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God is so good...
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
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:thumb:
We should use this as a standard response to any religious thread really...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1pCudKUIRg
The whole religion piece he does is hilarious, but that video made me think of this part in particular.....
It proves there are narrow-minded idiots with or without religion.
Why not focus on things like this instead: http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=7P6WNNNX#alertbar
If you mean the nutters that wrote the books which the faith is based on.
Have you read it? A lot of it is not that mental (and equally a lot of it is weirder than you probably realise!). I would absolutely not advocate taking it word-for-word literally, but there are huge swathes of it (e.g. much of OT prophecy) that is about breathing new life into the world, about working with the poor and needy and creating justice. Some of the teachings of Jesus make him seem a radical socialist in the terms of today's world. He was all about living on as little as possible so that others might live on the money you don't really need.
I could not disagree more with the message of this video but I find it really sad that people think everyone who believes in the message of Christianity thinks this way.
NB I *did* suggest she was a fundamentalist earlier.
I don't disagree that some of the teaching purported to belong to Jesus are pretty socialist in nature but it's worth remembering that he didn't write a single word himself. And that applies to each of the "Good books" - they were all written by someone else.
Both fair points, and I'm not in the mood for full-on apologetics, I just wanted to stick my oar in
There are some animal rights activists I have seen, who have literally said that the Japanese fishermen had it coming to them because they kill sea mammals... Apparently, it is karmic justice.
Fuck religious nutters and their hate mongering.
I really don't like the way that people like this woman are held up to be "typical Christians" and that "all Christians" think like she does.
I'm a Catholic, I go to Church every week and believe in Christ and his teaching. I'm not a fruitcake and I don't really like the way arseholes like Dawkins try and portray me as such.
I don't particularly care if you agree with my faith or want to join my faith, I know I'm not going to convert you no matter what I say. I respect other peoples' beliefs, with the exception of the Scientologists who are just batshit mental. I don't think it is unreasonable for the same respect to be given back to me and everyone else who believes what I believe.
I think the only writer in the New Testament that could be considered to be a "nutter" is Paul, and it's a shame that so much stall is placed on his teachings. I think he was a cock before the scales fell from his eyes on the road to Damascus and I think he was a cock afterwards.
Just because it was written by somebody else it doesn't mean that it is factually inaccurate.
Much of the Bible is allegorical- Jesus himself used parables and allegories to explain complicated things to simple people- and I don't think it devalues the faith by understanding this. Noah's flood didn't flood the whole world, and he didn't live to be 900 years old. The Jews probably escaped across tidal mud flats (similar to Morecambe Bay) rather than literally separating the sea. The seven days of Genesis probably refer to seven stages of development rather than seven literal days. Anyone who thinks dinosaur fossils were left on earth by the Devil to tempt people into sin is an idiot. The obsession over homosexuality in some quarters of the Church is creepy and I certainly think some people doth protest too much.
I don't know what a typical Christian is, or even if one exists. I suspect there are as many versions of Christianity as there are Christians. And to a large extent I don't know why anyone would want to identify themselves as Christian - you spend most of your time distancing yourself from the crazy stuff your fellow Christians believe that you don't.
I don't respect other people's beliefs. Or at least I don't respect them simply because they hold them. I wouldn't want people to respect my beliefs simply simply because I hold them. I respect good, well-reasoned ideas.
Scientology has intergalactic warlord space aliens, destroys families and rinses your bank account. Christianity has zombie Jesus, a stock-man's guide to keeping slaves, and institutional pederasty. It's all a bit much-of-a-much to me.
This is exactly what I was meaning about uninformed and idiotic attacks on the Church.
Priests are up to four times less likely to sexually abuse children in their care than the general male adult population.
Firstly, that might be evidence against the claim that the Catholic church has disproportionately high levels of pederasts. Secondly, the Catholic Herald is hardly a credible source to use to refute that claim. More pertinently: it's not the the claim I made. So... strawman, I guess. The routine cover up of child rape is institutional.
Of course Scientology does do real harm with the whole 'psychiatry is the devil's work', but then Catholicism does have the whole "AIDS may be bad, but condoms are worse..." thing. Like I said, much-of-a-much.
As for the systemic and systematic "cover-up", the Church has done significantly better than, say, the States of Jersey in dealing with the problem. Or any number of childrens' homes in Hartlepool or Teesside. Or the school in Bridlington that "doesn't have a sexual abuse problem" despite several teachers being jailed for grooming teenagers in their care.
If a priest is less likely to have sexual relations with a minor than an "ordinary" man, then it completely destroys your argument that "Christianity" (whatever that means) has "institutionalised pederasty". If pubescent boys are less likely to be sexually abused by a priest than by an adult male in the general population, there cannot be institutionalised pederasty.
What would you rather happened? Should we have just left it at OMFGZ w0t a f4ck1n l0z0r???!?!?!!!1!!!11eleven
I haven't accused the pope of being a Nazi paedophile.
Well it's reassuring to know that the Catholic church isn't the only organisation covering up the rape of children. Very reassuring indeed. The old "It Ain't Only Us What Done It" defence. Outstanding. Of course children's homes in Hartlepool don't have the extra irony of claiming to be the distributors of divine morality.
As stated before, it's what your organisation does when it finds out that it's members have been fucking children, that's indefensible.
Because we enjoy a debate?
Sorry, I couldn't get the tense right there. What I meant was that there is an agenda in the media about showing the Pope to be a Nazi paedophile. The next person who mentions his "Hitler Youth" pass is going to get a slap.
The point isn't that "everyone else does it too", the point is that it isn't something that is particular to the Catholic Church. There isn't any systematic child sex abuse, the child sex abuse that is present is no different to any other walk of life. Many people in care of children are more likely to be abuse them than a priest is, but you never hear a peep from the press about teachers who abuse kids. When schools cover up for teachers and social workers who abuse kids you never hear shite.
Could things have been handled better? Almost certainly. But the whole argument about child sex abuse within the Church is tiring in the extreme, because it's less of an issue than elsewhere. There are a lot of organisations that need to get their house in order long before the Catholic Church does. I see the leaders of the States of Jersey, for instance, still don't seem to think that anything was wrong with Haute de la Garenne...
It appears you couldn't get the tense right here, either. The reason why the whole Catholic/child abuse thing is still an issue is not because of how the church acted in the past, but how it continues to act. We don't criticise some children's home is because the relevant people have been brought to justice. It's finished. This isn't the case with the church, hence the ongoing comment on the issue.
Whereas in the US and in Ireland the Church has paid out serious cash in compensation and many of the priests and bishops involved have been ex-communicated.
That's not to say the Church has handled things well, it isn't just priests but social workers in Catholic childrens' homes who have abused kids. But lets not pretend that the problem is a Church problem and that only Catholic people rape kids. To say there's "institutional pederasty" in an organisation which has a lower prevalence of sexual abuse than other similar organisations is laughable.
Being hyperbolic about the pope's past isn't helpful or necessary. It's a distraction from the very many real and solid things the Catholic church is culpable for.
And if this was a thread about child abuse in care homes I'd be condemning that equally as strongly. What I wouldn't be doing is coming to the defence of the care home and attempting to dissipate blame by claiming "this child rape and cover up is no worse than than the one going on down the road at the Catholic church". And as stated before, the irony is tangible when supposed divine moral authority is being metered by an organisation which isn't anywhere near as humble for it's past transgressions as it should be.
It's tiring because it needs to be reiterated until the point where acknowledgement is absolute and not couched in terms of "but other people do it too". The only response to the cover up of pederasty by the Catholic church should be "yeah, that shit was inexcusable and indefensible and I condemn it completely".
Which is my response, it's certainly been my response when it has been raised before on these boards over the last few years. What happened is disgusting and lessons need to be learned.
However that isn't enough for a lot of people, who continue to use hyperbole about the Pope and child abusing priests as a reason to attack all Catholics. That is what is tiring- the continuous attacks on the Church without setting out the context are not fair and not acceptable. The sexual and emotional abuse of children may well have been covered up by the organisation, which is disgraceful, but that doesn't mean the abuse is institutional.
Pointing out that children are up to four times more likely to be abused by a teacher, parent or other carer doesn't mean that I find the sexual abuse of children within the Church to be acceptable, it just means that I think we need to have a wider discussion about child sex abuse and the way all organisations try to mitigate their financial losses by denying everything. The Church haven't done anything different to the Home Office who, whilst lecturing to us about child abuse and setting up database after database of "dubious people", continued to deny any financial liability for the abuse that their prison wardens carried out.
6% of priests and Church care workers abusing children is 6% too many, but the fact is that the proportion of adult men in the wider population who are child sex abusers is higher. That indicates that the Church is doing more to protect children than other organisations, completely knocking on the head any argument about "institutional pederasty".
Now might also be a good time to point out that the two countries with the highest cultural acceptance of pederasty seem to be Afghanistan and Turkey, both of which are decidedly not Christian.