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    My (Almost) Meeting with the Jehovah's Witnesses
       posted on 09/14/2011
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    Ghost Hunters Meets Groundhog Day
       02/05/2011 by Hal
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       01/24/2011 by melania
    Ghost Hunters Meets Groundhog Day
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       09/17/2010 by Jon Heim
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    Anne Rice - The Wanderer


    Created on Wednesday, August 4, 2010      Bookmark and Share

    Home    Blog    2010    August


    You may have missed this but Anne Rice has quit Christianity. That's right - the famous author is supposedly done with the Church. What I found interesting in this article is not the title but what she said beyond the headline.
    ....said Wednesday that she refuses to be “anti-gay,” “anti-feminist," “anti-science” and “anti-Democrat.”

    Politics aside, good for her. Welcome to humanism.
    “For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian ... It's simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”

    Amen to that sister. I don't quite get why you "tried" - that seems to imply that you thought that you would experiment with it but hey, you see it for what it is.
    "My faith in Christ is central to my life. "

    Ah, now I see where she's going with this. Its the 'ol "lets separate Jesus from the awful stuff" idea. Of course, there are many problems with this. First, the Old Testament foretold the coming Messiah. That's why the Jesus story (and all of its contradictions) was fashioned the way it was - it had to fit what the OT told us was going to happen. Worse, JC had to then turn around and validate the OT. You can't just forget that part of all of this because those are also part of his words. If you want to use him as a philosopher you can just skip the middle man and go right to the greeks. Cafeteria religion at its best.
    My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me,"

    Whoa. I have many problems with this one.

    Pessimistic atheist? First, one has nothing to do with the other. Being an atheist or a believer has nothing to do with being an optimist or a pessimist. There is just such a negative connotation when the two words are put together like that.

    But what is more telling is the rest of the statement. She prefers to be an "optimistic believer". Let me translate this for you:

    " I've shopped around and this is what was most appealing to me"

    This article is a fantastic example of why people believe and how little they know of disbelievers. Even when she was a "pessimistic atheist", Rice was a searcher and her search wasn't for truth. It was for... something. This is why people that need to fill a void in their lives settle on religion. If truth isn't comforting enough you just go out there and make your own reality. I can't fathom how this makes people feel better - I can't lie to myself on this level.

    What is unique about Rice is that she doesn't seem to be honest with herself about the evils of religion but not about how the story is derived. We seem to be seeing more and more people rejecting organized religion and pretending that the other part of the story doesn't exist. Once again, this is baffling.

    Besides, it isn't like Jesus had this wisdom beyond what we are taught as a child. Worse, he tells you that if you follow him it will all be ok. How ironic - the same thing that we tell our children when they don't know better.



    Created by Pesci on Wednesday, August 4, 2010 5:23:44 PM
    A hat tip to Pesci on this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-rowe/why-anne-rice-has-never-b_b_664576.html

    ,Some of the comments say the same things that I did. Namely, you can't separate the good from the bad.
       

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