Whenever we go out to eat, my wife is constantly out-ordering me. She’ll talk to the waiters and describe some incredible home-cooked meal just the way she pictures it, and more often than not they come back with some fabulous creation while I’m eating something with fries. Her food brain is like a fashion designer—nowadays I’ll just have what she’s having.
These past 2-1/2 months of house building she’s been cooking for 13 people out of the cabin—for both families and a friend, a grandson and the teenagers friends, and whoever stops by. It’s been incredible and a tremendous work load in a cabin with no dishwasher and a very basic kitchen. I don’t think we’ve eaten the same thing twice, and all top notch meals. Thank you.
Religion has no “off the menu” ordering, but it does. I’ll explain. I recently saw a show where this guy and his fiancé are looking for a church. Each week they go somewhere different, check the facilities and get a quick sales pitch explanation about the belief and direction of the church from the pastor. It is semi amusing sickening, but then the couple decides if this is a place and belief they agree with. Then they move on. Trying to find a Christian church that already aligns with what you want to believe is a painstaking process. The lighting, music, and decor must be just right. They will never find what they want, so they’ll either settle for close, or hey, start their own church! What better way to find what you already believe?
After the breakup of AT&T, thousands of smaller telecoms popped up all over the country. New companies emerged with their own way of doing things. The religious monopolies have already collapsed. Each is doing its own thing and is disconnected from the source (if there ever was one) and each church is going the way of the pastor. 45,000 denominations, personalized service, but it’s no longer Christianity—any more that Inland Telephone is AT&T. Everyone is off the menu, they just can’t admit it. 
“The key to solving the mysteries of god is unbelief ” whatever you hear in religion, look for the opposite to be true. Very simple observations prove this time and again.
TheCommonAtheist 
It’s a funny thing that it was my own predilection to “spectral evidence”, as in, I am a visionary and have had many and life-changing interactions with non-physical beings, that made me give up on my earlier Christian faith. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”, one of my favourite Biblical quotes, turned out to be a lie. If you need faith to believe it, then “it” doesn’t exist except either in your own imagination (“I want it to be this way”) or in the sales pitch of those whose job it is to suck in the unwary. I was definitely of the unwary variety until my spectral communications demonstrated the weakness of blind faith. Now I don’t believe ‘IN’ anything, but as I was taught, I believe ‘ALL’ things. If someone needs or wants to believe in god, I have no problem with that. If they actively reject such a concept, I have no problem with that either. Perhaps best stated by that great detective of detectives, Harry Crumb: “Believe what you will, but don’t believe it here.”
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Haha! Yes. Great comment. After the trick was over I became a huge skeptic of such things too. I always say no first, look for the obvious contradiction or explanation and move on, or in. Thanks.
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That moment you discovered that you were lied to your entire life. You become super-skeptical
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Mormons consume stimulants, Catholics use birth control, Baptists drink alcohol, and everyone has issues. I can relate to any search for the right (religion or other belief) and I do understand that. I know Christians who do not go to church or, when confronted with difficult bible items say, “I don’t believe that.” Given the state of American (and perhaps world-wide) Christianity (and other religions), I wonder if anyone is the fully the religion they claim to be. I have had friends claim (and been accused of) being cafeteria Catholics.” Off menu.
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Yep… Rampant sectarianism is one of many existence proofs that the whole enterprise is a crock.
Alas, the denominations keep on coming… pandering to just about every lifestyle imaginable.
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Pandering keeps the roles, but how can constantly changing align with the ultimate and last say in morality?
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Jim, Jim, Jim! Have you not heard of the brand new theological doctrine being circulated, reviewed and considered by the World Panel of All Superior Religious Virtuosi!? It is the doctrine of Immutable Mutability. It is the key for all keyholes!!! 😉
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Explain yourself or call off the joke! Seriously? Nooo. I suppose a 10,000 word MelistoBrainyawn explanation could set that right. Right?
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Hahahahaha! Well… I don’t know that we have to go to THOSE extremes, but…
I did get wind that the WPASRV borrowed several mechanisms and methods from the late great Stephen Hawking. 😁
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The parts of Hawking that god inspired through his unbelief, god is great.
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And…I already know the key to the mysteries is unbelief. Can I just unbelieve you now?
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Bwahahaha! Of course you can TRY, but I’m already in your head… especially your conscientious consciousness! 😈 (with an evil sly grin)
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The christology has become so mind-dwarfing I could easily believe you. I could just see Otto throw another wrench in the spokes of logic
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Oh MAN!!! I was hoping you were going to just go on and on and on about LG’s fantastic cooking and meals and phenomenal heart of serving others — and Jim, I KNOW I/we could go for hours singing her praises, right!? 🤩 And then you had to go RUIN my excitement in paragraph #3! I am so upset at you for not talking about LG… you crazy food-loving, wife-loving, short-brained man!!! LOL 😉😄
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Lol. It is worthy of its own post for sure. Thanks boss.
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You bet your nicely filled TUMMY it is!!! Hahahaha! CHOP CHOP sonny! And I don’t mean on a juicy prime rib either! 😉 😛
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That’s what our son-in-law did……shopped around churches until he found something to fit in with what he wanted……daughter hanging onto every little thing as well.
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Just goes to show morality is a culural/societal conditioning. Each person already has it, then they search for a church that’s suits the morality or doctrine that fits their personal values.
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Somebody ”got” to he & his siblings while their mother was in alcoholics anon, & they all swallowed it hook, line, & sinker. Then he met our daughter who had never been in a church of any sort, & he ”got” to her too. She was young, in love, impressionable, never ever questioned anything while growing up, & still doesn’t.
Their eldest daughter, our granddaughter, got married 4 years ago into a religious nutter family where her father-in-law performed the ceremony, is due for her first baby any time now, & we have just found out the university education her husband was studying……was theology, & he’ll be a church pastor this October!
…………and on it goes.
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My condolences to you. Ouch! Once you decide to exert faith before knowledge, undoing that hard wire takes its own kind of miracle—or luck.
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Which is why we told them years ago that the topic had to be kept closed for us to get along. We refuse to get into arguments over bloody religion!
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I’ll put a MAGA sign and a bible in the mail for you. You foreigners just don’t understand.
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MAGA????????
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Make American great again. Donald trump. Lol
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…..uuuummmmmm………….I’m Canadian………..
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I know. Just thought you’d like a souvenir. Lol
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I’ll pass, thanks…….hahahaha…..
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Good observation. I’ve run into a lot of “church shoppers”. Often they end up at one of the mega-churches, the more or less generic “christian” churches with multi-media shows, stages rather than altars because when it comes down to it much of religion is basic stagecraft, knowing how to put on a good show. And generally after a few months they grow disillusioned and go shopping again.
It isn’t really religion though, is it? Religion means that you conform your behavior to the belief system of the supreme being you believe in, not the other way around. These church shoppers aren’t looking for religion, they’re looking for confirmation of their own beliefs, feelings and prejudices.
This splintering has been going on for, well, forever. No religion is immune from it. The Catholic church proclaims itself to be united, but it isn’t. It’s divided up into factions that range from the ultra left socialists to far right extremists. Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. all have their own problems as people look for something, anything, to support what they already believe.
What it boils down to is that religions are the creations of human beings who are making a deity in their own image, to borrow the biblical phrase. They don’t want to have to change their beliefs to match those of some religion. Logic and science do not support their beliefs and prejudices, so they create a religious system that does it so they can attempt to lay claim to some kind of supernatural justification for their beliefs.
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Like John Wayne once said to his dog groomer, Betsy Puffyhair, “Betsy, I’ll betcha if communion wafers tasted like Lucky Charms cereal, people would go to church more often. So, I’ll keep shopping around ’til I find such a church, and, until then, I’ll continue sleepin’ in late on Sundays.”
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Oh Jim, don’t you just miss Pioneer Day picnic? I couldn’t stop laughing when they brought out little bottles of milk for all to shake vigorously in an attempt to make butter. How quickly it stopped when I mentioned it looked like people were masturbating!! Now that is off the menu for sure! 😂
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Lol. I miss a lot about church, I just couldn’t remember what they were until now!!
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Shopping around for a church is like shopping around in the Bible for the parts you want, while discarding the inconvenient parts.
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That’s what they all do
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