All-Purpose Religion Thread

[snowychap]

Fair enough (I shan't have a go about lazy language as I fear that I'd be next up against the wall - and not Tony's one of achievement!). I do think there's a problem with the 'veggie' label (why shouldn't we spend half of a week eating veg? It's bloody good stuff!) but I half get the idea that doesn't necessarily like (or even condone) the use of meat as a base for a diet.

p.s. Though I was vegetarian for a year (15/16 and I loved it), the only dog I have in the fight is that I am a meat eater and I like it, a lot.

Edited February 19, 2014 by snowychap

[mjmooney]

I have much sympathy with the pro-vegetarianism arguments. 

 

The only problem I have is that I LOVE meat (and dairy products), and don't much like fruit and veg (no matter how well cooked/prepared they are). 

 

So it ain't gonna happen for me. 

 

But this is nothing to do with religion, so  . 

Edited February 19, 2014 by mjmooney

[chappy]

This may have been posted elsewhere but Richard Littlejohn ladies and gents

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2561686/LITTLEJOHN-Jolly-Jihadi-Boys-Outing-Legoland.html

Edited February 19, 2014 by chappy

[chrisp65]

mmmmmmmmmmmm Daily Mail link

 

I'm guessing that'll be constructive and positive and embrace difference as a thing that is interesting and good

[limpid]

I'm considering blocking links to the Daily Mail.

[Wainy316]

I'm considering burning down shops that sell it.

[8pints]

[Rodders]

Lovely chap.

 

http://tinyurl.com/kzl2ng8

 

​God's 12 Biggest Dick Moves in the Old Testament

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Before Jesus arrived and his divine father chilled out, the Old Testament God was, ironically, kind of a hellraiser. He was not a nice guy. He really liked killing people. And he may have actually been insane, if his willingness to randomly murder devout worshippers like Moses was any indication. Here are the 12 craziest, most awful things God did in the Old Testament, back before that wacked-out hippie Jesus softened him up.

1) Sending Bears to Murder Children

So a guy named Eliseus was traveling to Bethel when a bunch of kids popped up and made fun of him for being bald. That had to suck, and you can't blame Eliseus for being pissed and cursing them to God. But God had Eliseus' back, by which I mean he sent two bears to maul 42 of these kids to death. For making fun of a bald dude. I have to think Eliseus was looking for something along the lines of a spanking, or maybe the poetic justice of having the kids go bald, but nope, God went straight for the bear murder. But on the plus side, that pile of 40+ children's corpses never made fun of anybody again. (4 Kings 2:23-24)

2) Turning Lot's Wife to Salt

Most folks know about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities of sin God decided to kill everyone in instead of, you know, making them not full of sin. But this was a town that, when two angels were staying at Lot's place, gathered en masse and asked if they could rape them. I repeat: They wanted to rape angels. So they kind of had their destruction coming. Lot and his family were sent from the city before things went down, and Lot's wife looked back, and God turned her into a pillar of salt. It's generally understood that Lot's wife was looking back in a wistful kind of way at her angel-raping hometown, but the fact is there's nothing in the Bible to suggest this. Nor was Lot's family warned about looking back. Maybe Lot's wife wanted to see Sodom and Gomorrah get what was coming to it. Maybe she was thinking wistfully of the things she had to leave behind. Maybe she wondered if she left the oven on. We'll never know, because God turned her into seasoning for breaking a rule she didn't know existed. (Genesis 19:26)

3) Hating Ugly People

In what should be good news for intolerant religious conservatives, God really does hate people who are different from the norm. Of course, God isn't as worried about skin color or sexual orientation as he is about whether you're ugly or not. Because if you're ugly, you can just go worship some other god, okay? (Even though God will punish you if you do and also they don't exist.) Here's the people God does not want coming into his churches: People with blemishes, blind people, the lame, those with flat noses, dwarves, people with scurvy, people with bad eyes, people with bad skin, and those that "hath their stones broken." Given that God is technically responsible for giving people all of these afflictions in the first place, this is an enormous dick move. (Leviticus 21:17-24)

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4) Trying to Kill Moses

In terms of people who God likes, you'd think Moses would be pretty high up on the list, right? I mean, God appointed him to lead the Jews out of Egypt, parted the Red Sea for him, and even picked him to receive the 10 Commandments, right? Yet this didn't stop God from trying to kill Moses when he ran into him at "a lodging place." There is literally no explanation given in the Bible for God's decision to murder one of his chief supporters. The line is "At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him." The only sensible explanation for this is that God was drunk out of his mind and looking for a bar fight, and you better hope that's correct because the alternative is that God's a psychopath. How was God stopped from murdering his #1 fan? "But [Moses' wife] Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it ... So the Lord let him alone." Either the sight of a very unexpected circumcision sobered God up quickly, or he didn't want to touch a dude who just touched a severed foreskin. Still, it's Moses' son who's the real victim here. (Exodus 4:24-26)

 

5) Committing So Much Genocide

God has killed so many people, you guys. Okay, I mean technically, God has killed everyone if you subscribe to Judeo-Christian thought, but I'm not talking about indirect methods, I'm talking about God murdering countless people in horrible ways simply because he's pissed off. God drowning every single person on the planet besides Noah and his family is pretty well known, but he also helped the Israelites murder everyone in Jericho, Heshbon, Bashan and many more, usually killing women, children and animals at the same time. Hell, God once helped some Israelites kill 500,000 other Israelites. God's crazy.

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6) Ordering His Underlings to Kill Their Own Children

God is obviously good at big picture dickishness, but he also took the time to be a dick on a more personal level. Abraham was another devout man who God decided to **** with, apparently because he knew he could. God ordered him to sacrifice his son to God (God was a fan of human sacrifice at the time). We know Abraham loved his son, so he was probably kind of upset with this, but hey, God's God, right? So Abraham tricked his unsuspecting son up a mountain onto a sacrificial altar and prepared to murder him. This story actually has a happy ending, in that right before Abraham drove a knife into his son's throat, God yelled "Psyche!" and told him it was only a test. And then Abraham received some blessings after that for being willing to kill his own child at God's whim. And all it took was the dread of being forced to kill his own child on behalf of his angry deity and, presumably, a shit-ton of awkward family dinners for the rest of his life. Abraham got off better than Jephthah, who had to follow through with murdering his daughter (burning her alive, specifically) in order to get on God's good side before battling the Ammonites. (Genesis 22:1-12)

7) Killing Egyptian Babies

Let's be completely up front: The Egyptians and the Jews did not get along. According to the Bible, the Egyptians enslaved the Jews, but the Jews had God on their side, if you kind of ignore God letting his people be enslaved in the first place. Rather getting his worshippers the hell out of there, God wanted to show those damned Egyptians what for, releasing 10 plagues that began with turning the river Nile into pure blood, and ending with the slaughter of the first-born of every single Egyptian man and animal. Now, I suppose it's possible that some, or even most of these first-born were adults who were shitty to the Israelites. But some of them had to be babies who didn't even have the time to persecute the Jews yet. And what the hell did the animals do to the Jews to get caught up in this nightmare? Were there proto-Nazi cows running around who needed to be punished for their transgressions against the chosen people? And you realize there were cats in Egypt, right? Cats who had first-born? God killed kittens. (Numbers 16:41-49)

8) Killing a Dude for Not Making More Babies

So you're a dude named Onan and you have a brother named Er. God does not care for Er, and kills him. Standard God operating procedure. Then things gets weird. Onan's dad orders Onan to have sex with Er's wife — not marry, by the way, just have sex with. This is actually pretty awkward for Onan, sleeping with his sister-in-law, and rather than give her any more kids (she had two with Er already) he pulls out. God is so infuriated that Onan did not **** his sister-in-law to completion that he kills him, too. Now, you could argue that God demands that intercourse be used specifically for procreation, but given how much God loves killing babies and children, I don't think his motives here are exceptionally pure. (Genesis 38:1-10)

9) Helping Samson Murder People to Pay Off a Bet

More evidence that God is possibly a low-level mobster: When his pal Samson got married, he was given 30 friends, and he posed them (a completely insane) riddle. Then he made a bet that if they could solve it in a week, Samson would give them all new clothes, but if they couldn't they would give Samson 30 pairs of new clothes. Well, Samson's wife wheedled the answer out of him and then told these dudes, at which point an angry Samson had to pay up. And here's where God comes in — literally, into Samson, giving him the power to murder 30 random people for their clothes. Only a true friend would help you commit mass murder to settle a completely stupid bet. (Judges 14:1-19)

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10) Trying to Wrestle a Guy, Cheating, and Still Losing

And here's more evidence that God is a drunk maniac: Jacob was traveling with his two wives, his 11 kids, and all his earthly possessions and had sent them across a river. At that moment, a guy essentially leapt out of the bushes and started wrestling. It's God! They wrestle all night, and God cannot beat Jacob, so he uses his magic God powers to wrench Jacob's hip out of its socket. But Jacob still won't let him out of a headlock until God blesses him, because Jacob has figured out who this bizarre man is. God blesses him and wanders off, presumably to go get in a bar fight somewhere. (Genesis 32: 22-31)

11) Killing People for Complaining About God Killing Them

To be fair, after God freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, they were extraordinarily bitchy about not instantly being in a land of milk and honey. It got so bad that God was ready to kill all of them and let Moses start the Jews over, although Moses managed to talk him out of it. But one of their more sensible complaints was that Moses was lording himself over the rest of them, which was probably true, seeing as God had given him the 10 Commandments and all that. So Moses summoned the three tribal elders who had made the complaint to a Monday morning staff meeting, but two of them didn't come. Neither Moses nor God cared for that, and God opened up the grounds beneath their people's tents, killing both tribes (God also set fire to 250 Israelite princes who'd made the same complaint). Having been well admonished that Moses was putting himself above the rest of the people with God's permission, a number of surviving Israelites were kind of pissed that Moses and God had killed so many of their fellow people to prove a point. God responded by killing another 14,700 of them with a plague. The complaints stopped. (Numbers 16:1-49)

12) Everything He Did to Job

Oh, Job. Other than a shit-ton of babies, no one had it worse in the Bible than Job, who was a righteous, good-hearted man who believed in God with every fiber in his being — which is when God decides to see how miserable he can make this dude before he gets upset. Note: This is a result of a bet between God and Satan. Also note: The bet is God's idea. He's literally just hanging out with Satan — which is kinda weird when you think about it — when he starting bragging about how awesome Job is. Satan points out that Job's pretty blessed — he's rich, he's got a lot of kids, etc., and he probably wouldn't be quite so thrilled with God if he didn't have that stuff. God downs his bourbon, presumably, and tells Satan he can **** with Job all he wants. Satan does. He kills all of Job's children and animals, burns down his house, destroys his wealth, and then covers him in boils. Job doesn't not curse God, but he does wish he'd never been born (literally) and begs God to kill him, but no dice. This lasts a long time until finally Job wonders why a just God would be so shitty. This is when God pops up and basically tells him."Shut up, I don't have to explain anything to you." Job, having finally done something wrong, pleads for mercy, and God eventually gives him back animals and children — new ones, because the old ones are still dead. Because of a bet. That God made with Satan. For kicks. (Job 1)

 

 

 

[chappy]

I'm considering blocking links to the Daily Mail.

Yeah apologies for linking to it, should have just quoted it. I cannot believe that they have got away with publishing what was in that article. I would expect nothing less from littlejohn, not that that makes it okay.

[mjmooney]

Actually, a Mail block would have spoiled my link to the A4 Mallard article yesterday. 

 

Probably worth it though. 

[Danwichmann]

 

 

It’s no good, Dawkins. No one’s going to abandon religion because some atheist is banging on at them about science

 

 

The fact that this quaint tradition endures with few complaints, despite a campaign led by the National Secular Society, suggests that the modern atheists are losing. So does the popularity of The Book of Mormon, the gloriously blasphemous musical I’ve finally seen, which, despite a swearing, camp Jesus and a plot revolving around religion being made-up nonsense, is strangely affectionate towards religion. You’re invited to judge the evangelists on what they do, rather than on what they believe, and that may be a vital part of its success, compared with the modern atheists whose attitude is: “Of COURSE Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, you idiots.”There’s a religious slot broadcast every morning on the radio, called Thought for the Day, and it’s marvellous. Because it usually involves some bishop telling you what he did the day before, and shovelling Jesus into it somehow. So it will go: “Last night I was watching an episode of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, in which a poor hapless restaurateur once again found himself on the wrong end of Gordon’s somewhat ribald invective. And I began to think to myself ‘Isn’t this a bit like Jesus’? Because Jesus too went out for supper one night, and that turned into a bit of a nightmare. Good morning.”

Richard Dawkins, for example, complained that a Muslim political writer wasn’t a “serious journalist” because he “believes Mohamed flew to heaven on a winged horse”. I suppose if Dawkins had been in Washington when Martin Luther King made his famous speech, he’d have shouted: “Never mind your dream, how can Jonah have lived in a whale, you silly Christian knob?”

Followers of this ideal just can’t have it that some people are religious, even if they’re not doing any harm. I expect that during Ramadan they wander around Muslim areas in daylight shoving sandwiches in Muslims’ mouths, while reading from a biological paper on the workings of the digestive system.

One flaw in this approach is that it isn’t likely to win many converts. In all the debates in which Dawkins has argued with believers, there can’t have been many occasions when someone has said: “Ah NOW I see: we’re organisms composed of a complex series of particles. So that goddess with all the arms must be a load of bollocks.”

He can’t seem to grasp that what’s obvious to him might not look that way if you’ve been brought up in Catholic rural Spain or on the banks of the Ganges, so dealing with the intricacies of people’s ideas requires more than yelling science at them. If Dawkins were asked to treat an anorexic, he’d say: “This will be easy,” and shout, “Look – you’re NOT FAT, I’ll pick you up and chuck you over the wardrobe. THEN you’ll calculate that a man of my years couldn’t throw an adult unless they were in need of fattening up. So get these down you – they’re some pork pies I’ve got left over from Ramadan.”

The modern atheist often points to atrocities carried out by religious institutions, such as the tyranny of the Taliban or the child abuse of the Catholic Church, but isn’t it the actions of these people that are vile, not the religion itself? Unless your attitude is: “Those priests are a disgrace. They sexually abused children, covered it up for decades, then to top it all they give out stupid wafers in their service. How sick can you get”?

The contradictions of religion are certainly confusing. I spent a morning at a Sikh temple recently, where 4,000 free meals are provided for anyone who wants one, and hypnotic musicians play all day amid an addictive tranquillity. Everyone you meet exudes joy and respect, until I thought: “I reckon I could be a Sikh.” Then an elder informed me of the guru who fought for the Sikh people with such courage, that when his head was chopped off he carried on fighting for the rest of the day, blessed as he was by God. And if I’m honest, I think that’s where we had to agree to differ.

Even so, there’s so much to experience and discuss with followers at this temple – the process that led them from the Punjab to west London, the food, customs, community and music – so to start your acquaintance by explaining to them that you can’t run around without a head, maybe by performing a series of experiments with goats on the steps of the temple, would cut you off from any of that. In any case, if you turned up at Richard Dawkins’s house with 4,000 mates, I’d be surprised if you all got a meal out of him.

It’s almost as if the modern atheist is in agreement with the religious fundamentalist that a person’s attitude towards God is the most important aspect of their character.

This may be why, even among atheists, the strident anti-religious stance of those like Richard Dawkins appears less attractive than The Book of Mormon, whose creators said: “We wanted to write a love letter from atheists to religion.”

That must be the most heartening attitude of all, though if you were to take Cliff Richard and Abu Hamza to see it, they would probably literally explode in a fireball. Then millions from round the world would flock to see the site of such a miracle. 

 

The marvellous Mark Steel

[legov]

While I actually (somewhat) agree that his ultra-cold rational approach isn't the best way to win converts, I couldn't disagree with this statement more:

 

It’s almost as if the modern atheist is in agreement with the religious fundamentalist that a person’s attitude towards God is the most important aspect of their character.

 

 

Doesn't reflect his beliefs at all.

 

While he (rightly) thinks religion is silly nonsense, I think his biggest concern has always been the tendency of religion to meddle in politics and science. Religious fundamentalism is about meddling in politics and science, and he is absolutely justified in railing against that. As for your average "casual" Christians etc, I wouldn't say that he respects them for their religious beliefs, but he certainly isn't as obsessed with them as his reputation suggests.

[Wainy316]

This made me chuckle from rational wiki's entry on Satan...

 

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Satan

 

 

v - t - e

You may have some lingering questions. Here, we shall answer them.

[edit]So, what's the deal with this Satan dude?

Satan/Lucifer was second-in-command to the big G in the Kingdom of H. Or, in English: in the Christian mythology, Lucifer was a high-ranking angel in heaven. "Lucifer" is roughly translated as "the bringer of light"; it comes from "Lucifer son of the morning" in Isaiah 14:12 (the only Bible verse in which "Lucifer" appears), which has often been interpreted as a reference to Satan, but may in fact mean a Babylonian king who was the Jews' number one bogeyman at the time. Or maybe it's electricity!^[1]

 

[edit]Like, why did he totally piss God off?

Lucifer decided that he was tired of being a working stiff. He had to run an army of millions of angels, got no overtime, no health benefits, and was really pissed that God hadn't even invented bars to drink in yet. He rebelled against God when he realized that God was a floating logical fallacy. There was a war in heaven as the choirs of angels split into two factions. God and his army of noble warriors bravely fought off the horde of logic hammering at the gates and kicked them out of heaven, where Satan and the fallen angels would be free to cause AIDS and reality television. On the plus side, this meant that they would no longer bother God. Y'know, "God"? The dude who controls everything and could have just smote the horned one at any time and place of His choosing? Not to mention, beingomniscient, should have known of the rebellion in the first place?

Satan's exile from heaven occurred before God had even created the Earth. However, Satan is seen chatting with God in heaven in the Book of Job, which occurs a long time afterward. Those wacky Old Testament authors needed a better continuity checker.

 

[edit]Like, why did God let the Devil set up shop in hell?

Because He is an asshole.

If the shop involves hard labor,^[2] that's the sign God wants to enslave people. It is not clear why the work has to be done by those people when an omnipotent God can do it at a flip of His finger.

[edit]So, like, why doesn't God just click His fingers and make Satan poof into a cloud of dust, thereby stopping Old Nick from torturing or corrupting any more innocents?

Because He is a sadistic asshole to boot. And it's all part of His great, much wider plan. Besides, every good narrative needs a good villain. Where would James Bond be if Her Majesty's Government did the sensible thing and just used highly-trained snipers or well-aimed cruise missiles to assassinate the bad guy rather than let 007 loose with some one-liners and dames?

Exactly.

 

[edit]Wait, I'm confused. Why would the Devil punish people in hell for doing his work?

Well, technically, it's God who is punishing you by consigning you to a lake of fire for all eternity. The Devil is just following orders. Which means he isn't an arch-rebel hellbent on challenging God at all. Which is where this part of the story gets so tangled up that we rejoice that humanity has had 10,000 more years to really get to grips with this whole "character motivation" thing in narrative fiction.

[edit]Like, how do I avoid going to hell?

Just don't book a trip to New Jersey. Zing! But you should also stay away from shellfish, taking it up the wrongun and a few other things.

Take note though that hell has hot springs (Revelation 21:8) and bars (Job 17:16), unlike heaven.

[edit]Okay, so I understand all that. But tell me, why do I sin? Is it Satan or is it God who causes me to sin? 

Ah, what came first, the chicken or the Prince of Darkness? The **** chicken (read: God), you moron. God created Satan and allows him to rule his dark dominion and have far more obvious influence on world affairs than He allows Himself to have. God created you. He did this in weird ways just to make sure you are sinned when you are conceived. To make it worse, He decreed that you have to obey His rules, even though you never asked Him to create you.^[3] One of these rules is that you must resist the temptations offered by His old roommate in favor of a life spent abstaining from fun and being a sysop at Conservapedia. Zing, zing, and double zing!

 

[edit]Wow, you've answered my questions with detail, wit, aplomb, and warm generosity. So what say you, is it better to serve in heaven or reign in hell?

They're both fictional places, you idiot.

 

[edit]Thanks!

Don't mention it.

 

Edited February 28, 2014 by Wainy316

[legov]

Angels can't fly

[AVFCforever1991]

Angels can't fly

 

BS, I've seen plenty flying about...

[Wainy316]

Angels can't fly

BS, I've seen plenty flying about...

First chickens now angels, you think everything can fly don't you?

[MakemineVanilla]

Religion is irrational treason

Betrayal of sovereign reason

Source of too much inhuman friction

Like love a useful social fiction

[MakemineVanilla]

[limpid]

https://humanism.org.uk/ for those who haven't yet joined.

[Xann]

 

Oh, this is good