sparky
Junior Member
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“The way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, bu
Posts: 47
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Post by sparky on Mar 30, 2018 23:01:15 GMT -5
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Post by jdredd on Apr 1, 2018 0:02:30 GMT -5
I wonder how things would be different if the concept of Hell was repudiated? It certainly seems to be an effective recruiting tool for Christians. Join us or cook forever.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 29, 2018 16:28:25 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/world/europe/pope-francis-vatican-roman-catholics-populism.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=7&pgtype=sectionfront"But whereas Pope Francis sees migrants — from Myanmar to Milan — as the primary victims of globalization and unrest, the nationalists on both sides of the Atlantic see them as a hostile, unsettling force. For anti-immigrant populists, the pope simply doesn’t get it. The former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, for example — himself a Catholic — likes to call Francis a communist for his economic policy and the pontiff from Davos for his cultural elitism. In an interview after the Italian election, in which populist parties won the majority of the electorate’s support, Mr. Bannon said that the result was “a big no vote to the Vatican, not to Catholicism, but particularly these policies.” He rubbed his hands together as he added, “Which you know I got to love.” Ha-ha! I knew I loved this Pope. He is pissing off the right people. Not that it's enough to bring me back into the fold. How could I be a member of the same c h u rch as Steve Bannon? Even if I did believe in Heaven and Hell and all that other nonsense.
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Post by jdredd on May 20, 2018 2:15:13 GMT -5
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Post by jdredd on Aug 15, 2018 0:53:05 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/us/catholic-rch-sex-abuse-pennsylvania.html?&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news"Bishops and other leaders of the Roman Catholic rch in Pennsylvania covered up child sexual abuse by more than 300 priests over a period of 70 years, persuading victims not to report the abuse and law enforcement not to investigate it, according to a searing report issued by a grand jury on Tuesday. The report, which covered six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses and found more than 1,000 identifiable victims, is the broadest examination yet by a government agency in the United States of child sexual abuse in the Catholic rch. The report said there are likely thousands more victims whose records were lost or who were too afraid to come forward." Uh-oh, more trouble for my former c hu rch. But what would you expect from a c hurch obsessed with sex (abortion, homosexuality) instead of issues of peace and economic inequality?
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Post by jdredd on Aug 27, 2018 15:44:26 GMT -5
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Post by jdredd on Sept 12, 2018 1:40:27 GMT -5
In the battle between science and religion (Is there? I'm not sure), religion seems to have a disadvantage. Science is making big strides daily, while religion has not had a new idea in years, maybe centuries.
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Post by jdredd on Oct 2, 2018 16:30:21 GMT -5
If I ever changed the name of a thread started by someone else, which I don't, I'd change the name of this one to "The Failure of Religion".
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Post by jdredd on Nov 2, 2018 16:31:40 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/opinion/midterms-christian-right-election-day.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"If Democrats fail to realize their dream of a blue wave in Tuesday’s midterm elections perhaps the biggest factor will be the organizing power of the Christian nationalist movement. “If we do our jobs,” Ralph Reed of the Faith & Freedom Coalition boasted at the Values Voters Summit in September, “they are going to be more shocked than they were the last time.” Among leaders of the Christian right, conversations about 2018 tend to begin with happy memories of 2016. Political commentators may argue that some combination of racism and economic anxieties of the white working class put Mr. Trump over the top, but leaders at the Values Voters Summit took a different view. “If you back the evangelicals out of the white vote, Donald Trump loses whites,” Mr. Reed told the crowd. “If the rapture had occurred, Donald Trump would have lost by the worst landslide since George McGovern.” I'm sure the evilgelicals don't think they have disgraced themselves by being Trumpsuckers. But alleged declining ch-u-rch attendance among young people must have some origin and this may be one factor.
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Post by jdredd on Oct 21, 2020 14:11:25 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/opinion/evangelicals-election-biden.html?action=click&algo=top_conversion&block=trending_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=723479888&impres"The Rev. John Huffman, who once was President Richard Nixon’s pastor, said he has voted Republican all his life but has now joined a group called Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden. He said he prays for Trump but sees him as “an immoral, amoral sociopathic liar who functions from a core of insecure malignant narcissism.” Huffman and others say they are speaking up partly because they fear that Christianity is tarnished and losing ground in the United States because of the strong support Trump receives from many evangelical leaders. (One of them is Duford’s uncle, Franklin Graham, who has claimed that Billy Graham voted for Trump in 2016.) Duford told me her message to the public is, “I’m sorry you have witnessed the same greed and hypocrisy in the rch that you see in the world, but this is not what Jesus is about.”
Christianity tarnished because of it's support for Trump? I wish I could believe that has happened, but I'm skeptical.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 3, 2021 13:54:19 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/opinion/pro-life-movement-14th-amendment.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"The pro-life movement’s multidecade strategy, up to and including its fraught bargain with Donald Trump, appears to have succeeded. Thanks to the Trump White House and Mitch McConnell’s Senate, there is now a 6-to-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, vetted by conservative legal activists and committed to principles of constitutional interpretation that seem to require sweeping Roe v. Wade away, or at least modifying it into obsolescence."
Yes, the religious right could be on the verge of moving America toward a theocracy. No doubt the current court thinks it is morally superior to the one that legalized abortion. I blame that egotistical bitch RBG for not resigning when Obama was Prez.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 12, 2021 12:22:16 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2021/04/10/opinion/sunday/religion-meritocracy-god.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=HomepageADVERTISEMENT "This year the inspiration for the elegies was new data from Gallup showing that for the first time in its decades of polling, fewer than half of Americans claim membership in a rch, synagogue or mosque. The fall has been swift: From 70 percent in 1999 to 47 percent in 2020. And lately the trend has inspired fewer Voltairean hosannas and more anxiety about a future where the impulses of religion are poured into politics instead." "For this column, though, I’ll emphasize the negative: Even if there is a resilience in American religion — especially in evangelical Christianity, still the most numerically robust form of faith — it doesn’t alter institutional faith’s general weakness, its limited influence, its subordinate position to other personal affiliations, from partisanship to ethnic identity to sports or superhero fandom." Gee, if I have to pick between Trump-loving evangelicals and hip superhero fans the choice is not that difficult. But beyond that, the idea that Christianity has any solutions to our problems is in fact problematic. Their gross hypocrisy is part of the problem, and I think young people are seeing that. In fact, Iron Man seems more righteous than Jesus at this point. And as we inch closer to war with China, were are the religious? Not just silent, but cheerleading confrontation, just like they did for the "War on Terror". And their "Christian charity" does not seem to extend to desperate immigrants, they just want a higher wall. They are reaping what they have sown.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 9, 2021 20:00:46 GMT -5
If people ask me if I am a believer or not (which they haven't in years), this is what I would say at this point: The difference between believers and atheists is one word: Believers ask WHO made the universe, and atheists ask WHAT made the universe.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 25, 2021 11:46:22 GMT -5
I commented above on the difference between believers and atheists, and it is on that minuscule difference that believers think your eternity will be decided. On the other hand, many atheists have a sense of superiority based on that tiny difference.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 14, 2021 23:43:41 GMT -5
In today’s NYT Ross makes his pitch for religion. Why? I suspect the same reason libs supposedly want open borders: more voters for his side. But putting that cynicism aside, I’m fairly certain he believes that religious people behave better than the non-religious. Sadly, I see no evidence for that. What I see are supposed Christians blowing up Muslims in Afghanistan for being too Muslim. And I see Christians in this country voting for the most vile candidates. But it’s all an old story, and maybe all comments about religion should go in the Cultural Stagnation thread.
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