merisa: No

Merisa: please come back when you are willing to answer our questions

That’s when they kicked me out of the chat, so I failed at my first attempt to get them to say something interesting, but it doesn’t mean one of you can’t pull it off! Because I’m a bit of a jerk, I’m offering a free one year membership to TGA to anyone that gets the best response from these guys. Post up the conversations you have in the comment section, and I’ll pick the winner. Good luck everyone!

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I just got this email from a fan of the site who spotted this in the U.S. Capitol Building. As you can guess, it’s a pretty blatent violation of the First Amendment, but as you are probably aware, it seems as though most folks aren’t even sure what that amendment actually says or means. It’s become extremely popular these days to deny or disregard the whole “separation of church and state” thing (you might recall that Christine O’Donnell is offering a whooping $1000 to anyone who can find this phrase in the Constitution), and we need to send a clear message to these religionists that we aren’t going to let them get away with this shit anymore. Anyone interested in throwing your support behind this initiative can leave a message in the comments or email me directly and we’ll see if we can’t get things back into working order.

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I don’t normally take pleasure in the failures of others, but I’m willing to make an exception when it comes to corrupt institutions. That’s why I cracked a little smile today when I read that the Church of Ireland lost over 17 million dollars when the value of their shares in AIB plummeted.

Of course, what sucks here is that the near collapse of this bank has ended up costing Irish taxpayers a bundle (since in today’s modern world, we can’t let “banks fail”), but if it’s any comfort, the Church now has less money to pay the pensions of retired priests that raped children. Small comfort, I know, but I try to take joy in the little things…

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Ok Brits, here’s the deal: a number of you nonbelievers have been filling in “Christian” in your census boxes, and that has got to stop. The British Humanist Association has launched a campaign aimed at encouraging atheists and agnostics to fill in “no religion” in order to send a clear message that religion is becoming increasingly marginalized in society.

With the growing confidence we’ve been feeling recently, I’m confident that the supposed “37 million Christians” will shrink faster than the polar icecaps. And for those of you who think it doesn’t really matter what you fill out, consider the fact that your country has thousands of faith schools that are funded by your tax dollars, all because of the perceived religious needs of Britain.

So do your part and tell the government that you have no religious affiliation, and that faith schools are a waste of fucking time.

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A fan sent me a picture of this poster he found at a local Hospital in Britain. It states that “[t]he miracle of cornea transplantation can help restore sight”. Miracle? That shit drives me crazy. Cornea transplants are medical marvels, made possible only because of our ever growing understanding of the human body. If it was a damn miracle, you’d be able to do the operation with a fucking toothpick and a communion wafer.

I’m sick and tired of this type of nomenclature when it comes to serious medical science. Can we start admitting that this is all because of the continued progress of science and not the supernatural, people?

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Never heard of A. Whitney Brown before, but I think I’ll check out more of his act. I liked what I saw. It’s twisted in just the right way.

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In an attempt to hide the fact that his candidate knows almost nothing of the founding document of her country, Jonathan Moseley, campaign manager to “witch-in-denial” Christine O’Donnell is offering a whooping 1000 bones to anyone who can prove that the phrase “Seperation of Church and State” is in the Constitution. It’s actually a pretty weak offer, since he’s technically correct in stating that the specific phrase is in fact not in the document.

The phrase actually comes from one of the authors of the Constitution, a certain Thomas Jefferson. You might remember him as the guy that was expunged from Texas schoolbooks for not being Christ-friendly enough (I dub this the “Thomas Paine” treatment). The actual phrase originates from a letter Jefferson wrote to a group of Baptists nervous about government encroaching on their religious rights:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”, thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

If folks like O’Donnell and Mosely actually bothered to think about the intended purpose of this separation, they might not be as opposed to it. If the wall came down and the government officially recognized Islam as the official religion, how would Christians react? It seems as though these morons have forgotten that the biggest supporters of this separation were religionists themselves that wanted the free exercise of their religion without any government interference.

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