Comic Con

Every year a group of Christian protestors show up at Comic con to tell all the attendees they are going to hell. This neat little letter came to me from Brian who lives in San Diego and got tired of it.

I moved to San Diego 8 years ago from Dayton, Ohio. I’m a graphic designer and since the age of 12 I have preferred the scientific method over outdated religious dogma. When attending Comic Con a few years ago I was walking to the convention center and encountered a large group of people holing up religious signs and yelling over the crowd with a megaphone. A few of the signs alluded to the FACT that people were going to hell for some of the most ludicrous made up reasons. “Heaven or Hell, You Choose!” is a sign that I remember, but what if both of those options are dead wrong? Atheists don’t show up a churches and try to convince people that their story is nothing more than a story (I might know what church this guy goes to now and maybe I should show up with a sign and a megaphone). I don’t tell people that they are wasting their time praying when they could be doing something productive in life yet this is exactly what this guy was doing to the Comic Con crowd. It angered me, it infuriated me that people would inappropriately interrupt a fun weekend where people were trying to enjoy their own form of escapism.

Angered, he decided to put on a protest of his own the next year. Throughout the course of a poll he ended up designing signs with these phrases

– Science Saves More Lives Than Jesus

– Religion the ultimate placebo effect

– These people are going to hell for annoying you at comic con (this was the crowd favorite)

– Your creation myth is silly, be honest with yourself, no one knows

– The universe is more complex than your vague book could have ever imagined

– Science is after the way the universe really is, not what makes us feel good – Carl Sagan

– Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and i’m not sure about the universe – Albert Einstein

– Keep thy religion to thyself – George Carlin

On Saturday, July 20th me and four friends, three sign holders and two photographers, went down to crowed Comic Con not knowing how we would be received. My house is four blocks from the madness at the convention center and during our walk down the street with the signs people were stopping us, taking pictures, shaking our hands and thanking us. Once we arrived down at the trolley stop next to the convention center the crowd was clearly on our side. Over a couple hundred people gathered around the church goer with a megaphone and us. This was more than the guy with the megaphone expected but he did an amazing job of talking for the entire two hours we were down there. The crowd easily turned on him when he ran out of things to say and resorted to anti gay and sexist comments. The people were not happy and one hour into the protesting of protesters about six police officers gathered around the crowd to make sure no physical altercations would happen. People yelled in the megaphone mans face while his mindless lemmings stood behind him with a few religious signs and did not say a word. Two gay men started making out in from of the megaphone preacher and he responded with “You are all perverts, you’re going to go home and get AIDS and syphilis.” This is the kind of classy individual we were dealing with. I stumped him with the following question. Can you name the ten commandment? He paused, locked up, and astonishingly could not even name one! I said “Come on! Thou shall not kill. Let’s go buddy, I’m helping you out here.” He was not interested in any discourse, he was a memorizer and all he was doing was spewing out the stuff he crammed into to his thick head since the time it was shoved in there at the age of two. He spoke of Jesus being the only super hero you need after all he did walk on water and turn water into wine. I, in my superman t-shirt, responded with “Those are pathetic super powers! My can fly over water…and shoot laser beams out of his eyes! It also takes a lot more than a cross to stop Kal El!”

Brian will be protesting next year and I’ll give you any updates as they come and how you can help.