Rant of the Exiles

An atheist is someone who denies the existence of God. This is different from an agnostic - someone who is unsure or undecided about the existence of God. And my point is the average atheist is smarter than the average Christian. And its mainly because you have to be intelligent and well-educated to qualify for atheism. There’s a couple different reasons for this. First statistically, let’s say the U.S. has around five to six million atheists whereas there are at least a hundred million professed Christians in this country. So when you're talking about atheists, its a pretty small sample size relative to the number of Christians. Its also hard to identify atheists because they don’t usually have some short of regular gathering. What I’m saying is there are probably ten times as many smart Christians as there are smart atheists but there’s just so many other Christians who are not smart and they bring the curve down. But most of all, its because atheism is an intellectual lux...

I've been in the Chinese church for a long time. It's not easy at times. I often wrestle with feelings of contempt towards Chinese culture. Like many immigrant churches, we have lunch together after worship service on Sundays. It is a loud, disorganized, chaotic affair. Both children and elderly push and shove their way to the front of the line for pizza. It could be the scene in some developing country. As an Americanized Asian, I survey the traditional Chinese dining experience with disdain and revulsion. Why do Chinese people have to eat and talk so loud? How come dining ambiance doesn't matter more? Today was a little bit of a breakthrough. The sisters group of our church, composed mostly of first-generation stay-home moms, invited me to join them for their hot pot lunch. I used to hate hot pot. But recently, its been making a personal comeback. I always thought it was revolting to deal with raw food. And even more disgusting to have to fish around for it with ever...