from a very early age I was bothered by religion, but not for reasons you might expect. let me take you back to middle school and one of my last video game addictions: Sim City 2000. I loved that game, but it exposed my intense dislike for inconsistencies. observe:

nice 12x4 blocks of residential. 12x4 was my building block size. the property was all close enough to the street so it wouldn't undergo traffic starvation, but the blocks were big enough to scale well into the 4x4-building-sized endgame, without too much land being sacrificed to streets.

in no time, these blocks would fill, and my little city would begin to bustle — BUT WHAT'S THIS?!

I took issue with churches because I wanted to maximize population. people don't live in churches, so churches are wasting precious residentially-zoned land!

churches were a type of building that never went abandoned, so the only way to promote new construction was to destroy it. but when I bulldozed the church, the land beneath it was dezoned! look!

why do they get such a privilege? if every time a building is constructed, is there a 1/250 chance it becomes a church? is the church going to stage a slow takeover of all the land in my city by this method? NOT ON MY WATCH! I bulldozed every church and rezoned the land.

as a result of this strange childhood I've always viewed churches as land that could be used better, but never will be. they just clog up the streets every Sunday.

but Milami and I just moved to a new place, and within throwing distance of our place is this daycare which looks kinda funny. I understand that a religiously-inclined daycare would want to look like a church, but it strikes me as silly.

and then I saw their sign today on my way to work:

huh.