Chuck Colson has a list of the three greatest enemies of Christianity right now. They are:
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Islam. It’s “evil incarnate.”
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Atheism. It’s “virulent.”
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Christian coffee shops??!?
OK, that last one is a little strange, but I had an epiphany. I’m sitting in a Christian-run coffee shop right now. It’s great for fairly good inexpensive coffee, it’s got an open wireless net, and some of the conversations around me are inspiring—I write some of my anti-religion screeds while the Bible Study Group meets at a table in front of me.
Gosh. Chuck Colson is right.
Actually, Colson seems to be denouncing Christians talking to each other in coffee shops. More to the point, he’s denouncing Christians talking to each other about their religion instead of just taking what their minister says as truth and doing what they’re told.
He may also be against Christian coffee shops – the only ones I know of up here take pains to serve only fair trade coffee and given Colson’s background he probably disapproves. But his comment seems more in line with dismissing people who want to think critically about their religious beliefs rather than denouncing the shops they meet in.
Don’t worry; I’m sure that if you work hard and keep trying, you can get onto Colson’s list next year. We’re all rootin’ for you!
It doesn’t even have to be Christian coffee shops. The Starbucks where I meet with my atheist group is usually well populated with Bible study groups. At least they’re TRYING to think for themselves instead of just being preached at.
PZ you must have an incredibly strong constitution….
How can you sit there and calmy drink coffee while listening to inane biblical drivel….
I admit to having some friends – otherwise sane and rational people – who are part of bible groups (I live in GA – I would have NO friends otherwise!)
We can talk about sports, weather, kids, work, politics (somewhat)….
However, I shun their religious conversation, their praising of ‘christian rock’, and feel the need to run screaming for the nearest lavatory whenever their saccharine platitudes that pass for ‘erudite religious comment’ washes over me.
You are obviously uber-human…
:)
It’s funny: the angrier they get, the prouder I feel.
anyone else disappointed at being ranked #2?
Coffee shops lead inexorably to the Enlightenment. It’s true!
Chuck Colson. Wasn’t he Nixon’s chief of staff? Or head of his campaign committee or something?
Oh, I see what Colson was going for–he was equating “the emergent church” with mere coffee shoppery. Of all the drooling nonsense within Christendom, the “emergent church” is the most offensive, because it actually combines Post Modernism with biblical hermeneutics. Crap squared. It’s not even wrong, and it’s impossible to counter or even discuss because it is shapeless and even further down the rabbit hole than “orthodox” Christianity.
I would think that even a Christian of moderate to low intelligence would recognize that the greatest threat to Christianity right now is Christian yahooery put forth by their own.
You can’t take over the world if your methodology involves making the world convinced you’re insane.
PZ, let’s hope they don’t recognize you in those Christian coffee shops, or you could be drinking a lot of spit with those lattes.
I think it would have been nice if they would have tossed the ACLU, NARAL, or Veterans for Peace in there at the top too. I’d like to be affiliated with more than one thing in the top three.
Dammit! All this shrill, man-hating, anti-family, pro-witchcraft, homo-riffic rhetoric I’ve been spewing for years… and feminism can’t even beat out a lousy Christian coffee shop for sheer invidiousness? That tears it. I’m grabbing my Bible* and heading out for a latte. *grumble grumble*
*which, in the new by-subject arrangement of books in our new house, is shelved between Hans Christian Andersen and the six oversized volumes of Elfquest
I’m sitting in a Christian-run coffee shop right now.
I hope you are (were) wearing an appropriate t-shirt, e.g.,
http://www.atheists-online.com/store.asp?shop=00500#1
The church-run coffee shop in my home town is in an actual converted church. It’s a really nice space and I’ve never heard a serious religious conversation in there. Everyone just goes for the cake, which is awesome. It’s more or less opposite Starbucks and it’s always packed.
I love the scene . . . .a roomful of Southern Baptists all dewy-eyed receiving moral guidance from a convicted felon.
I am struck by the adjective virulent as applies to atheism. Oh, I know, first you have one book on atheism, then another, and another, … , and then before you know it, your have 6!!!
“Half a dozen anti-religious books; what is amazing is how little, if anything, is said about the many thousands of pro-religious books published every year all round the world. The magazine Publishers Weekly reported earlier this year that the member publishing houses of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association between them produced 13,400 new titles in the two years 2005-6 alone. This is just one segment of the religious publishing industry in just one wing of one of the world religions; the mind boggles at the extent of forests being felled for purveyance of religious doctrine, opinion, exhortation and polemic in every shade, nuance and type.”
Tome truths
via
Butterflies And Wheels
vir·u·lent
-adjective
1. actively poisonous; intensely noxious
If that’s what atheism is to theism, is that so bad?
Why do prison-convert Christians hate coffee-shop Christians? But really, aren’t we all waiting to hear where Paris stands on the issue?
I think I can summarize:
Thinking. It’s “bad”.
Atheism is virulent?! Yay!
Sounds like a viable…, uh, frame. I can see two main transmission pathways of the core meme – either direct replication, or a retromeme insertion that later activates. :-)
Now we need to change often, so there is no resistance build up. New spokespersons, new ideas and new media.
Atheism is virulent?! Yay!
Sounds like a viable…, uh, frame. I can see two main transmission pathways of the core meme – either direct replication, or a retromeme insertion that later activates. :-)
Now we need to change often, so there is no resistance build up. New spokespersons, new ideas and new media.
Wait, atheism is virulent? Sweet, makes our jobs easier! If I go around whispering “there’s no god” on the bus will that be enough to infect them?
Chuck ‘Nixon’s Hatchet Man’ Colson was a vile member of a vile administration. He was chief counsel to R.M. ‘Ratbastard’ Nixon through the whole CREEP era and into Watergate. Disbarred, convicted, and having left the White House in handcuffs, he decided his next best option was to embark on an even slimier career, self-styled evangelical minister.
He still carries water for the R’s though, he participated in the slandering of John Kerry by the Slowboat Veterans for Lies.
I’m proud to be considered virulent by the likes of him.
“If I go around whispering “there’s no god” on the bus will that be enough to infect them?”
Unfortunatly no, its more like an STD instead of TB. You actually have to make contact with their mind, make them think, to have it catch. And most christians have a fairly high immunity to thought, at least the questioning kind.
I’m glad I wasn’t drinking my coffee while reading that post or I’d need a new keyboard and monitor!
Is Chuckie a Mormon? When I found out coffee and tea were prohibited (and shorts, except in designated athletic areas) at Brigham Young University, I realized I could not go there for grad school.
What Colson is very worried about is “thought”. People talk and sometimes, accidentally, think while doing so in places like coffee shops. This is indeed very dangerous for religion, especially conservative and literal religions. Receieved wisdom handed down is where it’s at for them.
All you need to know about Chuck Colson:
Quote: I’d walk over my own grandmother for Richard Nixon.
Plaque on his office wall: When you’ve got ’em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
I hadda look up Emerging Church. It’s easy to see why a deeply committed authoritarian like Colson would find it a threat. For people like him, governments and churches should be run like the military. A leaderless, doctrineless movement like the Emerging Church is anathema.
Colson is functioning here as a tool of the economic structure of the fundamentalist church, where the rank-and-file flock is groomed to support whatever the hell its ministers tell them the Almighty wants (which of course, coincides precisely with the ministers’ various needs and beliefs).
Anyway, those church-run coffee shops–meant to attract younger church members and provide an alternative to secular venues and activities–do encourage conversation and thinking (as Glenn Peters @ 20 points out) under auspices that a sheltered fundie adolescent’s parents probably wouldn’t object.
But what is she thinking? Not “Gosh, I really love Jesus”–she gets enough of that at home. She’s thinking: “Why is Reverend Lovejoy staring at my chest?” “No freaking way am I going to Bob Jones, Liberty or Oral–everyone who comes out of ’em is either a total loser or they completely hated the place” “I wish I could spend Sunday mornings in bed” and similar preludes to the sort of lives where charitable giving ends up in the hands of the local busker and threats of God’s wrath fail to evoke the desired guilt and fear.
And that’s what Colson’s objection is.
Re: Brian W (#6)
Atheism is NOT #2 it just happens to be sorted according to the fundie alphabet…. which only has a few letters, and many repeats (hence their trouble with english in many cases) You can see why they have problems in understanding the words ‘no’ and ‘idiot’ since these translate to ”, and ‘ID’, and ‘You Idiot’, becomes ‘Y ID’. A slight problem, no?
The Fundie Alphabet:
IACWWJDJLYLIG (I Am Christ, What Would Jesus Do, Jesus Loves You, Lord Is God)
What’ve Colson and Mormon got in common? Both need to lose a consonant.
Peter, LOL – again. Humor with symmetry. You witty fellah, you!
Heh. So what’s the Atheist Alphabet? WYSIWYG?
:-)
I love to visit christian bookstores (once a year or so) for two good reasons.
First; it’s both important & a lot of fun to see what sort of foolishness they are up to, such as the “George W Bush daily prayer book for children” (a book of prayers for Bush, not by him).
And second, I keep looking for more Job biblical action figures (with the rotting flesh) for my dioramas.
“Heh. So what’s the Atheist Alphabet? WYSIWYG?”
Posted by: Kseniya
How about WIIROHIF.
What Is Is Regardless Of How I Feel.
.
You would dare sully Elfquest by placing the Bible next to it on a shelf! For shame. The bible deserves a shelf by itself, preferably with lots of decoration around it. I think clown noses and whoopy cushions would be really good, if you don’t mind tacky. If not, maybe posters, flyers, etc. from the era of sceances and tarot card reading. lol
That sounds pretty reasonable. Where better to apply postmodernist analysis than to a work of fiction?
On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be much that needs countering. The only non-optional belief is apparently “Jesus was a nice fellow.” Which probably isn’t true, but isn’t very harmful to believe unless you want to major in Near Eastern history.
OK, Anton, fair enough, but in practice–have you ever talked to these people? Imagine all of the worst sanctimony of evangelical Christianity wrapped in the most wooly-headed pablum of post modernism. Harmless? I guess. But just–I don’t know, like fricking que sera sera lazy, I guess. The definitions one reads make it sound like a rigorous exchange of ideas, but really it’s more like recovery circle jerk where not only is nonsense tolerated but positively celebrated. Again, probably harmless, certainly more so than the slobbering theocrats, but I have no patience for pretentious idiocy.
Imagine all of the worst sanctimony of evangelical Christianity wrapped in the most wooly-headed pablum of post modernism.
Throw in some valley girl vocal affectations and things would be even better!
Like, you know, fundies are, like, so in control of the cultural structure of feeling and their utopia-oriented aporias are like, so bitchin’!
Muslims introduced coffee drinking to the christian West, so Colson’s enemies have synergized each other and come full circle.
No. Although to judge from the Wikipedia article, I may have heard one talking and assumed they were an English major who’d had too many shots.
We’re virulent? Excellent!
I like the book of prayers for George Bush. I say my own, but I bet they’re not in the book: “Please let him fall down the stairs and break his neck on live TV,” “Please let him not only lose the election this fall, but lock his keys in the car too,” “Please let him finally grow a brain and stop appointing horse doctors to oversee my reproductive health,” etc.
Speaking of the greatest enemies of Christianity, check out today’s(June 14) Sinfest webtoon (www.sinfest.net)
So THAT’s where our strategy for Iraq came from! Abu Ghraib was just a misunderstanding by someone taking the strategy a little too literally…