From here:
:
BREAKING NEWS THE IRANIAN PASTOR “YOUCEF NADARKHANI” HAS BEEN EXECUTED FOR REFUSING TO DENY CHRIST.
128 thoughts on “So..When Can Christians Expect an Apology From The Muslim World For This?”
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Blogs For Victory 
UPDATE:
The Pastor is reportedly still alive:
http://aclj.org/iran/pastor-youcef-nadarkhani-alive-hanging-reports-false
Leo
FYI
WordPress Takes Down “Bare Naked Islam” Blog After Threats From CAIR
by Jim Hoft on Thursday, December 29, 2011, 6:57 PM
I am glad that he is still alive, and I continue to pray for his safe return. But the fact that he still remains sentenced to death for his faith is a bigger affront than is the burning of an already-desecrated Quran.
When can rational people expect an apology from irrational superstitionistas? Irrationals always become thus the moment they gain political power.
I am glad he is still alive, and I hope the fact-based world community doesn’t just speak out in protest against this ridiculous affront to civilization, but takes action to provide devastating consequences for this kind of irrational behavior, no matter which irrational organization attempts it.
I don’t want religion stamped out any more than I want Hollywood to stop making movies. They both tell beautiful stories of fictional people and times that can be illustrative of the human condition. But that is all they are – beautiful fictions. They must never be allowed to gain political power. But they will. Oh, they will.
Christians and Muslim’s favorite prophet said it well: the truth shall set you free. Not fictional stories of fictional laws laid down by fictional ghost-daddy figures in the sky. The truth shall set you free. Jesus violated Oscar Wilde’s maxim and met an untimely end: “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
A murderous cult filled with murderous lunatics, straight from the pit of Hell.
http://thereligionofpeace.com/
calvin umpteenthg BS FU KMA
the usual BS from some loon who thinks he ls dead and a demon…
calvinumpteenth BS FU ESAD FUBO
Well if you follow the Christian bible these TWO you provide as “evidence” is laughable they are no more followers of Christ than you.
If you follow the KKKoran the MILLIONS slaughtered is THE basis and theme of the murderous cult.
http://thereligionofpeace.com/
Put the Numbers in Perspective
More people are killed by Islamists each year than in all 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition combined.
Islamic terrorists murder more people every day than the Ku Klux Klan has in the last 50 years.
More civilians were killed by Muslim extremists in two hours on September 11th than in the 36 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
19 Muslim hijackers killed more innocents in two hours on September 11th than the number of American criminals executed in the last 65 years.
There is a reason we call it Islamic terrorism, and it isn’t
because we falsely attribute motives to the terrorists, but
because Islam is the stated purpose and aim of the terrorists.
Daniel Greenfield
Islamic Terror Attacks for First Part of 2011
Islamic Terror Attacks for 2010
Islamic Terror Attacks for 2009
Islamic Terror Attacks for 2008
Islamic Terror Attacks for 2007
Islamic Terror Attacks for 2006
Islamic Terror Attacks for 2005
Islamic Terror Attacks for 2004
Islamic Attacks from September 11th, 2001 through 2003
About the List of Terrorist Attacks by Muslims
If we are “at war” with Islam it is not because there is something
wrong with us, but because there is something wrong with Islam.
“I am one of the servants of Allah. We do our duty of fighting for the
sake of the religion of Allah. It is also our duty to send a call to
all the people of the world to enjoy this great light and to
embrace Islam and experience the happiness in Islam.
Our primary mission is nothing but the furthering of this religion.”
Osama bin Laden (1957 – 2011)
calhoun emteenth BS POS BFD
I feel that the people who use Islam to do violence are cut from the same cloth as priests who use religion to rape children.
you are mixing up homosexuals and those who murder them.
As no one believes in a “ghost daddy in the sky” whenever a religious bigot drags out this fictional straw man to try to make people of faith look ridiculous all they do is shine a harsh and unforgiving light not only on their vicious bigotry but on their inherent dishonesty and willingness to lie to support this bigotry.
“kill them all until islam is the only religion”
I challenge anyone who is an apologist for that cult to deny that these exact words cannot be found in qu’ran.
. I don’t not feel that anyone who follows the Prophet Muhammad
then you are a bigger loon loser than I thought and that is HUGE.
Now run along and play in your lil fantasy island of the dead demons and gumdrop computers. ROTFLMFAO
IMNSHO…..worth a repeat.
FL Legislature Considers Outlawing Shariah & Other Foreign Law
“In American courts we need American laws and no other.”
Yessssss from the Great state that has given us the Great Marco Rubio and Allan West!!
Once again America is governed by its people and the Constitution, federally. States can make laws as they see fit for the common good of their citizens.
If Florida can pass a law that Muslim citizens cannot live under Sharia within their own communities then how can the Catholic Church demand federal funds to operate hospitals when all citizens or even employees are not catholic yet demand special consideration?
Then if Vermont decides to outlaw any consideration for catholic beliefs and refused the catholic Church any state funds this would be okay with you?
Cav, the odd conclusions you draw never make valid points, but they are of interest in the way they illustrate the bizarre and chaotic thought processes that undoubtedly also explain your belief that you live in Hell, your primitive economic theories, and your general infatuation with the Left—–all belief systems incompatible with rational thought.
Evidently some of this mental chaos is tangled up in your inability to grasp the difference between civil law and religious belief.
Take a little time to read and understand our Constitution, and ponder the fact that nothing contrary to it is legal.
Sharia law is contrary to it. Sharia law is,therefore, not acceptable under our rule of law.
Find anything in the Constitution that says accepting federal funding is an implicit waiver of 1st Amendment rights and get back to us.
matt zona
i’m with you on sharia
but
when you said
“Evidently some of this mental chaos is tangled up in your inability to grasp the difference between civil law and religious belief.”
???
a picture of rick santorum popped into my head….
::))
While I am not a big fan of Santorum, the media hype over his religion is irrational and agenda driven. As the hype over contraception, which leads me to two questions. Why is it when a democrat can’t win on his record, they constantly throw out distractions? And even more annoying, why are liberals so gullible and always buy it? That last question is rhetorical.
Actually Cluster all those fears people like you and Amazona had about JFK are actually true about Santorum. Kennedy put the needs of America first I am sure Santorum will make a religon based decision and that isn’t how it works in America.
calhoun unteenth AHE AMF FF
I am sure Santorum will make a religon based decision and that isn’t how it works in America.
you PRESUME much for a dead demon in hell forker.
and your declaration of “how things dont work in America” are as LAUGHABLE as you nut cases at the fork are.
Will Santorum be President in November Neocon? Virtually every indicator says that Obama will be reelected no matter who is chosen from the current GOP field.
Well Cav –
Gallup currently has Romney beating Obama
http://www.gallup.com/poll/election.aspx
But more importantly, no one is currently running against Obama, and when the GOP candidate is finally chosen, and the spotlight is then turned onto Obama, I think you will see Romney take an even bigger lead.
I don’t think the voting public will reward Obama for 8% unemployment, $4 gas, a ME in turmoil, dividing Americans along economic and racial lines, and a complete indifference to American exceptionalism
Why is that Cav?? Because you have a crystal ball? Can I borrow that someday?
Oh, so now I was “afraid” of JFK?
An odd response for a Catholic schoolgirl to the possibility of having a Catholic president, don’t you think? Especially for one in a family of Democrats.
Oh, that’s right—thinking never plays a role in your silly spurts of snideness.
But you just go on being “sure” of your delusional paranoid fantasies. Nothing you say makes any difference anyway, you being so dead and all.
…a picture of rick santorum popped into my head…….
I’ll just bet it did. And I’ll bet the voices in your head were telling you he wants to outlaw contraception, too.
The obvious question, at least for most people, would be why anyone would flash on a mental picture of Rick Santorum in response to a comment about not understanding the difference between civil law and religious belief. Surely you’re not one of the brain-dead lemmings who have been sucked in by the invented claim that he wants to impose his personal religious beliefs on the government, are you?
????????
“Rick Santorum would encourage one of his daughters to see a pregnancy created through rape as “a gift of human life” and urge her to not consider an abortion”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/24/rick-santorum-daughter-abortion-rape
Really, you are ok with a religious nut-case like this to be a serious contender for presidency?
canuckg*y
Really, you are ok with a religious nut-case like this to be a serious contender for presidency?
sorry to hear there are NO “religious nuts” who do not want to MURDER their grandchild in Kanada.
shows you leftists as what you are, and more reason to flush liberalism off the face of the earth.
calvin umpteenth BJ AMF FF AHE
you take what? from Whom?
dream on forker, nature takes her course.
what is your “deity” calhoun? who rules in Hell? satan or mooohaMAD?
Oh wait!!
Ah I see, when you have no one to lay blame upon for their choices it’s Nature.
calvin emphisis DMF, FF, AH
no fool, nature is GOD’s FREE will gift to us.To MURDER your own flesh and blood is against God and nature except for muslims, leftist communists, and (atheists. which pretty encompass the other three)
Neither. Constitutional monarchy.
@ neocon1:
You avoided my question.
And I am no leftist.
I just happen to think the GOP has a pathetic selection of canadidates to pick from.
Define “leftist”.
And just what about considering a new human life to be a gift means someone is a “nut-case”?
Yes, we know, the pro-death crowd likes to attach all sorts of conditions on life to determine if THEY find it worthwhile, valuable, or deserving of basic rights. (This is an established pattern of explaining atrocities, usually based on the claim that due to skin color or gender or ethnic background or whatever, the focus of the atrocity is “not really human” anyway so should not expect to be treated as one. In this case, the argument seems to be that the intended victim’s biological father was a bad man, so the victim should die.)
Evidently to people like Canuckguy, the reason the child was conceived is enough to declare that it should be killed. That, or the age of the intended victim, or the degree of selfishness of the gestational creature making the decision–to this kind of person, there seem to be all sorts of criteria for having a life of value.
Life never has intrinsic value. That would be too inconvenient.
I wonder if Canuckguy is as sour and hostile to phrases like every cloud having a silver lining, or when life hands you lemons you make lemonade.
There is something admirable and strong about looking at an unfortunate event, such as rape, and finding something in its outcome that is beautiful. And no, I can’t agree with Canuckguy that a human being can or should be considered disgusting or unworthy of life just because its father was a violent criminal and the act was ugly and unwelcome.
You guys also have the oddest habit of restating events to suit your agendas. So to you, rape is not just an isolated incident in a woman’s life which was frightening, painful and distressing, it is the absolute worst thing that could ever ever happen to her, scarring her for life, and demanding—-DEMANDING, mind you—-the death of the innocent outcome of the event.
Ama: “I never saw anything in any of Mark’s writings that indicated …a human institution (the Church) is necessary for to people be reconciled with God. .. This is a common lie told by anti-Catholics.”
There are so many ex cathedra declarations on this matter by so many popes it’s hard to know where to start. In 1302 Pope Boniface VIII infallibly stated, “With Faith urging us we are forced to believe and to hold the one, holy, Catholic Church and that, apostolic, and we firmly believe and simply confess this (Church) outside which there is no salvation nor remission of sins…” (The Sources of Catholic Dogma; 30th edition, # 468)
In 1442 Pope Eugenius IV reaffirmed this doctrine at the Council of Florence: “It firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews, and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart ‘into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels’, unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock… and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church. (The Sources of Catholic Dogma; 30th edition, # 714)
The same claim regarding the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation was reaffirmed by Pope Gregory XVI in 1832; Pope Pius IX in 1854 and 1863; Pope John XXIII in 1961; Pope John Paul I in 1978; Pope John Paul II in 1981, etc. Again I don’t wish to speak for Mark here, but one would have to be a historically illiterate Catholic to not be aware of this fundamental doctrine. See http://www.catholiccompany.com/sources-catholic-dogma-p1111195/?aid=117&gclid=CNGlv4T30q4CFeQQNAodWiLzAw
dennistooge
CATHOLIC = UNIVERSAL
Yet Catholic catechism teaches that if a person has a sincere belief in a religion, and practices the discipline of that religion to the best of his ability, he is saved.
And, as I have pointed out, a layman can perform some of the sacraments in an emergency.
I guess living within a faith does give you a different perspective than the selective winnowings of outsiders determined to find things with which to condemn that faith.
But you have convinced me of one thing, dennis—you are much happier as a non-Catholic, and may you continue to live in the joy and contentment that choice has evidently brought you.
Ama, I’ve been paying attention to church-state issues for over three decades. I’m not a scholar but have had a longtime interest in religious history too. One thing that continues to surprise me is how little so many people know about their own religious traditions.
With the unchangeable, centuries-old doctrines of actual Catholicism (as distinct from popular perceptions drawn from post-Vatican II Catholicity Lite – and you may be sure that Pope Benedict adheres to the former) there are reasons to want to keep a stout wall between church and state in the U.S. Particularly if we found ourselves with both the executive and judicial branches dominated by adherents to an authoritarian religious sect. It wouldn’t matter to me if it were Islam, Scientology, Catholicism or Protestant Dominionism. Seriously, it’s not the brand; it’s the fact of any authoritarian religious system that presumes such power over the eternal destiny of all humanity that is suspect. I would not tempt it by putting broad secular powers within its reach.
While people here fear and tremble at the idea of Sharia rule (which I maintain is a complete distraction from much more realistic, imminent possibilities), there is reason to fear a western version of authoritarian religious dominance emerging and supplanting the Constitution. There could easily be an historical handshake between Catholicism and Protestantism, if it meant consolidating great political power. The template has existed for centuries, the infrastructure for its enforcement is fully in place, even the legal precedent of suspending habeas corpus is now well established; all it lacks is opportunity. That opportunity could be something like another 9/11 or it could be as mundane as the incremental creep of America’s politics toward the hard right.
Anyone who has read even lightly from Sun Tzu on war and strategy should think long and hard about the art of distraction. This whole Sharia thing is silly – Bardolf (at least I think it was him) put that into perspective here a few weeks ago. Sharia Islam is out there, it exists as an abstraction to Americans. We really do have the luxury of ignoring it – it has zero chance of gaining any traction in the broad American culture. Not so with every other religious entity driven by an appetite for political dominance. And they’re not all Catholics by a long shot – so this isn’t about Catholicism per se.
I’m adamantly opposed to mixing religion of any stripe and politics, precisely because I value our Constitutional freedoms. And because of my attention to these things over time I see that merger as the most profound and realistic threat to those freedoms.
Dennis @ 2:19
It really is a pleasure, Dennis, to read comments that reflect independent and intelligent thought. Responding to a verbal bully in a civil manner can be a chore but you have shown that it can be done with class.
co: “It really is a pleasure, Dennis, to read comments that reflect independent and intelligent thought. Responding to a verbal bully in a civil manner can be a chore but you have shown that it can be done with class.”
Scientific studies have proven that ignorant and incompetent people cannot recognize the ignorance and incompetence of others.
Thanks for proving that once again.
dennis is a pompous bigot who tries to disguise his bigotry as intellectual research into religion, religious history, etc. But when you take the time to peer beneath his facade of religious history, or when it slips a little, all you find is one of those egoists who has decided that he, of all people, has the best if not only perception of the True Meaning of Christ, etc etc etc.
And when you think about it, this boils down to a belief that God must love him more, to have blessed him with the insights and sheer brilliance that He has bestowed upon such a select few.
Every religion consists of human beings trying to do the best they can to make sense of the imponderable. Some do it one way, some another.
We tend to be drawn, due to our own inherent natures, to teachings which encourage or justify those natures. So some are attracted to teachings which glorify and even demand intolerance, violence, and dominance. Some to autocratic theologies, some to ‘whatever’ theologies (such as the Unitarians) and so on. The Catholics I know tend to support the Catholic Church because it is the only Christian faith established by Christ Himself. I’ve known people who have chosen a church because of the social life of the congregation.
Then, after the allegiance is established, the inevitable weaknesses to which Man is so prone often come to the surface. But these do not define the theology, nor do they represent it. They exist parallel to the theology, often in direct contradiction to it. It’s all part and parcel of being imperfect human beings. A true, deep and sincere belief in God does not automatically erase human weakness.
Regarding the effort to conflate the attitude in archaic Christiandom toward the Crusades with the attitude in contemporary Islam toward terrorism committed in the name of Islam, I suggest that we take into consideration the knowledge available to the followers of each belief system at the time the events were (or are) taking place.
When the Crusades were taking place, few people knew what was going on. There was a vague general idea that some Christian soldiers were fighting Muslims as the result of attacks by Muslims on Christians—true as far as it went. But there was no TV, no internet, no medium of communication other than word of mouth. There was little or no exposure of what was being done by a few in the name of Christ, so claiming that there was unanimous support for everything that happened during the Crusades is simply a lie. (And what DID happen has been twisted into historically inaccurate demagoguery by anti-Christians so much of what people think they know, now, simply is not true.)
But now, four or five centuries later, we DO have extensive coverage of the atrocities of Islamic radicalism. We DO have television, newspapers, the internet, radio, telephones. Muslims now DO have access to the harsh ugly realities of Muslim terrorism. And while only a few actually participate, and while many explain that Islam is “a religion of peace” it is hard to find a single Muslim who will go so far as to actually condemn the acts, or the viciousness behind them.
We see interviews with Muslims who say they would never do such a thing, but when pressed to overtly condemn what has happened they back off. I remember a young woman challenging David Horowitz at one of his college speeches, haranguing him about the perception that Islam is violent, passionately insisting that it is in fact a “religion of peace” and claiming that the vast majority of Muslims do not agree with terrorist acts.
Horowitz asked her a simple question: “Do you agree or disagree with the statement by (sorry I don’t remember his name) that he wanted all Jews to return to Israel so they could all be killed at once and not have to be hunted down all over the world?” There was a long silence and then she said, very quietly, “…agree..”
Horowitz said he asks this question of every Muslim apologist who challenges him, and every one of them has agreed with this statement.
You cannot prove that Muslims denounce violence and terrorism just by pointing out that they do not participate in it. When they allow radical mosques to preach violence and terrorism and do nothing about it, when they do not stand up and openly denounce terrorism, when they simply let it flow around them without doing a thing about it, they cannot make a valid claim that it has nothing to do with them.
When a significant number of Muslims DO stand up and actively and specifically denounce radical Islam, DO denounce violence, DO take a real stand, DO state that they do not accept the violent teachings of the Koran as legitimate and binding, DO something other than pretend that passivity is the same as opposition, then there will be a legitimate reason to accept the claim of not approving of the violence.
And, we do need to remember that attitudes and beliefs have changed in four or five centuries. What was accepted as fact three or four hundred years ago is not, now. So an accepted perception of any group or religion or act that took place 450 years ago is simply not applicable to what is perceived now, unless it can be proved that it is.
We don’t support slavery, we don’t issue letters of marque, we don’t prohibit women from voting or owning property, we know that bacteria cause illness and not “humours of the blood”, we know the earth is not flat—the amount of acquired knowledge and altered perceptions since the 1400’s is vast. Any effort to pretend that a belief of that time condemns people of today is simply dishonest and a tactic.
Nice to see that a defense of religious bigotry is defined by CO as “class”.
Well, not nice exactly, but illustrative.
But you have convinced me of one thing, dennis—you are much happier as a non-Catholic, and may you continue to live in the serenity, peace, joy and contentment that choice has evidently brought you.
You people also act as if adding another incident of vicious brutality, that of killing ones’ own helpless infant, will somehow cancel out another, the act of rape.
Interesting. How does that work? A female says to herself “I was brutalized by a selfish and violent man, and my pain will all go away if I can just brutalize someone else, and be just as selfish and violent”?
To paraphrase Charlton Heston: “Random placement gremlins….damn you! Damn you all to hell!”
blowzo
I love the Bible. It’s sooooo illuminative.
I love liberals attempting to quote the “Bible” out of sheer ignorance.
The OLD testament was the Jewish LAW.
The OLD LAW has been fulfilled and no longer is in effect but for historical values.
The NEW area is now under the Grace of Christ and his teachings found in the NEW testament.
do try to keep up ass Klown.
Where is this exactly in the Koran?
I suppose each of the words can be found in the Koran, but the phrase as quoted above doesn’t match anything from a google search.
Sure it does Bardolf. Sure you are looking in the right place?
GMB
Since the Koran has been divided and subdivided I was thinking your quote matched chapter and verse.
I don’t spend enough time reading scriptures, why would I dig through the Koran?
” why would I dig through the Koran?”
To understand those who consider you the enemy? To understand those who consider you less than human? To understand those that consider you a second or third class person?
To know those whos goal, like the leftys, is power over everyone else?
Knowledge is power, right?
GMB
All valid points IF bigger dangers were not closer at hand. But, the Ottomans aren’t knocking on the doors of Vienna and as Mark Noonan would say the battle of Lepanto was more than 400 years ago.
Many more posters on B4V will lose the fight with obesity induced diabetes than die at the hands of Muslims. More will die of cancer brought on by smoking than beheaded by jihadis. Many more will die of cirrhosis of the liver brought on by alcohol than some Koran toting dummkoph.
baldork
I hear stories of Jews saying thing about the nazis in the early days.
I wonder what concerned the people of Nagasaki? That more people would die of ingesting poorly prepared pufferfish than….oh, never mind.
Amy and Neoconehead missed something in their analysis. (no surprise there, dementia and all)
The Jews and Japanese were weaker militarily in the situations. The USA has 30000 nuclear bombs, easily enough to wipe out the entire Mid East. SOOOOOO, only suicide type attacks are possible to create US casualties (also pointless invasions). Odds of being killed by terrorist slim compared to auto accident or heart disease.
Odds of Sharia Law in US nil.
But dolf completely misstates our comments—dementia? Or just determined obtuseness?
He tried one of his foolish comparisons, which of course made no sense at all, but which consisted of references to Ottomans knocking on doors of Vienna, the battle of Lepanto, the dangers of diabetes, cancer and cirrhosis, and made the point that all of these pose greater dangers than that of Islamic jihad.
neo and I merely pointed out that others have ignored threats which then materialized, and suddenly dolf is blithering about military weakness and nuclear strength.
?????????
And he seems quite proud of this: SOOOOOO, only suicide type attacks are possible to create US casualties (also pointless invasions).
But as usual he is absolutely clueless.
Yes, as an individual living in Colorado I face many more threats to my person than an encounter with a radical jihadist who wants to cut off my head. Duh. One of them, increasing all the time, is that of an irreversible eyeroll, from reading one too many of dolf’s blitherings and ditherings.
All I get from this latest foray into dolfisms is that dolf lives in a dolf-centric little world in which, if a jihadist does not venture into the staked plains of eastern New Mexico to go after him personally, then who the hell cares what else they do, where, and to whom?
And jihad is not just about going after one person at a time. Nor is it about a survivable attack, or an “invasion” which would be pointless only if viewed from the old perspective of invasion for the purpose of conquest instead of the Islamic version of invasion for the purpose of destruction.
Personally, I consider at threat to any American as a threat, period. No, change that, as jihad threatens not only Americans but anyone who does not subscribe to Islam. For now. If jihad succeeds in wiping out those who do not subscribe to Islam it will then turn on those who do not subscribe to the correct form of Islam, and then on those who do not worship properly, etc.
But dolf can huddle down in a corner of the math department, with a bottle of zinfandel and some Danish brie, and ignore the simple fact that jihad HAS killed thousands just in the past decade or so, and has the goal of killing millions more, and has the means to do so once Iran gets nuclear weapons. Call me quirky if you will, but when people say “I will kill you if I can” and then proceed to kill when they can, I tend to think they will kill when they can.
They both tell beautiful stories of fictional people and times that can be illustrative of the human condition. – bozo
Jesus was a fictional person?? Wouldn’t it seem odd that our modern concept of time is based on the life of a fictional person?
Aside from bozo’s absurd assertion and Cavilors moral relativism, it is quite obvious that in our current day, Islam has been the Faith that has caused so much turmoil. Not knowing a great deal as to the tenets of the Islam, I still have to think that this religion has been hijacked by an extreme element that needs to be confronted and defeated. What is troubling is the silence of the “moderates” within the religion, which as time goes on makes one wonder as to how “moderate” they really are. Is it possible that all Muslims support jihad whether in silence or not? If that’s the case, then we are in real trouble. It’s estimated that approx. 8% of all Muslims are radicalized, but with a Muslim population of over a billion, that small percentage represents a hell of a lot jihadists.
Remember, in the freak-centric world of freakzo, there is no power greater than he. He is the end-all and be-all of his random and meaningless presence on this earth, and he is eager to illustrate hIs total irrelevance to anything at every opportunity.
I happen to agree with him in his personal evaluation of his own insignificance as a human being—–I just see this as a choice, driven by fear of the implications of the existence of a Higher Power rather than evidence that there is no Higher Power.
cluster
. Not knowing a great deal as to the tenets of the Islam, I still have to think that this religion has been hijacked by an extreme element that needs to be confronted and defeated
maybe this will help…….
The Basics of the Political System in Islam (part 1 of 2): Islam a Total Way of Life
http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/224/
“All who will live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” 2 Timothy 3:12.
“There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.” Hebrews 11:35-38.
It’s an atrocity to persecute or kill anyone for their religious faith, but it’s a very old story. It was institutionalized during the Roman empire and medieval inquisitions. For various reasons the historical progress of Islam has proceeded at a different pace from ours. We should not expect an apology, but this does not justify hatred, insults or treatment in kind. How many deaths of Iraqi or Afghan civilians by American troops or security forces have been motivated by hatred of Islam? At least some, that’s certain. The Christian response to persecution is to “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you.”
That is a very high challenge, but it’s the unambiguous command of Jesus Christ. Some of the pastor’s tormenters may be turned to belief in Christ because of his example. Witnessing the stoning of Stephen preceded the apostle Paul’s transformation from Roman persecutor into Christian. He later was martyred as well. (That’s not fiction, Bozo – it’s history). Pastor Nadarkhani is a true hero in a very long tradition, and he’s looking far beyond the present moment. He is not afraid to die because he knows who will be greeting him at the resurrection.
Now Dennis is claiming that religious persecution began or was at least ” institutionalized” during ” the Roman empire and medieval inquisitions”—-in other words, contemporaneously with the advent of Christianity.
He is as historically illiterate as he is politically illiterate, and quite hostile to Christianity as well, no matter how fervently he declares his own Christianity and quotes Scripture.
He is quite a tiresome little bigot.
I too have grown very tired of Dennis’s faux Christianity and sanctimonious bullshit. He clearly hates Christianity taking every opportunity to point out it’s short comings or to lecture those who do choose to follow Christ, and I am convinced that his true self lies in his undying defense of innocent Arabs caught in chaos. I only wish that Dennis had the gray matter to understand that the very people he pity’s are the very people that won’t stand up and do anything about it, and are the very same people that actually could do something about it.
Just as many Jews are liberals first and Jews second, I suspect that Dennis is a liberal first and a Christian second.
Religious persecution from the Catholic faith happened several hundred years ago.
Who NOW shows true religious persecution by a) actively forcing religious law on its believers, punishing those who abandon the faith by pain of death and looking to establish a theocracy and b) which ideology wants to use the force of law to force individuals to act against their beliefs and looking to suppress reigion and/or religious icons of most faiths except the one from (a) that they are afraid of offending????
Denny is a drone, regurgitating the same crap that (b) pushes constantly regardless of the guarantees of the first amendment, nothing more.
I think dennis is one of those “Christians” who is convinced that for some reason, out of the billions and billions who have lived on this planet, only a very very few really understand the teachings of Christ, and of course he is one of the select enlightened.
And he’s probably not too sure about the others.
Oddly, his perception of the teachings of Christ include all sorts of things Christ has never been quoted as saying, such as the spiritual requirement of taking other people’s money to give to “the poor”.
And he’s not too big on redemption or forgiveness either, and as for tolerance, forgeddaboudit.
Every belief system has had some nuts who have committed atrocities in the name of their chosen belief system.
The most notable of these belief systems which have led to serious atrocities is the Leftist political model, a political system which has also replaced a belief in God to become a two-fer belief system. The thing is, the savagery of the Leftist system has never been just the acts of a few nuts—it has been part and parcel of the system itself, just as the savagery of Islam is part and parcel of its integral dogma.
It meets all the criteria of a belief system. First, it is dependent on faith, without the need for empirical proofs. It offers a sense of spiritual superiority, usually by demonizing those who do not follow it. It provides a mechanism for redemption—-if you can save the poor/the planet/the polar bears you too will be saved.
And it has, over the past century, butchered tens of millions to gain power.
Those silly Christians, with their handful of inquisition deaths, are so far behind the curve they aren’t even in the same game.
This thread is about a Christian pastor under threat of execution for his faith. B4V homies adamantly defend Christianity and will rip with a vegeance anyone who refutes it. But there’s this huge gap between so much of what you say, and how the Bible teaches followers of Christ to live and relate to others. I don’t find any biblical underpinning to much of anything on this blog, and only quote scripture as a reality check with what you claim is your belief system. Is it really? Do you actually believe what Jesus and the apostles taught, not just Psalm 109 (neocon) and the passages about homosexuals?
Why would any Christian find it offensive for someone to cite what the Bible says about persecution in the context of this topic? Seriously, in a situation of this gravity why not address the matter in more depth from a Christian perspective, instead of insulting someone else who tries to do so? Is this posting for thoughtful discourse to show support for a brother under persecution, or just another excuse for bashing people you hate?
Why would any Christian find it offensive for someone to cite what the Bible says about persecution in the context of this topic? Seriously, in a situation of this gravity why not address the matter in more depth from a Christian perspective, instead of insulting someone else who tries to do so? Is this posting for thoughtful discourse to show support for a brother under persecution, or just another excuse for bashing people you hate?…Dennis
————————————————————-
I would go with the latter, Dennis, since no one addressed the point of your post but did attack you personally; something Amazona is constantly railing against in others, but seems to have absolutely no problem in doing herself at every opportunity. In this case, you’ll notice that she calls you historically illiterate but does nothing to disprove your statements; just more of her usual personal insults. Sad to see this type of behavior in someone who professes to be a true Christian with a superior intellect and the ability to engage in political discourse in a civil & knowledgeable manner.
B4V homies adamantly defend Christianity and will rip with a vegeance anyone who refutes it. – dennis
That’s not even close to true. On most occasions dennis, your anti christian screeds go unchallenged, and never once has any B4V’er denied the fact that some MEN have tainted the religion of christianity in the past.
But there’s this huge gap between so much of what you say, and how the Bible teaches followers of Christ to live and relate to others. – dennis
Again, untrue. The Bible is very clear on the need for Chiristians to rise up against to, and confront evil. And with an estimated 800,000 radicalized Islamic jihadists, I’d say that there is a lot of evil to confront, so you may have to set aside your hyper sensitivities and passive understanding of what Christ actually stood for, and let the real christians fight this battle. I, for one, am up for it.
And here comes CO galloping in again, whining and bleating.
No, I did NOT list, in detail, the centuries of attacks on people of one belief by people of another, prior to Christianity. I also did not list the attacks on people of one belief by people of another which did not involve Christianity. This is a blog, not an encyclopedia.
You are trying to play another dishonest game, that of pretending that if one does not veer off course and offer detailed proofs of something that something does not exist. The goal, of course, is to shift the discourse to something else entirely, and it won’t work.
And there is a cumulative effect of posts here. In dennis’s case, it is based on things like his antipathy toward mainstream Christianity, his snarling at the old bogey-man of the dreaded “religious Right”, his love for the writings of Francis Schaffer, his constant lecturing on the Only True Path, etc. So when he tries the crap of pretending that religious persecution really only developed to any significant degree—-became ” ‘institutionalized’ during the Roman empire and medieval inquisitions”—it is just more of the same.
If dennis wants to lecture us on the evils of religious persecution and can do so without dragging in his biases and bigotry, I am sure he can do so unmolested. But when he tries to slip in his biases and bigotry about the aspects of Christianity he simply cannot stand, he will be called on it.
Just as you are called on your own biases and bigotry and political ignorance.
CO, as an example of calling you on YOUR lies, here is one: You say of me: …someone who professes to be a true Christian…”
Yet I have never, ever, made any reference whatsoever to my personal religious beliefs here on this blog or anywhere where any of you might have seen it.
You just make stuff up and then go howling after your own inventions. Fun to watch, but of no value.
However, I DO lay claim to “….the ability to engage in political discourse in a civil & knowledgeable manner.” and I do so regularly, at least with people who are also engaged in political discourse and not just railing against imaginary Others, or carrying on about personality, events and identity.
Feel up to trying that, just for a change?
Ah, it’s all over the place, here, too. When a “Leftist” does something, it is because he is a “Leftist”, but when a Christian or Conservative does something, it is because he is not a Christian or Conservative. It’s the No True Scotsman fallacy, only for some reason only you are allowed to use it.
swifty whimpers: When a “Leftist” does something, it is because he is a “Leftist”, but when a Christian or Conservative does something, it is because he is not a Christian or Conservative.
Well, it depends on the “something”. If a Leftist robs a bank, it is probably not because of his political allegiance, but because he is a crook. But if he supports Leftist agendas and policies, then yes, there is a link. If a Conservative does ‘something’ unrelated to his political convictions, then whatever he did is, well, to put it simply, unrelated to his political convictions. If a Christian violates a tenet of his faith, he did not do so BECAUSE he is a Christian, but in spite of it.
When a person does something which is based on a political philosophy, he is likely to identified with that philosophy, even if he is personally ignorant of the ideology itself and is merely attracted to the superficial promises and illusions it offers.
So when a person engages in actions or statements consistent with Leftist ideology, he is likely to be identified as a Leftist.
When a person does something which is not in any way connected with a political philosophy, his actions or words are completely independent of his political allegiance.
I know it is impossible for those whose politics are based on personality, events and identity to grasp this, but it’s just the way it is.
Thanks for yet another example of your conflation of events and ideology. You guys are doing a stellar job of illustrating, in great detail, the origins of your political allegiance, and so far it has been exclusively one of Identity Politics. At least here there has never been a discussion of the merits of your chosen political system, a defense of it based on its historical successes, or an explanation of why you think the Constitutional system of American government has not and will not work.
“swifty whimpers”
I notice that you spend a lot of time throwing around juvenile little jabs like this. In fact, most of the people here do. What purpose does it serve? Does it make you feel better about yourself to belittle others? Certainly you understand rationally that it undermines any other point you are trying to make, right?
I just call it like I see it, and all I see from you guys is either whining or snarling.
If you have a political comment, based upon a coherent political theory you can actually define and even defend, then go for it.
But your post was a “poor me, victim me” whimper about how unfair it is that when people do or say things in support of Leftist agendas or policies they are labeled Leftists, but when Conservatives or Christians do or say things that are totally unrelated to politics or religion their actions or deeds are not blamed on their politics or their religion.
Don’t like being called a whimperer, then man up and stop whimpering.
And no, noticing whimpering is hardly the same as enjoying commenting on it. I’m sure it would be terribly convenient for you to believe that if someone notices and comments on your whining it cancels out whatever else they have to say. But sorry, Bub, it doesn’t. If you say something stupid it is stupid, whether or not anyone comments on it.
You guys really do have a hard time sorting out cause and effect, don’t you?
I find it amazing that you can post this and almost at the same time go on at length about how sophomoric my ideas are. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that posting in “a political blog for adults” meant that I should avoid high level concepts like game theory in favor of a crass, condescending tone.
No, you should avoid trying to post what you so proudly call “…..high level concepts like game theory….” in favor of an actual discussion of politics.
You can show off your freshman larnin’ in game theory, string theory, or the theory of what’s happenin’ now, but it will all be irrelevant when asked for your POLITICAL THEORY.
That’s what I asked for, and that is what was so patently lacking in your silly, convoluted, effort to appear oh-so-smart while ducking and dodging the simple question of which of the two currently opposing political systems in the United States do you support, and why. Hell, you couldn’t even define either one of them, much less explain why it would be the better or worse form of governance.
But kudos on taking that game theory course. I’ll bet it soothes your ego to consider it a “high level concept”. Is it part of a “studies” program that will prepare you for nothing more than life as a clueless Lefty supporter and burger flipper?
But I’m fair, so I’ll give you another shot at it. Tell us, please, which of the two currently opposing political models you believe will be the better model for governing the United States, and why. If you can handle this, we can go on from that point to definitions of the two models and examination of their respective historical successes and failures—you know, the kind of objective evaluation that the not-so-emotionally-driven use to make THEIR decisions on how best to run the country.
Your contempt for education is duly noted. Just so you have some idea of how many of your blind guesses about my character and history were accurate, I’m currently working as a software engineer, I haven’t been at a university in years, and I’ve never taken a class in game theory. Weighing governmental systems is an exercise in analyzing abstract systems, and it just so happens that game theory is a framework well suited to identifying systemic influences on people’s behavior. I don’t expect you to have to use the same tools I do in your own decision making process, so I would appreciate it if you didn’t try to dictate what tools I use in mine, especially in the superior tone that you are taking.
I don’t find any biblical underpinning to much of anything on this blog,
Really? Do you think this might be because it is not a Bible Blog?
You have clearly wandered astray, and need to find your way back to religious blogdom. This is and always has been a political blog, and if you can’t sort out the difference between politics and religion, or if you somehow got misled into thinking this was a place to harangue people about religion, then you have simply made a mistake.
But it’s not too late to correct it. I am sure the internet is rife with places for people like you to obsess about the REAL meaning of whatever.
This kind of religious persecution is unjustified and I’m very glad to know the pastor is safe and unharmed. Having said that, since this story is merely being used to paint all of Islam as murderous, fanatical lunatics, might I remind you all that the religion you practice has no high horse in which to ride upon: the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, the KKK; all of these instances bear examples of radical Christianity oppressing and/or killing in the name of their deity. Religious fanaticism runs both ways.
No,no, no, you silly silly bigoted twit—-all of these instances DO NOT “bear examples of radical Christianity oppressing and/or killing in the name of their deity.”
What they DO “bear” is instances of individuals veering wildly from the teachings of their religion.
But the religion you hate and attack has never instructed its followers to kill all who do not also follow it—a distinction you people simply overlook in your pursuit of anti-Christian bigotry.
It is not surprising that you muddle the actions of a few into a condemnation of the whole—people whose entire political purview is based on personality, events and identity are hardly likely to have a different perspective of a disliked religion.
Do we just ignore the Old Testament when we talk about these things? Because I am pretty sure it is absolutely littered with references to murdering infidels.
I also like the constant struggle to include anybody who ever spoke positively about anything from social programs to communism in The Left(tm) while simultaneously trying to get exceptions for every person who self-identifies as part of one of your personal groups who might reflect poorly on the group. There’s a problem, though. Many of those historical events were caused by majority and/or systemic opinions at the time. Are you going to argue that the various Popes who encouraged the Crusades were outliers and not really reflective of the religion?
Last I checked, a Pope is flesh and blood as well. Why does the left always conflate the abhorrent actions of MEN with that of the doctrine of Faith? That is of course only when applied to Christianity. Liberals would never conflate the actions of jihadists with the doctrine of Islam – that would take actual courage.
My whole point was that it is a double standard. Denounce the jihadists, but repeatedly bashing the whole religion when there are many adherents that have done nothing wrong, in my opinion, opens you and your religion up to the same scrutiny.
Are members of a religion to be judged by the action of other practitioners or not? If you have to know which religion I’m talking about to answer the question, you have no interest in religious tolerance.
Jonathan,
Any time “other” men interpret the Word, human bias always perverts the message – that is why I am not a big fan of organized religion. And yes, when speaking of the “big pictures” of Faith it would be necessary to include the Crusades, etc, when speaking of Christianity, however those events did happen in another era, as opposed to the current murderous rampage Islamist jihadists are on so that is why it’s really important to STAY FOCUSED.
You and dennis would prefer to wallow in relativism rather than face reality.
Were all Christians alive during the Crusades guilty of the atrocities the Crusaders perpetrated?
jonny slow
The Crusades was a WAR with the butchers of islam.
not much has changed.
PS
the OLD testament was of the law, the law has passed away and we are under the NEW Testament, the OLD is for historical reading only.
do try to keep up stooge.
Cluster, I think it is increasingly evident that the kind of mindset that makes some people such suckers for Identity Politics is what makes them suckers for Identity Religion.
If you can’t even take the time to research and understand a political philosophy, which can probably be summed up a few paragraphs, you are hardly likely to have the energy or intellect to bother to understand religious dogma.
So they will think that personalities, events and scandals ARE religion, and what’s more will keep posting here to remind us of the shallowness of their “understanding”. They stay on the surface, so they think the surface is all there is.
In case you had forgotten, the Crusaders did an excellent job of massacring Jews during the Crusades, not just Muslims.
They also committed all sorts of atrocities, while Saladin became well known as a great example of chivalry.
Your bigotry is showing.
Amazona,
I get it. When people make overly broad statements about Islam, it is just true, but when anybody responds by applying the same logic to Christianity to demonstrate why it doesn’t make sense, then it is “Identity Religion”, whatever that means. Your ability to hide from having to legitimately defend your positions is stunning.
not-so swift whines about his perception that people who, according to him, “…ever spoke positively about anything from social programs to communism (are considered )The Left..” yet he refuses to explain his political philosophy, as do others who also voice support of Leftist ideals and agendas.
Naturally he has to falsely assert that any passing comment which is not hostile to the Left condemns one to be considered a Lefty, but then people like him tend to go to great extremes to either hide their ideology or disguise the fact that it consists of nothing but superficial attraction to superficial aspects of that ideology.
Without a coherent statement of political belief, we are pretty much stuck with the “walks like a duck, quacks like a duck..” methodology for figuring out where people stand on political matters.
But you just keep trying to conflate your superficial concept of politics, which is based on personality, scandal and events, with actual political philosophy. This seems to be your comfort level.
When people do things for political reasons, their actions indicate their political positions. When people do things that are not based on politics, then what they do has nothing to do with their political position.
Sorry this is too complicated for you.
Another thing that seems to bumfuddle you is the passage of time. Lots of things were accepted a few hundred years ago that are not, now. Constantly going back hundreds of years to try to generate some kind of argument, since there’s nothing current you can cite, is just dumb.
Yes, there was a time when all of Christianity was headed by Popes, before Luther and the separation of the Church into various factions. Yes, there was a time when Christianity was at war with Islam. No, Christians did not pick this fight, it was not oppression, it was not proof of evils of Christianity, etc etc. But most of all, it was a long long time ago, and hardly relevant to anything we are talking about now.
Now, in this time, many Muslims are dedicated to ending anything that represents, to them, Western civilization. Most are not active in this pursuit, but do not stand up against it, either. Those who speak out against it are thought of differently than are those who hide behind the claim of not actively participating, but who do not speak out, do not report radical teachings in their mosques, etc. Straddling the line between jihad and what is called peaceful Islam is the same thing as supporting jihad.
“not-so swift whines about his perception that people who, according to him, “…ever spoke positively about anything from social programs to communism (are considered )The Left..” yet he refuses to explain his political philosophy, as do others who also voice support of Leftist ideals and agendas.”
Amusingly, this is apparently such a canned response for you that you forgot to even ask me to explain my political philosophy before carrying on at length about my refusal to explain it. Do you copy and paste this same garbage into every conversation where you don’t have any legitimate points to make?
And I cite historical transgressions specifically to highlight that using them as a basis for any sort of opinion on all Christians, modern or contemporary to the poor behavior, is ridiculous. All I’m looking for is an explanation as to why Christians living during but not participating in the Crusades are different from Muslims living in modern times who are not involved in any jihad movement. Or maybe you don’t think they are different, and that’s fine too. What doesn’t work for me is the perception that they are different based on pure xenophobia.
swifty, you have my deepest and most sincere apologies for failing to ask YOU, personally, to describe and explain your political philosophy. I’m actually quite thrilled to see what appears to be a willingness to do so—-such a nice change from the six years or so of people refusing to do so when asked.
Please—you have the floor. Please tell us what your political philosophy is, and why. Just be informed in advance that here, a wish list of “world peace” and “equality” and such do not qualify as political philosophy.
Here we are talking about the best blueprint for governing the United States of America. Just to simplify things in advance, at the time we have only two basic political choices. One is the Constitutional model, based (!) on adherence to the Constitution of the United States of America, a model in which the scope and power of federal authority are severely restricted and the bulk of power and authority rest with state and local governments. The other is, to describe it without labeling it, the opposite.
Once a coherent political philosophy has been established, defined and defended, then and only then can we move on to what we want it to accomplish.
Thanks in advance for volunteering to be the first non-Conservative on this blog to define and defend your political ideology. You are a welcome addition to the roster. I’m looking forward to a calm, respectful, rational discussion on the merits of each system as well as its defects.
BTW, swifty, it is also counterproductive to delve back into history to try to define contemporaneous policies and institutions based on what they may have done, or represented, decades and particularly centuries ago.
We have covered, in great detail and depth, over the years, the evolution and changes in various institutions, such as Christianity, over the centuries, and when the current ideology of any group is unrelated to its historical actions there is simply no benefit in trying to conflate what was with what is.
“BTW, swifty, it is also counterproductive to delve back into history to try to define contemporaneous policies and institutions based on what they may have done, or represented, decades and particularly centuries ago.
We have covered, in great detail and depth, over the years, the evolution and changes in various institutions, such as Christianity, over the centuries, and when the current ideology of any group is unrelated to its historical actions there is simply no benefit in trying to conflate what was with what is.”
Great. Then I assume you’ll never have cause to conflate any modern political movement with anything historical “leftists”, such as Mao Zedong, Stalin, or Marx have said or done.
“Here we are talking about the best blueprint for governing the United States of America. Just to simplify things in advance, at the time we have only two basic political choices. One is the Constitutional model, based (!) on adherence to the Constitution of the United States of America, a model in which the scope and power of federal authority are severely restricted and the bulk of power and authority rest with state and local governments. The other is, to describe it without labeling it, the opposite.”
It’s nice of you to try to control the conversation by trying to artificially limit my choices, but I’m not interested in playing that game. I’ll explain my core reasoning, and I’ll let you take care of trying to force what I have to say into whatever definition you want.
A democratic government, at its core, addresses two main concerns. The first is a set of problems that all closely relate to the Tragedy of the Commons (or, put in terms of game theory, a Prisoner’s Dilemma). There are many situations where we as a nation achieve an optimal result by cooperating, but any particular individual can frequently achieve personally better results by cheating everyone else. If we can agree to work together, we come off great, but if we don’t have any way to assure cooperation, the only way to protect ourselves is by trying to cheat everyone else, first.
The second problem is that power attracts power. An anarchic system, left to its own devices, necessarily leads to power consolidation and eventually degenerates into some form of dictatorship (usually hereditary) or at least a centrally empowered oligarchy/theocracy.
A democratic government is a useful tool to circumvent both pitfalls, and roughly through the same mechanism. If you and I sign a contract together but there is no enforcement besides whatever guns I have in my closet, then we both have very little guarantee that the contract will be fulfilled and have every reason to cheat each other. What we do instead is generate an external system that we both agree to cede control to, at which point we take the power to break the contract out of our own hands and therefore can act in good faith with a high likelihood that we won’t be cheated. Similarly, the borders can be defended, roads can be built, and education can be provided without having to rely on voluntary contributions, where the incentive is not contribute and hope everybody else will contribute enough that you still get the benefit.
The government we just made can also prevent the consolidation of power that eventually leads to the many being forced into servitude for the few.
There are a whole lot of specific implementation details I’ve not gone into, and a whole lot of potential for abuse not addressed, but I feel like I’m getting long winded here, so I’ll leave those for another time.
Yeah, you WERE getting long-winded, and in the process saying pretty much nothing. Oh, there was some babble from a PolySci 101 course or some such thing, but nothing at all relevant to the best way to govern the United States of America.
But given your wordy evasions, I can see why you want to avoid being pinned down to anything even remotely related to our current choices of government.
First, your effort to exclude …. anything historical “leftists”, such as Mao Zedong, Stalin, or Marx have said or done….” because what they DID was in the past is silly. Their atrocities were not only in the very recent past, they were directly related to their political philosophy, clearly stated over and over again, which is alive and well to this day. The same cannot be said about the Crusades, for example, or any of the other very very historically distant events you seem to find so compelling.
(I expected you to try this and was just waiting to see if you were really dumb enough to try.)
We are talking about American politics, about the best available political system for governing the United States of America. To do this we have to go back at least 240 years, to right before our Declaration of Independence and the official origins of one of the political systems vying for power in contemporary America. We have to look at the opposing system of government, which was founded near the beginning of the 20th Century, by Karl Marx, and put into play by such as Mao and Stalin.
THESE are relevant to the discussion, because THESE are the systems from which we have to choose today.
You can blather on all you want to about a “democratic government” but we don’t have one, we never have had one, and God willing we never will have one. Pull your head out of freshman philosophy and study the writings of the Founding Fathers and their contemporaries to learn what they thought of “democratic government” and why they were too smart to put one together.
You can try to drag in anything else you want, too, but it will all be at least as irrelevant. You might as well lecture on Klingon politics, or the political system of Narnia.
The simple fact is, there are two, and only two, basic political models vying for power in 21st Century America. One is, at its core, the one created in the mid-18th Century and codified in our Constitution. One was created by Marx and Engels and put into play by such as Mao and Stalin. When you strip all political rhetoric in this nation down to its essential core, this is what you end up with.
So to be politically relevant you have to first understand these two systems, then choose one, and then be educated and committed enough to explain it to others and defend it.
Any silly effort to appear worldly, educated, intellectual and politically savvy by expounding on any other system or concept is really just a transparent effort to avoid doing these things.
Tragedy of the Commons !! A Prisoner’s Dilemma !! pish tosh. This is a political blog for adults, not a freshman paper in which you try to impress a TA by regurgitating a lot of pompous theory.
All I see is a determination to avoid a relevant discussion of current political choices based on an evaluation of the relative merits and defects of the two available systems. This could be based on ignorance of the two systems, which is pretty likely, but I think there is also a deep reluctance to openly espouse a system which cannot be defended on its merits but only condemned based on its history of unrelenting failure. I think on some level you know this, and know that you still cling to the emotional gratification you get from hating an imagined Other and sniping at it, and realize that an objective discussion of objective fact will make it harder for you to justify your emotional resonance with the airy-fairy promises of the Left.
“Yeah, you WERE getting long-winded, and in the process saying pretty much nothing. Oh, there was some babble from a PolySci 101 course or some such thing, but nothing at all relevant to the best way to govern the United States of America.”
Hey, at least I managed to define the core of my political reasoning in terms other than a desperate grab a claim at loving the Constitution more than anybody else.
“First, your effort to exclude …. anything historical “leftists”, such as Mao Zedong, Stalin, or Marx have said or done….” because what they DID was in the past is silly. Their atrocities were not only in the very recent past, they were directly related to their political philosophy, clearly stated over and over again, which is alive and well to this day. The same cannot be said about the Crusades, for example, or any of the other very very historically distant events you seem to find so compelling.”
Except that everything that you said about the Crusades not being applicable to modern Christians is just as relevant to modern Liberals and their distance from above listed figures. You have completely and utterly failed to draw any distinction, except that you desperately want to judge other people based on something other than their own ideas or actions but hate when people do the same to you. It is either both or neither.
“THESE are relevant to the discussion, because THESE are the systems from which we have to choose today.”
We have artificially limited choices, sure, but two out of three of the listed figures committed genocide. None of your current choices in our system want to commit genocide. There are quite a few more nuanced differences between Obama and Stalin, but the whole not starving millions of Ukrainians to death to quash dissent seems like enough by itself to illustrate how ridiculous the comparison is.
And, by the way, we have many more examples of historical unregulated markets without strong central governments. As I mentioned above, they inherently degenerate into things like hereditary dictatorships. And there were a lot more European monarchs than Stalins or Maos.
“You can blather on all you want to about a “democratic government” but we don’t have one, we never have had one, and God willing we never will have one. Pull your head out of freshman philosophy and study the writings of the Founding Fathers and their contemporaries to learn what they thought of “democratic government” and why they were too smart to put one together.”
A representative democracy is still a democracy. The term you were looking for is “direct democracy” which I never claimed we had.
“The simple fact is, there are two, and only two, basic political models vying for power in 21st Century America. One is, at its core, the one created in the mid-18th Century and codified in our Constitution. One was created by Marx and Engels and put into play by such as Mao and Stalin. When you strip all political rhetoric in this nation down to its essential core, this is what you end up with.”
I’m not vying for power over anything right now, so I don’t see how any of that would be relevant, even if it were true. Which it obviously isn’t, since I count two major segments in just the Republican party.
“Tragedy of the Commons !! A Prisoner’s Dilemma !! pish tosh. This is a political blog for adults, not a freshman paper in which you try to impress a TA by regurgitating a lot of pompous theory.”
Condescension duly noted, but just because I choose to define my political views in philosophical terms rather than emotional diatribes about the magic of the Founding Fathers does not make it invalid.
“This could be based on ignorance of the two systems, which is pretty likely, but I think there is also a deep reluctance to openly espouse a system which cannot be defended on its merits but only condemned based on its history of unrelenting failure. I think on some level you know this, and know that you still cling to the emotional gratification you get from hating an imagined Other and sniping at it, and realize that an objective discussion of objective fact will make it harder for you to justify your emotional resonance with the airy-fairy promises of the Left.”
You didn’t ask me to pick one of the available philosophies or whatever you are going on about. You asked me to describe mine. Again, I am convinced you have some set of canned responses that you keep trying to use, only you’ve forgotten to go through your setup process to use them. You have to get past the part of your little game where you get me to make the statements you want to rail against before you unleash the criticisms of those statements.
You should try having an actual political discussion with somebody someday rather than trying to railroad everybody into the same silly argument about what The Left(tm) stands for.
swifty, you just keep digging yourself in deeper and deeper, don’t you?
For example, you assert ..everything that you said about the Crusades not being applicable to modern Christians is just as relevant to modern Liberals and their distance from above listed figures…
Nonsense. But for the sake of argument, why don’t you expound on that theory? That is, explain the “theory” of Christianity that prompted the Crusades and tie it in to actual Christian theology of today, and then you can explain the political ideology of Marx, Stalin and Mao and tell us how that is still applicable to current Leftist ideology.
We already know the answers, but it would be a good exercise for you and it might even get you past that college freshman disdain for Christianity as fed to you by your Leftist professors.
While you’re doing this, I will forge ahead with the observation that nothing in Christiandom in the past three centuries has been even remotely similar to the Crusades and therefore I consider the Crusades to be well beyond the scope of identification for modern Christianity, and I will also observe that current Leftist ideology is so firmly based on the origins of the Left as seen in the writings of Marx and Engels that it cannot be separated from them.
I will, in the same vein of separating relevant relationships between current and past events, refrain from linking the Russian genocides led by Lenin and Stalin to the Cossack raids on peasants.
You may have, in your own mind, “defined the core of your political philosophy” but as it was nothing but pseudo-intellectual jibber-jabber than never even touched on either of the two political choices we have now, and was just some litany of disjointed references to game theory and such, it didn’t really have anything at all to do with my question.
You may reject the very real fact that there ARE just two systems vying for control in this country, and you may claim that you, personally, are not vying for control, but as usual you miss the vital point here: When you attack those who represent one of the two competing systems, you are supporting the other, whether you understand it or not.
YOU are the one who charged into a political blog, attacking everyone and everything that you could link to Conservatism, which places you quite firmly on the Left end of the political spectrum by your actions if not by actual thought. I wondered if you actually understand where you are on that spectrum, if you understand the Leftist model, and if you do if you think you can define it and defend it.
So far it seems clear that you cannot do any of these things, and furthermore that you are so entangled in your mishmash of newly acquired information (not to be confused with knowledge) and so eager to show it off and so emotionally drawn to Leftist agendas while being so ignorant of actual Leftist ideology and so knee-jerk irrationally hostile to what you identify as conservative that you are simply incapable of sorting it all out and making a coherent statement about your real-life political philosophy as it relates to your political choices in political 21st Century America.
swifty, you stumble into many revelations about your political ignorance while proclaiming your political savvy. It’s really kind of funny.
For example, you say, regarding my assertion that there are only two political models vying for control of the U.S. government: “.. I count two major segments in just the Republican party…”
Yeah, well, not so much. Because the Republican party is not a political system. See, you proved, again, your dependence on Identity Politics, as well as the fact that you don’t even know what a political system IS.
You reinforce this observation of your limited and inaccurate political acumen with silliness like this: None of your current choices in our system want to commit genocide. There are quite a few more nuanced differences between Obama and Stalin, but the whole not starving millions of Ukrainians to death to quash dissent seems like enough by itself to illustrate how ridiculous the comparison is.
Here, once again, you are confusing events with ideology, which is just more proof that you not only do not understand the ideology of either the Left or the Right, you don’t even grasp the CONCEPT of ‘ideology’.
You wander off into the college-freshman-bringing-home-anti-capitalist-nonsense weeds with this: And, by the way, we have many more examples of historical unregulated markets without strong central governments. As I mentioned above, they inherently degenerate into things like hereditary dictatorships. but this has nothing at all to do with defining the political ideology of the Left or the Right.
You whine: …just because I choose to define my political views in philosophical terms rather than emotional diatribes about the magic of the Founding Fathers does not make it invalid.”
No, but it does make it incoherent. BTW, nice effort to distract from what I said by the insertion of a straw man, feeble as it is. “..the magic of the Founding Fathers..” is pretty juvenile, don’t you think?
But it IS proof you have never studied their writings, THEIR political philosophies, and most likely the documents they forged to form the foundation for the United States of America. Nah…you were “taught” that they are archaic, irrelevant, blah blah blah, and that those who respect them are really just making “…a desperate grab a claim at loving the Constitution more than anybody else.”
Again, a silly effort to trivialize my position by simply lying about it.
This is what people do when they know they really don’t have a leg to stand on without lying and distorting the positions of the opposition. (This is analogous to the lying and distorting by the Left in claiming that Rick Santorum wants to outlaw contraception.)
You have used a lot of words in a desperate effort to accomplish two things: To establish yourself as an intelligent and educated thinker, and to avoid addressing the reality of contemporary United States politics. You have flailed, whined, insulted, ducked, dodged, evaded and squirmed. You have tried to distract and then distort.
But you simply cannot, or will not, address the realities of contemporaneous American politics. So, cutting through the evasive verbiage, we come to the question of “Why”?
The two obvious possible answers are that you either don’t know or you do know and don’t want to admit it.
BTW, I AM trying to have “..an actual political discussion with somebody .. ” and so far it has not worked well with people who evidently support Leftist agendas, for the reasons listed above. Nice effort to squirm out of “an actual political discussion” by trying to demean one as “..trying to railroad everybody into the same silly argument about what The Left(tm) stands for.” (Such a darling little effort, by the way, to trivialize Leftism with your coy little ™ insertion. )
The very fact that you can even claim that an effort to define the Left is silly is just more proof, not that it is needed, that you are skimming the surface of political thought. Which of course leads us back to that inevitable question: Why?
You claim that You didn’t ask me to pick one of the available philosophies or whatever you are going on about. You asked me to describe mine.
Well, not exactly. I did ask you to define yours, but knowing the tendency of you guys to contort yourselves into impossible positions to avoid doing so I also narrowed it down a little.
Here, let me refresh your memory: Please—you have the floor. Please tell us what your political philosophy is, and why. Just be informed in advance that here, a wish list of “world peace” and “equality” and such do not qualify as political philosophy.
Here we are talking about the best blueprint for governing the United States of America. Just to simplify things in advance, at the time we have only two basic political choices. One is the Constitutional model, based (!) on adherence to the Constitution of the United States of America, a model in which the scope and power of federal authority are severely restricted and the bulk of power and authority rest with state and local governments. The other is, to describe it without labeling it, the opposite.
Once a coherent political philosophy has been established, defined and defended, then and only then can we move on to what we want it to accomplish.
“That is, explain the “theory” of Christianity that prompted the Crusades and tie it in to actual Christian theology of today, and then you can explain the political ideology of Marx, Stalin and Mao and tell us how that is still applicable to current Leftist ideology.”
Neither is particularly applicable to anything going on today, except for as history lessons to keep in mind so we can avoid making the same mistakes.
“I will also observe that current Leftist ideology is so firmly based on the origins of the Left as seen in the writings of Marx and Engels that it cannot be separated from them.”
That’s downright ludicrous. I’d like some citations here.
“But it IS proof you have never studied their writings, THEIR political philosophies, and most likely the documents they forged to form the foundation for the United States of America. Nah…you were “taught” that they are archaic, irrelevant, blah blah blah, and that those who respect them are really just making “…a desperate grab a claim at loving the Constitution more than anybody else.””
This claim is also completely unsupported.
“Again, a silly effort to trivialize my position by simply lying about it.”
I trivialize your position because it is trivial in the literal sense of the word. The entire core of your philosophy, according to you, is that you think the Constitution was a good idea. Well, I do, too. So do most people, conservative or not. Your description is so bereft of useful meaning to a political discussion that it is, in fact, trivial.
Try explaining it a different way. What if you were sent to an alternate dimension and wound up getting to design your own government. A Constitution is a good place to start, but that’s merely a framework for making actual policy decisions and limiting the scope of the government. You’d get done explaining what the core of your philosophy was, and they still wouldn’t even be sure your government would outlaw murder.
“You may reject the very real fact that there ARE just two systems vying for control in this country, and you may claim that you, personally, are not vying for control, but as usual you miss the vital point here: When you attack those who represent one of the two competing systems, you are supporting the other, whether you understand it or not.”
Again completely unsupported. There are only two systems here insofar as there are two political parties. It is an artificial limitation based on a first past the post system and not anything inherent to the scope of my choices on a personal level.
“You have used a lot of words in a desperate effort to accomplish two things: To establish yourself as an intelligent and educated thinker, and to avoid addressing the reality of contemporary United States politics. You have flailed, whined, insulted, ducked, dodged, evaded and squirmed. You have tried to distract and then distort.”
I didn’t address contemporary United States politics because they are not necessary to an explanation of my political thinking.
“The very fact that you can even claim that an effort to define the Left is silly is just more proof, not that it is needed, that you are skimming the surface of political thought. Which of course leads us back to that inevitable question: Why?”
Again, it is silly because I have no interest in analyzing what you mean by The Left. I do have an interest in discussing my philosophy, which was the question.
“You claim that You didn’t ask me to pick one of the available philosophies or whatever you are going on about. You asked me to describe mine.
Well, not exactly. I did ask you to define yours, but knowing the tendency of you guys to contort yourselves into impossible positions to avoid doing so I also narrowed it down a little.”
I read it the first time. You asked me to define my philosophy, and then realizing that it would not give you the opportunity to attack what you see as The Left, you went on about what options were available in this country as if to indicate that they were the same question. They are not. I define my own beliefs, and then from there I can make a decision on how I want to interact with the current political landscape. The latter is not required in any way for the former.
Oops, I accidently skipped an entire portion of a post while responding.
“Yeah, well, not so much. Because the Republican party is not a political system. See, you proved, again, your dependence on Identity Politics, as well as the fact that you don’t even know what a political system IS.”
Whether the Republican Party is a political system by your definition or not is entirely irrelevant. The point is that I assume that The Democratic Party represents roughly one of the two systems you claim exist. For that to be the case, the Republican Party would have to roughly occupy the same political system as each other. Which leaves us with Ron Paul and Rick Santorum both occupying the same political space (or Ron Paul has to be part of The Left with Obama). If your categorization is so broad as to make a claim that Ron Paul and Rick Santorum represent the same thing, the categorization is too loose to have any descriptive meaning.
What we actually have is a myriad of political perspectives that can’t really be accurately reflected by any short sound byte or 1-2 dimensional graph that happen to ally themselves with each other because that’s what our political system requires for them to have a voice. On the right, you have some double digit number of people who vote with abortion as a single/primary issue, and I’m still waiting on an explanation of how that relates at all to the core of other conservative values.
What’s doubly interesting about the whole thing is that if you ask the abortion voters what they think about something like economic policy, they will frequently fall in line with the other segments of the conservative voting block. There’s a sociological effect at work here. If I talk to you and agree that abortion is evil and gay people have no right to marry, and you agree strongly, then when I turn the conversation to economic issues that you haven’t really thought about before, you’re going to find anything I have to say more compelling. If I just argued with you on those above listed issues instead, you are going to be more likely to be suspicious of whatever I have to say on the economy, even though it is not related.
These are the mechanisms by which the political systems you are so worked up about are made. If you alter the system so it doesn’t encourage exactly two parties, you tend to see people branching off into slightly more segments, with the previously implicit alliances becoming more explicit when you are trying to get a working coalition government, although not to the exclusion of the opinion consolidation mechanism I described above.
Jonathan Swift, Ama’s contempt for plain facts is well established. Hard right extremists pick and choose freely between facts and mythology to establish their ideology and cement its superiority in their thinking.
It’s too bad the right can’t just rationally disagree with opponents’ arguments or challenge them on facts, but that often ends badly for them. Note that Ama couldn’t do anything with my documentation below of what she called a “common lie told by anti-Catholics” except revert to a popular misconception and lash out at my “bigotry”. What is truly disturbing is the need to vilify, to name-call and demonize their opponents, to deny them a shred of ordinary respect. Hence you, I and others here are frequently called liars, bigoted twits, pious frauds, wolves in sheep’s clothing, etc. This demonization of the “other” is a typical first step in most repressive systems’ process to eliminate undesirables all through history. The enemy is not just a person with another opinion or belief system – he is a moral pariah, the devil incarnate, or somehow subhuman.
You are meticulous and even eloquent in describing your political philosophy. Any thinking person should respect the logic and objectivity of your essay, yet except for a vanishingly small handful of readers here it will go unappreciated, and may be vilified. While you may be careful to be fair and avoid the cheap descent to name-calling and ad hominem attacks, such are currency of the realm here and generally on the hard right.
A couple weeks ago driving through Kentucky I spent over an hour listening to AFA commentator Bryan Fischer on a religious radio station. The same tactic was used to vilify Obama, who repeatedly was called the most “anti-God” president in America’s history. No objective basis was offered for this assessment, but that wasn’t its purpose. Its purpose, amply demonstrated by calls from listeners, was to whip up irrational anti-Obama prejudice. This underscores how mainstream evangelical religion in America has abandoned any pretense of commitment to the Gospel Commission and committed itself instead to political demagoguery.
To bring the conversation back to my own area of interest (and risk being accused of more “sanctimonious bullsh*t” by cluster) I could cite passage after passage from the Bible admonishing believers to be temperate in speech, culminating with the Ten Commandments’ imperative against bearing false witness. All that is out the window with these guys. Christianity is rapidly becoming become a hollowed-out vessel for emphatically secular and even dishonest political content, using religious terminology wherever it can be slapped on to give that content a quasi-religious gloss.
Nowhere has this been more obvious recently than in the characterization of the relatively mundane detail of contraceptive coverage in Obama’s healthcare policy as an “attack” on religion. Screaming victimhood is pure histrionics – give the religious right what they really want and you will quickly see why the founders placed the First Amendment up front. And it won’t require abstract and convoluted reasoning to arrive at that conclusion – it will hit people square between the eyes. The abortion debate is much the same – pure politics given a religious gloss. There is no comprehensive, authentic “reverence for life” ethic on the right; it’s all demagoguery using the “pro-life” meme to create an illusion of moral superiority. But that’s a whole nother topic.
Anyway, thank you for the rationality and illumination of your thinking – it was worth my time to find and read, even if ends up being otherwise unseen, or impugned by someone else.
“So..When Can Christians Expect an Apology From The Muslim World For This?”
In answer to the basic question of this thread. Never. The religion of “peace” allows this. This is sharia law in action. The same sharia law that leftys will defend to our death in hopes that the muzzies will spare them.
News flash leftys. The muzzies have even less use for you than they do anyone else. You might get lucky and swing from a noose after they are done witht thier other enemies.
I would not count on it.
Off Topic, BUT THIS IS PRICELESS!!!
BENTONVILLE, Ark. – Sept. 27, 2007 – Walmart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) today announced phase two of its $4 prescription program with changes that will help even more Americans deal with the high-cost of healthcare. The program – which has already saved Americans more than $610 million in its first year – has been expanded in two key ways:
More medicines covering more categories – ……Fertility and prescription birth control will also be included at $9, compared to national average prices ranging from $24 to $30 per month and saving women an estimated $15 to $21 per month – $180 to $250 annually.
Someone send me Sandra Fluke’s address – and I will send her a check for $324 to cover her birth control for three years, only because I care so much. I would also think that liberals everywhere will run to Walmart and offer donations to help cover the birth control cost for other women, because it is such a health issue, right? C’mon liberals, who is with me??
Since this is a thread about religious intolerance, I’ll introduce discussion of the new ABC television show, Good Christian Bitches.
I had the TV on in the background last night while I did paperwork and took a couple of phone calls, so when the show came on I was only peripherally aware of it. I did wonder a little about the title—GCB—but not much.
This morning when I learned the true title of the show, I got seriously pissed off. Now, I don’t usually DO things when I am offended. For example, when I learned of the actions of the Hawaii Five-0 crew at the Pearl Harbor memorial service I didn’t boycott their sponsors or anything. I discussed it with friends and we all made a commitment to simply never watch the show, but that’s as far as it went.
But this is different. This has my dander up. This is outrageous and I am finally moved to real action. In this case, it is not just a matter of not buying anything from GCB sponsors, or even of letting them know how I feel. though this is also a good idea. This is a matter of not watching anything the network puts on. This is a network decision, and it is such an affront to Christians that it cannot go unaddressed.
No, it’s not just cute. It would have been possible to have a show about shallow, superficial, mean-spirited people and make one of them a hypocritical Christian—maybe. If her neighbor also preened in his supposed Christianity and was shown attending a church which claimed that Jesus was a black man killed not because he was the Son of God but because he was hated by white Europeans and therefore racial bigotry is ordained by Christ, there might be a little balance.
But to title a show like this is beyond tasteless, and I hope it rebounds on ABC. Their target base is obvious, and I hope it is big enough and loyal enough to sustain them.
Again, the Random Placement gremlin is at work—the GCB post was supposed to be a stand-alone post at the end.
BTW, HuffPo casually dismisses the bigotry as ABC simply “courting controversy”. I wondered when the efforts would begin to trivialize the message of the show, to write it off as simply being entertainment, what’s the big deal, etc.
CO, no I didn’t expect actual answers to those questions. Nor as to why people who generally seem to approve of waging war on Islam would “expect an apology from the Muslim world” for the actions of one country’s government against a Christian. That’s more the kind of thing a Christian might do – to apologize on behalf of his fellows for a perceived slight or insult to another group. But when Obama apologized to Afghans about the burned Korans, I don’t recall any kudos for that here.
Ama, I recall with some nostalgia that Mark Noonan, one of this blog’s founders, regularly posted on religious themes here, often in great depth. I don’t recall you ever calling him inappropriate for doing so. When it came to really deep, fundamental issues like human nature, mankind’s inherent need for transcendent reality and the fact of an infinite God who exists above all else, we were very much in agreement. Where we parted ways – and I don’t want to speak for Mark here, but my perception was that he believes a human institution (the Church) is necessary for to people be reconciled with God. Out of that belief, it seemed to me, flowed his ideas regarding many other things I took issue with, his strong authoritarianism being near the top of that list.
Although we disagreed on nearly every political issue I always appreciated Mark for having clearly defined religious values and being passionate and articulate enough to expand on them in depth. The blog has lost something essential for his absence. Your and others’ contempt for my occasional posts that attempt to tie current events to religious ideas and principles is why I’m not here often. And of course, the incessant name-calling and absurd leaps of presumption that are a regular feature here. I sometimes don’t come here for weeks at a stretch, so you’ll have your respite from me – count on it.
As for the new show “GCB”, this is the first I’ve heard of it. I have to agree it’s an outrageous title and premise, which confirms why I haven’t had a TV (and have been essentially boycotting Hollywood) for nearly 20 years now. Having said that, the show also appears to be a response by the entertainment industry to the way much of high-profile Christianity (so-called) has made a parody of itself, instead of living out the values of its namesake.
If the majority of professing Christians really were living examples of Christ’s piety and love I’m sure they still would be ridiculed and persecuted – the Bible and Christ’s own words make that clear. However it would be a lot harder for Hollywood to make a show like this work. Apparently the producers are tapping into a widespread perception of Christianity that doesn’t just come out of nothing.
With mega-churches preaching a gospel of prosperity, powerful religious organizations and their influential spokesmen advocating for policies that would primarily benefit the wealthy and against policies aimed at helping poorer, more vulnerable Americans, they have made themselves easy to caricature. And that’s not to mention loudly propagating a variety of known falsehoods, from topics as diverse as global warming to claims that the president is a dangerous anti-Christian radical and every mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government. And on and on.
It would be far preferable if the caricature had to be drawn from characteristics like compassion, generosity and faithfulness to the Gospel commission – even political naivete. If the majority of high-profile Christian organizations had as their primary goal the conversion of souls to Christ (like Pastor Nadarkhani) instead of acquiring and wielding political influence and wealth, I don’t believe this show could exist.
CO, no I didn’t expect actual answers to those questions. Nor as to why people who generally seem to approve of waging war on Islam…..
Who is waging a war on Islam?
But when Obama apologized to Afghans about the burned Korans, I don’t recall any kudos for that here.
Well Obama has apologized so many times, it’s hard to keep track.
dennis, your absence, kneepad defense of Islam, and miscellaneous pious bullshit, will not be missed. Ciao!
I think the most annoying thing about you dennis is your lectures, which puts you in the same league as Rev Wright, Jimmy Baker and all the other faux “men of the cloth” in my book.
Not exactly good company to be associated with
Having said that, the show also appears to be a response by the entertainment industry to the way much of high-profile Christianity (so-called) has made a parody of itself, instead of living out the values of its namesake.
Well, it didn’t take long for the “chickens coming home to roost/Christians asked for it” mentality to show up.
As for the new testament, I love the religious illiteracy that seems so linked to political and historical illiteracy.
Take the word “Christian” for example. Anyone know where it comes from? Anyone? (tick tock tick tock)
Hint: We are not talking about Jehovaists here. We are talking about Christians.
CHRISTians. That is to say, followers of and believers in CHRIST.
Whose life marked the end of the Old Testament and beginning of the New.
Hearing some religious bigot bleat about the language of the Old Testament in an effort to condemn Christianity is just more proof, not that we need any, that bigotry feeds on ignorance.
Apparently the producers are tapping into a widespread perception of Christianity that doesn’t just come out of nothing.
No, it comes from something, all right.
It comes from contempt for people of faith. It comes from the brain-dead mentality that claims people of faith believe in and worship a white-haired old man who lives in the clouds. It comes from the arrogance of believing that there is no higher power than the individual in question. It comes from the same lies and distortions and ignorance that are used to try to justify all bigotry.
dennis, your screed is so full of hysteria, lies and sour hatred it would take far too long to address them all, and would end up being no more than a lengthy way of taking out the garbage.
Why don’t you just go off with the other three people in the history of mankind whose view of Christianity is as pure and perfect as yours, and you can praise each other while condemning the rest of us—just not here.
Amazona, please itemize: 1. hysteria; 2.) lies; 3.) sour hatred.
Thank you.
Amazona it’s just a television show. Like all other things in society you can choose to watch it or not watch it. In your country on DirecTV there there is available 9 different religious channels that operate 24 hours a day in HD. You have choices make them. Others have choices and they will make their own. From time to time I even find myself enjoying the lectures of Bishop Fulton J Sheen. Television is a very powerful medium and even offers something new and exciting to a demon in Hell.
And how many of these shows have titles that denigrate the religion in question?
Or any religion, for that matter?
Are you truly so dense that you do not grasp a difference between a show which explains its religious beliefs and one which attacks the religion of others?
Well, you ARE quite deeply invested in a silly and juvenile game in which you pretend to be a demon in Hell, so I guess when it comes to you anything is possible.
BTW, I have asked you several questions which you have evaded, simply ignoring them till there is a new thread where you can come back with more of your, shall we say, ‘observations’. Are you willing to address questions about posts you have made, or will it just be a waste of time for me to repost them?
dennis: Hyper-emotional (ie: hysterical) lies:
… mega-churches preaching a gospel of prosperity….
powerful religious organizations and their influential spokesmen advocating for policies that would primarily benefit the wealthy……
and against policies aimed at helping poorer, more vulnerable Americans….
propagating a variety of known falsehoods, from topics as diverse as global warming…..
every mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.
And these are just from one paragraph in one post from you.
BTW, these excerpts also illustrate your sour hatred.
You probably DO believe that large churches advocate against the poor and to further enrich the wealthy. You probably DO believe that failing to believe in AGW (which I assume is what you mean by “global warming”) is a symptom of the evils of big religion. You probably DO believe, for some bizarre reason, that people do believe that EVERY mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.
So, strictly speaking, these may not be lies at all, since a “lie” is the purposeful intent to deceive and you may just be preaching about things you feel are true.
But that does not change the fact that they are not true, and are just part of your sour hatred of so much and so many.
BTW, I never saw anything in any of Mark’s writings that indicated “…a human institution (the Church) is necessary for to people be reconciled with God. ..” This is a common lie told by anti-Catholics. I have a sister in law who believes this and my almost eight years (get ready to jump on that “ALMOST”, dolf!!) of daily religious instruction which never included this belief is, to her, irrelevant. As I am sure it would be to you.
Any church which allows a layman to baptize, hear a confession and/or administer last rites in an emergency is hardly one that asserts that the Church is necessary for to people be reconciled with God.
But bigotry has no bounds, and religious bigotry is the worst of all, being so deeply rooted in the basest of human emotions.
When can the Iranians expect an apology from B4V for saying they had killed someone they hadn’t? Who cares, let’s just go kill em all and wonder why the price of oil is going through the roof.
When they apologize for killing Neda. Maybe then would I even consider uttering a single word to those theocratic morons.
Jose Guerena Killed: Arizona Cops Shoot Former Marine In Botched Pot Raid
You don’t by chance live in a police state do you?
dolf, all you really have to do is post something like “feeling like saying something really stupid and irrelevant—proceed as if I have done so” and you will accomplish the same thing as your last post, and so many others.
Maybe you could make a macro so you’d just have to hit Ctrl/whatever.
I’ll bet it WOULD make you laugh—some more of that tee hee, titter titter, giggle snort haw haw stuff that makes you think that’s a tingle going UP your leg.
But what is really funny is your eagerness to illustrate, yet again, your total ignorance of the United States Constitution.
Well, not funny so much as tiresome, seeing as how often you do this.
And as usual Neocon has his bigotry turned against him:
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill, authored by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Rep. Joe Pitts (D-PA), condemning Iran’s mistreatment and sentencing of Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani.
Nadarkhani was sentenced to death for the crime of apostasy after converting to Christianity. According to an Ellison news release, Iran is a member of the United Nations and a signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes the right to change religion and worship freely.
“The case of Pastor Youcef has united us because religious freedom is a fundamental human right,” Ellison said during the bill’s presentation. “We find in Pastor Youcef a humble man who refuses to disavow something he has found to be true, even if it means paying the ultimate price.”
“As we seek to protect the human rights of Pastor Youcef and all Iranians, we must not pursue a course of action that could degrade their human rights further,” Ellison added. “I have been deeply troubled by the recent talk of war with Iran. We must not forget that war is the ultimate human rights disaster. It could seal the fate of Pastor Youcef and so many other prisoners of conscience inside Iran.”
Huh??? You can distort anything, can’t you?
Hey I finally realized who dennis is – that unhinged liberal Mike Malloy who said this yesterday:
Their God, if this is the way they want to look at it, keeps smashing them into little grease spots on the pavement in – uh – uh – in, you know, in Alabama and Mississippi and Arkansas and uh Georgia and uh Oklahoma. You know, the Bible Belt, where (imitates preacher) ‘They ain’t going to let no goddamn science get in the way! It says in the Bible blah blah blah blah blah!’
So, according to their way of thinking, you know, God with his omnipotent thumb reaches down here and so far tonight has smashed about 20 people into a grease spot on Highway 12 or whatever the hell highway they live next to. It’s so sad, it’s just so sad for this, for this kind of nonsense.