Come on. A string around a group of buildings? That isn’t some modern world bullshit, they could’ve done that at any point in their history. A question like “which direction do you face to pray to Mecca when you’re in space” is a question you might need to answer to integrate religious ritual into a modern society. Tying a string around a bunch of buildings to fool God into thinking it’s all your home so you can carry your housekeys in your pocket is absurdly childish and not any sort of recent need being answered.
It’s hard to imagine the psychotic controlling entity of those stories being cool with you thwarting the spirit of his orders by finding little loopholes or silly cheats. And hey, you know, if he’s not, you’re only going to get the worst possible punishment ever. So let’s just wing it and hope God has a sense of humor about his rules.
Is there scriptural support for the idea that God digs creative cheats around his orders?
Idiotic religious practice causes “an average of 6 deaths, 22 injuries, and $18.3 million in direct property damage annually.”
No. The fact that electrical shorts, too many extension cords, and sometimes stupidity or ignorance, results in Christmas tree fires and multiple resultant deaths every year is not an “idiotic religious practice” being the cause of those deaths.
If you SB go after Christianity with OUTRAGE for having a tradition of Christmas trees with lights that has resulted in these deaths every year then you are being a complete idiot. If you have not then you are a hypocritical asshole.
Your general point is undoubtedly true both in the real world and on this board. What I don’t appreciate was your insinuation that I am a hypocrite. If you meant that this is a general trend and not directed at a specific few of us, then you should have said so at the outset or at least clarified later with an apology.
The life-saving acceptance to break a rule is so fundamental that there is no way that he wouldn’t know about it and it’s considered an outright sin to disobey it. Your friend of a friend story probably didn’t happen.
How am I a jerk? I think that people should be equal and good to each other because this world is all we’ve got, and all we can do is try to make it a better place for each other and maximize happiness.
I don’t oppress people in the name of my religion. I don’t take glee in the idea that those who aren’t part of my little group is going to be tortured for eternity by my all-loving god. I don’t do good to others because I think God is like Santa and he’s keeping a list and I’ll be rewarded if I do so. I do good to others because everyone’s life would be better if we were better to each other. I can say with total confidence that I am more kind than the average religious person.
A fucking retarded woman obeying her religious tradition burned a bunch of kids to death. I think that sucks, and that makes me the jerk?
You are simply asking for special privilege for whatever it is your silly beliefs are. You’re like those people who say Richard Dawkins is a raving militant maniac because he’s willing to say religion shouldn’t be privileged when in reality he’s actually this polite little British guy who actually speaks with a lot of nuance, careful language, and wants to make the world a better place. You want to imply that my action of applying scrutiny to religious evil is an inherently rude or shocking thing. This is part of how your type has kept your silly beliefs in a privileged position for so long, and caused so much harm along the way.
Mock them for what? Because they have weird body modifications? Is my posting in this thread anything like that? I’m not saying “Haha Jewish people wear funny hats!” I’m saying “adherence to stupid fucking religious/cultural ideals just got a bunch of fucking kids burnt to death” - I mock things that are harmful.
I think they did essentially exploit the same interpretation in many times and places, though generally with more substantial connections between buildings than string.
Again, it’s not seen as a cheat around, it’s seen as adherence to the letter of the law. Because the letter, the Word, is what’s important; it’s how you prove you’re paying attention. There is no “spirit of the law” to be subverted.
That’s the understanding I’ve been given, anyway, from nonpracticing Jewish interlocuters.
In that case, I’m sorry to you, hajario. You may well not be a hypocrite. I have no particular reason to suspect that you, personally, are. It was not my intent to call out specific posters in this thread, but rather a general tone, and a general tendency for a lot of people to do what I described. I did not mean to implicate any particular individual in this, since I don’t recall anyone specifically in this thread being involved in Christian stupidity bashing.
Hey, conveniently I already included a link where you can see your kind in action.
Pretty much no one in the modern western world is (systematically) oppressed. But if you want to play this card,take a look at this. That’s not exactly analogous to anything - propensity to vote for a presidential candidate is not a direct analog to oppression, and atheism is a lack of belief rather than intrinsic value like ethnicity, but it would suggest that if we’re talking about people disliking you because of an attribute then atheism is actually pretty far up there. I’ve seen a similar poll in which it was roughly tied with rapist.
But, you know, I’m mansplaining/whitesplaining/cissplaining this to you, so it’s all worthless anyway.
You’re trained in a decent amount of epidemiology, right? What’s the actual per-hour chance of death from a Christmas tree fire vs leaving a hotplate unattended all day? How many orders of magnitude lower does it have to be in order to not be considered equally idiotic?
Christmas trees are a poor example, anyway, since they’re more secular than Christian at this point anyway. Lots of people who aren’t practicing Christians use them. They aren’t part of any sort of any Christian religious doctrine. There’s not a cultural tradition to use them in an unsafe way as a workaround to appease a silly Christian rule.
Now by all means, you can find some sort of comparison. Perhaps Christian Scientists who die of routinely treatable conditions because they think all of their diseases are signs of spiritual impurity and can only be healed through faith. That would be a more analogous example of doctrinal religious stupidity leading to harm. Do you think I’d be kind to such an idea?
To add to that, I’m not even participating in this thread because I’m outraged at the fire. I mean, sure, that’s obnoxious, but there are all sorts of obnoxious religious horrible practices maiming and killing people left and right all day. What got me into this thread were people who were trying to brush aside the religious connection to this tragedy, trying to equate it to simply having a coffeemaker malfunction and create a fire. It’s the latter that really incenses me and brings me to a thread. I’m unneeded in threads that bash Christian religious stupidity because that’s not the tone of the thread - in those threads, the religious stupidity is properly skewered.
So not only did you pick a poor analogy, but you directed your accusations of hypocrisy the wrong way. I’m not a hypocrite if I’m not equally participating for every incidence of death caused by religious stupidity - I could keep up with that 24/7 and still not have the time to properly rant about it. I assume you’re passionate about the damage that alternative medicine bullshit can do - if you rail on the stupidity of homeopathy, can I call you an asshole hypocrite if you’re not also spending all your time making sure you’re equally ranting against Reiki?
My main point in this thread is about the social privilege religions enjoy, and that includes crediting good acts to religions but absolving religions of the negative effects of their stone age beliefs.
Like I said, I can’t cite the crappy story, but that was a bad example anyway.
With this recent incident in the OP, I was trying to question why this life saving acceptance rule wasn’t used here. Electric appliances are dangerous left on all night may potentially save lives if turned off, so couldn’t that rule be used here for the potential live saving event?
There are these rules, and I don’t follow them that well, but God will understand. I mean it’s not like he destroys cities, or murders helpless children of bad regimes, or kills off a man’s family because of a bet.
Sounds legit.
Honestly though, I know what’s happening. They don’t want to suffer the costs of faith, but they want the benefits. It’s like saying otters are fish so you can eat them.
Because the person involved was stupid and didn’t think that they were risking someone’s life. The lack of smoke detectors probably played a part too. They should have just eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches once a week.