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i think i missed my calling

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he's got almost as much ink as you do.


How did the spirit get through her Hollister sweatshirt?


WTF.

WTF.


My new favorite buzz term is 'The Moron Crescent' which starts in West Virgina, swoops into the south and then up into Idaho. I predict evangelical culture will morph into an American Khmer Rouge that will storm the cities and execute everyone with a higher than sixth grade education.

'The Moron Crescent' was coined by James Kunstler at
http://www.kunstler.com


These people are on acid. There can be no doubt. How can anyone believe this shit. It has to just be a scam to relieve people of their money. THAT will cause people to act like this. This shit should be outlawed.


C-Freak, I could be wrong, but I think you may have annointed [splashed] me with PBR at Dick's before (though it took me a few hours to fall down).

So...
do I owe you money for that now, or how does this whole "evangelism" thing work?

Check or cash?


I don't care how crazy or funny these people are, they are enablers that let a lot of the world believe in useless delusion that breaks people apart and creates incredibly stupid divisive politics.

Sure, say whatever it is. These people are magic and YOU SHOULD BELIEVE THEM. IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE THEM AND THEIR MIRACLES YOU WILL NOT BE TAKEN INTO HEAVEN WITH THEM.


But in reality. They are deluding themselves. ACTIVELY lying to themselves.


This is just sick and there are far worse. Check out the video 'Jesus Camp' or any other local enabler and tell them the world is not 5,000 years old and that they are stupid to believe literally in a book that was written about someone decades after he had died.

whew. Just stop.


Let me get this straight- your religion preaches that two thousand years ago, a Middle Eastern virgin was impregnated by a ghost. And the spawn of this ethereal sperm grew up to walk on water and multiply bread loaves and heal the sick and raise the dead and cast out literal demons. And this Love Child wasn’t just any ordinary spud, it was God incarnate who willingly submitted to a bloody S&M crucifixion to pay for OUR sins, when it would have been much easier (and less messy) if He’d merely made us sin-proof in the first place. And this Miracle Baby, son of a (cough) virgin, rose from the dead after three days and now gets very upset when heavy-metal musicians slander His name. And Moses parted the Red Sea, Noah had an ark, God rained frogs on Egypt, and Joshua made the sun stand still. And even though Adam and Eve only gave birth to two boys (one of whom killed the other), the human race somehow fruitfully multiplied while avoiding the sin of incest. And remote Polynesian islanders will boil in molten lava eternally if they don’t embrace the gospel, even if they’ve never had a chance to hear the gospel. And the God who gave you a weenie will also zap you with lightning bolt if thou darest toucheth the weenie which he didst create
Is that it? Did I miss anything? Is this the horseshit you’re trying to peddle me? That’s not the Greatest Story Ever Told, it’s the craziest.
Jim Goad, The Redneck Manifesto, p. 146.


Hate to be contrary, but I'll gladly allow these whackos their whackiness, if it means I'm allowed to practice my own particular type of whackiness.

"Outlawing" religious behavior is a very scary idea.


i grew up in a family that laps this kind of stuff up. let me tell you these theatrics are alive and well in duluth,mn. i'll never forget being 15 and having a pastor pushing on my forehead, annointing me with his spittle until the spirit of god moved me to pretend to pass out. this stuff is hilarious, to be sure, but also really, really scary.


The Jesus Story is Plagiarism

Horus == Jesus


Whether this Jesus fellow was alive or not. He DEFINITELY was not god. To think that we are here for a *special* purpose makes everyone feel toasty warm, but it is BS.


I'd like to see all of these pro-life people either change their name to pro-human-life or become vegetarians.


Vicarious . That's real nice of you. So does practising your wackiness lead to thoughtless destruction and jillions of people being killed in the fervour and zeal of your spaghetti monster?
Christianity creates an us and them attitude that makes the unsaved not just hateable but not even human (damn heathens). and so Preaching Christianity is preaching hate speech, makes acting without one's own personal thought/ consideration acceptable. If Christians actually acted like Christians they'd drop all the theatrical stuff and name dropping and it would just be the religion of always doing good and being thoughtful. And eat his body and drink his blood too.When will it be time for people to move on?
And fuck. What if they’re right? Sweet vid! blah blah blah.


Personally, I'm not advocating for outlawing these ludicrous religious practices. I'd like to hang onto my rights to revere invisible bullshit also.

But a sustained campaign of mockery and education against these degenerate theists would be a good idea.


I like to think that the "unconscious" are being covered up with matching purple snuggies.


I tried everything, literally everything, and I can't find anything that rings as true as Christianity. Still, I just cringe when I see things like this because I know it can be misinterpreted and used to discredit authentic spiritual practices (such as healings, spiritual annointing and more). There is great diversity within Christianity and this stuff is on the edge of that body. Pretty far out, too. It was all done far too publicly, there was not enough oversight in Lakeland, for example, and too much room for abuse. And that "minister" has since been censured for having some problems. It doesn't change the fact that the girl was healed. Even if it is hilarious that would STILL be a miracle, wouldn't it?

I'm not stupid, I'm not a fool. I know that the Christian story is implausible, but that doesn't mean it's not true. I'm aware of all the evidence AGAINST it, still I believe. Look who's being sworn in for president later this month. A year ago conventional wisdom said that was implausible, too. But some people had faith and ... it happened.

My mind isn't closed, is yours?


I defer to Bishop Spong, world's greatest living Christian heretic.


Martin Luther ignited the Reformation of the 16th century by nailing to the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517 the 95 Theses that he wished to debate. I will publish this challenge to Christianity in The Voice. I will post my theses on the Internet and send copies with invitations to debate them to the recognized Christian leaders of the world. My theses are far smaller in number than were those of Martin Luther, but they are far more threatening theologically. The issues to which I now call the Christians of the world to debate are these:

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

So I set these theses today before the Christian world and I stand ready to debate each of them as we prepare to enter the third millennium.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF6I5VSZVqc


Modern Jackass,

Lumping every christian, christian belief, christian practice, dogma, etc., under one umbrella is. as if they are all like those in the clip utterly ridiculous, and completly uninformed, and might I say
very unrefined.

My mom, for one, is a Christian. She has never killed anyone, and gives away her money and time to the less fortunate. A lot of it. Because she's a Christian and her particilar form of Christianity is based on love, equality, respect, selflessness.

Get over it. Grow up.


I'd like to hear from Ironic 1 on this


Amen.


vicarious, maybe your mom's just a nice person, and would be one anyway without christianity?

love, equality, respect, and selflessness aren't just under religion's dominion.


jp,

people didn't have "faith" that obama would be elected -- they went out and cavassed neighborhoods, cast ballots, and actually acted in the world to make something happen.

also, the christian story isn't "implausible." it's actually impossible. many, many angles of it are. it's like harry potter, only more fantastical and with more zombies.


Like I said, it's just a very innocent way of ripping people off. All they have to do is say, "But people have been believing this shit for centuries, there HAS to be SOME good coming out of it". It's all in the motivation. Christianity isn't evil. It's a concept. Our puny brains can't come up with anything better, so the same shit gets recycled over and over again. We're animals with an attitude. If someone, ANYONE, could come up with proof that A god exists it would be a different story. But the fact that after billions of years of evolution, all we have to show for it is a guy in Superior fucking a dead deer. That pretty much much proves to me we have a LONG way to go.


To Wit: The Bible condemned the following sexual activities which we also condemn: incest, rape, adultery, and intercourse with animals. But the Bible also condemned {}the following practices which we today generally allow or at least do not universally condemn: intercourse during menstruation, celibacy, marriage to non-Jews, naming sexual organs, nudity under certain conditions, masturbation and birth control. …finally, the Bible permitted these behaviors that we today condemn: prostitution, polygamy, levirate marriage, sex with slaves, concubinage, treatment of women as property and very early marriage (for the girl aged eleven to thirteen)


Christianity is a greatest hits cover album of previously existing religions and myths. "Smoke on the Water" rocks; just don't tell me yours is the only way to play it.


To Quote Chief Wiggum-"Where's your messiah now Flanders?"


Yes where is Ironic1 when I need him.

But let me try a bit on my ham-fisted own here ... First, I'll argue that the majority of the Obama-ites started with Faith as a baseline premise. And that faith spurred them to action and ... here we sit.

Then ... umm

What's the difference between implausible and impossible? Throughout recorded human history so many "impossible" things have been proved only "implausible" that I would have a hard time answering that one myself. But no doubt there is a brilliant linguist out there in PDD land who can clear that one up for us. And regarding the supernatural, IS there really ever an impossible?

I'm not sure what that means, "Theism as a way of defining God is dead" but I don't think I agree. I mean isn't that just a word "theism" and not an actual belief?

But I am not trying to go bare knuckles with an essentially unresolvable argument over belief here. (I'm not a troll, after all, or am I?)

As for proofs, I am not one of those people who will argue things to the death. I'm not married to any particular ideology, and finally, the real evidence has come to me over months and years and decades even and through as many sources as I could find.

Some of it does require mental gymnastics, I agree, the idea that the death, crucifixion and death of Jesus serves as a substitute for the penalty owed for sin by me and every other human being who claims them. That one takes some real hard thinking before you decide to believe it. But most of it is very simple and logical. For example, I've actually come to a place where the existence of a creator is affirmed by the complexity, beauty and "impossibility" of the universe itself. Most folks probably agree, "creation" is so amazingly well-done that that the name itself implies a creator.

As to Caroline's original video, is it a miracle that the girl was healed of her allergy or not? What about the thousands of others who have claimed healing through (not by) the Lakeland Fla revival?

Ridiculous as some of it is, I maintain that at the foundation there is real beauty and wonder. And humor, lol.

And maybe you did miss your calling C-freak. After all, you've certainly gotten a lot of us thinking and talking about a truly substantive matter. And that guys ink has got nothing on yours.



Sorry, did someone call on me?

Look, I'll be the first to say that some Christians are whackos, but I don't think whacko-ism is the exclusive province of Christianity.

I'm not going to make an elaborate defense of my Christian faith right now on this blog because, frankly, I don't feel like it right now. I'm also not in the habit of shoving my beliefs down other people's throats.

But since you asked, I will say this, however. We need stories to live by. I choose to model my life around the story of a person who was rejected and put to death by the preeminent military, economic, and religious powers of the time. And yet, in the face of this overwhelming opposition, there was a power that said "yes" when all these arrayed and assorted powers said "no." I choose to believe that death is not the final word, and I'm not talking about some pie-in-the-sky life after death. I really don't know what happens after you die. But I do know people who are lulled to death in this life by these same powers.

So I choose to live my life in concert with the one who defied these powers to the point of death and prevailed.

Now you may well ask, do you mean this historically or metaphorically? Are you speaking metaphysically or simply as an ethical allegory? I think people who try to make these stories, from any faith, into science or history are missing the point entirely. It is a capitulation to modernity to suppose that all truth is historical truth or scientific truth. The failure of fundamentalism is that it assumes that narrative truth is not strong enough to stand on its own. That it must also be historical and scientific.

Well, I said more than I intended.


Religion and faith is what it is. I say just live and let live. If someone feels doing things like this video shows makes them a better person, fine I am a Christian, I believe in Jesus but that is about as far as I feel the need to take it. I keep my beliefs regulated to my church and my home.


We need a new term for people that do not believe literally in religion yet prescribe to the stories and morals.

Like a 'non-enabler'.


At this point I cannot trust anyone that says they are a 'believer'. I can take them at faith that if they believe these ancient folk beliefs that they are liable to push misinformed agendas.

If anyone believes our world is only here for us, it is only 5,000 years old and the dinosaurs are here to test our faith, then THEY ARE WRONG.


HONEY COME QUICK. SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET!


If anyone believes our world is only here for us, it is only 5,000 years old and the dinosaurs are here to test our faith, then THEY ARE WRONG.

AMEN!


Ironic 1: "I said more than intended".

In fact, wise Paid Holy Man, you said it all.


See Bishop Spong's term "Believer in Exile."
Theism got you down? Atheism seem promising except Richard Dawkins is an ass? IF ONLY THERE WERE ANOTHER OPTION.

Wait for it-

Nontheism, as in a nontheistic interpretation of the Bible.

Spong is the mac.


This whole literal meaning and putting words in Jesus' mouth and even Jesus being god are are just creations of Ego-centric Humans.

In no way are we the central fixture of the earth. There may very well be another ice age or a warming period where most of the humans are wiped out . The worst part is that this literal sense of interpretation is putting people into thinking that we are in the 'end of times' and that nothing can be done about it anyway. These people think first that we are everything and then that we don't influency anything. That is just incorrect.


We can tell children that we are just another animal on this earth and that we can make the most of it through communication peace and love.

OR

We can lie to them when they ask their questions and say that we are the central reason for everything being, with no end point except if they follow some inane rules they can ascend to heaven.

I do not want children to be indoctrinated to hate. Why should we lie to them about something else so basic?

I know everyone that follows any religion is not bad, but all I can see is the bigots, the war mongers, the land rapers, the child rapers and the disagreements with obvious truth.


I cite this:
20 reasons to abandon Christianity


ben b: a beer will do just fine thanks.

jp: i was just thinking in case this whole aquarium thingy doesn't work out....

but what i really wanna know is this - what kind of healing did the other person get that's lying on the stage covered up while the whole mess is going on? must have took a long time to take.

ps - shitty ink.



Religion is like pop music- mostly crap, but just when one wants to lump all believers together and damn them all, one runs into someone doing really good things in the world, based on their faith. Not all Christians are fools who take the myths literally. As Chris Hedges has pointed out, as bad as most religion is, we are not advancing morally as a species because of reason,either. Thus has it always been. No use fighting bigotry with bigotry.


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