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Posted
6 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Religion killed Socrates and Jesus. Or was it the state? Who is to say? 

Socrates was killed for just asking questions 

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Socrates was killed for just asking questions 

Socrates was the original troll.  Claimed to know nothing while exposing the ignorance of others. The problem for Socrates was he trolled the wrong people, some douchebag rich kid snowflakes.

Posted
6 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

You were asking for it. I was just answering the call. :)

If you want to make the atheists shut up, stop the Christians from trying to impose their religion on everyone else. 

As a person who bought the whole faith thing, I see no reason to make atheists shut up. I get why they may feel as constrained as those who oppose gun culture and who feel powerless against it.

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Posted

I like the atheists. The don’t leave flyers or bang on the door to invite me to their place of worship. Which they tell me is very inclusive.

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Posted

Just as there are off putting Christians like atheist, Bill Maher, there are admirable Christians like the late atheist, Stanley Marcus.

Posted
Pointing out that most who extoll the virtues of atheism do so while ignoring the atrocities committed in the societies where it has been compelled by the state is “concern trolling?”  
 
I’m not sure how one would think pointing out the dangers of state imposed atheism in a thread about the dangers of sliding into state imposed religion would be a problem. 
 
to be fair I haven’t read the whole thread. Are there a bunch of posts saying religion is great, but weaponization of religion and state imposed religion are bad? 

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Posted
19 minutes ago, TheRealRonWeaver? said:

 

Hitchens makes some thought provoking and well deserved criticisms of religion but the guy was also a provocateur bordering on disingenuous troll at times.  Especially with the whole “circumcision is ritualistic genital mutilation.”  The guy kept pushing the envelope to remain relevant I guess.

Posted
3 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Hitchens makes some thought provoking and well deserved criticisms of religion but the guy was also a provocateur bordering on disingenuous troll at times.  Especially with the whole “circumcision is ritualistic genital mutilation.”  The guy kept pushing the envelope to remain relevant I guess.

I mean he’s right about circumcision IMO. 
 

WRT this clip Hitchens seems not to want to address the atrocities committed by those regimes rather he wants to blame the victims for the leaders that came to power. He then literally creates a straw man society for his opponent to refute rather than discuss the actual societies that have existed. Then he finishes up with “yeah well the Catholics killed a lot of people too and look who started WWI”

Posted

Guys like Hitchens, and to a lesser extent, Bill Maher intrigue me. That Hitchens would write an 800 page book on why God is not great, doesn’t really convey a lack of interest in the subject.

Posted
17 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Especially with the whole “circumcision is ritualistic genital mutilation.”

To be fair, it quite literally is. It is a mainstream medical procedure now because it also happens to be benificial. Doesn't change the fact that its roots are as a ritualistic (religious and/or rite of passage) practice that had nothing to do with health.

Posted (edited)
22 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

To be fair, it quite literally is. It is a mainstream medical procedure now because it also happens to be benificial. Doesn't change the fact that its roots are as a ritualistic (religious and/or rite of passage) practice that had nothing to do with health.

I know, kinda why it was bordering on trolling. He wasn’t openly advocating against circumcision, seemed like he was just trying to rile people up over an uncomfortable truth to further his anti-religion position. It was the way he argued the point that bothered me, I guess. 

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
Posted
3 hours ago, Sawbonz said:

Pointing out that most who extoll the virtues of atheism do so while ignoring the atrocities committed in the societies where it has been compelled by the state is “concern trolling?”  

 

I’m not sure how one would think pointing out the dangers of state imposed atheism in a thread about the dangers of sliding into state imposed religion would be a problem. 
 

to be fair I haven’t read the whole thread. Are there a bunch of posts saying religion is great, but weaponization of religion and state imposed religion are bad? 

I think you are unfairly presenting imposed atheism as the root cause of the atrocities committed by those countries, when the real issue is authoritarianism. In reality, it's no different from any country that has imposed religion, whether it be officially or simply in practice, and brother there are PLENTY of examples of that throughout history and in the contemporary world.

In either case, the imposed religiosity/atheism is merely a symptom and a tool to enforce said authoritarianism. 

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Posted

But, BEVO, we don’t know what they were thinking.  I jest.  It is also only behavior, including statements, that we claim to know what humans are thinking, but we never do know.  That chimps are not conscious in some way relevant to them is absurd.  On a continuum this sort of animal sensibility runs thru dogs, and cats.  That they don’t have language does not mean they don’t have emotions that drive behavior.   Like others we know.  
 

Thanks for this perspective.

Posted
15 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

I think you are unfairly presenting imposed atheism as the root cause of the atrocities committed by those countries, when the real issue is authoritarianism. In reality, it's no different from any country that has imposed religion, whether it be officially or simply in practice, and brother there are PLENTY of examples of that throughout history and in the contemporary world.

In either case, the imposed religiosity/atheism is merely a symptom and a tool to enforce said authoritarianism. 

I agree with this statement completely. The authoritarianism is the problem. Historically religion has been the symptom/tool as you say. As the 20th century has shown us religion is neither necessary nor sufficient for authoritarianism to take hold.
 

I do think fascism/far right/religiosity go together. There is authoritarianism on the far left as well and violent religious oppression is an integral part of it

 

To all you atheists who just want to be left alone, I’m not accusing you of being complicit in that evil. Just as I hope you do not blame the people of faith who just want to worship in peace for what the far right is trying to do here

 

One last thing re rapists, pedophiles, etc. You will find them in any society; just look for places of power imbalance. If you are in a majority “Christian” country, most offenders will be Christian; in a majority Muslim country most will be Muslim. In a completely atheist society, well I hate to break it to you, but they will be there as well, likely in the same proportion 

Posted
2 hours ago, Sawbonz said:

You made a ridiculous statement that on its face is false

Not at all. Hitchens was making the same point. It’s not atheism that drove Stalin to kill, it was tyranny, the demand for absolute devotion to the state. The political ideology became the new dogma. It demanded a fanatical devotion the same as any religion. It’s a bullshit argument that Christians use to threaten about the dangers of atheism by pointing to the behavior of authoritarian regimes like the “godless communists” in Soviet Russia. Again, have you seen the atrocities the Russians are committing in Ukraine? Putin has embraced the church and now we have members of the Christian Right in this country taking his side and repeating his propaganda.

You should know better. 

Posted (edited)
45 minutes ago, BevoAbyss said:

And, to offer the obligatory quote from the astronaut Taylor (played by Charlton Heston): "There has to be something better than man out there. Has to be."  

For younger people who only know him as basically the embodiment of this thread’s title, his getting that role must seem the most ironic casting ever

 

He could be the poster boy for brain worms

image.gif.1a0399dfc785e5e5d947c7859f3b4de1.gif
 

 

Edit

 

Also if I have misread the tone of some of your other posts and attributed a level of anti theism to you that is unwarranted I would like to apologize. 
 

but not for the Michael Keaton jerkoff gif. This is Surly after all

Edited by Sawbonz
Posted
2 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Not at all. Hitchens was making the same point. It’s not atheism that drove Stalin to kill, it was tyranny, the demand for absolute devotion to the state. The political ideology became the new dogma. It demanded a fanatical devotion the same as any religion. It’s a bullshit argument that Christians use to threaten about the dangers of atheism by pointing to the behavior of authoritarian regimes like the “godless communists” in Soviet Russia. Again, have you seen the atrocities the Russians are committing in Ukraine? Putin has embraced the church and now we have members of the Christian Right in this country taking his side and repeating his propaganda.

You should know better. 

See the rest of my posts. You (and Hitchens) want to paint religion as the root cause when atrocities are perpetrated by the far right. It’s not, as evidenced by the fact atrocities from the far left have been committed (and at a far greater scale, though this is due to technological advances in killing rather than lack of effort in earlier societies), where not only is religion not used to justify the acts, it is violently suppressed by the perpetrators. 
 

That clip from Hitchens is intellectually lazy and one long logical fallacy. 

Posted
23 hours ago, BevoAbyss said:

I guess, somehow, the 30-35% of Americans who are non-religious need to organize on local, national, and international scales. And they need to have a platform and manifesto, just for starters. If it is not too late. But maybe the non-religious are too apathetic because consumer society offers endless distractions....

They need to work with the smaller religious groups including Christian sects (such as Lutherans, Methodists, Pentecostals), the Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, etc. and they need to frame this as a fairly small portion of religious fanatics (evangelicals as we know them by their behavior, not the textbook definition) who are trying to fuck with the vast majority who aren't evangelicals.  It may not seem like an existential crisis, and arguably it isn't (it'll pass, the youths are too non-evangelical/churchy), but we still need to frame it as "if we give this to them, they'll just do more". 

Make sure that people know that during Dan Patrick's Dannie Goeb's inauguration, he said "I respect all faiths and religions, but I am a Christian first, a conservative second and a Republican third, and I praise Jesus for this moment and this day".

Maybe even get the Catholics on board since here in Texas, it's a bunch of Baptists/evangelicals who are trying to inflict their version of Christianity on everybody else, even though the Catholics are the largest group in Texas, and in the scheme of things, the Baptists are vastly outnumbered by everybody else.

And we need to play the Catholics off against the Baptists/evangelicals pushing this shit.  Maybe even goad your Baptist/evangelical relatives/friends with "oh, we need a lot more religion in schools, and since the Catholics are the largest group in Texas, we need to look to them for guidance on this - kids need to learn to look towards the Vatican and Pope."

They also need to put names and faces on this stuff, including Dan Patrick, and they need to make the Republicans push this completely own this - dig up their comments, etc. because most of these evangelical motherfuckers at some point have made sure to bash other Christian sects/groups or religions - they are proud of it even.

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Posted
7 hours ago, Brian Fantana said:

You're not wrong about outspoken atheists being just as annoying as outspoken evangelicals, but there is a power dynamic at play here. Also, it seems like you are mainly just using your (justified) annoyance at outspoken atheists to concern troll about communism.

What’s missing here is an acknowledgment that there is supposed to be a point to Christians engaging non Christians. Sadly, it is a point routinely ignored and/or poorly executed by holy roller types who take themselves way too seriously and who end up making a mockery of the very thing they call themselves defending.

Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Methodists,

As someone from a family who recently cut ties, the Methodists in Texas and elsewhere are working some things out. Even the churches which didn't split to the "Global Methodist Church" may be anything up to the shitty side of 65% evangelical.  Not sure they can be counted on for any tough assignments at this point.  But it depends on the church and its leadership mostly.  Not a sure thing by any means.

Edited by dcbc
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Posted
5 minutes ago, dcbc said:

As someone from a family who recently cut ties, the Methodists in Texas and elsewhere are working some things out. Even the churches which didn't split to the "Global Methodist Church" may be anything up to the shitty side of 65% evangelical.  Not sure they can be counted on for any tough assignments at this point.

Since the provision under which UMC congregations would be free to leave the denomination with their properties, required opposition to all rights and privileges of LGBTQ members, the vast majority of the shitty side left in a huff.

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Posted (edited)
10 minutes ago, Satchel said:

Since the provision under which UMC congregations would be free to leave the denomination with their properties, required opposition to all rights and privileges of LGBTQ members, the vast majority of the shitty side left in a huff.

Right.  My point was that it required a 2/3 vote.  So there are remaining UMC congregations where up to 65% of the congregations voted to leave, but they couldn't make the 2/3 margin.  How overall nutty the congregation is depends on the church.  To an extent, it may just reflect the local population with larger metro churches skewing far lower on that percentage scale.  Consider my avatar as indicative of my location and how things went locally for us.

Edited by dcbc
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Posted
8 minutes ago, dcbc said:

Right.  My point was that it required a 2/3 vote.  So there are remaining UMC congregations where up to 65% of the congregations voted to leave, but they couldn't make the 2/3 margin.  How overall nutty the congregation is depends on the church.  To an extent, it may just reflect the local population with larger metro churches skewing far lower on that percentage scale.  Consider my avatar as indicative of my location and how things went locally for us.

In the NTC, we “lost” a couple of First Churches, among them, Irving and Carrollton. The most surprising loss by far was St. Andrew in Plano. They made no secret of misusing the provision since they made no secret of their leaving being based on financial considerations which had next to nothing to do with LGBTQ issue.

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Posted (edited)
29 minutes ago, dcbc said:

Right.  My point was that it required a 2/3 vote.  So there are remaining UMC congregations where up to 65% of the congregations voted to leave, but they couldn't make the 2/3 margin.  How overall nutty the congregation is depends on the church.  To an extent, it may just reflect the local population with larger metro churches skewing far lower on that percentage scale.  Consider my avatar as indicative of my location and how things went locally for us.

One could surmise that those that voted to leave would but their parish did not, would then seek a new spiritual home where the hating of gays is still sanctified in Jesus’ name. Well, not Jesus’ really since the common biblical reference is from the OT way before Jesus was born. 
 

hey, kinda like the 10 commandments!

Edited by Pato del Muerto
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Posted

There are places I want to visit in Montana, but when I read about what they are doing to the trans representative and not even allowing her to speak, well, I will just not go there. My God what a bunch of backwards ghouls picking on a small group of people just to score some political points. A lot of our fellow citizens really do not deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us. Montana is what religious fundamentalists look like. These are mentally broken, deranged and unwell people. 

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Posted

I really prefer Greek or Egyptian religions. They just didn’t take shit as seriously with killing and oppressing people, so they didn’t stick like the current big 3.

There are some great stories…

Contendings of Horus and Set begins with the death of Osiris — killed by his brother, Set. There is a court battle between Set and Horus, Osiris’s son and reincarnation, about who gets to inherit Egypt. The Enead, ancestors, call for a break and tell the uncle and nephew to stop fighting and to meet back in court again in the morning. Set invites Horus to his house and that night the two end up having sex - But, right before Set ejaculates in Horus’s ass, Horus pulls out Set’s cock and holds it in his hand, and Set unknowingly ejaculates into Horus’s fist. In the morning, Set leaves all happy and heads to the garden. Horus takes his uncle’s semen to his mother/wife, Isis, who quickly cuts off the defiled hand and feeds it to a fish that swims away deep into the river (an important detail). Isis then jerks off her husband/son, collects his semen, and she goes to the garden and secretly wipes it on Set’s favorite lettuce, which he carelessly eats for breakfast.
Later that very morning, at court, Set announces to everyone that he has new information: “I had sex with Horus last night. He is therefore emasculated and has no right to the throne.” Everyone looks to Horus who just laughs and says, “He’s lying.”
“No,” Set replies, “I can prove it! Call forth my semen and it will come out of Horus’s head [where it was believed all semen is stored].” They call out for it, but the semen doesn’t come out of Horus’s head; it comes out of a fish suddenly seen sailing through the air from out of the river! Everyone laughs (because it implies that Set fucked a fish last night). Horus then says that the opposite it actually the case. “The truth is that I fucked my uncle Set. Call out to my semen and it will appear right where it should.” They call it forth, and the semen sure enough appears as a shiny drop in the center of uncle Set’s forehead.
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, Thoth appears and grabs Horus’s semen, slaps it onto his own head, and crowns himself King of Egypt
.
It’s interesting how the anointing of oil on the head will be picked up by the Hebrews, who will call the holy oil, ‘shemen.’
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Posted
22 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

One could surmise that those that voted to leave would but their parish did not, would then seek a new spiritual home where the hating of gays is still sanctified in Jesus’ name. Well, not Jesus’ really since the common biblical reference is from the OT way before Jesus was born. 
 

hey, kinda like the 10 commandments!

One could

Posted
16 minutes ago, Fastbreak said:

I really prefer Greek or Egyptian religions. They just didn’t take shit as seriously with killing and oppressing people, so they didn’t stick like the current big 3.

There are some great stories…
 

all stars lol GIF by Lifetime

Posted
6 hours ago, BevoAbyss said:

With all due respect: just because you are not informed on the subject does not mean it is "gibberish." 

Apparently, you know nothing of the revolutionary work of the great Jane Goodall — perhaps the most important primatologist of the 20th century. Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

"Then suddenly we found that chimpanzees could be brutal—that they, like us, had a darker side to their nature. .... Her findings revolutionised contemporary knowledge of chimpanzee behaviour and were further evidence of the social similarities between humans and chimpanzees, albeit in a much darker manner."

For a more detailed explanation of Goodall's findings, here is a screen capture from Wikipedia. . Note the clear examples of tribalism, violence, dominance, ganging up (feeling superior?) on a solitary monkey and killing it, etc.  

 

 

Goodall.jpg

Did a sentient fedora type this statement? How fucking condescending can you be? 

Like I said, this is “science-y,” not science. As even Jane Goodall would tell you, apes are capable of responding to aggressive instincts, but incapable of experiencing motives or motions that we could recognize as “evil” or “bad.” 
 

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/22585935/jane-goodall-chimpanzees-animal-intelligence-human-nature

Quote

Given the two poles that you discovered — some very trusting behavior and bonds, and some aggression and violence — do you think of chimps as being capable of altruism or kindness on the one hand, and malice or evil on the other?

Jane Goodall

Not evil. I think only humans are capable of evil. Because to me, evil is not just responding to an aggressive impulse (which is what chimps do), but sitting deliberately in cold blood and planning the destruction of another human being or planning a war. Just like them, we have a good side and a dark side. But I think our dark side is worse because we are capable of evil. I think our good side is better. Because while chimps can be altruistic, they’re responding to the immediate emotion. But we can be altruistic thinking about the consequences to ourselves and realizing that if we move ahead to help that person, it may have serious negative impacts on us, but doing it all the same because of this compassion we have.

Apes are certainly capable of expressing dominance. You can also go watch it at a dog park. “Superiority” requires a level of thinking that apes don’t have, or at least, they can’t tell us about, because it requires a concept of “better than” in a deeper way than preferring a big banana to a small one. And apes don’t have that, it is nonsensical to attribute to a chimpanzee the ability to believe it is “better” than another chimpanzee. 
 

There’s a lot of deep thinking and discussion about things like primate cognition and the continuum between what they experience and we experience but you’re not doing it here. It’s gibberish to say things like “feelings of hate and supremacy are from the apes.” 

Posted
5 hours ago, BevoAbyss said:

I fail to see how turning away from the very evolutionary things that clearly separate humanity from the apes — namely, our science, reason, logic, aesthetics, to name a few things that we developed — is the path away from the apes.

How is the belief in an unseen, never seen, never heard from God (who does not a damn thing to improve life on Planet Earth) any better than apes? It's not and history has shown that time and time again. 

You posted a pic of a chimp, apparently suggesting that grasping our evolution origins is counter to humanity. Lulz.

This pic from the original Planet of the Apes (1968) captures the essential attitude and worldview of religion toward science, logic, evidence, or anything that refutes their beliefs. And, to offer the obligatory quote from the astronaut Taylor (played by Charlton Heston): "There has to be something better than man out there. Has to be."  

The failure of basic science education in this country is astonishing. It's no wonder MAGA-GQP are so powerful. We're in the middle of an epic intellectual/educational collapse and a huge swath of America is literally devolving right before our eyes. Taylor's also right about something else: "It's a madhouse!

ApesWeek.jpeg copy.jpg

More gibberish. Belief in an unseen, never heard from God is a great example of the chasm between apes and people and how they can think.  An ape is incapable of imagining or conceptualizing something it has not seen or heard. Apes respond to particular things in their environment. 
 

Attributing various phenomena to unseen sentient forces may be wrong, but it’s a way-station to things like science and reasoning and aesthetics. Getting the idea that doing a particular dance at a certain time of year causes an unseen entity to make it rain is unscientific, but it’s far more advanced than what apes are capable of (apes do not ponder where rain comes from or goes and simply respond to it when it happens). 
 

 

Posted
11 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church say hello.

No reasonable person brings up Soviet Russia et al. because they’re irrelevant to the subject. Believers like to bring them up as a means to argue the dangers of atheism but that’s a fallacious argument. Authoritarianism is bad in all its forms. Just look at what a responsible member of the global community Russia is now that Putin has embraced the church. It’s not because they didn’t have religion that the regimes you mentioned were bad. In those systems the government took the place of religion. You can’t blame it on atheism which, again, isn’t a belief system. We can and do fill volumes with accounts of the atrocities committed in the name of the Christian god during the medieval period when there was no separation between the state and the Catholic Church, an era that we commonly refer to as the Dark Ages and which lasted for centuries.

Nobody is saying atheists can’t be assholes. I’m sure there are atheists out there who rape little children just like the Catholic priests and Baptist ministers do. But they’re not doing it because they’re atheists anymore than the Christians are doing it because they’re Christians. I’ll bet there are a lot more Christians raping little children than there are atheists doing it, though.

Which reminds me, I wonder if that “Atheists don’t...” website is still up...

<searching>

...Nope. I didn’t think it was still around. There used to be a website that compiled examples of awful acts committed in the name of religion. You could click through example after example endlessly of things atheists don’t do.

Now the first thing I found was this, which is still pretty cool:

 

Just like we have science-y stuff on here, we also are getting stuff that is “historical-ish.” One of the reasons that “new atheism” can get so tiresome is the reliance on dogmatic, oversimplified, frequently wrong narratives of the past that are useful polemically but unhelpful to actually understand what happened and how people thought. If that sounds familiar, it should— they are basically Bible stories for atheists. 
 

The mistakes range from the semantic (there is almost no reputable historian working today that uses the term “dark ages”) to the more meaningful. For instance, Christianity is the only Abrahamic religion that has virtually ALWAYS had some inherent degree of separation between religious and secular authorities (aside from the Papal States).  And it’s one of the distinct differences between what came before it in supposedly more enlightened Roman times. The term “Pontifex Maximus” was one of the titles of the pagan Roman Emperor, who combined religious and secular authority in one person. The emperor inherited it from the Republican era, when religion and state power were absolutely one and the same.
 

That was never true for the bishops of Rome and the late Roman Emperors or bishops of Rome and subsequent European chieftains and kings, or for that matter the various eastern bishops and the eastern emperor, where church and state were always cozier than in the West. Medieval churchmen would hurl “pontifex Maximus” as an epithet and the term was officially reintroduced to the pope well after the Renaissance kicked off and the authority of the bishop of Rome was beginning to wane. 
 

It’s far more accurate to say that the idea of separation of church/religious authority and secular state is an invention of late antiquity and the middle ages as opposed to a creation of those times, major conflicts revolves around where the authority of each ends. Rewatching “A Man for All Seasons” might be useful here. 
 

There’s also the counter-intuitive— the “Darkest” part of the early Middle Ages involves the least Christianized parts of Europe where the church’s influence was weakest, because that’s where literacy collapsed, not because the church enforced ignorance.
 

Then there’s the popular legends with no basis in fact— witch hunts and witch burnings were not a feature of the “Dark Ages” and churchmen of the time told the secular authorities not to execute women as witches because belief in witchcraft and the existence of witches was a pagan superstition. What we think of as witch-hunts took place mostly in the modern period and was most intense where protestantism and Catholicism were in most intense competition. Solidly Catholic Spain and Poland basically ignored the witch-burning craze, although of course they got up to other bad shit based on religion. 
 

TL; DR— your interpretation of history is basically late-enlightenment era Protestant propaganda, redressed in the clothes of atheist polemics. It’s been commented upon by people smarter than me that new atheist polemics have a striking rhetorical and intellectual similarity with Anglo-American evangelical polemics and it’s no surprise that this is the background shared by Dawkins, Hitchens, etc. 

 

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Posted
5 hours ago, Fastbreak said:

I really prefer Greek or Egyptian religions. They just didn’t take shit as seriously with killing and oppressing people, so they didn’t stick like the current big 3.

There are some great stories…
 

The Greeks (and Egyptians) for that matter were awful. I like the Greeks in particular as the counter-example for the “religion is the prime motivator for violence and subjugation in the world.” 
 

Quote

Athenians. For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretences- either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us- and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Quote

We will now proceed to show you that we are come here in the interest of our empire, and that we shall say what we are now going to say, for the preservation of your country; as we would fain exercise that empire over you without trouble, and see you preserved for the good of us both.

Melians. And how, pray, could it turn out as good for us to serve as for you to rule?

Athenians. Because you would have the advantage of submitting before suffering the worst, and we should gain by not destroying you.

 

Quote

Athenians. When you speak of the favour of the gods, we may as fairly hope for that as yourselves; neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise among themselves. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can

TL;DR: Might makes right, surrender to us before we give you a real hurt, and the gods are irrelevant in any case.  This is just how it all works— we are bigger and stronger. 
 

The Athenians would later kill every adult male in Melos, sell the women and children into slavery, and send their own colony to take it over.  I fail to see how a poor Saracen cowering at the pointy end of a Crusader’s sword was somehow worse off than a Melian because of all the God bits, as opposed to the ruthless Athenian “we are doing this because we can.” 

Posted
One could surmise that those that voted to leave would but their parish did not, would then seek a new spiritual home where the hating of gays is still sanctified in Jesus’ name. Well, not Jesus’ really since the common biblical reference is from the OT way before Jesus was born. 
 
hey, kinda like the 10 commandments!

6a2bcfc770fcc1a7d8d7f82372b57c4f.gif
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Posted

Very intriguing discussion and thread. I took a history of religion course at UT—equally fascinating. My mom grew up Church of Christ—like bare bones Bible stuff—mostly “you will burn in hell if  you go against anything the Bible says not to do.” Not to be confused with Church science folks that don’t believe in medical intervention.
 

It’s weird bc people of a lot of people in my mom’s generation believe in Jesus Christ and yet place all this emphasis on the Old Testament.
 

Reading about all the denominations in America and how they split off from one another for something as simple as music or dancing or instruments in the church. Anyway…pardon my interruption, I am enjoying this thread. I have been trying to find a church in Austin. I am finding it extremely difficult. It’s either a mega church or a dying one. It sucks. I’m a Christian but it is hard for me to go to any church that only wants to talk about how Christ died and returned but not spend any time encouraging others to truly be like Him. I have so many questions and issues with organized religion. I figure even if people are open to it they just see bastardizing assholes spouting shit about Christianity when in truth so many people who claimed to love Jesus are just cafeteria types with a Santa Claus list worth of demand letters (I mean prayers.)
 

Great thread.

 

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Posted
2 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Perhaps the patriarchy infused into most religions is also part of the problem.  

That was brought up on page three of this thread, but didn't get too far.

I think @BevoAbyss has brought this up, but one need only read the history (while we're still allowed) of the historical  treatment of indigenous peoples in America with respect to their own beliefs, perspectives, and very existence versus the Eurocentric-minded government and settlers and how they are viewed today to see parallels across societies. Most on here understand that, I think. However, there were tribes in the Americas wherein females had much more agency until the colonies were created. Many most religions simply will not tolerate that. Any that claim otherwise typically confine that 'freedom' to specific roles that have no true authority over the male gender, but the opposite is not true. I've pretty much given up hope that the collision course upon which our nation is set will end without a massive toll.

That's the ledge for you, hard to see humanity as any other than ants.

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Posted
19 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

However, there were tribes in the Americas wherein females had much more agency until the colonies were created

I was hoping someone would bring this up.  Several indigenous tribes have a matrilineal and/or matriarchal social structure infused with their religious practices.  (Particularly the Hopi and Cherokee.) Are these societies better at “keeping the peace” than their patriarchal counterparts?  Someone should do a study. Perhaps there is an argument to be made. 

Posted
19 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

There are places I want to visit in Montana, but when I read about what they are doing to the trans representative and not even allowing her to speak, well, I will just not go there. My God what a bunch of backwards ghouls picking on a small group of people just to score some political points. A lot of our fellow citizens really do not deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us. Montana is what religious fundamentalists look like. These are mentally broken, deranged and unwell people. 

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