And these poor kids are the victims!
And as I posted this link, I stopped to ask myself—is this really superstition, or just somebody’s rotten need to find somebody, anybody to blame? 
:mad: :mad:
There are moments when I feel rage & revulsion for all Humanity, & wish I could become something other than Human.
Reading the above link… I wanna be sick. With anger!
That’s not superstition, it’s jumping on the bandwagon.
“Oooh, here’s a good way to offload some excess baggage. Out, devil!!!”
Y’know, when we finally nuke ourselves into oblivion and turn the planet over to the roaches, it’ll probably be for the best.
Jesus wept.
My god-anyone else see the irony in that the kid was accused of being a witch because he PRAYED at his mother’s bedside?
Ouch. I think I’m going to be ill.
Your thread title says it all.
Add this odious tripe to:
Five and eight year old girls being raped because sex with a virgin supposedly cures AIDS.
A faithful wife who is infected with AIDS by her own philandering husband is frequently cast out of her home anyway.
The only sad part about this is how the winnowing happening in Africa is not weeding out these scumbag men. It is the women and children who are taking it in the shorts. The men only die after first infecting up to a dozen others. I know it sounds heartless, but I can rally not one whit of sympathy for such evil. The women and childrens’ plight rips my heart out though.
**Guin[b/] you said exactly what I was going to say. The only thing I can say to myself is, thank goodness I have that ability to know in my heart that there are people out there who know who they are inside.
It makes me sick to know that there are families letting children like Joel live on the street like they do. I mean, maybe I just don’t understand the way people live, outside of my warm little world where my family would accept me, no matter what.
Are they only being called sorcerers because they pray for their loved ones? Maybe I am being very ignorant here, and I am sorry if I am, but I think that frustration has blinded me right now. Maybe I don’t understand their culture. Maybe it will make a little more sense in the morning, but right now, I just want to take all of these children up in a group hug, and just be there. Be there for them because their families haven’t been.
Pardon my urge to be ill because of this. Ill from anger, and ill from assumption from their families, and other folks who are so quick to point a finger. Whatever happened to understanding?
Damnit!!! I ment to say Guin. Preview is a wonderful thing.
Well, it makes me grateful that none of the stupid things Americans believe in are currently causing that much trouble. UFO-nuts, chiropractors, TV psychics, and the assortment of New Age trash is just like a fly buzzing around compared to real live witchhunts. These people need to come to America and see what an actual “witch” is. Once you’ve seen some ignorant “Wiccan” running around in goth makeup trying to conjure up magic forest power, and then going to her job at the convenience store, that pretty much kills any fear of witches you might have. Fear being replaced with hysterical laughter and mockery.
So superstitions here are pretty harmless. Well, homeopathy and other alternative medicines do occasionally harm people. And the “Church” of $cientology does kill people now and then, or throw them off the side of some self-proclaimed sea captains boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which is pretty much the same thing. But other than that, and the occasional religiously-motivated murder, we’re clean!
It sounds as though these families are being thrust into poverty and acting out of desperation.
Desperation causes people to do horrifying, despicable things. And then they make up some excuse for why they do them, because “My survival instinct kicked in” sounds so callous.
Rex, your post is so offensive to me personally, I’m speechless.
Cite? I can’t stand them either, but I’ve never seen a reputable source making such claims about them.
Why? Don’t tell me you believe in any of that crap.
Well I’m a practicing Wiccan and I’ve also been using Naturopathy since I was a baby, so, yes.
So, why is it acceptable to mock, laugh at, and be religiously intolerant of pagans?
Quite often of late, I have seen mockery of pagans or outright slurring.
In a recent thread, I was called a “baby eating satanist.”
Cold. Nasty. Hateful. And it should be unacceptable. But, it goes on and on.
While there have been posters who have been majorly intolerant of Christians, they were given what for by other posters and the mods.
When an “Ask The Pagan” thread was open a few years ago, it quickly devolved into mockery from many board members leading to two pit threads, one of which focused on me.
As long as a pagan mentions it in passing, little is said about it.
Some have said that they mock and ridicule such things because they are “stamping out ignorance.”
Yet isn’t it quite ignorant to make fun of someone’s faith?
Not only do herbs and crap like that not work, which is the major factor against them, but apparently the big book of naturopathic medicine, the Textbook of Natural Medicine by Joe Pizzorno and Micheal Murray, advises St. John’s Wort for AIDS patients. A commission on naturopathy in Massachusetts recently cited some studies showing good evidence that St. John’s Wort actually interferes with anti-HIV medicines. So that means it’s a good chance that in addition to being ineffective, these “alternative” medicines are harming AIDS patients. So naturopathy offends me, because it’s misleading people about their medicinal options to their detriment, and may have resulted in some people dying from AIDS because they used an “herbal remedy” that did more harm than good.
Homeopathy is even more ridiculous. Homeopaths think that if they dilute something with water, it will somehow become more potent. Funny, but that doesn’t seem to work with my coffee. When you dilute something it gets weaker. These people actually think that the water “remembers” the properties of whatever is being diluted. I’m sorry, if a belief is so ridiculously silly, I have to laugh.
Blah blah blah.
Start another thread and quitcher hijacking. I know I was walking the line when I posted earlier, but I thought it would be over quickly and be a minor blip among discussion of the OP. If you want to rant about quackery, you’re in the right place mostly. Please press the “new thread” button, located in the top right hand corner of this thread’s OP.
See you there - not.
I’m with RexDart on this one. 100%. Believing in something that has zero science behind it is silly. Yes, that includes god, and any other ridiculous belief system.
You can’t disagree respectfully, can you?
Silly.
:dubious:
Unless there’s a scientifically-proven reason to believe otherwise, no. Believe what you want, that’s fine by me, but if you’re going to rub it in MY face, you better be able to back it up with solid facts.
Just to respond to the hijack for a sec. . .
Even if one does anot share their beliefs, there is no call to mock Wiccans for their faith. As I understand it, Wiccans are not witches in the conventional sense, that is, they don’t turn people into toads or change straw into gold. Rather, they believe that they commune with nature spirits and revere the natural world. What’s wrong with that? Faith in the supernatural is by its nature nonfalsifiable and thus not susceptible to scientific analysis. There is as much rationale for the Wiccan Dopers’ religion as there is for Christianity or Judaism, yet Rex Dart wouldn’t mock the Christian or Jewish Dopers as he has the Wiccans. If the veneration of nature makes people happy, then good for them. One may disagree with the claims made by religion but it is classless to be disrespectful to people who practice it as long as their faith does not impinge on the freedom of others.
However, naturopathy and homeopathy are based on falsifiable propositions and have been shown to be utterly worthless.
I don’t presume to speak for kung fu lola, and while I don’t personally buy into Wicca, dismissing someone’s religion as ‘crap’ is a bit presumptuous.