For me, it’s always Jehova’s at the front door. They seem nice, and they leave without conflict, but I wonder now what effect a pentagram on the front porch, right where you’d have to stand to ring the bell might have.
I was going to start a new thread, but since this fits in the category of knowing when to shut up…
Oct. 3 was bring your bible to school day. Not the religious book of your chosen religion, not the quran, not the torah. The goddamn fucking bible. If this was share your faith day, I’d have less of a problem with it. As it is, there’s a shit ton of problems.
The first problem is where it came from, and the motives behind it. This was started by Focus on the Family, a right wing anti-gay fundamentalist organization, a more fitting name for which would be Focus on My Bullshit Beliefs and Bigotry. The goal is to get a foot in the door of separation of church and state, get the bibles in the school, then get prayer back in school, then start teaching you anti-gay, anti-evolution, anti-science bullshit. I didn’t say it would work, but that’s the apparent goal here.
Second problem, politicians are getting involved. The fucking governor of Kentucky went on social media to encourage children as young as kindergarten to proselytize their fellow students. If someone brought a quran and tried to tell students about that, this fucker’s head would explode. Fucking double standard.
Third problem, along the double standards line, when is bring your science book to church day? If you want to spread your religious bullshit through the schools, why can’t I teach science in church? If you get to propagate your mythology in school, why can’t I encourage reason and teach the true origins of christianity in church? Fucking double standard is why.
I’m OK with a public school having Bibles available for checkout in the library. (My schools always did.) I’m also OK with students reading the Bible in study hall or teachers reading it in the lounge, and extracurricular groups like Fellowship of Christian Athletes, as long as nobody is required to join.
(or the Koran, or the Torah, or the Bhagavad-Gita, or, or, or…)
I am NOT OK with a declaration like the one above.
We used to talk about science in my bible study group, I remember an interesting discussion on quantum physics. We used to get into all kinds of interesting tangents. Science and faith aren’t mutually exclusive, but it can be challenging to reconcile them, and at times it can be interesting to analyze one through the perspective of the other.
Also, government sponsoring an event that brings the teachings of one religion to school to the exclusion of others is a pretty blatant violation of the Establishment Clause.
Fundy jeezoids / dominationists never seem to consider consequences. Let’s say they DO get their cult established. Guess what? The US 1st Amendment is not about protecting government from churches, but just the opposite. Get ready for a cabinet-level Dept of Religion… with all the bureaucratic efficiency of a welfare office or cable company.
To be a Church, meet these guidelines, all 28 gigabytes of legalese. And after the next election, all new rules will be written, the old Church will be banned or at least taxed, and a new Church will be mandatory. Until the next administration change.
If a mook wants to talk about religion, change the subject to taxing churches. Their reactions should be entertaining.
We used to talk about science in my bible study group
This is not the same as preaching in front of a congregation, or being taught science in Sunday school. A number of things may be discussed in bible study, but I have never heard of, nor expect to, science being preached from the pulpit. That will never happen, not in a fundie church Focus on Bullshit would approve of. Unitarian church, maybe.
I wouldn’t expect to either, unless it were somehow directly related to the topic of the sermon, because that’s not what the pulpit is for.
Now, I would expect a church-run private school to teach science. I would expect that some of them do a very good job of teaching science, and some of them do a bad job; and that the more fundamentalist churches are more likely to fall into the latter category. But it would be interesting to see some good evidence, as opposed to anecdotal evidence or sheer speculation (speaking of Science…).
But it would be interesting to see some good evidence, as opposed to anecdotal evidence or sheer speculation (speaking of Science…)
If you are talking about anecdotal evidence and speculation, you are not speaking of science.
Yes, that’s my point.
The wording made it seem you had gone to the dark side.
This. This, this, this.
All these people who want state-sponsored religion seem to assume that of course it will be their own particular branch of religion that will be so sponsored. Religions schism; it’s just what they do. There must be hundreds of different versions of Christianity alone. Even if the state picks g*-your particular version at the moment: sooner or later, whatever g-you practice, that’s going to be the version that’s on the outs.
*that’s g-for-general, general-you: does not refer to any particular poster or indeed to any specific individual. This language could IMO use some more pronouns, and not only to deal with genders.
Or install a chain next to the sign, with a dictionary hanging from it.
And a Post-it note sticking out from the “S” section, where the word “solicitor” is highlighted.
I foresee a slew of IoT doorcam apps hosting image recognition AIs that trigger reactions to (un)recognized folks at the door. Known? Let-em ring. In uniform? Decide whether to stay or flee. Otherwise unknown? Hose-em down. Didn’t they see your “solicitors will be urinated upon” notice? For entertainment, scent the spray with drippings from a bitch-dog in heat so nearby hounds follow the target.
I don’t condone this but I predict it.
One could use one of the words already extant. The effect might be slightly stilted, but one would get one’s point across.
Can one come up with a better alternative than that?
I was fond of “She, he, it” but given the average English user’s penchant for abbreviating things, it had an obvious flaw (or feature, depending on your point of view).
Hey, s/h/it happens.
Sometimes I use that technique. Sometimes it seems really awkward.
Admittedly, g-you with asterisks explaining it is probably even more awkward. Point taken.
When I was young I had a sign on my apartment door that read something to the effect of:
The annoying 10 year old kid in the neighborhood* who would come by to visit daily could read, and thought it was funny when we responded like the guy assigned to hand out insults in the Monty Python Argument Sketch. The other random ass solicitors apparently weren’t so careful or maybe they just weren’t so literate. Either way, my roommate and I made a few people leave in bewildered tears. If I recall correctly, it was when one or both of us lit into an older pair of solicitors** when we realized we were being dicks (or at least bigger dicks than we felt like being on a day-to-day basis) and took the sign down.
The outgoing answering machine message that consisted of us chanting “THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!!!” until the beep stayed up for several months, however. I loved living in that apartment, even though me and my intimidatingly huge roommate sometimes were at odds about stuff. The answering machine message was his idea, and I forgive all disputes in memory of it.
*Who inexplicably had a child sized t-shirt with an iron-on that said “Instant Asshole! - Just Add Alcohol!” His name was Jason. We called him Justin repeatedly to try to get him to go away. He had no business hanging out at this apartment complex. He didn’t live there, and it was a weird place. Ok, now that I write that and think about it, he probably had all the business in the world hanging out there. He was still annoying and I didn’t like that fucking kid. It was like having Ricky Bobby’s kids drop by daily, but I had no idea who the character Ricky Bobby would someday be at the time.
**No, no one got a word in edgewise. We deliberately tried to avoid knowing what they were selling. Might be magazines, might be Jesus. Might be Jesus Magazines. They’d read The Sign.