Tuesday, November 07, 2006

The Heirophant's Proselytizer Questionnaire

So you're watching the Colbert Report when your door bell rings sounding out the arrival of the brand new digital projector you bought from Woot. You clamber over your coffee table in a fit of existential glee knowing that soon you're entire existence will be lit by 160 watt 1000 lumen bulb of ecstasy broadcasting the Simpsons in life size realism across your living room wall. You throw the door open standing there in your underwear with a silly grin on your face when you realize there is something odd about the UPS delivery man and the friend he brought. You begin to ask him where your god damn projector but before you can open your mouth you are berated with religious banter as the two strangers begin to proselytize you with their Christian faith. Usually you would be left there groggy, confused, and irritated trying to figure out how to get rid of them, however this time you are prepared with your handy Heirophant's proselytizer questionnaire!

You calmly explain to your proselyte that you will consider converting if they can satisfactorily answer a few fun and easy questions such as:
  1. Explain why your god's only son had to die so we can go to magic happy land when we croak.
  2. Did everyone who died before Jesus go to Hell? Justify your answer.
  3. If a Catholic, justify the Inquisition and other persecutions of "heretics" throughout the centuries, concentrating on why the Pelagianists, the Priscillianists, and the Manichaeans were persecuted; if a Protestant, justify the witch trials and the way that Protestants constantly hunted down native Americans until there were so few that the government could simply take their land; if a member of an Eastern Orthodox church, justify the persecutions of the Old Believers after the reforms of the seventeenth century.
  4. etc. etc. with some 145 more great questions to follow.

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