OK, this time I nearly screamed 'CITE?!" in church

[Mangetout]

In the middle of the sermon, to be precise... usually I find it fascinating and applicable, rarely boring and irrelevant.

But today it was pretty much a study in non-sequitur, logical fallacy and general crooked thinking.

The bit where I nearly demanded a cite was "This is true; I heard about a school where they have banned hot cross buns because they are overtly Christian", but there was quite an assortment of other gems, such as:

"I've decided to utterly believe the whole of this [waving a Bible] until such time as someone can prove it wrong in any way, people have tried to prove it wrong to me and I'll admit I didn't always have the answers; there are a million things I don't understand and in any case, these critics are mostly not worth listening to... anyway, it can only either be entirely true or entirely false."

Grrrrrrr...

[Lissa]

Originally posted by Mangetout

The bit where I nearly demanded a cite was "This is true; I heard about a school where they have banned hot cross buns because they are overtly Christian."

Ahh, Christian rumors . . . gotta love them. My grandma, an avid church-goer always shares the latest with me.

My favorites were the story about the little girl who was expelled from school for praying before lunch, and the Clinton administration's attempts to "take over" by bringing a million Red Chinese over here and hiding them in box cars.

"But, my preacher wouldn't lie to us! He's a man of God!"

[Derleth]

"And if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, by Gawd, it's good enough for everyone!"

[mblackwell]

http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news...16/ixhome.html

I don't know if the Telegraph is a reliable paper or not, but it looks like iit is sort of true.

[JonScribe]

And isn't it time we got rid of those plus-signs?

[Mangetout]

Fair enough, but it would only really be a story if they banned hot cross buns but still served up (at some time or other) some sort of food that carries specific symbolism for some other faith, which I really doubt would happen - the story was presented as being specifically oppressive toward Christianity; "Look!, they want to ban Christianity and only Christianity" is the message and even the Telegraph seems to succumb to this in a small way:

Despite this ruling, the council confirmed that it will continue to organise special menus to celebrate events as diverse as the Chinese New Year, Italian National Day and Russian Independence Day.

But of course these are national, not religious festivals - banning hot cross buns, however sensible or silly, is someone's idea of separating religious bias from education, not picking on a specific religion.

[Malacandra]

Originally posted by mblackwell
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news...16/ixhome.html

I don't know if the Telegraph is a reliable paper or not, but it looks like iit is sort of true.

Heh... I ought to start a thread called "Ask the Brit". The Daily Telegraph is right of centre, but it's by no means "trash press" - it likes to consider itself a quality paper. I've heard a little treatise about the target readership of the various English national dailies, in terms of who runs the country and how:

"... the Daily Express is read by the men who think the country ought to be run the way it used to be run;
"The Daily Telegraph is read by the men who think it still is.[/i]

Slightly old-fogey-ish, retired-colonel, Disgusted-of-Tonbridge-Wells kind of thing.

There was another story lately about a school banning the "Three Little Pigs" story in case it upset the Moslems - which even the Moslems thought was extremely silly.

[Malacandra]

Fuck fuck fuckity-fuck fuck fuck. Preview Is My Friend

[RTFirefly]

Originally posted by Lissa
"But, my preacher wouldn't lie to us! He's a man of God!"

And few of them would, deliberately.

But all too many of them seem to check their skepticism at the door when it comes to what they hear through the Christian grapevine, so last week's pseudo-Christian glurge frequently winds up being part of this Sunday's sermon.

[Mangetout]

There seems to be an inherent tendency for Christians (maybe just people generally) to believe glurge; one time I was asked to lead a discussion and I decided to put the cat among the pigeons and talk about 'truth vs fact' - selecting this bit of glurge to demonstrate that a story does not need to be factually correct to serve the purposes of delivering a moral message and initiating thoughtful behaviour.
The whole thing got off to a very shaky start and almost backfired because even though I was the one bringing the glurge to them, I was unable to convince them that it was not a true story - honestly, they came up with every possible explanation as to why I could very eaisly be wrong and that there probably was a guy out there called Kyle to whom all these things had happened.

[Governor Quinn]

Malacandra: I've seen a similar list involving American newspapers. Tell me how your list goes, and I'll tell you how ours goes.

[asterion]

Originally posted by Malacandra
Heh... I ought to start a thread called "Ask the Brit". The Daily Telegraph is right of centre, but it's by no means "trash press" - it likes to consider itself a quality paper. I've heard a little treatise about the target readership of the various English national dailies, in terms of who runs the country and how:

"... the Daily Express is read by the men who think the country ought to be run the way it used to be run;
"The Daily Telegraph is read by the men who think it still is.[/i]

Slightly old-fogey-ish, retired-colonel, Disgusted-of-Tonbridge-Wells kind of thing.

There was another story lately about a school banning the "Three Little Pigs" story in case it upset the Moslems - which even the Moslems thought was extremely silly.

In my opinion from reading the Telegraph, it seems to be aligned about the same as the Chicago Tribune. Then again, in my experience, the London Times can be pretty conservative at times as well.

I only read the NY Post for their terrific headlines and the Sun for the boobies (hey, doesn't everybody?)

[Jackmannii]

You could always go up to the minister afterwards, all wide-eyed, and ask what school banned the hot cross buns, because you are shocked and indignant and want to write in protest.

Good luck.

It's always amazing how many people will advance various improbable and outright crack-brained scenarios, and when challenged for evidence (of miracles, alien abductions, The Jewish Conspiracy&trade will say "Prove me wrong!!!".

[Jackmannii]

Obviously The Jewish Conspiracy™ is out to screw up the coding of anyone who dares reveal its existence. Oh, the perfidy.

[Lissa]

Originally posted by RTFirefly
And few of them would, [lie] deliberately.

But all too many of them seem to check their skepticism at the door when it comes to what they hear through the Christian grapevine, so last week's pseudo-Christian glurge frequently winds up being part of this Sunday's sermon.

I once went to church a few times with a friend. The pastor gave a long sermon based on a particular scripture.

After the service, my friend asked me how I had liked it.

"Well," I said, "I might have liked it more if he based his sermons on scriptures which are actually in the Bible."

My friend was outraged and insisted that it was. I reminded her that I had gone to Christian school, and knew the Bible pretty much inside-and-out. She fumbled through the book looking for it, but after several tense minutes, admitted defeat, but insisted I ask the pastor where it was.

We went up to him, and she told him in amused tones what I had said. He looked at me strangely, and I asked him politely if he could please tell me where to find the passage as I would like to study it more deeply at home. Instead of answering the question, he basically rephrased the sermon, going into great detail of what each phrase meant. Every time I would ask him where to find it, he smoothly slipped into another explanation. He never did give me a straight answer, finally saying that he had to leave, but he'd love to see me come back next Sunday. Bloody unlikely, I thought.

Later, in the car, my friend asked me if all of my "doubts" had been cleared up. I stared at her dumbfounded. Had she heard the same conversation? I again insisted that it was not in the Bible. When we arrived at her house, she spent what seemed like hours going through concordances, Bible study manuals, and even using an electronic Bible Word Search. "It's here," she insisted, "I just can't find it."

I told her I was going home, and to give me a call when she did. I never heard from her, and the next time I saw her, all she did was give me a hostile look and turn her back so she wouldn't have to speak to me. Last I heard, she's still a member of that church.

[Shirley Ujest]

My BIL's mom use to be an evangelical minister. I would attend services for the holidays and that was about all I could handle.

One Easter, she was talking about how their church ( not in the best section of town ) was donating this and that for some poor mission in Africa .

They had raised enough money to buy an incubator for all 'these babies that have aids which have proven to cure them'.

I looked over at my BIL and said, " Don't you think the Center for Disease Control would be interested in those incubator?"

Even my BIL winced at his mom's gaff.

[Miller]

"Why, just last month, over in Springfield, three little girls were hit by a car and killed, all because the atheists in the school board decided to remove all the cross walks from the grounds!"

[nogginhead]

What's a BIL?

One hesitates to ask, as a non-believer, Mangetout, but still...

Do you plan to keep going after this experience? Do you find that the pastor's opinions are generally worth paying attention to, even if the sources behind them aren't so trustworthy (or misconstrued as they seem to have been here)?

RE: the article behind the statement. In my town, which used to be mainly Catholic, Santa used to come into the public schools. Would your pastor be offended by the decision to stop this? I'm agnostic (ouch) on the question of whether hot cross buns would bug me, but Santa is way over the line.

[Lissa]

Miller, BIL = Brother in Law

[Mangetout]

Originally posted by nogginhead
What's a BIL?

One hesitates to ask, as a non-believer, Mangetout, but still...

Do you plan to keep going after this experience? Do you find that the pastor's opinions are generally worth paying attention to, even if the sources behind them aren't so trustworthy (or misconstrued as they seem to have been here)?

The guy was a visiting speaker; we have one minister serving a circuit of seven churches, so about six weeks out of seven, then preaching is provided by local preachers, members of the lay leadership, etc... Usually it is pretty sound.

[japatlgt]

"King James Bible" <waves bible overhead> "Good enough for the apostle Paul, good enough for me!"

I almost called bullshit in church once.

[Doomtrain]

Originally posted by japatlgt
I almost called bullshit in church once.

The all-time best is "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me."

Just stand up and calmly say "I call bullshit, Rev..."

[Gyrate]

Originally posted by GMRyujin
The all-time best is "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me."

Since it's been mentioned twice already in this thread, do we even know who actually said this first? I've seen it attributed to school boards, city and state legislatures, various members of Congress, preachers, teachers, and so on. I can't find it in Snopes either.

Just stand up and calmly say "I call bullshit, Rev..."

[South Park] Shenanigans! I call shenanigans! [/South Park]

[SpazCat]

One of the things that drove me out of church was the pastor telling the story of the girl at Columbine who was shot in the library. Y'know the one, one of the boys said "Are you a Christian" and she said yes and he shot her and the story implies that she was assumed into Heaven for her faith. I deleted several forwards of that story from my email that week, I didn't need to hear the same crap in church. This is why I respect my grandfather so much. He based his sermons on actual scripture. Go Grandpa!

[CalMeacham]

Is it moral to shout "Cite!" in a crowded church?

[matt_mcl]

Originally posted by japatlgt
"King James Bible" <waves bible overhead> "Good enough for the apostle Paul, good enough for me!"

Isn't it funny that the only Bible that some fundamentalists accept is stamped with the name of a gay Catholic?

[lno]

Originally posted by jr8
Since it's been mentioned twice already in this thread, do we even know who actually said this first? I've seen it attributed to school boards, city and state legislatures, various members of Congress, preachers, teachers, and so on. I can't find it in Snopes either.

I've only seen this attributed to Ma Ferguson, governor of Texas circa 1920. There seem to be more quots from her than anyone else online regarding that line, so I'm leaning in that direction.

[Shodan]

Originally posted by nogginhead
One hesitates to ask, as a non-believer, Mangetout, but still...

Do you plan to keep going after this experience? Do you find that the pastor's opinions are generally worth paying attention to, even if the sources behind them aren't so trustworthy (or misconstrued as they seem to have been here)?

Did you notice that the story about the hot cross buns being banned is substantially true?

Originally posted by Mangetout

The bit where I nearly demanded a cite was "This is true; I heard about a school where they have banned hot cross buns because they are overtly Christian"...

Hot cross banned: councils decree buns could be 'offensive' to non-Christians
By Chris Hastings and Elizabeth Day
(Filed: 16/03/2003)


Schools across Britain have been ordered by local authorities to abandon the ancient tradition of serving hot cross buns at Easter so as not to offend children of non-Christian faiths.

In other words, the cite requested by Mangetout has been supplied (by mblackwell - thank you).

Regards,
Shodan

[tdn]

Originally posted by RTFirefly
what they hear through the Christian grapevine

Would this be where they got the grapes for the alcohol-free wine used at the Last Supper?

(Yes, I've heard this "fact" before.)

[nogginhead]

Originally posted by Shodan
Did you notice that the story about the hot cross buns being banned is substantially true?

In other words, the cite requested by Mangetout has been supplied (by mblackwell - thank you).

Regards,
Shodan

Yes, I did. That's why I added
[quote]
(or misconstrued as they seem to have been here)?
[\quote]

The OP suggested to me that this was presented as the action, in the US, of some local anti-christian zealots.

And you'll note that several untrue statements from the pulpit have been related by others.

Yours,
Nog

[Mangetout]

Originally posted by Shodan
Did you notice that the story about the hot cross buns being banned is substantially true?

Certainly the story itself appears to have an element of truth (I guess this is what I miss out on by not buying newspapers), however, it was very much misrepresented by being offered as evidence in a "they want to ban Christianity" monologue.

[Mangetout]

(In other words it is a cite, but not one that supports the argument)

[Early Out]

Originally posted by Shodan
Did you notice that the story about the hot cross buns being banned is substantially true?

I read this a bit differently. It sounds to me as if the local schools are being asked to stop pushing Easter, a uniquely Christian holiday. The hot cross buns are not, in and of themselves, somehow "Christian:" it's the practice of serving them specifically at Easter time that imbues them with a symbolic significance that some might find objectionable.

[Lissa]

Originally posted by SpazCat
One of the things that drove me out of church was the pastor telling the story of the girl at Columbine who was shot in the library. Y'know the one, one of the boys said "Are you a Christian" and she said yes and he shot her and the story implies that she was assumed into Heaven for her faith.

IIRC, the Columbine girl's tale was written in a book called something like "The Martyrdom of Cassie." It was by her mother.

This reminded me for some reason of the tale we were told in Christian school. The principal's voice broke, and tears rolled down her wattled neck as she told us about a little girl in Soviet Russia. Seems that "the government police" pulled all of the kids out of school, lined them up, and ordered them to spit on a bible. When it came to the little girls' turn, she lovingly wiped the saliva from the book, and kissed it. Of course, they shot her.

The cynic in me chuckled inwardly at the tale, thinking that it was better for the Russians to be spending their time rounding up kids for mass-spittings than trying to take over the world.

[Doomtrain]

"In Soviet Russia, Bible spits on you!"

[missbunny]

I thought it had come out that Cassie Bernall most likely didn't ever have the "do you believe in God?" exchange with the Columbine shooters.

[blowero]

For what it's worth, Star of David buns are a lot harder to make...

I think I saw this on Snopes.com but there was apparently an email going around where someone had read an article in The Onion and thought it was serious. The article in question was a satirical piece about how kids thought that Jesus was weak and liked Harry Potter better. They said a lot of people were up in arms over something that was completely made up.

[Doomtrain]

Originally posted by blowero
For what it's worth, Star of David buns are a lot harder to make...

I think I saw this on Snopes.com but there was apparently an email going around where someone had read an article in The Onion and thought it was serious. The article in question was a satirical piece about how kids thought that Jesus was weak and liked Harry Potter better. They said a lot of people were up in arms over something that was completely made up.

If you want to see a magnificent example of that, head on over to WhiteHouse.org and read the 11 pages of random hatemail.

[av8rmike]

For what it's worth, Christians don't exactly have a monopoly on passing off glurge as truth. In several synagogues I've had that story about Itzhak Perlman breaking a string onstage and still playing the concert told to me as The Honest Truth. Some people just can't resist a feel-good cripple-doing-more-with-less story, which I'd say cuts across all religious lines.

[Gyrate]

Originally posted by lno
I've only seen this attributed to Ma Ferguson, governor of Texas circa 1920. There seem to be more quots from her than anyone else online regarding that line, so I'm leaning in that direction.

Thanks, lno. Color me enlightened.

Now I'm marvelling at Texas having a female governor in the '20's. Or is "Ma" a man? Off to Google again...

[lno]

Originally posted by jr8
Now I'm marvelling at Texas having a female governor in the '20's. Or is "Ma" a man? Off to Google again...

Quite female.

Her first administration was noted for the unusually large number of pardons granted (averaging one hundred per month)

And she was a Texan? Wow, how times have changed...

_{Please don't shoot me.}

[blowero]

Originally posted by GMRyujin
If you want to see a magnificent example of that, head on over to WhiteHouse.org and read the 11 pages of random hatemail.

Hilarious - this is my favorite:

SUBJECT = Eat Shit
NAME = Liberal Fags
MESSAGE = You unpatriotic little whores need to paste your adresses on this site, so some real Americans can show up at your house and your goddamn computer up your ass.

At least they got that the site was a parody.

[Algernon]

from the OP...
"I've decided to utterly believe the whole of this [waving a Bible] until such time as someone can prove it wrong in any way, people have tried to prove it wrong to me and I'll admit I didn't always have the answers; there are a million things I don't understand and in any case, these critics are mostly not worth listening to... anyway, it can only either be entirely true or entirely false."

Mangetout, this is nearly word for word what the pastor said at my mother's funeral four weeks ago. The fact that he took the opportunity to "preach" at my mother's funeral service was irritating enough (he even made an altar call), but his statement that the bible he was waving "contained all the answers to life's questions, and [that he] has never found an error in it" really caused me to clench my jaws and grind my teeth.

[Lissa]

Originally posted by missbunny
I thought it had come out that Cassie Bernall most likely didn't ever have the "do you believe in God?" exchange with the Columbine shooters.

It did, but people like the "martyrdom" version better.

Posted by blowero

I think I saw this on Snopes.com but there was apparently an email going around where someone had read an article in The Onion and thought it was serious. The article in question was a satirical piece about how kids thought that Jesus was weak and liked Harry Potter better. They said a lot of people were up in arms over something that was completely made up.

There was a letter to the editor in Reader's Digest from a woman protesting the magazine's interview of J.K Rowling because, the woman said, she had seen in The Onion that the profits from Harry Potter all go to the Church of Satan. The editor replied gently that The Onion is satire, which, given the idiocy displayed in the original letter, I doubt the writer could define.

[Doomtrain]

Originally posted by blowero
Hilarious - this is my favorite:

At least they got that the site was a parody.

I like the clueless people who were like "Gosh, I don't think Mrs. Bush would appreciate this. I'm going to write her right now and let her know."

[Siege]

Actually, not only was Cassie Bernall not asked if she believed in God, a young woman named Valeen Schnurr was by one of the killers at Columbine, and he reloaded but didn't shoot her. Here's a cite from Salon.com, since I can't get the http:// button to work:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/19...all/print.html

There seems to be a need among some Christians to try to depict themselves as victims of a corrupt and oppressive government or society. I am a devout Christian, and I have to disagree. If Christianity were in danger, I somehow doubt every firehall in the area would be advertising Friday night Fish Frys!

By the way, Mangetout, did you talk to the priest about this? After my minister once preached a sermon on abortion, during the course of which he mentioned he asked God called to " educate him about this", I went up to him and said, "You asked for an education; you're about to get one." Then again, he was a friend, and we knew how to disagree with each other while still respecting each other.

CJ

[Mangetout]

Regrettably there was not time to tackle the preacher himself, as I was busy rounding up children (mine and someone else's) after the service; I'm not entirely sure how well I would have fared; the guy has built himself pretty much an impenetrable logic of unfalsifiability; anyone who tries to argue against him is either an unbeliever or a backslider and is therefore wrong and can be substantially ignored.
(this might seem like a huge assumption, but remember, I have only related a couple of brief statements from a 35 minute talk)

[Malacandra]

Originally posted by Governor Quinn
Malacandra: I've seen a similar list involving American newspapers. Tell me how your list goes, and I'll tell you how ours goes.

'Scuse the delay. IIRC it goes like this:

The Times is read by the men who run the country
The Daily Mail is read by wives of the men who run the country
The Daily Mirror is read by the men who think they run the country
The Guardian is read by the men who think they ought to run the country
The Morning Star is read by the men who think the country ought to be run by another country
The Daily Express is read by the men who think the country ought to be run the way it used to be run *
The Daily Telegraph is read by the men who think it still is
The Sun is read by the men who don't care who runs the country, as long as she has big tits and runs Bingo games.


* Less true now than formerly, the Express's editorial slant has changed a bit over the last few years

[Gyrate]

Originally posted by Shodan
Did you notice that the story about the hot cross buns being banned is substantially true?

Tisn't. The council says the Telegraph story is false.

[Ben]

Originally posted by jr8
Since it's been mentioned twice already in this thread, do we even know who actually said this first? I've seen it attributed to school boards, city and state legislatures, various members of Congress, preachers, teachers, and so on. I can't find it in Snopes either.

I don't know who said it *first*, but according to my Mom, my uncle said it many times. (And yes, he was serious.)