xotan
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Post by xotan on Dec 4, 2010 17:15:54 GMT -5
As an amusement park it should attract taxes and mitigate agains Ham's church haiung an exemption too.
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Nov 18, 2010 17:48:56 GMT -5
So who among fundie preachers would be a possible candidate for antichrist?
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Nov 18, 2010 17:34:18 GMT -5
The Irish situation is odd. The Irish constitution dates to 1937. Fairly recently it was discovered that something in it required legislation against blasphemy, so a law was introduced. As far as I am aware it has still not been enforced. OTOH,if you want blasphemy, go into any bar and it's guaranteed that within 5 minutes thelistener will have heard the words 'fuck and 'Jesus' linked in a conversation. Who can police such a thing?
If I recall correctly, sometime in the 1970s, the editor of the English gay newspaper Gay Times, Dennis Lemon, was jailed on a blasphemy conviction. I wonder is that law still on the English statute book? BTW this was at this instigation of an old biddy who seemed to think she should monitor the morals of everyone. She invoked a law that had fallen into desuetude, and got the conviction from their Lordships. As I see it, monitoring others' morals seems less healthy than concentrating exclusively on one's own personal ones - assuming one has any.
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Oct 23, 2010 6:22:06 GMT -5
The end implication of this denial by churches of any responsiblilty for anti-gay hate is this: the bible is not God's infallible word. I mean, if the media are the ones responsible, then we can no longer rely on Leviticus. Oh the thought of it!
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Oct 23, 2010 6:14:56 GMT -5
It's not just gays that are at risk. A law like this is a handy way to get rid of those you don't like. Just report them as being gay. It's been done before.
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Oct 15, 2010 9:39:03 GMT -5
Reading some of the posts here one would take it that hell and heaven were proved locations/states of being. Unsurprisingly, it's the believer types who seem to favour capital punishment. However, by their own code, a murderer (100% certain - huh? Never can be!) can make a last second appeal to Jesus and go direct to the purported heaven. So, in effect, the punishment is ...what?
Being more pragmatic, I do not believe that there is ever 100% proof, even with the smoking gun in someone's hand. There have been more than enough cases of judicial murder to make reasonable people unhappy with the concept of a death penalty in most places other than America. There the influence of the biblical Eye for an Eye code is a fair indicator that even many of those who claim to be atheist are tainted by biblical thinking.
Perhaps a way to counter this would be to execute juries who bring in wrongful guilty verdicts. In terms of the Lex Talionis it seems only fair that those who are responsibile for death of an innocent should themselves be killed. Fair is fair.
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Oct 15, 2010 9:12:27 GMT -5
I think it's more a question of whether the Bible is inconsistent.
Didn't Solomon hitch to lots of pagan women?
And what about Jacob and his pagan cousins Leah and Rachel?
Let's get real. the Bible is not civil law, nor should it ever be, this side of a theocracy. So the question is redundant to start with.
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Oct 5, 2010 16:43:03 GMT -5
Is America in the 21st century, or is it in a timewarp?
This speaks to me of ignorance on the march. How impoverished the young, fresh, curious and inventive minds of America must be with this sort of carry on.
Roll on theocracy! Roll on Salem Mk II.
Who said that when people start burning book, they soon be burning people. Get the kindling reeady.
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Oct 3, 2010 16:54:33 GMT -5
It really pisses me off when ignorant fundie preachers, mainly American, mess around with my culture (and it's Scotsgit's too!")
Why don't they invent lurid lies about 4th July and take whatever comes their way from sane America.
In Ireland this current month is Deireadh Fomhair in Irish Gaelic. [Scotsgit, do you know is it the same in Scots Gaidhlig?) It means end of harvest. This seems particularly to refer to berries and other fruits. If left on trees or bushes they were likely to be worm-ridden.
As to human sacrifice, yes, it existed. Bodies of the sacrificed have been found in peatbogs in Ireland, but relatively few. There is no great welter of blood such as in Meso America. If there had been, the Romans would have made a lot more of it. Also the monks, when Ireland was christianized, too. Besides, it must be stated that human sacrifice was discontinued in Rome only about the time of Julius Caesar's birth - ca. 100 BCE. And the official name for the slaughter in the Roman arena was 'mundus', sacrifice! It is also debatable if the killing of Vercingetorix, the Gaul, was not human sacrifice.
The point was well made early in the thread that the veil was not with the world of the dead, but with the Otherworld. Irish/Celtic gods lived in parallel with the Gael, there being frequent intercourse between both. This mythology in time became folklore (a lesser mythology), and there are many stories of lone travellers unwittingly interrupting the revels of the Good People (the euhemerized Tuatha De Danaan). They were either punished arbitrarily, or invited to the revel with its wine, food and music, only to awake on the morn with no sign of the revellers of of the revel itself.
But certainly Samhain has nothing to do with witchcraft or devil-worship - concepts unknown to the ancient Celts. It's connection with death is a Christian imposition. That said, I recall that when I was a child, after our games and guising, we helped putting out food and drink for the spirits of our dead family members who, on this night, might just visit their living kin's dwelling. It was a satisfying and happy ritual, not redolent of skeletons or ghosts. These were our people coming back on a visit.
And as Samhain is part of our culture, Fundies, keep your unclean hands and ignorant bigotry off it.
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Oct 3, 2010 15:50:44 GMT -5
Yes, it does get better. that message needs to be hammered home.
I'm in my 60s now and although I suffered a lot from loneliness in my teenage years, somehow I managed to channel that into productive things like music (I play two instruments, compose, sing in a choir, conduct a choir), studies, reading, writing and many other areas that continue to give me great enjoyment in life.
Then one day the loneliness was over. I met my partner, and we have been together now 37 years.
Despite the loneliness, and the obvious fact I was not dating, never in my life have I been taken to task about my sexuality. In fact, I have never encountered any hostility. I lived in Ireland quite openly with my partner and people there certainly knew the score. It didn't stop them inviting us to their parties, weddings, christenings and other events. My choirs here in France don't think it's an issue, and the small village where I live (300 people) are totally accepting.
Of course there is homophobia in Ireland and in France. But it does not have legal or societal approval. This is an indication of the growing cultural difference between these countries, the rest of the Eurounion and the US. This difference is marked in many ways, but for the purpose of this discussion laws in these, and other European countries make the kind of behaviour we read about in American schools illegal here. Here proving one's masculinity is not the big thing that it seems to be in America... One wonders, therefore, what this overstress on being utterly ueber-male signifies in the American psyche?
I fear that until America introduces gender anti-discrimination laws the jocks in schools will still be striving to be be what they already are - male, possibly in fear of being thought anything else, and the reckless and irrresponsible catcalling and stigmatisation will continue with its predictable outcome. In my view, the persecution of those who are different is an expression of an insecurity, probably rooted in Biblical religion.
Has anyone marked out on a map where these suicides are occurring? I would not be surprised if the events clustered in the southern US.
Having had such an easy ride in life with my sexual self-identity, all I can say is thank whatever gods for atheism and the European drift in that direction. All I can hope is that American legislators have the maleness and the balls to introduce laws to protect the country's children. Now that would be a real indication of maleness and having balls! But I fear the US is deeply in denial that homosexuality is as natural and normal as heterosexuality, so the suicides may well be likely to continue.
So, yes, things will get better, but not in American schools unless America acts; and what will be the cost in young lives for any delay?.
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Aug 18, 2010 10:19:36 GMT -5
This is frightening to see: young children corrupted by their parents' blind hate of what most of us consider decent living - nurturing and protecting our own, and then caring for others. These people are not of the human tribe. They are simply dangerously weird.
It amazes me that such monumental hatred and hubris can be construed as religion. Quite frankly, in other parts of the world these people would be regarded as insane, and dealt with appropriately by the authorities. Clearly, in America the destruction of the moral base which should be the foundation of children's inner life and their relations with their outer world is not a matter of concern to the authorities, otherwise those children would have been protected by the state (country) from the insane 'religion' of their parents and grandparents.
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Aug 10, 2010 16:14:06 GMT -5
My partner had been on the receiving end of JW visits. Then one day I opened the door to them and explained politely that we did not welcome their visits, and would they please not call again. Some time later they did call. By chance it was I who opened the door again. This time they were told in the most forthright language that they had been politely requested not to call on one of their past visits, but since they saw fit to ignore politeness they might understand rudeness instead - and I was bloody rude to them.
They have not called since, and that was quite some time ago.
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Jul 31, 2010 8:00:07 GMT -5
Who was it said that where people burn books they soon begin to burn people?
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Jul 31, 2010 7:55:28 GMT -5
Not quite atheist - more an advanced agnostic, I suppose. But I do take on board what Valsa says.
I live in a house that is 300+ years old and although I see nothing, I am aware that come midnight (by the sun - not by the clock) I share the kitchen with someone else. Normally I sit there late and have a glass of milk, do some reading and quiet my thoughts to prepare for sleep. there is nothing unsettling or disturbing about this other presence, which I perceive as female. In fact, I was moved to write about it, and this probably explains the situation best:
Each Other’s Ghost
The house is built of man-carved stone; Three hundred year or more it stands, Cheating Time’s destroying hand, Atop Alaigne’s watchful hill.
Its memories dwell within its walls: Joy, loss, sadness, pain; Former lives may live again, For those who know to see.
And one who loved it keeps her place Beside a hearthstone long effaced. She sits, she knits, quiet, unmoved Aware, almost, of changes there.
She dares to watch and knows to see The future time - she senses me. I too sense, and know she’s there: Each other’s ghost, this place we share.
© May 2009
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xotan
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Post by xotan on Jul 16, 2010 10:47:26 GMT -5
Some scorching remarks on Irish TV last evening on this matter. It is seen as an attempt to divert attention from the child-molestation debate.
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