You clearly don’t understand why people go to church or what they get out of it.
Krakauer is talking about religious fundamentalists in that book. If you are comparing every religious person to Warren Jeffs then you have a very simplistic way of looking at things, one that probably is fairly simplistic in all matters.
Don’t be so faggy.
Regards,
Shodan
What does “offensive” mean, then? “A comment that could potentially offend one person?” Loads of people were offended by what Wright said, so how can the offensiveness be debated? It’s debatable how many people understood the comment in the first place, since it was in some cases wilfully misinterpreted.
I won’t bother arguing about Obama’s religiosity, but how often did he go to the church in the first place?
It’s offensive to certain people. It means what it means. Just because you don’t care doesn’t mean others don’t, or that you personally are incapable of understanding that it offends a lot of people.
And yes, it was willfully misinterpreted.
I understood it to be regular attendance. I think a lot of people don’t understand what’s going on, and don’t want to understand beyond the need to confirm their bias. What Jeremiah Wright says, IME is pretty common in the black community. I’ve heard those kinds of things stated commonly, but then again my experience with black people is often black leftists, so my sample is skewed.
I think Obama broke with Wright because Wright was getting more and more belligerent during the campaign process. Wright was effectively sabotaging Obama because he couldn’t handle taking a step back and letting Obama do his thing. Obama split with him because he wouldn’t get with the program, not because Obama suddenly thought his ideas were no longer worthwhile.
Jeremiah Wright is a Red Herring. People on the right overestimate his influence on Obama and people on the left underestimate it.
It is quite common IME for black people to feel like the US Government is an entity by and for OTHER people, and people like Jeremiah Wright get up there and say what a lot of people are thinking. Obama’s attempts at ‘CHANGE’ are specifically based around changing the perception that it’s by and for other people. Wright couldn’t set down the anger over past transgressions long enough to get with that program, so Obama cut him loose.
Wright says things that are offensive, and says them regularly. There is no reason to downplay that, there is no reason to try and create some superficial narrative that confirms our own biases about Obama in order to judge his religiousity based upon our own prejudices regarding religiousity.
Yes, he went there for political reasons, but I don’t think that politics are the sum total of his experience with that church.
You mean like how Tony Blair refused to officially convert to Catholicism during his premiership in a country where the vast majority of the populace wouldn’t have given a shit if he professed his belief in a Supreme Being made of marzipan?
I can not believe you jumped back on Wright. I would have thought you would have said that it was old news and irrelevant. I keep hoping for a grain of honest from you. Alas ,it is beyond you. It is sad. But you are what ever you are, no matter how small that is.
I knooooooooow, I totally hate it when that happens
I’m all, like, on the way to my car and someone jumps out and he’s like “so talk to us about politics?”
And then I’m all like “The Jews control the media and they’re using it to subvert traditional western Christian culture!” when, what I really meant to say was “I object to all the sex and violence that the media is putting out these days.” Or maybe I meant to say “The Zionists control the media”, I’m not sure. But whatever it was, the fact that I used a blatant anti-semitic trope to slanders American Jews is only because I was surprised and caught off guard.
Why, the other night my wife jumped out at me and surprised me and, before I had a chance to think, I was all like “Jews sacrifice Christian children and use their blood to make matzah!” I just say shit like that when I’m not well rehearsed.
Obviously, I meant to say that it’s Zionists who make blood matzah.
I didn’t understand anything here except that Tony Blair didn’t convert to Catholicism in Anglican Britain.
:rolleyes:
Paging Carrie Prejean, Ms. Carrie Prejean to the white courtesy phone.
Yes, I too was looking for a way to link gay marriage to this debate.
See, now that is faggy! Darn that gonzo!
Regards,
Shodan
What did I have to do with that ,you ambulatory sphincter.
Hey guys - who is Jeremiah Wright?
America’s angry black man in chief. 
Al Sharpton’s term of office ended.
Oh, he’s the guy who speaks for all black people now? We really did need a new one. I hope he only has nice things to say, and doesn’t rile up the white folks like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson did.
I had him pegged as more of a bottom feeder. I mean, he’s a snapper, he gives me a haddock and this episode proves he’s really floundering.
Nah, too late, he riled some people up. They like to get riled though.
The link in the OP still works. Have you tried that?
The book was about people with fairly extreme fundamentalist views, but the quote applies to all religious belief - faith is the opposite of reason.
I don’t think every religious person is Warren Jeffs, but I think all religious belief falls into the same broad category. It’s a demonstration of the willingness of people to believe in things that make no sense, and for which there’s no evidence. There are degrees of silliness within the spectrum, but it’s all silliness, in the end.
If people get some comfort from going to church and engaging in rituals, I wouldn’t dream of denying them that comfort. But that doesn’t make any of it believable or justifiable on an intellectual level.
I genuinely believe that humanity would be in much better shape if the seemingly inherent tendency to believe in the supernatural could be eliminated. I concede that it can’t be - it seems that every culture comes up with similar flights of fancy when confronted by anything it doesn’t immediately understand - but that’s no reason to surrender to it.