# Pagans, Athiests, and Mormons, beware! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 26, 2005, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618 "2005-05-26T16:28:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Syntropy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Syntropy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syntropy)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/101 "2005-05-27T16:15:03Z")
Sooooooo, that means it doesn’t happen? I think you’re missing the point. The practice has definitely decreased in recent years, but Catholic churches have always collected tithes. The fact that you don’t happen to belong to one that does doesn’t make it untrue. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/102 "2005-05-27T16:51:00Z")
Remember that’s gross income, not net. Please, people, don’t force us to audit. ---
**Author:** ![Lilairen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lilairen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lilairen)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/103 "2005-05-27T21:34:44Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > Nah. I’m not confusing them. The ankh was listed, as well as a bunch of other stuff, that Wiccans should make. That confused me, because the only time I have seen an ankh (besides in Egytptian depictions) is as jewelry…so I got to thinking and wondered–would I have to make my own jewelry? Plus, I had no idea how an ankh was used–why would I? Sounds like you hit a pretty eclectic site there. (There’s a broad spectrum of Wiccan practice, ranging from lineaged traditionalists through the increasingly eclectic stuff out to things that are only tenuously ‘Wicca’ at all. The muddle is worse in the States because of the influence of the Feri-descended trad, Reclaiming, which has a very different set of axioms, and some tendency to not clearly distinguish between the two.) I don’t believe that the more traditional lines use it at all. Incidentally, I went and fought a little of my own ignorance and looked up the glyph ‘ankh’ in my Middle Egyptian textbook. Apparently the words for ‘life’ and ‘sandal strap’ were homophones, and thus the ancient Egyptians recycled the sandal-strap glyph for reference to life, and we’re more familiar with that usage because (the book says) even in ancient Egypt one’s more likely to talk about life than sandal straps. So it’d be like writing ‘crouch down!’ with a drawing of a mallard because both are pronounced “Duck!” So in case anyone cares, that’s why. (I seem to be MPSIMSing in the Pit. Oh dear.) > [@](#): > > thank you all for offering suggestions and support. It sounds like there is an entire world out there, quiet and yet resilent. Heck-anyone up for an “ask the Wiccan” thread? I’ll keep my eyes open for it, but I’m not gonna start one, I’m so not qualified. 😉 (While I am studying religious witchcraft at the moment formally as supplementary practice, the trad I’m training in is not related to Wicca.) ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2005, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/104 "2005-05-28T03:28:58Z")
> [@Lilairen](#): > > Sounds like you hit a pretty eclectic site there. (There’s a broad spectrum of Wiccan practice, ranging from lineaged traditionalists through the increasingly eclectic stuff out to things that are only tenuously ‘Wicca’ at all. The muddle is worse in the States because of the influence of the Feri-descended trad, Reclaiming, which has a very different set of axioms, and some tendency to not clearly distinguish between the two.) I don’t believe that the more traditional lines use it at all. the reference was off the first site that **whynot** mentioned. No biggie–I checked out the ankhs on that shopping site and some of them look great. Incidentally, I went and fought a little of my own ignorance and looked up the glyph ‘ankh’ in my Middle Egyptian textbook. Apparently the words for ‘life’ and ‘sandal strap’ were homophones, and thus the ancient Egyptians recycled the sandal-strap glyph for reference to life, and we’re more familiar with that usage because (the book says) even in ancient Egypt one’s more likely to talk about life than sandal straps. So it’d be like writing ‘crouch down!’ with a drawing of a mallard because both are pronounced “Duck!” [/QUOTE] Help.I just worked a 14 hour day and am very tired. This makes no sense to me…in my head it sounds like the burble of a brook in the distance or the almost inaudible tones of a reference librarian explaining set theory to someone–not me. Thanks for the help-no disparagement of your post intended…I just can’t make head or tail out of it tonoc. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2005, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/105 "2005-05-28T03:33:43Z")
too tired to code, even. And one more thing: I belong to mainstream community (prostestant) church–many of our members tithe. I don’t, but many do. ---
**Author:** ![Lilairen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lilairen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lilairen)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2005, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/106 "2005-05-28T04:19:24Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > tHelp.I just worked a 14 hour day and am very tired. This makes no sense to me…in my head it sounds like the burble of a brook in the distance or the almost inaudible tones of a reference librarian explaining set theory to someone–not me. > > Thanks for the help-no disparagement of your post intended…I just can’t make head or tail out of it tonoc. I’ll try again; gods know I’m not always terribly coherent. The ankh symbol is generally agreed by Egyptologists to be a representation of a sandal strap, and is commonly translated as ‘life’. This is, shall we say, completely fucking incomprehensible. “Sandal strap” does not associate naturally with “life” in my book. It turns out that the word for ‘sandal strap’ was also pronounced ‘ankh’, and was written with the symbol for the sandal strap. The Egyptians tended to recycle hieroglyphs, and so rather than either spell out ‘ankh’ (which would be spelt, uh, vulture, squiggle, shaded circle? whoa, I remembered that correctly) they reused the sandal strap symbol. And because most people talk a lot more about life than about sandal straps, most of the text use the glyph to mean ‘life’. (Especially since a large chunk of the surviving writing is religious.) Which means that most people just know it to mean ‘life’, and those people like me (at least before I looked it up in my textbook) who also knew it to be a sandal strap but don’t know more about it sort of go, “WTF?” Anyway, I looked it up and learned about the homophone and thought it was cool enough random information to share. :} ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2005, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/107 "2005-05-28T09:27:07Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > I hope the judge is disbarred (debenched? defrocked? What do you call it?) and then publicly flogged. The technical word is “flung”, and the flinging is usually preceded by the flogging, rather than other way around. That is why most courthouses have a trebuchet in the attic. Don’t you folks learn anythining in civic class? ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2005, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/108 "2005-05-28T10:39:39Z")
Let’s start with some family law generalities (I don’t know if they apply in Indiana, so take this with a grain of salt):  The discretionary power of the superior court permits a judge to make any order that is just in the circumstances.  The court does not have to make an order that conforms with the consent of the parties.  A judge must make a decision that is in the best interests of the child.  A judge may consider reports from the children’s agency.  If two parents can’t decide on a religion for their child, the court can decide even although this tramples on the religious rights of one of the parents (I think that in Indiana the test is actual and substantial harm).  If rights must be impinged, the court should chose the least intrusive alternative. I think that the judge first blew it in making the great leap from a report asserting confusion over divergent belief systems to the conclusion that this caused actual and substantial harm. The judge erred in law in failing to apply the actual and substantial harm test, and in the alternative the judged erred in fact in finding that confusion equated with actual and substantial harm. Even if there indeed was actual and substantial harm proven, the judge then compounded the error by ordering both parties to not expose their child to non-mainstream beliefs and rituals, when a far less intrusive order could have been made to simply direct that the child sit out religion class and/or receive instruction/counseling to address the religious confusion issue. With such a sound understanding of the law and of how to go about making decisions, and with such a deep ingrained respect for religious rights, including minority religious rights, I don’t think that this judge should be a judge, let alone be allowed to hear family cases. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2005, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/109 "2005-05-28T13:14:56Z")
> [@Lilairen](#): > > \ > > The ankh symbol is generally agreed by Egyptologists to be a representation of a sandal strap, and is commonly translated as ‘life’. This is, shall we say, completely fucking incomprehensible. “Sandal strap” does not associate naturally with “life” in my book. No-that strap would be the jock strap. 😃 (bra strap?) 😉 ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2005, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/110 "2005-05-28T13:20:46Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > Even if there indeed was actual and substantial harm proven, the judge then compounded the error by ordering both parties to not expose their child to non-mainstream beliefs and rituals, when a far less intrusive order could have been made to simply direct that the child sit out religion class and/or receive instruction/counseling to address the religious confusion issue. Indeed. He could have ordered them to take the child out of Catholic school and thus end the “confusion” that way. Imagine the uproar that would have caused. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2005, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/111 "2005-05-28T17:51:00Z")
Btw, the Louisville Courier-Journal’s account of this Friday noted that a spokesman for the Indianapolis branch of the religious righty group the American Family Association has also spoken up in favor of the parents’ right to teach their son about Wicca. So there! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/112 "2005-05-29T09:26:33Z")
> [@Cemetery Savior](#): > > > [@Ranchoth](#): > > > > “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no > > God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” -Thomas Jefferson > > Except for that whole tithing thing for Catholics. Actually, even in that case, if my neighbor chooses to attend a church which requires tithing, it’s still not picking _my_ pocket. It’s also not just Catholics, as has been pointed out. Back in th 1980s, there was a news story about a family in Pennsylvania who starved to death because they wouldn’t use the money they’d set aside for tithes to buy food (I don’t remember what denomination they were, only how appallingly stupid this was). I also had a driving instructor who was planning on leaving his Lutheran church because they were going to make tithing a strict requirement, as in it must be 10% of your income and you must pay or else. CJ ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/113 "2005-05-29T10:00:10Z")
The problem is, people act on their beliefs. Belief informs thought, paradigm, and deed. While personal faith certainly has its pragmatic uses, real problems may arise when one attempts to act on this faith. What if, for example, the lunatic fringe in America has its way, and the government is run by theocratic thugs? Do we _really_ want a government which prefers to worry about our ‘souls’ than, say, education, health care, etc? Do we want someone telling us that no matter how much suffering we go through, it’s all good because we’ll wind up in heaven? This is of course not to say that all the faithful are dangerous to the public good, but some certainly are. As evinced by the history of humanity, faith can glom onto just about anything. One axiom-of-faith has no more validity, proof, or possibility of refutation than any other. People can, and have, believed that their God or Gods wanted them to do things. Sometimes horrible things. While some use faith as their personal tool, others kill abortion doctors because that’s what _their_ faith tells them. /$.02 ---
**Author:** ![lezlers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@lezlers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lezlers)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2005, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/114 "2005-05-30T00:22:23Z")
I’m sorry **Finn** , was your post in response to another? I’m struggling to find the context to put it into. Who’s harming who? And **FriarTed** , that’s just the best damn news I’ve heard in a _long_ time! Just when you thought you got those groups figured out, they go and get all rational on ya… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Cemetery\_Savior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/439d5e/32.png) [@Cemetery\_Savior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cemetery_Savior)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2005, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/115 "2005-05-31T15:11:43Z")
> [@Siege](#): > > Actually, even in that case, if my neighbor chooses to attend a church which requires tithing, it’s still not picking _my_ pocket.CJ I thought the context was that the Church would be picking Jefferson’s pocket. I didn’t think it was an extended picking. Y’know, I committed the SD sin of extrapolating information I thought I knew to other situations. I had thought that all Catholics tithed. If not required, I thought it was a tacit requirement to be Catholic. My apologies to all non-bled Catholics! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2005, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/116 "2005-05-31T15:13:59Z")
> [@lezlers](#): > > I’m sorry **Finn** , was your post in response to another? I’m struggling to find the context to put it into. Who’s harming who? My post was in response to the idea that by necessity someone’s religion doesn’t harm anybody else. I think I outlined pretty clearly a few cases in which a person’s religion can do harm to other people. Is there anything I can clear up for you? ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2005, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/117 "2005-08-18T16:08:54Z")
[http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050817/BREAK/508170493](http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050817/BREAK/508170493) VICTORY FOR THE FIRST AMENDMENT AND THE PARENTS BY A UNANIMOUS COURT DECISION! ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2005, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618/118 "2005-08-18T16:15:19Z")
And an even greater victory — the original judge has admitted his error, and changed his own mind. A very good result overall. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pagans-athiests-and-mormons-beware/305618.md?page=5)