Erin, insent to your profile address.

what is the church about, if not to make things better for the people in most dire need?

Ha ha ha ha ha.

It's to collect money, maintain power and protect the status quo, while trying to enforce a standard of sexual behavior that keeps the poor poor.

Atheism, though terrifying, seems much less annoying. The closest thing I have to any sort of teaching is probably Sagan's Pale Blue Dot.

Mostly the stuff that scares me is shit I shouldn't care about. Like the sun becoming a red giant, turning the earth into vapor and dust, and everything that ever happened being snuffed out, with no one to ever know we were even here. In 4.5 billion years. It freaks me out.

Amy, I would totally scramble you some eggs. These were some of my best work and it's amusing to me because the ingredients were so controlled by the fact that I really need to go shopping. My fridge now contains an onion, a little bit of parm and milk. Operation "empty fridge, freezer and pantry" in hopes of only refilling with things I will actually use is really quite a success.

Liberation theology is, well, a frelling huge concept, with tens of thousands of pages of study and talk unpacking it, but at heart and at its simplest it's about taking Christ's parable about separating out those who know Him from those who don't, about visiting prisoners, feeding the starving, caring for the ill and the helpless and generally trying to live justly and make this shitty world at least marginally least shitty for those with the fewest resources, and putting it into action, including action that may seriously upset the established religious and political powers that be.

This is really fascinating. I conveniently will have my uncle here for several days at Thanksgiving so I foresee interesting discussions.

Atheism never asks you to tithe.

I'm irritated that the Mormon Church has so much money that they can do a massive ad buy(featuring the twelve hip/diverse/sciencey Mormons) that I have to hear about it six times a day in primetime. Anybody else, or is Phoenix just super-duper-special. Wish I had money for "I'm Erika...I'm secular," but besides that, it does seem a misplaced priority, especially given that Mitt is the "fetch!" of perennial candidates(stop trying to make him happen!)

Mostly the stuff that scares me is shit I shouldn't care about. Like the sun becoming a red giant, turning the earth into vapor and dust, and everything that ever happened being snuffed out, with no one to ever know we were even here. In 4.5 billion years. It freaks me out.

Right there with you, Allyson. Heat death of the universe keeps me up at night. The earth being destroyed, I can at least hope we'll get to somewhere else before then.

I can't help but think those millions spent on ads saying that Mormons are the cool people and they even include people of color now are designed to soften up the resistance to a Mormon president.

From Press--Erin, that's my fault--she sent it to me, and I didn't fill it in yet. I will do so now

Job rant that hardly anyone else will understand: I HATE how some otherwise intelligent techies will turn into drooling idiots when you try to explain to them how ssh keys and public-key cryptography works.