Friendly Atheist Contest #16: Tell Us About Your New Religion

In the beginning, The Mother created the Heavens and the Earth.

She muttered in the mightiest of ways:

“Let there be a lot… of stuff!”… And there was a lot of stuff, and this was alright.

This took 22 minutes and tired Her ever so slightly. There was the hard stuff and the soft stuff, the living stuff and the dead stuff, the smart stuff and the stupid stuff. All in all, the stuff kind of sucked.

She is not perfect, no. But she at least admitted it. So she decided to create stuff in Her image to figure out Her creation.

“Let there be… something that looks like me!” But Her newly invented photocopier was broken, and she was in no mood to redesign one. Besides, being invisible and all, there wasn’t an image to copy.

So the great Mother looked toward some soft, smart stuff and declared the new image of human.

However, this new human would shed, fling its feces, and make even more of a mess when agitated. Not satisfied with Her choice, She decided to modify this human. With all Her might She tore every hair out from the human’s body (except in a few choice locations… She’s not perfect, remember?)

The human was female, like Her. She noticed the male old-humans were quite violent, so She decided to make Her new human a companion. She heavily sedated the human and extracted one of its legs.

From this new leg was born a new male. It was a beast of a creature, who walked limp due to the unevenness, and was nearly as hairy as old-humans. He fixed the copy machine and threw himself into it, then the female. Out came a new couple, and our Mistress enjoyed the sight of problems being solved.

After all this, everyone was getting hungry, but She hadn’t designed Her bananas to accommodate Her new humans, and they knew not how to gather food of their own.

“Let there be sandwiches!”

The humans rejoiced, the other soft stuff hoarded the leftovers and too did their own celebrations.

It wasn’t long before a new human was born. His name was Cletus, and he was a mean-spirited boy. “Mah gramps ain’t no monkeh!” he would exclaim. Grandpa took much offense to this and beat Cletus brutally until his neck was swollen and teeth knocked out.

Some 8 million years later, humans were thriving and they were quite nice creatures. The Mother was bored wanted to create a stir, so She found a virgin lady and sent a Holy Donor (a part of her) to *censored* the woman and mess with the people.

Unfortunately, upon the birth, the stable’s roof collapsed and the Daughter ascended to Heaven quite quickly.

Ashamed of this disaster, the Mother vowed never to touch the Earth again.

We now pray to Mother every third Saturday of the month to ensure the well being of ourselves, in hopes that she may one day interfere in our lives again, and bring tidings of Jello and spare gas caps.

Hemantism

Rules

1. Intelligence makes you beautiful, not the other way around.
2. No meat, because if we can do without, we should do without.
3. Mandatory snarky classes. One should learn to retort with wit.
4. One must not take life too seriously, unless, of course, life is being harmed unjustly, then unite.

Followers must include those willing to get things right and must be fair.

Followers should purchase merchandise as necessary, like books on soul selling, or buttons.

The group history will be made up by new converts collectively, and written down on some form of electronic storage system that is inter connected to other such forms of electronic storage. This media will have a sound not unlike that of a peer vomiting, maybe glog, pflog, or blog.

The Great God Gomo.

Gomo is makes sure that if it is supposed to happen, it happens.

If it not supposed to happen, it doesn’t happen.

He is the most powerful god in all universes, planes of existence, alternate realities, Star Trek episodes, and he even controls the Force.

Paradoxism
Belief system that if there is a God and a Heavenly reward, then only people who don’t believe in God and the Heavenly reward get the Heavenly award.
open to everyone.
enemies: those that have a more simple-minded cause and effect belief system for getting into heaven.

I’ve founded the First Church of Frank. (“Sinatra”, for you ignorant heathens.) UrbanDictionary defines “Frank Sinatra” as “God Himself”, and we have established this as our Foundational Doctrine. We gather together every Saturday night (otherwise, it would be “The Loneliest Night of the Week”) to sing hymns (“Amazing Frank, how sweet his sound)”, watch educational films (“The Manchurian Candidate”, “From Here to Eternity”, etc). We listen to Sinatra sing to us from the beyond (through the Compact Discs he left us), dance, and contemplate how great a man he was. We require all members and visitors to be dressed to the nines (“You’ve Got to Have Style”), of course. We have several sacred texts, but the most sacred is “The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Livin’”. We seek to remember Frank in everything we do, to carry on after Ol’ Blue Eyes has left us for that “The Sands” lounge in the sky.

Some of us believe in the Holy Trinity of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. While we are not of one mind in this subject, we do share devotion to Frank Sinatra’s life in common.

Some of Frank’s sayings:
“What I do with my life is of my own doing. I live it the best way I can. ”
“I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living his life, and who had good friends, a fine family. I don’t think I could ask for anything more than that, actually. ”

“I’m not unmindful of a man’s seeming need for faith; I’m for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels. But to me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle. ‘
Also quoted in Frank Sinatra, My Father (1986) by Nancy Sinatra, p. 201

“There are things about organized religion which I resent. Christ is revered as the Prince of Peace, but more blood has been shed in His name than any other figure in history. You show me one step forward in the name of religion and I’ll show you a hundred retrogressions. Remember, they were men of God who destroyed the educational treasures at Alexandria, who perpetrated the Inquisition in Spain, who burned the witches at Salem. Over 25,000 organized religions flourish on this planet, but the followers of each think all the others are miserably misguided and probably evil as well.
I’m for decency — period. I’m for anything and everything that bodes love and consideration for my fellow man. But when lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday — cash me out. ”

“If you don’t know the guy on the other side of the world, love him anyway because he’s just like you. He has the same dreams, the same hopes and fears. It’s one world, pal. We’re all neighbors. “

Graffinism

God = Greg Graffin, lead singer of Bad Religion
God’s sidekicks = Jay Bentley, Brian Baker, Brett Gurewitz, Greg Hetson, and Brooks (bass, guitar, guitar, guitar, and drums, respectively

Satan = Religious idols/figures

Theme = Humility. Greg Graffin is one of those guys that actually realizes how little the universe as a whole cares about him. His greatest numbers are “No Control,” “Broken,” and “Change of Ideas,” for example; No Control is about how we think we are in control of our surroundings and our lives, but we really aren’t, whereas Change of Ideas is about how it’s okay to have weird beliefs on the side, just as long as you stay open in the long run (Broken is about how people are not disposable just because they might have done something [or had something shitty happen to them] to “mark” them). But the best part is that, at the end of the day, he always reminds you not to treat him like a God (the only God that doesn’t want to be worshipped; imagine that!). He reminds you that he, like you, is a human being, prone to flaw, and that you should take anything he says with a grain of salt. In describing this, I used to say that “there is always an exception.” Then I realized that this phrase is self-defeating, for there must be an exception to the phrase itself or it is not true; therefore, it evolved to become “there is almost always an exception.”

All joking aside, though, this guy is so damn interesting and thought-provoking that I could imagine someone preaching an entire sermon just based on what he and Bad Religion have written. Although I’m sure he wouldn’t like that, as he made clear in “No Direction.”

He’s the epitome of what it means to “live by example.” People like him for his ideas, not because he offers people rewards in the afterlife, or the blessing of an invisible being in the sky (or because he bashes people who do that).

Siamang: well-spoken.

Frank: Mind if I drink this?
Dean: Sure.
Frank: It’s your stage, so I figured I might as well ask..
Dean: Hey, it’s your world; we’re just livin’ in it!

Oh, I know! A Flying Spaghetti Monster religion! That’s funny, isn’t it?

…crap.

How about a magic carpenter lived 2000 years ago and was raised from the dead after three days?

…crap.

Oh, now I’ve got it. Something so bizzare that it would be ludicrous to believe it. How about 75 billion years ago, Xenu brought billions of people to Earth and blew them up. This let out their thetans, they were brainwashed, and flew into people. Now we have to pay people money to get rid of the thetans and gain sanity!

That’s creative, isn’t it? Right?

…………God damn it!

I guess all the crazy/funny stuff is already taken.

Regarding #4: God is currently in clinical trials. And, last I heard, they need more volunteers.

Religion: Wristbandism

Followers: Anyone willing to waste time writing witty comments.

Rules:
1) Must try to appease Omnipotent Being that determines followers fate in rank order.
2) Winners must proudly wear cheap apparel.