The 'Funny (ha, ha)' side of religion

Cabaal wrote: »

He really needs to stop saying okay!

More than 7,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses will converge on the Citywest convention centre campus in Dublin this weekend for the faith’s annual Irish convention.

“Checking out?” slowly enunciated the helpless clerk, abruptly disregarding another traveler’s outstretched fistful of credit. She was obliged to immediately reckon with the obtrusive fashion anomaly before her. I was clad in Velcro fastened sneakers, a long sleeve polo shirt tucked into nipple-high sweatpants, which were cinched awkwardly at my waist by a sporty fanny-pack. A slightly askew “JUST TRY TO BURN THIS ONE!” American flag trucker hat was my idiot crown.

“Hiiiii!” I brayed, thrusting the card into her mitts. “THREE-O-NINE!” I incorrectly counted the numbers off with my fingers, so the poor girl would understand what was happening. The other hotel patrons silently endured my rudeness. I was clearly some sort of mental defective, an innocent of the highest order. They wouldn’t dare.

The event we were covering was a quick shot across the Kentucky state line, the grand unveiling of a 60,000 square foot bellwether of our culture’s sheepish intellectually depravity: The Creation Museum. The poured concrete brainchild of Ken Ham, world-renowned creationist douche and president of the Christian apologetics ministry “Answers in Genesis,” this “museum” aims to depict biblical narrative as historic reality. 27 million donated dollars worth of animatronic dinosaurs and humans palling around in the Garden of Eden—madness. Like the slaves of narcotic bliss, we felt physically compelled to participate in this insanity, adding to it whatever we could. Our drug was adrenaline, our bliss: messing with uppity religious primates.

Through the bifocals, I could make out only vague shapes of what I’d read earlier was a protest camp being set up across the street—a tame placard and bullhorn assault by the dwindling forces of reason; a futile volley over the frontlines of the American Culture War. On the other side [behind the Creation Museum's gates] was God’s Army—fortified by a million-dollar wrought iron fence, packing heat, and totally impervious to reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVk6_DtMbA8

NEW YORK—Speaking for the first time since waking from a medically induced coma following a devastating car accident, 8-year-old Aiden Miller recounted an extremely vivid near-death experience Friday that reportedly contained detailed descriptions of heaven, angels, and a six-figure book deal. “I was walking up in the clouds and met friends, and strangers, and all these famous people who talked with me about all kinds of things and brought up the possibility of selling the rights to my story to a big-name publisher,” said the second-grader, who attested that during the five-minute period in which his heart had stopped on the operating table, he ascended to a shining, golden paradise where he says he met with the archangel Gabriel and a literary agent who has helped a number of authors secure multi-book deals with lucrative worldwide book tours. “Jesus was sitting at the right hand of God and my grandfather was right there, and they looked at me and smiled at each other and said I should ask for an $80,000 advance with 10 percent of back-end profits.” Miller added that he felt a profound sense of peace and well-being when Jesus told him to go forth and seek a blockbuster deal for the movie rights.