Gutter Phoenix posted:

Pershing posted:

His autobiography is one of the reasons I became a Christian...that and Kevin Smith's Dogma.

Heath posted:

You became a Christian because of Dogma? I thought most people went the other way around.

Pershing posted:

His autobiography is one of the reasons I became a Christian...that and Kevin Smith's Dogma.

Tiggum posted:

What were you before you became Christian? Like, did you go from not believing in God to being convinced that he's real? If so, how? Genuine question. I'm not sure how to phrase this so it doesn't come across as disingenuous but I'm actually interested.

Tiggum posted:

What were you before you became Christian? Like, did you go from not believing in God to being convinced that he's real? If so, how? Genuine question. I'm not sure how to phrase this so it doesn't come across as disingenuous but I'm actually interested.

Pershing posted:

I had had some incidental exposure to Christianity growing up thru my grandparents who were members of the Church of Christ denomination. My mom had rebelled after eloping with my dad and left my grandparents' church all together for a variety of reasons. My dad's side of the family had a vague, non-practicing Christian background. I was not given any kind of Christian upbringing other than rare Sunday School trips while visiting my grandparents.

It wasn't so much that I 'didn't believe in God' but more that I didn't think that the Christian churches around me were not my type of people? Like, the impression that I got of the Christians in my area (we're talking southern Protestant Christianity) was that they were very judgmental, very much working from an 'us against them' mindset...and they all looked the same, dressed the same, acted the same...I didn't feel I could fit in with them even if I tried. There was a standard in that Christianity that I was never going to meet.

Tiggum posted:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm getting from this is that you always believed in the Christian god, you just didn't identify with any particular denomination? Or at least believed in a single creator deity, even if it wasn't specifically Jesus.

Pershing posted:

No, I didn't have a belief. It was present in the culture I was operating in, so it soaked in to some of the day to day surroundings of my life (Christmas gifts, that kind of stuff). But I didn't really have a belief in God as such. I knew of those beliefs, however.

Pershing posted:

I'll try to throw some books in this post so that I stay remotely on topic.

I had had some incidental exposure to Christianity growing up thru my grandparents who were members of the Church of Christ denomination. My mom had rebelled after eloping with my dad and left my grandparents' church all together for a variety of reasons. My dad's side of the family had a vague, non-practicing Christian background. I was not given any kind of Christian upbringing other than rare Sunday School trips while visiting my grandparents.

It wasn't so much that I 'didn't believe in God' but more that I didn't think that the Christian churches around me were not my type of people? Like, the impression that I got of the Christians in my area (we're talking southern Protestant Christianity) was that they were very judgmental, very much working from an 'us against them' mindset...and they all looked the same, dressed the same, acted the same...I didn't feel I could fit in with them even if I tried. There was a standard in that Christianity that I was never going to meet.

In my early adulthood I had some trying times and some losses...I had the first experience of people close to me dying. I had this feeling that I needed more from my life to deal with all this so I tried to look around for some sort of spiritual framework. I played around for a while with the Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying, it was somewhat helpful but didn't really touch me. After that it was a lot of freethought kind of stuff, like Carl Sagan books and Michael Shermer and reading Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

That last bit got shot to pieces one night when I was reading Christopher Hitchens' Letters To A Young Contrarion. He's got this part in there about being an atheist and dealing with existential crises...I'm probably butchering this now but it boiled down to "well, you'll have some nights where it's like you in a ship alone on the ocean...that'll suck but hey you'll get thru it". That was the exact opposite of what I needed so I put him down, first time I ever threw a book in the trash.

Later that same month I was at my sister in law's wedding Mass. Halfway thru the service I had this...~feeling~ inside myself and I went, "yeah...I could be Catholic!". That pretty quickly turned into terror all like "Oh my God, Catholicism?!?". I was sick to my stomach for the rest of the day from worry about what could come next...I left the wedding early and blamed it on feeling sick from the heat. After that, I wrote the priest who had been presiding and he mailed me a copy of Dorothy Day's The Long Loneliness. The book helped a little but what really helped was learning more about Dorothy Day...her life really spoke to me the more I learned about her.

Which to bring it back to the books from the beginning, that's what 'tilled the ground' for me when it came to getting baptized and entering the Church. Johnny Cash, Dogma, Dorothy Day...it was a revelation for me to see a Christianity that was full of life and love and humor and desperately flawed and suffering and working all these things out at the same time.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

I love this thread (and the magazine thread) because I learn about so many new and interesting things that I should already know about, but somehow don't.

Pershing posted:

I'll try to throw some books in this post so that I stay remotely on topic.

I had had some incidental exposure to Christianity growing up thru my grandparents who were members of the Church of Christ denomination. My mom had rebelled after eloping with my dad and left my grandparents' church all together for a variety of reasons. My dad's side of the family had a vague, non-practicing Christian background. I was not given any kind of Christian upbringing other than rare Sunday School trips while visiting my grandparents.

It wasn't so much that I 'didn't believe in God' but more that I didn't think that the Christian churches around me were not my type of people? Like, the impression that I got of the Christians in my area (we're talking southern Protestant Christianity) was that they were very judgmental, very much working from an 'us against them' mindset...and they all looked the same, dressed the same, acted the same...I didn't feel I could fit in with them even if I tried. There was a standard in that Christianity that I was never going to meet.

In my early adulthood I had some trying times and some losses...I had the first experience of people close to me dying. I had this feeling that I needed more from my life to deal with all this so I tried to look around for some sort of spiritual framework. I played around for a while with the Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying, it was somewhat helpful but didn't really touch me. After that it was a lot of freethought kind of stuff, like Carl Sagan books and Michael Shermer and reading Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

That last bit got shot to pieces one night when I was reading Christopher Hitchens' Letters To A Young Contrarion. He's got this part in there about being an atheist and dealing with existential crises...I'm probably butchering this now but it boiled down to "well, you'll have some nights where it's like you in a ship alone on the ocean...that'll suck but hey you'll get thru it". That was the exact opposite of what I needed so I put him down, first time I ever threw a book in the trash.

Later that same month I was at my sister in law's wedding Mass. Halfway thru the service I had this...~feeling~ inside myself and I went, "yeah...I could be Catholic!". That pretty quickly turned into terror all like "Oh my God, Catholicism?!?". I was sick to my stomach for the rest of the day from worry about what could come next...I left the wedding early and blamed it on feeling sick from the heat. After that, I wrote the priest who had been presiding and he mailed me a copy of Dorothy Day's The Long Loneliness. The book helped a little but what really helped was learning more about Dorothy Day...her life really spoke to me the more I learned about her.

Which to bring it back to the books from the beginning, that's what 'tilled the ground' for me when it came to getting baptized and entering the Church. Johnny Cash, Dogma, Dorothy Day...it was a revelation for me to see a Christianity that was full of life and love and humor and desperately flawed and suffering and working all these things out at the same time.

Tiggum posted:

Here's the thing though: I grew up with no religious beliefs. My parents were Christian as children but atheists by the time I was born. As far as I'm aware, both of my grandmothers (my grandfathers being dead before I ever got a chance to know them) were also atheists (or at least never indicated any particular religious beliefs to me). So I got that broad cultural stuff like giving presents for Christmas but absolutely none of the religious context. And I literally cannot imagine a single thing that could ever convince me that Christianity is true. Or Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism or any other religion. They're all on the exact same level to me. Were they to you?

When you say you "knew of those beliefs" was that in the same way that you knew that the ancient Greeks believe in Zeus and Athena and so on? Because if it was, that's what I'm interested in. What makes you go from "all this stuff is mythology" to "this specific mythology... is actually real?" Why did you pick Christianity over any of the other options available? What convinced you that this specific type of magic is the real one and the others are, as you always believed, merely superstition?

And again, I want to clarify that I'm not being disingenuous and I know it's very hard to read this as anything other than "smug atheist thinks he's smarter than you" but I actually don't think that and I do believe that my atheism is almost entirely the result of my upbringing and not the result of some innate superiority or anything like that. It's just, that stuff where you talk about reading stuff and throwing it out seems like it has to be because it conflicts with your preconceptions? Which suggests that your existing beliefs were more in line with the Christian position than anything else. But if they weren't, what changed your mind? What's that game-changing argument that convinces you?

Gutter Phoenix posted:

I've been wanting to respond to this for days, but haven't had a decent opportunity. I may have to do this in a few separate pieces. I too will try to tie it all to books, which in this case, will not be difficult.

First off, let me say that I appreciate you telling your story, and I can relate to many parts in various ways. I grew up Catholic, and can appreciate the sense of serenity that Catholic churches have inside, with the peace, quiet, smell of incense and whatnot. I would currently describe myself as agnostic, but I still get that sense of peace and calm in those places.

That being said, I have a lot of issues with the Catholic church, Christianity, and religion in general. I had my own religious conversion when I was 19 and it dramatically changed my life. I later had a rapid loss of faith, and that also dramatically changed my life. This is a story I hold very close to my chest and rarely even tell my closest friends/ family. I'm still not sure how much I'll tell here.

Shoot, I thought I'd have more time this morning. I'll have to come back to this.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

I've been wanting to respond to this for days, but haven't had a decent opportunity. I may have to do this in a few separate pieces. I too will try to tie it all to books, which in this case, will not be difficult.

First off, let me say that I appreciate you telling your story, and I can relate to many parts in various ways. I grew up Catholic, and can appreciate the sense of serenity that Catholic churches have inside, with the peace, quiet, smell of incense and whatnot. I would currently describe myself as agnostic, but I still get that sense of peace and calm in those places.

That being said, I have a lot of issues with the Catholic church, Christianity, and religion in general. I had my own religious conversion when I was 19 and it dramatically changed my life. I later had a rapid loss of faith, and that also dramatically changed my life. This is a story I hold very close to my chest and rarely even tell my closest friends/ family. I'm still not sure how much I'll tell here.

Shoot, I thought I'd have more time this morning. I'll have to come back to this.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

Pastry of the Year posted:

I feel like The Gospel Blimp has come up before, but I read the back cover blurb before noticing that it was published by Zondervan and so is likely not the scathing satire of evangelicals one hoped it might have been.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

It took me a long time to find a copy of this:

Heath posted:

Is this the one where the man fucks the tree

Gutter Phoenix posted:

quote:

And the result is one, big bang!

Pershing posted:

This is me ing that I will post at least three books to this thread by May 1st...gimme a one week probe if I don't.

I keep wanting to contribute and it looks like I need a gun to my head to make it happen.

creepy-rear end dolls posted:

Tis but a coincidence I served all those meat pies in the cafeteria the day after that Boy Scout troop went missing.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

I swear, it's getting harder and harder for me to finish books these days. Technological advances are neat and all, but so drat distracting! I'm pretty sure everyone who spends most of their day working on a computer has Attention Deficit Disorder by now.

Megabound posted:

COVIDs been great for my reading, tho nothing odd. I'm finally getting around to Don Quixote and loving it. Never expected it to be so funny.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

Yeah, I never read that until I was almost 30, and never expected to like it as much as I did. There is a reason it is the best selling fiction work of all time.

Notahippie posted:

Read "A Drink with Shane MacGowan," which is his autobiography. There's a story in there where h'e's off his head on pills and alcohol while on tour and decides that there's been a nuclear war and his destiny is to bring music back to post-apocalyptic America so he smashes any record he can find that he thinks doesn't deserve to survive.

A Pack of Kobolds posted:

From the depths of C-SPAM I bring news of a book I did not know existed and cannot wait to read.




loving hell, Shane!

Gutter Phoenix posted:

Rad!

Let us know how it is, and feel free to post any particularly great stories here, especially if they involve his teeth.

"Shane MacGowan" posted:

Bono was kind enough to lend us his Martello Tower in Bray for a while, and it turned out to be overlooking a house that was owned by Mary Coughlan... when you get up to the top there's the master bedroom with a huge bed and there's just glass walls so all the neighbors can see you getting in and out of bed and see you dangling your wares. I would say good morning to Mary Coughlan by waving my donger at her. I was spotted by somebody passing by the train flashing at her and it was in the papers the next day, but the temptation to do it was unbearable. We found one of the great man's condoms in the great man's bed, too. It was very comfortable sleeping in Bono's bed, it was a very comfortable bed.

A Pack of Kobolds posted:

loving hell, Shane!

Shane MacGowan posted:

So I decided to drop a tab of acid. Well, a blotter, or a section of blotters. I don't know how many, but it was very strong, the section I got, because I imagined the third world war starting and I was involved in a plane crash. And it came out with Ireland being the ruler of the world and I was Ireland's diplomatic atache to the superpowers, like some kind of ambassador. I'd been a soldier in the war and the US were a write-off as a political power. And I was negotiating with the Soviet Union and China. So I started dishing out all the caviar I had around there. Not real caviar. Lumpfish roe.

I got out the vodka and caviar for the Russians. I was doing the diplomatic negotiations. I imagined that I was at a summit meeting in my flat. The kitchen was a disaster area. And the third world war had been started by our roadie, Charlie Malcolm, being shot in the band bus by Tone Loc, you know, who was in a bunker under the motorway singing "Wild Thing." So I started playing Wild Thing over and over again and we decided to divide world power up between the blacks and the Irish. And in order to demonstrate the USA's cultural redundancy I ate my Beach Boys Greatest Hits album.

Kathy knocked on the door and my mouth was covered in blood and she said that Frank Murray was on the phone and I had to be somewhere and I said, Go away can't you see I'm involved in the future of the world here? She knew I'd flipped my lid when I threw my green guitar, my favorite guitar down the stairs after her.

Gutter Phoenix posted:

I was in San Francisco earlier today and spent some time browsing Green Apple Books. I'm still unemployed and so I had to restrain myself, but I picked up a few new things.

I used to own this book and have been looking for a replacement copy, so I was overjoyed to find this one for only $8. Not only does it still have the CD, but it was also signed by Negativland member Mark Hosler!





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6gPSSYxex0