Subject:
Another lovely piece of fanmail.

Dear Bob, I am grateful to have such an amusing site on the 'net to visit. I could spend all day talking about your great website, but I'm not going to. Instead, I'm going to tell you my story.

I live in Missouri. It's a very strange place to live, and the accents are just horrid. Everywhere, everyone is religious. Everyone goes to church, everyone prays before bed and before meals. Everyone but me and my family. My parents are christians, but they are not fanatics. They don't believe in speaking on tongues, washing old people's feet, or sitting in the front row at church and feeling the breath of a screaming preacher in your face and being spat on by him. We went to a Methodist church, until I was about 10, then we just stopped going anywhere on Sunday because my Mother got a job. I enjoyed peaceful Sundays, not having to hear about God this, God that, until SHE came along. ( Let's not use her real name... Let's call her Sara Jane. )

Sara Jane. I hate that girl. She called me, 8:00 AM on a Sunday morning, and asked, "Would you like to come to church with me today?" I'd known her along time before this, but she never asked me to go to her church. I knew she and her parents were very heavy into the religion, but this just shocked me. And while I stand stunned, I uttered a 'yes'. During that point in my life, I was not very social and had few friends, so I didn't think going to church would hurt anything. I went all the time, for about two years, I went to church, I prayed, I did everything. I even went to church camp, and while everyone else received 'the spirit' all I could do was complain to God about not being a good artist.

After church camp, my Godfather was hospitalized. He was ran over by his tractor. I prayed and I prayed to God to let him be alright, but the next morning Mother told me he'd passed away. I was pissed. I was utterly pissed. God's a fucking bastard. Isn't it, pray and ye shall receive? A load of bull like that? I wanted my Godfather back. He was my best friend in the whole world. He wasn't that old, he shouldn't have died. Let God take some older man, not my godfather.

But no, he had to take my best friend. Stupid jackass. No more God for me. I was through with him. Death happened, God doesn't exist. Science exists. Science explains all, religion is just a boring book some insane men wrote a thousand years ago. But how was I going to get out of church? I used silly excuses: "Nope, going to grandma's house. Yes, yes the house across the river and through the woods." "Don't feel good. Sick." That one I used quite often. But then, Sara Jane started to plead for me to come to church, and I flat out told her, "I don't believe in God. You can kiss my ass." Whoo boy, did that feel good.

I was alone in my beliefs. No one believed the same thing I did, everyone worshipped. No one liked me. No one was happy that I began to wear black clothing and striped panty hose. But then... then came the Internet. We got a computer. I fell in love. I found so many people who shared my opinions, like you, Bob.

You share my opinions, and DAMN are you funny. I just love the dress-up Jesus thing. Jesus is going Scuba Diving tonight.

A good, good friend of mine gave me a link. It was www.normalbobsmith.com. Not thinking it was anything important, I visited. Now I visit regularly, play with the dress-up Jesus and read hate/fanmail.

Bob... Bob, I know this might be a little soon for you... but will you marry me? We can run away together, we can elope. Do you want to marry in Vegas? You know, the priest dressed up as Elvis? Huh?

With Undying Love,
Sakhi.

Hi there Bob,

Yup, I still have a beer now and then with friends. I shock a lot of people at the church when I pull up on the Harley on Sunday. I still dress like a biker and have long hair and that irritates some of my brothers and sisters in the church. But the pastor is cool, and I've got to be true to myself.

Satan really doesn't influence God, The father is giving him an opportunity to prove his point. Remember the book of job? God allowed Job to be stripped of his worldly goods, to see if he would curse God. Job, though suffering, wouldn't. He was a righteous man and Worshipped him regardless of his fate. Well, to make a long story short, Satan was proved wrong, and God restored all of Job's worldly goods, in fact, he had more than when he started the test.

Would you like to live with someone who you didn't like for all of eternity? Neither would I. I suppose that's why God gives is a choice on who we serve...Him or Satan. That seems to be the only two choices we have.

Satan has limited powers to create, but he is no match for the Father, otherwise he would be living in Haven now and we would be toast. LOL I ride with The Son's of God MC, but I still have ties with the Outlaw clubs too. I rode with the Pagans, and some other clubs, and now have the chance to tell them the Good news. Being a Christian doesn't mean you have to change who you are, it's means you use your talents for God, wherever you are and do the best you can. Your soul is clean, without sin, even though your body continually is at war with your born again sprit. True Christians pray for one another, and help each other, rather than judge each other.

That job belongs to The King of Kings alone.

Signed, A friend,
LightWarrior03@aol.com

Man, the more I listen to you the less sense you're making. Did you really mean what you said about the dinosaurs and fossils being the work of the Devil? You can't really think that Satan falsified billion year old galaxies to fool us into believing we evolved over a long period of time, do you?

Would it really be so far out to say that maybe we have evolved gradually, improved upon ourselves throughout the centuries, developing new skills, learning from our mistakes and advancing... as history clearly shows we do? Do you think that our great strides in technology and our ability to live longer and healthier are an illusion manifested by Satan as well?

I have to tell you that your theory on how volcano eruptions and floods are a direct result of human sins is pretty "out there" if you don't mind me saying so. Have you had any formal education? Would you go so far as to say that an eclipse is an angry God shutting out the sun?

I'd really like to hear one of your more sensible reasons for believing in God. Is it simply because it gave you a reason to change your ways?

I dunno, it really is going to take some serious changes in the way I logically think things out to get on your wavelength. You seem to be able to fabricate explanations quicker than I ever could.

Bob

Dear Bob,

I guess it comes down to the Word of God in the end, either you believe that the Bible is Holy spirit inspired or it isn't. God is not a man that he would lie. You obviously haven't read the Bible and seen the truths there in. As far as an education, I've had 2 yrs. at a local college, but I've learned more from the Word of God than any leaning institution man ever devised

Oh, by the way, there was no volcano's or earth quakes, or any of that garbage, before the fall, what then, is the logical conclusion? Gee, I guess our loving God decided to torture us. (not).

If we're so improved, why are we doing the same things, murdering each other, stealing, lying, and every other despicable thing that we could do to each other? In all those years of your so called evolution, how come we haven't improved on the basic atrocities man commits against man? Could it be the very Sin nature if man?

Maybe God is right, and every man is a lire. Who even gives a crap about dinosaurs anyway? What we should care about is our neighbor, to learn to love each other is what counts, not worrying about some bones of a long dead species.

If it pleases you then go ahead and make fun of the Lamb of God, you won't be the first to do it, and you won;t be the last. But one day you will stand before him and have to give account of your life, we all will, God help us.

Finally, you ask for a good reason why I believe, I suppose that in looking at Jesus, I see how wretched I was, and I knew in my heart of hearts, that I needed to be set free from the law. Because I knew that I couldn't live up to it. Tell me Bob, how will you deal with your sins? Just a dumb ol Christian,

Signed, A friend,
LightWarrior03@aol.com

Wait one second. You're telling me there were no natural disasters before "The Fall"? I'm not exactly sure what event you're referring to when you say "The Fall". I think you're talking about Adam and Eve's first sin in the garden of Eden. I honestly wasn't aware that there was ever a time when there weren't natural disasters. I would like to hear more of what you know about this.

As for improving over time, I am simply stating the fact that we have improved since a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, ten thousand years ago. In the same way that we've learned to adapt to life, so did the otter learn to crack a shell with a rock, a giraffe's neck got longer to reach the leaves higher up, and the grasshopper built a tolerance to the poisons we made. When we grow and improve we pass it on to the next generation... on average. That's evolution at work.

You're missing my point about the dinosaurs. I was simply trying to illustrate that the evidence dinosaurs existed millions of years ago strongly suggests that the Bible may have inconsistencies, that's all. It's the same way you'd tell if any story were true or untrue. I by no means feel that we should care more for fossils than we care about our neighbors and loved ones. I want to make that absolutely clear! I'm sorry to anyone who might disagree but I firmly believe that human life is more important than dinosaur bones. I'll fight anyone tooth and nail on that. That's how strongly I feel on the subject.

You've asked how I deal with my sins. The way that anyone should deal with the wrongs they commit (and I'm sure you'll agree) is to first recognize, admit and regret the wrong to yourself. The next step is to admit and apologize to the effected parties of your bad deed. Finally you need to commit to some sort of change so as not to make the same mistake again, learn from that mistake and pass that knowledge on to others (evolution again). I've always thought that some of those steps are more likely to get skipped if you think that a prayer to God is the most important part of dealing with a sin. Not following any of these steps has its repercussions. You can lose the trust of others, it can burden your conscience, damage a reputation, get you in trouble with the law, get you beat up or killed or a great number of other things. I'm not sure what you were expecting me to say but these things all seem quite logical to me.

Man does both good and bad. There can't be one without the other. That's the reality of an imperfect world. We all do the best that we can, but free will means that man will always have the opportunity to make mistakes and sin. People who lie, cheat, steal, rape, murder or anything else face certain repercussions of such acts here in this lifetime... usually. I must also add that life isn't fair. Expecting there to be some kind of punishment that equals every bad deed and a reward for every good deed is not reality and it shouldn't be.

Boy, I feel like I'm doin' all the explaining here and you're just sayin' "I don't care, just worship God." while you come up with any explanation off the top of your head no matter how wacky or illogical it may sound. Is that what believing in God entails?

Bob

Dear Bob,

Just for my own curiosity, what do you believe in? Do you believe we evolved from an ameba that was brought to life by a lightning strike in a primordial soup of a sea? And then evolved in to sea creatures and finally crawled on to the land, and became life as we know it?

No, I don't think even you believe that theory. You must believe in God because you told me that He didn't answer your prayers. Why is it so hard for you to believe that all that is good in the world is from God, and all that is bad is from Satan? Really, it's that simple, unless your an atheist, and believe in nothing.

I could explain to you that the world was made perfect, and that we allowed Satan to become lord over the earth, by bring sin into God's perfect world. Do you realize that sin is simply disobeying God? whether it is eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or not obeying the Ten Commandments.

How is it then, as smart a man as you are, doesn't see the truth of the scriptures? We could go round and round on these things, but I can see you aren't ready yet to discuss the Word of God, for it is only there the answers you seek are A servant of the Most High,

LightWarrior03@aol.com

Well I was on the verge of buyin' into your whole "existence of God" thingy until you assured me that there was no possible way He could be under the powers of Satan. That blew it for me. Sorry 'bout that.

You described this exchange we've had as "going around in circles" as if you've answered all of my questions and I'm just being difficult. Here on my end however it's clear that you aren't ready to discuss the probability of evolution. In fact, I don't think you care at all about my questions and you'll say anything to explain your god without regard for common sense, proof, logic, the facts of life, or even my own gullibility.

At the very least, evolution can be explained without sounding like you're a mental patient. Animals seem to change and adapt to their environment over extended periods of time. That's evolution. Did you know that a mole's eyes are small and blind because that's the way they've evolved as a result of their environment? The biggest, strongest gorillas are the ones that reproduce the most and this makes the gorillas bigger and stronger in the long run. Man, explaining this stuff to you is like talking to an eight year old.

In the same way that dogs are bred for show, sled pulling or rat catching, so does nature promote and demote living organisms. I'm not talkin' about all of this happening over several thousand years (your Bible's timeline of our planet), I'm talkin' about millions and millions of years! If we can teach a gorilla sign language or breed a stubby legged cat or a featherless chicken to better suit our purposes then giving an ameba a million years to become a tadpole seems more than probable... it's inevitable.

I guess that I don't see the "truth" in your scriptures because you tell me that Satan has falsified the evidence of the dinosaur, the universe, evolution and quite possibly the Munchkin kitty cat.

Talking to you has convinced me that I have the choice between atheism or the steady, mind-numbing fall into an answerless well of confusion and madness. I guess I choose atheism.

I'm not fighting with you, you just sound like you're kinda skitzo. If you're just playin' make-believe because you want to live forever, now that I'd understand.

Bob

Dear Bob,

Every answer I gave you is from the scriptures, if it comes down to your theory of evolution or the Bible, I'll take the Bible every time. Since you would rather read a newspaper than the Word of God, it's useless to try and show you the truth. It is written. "Don't cast your pearls before swine. lest they trample them in the mud." So go ahead and serve your god, whatever it is, as for me I choose the LORD. Maybe someday you'll be in a place to see with your spiritual eyes, but not today. Have a good life

LightWarrior03@aol.com

"Spiritual eyes"? Are those the eyes that look past facts, my well being and the obvious? Answer me this. What is it that makes you different from any other cult out there claiming to speak for God? Since everything you believe can't be proved, validated or even questioned why can't everything you've said to argue for your God be used to argue for their God? That's all I ask... and something you need to ask yourself.

Bob