Sunday, October 30, 2005

And another thing...

I am just. so. over. the religious proselytizing. Most of the time, you see a piece of paper on the sidewalk, odds are it's yet another "you will BURN in the fires of HELL unless you REPENT your very EXISTENCE" pamphlets. Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, every other week it seems like, ringing my bell, not in a good way. Crazy-ass preacher yesterday in the middle of the greenmarket. ("The BIIIBLE says you must FEAR God above all else--" I said, "The Bible also says that you should pray in your closet instead of standing in the middle of the street making a spectacle of yourself." He thunders back, "I'm not praying, I'm PREACHING, sinner!--" I wandered off. The produce was a lot more interesting).

And in the subway, you know, it's Scientologists to the right of me, Falun Gong to the left, and here I am, stuck in the middle with way too many fucking huddled masses till the goddam train comes already...

And this is of course just here in NYC. This is just smalltime shit. Let's not even talk about Falwell and Dobson and the rest of that bunch, for now at least.

But anyway so now I'm pondering what would happen if the rest of us--heathens, pagans and infidels--decided to start a missionary program or two of our own. On the subway, drop leaflets that are xeroxed excerpts of "Sister Mary Ignatius Explain It All For You," or "Beyond Good and Evil," or even maybe just plain old sex-positive pamphlets, with helpful instructions and diagrams. maybe gay folk should start recruiting, or at least door-to-door educating. maybe PFLAG should start sending out sincere, nicely dressed boys and girls in twos and threes to ring bells in the heartland. maybe we should send ringers to hang around or even attend places like Oral Roberts College and Patrick Henry University, and target and try to stealth deprogram some of 'em. why the hell not? hey, maybe just because they're paranoid doesn't mean we shouldn't actually be out to get them.

4 comments:

christhestampede said...

Nietzsche rocks; he's among my favorite of philosophers (after Socrates and Heidegger.) The Geneology of Morals is a good look into the ancestry of the ever-wonderful sidewalk preacher.

Anonymous said...

you need the skit from "three dead trolls in a baggie": _proximity to god index_

"Well let's just see how the world's religions are doing in their quest to become closest to God. In order to do that, we have to check our Proximity to God Index. As you can see, Judaism and Islam are up 1.2 points this week, largely thanks to the Mideast peace treaty; Hinduism is holding steady at 68.93. Buddhism is up 1.2 points; those pesky Jehovah's Witnesses are still holding strong at 20.32. The Mormons up a whopping 6.7 points today largely due to an extraordinary number of births. The Catholics lost a couple of points there, holding at 58.35 and the Satanists are still slightly closer to God than the Scientologists..."

Anonymous said...

hmm, well my ex decided to start and atheist/agnostic student group at our college and used the money they gave him to make a bunch of little tracts similar to the religious ones they give you, except with mostly quotes from Carl Sagan and also George Bernard Shaw? (doesn't remember).

Anonymous said...

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