From: "Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]"
<FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
To: "FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 7, 2014 2:51 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Some of the embarrassing things believers pray to
their God FOR
RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of
the Unknowable.
PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single
petitioner confessedly unworthy.
—Ambrose
Bierce (1906)
MORE AMBROSIA:
CLAIRVOYANT, n. A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that
which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is a blockhead.
CONVENT, n. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate
upon the vice of idleness.
DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm,
Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and
daughters.
DIVINATION, n. The art of nosing out the occult. Divination is of as many kinds
as there are fruit-bearing varieties of the flowering dunce and the early fool.
ESOTERIC, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient
philosophies were of two kinds,—exoteric, those that the philosophers
themselves could partly understand, and esoteric, those that nobody could
understand. It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought
and found greatest acceptance in our time.
EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense)
such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.
FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without
knowledge, of things without parallel.
GHOST, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.
HEATHEN, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he
can see and feel.
HEAVEN, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their
personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.
HEBREW, n. A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an altogether
superior creation.
HOPE, n. Desire and expectation rolled into one.
INFIDEL, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in
Constantinople, one who does. (See GIAOUR.) A kind of scoundrel imperfectly
reverent of, and niggardly contributory to, divines, ecclesiastics, popes,
parsons, canons, monks, mollahs, voodoos, presbyters, hierophants, prelates,
obeah-men, abbes, nuns, missionaries, exhorters, deacons, friars, hadjis,
high-priests, muezzins, brahmins, medicine-men, confessors, eminences, elders,
primates, prebendaries, pilgrims, prophets, imaums, beneficiaries, clerks,
vicars-choral, archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, preachers, padres,
abbotesses, caloyers, palmers, curates, patriarchs, bonezs, santons, beadsmen,
canonesses, residentiaries, diocesans, deans, subdeans, rural deans, abdals,
charm-sellers, archdeacons, hierarchs, class-leaders, incumbents, capitulars,
sheiks, talapoins, postulants, scribes, gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers,
sextons, reverences, revivalists, cenobites,
perpetual curates, chaplains, mudjoes, readers, novices, vicars, pastors,
rabbis, ulemas, lamas, sacristans, vergers, dervises, lectors, church wardens,
cardinals, prioresses, suffragans, acolytes, rectors, cures, sophis, mutifs and
pumpums.
MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin,
early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true
accounts which it invents later.
PANTHEISM, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the
doctrine that God is everything.
PHILOSOPHY, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously.
REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the
cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.
REVELATION, n. A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he
knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.
ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They Are.
SACRED, adj. Dedicated to some religious purpose; having a divine character;
inspiring solemn thoughts or emotions; as, the Dalai Lama of Thibet; the Moogum
of M'bwango; the temple of Apes in Ceylon; the Cow in India; the Crocodile, the
Cat and the Onion of ancient Egypt; the Mufti of Moosh; the hair of the dog
that bit Noah, etc.
SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the
false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement.
SELF-EVIDENT, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else.
SELFISH, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
SYCOPHANT, n. One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be
commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor.
WITCH, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the
devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league
beyond the devil.
________________________________
From: "TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]"
<FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
To: "FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 7, 2014 11:56 AM
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Some of the embarrassing things believers pray to
their God FOR
If this survey is anywhere near accurate, it looks to me as if believers (or
American believers, anyway) are a bunch of hypocrites and slackers and vengeful
psychopaths. At the very least, they're more honest with a telephone pollster
than they are with their supposedly omniscient God.
This is how many religious people are willing to admit to a pollster that they
actively mislead God
This is how many religious people are willing to admit t...
A new poll has some surprising findings about Americans who say they pray
regularly.
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