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The Oklahoman profiled godless sinners who shall rot in the eternal cauldron of Hell

8:00 AM EDT on July 9, 2013

advice god

It may be time to pray for The Oklahoman.

Over the July 4th weekend, the newspaper that still prints a prayer on its front page ran a two-part expose on atheism. The feature, which was inspired by Wolf Blitzer's discovery of an Oklahoma atheist that survived the tornado that God sent to Moore, gives us a good look at those curious, immoral, and overly logical souls who do not accept God as part of their life.

Seeing the Oklahoman cover atheism is somewhat surreal. I think in the 1950's the Gaylord's lobbied for it to be a crime. Now, not only does the Oklahoman acknowledge that atheists live, eat and breed in Oklahoma, but Religion Editor Carla Hinton goes out of her way to portray them as regular people like you and me.

Well, kind of normal. Check out the atheists they found for the article:

Melissa Walkup
Sean Braddy
Red McCall
Shelley Rees
beaker
Michelle Ellis

Oh my Non-Christian God, is that they best group of atheists they could find? It looks like a who's-who list of people who were picked on in high school. Did they post an "Atheists Wanted" sign at SoonerCon or something. I bet they're all Bothan Spies for Jedi OKC.

Okay, okay. I'm just joking around. Those look like some gooooood atheists! I'm going to be nice to them. They already have to deal with an eternal afterlife spent playing shitty video games in a sauna with the Devil, Hitler and Liberace, so why rub it in and say they could all use a Rachel Ray makeover. Instead, let's examine the various excuses they give for not believing in a loving deity that's caused floods, locust invasions and Jason White to overthrow Kejuan Jones in the 2004 BCS National Championship Game.

First of all, we have Sean from Norman.

Sean Braddy, 41, of Norman, said he grew up in church but decided when his son was born in 1982 that he was completely done with religion.

So...this guy is 41 and his son was born in 1982? Uhm, if anything you think that would reaffirm his belief in God and religion. That's about as miraculous as a mysterious old man in heaven impregnating a virgin. I wonder if anything else happened to Sean to make him in atheist:

Braddy, who is black, said he grew up in the 1970s and saw the Ku Klux Klan and other white opponents of desegregation do many un-Christian-like things — all in the name of religion. He said he considered himself a Christian at that time, but the disturbing behavior of people who also called themselves people of faith was confusing.

“When I was in college I would ask friends, ‘You can be as wicked as you want to — throw rocks at people, spit on them and you still go to heaven?' My conclusion was they believed in God just as much as I do,” he said.

Ahh, that whole KKK thing. That can get you down. I guess he's one of those atheists that focuses on the all the "bad" parts of religion. Sure, religion is responsible for a lot of the hatred, bigotry and death this world has seen over the past 2,000 years, but that's just due to some bad apples. Don't let them ruin it for you.

Atheist Michelle Ellis doesn't like religion because it "doesn't make sense?"

Ellis said she was ready for such a group, having felt isolated in her journey from believer to nonbeliever. Ellis said she grew up in a Christian family in Texas in which both of her grandfathers were preachers. She said she had a lot of fear and guilt about God because of how He was portrayed at her church. She said she began to question her Christian faith after leaving home for college. She said she stopped attending church for a few years and when she returned, she found the biblical teaching contradictory. She said she began to ask Christian leaders questions.

“Adam and Eve did not make sense. The story of Noah's Ark definitely did not make sense. Why does the Bible talk negatively about women?” she said. “They just wanted me to go away. They didn't want me to ask questions.”

Know what else doesn't make sense? How airplanes fly. You still ride around in those things right?

Also, how does the story of Adam and Eve confuse her? It's a pretty simple plot. An all-powerful super-being creates a garden, a couple of naked people in his image, a snake, and an apple about 6,000 years ago, and yada yada yada, here we are today. Or something like that. I dropped out of Vacation Bible School. Regardless, that's much easier to comprehend than a proven scientific theory that explains how life evolved over billions of years through the process of natural selection.

Shelly Reese is an atheist because she doesn't believe in the "supernatural:"

She said she felt she belonged to a nonbelievers group she found in college much more than she did the church youth group.

“I don't believe in the supernatural — that's where it (Christianity) all falls apart for me, so I always thought I was a bad Christian. I thought I was doing it wrong,” Rees said.

“I was trying really hard to fit in, to pray and do what everybody else was doing. They would say you have to talk to Christ — invite Him in. I did that.”

Uhm, how can you not believe in the supernatural? It's the only way to explain miracles (like the Virgin Mary appearing in a grilled cheese sandwich), the unexplained (ghosts, angels, mermaids) and other strange things (Fig Newtons, Biker Fox, Why it's called the North Canadian River) that can't be proven by science.

Former 1920's baseball pitcher Red McCall, the leader of the Oklahoma Atheist cult, gave this lame excuse for refusing to accept God into his life:

McCall said he was in seventh grade when his older brother committed suicide. The cruelty that Christianity seemed to impose on people who take their own lives did not correspond to the God that McCall had believed in thus far. He said this reinforced the doubts he had begun having about the existence of the divine.

“It just didn't make sense that my all-loving God of Christianity would sentence my brother, who made a really quick mistake, to sit next to Hitler in hell. That didn't make sense at all. Likewise, heaven didn't make sense to me, either,” he said.

“A lot of people insert God whenever they don't understand something. Anytime there's a gap in scientific knowledge, people insert God. I'm not going to do that,” McCall said.

Red, I see how you can be a doubter. But let me share this story with you from my high school days.

Back when I was 15, I played on a basketball team for some church located at NW 10th and Rockwell. The team was part of a church league and free to join, but the catch was that you have to go to their church once a week. Big deal, right? One Wednesday night during youth group, the youth pastor was talking about salvation or whatever, and mentioned how the only way to heaven was to accept Jesus Christ as your savior. You know, that whole routine. In the middle of his spiel, I raised my hand to ask a question:

"What about people who grew up in other parts of the world and were taught another religion? You know, the kids that have never heard of christianity."

"Unless you accept Jesus Christ as you're lord and savior, you end up in place that you don't want to be. And Im speaking about life and death."

"Yeah, but how's that fair if the people don't even know about Christianity?"

"Well...the bible says more will take the path to hell than the road to heaven."

You see, Red. It's okay. Thanks to knowledge of that 22-year-old youth pastor (who also happened to be banging a 16-year-old girl from the youth group), we know that a lot of good, morally sound, decent people go to Hell. So don't feel bad. I'm sure your brother is hanging out with someone other than Hitler.

Anyway, now that the Oklahoman has profiled atheists like they are zoo animals or specimens from another world, you have to wonder what's coming out next. It's probably either a list of 40 Gay People Under 40 or a search by Nolan Clay to find an elusive Oklahoma Obama supporter. I heard there are a couple of them out there. I bet they're also atheists.

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