You know what, Chas.E? Here are your choices:
You can refer to others’ beliefs “ridiculously stupid” in Great Debates.
or
You can refer to others’ beliefs “ridiculously stupid” in the Pit.
or
You can not do it at all.
Do it in General Questions again, and you will be looking for a new message board.
Consider this an official warning.
C. All of the above.
I think that if I answer the question directly (which I did, several times) then I should be allowed to inject a personal opinion as well. As someone pointed out, that’s why we all read Cecil in the first place.
I freely admit to taking far too much pleasure in pointing out the inconsistent and ridiculous points of christianity, however, I always try to do it with “factually” accepted christian theology. Since you are the moderator, please tell me if this is against the rules, and I will comply.
Facts are always good. It’s the loaded language that is a problem, as is interjecting into a thread where others can re-interpret a question to keep it in GQ.
By the way, here are two copies of the word “as.” as as
Everyone should please feel free to place them in my prior post in a grammatically appropriate place.
I thought it was his death in 1900. (It was in all the papers.)
Or was that Nietzsche?
ok manhattan, we were writing those messages at the same time, so don’t consider that last msg a response to yours. I consider myself warned, and will comply. But one point of clarification is necessary. If someone’s belief really IS “ridiculously stupid” like for example, the Flat Earth people, is it against the rules to say so?
And in my own defense, I did not say anyone’s belief system was ridiculously stupid, just certain DOCTRINES. I think we can all agree that, for example, the church suppressing Gallileo was “ridiculously stupid” and the Vatican even admitted it was “an error” (a monumental statement considering the source).
Anyway, I won’t respond further, I’m not going to get booted over such a (oops, almost said the R word again) thing.
Yeah, I figured that. It’s all good.
As a general (heh) rule, if something is factually silly it’s OK to call it so. The problem with religions is that many of them postulate an omniscient, omnipotent being to whom the normal rules of the universe do not apply. That renders anything possible, even if it is otherwise impossible.
I’d simply ask that you let Chronos and I do our jobs here. We routinely redirect questions to focus on what a certain religion opines about a matter, send threads to Great Debates or otherwise take steps to ensure that this forum stays factual.
And geez! In my case at least, it’s not like your dealing with someone with a pro-religion bias!
OK, issue settled. But I beg you to allow a LITTLE latitude, as long as I come up with the good facts (and I think you know I always come up with interesting facts). And besides, people seem to enjoy the sight of sacred cows sent to slaughter (as long as it is not THEIR sacred cow). That’s what attracted us to Cecil and SD in the first place.
I prefer whenever possible to leave the moderation to the people in charge of that forum, which is why I haven’t made any official statements.
But to refer back to the subject, my point was that you fight ignorance better by avoiding belittling your opponent.
Example:
“Here’s an example of a miracle (miracles should of course be viewed with skepticism” sounds better to me than
“Here’s an example of a miracle, which is obviously bogus and invented by dishonest priests to fool gullible people.” The second statement will just make a religious person, think you’re a jerk, encourage them to ignore you, and actually be detrimental in the “fight against ignorance”.
The reverse example: a priest saying “Try Christianity, you might like it” is more to my liking than the fire and brimstone preacher screaming “You’re going to hell if you don’t accept JC!” The delivery is a big part of the message.
[Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 02-24-2001 at 11:37 AM]
Probably the chronologically latest overt miracle recorded in the Old Testament was when a mysterious hand appeared at a banquet that King Belshazzar of Babylon gave for a thousand of his noblemen and inscribed a message of doom on the wall. This is in Daniel chapter 5.
The story in the book of Esther is considered by the Jews to be a “covert” miracle, i.e., a story of G-d’s providence working through natural means, which was chronologically later than the one in Daniel.
Probably the latest prophecy (direct communication between man and G-d) recorded is either the one in the last chapters of the book of Daniel or the one in the book of Malachi.
The Talmud relates a number of miraculous occurrences in the post-biblical era. One example is that they say that the corpses of Betar (a city that was at the center of a Judean rebellion against the Romans, which was massacred by them in the year 127) spent years without being allowed to be buried, yet they didn’t rot at all.
I don’t think that you read that site very carefully.
For the Catholic Church to declare Kolbe a saint, it must believe that he performed a miracle (or rather, interceded to convince God to perfom a miracle) after 1941.
The last miracles as recorded in the King James Bible (the one I am most familiar with) appear in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. It’s a little hard to tell which came last chronologically (at least by the quick skim I just gave it) because after the miracle at Pentecost in Chpater 2, the apostles spread out and start doing cool stuff, and the main narrative of this book follows Paul as he converts and begins preaching. Acts is pretty much the last narrative book of the Christian Bible.
Your other question may also be answered here, in chapter 7. Just before his martydom, Stephen sees the heavens open and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
ChasE, when you see a GQ thread asking about some piece of Star Wars arcana, do you feel compelled to explain that it’s only a movie?
Occasionally, when I see someone unable to distinguish between reality and fiction.
There are many things to be learned from Science Fiction, but if you learn that you want to dress up and pretend you are Darth Vader, you’re drawing the wrong lessons.
Whoops! :o And this is in the same thread where I had the effrontery to claim “At the SDMB, one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned is to read carefully …”. I am such a nimrod!