I have a Google alert set up for my name. This alerts me any time there is a mention of my name on any site indexed by Google. It’s interesting where my name shows up. Take Conservapedia, a website started in 2006 by American homeschool teacher and attorney Andrew Schlafly, son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly. There is an entry for my name on Conservapedia. What an honor, right? Surely they are referencing my liberal political views, my defection from Christianity, or my defense of atheism? Nope. Conservapedia lists my name in an article on atheism and obesity. The article contends that atheism will make you fat and I am one example of this. I kid you not. I am listed right up there with a number of fat atheists I admire and respect, people like Daniel Dennett, Nate Phelps, Robert M. Price, Matt Dillahunty, and Dan Finke. Also on the list are people like Isaac Asimov, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong-un, Kim II Sung, Kim Jong-il, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Leonid Brezhnev.
Should I bother to tell Conservapedia that I was fat before I became an atheist? Should I tell them that Evangelical Christian churches are filled with obese members? Nah, why bother. I certainly wouldn’t want to ruin Schlafly’s and Conservapedia’s atheist fantasy. I found this to be so funny that I am seriously considering returning to the Christian faith. If Jesus can make me healthy, wealthy, wise, AND skinny…count me in.
121615
Some of the worst and most intense ridicule I have ever taken for being fat came from the people at the Southern Baptist megachurch I worked in for 9 years as a housekeeper…one of my verbal abusers could be nailing my hide to the wall about my size and weight, and an hour later, pray aloud in the “staff prayer meeting” like nothing had ever happened….
That’s funny considering how full our fast food restaurants get here in the Bible Belt right after church time on Sundays. No, Christianity makes you fat even though eating too much is sinful. Odd isn’t it?
Jonathan Edwards is still the world record holder for the triple jump, a record he set in 1995. He was a devout Christian until 2007, and hosted a number of religious programmes in the UK. As you can imagine he’s never been exactly…well, fat. Then in 2007 he saw the light and, seemingly to outsiders anyhow, overnight lost his belief in god and the bible. This is somebody who, in 1991, refused to compete on a Sunday, despite being one of the greatest ever in his sport (though he was persuaded eventually to compete by his vicar father). He says that losing his faith has made him a much happier person…but he’s still thin!
Andrew Schlafly is a good example of an intelligent man with the typical huge blind spot that is a black hole for rational thought because religion was instilled in him at such an early age.
This whole page is based on a study where people self reported on if they ate healthy, had a certain number of servings of fruits and vegetables, and their religious attitudes. The study may well be detecting religious people’s propensity for self deception. Note the study does NOT ask people their BMI, if they are obese, or anything to do with weight only the subjective “eat healthy” and the vague description of “servings”
The rest of the article is just a big ad hominem fat shaming that of course goes way beyond the trivial scope of the poorly designed study with absolutely no construct validity. But of course Andrew doesn’t care about that. I imagine him snickering as he wrote it. Maybe gallop needs to do a study on correlation being a right wing Christian nut and douchbaggery.
I was fat before my deconversion and I am still fat now. As a child, and Christian, I wasn’t fat, as a teen I wasn’t either, though a little shorter and so a bit fatter than my classmates. I became fat around 18/19 or so and have been jojo-ing a bit from time to time.
The last time I lost quite a bit of weight, I was still a Christian and when I regained it again about a year and a half later, I was a Christian as well… I still hope to lose some weight again, but am not holding my breath. I was so happy last time when it worked for a bit, and since I regained it, well, I guess I lost a bit of hope in that regard. It’s just in the way sometimes… and I would like to have more stamina. Other than that, I’m not as bothered by it anymore as I used to, but not happy about it either.
Skinny before. Still skinny. I wouldn’t mind actually putting on a few atheist pounds but so far my atheism hasn’t helped a bit! I must be doing atheism wrong.
That has to be one of the funniest fucking things I have EVER heard! I want to email these people & say: “have you stupid bastards ever been to a baptist church? Have you ever been to a baptist church in the SOUTH??!” Unreal, man
What a childish attack! He shouldn’t make fun of your weight.
As a side note, I deconverted from Christianity at age 14. I weight more now at age 36 than when I was a teenage Christian. Coincidence? I think not! 😀
Thanks for my morning dose of humor…I haven’t laughed this hard in some time. I think we’ll just have to chalk it up to christians not having the best grip on how to use logic. They should review fourth grade science class about cause and effect, and how to rule out extraneous factors. chuckle
For the record, I was a skinny christian and am now a skinny atheist, and my pants size had nothing to do with my decision to expand my brain by questioning religion.
Christianity wants to mess with your gray matter and get into your underwear too. Christianity wants you to give up your mind (which was predestined as evil) and to not even think your own thoughts but those of skinny Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity will blame and shame with God’s Love and you will not be able to appreciate it because your mind is too atheistic and hardened by the Devil.
Stollar over at Homeschoolers Anon., just wrote about holy man, Doug Wilson, shaming, blaming and hurling filth towards a family whose child was abused under his spiritual umbrella. Basically, he blames the victims for crimes committed against them. The holy ones had to meet to consider whether the father of abused should be removed from his church duties for being unable to foresee and prevent his daughter’s abuse.
In Christianity, only the skinny triunity matters. People are fodder in this feast of delusion.
While laughing about your post and brushing my teeth this morning, I had an epiphany! We know that approximately 70% of americans are christian, and also that approximately 70% of americans are obese. Ergo, christians are the obviously the obese ones.
Disclaimer: the scientific method was not used my correlation…I’m too busy to bother with that shit. 😀
Actually, Christians are supposedly wanting to be more like Jesus. Jesus was thin. Many, many of them are failing to achieve this. I guess they could pray about it. Yes, I’m sure that would work.
Lynn,
What evidence do you have that Jesus was thin?
This is hilarious considering that the highest obesity rate is in the most religious region of the United States—the Bible Belt, which has the lowest percentage of atheists. Nice try Schlafly.
Well, Bruce, I gained weight AFTER I moved away from conservative Christianity. A coincidence? YES. It’s obviously a health thing, just like with you. Hopefully you can laugh at the idiocy of it all.
I’ve struggled with weight all my life. Catholic, Protestant, Atheist; Karen was always fat.
But it does occur to me that if I walked as much as Jesus did, I’d be pretty thin too. I wonder how often he replaced his sandals?
Bruce, I could tell you that your blog is one of the most insightful, rational, detailed, and sometimes empathetic on the Internet (especially today’s An Ex-pastor’s Dilemma, BUT (here I’m going to be politically incorrect;-)
I don’t want you to get a
fat head;-)
Don’t want you to become another fat atheist like G.K. Chesterton or Thomas Aquinas–all those fat anti-Christians…
I’m from the opposite side of the road, still weigh almost exactly what I weighed in junior high in 1959, about 168. Back then I used to eat 2 or 3 meals a day trying to gain weight, and lifting barbells, so I could look like Iron Man Magazine.
That’s the skinny.
But I know why all of you atheists are so stout; it’s from drinking dark beer, stout!;-)
It’s all a part of the fundy logic to put all these really crazy ideas together into something that makes sense to them. Even then, it smells bad.
Just look at how they use the Bible and you will understand.
I was fat as a Christian and am fat as a non-Christian.
Fat has nothing to do with health. I know skinny people who get winded going up a flight of stairs. My weight has never stopped me from doing my job. That is what I consider (personally) the test of my weight and physical make-up.
@Carolyn- We know Jesus was skinny because that’s how the pictures show him.
Actually, a man that walked as much as he did (according to the scriptures) wouldn’t be fat, period. Besides, how could a man endowed with the spirit be fat. He would be as pure and healthy as man was ever intended to be.
Only YOU can make yourself lose weight. You’ve got to want good health more than you want that bagel and cream cheese.
You are assuming the everyone who is overweight is fat because of a lack of appetite control. This is not true.
Wow. I love how know-it-alls who haven’t walked in another person’s shoes, feel free to be judgmental.