Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
And I am sure . . .
. . . that all the good Christians who read this piece were just shaking their heads:
Nigerian car thief turns into goat!
Abuja, Nigeria – In Nigeria recently, an angry mob demanded that police jail a goat. Vigilantes insisted the animal was a human car thief who transmogrified upon being apprehended. Nigerian law doesn't recognize magic, witchcraft, or voodoo. Yet, faced with an angry mob, police acquiesced, arresting the goat.
* * *
Not infrequently, police hear reports that a man claims someone cast a spell to capture his spirit. Tradition here holds that if you sleep in bed with your feet at the headboard, you are communing with witches. Criminals buy charms from witch doctors to become invisible and escape arrest. A hairdresser tells of a client of another customer who reported a snake in her house that turned into a young woman. When the girl was taken to a Pentecostal church service she turned back into a snake. The journalistic canon of having two independent sources to confirm a news story becomes irrelevant when an entire congregation insists "it really happened."
* * *
"We believe in God," says Lydia Tolulope Adeleru, an American-educated daughter of a Baptist minister. "We also believe in our cultural gods like Sango, the god of iron, as well as Esu, the devil. We are a deeply religious people but we never left the old ways." Africans often look for an unknown element to blame for disasters, floods, and crop failures. "If Christians have a God who makes Lucifer fall from heaven," adds Ms. Adeleru, "what's so strange about our juju [black magic]?"
Nothing at all, Ms. Adeleru. But just try telling that to Christians.
Jim Downey
HT to ML - Danke!
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Well...
If theists keep insisting that I need to believe in something, I'm thinking that Sango, the god of iron, is going to be my new first pick. He doesn't sound like he'd be some kind of prick about my sex life. (Er, so to speak.)
I'm betting he's a lot more interested in my blacksmithing skills. Although that could be a problem.
On the other hand, hasn't somebody got a god of Aluminum? Wouldn't it be fair for all the elements to get their own god?
If so, I'm going for Xenon. Not only is she nonreactive (a big plus in a diety), she once had a really good pinball machine.)
Yes, yes . . . no, wait!
Maybe if that last sentence read, "We are a deeply religious people who integrate new ways into the old ways and call it lucky for ourselves" I could understand the whole paragraph.
Otherwise it registers as gibberish.
I don't know. It makes
I don't know. It makes perfect sense to me the way she stated it. They're very religious people--they have twice as much religion as most because they have Christianity *and* their old religion.