Religious News/Quotes of the Day

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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

Hitchens says Obama not a believer. One minute video clip.
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Doug »

Hunting people for Jesus? It used to be fishing...

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A U.S. church raised money to send Bibles, printed in the Pashtu and Dari languages, to American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, a report on Al Jazeera documented Sunday night.

It is against military rules to proselytize -- a regulation one of the soldiers filmed by the network readily acknowledged. "You cannot proselytize, but you can give gifts," says the soldier. It is a crime in Afghanistan to attempt to convert anyone from Islam to any other religion... The footage is said to be roughly a year old.

The Al Jazeera report also shows a military preacher urging army parishioners to "hunt people for Jesus."

"The Special Forces guys, they hunt men. Basically, we do the same things as Christians. We hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down. Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the Kingdom. That's what we do, that's our business," he says.

See here.

DOUG writes:
Remember the guy who converted to Christianity and then was sentenced to death? He was allowed to leave the country, but he could not stay.

We sure know how to win the hearts and minds, don't we?
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Doug »

This is like the Perfect Storm of bullshit.

=================================================
Mexican Wrestlers Visit Image of the Virgin Mary on a Pancake Griddle
Image
Mexican wrestlers Renegado and Mr. Tempest look at an image of what they believe is "Our Lady of Guadalupe" on a griddle at Las Palmas restaurant in Calexico, Calif.
See here.

CALEXICO, Calif. - ...Restaurant manager Brenda Martinez says more than 100 people have flocked to the small town of Calexico on the California-Mexico border to gaze at the likeness of the Virgin Mary since it was discovered as the griddle was being cleaned.

Among the awe-struck was a group of masked Mexican wrestlers who arrived Thursday for an exhibition at a nearby swap meet.

One, known as Mr. Tempest, says: "This is amazing. It's a true miracle."

DOUG writes:
"Our Lady of Guadalupe" refers to a famous "miraculous" image of the Virgin Mary that appeared in Mexico in the 15th century.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

DAR
Speaking of a storm of BS, we missed the "Power Team." They were at 1st Bapt. in Bentonville about two weeks ago.
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Doug »

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NEW YORK – A Roman Catholic archbishop who resigned in 2002 over a sex and financial scandal involving a man describes his struggles with being gay in an upcoming memoir about his decades serving the church.

Archbishop Rembert Weakland, former head of the Milwaukee archdiocese, said in an interview Monday that he wrote about his sexual orientation because he wanted to be candid about "how this came to life in my own self, how I suppressed it, how it resurrected again."

Called "A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop," the book is set to be released in June.

See here.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

DAR
I need to post this here so a fellow I am talking with in this thread can see this Oxford reference about abortion:

Kat:

****
Excerpts from "The Oxford Companion to the Bible"; edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan; Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 4

On Abortion: "Archeological evidence indicates that in ancient Israel the infant mortality rate was as high as fifty percent. It is also possible that, given the diet and living conditions at the time, female fertility was low. Male control of reproduction and a belief that numerous descendants are a sign of divine blessing are also found in the Bible. These factors support the view that abortion would not have been common.
"Alternatively, it can be argued that abortion was practiced without censure. Many women died in childbirth, a strong incentive to avoid carrying a pregnancy to term. Biblical legislation, as in Leviticus 27:3- 7, indicates that the lives of children as well as women were not valued as highly as those of adult men, while no value whatsoever was given to a child under the age of one month. There is no indication that a fetus had any status.
"A key text for examining ancient Israelite attitudes is Exodus 21: 22-25: (snipped, but translated as "MISCARRIAGE, and yet no further harm follows....") Several observations can be made about this passage. The Hebrew text at v.22 literally reads "and there is no harm," implying that contrary to current sensibilities, the miscarriage itself was not considered serious injury. The monetary judgment given to the woman's husband indicates that the woman's experience of the miscarriage is not of significance, and that the damage is considered one to property rather than to human life. This latter observation is further supported by the contrast with the penalties for harm to the woman herself."

Given that the infant mortality for full-term babies was as high as 50%, what are the chances of survival for a pre-mature birthed child in ancient Israel? Not very good, I would imagine.
What did the Rabbis say?:
The Rabbis ruled that the fetus was "animated" with a "life" similar to vegetables or animals, but only after birth did an immortal soul, a living person, a "nefesh adam," come into being. In fact, unless a full nine-month pregnancy was definitely known to have been completed, a female child was not considered a "bar Chaiyama" (a viable, living thing) until thirty days after its birth (males were required by the Law to be circumcised on the 8th day after birth, so a male only had to survive for eight days to be given a name).
The Talmud used the phrase, "ubar yerekh imo" ("The fetus is the thigh of its mother") [TB Hulin 58a and elsewhere] and, "the fetus is regarded as one of her limbs" [TB Gittin 23b]. Clearly, as the Rabbis understood the scriptures, the fetus is considered a "part of its mother" rather than an independent entity. [ Cf. "Marital Relations, Birth Control, and Abortion in Jewish Law" by David M. Feldman (New York: Schocken Books) , p. 253.] The Mishnah [Arakhin, I.4 (7a)] ruled that there is no need to wait for a pregnant woman convicted of a capital crime to give birth before being ex ecuted. The Talmud and the Mishnah have actually required abortion in cases where the mental or physical health of the mother was jeopardized by a pregnancy. [Ibid, p. 275]
While Jewish law forbad men to sterilize themselves, women were allowed to sterilize themselves, either temporarily or permanently [Talmud, Tosefta Y'vamot Ch. 8]. Men were believed to be subject to the commandment to "be fruitful and multiply," but women were not.
This decidedly "Pro-Choice" stance is still held by the majority of Jewish organizations today. The United Synagogue of America passed a resolution that says in part: "In all cases, the mother's life takes precedence over that of the fetus up to the minute of its birth. This is to us an unequivocal position." Abortions, "though serious even in the early stages of conception, are not to be equated with murder, hardly more than is the decision not to become pregnant."
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by tmiller51 »

Check out the Google logo today:

Image

Looks like it has upset some fundamentalists: http://www.rr-bb.com/showthread.php?t=93704

Tim
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

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Following a report it ran earlier this month regarding evangelical US soldiers in Afghanistan seeking to distribute bibles in Pashtun and Dari, Al Jazeera now reports that those bibles have been confiscated and burned. According to Al Jazeera:

"My understanding is that the [military] leadership confiscated these bibles so that they could not be distributed around Afghanistan, Colonel Greg Julian told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

See here.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

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DUBLIN — After a nine-year investigation, a commission published a damning report Wednesday on decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at Catholic Church-run reform schools for Ireland's castaway children.

The 2,600-page report painted the most detailed and damning portrait yet of church-administered abuse in a country grown weary of revelations about child molestation by priests.

The investigation of the tax-supported schools uncovered previously secret Vatican records that demonstrated church knowledge of pedophiles in their ranks all the way back to the 1930s.

...Victims of the abuse, who are now in their 50s to 80s, lobbied long and hard for an official investigation. They say that for all its incredible detail, the report doesn't nail down what really matters _ the names of their abusers.

"I do genuinely believe that it would have been a further step towards our healing if our abusers had been named and shamed," said Christine Buckley, 62, who spent the first 18 years of her life in a Dublin orphanage where children were forced to manufacture rosaries _ and were humiliated, beaten and raped whether they achieved their quota or not.
See here.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Savonarola »

tmiller51 wrote:Looks like it has upset some fundamentalists
The people commenting on that thread scare me.
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

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tmiller51 wrote:Looks like it has upset some fundamentalists:
DAR
Why would they be mad at google for showing a fossil? Don't they know God planted all of those fossils to test their faith? Of course they do. And they passed the test, they still believe in the creation story.

D.
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

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Image

The outgoing Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, made a contribution at the end of Archbishop Vincent Nichols' installation that was at once touching, funny, serious and extreme. He said, rather controversially perhaps, that a lack of faith is 'the greatest of evils.' He blamed atheism for war and destruction, and implied it was a greater evil even than sin itself.

... He then went on to talk about the battles that will be won and lost in the effort to sustain the Christian presence in secular society.

'But what is most crucial is the prayer that we express every day in the Our Father, when we say, deliver us from evil. The evil we ask to be delivered from is not essentially the evil of sin, though that is clear, but in the mind of Jesus, it is more importantly a loss of faith. For Jesus, the inability to believe in God and to live by faith is the greatest of evils.

'You see the things that result from this are an affront to human dignity, destruction of trust between peoples, the rule of egoism and the loss of peace. One can never have true justice, true peace, if God becomes meaningless to people.'

See here.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

Doug wrote:Bishop Quote:
"One can never have true justice, true peace, if God becomes meaningless to people."
DAR
Ah justice, sweet justice! I am reminded of when evangelical leader Norman Geisler answered the question of why would God need to roast people in the fires of hell for all eternity rather than just let them pass away into nothingness for all time. His answer:

"...annihilation would be demeaning both to the love of God and to the nature of human beings as free moral creatures... This would be like a father telling his son he wanted him to be a doctor, and, when he chose instead to be a park ranger, the father shot him! Eternal suffering is an eternal testimony to the freedom and dignity of humans, even unrepentant humans." —Geisler & Howe, When Critics Ask (pg. 494)

D.
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Doug »

Darrel wrote:
Doug wrote:Bishop Quote:
"One can never have true justice, true peace, if God becomes meaningless to people."
DAR
Ah justice, sweet justice!
DOUG
And note just a couple of posts back on this very thread we find out that the Catholic Church's reform schools had decades of child rape that were not mitigated by any justice. In fact, just the opposite: the church's influence was used as a screen to prevent justice for so long.
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

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"...we must also not forget to protect and celebrate
our fundamental freedoms that the Bible has influenced."

When the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 31, 2009, Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) hopes you’ll be ringing in “the Year of the Bible.”

It’s probably just wishful thinking.

Broun’s simple congressional resolution aimed at honoring the Good Book has produced a push-back of biblical proportion in the blogosphere, with critics dismissing it as either unconstitutional or a waste of time. Jews in Congress and atheist activists are dismissing the resolution, while none of the many Democrats in Congress who are Christian have bothered to sign on as co-sponsors.

According to GovTrak.us, the resolution is among the most-blogged-about pieces of legislation , with most posts less than complimentary in nature.

“Does that mean 2009 is not the year of the Bible?” mocked Rep. Barney Frank ­(D-Mass.), who is Jewish. “What is 2012 the year of? The Quran?”


Read more: "Lawmaker wants to make 2010 'Year of the Bible' - Victoria McGrane - POLITICO.com" - See here.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

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Rev. Cutie

MIAMI — A popular Miami priest and media personality known as "Father Oprah" has left the Catholic Church and joined the Episcopal Church after he was photographed cavorting on the beach with his girlfriend.

The Rev. Alberto Cutie (KOO'-tee-ay) was removed from his Miami Beach church after photos of him kissing and embracing a woman appeared in the pages of a Spanish-language magazine earlier this month.

He was received into Episcopal Church in a ceremony Thursday at Trinity Cathedral and may later announce he will marry his girlfriend, which is allowed in that denomination. He must complete other requirements before serving as an Episcopal priest.

See here.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

I wonder how short of priests the Catholics will have to get before they change this outdated rule.
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Doug »

Darrel wrote:I wonder how short of priests the Catholics will have to get before they change this outdated rule.
DOUG
Insider talk is that there is a groundswell of U.S. Catholic clergy that want to split off from the Vatican over this and allow gay and married clergy just like the Episcopalians. I can't get any good numbers on how big this movement is, though. My impression is that it is not small, but that it lacks any real political force within the Church right now.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by tmiller51 »

Tweets of Hate: The Crazy Right Twitters About the Assassination of Dr Tiller.
One side effect of Twitter is that the stupid, bigoted comments people used to make at the water cooler now get preserved for future employers to find using Google.

A small sample of the hatred expressed on Twitter after the assassination of Dr Tiller:

* Crap, I always forgot hashtags. I'm happy Tiller's dead. - Jennifer Waite, Selah, Washington
* UPDATE... Doctor George Tiller was aborted today in his 204th trimester - aren't paybacks a bitch - Punch
* oh HAPPY DAY! Tiller the baby killer is DEAD! - Samantha Pelch
* George Tiller the baby killer was shot dead this morning. God bless the gunmen who hopefully won't be caught. - readnwatchchris, Creedmor. NC
* was George Tiller the baby killers brain scrambled the way he scrambled full term fetuses.. one can only hope - Brad S
* Infamous baby killer George Tiller gunned down at (irony) church. Why do I not feel sorry for him? Have fun at Judgment Day. - James Fiddler
...
Many more examples here
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

Haven't looked to closely at this yet but it looks like a huge resource for those who think Jesus didn't exist at all:

Jesus Myth - The Case Against Historical Christ

Doug, we ought to have a short debate at a meeting on whether Jesus existed or not. People would learn a lot, mostly about how weak the evidence is for his existence. If we advertised it could get a lot of attention.

D.
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