I went into the office to pick up my mail, among other things, and look what someone sent me!
Oh, look, it has a cute little reindeer sticker! It’s probably a Christmas card. How sweet!
Although, as I do with all mystery mail, I checked the return address. “Living Way Lytle Creek”…my spider sense is tingling. The back of the card confirmed my expectations.
Everything beneficial that atheism has ever contributed to society is referenced herein…
. Does anyone want to guess what’s inside? Go on. I bet you can.
Yeah, predictable. Oh, they really got me! Ha ha. I suppose I could reply by sending them a book that contains a lot of lies and poison spread through society by religion, but it’d have to be grossly incomplete, and besides, they’re probably already surrounded by Bibles.
How sad, although it is nice of them to go out of their way in their precious holy day season to confirm to me why I despise Christianity. Is this how their Jesus wants them to behave? Of course it is. Their religion is and always has been about faith in hatred.
Also, it is kinda pathetically stupid.
So nice of them to share their thoughts. They included every one of them they had.
Did they have a child address the envelope?
Is that a California postage mark?
Lol , but that’s so disrespectful considering that religion has always been a mixed blessing . And it doesn’t matter which religion you look at . Hatred , divisiveness ignorance and cruelty along with solace and community feeling
“And with tears pouring down his face, the atheist professor dropped to his knees and gave his life over to Jesus.”
I got a genuine hand written letter through the post this morning addressed to “The Occupier”, and it obviously wasn’t a Christmas card.
The first thing to fall out the envelope was flyer that says:
“Who controls the world?
Do you think it is…
God?
humankind?
someone else?”
On the back it a link to jw.org.
There was also an accompanying hand written letter, not a photocopy, explaining how sorry they are they can’t come and visit us in person due to the “Covid 19 restrictions”
I’m actually impressed by the amount of effort that they have expended.
Wait, so somebody just needed an excuse to post you a holiday card free-for-your-reüse?
The U doesn’t screen mail for safety?
@8You should wish jw’s a merry xmas ,annoys the hell of them .
And has fox news started the war on xmas yet ,or are they still sulking that the snatch snatcher doesn’t
love them anymore ?
The JWs have been on a letter writing campaign for a while . Mine was in Spanish, which I don’t speak at all. At first I was tempted to return it explaining that I don’t understand much Spanish but then I remembered that the JWs are a particularly nasty controlling cult and just chucked it in the trash.
Oh yeah , you’ve just got a free xmas card to reuse
Look on the bright side: they spelled your name correctly.
Note the bible verse written vertically at the left: Psalms 14:1. That’s the famous “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.”
The rejoinder is in Matthew 5:22, “but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.”
Sad…
The URL in their return address stamp has an error, a missing ‘t’. It should be livingwaylytlecreek.org
Hopefully weapons-grade anthrax powder was invented by a theist. I’d be careful about opening mail from any unidentified senders. (I’m pretty careful anyway.)
My guess is that they coughed on it, and that the letter was attempted murder.
Yes, Lytle Creek is in California. It’s almost the middle of nowhere, surrounded by national forest not too far from San Bernardino.
Wasn’t there a Sherriff from there who despite being an authoritarian prick, refused to acknowledge the authority of the Governor of California?
Many years ago, when soccer was a working class game, and the players were paid a minimum wage, and were expected to be deferential to club owners, a working class guy, who was the Lionel Messi of his time, called Len Shackleton published his autobiography. There was a chapter titled what a football club chairman knows about football, which like this, was left blank. Far more powerful, innovative, and much braver, atthe time.
Lytle Creek also burns every fire season. Seems like they ought to take the hint.
ajbjasus@18 First one I remember is “The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro Agnew”. At least think so. Could I have really seen that at Spencers Gifts? Whatever, it is a very early memory.
@20PaulBC — a few years back a friend gave me a birthday present book, titled The Instructional Guide To Irish Foreplay. The first page said: “Brace yourself, Brigid!” The rest was blank.
That gives me a good idea for a fine holiday gift. Same type of card, but enclosed within, a generous size memory card full of reference books.
And a strong suggestion for Calibre for managing said ebooks.
Paulbc@18
He wrote it in 1956. He was from my hometown and ruffled a lot of the establishment :
“ A showman who liked to entertain the crowd, he was able to cut the ball with sufficient spin that it would roll towards an opponent only to stop and then return to him as though on a string.[43] He was also adept at back heeling penalty kicks into the goal.[44] He would rarely track back and defend however, and antics were sometimes criticised as “unsportsman-like”.[43] On one occasion, 2–1 up against Arsenal with 5 minutes to go, he dribbled the ball into The Gunners’ penalty area before putting his foot on it, pretending to comb his hair while looking at his watch. Other examples include mocking opposition full-backs by playing one-twos with the corner flag, literally sitting on the ball to torment defenders who couldn’t dispossess him, and teasing a beaten goalkeeper by putting his foot on the ball on the goal line.[2] Sunderland teammate Trevor Ford wrote in his autobiography that: “where did it [Shackleton’s antics] get us? Precisely nowhere. The result was that when he did make a move, the opposing defence was in position and the attack broke down. Time and again when I thought Shack was going to slip a goalscoring pass to me he would veer off”.[45] However Billy Bingham defended Shackleton by noting that Ford had poor positional skills.[30]”
The wise and brave say it out loud and often.
Look on the bright side.
You get a free Holiday card to reuse and they wasted a 55 cent stamp.
The envelope is very festive, your one mistake was opening it.
I would drop your thoughtful admirers a short note to point out that George Wallace, Joseph Stalin, Ronald Reagan and Adolf Hitler were all church-going Christians. That’s one vile segregationist, one murderous sociopath (Stalin actually went to a seminary to learn to be a priest) and two atheist-hating, Christian-nationalist, genocidal war criminals. I would add: Now, let’s talk about the Crusades and the Inquisition.
wsierichs @26: Regarding Stalin;
Now let’s talk about Mao and Pol Pot.
Ideologues of all stripes are fuckwits.
I would fill it out and mail it back. They have a return address.
I occasionally have a little dig around the websites of churches like this, just to see what makes them tick. Usually there’s nothing much of interest, but turns out, the pastor of Living Way Church, Lytle Creek, is a guy called Simon Woodstock, who used to be a big deal in the pro-skateboarding scene back in the 80s and 90s.
He featured a bunch on MTV, apparently, and even got into celebrity boxing matches before they were “fashionable”. Then drugs and alcohol caught up with him (or maybe his career nosedived) and he “found God” and left skateboarding.
Looks like he’s still a weirdo — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b8qPcX6_qc
But I guess his church isn’t doing great since he got back in the ring last year to box another aging skateboarding has-been, and it didn’t go well. So if you want to see the sender of that card having the living daylights knocked out of him, click here: https://youtu.be/DHGZdjFuV_I?t=410
I guess mailing blank cards to atheists is a safer way to pass the time…
That, and this:
under the “How to find us” section would suggest the Good Lord is trying to tell him something…
@26 Don’t think stalin and hitler were christians ,and certainly not church goers ,adolf said he believed in a god ,not the christian one.
Hitler said a lot of things, not all of them mutually compatible. And since the original topic was atheists vs. everyone else, it really doesn’t matter whether he was Christian.
@32 I was reply to someone who said stalin and hitler were christians .
Forget Hitler.
Look at Martin Bormann.
An outspoken atheist.
The guy right btw. Atheism never contributed anything.
Atheists at the other hand …..
@34 Bormann according to George Mosse by way of Wikipedia
I’m not sure what you call that, but it sounds like no form of atheism I know. It sounds significantly more theistic than deism for that matter, since the will of God is paramount rather than the mere existence as a disinterested creator.
I also think that Nazism requires many unfalsifiable beliefs, allegiance to a hierarchical power, and a suppression of free inquiry. (Stalinism as well, and the cult of Kim Jong Un, etc.) These factors rather than mere belief or disbelief in the supernatural are what gives it commonality with religious oppression.
Here is an article that is much longer than it needs to be:
What science can learn from religion
@36 I think religion has a lot to teach us about human psychology and culture, though the same can be said of other human activities. It’s also not unreasonable to think that scientists studying ancient religious art will have more insight if they are themselves religious. It’s like if I were to try to figure out what is going on at a football game. Maybe I could, but you’re better off leaving it to people who care.
The article you linked is an overstatement though. I find religion fascinating (in fact, I find it a lot more interesting than competitive sports). That does not make it other than a product of the human mind.
@36 Just make sure you don’t end up believing in one of them ,look into the abyss ,and all that stuff .
Oh fuck that. Things that atheism contributes: critical thought, less dogma, innovative ideas, comedy (just check out God Awful movies.)
Hell Bertram Russell was an atheist. He was one of the smartest people ever.
Religion can teach us about how humans behave and how the human brain works (like how the placebo effect makes people think that they can feel god), however, it should not be anywhere near governing policies.