The Hazards of Belief

Hotblack Desiato

Some fluffly feel-good stuff from Sr Stan:

Sr Stan: Out of disaster and despair, good can emerge

But what's this?

If this vile virus can do any good at all, maybe it is this: that it will teach us to recognise our fragility. We think we own the Earth; we certainly think we can dominate it. It is salutary to discover that our dominance is based on a very wobbly foundation and that we can only hope to co-exist, carefully and thoughtfully, on this Earth, with our fellow-humans and our fellow-creatures, respecting and managing our environment and its ecosystems.

Now, where could people have got an idea like that from?

Genesis 1:28 wrote:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Oops.

Hotblack Desiato

Does this mean vegetarianism is heretical? After all, vegetables are on the earth but do not move so we do not have dominion over them...

Odhinn

Reverend Ralph Drollinger is especially close to the Trump administration, holding a weekly bible study attended by multiple members of Trump's cabinet.

This proximity to national policy-makers is why it's so concerning that in a recent blog post titled "Is God Judging America Today?" Drollinger said the global pandemic was caused by LGBTQ people, environmentalists and atheists.
In his post, Drollinger claimed members of all these groups with "depraved minds" were igniting God's wrath, causing him to lash out with crises like the pandemic.

In a 2018 post about the book of Leviticus, the reverend compared homosexual relationships to a woman falling in love with her cat and said accepting gay marriage would be "a path toward extinction."

https://www.comicsands.com/white-house-pastor-lgbtq-virus-2645577874.html?fbclid=IwAR09CFErS74SzHc7KJaquv4I8JMD_WoQ_qjCgqAh1YdwSckQvwV8Ke4BP7Y


Yez dirty shower of enviromental cat lovers yiz......

robindch

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Does this mean vegetarianism is heretical? After all, vegetables are on the earth but do not move so we do not have dominion over them...

Hard to say. Though many of the religious people I know seem, politically, to be zero-summers - where a win in one place is understood to require an equivalent or greater loss elsewhere, and vice versa.

Hence, anything small and insignificant which doesn't move - and therefore, over which dominion doesn't actually mean very much in practice - doesn't really play any meaningful part in the power game implied by the idea of "dominion".

To a first approximation, therefore, I'd say that vegetarianism doesn't really figure one way or the other.

Bannasidhe

Odhinn wrote: »

https://www.comicsands.com/white-house-pastor-lgbtq-virus-2645577874.html?fbclid=IwAR09CFErS74SzHc7KJaquv4I8JMD_WoQ_qjCgqAh1YdwSckQvwV8Ke4BP7Y


Yez dirty shower of enviromental cat lovers yiz......

Turns out the path towards extinction was not marrying a cat but eating a bat.

Sooo close but no banana.

Peregrinus

Speaks for itself, really.

Hotblack Desiato

Since when did anyone go to 'Nawlins to avoid sin?

PopePalpatine

Odhinn wrote: »

https://www.comicsands.com/white-house-pastor-lgbtq-virus-2645577874.html?fbclid=IwAR09CFErS74SzHc7KJaquv4I8JMD_WoQ_qjCgqAh1YdwSckQvwV8Ke4BP7Y


Yez dirty shower of enviromental cat lovers yiz......

It sounds like something a Brazilian rancher would come out with.

Igotadose

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Since when did anyone go to 'Nawlins to avoid sin?

tbf, the wife (also stricken) said they “seemingly always catch some sickness while they’re there,”

Yeah-hah, I can imagine what you can pick up in NOLA during Mardi Gras. Uhuh.
:p:p

robindch

Kenneth Copeland demands "that a vaccination come immediately", calls the virus "doggone" and announces that "It is finished! It is over! And the United States of America is healed and well again".

On the plus side, his formerly large audience seems to have dwindled to just one guy who keeps his distance:

https://twitter.com/hemantmehta/status/1244344119545208834

Igotadose

Think of it as evolution in action:
Liberty reopens, students come down with Coronavirus.


https://www.insider.com/liberty-university-students-covid-19-symptoms-school-reopened-2020-3

Hotblack Desiato

Doing their bit to raise the USA's average IQ

Hotblack Desiato

How five days of evangelical worship set off the coronavirus outbreak in France

Three days after the Christian Open Door evangelical megachurch’s “week of prayer and fasting” in Mulhouse, eastern France, pastor Samuel Peterschmitt, the organiser of the event, began feeling feverish. He, his six children and 13 grandchildren have all since been diagnosed with coronavirus.

The event ran for five days, from February 17th-21st. The first case of coronavirus, also known as Covid-19, in Alsace was diagnosed in Strasbourg on February 29th. The victim had not attended the 2,500-strong religious gathering, but her two children had accompanied their grandparents. The regional health authority (ARS) missed the clue.

The penny finally dropped on March 2nd, when a solitary inhabitant of Nîmes who drove back alone from Mulhouse tested positive. “Eureka!,” Christophe Lannelongue, an investigator for the ARS told Radio France. “It was the gathering at the Christian Open Door in Mulhouse!”

Even then, authorities believed that only a few hundred of the faithful had been contaminated. It took more than a month for the prayer week to be recognised, in the words of French health minister Olivier Véran, as “the tipping point” of the French epidemic, which by Tuesday had infected 44,550 people and claimed 3,024 lives.

The church gathering was “like an atom bomb that fell on us in February, and we didn’t see it”, Lannelongue continued. “After February 21st [when the gathering ended] people did not know they were infected, because they had few symptoms.”

The Christian Open Door was founded by Peterschmitt and his father in 1989. It has held the week of prayer and fasting annually for the past 25 years. There is no registration, and as the name implies of the church, anyone can enter.

Over five days, 2,500 faithful prayed, sang and danced in the converted supermarket. They embraced each other and held hands. Pastor Peterschmitt stalked the stage, his image projected on a giant screen.

The pastor’s son Jonathan, who is a medical doctor as well as a pastor, now believes the vast majority of 2,500 participants were infected in up to four daily services in the megachurch. “We were immersed in the same culture for a week,” he said. “Same chairs, same toilets . . .”

Another doctor in Mulhouse asked a coronavirus patient if a lot of people were coughing at the gathering. “Yes, most of them,” he answered.

Regardless of how it started, the disease spread like wildfire. The ARS says a nurse in a Strasbourg hospital who attended the gathering contaminated 250 of her fellow medical workers. Outbreaks all over France, in Orléans, Besançon, Saint-Lô, Belfort, Dijon, Mâcon, Agen, Briançon and Paris, have been traced to the Open Door Church in Mulhouse.

Six pensioners from Corsica flew back to Ajaccio, where they infected at least 263 people, of whom 21 have died.

Odhinn

I knew it was the gays, knew it from day 1.

The cause and spread of Covid-19 to humankind has baffled the great scientists of the world to date, but one DUP local coucillor in the north reckons he has it sussed and his intimations have caused huge embarrassment for his party.
John Carson, a DUP councillor in Ballymena, Co. Antrim has invited ridicule for suggesting that the presence of the virus is as a result of God’s punishment for the legalisation of same-sex marraige and abortion in the six counties.

https://www.nova.ie/crackpot-blames-covid-19-on-gay-marraige-abortion-177102/

Bannasidhe

Odhinn wrote: »

I knew it was the gays, knew it from day 1.




https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=112891252

Feck off, I'm not admitting anything until my test results come back. :mad:
#notholdingmybreathe.

Hotblack Desiato

Odhinn wrote: »

I knew it was the gays, knew it from day 1.




https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=112891252

Odhinn, I click on that and I get an empty "reply to post" box pointing at this thread?

Anyway, relevant questions must be asked. If the quares and the hures are responsible, if they'd only legalised gay marriage but kept abortion illegal, would they have had a virus half as potent? And vice-versa of course. Does allowing johnnies add a certain percentage to the viruses' vigour? How about those poor (lit. and fig.) cnuts living in god-forsaken (yeah, right, where faith is strongest generally) shítholes with poor government and close to non-existent healthcare who are going to be fùcking devastated by this thing in spite of how devout their faith may have been? We need answers DUP.

Odhinn

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Odhinn, I click on that and I get an empty "reply to post" box pointing at this thread?

Soz, fixed.

https://www.nova.ie/crackpot-blames-covid-19-on-gay-marraige-abortion-177102/

robindch

Yaakov Litzman is Israel's Health Minister. Or, to give him his full title, Rabbi Litzman, head of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party.

About ten days ago, Litzman announced his hope that the messiah would return and sort everything out. Unfortunately, after breaking his own health department's guidelines, Litzman tested positive for coronavirus, causing Israel's PM, Mr Netanyahu to go into quarantine too:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-coronavirus-health-cure-1.8703719
https://www.timesofisrael.com/infected-health-minister-accused-of-ignoring-rules-endangering-israels-leaders/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-officials-forced-to-self-quarantine-after-health-minister-contracts-virus/

Hotblack Desiato

Going to Mass ‘can make people faint’

Going to Mass can make you collapse, a new study shows.

The multiple sudden changes in position during Mass from sitting to kneeling to standing can cause fainting or in medical terms a syncope episode due to a fall in blood pressure.

Syncope is described as a transient, self-limited loss of consciousness with an inability to maintain postural tone that is followed by spontaneous recovery.

The study, carried out by the Department of Aging and Therapeutics at UL Hospital Group in Limerick, focused on Mass in particular as it is a common situation where people can lose consciousness due to short bouts of sitting, standing and kneeling.

Syncope is common and accounts for 1 to 2 per cent of annual Emergency Department presentations and often leads to hospital admission.

In the 2016 census, 78.3 per cent of Irish people identified as Catholic, and attending weekly or daily Mass remains common throughout the country.

The study, published in this month’s Irish Medical Journal, examined the number of times and the duration of stance changes during a Sunday Catholic Mass.

The review identified 110 cases of fainting, with 56.3 per cent taking place at Mass with patients being brought to University Hospital Limerick as a result.

robindch

CNN reports that christians from The Solid Rock Church believes they're safe from Coronavirus as they're "covered in the blood of Jesus":

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/04/04/ohio-church-service-covid-19-pandemic-tuchman-pkg-ac360-vpx.cnn

Odhinn

Trouble at Mill for Pope Frank.

An influential conservative cardinal has established himself as a “parallel authority” to Pope Francis, according to a new book that depicts the pontiff as a prophetic reformer who is surrounded by opponents waging “guerrilla warfare” against him.
Cardinal Robert Sarah, a prelate from Guinea who heads the Vatican’s liturgy department, has sought to present an alternative leadership model for the global Roman Catholic church, Christopher Lamb claims in The Outsider.

Sarah, who is frequently tipped as a potential successor to Francis, “combines a mystical spirituality with an unbending defence of traditional Catholic teaching. Were he elected pope, he would undoubtedly harken back to Pius XII, a neo-traditionalist who would ‘reign’ as pope rather than adopt the style of the Latin American [Francis], who rolls up his sleeves and takes risks to take the church out on to the street.”
The cardinal is described as “extraordinarily conservative” and “very uncomfortable” with women holding positions of authority in the church’s charitable network.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/book-lifts-lid-on-guerrilla-warfare-against-pope-francis?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR3Q8efkZ5HjbSibUdljPkV9nBGxGLyhoY5iisxSYbx-ZX6BcDL_xWcKGqo#Echobox=1586072617

A_Lost_Man

Isreali minster who said corona virus is divine punishment for homosexuality is tested positive along with wife

robindch

Guardian wrote:

Cardinal Robert Sarah [...] is described as “very uncomfortable” with women holding positions of authority [...]

The good cardinal might wish to consider changing his surname then.

Niska

<snip> It's already in the Ongoing Scandals.

Yellow_Fern

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Going to Mass ‘can make people faint’

Its also good low intensity exercise. Kneeling recruits leg muscles unlike sitting. Should be encouraged

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200309165235.htm

Odhinn

No such thing as a virus, "wifi poisoning "


https://youtu.be/8CIAyq_mhzk

Hotblack Desiato

Would have been great if the guard had tazered her

Didn't know that driving around with a virgin mary statue on the roof and speakers blasting out the rosary was essential travel.

Odhinn

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Would have been great if the guard had tazered her

Didn't know that driving around with a virgin mary statue on the roof and speakers blasting out the rosary was essential travel.

Blessings on the move seems to be a thing

https://www.broadsheet.ie/2020/04/09/believaroo/


I look forward to footage of a priest zooming along on some electrically powered scooter while chucking the holy water about the place,

ohnonotgmail

Odhinn wrote: »

Blessings on the move seems to be a thing

https://www.broadsheet.ie/2020/04/09/believaroo/


I look forward to footage of a priest zooming along on some electrically powered scooter while chucking the holy water about the place,

was that not a Father Ted episode?

Odhinn

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

was that not a Father Ted episode?

Might well have been, given Poes law.

Hotblack Desiato

VRT offence as it's on a yellow plate, Customs & Excise can seize on the spot and arrest all onboard. Also according to Broadsheet comments, it's not been taxed in the UK since 2007, so probably no MOT either. Insurance...? good luck

RCC yet again demonstrating its disdain for "the laws of man".

Yellow_Fern

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

VRT offence as it's on a yellow plate, Customs & Excise can seize on the spot and arrest all onboard. Also according to Broadsheet comments, it's not been taxed in the UK since 2007, so probably no MOT either. Insurance...? good luck

RCC yet again demonstrating its disdain for "the laws of man".

Quite the generalization.

robindch

Odhinn wrote: »

I look forward to footage of a priest zooming along on some electrically powered scooter while chucking the holy water about the place,

More of a van than a scooter, but behold the priests of Tblisi on Paddy's day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g_h0J02EAI

And here's Patriarch Kirill (he of the famous 'shopped Breguet watch photo) doing a dry run, so to speak, in Moscow the other day:

https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1246077530664308736

Yellow_Fern

robindch wrote: »

More of a van than a scooter, but behold the priests of Tblisi on Paddy's day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g_h0J02EAI

And here's Patriarch Kirill (he of the famous 'shopped Breguet watch photo) doing a dry run, so to speak, in Moscow the other day:

https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1246077530664308736

and we are all grateful for it.

ohnonotgmail

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

and we are all grateful for it.

why, did it work?

Hotblack Desiato

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

Quite the generalization.

:rolleyes: Do let us know which laws it's now OK to break.

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

and we are all grateful for it.

Who's "we" and why would they be grateful for what some orthodox priests are getting up to hundreds of miles away?

Bannasidhe

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

and we are all grateful for it.

Quite the generalisation.

Odhinn

They're upping their game
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English/videos/216116789714159/

Yellow_Fern

Odhinn wrote: »

They're upping their game
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English/videos/216116789714159/

Seriously tho, Catholics being Catholic. They do this every Corpus Christi so I don't see how it is a hazard of belief?

Odhinn

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

Seriously tho, Catholics being Catholic. They do this every Corpus Christi so I don't see how it is a hazard of belief?

..blessings via helicopter every year?

Igotadose

As per the #IMPOTUS, Happy Good Friday to everyone.

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1248699553374711810

B9K9

Now if there was a pope mobile atop this bad boy, would some theologian hazard a guess if even the pope hisself could impart blessings fast enough to make all the water holy enough to have a decent effect? Maybe a theologian with a side qualification in ag science, those guys know all about crop sprayin dosages and flow rates.

https://www.limerickpost.ie/site/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/In-action-the-new-HRET-fire-tender-which-Shannon-Airport-is-set-to-take....jpg

Odhinn

The stupid is real.

The UK's mobile networks have reported a further 20 cases of phone masts being targeted in suspected arson attacks over the Easter weekend.
Trade group Mobile UK said it had been notified of incidents in England, Wales and Scotland.
One of the targeted sites provides mobile connectivity to a hospital in Birmingham.
The figure represents a lower incidence rate than had been the case the previous weekend.
Mobile UK added it had received no reports of staff being targeted over the period.
Attacks on 5G masts pre-date the coronavirus pandemic. But there are concerns a surge in the amount of vandalism has been caused by conspiracy theories, which falsely claim the deployment of 5G networks has caused or helped accelerate the spread of Covid-19.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52281315

Yellow_Fern

The stupid is very real.

Is the Covid-19 Pandemic Mother Nature’s Response to Human Transgression?
The coronavirus may not, in retrospect, prove to be the tipping point that upends human civilization as we know it, but it should serve as a warning that we will experience ever more such events in the future as the world heats up.

by Michael T. Klare

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/02/covid-19-pandemic-mother-natures-response-human-transgression

Bannasidhe

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

The stupid is very real.



https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/02/covid-19-pandemic-mother-natures-response-human-transgression

MOD
Rather than link dump perhaps you would be kind enough to provide some points for discussion.

Yellow_Fern

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

The stupid is very real.

Is the Covid-19 Pandemic Mother Nature’s Response to Human Transgression?
The coronavirus may not, in retrospect, prove to be the tipping point that upends human civilization as we know it, but it should serve as a warning that we will experience ever more such events in the future as the world heats up.

by Michael T. Klare

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/02/covid-19-pandemic-mother-natures-response-human-transgression

It is remarkable how people are arguing the virus is some kind force sent by Gaia to curb human abuse of the planet. It is as mad as medieval monks blaming the Black Death on human sin!

We’re the virus’: The pandemic is bringing out environmentalism’s dark side
By Sierra Garcia on Mar 30, 2020

As of today, this March 17 tweet, which referred to the drop in air and water pollution during the global COVID-19 pandemic, has received nearly 300,000 likes and more than 70,000 retweets — as well as condemnation from some users.

“The problem is not people,” replied one user. “That’s some ecofash **** that leads to genocide.”

https://grist.org/climate/were-the-virus-the-pandemic-is-bringing-out-environmentalisms-dark-side/


The stupid is real.

nozzferrahhtoo

Always easy to call people we disagree with Stupid. I used to do it myself. The problem with that world view however is that many of the people who think that way are anything but stupid. They are often well read, articulate, intelligent, cogent and coherent human beings. There are people much more intelligent and educated then you or I, who believe religious claims about the universe. Newton himself, probably one of the least stupid individuals our species ever produced, believed some absolute tosh.

The thread title is "The Hazards of Belief" and that sums it up well. Their ideas are not stupid at all. They are in fact perfectly valid and intelligent ideas given what they believe about the nature of the universe. Their particular god sending plagues to account for the sins of mankind is right there in the Bible. Why would they not believe that a global pandemic is not more of the same?

The problem is that the idea there is such a god is unsubstantiated guff. But once that meme is installed on their neck-top computer, the ideas that follow on from it are consequently deranged or misguided perhaps but "stupid" not so much.

An analogy that is always useful here is to the parents, often in the US, who let their own children die of medical conditions that are very easy to mediate. All because medical intervention is, to their mind, an affront to their god. This might seem "stupid" and even "evil" to us of course, for good reason, but given what they believe it is a perfectly loving and coherent action. The death of their child is not an act of malice, evil, or hate. It is an act of love. Misguided love, but love none the less.

And the real noodle frying happens when you realise you would likely act the same way too. If you truly believed that mediating temporary physical suffering would jeopardise the well being of the ETERNAL soul of your loved child.... you would probably watch them die too without intervening. Because it would be the RIGHT thing to do.

Stupidity is not the problem here. It is unsubstantiated beliefs. And intelligence is not always an inoculation against infection by memetic nonsense any more than physical health stops you being prone to infection from malicious genetics like the common cold. In fact quite the contrary. Sometimes being physically or mentally healthy can leave you MORE prone to infections.

Bannasidhe

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

It is remarkable how people are arguing the virus is some kind force sent by Gaia to curb human abuse of the planet. It is as mad as medieval monks blaming the Black Death on human sin!

https://grist.org/climate/were-the-virus-the-pandemic-is-bringing-out-environmentalisms-dark-side/


The stupid is real.

The only reference to Gaia is the following:

Originally propounded by the environmental scientist James Lovelock in the 1960s, this notion has often been described as “the Gaia Hypothesis,” after the ancient Greek goddess Gaia, the ancestral mother of all life.

And while the continual use of the term 'Mother Nature' may be a bit cringe (like calling pets 'furbabies'), that doesn't distract from the central question which is to what extent is human abuse of the resources of the planet coupled with the negative impact we, as a species, are having on the climate a factor in pandemics.

I think it's a valid question and human activity can be linked to the spread of virus'. For example the Black Death arrived in Europe due to trade with China. It spread due to Venice being a trading hub.

What part of the hypothesis do you think is 'stupid'?

I assume you are also over in the Christianity forum telling those who believe the virus was sent by God (with no scientific hypothesis to back up that contention) that they are 'stupid'?

Yellow_Fern

Bannasidhe wrote: »

The only reference to Gaia is the following:



And while the continual use of the term 'Mother Nature' may be a bit cringe (like calling pets 'furbabies'), that doesn't distract from the central question which is to what extent is human abuse of the resources of the planet coupled with the negative impact we, as a species, are having on the climate a factor in pandemics.

I think it's a valid question and human activity can be linked to the spread of virus'. For example the Black Death arrived in Europe due to trade with China. It spread due to Venice being a trading hub.

What part of the hypothesis do you think is 'stupid'?

I assume you are also over in the Christianity forum telling those who believe the virus was sent by God (with no scientific hypothesis to back up that contention) that they are 'stupid'?

Pandemics have been on a very very long decline across the world. It is easily falsifiable that pandemics are not increasing. But the real problem with this crazy viewpoint is that belief and I stress belief, that nature is some kind of system that rewards what we as 2020 humans deem as moral pro nature behaviour. We have been a global lineage for over a million years and we have been wiping out species and transforming the planet for probably as long but only now we need to be wiped out by nature. What is this magic like force of mother nature that generates viruses? This is not a science based view point. It is supernatural philosophy. A New Age religion. Evolution does not have agency. Its random. The earth is a lump of rock flying through space. There is no nature force healing things. There is no mechanism to curb human abuse of the planet. These people don't under Darwinian thought at all.

Bannasidhe

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

Pandemics have been on a very very long decline across the world. It is easily falsifiable that pandemics are not increasing. But the real problem with this crazy viewpoint is that belief and I stress belief, that nature is some kind of system that rewards what we as 2020 humans deem as moral pro nature behaviour. We have been a global lineage for over a million years and we have been wiping out species and transforming the planet for probably as long but only now we need to be wiped out by nature. What is this magic like force of mother nature that generates viruses? This is not a science based view point. It is supernatural philosophy. A New Age religion. Evolution does not have agency. Its random. The earth is a lump of rock flying through space. There is no nature force healing things. There is no mechanism to curb human abuse of the planet. These people don't under Darwinian thought at all.

Much wordy response but sadly short of facts.

At no point did that article engage in anthropomorphism of the planet so your claim the author 'believes' the 'lump of rock' is acting with deliberate intent is without foundation.

As for this comment "We have been a global lineage for over a million years and we have been wiping out species and transforming the planet for probably as long but only now we need to be wiped out by nature." - entirely without a shred of evidence. You simply cannot claim that the likes of Homo habilis or Homo erectus were 'wiping out species and transforming the planet' when we know very very little about them bar they were hominid. Ironically enough most of "our global lineage" was wiped out - could that have been by nature???

I suspect it's not these people who do not understand Darwin's theories.