Free God, No! by Penn Jillette

they had budgeted for the church in future years and use it for good causes. They started with bulletproof vests for local police and “jaws of life” for ambulances. Hey, you talk against lesbians around my fucking family, we take you down to Chinatown.
    I was doing the Penn & Teller show in New York City when all this happened. I had met Pastor Shirley, and she was very respectful of my atheism. She sincerely cared for my parents, and her view of religion seemed to center on kindness. I liked her. I spoke with her honestly about our disagreements and my gratitude for the solace she brought my parents. When my mom called to tell me the story and explain how they all had quit the church, I was flabbergasted. I cried on the phone. I was so proud of them.
    I have a good friend from Louisiana. He’s a bit older than I. He talked about his dad being raised a racist. It was just the way things were. In the sixties his dad and the whole community changed. Racism was wrong. That generation really did change. Racism didn’t vanish overnight—it’s still with us today—but it started to go away. My friend threw me a challenge. He asked me, if I was presented with absolute proof that racism was the correct way to think, would I be able to change? Could I make as deep a change in my worldview as his dad had? I don’t know.
    Is there something that could make me join a church? Maybe my mom was always a heathen. Maybe my dad didn’t get rid of his faith, he just left the church. But it still seems like leaving that church was a difficult, heroic act. Whenever I’m confronted with big changes around me, I think about my mom and dad sticking up for Pastor Shirley. They stuck up for her and still kept their financial pledges. Goddamn.
    When I stopped crying, I gave my mom some advice. I warned her that she had to be strong. I said, “Pastor Shirley is going to come by the house one of these days, and she’ll thank you for your support, but she’ll tell you that your faith is more important than the petty politics of onechurch. She’ll say the church is more important than a few individuals. She’ll say that you must keep your faith and keep the community of the church. That’s the way it works. You’re going to have to be strong and stick to your beliefs.” Yeah, I was telling my mom and dad how to be strong. That’s the kind of asshole I am.
    I was right. Pastor Shirley did stop by the house a while later for a visit.
    She thanked them for their support, told them she’d found a job in a church far away, and then inquired about their health and asked how I was doing in New York City.
    That’s all. Not a word about their going back to the church or to religion.
    Phooey on my cynicism.
    “We Shall Overcome”
    —Pete Seeger
    “Jesus Is Easy”
    —Martin Mull

Auto-Tune, Tattoos, and Big Fake Tits
    P enn Jillette’s first rule of tits: all that matters about them love jugs is how much the person whom they’re attached to likes them. I’ve heard a lot of men complain about “fake tits.” They’ll say stuff like “Those aren’t real.” They don’t mean they’re just imagining them, they mean these particular ganastahagans are not genetically coded. In my experience, the men who say this are men with very little experience with aftermarket heavers. Women who have had their breasts altered often like their surgically “enhanced” breasts more, and if they like them more, I like them more.
    The Eskimos—or as I think they’re called, the Inuits, or maybe the correct term is now “Frozen-Ass Aboriginal North Americans,” I don’t know—do not have twenty-something words for snow. That’s not true. But the Brits do have more than a hundred and fifty terms for male masturbation. If you’re in England and someone uses a verb and you don’t know what it means, it probably means jacking off. For jilling off, female masturbation, our brothers and sisters across the pond stick to “auditioning the finger