I'm convinced!

What did that pickle do to deserve that?

what is the fate of the pickle after giving witness?

So God and Jesus empowers us with double penetration?

The guy is not proving Christianity by electrocuting the pickle. He is using it as an analogy. A better, and more accurate title would have been "Christians are like electrocuted pickles"

What is it with these guys and their use of phallic produce. Remember the banana video with Kirk Cameron?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGMuIyBK5P4

Tht's rlly lm- tk dmnstrtns md t kd's lvl nd mk fn f thm, nd ct lk tht's ll Chrstnty s. ll t ds s mk m thnk lss f Y.

#5: Just like how Ogres are like onions!

I like the warning at the end not to try this at home. I wish he would have carried the analogy through to the warning as well.

# 5 i agree, but i also agree with #6: pickles, slings? sound pretty tawdry to me, mr. christian.

So accepting Jesus in my life is like getting stabbed with two fork and electrocuted until I start glowing and smoking?

Sign me up!

Holy shit, keep god the hell away from me! I like the many layers this analogy has. beautiful light of god in the dark, scary death rattle while illuminated with light (Truth).

Just teach science to your damn followers christianity! Leave your god at home where it belongs.

So electricity is God.

Gotcha.

Anyone needs me, I'll be wiring myself into the mains.

Next he waterboards the pickle to prove how America can never be wrong.

Christianity lights you on fire? Ouch

What a WEIRD thing! What good is a fried pickle? Imagine what litle boys in their 'poo-poo pee-pee' phase would make of that. Parents, don't let your babies watch this.

I just would not believe if it was not of the black board in the background.

That means that it is pure science.

PTL

That must be what Larry the Cucumber feels like all the time.

http://www.larry-boy.com/police/images/mugshotjpgs/larryCu.jpg

Plus, why does that man think that pickles are ugly? That is pickleist!

This creeps me out in so MANY ways -- on so many levels -- it's almost unbelievable.

slings? yeah! hadn't noticed but I sguess this all cross-indexes with, " phallic symbols, sex toys, slings, electrical play, piercing, branding, double-ending, dominance and submission, penetration, trans-kingdom sexual exploration (not just species!), harness equipment, bears,.... I wonder if this guys congregation knows?

So the lesson is don't try Christianity at home. Got it.

It's creepy enough that 'God is always watching you' but now I have to worry about keeping him away from my pickle. Creepy.

On the other hand maybe God could be the new Viagra spokesman? 'Viagra. Because even God needs a little help energizing your pickle!'

Pickle Surprise!

Big deal. It's a little science experiment using metaphor to describe the Holy Spirit. It's nowhere near the zany rationalization of Kirk Cameron's banana logic.

I was about to say "in b4 Christian bashers", but no, I didn't get in before them at all.

wow, just the other day god stuck two forks into me and attached them to a battery. it hurt like hell, but i only gave my name, rank, and serial number. when he finally turned it off the relief i felt was... heavenly !

If I am supposed to accept that the pickle and the electricity are supposed to be intrepreted symbolically rather than literally, then what does the sling stand for? What about the forks being driven into the pickle? You can't just pick parts of something to interpret symbolically and then tell us to just ignore the rest.

all that pickle juice and steam squirting out of the thing when the lights turned on was borderline erotic. He ate that pickle after the recording. Better yet, he has the motherjar kept of all pickles he's ever administered shock therapy to.

What a fantastic analogy! The pickle is electrocuted, cooking, using up the things that make it a pickle until they're gone. When it's done, it's a burnt out husk that tastes pretty awful.

Absolutely perfect :)

Other things that are like a Christian infused with the power of Christ:
- Light bulbs
- Steel wool
- LEDs (use less power of Christ, will explode at godlike currents...)
- Pickled Herring
- Rare gasses

In all seriousness, I think this video is its own perfect analogy of modern Christianity.

Wow, the crucifixion should have been at night then. Think of how cool Jesus would have looked glowing and sparking like that!

Wow!

I guess this means that people sentenced to the electric chair get touched by god and go to heaven.

Maybe I should rethink my opposition to capital punishment! We need electric chairs in our schools!

I sense a lord's prayer pickle parody prancing near....

Something something Kool-Aid pickle.

The pickle was bleeding out both ends and smoking when he did it with the light on.

Why, why, why do they let people like him proselytize? It just messes up the world for the rest of us who are Christians.

Freud would be proud.

Unfortunately, this kind of lends credence to people who say Scientology is just as valid as Christianity. Tom Cruise is still crazier than this guy, but not by much.

So I can soak myself in brine and electrocute my way to salvation? Sounds preferable to kneeling before an idol.

"you'll notice that all the lights went out in your house. that's like christianity halting the progress of science!"

Come now Mark, you could have done much better! Yanking the trolls chains for fun are we? There's nothing about that vid that connects with your headline or caption - it's just an analogy of an aspect of Christianity that was made for a very young audience. Lm pst.

#16 Buddy66 "What use is a fried pickle?"

Uhm.

Have you ever TASTED a fried pickle?

THEY'RE DELICIOUS NOM NOM NOM NOM

They're the God to the fried mars bar's Satan.

ch #38's sttmnts. My prvs cmmnt ws nt llwd- ht lttl t cls t hm, hh? Smbdy nds t grw p rnd hr.

ooops I found my previous comment now. Too many popped up all at once, I missed it. Sorry.

Christianity is funny already. It doesn't need pickles.

I feel bad for this man. He seems like he sincerely believes, yet it feels like the way he's trying to share Christianity is missing the point. Perhaps he is trying to encourage Christians to be, well, Christians.

Christians are not told to tell others about being light to the world, they are told to *be* light to the world.

WorldVision (mentioned in previous post http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/18/clean-water-video-fr.html) is one such Christian organization that *is* a light to the world and accomplishes this in such a way that people do not perceive as condescending or judgmental.

Now i get it! Christians are shriveled up, vinegary, and sour, and then they wind up being oozing, dried out husks of their former selves when they find jesus!

Why didn't somebody just come out say it years ago?

Why can't some of these Christians just accept and learn science rather than always trying to pervert it to cram it into their crazy cults?

Ahhh, analogy: the weakest form of retoric.

See, an analogy is like the crappy little pickle at the bottom of the jar that nobody wants to eat. It's just not good.

Also, very glad I stuck around to hear the end. "Don't try this at home!" I think that's where the whole thing really breaks down. Classic.

I'm feeling so much better now that I know this information...

And you see how it's smoking? Don't try that either, kids!

The Comic Sans is bothering me at least as much as the pickle execution.

#40, what makes you think your previous comment was not allowed? I see it right up there at #7. Playing the aggrieved martyr doesn't work real well when you haven't actually been martyred.

I feel so sorry for christians, especially those who had to try to find a way to defend the "metaphore" of what I think is the sickest (not the good sick) thing I have ever seen on the internet.
How do these uberchistians differentiate between what to take literally and what is a metaphor? So tricky, but then again, they have pickle science to help them figure it out.

Interesting,

I read about electrocuted pickle way back in the 90's in a magazine called Nova I think. It was very interesting. It was a student who use to cook hot-dog sausage like the christian do up there. Then the student start to cook anything he can. He came to the pickle. Interesingly, the pickle use to glow only on one side (like we see in the video). Therefore, the student try to reproduce the glowing thing, but the glowing side of the pickle was aleatory. Then the student start to make pickle in other salt then the sodium o ne and the glowing start to be diferent color according to the salt used.

I tried to find out the magzine (nova I Think!) but I can't.

The bottom line is, like Granpa John said, don't try this at home folks, It can be dangerous to handle power of christianity if you don't master it. Let's the force be with you, John!

That guy just forked a pickle!

(So if we follow the analogy all the way to it's conclusion, Christianity will eventually make you a burned out husk?)

As someone who has spent many years debating the proponents of the several forms of Christianity that are rampant throughout the Western World:

--
In my life, I have only ever prayed but one prayer, a short one, and it was thus: "Oh Lord, make mine enemies ridiculous."

And LO! It was granted!
-- Voltaire.

@ #49 WoeToHice

Really? That's the sickest thing you've seen so far online? Methinks you are reaching a bit - your post was pretty good bait until you botched it up with that.

Lilorfnannie,

It must be HORRIFYING to be SO OPRESSED!

Watch your back - they may send lions again!

I'm honored to be in such company. You guys are flat-out fucking funny!

An earlier mention of Freud . . . I'll bet even the good Viennese doctor would be aghast, with every reason to think he was being satirized.

"Don't try this at home."

Don't connect pickles to forks and electricute them or don't symbolically electricute yourself with the Christian God?

Don't think this guy is going to convert any sane person with something like that.

Maybe this guy is secretly a pro-science/technology educator. He's trying to teach the kids of rabid creationist parents about cool science tricks, but the only way he can get it past their parents is by couching it in a bunch of religious moralizing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_OAbnw58wI

If this thing is aimed at children, I hope it's ONLY about christianity.
If that entire video was the entire lesson, than what all did they learn about electricity and conduction? If this was displayed under the guise of science, then he should of at least talked about the properties of conductivity in the pickle and the way electricity acts upon it, rather than focus entirely on the analogy of the pickle's well being with christianity.

Next up, how Mentos and Pepsi are a Buddhist allegory for how one can expel earthly desires.

If you take the analogy further, being connected to god requires you to be strapped. Strapped to the slings, forks and more importantly, to the wire. Not only is the pickle held in place, the electricity passing thru it is the same everywhere. All the pickles, connected by wires, receive the same energy. The same truth. The exact same light.

I ask you Grandpa John, is that pickle really free?
Free to move? Free to think... free to not have gases and juice spitting out of it?

Ah hah hah. Hah hah hah. Heh. Hah ha ha ha ha, cough, "choke", spit up. Hah hah hah, oh lordy lordy lordy. Oh poo, I think I followed through a little.

Snort

Please, stop. Really

Sigh

I want a WWPD sticker for my car. What would the pickle do?

Lilorfnannie,

Mind your manners or lose your vowels.

Thus demonstrating that getting forked and juiced will really light you up.

No doubt bringing together enough plutonium to reach critical mass would demonstrate the power of evangelism.

The maker of that video isn't serious, he's just gherkin' you around.

Lm pst, clearly intended to be inflammatory and completely missing the point of the demonstration (it wasn't meant to "prove" anything).

On the other hand, it was a surprisingly effective way to draw out all the trolls. The guy quoting Voltaire had it exactly right: the trolls are doing a wonderful job presenting themselves as ridiculous.

Shamefull parody of this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqXbhFFzbxw

It's a nice demonstration if you're already into christ. If you're not, it's just begging to be made fun of.

So, christianity is like being electrocuted... Hmm.

just watch (and listen) from 2:22 to 2:24

Stitch that you heathen pickle!!

And God said "smite thy pickle with the power of electricity"

So it is written in scrolls of old.

"#38 posted by skarbreeze: ...There's nothing about that vid that connects with your headline or caption - it's just an analogy of an aspect of Christianity that was made for a very young audience."

Of course it connects with the headline and posts. He said: "I want to show you a really neat experiment which demonstrates how Christianity can make a difference in people."

That he's foisting this malarky on a "very young audience" is a bonus.

The power of electricity compels you.

This and many other Jesus-affirming food tricks can apparently be found in Penn and Teller's How to Play with Your Food, circa 1992.

I'd completely forgotten about the existence of that book until this video triggered junior-high era, glowing pickle flashbacks.

(Use "search inside" and search "pickle." It's on page 157.)

The "guy quoting Voltaire" was quoting Voltaire's views on how ridiculous Christians are, in the context of how ridiculous Christians are, with respect to defending their own worldview.

Sometimes they even claim that something means the exact opposite of what it clearly means!

Thanks for reminding me of How to Play with Your Food - my friend and I made a pickle lamp from the instructions in that book. It wasn't as elegantly simple as the one in the video linked in #67, though.

Guess I would have been more impressed if Grandpa John had held the forks in his hands. I'm sure he would glow too. Praise the Lord!

We could put the pickle in a blender:

"Electrocuted pickle-cum-Christian analogy dust: don't breathe this!"

Alright Skarbreeze, you're right...reaching. But you have to admit it might have been a pickle-in-cheek science bit without the religion stuff. Adding the sugary sweet jesus element in there with all the forks and electricity and chalkboardness...it just gave me the hurls. yick.

Any electricity experts out there know why the pickle only lights up on one side?

It reminds me of a short story Donald Barthelme wrote called "At the End of the Mechanical Age" in which God was the engineer reading the electrical meters, and his love was the electricity powering our lives.

Much more eloquent than the pickle, obviously.

The text of the story can be found here. It's not like a religious story or anything like that. Almost the opposite, so if you're not keen on Jesus it won't offend you or anything.

If Jesus was full of god given psychic mitochondrion and piss loaded already, he was human after all, would he still turn the cukes into pickles if you bought his 12 crew another round? Isn't that what cheap parlor tricks are all about? Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

good question, is that the hot or neutral side that glows the most?

This makes Christianity seem very offputting... I don't want to become a fried pickle :"(

Best quotes:

"Funny things start happening" and "Don't try to do this at home"

exactly. Amen.

This guy does not know what he is talking about! Electricity is a lie perpetrated by the atheist, communist, anti-American scientist conspiracy! The Bible does not talk about electricity! And, the Theory of Electromagnetism is just a theory! Its just a theory! Its not proven!

He is a witch I say! Burn him!

Hey, weren't those KOSHER pickles?

So this guy is demonstrating some pretty anti-semetic stuff here. Electrocuting jewish pickles in the name of God.

That's pretty messed up.

When my friend Mike and I electrocuted four or five pickles, I remember that while both electrodes could produce a glow at first, as the sodium gets used up eventually only one side will glow, then neither. I expect that as they are using AC current, the particular electrode has no significance, but rather sodium availability around each electrode.

OMG, I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT! (Literally...'cause the pickle was glowing.)

The electropickle has led me to Jesus!

"Boy this is an ugly pickle"

Right off the bat he broke a commandment. Judge not, least ye be judged.

@ Keneke: did you ever consider the fact that Christianity is completely deluded and insane? people who bash it are merely applying logical thought to observable fact.

I love the Christians,
Their labored metaphors,
I love the pickles,
and charge and slings and forks,
I love the whole world
and all its silliness
Boom-de-yada
Boom-de-yada
Boom-de-yada
Boom-de-yada!

This type of thing royally pisses me off. I'm Christian... but I cannot conceive of any way that the Electrocuted-Pickle theory could help an "unbeliever" become a Christian. This reminds me of this billboard I pass every time I drive home to Missouri. It's big and green and just says "Jesus". WTF does that do? Do those people or Grandpa John here really think people will say, "Gosh. My life is without meaning or guidance. HOLY SHIT its a billboard that says Jesus! I should go to church." or "I was considering doing some heroin and banging a couple of whores, but that glowing pickle sure makes me think twice about my life decisions." Hell no!

All this does is make the crazy right wing Christians feel better about themselves while perpetuating the thought that all Christians are pickle electrocuting psychos.

rAMPANTiDIOCY,

Manners.

19] This is the testimony given by Electropickle when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask it, ‘What are you?’
20] It confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’
21] And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ It said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ It answered, ‘No.’
22] Then they said to it, ‘What are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’
23] It said, ‘I am the voice of one crying out from the refrigerator, "Make straight the way of the Lord and accompany club sandwiches," as the prophet Isaiah said.'

Did anyone else think that this was pickle S&M?

What about the other lessons?

The Man hates you - you're ugly.
Like pickles, all Christians probably taste the same.
When you plug in a pickle all the lights go out and you have to trust me to tell you what's happening to the other pickles.
The Man with the power enjoys destroying the pickles while claiming it's "just to make them different and better"
After the Man is done using you up to prove his point, he will discard you.Tough luck pickle!
The safety of your children is a definite afterthought.

So the message is that Christianity will cook you from the inside out, and leave you a useless husk that superficially resembles your original form as a useful, vital denizen of the planet, while actually leaving you useless for anything other than warning others away from your chosen path? A better advertisement for agnosticism was never created.

did the Inquisition have pickles?

how would Islam deal with the Pickle? Or Judaism?

IWood: Thank you. That was lovely.

Is it true that the followers of James, the brother of Jesus, insisted on kosher dills, while those who accepted the Pauline teachings allowed bread & butter pickles, as well as polski ogorkis to be electrocuted?

Confucius tastes the pickle and says, "It is sour."

Buddha tastes the pickle and says, "It is bitter."

But Lao Tzu tastes the pickle and says, "It is sweet."

The "guy quoting Voltaire" was quoting Voltaire's views on how ridiculous Christians are, in the context of how ridiculous Christians are, with respect to defending their own worldview

Regardless, his quote applies quite directly to the anti-religious comments on this post, no matter what Voltaire was commenting on initially.

I just wish atheists would a) stop pretending they aren't holding religious views themselves, and b) stop berating those who hold different religious views. There's already enough examples of people expressing hypocritical religously-based ideas without the atheists adding to the problem. Yet, that's exactly what many of them do (including the vast majority represented here).

I don't know from Islam, but the tribe would have it on the side, with corned beef on rye. With maybe a nice piece of fruit after.

's all nonsense anyway. So long as you got your potato, everything will be OK.

Hmm - Pickles to demonstrate christianity, before it was bananas on youtube to prove intelligent design. Do I see a trend here of phallic objects being chosen by these people to make their points? - or maybe they are literally just trying to stuff their beliefs down other peoples throats.

The power of Kosher compels you!

Thanks 86, I want a fried pickle now!

Here we go again, A theist accusing atheists of being RELIGIOUS. The flag is up,
the flag is waving,
the flag is down!
Commence firing...

Here we go again, A theist accusing atheists of being RELIGIOUS. The flag is up, the flag is waving, the flag is down! Commence firing...

Most atheists, like most Christians, aren't very religious. But the few who are...

@95: That reminds me of some Christian proselytisers in Melbourne a few years ago. Their modus operandi was to hang around near tram stops in a central shopping area and shout at people about "JESUS! JESUS! JESUS IS LORD!" and so on. And I mean shout; they didn't preach or declaim in measured tones, but hollered with manic intensity.

I suspect the number of people who accepted Jesus into their lives because a dishevelled-looking person shouted at them at a tram stop was quite small.

I used to do this to hot dogs for lunch, but only on Fridays, and you have to eat them without a bun. It really does cook them well, though.

Harveyboing: Voltaire was highly critical of Christians, Christianity, superstition, and religion in general and in specific. It is hard to find a more anti-this-kind-of-pickle-roasting-idiocy than Voltaire. "Votre Majesté rendra un service éternel au genre humain en détruisant cette infâme superstition, je ne dis pas chez la canaille, qui n’est pas digne d’être éclairée, et à laquelle tous les jougs sont propres"; "Tout homme sensé, tout homme de bien, doit avoir la secte chrétienne en horreur."; "Ne peut-on pas remonter jusqu’à ces anciens scélérats, fondateurs illustres de la superstition et du fanatisme, qui, les premiers, ont pris le couteau sur l’autel pour faire des victimes de ceux qui refusaient d’etre leurs disciples?"

Voltaire held a great many awful, nasty, and/or wrong opinions. I do not agree with them, and thus do not repeat them. Those above are merely illustrative of your error - they aren't necessarily my opinion.

But this is true: "Qui plume a, guerre a."

You may hold the opinion that atheism is a religion, or a religious notion. You're wrong.

You may hold the opinion that those who mock this video do so because they are atheists. You're wrong.

You may hold the opinion that it is wrong to mock the clearly-misapplied-precepts-lifted-whole-cloth-from-other-people-without-understanding-them. This may be true for you, but it's not true for me, nor is it true of the society I choose to be a part of. Shame has a social function to both the object and the audience, and it is rightly deserved in the case both of the PickleInquisitor and in your awful misappropriation of the spirit of Voltaire - he would be front-row-center ringleader of this forum post were he alive today.

Don't hold strong opinions about which you understand (or as Voltaire said, "Il est bien malaisé (puisqu’il faut enfin m’expliquer) d’ôter à des insensés des chaînes qu’ils révèrent.").

G E Gardner-

That is indeed the case, which I think can mostly be attributed to Paul's "issues" with kosher dills.

A scroll found at Nag Hammâdi suggests that chutney was used by certain early sects, but obviously this eastern influence didn't survive the journey into orthodoxy.

#61 -- thank you

Christians light up, yes. But do they blend?

Pickle smoke. Don't breathe this!

Bardfinn: you seem to be under the misconception that contradiction is a valid form of argument or debate.

You're wrong.

Antinous: thank you, for one of the most concisely insightful comments here.

#115bardfinn,

Is it you or Voltaire stumbling around in that thicket of parentheses?

Buddy66 wrote:
What a WEIRD thing! What good is a fried pickle?

Go to a pub or somewhere else that has a wicked deep-fried zucchini. Get them to do the same thing with garlic dill pickles. Eat one. You'll be converted.