Better Than Faith is a resource for anyone questioning faith. Whether you are doubting your own faith or you just want to shine a light on religion and expose some of its dirty little secrets, you should find something here to help you.
We feel that where there are proselytizers trying to convert people to their religion, there should be a voice of reason to help those people make an informed and rational choice instead of potentially caving under the confusing mind games and bullying that many preachers use.
If you would like to join us, we would be glad to have you. If you want to start your own group, we wish you the best of luck, and we hope that our materials will help.
During the protest of the protest, the local TV station Fox 10 arrived to cover the invasion of intolerance at Desert Mountain High School. Apparently, this school has the largest gay-straight alliance group in Arizona schools - making them a target of gay-hating Westboro.
Westboro’s protests are a little annoying to deal with because they bounce around from place to place like crazy, only staying for about 45 minutes in each location, but we’ve kept up with them fairly well so far.
After hitting the consulates of several countries and one soldier’s funeral, this afternoon we ended up at a high school in Scottsdale where the WBC was protesting for no apparent reason. I guess they just like stirring people up and wasting the time and money of the police departments who had several officers at each location, and I think dozens at the high school.
| January 30, 2009 | ||
| January 31, 2009 | ||
| 8:00 am | to | 9:00 am |
Tomorrow and Saturday morning the bigots from the Westboro Baptist Church will be out to inform us all that “God hates fags”, and even that “God hates you”. If you do believe in a god, these people probably don’t represent your views, so whether you’re religious or not, if you live in the Phoenix area you may want to come down and show them that we don’t accept their message of hate.
You should be aware that the last time these people scheduled a protest here, they didn’t even show up, but this is a much more full schedule so they are most likely going to be here. You can find a list of their scheduled events on their site, but make sure you check it again before you go out because they have changed it recently and they could change it again.
If you still aren’t sure why we’re opposing them, here is a quote from their site about one of the events tomorrow:
Greenwood Memor Lawn Serenity Chapel 2300 W. Van Buren Funeral of Army Staff Sgt. Roberto Anrade — Look what the Lord our God has done! He is pouring His wrath out on this nation, focusing on your military. So here we were, already planning to be in your area to warn you to put away your idols and your grevious sins against God. Then, our God killed one of your own at such as time as to allow us to be there, near the funeral, to connect the dots directly in front of your face: because you will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, He has killed another of your rebels in uniform! Thank God for dead soldiers. God is your enemy. America is doomed.
Have you ever wondered why so few Christians follow everything that Jesus said they should do? Maybe this is the answer.
Being as involved as I am with Young Earth Creationist preachers, sometimes it is hard to remember that there are many churches out there whose pastors and congregations I have a lot more in common with. The upcoming Evolution Weekend event is a good reminder.
The weekend of February 13th - 15th, the clergy at thousands of churches across the country will be speaking up in support of evolution. If you are involved with a church or know people who are, please ask them to participate in this event. People should know that even if they do believe in the supernatural, they can still believe in science.
Normally I don’t do a lot of public dissection of the individual actions of preachers I run into, but I decided it was time to write one when Amerist’s mild post elicited the following response from one of the preachers it talked about:
Thanks guys for all the compliments in your writings. Very weak journalism. Sad, your articles are not accurate at all. Fun to read though. I still love you guys! God bless- Jeff
This night reared its ugly head at about 8pm with a surprising number of people on Mill Ave. The Resistance appeared at about that time and the new set of preachers were wandering about already—this being Jeff and Vincent, also Valerie and Jim of more familiar people.
Jeff does not present himself well. The way that he plays the crowd is in a manner deliberately like 3rd graders arguing, picking up clipped phrases from those talking to him and trying to turn them over and over in his hands; he also spends time demagoguing the audience with divisive speech, designed to rile and incite violent emotions. and It’s particularly disrespectful of his audience and the listeners and makes it obvious that he’s just out there for the spectacle and the theater.
Comics.
We all love them, right? Here at BTF we’ve compiled a list of funny comics, many of which have atheist or irreverent themes. Not every strip is about atheism, but they should at least appeal to the atheist in everyone!
In part 19 of his “Why do people laugh at creationists?” series of videos, Thunderf00t responds to the claims made in a creationist video where an animated creationist teacher who looks like a giant penis bashes “evilution” and convinces a skeptical kid to accept creationist Christianity.
As usual, the creationist arguments are thoroughly destroyed.
