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Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 8:06 pm
by Dardedar
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Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 10:00 pm
by Dardedar
PLAYBOY: Why are you an atheist, Mrs. Murray?

MURRAY: Because religion is a crutch, and only the crippled need crutches. I can get around perfectly well on my own two feet, and so can everyone else with a backbone and a grain of common sense. One of the things I did during my 17 years as a psychiatric social worker was go around and find people with mental crutches, and every time I found one, I kicked those goddamn crutches until they flew. You know what happened? Every single one of those people has been able to walk without the crutches -- better, in fact. Were they giving up anything intrinsically valuable? Just their irrational reliance upon superstitions and supernatural nonsense. Perhaps this sort of claptrap was good for the Stone Age, when people actually believed that if they prayed for rain they would get it. But we're a grown-up world now, and it's time to put away childish things. But people don't, because most of them don't even know what atheism is. It's not a negation of anything. You don't have to negate what no one can prove exists. No, atheism is a very positive affirmation of man's ability to think for himself, to do for himself, to find answers to his own problems. I'm thrilled to feel that I can rely on myself totally and absolutely; that my children are being brought up so that when they meet a problem they can't cop out by foisting it off on God. Madalyn Murray's going to solve her own problems, and nobody's going to intervene. It's about time the world got up off its knees and looked at itself in the mirror and said: "Well, we are men. Let's start acting like it."

LINK

Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 11:53 pm
by Dardedar
DAR
So it's not just the Christians that do this:

***
Hindu man chops off his hand to offer to deity
Joanna Sugden

A Hindu man has chopped off his right hand in an offering to his religion's goddess of death.

Rajesh Taipuriya, 23, severed his hand using a kukhuri, a curved Nepalese knife, after a service in Nepal where devotions were offered to the popular deity Kali.

Mr Taipuriya asked the priest to bring him the knife, traditionally used in animal sacrifice, and in one swift motion the stony faced devotee cut off his hand then offered it at the altar of the multi-armed goddess.

A crowd gathered to see the unusual offering lying on the Kali temple floor in Bardesha, while its owner left in a taxi. He survived the amputation and is receiving treatment in a hospital 250 kilometres from the capital Kathmandu.

It was unclear why the young man made the gesture to the goddess who is linked with destruction and is a consort to the Hindu deity Shiva.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 174691.ece

Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 6:52 pm
by Barbara Fitzpatrick
Kali is the goddess of retribution/justice as well as destruction. Admittedly I wouldn't cut off my hand (or any other body part) to offer her - but we could use a little retribution/justice in America and the world.

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 1:58 am
by Doug
Darrel wrote:Rajesh Taipuriya, 23, severed his hand...
DOUG
Just call him "lefty"...

Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 8:37 pm
by Dardedar
CNN has a non-scientific religious poll going right now. Here is how it is going as of 8:30 Wednesday evening (8/22):

Which religion do you associate with?

Christianity 15% 3472
Judaism 3% 812
Islam 1% 336
Buddhism 1% 129
Hinduism 0% 85
Jehovah�s Witnesses 1% 182
Atheism 71% 16622
Agnostic 3% 794
I am spiritual, but of no religion 3% 776
Mine's not listed 1% 300

Total Votes: 23508

At least it shows the atheists are motivated!

Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 9:21 pm
by Savonarola
Darrel wrote:At least it shows the atheists are motivated!
I'm thinking that it just shows that most of the geeky people who spend lots of time surfing the web are atheists. (Of course, I'm hardly on anymore...) After all, how many hardcore, conservative religio-nuts are going to be perusing CNN's website?

Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 11:31 pm
by Doug
Darrel wrote: Atheism 71%
DOUG
That's very high. The number is staying constant, too, with 1000+ more people voting after Dar's post.

Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 6:01 pm
by Barbara Fitzpatrick
'Fraid Sav's right - the poll is flawed because the population it surveyed is heavily skewed towards aetheism (i.e., a majority of intelligent, educated people with access to the internet are aethesists).

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 1:52 am
by Dardedar
Liberal Massachusetts Allows Gay Marriage and Has Lowest Divorce Rate In America

"If blue states care less about moral values, why are divorce rates so low in the bluest of the blue states? It’s a question that intrigues conservatives, as much as it emboldens liberals.

As researchers have noted, the areas of the country where divorce rates are highest are also frequently the areas where many conservative Christians live.

Kentucky, Mississippi and Arkansas, for example, voted overwhelmingly for constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage. But they had three of the highest divorce rates in 2003, based on figures from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics.

The lowest divorce rates are largely in the blue states: the Northeast and the upper Midwest. And the state with the lowest divorce rate was Massachusetts, home to John Kerry, the Kennedys and same-sex marriage.

In 2003, the rate in Massachusetts was 5.7 divorces per 1,000 married people, compared with 10.8 in Kentucky, 11.1 in Mississippi and 12.7 in Arkansas."

New York Times

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:50 pm
by Dardedar
"Of course God is infinite. God is the infinite amount of nonsense one can know about nothing. In case you haven’t found God yet, He’s right there in the dictionary. Hallelujah! All’s right with the world!" --Anon

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:54 pm
by Dardedar
DAR
Catholic payouts for their pedophiles is now over $2 billion:

***
2007-07-15

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The day after the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay a $660 million (¤478.9 million) settlement to hundreds of people who claimed to have been abused by clergy, parishioners attending Sunday Mass at the city’s cathedral reacted with sympathy for victims and disappointment in the church.

[snip]

The settlements push the total amount paid out by the U.S. church since 1950 to more than $2 billion, with about a quarter of that coming from the Los Angeles archdiocese. A judge must sign off on the agreement.


LINK

Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 1:14 pm
by Dardedar
"Security is so seductive, and insecurity is so frightening. But security is always false, and insecurity is always real. No religion can make anyone secure, though it, like the drugs on which our society is so dependent, can give the illusion of security. True religion enables one to grasp life with the radical insecurity and to live it with courage. It does not aid us in the pretense that our insecurities have been taken away."
--JOHN SHELBY SPONG, A New Christianity For a New World, p. 68

Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2007 5:29 pm
by Dardedar
S. African bishop: Condoms tainted with AIDS

"MAPUTO, Mozambique - The head of the Catholic church in Mozambique said on Wednesday he believed some European-made condoms were deliberately tainted with the HIV/AIDS virus to kill African people.

“I know of two countries in Europe who are making condoms with (the) virus on purpose, they want to finish with African people as part of their program to colonize the continent,” Archbishop Francisco Chimoio told Reuters.

“If we are not careful we will finish in one century."

LINK

Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2007 5:40 pm
by Doug
Darrel wrote:S. African bishop: Condoms tainted with AIDS

"MAPUTO, Mozambique - The head of the Catholic church in Mozambique said on Wednesday he believed some European-made condoms were deliberately tainted with the HIV/AIDS virus to kill African people.

“I know of two countries in Europe who are making condoms with (the) virus on purpose, they want to finish with African people as part of their program to colonize the continent,” Archbishop Francisco Chimoio told Reuters.

“If we are not careful we will finish in one century."

LINK
DOUG writes:
Someone ought to put that archidiot in jail. He is intentionally causing suffering and death by his irresponsible and false remarks.

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2007 9:25 pm
by Dardedar
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Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 10:34 am
by Dardedar
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Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:38 pm
by LaWood
From the famous LTEs in Northwest Ark Times Oct 23, 2007"

" Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee ” makes the following commentary on Psalms 14. “ There are many people with Ph. D. ’s teaching in our universities today. Many of them are atheists. I want to say carefully — the lowest that a man can sink in human depravity is to be an atheist. That is what the Word of God says. If you do not believe there is a God, you are a madman; you are crazy. You do not have any real sense. ”
submitted by letter writer John David True / Farmington
http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/Editorial/58533/

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 4:08 pm
by Dardedar
What a precious quote!

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 12:10 pm
by Dardedar
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