Well, in December I blogged about my experience with the North Texas Church of Freethought. A fellow named Andy, apparently a member of this "church", has found my blog through the graces of the internet and responded:

I cannot disagree with you more regarding the North Texas Church of Freethought. Your claim that "that there was no positive agenda, and that these people just hung out on Sundays to poke fun at Christians" is simply false to the core. We specifically make a habit of NOT doing that and standing for something as opposed to merely being against something.

[The full response is in the comments section of the blog referenced above.]

Andy "gives me two quotes" from the founder of the NTCOF, in an attempt to persuade me that they in fact really stand for something, other than just mocking other people's beliefs.

Unfortunately, none of these sentiments were in full view during the service last month. Just a bunch of people sitting around laughing at the stupidity of arguments in favor of the existence of Santa Claus (meant to map to common arguments for the existence of god).

Personally, I got no sense of what these people thought or believed, in any sort of positive fashion. Satire can be useful, of course, and highly entertaining. Stale internet jokes don't pass for cutting-edge satire, though, and if that's all you have to say as a group, then it's just not going to do much for me.

The excuse that we caught them on an off day, or one in which they weren't really representing their "true" selves, is just lame. They only have a "service" once a month, and they should take into account that on any given day a visitor could be sitting among them. I just don't buy that as an excuse, and I'm not willing to give it another try to see if that's the case.

Life's too damned short.