The Bible Belt
I’m seeing some really hateful rhetoric spewing out of the various secular online communities, much of it directed at the Bible Belt. As an atheist and a resident of Mississippi, I expect better from my contemporaries.
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I never know why or when I’ll suddenly be “inspired” to write a blog post. It’s more for my own benefit that anything else – I’m not exactly an online celebrity. In this case I had posted a rather testy meme on Facebook because I was (and remain) so weary of all the inane “God memes” people are posting right now. This always gets worse in times of crisis. With covid-19 raging around the world, FB has become flooded with memes about how “God is in control” and “God is mighty” and so on and so forth. So I posted a larger version of the image on the left. Took all of about 10 minutes to create it with Paint.net. And what’s obvious is that all these pro-God memes are not statements of faith. They are instead an obvious attempt by frightened people to convince themselves that their god is there for them. And I remain convinced that He is not.
Kroger in Laurel, MS (where I shop)
So I visited Kroger and Walmart last Sunday morning. Tons of empty shelves and endless checkout lines. And why? The corona virus, pure and simple. I spoke with a couple of people at Kroger and they agreed that it was all about panic-buying. Good thing I have plenty toilet paper, right? I did want a loaf of bread, but there was none to be had. I grabbed a couple of cornbread muffins from the deli and left in disgust.
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I keep seeing these bogus memes on Facebook and elsewhere about how we need to put prayer back in public schools. And now President Trump is pandering to Evangelicals by telling them he’ll do just that. This is strictly a political move since an article in Christianity Today portraying him as unfit seems to have damaged his support among true believers.“At least nine Christians were murdered by Islamic extremists in Kenya on Dec. 6 because they refused to recite the Islamic Shadada, a Muslim creed, according to International Christian Concern (ICC), a human rights organization based in Washington, D.C.”
It says nothing favorable about humanity’s prospects for survival that there are still people willing to die or to kill for a nebulous concept like religion. Folks, you only have one life to live – the one you’re living right now. And that makes our brief time in this world all the more precious.
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Facebook is rapidly becoming a repository for dimestore philosophy, uninformed political opinions (both left and right) and truly frightening religious zealotry. It’s everywhere. And it’s worsening daily. But the more worrisome part of this is the fact that the people posting this mess aren’t just on Facebook. They’re out there in the world. They believe their own bullshit. They breed. They vote. They influence others.
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Y’all bear with me here, OK? I’m a little bit pissed off and disgusted in the extreme. Grotesque memes like this one are becoming all too common these days. Christians are losing the battle for the minds of the people and they know it. But despicable, threatening images like this one can serve to frighten the gullible into belief “just in case.” The tactic is morally bankrupt and rooted in lies (Christians call it “scripture”).I’ve been debating on whether and how to share something for several days. Those of you who are often my sounding boards shouldn’t be offended that we haven’t talked about it. It’s just something I needed to puzzle out on my own. It was somewhat awkward and I wasn’t certain if there was even any benefit to putting it out there. But in the end, given the often raucous debates flying around between theists and atheists I decided it was worth sharing.
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Forgive me while I rant just a little. Having grown up in a Christian (Baptist) family, I have a lot of Christian friends. Some of us debate on occasion but it’s always with respect. Okay, usually with respect. Well, mostly anyway. 
But a lifelong friend of our family (I’m not naming names), who is also a Baptist preacher recently posted the following on FB:
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Is it just me, or do the lives of children not mean as much as they used to? Kids, born and unborn, are dropping like flies for a variety of horrifying reasons. You can’t view any major news outlet without seeing crimes committed against children, sometimes by other children.
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