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Silly oblivious theists

Here's a place to post your story of theists being humorously oblivious, un-self-aware, or cognitively dissonant. I'll start off with one of my own.

Yesterday I was driving around my mother-in-law and brother-in-law, both of who are Mormon (though my brother-in-law is a very bad Mormon). They're both involved in theater, and somehow the topic got onto theater superstitions - not refering to Macbeth by name, not whistling in a dressing room, not saying the last line of the play until opening night, etc.

They were saying how they don't really believe in those things, and my mother-in-law said "let's face it, I'm just not a superstitious person". I had to bite my tongue and focus on not guffawing or driving off the road. Then my brother in law started explaining why the Macbeth curse is just confirmation bias...I wondered why they couldn't apply the same skeptical eye to their own superstitions, but I didn't actually ask it outloud - I'd prefer if my wife didn't kill me, after all. ;-D

So, how about your stories?

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Permalink Reply by Skraeling on March 22, 2010 at 11:03pm

I've a sort of one - a lady I used to work with was a born again christian, thankfully she didn't harp on about it..

As an aside, bear in mind that this is in Texas - the store management had impressed upon her NOT to try and convert any employees. Pretty astounding when you think about it.

.. but she seemed so proud one day when she told me that she knew a way to fool the electricity meter at her house, and did so, to reduce her power bill.

Umm... "Thou shalt not steal"?

She was also amazingly racist, and I had a sequence of questions lined up for her for the next time she went off on a rant, but she left before I got the chance.

Basically she didn't trust anybody who was any shade of brown. So I was going to ask her if she trusted Pakistanis, expecting her to say no - then ask if she trusted arabians or anyone else from the middle east, hoping she'd say "no".

Then I'd have asked her ..so, what race was jesus? And just watch.

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Permalink Reply by Brandon P on March 22, 2010 at 11:09pm

For a lot of people, "stealing" means picking up an item and walking away with it. Complicated things like fraud or falsification go right over their head - along with concepts like irony and hypocrisy.

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer Nicole on March 28, 2010 at 11:55am

Jesus was white. All the pictures of him show it, so it must be true. It's actually funny how people refuse to accept that the current image of Jesus was created by Florentine artists based on their own appearance. I think it was Florentine.

It's assumed now that Jesus was a typical Middle Eastern, but there are other race theories. It's possible she believes one of the alternatives. For some of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_of_Jesus

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Permalink Reply by Rusty Gunn. on March 28, 2010 at 12:19pm

Well........well.........well..........Jesus was WHITE! (Wasn't he?)

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Permalink Reply by Brandon P on March 22, 2010 at 11:16pm

I also know this teenager who hates christianity, but he KNOWS that Wicca is true and right.
To be fair though, the kid's got some problems and is working through a rebellious stage. I also try to cut Wiccans some slack in general because the rule of three means they generally aren't dicks.

But still, the whole "Christianity is bollocks and obviously untrue, but [insert new-agey thing] is totally awesome and the answer to all of life's secrets" is really prevalent in my area, and it drives me nuts. I prefer hippy woo to fundie woo, but come on, look at yourself objectively for just a moment...