Religious News/Quotes of the Day

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Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

"Keep in mind that without God, and the Bible, we would be incapable of morality.
The Bible isn't only good for moral instruction, mind you. It is very useful for making financial decisions too. For instance, just the other day I was selling my two youngest children down at the black market. I couldn't, for the life of me, remember the pricing schedule; luckily I had my King James at hand. A few page flips later my problem was solved: twenty shekels for the boy; ten for the girl." --ANDRE ARTUS

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Post by Dardedar »

"Christians are like a council of frogs in a marsh or a synod of worms on a
dung-hill croaking and squeaking "for our sakes was the world created."
-- Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus (attributed)
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Post by Dardedar »

"Faith is a cop-out, a defeat--an admission that the truths of religion
are unknowable through evidence and reason. It is only undemonstrable
assertions that require the suspension of reason, and weak ideas that
require faith. I just lost faith in faith. Biblical contradictions
became more and more discrepant, apologist arguments more and more
absurd and, when I finally discarded faith, things became more and more
clear." --Dan Barker - Losing Faith In Faith
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Post by Dardedar »

"...last week President Bush announced the nomination of James Holsinger to become the Surgeon General of the United States.

In addition to his medical degree, Holsinger has a master's degree in biblical studies from Asbury Theological Seminary, which he used to help found Hope Springs Community Church in Lexington, Kentucky. Hope Springs ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian, according to The Lexington Herald-Leader.

"We see that as an issue not of orientation but of lifestyle," Holsinger said. "We have people who seek to walk out of that lifestyle."

Holsinger has not yet indicated whether he will "cure" Mary Cheney."

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Not a Choice

Post by NeilS »

Darrel wrote:"We see that as an issue not of orientation but of lifestyle," Holsinger said. "We have people who seek to walk out of that lifestyle."
Bush nominates for Surgeon General someone who apparently lacks sufficient medical knowledge to understand orientation is NOT lifestyle choice?

I don't have to be a doctor to know that scientists have been finding evidence that orientation may be genetic. And let's be honest, who actually chooses an orientation? No matter how many girls/women have shot me down cold...I have never been tempted to change sides. I just love women and I can't help it. It's not my fault. It just is. It's NOT my choice. It's just natural for me. It's reasonable to think it is so for everyone.
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Re: Not a Choice

Post by Dardedar »

NeilS wrote:And let's be honest, who actually chooses an orientation?
DAR
Yes. It was interesting to see rightwinger George Will on "This Week with George Snuffalupagus" say (paraphrase): "My grandchildren tell me they they equate gay with being left-handed, BORING."
This is the future. Twenty years from now we will view the people who are against equal rights for the gays, as we now view those who were against interracial marriage and all of the other racist nonsense of the sixties (and earlier). Some of us already view these bigots this way.

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Post by Dardedar »

“If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don't have the very words of scripture? ... It's a bit hard to know what the words of the Bible mean if we don't even know what the words are! This became a problem for my view of inspiration; for I came to realize that it would have been no more difficult for God to preserve the words of scripture than it would have been for him to inspire them in the
first place. If he wanted his people to have his words, surely he would have
given them to them... The fact that we don't have the words surely must show, I reasoned, that he did not preserve them for us. And if he didn't perform that miracle, there seemed to be no reason to think that he performed the earlier miracle of inspiring those words."

--Bart Ehrman, "Misquoting Jesus: The story behind who changed the Bible and why"
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Post by Dardedar »

Popular conservative author Dinesh D'Souza's recently spoke before Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church:

John Gorenfeld describes the event:

"The hosts persuaded a ballroom full of people to drink special packets of "Holy Juice" symbolizing the blood and body of Reverend Moon, provided in transparent plastic cups the size of dairy creamer at Denny's. I couldn't get a straight answer about what's in the Holy Juice.... On stage, Mrs. Moon described the creation of a "Peace Police Force," and much of the rhetoric involved replacing the existing United Nations with a second United Nations."

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Post by Lawood »

I just had to share this LTE from an fine, elderly gentleman from Rogers:

Ark Demo-Gaz, June 28, 07

"It may never happen, but imagine what the world would be like if there were no religions. Think of the hostilities that would have no further reason to exist: Protestant vs. Catholic, Sunni vs. Shiite, Christian vs. Muslim, Israel vs. Palestine, Hamas vs. Fatah, and the many other religions and sects that are constantly at each other’s throats. The strongly felt differences are evident in all areas, including within those claiming to adhere to a single faith, like the disparate views of evangelicals and the more moderate followers. Mark Twain said it best: “Man is the religious animal. He is the only... animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.” Those who believe Christianity alone has the answers should consider that, despite over 2, 000 years of trying, Christians constitute only one-third of the world’s population.
JAMES RODERICK GREIG / Rogers

http://www.nwarktimes.com/adg/Editorial/194232/
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Post by Savonarola »

Lawood wrote:[quoting LTE]
Those who believe Christianity alone has the answers should consider that, despite over 2, 000 years of trying, Christians constitute only one-third of the world’s population.
Frankly, I'm disappointed -- perhaps even disgusted -- that it took only 2000 years for such complete malarkey to infect two billion people.
<Physt> If 2 billion people believed in FSM.. we would use ID as the joke.. "YEAH, an invisible man just created everything".."Har har"
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Post by Barbara Fitzpatrick »

Response to the quote from the "fine, elderly gentleman from Rogers" - If it weren't religion it would be something else. The core issue behind religious wars is greed. Religion is just easier - "god" decreed that "his followers" should have the land, money, jobs, etc. But make no mistake, if god hadn't decreed it, somebody else would. Manifest Destiny by any other name is greed. The English and Irish fought for centuries and everybody plays it as religion - but it was only religion as in: protestants had no limits on ownership, catholics couldn't own anything valued at over 5 pounds sterling; protestants could leave their property intact to whoever they wished, catholics' property was split equally among all the deceased's children; protestants had no limitations on jobs they could take or education they could attain, catholics were restricted to what we'd call blue collar jobs and elementary education - and on and on and on, even to what colors the catholics were permitted to wear (for many years green was illegal - that's why the Irish wore it all the time when they immigrated to America). It's not a religious issue. It's a wealth and power issue using religion as an excuse.
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Post by Dardedar »

Nice rant on American Puritanism:

***
"You see, in Europe when they say "nude" they think of artworks in the Louvre, Degas, Michelangelo. They think of Greek sculpture; of the David. The word "nude" in the USA means a centerfold in Playboy or Penthouse.

Even in Asia they have a much clearer understanding of the distinction between the artistic nude and pornography. Sacred spaces throughout Asia are illustrated with Gods copulating and creating life; the life force is what they are depicting. In the USA, the whole concept of morality was founded by Puritans. They got off the Mayflower and never walked very far from Plymouth Rock. Our psyche is still tied to this mode of puritanical thinking. I would love to see this change, but it won't happen in our life time.

The USA seems to be plagued by a disproportionate number of demonizers that find no other engagement between TGIF and Monday Nite Footsieball, so they venture to masturbate in frontof their iMacs to the theme of superputas and pseudo lesbos, but when they hit upon a "family nude beach" they shudder in awe, because naked people in nature are "evil" and unless a woman has a huge cucumber shoved up her anus while sucking the silicon enhanced genitals of queer weekend bikers, -- well "naked people in nature" MUST BE BANNED IN THE USA.

Breaking the link between nudity and sexuality often opens an entirely new dimension of body and self-acceptance. For most people it's an exhilarating realization of physical and spiritual freedom."

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Post by Barbara Fitzpatrick »

That looks more like chocolate than dung and the kid looks a little young to be corrupted. What until he's had a few years sitting on his butt in front of Fox News.
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Post by Dardedar »

DAR
Apparently the Washington Post had an article attacking Christopher Hitchens and his new book. Here is his response. Worth a read:

***
An Atheist Responds

By Christopher Hitchens
Saturday, July 14, 2007; A17

It's uncommonly generous of Michael Gerson[" What Atheists Can't Answer," op-ed, July 13] to refer to me as "intellectually courageous and unfailingly kind," since (a) this might be taken as proof that he hardly knows me and (b) it was he who was so kind when I once rang him to check a scurrilous peacenik rumor that he was a secret convert from Judaism to Christian fundamentalism.

However, it is his own supposedly kindly religion that prevents him from seeing how insulting is the latent suggestion of his position: the appalling insinuation that I would not know right from wrong if I was not supernaturally guided by a celestial dictatorship, which could read and condemn my thoughts and which could also consign me to eternal worshipful bliss (a somewhat hellish idea) or to an actual hell.

Implicit in this ancient chestnut of an argument is the further -- and equally disagreeable -- self-satisfaction that simply assumes, whether or not religion is metaphysically "true," that at least it stands for morality. Those of us who disbelieve in the heavenly dictatorship also reject many of its immoral teachings, which have at different times included the slaughter of other "tribes," the enslavement of the survivors, the mutilation of the genitalia of children, the burning of witches, the condemnation of sexual "deviants" and the eating of certain foods, the opposition to innovations in science and medicine, the mad doctrine of predestination, the deranged accusation against all Jews of the crime of "deicide," the absurdity of "Limbo," the horror of suicide-bombing and jihad, and the ethically dubious notion of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice.

Of course Gerson will -- and must -- cherry-pick this list (which is by no means exhaustive) and patter on about how one mustn't be too literal. But in doing this, he makes a huge concession to the ethical humanism to which he so loftily condescends. The game is given away by his own use of G.K. Chesterton's invocation of Thor. We laugh at this dead god, but were not Norse children told that without Valhalla there would be no courage and no moral example? Isn't it true that Louis Farrakhan's crackpot racist group gets young people off drugs? Doesn't Hamas claim to provide social services to the downtrodden? If you credit any one religion with motivating good deeds, how (without declaring yourself to be sectarian) can you avoid crediting them all? And is not endless warfare between the faiths to be added to the list of horrors I just mentioned? Just look at how the "faith-based" are behaving in today's Iraq.

Here is my challenge. Let Gerson name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first -- I have been asking it for some time -- awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain.

Essentially conceding that philosophy and secularism do not condemn their adherents to lives of unbridled selfishness, and that (say) the Jewish people did not get all the way to Mount Sinai under the impression that murder and theft and perjury were okay, and also that we could not have evolved unless human solidarity was in some way innate, Gerson ends weakly by posing what is a rather moving problem.

"In a world without God," he writes, "this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution but designed for disappointment." Again, he substitutes the wish for the thought. We very probably are, as he admits, not the designed objects of the Big Bang or of the process of natural selection. But this sober conclusion, objective as it is, is surely preferable to the delusion that we have been created diseased, by a capricious despot, and then abruptly commanded to be whole and well, on pain of terror and torture. That sick joke is one that we can cease to find impressive, that belongs in the infancy of our species, and gives a false picture of reality that we would do well to outgrow.
----

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of "God Is Not Great."

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Post by Dardedar »

Religious Book Seller Struck By Lightning

(CBS) HIALEAH A man making a trip from Puerto Rico to South Florida to raise money for his religious education remains hospitalized Monday after he was struck down by a bolt of lightning which flew from clear blue sky on Sunday. He was selling religious materials when he was hit.

Hailu Kidane Marian was working with members of his religious group, selling religious materials door-to-door in a Northwest Miami-Dade neighborhood, when the bolt from the blue struck him down.

"I heard a boom, and I looked and the guy jumped back, and he just laid there, stiff," said witness Maria Martinez.

Paramedics say Marian was not breathing and his heart was not beating when they arrived, but they were able to revive him and rushed him to Jackson Memorial hospital, where he was in critical condition Sunday night.

Members of his religious group waited outside the hospital throughout the night for word of his condition.

"He's unconscious, he's in a coma," said Francisco Perez, leader of the Puerto Rico-based group. "It's difficult what happened, you know, but what can we do? Things happen in life, but we still believe in God."

This is the second incident in as many months of someone being struck down by lightning from a clear sky in South Florida.

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Post by Dardedar »

"The total payouts for abuse cases in dioceses all over America is now over $2 billion, and I imagine much of it came from people who went to Church and bought the invisible product by dropping their hard earned money into the basket. I wonder what those people think when they see that their money got spent on buying the privilege of touching and fucking kids."
"The Business of the Catholic Church" by Bill Maher
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Post by Dardedar »

President of the Christian Action League, 74, Is Arrested after Allegedly Paying Hooker with Checks

Rev. Coy Privette, the president of the Christian Action League, a North Carolina ultraconservative Christian political organization based in Raleigh, has been arrested for soliciting prostitution:

...

For over three decades, Privette has been one of the best known and most outrageous spokesmen for “family values” and Christian extreme right politics in North Carolina. In the 1970s, he was serving as minister at the North Kannapolis Baptist Church when he joined the tide of evangelicals entering politics that included the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition. He served in the N.C. Legislature from 1984 to 1992, and has been a member of the board of commissioners in Cabarrus County since 1998.

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Post by Dardedar »

DAR
From the Jehovah's Witnesses website:


"Jehovah provided a perfect solution"
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Post by Doug »

Darrel wrote:"Jehovah provided a perfect solution"
DOUG
Tell that to the poor bastards that had to die from the first "solution"--drowning the entire planet a la Noah's Flood.

According to the Bible, that was God's first attempt at a solution. And thousands of years later he thought of another solution in which only ONE person died?

And in any case, we have seen how well each solution took care of that pesky sin problem...

Surely any reasonably intelligent being could come up with a more humane solution...

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"Wash Away Your Sins" Soap ...and Bubble Bath


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The moist towelettes seem to work just as well in a pinch.
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