God's Second Chance

I was talking to my crazy neighbor lady about my upcoming move and marriage when she told me how happy she was for me that I'd found love again and was moving on.

"God gave you a second chance," she said.

I nodded and smiled.  I agree that I'm very lucky and I am thankful for all the great things in my life.  I have more blessings than I can count. But do I believe that God gave me all those things?  No.  If I did, I could just as easily have responded to my lonely widowed neighbor lady with, "Yeah, it's too bad God doesn't give a shit about you."        

(When I told my fiance this story, she said, "God didn't give you a second chance.  I did.")

But I don't believe God plays favorites.  When good things happen, it's not a reward, and when bad things happen, it's not a punishment.  It's just life.  Sometimes you're the lawnmower, sometimes you're the grass.  Or something like that. 

        

Invisible Gorilla

Here's a new science-y book to add to the Timicist cannon:  The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.

It's yet more evidence that many of our intuitions about how we think are all wrong.  The book deals with several illusions caused by our brain:

1. The illusion of attention
2. The illusion of memory
3. The illusion of confidence
4. The illusion of knowledge
5. The illusion of cause
6. The illusion of potential

True, although stupid and smart people alike are likely to put more trust in confidence.  That's the illusion of confidence.

Study after study shows how we overestimate our brain's ability.  The brain is an amazing machine that does lots of great stuff, but it's not perfect, and we need to recognize its limitations.  This is why we need science:  to remove the personal biases and illusions caused by our brains.

To learn more, see http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html, or read the book. 
 

Social Scientist

I was trying to tell someone recently about the Five (+ 1) Tenets of Timicism, and I think I got most of them right.  I'm such a horrible timvangelist, I have trouble remembering the tenets of my very own cult.  (After a quick review I see that I forgot the third tenet, Humor. D'oh!)


Anyway, after my spiel my friend replied that Timicism sounds more like the rules of a social scientist than a religion.

Hm.  I kinda like that description.

Timicism: the "religion" for social scientists. 

Political Power of Prayer

Respectful Atheists

I've read another book. Much like Kluge, this one deals with the human brain and how it evolved to function in a world that was way different than our current one. Hence, a lot of the things our brains do don't make much sense in the world we live in. I love this stuff.

The book is Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives by Dean Buonomano. There's a lot to say about this book, but how it most applies to Timicism is in his chapter on "The Supernatural Bug." Buonomano puts forth some interesting theories as to why our brains evolved a predilection for supernatural beliefs.

What I really appreciate is the following passage:

Throughout history religion has been a wellspring of compassion and benevolence. Today, religious organizations sponsor humanitarian efforts and continue to foster unparalleled acts of altruism-- thousands upon thousands of faithful work tirelessly in the most remote corners of the globe to feed and educate parentless children and others in need. Religion has nurtured the arts and sciences alike; countless scholars and scientists were priests, including Gregor Mendel whom many consider the father of modern genetics. And, of course, religion's most precious offering may be that it has served as a permanent oasis of hope and consolation in the face of often harsh realities.

Yet, when reviewing the vast database of irrational behaviors and repulsive acts that human beings have engaged in throughout history, religion has often stood in the foreground: from the human sacrifices of the Aztecs, through the Crusades and Inquisition, to suicide bombings and religiously motivated terrorism. Past and present religious beliefs have postponed scientific and technological progress, including the acceptance of heliocentrism, evolution, and stem-cell research. Additionally, lives continue to be lost to poverty and disease exacerbated by economic and health policies in which religion trumps reason....Religion has undeniably been the source of both great good and of great harm. [pp. 198-199.]

Unlike so many obnoxious atheists that I know, Buonomano is able to acknowledge that religion has done many good things, while at the same time it's clear he believes that belief in the supernatural is a "brain bug."

Ten Commandments for Atheists

Comedian/magician Penn Jillette has come up with 10 Commandments for Atheists. Although Timicism is not strictly an atheist religion, I'd like to include his commandments in the Timicist cannon, because they are something I can get behind.

Jillette's list:

1. The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all.

2. Do not put things or even ideas above other human beings. (Let's scream at each other about Kindle versus iPad, solar versus nuclear, Republican versus Libertarian, Garth Brooks versus Sun Ra— but when your house is on fire, I'll be there to help.)

3. Say what you mean, even when talking to yourself. (What used to be an oath to (G)od is now quite simply respecting yourself.)

4. Put aside some time to rest and think. (If you're religious, that might be the Sabbath; if you're a Vegas magician, that'll be the day with the lowest grosses.)

5. Be there for your family. Love your parents, your partner, and your children. (Love is deeper than honor, and parents matter, but so do spouse and children.)

6. Respect and protect all human life. (Many believe that "Thou shalt not kill" only refers to people in the same tribe. I say it's all human life.)

7. Keep your promises. (If you can't be sexually exclusive to your spouse, don't make that deal.)

8. Don't steal. (This includes magic tricks and jokes — you know who you are!)

9. Don't lie. (You know, unless you're doing magic tricks and it's part of your job. Does that make it OK for politicians, too?)

10. Don't waste too much time wishing, hoping, and being envious; it'll make you bugnutty.

Religion Analogy

I love a religion analogy that is phallic, funny, and follows the spirit of Timicism.

New Theories of Death

As a Timicist, I am fascinated with ideas of death. I mostly believe that it's a big dirt nap, but I've just read a book about lots of different theories and I'd like to add it to the Timicist cannon.

Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives by David Eagleman is a small thing, a short read that I could probably have finished off in one sitting if I were so inspired. It's a fascinating idea: 40 different theories on what happens to you when you die.

Unfortunately, the idea is more interesting than the content. It does have some fascinating, mind-blowing ideas, but on the whole the book is mostly disappointing. Maybe that's what the afterlife is really like: you get all excited about the idea of it, but then it's anticlimactic.

The title passage, "Sum", posits that in death we re-live all the moments of our life, but they are bunched together by activity. Therefore, we sleep for 30 years and spend six days clipping our nails. Seven months of non-stop sex. One year reading books. Twenty-seven intense hours of pain: broken bones, accidents, cuts, etc. Three weeks realizing you're wrong. You get the picture. Everything is clumped together.

Although the statistics would be interesting, it's kind of a stupid idea. As I was reading it, I protested, "But you can't just take all of these moments out of context like that." Relaxing on the couch after a long strenuous day is different from sitting on it for months at a time. But that is his point. He ends this story with the moral that we are fortunate that life is broken up into "tiny swallowable pieces." Like so many other theories in the book, it seems to point more to life than to death.

Almost every theory in the book points to one conclusion: when you die, you find out what the true nature of life and the universe is. (Which happens to be what I always hoped the afterlife would be like.) It's only that true nature that changes from story to story. There's also a very heavy Western bias in all the theories. They're mostly all about the Judeo-Christian God-- some anthropomorphized deity-- living in heaven. I had kind of hoped that the theories would be a little more out there.

The writing isn't that great, and a lot of the examples or conclusions he comes to don't make sense to me. He might have an interesting idea, but the implementation feels all wrong. For example, there's a theory about how you are represented in the afterlife by yourself at every age, so that your 5-year-old self might hang out with your 34-year-old self and your 67-year-old self. Neat idea, but then he goes on to say that many of your different selves realize they have hardly anything in common other than a name. Huh? Surely sharing the same life history and experiences counts for a strong bond, even if it's a teenager and an elderly version of yourself?

Still, as an idea book, it gets the job done. Some of his ideas are very similar to ideas I've had, and some are completely new to me. Those new and old ideas mingled and brought up new theories.

For example, as I was reading the book, I had this revelation that maybe I have already died dozens of times, but the superior being who is playing the "Game of Tim" keeps going back to an earlier saved version of the game and reviving me. I do this when I play computer games if I make a stupid fatal mistake. I go back and try again. Maybe that's what my life is like. That could explain why I'm convinced that things will work out in the end. Any fatal mistakes can be fixed by going back to an earlier saved version.

The book is a short read that can get your creative juices flowing, so I recommend it.

Shrinking Jinxes

Lately I've been rethinking my attitude toward jinxes.

Traditionally, jinxes have been an acknowledged superstition of Timicism. As it says in the Book of Timicism 3.0:

Jinxes: If you want to insure that something will never happen, think and talk about it a lot. If there's something you really want, just spend all your time obsessing about it; it will surely never come true. Whatever scenario you act out in your head for any given situation, the reality will always be different. If you plan for something, it won't happen, or not like you planned it. This goes for positive and negative scenarios. If your overactive imagination plans for the worst-case scenario, it won't happen, either. Misfortune, just like fortune, sneaks up on you.

I've always had a superstitious imagination. If I imagined something good happening (motivational gurus call this "visualization"), then I was convinced it would never happen. I would be jinxing it, and then I'd feel like a fool for ever thinking it was possible. And even if it did happen, it would never look like it did in my imagination, so it would be a disappointment.

My solution to this was to try as hard as I could to NOT think about possibilities. If there was something I really wanted (which almost always involved getting with a girl I was crushing on) I would do everything I could to NOT visualize it. Because if I visualized it, I believed I guaranteed its failure.

The Timicist position was to keep your expectations low and you won't get disappointed. That way, you're not crushed when the thing you really want doesn't happen.

I was trying to tell a friend about this recently, and she didn't understand my reasoning. Why not visualize good things? What's the worst that will happen if they don't come true? Why keep yourself from thinking good thoughts? And at least you have the good feelings that come with the visualization, even if it never comes true.

Per usual, I was defiant and kept trying to argue my position. But she planted the seed of an idea in me, and after much thinking, I realized she had a point. Why was I so afraid to imagine good things? Has this strategy actually kept me from getting disappointed?

The thing is, the "jinx" superstition doesn't even hold up to analysis. I can think of two significant times in my life where I imagined something wonderful happening, and it DID happen. And it didn't lead to a disappointment once it turned into reality. It was actually the opposite: the fantasy enhanced the reality. Because the reality is never exactly like the fantasy, so it's amazing and wonderful to see how it plays out in real life. Real things are 100 times better than fantasies, merely by the fact that they're real. Fantasies can't touch them.

It doesn't make sense to say visualizing things jinxes them, except when they don't.

So I'm officially revising theTimicist position on jinxes. Go ahead and let your imagination run wild. Even if you're a fool for getting ahead of yourself, it's better to be a fool with happy fantasies than a one who lets fear of a superstition rule his life.

Luxuriate in all the possibilities. When something you might have "jinxed" does indeed happen, it will be way better and more surprising than anything you can fantasize about.

Of course, as with everything, balance is key. Don't spend your whole life in fantasy, and don't make huge decisions based on empty hope, but also don't let fear prevent you from thinking of all the wonderful possibilities life offers.

Timicist Funerals

I recently attended a Christian funeral. The beginning was a little slow, but I did like the reading of the Bible passage from Ecclesiastes about there being a time for everything: "A time to be born and a time to die... a time to kill and a time to heal... a time to weep and a time to laugh... a time to love and a time to hate..." (You may have heard these quotes in the famous Byrd's song, "Turn, Turn, Turn.") It's one of the few parts of the Bible that really impresses me, and it speaks to the Timicist bonus principle of balance.

The most powerful part of the funeral was when people volunteered to get up and share memories and remembrances of the deceased. His children, sister, nephews, grandchildren, and friends all had touching stories to tell. There were many tears and a few laughs. I shed a few sympathetic tears of my own, even though I was not personally close to him. (Hey, I'm a Timicist, not a monster.)

I was still basking in the emotion of these testimonials, the tears drying on my cheeks, when the third minister of the service got up to speak. By now it was 2 pm, the funeral was already an hour long, and due to a promised lunch after the service, I hadn't eaten since breakfast. The third preacher apparently had something to prove over the first two, so he spent the next half hour going on and on about Jesus and the Lord and sheep and even reread some of the Bible passages the first two preachers had read, in case we had forgot them in the past hour. What was conspicuously absent from his ramblings, however, was anything about the man in the casket.

This was merely annoying, but when he started using this man's death as an opportunity to threaten me with hell fire, I was offended and completely turned off. Who the fuck does he think he is, telling us who is or isn't going to heaven based on his very narrow understanding of God? And using a captive audience to do so? I'm here trying to honor this man's life, and I have to endure an infomercial for Jesus? And, I'm fucking starving!!!

Look, I understand that for Christians who believe in heaven, it is a comfort for their loved ones to believe that their dear departed is in a better place. What I object to is using that as a springboard to telling the rest of us we won't be in a better place if we don't accept Jesus into our hearts. Because if there's one thing Mr. Smug Preacher made absolutely clear, it's that there is only one path to salvation, and it has nothing to do with good works or living like Jesus or loving God or loving your fellow human. Nope, only one thing does it, and that's accepting Jesus as God's son.

I've ranted elsewhere about why this is an absurd premise, but during the funeral I thought about the unmitigated tackiness and arrogance it takes presume you have all the answers. And to discount the worth of billions of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, secular humanists, and followers of hundreds of other religious traditions. And to take advantage of the captive audience to advance your agenda.

I also understand that this was the view of the man in the casket, and he would have wanted his death to serve as an occasion to spread the word. If even one person is drawn to Jesus from this occasion, then it was worth it. Well, what about all the people like me, who are turned off by such a display and vow to never, ever follow Jesus as long as assholes like this preacher speak for him? You could be turning away just as many people as you're helping.

You know what? When I die, I want to force everyone to sit through a two-hour lecture on logic and the scientific method.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Which brings me to my real point. Attending this funeral also got me to thinking about what a Timicist funeral would look like. So let me take this opportunity to put in writing, for my loved ones, the way(s) I would like to be honored when I die.

First of all, I want my body to be harvested for as many organs as possible. As John Prine sings, "Please don't bury me/ down in that cold, cold ground/ I'm gonna have 'em cut me up/ and pass me all around..." If my death can serve to help others, I'd rather give something concrete, like a lung, rather than scaring them into following my imaginary heroes.

Whatever's left of my body should be cremated, so as to leave the smallest possible imprint on the Earth. Actually, what I'd really like to do is be cut up and fed to chickens. Since I've eaten so much chicken in my life, it only seems fair to give back. From chicken to chicken, or something like that. Assuming Timmeat would be good for chickens.

The chickens should be free range, of course

I also wouldn't mind being composted and used to fertilize something-- a tree or flowers or phallic-shaped vegetables. But I don't know if any of that would be legal, so cremation is probably the most practical way to go. As for where to scatter my ashes, I don't have a specific place. I like mountains and scenery & stuff, so maybe some place with a nice view.

I'd like there to be a lot of crying at my funeral. Like, serious wailing and gnashing of teeth. If any of my exes want to sob in anguish and throw themselves on my urn, I wouldn't object to that. But I'd also welcome laughter. Not the dancing-on-your-grave kind of laughter, but the remembering-funny-things-I-said/did kind.

Readings from any of the following authors would be appropriate: David Sedaris, Dan Savage, Bill Bryson, John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, Nick Hornby. There could even be a reading of some of my writing. Hey, I'll be dead, I'm allowed to have an ego. But please, dear god, none of my poetry from high school.

As for music, of course John Prine's "Please Don't Bury Me" should be there. Jimmy Buffett's "I Have Found Me a Home" and "Happily Ever After (Every Now and Then.)" Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go." Barenaked Ladies' "This Is Where It Ends" and "If I Had $1000000." I'd also like They Might Be Giants' "Particle Man," but only if I die before my brother Dan, who also wants this song at his funeral.

Absolutely no one will be lectured at my funeral about how to live their life.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

The problem with being a corpsezilla and trying to plan your own funeral is that is it the ultimate reliquishment of control. I won't be there to make sure all goes as planned. For the control freak, his funeral is a final, unwilling act of letting go. So do whatever you want. I've said my peace, and when the time comes, I hope I can go rest in it.

Atheist Fight!

I have an uncomfortable relationship with atheists.

On the one hand, I essentially live my life as an atheist. That is, I don't let the possible existence of a higher power influence my thinking as I go about my life. I believe in science and reason and think that religion has done a lot of bad things to hold them back.

On the other hand, I wish so many of the atheists I knew weren't complete assholes about it.

I recently got into an argument on Facebook with an atheist friend of mine. He's what I like to call a fundamentalist atheist, because he's just as obnoxious about his religious views as the most annoying closed-minded Christians.

It all started when he said Martin Luther King "made a career perpetuating the biggest prank in history." To be fair, he did add that King was a "force for good" despite this. But he still thinks that because MLK was a minister and believed in god, his career was a joke.

I objected. Although I know that religion can be illogical and harmful at times, I'm also able to recognize that sometimes it can be a force for good. So many people I know (or know of) who dedicate their life to helping others-- who really make the world a better place-- do it out of a sense of obligation to their spiritual beliefs. I don't think you can discount that power.

But my friend does. According to him, religion is "a force for evil in this world, it has caused death and hardship beyond any other cause. Any good done in the 'name' of religion is actually done in spite of the evil that is religion."

Wow. That is scary extreme. Replace the word religion in that statement with, say, homosexuality or Judaism or Harry Potter... and what does it sound like?

I don't believe that religion is some external evil that has been forced on human kind any more than war or xenophobia or eating meat has been forced on us. Religion is part of who we are. Scientists have discovered the part of the brain involved with spiritual experiences ("feeling god"), just like there are parts of the brain for music or language. It's hard-wired into us. I'm happy that our culture continues to move toward a more rational explanation of how the world works, but anyone who thinks that religion has NEVER EVER EVER inspired a single person to treat someone else more humanely-- well, they're just being willfully obstinate toward the observable facts. It almost feels like my atheist friend wants to deny that religion exists at all.

Yes, religion is often irrational, but so is human behavior. The annoying thing about some atheists is the smugness with which they dismiss the human experience, without acknowledging that they themselves also have irrational beliefs and behaviors. No human is completely logical.

Fundamentalist atheists, just like fundamentalist believers, like to set up strawman arguments that all religious people have (or should have) the exact same beliefs.

I believe it's not an all or nothing thing, there's a spectrum of ways to believe, from literal to metaphorical, that many hardcore atheists ignore.

So it's disturbing to me that, although I agree with my atheist friend on the nature of god, we disagree radically on the nature of religion.

The Klugey Commandments

Timicism has a new Bible.

Well, sort of. The whole concept of a Bible is antithetical to Timicism, since no one book, person, or source can be the ultimate authority. But if Timicism had a Bible, its current incarnation would be a book written by Psychology professor Gary Marcus titled Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind.

I won't say that this book changed my life so much as it confirmed it. It confirmed many of the ideas and theories I already had about human behavior and the nature of the universe. (Fittingly, "confirmation bias" is one of the the forces at work in our brains that the book reaffirms.)

Citing study after study after study after study, Marcus shows how people make decisions based on irrelevant factors. We are not necessarily rational, even when we are deliberative. He chalks this up to the klugey way that our brains evolved. "We are just not born to reason in balanced ways," he writes.

There is way too much good stuff in the book to process out here on my blog, so I will just present Marcus' 13 "suggestions" to deal with our imperfect brains. Many of these suggestions correspond with my own Timicist principles. I'll call them my 13 Kluge Commandments-- with the caveat that they're not really commandments-- because I like the reference to that other religion and the [K]-sound alliteration.

The 13 Kluge Commandments (excerpted directly from Kluge, pgs. 165-172.)

1. Whenever possible, consider alternative hypotheses.
2. Reframe the question.
3. Always remember that correlation does not entail causation.
4. Never forget the size of your sample.
   
5. Anticipate your own impulsivity and pre-commit.
   
6. Don't just set goals. Make contingency plans.
7. Whenever possible, don't make important decisions when you are tired or have other things on your mind. [This one deserves an asterisk.]
8. Always weigh benefits against costs.
9. Imagine that your decisions may be spot-checked.
10. Distance yourself.
11. Beware the vivid, the personal, and the anecdotal.
12. Pick your spots.
13. Try to be rational.

For copyright reasons, I don't want to quote more than this from Marcus' book. But each of these points make a lot more sense after you've read it. I encourage any Timicists out there to buy, or at least read, the new Timicist "bible."

Things That Are Doing It

Let me preface this completely juvenile post with the following insight: Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. Organizing non-identical shapes into patterns and symbols helps us to speak, understand, read, and write. It helped our ancestors to identify dangers in the wild.

This propensity for pattern-seeking has some interesting side effects, though, like when we see a family of ducklings in a cloud or a pineapple in a Rorschach test. Some times it gets downright wacky, and people who think about Jesus all day become convinced they've seen him in a pancake.

With that in mind, here's a website I stumbled upon recently: Things That Are Doing It.


The site has all kinds of fun pictures that, if you are a 12-year-old boy like me, you think are dirty. Some of them are not in any way intended to be dirty, but if you have "doing it" on the brain, you start seeing it everywhere. Like, for example, this Russian graph:

Oh, yeah, that blue line totally wants it bad.

There are a whole lot of pics of everyday things that resemble naughty bits:


Some of them are obviously designed to be dirty:

And some of them, it's just puzzling what the hell they were intended to be:


My favorites are the unintentionally inappropriate ones:


And my very favorite one of all? Jesus "enlightens" the little children:


It's really hard to fathom how the designer of this light switch could have been so naive. I have to believe it was someone so blissfully awash in thoughts of The Lord that they couldn't conceive of Jesus even having a penis, much less sharing it with the beautiful children. Someone who lived in a world far, far removed from priest molestation scandals, or things that do it in public.

Yay, Evolution

The official Timicist position on evolution can be read at the Timblog here: http://tim4814.blogspot.com/2010/04/yay-evolution.html.

April Honest Day

New Timicist Holiday:

April 5: April Honest Day

In response to that other April holiday where people take great joy in lying to, and making fools of, the people they love, this is a holiday dedicated to NOT making up stupid shit.

On this day you are encouraged to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.


For more background on this holiday, see this Timblog post.

New Proverb

A new Timicist proverb that I read on a pencil at the UU church:

Unanswered questions are far less dangerous than unquestioned answers.

John Shelby Spong: Honorary Timicist

Through my connections to the Unitarian wing of the Timicist movement (or vice-versa, it's really a chicken-and-egg thing), I discovered a brilliant essay by John Shelby Spong, an Episcopal bishop.

"Spong" is much more than just an awesome last name. His essay masterfully puts homophobia in its place, equating it with all the other misguided ways people have used the Bible to oppress minorities throughout our history.

Some excerpts:

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone...

I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery...

The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church...

I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection....

Full text here. I highly recommend it.

Timicism would like to go on record as saying, "hell yeah, you go, Spong!"

Every word of this manifesto fits with Timicism. For his dedication to truth, fairness, harmlessness, and love, I would like to extend an honorary Timicist title (of his choosing) to John Shelby Spong.

Might I recommend the "Sponginator?"

The Timicist Unitarian

So I spent all this time devising and crafting Timicism 3.0, and I come to find out it already exists.

It turns out that Timicism is just a brand of Unitarian Universalism (UU). We're not identical on all the the specifics, but the basic gist of both is the same: find your own path, respect others, borrow from all the religions, use reason and science.

I wonder if they'd be willing to merge with me? TUU: Timicism Unitarian Universalist? UTU? UUT?

I suppose the T should go last, since I was the last to join the party. I'm all about humility and fairness, after all.

Timicist Buzzwords

Paring down all my beliefs into five words (Self, Fairness, Humor, Harmlessness, Love) was a difficult task. And I'll admit that the five words themselves don't do the best job of capturing their corresponding tenet. I believe in the tenets, I'm just not sure they are all labeled correctly.

So here is the expanded list of buzzwords that represent Timicism:

Truth
Think
Self
Fairness
Skepticism
Question
Logic
Consistency
Accuracy
Humility
Humor
Laugh
Harmlessness
Love
Touch
Sex
Balance

These are the ingredients that make up the Timicist word soup.

Brainless Christian Pumpkins

A devout Christian in my family sent me the following email:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From one pumpkin to another!!!!!!!

A woman was asked by a coworker,
'What is it like to be a Christian?'

The coworker replied, 'It is like being a pumpkin.' God picks you from the patch, brings you in, and washes all the dirt off of you.
Then He cuts off the top and scoops out all the yucky stuff. He removes the seeds of doubt, hate, and greed. Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside of you to shine for all the world to see.'

This was passed on to me by another pumpkin.
Now it's your turn to pass it to other pumpkins.

I liked this enough to send it to all the pumpkins in my patch.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

So God will open up your head, scoop out your brains, and carve a permanent smile on your face? To a thinking person, that's not a selling point. I'm half wondering if this wasn't intended to be satire, with the message being: In order to believe in God, you have to have a lobotomy.

This just proves that some Christians will use any image, no matter how horrifying or inappropriate, to talk about God.