Still nothing! I am disappointed in the extreme. Surely God can have no more excuses? I mean, why would an omnipotent, omniscient being have any difficulty at all in doing as His follower bade Him? It’s been five days and the time for traipsing Mill Ave. is nearly upon us again. If God is so interested in the goings-on of Mill, wouldn’t it benefit Him to have one of the Resistance out of action and suffering a crisis of non-faith?

Wait, you’re thinking. God doesn’t have to obey anyone! So what if Cesar claimed to be able to call down the Lord’s wrath upon me? That doesn’t mean He’s going to do it.

But why, though? This deity, who would necessarily have to be very well acquainted with who I am, knows what proof I need to believe in him, and to thus be “saved”. If he can perform such enormous feats as destroying Sodom and Gomorrah and (paradoxically) impregnating a young woman sans genitalia, why can’t he blind me to save me from the fires of Hell? Surely he knows that I would be more inclined to believe after such a miraculous experience.

Perhaps the Lord is as I suspected: a cruel god, a tyrant unmatched. Perhaps he truly does not care for his followers one bit…

Or perhaps, just perhaps, He is not the god of the Bible. He could be a different god entirely, one who never claims to intervene. Or maybe it is a deist god, who does not interfere with the universe much after creating it, leaving its creations (us) in a state of benign neglect…

Or maybe, and much more likely, it’s none of these things at all. The reason Cesar couldn’t blind me using the power of the Lord is because there is no Lord. There is no power to call on outside of ourselves to get the things that we want. Didn’t Jesus claim several times (in Mark 11:24 - 25, for instance) that whatever a Christian believed would happen and prayed for would take place? Not so, it would seem.

Read more...

Filed under: Gadfly by Gadfly
6 Comments »

Being blind seems to be remarkably similar to having sight. I’m beginning to think that perhaps nothing is happening at all.

Then I remember that Father’s Day was yesterday. I can’t expect so much out of God. I mean, like any good dad He was probably partying into the early hours with His son Jesus, going all Old Testament on a keg of prodigious size. The resulting hangover will surely take a day or two to overcome.

Meanwhile I sit and wait for the proof that he even exists. Surely blinding an 18-year-old girl shouldn’t be too hard for him? Once He can get up off the couch without puking up a galaxy or two, I’m sure he’ll get right to it. Cesar’s request is probably not far down the queue, right?

We’ll see.

Read more...

Filed under: Gadfly by Gadfly
100 Comments »

I’m so excited I can barely contain myself. The Lord is going to blind me!

Last night was a fairly calm night, as Phil and those with him were the only ones hanging around. The exception was Edwin, who vanished soon after we arrived. With Phil was Cesar, a preacher I’d seen around only a few times.

He came up to us immediately as we approached the post office corner, and started in on his usual shtick. “I love you. You are my sister,” he said, indicating me, “and you are my brother.” He waved his hand at Kazz. “I love the both of you. But you need to respect us.”

He rambled on in the vein of “respect” for a while, and his main premise seemed to be that we would be bringing the wrath of God down on us if we continued to do what we do. He ignored me when I told him that while I respected their right to preach what they wanted to preach, I didn’t have to respect what they were saying. Also, the very fact that he seemed to be threatening us with God’s wrath was not terribly “respectful” of him to do.

“I can make you blind,” he said, looking at me. “For a little while, you will be blind.” I took this again as somewhat threatening, until he assured me that he had no need of touching me. He had only to speak to God, telling him that I was a child of Satan and to reveal himself to me. He did this, at my request, and he told me that the blindness would start some time the next day.

Read more...

Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Gadfly
1 Comment »

This Friday night was sparse with us-lings, since many were at the SFTS end-of-year party. Kazz, Spyral, Ezra, and I all dropped in on the revelry; Spyral and Ezra decided to stick around while Kazz and I went out to Mill.

An unpleasant little surprise awaited us upon our arrival. The Door were out, in all their screaming, shouting, spooky glory. I had never yet seen them, only heard tales of their insane antics and occasional violent behavior. They were all I could have hoped for and more on this night. A large number of them were dressed in black bodysuits, dancing and wailing with skeleton-painted faces as a mad preacher howled above their writhing bodies. Some waved ghostly gauze banners with images of what may have been demons on them. A reasonably large crowd looked on, and Omar and Jim stood not too far from where we set up the speaker.

Read more...

Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Gadfly
1 Comment »

Apologies that this took so long to post.

Mill Ave. wasn’t quite crawling with preachers this Saturday, which isn’t to say there weren’t any. Since it’s usually pretty devoid of them on Saturday nights now, there seemed to be a comparatively large amount. Al and his cronies were handing out their “I.Q. Test” tracts by the Light Rail, and we kept an eye on them for a while. Then word came that the dreaded Jeremiah was on on the corner of 5th St.

A cameraman was out to document Jeremiah’s incredible preaching abilities, and we set up our equipment nearby. Joe and Kyle were already there, and Rocco turned up a while after. We were bothered for a while by the adversarial cameraman, who intimated that we were cowards for not “preaching” our beliefs on our own, instead of merely reacting to the street preachers. He didn’t seem to understand when we tried to explain to him that we aren’t really fond of annoying people without cause.

Read more...

Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Gadfly
3 Comments »

I often state that religion can be defied on reason alone. Simply put, if there is no evidence for it, there is no reason to believe it. There is also no reason to disbelieve it, though if evidence can be brought against it, the claims become increasingly absurd and defy Occam’s razor to the point of ridiculousness.

Thus, it’s often seemed silly to me that so many of us are forced to argue the specifics of Bible passages and the like in order to make our point. The thing is, though, that many of the people we’re debating against are willing to make great rationalizations for what they believe. They’re incredibly forgiving with the book. They variously condemn us for taking a phrase too literally or, alternately, not literally enough.

Read more...

Filed under: Gadfly by Gadfly
No Comments »