An introduction to Fred Phelps...

[Theophrastus]

Fred Phelps is the head pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church. The Westboro community is made almost exclusively of Fred Phelps' family, a majority of it his daughters and granddaughters.

Fred Phelps has long been known as a hateful man spreading malicious ideas with the Bible as his point of authority. He came to national attention recently when his church began protesting, or witnessing as they call it, at the funerals of soldiers killed in the Iraq war.

His reasoning is that God has abandoned his love for America because as a nation we allow homosexuality, a sin with which Phelps is curiously preoccupied. He, of course, has other claims on moral grounds on why God is allowing this country to suffer, and in general why the world is doing so poorly in his eyes.

Below, find a video of Fred's webcast sermon regarding the Virginia Tech killings. The content of this video will likely be disturbing, as he says many appalling things, among them praising God for the deaths and stating that though he's happy with the 33 deaths, he would have wished for 33,000.

Fred's Sermon.

In this thread I'd like us not just to react against the content of the video, but to ponder for a moment how a man with such a malicious outlook and bilious message is harbored under the provision of freedom of religion while Atheists such as we are considered immoral and untrustworthy.

It's my thought that we should take to heart how perverted a group's thinking could become when the message of the Bible (in this case rather accurately portrayed by Phelps - everything he says is backed up by the scriptures) or any other religious book could lead our society astray.

If anything, let this be a rally to you to publicly decry religious texts and religious thought, making clear what dubious superstition it is and what terrible mentalities it fosters. Will there be awful people without religion? Of course. Will their fatwas and murder cries be protected by US law? Let's keep that from happening.

A documentary by Louis Theroux in which he spends a good amount of time with the Phelps family can be found here.  

[Six Billion of Spades]

This is exactly why so-called True Christians©™ should just put down their "God Loves You" signs and quit. Fred has 'em all beat.

On one hand, you have to applaud ol' Fred for his honesty. He obviously has the king-sized sack to follow the Bible as it's actually written in a country where the state religion is "Cafeterian."

On the other hand, as part of the scarce, less-than-0.05% minority who actually do take the entire Bible (or at least most of it) at face value, he's quite the maniacal twatburger, rife with all of the bigotry and hatred found in the Old Testament.

In other words, he's the very definition of a real True Christian©™: spiteful, arrogant, flammable, and unsuitable for children under 3.