A tribute to some famous televangelists. Would Jesus Wear a Rolex , performed By: Ray Stevens . Written By: Chet Atkins and Margaret Archer . Related: “Would Jesus Wear a Rolex™?”

by agnosticator O nce again, I am reminded of the primary difference between a "true" Christian and the rest of us. Here is a quote from a Christian in the forums: "Christians are capable of greater levels of love than unbelievers. Not because of who we are; but because of God's work in our hearts." This is an example of a common belief shared exclusive to believers. They are better than anyone else because God touched them and made them special. But not only special, God makes them superior in every way. They magically become more empathetic, more honest, more loving, and morally superior. Simultaneously, they possess a mean streak; an attitude that is palpable to those unlike themselves. This is the arrogance of faith. The New Testament inspires this attitude through the doctrine of salvation. But this is only the beginning. The scriptures are riddled with words of arrogance masquerading as love and concern. There is a mean-spirited bitterness permeating the N...

by Jon Castro Image via Wikipedia T o His Majesty the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, For years and years we asked, yet did not receive. Sought, yet did not find. Knocked, yet were never answered. Did we not ask enough? Seek enough? Knock enough? Truly you are a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you have not scattered seed. In vain we rose up early, and in vain we sat up late. Your ear did not attend to our cries and in you we found no mercy. You set us in slippery places and cast us down to destruction. Truly you are no Saviour of souls. In you there is not a shred of compassion – only a heart of hate. Jacob you may have “loved”, but Esau you hated. Billions like him have dropped into hell, ignored by you all their lives. Yet who was it who left the devil roaming around in the garden to tempt Adam and Eve? Who was it who put that tree there? You! In your massive foolishness, questionable omnipotence and sheer lack of benevolence, you presid...

by Sharon Image by davidsilver via Flickr O ral Roberts, the 91 year old founder of Oral Roberts University, now semi-retired, has taken to reminiscing on the Christian TBN network, about how he founded the University that bears his name. His fond remembrances of how "God" revealed to him the "seed faith" theology (a coin he termed), is enough to make any fiscally responsible persons' blood boil ! Oral Roberts founded the 263 acre University campus in 1963 in Tulsa Oklahoma. The current endowment rests at 33 million dollars, off of which Oral Roberts earns $83,505 per year for his retirement. In addition the University Board of Regents used millions of dollars of endowment money in 1988 to purchase property in exclusive Beverly Hills for Oral Roberts West Coast home and office, which also included a country club membership. In addition he also maintained an exclusive residence in the St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton Florida (until 1992), which he ...

The young man in the following video interview on the Tyra Show is no longer gay , he says, because an unclean spirit was cast out of him one day at church . After listening to this young man talk, what do you think? Is he still gay? And what do you think about his "pastor?"

by whydowebelieve Whydowebelieve 's plans for a lovely picnic at Huntington Beach are interrupted as Ray Comfort shows up to tell him that knowing Jesus is like knowing Comfort's wife. We felt compelled to expose these falsehoods to his gathered audience in the same way our blog challenges religious beliefs in other arenas.

Bart D. Ehrman discusses the history of the word of Jesus and Stephen Colbert offers him irrefutable logic. (5:30) Books by Erhman available here: ExChristian.Net Bookstore

by Louisa May Image via Wikipedia I have heard this argument so many times. But, to be honest, it did not take me much time to invent my own theory. I am not very good at physics , but it is generally accepted that the universe is expanding , with solar systems bursting in and out of existence all the time. The Earth is the perfect distance from the sun to support life, and the Big Bang needed the right pressures and angles (and so on) to create the Earth as we know it. I accept this as fact. Yet, if solar systems are continually being made and destroyed, wasn't our solar system statistically bound to happen eventually, coincidentally, anyway? There doesn't need to be a God -- or a Creator -- just a continually expanding universe. And considering the fact there would be no universe if it were not expanding... So, despite the fact I am a Christian, the moronic nature of the cosmological argument has forced me to score a point against myself and score a point point for a crea...

by Neal Stone C hristians love to use the watch maker analogy to prove God exists because it takes an intelligent being to create something complex. I guess Christians don't watch much Red Green and if you've ever watched it you know what I am talking about. Let's take a look at a watchmaker shall we? A watchmaker can be proved to exist. We only need to go to the nearest mall to find one or evidence of his work. The evidence isn't questionable and left for us to interpret for ourselves either. His stamp is clearly marked on all his creations. We can also talk to the watchmaker and get a clear answer to our questions and problems we may have about our watch. After all, only the watchmaker knows right because he works in strange and mysterious ways right? WRONG! God is all guess work and theory. Even creation as proof can be questioned. Take a watch, broken or working, to any watch repair shop and each one can correctly diagnose the problem or tell you CLEARLY h...

by WizenedSage I finally figured it out. I’ve wondered for the longest time why you believe the silliest religious nonsense imaginable. And it’s so simple. It’s really not because it makes sense to you. No, you believe because you were told to believe; most of you as children, since we are all hardwired to believe authority figures when we are children. After all, it’s not like you read the Bible and found it compelling. You know as well as I do that the stories of the Bible are not only NOT compelling, they’re not even plausible. But, from the beginning, you were told to believe these stories. Whether you heard them first from your parents or from Sunday school teachers, you were instructed to take them seriously, as gospel even. It’s not like you reached a point in life where you thought you ought to check out this religion thing you kept hearing about. It’s not like you sat down with the Bible, the Quoran, the Bhagavad Gita , and a compendium of the Buddha’s greatest aphorisms in ...

by billybee Image by giveawayboy via Flickr D ear Jesus, Hi. You probably won't remember me, but I use to be a member of your body on earth. I know you've seen millions of folks come and go and I was nobody special that you would have noticed me. Most of the time I just did the minimum stuff that all of the other guys were doing (i.e.; praying, believing, tithing, fearing,..etc,etc...). That's why I feel so awkward ask for a special favor from you. I only devoted around 30 years of my life to serving and believing in you, so it is pretty brazen of me to expect you to do anything for me... But still, I'm thinking to myself; "Oh, what the hell. All He can say is- "NO!" So, here goes.... Will you please, please, PLEASE hurry and rapture your church to heaven? Come get them RIGHT NOW! Don't wait another minute, day or year. Do it...Clap your hands..blow the horn...twinkle your eye...WHATEVER it is that your gonna do, do it and do it NOW! The rest of ...

By Valerie Tarico Image by [Filhi][bahthi] photography ( camera damaged ) via Flickr A couple of years back, I dragged my agnostic husband, Brian, to a Calvinist megachurch. Calvinist means God preselected a few humans for salvation and the rest for eternal torture. We sat there for an hour, goats among the sheep. Brian’s reaction? “That was the best indie rock I’ve heard in a long time!” Christians have a love-hate relationship with popular music. I came of age during a hate phase. Rock was diabolical. In my generation, Alice Cooper , missionary kid , played out his parents’ fears about rock music , chopping up baby dolls and screeching about necrophilia while dressed as a 17th Century witch . Having dabbled on the enemy side of a fantastical spiritual war that supposedly encompasses us all, he now attends an evangelical mega in Scottsdale, Arizona. Music can be a path out of insularity. In his youth, Alice had to choose between edgy rock and Jesus. By contrast, my nephew (raised by...

by Neal Stone W e all recall the old Peanuts comic strip and cartoons. There is one scene that plays out many times. That is the scene when Lucy holds the football and Charlie Brown and then as Charlie Brown runs to kick she pulls it away at the last minute. This scenario happens over and over and Charlie brown falls for it every time. Sound familiar? How many times I recalled God's promises that if I followed him and served him he would take care of my life only to yank the football away each time. I remember going to the front of the church for prayer about not being employed and no direction in life and the church leader looked at me and said “You need to speak in tongues ! (?)” And then yanked the football away. I remember a man praying for his wife who died of cancer. He was told God was working in mighty ways and would heal her. She died and then was told “It was God's will” And the football gets pulled away! I have had people look me in the eye and tell me God w...

by randomatheist Image by costales via Flickr T his one man named Jesus, born of a virgin, is actually God in the flesh. He came on Earth to serve The Father's will by dying on the cross for the world's "sin." Jesus: The ULTIMATE Sacrifice. The Gospel follows as written: The individual believes in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. The individual's "sin" is paid in full by the blood of the Lamb since 2,000 years in the past. For the individual to enter the Kingdom of Heaven , the believer must repent from his "sin", accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior, and receive forgiveness for his wickedness. Now this may be some pretty simple stuff, but time to delve deeper into the actual details utilizing logic and common sense. There is something actually wrong with this picture. What's this? You must accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior in order to escape from your trip to hell. Biblically, your "sin" is paid i...

Skeptic Michael Shermer pleads his case before Jesus and Mr. Deity .

by MtlRedAtheist The Sunday School Bible story Joshua and the Battle of Jericho describes the God ordained extermination of the people of Jericho, otherwise known as Genocide. Teaching this for children to have faith in God is an excellent example of how we can allow ourselves to be blinded by ideology to the point where we can gloss over the fact that the story depicts genocide in a positive light and distract ourselves with the magic of the walls coming down. I've noticed that it tends to be in the evangelical Christian culture to shelter children from violence in entertainment, but who will shelter them from the violence in Bible stories ?

by GumbyTheCat Image by richardhod via Flickr H ave you ever rid yourself of a car that turned out to be a total lemon? Have you ever experienced the odd mixture of feelings that roil within you as you watch the clunker being towed away for the final time? You know, the simultaneous feelings of relief and happiness that you are finally rid of that worthless wreck, coupled with feelings of sadness and anger because you know how miserable that car made you and how badly you were ripped off over the years? Well, I know exactly how you feel. A few weeks ago, I went through that very experience. Some years ago, I didn't even own a car. I went through life having a very difficult time getting through my journeys. When you don't have a car, you can be made to feel that reaching your destination is such a formidable task that at times you just give up all hope of reaching it. You end up looking down at the sidewalk, rather than gazing far down the road. Most of my relatives and friend...

by Mriana (In loving memory of a WWII atheist in a foxhole; one of my heroes) "I want you to be all love. This is the perfection I believe and teach. And this perfection is consistent with a thousand nervous disorders, which that high-strained perfection is not. Indeed, my judgment is, that (in this case particularly) to overdo is to undo and that to set perfection too high (so high as no man that we ever heard or read of attained) is the most effectual (because unsuspected) way of driving it out of the world." —Works, vol. vi. p.715. ~ John Wesley ( http://homepage.mac.com/craigadams1/WESPERF/SECTN02.html )[sic] "'The pure in heart,' are those whose hearts God hath purified even as He is pure'; who are purified through faith in the blood of Jesus, from every unholy affection; who, being cleansed from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfect holiness in the (loving) fear of God.' They are, through the power of His grace, purified from pride, by the...