Brontoforumus Archive
Discussion Boards => Thaddeus Boyd's Panel of Death => Topic started by: Thad on October 10, 2008, 09:14:49 AM
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I think Bill Maher would appreciate the irony in saying that Religulous preaches to the choir. It's a funny movie, and has some good things to say, but the people who need to see it are the people who will refuse to see it. (Or will walk out halfway through. The guy at my comic shop said a group of Mormons left in the middle when he saw it, and he nearly stood up and applauded.)
It's all a little cursory. My favorite bit is where he talks to a neurosurgeon; I wish they'd gone into more detail about what goes on in the brain when people are praying.
I also quite liked the bit about the Jesus story predating Christ by a thousand years or more.
My angle on religion, and something I'd have liked to see explored further, is that these stories and myths have value, but shit goes south in a hurry when people take them literally. You all know I love superhero comics, and I've often pointed out that they're a modern heroic mythology -- there are a lot of perfectly good morality tales in Batman (a friend of mine has said that TAS helped shape his worldview when he was a kid), but YOU DON'T LITERALLY DRESS LIKE A BAT AND METE OUT VIGILANTE JUSTICE.
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Kal-El died for your sins, Thad.
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Also, heaven exploded and God was powerless
to stop it. Some Messiah Moses turned out to be.
I have every intent of seeing Religulous (maybe today, and perhaps with a double feature of An American Carol), and I'm a Christian that fancies himself reasonably well-informed. Naturally, I disagree with Thad on various related issues, but such a discussion doesn't quite belong here (maybe in its own thread, or just in an older one). I anticipate it to be the Second Coming of Brian Flemming, but I'll be damned if I'm going to critique a flick I haven't even seen.
Christ answered his critics directly, and didn't shy away from them (part of that was the nature of the times and culture, but still). So yeah, people who walk out or refuse to see the flick are missing one of his many points, I believe.
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People who enact violence (or any act of hatred really) in any major religion's name are missing many if not most important points, I believe.
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I caught Religulous on its opening weekend and just loved it. I've long thought that Bill Maher was too authoritarian a figure to head a show like Real Time, which because of his aggressive style of debate, comes off as little more than propaganda for his worldview, a sort of left-wing O'Reilly Factor, but in Religulous he tackles people that are just as convinced of their own rightness as he is, and it seems a fairer fight. To make it fair, however, required Maher to be pushier than I've ever seen him before, so much that it came as a surprise that there was only the one vague threat of violence toward him in the movie.
The more I think about his closing monologue, the more I disagree with Thad that this movie was intended to dissuade the religious. It seems to me that Maher was more trying to rally those already on his side (or leaning that way) to be less forgiving of religious zealotry and not to tolerate ignorance justified by religious faith. Considering the conversations and debates I've had since I left the theater, I think that the movie was successful in that regard.
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People who enact violence (or any act of hatred really) in any major religion's name are missing many if not most important points, I believe.
Wrong thread to infer that I was talking about violence in relation to religiously-themed open debate, Catloaf. I'm shutting up before there's a topic split.
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My priest liked it, he's talking about getting the community together to see it. :wat:
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Your priest is bad at his job, huh?
EDIT: I've just been informed that I'm the only one who had to deal with (exclusively) insane priests during his childhood. Not touchy type priests. Just nuts priests.
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What about touchy-nuts type priests?
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I'm shutting up before there's a topic split.
:happy: Ha ha! Keep talking!
I split this into Real World so it can bleed into a debate about the issues surrounding the movie as well. I don't think that's entirely off topic, and it won't stop people about talking about the film itself. We'll see how it works out.
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Back in Texas, the priest of the church I went to was a 100% Grade-A Awesome dude. The guy would frequently bust his ass making sure that someone who needed help was getting help. On more than one occasion when a parent was running late he'd offer to watch the kids or see if one of the other adults there would watch them. He wasn't the touchy kind of priest, he was just awesome.
One morning he woke up and found a huge 60 inch flatpanel TV on his doorstep, with a note from community thanking him for all his hard work.
Yeah, I miss him.
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The more I think about his closing monologue, the more I disagree with Thad that this movie was intended to dissuade the religious.
Maybe not directly, but I would certainly say that the point is SOMEONE needs to start dissuading them.
It seems to me that Maher was more trying to rally those already on his side (or leaning that way) to be less forgiving of religious zealotry and not to tolerate ignorance justified by religious faith. Considering the conversations and debates I've had since I left the theater, I think that the movie was successful in that regard.
That's a pretty sweeping social goal for a simple 100-minute movie -- though Maher's less of a dick about it than, say, Dawkins (who I like) or Hitchens (who I don't). But I certainly agree that it's an important one: we need to get atheists, nontheists, agnostics, humanists -- whatever label you want -- together and organized and push for the government to start recognizing the establishment clause. We also need to pick our fights -- trying to get "under God" taken out of the pledge, for example, was a monumental fucking waste of time that just made us all look bad.
Of course, we have allies in moderates, people who are religious but acknowledge that the country shouldn't be governed on superstition but on science. I'm thinking, for example, of the priests he spoke to at the Vatican (though of course they're presumably not involved in American politics). There are a hell of a lot of people like that out there, and we need to recognize them as our allies. I think the bottom line, if we want to improve our standing in society, is not to be a bunch of smug assholes about our views. Maher hit the nail on the head when he talked about doubt and uncertainty as humble traits and described certainty as something scary.
EDIT: Note to splitter: good idea, but don't do that while I'm posting.
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we need to get atheists, nontheists, agnostics, humanists -- whatever label you want -- together and organized and push for the government to start recognizing the establishment clause.
D'you mean the one that permits freedom of religion, Thad? Because I'm pretty sure that doesn't cover being atheist and would be counterproductive to do so. Can't prove a negative, etc.
If not, could you elaborate on the clause you're referring to?
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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion....
Those are the first lines of the first amendment of the Bill of Rights, Buge.
That doesn't just expressly permit freedom of religion, it implies freedom from religion. Also, since when is being an atheist covered under freedom of religion? It's basically a freedom to believe and think how you choose, not the freedom to pick a god and worship it.
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And more significantly, it's prohibiting governmental recognition of religion or religious organizations as special or different, under the law, for the sole reason of being religious.
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I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen "The Church of [corporation name]" for tax breaks yet, frankly.
(no, scientology is not quite a corporation)
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Which means that tax breaks for religious organizations are unconstitutional, but nobody has the balls to stand up on the political forum and say such a thing.
Also, I encourage all of you to join the Church of Constantine. We have meetings on Saturdays, drink beer and drive a boat around the lake, and clothing is optional. This means you, ladies.
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Hey, a tax break for a religious organization that's registered as a nonprofit and meets all of the qualifications, and doesn't violate their 501(c)(3) status, is totally kosher.
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I would love it if everyone stopped being religious, but unfortunately the reasons I have a distaste for organised religion are the same reasons I don't feel good about trying to foist my atheism on other folks, regardless of how idiotic I think their stupid backwards beliefs are. Namely, it's none of my fucking business.
I don't give a shit if someone wants to believe in an invisible wizard who lives in the sky and watches you masturbate. Just keep your craziness away from me and I won't tell you about how life is meaningless dust in an endless howling void that will eventually decay into abject nothingness.
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I think the bottom line, if we want to improve our standing in society, is not to be a bunch of smug assholes about our views.
Hey, that's odd, this quote can be applied to anything
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I would love it if everyone stopped being religious, but unfortunately the reasons I have a distaste for organised religion are the same reasons I don't feel good about trying to foist my atheism on other folks, regardless of how idiotic I think their stupid backwards beliefs are. Namely, it's none of my fucking business.
I don't give a shit if someone wants to believe in an invisible wizard who lives in the sky and watches you masturbate. Just keep your craziness away from me and I won't tell you about how life is meaningless dust in an endless howling void that will eventually decay into abject nothingness.
But that's the PROBLEM, Ham: they DON'T keep their craziness to themselves. Evangelicals, by definition, foist their beliefs on everybody else. We've got a bunch of them running the country, and indeed the world, right now, and it's not a fucking good scene.
One of the central points Maher tries to make in Religulous is that, when the people in charge think the end of the world is coming, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. At best, they'll half-ass any attempts to stop it, and at worst, they'll actively push to bring it about.
Religious views do not exist in a vacuum. If they did, hey, swell, you guys can believe in your imaginary friends and we'll believe in science and we'll go our separate ways. But that's not how it works out in the real world. The people on the fringe of the imaginary-friend crowd are poisoning the air, wiping out entire species at an alarming rate, invading countries that believe in different imaginary friends, controlling women's bodies, killing gays, and, not to put too fine a point on it, some of them have been known to fly planes into buildings.
Now, the vast majority of religious folks are not extremists and don't do those things. So I'm inclined to agree with you that religion's not the problem per se, rather that the problem is extremism. But at that point we're debating semantics -- the point is that religion should stay the hell out of government policy, and that if we're going to survive and evolve as a species, we're going to have to acknowledge that evolution EXISTS first.
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One of the central points Maher tries to make in Religulous is that, when the people in charge think the end of the world is coming, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. At best, they'll half-ass any attempts to stop it, and at worst, they'll actively push to bring it about.
Isn't this basically what Harris says, minus additionally blaming religious moderates for putting up with it?
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What Jesus really preached was to put kindness and compassion in your heart, and, when times are difficult, to associate with like-minded people for support and community while you tough it out.
There are people who expected him to kick the Romans' ass and give Hebrews their political independance back. People asked him if they should pay taxes to the Emperor; there's no doubt that these people wanted revolution. I mean, if you stop paying taxes to the Romans, you can't expect them to just go "oh well" and leave. But Jesus said "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar." He didn't stray off-message: the government stuff isn't important. What's important is that kind folk who help each other out will be okay even if the earthly government is rotten. History happens, the ages are born and spent, political systems fall in and out of fashion, but compassion towards your fellow man endures and must prevail. That is Christianity. It doesn't have the monopoly on kindness and compassion, far from it. But those are its essence.
Of course people screw it up. The revolutionaries are still there. They don't want to accept that being kind and compassionate is sometimes really fucking hard. They don't have enough of either to endure adversity. They reject rather than include, condemn rather than forgive. And they feel threatened. And they are threatened, because they don't have what it takes to really last. They form temporary establishments to struggle against other temporary establishments, when they instead should make every effort to better themselves with qualities that will never fall out of favor. They want Christianity to be easy, as easy as toppling a government. But in reality, what Christians must struggle to change is inside of them. The problem comes when some would rather conquer the world than admit it is their own hearts they should conquer first.
So yeah, religion should stay the hell out of government policy. And, at its core, it wants to stay the hell out. The troubles we have come from human cowardice and hypocrisy, and those wouldn't go away even if everyone in the world became atheist overnight.
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Wait, wait, wait. I'm pretty sure God said we have to kill all of the gays. And the Jews. Who else is around? The Muslims? That seems fine too. Gotta balance out all this loving thy neighbor with just a smidge of hating everybody.
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That's why I'm a modern Christian and not an ancient Jew. As far as I believe, the Old Testament is baby steps for early civilization. When it says that you shouldn't sell your daughter to foreigners (and implies it's okay to sell your daughter to people you know), we're not quite to the point where you don't sell your daughter at all, but you're beginning to change minds and planting the seeds for a world where you'll one day be able to say it's not okay to sell your kids to anyone and not be outright ignored and mocked. The Old Testament has instances of Hebrews facing divine retribution for attacking specific foreign tribes. Well, saying "you can attack these guys, but not those other guys" is baby steps towards saying "just don't attack anyone at all if you can help it".
But look. That's getting away from what I'm saying here. If people don't fight over religion, they'll fight over race. They'll fight over land. They'll fight over money. The thing is, none of the medals for race, land and money have a reverse side that says "also you should be excellent to each other".
EDIT: And of course, I'm not saying everyone needs religion to tell them to be excellent to each other. But sometimes it helps.
EDIT JOHNSON THE SECOND:
Wait, wait, wait. I'm pretty sure God said we have to kill all of the gays. And the Jews. Who else is around? The Muslims? That seems fine too. Gotta balance out all this loving thy neighbor with just a smidge of hating everybody.
wait what
Oh, you're talking about religions in general, not just the judeo-christian thing. Okay yeah, I have a correction to make. In my posts above I'm talking about Christianity because that's the one I know about. I should have been more precise. Thanks for pointing it out.
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Out of curiosity, how often do those members who are atheist or agnostic actually experience some body personally making an issue of your beliefs? I mean how often does some body try to convert you in an aggressive way?
My main issue with religion is evangelical right wing Christianity and oppressive Muslim regimes, but population wise these groups are a small portion of the religious people on the planet.
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The main problem with the evangelicals is that you could take away their Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Shinto or what-have-you and it wouldn't slow them down for a second. The religion is what they say they are about, but it is not what they are about. These are people who will latch onto an idea - any idea - to ground themselves in a world they may simply not have the capacity to understand, and from there will attempt to function according to that idea while at the same time trying to force their immediate universe to fit their model of it, first and foremost by coercing any people surrounding them to accept the same model and to eliminate any idea that challenges or contradicts it. Conformity is all they really care about. Christianity, while popular in America, could be replaced by Buddhism, Rationalism, Agnosticism or whatever else you prefer, and it would still become something innocently poisonous as more and more people started to use it as their only, inarguable means of understanding the world.
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Without agreeing wholesale, I think Zed has a bit of a point. Humans have always struggled to create a society which will function well, something that will ensure a good life and happiness for at least their descendants. At a basic level, this usually involves codifying behaviour and providing carrots and sticks to encourage this.
Religion is just another permutation of this phenomenon. As was the code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the Constitution of the United States, and untold other attempts at same.
All of these attempts are coloured by their founders personal views, and later on, their followers' views. Some people actively subvert the rules for their gain and the gain of their descendants, but other people change the rules as things move around in an ever-changing world. Humanity has been defined by that eternal struggle, on one hand trying to provide an eternal, immutable set of rules that will bring happiness to all* against the recognition that a single overarching set of rules is a rigid, inflexible thing and needs adjusting.
In the same way that most reasonable modern economists acknowledge that some capitalism and some socialism is necessary, and that a balance between extremes works best, so has human society evolved (so far) to something of a balance between religion and atheism. Since there will always be 'unanswered questions', Religion will always provide some incentives for human behaviour that material government cannot.
Thus we have an uneasy coexistence. A middling balance is vital for a well-moderated, well-functioning society. A large and healthy middle class is the surest sign of a prosperous society, and an open-minded but sometimes spiritual outlook is the surest sign of a healthy society emotionally.
The real challenge will always be the struggle against entropy and the tendency for things to always slide off to extremes. This is made even harder, because you will always need a small amount of the extremes, to avoid blandness and crushing boredom. You always need to have some place to move, be it up or down. It's fight we'll always lose in the end, but it's a good fight well worth fighting all the same.
*one's definitions of 'all' may vary greatly.
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One of the central points Maher tries to make in Religulous is that, when the people in charge think the end of the world is coming, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. At best, they'll half-ass any attempts to stop it, and at worst, they'll actively push to bring it about.
Isn't this basically what Harris says, minus additionally blaming religious moderates for putting up with it?
I meant to say Hitchens; I've fixed the original post.
What Jesus really preached was to put kindness and compassion in your heart, and, when times are difficult, to associate with like-minded people for support and community while you tough it out.
Maher acknowledges this (though he also refers to religion as a mental disorder). Early on, he talks to truckers at a truck-stop church and asks their views and shares his. They're not receptive and don't seem to actually understand the things he's saying; one of them seems like he's about to threaten physical violence but leaves instead. The rest, while they don't see eye-to-eye, listen politely; at the end, he says, okay, you've listened to my beliefs, now I'm ready to accept yours; go ahead and pray for me. And then he thanks them for being Christ-like instead of merely Christian.
Out of curiosity, how often do those members who are atheist or agnostic actually experience some body personally making an issue of your beliefs? I mean how often does some body try to convert you in an aggressive way?
Directly? Seldom. The Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses who come to my door are polite and leave when I ask them to. (I had a couple guys representing something called the Church of God the Mother or somesuch thing drop by the other day; basically they were preaching Christianity with the twist that God has both a male and female aspect. I chatted with them awhile and found what they had to say interesting; I told them I'm not a believer and they're not going to change that, but I like the idea of emphasizing a feminine nature to God since religion is so commonly used as an excuse for female oppression.) There HAVE been times when people have been aggressive or gotten in my face -- when I went to the Seal Beach con, I regaled them with the tale of a man bothering my family on that very pier a decade previously and not leaving until Dad threatened to call the police -- but you make a good point, that's not the norm.
That said, someone doesn't have to be directly in front of me being physically aggressive to violate my rights. As I said, we've got a government full of evangelicals, and their effect on the country and the world is a very negative one.
My main issue with religion is evangelical right wing Christianity and oppressive Muslim regimes, but population wise these groups are a small portion of the religious people on the planet.
Agreed, and that's a point I tried to make earlier. Moderate religious folks are our natural allies, not our enemies; they want the same things we do.
So yeah, religion should stay the hell out of government policy. And, at its core, it wants to stay the hell out. The troubles we have come from human cowardice and hypocrisy, and those wouldn't go away even if everyone in the world became atheist overnight.
The main problem with the evangelicals is that you could take away their Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Shinto or what-have-you and it wouldn't slow them down for a second. The religion is what they say they are about, but it is not what they are about. These are people who will latch onto an idea - any idea - to ground themselves in a world they may simply not have the capacity to understand, and from there will attempt to function according to that idea while at the same time trying to force their immediate universe to fit their model of it, first and foremost by coercing any people surrounding them to accept the same model and to eliminate any idea that challenges or contradicts it. Conformity is all they really care about. Christianity, while popular in America, could be replaced by Buddhism, Rationalism, Agnosticism or whatever else you prefer, and it would still become something innocently poisonous as more and more people started to use it as their only, inarguable means of understanding the world.
The real challenge will always be the struggle against entropy and the tendency for things to always slide off to extremes.
But how can you be an extremist if your core belief is "Nothing is certain, and we must remain skeptical of even our most firmly-held beliefs"?
I suppose that's like asking how you can be an extremist if your core belief is "Love thy neighbor." Somewhere, the message is going to get subverted and the ethical code will no longer be about what it says it is.
I continue to think the answer is better education. Curiosity, asking "Why?", is part of our fundamental nature as children; that needs to be encouraged, made into a trait that we never lose.
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An individual can have moderate and fair-minded core beliefs. I was speaking of the tendency of society in general to slide towards extremes over time.
Of course, everything cycles, so after the slide towards extremes, things will often balance again.
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My personal view is that a direct relationship between the church and state weakens both the religion and the state in almost all cases. The religion end up passe or corrupted. The government ends up with a focus out of whack compared to its actual duties. There's a reason that 1000 year old churches are pulling 20 people a service in Europe. Of course there's a fine line between a large number of religious persons in government acting upon their own beliefs, which I am fine with, and a religious infiltration of government like we've seen over the last 8 years, which I am not fine with. The combination of nationalism and religion is poison, I don't know of any case where it's ever done anything but harm.
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Out of curiosity, how often do those members who are atheist or agnostic actually experience some body personally making an issue of your beliefs?
I was told that formal apostacy would get me kicked out of the house.
There's never been any solid conversion attempt on me, unless people not aware of my suspicions ("beliefs") inviting me to some kind of Christian bible study counts. Or the Jehova's Witnesses on bikes count. Or the teeny tiny hotel bibles (which I suspect are there for people who need bibles, not to gain new recruits) count.
I'm not sure what the picketing God squads on campus are trying to do. It seems less like conversion and more like trolling.
Seeing those "designated free speech zone" signs make me giggle every time.
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The combination of nationalism and religion is poison
Seems like the two tend to go hand in hand. I'm remembering some things wrong, so I'm going to axe this post and make a new one after having had more time to gather passages and thoughts.
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Education is nice, but you claim repeatedly that the real big problem is that the zealots are running the country, and for the most part these people do not suffer from a lack of education. The content of that education is certainly to blame, but now you're entering a dangerous area: if you're going to enforce the teaching of a more open world-view, you're going to have to find a way to force the teachers to instruct their pupils in a manner which they don't personally believe in. Which is, of course, entirely within the realm of their modus operandi, and is rightly reviled.
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Yeah. If you hate zealots for their beliefs, then you share their hate, for they hate you for your beliefs as well. If you hate zealots for their zeal, then you should be careful not to become a zealot yourself, unless you're ready to become what you hate.
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I'm ready! I'm ready! Put me in, coach!
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I'm beginning to see a flaw in my assertion.
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Education is nice, but you claim repeatedly that the real big problem is that the zealots are running the country, and for the most part these people do not suffer from a lack of education.
I don't know that that's entirely accurate. Bush went to Yale, sure, but to say he's well-educated is a pretty fucking monumental stretch. Rove's an avowed atheist, and it's hard for me to picture Cheney as a Bible-thumper. You start getting into Congress and I'm sure there are lots of folks whose transcript is worse than Bush's.
I suppose what we're looking at is collusion between people who have the same goals for different reasons -- the stupid and the evil, I suppose is one way of putting it.
The content of that education is certainly to blame, but now you're entering a dangerous area: if you're going to enforce the teaching of a more open world-view, you're going to have to find a way to force the teachers to instruct their pupils in a manner which they don't personally believe in. Which is, of course, entirely within the realm of their modus operandi, and is rightly reviled.
If you don't believe in science, you shouldn't be a science teacher. If you don't believe in history, you shouldn't be a history teacher. If you think teaching abstinence will keep teenagers from fucking, you shouldn't be a sex education teacher.
Sometimes it's not a matter of what you believe, it's a matter of what is factually accurate. Math teachers don't get to say that two plus two is five; science teachers shouldn't get to say that there's controversy within the scientific community as to the validity of evolution.
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Well, part of what I'm saying is that fixing education is not going to help a guy like George W. Bush - you can't make him brilliant, he simply will not take that step for himself.
Education doesn't start until about age 5, at which point there are a lot of things about the child that are beginning to set - whether or not they're going to go in with any sort of curiosity, for example, or whether they've been instilled with a drive to succeed rather than just survive and breed. This comes ultimately from culture, which is a difficult thing to try and control.
Getting back to the matter of the zealous, I really don't believe they need to be swayed as much as you might think. A lot of people take comfort from their fervent beliefs that would be unattainable any other way. What needs to be done is to limit their effect on society as a whole, however. This had largely been happening since... well, the Italian Renaissance, really, but it seems like in recent years the whole world seems to be crawling back into its various shells. The reasons for that are probably much too complex to be even theorized at by some jerkass on a message board with a clown avatar.
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Well, part of what I'm saying is that fixing education is not going to help a guy like George W. Bush - you can't make him brilliant, he simply will not take that step for himself.
Sure, but there are tens of millions of people who that's not true of. Just because you're never going to convince some people of an argument doesn't mean you shouldn't try to convince ANYONE.
Getting back to the matter of the zealous, I really don't believe they need to be swayed as much as you might think. A lot of people take comfort from their fervent beliefs that would be unattainable any other way. What needs to be done is to limit their effect on society as a whole, however.
We live in a democracy. There are two ways to reduce the influence of zealots in elections: reduce their relative numbers in the population, or reduce their relative voter turnout. And the thing about the latter is that THEY'RE ZEALOTS; by definition they care more about pushing their agenda than everybody else.
There's also the possibility of putting up barriers to voting, but I find that idea morally reprehensible.
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I think the answer ultimately lies in decreasing the power of the national government in relation to the states. If there are states that cater to the needs of crazy people, the crazy people will flock there and stop trying to change the rest of the country quite so much. Illegal abortion? Great. No gay marriage? Super. Keep it in Statesota. The rest of us will go ahead and apply reason.
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Kazz, our constitution expressly forbids what you're talking about.
In fact, in strict terms, since three states legally allow gay marriage, the other states are violating not just human rights, but constitutional state's rights by not legally recognizing them. This is going to be a big issue in the coming years, and that's a good reason to have Obama putting his judges in the Supreme Court.
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that sassafrassin'...
where's ron paul when you need him
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I've said this many a time before, but here it goes anyway:
States' rights are important.
But individuals' rights trump states' rights.
States do not have the right to deny rights to individuals. When they attempt to do so, it is the federal government's job to step in and force them to.
The logic you're using is, part and parcel, the same as used by the segregationists in the 1950's and 1960's. The Executive Branch told them they could stuff it, that they had to honor the Emancipation Proclamation as interpreted by the Supreme Court.
Sure, there's no Amendment explicitly guaranteeing abortion rights or marriage rights -- but there IS one saying there doesn't HAVE to be one. It's the Ninth. People forget about the Ninth because it's deliberately vague, but there's precedent here. #9 is the one the Supreme Court cited in the Griswold decision.
Now, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the current SCOTUS to rule that #9 also covers gay marriage. But I'm willing to predict that we WILL see that decision within a generation.
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States do not have the right to deny rights to individuals. When they attempt to do so, it is the federal government's job to step in and force them to.
I'm honestly not sure whether that's a joke or a typo.
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Ha. Freudian slip.
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Okay, I'll take a step further. Give them their own tiny, tiny country. Then maybe they won't ambush military funerals claiming that God hates America because America isn't doing a great job of rounding up the gays and killing them.
I JUST WANT RID OF THEM OK?
They're not going to change. Just make them go away.
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Fifteen minutes after they secede, they'll be declaring war and trying to invade us anyway.
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Then we can kill/enslave them. Sounds good to me.
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Hey, uh, didn't we do that once already?
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Caught the film yesterday.
Cannabis disciple's hair catching fire and Orlando Jesus were jaw droppers. The kid citing Episode One without a moments inflection nearly made me pee.
Needed another half hour, and not such a heavy handed closing monologue. Came off as the pure propaganda it had mocked in the previous 95 minutes.
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Minutes ago I spoke with friend Dr. Norman G. Marvin, M.D. and he is so concerned at what he has learned about Barack Obama's family in Kenya that he is calling a special prayer meeting in his home to pray against the witchcraft curses attempted by them against John McCain and Sarah Palin.
srsly
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I was never sure if Obama was in league with the devil, evil muslims, or an evil genie. Then inJesus revealed to me the horrible truth, he's in league with all three!
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Out of curiosity, how often do those members who are atheist or agnostic actually experience some body personally making an issue of your beliefs? I mean how often does some body try to convert you in an aggressive way?
Hoo boy. This is my favorite question when people ask me about my lack of faith.
I was already an atheist when I was sent to Catholic high school. The first year went by without much issue, but in my sophomore religion (i.e. Catholicism) class, the teacher didn't take kindly to me. She asked the class one day if there were any non-Catholics, and I, along with one of the school's few Jewish students, raised my hand. I got a funny look for that, and when I explained to the teacher that I just didn't believe in god, she told me without a trace of humor that that would make it very, very hard to pass her class. I wasn't so surprised when I started getting D's and F's on most of my assignments. I left the school after that year.
My next school was a (ostensibly) secular private school in the area with a very good reputation. They offered philosophy classes, and I took them, not realizing that I would be the only atheist in the class. Fortunately, the teachers seemed fine with me, but the students were another matter. Often, arguments I made in class were met with a response telling me that I had no morality because I'm an atheist and that my opinion didn't matter for that reason. They make a good case, am I right?
The incidents since then haven't hurt as bad because they came from idiots on the street, knuckleheads with no sway over me or my life. However, these incidents do include physical attacks. On a trip about a year and a half ago, I stopped in at a little cowboy bar outside Colorado Springs. About halfway into beer number two, I notice some guy by the pool tables giving me an ugly look. Now, every time I tell this story, somebody insists that what happened was my fault because of my tee-shirt, (http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=CG-PFFT&Category_Code=CG) but I don't think that it's any more inflammatory than a "JESUS IS GOD" bumper sticker. Anyway, fast forward 45 minutes and another beer, and this same guy and his friend are following me out to the parking lot to have words. They shout curses at me and tell me that this is a godly country and (no joke) that people like me should go off to Europe where we belong. I reply that I've been to Europe and that they're not the ones that need saving. This did not have the calming effect you might expect, and the more hot-headed one took a couple lazy, drunken swings at me.
Atheists in America are the least trusted people of all. Hell, in polls, people have said they'd vote for Jew before they'd vote for an atheist, and who in history has been hated and persecuted more than they?
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Out of curiosity, how often do those members who are atheist or agnostic actually experience some body personally making an issue of your beliefs? I mean how often does some body try to convert you in an aggressive way?
I got fired for it once. Was a shitty job, and it was in Virginia, so wasn't much point in trying to fight it.
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I wouldn't call the bar incident your fault Clutch, but I think the comparison you made of your shirt to an evangelical bumper sticker is a fair one. You clearly weren't looking to avoid conflict when you wore a shirt proclaiming your atheism to a cowboy bar.
School sucks when you have different religious views. I've never had a teacher like the one you described, but we did have a large southern baptist group of students who just didn't think anyone who wasn't a member of their denomination was going to heaven, and weren't shy to let you know. At the same time my nerd friends gave me shit for being religious.
The reason I asked that question initially is a few month ago I realized that I still get harassed about my religious beliefs by atheist and agnostic people I interact with on a fairly regular basis, but I've only had to deal with religious inquests a few times since graduating high-school. I was curious if maybe I was just lucky in terms of not being bothered by irate religious folk, or if my experiences actually played out with others in the community.
I'm used to it by now so I'm not inclined to complain too much. I've surrounded myself with people that have different beliefs, so it would be foolish to expect nothing to come of that.
Warning - while you were typing a new reply has been posted. You may wish to review your post.
Wow, that suck TA.
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Clutch,
Out of curiosity, do you know why we had to get a new forum (http://boards.pyoko.org/index.php/topic,5590.0.html)? It's a pertinent discussion to your story.
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agnostic people
Agnostic people tried to tell you about the supernatural?
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agnostic people
Agnostic people tried to tell you about the supernatural?
In that I'm apparently an idiot for having religious beliefs of any kind.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4wQfQtpDAc
The lord will provide!
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In that I'm apparently an idiot for having religious beliefs of any kind.
Well, I mean, OBVIOUSLY! :hurr: The supernatural is unknowable and there's nothing we can definitively say about it! You 'tard! It sounds like these are double-'tarded atheists trying to pose as members of the one true completely uncertainty.
Because Guild doesn't think it's a joke unless its stupid and mean, here's the spoiler, for you 'tards:
(THAD EDIT: inappropriate spoiler tag removed.) That was meant to come off as self-parody. I do not actually think you are retarded for believing you can understand things about the supernatural.
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The lord will provide!
I hate that so much, you've got Obama, a candidate that openly talks about his faith and how it affects him, vs McCain a candidate that couldn't give less of a shit about religion, and somehow you're going to convince yourself the McCain is the religious one? Fuck those people so hard.
I am really happy to have a positive religious political figure in the forefront after eight years of Bush though.
In that I'm apparently an idiot for having religious beliefs of any kind.
Well, I mean, OBVIOUSLY! :hurr: The supernatural is unknowable and there's nothing we can definitively say about it! You 'tard! It sounds like these are double-'tarded atheists trying to pose as members of the one true completely uncertainty.
Because Guild doesn't think it's a joke unless its stupid and mean, here's the spoiler, for you 'tards:
[spoiler]That was meant to come off as self-parody. I do not actually think you are retarded for believing you can understand things about the supernatural.[/spoiler]
Actually I misrepresented the agnostic people I interacted with. Usually they don't give me shit for believing something, but rather for being part of a religion which is evil and terrible. Usually it's the evangelical atheists that think I'm stupid for my beliefs.
I'm actually an agnostic by the dictionary definition, but that's kind of too fine a point for most people to care to grasp.
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Actually I misrepresented the agnostic people I interacted with. Usually they don't give me shit for believing something, but rather for being part of a religion which is evil and terrible. Usually it's the evangelical atheists that think I'm stupid for my beliefs.
No, it's just the militant atheists that tell you.
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...
I'm actually an agnostic by the dictionary definition, but that's kind of too fine a point for most people to care to grasp.
Erm? Then? I mean? Do you just claim membership then? To like the Catholics or something?
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Actually I misrepresented the agnostic people I interacted with. Usually they don't give me shit for believing something, but rather for being part of a religion which is evil and terrible. Usually it's the evangelical atheists that think I'm stupid for my beliefs.
No, it's just the militant atheists that tell you.
Yeah, there's that too. ::(:
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I'm actually an agnostic by the dictionary definition, but that's kind of too fine a point for most people to care to grasp.
Erm? Then? I mean? Do you just claim membership then? To like the Catholics or something?
Agnosticism means you don't think knowledge is possible. Knowledge isn't required for faith. Depending on your semantics lack of knowledge may even be required for faith.
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Eh- erm... But you're... Religions, by their nature, claim knowledge of the divine.
I mean, I... I'm not sure that's an accurate term.
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Anti-religious would be more accurate. There have been atheists who consider religion necessary as the masses can't be trusted by themselves.
I also dislike the term 'militant atheist' since that's like saying 'militant gays' or something.
Basically: homosexual is to gay activist as atheist is to militant atheist.
Consider a person who thinks homosexuality isn't right despite agreeing with a gay activist on all other fronts. Now this is a victory from a rights-based objective, but that concession legitimizes homophobia and is a (small) threat.
Drop some of the moral connotations, and an atheist faces a similar dilemma with a liberal religious person. Their faith, despite agreeing with the atheist on everything else, legitimizes illogical thought in a small way.
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Anti-religious would be more accurate. There have been atheists who consider religion necessary as the masses can't be trusted by themselves.
I also dislike the term 'militant atheist' since that's like saying 'militant gays' or something.
Basically: homosexual is to gay activist as atheist is to militant atheist.
Consider a person who thinks homosexuality isn't right despite agreeing with a gay activist on all other fronts. Now this is a victory from a rights-based objective, but that concession legitimizes homophobia and is a (small) threat.
Drop some of the moral connotations, and an atheist faces a similar dilemma with a liberal religious person. Their faith, despite agreeing with the atheist on everything else, legitimizes illogical thought in a small way.
Well, I used evangelical atheist because I think it's a more accurate term, and also it doesn't conjure a picture of Richard Dawkins wrapped in a bandoleer of ammunition. But yeah, most atheist and agnostic people I interact with are perfectly civil and don't bother me about it, but there's a sizable minority that is really really bothered that I believe something they don't and feel the need to convert me, either through discussion or through berating me.
Eh- erm... But you're... Religions, by their nature, claim knowledge of the divine.
I mean, I... I'm not sure that's an accurate term.
My religion doesn't purport to have knowledge of the divine. And I'm distrustful of anyone who does. Though that also depends on what you mean by knowledge.
Knowledge is defined in philosophy as true justified belief. It's a belief, and it may or may not be true, as for justified, I guess that depends on what you think justifies a belief.
Edit: And as I said earlier, many people believe that knowledge precludes faith.
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What is your religion anyhow? If you're willing?
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What is your religion anyhow? If you're willing?
Christian, Episcopalian.
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YOU REBEL!
I don't care what anyone believes and I don't think anyone should care what I believe. So I don't tell anyone what I believe and I don't listen when other people tell me their beliefs.
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I hate that so much, you've got Obama, a candidate that openly talks about his faith and how it affects him, vs McCain a candidate that couldn't give less of a shit about religion, and somehow you're going to convince yourself the McCain is the religious one? Fuck those people so hard.
You DO know he has a running-mate, right?
Guild doesn't seem to.
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I hate that so much, you've got Obama, a candidate that openly talks about his faith and how it affects him, vs McCain a candidate that couldn't give less of a shit about religion, and somehow you're going to convince yourself the McCain is the religious one? Fuck those people so hard.
You DO know he has a running-mate, right?
Guild doesn't seem to.
Yeah, but these people weren't going to vote for him before Palin joined the ticket. Hell Palin talks about faith less than Obama even, though that's largely because her time is spent exclusively on attack Obama.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4wQfQtpDAc
The lord will provide!
She is like twenty emotes thrown into one!
Lines up nicely with Our Electoral Process (http://www.thepaincomics.com/Our%20Electoral%20Process.jpg) to boot.
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She is like twenty emotes thrown into one!
I'll say.
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McCain doesn't talk about religion because he's a Mormon, which is great for getting the Mormon vote, but not much else.
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Er, no, he's Southern Baptist.
You must be confusing him with every OTHER politician in Arizona.
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What? I thought McCain was Catholic.
And Bal is probably confusing him with Mitt Romney, Mormon runner-up.
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That woman is a little purple eye shadow away from being Mimi from the Drew Carey show.
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Er, no, he's Southern Baptist.
You must be confusing him with every OTHER politician in Arizona.
I totally was
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What? I thought McCain was Catholic.
Reasonable, with an Irish name, but no. He was raised Episcopalian, though.
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Anti-religious would be more accurate. There have been atheists who consider religion necessary as the masses can't be trusted by themselves.
This view is called "religious functionalism."
I also dislike the term 'militant atheist' since that's like saying 'militant gays' or something.
Basically: homosexual is to gay activist as atheist is to militant atheist.
Not so much. Gay activists don't call heterosexuality a dangerous tendency. Kazz (BREEDING IS MURDER) would be a better example of what you're calling a "gay activist" than any actual gay activists.
Consider a person who thinks homosexuality isn't right despite agreeing with a gay activist on all other fronts. Now this is a victory from a rights-based objective, but that concession legitimizes homophobia and is a (small) threat.
Drop some of the moral connotations, and an atheist faces a similar dilemma with a liberal religious person. Their faith, despite agreeing with the atheist on everything else, legitimizes illogical thought in a small way.
what
Eh- erm... But you're... Religions, by their nature, claim knowledge of the divine.
I mean, I... I'm not sure that's an accurate term.
My religion doesn't purport to have knowledge of the divine. And I'm distrustful of anyone who does. Though that also depends on what you mean by knowledge.
Knowledge is defined in philosophy as true justified belief. It's a belief, and it may or may not be true, as for justified, I guess that depends on what you think justifies a belief.
The center of Episcopal teaching is the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ.[70] The basic teachings of the church, or catechism, includes:
* Jesus Christ is fully human and fully God. He died and was resurrected from the dead.
* Jesus provides the way of eternal life for those who believe.
...
* The Old and New Testaments of the Bible were written by people "under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit."
Do I have the wrong Episcopal Church?
That last line especially deals with revelation, which is the main device through which the divine is said to make itself known.
(I'm not so presumptuous as to tell you what you believe; it just looks like what you said is contradictory)
EDIT: Is this some trick of terminology in which you guys can't really verify the core tenets of the religion, so you say you don't know them to be true, but instead believe (read: have faith in) them to be true?
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Catholic dogma says such things for sure. I imagine it's a pretty common tenet (it was paying rent! What! :whoops: ) amongst most religions that have spawned an elite, intellectual class to safeguard its knowledge and records.
It's been a while (and diluted with the watered-down dogmas of a jillion protestant spin-offs) but I think the argument goes that, while you can't actually be sure, you have a considered faith in the new testament. When you ascribe to that faith, you're making claims about the divine. Even if you take the (well-reasoned) stance that you can't prove that belief.
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Tenet.
Can you elaborate a bit on "considered faith"?
When you ascribe to [considered] faith, you're making claims about the divine. Even if you take the (well-reasoned) stance that you can't prove that belief.
What kind of claims? I'm not entirely sure I understand what's being hinted at.
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The center of Episcopal teaching is the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ.[70] The basic teachings of the church, or catechism, includes:
* Jesus Christ is fully human and fully God. He died and was resurrected from the dead.
* Jesus provides the way of eternal life for those who believe.
...
* The Old and New Testaments of the Bible were written by people "under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit."
Do I have the wrong Episcopal Church?
That last line especially deals with revelation, which is the main device through which the divine is said to make itself known.
(I'm not so presumptuous as to tell you what you believe; it just looks like what you said is contradictory)
EDIT: Is this some trick of terminology in which you guys can't really verify the core tenets of the religion, so you say you don't know them to be true, but instead believe (read: have faith in) them to be true?
Double checking my book of common prayer I can say that while that summery of our catechism isn't strictly speaking a lie, it is certainly misleading. It was probably put up by one of the more conservative members of our church that does personally view our doctrine that way. The catechism's actual answers on some of those things such as hell are actually tame enough to make just stating that we believe in it fairly misleading.
The official Episcopal stance is that the Nicene creed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed) and the Apostles' creed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles'_Creed) are the sum of required belief to be a Christian. It is notable that these two creeds are statements of belief and not fact or knowledge. We do have a catechism, but unlike many churches it is not a statement of official dogma.
Here's a quote from the book of common prayer preceding the catechism.
"It is a commentary on the creeds, but is not meant to be a complete statement of belief and practices; rather, it is a point of departure for the teacher, and it is cast in the traditional question and answer form for ease of reference."
It is the Episcopal stance that one is allowed and encourage to consider and interpret the creeds for themselves.
Sometimes this can lead to people with radically (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shelby_Spong)different (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Robinson)views (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episcopal_Diocese_of_Fort_Worth) worshiping together.
And while many churches might not officially have this practice of personal interpretation, it is never the less very common in any number of denominations. It is a fairly recent occurrence in the history of the church that the Bible was viewed as the word of god, literal, infallible, and complete.
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I'd never heard of those creeds. Their existence is pretty interesting stuff.
The purpose of a creed is to act as a yardstick of correct belief. The creeds of Christianity have been drawn up at times of conflict about doctrine: acceptance or rejection of a creed served to distinguish believers and deniers of a particular doctrine or set of doctrines.
...
The Nicene Creed of 325 explicitly affirms the divinity of Jesus, applying to him the term "God". The 381 version speaks of the Holy Spirit as worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son.
4. A series of questions are then asked, to which the reply is always "I renounce them":
Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
5. The second half of the query is asked, to which the reply is always "I do":
Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?
Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?
6. The Apostle's Creed is then recited, in which is divided into three parts; the celebrant asks whether they believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to which the Creed is stated in its three divisions in respect to the Three Persons of the Trinity.
Can you explain a bit about what is meant by "Savior" in #5—especially its relationship (if any) with "Jesus provides the way of eternal life for those who believe"?
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I'd never heard of those creeds. Their existence is pretty interesting stuff.
The purpose of a creed is to act as a yardstick of correct belief. The creeds of Christianity have been drawn up at times of conflict about doctrine: acceptance or rejection of a creed served to distinguish believers and deniers of a particular doctrine or set of doctrines.
...
The Nicene Creed of 325 explicitly affirms the divinity of Jesus, applying to him the term "God". The 381 version speaks of the Holy Spirit as worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son.
4. A series of questions are then asked, to which the reply is always "I renounce them":
Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
5. The second half of the query is asked, to which the reply is always "I do":
Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?
Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?
6. The Apostle's Creed is then recited, in which is divided into three parts; the celebrant asks whether they believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to which the Creed is stated in its three divisions in respect to the Three Persons of the Trinity.
Can you explain a bit about what is meant by "Savior" in #5—especially its relationship (if any) with "Jesus provides the way of eternal life for those who believe"?
Well after pouring through the catechism and failing to find the quote used in that wikipedia article, or really anything close I decided to do some google searching. Turns out that phrase only appears in wikipedia articles referring to Anglican churches, and nowhere in the catechism of any Anglican church :whoops:
But yeah I'll give you the closest answers I can find in the catechism and then I'll give you my personal take.
Q. What is meant by the Messiah?
A. The Messiah is one sent by God to free us from the power of sin, so that with the help of God we may live in harmony with God, within ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation.
Q. What is the significance of Jesus' resurrection?
A. By his resurrection, Jesus overcame death and opened for us the way of eternal life.
Q. What did the Messiah promise in the New Covenant?
A. Christ promised to bring us into the kingdom of God and give life in all its fullness.
Q. What do we mean by everlasting life?
A. By everlasting life, we mean a new existence, in which we are united with all the people of God, in the joy of fully knowing and loving God and each other.
My personal view on accepting Jesus as my savior is two-fold. First the practical. Christianity is personally important to me. The teachings of Christianity provide me with a community and a way to look at the world which is full of hope. Also it introduced memes into the western world that I personally consider responsible for much of the good and progress of the last 2000 years.
Then there's the more faith based view of the savior. The idea that we are not only created in the image of god, but that god was re-created in the image of us has a strong resonance with me. That dying, returning to life, and ascending into heaven the human nature was freed from death and brought up into heaven. I have a kind of compatibleist view on this. I take it as a metaphor, but I'm also open to the possibility of the literal truth of it.
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Which is it? A metaphor or the literal truth? Even if you say it's a metaphor, you aren't stating the more exacting truth as you see it. Please elaborate.
You're also going to have to clarify what you mean by God "re-creating Himself." That sounds like contradictory nonsense without scriptural basis.
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Jesus was a man
I mean, he was a deity man
Or maybe he was just a deity
But he was still JESUS!
JESUS!
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In Catholicism God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all separately definable, but nonetheless part of the same being. It's not really intended to make sense. That's part of the whole faith thing.
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:Proclaim: the :mystery: of :faith:
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Which is it? A metaphor or the literal truth? Even if you say it's a metaphor, you aren't stating the more exacting truth as you see it. Please elaborate.
You're also going to have to clarify what you mean by God "re-creating Himself." That sounds like contradictory nonsense without scriptural basis.
As I said, I take it as a metaphor, but I'm open to the possibility that it's the literal truth. There is no knowing with something like this.
What do you mean by the more exacting truth as I see it? I'm happy to explain the way I see things, but I'm not sure exactly what you're asking.
And by re-created I mean that there was a fundamental change to the nature of god if he completely shared the essence of humanity. That kind of stuff really isn't at the core of my religiosity however.
Edit: So I realized that maybe I'm being dense here. Are you guys trying to ask me in a roundabout way whether I think you're going to hell?
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Jesus was a man
I mean, he was a deity man
Or maybe he was just a deity
But he was still JESUS!
JESUS!
:perfect: Jesus has consummate Vs.
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In Catholicism God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all separately definable, but nonetheless part of the same being. It's not really intended to make sense. That's part of the whole faith thing.
That always made perfect sense to me, actually. But then, I like to come up with fantasy stories about magic and shit, so yeah.
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I don't know. There's no real way for me to know right now. I'll investigate the matter when I'm dead. If there is something all powerful, all knowing, I think it could take five minutes to answer questions at that time, or I will take a number and sit in the lobby where the most recent magazine is from 1985. Failing that I'll be commenting 'oh god the worms' or be too busy rotting.
If the tenets of a given faith give you meaning to your life and a good set of moral guidelines to live by, that's fine and dandy. I can respect that.
If you are more concerned with religious entities, religious law, and blind devotion in them, fanatical about every single written word with no room for alternate meaning or context of when it was written, and trying to 'save' me because I am not listening or going to your place of worship, please leave me alone.
All that aside, I still kind of want to see the movie, because Bill tends to have some golden snarky comments.
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I don't know. There's no real way for me to know right now. I'll investigate the matter when I'm dead. If there is something all powerful, all knowing, I think it could take five minutes to answer questions at that time, or I will take a number and sit in the lobby where the most recent magazine is from 1985. Failing that I'll be commenting 'oh god the worms' or be too busy rotting.
If the tenets of a given faith give you meaning to your life and a good set of moral guidelines to live by, that's fine and dandy. I can respect that.
If you are more concerned with religious entities, religious law, and blind devotion in them, fanatical about every single written word with no room for alternate meaning or context of when it was written, and trying to 'save' me because I am not listening or going to your place of worship, please leave me alone.
All that aside, I still kind of want to see the movie, because Bill tends to have some golden snarky comments.
MadMaxJr, you're going to hell. :humpf:
My church is going to see Religulous on thursday, but I have work. :sadpanda:
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My church is going to see Religulous on thursday, but I have work.
Can you report on this after the fact all the same?
I wanna know how many make it past the guy sucking on the nun's tit.
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My church is going to see Religulous on thursday, but I have work.
Can you report on this after the fact all the same?
I wanna know how many make it past the guy sucking on the nun's tit.
With my group it'll be everybody. My priest recently introduced some of the members to cakefarts. :facepalm:
Edit: The video, he didn't actually fart on a cake.
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I also dislike the term 'militant atheist' since that's like saying 'militant gays' or something.
Basically: homosexual is to gay activist as atheist is to militant atheist.
Not so much. Gay activists don't call heterosexuality a dangerous tendency. Kazz (BREEDING IS MURDER) would be a better example of what you're calling a "gay activist" than any actual gay activists.
No no, the relationship was meant to be explained in-
Consider a person who thinks homosexuality isn't right despite agreeing with a gay activist on all other fronts. Now this is a victory from a rights-based objective, but that concession legitimizes homophobia and is a (small) threat.
Drop some of the moral connotations, and an atheist faces a similar dilemma with a liberal religious person. Their faith, despite agreeing with the atheist on everything else, legitimizes illogical thought in a small way.
what
That, which was apparently confusing. Let's try it again. From a 'militant atheist' perspective:
Disliking homosexuality without acting on it is bad because that dislike legitimizes others who feel the same but act on it.
Liking faith without acting negatively towards others is bad because it legitimizes people who like faith and do act negatively.
From a strict perspective faith is always bad as it is defined as 'belief without evidence'. Basing actions on such criteria is always a bad thing.
So, in this analogy repressed homophobia and faith both have inherent negative utility and are not responsible for the person's good behavior anyway. Ergo, that person should try to fix this problem.
From a more pragmatic perspective the more proactive religious are more of a danger to society, but I can see why people might try fix those who still have the same 'problem' but aren't influenced by it as much.
There, that make mores sense?
Preemptive note: Irrational is not the same as pointless or acting without a goal in mind. It's willfully drawing the wrong conclusions from the world.
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"Disliking homosexuality without acting on it is bad because that dislike legitimizes others who feel the same but act on it."
You seem to implicitly accepting that that "disliking" part leads to condoning the actions of bolder parties with similar viewpoints (perhaps by expressing a similar/sympathetic viewpoint, or not acting to stymie their efforts). It could be argued that condoning is its own form of acting, and that what you are calling "legitimization" is an action in and of itself.
I'll try to respond further when I get back from class.
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Disliking homosexuality without acting on it is bad because that dislike legitimizes others who feel the same but act on it.
Liking faith without acting negatively towards others is bad because it legitimizes people who like faith and do act negatively.
Liking muffins without using them to choke old ladies is bad, because it legitimizes people who like muffins and use them to choke old ladies.
You're retarded.
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I like swords
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I don't care what anyone believes and I don't think anyone should care what I believe. So I don't tell anyone what I believe and I don't listen when other people tell me their beliefs.
So you're totally lacking in passion and close-minded? Really? That's your defense? Honestly, I don't think it's possible to be consistent with this approach. At least there's no issue of you convincing me otherwise, right? Anyway, you can't stop anyone from caring when they think what you're doing (or not doing) is moral or immoral. Friggin' deal.
...Would it kill you to just say "I don't want to be proselytized?" Some time? Maybe?
Q. What is meant by the Messiah?
A. The Messiah is one sent by God to free us from the power of sin, so that with the help of God we may live in harmony with God, within ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation.
Q. What is the significance of Jesus' resurrection?
A. By his resurrection, Jesus overcame death and opened for us the way of eternal life.
Q. What did the Messiah promise in the New Covenant?
A. Christ promised to bring us into the kingdom of God and give life in all its fullness.
Q. What do we mean by everlasting life?
A. By everlasting life, we mean a new existence, in which we are united with all the people of God, in the joy of fully knowing and loving God and each other.
[...]
Then there's the more faith based view of the savior. The idea that we are not only created in the image of god, but that god was re-created in the image of us has a strong resonance with me. That dying, returning to life, and ascending into heaven the human nature was freed from death and brought up into heaven. I have a kind of compatibleist view on this. I take it as a metaphor, but I'm also open to the possibility of the literal truth of it.
Which is it? A metaphor or the literal truth? Even if you say it's a metaphor, you aren't stating the more exacting truth as you see it. Please elaborate.
You're also going to have to clarify what you mean by God "re-creating Himself." That sounds like contradictory nonsense without scriptural basis.
As I said, I take it as a metaphor, but I'm open to the possibility that it's the literal truth. There is no knowing with something like this.
What do you mean by the more exacting truth as I see it? I'm happy to explain the way I see things, but I'm not sure exactly what you're asking.
These articles you cited seem to be pretty clear-cut to me, spiritually and linguistically speaking. If Jesus only metaphorically/spiritually rose from the dead, or only metaphorically spoke of bringing people the kingdom of God and everlasting life, then what higher spiritual truth are they referencing?
My apologies for the miscommunication. I am not an eloquent person, but I do make an effort to say what I mean. Sometimes I fail, and/or forget to be more careful with my use of words.
And by re-created I mean that there was a fundamental change to the nature of god if he completely shared the essence of humanity. That kind of stuff really isn't at the core of my religiosity however.
Hmm. Well, firstly, you either share something or you don't, but if you mean to say that Jesus was (and is) fully God and fully man, then I can understand why you'd say that. As for Jesus's birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension at some point marking change, then you probably mean it to be revelation, as it is all held to be prophecy which was fulfilled. So our view of God changed, but I'm not sure I can agree with you if you say God fundamentally changed. This is skirting around the broader discussion of the actual Trinity, of course. If no Trinitarian doctrine is at the core of your religiosity, then you've got me scratching my head about what is.
If I seem like I'm skipping ahead or (God forbid) putting words in your mouth, then rest assure that that's not my intent. I'm just trying to further the discussion because I'm curious.
Edit: So I realized that maybe I'm being dense here. Are you guys trying to ask me in a roundabout way whether I think you're going to hell?
...I dunno'. Are they? Not like you're the One who ultimately decides, of course.
In Catholicism God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all separately definable, but nonetheless part of the same being. It's not really intended to make sense. That's part of the whole faith thing.
If I may offer a response (though I'm a non-denominational Protestant, not a Catholic), then consider this. When it comes to light, you have the light produced, the heat from it, and the source itself. All of those are connected, but are each a part that can be differentiated. Not that I think arguing exclusively via analogy holds up well, but that's a handy way to approach understanding the Trinity. It makes sense to me when I think about it, even if I don't fully understand it. Answers very often lead to more questions and all that.
"It's faith, Hawkgirl. You're not supposed to understand it. You just have it." Hoo, boy. Aquaman would make a lousy apologist for Atlantic polytheism. Anyway, I'm a Christian because it's reasonable, and the other belief systems I've gone over and thought about don't convince me. So this view either states that people of faith don't need to think, or just ignores what ancient Jews and Christians thought "faith" was or is (roughly, loyalty based on prior experience). I can't say if something similar is your view, Bal, but such perspectives irk me.
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Liking muffins without using them to choke old ladies is bad, because it legitimizes people who like muffins and use them to choke old ladies.
You're retarded.
This would be a rebuttal if there was....any kind of casual relation between liking muffins and choking people. Unlike established ones between gays bad->rar protect marriage and yay faith-> (insert atrocity).
Versus yours, which is I like muffins -> rarr choke people with muffins. There is no causality there.
I realize the example is poorly worded but I don't think I need to hold your hand through the garden of knowledge here.
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Your claim is that simply being Christian enables the people who murder gays. Or perhaps that being Muslim enables the people who fly planes into buildings.
Islam and Christianity are both peaceful religions with a small population of very dangerous extremists. You can't seriously blame the entire population of the faith for the actions of a few total nutjobs.
And Cannon, fine, I agree with whatever you say from this point forward.
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Your claim is that simply being Christian enables the people who murder gays. Or perhaps that being Muslim enables the people who fly planes into buildings.
It does? By being either one you confirm the religions fundamental tenets. Faith is fundamental in this as it is belief without evidence. There is no justification for God or His wishes. It's what you believe. This essentially means you can get away with anything if think God told you to. See: Abraham.
Believing in faith makes the claim that it is not a bad thing. Since these 'extremists' follow the same definition, you are justifying their behavior because it follows the same logic. Saying otherwise is like a gun rights advocate not saying their position could be responsible for increased gun violence. It is a consequence of their philosophy.
Islam and Christianity are both peaceful religions with a small population of very dangerous extremists. You can't seriously blame the entire population of the faith for the actions of a few total nutjobs.
By whose definition? Half the country does not believe gays should marry. (http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_marp.htm) There are dozens of state bans. This belief is justified by the Old Testament and since Christians like the Ten Commandments just fine I don't see why it's not valid. Unless you're calling 50% of the U.S. extremists, which contradicts the meaning of the term.
There are various other examples such as abortion. Things are worse in the Muslim world, where gays are stoned to death. Do you think this happens despite everyone having moral outrage over it?
And saying they're peaceful is a laughable claim. Islam was spread by the sword. Christianity had its crusades, witch burnings, inquisition, Jewish pogroms and oh so many other crimes. All justifiable with their religion.
Saying these are not valid is a massive No True Scotsman fallacy. Were there no Christians until the 1960s, then? These beliefs still exist in the form of modern religious discrimination.
If anything Christianity's moderation and its modern 'peaceful' nature is the result of secular forces. It's been dragged kicking and screaming out of the Dark Ages, not skipping along of its own accord.
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do you like numbers (http://www.pollingreport.com/civil.htm)
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Just how many gay people are there, anyway?
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Robert Burton on the certainty bias (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-certainty-bias&print=true). (Could go just as well in the Science thread, but it's directly relevant here.)
HT: Bob Harris (http://www.bobharris.com/content/view/1655/).
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(http://i36.tinypic.com/eajo2b.jpg)
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Isn't an ex-transsexual more accurately a double transsexual?
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Ex Wizard
(http://kazz.rooms.cwal.net/dumbledore.jpg) YOU CAN'T ESCAPE YOUR DESTINY, ISAAC POTTER!
shown here: a glaring lack of familiarity with harry potter, probably
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No one's commenting on "Ex HIV Positive?"
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I don't know how people test HIV positive. It doesn't seem impossible that an AIDs victim could be HIV free.
Just implausible, and outside of the range of publicly available treatments.
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One of the churches in town changed their sign out front to "TRUST IN GOD'S AUTHORITY, NOT MAN'S MAJORITY", and a first grader came to school the day after the election saying that Obama was going to have all the first-born white children rounded up and killed.
:disapprove:
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Kid was probably a middle child.
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That's a hair away from being worth getting child services involved.
Might not even be a hair away.
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first grader came to school the day after the election saying that Obama was going to have all the first-born white children rounded up and killed.
2012 truly will be apocalyptic for a political party that will have nothing whatsoever to run on.
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Well, they're certainly going to lose their base, ifyaknowhatImean.
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One of the churches in town changed their sign out front to "TRUST IN GOD'S AUTHORITY, NOT MAN'S MAJORITY"
On the other hand, man's majority is good enough for Prop 8.
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As long as they're losing on a single issue, they're the victims, okay?
And if they're the victims, God is the victim.
And even though He's all-powerful, He is helpless when you defy His cadre of ignorant hicks.
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No, they just get a free ticket to blame natural disasters on people for a while.
THE GREAT SKY GOD DOES NOT APPROVE OF YOUR SO CALLED "PROGRESS"
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The bible does address the issue of child murder. It states that a child unable to comprehend the idea of sin will go to heaven by default when dead. It doesn't say, "So don't kill them," however the bible DOES say, "Thou shalt not murder."
Is abortion murder? According to the bible, killing for a just cause is acceptable.
Furthermore, the bible stipulates that any laws of man which do not conflict with the Word are to be obeyed by the righteous.
LOLBORTION
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The bible does address the issue of child murder. It states that a child unable to comprehend the idea of sin will go to heaven by default when dead.
Oh hey. About exactly the opposite of what the Baptists are saying. Huh. 'magine that.
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I'm not sure of the Catholic dogma on that point. I'm not sure where a child is... "infected" with original sin. So I suppose it's possible that the original sin is tied with the pain childbirth causes a mother. Or some such a thing. All I know is that if a baby dies after being born, but before their baptism, they are cast into hell because the sacrament of baptism hasn't been given to them. :tears:
On the other hand, one of the big catholic tenets (happy Thad?) is to be fruitful and multiply, but it's been ages since I've actually looked up the pope's interpretation of the accumulated philosophy.
EDIT:
Fuck Aquinas.
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I'm not sure of the Catholic dogma on that point. I'm not sure where a child is... "infected" with original sin. So I suppose it's possible that the original sin is tied with the pain childbirth causes a mother. Or some such a thing. All I know is that if a baby dies after being born, but before their baptism, they are cast into hell because the sacrament of baptism hasn't been given to them. :tears:
I was given to understand that the church was reexamining this notion in recent years because it's made it difficult for them to make inroads in Africa.
Lewis Black did a bit about it on Daily Show which I unfortunately can't find at the moment; it went something like, "I guess they COULD just change their stance on birth control, but it's WAY EASIER just to REORGANIZE THE ENTIRE AFTERLIFE!"
catholic tenets (happy Thad?)
:endit:
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The bible does address the issue of child murder. It states that a child unable to comprehend the idea of sin will go to heaven by default when dead.
Oh hey. About exactly the opposite of what the Baptists are saying. Huh. 'magine that.
Well, the bible says they're still infected by original sin. It's just that they're not liable for it yet.
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Lewis Black did a bit about it on Daily Show which I unfortunately can't find at the moment; it went something like, "I guess they COULD just change their stance on birth control, but it's WAY EASIER just to REORGANIZE THE ENTIRE AFTERLIFE!"
catholic tenets (happy Thad?)
:endit:
:whoops: They didn't reorganize that part! You're goin' to hell for sure now!
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Lewis Black did a bit about it on Daily Show which I unfortunately can't find at the moment; it went something like, "I guess they COULD just change their stance on birth control, but it's WAY EASIER just to REORGANIZE THE ENTIRE AFTERLIFE!"
I'm guessing their (justifiably) afraid of losing a bunch of the people they have, while probably not having that much of an effect on the people they're screaming at. Saying something to the effect of "More people get to go to Disneyland!" is probably safer.
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The bible does address the issue of child murder. It states that a child unable to comprehend the idea of sin will go to heaven by default when dead.
Oh hey. About exactly the opposite of what the Baptists are saying. Huh. 'magine that.
Well, the bible says they're still infected by original sin. It's just that they're not liable for it yet.
The bible doesn't say anything about original sin actually.
Fuck Aquinas.
(http://i630.photobucket.com/albums/uu23/Bon_Bon_2009/scruffy-1.jpg)
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Yes it does. It just doesn't call it "original sin."
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I'm curious.
Is it in Genesis?
Or is it part of the NT deal?
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Yes it does. It just doesn't call it "original sin."
The only place anything like it is talked about is in Romans, and there it really doesn't fit with the concept Aquinas was talking about.
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Yes it does. It just doesn't call it "original sin."
This is a good snapshot of Guild's "debate" technique: say something contrary, cite no examples, and demand other people disprove your claim.
Guild, knock it off or I'm kicking you back off the board.
Classic, Kashan, do not reply to people who use this style of argument.
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Yes it does. It just doesn't call it "original sin."
Classic, Kashan, do not reply to people who use this style of argument.
Okay. :nyoro~n:
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No, go ahead and let him do it. People disproving his claim is pretty informative. And common.
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B-b-but! :;_;:
I'm curious.
Is it in Genesis?
Or is it part of the NT deal?
Is equivalent to:
SOURCES!? FUCKERMOTHA!
Right?
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Catholic Dogma, at least the traditionalist kind, indicates that a child born, but not baptized goes to purgatory, along with all the good people born before Jesus.
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...
...
Isn't purgatory counted as a layer of hell?
Or is that just Dante?
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Wasn't the idea of layers all Dante?
(Not counting Hindu-Buddhism here.)
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:derp: :shrug:
I forget that not all of the cool ideas get incorporated into the dogma or kept. I miss the Harrowing of Hell.
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Except we're talking about a cool idea that did get entered into the dogma, which is the sort of shit that confuses the whole issue.
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Or maybe they were removed?
Anyway, it's time to go ask a proper scholar and get back to the boards about it.
I don't know when I'll next be able to get in touch with them, or even if I'll have the balls to ask them hard-hitting catholic dogma questions, but I know a few people with 4 realz scholarship in the subject.
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No no, Purgatory is a separate entity altogether. You get opportunity to work off your sins and maybe make it to heaven if you're humble and stuff. It's like... 18th century Australia, if heaven were 18th century Engl...
It's like those cards you get from Subway. The nine stamps are purgatory, the free sub is heaven.
...
...
Isn't purgatory counted as a layer of hell?
Or is that just Dante?
According to Dante, the virtuous non-Christians (i.e. those not baptized) dwelled in Limbo, the First Circle. They don't suffer, but they live forever in desire of seeing God. The greatest of these souls get to live in a nice castle, but that's it.
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Yes it does. It just doesn't call it "original sin."
I was not, in fact, trolling. Well, kinda, but I was also hoping to spark some debate to glean for information (like I always do). Call me crazy, but I'm 200% ends-justifies-the-means. Even if a side-effect is people hating me (big whup, there's lotsa haters in the world, none of them original).
I honestly have no idea if the bible ever specifically says the words, "original sin."
See that quote above? I call that a shifting the burden of proof bait-and-switch combomeal (coupled with a bit of semantical dodging): I can now interpret any part of the bible referencing Adam, sinful nature or sin itself to be "original sin," all of which means nothing to the original point.
You won the argument Kashan. Thanks for ruining it Thad, you douche.
You know, most people study ethics to learn what to avoid saying. I think if my teachers knew what I take from their classes to fill my life skills toolbox with they'd kick me out summarily.
Uh... niggers and homos should burn in hell; let's re-elect G. W. Bush and fuck the environment with a pollution-crucifix. The end.
Of course, by saying all of this I'm destroying what I've so carefully crafted. I guess I'm also a bit of a nihilist.
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It's like those cards you get from Subway. The nine stamps are purgatory, the free sub is heaven.
Is it just me or does it always seem like your eternal reward is gone much faster than usual?
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JESUS H. FUCKING PILTDOWN CHRISTMAS MAN. TAKE IT TO THE RELIGULULULOLOUS THREAD PLACE.
LOL
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I'm also a bit of a nihilist.
::(:
Say what you want about religiously quoting movies, at least that's an ethos.
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In Dante, Purgatory was an entirely separate realm from Heaven and Hell as well. The three books of the Divine Comedy are the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradisio.
Also, Catholic dogma used to state that unbaptized children who died went to Limbo, not Purgatory. The concept of Limbo came about pretty much just as a theological explanation for this scenario. It probably is a lot less dreary than it sounds at first because of the whole part about the afterlife being temporary until Jesus returns and reorganizes everything, but the idea of the souls of children being consigned to a big empty room still didn't sit well with a lot of people and Limbo is no longer recognized as part of the faith.
At least, that's what I remember off the top of my head. I also forget what the current stance is on what happens to them.
I'm assuming this is all going to be split also.
kick me out
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Don't fucking join the conversations I start to spam your me-hating rhetoric, haterbob hatepants.
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JESUS H. FUCKING PILTDOWN CHRISTMAS MAN. TAKE IT TO THE RELIGULULULOLOUS THREAD PLACE.
LOL
But Piltdown Christmas Man was a hoax!
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ALONG WITH EVERY OTHER TRANSITIONAL CHRISTMASMAN! EVILUTION IS A FRAWD!!!!
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guys, I just got off the phone with Piltdown Christmas Man's grandmother
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Don't blame me, I voted for Homo Erectus.
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Coitus Interruptus's ears perked up. "Gotta go!" he said suddenly, "I think I just found my long lost twin brother!"
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"Get out of the costume, Greg."
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Billboard promoting atheism will be removed (http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_atheist21.44263f8.html)
"It's asking people to think," she said. "We want people to realize you don't need religion to do good, and that if we didn't have religion, the world would be less divisive. . . . Think of how many people have been killed in the name of a supernatural being that there has never been any evidence for."
...
Judy Rooze, administrator of First Baptist Church of Rancho Cucamonga said, "I understand people have freedom of speech, but this is taking it too far. It's very jarring."
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Yeah, how dare someone use their freedom of speech to express an opinion I don't agree with! That's taking your little 'rights' WAY too far.
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...Apparently some people HAVEN'T forgiven John Lennon yet.
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...there used to be a billboard on the way up to Flagstaff that said "Need a friend? Call Jesus."
I was very disappointed when they repainted it and changed the text to something less absurd.
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Great, that's like the next town over from here. You guys made me miss LA for about 2 seconds, damn your eyes.
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Next thing you know, those dirty atheists will be promoting their satanic filth on the radio. After that, television ads. Nietzsche quotes in the newspaper classifieds. Tracts taped to payphones about the absence of an afterlife. Just wait until they knock on your door on a Saturday morning and try to convert you to their lack of religion. God bless those folks for taking down a billboard that would be better put to use spreading our Lord's word.
/sarcasm
Nietzsche always makes me think of A Fish Called Wanda. :lol:
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Next thing you know, those dirty atheists will be promoting their satanic filth on the radio. After that, television ads. Nietzsche quotes in the newspaper classifieds. Tracts taped to payphones about the absence of an afterlife. Just wait until they knock on your door on a Saturday morning and try to convert you to their lack of religion. God bless those folks for taking down a billboard that would be better put to use spreading our Lord's word.
/sarcasm
Dogs and cats, living together...MASS HYSTERIA!
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Heh. There's a proselytizing Mormon enclave a block from my house. I frequently meet these dimwitted though earnest young men.
My favourite tactic for disrupting them is the following response. "Now hold on son, I'm going to have to stop you there because I'm the son of a Catholic and a Muslim, and I'm married to a Jew, so we're right full up on denominations here."
::D:
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Ah, but what happens when they tell you that you should raise your kids Mormon?
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Well, I tend to disarm them by 'out-happy-ing' them. So they get kind of flustered and don't know what to do.
I mean, they're all from the Deep American South or rural Korea(!) to begin with, so they ain't none too bright. It's not like this requires a great deal of effort on my part.
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I'll convert if you kiss me.
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Kiss me, I'm Irish.
:wat:
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My great uncle John used to mess with Jehovah's Witnesses that came to the door.
"So let me get this straight... Ya'll think only one-hundred forty-four thousand will rule over the saved, yes?"
"Yes."
"Nice of you two to blow your own chances by preaching to me."
"Um."
"Have a nice day."
I should probably stay out. I still haven't even seen the flick that started this thread.
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Aren't there more than 144,000 Jehovah's Witnesses already?
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Aren't there more than 144,000 Jehovah's Witnesses already?
Yeah, but most of them are hypocrites and are actually horrible gay sinners.
I guess they don't have very good self confidence. :shrug:
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I do believe it goes that there will be more than that number in heaven, but... Apparently God has a V.I.P. room, and missionaries are either innate underachievers, or want more people to point at and laugh about on the other side of those bright lights.
But my family is generally more garden variety WASP, so some of us dig at those infected with a slightly different kind of mind-virus am i rite
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With odds like this (http://machall.com/view.php?date=2003-09-24), the chances of a Jehovah's Witness member actually making it into heaven are like 1 in 48.
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I had an escaped Mormon roommate for a while, and they came around pretty frequently (damn his parents) to see what was up with him. They were always fun.
"Are you Charles ____?"
"Nope."
"Oh. His roommate, then?"
"Nah, I just fuck his girlfriend while he's at work."
That and the "no, I'm his boyfriend" bit always seemed to mortify the shit out of them. Sadly, they eventually stopped coming around.
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Sometimes Sharkey, you are upstanding dude.
It's also a tiny thrill to remind Mormons how young of a religion they have and wonder aloud if someday Scientologists will become as respected as they are.
Unfortunately, the LDS are coming back to Illinois in force, so I probably actually know a few of the people I'm heartlessly offending and belittling. It makes me think that maybe I'm a bad person.
I should probably make fun of Doom or someone and feel better about myself.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znnFmTuGVyc
Great blog, or greatest blog?
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Hey, why not bone up with a brief history of Mormonism (http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/11/why_the_mormons.php). Well, it's more about Joseph Smith and how he was a con artist, but you know.
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Great blog, or greatest blog?
That was nauseating somehow. I haven't felt that bad since this nugget of joy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdNeaSgqcFg
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He even said to be careful of the cord. That fucker.
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Doesn't help that the reporter looks like Dick Cheney.
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Well, Live is just Evil backwards.
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It all makes sense now...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABSoHYQr6k
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Great blog, or greatest blog?
Well, that's what they get for idolatry.
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Their cries are louder than that of aftermath reactions to orphanage bombings.
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Kentucky Anti-Terror Law Requires God Be Acknowledged (http://www.kentucky.com/181/story/608229.html)
Oh, Kentucky. You crazy coots, you.
State Rep. Tom Riner, a Southern Baptist minister, tucked the God provision into Homeland Security legislation as a floor amendment that lawmakers overwhelmingly approved two years ago.
...
"This is recognition that government alone cannot guarantee the perfect safety of the people of Kentucky," Riner said. "Government itself, apart from God, cannot close the security gap. The job is too big for government."
I'd like to take a moment to quote the first amendment (http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html), if I could:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
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"This is recognition that government alone cannot guarantee the perfect safety of the people of Kentucky," Riner said. "Government itself, apart from God, cannot close the security gap. The job is too big for government."
It'd be neat if Napolipolita closed down the DHS office with those exact words.
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So I heard this thread needed more GodTube.
http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=f5ddfcdde43d7c8fe40c
2:36 is wonderfully (http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo22/driftycity/pedobear.gif)
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I'm sorry, all I keep hearing is I am a soldier for chraist.
Who is this chraist and what faith does he represent?
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Most memorable line, because it's the only one I could make out!
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Who is this chraist and what faith does he represent?
I forget. Something about stubbornness and weapons.
EDIT: Now I remember; it's the one religion from Baldur's Gate. AH SURVE THE FLAMING FIUST
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that is my favorite thing, ever.
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(cross-posted from a locked livejournal comments thread)
This is a conclusion based on anecdotal evidence, so don't take it seriously, but I suspect most believers achieve their conviction through familiarity with their own belief-system and one or more moments of personal elevation. People expect miracles from their religion: maybe not consciously, maybe they're cynics or convinced of the scientifically explicable nature of the world, but I think almost everybody is at least a little bit open to the idea of the impossible occurring. Then someone has a profound moment, a revelation--uplift, wonder, certainty and happiness in the midst of grief, a random response from a random stranger that was just the thing they needed to hear... and in their mind, they've felt the touch of the divine, and doubt simply falls away. It isn't that the other religions are more or less wrong than theirs; it's that their halting, hesitant faith in their own religion was ultimately rewarded. Even if I find their moment of divine inspiration lacking, the product of a pattern-seeking psyche assigning a religious label to the mundane miracles of the physical world, that doesn't make it any less significant for the person who actually experienced it, does it?
All of which is why I claim to be an atheist and an omnitheist. Does the historical truth of a religion matter, if spirituality and the socio-economic network a church provides is such a positive force in so many peoples' lives? If there is a God that created the world, then it didn't just write the Bible or the Torah or Joseph Smith's golden plates, but rather every action or thought of every living being and all the inanimate matter in the universe. God's message to its creation is its creation, and I can see my own self-consciousness as an argument either for or against the deliberate intentionality of such a message. We're a pattern-seeking life-form, it's true, but is life improved or worsened by rejecting the search? Do the options have to be mutually exclusive?
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Christianity WOW (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/05/24/the_forever_virgins/)!
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Christianity WOW (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/05/24/the_forever_virgins/)!
:wat:
:lol:
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Vowwww of ceeeeelibacyyyyyy. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Well, that works okay with priests, right?
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I know you've probably been over a lot of this before, but if you'll bear with me:
All of which is why I claim to be an atheist and an omnitheist. Does the historical truth of a religion matter, if spirituality and the socio-economic network a church provides is such a positive force in so many peoples' lives?
True, of course, but if it's almost impossible that the reality something like Christianity offers could exist under a rational god, and letting the church do what it does is allowing millions to grow up under a fundamentally false, limiting understanding of our world. Comforting, yeah, but it's a problem when the world doesn't line up with their beliefs and they're forced to start making up their own fiction to make sense. It's just going to be a huge source of frustration for believers and non-believers can't even agree on how the universe likely works, much less what the rules are. I don't think their ease of mind is worth limiting what I'm allowed to do, and I don't really feel I'm being selfish for feeling like that.
I can see my own self-consciousness as an argument either for or against the deliberate intentionality of such a message. We're a pattern-seeking life-form, it's true, but is life improved or worsened by rejecting the search? Do the options have to be mutually exclusive?
It's fine if the search actually continues, not grinding to a halt at a false unquestionable, static "answer" like the one religion offers. I'm all for continuing the explore the pervasive laws that nature uses to organize itself - stuff like six degrees of separation, identifying human/animal sociological patterns, bettering our understanding of how our brains function and associate - and I'm open to the possibility that the universe does work under some sort of Foundation-like pattern, or even the efforts of a god, but we don't really have any evidence to support any of that just yet. To believe that a pattern exists when it's possible, if not likely, one doesn't (or just works differently than the one something like religion promotes), is an act of self-delusion that's just setting them up for frustration. At worst, it's affecting their judgment, narrowing their perspective, making them decide and act in a certain way that feels in line with the vague unexplainable flow of life they want to be a part of.
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The authors pinpointed two parts of the brain that, when damaged, led to increases in spirituality: the left inferior parietal lobe and the right angular gyrus. These areas at the back of the brain are involved in how we perceive our bodies in spatial relation to the external world. The authors of the study in the journal Neuron, say that their findings support the connection between mystic experiences and feeling detached from the body.
...
Previous studies have shown that a broad network of frontal and parietal brain regions underlies religious beliefs. But spirituality does not seem to involve exactly the same regions of the brain as religion.
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Lawrence Wright has a fucking amazing piece on Scientology in The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright). It's written around Paul Haggis, the guy who wrote Million Dollar Baby and Crash, and who recently left the church after 34 years over its support of Prop 8.
It's long but it's worth the time to read it. Extremely thorough and remarkably evenhanded; he reports numerous detractors' accusations against the church but also gives the church an opportunity to defend itself -- he notes that most of the accusations ARE hearsay by people who, by their nature, want to damage and discredit the church, but on the other hand, the church's constant denials aren't exactly convincing.
It's also even-handed in looking at the positives and negatives of the church -- Haggis himself notes that while he always thought the Xenu story was completely nuts, he thought the counseling really helped him, and indeed many of the people who've left and criticized the church still practice some version of its teachings.
None of which is to say it pulls punches. Haggis gets the last word, and that word is "cult". Wright does a truly admirable job presenting the facts as well as the claims of both sides; he leaves the reader to draw his own conclusions, but I know what conclusions I drew from it and I think most people reading it would draw similar ones.
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Penn Jillette, challenged by Glenn Beck, has put together 10 Commandments for Atheists (http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2011-10-28/penn-jillette-ten-commandments/50978982/1). I think they're pretty good!
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Pretty good, though this idea has been around before. It's also not very hard to do better than the 10 commandments, I'm honestly baffled by the obsession some Christian groups have with them. 4 of the commandments are pretty much strictly required for a functioning society (murder, theft, lying, and adultery) and another 2 are just practical (honor your parents and don't covet) which means there are really only 4 commandments that are saying anything unique or interesting. Of the other 4 commandments, keep the sabbath kind of stands on its own. Really though nobody actually does that or values it even among evangelicals, so how important can it be? The last 3 commandments are all variants on honoring god (don't take the lord's name in vain, no false idols, I am the lord your god).
It's also notable that other than "honor thy mother and father" and "keep the Sabbath" the commandants are strictly proscriptive, which I consider a weaker form of moral imperative and which is in my opinion counter to thrust of Christianity as a separate religion from Judaism. I think one of the notable things about Christianity compared to other religions around at the time it arose is that it told you what you should do in very open terms (Love the lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself.) rather than what you shouldn't do in very specific terms.
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And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn. And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful? And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him? How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him? And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.
This is literally Jesus justifying his disciples' breaking of the fourth commandment. The law exists for the benefit of man, rather than man existing for the benefit of the law.
Modern fundamentalists are the new Pharisees.
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Pretty good, though this idea has been around before. It's also not very hard to do better than the 10 commandments, I'm honestly baffled by the obsession some Christian groups have with them. 4 of the commandments are pretty much strictly required for a functioning society (murder, theft, lying, and adultery) and another 2 are just practical (honor your parents and don't covet) which means there are really only 4 commandments that are saying anything unique or interesting. Of the other 4 commandments, keep the sabbath kind of stands on its own. Really though nobody actually does that or values it even among evangelicals, so how important can it be? The last 3 commandments are all variants on honoring god (don't take the lord's name in vain, no false idols, I am the lord your god).
It's also notable that other than "honor thy mother and father" and "keep the Sabbath" the commandants are strictly proscriptive, which I consider a weaker form of moral imperative and which is in my opinion counter to thrust of Christianity as a separate religion from Judaism. I think one of the notable things about Christianity compared to other religions around at the time it arose is that it told you what you should do in very open terms (Love the lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself.) rather than what you shouldn't do in very specific terms.
Ten Commandments - by George Carlin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-RGN21TSGk#)
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4 of the commandments are pretty much strictly required for a functioning society (murder, theft, lying, and adultery)
Adultery doesn't need its own spot. It falls under general oath-breaking/cheating, which is probably covered under "not lying." Same goes for bearing false witness, which you didn't mention.
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4 of the commandments are pretty much strictly required for a functioning society (murder, theft, lying, and adultery)
Adultery doesn't need its own spot. It falls under general oath-breaking/cheating, which is probably covered under "not lying." Same goes for bearing false witness, which you didn't mention.
Oathbreaking/cheating weren't prohibited by any of the 10 commandments, unless you mean cheating in the sexual sense in which case I'm not really clear how you're separating that from adultery. It is notable that adultery deserved it's own spot at the time because of how property and inheritance were dealt with. In modern society though, you're right it could probably just be put under not lying. And the lying commandment I was referring to was "though shalt not bear false witness." Again I'm not really clear on how you're separating the two. "Though shalt not bear false witness" did technically refer to lying in court originally, but it's generally interpreted as and referred to as "thou shalt not lie" in modern days by the kind of people who are proponents of the 10 commandments.
Another interesting thing about the 10 commandments is they don't really hold the same kind of special place in Judaism that they do in evangelical Christianity. For Judaism the 10 commandments are just a small section of the law that's some what notable for how they were delivered. They would never consider the 10 commandments to be all you needed for morality.
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Mormon tradition holds that the tablets that Moses broke when he was so upset at seeing the people make sacrifices to a golden calf contained the fulness of the law, or the higher law that Jesus taught. The Ten Commandments were a substitute law, one so simple that spiritual babies could understand it.
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You Can't Touch Mormon Jesus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46PXaJxzuDE#)
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Dammit Buge!
Well, maybe it'll make Gaston go away. For a little while.
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4 of the commandments are pretty much strictly required for a functioning society (murder, theft, lying, and adultery)
Adultery doesn't need its own spot. It falls under general oath-breaking/cheating, which is probably covered under "not lying." Same goes for bearing false witness, which you didn't mention.
Oathbreaking/cheating weren't prohibited by any of the 10 commandments, unless you mean cheating in the sexual sense in which case I'm not really clear how you're separating that from adultery. It is notable that adultery deserved it's own spot at the time because of how property and inheritance were dealt with. In modern society though, you're right it could probably just be put under not lying. And the lying commandment I was referring to was "though shalt not bear false witness." Again I'm not really clear on how you're separating the two. "Though shalt not bear false witness" did technically refer to lying in court originally, but it's generally interpreted as and referred to as "thou shalt not lie" in modern days by the kind of people who are proponents of the 10 commandments.
Another interesting thing about the 10 commandments is they don't really hold the same kind of special place in Judaism that they do in evangelical Christianity. For Judaism the 10 commandments are just a small section of the law that's some what notable for how they were delivered. They would never consider the 10 commandments to be all you needed for morality.
I mean that if a new commandment says "don't lie," that cheating (general, but inclusive of sexual) and oath-breaking are covered by it. If a marital/coupling/whatever oath says "I won't plumb other holes," then doing so violates the no lying commandment, and thus we shouldn't need to waste space with "don't cheat (specifically sexually)."
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I think the original commandment as meant to specifically ban marriages in which the no-swingin' oath was omitted.
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Mormon tradition holds that the tablets that Moses broke when he was so upset at seeing the people make sacrifices to a golden calf contained the fulness of the law, or the higher law that Jesus taught. The Ten Commandments were a substitute law
I thought that was actually all Christianity and Judaism (and probably Islam too). It's just ignored, like most of what the bible/torah/quran literally says.
Moses spends a fucking month all alone atop mt. Sinai, comes back, looses his shit, breaks the totally awesome and perfect tablets of law*, and then later comes up with the ten commandments off the top of his head. It's a fucking metaphor for mankind never knowing the true nature of god, or what is truly what god wants of us. Which is rather inconvenient for established religious institutions and that's why they act like the ten commandments are what Moses originally came down with, which they aren't.
*Which were said to be fucking magic, in that while they were carved all the way through the tablets, one could read them forwards on either side.
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Am I the only one that notices that Moses rambles off more than 10 laws, though?
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Am I the only one that notices that Moses rambles off more than 10 laws, though?
Not really. Like I said the Jews hold the 10 commandments as just part of the law. Also of note, there are more than 10 imperative statements in the 10 commandments. Also the two places where the 10 commandments are listed are actually completely separate from the the story of the 10 commandments in terms of the tablets, and the story that does refer to the tablets actually has an entirely different set of imperative statements. You can see the 2 versions of the 10 commandments and the version that people usually ignore which is actually present in the story of the tablets here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Covenant_Code#Decalogues_compared).
Mormon tradition holds that the tablets that Moses broke when he was so upset at seeing the people make sacrifices to a golden calf contained the fulness of the law, or the higher law that Jesus taught. The Ten Commandments were a substitute law
I thought that was actually all Christianity and Judaism (and probably Islam too). It's just ignored, like most of what the bible/torah/quran literally says.
Moses spends a fucking month all alone atop mt. Sinai, comes back, looses his shit, breaks the totally awesome and perfect tablets of law*, and then later comes up with the ten commandments off the top of his head. It's a fucking metaphor for mankind never knowing the true nature of god, or what is truly what god wants of us. Which is rather inconvenient for established religious institutions and that's why they act like the ten commandments are what Moses originally came down with, which they aren't.
*Which were said to be fucking magic, in that while they were carved all the way through the tablets, one could read them forwards on either side.
Definitely not all of Christianity. I wouldn't be surprised if it's only Mormon tradition.
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Moses goes up to Sinai with Joshua, comes back with some tablets, breaks the original tablets, and then goes off by himself so God can re-dictate the laws to him onto new tablets.
If you take the Bible to be largely a recorded history of shysters, then it's likely that Moses and Joshua (his main rival for tribal leadership) went up and hashed out a compromise set of laws together, and then when they got back Moses was all like "WHOOPS THERE GO THOSE TABLETS I'D BETTER GO GET DICTION FROM GOD AGAIN OH NO I DON'T NEED YOU TO COME JOSHUA THANKS".
Politics. Politics never change.
Anyway the whole situation is important to the Mormons because they maintain that the original, untampered law is what is recorded in the Book of Mormon, as translated from a set of 1400-year-old Egyptian plates that Joseph Smith found in his backyard in New York.
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Mormon tradition holds that the tablets that Moses broke when he was so upset at seeing the people make sacrifices to a golden calf contained the fulness of the law, or the higher law that Jesus taught. The Ten Commandments were a substitute law
I thought that was actually all Christianity and Judaism (and probably Islam too). It's just ignored, like most of what the bible/torah/quran literally says.
Moses spends a fucking month all alone atop mt. Sinai, comes back, looses his shit, breaks the totally awesome and perfect tablets of law*, and then later comes up with the ten commandments off the top of his head. It's a fucking metaphor for mankind never knowing the true nature of god, or what is truly what god wants of us. Which is rather inconvenient for established religious institutions and that's why they act like the ten commandments are what Moses originally came down with, which they aren't.
*Which were said to be fucking magic, in that while they were carved all the way through the tablets, one could read them forwards on either side.
(http://i.imgur.com/IjPW2.png)
I think someone's dodging the question.
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The Vatican is ordering disciplinary action against American nuns because they're too lenient on gay rights, women's issues and abortion (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/04/vatican-criticizes-us-nuns-being-too-progressive/51328/).
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Castle Anthrax (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtcSYPjJbgg#)
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Extra Credits sometimes have thoughtful and well-researched discussions on subjects but this week's offering really soured me on them. That is, the second part of their two-part series on Religion in Games (http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/religion-in-games-part-2).
Right around 1:40, he makes the assertion that "all reason is based on faith". Which says to me that he really, really didn't do the research. I suggest you watch it if you want to see a guy building a house on sand.
I also take exception to claiming that games with faith as a theme don't exist. Morrowind has faith as a theme. Planescape: Torment has faith as a theme. Those aren't obscure games in the slightest and it speaks to the level of effort they put into this that they passed over those two. It's a shame that the Extra Credit people went with such a pat thesis, since the topic is something that should be talked about.
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Hell, at least as far back as Act Raiser.
Even something like Final Fantasy Tactics, which relies on a pretty searing depiction of the Catholic Church and even has its Christ figure turn out to be a demon, depicts people of genuine faith as heroic (even if they have a tendency to become damsels in distress and get taken advantage of and/or stabbed). Xenogears...well, nearly everything I just said applies there, too. Truly the PS1 era is the era of the self-important, navel-gazing JRPG.
Final Fantasy 10 is about the clash between faith-as-in-dogma and faith in a better way.
The Metroid series is messianic -- this isn't actually spelled out in-game until Metroid Prime, but Samus as Chosen One has been part of the ancillary material at least as far back as that Super Metroid comic in Nintendo Power, and from the very first the games have that whiff of ancient ruins with totems and artifacts of power.
Ecco the Dolphin is chock-full of mysticism and mythology, even if it does sort of go off the rails once the aliens start to show up.
Dragon Quest 7 -- ooh, that's a big one, and an incredibly literal one. The whole world fades out of existence even as belief in God fades; as the heroes travel through time they recover history, religion, and all the missing continents that vanished from the world. Then God shows up to thank them all, 'cept it's not God at all, it's the devil in disguise come to plunge the world back into chaos. Then you fight him, save the world, and if you play the postgame you can fight the real God and he really kicks the hell out of you using smiles and tickle power and that's where I quit playing.
And then there's whatever the fuck's going on here:
Exodus: Journey to the Promised Land Game Sample - Genesis/MD (Unlicensed) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mezjkfdWJS0#)
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Man I thought that was going to be a video for that one game on the NES about the demon that is also a Christian apparently and is powered-up by crosses (and ice cream cones!) Not sure if that is germane to this discussion.
Also, if we want to go even earlier, there was Ultima: Quest for the Avatar. Granted, it dealt with religion rather generically, but the next game in the series dealt with religious extremism (and the game after that religious tolerance).
Also, if we're including text adventures in this discussion (and we should) there have been plenty of games that have dealt with faith in one way or another. Vespers (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=6dj2vguyiagrhvc2) is a Christian themed horror game that deals with themes of whether God is just (albeit superficially, or so I hear). Unraveling God (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7373q45c9jh4t5yg) is uh apparently about religion vs. science? Voices (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=nue0kr86i5cpkqze) is a game about Joan of Arc. I've never played any of these games.
Moving on, last year's IF Comp had Tenth Plague (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=axzhbgr7dn7fba5g) and Cana According to Micah (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=r19zeypqcr684muu), which are like complete opposites in nearly every way, to the point where it kinda blew my mind that they were released in the same Comp without causing some kind of antimatter-esque explosion. Tenth Plague, of course being the Old Testament game, takes a rather negative view of God, religion, and divine judgment; meanwhile Cana is one of the most humane games I've ever played. This year's howling dogs (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=mxj7xp4nffia9rbj) contained an extended Joan of Arc segment, which Emily Short wrote a little about here (http://sparklyifreviews.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/howling-dogs/). I also have to mention Sunday Afternoon (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=yv4mjm4han072fg), which isn't really about religion, per se (despite having the "translator" of Cana as an NPC), but contains my favorite bit of writing about religion ever:
>X STEPHEN
Barchester is crawling with clergymen, and Uncle Stephen is another one of them. He's one of the super High Church types who might as well be Catholic, or at least that's what Father says. From what you've seen, that means that the services are more fun but the clergymen are stuffier. No-one is stuffier than Uncle Stephen; if he were in charge of the cathedral, there would probably be clowns.
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If was the guy who paid for that episode, I'd want my money back. On the other hand, if I was the guy who won the auction and they said "yeah uh religion uhm we haven't done that because we haven't found enough good stuff to talk about" I'd PROBABLY believe them and pick a new topic.
But yeah, that sorta blew it and missed a number of examples and sorta spent two episodes talking about nothing. Extra Credits is kinda always hit or miss though. I'd probably have ran out of things to say long before they have.
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Brief bit of Hitchens on the subject of the ten commandments. It's interesting to note how many different versions there are in the old testament.
Christopher Hitchens Revises the Ten Commandments (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9weXGtCk7c#ws)
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I didn't know which thread to put this in, but I think this one is more fitting by a hair.
Sandy Hook Massacre - William Lane Craig, PhD (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYHd2F3vnL4#ws)
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Jesus F Christ. A crazy king two thousand years ago (may or may not have) killed a whole village's worth of newborns, so Sandy Hook ain't a tragedy as much as it is a lesson, amirite?
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Two members of the Westboro Baptist Church, Megan Phelps and Grace Phelps, defected, apparently (https://medium.com/turning-points/83d2ef8ba4f5).
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Pope Benedict XVI resigns, citing health reasons (http://en.radiovaticana.va/articolo.asp?c=663815)
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That would explain why he looks more like Emperor Palpatine in every photo. I figured he was just accruing dark side points.
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At least he stepped down before his jaw fell off or something equally horrifying/hilarious.
edit: on the other hand, Cyber-Pope
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That would explain why he looks more like Emperor Palpatine in every photo. I figured he was just accruing dark side points.
What the hell are you talking about? He's ALWAYS looked like Palpatine.
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To circumvent any complications due to age in the forseeable future, the new pope will be a 17-year old skateboard superstar, will also molest himself for the sake of convenience
Oh man, this should have been a 1990s era Disney Channel Original Movie.
Trailer:
Voice over: John Paul Jr. was just a normal kid trying to make it through high school.
Quick shots of JP Jr. skateboarding, getting his lunch tray flipped out of his hand by a bully when he waves at a pretty girl and then getting yelled at by his principal while he and his best friend pull a wacky prank.
Voice over a shot of the college of cardinals looking confused and scratching their heads while looking at a sheet of paper: But when a mix up half a world away makes him the new pope, JP's life goes from ordinary...to heavenly!
Shot of someone taking a sip from the communion cup. They screw up their face and say "This tastes different!"
The priest says "It's the new rule!" and points. The camera does a quick zoom over to an open bottle of Surge which has clearly replaced the communion wine while a record scratching noise is made.
The chorus of Smashmouth's "All Star" kicks in.
Two church-officials look scandalized. One says: "He installed a skate park...in St. Peter's square?!" We are then treated to a scene of said skate park with tons of people using it. Tony Hawk skates by in priest robes.
Voice over: But with graduation approaching, this may be JP's last chance to ask the girl of his dreams to the big dance.
A mean looking cardinal tells JP: "The Pope cannot date, your holiness!"
JP looks crestfallen.
Voice over: Now he's going to have to balance his life as the holy father with that of the American teenager!
Quick shots of a few monks jamming on guitars, then a stuffy looking bishop break dancing and JP ramping the pope-mobile daredevil style over some cars.
Voice over: Jonathan Taylor Thomas stars in...Homecoming Pope!
Only shooting stars break the mooooold
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I don't care about the pope, but a Québécois cardinal is in the running and I'm kinda rooting for the home team on this one.
oh hey, turns out i care about catholicism exactly like i care about hockey
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http://www.examiner.com/article/pope-will-remain-vatican-to-avoid-prosecution-for-child-sex-abuse (http://www.examiner.com/article/pope-will-remain-vatican-to-avoid-prosecution-for-child-sex-abuse)
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Meanwhile, on top of YouTube:
(http://brentai.brontoforum.us/images/23195116_1360967556432_YouTube-Scientology-Masthead.jpg)
You Serious? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztVMib1T4T4#ws)
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(http://francois.brontoforum.us/miscpic/yolosci.png)
Man, and I thought my opinion of scientology couldn't get any lower.
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So apparently there may be a scandal in the Catholic Church involving gay orgies with prostitutes?
I can't be the only guy thinking that sex scandals involving consenting adults are a huge step up.
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Next, they'll graduate to using condoms!
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Hahaha no they won't.
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So apparently there may be a scandal in the Catholic Church involving gay orgies with prostitutes?
I can't be the only guy thinking that sex scandals involving consenting adults are a huge step up.
Pope OKs condoms for use by male prostitutes (http://www.advocate.com/news/daily-news/2010/11/20/pope-condoms-ok-male-prostitutes)
(http://i.imgur.com/8wB9qn2.jpg)
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http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/white-smoke-over-sistine-chapel-signals-election-pope-183222541.html (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/white-smoke-over-sistine-chapel-signals-election-pope-183222541.html)
There's a new Pope in town, and he's Argentinean.
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He's Italian, born in Argentina. There's a difference.
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The fast pick has me feeling like he wasn't a controversial choice, meaning he probably won't be that different than his predecessor?
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Well, he's old, white, ultraconservative, anti-gay and anti-choice.
So...
Lana Kane Yup (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu9ZxzsWchg#)
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The fast pick has me feeling like he wasn't a controversial choice, meaning he probably won't be that different than his predecessor?
Nazipope beat him by one vote in 2005, apparently.
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:done:
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Francis is known as a humble man
“He cooks for himself and took great pride in telling us that, and that he took the bus to work” rather than riding in a car, Father Rosica said.
You can tell he's humble because he takes every chance to tell you so!
(http://i.imgur.com/8bZ6wJo.jpg)
<Mazian> FOXNEWS POLL: Humble Pope, or humblest Pope?
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I know there are people who will never be fans of the Catholic Church, no matter what it does, but this Pope is looking like a massive improvement over the last one.
Maybe some of what he's saying will be buried, maybe there won't be deeds to match the words, and I'm sure there will be endless people who'll say this doesn't go far enough, but in the bastion of ultimate conservativism in the land of aeons-long incremental change that is the Catholic Church, even hearing those statements made is a damn good start.
EDIT: Article (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/pope-francis-reaches-out-to-gays-says-he-wont-judge-gay-priests/article13476619/)
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Yeah, I know what you mean. I wouldn't define myself as Catholic anymore (though I haven't officially declared apostasy or anything, because why bother, I'm not trying to make a point), but still, there are enough of them in the world that having a relatively sensible man under that hat is actually very good news for everyone.
I didn't care much for the last pope, but in a way, and I say this without cynicism, that he stepped down is proof of at least some amount of wisdom on his part. It is no small thing to declare one is not the right man for the job, especially when nobody else is in a position to do anything about it.
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Yeah, I have no ties to any religion, but I still think it's awfully nice to have a good pope under the mitre.
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I've been pretty impressed by his focus on the poor and his compassion for people in prison. Seems like a decent guy, even if you don't get that job without having a pretty different set of ethical beliefs than mine.
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From what I understand, "We accept gays but not gay sexual acts (or most sexual acts in general, really)" has always been the position of the Church. The Pope isn't saying anything new there. He's just saying it in a way that gets most people to go "oh, man, a Pope who isn't anti-gay."
Though the article does point out an actual difference: He is willing to let gay priests stay priests, while the previous Pope was not.
Overall he seems like an improvement over the previous Pope, but remember the following facts when you suck his dick:
You're committing a sin and you're going to hell.
Unless you confess. Then God deletes all local related content.
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Or unless that dick belongs to a priest, and you're an eight year old altar boy.
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Saying this pope is better than the last one really isn't setting the bar at all. Not that I am a fan of any Pope, but Ratzinger was actively terrible. Has this one reversed the official position on condoms in Africa yet, because if not he's still evil.
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Francis' position is consistent, and basically boils down to "It's totally cool to be gay as long as you never say, do, or think anything which would technically make you homosexual."
In other words, you can be gay if you also happen to be a priest.
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Despite being a rampant optimist, it’s unlikely the Pope’s statements will create a dramatic change of tides, like I believe Obama’s change of stance on gay marriage did last year. It was, after all, just a few months (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2013/0424/Pope-Francis-on-abortion-gay-marriage-priestly-sex-abuse-and-more) ago that Pope Francis claimed that gay marriage was an “anthropological step backward.” While Argentina was voting on its own gay marriage bill, he stepped in to offer his thoughts: “Today the country, in this particular situation, needs the special assistance of the Holy Spirit to bring the light of truth on to the darkness of error, it need this advocate to defend us from being enchanted by many fallacies that are tried at all costs to justify this bill and to confuse and deceive the people of good will.”
All of this is also saddled with the fact that in the same unexpected press conference that happened this morning on the Papal airplane, his sweeping statements about gay priests were placed right next to this statement on the possibility of ordaining women in the church:
“The church says no. That door is closed.”
Hmm. “Progress.”
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^ Is that like how the worst crime a politician can commit is changing his mind?
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#shotsfired (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/pope-francis-catholics-focus-divisive-issues-article-1.1461336)
:thad: : Pope Francis tells Catholics to stop worrying about Gays, Abortions, and the like, and focus on helping people and remembering that Jesus saved you to be a good person.
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Yeah, I really like this new Pope.
I especially like the way he frames the Gay/Abortion stuff as as really minor bullshit issue that the Church has gotten itself hung up on.
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I mean, he's not saying that those things won't damn you to a life of eternal hellfire, but I guess not talking about it is a start. With any luck, though, maybe a stronger emphasis on economic justice will bring the church back to their radical roots in the 1920s. Or at the very least, convince Catholic universities not to force their adjunct professors into life-destroying poverty (http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/death-of-an-adjunct-703773/).
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I think people with comfortable distance tend to underestimate how much courage is required for a single person to stand up to a massive and entrenched organization. Even if that person is supposed to be "infallible" by tradition.
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I agree with you, Constantine, about the fact that the Catholic Church is pretty fucking stupid/horrible and a Pope saying some stuff won't change that, but on the other hand the Pope saying some stuff is a step in the right direction. Sure, he's saying it for the PR. I don't care. If he even makes one Catholic fuckhead reconsider his thoughts on how to be a Catholic (more helping others, less calling women baby-killers) then he's done a good deed.
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Well, and there are a hell of a lot of Catholics pushing for these kind of modern reforms, too. You're not going to get American Catholics to decide, as a group, that birth control is a bad thing; it's just not going to happen. The push for women in the clergy is only going to get bigger. And while gay rights is still a flashpoint for now, public opinion has only ever moved in one direction on the subject. The Church's views on abortion are pretty entrenched, and it's still a divisive issue among the mainstream public in much of the developed world, but over time I expect that'll change too.
One of my best friends from high school came out of the closet shortly after starting college. Not long after, his parents quit the Roman Catholic Church. They're devout and were very active in the church (and legitimately wonderful people, I might add); they joined a more progressive offshoot sect that (1) does not think their son is condemned to hellfire and (2) allows Mom to be a preacher.
Leastways, that's how I heard the story secondhand; I'll admit I haven't been in great touch with my friend over the past few years so there could be a bit of Telephone at work here.
But I think there are lots of people like that. Sure, there's an entrenched power structure that's resistant to change, and a pretty huge reactionary faction among the faithful that doesn't want to see the church change its views on what they consider to be core values and principles. I think Francis is doing a pretty good job of speaking to those people -- "Hey, you want core principles? Be humble and help the poor; all that other stuff is less important."
And there are plenty of people like my friend's parents -- people who are deeply religious, who consider their Catholic faith to be a fundamental part of their identity, but who will walk away and find some other place to worship if the church continues to condemn their friends and families.
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My Father was actually a priest and Dominican monk for close to 30 years before leaving the priesthood and marrying my mother. From the stories I've heard there was a lot more room to believe and practice as one personally saw fit in the immediate aftermath of Vatican 2, and that the slow conservative shift following that has pushed many out of the church. My father considered himself a catholic until he died, but he ended up worshiping in another church.
Side story: When I was a kid in the 80's my father used to rage about the church moving around molester priests instead of defrocking them. I grew up thinking this was one of those terrible things that everybody knew about and nobody cared about, and I was really surprised when it became such a big story.
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In his strongest statement on economic matters yet, Pope Francis decries "trickle-down economics". (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pope-francis-denounces-trickle-down-economic-theories-in-critique-of-inequality/2013/11/26/e17ffe4e-56b6-11e3-8304-caf30787c0a9_story_1.html)
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For whatever reason, I've been toying on-and-off for a few months with the idea of going back to church every once in a while. Not sure why; maybe I've been curious to see if I could find a peculiar, nigh-unique sense of community that can come from just going to mass because you want to, surrounded by people who aren't culturally forced to go there as well. (By now, around here, the idea that anyone might go to church on Sundays only to avoid greater social repercussions is fairly ludicrous, except maybe in the local Latino enclave.) Maybe it would get me to socialize with people I would never otherwise have any reason to meet, which is a bonus. Also it would be interesting to see if the priest would make any mention of this interesting bit of news in any way.
That said, this new Commie Pope might just be what tips the balance and gets my butt in a pew, at least once. Maybe I could go the the Christmas mass even; the church in my parish is a small cathedral and I've never been in there, it must be pretty nice at that time of year. I mean, it probably wouldn't be enough for me to call myself Catholic again, but, I dunno, cultural experience, etc. etc.
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You know, it's funny how strange it has become in the western world (hell, MOST of the world out side reactionary fundamentalist communities) to hear anyone in authority, religious or not, even talk about organizing society in such a way that non-economic social goals are superior rather than subordinate to economic goals.
The few people you hear going in that direction are usually derided as kooks and or naive, like someone out of the junior anarchist league. In fairness, that sort of crowd usually is proposing some wacky unworkable idea, but this idea that everyone has to pay serious homage at the altar of economics is interesting if you step back and let yourself feel how weird it is.
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It's an utterly, horribly cliché thing to say, but it feels like the people who promote the belief that the pursuit of God's grace is the road to happiness may be beginning to feel stiff competition from the people who promote the belief that it's actually the pursuit of money.
EDIT:
No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
:whoops:
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When ever 'religious' people bitch about income inequality not being a problem I like to quote matthew 25:40 at them and watch their head explode.
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I don't expect anything to explode. With the amount of cognitive dissonance and cherry picking endemic to most religious practice, a passage conflicting with their MO doesn't seem like it'd do anything.
Maybe eschewers of mixed textiles will listen?
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You probably can't use the letter of the Bible against anybody who shaves.
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And don't even get me started on religious people and global warming. As if god gave us the planet to burn to the fucking ground.
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Religious people have had 2000 years to rationalize whatever inconsistency you just picked up from a Facebook repost. You'll have to work a bit harder than that to destroy a man's foundations.
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So, no mention of economic policy from the bishop this morning. He did mention the upcoming Noah movie though, as evidence that the, err, character is still relevant today, so that was cute. Energetic old man, he tries. We have the same first name, which in French is also the pope's name, so, yay coincidence!
The place was two-thirds empty I reckon, even though it's the first Sunday of Advent and our new mayor actually showed up (I didn't vote for him). The parish priest* came to ask where I was from before mass started; he seemed surprised when the answer turned out uninteresting ("I was born a half hour's drive away from here and grew up in this town!"). Remember, I'm the guy who occasionally gets hate-speeched at just walking along the street because idiots think I'm an Orthodox Jew. Welcomed me all the same of course, lost sheep and all. Not that I expected otherwise, really.
*: This is the cathedral at the head of the diocese, two blocks from the bishopric building; there were like five priests and a deacon, plus the bishop, never seen that before. I don't know if there's ceremonial significance or if they're overstaffed.
Not sure if I'll go back. At least I wasn't actually bored, for whatever reason. Novelty, maybe. The music was nice but apparently the violonist they had was a special guest, and they're using the tiny electric organ instead of the awesome one in the back, for cost reasons I assume. They did pass the plate twice, which I did not expect, that's not how it was when I was a kid. I had dropped paper money on the first one but if I return I'll know to pace myself. I guess that's how they get the first-timers.
And that's your Church Report for today. No need to thank me; you may go about your business, citizens.
EDIT: I just realized that the extra priests are probably assigned to parishes that closed down in the last several years and got consolidated into this main one. They gotta go to mass too, I'm sure.
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Religious people have had 2000 years to rationalize whatever inconsistency you just picked up from a Facebook repost. You'll have to work a bit harder than that to destroy a man's foundations.
Some people are. Actively. (http://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghossian/dp/1939578094) Not sure how well it's working out in practice. Time will tell.
The best one can hope for is to put information out there and let people draw their own conclusions.
Superstitions can be hard to break.
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Superstitions or other self-created notions also have a way of filling any informational vacuum.
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Do they ever. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps)
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Why is this pope so good
A knowledgable source in Rome told The Huffington Post that "Swiss guards confirmed that the pope has ventured out at night, dressed as a regular priest, to meet with homeless men and women." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/02/pope-francis-homeless_n_4373884.html)
Pope Francis has called for power in the Catholic Church to be devolved away from the Vatican, in the first major work he has written in the role. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25102720)
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh last week called Pope Francis' economic views laid out in his Vatican mission statement "pure marxism." (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/limbaugh-calls-pope-francis-mission-statement-pure-marxism)
Is it a sin for me to have a papalboner?
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he's on my top 3 popes already
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If it this then we're both going to hell.
welp, guess i'm going next sunday too
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So is the dude like a Younger Times John Paul 2? Or more liberal than that?
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I can't help but feel cynical that - although he is probably a better person than his predecessor - he's still a Pope and the Vatican just got much better at their PR.
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While I don't doubt that Pope Frank himself feels positive about what he's saying, he's definitely saying it - or being allowed to say it - because the Vatican realizes it has a youth problem. Especially at home in Italia, where the "Our parents are economically murdering us all" attitude is neither new nor controversial (current youth jobless rate: 41.2%). Telling people how sinful it is not to constantly be having babies plays well with the generation with dozens of spawn and one foot in the grave, but not so much with the one that will inherit the country, can't afford to start a family, and rather resents those who kiss up to their ruthless elders. Spreading around the radical idea that maybe we shouldn't be systematically crushing people? A bit more resonant.
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[Popeing intensifies]
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While I don't doubt that Pope Frank himself feels positive about what he's saying, he's definitely saying it - or being allowed to say it - because the Vatican realizes it has a youth problem. Especially at home in Italia, where the "Our parents are economically murdering us all" attitude is neither new nor controversial (current youth jobless rate: 41.2%). Telling people how sinful it is not to constantly be having babies plays well with the generation with dozens of spawn and one foot in the grave, but not so much with the one that will inherit the country, can't afford to start a family, and rather resents those who kiss up to their ruthless elders. Spreading around the radical idea that maybe we shouldn't be systematically crushing people? A bit more resonant.
Amen.
I'm gonna believe that he's just a really good guy unless proven otherwise, but yeah, if this is a strategic move on the part of the Vatican, it's a smart one.
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Which, to me, casts doubt on the idea of it being a strategic move on the part of the Vatican.
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Fox News Reports: Pope Francis is the Catholic Church's Obama - God Help Us. (http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/12/04/pope-francis-is-catholic-churchs-obama-god-help-us/) It's ... it's like something out of the Onion.
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I can't help actually laughing every time he lists John Paul II as a conservative. Either he actually forgets what that man was like or is desperately hoping that everybody else does.
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If Francis was the pope Adam Shaw wanted him to be, Shaw would be excommunicated for that article.
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Benedict XVI and John Paul II refused to kowtow to the liberal agenda
The Second Vatican Council of the 1960’s aimed to “open the windows” of the Church to the modern world by doing just this
who does he think was pope during the nevermind
Well I always figured Fox News thought it was more Catholic than the Pope but this has got to be the first time they run it as an article
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http://nation.time.com/2014/01/07/satanists-unveil-statue-for-oklahoma-capitol/ (http://nation.time.com/2014/01/07/satanists-unveil-statue-for-oklahoma-capitol/)
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In addition to representing the Satanic religion, the monument “will also have a functional purpose as a chair where people of all ages may sit on the lap of Satan for inspiration and contemplation,” said Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves.
Now THAT is some epic fucking troll right there.
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Hmm, that is a pretty comfy looking lap. 8/10 Would sit.
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And now I feel very sad about my 7/10 review.