Posted inHumor

Deep (well, sort of) thoughts about Tesla Full Self-Driving and Netflix Kevin Hart Roast

In my never-ending -- except after I die -- quest to suck gobs of philosophical profundity out of the marrow of everyday life, I want to share what struck me about the meaning of our one and only existence on this crazy planet we call Earth after some seemingly mundane experiences. Yesterday I was able to ride in and then drive a Tesla for the first time. Wrote about this momentous occasion on my HinesSight blog in "Driving a Tesla around Salem with Full Self-Driving, I was super impressed." Never shy about quoting myself, I will. Touching the steering wheel…
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Posted inHumor Personal/Stories

My icy driveway experiment: what slides furthest?

Following up on my previous post where I spoke about the freezing rain that coated my area of Oregon with a sheet of ice yesterday, I'm pleased to present the video results of an experiment I conducted today on our very icy driveway in rural south Salem. My quest was to determine what would slide furthest: a shoe, a banana, or a stuffed wolf? After the experiment, I then attempted to rescue the wolf from the middle of the driveway, which didn't go so well, as shown in the video. Nonetheless, I await my senior citizen scientist award.
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Posted inHumor Religions

Scientology gets much-deserved ridicule in South Park episode

There's so much competition for The World's Craziest Religion, it's impossible to pick a clear winner. But Scientology has to be somewhere near the top of Mt. Crazy. I say this even though I don't know very much about Scientology. Well, until today. For after watching a South Park episode that was on one of the televisions in the aerobics room of my athletic club where I exercised this afternoon, I feel like I do know a lot about Scientology. You can too, if you watch the 22-minute episode. Wikipedia has a summary of the plot of "Trapped in the…
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Posted inGod Humor

How to reply to 14 crazy things religious believers say

Since it's July 4, Independence Day, here in the United States, I thought I'd mark the occasion by composing 14 replies to some crazy stuff religious believers might say. This is in line with my commitment to spiritual independence. And also because, as I said in a post on my HinesSight blog, I'm not feeling good about our political independence these days. Enjoy... If someone says, God must exist eternally, because the cosmos couldn't create itself, reply: If nothing created an eternal God, then nothing could have created an eternal cosmos, the difference being that the cosmos clearly is real,…
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Posted inHumor Religions

Wacky religious news: Islamic sex cult and baptism gone wrong

My wife, Laurel, a proud atheist, enjoys finding stories about the bizarre side of religions (assuming there is anything other than bizarre in religiosity). Recently she came across the tale of Adnan Oktar, a Turkish sex cult leader.  In the end, it was not the British deep state, Darwinists, Jews, Freemasons or any of the sinister cabals that Adnan Oktar long railed against that defeated him. It was the Turkish judiciary. On Monday, the notorious 64-year-old preacher, often referred to in salacious headlines as a "sex cult leader," was sentenced to 1,075 years in jail for crimes including sexual assault, sexual…
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Posted inHumor Politics

QAnon and religion are both mass delusions

The Real Time With Bill Maher show always ends with a feature called New Rules. Most of the rules are brief and humorous, while the last takes longer to explain and is more serious, though still funny in a different way. I just finished watching our recording of the February 5 episode.  Maher's closing New Rule was a right-on discussion of how the craziness of QAnon relates to religious belief. Probably you're familiar with this cult, but if you aren't, a BBC story describes what QAnon is about. At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, completely unfounded theory that says…
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Posted inHappiness Humor

I got a transcript of a call to the Spiritual Surrender support line

Thanks for calling the Spiritual Surrender support line. How may I help you today? Well, I've heard a lot about the benefit of surrendering to a higher power. Isn't that how some addicts get off drugs and alcohol? I think it is. Anyway, i've got quite a few problems -- who doesn't these days -- and I'm wondering if some sort of spiritual surrender is right for me. Excellent. You've come to the right place. We specialize in helping people like you. Let's start with me asking you a few questions. No problem. OK. Do you have an idea of…
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Posted inHumor

Magic fairies, like God, don’t exist. But we do.

Comic strips can say a lot in just a few words and pictures. Here's one in yesterday's Sunday paper that I like a lot. Wouldn't it be great if everybody worked to make the world a better place without resorting to supplications to imaginary beings like gods and fairies?  (Of course, John Lennon wrote a song along that line.)
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Posted inHumor Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Greatest comment about the RSSB guru ever. Behold!

l am awestruck. I bow down before the glory. I marvel at every inspired word. No, I'm not talking about God or a holy book. I'm extolling a comment "j" left today on a recent blog post. Here it is. (UPDATE: it seemed obvious that this comment is fictional, but in case anyone thinks it is real, it was made up -- though there is considerable truth in the fictional exchange.) The guru being referred to is the leader of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization based in India that I belonged to for 35 years until I…
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Posted inHumor Personal/Stories

I urge that Santa Claus be impeached

If you think I'm tough on religious leaders, check out what I wrote about Santa Claus in my HinesSight blog post, "Santa Claus must be impeached."  I credit my wife, Laurel, with coming up with the concept for our 2019 Christmas letter. Then I researched the grounds for impeachment and came up with four excellent reasons. There are more, of course. For example, I deeply doubt that Santa Claus is abiding by minimum wage and workplace safety laws in his present-making workshop staffed by elves.
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Posted inHumor Radha Soami Satsang Beas

“Gurinder Singh Dhillon” search results feature…me!

Today Sonya, a regular commenter on this blog, noted that the "scary," "evil" photo of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, actually is an official photograph that can be downloaded from the RSSB web site.  But as shown above, in the lower right corner, that photograph shows the guru at a considerable distance. Zooming in on the high resolution screen of my much-beloved MacBook Pro  we get the scary, evil look of Gurinder Singh Dhillon. In the course of searching for this photo, I found that Google Images has another search result for the RSSB guru…
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Posted inHumor

Deepak Chopra quote generator shows ridiculousness of New Age’ism

Religions are absurd by definition. They make confident proclamations about God, heaven, life after death, and such, even though there is zero convincing evidence that God, heaven, life after death, or other supernatural phenomena even exist. But there's plenty of absurdity floating around in the sphere of "spiritual but not religious," which includes New Age ideas. Deepak Chopra is a notable purveyor of this sort of crap. I've written about Chopra here, here, here, and here. The blog post linked to in the last "here" is called Deepak Chopra's inanity makes my head explode. OK, not literally. Otherwise I couldn't…
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Posted inHumor Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Allegedly, this is an alleged blog post about allegations

Here at the Church of the Churchless we admire humor, especially when it is directed at oh-so-serious religious believers.  So I'm pleased to share this comment by Spence Tepper, who wrote it as a properly amused response to someone who was upset by me not using "alleged" in each and every sentence I wrote about a criminal complaint filed against Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. I've corrected a few alleged typos in the comment that was allegedly written by Tepper. Hi Michael. You wrote "In case he decides to delete that blog post, I have…
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Posted inHumor Religions

George Carlin jokes about absurdity of religion

In an email message, a regular Church of the  Churchless visitor recommended that I check out a George Carlin video about Christianity.  When I searched You Tube, a pleasing variety of videos popped up where Carlin bashes religion. So I picked the one that's gotten the most views, 11 million.  Enjoy. Carlin hits on a lot of great points, including the crappy job that God is doing with the world, the ridiculousness of combining the threat of hellfire with God's love for us, why praying makes no sense, and the insatiable demand of religions for money, money, money.
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Posted inGod Humor

Thanks to Ariana Grande, I now believe God is a woman

Hey, I've become a believer. In God. Who is a woman. The lyrics explain this profound theology: You, you love it how I move youYou love it how I touch youMy one, when all is said and doneYou'll believe God is a womanAnd I, I feel it after midnightA feeling that you can't fightMy one, it lingers when we're doneYou'll believe God is a woman I don't wanna waste no time, yeahYou ain't got a one-track mind, yeahHave it any way you like, yeahAnd I can tell that you know I know how I want itAin't nobody else can relateBoy,…
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