I once got a production gig doing sound for a Carols by Candlelight because the last guy wore a “Jesus is a Cunt” T-Shirt… I found it amusing that I did the gig with a similar T-Shirt on under my jacket…

I love that.

Can’t decide if its a riff of the old If you see buddha on the raod kill him thing.

But hey it gets people talking and heading toward the site

My poor vision and my small monitor provided me with a blurry image of the photo. Text conveniently resizes in my browser; photos do not. But, when I got in close enough to make it out I, like T&A, laughed my ass off. There is a real cockiness that appeals to me in the sentiment. It’s like: here’s one for the Crusades you rat bastards or witch hunts you son-of-a-bitches or bloodletting you cocksuckers or anti-contraception you pricks or anti-homosexualism you assholes or anti-women’s rights you fuckheads or institutional child molestation you worthless fucking skanks. It may not suit your personality, and I know I’d have to be in just the right mood to cart it around, but I do think it unequivocally gets its bearer’s point across.

When it comes to being confrontational about religion, I think that there are some people who will only dismiss you if you “play nice,” but they will sit up and take notice if you are more forceful in approach. Some people need the whack in the head, at least figuratively, before they will be at all receptive to what you have to say.

A couple years ago, two Jehovah’s Witnesses, a man and a woman, came to my door and I answered it with my 15 year old son in tow. I outlined my moral objections to christianity with several bible quotes and I pressed them both very hard, with my young son witnessing their distress, to justify how they could morally endorse such a reprehensible conception of a god that would commit such vulgar acts. They had intentionally entered my domain and I wanted to wring every drop of blood from them that I could. I wanted my son to see what happens when you challenge their delusions. With their anxiety escalating by the second, it became apparent that they only wanted out. I challenged them further which at least got them to linger long enough for my final flourish.

Where is your silly-assed god now? Why doesn’t it come to your defense? Why do you continue to be part of a religion that glorifies a thing that would destroy all of mankind – its supposedly loved children no less – because it was pissed off? What does it say about you that you are so pathetic as to desire approval from people who think the christian mass-murdering god should be thought of as a loving father? How can you look at yourself in the mirror when you realize that you worship a thing that would drown untold numbers of unarguably innocent human babies while it saved rattlesnakes, scorpions and possums on Noah’s ark? I said something to the effect of, “Think of it; not one human child was as worthy of sparing as a goddamned locust, yet, you claim to love that vulgar god. No wonder you consider yourself as morally corrupt. You are.”

I laid it on as hard and heavy as I could before they could get away. At one point the woman sat on the ground exactly where she had stood. I thought she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She was visibly trembling. She whipped out her cigarettes and started smoking about one a minute. I thought I might need to call an ambulance; she was that disturbed.

About six months later, I saw her in a coffee shop and she thanked me “for setting her straight.” She had left the Jehovah’s Witnesses and was then attending a Unitarian Universalist Church and had gone far toward abandoning theism altogether. She told me that she had never had anyone state to her the simple but obvious facts about the christian god that I had told her that day. She had only heard the believers perspective. She was grateful, appreciative.

Sometimes non-confrontational is the soup du jour, but, then, at other times, on your ass, in your face confrontation, gets the job done. If only I could always precisely gauge which one to emply.

I just thought a little of both, funny yet brave(dumb?)

I tend to think that methods like signs and protests aren’t very effective – if they were, no one would seek out an abortion (those people are fucking ruthless). But, I’m okay with verbal confrontations when believers try to define my atheism for me OR when they make comments that show their complete lack of knowledge on the subject.