Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion
In a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit DiscussionIn a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
This morning I recieved the following in my email from a student. It is intented to be inspirational, or at minimum cautionary. My response to the student is included at the end.
This is very true……Our God is a wonderful and forgiving God, but what he says is true…..Do not mock him, and be sure not to put anything past him. Our God is merciful, but there are to many people today who do not fear Lord…. that’s the problem. Read the good Book!
DID YOU KNOW THESE FACTS? I SURE DIDNT TILL NOW
Death is certain but the Bible speaks about untimely death!
Make a personal reflection about this….. Very interesting, read until the end…..
It is written in the Bible (Galatians 6:7):
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked:
for whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap.
Here are some men and women who mocked God :
John Lennon (Singer):
Some years before, during his interview with an American Magazine, he said:
“Christianity will end, it will disappear. I do not have to argue about that. I am certain.
Jesus was ok, but his subjects were too simple, Today we are more famous than Him” (1966)
Lennon, after saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, was shot six times.
Tancredo Neves (President of Brazil ):
During the Presidential campaign, he said if he got 500,000 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from Presidency.
Sure he got the votes, but he got sick a day before being made President, then he died
Cazuza (Bi-sexual Brazilian composer, singer and poet):
During A show in Canecio ( Rio de Janeiro ), while smoking his cigarette, he puffed out some smoke into the air and said: “God, that’s for you.”
He died at the age of 32 of AIDS in a horrible manner.
The man who built the Titanic
After the construction of Titanic, a reporter asked him how safe the Titanic would be.
With an ironic tone he said: “Not even God can sink it”
The result: I think you all know what happened to the Titanic.
Marilyn Monroe (Actress)
She was visited by Billy Graham during a presentation of a show. He said the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her. After hearing what the Preacher had to say, she said:
“I don’t need your Jesus”.
A week later, she was found dead in her apartment
Bon Scott (Singer)
The ex-vocalist of the AC/DC. On one of his 1979 songs he sang: “Don’t stop me, I’m going down all the way, down the highway to hell”.
On the 19th of February 1980, Bon Scott was found dead, he had been choked by his own vomit
Campinas (IN 2005)
In Campinas , Brazil a group of friends, drunk, went to pick up a friend…… The mother accompanied her to the car and was so worried about the drunkenness of her friends and she said to the daughter holding her hand, who was already seated in the car:
“My Daughter, Go With God And May He Protect You..”
She responded: “Only If He (God) Travels In The Trunk, Cause Inside Here….. It’s Already Full ”
Hours later, news came by that they had been involved in a fatal accident, everyone had died,
the car could not be recognized what type of car it had been, but surprisingly, the trunk was intact. The police said there was no way the trunk could have remained intact. To their surprise, inside the trunk was a crate of eggs, none were broken .
Christine Hewitt (Jamaican Journalist and entertainer)
Said the Bible (Word of God) was the worst book ever written.
In June 2006 she was found burnt beyond recognition in her motor vehicle
Many more important people have forgotten that there is no other name that was given so much authority as the name of Jesus. Many have died, but only Jesus died and rose again, and he is still alive
“Jesus”
P.S: If it was a joke, you would have sent it to everyone.
So are you going to have courage to send this?.
I have done my part, Jesus said
“If you are embarrassed about me,
I will also be embarrassed about you before my father.”
Here’s how I replied:
So…
Whatever God does is by definition the good.
If we want to be good, God should be our role model.
So if someone mocks us, we should kill them in some horrific way that makes it look like we had nothing to do with it.
I’m afraid I don’t find this sort of thinking very inspiring. In fact it makes me nervous to think that people are inspired by stuff like this.
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April 20th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Scott, thanks for sharing that. Whoever wrote the student’s clearly cut-and-pasted message to you read a lot of effective chain letters for inspiration. And I shudder to think how your student will go about make decisions before entering the voting booth!
April 20th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Gosh, people supposedly mocked God and then died, according to some rather difficult-to-verify testimonials. The egg story sounds particulary fishy, like that Johnny and the liver ghost story that keeps going around or maybe the dead hitchhiker story or the story of the couple parking and the escapee with the hook. Now if they really want to “prove” their thesis, they need to find someone who did NOT mock God and became immortal.
My reasons for not mocking anyone’s god or goddess are more pragmatic. It cuts off that undefinable part of yourself where heart and hope and respect for the vastness and complexity of the universe are born. It cuts off recognition for the humanness of those around us, and by extension, of ourselves.
It’s also rude.
April 20th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
No, it doesn’t cut anything, Anonymous. That’s just silly hyperbole.
What’s rude is claiming that you have a god and then making up lots of rules that everybody else has to follow, and then getting offended when people mock you.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
No, Frank. See, it’s rude to mock God because God is a fiction of powerless people who are just making shit up because they’re scared. If God were really real, then of course mocking God wouldn’t be rude; it would be the act of utmost courage against the biggest damn bully in the frickin’ Universe. But God isn’t real, so it’s just about social standards and junk. Anonymous acknowledges this implicitly.
April 21st, 2007 at 10:13 am
Oh, dear, Jim, has it now been definatively proven that God does not exist? As soon as you saw the proof I’m sure you immediately posted the link. Where was I? I must have been sleeping. Oh, DO post the link again.
April 21st, 2007 at 11:02 am
About this time of year, right after Easter but before Earth Day, the heathens get restless and try to start pogroms. This week alone we have seen one post that tried to prove God does not exist by refering to some book about headache cures in the Bible. Of course, no one has read the book. Then someone else tried to prove God does not exist with some Bible verse they said was about an angel destroying people with fire. On closer reading the angel only had an aura of fire and was not burning people with it. But several people chimed in, one even saying he wanted Christians to get venereal warts.
Ever wonder how lynchings get started? Or Nazi death camps? Or even the Tuskegee, Alabama syphilis experiment on black sharecroppers? Oh, the atheists will piously post things like “First they came for the Catholics, but I said nothing…”, but when it comes right down to standing up for religious tolerance, on this website at least the atheist bigots are busy looking around for stones and sniffing expectantly for blood.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Okay, Scott, enough about the peanut gallery, now about the Email.
First, I would ask who the writer is. One clue is the sentence:
The writer does not have a clear grasp of the grammatical difference between ‘to’, ‘too’ and ‘two’, which used to be taught in about the ninth grade. Then the word “fear”. In Archaic English ‘fear’ used to mean ‘respect’, but in modern English the word means more like ‘afraid’. The writer taking an ancient word and using it in the modern sense, with the result that the orginal meaning of the Bible has been changed to mean something that was not there originally. So the writer is not particularly educated and is no student of the Bible either.
Then, I would take a look at the source document. Too many times when someone posts a Bible verse, everyone just stands around and quivers in front of it and forgets to look it up like they would if it was Sartre or Marx or the Baghvad Gita. What about the translation? What’s that “soweth” stuff and that “whatsoever” stuff and even the “shall he also reap” stuff? Nobody talks like that. Could this be the King James Version of 1611?
There are a lot of problems with using the 1611 King James Version. First it is based on 15th century manuscripts–much older manuscripts have now been discovered. Knowledge of New Testament Greek has also expanded enormously, again from discovered manuscripts. Some words have become archaic–endings like -est and -edst and words like thee and thine. Other words are no longer understandable. Worse yet, words that were once accurate translations of the original Greek have changed their meaning and now convey a different meaning than they did in 1611. The KJV uses words like “let” in the sense of “hinder”, “prevent” to mean “precede”, “allow” in the sense of “approve”, “communicate” for “share”, “demand” for “ask”… in all there are some 300 words in the KJV that now convey a different sense than they were meant to convey.
Okay, so looking up the thing up in an accurate translation (sorry, it’s NIV), Paul says,
Well, how about that. Paul is talking about the difference between living a life of spirit–which if you look at the surrounding text is a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.–and a life of sinful nature, which consists of fits of rage, selfish ambition, provoking and envying each other, and all of that, along with Paul’s usual anti-debauchery stuff. Paul is saying there is a natural order to things–if you live your life a certain way you will get certain results.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:57 pm
The text input slows down annoyingly when the post gets to a certain length, so I will continue in a new post…
Now take one of the examples, say the first one, the John Lennon assassination. Was this a cause and effect wrath-of-God thing? The comment about being more famous than Jesus was in the early Beatle days and caused quite a stir. But the Beatles were indeed more famous than Jesus–their treatment by the public went beyond admiration for their talent and bordered on the worshipful. How is that mocking? It was true. But if god was annoyed with it, why were they not stricken down on the spot? Instead the Beatles put out many more albums and Lennon went on to have his own music career. And what did the assassin say? That he was still annoyed about the Jesus comment after all these years? No. I forget his name, but he said he wanted to be famous.
This is just such obviously bogus stuff, you have to wonder why people continue to Email it. Maybe it’s the little blackmail bit at the end.
Oh, so if you don’t send the Email to someone else you are a coward, and you are not doing your part to “help Jesus”. But it looks to me it’s just perpetuating a false doctrine. What was the parable of the wheat and the tares? You’ll have to google it, I don’t have the reference. The farmer does not go out and pull out the weeds while the wheat is still sprouting becasue it would upset the wheat crop. Instead he waits until everything is ready for harvest and the tares can be separated out easily without destroying the wheat.
April 21st, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Ah, there’s nothing like a pogrom in the spring, when the atheists chop off the heads of the Christians and rape their children, burning their villages down. Yes, nothing like a pogrom. Nice hyperbole.
And “anonymous,” the tongue-in-cheek comment referred to your beliefs. One could only think it was rude to mock “God” if “God” wasn’t really the supreme power of the universe. It’s not rude to mock an authoritarian autocrat like the Christian God if that God really exists. It’s audacious and possibly foolhardy, if God really exists, but not “rude.” What you need to make mocking God rude is to bring the God character down to the level of a vulnerable, helpless wee thing. That’s your doing, not mine.
April 21st, 2007 at 4:40 pm
I believe in God….simply putthat is, until science can defintively tell me where the atoms came from that started the big bang….I also respect all those that have no faith in a God of any kind…for I say this to them: When you die, and you are right, then no one will know…but If I’m right, then “there will he hell to pay….”
April 21st, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Not hyperbole, “Jim”. You think death camps for certain religious groups belong in the past? Right now in Iraq people are riding around grabbing other people off the street and killing them because they are Shia or Sunni.
Or maybe you think that kind of thing is just for the barbarian Iraqis and can’t happen with the civilized Americans who frequent this website? Try again. How did Abu Graib happen? Guantanamo? Waterboarding? Oh, no, “Jim,” as a culture we are more than capable of pogroms. You and I are capable of it too.
This isn’t about “God” either, is it. No, it isn’t God who is being mocked here–it is Christians. Your little friends aren’t saying anything about Moslems or Jews–even though the Old Testament seems to get quoted a lot–but they sure think it’s open season on Christians.
And that is how the pogrom starts. First with stereotyping, generalizing, demonizing. No one has the courage to speak out against it. Then the partitioning: you’ve seen the signs around the world–”no Koreans or dogs allowed here”. Then come little suggestions about ways to harm them–maybe you could give them genital warts–suggestions become bolder and more over the top as more people jump on the bandwagon–and again no one speaks out.
And how do you disarm the mob? You start by calling people by name. Don’t give me that “God is an authoritarian autocrat” generalization bullshit. Who says “God is an authoritarian autocrat”? Name the theologian. Quote the person who said it. Give a link. Tell us how you discovered the quotation and why it matters to us today. And for crying out loud, do try to inform yourself about a religion if you want to discuss it. So many posters here like to get all negative then act like they’re saying something profound when they’re only demonstrating their ignorance about theology.
April 21st, 2007 at 8:30 pm
So recognition by intimidation? Doesn’t sound very peaceful and loving. This is basically like saying, “Mock God and we will kil you.” Didn’t the Muslims do this kind of tactic to the site once, when someone drew mohammed?
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:20 am
Bullshit, “anonymous.” Bullshit. I’ve seen Jewish religion and Islamic religion and Christian religion and Hindu religion and Buddhist religion all mocked here, and justifiably so. Your standard — an atheist making fun of anyone’s God character is a pogrom — is fortunately not the standard of law, so I can continue to mock you for believing that your God is simultaneously all-powerful and vulnerable to the irreverance of a single person.
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:35 am
This is a tactic I’ve seen used way too often, so much that it’s lost all meaning for me. Christians (yes, I’m singling out christians here because they’re the ones who pull this crap) bitch and moan when their religion gets poked fun at and wail that no ones poking fun at other religions but when the same people who were poking fun at the christian religion take pot shots at other religions, christians develop a case of selective blindness and don’t even mention it.
You think we don’t poke fun at Jews and Islamics too?
But, I thought we only poked fun at christians!?
Poking fun here; gasp, not at Christianity!
What’s this? Not poking fun at christians?
Here’s some more fun and still not against christians!
We bitch about catholics AND jews too?!
Tell me something, if we actually wanted to poke fun at christians rather than the things they worship, just what makes you think we wouldn’t be obvious with it? If we wanted to poke fun at a christian just because they were christian, we’d damn well do it. This post is about poking fun at the teachings of christianity.
Really? Who said that? Can you quote it and post the link? Please? I’d really love to see who it was that said they wanted to see Christians get warts. Who said that, anyway? Like I said, would you be so kind as to post a link to it and even quote it? Pretty please?
April 22nd, 2007 at 11:33 am
No, Animist, it’s not saying “Mock God and we will kil you.”
If you read the Email again, it just piles up a lot of circumstances where people were publicly disrespectful of God and later had something disatrous happen to them–car accidents and so forth. It doesn’t really explain the mechanism for this happening, but it does imply some kind of cause and effect.
The Muslim situation was different because it was about people taking vengance.
So, Scott, I originally like your reply, but as I read the surrounding text it doesn’t look to me like it’s talking about God doing anything. I’ve unearthed my copy of TNIV translation and it’s even better. It says, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. People reap what they sow. Those who sow to please their sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; those who sow to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” So my interpretation is that the process is more impersonal, sort of along the same lines of how you get a hangover. If God–or rather Spirit–is doing anything here or is even sentient rather than a metaphor, it’s merely extending protection to those who seek it. Or perhaps the seeking of protection in itself serves to focus the individual in a path that avoids dangers.
April 22nd, 2007 at 11:48 am
How fast does god work? Here, let’s find out:
God, I think you are phony. If I am wrong come down and give me billions of dollars, a recipie to world peace and the keys to a brand new Convertible. Oh, and do it in 10 seconds.
1…
2…
3…
4…
5…
666…
7…
8…
9…
10!
Nope. Nothing. Was kinda hoping I was wrong, too. (For obvious reasons)
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:15 pm
This was a cut n paste. I didn’t make it clear in my original post, but it was a forwarded message, so it has probably been making the rounds for a while.
As I look at the original post, most of these alleged incidents are suspect for one reason or another.
Lennon–he wasn’t disrespecting Jesus. Pointing out that the Beatles were more popular than JC is certainly not disrespectful.
Neves–how many times have presidents died at inopportune times. If he’d died at any time during his presidency, it could be claimed that God had removed him. So if a president dies during his presidency, how difficult would it be to look back through all is statements and find something akin to mocking God. And if he did say “God Himself couldn’t remove me” it is a hyperbole, not a literal statement about God.
Munroe–if she had no reason to believe, and wasn’t convinced by Graham, then why should be held accountable for Graham’s poor arguments. Seems like Grahm deserves God’s wrath for the people he doesn’t convince…
Bon Scott–nobody seriously thinks Highway to Hell is about Hades, genenna, or sheol. It’s about the excesses of the Rock n Roll lifestyle.
The Drunk friends, the trunk, the eggs–Can anybody say “Urban Legend.”
Titanic–really? Is this documented. sounds like an urban legend, but even if it’s not, he didn’t mean it literally. It’s a metaphor, a hyperbole. It’s like saying, after your wife has surgery, “you look strong enough to take on Mike Tyson.” Do you think if Tyson heard this he’d get all offended and think somebody was really chalenging him? Does anybody really think God thought to Herself, “What did he say? That I’m not capable of sinking his ship? I think I’ll sink it, and drown 1500 people in the process, and focus especially on the poor folk. That’ll teach that guy not to use me in his hyperboles!”
But what if we allow, for thesake of argument, that all of these alleged examples are legit. What does that ddemonstrate? In order to conclude anything we’d want to compare similar casesin which people “mocked” god, but nothing happened. Is there an increase in the probability of horrible death?
(Animist? How are you faring?)
I find it disturbing that people would believe that God (who is in principle the paradigm of the good) would ensure that people who use the word “god” in metaphor or hyperbole should deserve a horrible death. I find it disturbing that people find this forward to be inspiring.
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:41 pm
To be sure, “Jim”, you allow almost anything here, including hate speech, even if you don’t engage in it yourselves. Except in the case of Christians, of course.
Where are your articles pulling some obscure passage out of the Mahabharata or the Koran and using it to make out-of-the-blue generalizations about the religions’ followers? No, your stuff about other religions always refers to a specific public event or specific public statement of some religious figure. You are always careful to document the source of the information and the direct quotations, or at least links to them. Neither do you pretend that the statement of one public person represents the views of all of the religion’s followers, or that any religion is a monolith with all of its members agreeing on everything–except when it come to Christianity.
I don’t appreciate your characterization that you can mock me because you think you can assume what my beliefs must be. You can’t read minds and you don’t know what I believe. If you disagree with something I have said, quote me directly.
In thinking further about your Moslem articles, I don’t remember seeing anything about Islam lately since maybe about the time of the DOS attack. Perhaps you were intimidated by the attacks, and think Christians might be a safer target.
If you want to write about religion, you would have more integrity to comment on your own religion.
Speaking of which, happy earth day. Oh, and happy belated(?) birthday..that would make you a Taurus? That would explain so much, wouldn’t it, but no, you’re probably an Aries. So here is your virtual birthday present, a link to, hopefully, your horoscope:
http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/aries.html
April 22nd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Scott, I remember the Beatles thing, although I wasn’t very old at the time. Yes, people were extremely disturbed by the remark and people who had previously rebelled against their parents to buy Beatles albums (I wasn’t allowed any, even before the remark) suddenly got depressed, reversed themselves, and decided on their own to boycott the Beatles. The Beatles made some kind of public statement and suddenly became humble, and album sales resumed at a less fevered pitch.
What the examples seem to have in common is the concept of “hubris”. The Greeks attributed their losing of a war to hubris, the idea they had grown more powerful than the gods (and demonstrated this in their military conquests, by thinking they had won the wars on their own instead of being given the victory by the gods). When someone says “even god is not powerful enough to…”, they are saying that they or someone else is more powerful than god, a god who is generally credited with being powerful enough to create the earth and all its laws of science.
Same principle comes up in biblical story of the tower of Babel. The tower was interpreted as challenging god in building a tower to the heavens and the result was god confounded the speech of the people so they could not understand each other. Which story is older I couldn’t say, the tower of Babel relates to the Hebrew captivity in Babylon. A modern correlary might be the proverb “pride goes before a fall,” the athletes avoidance of overconfidence in psychological preparation for an event, or the actors tradition of saying “break a leg” before going onstage to cultivate a small amount of stage fright. So the ideas in Paul’s letter to the Galatians are not particularly original–the idea is definately much older than Christianity.
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:55 pm
My reply to Jim’s post #13 has disappeared.
Oh, and I just discovered jClifford is an Aries too, so happy birthday to both.
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Damen says it well. Anyone who is non-Christian knows full well that non-Christian religions are mocked all the time in America, and here at Irregular Times too. Christians in America are different. Christians seem to think their ideas are special and that anyone questioning their integrity is “bashing” them in a “pogrom.” I think it’s a function of all the privileges of being in the majority religion. When Muslims try to enact their religious edicts into law, when Buddhists mandate the teaching of their theory of creation as science in the public schools, you bet your boots we’ll speak out. In the meantime, what an embarassingly off-key hissy fit to claim that Christians have it especially rough in America, and are the victims of a “pogrom.”
“Pogrom.” Oh, please, the pain of one’s belief system being mocked. Call the DA! Call the Cops! Call 911! Because someone disagrees with you, you’re being oppressed!
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:57 pm
To be fair, I should have written “some Christians.” I know there are a lot of Christians who are aware of their privileges in America.
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Oh, my, my, my, Jim, so many exclamation points. And you say I’m having a hissy. Whatever you had for lunch, remind me not to eat any.
You know quite well I’m not talking about America, I’m talking about you, Jim. I don’t expect you to be responsible for what “America” does, but you can control your own words. In the same way I can’t be responsible for whether your religious group is mocked by someone else–I can only be responsible for myself. My beef is with what I perceive as the editorial slant of your website, and that’s why I’m appealing to your sense of fairness and moral values.
You know quite well this doesn’t have anything to do with someone disagreeing with me, either. I have invited you specifically to disagree with me and to quote my words exactly when you do so.
I think you also know quite well I’m not talking about mandating the establishment of a religion, or cutting off debate on subject that affect public policy. If you are still not clear on this, refer to the last paragraph of post #11.
Damen has aptly illustrated my points. All of the links he posted refer to either 1) a statement by a public figure or religious leader 2) current events that affect the public. The articles were fully documented with links to exact quotations, so you could read for yourself what was said. None of the articles discuss belief systems, religious writings, generalizations about practitioners of any particular religion, or expressions of irrational hostility based on their supposed characteristics.
In contrast, Damen makes the following unsupported and psychologically loaded generalizations about Christians.
~Christians bitch and moan
~they’re the ones who pull this crap
~take pot shots at other religions
~things they worship (last time I checked Christians worhipped a God)
~If we wanted to poke fun at a Christian just because they were christian, we’d damn well do it. (Look up the definition of “prejudice”)
~This post is about poking fun at the teachings of christianity.(the post is about analyzing a chain Email)
Any four-year-old can use ridicule and many four-year-old’s do. In the past many of these “large four-year-olds” with computer access have posted disparaging remarks about gays, blacks, ‘bitches’, and who knows what else based on their own insecurities and their sick need to run someone else down and bolster their own self-esteem.
I would urge everyone to acknowlege the humanity of every individual, including those who come here looking for someone to bully based on their supposed group characteristics. I am naive enough to believe that if enough people have the guts to do this, war can be eliminated. We start by calling individuals by their names.
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Sorry, no. I reserve the right to mock people and beliefs when they’re worthy of it. Christians and Christianity are not granted some kind of magic exclusion. And if you want people to start calling individuals by their names, you might want to consider using yours.
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Oh, dear. Jim and jClifford both appear to be the same age, and they’re both Aries, that means they’re… they’re…so one of them must be…evil?
Well, “Jim”, you know exactly who I am and how my name is “anonymous” at your suggestion. If you have further ideas do let me know.
I’m sure that you understand I do not consider that your religious beliefs have been proven or are provable. But that’s your business and I don’t intend to mock you for it.
If you do something I don’t agree with, I don’t intend to mock you for that either. I will tell you the reasons I don’t agree. Mocking is for people without reasons.
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Anonymous, how come you still haven’t answered my question as to who it was that said they wanted to give christians warts on their venials?
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:36 am
ve•nial /’vi:ni{shwa}l/ adj. [usually before noun] (formal) (of a sin or mistake) not very serious and therefore able to be forgiven
Hmmm, certainly not what I’m looking for in the bedroom department.
http://www.oup.com/oald-bin/web_getald7index1a.pl
Goddam Christians, not built like everybody else, they got them venials on ‘em. No wonder folks wants to go on a pogrom.
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:43 am
No, mocking is for people who aren’t entirely literal.
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:15 pm
I think that the reason Babel failed was lack of resources. If they had broken the stratosphere they would not have found god, but a vast creation of space. No space shuttles have reported seeing god, either. Think he’s afraid of us?
The Qur’an isn’t being shoved down our throats, so we’re not mocking it. Funny, this is another of those times I find myself responding to a christian who tries to redirect our comments to the Qur’an (ex. Why aren’t you making fun of the Qur’an, etc.)
BTW, Scott, I’m doing fine. So far I haven’t been crushed by bills, granted that beautiful notion of world peace, or won any holy car contests. I’m bummed, yet happy.
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:19 pm
They only pick on Christians? Come on! Check out the posts on the Mohammed cartoons, or Ram Bomjon. They make fun of everybody. Heck, they even make fun of the Soviet Communists by mockingly implying that they were no better than the Bush administration. They’re pretty harsh on everybody who’s credulous about anything. Are they wrong to be? I don’t know. How are you enjoying the faith-based policies of the Bush administration?
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:42 pm
For the tower of Babel, Animist, look up “ziggarat” or “ziggurat”. There are some 30 of these platforms/temples still in existence in the area around what was Babylon. The ancient Hebrews were conquered by King Nebuchadressar II of Babylon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebuchadnezzar_II_of_Babylon
(although I think the name is spelled differently in the Bible) and deported to Babylon in masses.
This was the typical pattern with this king’s military conquests. Whole populations were displaced and brought to Babylon to prevent revolts in the outlying provinces while the Babylonian soldiers were busy conquering yet another people. Huge numbers of these forcibly deported populations from many nations were sent to work on public construction programs.
The ancient Hebrews were, well… not too sophisticated. They were a pastoral people who were not used to large cities like Babylon and probably didn’t understand the use of the ziggarat or understand why they were surrounded by so many people speaking different languages. It’s an interesting story though, and once you find out its historical basis, it’s kind of interesting to see how the ancient Hebrews interpreted what was happening to them.
Back in the early days of the space program, one of the Russian cosmonauts orbiting the earth beamed back the message that he didn’t see God. One of the American astronauts responded, “My God isn’t that small.”
You seem to be implying, Animist, that some sort of religion is being forced on you. Do the police come to your house and tell you what church to go to? Do people say they will kill you if you are the wrong religion, as they do in Iraq? Does Mayor Daley’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice go into the shops, malls, and restaurants to make sure they’re closed when the Catholics (Daley’s religion) is having their prayers, do they make sure you’re attending prayers, do they make sure your mother and sisters aren’t smiling too much when they buy something from a male shopkeeper or that they don’t talk to a man on the street, as they do in Saudi Arabia? Oh, and do they fish out all the coins that are thrown into fountains when people make a wish and read the Bible over them to take off any magic spells?
What country do you live in that your family cannot worship as they please?
Oh, and do you know that non-Moslems are not allowed in the city of Mecca at all, so if someone is traveling through the country and they have someone in the car with them who is not Moslem, they have to go the long way around the city. Do we treat Moslems like that? No, we have invited Moslems to our church many times and they have even talked about their beliefs and read the translated Koran inside the church.
There have been people who made statements on this website about “the Moslems” killing thousands of people on 9/11 or “the Moslems” making death threats against Danish cartoonists or “the Moslems” burning embassies to enforce their brand of censorship, but someone–either a reader or one of the regular writers–has always stood up and said not all Moslems are responsible for 9/11, not all Molems are terrorists, and not all Moslems are the same. The same when your little buddy Phil makes all the derogatory remarks about black murderers. Of course there are murderers who are black, but all blacks are not murderers. But when people start talking about “the Christians” suddenly it’s okay to make generalizations and stereotypes. All of a sudden they’re treating Christians differently from other groups they take so much trouble to be fair about, and all of that without even bothering to get any facts. It’s mean and it’s stupid. It makes them look a lot like Phil.
As far as your game testing God, I guess you found out God isn’t like room service or like having a slave. You might want to look up the place in the Bible where Jesus goes into the wilderness for 40 days before he begins his ministry. On the other hand we don’t pray for things unless we want them, so you might try praying for those three things, maybe some day you will see them realized.
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Oh, come on Ralph, they talked about a specific public event where some Danish cartoonists had death threats made against them by Moslem INDIVIDUALS, not all Moslems in general. And they talked about Ram Bomjon BY NAME, not lumping the thing in with all Buddhists–or was it Bonists…or Hindus?
April 24th, 2007 at 4:16 am
But you still haven’t told me or linked me to who it was that said they wanted to give christians venial warts. How come you’ve still failed to do so?
April 25th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
First off, haven’t been cleaved by a thunderhead yet. Just wanted you all to know I’m still me. Second, how DO you like the ‘faith based initiatives’ anonymous? I know not all Christians want their religion force-fed to others. It’s just like people who play D&D, Meaning: You only hear about the crazy/insane/overly-dedicated ones in the news. Say, wasn’t there the story of a guy on this exact website saying that he had lived in a southern town as a Jew and had to undergo all kinds of prejudices (ex. Principal saying he should get a gun whenever he saw the guys kids, police keeping near their house, etc.) The point I’m trying to make is this: SPEAK UP. Don’t let the Right-wing fanatics despoil your religion. Take the true meaning of Christianity back.
BTW, thanks for at least coming up with some arguments. I see you’ve observed some of my verbal flame wars with Phil. He was never that intelligent.
April 25th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
The true meaning of Christianity is for anyone who wants to search for it. The temporal church is another matter, I’m afraid, and does have to be defended against the right wing. A case in point is the IRS lawsuit against the All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena after a visiting speaker preached an anti-war sermon.
http://www.allsaints-pas.org/site/PageServer?pagename=IRS_Exam_splash
I like the statement on their website:
If you remember, Episcopalians are the same ones that ordain openly gay bishops. Why is it the atheist bloggers here like to ignore churches like this that show true moral courage while acting like Pat Robertson speaks for all Christians? They are helping give credibility to a group that used to be marginalized.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Because those churches need to make their values known! Combat Pat Robertson! Let him know he does not speak for all the Christians!
April 26th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Go right ahead. Let us know how that works out for you.
April 28th, 2007 at 10:44 am
And that is why I have very little respect for christians.
April 28th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Looks like Damen is still making generalizations about all Christians–can you say “prejudice” ?–but damn, who can blame him, they’ve got those, those, venials on ‘em instead of, you know, thingees. Eeewww.
April 28th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Anonymous, or should I say Seymour, as that is the name I am going to be calling you from now on.
Call me prejudiced if that helps you sleep at night, Seymour, I really don’t give a shit.
But see, if you and the rest of the christian majority will remain quiet while boneheads like Pat Robertson continue to spew their warped dogma like it’s the attitude of the majority of those of your religion, and when someone urges you to speak out against these extremist idiots you respond with “Go right ahead. Let us know how that works out for you” then I have no respect for you or for those who remain quiet. Can you say “acquiescence”?
Was I making generalizations? No, I wasn’t. If I were, I’d have said “All christians” rather than “Most christians.” But that’s like you to warp the things I say to fit your ideals rather than the facts.
Oh, by the way Seymour, how come you still haven’t told me who it was that said they wanted to give christians venial warts?
April 29th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Oh do tell us your plan for “combating” Pat Robertson. What will it be–lobbing missles into his church or just knocking on his door with Bible in hand to force-feed him a different doctrine….or maybe a nice full page ad in the NYT that says “Pat Robertson is a big dummy.” I’m dying to hear your plan, and along with it a budget that says how much it will cost, how you will pay for it, and what you think it would accomplish.
Of course, if you would bother even a cursory google, there is plenty of information already out there. But no, you won’t read any of these church’s websites, because they might, you know, be lying. If Robertson is the only one you are willing to listen to, you could also bother to do some research on him, what denomintion he belongs to, where his money comes from, and how many people he actually represents. But like I said, those websites (of mainstream Christian denominations) are already out there and you won’t look at them.
It’s like the farmer who was spreading seeds on a field. Some of the seeds fell on rocks and didn’t germinate. Other seeds became choked by weeds and didn’t survive. But some seeds fell on fertile ground and produced a crop.
April 29th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Why should WE come up with the plan? It’s your religion.
But, to help, may I suggest protests, (maybe)?
April 29th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
You should be the ones who come up with a plan because you’re the ones who are doing nothing but bitch. All you do is whine, whine, whine that Christians just aren’t good enough, either they interfere too much or they don’t interfere enough, they should be doing more, they should be doing less, and now you’re whining that they should spend all their energy having pissing contests with other Christians that don’t share their ideology, never mind trying to find out what they actually spend their energy on.
You and Damen are playing the “it’s not good enough” game and I’m calling you on it. You haven’t even bothered to google their websites and find out what they do, but you’re sure it’s not good enough.
Okay, now tell me about your protest thingee. My neighbor next door, let’s call her Millie, is a Christian from a mainstream church, she’s Lutheran. She’s not a hater and she rents the upstairs part of her house to a Hispanic single mother and her baby, and now a sister that moved in with them. Millie is close to 90, so she doesn’t walk very fast, but her daughter takes her to the doctor and every Sunday someone picks her up and brings her to church. Her church probably has a few mission projects sponsoring a school in South America, a clinic in Africa, a refugee child somewhere, that sort of thing, and Millie probably writes a check out of her fixed income every week to buy medicine, desks, food, to suppport their projects. Millie probably doesn’t even know who Pat Robertson is, but she has probably heard of Billy Graham.
Now, since you and Damen are so good at thinking up things for OTHER people to do, exactly what is it that you think Millie should do that would satisfy you? Maybe her daughter could drive her over to your house so she can protest to you? And then you can explain to Millie how you have “very little respect for Christians?”
April 29th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Oh no no Seymour, this little game of yours isn’t going to fly with me. I’m not going to sit and yap about a made up story about your made up Millie and a made up African refugee. It has nothing to do with the subject of Pat Robertson and I’m not going to swing at your straw man.
This is not a game of pass the buck, this is your religion and this bonehead is speaking for you. Now until I see a group of people outside of Patty Robertson’s waving signs and protesting against him and have it covered in either the media or the newspapers I’m going to have to assume that this guy is, in fact, speaking the opinions of the majority.
Now you want to say that all we do is play the “It’s not good enough” game, right? Bullshit. First off, I’ve never said that christians don’t interfere enough. Show me where I said that and I’ll give you a cookie. I’ll bitch about christians when they try and shove their beliefs into the government, but do I care if they start shoving eachother around? No, I don’t give a rat’s ass about that.
But what really galls me is when christians will scream that Pat Robertson doesn’t represent the majority of people and yet when asked to publicly protest that bozo they’ll clam up. They won’t actually bother to go stand outside of his studio and demonstrate that he does not speak for everyone, they’d rather than sit in comfortable anonymity behind a computer screen and whine on a blog about how he doesn’t speak for everyone. It’s their religion he’s speaking for, not mine. It’s not my job to protest, it’s theirs and yet they won’t.
That is why I have little respect for those who won’t protest against him.
April 29th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
That’s why you don’t use examples like jacked up singers!
Insted you should stick with the sence it makes to follow Gods ways.
Like Getting maried before getting it on and being fathfull to you’r spouse.
It’s not just because it’s the right thing to do,It’s to weed out all thoues std carrying hoes out there!
April 30th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Anonymous, if you wanna be represented by Pat Robertson, well, I kinda wonder what’s in your head, but that’s your buisness. I’ve given you ideas, use them if you want, if not, DON’T TAKE IT OUT ON US DAMMIT!!!!
On a related note, if you continue to do so, I must give you a name. How does “Phallus” sound, hmm?
April 30th, 2007 at 1:52 am
I don’t remember saying what religious leader, if any, represents me, but your attitude is totally in line with the other rednecks on this website. Anyone refuses to throw stones at blacks, they’re automatically a nigger-lover, if they refuse to persecute gays, they’re dykes and faggots. The labels people want to paste on others really tell more about themselves and their own bigotry.
My next door neighbor is a real person and a Lutheran and I myself have donated books to the Africa project. You used to be able to support a refugee child for $15 a month. It wasn’t just for churches, but some churches did it because they could make a difference in someone’s life for very little money.
I’m not real sure who Pat Robertson is, or is it Patty?–except that people on this website seem to talk about him a lot. I’ve never seen a picture of what he looks like or heard a recording of his voice or read anything that he has written. I don’t know why you people are so obsessed with this guy. I always suspected there are a few ignorant people who believe the Pope speaks for all Christians, but I never heard of it before with this Robertson guy. Do you suppose some people should go stand outside the Vatican, then they should put that on TV so that people don’t think Catholics have the only religion?
Now suppose my neighbor Millie could get some of her Lutheran friends to take that Africa money and use it to take the train over to where ever Robertson hangs out and they could get the local TV station to take a picture of them carrying “robertson does not speak for us” signs in front of his place and send it to Damen because they are so quiveringly anxious to have Damen respect them without having to actually look at their official website. Then what? How does that promote their core moral values?
And who would they be representing? Can they even represent their own denomination? No. They can’t represent the rest of the people in their church, or the next church down the block, or even the theologians over at the headquarters office, or the official representatives who write the official website. They would only be representing themselves.
And Animist, as far as “taking it out on you”,…if you want to show prejudice against people because of their race or gender identification or religion, I will continue to “take it out on you”. Bigotry is not okay.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Pat Robertson is one of the most politically powerful Christians in the United States today. Here is some information on him from the Wikipedia entry “Pat Robertson”:
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Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson (born March 22, 1930 is a televangelist from the United States. He is the founder of numerous organizations and corporations, including the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), the Christian Coalition, Flying Hospital, International Family Entertainment, Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, and Regent University. He is the host of The 700 Club, a Christian TV program airing on channels throughout the United States and on CBN affiliates worldwide.
He is opposed to abortion and gay rights. Robertson is a supporter of the Republican Party and campaigned unsuccessfully to become the party’s nominee in the 1988 presidential election.
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In the time it took you to prattle on about how you’d never heard of this guy, you could have plugged his name into a search engine and found out that he is arguably the most high-profile, politically powerful Christian in America today.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Oh, I’ve heard OF him, Ralph, mostly from a retired pastor who has property in Florida, but I don’t personally know what he’s like. He’s not on TV here; that Crystal Cathedral guy–Shuller–is popular here. I’ve also heard Billy Graham speak–another one with White House ties. They come and go. I can’t see any good reason to start jumping up and down because of Robertson.
Here’s what I know about the religious right: The Republican party doesn’t like to cozy up to them becasue they’re pretty far out there. It didn’t used to matter, though, becasue the religious fringe didn’t believe in getting involved with politics. Politics was corrupt and “of this world” and would sully anyone who touched it.
So the only fringe group with any leverage was the left wing tree-huggers. They had enough influence to nominate a McGovern or a Nader which would throw the election to the Republican party.
But now the religious right fringe has decided to play politics, with the result that they can get a fringe candidate nominated who is so extreme as to throw the election to the Democrats. Hence (I believe) Unity08. It’s the Republican party trying to get back to it’s Goldwater roots (Exhume Goldwater) and ditch the religious right loony toons.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I try to remain open-minded. I am Not A Redneck, I don’t hate blacks (I am one), gays/lesbians, or any other race, religion, sex. orientation, nationality, genus, or lifestyle. I Do, however, hate those who bully into others’ lives and try to change them when the person doesn’t want it to be changed. And I dislike (not HATE, mind you) those that do nothing to stop it and then bitch about others judging them when they haven’t even spoken up. Big Bad Patty’s voice is the only I’ve heard for Christianity in Politics.
August 25th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
One thing for sure at the trumpet sound every kness is going to bow and every mouth confess that Jesus is LORD .. It dont matter what people say now but in the end i feel sorry for those that mock him.
August 25th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
yeah sharon you are right they have no clue
August 26th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Gonna bow whether we like it or not, eh?
Actually, we have a pretty decent understanding of your skydaddy. But speaking for myself, I don’t believe in him. My reason for this is simple, if knew he was real as well as all the stories in the bible or even believed he was real, I would hate the motherfucker with every fiber of my being. I can not worship a tyrant like him and if that means I spend an eternity in hell for my lifetime of non-worship, I’ll welcome it gladly knowing I’m away from the maniac you so willingly bow to. But I don’t believe he exists, so I am spared that hatred.
However, I also know that the evidence and my own common sense points to one conclusion; There is no god, no satan, no heaven, no hell, no eternal punishments, no eternal rewards. You tell yourself whatever you want if it helps you sleep at night, but when all is said and done, this is the only life you’re gonna get.
August 26th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Oh, Damen, calm down, you wicked atheist you. Sharon Brasfield and anonymous will get their comeuppance in time, when they’re forced to eat the kibble of the Great Turtle. And then clean his cage. Oooga Booga!
August 28th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Sorrow for those that mock Him.
You feel that in the end, do you?
What’s it feel like? Rectal itch?
September 5th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
I find this hilarious . . . Why is it that some dipshit always says “Well if there isn’t a God PROVE IT!” The burden of proof has, and always will, rest on those who believe in a deity. We would first need proof of existence before we could de-bunk the “proof.” Do we say prove that there ISN’T a Big Foot? The proof that a God does not/may not exist (depending on the individual) is that no one can PROVE that God DOES exist. The bible? There are many books written that can attest to the existence and mating habits of the Big Foot, Purple People Eater and the Chupacabra . . . but that is not proof. Just fictional babblings of a lunatic.
Now I’m going to die an untimely death, bleah bleah bleah. Feel sorry for me, I’m going to burn in hell bleah bleah bleah. I feel sorry for all of your who believe it. It must be like a prison to live in constant fear. I prefer to live in the range of my own morals and die knowing I lived a full and good life.
Untimely death is proof of the wrath of god? I’d like you to tell that to a parent of a dead child. Afterall if one untimely death is the result of Mocking God, how can you rule out the rest? Those raped and murdered children must have mocked god as well. Wow, so inspired . . .
October 18th, 2007 at 11:16 am
“Well if there isn’t a God PROVE IT”
–Good point Eury.
This is a typical logical error known as the ad ignorantium, i.e. the argument from ignorance. What it amounts to is drawing strong conclusions from weak premisses. If your premisses can only lead you to conclude that you can’t prove something one way or the other, then we’re not justified in saying “you can’t prove that X is not true, therefore I conclude that X is true.” Such reasoning will lead us to believe whatever we want–Santa Claus (go on, prove he’s not real), Big foot, alien abductions, anything.
If God exists, and if God is benevolent, then (s)he would not expect you to make a decision with such huge ramifications (eternal bliss v. eternal suffering) based on such weak grounds as “can’t prove it’s not true”
October 25th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
[…] religious thought. Thanks for provoking my thought, Scott. Scott’s latest diary was entitled Mocking God and was written on April 24, 2007. […]
February 13th, 2008 at 11:35 am
This “inspirational” email seems to be making the rounds again. I just received it again this morning, from a different student.
It reminded me that I’d posted it here, so I looked it up, and read over the comments.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading these comments again. Thanks folks. Plenty of fodder for my logic classes and my epistemology of faith class.