The Ebay bonus

[older]

I bought some stuff off Ebay and the seller's screen name was obviously Christian related as it was just a reference to some Bible verses. So I get the package and product is fine. As I pull out all the packing material, at the bottom of the box is a religious tract titled, "All God's Creatures?" Well, I'm not triggered by this shit so I thought I'd take a look just to see what's in it. I otherwise don't encounter these things; I turn them down on the rare occasions when I encounter a street preacher and where we live we don't get these folks knocking on the door. 

 

This thing is horrific. It's a little cartoon book obviously aimed at children. It's all about a young boy whose cartoon image looks perhaps 8 or 10 years old. His grandfather is being very grumpy and bossy, and after a few interactions the boy quotes the Bible, "As it is written There is none righteous, no, not one." And then he says, "That means everyone is in trouble with God."

 

He quotes another bit and then says, "Not one of us is good enough to go to heaven!" [All the boldface and italics was in the booklet.]

 

There's some more of this bullshit that I won't bother to quote, and then the little bastard says, "Sorry, Grandpa, 'We ought to obey God rather than men.' And I have to tell you — you are on your way to hell!"

 

Grampa says, "I know he's right. If I died tonight, I'd drop straight to hell. I'm scared to death! What do I do?"

 

There's more of this bullshit and obviously, at the end Grampa repents and is saved. The booklet closes with three questions for the reader:

• Do you admit that you are a sinner?

• Do you believe Jesus died for pay for your sins?

• Did you ask Him to forgive you and come into your heart?

 

Nobody else can save you. Trust Jesus today!

 

 

The asshole in me says I should respond to the seller with one of the four questions I posted here: https://www.ex-christian.net/topic/87102-four-questions-for-christians/

and perhaps make a comment in the Ebay feedback that the tract was uncalled for and not welcome. But I'm not going to do that, it solves nothing and just makes me as big of a jerk as this seller is. But nevertheless, how could anyone put this shit onto children? Regardless of whether I were a Christian or not, there is no way I'd let one of my kids read this. No wonder many of you consider Christianity to be a form of child abuse.

[Casualfanboy16]

I get religious tracts at my job telling me if I don't repent I'm gonna go to Hell and hear the moans, wails and screams of the damned as they burn alive in Hell for all eternity, so I can kinda relate to this lmao. Sometimes I find them lying around, other times I get handed them to me directly, like, thanks?????

[Wertbag]

When I first came across Chick Tracts I thought they were satire.  I couldn't imagine anyone actually believing this nonsense, until I spoke to many of the crazies out there and came to realise that they are really serious about this stuff.  I think the best thing about them is that they are so bad they are more likely to drive people away from religion than towards it.  If you already believe, then maybe you can get onboard with the message, but if you are not then the bat shit crazy messages will make you run far away from these types of people.

 

[older]

What bothers me the most, Wertbag, is that this thing is aimed at children. They don't have much of an option to walk away like an adult could. If your mother-in-law buys into this, it's her thing. But some 8-year-old kid whose view of the world is controlled by others can, and certainly has been, be seriously screwed up from this. Every young kid has various fears; being afraid of the dark, terrified of lightening and thunder, or scary science fiction shows. To pile on the notion of hell is nothing short of child abuse.

[mwc]

     Here's a link to that tract.

 

          mwc

 

[Casualfanboy16]

One time I looked up the website on the back of a tract out of morbid curiosity and lemme tell you the mental whiplash I felt finding Halloween tracts, 3D motion tracts, and other tracts of various kinds. I checked the Halloween tract and it had a word search and everything for kids to fill out before it got to the preachy shit and I found it so funny. 

 

There was this other tract I received. I don't remember the exact title, but it was this little girl telling this other little girl about her new best friend Jesus. Yup. It's even funnier because I thought that the art style looked like a knockoff Junji Ito manga and reading it gave me tons of laughs. The best thing I do is just read them to my coworkers and make fun of them lmao.

[older]

Thanks, MWC, for the link. All I have to say is Holy Shit!  I checked out a couple of others and this stuff is bat-shit crazy.

 

 

[Casualfanboy16]

44 minutes ago, older said:

Thanks, MWC, for the link. All I have to say is Holy Shit!  I checked out a couple of others and this stuff is bat-shit crazy.

 

 

It really is!! I read this tract here and I'm losing my shit. This page in particular with the gay guys here is both horribly concerning and anger inducing and at the same time so absurdly hilarious. I fucking hate homophobia, but laughing at it hysterically just diminishes the pain. This panel is so fucking stupid. Oh nOoOo! Not the scary gay people!!! Marriage is ruined!!!!

 

I've gotten to a point where this rapture shit just makes me laugh hysterically!! I'm healing!!

 

[older]

33 minutes ago, Casualfanboy16 said:

I've gotten to a point where this rapture shit just makes me laugh hysterically!! I'm healing!!

Glad you're healing.

 

What is scary is that these people are trying to influence our government and they succeed from time to time. (I recall the quote from Victor Hugo: “I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”) I don't care what people do behind closed doors, and as long as it's consensual and doesn't affect others. But when they try to put it onto others through social pressure and legislative fiat, they've crossed a line. And a concerning number of them have said that they are willing to use force if necessary.

[Casualfanboy16]

23 minutes ago, older said:

I don't care what people do behind closed doors, and as long as it's consensual and doesn't affect others. But when they try to put it onto others through social pressure and legislative fiat, they've crossed a line. And a concerning number of them have said that they are willing to use force if necessary.

Religious influence on government scares the fuck out of me. I just want to be able to live my life and get married and shit and have other people like me have rights. Religion and politics don't mix well. I may be a bit behind in terms of certain political stuff, but since politics,  more often than not, intertwines with people's religious beliefs, I sometimes worry that the US may become more and more theocratic as years go by. Religion already has such an influence in so many ways, even with the decline. We don't need it anymore. Just let me be gay in peace. You can worship all you want, but don't try to bring us heathens into this, thanks lmao.

 

Edit: oh wait or are you talking about gay people with the "as long as it's consensual and doesn't affect others" line and I've just massively misinterpreted the sentence? I'm doing like 3 things at once right now I might've taken that wrong??

[♦ Fuego ♦]

I found them in a porta-potty recently. Guess where they went?

 

[older]

1 hour ago, Casualfanboy16 said:

Edit: oh wait or are you talking about gay people with the "as long as it's consensual and doesn't affect others" line and I've just massively misinterpreted the sentence? I'm doing like 3 things at once right now I might've taken that wrong??

I was referring to religion. But I do extend that to anything that people might do that does no harm. 

[Casualfanboy16]

37 minutes ago, older said:

I was referring to religion. But I do extend that to anything that people might do that does no harm. 

Oh okay. I just second guessed myself and ended up misinterpreting.

 

Anyway, I found that horrible chick tract about being best friends with Jesus here. I recieved it at work.

[Casualfanboy16]

1 hour ago, Fuego said:

I found them in a porta-potty recently. Guess where they went?

 

C'mon, @Fuego! The poor porta-potty didn't do anything to deserve that!

[older]

1 hour ago, Fuego said:

I found them in a porta-potty recently. Guess where they went?

 

 

5 minutes ago, Casualfanboy16 said:

C'mon, @Fuego! The poor porta-potty didn't do anything to deserve that!

This suggest an interesting counteroffensive. Make up a bunch of tracts that look similar from the outside but that are about the various contradictions in the Bible, presenting them in such a way to cause the readers discomfort. 

[Casualfanboy16]

4 minutes ago, older said:

 

This suggest an interesting counteroffensive. Make up a bunch of tracts that look similar from the outside but that are about the various contradictions in the Bible, presenting them in such a way to cause the readers discomfort. 

I was gonna say that!! Like, make them look eerily similar to the chick tract art style too for added effect. For even more added effect, make the website on the tract of a similar format to the chick tract website. The anti-tract!!

[Casualfanboy16]

Another time I found a tract that was like in the form of fake money. It was left on the ground and when you turned it over it just got all preachy. The funny thing is, I was so pissed. Not because of the fact it was fake, but because the moral lesson of the tract was about lust in like the sexual sense and not greed. You had the perfect opportunity to talk about greed!!! The tract was literally a fake $1 Million!!! If I can come up with a better tract than the person/people who made it, then they might as well give up.

[Wertbag]

"God was sorry He had made mankind because they had become so rotten.  Everything was totally evil, so He destroyed everything that lived on the Earth"

Killing all those evil babies and even evil unborn, cos screw those guys, and don't even get me started on how evil the sheep were, those guys needed to be wiped out!

 

"Today's conditions are the same as it was in the days of Noah!"

So, the mass genocide achieved nothing?  Within a few thousand years everything returned to exactly how God knew it would be, rendering all of the killing pointless?

 

Even the page "Life as it is today" doesn't match what most of us see around us.  We work jobs, raise kids, play, laugh and enjoy life.  There are bad people out there, but luckily most of us in the western world can live in relative peace and happiness.  I see that hatred on the page and just can't relate that to my own life, it's an alien world to me.

 

But of all of it probably the least likely line is that there will be a leader who unifies all of the world religions and operates from the Vatican.  Now that would be a miracle!

[Casualfanboy16]

17 hours ago, mwc said:

     Here's a link to that tract.

 

          mwc

 

I just went through this tract again just because. There's so much wrong with this. So far we've got...

 

1. Children proselytizing and also converting people?? Uhm... what?

 

2. Nonbelievers being put in a bad light, making them seem like shitty people. Also the fact it sort of conflates non-belief with anti-theism. The grandpa didn't really seem like he didn't believe. He said he knew when he died he was going to hell, so it just seems like they're also saying that non-believers really do believe deep down and are scared of going to Hell (although depending on what stage of deconversion you're at it technically may be true).

 

3. The art style is a wrong within itself. I know art is subjective, but the main characters are so horribly drawn. Then the grandpa seemingly looks worse in comparison because he's the siNnEr. Also It feels weird because some ways people are drawn in this don't look half bad, while other times the characters look like knockoff Junji Ito protagonists.

 

There's just so much wrong with it from the art style, to the shitty morals and lessons and all this stuff. The list would be too big if I were to go through the list of wrongs.

[mwc]

16 hours ago, Casualfanboy16 said:

I just went through this tract again just because. There's so much wrong with this. So far we've got...

 

1. Children proselytizing and also converting people?? Uhm... what?

 

2. Nonbelievers being put in a bad light, making them seem like shitty people. Also the fact it sort of conflates non-belief with anti-theism. The grandpa didn't really seem like he didn't believe. He said he knew when he died he was going to hell, so it just seems like they're also saying that non-believers really do believe deep down and are scared of going to Hell (although depending on what stage of deconversion you're at it technically may be true).

 

3. The art style is a wrong within itself. I know art is subjective, but the main characters are so horribly drawn. Then the grandpa seemingly looks worse in comparison because he's the siNnEr. Also It feels weird because some ways people are drawn in this don't look half bad, while other times the characters look like knockoff Junji Ito protagonists.

 

There's just so much wrong with it from the art style, to the shitty morals and lessons and all this stuff. The list would be too big if I were to go through the list of wrongs.

     You're just scratching the surface with all the problems.  I'm pretty sure Jack Chick is dead...lemme check...yep he died in 2016.  I don't know if he wrote those tracts but another guy illustrated them.

 

     They're just terrible little booklets.  I've personally only ran into them in bathrooms off the interstate.  People liked to put stacks of them on the hand towel dispensers.  Just what everyone needs.  A little damp preachy booklet.

 

          mwc

 

[Casualfanboy16]

26 minutes ago, mwc said:

They're just terrible little booklets.  I've personally only ran into them in bathrooms off the interstate.  People liked to put stacks of them on the hand towel dispensers.  Just what everyone needs.  A little damp preachy booklet.

Well hey, if you run out of hand towels... or TP, they'll come in real handy!

[older]

If you've stayed in hotels perhaps you've found the Gideon Bibles in the bedside drawers. I haven't seen any lately; perhaps they don't do that anymore. But these Bibles had some pages in the front put together by the Gideons with suggested readings and statements about the Gideons. I decided to put one together that looked just like one of those, using the same typeface and graphic design, and make reference to some of the horrible things in the Bible. By making this the same page size I could print it out and paste it into the Gideon Bible so it would look like it was part of the book. I admit to doing that a few times in hotels, just to be a troublemaker. I still have the file but can't post it here because for some reason the site won't let me post graphics, but here's the content:

 

This Bible was placed by

The Gideons International Who was Gideon?

Gideon was a man who was willing to do exactly what God wanted him to do, regardless of his own judgment as to the plans or results. Humility, faith, and obedience were his great elements of character. This is the standard that The Gideons International is trying to establish in all its members, each man to be ready to do God's will at any time, at any place, and in any way that the Holy Spirit leads.

Read Judges 6 – 9 and see what a great man Gideon was:

• He showed strength of character by keeping slaves (6:27, 8:31, 9:18)
• He honored God’s tolerance and love by sneaking out in the middle of the night and destroying an altar belonging to someone else’s

religion (6:25–32)
•He followed his faith by using treachery to kill over a hundred

thousand people and behead their leaders (7:9–25)
• He was ready to do God’s will and destroyed a town and killed all the

officials because they wouldn’t help him fight his war (8:4–21)
• He showed his great humility by collecting all the gold plundered by his troops and made it into ceremonial clothes for himself (8:23–29)

• He demonstrated “Christian values” by being a polygamist (8:30)
• He revealed more of his great character by having sex with one of his

slaves (8:31, 9:18)

The Roman Catholic Church has elevated Gideon to sainthood. What better honor for a polygamous, vain, slave-owning butcher?

[Wertbag]

And that's where the old saying that the bible is the best selling book in history comes from.  Groups like the Gideons buy a million copies and give them away.  

I have a few bibles in storage, every single one was a hand me down or give away.

[older]

7 hours ago, Wertbag said:

And that's where the old saying that the bible is the best selling book in history comes from.  Groups like the Gideons buy a million copies and give them away.  

I have a few bibles in storage, every single one was a hand me down or give away.

  

Here's some more info on this, from a travel website. Imagine what good things could be done if the $100 million spent on this was used to feed hungry people, or was sent to Doctors Without Borders?

 

 

According to the LA Times, Gideon International spends approximately $100 million a year on distributing Bibles to all of the different locations (not just hotels). In case you were not clear, hotels do not pay for the Bibles.  The Bibles are “provided through donations from church offerings and individuals.”

The Gideons are super efficient at distributing Bibles.
According to some reports, as of 2015 they had distributed over 2 billion Bibles and it is estimated that they distribute more than two copies of the Bible per second!

According to the STR survey conducted every two years in coordination with the American Hotel & Lodging Association, the number of hotels providing Bibles has been on a downward trend.
Based on service in the last few years, the percentage of hotels that offer religious materials in rooms dropped from 95% of hotels in 2006 to 48% in 2016.
Some sources question these numbers based on incomplete reporting but it seems pretty clear that wherever the actual numbers stand, there has been a very steady downward trend in hotels that offer religious texts in rooms.

 

(https://www.uponarriving.com/hotel-rooms-bibles/)

 

[Casualfanboy16]

On 9/19/2023 at 12:05 PM, mwc said:

     You're just scratching the surface with all the problems.  I'm pretty sure Jack Chick is dead...lemme check...yep he died in 2016.  I don't know if he wrote those tracts but another guy illustrated them.

 

     They're just terrible little booklets.  I've personally only ran into them in bathrooms off the interstate.  People liked to put stacks of them on the hand towel dispensers.  Just what everyone needs.  A little damp preachy booklet.

 

          mwc

 

You're never gonna believe what I found in the bathroom at work today