A Smug Little Atheist

Saying for the Day: It is easy to be smug when you know that everybody else is wrong.

Back to the archive box and here is the baptismal certificate of my brother Robert. It was Robert’s death when I was nine years old that convinced me there was no God.
From that point until just before I entered high school I was an atheist. I knew, for sure, there was no God.
Those people who believed in God were either deluded or stupid.
I was a smug little atheist. I knew that the answer to the world’s problems was science not religion. I knew that those of us who didn’t believe were smarter than those who did.
My mother kept sending us to Sunday school and because she was suffering so much from Robert’s death I never argued with her. I did upset the poor teacher, however. She was a nice old lady who really loved God. I would say things in class like “ only a fool could believe these silly stories”. She put up with me. I think I was her cross to bear.
When I was in eighth grade my Lutheran grandfather decided I should go to Confirmation. I loved grandpa John and would do anything he asked. He came out to the farm every Saturday and brought me in to the church for class. I was never so bored in all my life. Class lasted for two hours with a ten minute break between the hours. Once during that ten minute break I got into a fight with another student and we knocked the clock off the wall and broke it. We never told the Pastor who did it.
I ended up getting Confirmed while being more convinced than ever that there was no God. I felt like a real hypocrite taking Confirmation gifts and not believing. But I took them.
So I am at this point a Confirmed Lutheran Atheist. How I get from there to Christian by the miracle of grace I’ll tell you next week.

@@@@
News from Pigeon Falls ( If there is one)– Well today was the day of the big town meeting. It was all anybody talked about all day. Nancy heard every crazy theory you could think of as to what the meeting was about. One lady even suggested that the mayor knew the Bishop had killed his wife and was going to announce it. But at meeting time , nobody seemed to know the real purpose.
At 4:00 Mayor south called the meeting to order and there were over 200 people there. She thanked them all for coming and then began the meeting with the following prepared statement.
“ Pigeon Falls is now in the worst crisis of its existence. In fact when this is all done there may be no Pigeon Falls. At least no Pigeon Falls as we know and love it. In attempting to answer a tax question posed by the Bishop we have discovered that we do not seem to have either a Charter or a constitution. People can remember the Charter hanging on the wall of the Town Hall but though there is a spot on the wall that looks like something was hung there ( the paint around it has faded) no Charter hangs there now. Further the Constitution which we thought was in the file drawer is not there. Nobody can remember the last time we looked at. We have gone for years and years just doing things the way they were always done and nobody asked questions. I have been to Lansing but there doesn’t seem to be a copy on file. There must have been at one time because we have a sales tax number and they have taken millage from us as a community. Somebody there thinks it might be in some box in the basement of the capital. They are searching for it.
But at this point we do not know what we can and can’t do. We don’t even know if we were elected properly. Until this can be resolved I and the entire council are resigning. Pigeon Falls now has no government and seems to have no legal existence . We will continue to try to work this out.
She then left the podium. There was a stunned silence. People wondered what this would mean to them in terms of everyday life.
In the midst of all of this another pigeon was found dead . Somebody had run it through a wood chipper. It was one horrible mess. Our own little Nancy Drew can not come too soon.
Somebody said that they saw a Canadian web site were they were giving lessons to pigeons on how to poop on people. Canadians creating little pigeon terrorists who would have believed it. Perhaps it is defense against the Pigeon Falls pigeon killer.
*****

A fairly good day. I got the trestle from yesterday finished and built another one today. The lawn man came and cutr the grass. Betty got the last of the flowers in before the rain came. Bettyw ent to Bible study. I need a breathing treatment.
GBYA