personal experience

GodisPretend.net is 4 Years Old!

I hadn’t really realized how long I had been running this site until I looked up a few older posts a few weeks ago. This website has changed shape, servers, and domain names in those four years, but the central theme has stayed the same: religion is inherently violent and has no place in modern civilized society. As sort of a blast from the past, I present to you the first four blog posts I ever made on this site.

Subservience of Women
“What better move to make when writing the bible than to include a post to keep women in submission for all of time than to include the obligatory “men are better than women” verse.

The first epistle to Timothy brings us this travesty.” (Read More)

Evolution vs. Creation
“Life. Where did it come from? What does it have in store for me? What can I expect after life on earth?

Don’t know. It depends. Decomposition.” (Read More)

Don’t Pray For Me, Argentina
“I’ve got to hand it to Christianity. They have a pretty good racket setup. What most likely started as a simple way to keep the uneducated working class in check has become a self-perpetuating machine with all the right gimmicks built right in. Such as ‘We are right. Everyone else is wrong.’ Gotta love that one. No tolerance for diversity, no compassion for your fellow man, no ‘love thy neighbor’ (wait a tick…)” (Read More)

What Foxholes?
“You’ve probably all heard it. “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Oh really? What foxholes? And why wouldn’t they be down there? Are foxholes lined with Holy Water or some atheist repellant? I understand what this message is trying to convey, but that doesn’t make it anymore based in fact. The fact that people keep repeating this drivel only continues to lend to its credibility.” (Read More)

Nigerian Scam With a Religious Message

Throughout my years of internet usage, I have seen many scam emails. Most take the form of a foreign lottery jackpot or the estate of some distant dearly departed relative. This is the first time in more than 12 years of internet usage that I have come across one with an entirely religious slant. I think it’s funny that the overseas jackoffs that are running these scams can so easily (and quite accurately) recreate the verbiage that so many religious folks use.

Enjoy!

Dearly Beloved.

Calvary greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, I am Mrs. Victoria Balli, I am a nationality of the United Kingdom, and I am presently hospitalized, due to my illness. I am 59 years old and I was diagnosed with Esophageal Cancer for about two years. I am a widow to Late Mr. William Balli. You see, my husband was once the Managing Director of Shell Oil Company in South Africa, where we spent most of our lives and I have served the Lord all through my life.

From all indications, my condition is serious and is quite obvious that I may not live more than six months, because the cancer stage has gotten to a very severe state and my doctor has told me this. The one that disturbs me most is the stroke that paralyzed half of my body before my late husband was killed during his reign as the Managing Director of Shell Oil Company.

My late husband was wealthy and after his death, I inherited all His business and wealth. Presently my doctor told me that I may not live for more than six months, though I am not scared about this, I am not afraid of death, hence I will be in the bosom of the Lord forever, any time my God calls me home. So, I now decided to look for an organization or an individual who is God fearing, that will use the funds for charity organization, by contributing to the development of evangelism in the world, assisting motherless babies homes and poor churches all over the world.
I selected you after searching the Internet for this purpose and prayed over it, for the fact that I always go to God in prayers in situation like this, because He is the Alfa and Omega. I am willing to donate half of my husbands wealth to you for the development of evangelism and also as aids for the less privileged around you rather than allow my husbands relatives to use my husband hard earned funds ungodly. You may contact my lawyer, James Cole, with the specified address-:

CHAMBERS OF James Cole
Barrister James Cole
9 Bedford Row London WC1R 4AZ
E-Mail: james_cole_lawfirm@mail2ohio.com
Phone: +44-702-404-1690

Ensure that you copy this correspondence to his email address above and tell him that I have asked you to reach him. Please, do not reply if you have the intention of using this fund for personal use, you will have a reasonable percentage of the total funds before investing the remainder of the funds for God`s works. Lastly, I want you and your church to keep praying for me regarding my health, because I have come to find out that wealth acquisition without Jesus Christ in one’s life, is vanity upon vanity. If you have to die says the Lord, keep fit and I will give you the crown of life. May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the sweet fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you now and forever more, amen.

GET BACK TO ME WITH MY PRIVATE EMAIL: mrsvictoriaballiv@gmail.com

Goodluck in all your future endeavors and God bless you.

Thanks,

Mrs. Victoria Balli.

Crass Consumerist Christmas

black-fridayI’ve seen it every year, and this year brought no surprises. People rushing around from one retail locale to the next. Searching for the lowest-priced thing of choice to wrap in thin, cheap paper to give to their loved one so they won’t be thought a scrooge.

I used to work in retail and had a very firsthand view of the mean-spirited search for consumer packaged goods. Whatever delusions of “Christmas spirit” shoppers embody at home or church, they ditch them when they enter the store on a mission for sale-priced goods. I once helped a woman to her vehicle with a large item, and the whole way to her car she did nothing but bitch and complain about how every store was sold out of the things she “needed” (her words). Then right as she was getting into her car, she made sure to say “God bless!” Really? You search frantically for items to give as gifts, and you think that somehow fits in with the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus? I don’t understand how people reconcile all of these hateful, vengeful, and competitive feelings with the peace and mercy that is supposedly at the heart of the holiday.

Like several other atheists and non-believers I know, I celebrate Christmas, but I celebrate it as a secular holiday whose main tenet is togetherness and time with family. Yes, we exchange gifts, but we do so on a very limited scale. The whole point of a peaceful gift exchange is lost if you fight tooth and nail to acquire some last minute item. Besides, Black Friday or not, you can almost always find better deals on the internet than you can in brick-and-mortar stores anyway.

Only 359 days until next Christmas. So that means only about 300 days before the next phony “War on Christmas” begins.

Have a safe and Happy New Year!

Happy Mother’s Day!

holy-motherFirst, I would like to wish all of the mothers out there a very Happy Mother’s Day! While I am personally a big fan of letting my mother know how much I appreciate her every time I speak to her, I am not out to rain on anyone’s mother-loving parade.

I would, however, like to rain on some theists’ nonsensical-beliefs parades.

I was listening to XM earlier, and instead of playing music, the DJ, who was blabbering on about shit that I could care less about, decided to close his verbal segment with some quotes about mothers. I don’t subscribe to XM to hear talk on a music channel, but I was too close to home to be channel zapping for alternate programming. One quote, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, stood out.

“God couldn’t be everywhere. That’s why he invented mothers.”

Yeah, I get it. You’re setting out to raise mothers to a godlike standard because they do indeed balance a frightfully heavy load when it comes to child rearing. But in repeating this, what every Christian is actually doing is impugning the omnipresence of their own Lord and Savior. For my Christian-troll readers, I don’t want to hear any of your, “It’s a joke you angry atheist! If you stepped down off your soapbox once in a while to stop persecuting people, maybe you’d have a sense of humor.” To responses like that I can only respond that this phrase does indeed lower God, and should be phrased so many of the other infinite ways it could be worded to give a boost to moms. Why, like so many other “cute” and “fun” sayings, has this caught on as an oft-repeated maxim without any critical thought given to its meaning?

It reminds me of a shirt, sign, or some other crap that I saw at Cracker Barrel that said, “And on the 8th day, God created chocolate.” No he didn’t. He just didn’t. There is no scripture to back this up, and instead of critically analyzing the natural processes that have formed every living thing on this planet, you instead create humor out of one of the most nonsensical leaps in logic in the world: the creation story. This gets repeated with many other things apart from chocolate: beer, Marines, tattoo artists, Legos, hairdressers, ad infinitum. Unlike moms, who deserve more than a pat on the back, these selfish people seek to create some kind of humorous inference related to the creation story that they are somehow special. Guess what? You’re not. You’re a sheep, and a dumb one at that.

Happy Mother’s Day! Unless you are a mother that stifles her children’s learning and discovery of the world by force feeding them bullshit stories from ancient, poorly-edited texts. If that’s the case, I hope the Mother’s Day Fairy leaves you coal in your apron.