The Hazards of Belief

Bannasidhe

seamus wrote: »

No, abstinence is the only foolproof method. Just don't visit any religious sites. Problem solved.

Would the rhythm method not work? Click, click, click - minimise. Click, clickclick - minimise. Clickclickclick - minimise. Clickittyclickclickclick- can't minimise! LOGOUT!!!

joseph brand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku3GcPrW9xg&feature=relmfu

Malcolm Muggeridge (@10:45) says that there's a difference between what Mother Theresa did and what social workers do. The social workers 'serve their fellow for an idea' while Mother Theresa serves her 'fellows for a person'. "If that person wasn't there or was discredited then, my work is over". (Not helping the poor unless there's a prize of heaven)

That's a profound statement. We now know that she was an Atheist but the fact that she was only being 'charitable' because of a 'god', shows that she had wasn't so much 'helping' the poor as she was helping herself. Selfish oul biddy.

Why did he even say this? Shot himself in the foot.

Bannasidhe

joseph brand wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku3GcPrW9xg&feature=relmfu

Malcolm Muggeridge (@10:45) says that there's a difference between what Mother Theresa did and what social workers do. The social workers 'serve their fellow for an idea' while Mother Theresa serves her 'fellows for a person'. "If that person wasn't there or was discredited then, my work is over". (Not helping the poor unless there's a prize of heaven)

That's a profound statement. We now know that she was an Atheist but the fact that she was only being 'charitable' because of a 'god', shows that she had wasn't so much 'helping' the poor as she was helping herself. Selfish oul biddy.

Why did he even say this? Shot himself in the foot.

Mother Theresa helped my mate find her shoes.

Mate got, as we say in Cork, langerated* in Calcutta and thought it would be a hoot to go check out Mother Theresa's operation. Mass was being said in the church and everyone had to take their shoes off. Mate took hers off. Passed out in a pew. Woke up with the screaming heebie jeebies and did a whole Daffy Duck type freak-out because she couldn't remember which of the many doors she's left her shoes outside.
A very unamused MT escorted her from the building and sent a minion...fellow nun... to find the shoes. She then banned mate from the place for life. As MT is now dead we have suggested mates returns as it turned out she got the wrong shoes but was so desperate to escape from MT that she didn't notice at the time.

*Trans - an extreme state of drunkeness.

Pushtrak

http://www.cinews.ie/article.php?artid=10152

Speaking about his conversion, Rev Minchew said, “I think these people are very brave because they answered the call of God and the indignation of Pope Benedict and did it at great cost. I think the reason they came across during the ordinariate is because they don't quibble over things like the clergy, but I think there is a great comfort in the Catholic Church, you know what you believe and what the church teaches. In the Church of England, you don't know what to believe from one Synod to the next. What we would have taken for granted 30 years ago you can't now but in the Catholic Church you know what you are getting into it is not changing.”

Delirium

North Carolina approves gay marriage ban

RESIDENTS of North Carolina voted in favour of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages and civil unions on Tuesday.

The measure was passed by 61pc against 39pc, according to preliminary results from the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

Similar state constitutional amendments have been approved in some 30 US states.

The amendment solidifies and expands already enacted North Carolina law forbidding same-sex marriage.

The Reverend Billy Graham, an evangelical preacher who was born and lives in North Carolina and at 93 remains enormously influential, took out full-page newspaper ads across the state supporting the ban.

"At 93, I never thought we would have to debate the definition of marriage," Reb Graham said in the ads.

"The Bible is clear: God's definition of marriage is between a man and a woman."

Penn

North Carolina is my least favourite of the Carolinas.

robindch

robindch wrote: »

Vatican gets annoyed with nuns in the USA who are spending too much time worrying about poverty and not enough about abortion and same-sex marriage:

Gossip in the Vatican suggests that it was conservative US bishops, resident in Rome, who were behind the ideological crackdown on the nation's nun's (average age, 74):

http://www.religionnews.com/faith/leaders-and-institutions/are-americans-in-rome-behind-the-nuns-crackdown

Bannasidhe

AN Arizona Catholic high school has forfeited an opportunity to play in a baseball final, as the rival team fielded a girl on second base.

Our Lady of Sorrows, a fundamentalist Catholic school in Phoenix, chose to forfeit the championship final rather than play against Mesa Preparatory Academy, because the school has a 15-year-old girl Paige Sultzbach on their team.

Paige had set out two games already against Our Lady of Sorrows out of defence to the school’s opposition to coeducational sports – but she dreamed of playing the championship game, and was included on the team sheet by the school’s coach for the final.

Our Lady of Sorrows explained their stance to the local news station: "Our school aims to instil in our boys a profound respect for women and girls. Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we choose not to place them in an athletic competition where proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty."

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/americas/catholic-school-in-us-refuses-to-play-in-baseball-final-because-of-girl-on-opposing-team-3104953.html

Archbishop McQuaid would be so proud - seems things haven't moved on much since the 1930s in the Catholic mindset.

Galvasean

Sounds like they didn't like the idea of getting beaten by a girl again! :pac:

MagicMarker

It makes no sense, why would a girl be playing baseball when she could be having babies?

Sarky

Woo! De-fault! De-fault! De-fault!

dmw07

Sarky wrote: »

Woo! De-fault! De-fault! De-fault!

The two greatest words in the English language.

robindch

The Indo wrote:

Our Lady of Sorrows [...]

What an appropriate name for the school.

obplayer

koth wrote: »

North Carolina approves gay marriage ban

http://newsthump.com/2012/05/10/north-carolina-votes-to-maintain-sanctity-of-cousins-marrying/

Hotblack Desiato

Bannasidhe wrote: »

AN Arizona Catholic high school has forfeited an opportunity to play in a baseball final, as the rival team fielded a girl on second base.

Maybe they confused 'playing on second base' with 'getting to second base' ?

joseph brand

Who could argue with that?

shizz

joseph brand wrote: »

Who could argue with that?

I think my brain just attempted a face palm after reading that.

The Mad Hatter

shizz wrote: »

I think my brain just attempted a face palm after reading that.

It does sort of make the corpus callosum want to curl in on itself, doesn't it?

kylith

Am on the bus at the moment, and, in a change from "What think Ye of Christ" there's a poster touting The Oil of Psalm 23, which I'm considering writing to Dublin Bus to complain about as the testimonials are unconcionable: "My dad stopped drinking" says one. "I stopped hearing voices!" claims another. These just under the legend "Can one drop make the difference? We say yes!" so it's obviously claiming that one drop can cure everything from alcoholism to scitzophrenia.

I wish I had a big black marker so I could write "caution, bollocks does not cure mental illness".

Hotblack Desiato

Complain to the ASAI.

joseph brand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjMRgT5o-Ig

Max Blumenthal's latest takes us on a shocking and at times bizarre tour of right-wing Pastor John Hagee's annual Washington-Israel Summit, blowing the cover off the Christian Zionist movement in the process. Starring Joe Lieberman, Tom DeLay, Pastor John Hagee, Ambassador Dore Gold and a host of rapture-ready evangelicals praying for Armaggedon.

Scary scary people. :eek:

Sonics2k

A GANG of unknown youths went on the rampage, setting fire to more than 40 houses, leaving several families homeless at Mianguala village in Sumbawanga District on sheer allegations of witchcraft.

http://dailynews.co.tz/index.php/local-news/5106-irate-villagers-lynch-two-suspected-witches

Turtwig

joseph brand wrote: »

<yt>:mjMRgT5o-Ig<yt>



Scary scary people. :eek:

Rapture Ready is that not a Poe site?

robindch

Jernal wrote: »

Rapture Ready is that not a Poe site?

RaptureReady is, unfortunately, genuine.

joseph brand

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/15/church-sues-woman-for-500000-after-negative-google-review/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2144038/Pastor-Charles-ONeal-sues-church-members.html

A church in Beaverton, Oregon is suing a woman after she posted a negative Google review calling them a “cult.”

Julie Anne Smith revealed on her blog in March that Pastor Chuck O’Neal and Beaverton Grace Bible Church had sued her for $500,000 over negative reviews on Google and DEX that claimed that she had been shunned for no reason.

Galvasean

Discredited TV psychic says Madeline McCann is dead. Source: 'a spirit' told him.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/9266260/TV-psychic-Derek-Acorah-Maddie-is-dead.html

Who do these frauds think they are interfering with real people's serious business?

ShooterSF

So the sun refuse to report the fact that Madeleine has died even though a famous psychic reported it yet they are happy to publish living advice regularly based on the month people were born by a mystic. Yeah, ok...

robindch

Remember all those calls by the religious to "support the family" coz it's "under attack" and family things were much better ages ago?

Well, history suggests that it just ain't so:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/14/family-life-best-for-1000-years

Guardian wrote:

'Throughout history and in virtually all human societies marriage has always been the union of a man and a woman." So says the Coalition for Marriage, whose petition against same-sex unions in the UK has so far attracted 500,000 signatures. It's a familiar claim, and it is wrong. Dozens of societies, across many centuries, have recognised same-sex marriage. In a few cases, before the 14th century, it was even celebrated in church. This is an example of a widespread phenomenon: myth-making by cultural conservatives about past relationships. Scarcely challenged, family values campaigners have been able to construct a history that is almost entirely false.

The unbiblical and ahistorical nature of the modern Christian cult of the nuclear family is a marvel rare to behold. Those who promote it are followers of a man born out of wedlock and allegedly sired by someone other than his mother's partner. Jesus insisted that "if any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters … he cannot be my disciple". He issued no such injunction against homosexuality: the threat he perceived was heterosexual and familial love, which competed with the love of God. This theme was aggressively pursued by the church for some 1,500 years. In his classic book A World of Their Own Making, Professor John Gillis points out that until the Reformation, the state of holiness was not matrimony but lifelong chastity. There were no married saints in the early medieval church. Godly families in this world were established not by men and women, united in bestial matrimony, but by the holy orders, whose members were the brothers or brides of Christ. Like most monotheistic religions (which developed among nomadic peoples), Christianity placed little value on the home. A Christian's true home belonged to another realm, and until he reached it, through death, he was considered an exile from the family of God.

The Reformation preachers created a new ideal of social organisation – the godly household – but this bore little relationship to the nuclear family. By their mid-teens, often much earlier, Gillis tells us, "virtually all young people lived and worked in another dwelling for shorter or longer periods". Across much of Europe, the majority belonged – as servants, apprentices and labourers – to houses other than those of their biological parents. The poor, by and large, did not form households; they joined them. The father of the house, who described and treated his charges as his children, typically was unrelated to most of them. Family, prior to the 19th century, meant everyone who lived in the house. What the Reformation sanctified was the proto-industrial labour force, working and sleeping under one roof.

The belief that sex outside marriage was rare in previous centuries is also unfounded. The majority, who were too poor to marry formally, Gillis writes, "could love as they liked as long as they were discreet about it". Before the 19th century, those who intended to marry began to sleep together as soon as they had made their spousals (declared their intentions). This practice was sanctioned on the grounds that it allowed couples to discover whether or not they were compatible. If they were not, they could break it off. Premarital pregnancy was common and often uncontroversial, as long as provision was made for the children. The nuclear family, as idealised today, was an invention of the Victorians, but it bore little relationship to the family life we are told to emulate. Its development was driven by economic rather than spiritual needs, as the industrial revolution made manufacturing in the household unviable. Much as the Victorians might extol their families, "it was simply assumed that men would have their extramarital affairs and women would also find intimacy, even passion, outside marriage" (often with other women). Gillis links the 20th-century attempt to find intimacy and passion only within marriage, and the impossible expectations this raises, to the rise in the rate of divorce.

Children's lives were characteristically wretched: farmed out to wet nurses, sometimes put to work in factories and mines, beaten, neglected, often abandoned as infants. In his book A History of Childhood, Colin Heywood reports that "the scale of abandonment in certain towns was simply staggering", reaching one third or a half of all the children born in some European cities. Street gangs of feral youths caused as much moral panic in late 19th-century England as they do today. Conservatives often hark back to the golden age of the 1950s. But in the 1950s, John Gillis shows, people of the same persuasion believed they had suffered a great moral decline since the early 20th century. In the early 20th century, people fetishised the family lives of the Victorians. The Victorians invented this nostalgia, looking back with longing to imagined family lives before the industrial revolution.

In the Daily Telegraph today Cristina Odone maintained that "anyone who wants to improve lives in this country knows that the traditional family is key". But the tradition she invokes is imaginary. Far from this being, as cultural conservatives assert, a period of unique moral depravity, family life and the raising of children is, for most people, now surely better in the west than at any time in the past 1,000 years. The conservatives' supposedly moral concerns turn out to be nothing but an example of the age-old custom of first idealising and then sanctifying one's own culture. The past they invoke is fabricated from their own anxieties and obsessions. It has nothing to offer us.

Genghiz Cohen

robindch wrote: »

Remember all those calls by the religious to "support the family" coz it's "under attack" and family things were much better ages ago?

Well, history suggests that it just ain't so:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/14/family-life-best-for-1000-years

Wait a sec, are you trying to say that some religious people are full of ****?

mikhail

robindch wrote: »

Remember all those calls by the religious to "support the family" coz it's "under attack" and family things were much better ages ago?

Well, history suggests that it just ain't so:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/14/family-life-best-for-1000-years

Another Victorian myth? Those guys really screwed up Western culture.

biko

The German government's attempts to unite different religious groups seem to be turning sour. Introducing lessons on Islam in schools was meant to help integrate the country's three million Muslims. But the policy is having some undesired effects.
Muslims pupils are leaving the schools radicalised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86s-UWQ1DSI

robindch

biko wrote: »

Introducing lessons on Islam in schools was meant to help integrate the country's three million Muslims. But the policy is having some undesired effects. Muslims pupils are leaving the schools radicalised.

"Religious Men Causing Trouble in Schools" shocker!

Turtwig

Lesbian couple return from honeymoon to find home has been burnt down.

Hotblack Desiato

Ugh. Their child is the biggest victim in this

The Black Oil

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18108197

One Amish community in a northerly part of the state of New York is finding modern building regulations are encroaching on its way of life.

~~

But when he met with Andy Miller and the five other Amish men charged with contravening state building codes, he was certain that the town's building inspectors had violated America's first and greatest constitutional amendment - the right to worship freely.

What had provoked the inspectors to issue Stop Work Orders was the Amish men's refusal to install smoke alarms in their newly built houses.

In court and in broken English - their first language remains a German dialect - Andy Miller explained that it would be against their Christian beliefs to have something so modern in their homes.

See, I don't think you could have too much of a beef with the Amish, really. At least, I don't. Maybe there's something to be said for living through traditional methods. I'm not especially libertarian or anything, but I was wondering if they should really have to comply with building codes. Common sense says yes, of course, but they lost me here.

They hand-pumped water for washing, and there was an outdoor privy. The fire they cooked on prompted me to ask Mose about the smoke alarms.

"I use this," he said pointing at his nose, "or him," and his finger pointed upwards. "I don't need a devil on the wall to tell me if my house is burning."

I asked him what would happen if he did not wake up and all his children were burned to death.

"If God does not wake us, well, that must be part of his plan," Mose told me.

Wasn't sure how much to quote in view of Sherlock's law.

Bannasidhe

The Black Oil wrote: »

See, I don't think you could have too much of a beef with the Amish, really. At least, I don't. Maybe there's something to be said for living through traditional methods. I'm not especially libertarian or anything, but I was wondering if they should really have to comply with building codes. Common sense says yes, of course, but they lost me here.



Wasn't sure how much to quote in view of Sherlock's law.

Find me a religion and I'll find you a case (or 1000) of abuse :mad:

​Four Amish men in southern Missouri pleaded guilty this week to endangering the welfare of a child.

The men, all elders within the Amish community, reportedly knew about the sexual abuse of two girls living among their flock in the Ozark town of Seymour but failed to report the allegations to authorities.

Like a similar story unfolding in an Amish community in northeastern Missouri, the elders had hoped to reform the sex offender on their own.


According to one report one of the elders told a Webster County sheriff's investigator "that it was against the Amish Rules to report child sexual abuse," and that they had shunned Johnny Schwartz twice for the sexual abuse of his daughters.

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2010/10/amish_elders_plead_guilty_to_harboring_sex_offender.php

They shunned him twice???? So does this mean they un-shunned him once after they knew he had abused his daughters and then re-shunned him when he did it again?

It really comes down to does a person's religious belief give them permission to ignore civil laws which conflict with their beliefs - the actual law in question is not relevant, be it installing smoke alarms or reporting the sexual abuse of children - it's whether religion gives you a 'get out of jail free' card as some seem to feel it should.

ShooterSF

The Black Oil wrote: »

See, I don't think you could have too much of a beef with the Amish, really. At least, I don't.

I do. They force this lifestyle on their children and it's worse than any catholic indoctrination in this country as it's many times harder to shake off. They want to put their own rules above the states and as above most likely, as a result, protect wrong doers from the law.

Mostly though it's the indoctrination of children. People seem to look past it as it's cute to see people living like that if you ignore the lack of real choice they had in that lifestyle to begin with.

Hotblack Desiato

It's just stupidity to say that all human inventions up to an arbitrary point in history are OK, but anything invented after that is evil.

Delirium

Scientology cult ordered me to have an abortion

A BRITISH mum who escaped Scientology after 20 years has revealed her hell in the clutches of the weird secretive cult that targets Hollywood celebs.

In a startling expose of the sci-fi inspired church — which boasts Tom Cruise and John Travolta as leading members — brave Sam Domingo, 45, from Kent, says they:

FORCED her to have an abortion when her husband got her pregnant because cult leaders didn’t approve

PUNISHED her for disobedience by making her dig a huge hole in frozen earth with a pickaxe for two weeks

SENT her to indoctrinate rich stars at the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood

TOOK her passport away so she couldn't flee and fly home

MADE her scrub a tunnel full of rats and cockroaches for being “disloyal”.

Penn

koth wrote: »

Scientology cult ordered me to have an abortion

That is generally what I always figured. The rich and famous Scientologists lead the good life while the ordinary Scientologists are forced to do all the real batsh*t crazy stuff for batsh*t crazy reasons.

magicbastarder

ShooterSF wrote: »

I do. They force this lifestyle on their children and it's worse than any catholic indoctrination in this country as it's many times harder to shake off.

don't the amish send their kids off in their teens to live in the outside world, so they can make an informed choice about what life they want to lead?

Galvasean

magicbastarder wrote: »

don't the amish send their kids off in their teens to live in the outside world, so they can make an informed choice about what life they want to lead?

In their 20s. By that time they've been so brainwashed that they are afraid of a friggin' toaster.
Of course the ones that do decide the Amish life is no longer for them get shunned and are not allowed see their family again. If that isn't emotional blackmail I don't know what is.

Bannasidhe

Galvasean wrote: »

In their 20s. By that time they've been so brainwashed that they are afraid of a friggin' toaster.
Of course the ones that do decide the Amish life is no longer for them get shunned and are not allowed see their family again. If that isn't emotional blackmail I don't know what is.

Absolutely. They are sent out into a world of technology, drugs, alcohol, bureaucracy, porn etc without any of the required mental tools for survival. Yes, many go back - fear is a great motivator and 'home' is the place they understand the rules. Many also succumb to drugs, homelessness and depression due to being babes in the modern world.

Galvasean

Galvasean wrote: »

Of course the ones that do decide the Amish life is no longer for them get shunned and are not allowed see their family again. If that isn't emotional blackmail I don't know what is.

No, that's if they decide to get baptised and then later defect
if they just move out of the community or whatever i think it's fine, though obviously not as close as before

robindch

magicbastarder wrote: »

don't the amish send their kids off in their teens to live in the outside world, so they can make an informed choice about what life they want to lead?

As above, I think a lot of them choose to spend two years in the real world in their early twenties, at the end of which, if they choose to return, they've to make a commitment to the general terms and conditions of the Amish religion.

Now, call me a cynical ol' bast*rd, but I can't help wonder if this is as much a way of cementing compliant people into a society, as it is a way of getting rid of non-compliant ones. If so, then it's an elegant evolutionary adaption.

Bannasidhe

robindch wrote: »

As above, I think a lot of them choose to spend two years in the real world in their early twenties, at the end of which, if they choose to return, they've to make a commitment to the general terms and conditions of the Amish religion.

Now, call me a cynical ol' bast*rd, but I can't help wonder if this is as much a way of cementing compliant people into a society, as it is a way of getting rid of non-compliant ones. If so, then it's an elegant evolutionary adaption.

Not all Amish communities follow this practice - it's called the Rumspringa - among those that do it begins at age 16.
So 16 year olds who have seen the modern world only as self excluded outsiders are thrust out into this alien and hostile environment to decide their future.

Most of us who have experience of 16 year olds would be concerned at sending them to do the weekly shopping alone- what the Amish do is the equivalent of us sending our 16 year olds off to live in a country like France alone for a year. They might have some knowledge of French society, language etc but would be totally unprepared for gaining housing, employment ec or dealing with 'temptations' such as drugs.

I mean, I'm 47. I've lived in many countries across the globe. I have enough smatterings of various languages to allow me to get my basic needs met but drop me in the middle of Japan (which I have visited) and I would be fecked and very happy to get myself back to a place where I understand how things work.

Now, I have no issue with 16 year olds being expected to take on more adult responsibilities but I do question the motives behind the idea of sending these 16 year olds out into a world they are completely unprepared for.

Maybe, like Robinch, I am a cynic...

shizz

I'm watching this video of Thunderf00t interviewing the Westboro Baptist Church on youtube. I won't embed it because it's really disturbing but if anyone wants to watch it here

I happened to go to their website and noticed that they believe that God killed 16 BILLION people by the flood?! I know there isn't an ounce of logic used by these guys but it's awful.

Turtwig

Thesis progressing nicely then? :pac:

Delirium

Afghan schoolgirls 'poisoned by Taliban'

More than 120 schoolgirls and three teachers have been poisoned in the second attack in as many months in Afghanistan blamed on conservative radicals in the country's north, Afghan police and education officials have said.

The attack occurred on Wednesday in Takhar province where police said the Taliban, who are opposed to education of women and girls, had used an unidentified toxic powder to contaminate the air in classrooms, leaving scores of students unconscious.

Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), said the Taliban appear intent on closing schools ahead of a 2014 withdrawal by foreign combat troops.

fcukers :mad: round them up and shoot them :mad: