[Pesqueeb]

maybe they were goaded into it

Maybe?

 

[jonKranked]

They clearly also missed the part where Jesus™ landed at Plymouth Rock, slayed the burning bush, and led the Pilgrims out of the North Atlantic where they sailed lost for 40 years.

 

[$tinkle]

Maybe?

mahalia jackson much?

 

[Pesqueeb]

mahalia jackson much?

I didn't even know you could sing.

 

[Andyman_1970]

Great article........

So it's not surprising that some conservative Christians find the nonpatriotic alliance of progressive evangelicals and Anabaptists troubling — even dangerous.

Could it be because their heads are hurting from all the cognitive disonance? I'd argue that conservative evangelicals find this "dangerous" as it subverts their "pick and choose" view of the Scriptures and tends to put the Bible in context rather than "here and there" literalism.

Jesus’ identification with the poor, love of enemies, and refusal to take power are incompatible with the “entire political and economic system” of the United States, he says.

This pretty much summarizes the entire disconnect between the US (in culture and goverance) and the teachings of Jesus. This is my main arguement that the US is not a "Christian nation", I don't believe it ever was or was intended to be, nor do I think it should.

David Barton anyone........I'm pretty sure he thinks these anti-patriots are from Satan.

 

[$tinkle]

Could it be because their heads are hurting from all the cognitive disonance? I'd argue that conservative evangelicals find this "dangerous" as it subverts their "pick and choose" view of the Scriptures and tends to put the Bible in context rather than "here and there" literalism.

so if we rebuild bridges, hospitals, schools & roads in iraq & afghanistan, that's like putting malchus' ear back on that peter lopped off, right?

 

[jonKranked]

so if we rebuild bridges, hospitals, schools & roads in iraq & afghanistan, that's like putting malchus' ear back on that peter lopped off, right?

yes, but only if we re-open the opium dens too

 

[Andyman_1970]

so if we rebuild bridges, hospitals, schools & roads in iraq & afghanistan, that's like putting malchus' ear back on that peter lopped off, right?

Let’s “assume” the US is a Christian nation guided by the teachings of Jesus. Then yes the resources of the US should be used to bring as much good to the world as possible. I don’t think it’s hard to believe if we beat some our swords into plowshares we could eradicate hunger in say Africa, that whole bringing heaven to earth thing Jesus talked about. Makes you wonder if as the imaginary Christian nation we’re discussing if we really did love our enemies and wish them well…….

Interesting concept from my studies of Judaism, they believed that the more good one did on earth, the more one strove to bring heaven to earth every day, the faster the Messiah would come (or return). Imagine if conservative US evangelicals embraced this concept……the more heaven they brought to earth the faster Jesus would return………dude they’d be falling all over themselves to feed little brown babies with big bellies. Of course when He did come and remake earth vs. beam the Christians to another place they’d be pissed………

 

[kidwoo]

i'd like to go on record as the only one in this thread who condemns the violent actions taken against 2 people who were exercising their first amendment rights (and not hate speech, examples of which simply don't exist in the linked video upthread)

it's too bad that i cannot be joined for the clearly expressed reasons of their race & religion, but i guess that's the way it has to be here. we're still in a pre-civil rights era in this dark corner of the internet.

It's like you take obtuse and then file it down till it's a circle.

Beating on someone is moronic, and those guys at that rally are assholes.

You're an idiot because this is how you presented it.

this is what the tolerant left looks like:

...never once facing the irony of your statement in that you know damn well it is the left that has brought about changes in racial equality, gender related equality, and economic fairness. You know, the perpetuation of intolerance.

 

[$tinkle]

You're an idiot because this is how you presented it.

name calling.
how precious.

...never once facing the irony of your statement in that you know damn well it is the left that has brought about changes in racial equality, gender related equality, and economic fairness. You know, the perpetuation of intolerance.

so lincoln, mlk, & most of the members as a portion of their party of the 88th congress voting 'aye' for the CRA weren't republicans after all? well that's news to everyone.

 

[syadasti]

so lincoln, mlk, & most of the members as a portion of their party of the 88th congress voting 'aye' for the CRA weren't republicans after all? well that's news to everyone.

The Republican party of today is vastly different than Lincoln's era and as various commentators have pointed out, Obama is further to the right than Nixon and some say Reagan even. You aren't trying to claim political parties are static are you? Name calling might be appropriate.

 

[kidwoo]

name calling.
how precious.
so lincoln, mlk, & most of the members as a portion of their party of the 88th congress voting 'aye' for the CRA weren't republicans after all? well that's news to everyone.

Yeah lincoln is gonna be pissed about what happened in seattle this year. Just wait till he sees that video (if he hasn't already). If there's one thing I associate lincoln and MLK with, it's the modern right in 2013. God knows they'd be all over voter ID laws and standing hard with Scalia.


edit: sniped!

 

[$tinkle]

Name calling might be appropriate.

if you call mlk, lincoln, & obama 'delusional', make sure you do it hushed tones as not to wake the baby jeebus

 

[syadasti]

if you call mlk, lincoln, & obama 'delusional', make sure you do it hushed tones as not to wake the baby jeebus

Its not likely they are true believers, so they wouldn't be delusional. Especially as politicians and the origin of political systems, its a social construct.

 

[$tinkle]

Its not likely they are true believers, so they wouldn't be delusional.

they all affirmed jesus christ as the son of the living god & accepted him as their lord & saviour. not exactly unitarians. or did you mean, "they don't juggle snakes & gargle strychnine"?

it's really ok to acknowledge this. won't get cooties; promise. but if you do, we can lay hands & pray it away.

 

[Andyman_1970]

Its not likely they are true believers........

Wait......what.....the REVEREND Martin Luther King not a true believer........

 

[Pesqueeb]

they all affirmed jesus christ as the son of the living god & accepted him as their lord & saviour

We've had this discussion before. I for one, don't believe that Obama actually has affinity towards any particular religion, but the game has to be played. I also don't think either of the Clinton's suffer from any particular religious affliction. I would hesitate to make that judgment on any non-living president.

 

[syadasti]

Wait......what.....the REVEREND Martin Luther King not a true believer........

You aren't considering the social structure of that community. Leaders were typically reverends. And even as a church leader that doesn't mean you truly believe - some people are just good at selling. On the really far end of the delusional spectrum their delusions allow them to even abuse people on the side, lead people to commit mass suicide, marry away their underage daughters, participate in orgies, etc.

Also you or Stinkle are too biased by your own beliefs in order to estimate what others believe:

People often reason egocentrically about others' beliefs, using their own beliefs as an inductive guide. Correlational, experimental, and neuroimaging evidence suggests that people may be even more egocentric when reasoning about a religious agent's beliefs (e.g., God). In both nationally representative and more local samples, people's own beliefs on important social and ethical issues were consistently correlated more strongly with estimates of God's beliefs than with estimates of other people's beliefs
...
Unlike inferences about people, however, inferences about God's beliefs cannot rely as readily on information directly from the judgment target. One can quiz neighbors on their beliefs, read editorials about celebrities' positions, or observe public opinion polls. Religious agents do not lend themselves to public opinion polling. Even within Christianity, for example, groups differ quite dramatically in their interpretation of God's attitudes toward such topics as same-sex marriage, the death penalty, and abortion. The inherent ambiguity of God's beliefs on major issues and the extent to which religious texts may be open to interpretation and subjective evaluation, suggests not only strong egocentric biases when reasoning about God, but also that people may be consistently more egocentric when reasoning about God's beliefs than when reasoning about other people's beliefs. When the beliefs of a positively evaluated target are relatively ambiguous, a person may construct them by relying on his or her own beliefs (19). Indeed, it may seem particularly logical to use egocentric information when reasoning about God, because religious agents are generally presumed to hold true beliefs, and people generally presume that their own beliefs are true as well (20).

And as Pesqueeb notes, people will discriminate against an athiest or even an agnostic. They don't have a chance against a conventional candidate/leader given social norms.

 

[syadasti]

By coincidence, printed for today's edition:

The Secular Society
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: July 8, 2013

I might as well tell you upfront that this column is a book report. Since 2007, when it was published, academics have been raving to me about Charles Taylor’s “A Secular Age.” Courses, conferences and symposia have been organized around it, but it is almost invisible outside the academic world because the text is nearly 800 pages of dense, jargon-filled prose.

As someone who tries to report on the world of ideas, I’m going to try to summarize Taylor’s description of what it feels like to live in an age like ours, without, I hope, totally butchering it.

Taylor’s investigation begins with this question: “Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say 1500, in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy but even inescapable?” That is, how did we move from the all encompassing sacred cosmos, to our current world in which faith is a choice, in which some people believe, others don’t and a lot are in the middle?

This story is usually told as a subtraction story. Science came into the picture, exposed the world for the way it really is and people started shedding the illusions of faith. Religious spirit gave way to scientific fact.

Taylor rejects this story. He sees secularization as, by and large, a mottled accomplishment, for both science and faith.

Advances in human understanding — not only in science but also in art, literature, manners, philosophy and, yes, theology and religious practice — give us a richer understanding of our natures. Shakespeare helped us see character in more intricate ways. An improvement in mores means we take less pleasure from bear-baiting, hanging and other forms of public cruelty. We have a greater understanding of how nature works.

These achievements did make it possible to construct a purely humanistic account of the meaningful life. It became possible for people to conceive of meaningful lives in God-free ways — as painters in the service of art, as scientists in the service of knowledge.

But, Taylor continues, these achievements also led to more morally demanding lives for everybody, believer and nonbeliever. Instead of just fitting docilely into a place in the cosmos, the good person in secular society is called upon to construct a life in the universe. She’s called on to exercise all her strength.

People are called to greater activism, to engage in more reform. Religious faith or nonfaith becomes more a matter of personal choice as part of a quest for personal development.

This shift in consciousness leads to some serious downsides. When faith is a matter of personal choice, even believers experience much more doubt. As James K.A. Smith of Comment Magazine, who was generous enough to share his superb manuscript of a book on Taylor, put it, “We don’t believe instead of doubting; we believe while doubting. We’re all Thomas now.”

Individuals don’t live embedded in tight social orders; they live in buffered worlds of private choices. Common action, Taylor writes, gives way to mutual display. Many people suffer from a malaise. They remember that many people used to feel connected to an enchanted, transcendent order, but they feel trapped in a flat landscape, with diminished dignity: Is this all there is?

But these downsides are more than made up for by the upsides. Taylor can be extremely critical of our society, but he is grateful and upbeat. We are not moving to a spiritually dead wasteland as, say, the fundamentalists imagine. Most people, he observes, are incapable of being indifferent to the transcendent realm. “The yearning for eternity is not the trivial and childish thing it is painted as,” Taylor writes.

People are now able to pursue fullness in an amazing diversity of different ways. But Taylor observes a general pattern. They tend not to want to live in a world closed off from the transcendent, reliant exclusively on the material world. We are not, Taylor suggests, sliding toward pure materialism.

We are, instead, moving toward what he calls a galloping spiritual pluralism. People in search of fullness are able to harvest the intellectual, cultural and spiritual gains of the past 500 years. Poetry and music can alert people to the realms beyond the ordinary.

Orthodox believers now live with a different tension: how to combine the masterpieces of humanism with the central mysteries of their own faiths. This pluralism can produce fragmentations and shallow options, and Taylor can eviscerate them, but, over all, this secular age beats the conformity and stultification of the age of fundamentalism, and it allows for magnificent spiritual achievement.

I’m vastly oversimplifying a rich, complex book, but what I most appreciate is his vision of a “secular” future that is both open and also contains at least pockets of spiritual rigor, and that is propelled by religious motivation, a strong and enduring piece of our nature.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on July 9, 2013, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: The Secular Society.

 

[$tinkle]

We've had this discussion before. I for one, don't believe that Obama actually has affinity towards any particular religion, but the game has to be played.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2010/09/president-obama-i-am-a-christian-by-choicethe-precepts-of-jesus-spoke-to-me/
so he was lying then, or is lying now?
the larger question: is he kenyan, or a true scotsman?

You aren't considering the social structure of that community. Leaders were typically reverends. And even as a church leader that doesn't mean you truly believe - some people are just good at selling. On the really far end of the delusional spectrum their delusions allow them to even abuse people on the side, lead people to commit mass suicide, marry away their underage daughters, participate in orgies, etc.

and so it must follow that by cherry picking the minority who do not adhere that all must be dismissed. so there are no true gay leaders, secular leaders, scientific leaders, etc.

Also you or Stinkle are too biased by your own beliefs in order to estimate what others believe:

this would be the 'a fish cannot see the water in which it swims' argument, or more specifically, ad hominem. we also observe 'poisoning the well', with a dash of 'appeal to consequences'.
and here i thought a tenet of the infidel faith was critical thinking

 

[$tinkle]

where is your fsm now?

 

[Pesqueeb]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2010/09/president-obama-i-am-a-christian-by-choicethe-precepts-of-jesus-spoke-to-me/
so he was lying then, or is lying now?
the larger question: is he kenyan, or a true scotsman?

where is your fsm now?

It's true. I was a sinner until I saw the Reverend Horton Heat.

 

[Andyman_1970]

^^LOL......."when I'm not kissing babies I'm stealing their lollypops"

 

[$tinkle]

^^^ must spread -- halp, i'm being oppressed

 

[Andyman_1970]

You aren't considering the social structure of that community. Leaders were typically reverends. And even as a church leader that doesn't mean you truly believe - some people are just good at selling. On the really far end of the delusional spectrum their delusions allow them to even abuse people on the side, lead people to commit mass suicide, marry away their underage daughters, participate in orgies, etc.

So to be clear you're implying MLK was merely a pastor in title only to garner the trust of southern black folks in the US?

 

[$tinkle]

So to be clear you're implying MLK was merely a pastor in title only to garner the trust of southern black folks in the US?

tilting at windmills aside, it seems to fit the narrative of "nothing good in God's name"

 

[syadasti]

So to be clear you're implying MLK was merely a pastor in title only to garner the trust of southern black folks in the US?

Its part of their culture. Just as great leaders and thinkers in Rome worshiped in their own gods. The latest delusion isn't any more valid than those of the past or the various other contemporary ones.

 

[FSM]

where is your fsm now?

You called?

 

[dante]

“Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say 1500, in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy but even inescapable?”

Ummm, maybe because we don't do this to "nonbelievers" anymore?

 

[$tinkle]

Ummm, maybe because we don't do this to "nonbelievers" anymore?

except that we do:

well, not "we", per se, but it still happens in darker corners of the theocratic world

 

[Andyman_1970]

^^^The more things change, the more they stay the same...........

 

[$tinkle]

Poverty weighs greater on lesbians

maybe they wouldn't be so poor if they didn't buy red boat & sriracha by the gallon

 

[eric strt6]

HA HA

"Like a chicken with its head cut off, Proposition 8 is trying to act alive, even though it has no real chance of being revived," said Vikram Amar, a UC Davis law professor."

http://www.mercurynews.com/samesexmarriage/ci_23664796/gay-marriage-foes-lose-state-supreme-court-plea

Gay marriage foes lose California State Supreme Court plea to halt weddings

 

[eric strt6]

man these fookers from AZ backrolled by the Koch Bros just wont go away

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Same-sex-marriage-foes-file-suit-in-clerk-s-name-4676171.php

Opponents of same-sex marriage in California launched another attempt Friday to stop the weddings that started three weeks ago, filing a lawsuit in the state Supreme Court in the name of a county clerk. The suit challenges Gov. Jerry Brown's order to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

Like the sponsors of Proposition 8, who unsuccessfully asked the same court last week for an emergency order enforcing the 2008 ban on same-sex marriages, San Diego County Clerk Ernest Dronenburg argued that neither Brown nor the federal judge who declared Prop. 8 unconstitutional in 2010 have authority over local clerks' issuance of marriage licenses.

But unlike Prop. 8's proponents, whose inability to show that they have any personal rights at stake in the marriage dispute has hamstrung their legal efforts, Dronenburg said he has something important at stake - his ability to do his job and follow the law.

Dronenburg is "caught in the crossfire of a legal struggle over the definition of marriage," his lawyers said - he believes Prop. 8 is still the law, but, like other county clerks, has been warned by Attorney General Kamala Harris that he faces contempt of court if he refuses to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

 

[eric strt6]

And they lose again. California State Supreme Court says Nyet

http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/Calif-court-rejects-bid-to-stop-gay-marriages-4682550.php

Without comment, the California Supreme Court rejected a request from the elected government official in charge of issuing marriage licenses in San Diego County for an order halting gay marriages, which resumed in the state last month for the first time since the ban passed in November 2008.

County clerk Ernest Dronenburg Jr. sought the stay on Friday. He also asked the seven-member court to consider his legal argument that same-sex marriages still are illegal in most of California, despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision widely regarded as having authorized them and the state attorney general's assertion that clerks throughout the state must issue licenses to gay couples.

 

[dante]

Well that didn't take long.

Federal judge rules that Ohio can't block recognition of gay marriages from other states:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2013/0723/Same-sex-marriage-Ohio-judge-opens-new-frontier-for-gay-activists-video

In his ruling, Black wrote that Ohio's same-sex marriage ban denies the couple equal protection, and that the state already recognizes other out-of-state marriages not authorized to be performed within the state, such as those between first cousins. "How then, can Ohio … single out same-sex marriages as ones it will not recognize?" he asked in his ruling.

Good question.

 

[$tinkle]

Good question.

indeed.

will this result in a groundswell of 1st cousins clamoring to have their marriage rights recognized? not likely. but they are well positioned if i'm wrong.

 

[dante]

indeed.

will this result in a groundswell of 1st cousins clamoring to have their marriage rights recognized? not likely. but they are well positioned if i'm wrong.

They already are recognized. That was the judge's point. (I guess I bold-faced the wrong part of my quote?)

In his ruling, Black wrote that Ohio's same-sex marriage ban denies the couple equal protection, and that the state already recognizes other out-of-state marriages not authorized to be performed within the state, such as those between first cousins. "How then, can Ohio … single out same-sex marriages as ones it will not recognize?" he asked in his ruling.

 

[$tinkle]

They already are recognized. That was the judge's point. (I guess I bold-faced the wrong part of my quote?)

not what i meant.
now 1st cousins will be positioned to have it recognized on the fed'l level, not just "states' rights" (or at least it should be reasonable to expect to see petitioning for ballot measures where it's not yet recognized)
my understanding is proponents of gay marriage are not content with it being state-by-state either.

btw, what's the reason for siblings by adoption not being allowed to wed? or those who cannot reproduce?
those who have hangups about miscegenation are almost all gone
those who have hangups about same sex marriage are now fleeting
pretty soon(?), will we all be "enlightened" that it's none of the gubment's bidness who marries whom?

 

[Beef Supreme]

not what i meant.
now 1st cousins will be positioned to have it recognized on the fed'l level, not just "states' rights" (or at least it should be reasonable to expect to see petitioning for ballot measures where it's not yet recognized)
my understanding is proponents of gay marriage are not content with it being state-by-state either.

btw, what's the reason for siblings by adoption not being allowed to wed? or those who cannot reproduce?
those who have hangups about miscegenation are almost all gone
those who have hangups about same sex marriage are now fleeting
pretty soon(?), will we all be "enlightened" that it's none of the gubment's bidness who marries whom?

I'm really impressed that you made it through all that without making a reference to fvcking chickens.