[onoway]

Not trying to start anything at all here, just got this email and wanted to share it.


An atheist was walking through the woods.

'What majestic trees!
'What powerful rivers!a
'What beautiful animals!
He said to himself.

Suddenly, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him.

He turned to look .... . . and saw a 7-foot grizzly bear charge towards him.
He ran as fast as he could along the path.
He looked over his shoulder & saw that the bear was closing on him ....

He looked over his shoulder again, and the bear was even closer .... and then ..... He tripped and fell.

Rolling over to pick himself up, he found the bear was right on top of him .........
reaching towards him with its left paw ..... and raising the right paw to strike ...
At that instant the Atheist cried out,
'Oh my God!'

Time Stopped ...
The bear froze ......
The forest was silent ....

A bright light shone upon the man,
and a voice came out of the sky ...

"You deny my existence for all these years,
you teach others I don't exist
and even credit creation to cosmic accident ........
Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament?"
"Am I to count you as a believer?"

The atheist looked directly into the light ....
"It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now ...
but perhaps you could make the BEAR a Christian?"

... a pause ...

"Very well," said the voice ...


The light went out.
The sounds of the forest resumed ....
the bear dropped his right arm ...
brought both paws together ...
bowed his head & spoke...







"Lord, bless this food, which I am about to receive.
Amen."

[blackshoe]

That's fuunnny!

[Vampyr]

blackshoe, on 2016-February-12, 21:17, said:

That's fuunnny!

Yes, particularly the idea that all believers in a deity are Christians.

[gwnn]

If you are going to run away from a bear, you should avoid running uphill or downhill, you should look for a slope and try to run on the same level. Bears are rather unstable and they cannot run when their two sides don't have the same traction. I didn't manage to find any evidence to this assertion but it's such a cool story and it kinda makes sense so I'm spreading it when I get to (kind of like some monotheists out there ).

I've read this joke before but it was with a Christian missionary. I'm not sure what the "no atheists in foxholes" myth adds to it.

[Zelandakh]

gwnn, on 2016-February-13, 03:29, said:

If you are going to run away from a bear,

You should not run at all. The usual advice for escaping from a bear is to stand your ground and make yourself look as big as possible, even if the bear charges at you. If you do have to avoid a bear, the best technique is to side-step them as their turning circle is not so good. It is almost always wrong to run directly away and they are much faster runners than you might think.

[gwnn]

In unrelated news..

[gwnn]

They are not much faster than I'd think, I actually lost a bet to some friends where I swore up and down that bears are faster than rabbits (it turns out they are {slightly} slower). But maybe they are bad at running level on a slope, not sure.

[Zelandakh]

gwnn, on 2016-February-13, 08:05, said:

They are not much faster than I'd think, I actually lost a bet to some friends where I swore up and down that bears are faster than rabbits (it turns out they are {slightly} slower). But maybe they are bad at running level on a slope, not sure.

Bears are typically faster than rabbits. Some varieties of hare, such as jackrabbits, are a little faster though, which may have been the confusion.

[kenberg]

http://www.speedofanimals.com/


gives

Brown bear 35 km/hr

Grizzly bear 56 km/hr

Mongolian Wild Ass (in case anyone is interested) 64 km/hr

Rabbit (subspecies unspecified) 48 km/hr

Probably not surprisingly, the cheetah tops their list at 120 km/hr. That's moving along.


The speed of a frightened atheist is not given.




Added: At
http://tpwd.texas.go...eds/index.phtml

the jackrabbit speed is given as 40-45 mph, so 64-72 km/hr.

[gwnn]

The "confusion" was that we were talking about brown bears and not grizzly bears. Anyway I see

http://www.infopleas...a/A0004737.html

Has only 30 mph for the grizzly bear. Maybe it's a question of hungry vs full?

[kenberg]

gwnn, on 2016-February-13, 12:18, said:

The "confusion" was that we were talking about brown bears and not grizzly bears. Anyway I see

http://www.infopleas...a/A0004737.html

Has only 30 mph for the grizzly bear. Maybe it's a question of hungry vs full?

30 m/hr is 48 km/hr.

I am starting to get suspicious about some of the figures. The last site I gave listed humans as 20-25 mph. If I calculated correctly, doing a hundred yard dash in ten seconds converts to a little over 20 mph.

[ggwhiz]

In a similar vein an Irish guy desperately needed a parking spot to get to a job interview in time but there were none.

He said: Lord, if you provide a parking spot I'll quit drinking and go to church every Sunday. Immediately a car pulled out right in front of him.

Him: Never mind. I found one.

[barmar]

ggwhiz, on 2016-February-13, 14:10, said:

In a similar vein an Irish guy desperately needed a parking spot to get to a job interview in time but there were none.

He said: Lord, if you provide a parking spot I'll quit drinking and go to church every Sunday. Immediately a car pulled out right in front of him.

Him: Never mind. I found one.

There's a more well known one about a drowning man. The punch line is he eventually drowns, and when he gets to heaven asks God why he didn't save him. God's answer: "I sent you a rowboat, a motorboat, and a helicopter, what more did you expect?".