If abortion is murder, how come they only go after women? Men who fuck around without birth control can impregnate dozens of women over the course of a single woman’s pregnancy. That ought to be reckless indifference at least.
They don’t care about an unborn fetus, all they care about is controlling women. That’s why they never go after men. The church is a patriarchy, always has been.
I’m pretty happy with the Godless “figure it out for your own damned self” philosophy of some branches of Buddhism. Pure land, God Buddha, and much of the militant stuff (Burma) leave me stone cold, but even the Dalai Lama with his reincarnation fixation, or Thich Nhat Han, don’t fight too badly with modern scientific methods. There’s much less “take our weird story based on Faith, or you are damned” than you find in almost any Judeo-Christian sect.
That keeps me a happy, but he’ll bound for sure, agnostic.
Pascal’s wager aside, that seems the safest, least angsty place to be.
Of course, I don’t advertise, because the overly serious Godders would badger me, and I’d be forced to undermine their incorrect faith in response. That’s a scenario That’s bad for everyone.
Let them rub blue mud in their belly if it keeps them sane, and does not hurt me.
That’s because men who fuck around are simply giving in to the temptation presented by immodest women. They can’t be expected to control themselves! It’s up to women to remain pure and keep their sin-zones out of sight, thus ensuring that men remain Godly and monogamous.
Hey, leave the Jews out of that gross generalization! Although there is undoutedly some Jewish sect somewhere that has that attitude (two Jews, three opinions), all of mainstream Judaism and even the most extreme fundamentalist sects do not believe in eternal damnation for matters of faith. The vast majority of Jews do not believe in any form of Hell at all, and even those few Orthodox sects that do say that the longest anyone will spend there is one year. And that would be for some heinous crime like mass murder, not what one believes. (And Jewish “hell” is very different from the Christian concept of Hell.)
Also, to defend Christianity, a pretty large portion of them don’t take that attitude either.
How large a portion would you say? A sixth of a cake would be a pretty large portion to put on a plate, for instance, but it is still only one sixth of the whole cake.
I have no idea what portion of self-described Christians don’t share the “take our weird story based on Faith, or you are damned” attitude. It’s an interesting question, though.
I went to my wife’s dad’s funeral ELCA Lutheran. got a long lecture on “the wages of sin is death”.
The “Minister” is perfectly welcome to go schtup himself.
Yes, Commasense, the Judeos, seem freer of crap than most, but talking to the serious conservatives can leave quite a bad taste in the mouth. It is literally their way or the highway.
At least the notion of innocent but unbaptized babies being damned has passed away. Even for someone like me who shrugs agnostic, that’s enough to get Jesus to pull out the nails with his teeth, climb down and kick some serious butt!
Absolutely, and you’ll get no argument from me about Jews and hell, damnation, etc.
But, the OP stated “But, really, fuck all religion . . . this is my attempt at an Omnibus thread. How bad is religion? Let us count the ways!” And, as a member of the tribe I have no hesitation to say that the Jewish religion, like all religions, can be bad.
I get particularly pissed at what the Orthodox Jews have done to Israel. Basically, because of their powerful influence in a system where coalition governments are the norm, they have changed what was established as a secular state into one where religious zealots call too many major shots.
Even outside of Israel, in Orthodox circles women are not equal to men. I find that bad. I also find it sick that kids and young adults who might have otherwise done something productive for the bigger multi-denominational society that surrounds (and protects) their island of religious fantasy, are not even taught the rudiments of reading (English), the most basic math, or anything else other than Biblical Hebrew. Cause that’s all you need to study Talmud. All fucking day. Every day.
He can honestly claim that it is safer for the kids to be under his care than the pedophiles.
You get no argument from me. And you didn’t even mention how the Orthodox are having so many children that they will eventually be the majority of all Jews.
Fundamentalists of all stripes suck.
Can you find a link where Billy Graham said he was no longer a believer?
Jack Van Impe has died. His Stepford-wife Rexella lives on.
Peter Popoff is a footnote. How about Jimmy Swaggart? My local cable package includes a channel called SonLife, which is not for dyslexic Rush fans but is actually - you guessed it - 24-hour Swaggart family programming. You had better bet they probably don’t show this.
Awww… they had a special kind of weirdness about them (and Chuck Ohman was a great voiceover man). They were so much fun with their very bright and eager enthusiasm about the (always coming, never arriving) Tribulation and the World Government that almost every month it was someone different who’d be bringing it about…
No links on Graham not believing, I read that in a magazine, and not one of those tabloids. You could Google (or Bing) but it might take a few pages to find the info.
I used to watch them sometimes for that reason. He was so happy that the end of the world was coming. And I had to admire how he scrupulously cited all his biblical references. He’d be zipping through his bit, seamlessly saying “Revelation 4:13” or whatever after every quote or paraphrase. He was a nut, and his brand of Christian eschatology is dangerous, but he was so watchable.
Respectfully, I think if Billy Graham recanted his beliefs late in his life, that would be fairly well reported.
Here’s my nomination for the awfullest religious leaders and the worlds worst religion.
There is a polygamous cult in Utah known as The Kingston Group., with an estimated 3500 members. Their church is The Latter Day Church of Christ and their business arm is the rather innocuous sounding Davis County Cooperative Society. They refer to themselves as ( no shit) The Order. They are very hierarchical, the men in the group all carry numerical rank —- not just the leaders, someone might be 74. Or 106. And they all pray in the direction of “The Home Place” 3 times a day.
Here’s a pretty good article with lots of background information.
They do not live in compounds or wear archaic clothing. They live scattered throughout the greater Salt Lake City area, wearing modern clothing, hiding in plain sight.They have white supremacist beliefs, believing ( as do many fundamentalists) that dark skin is a mark of sin. They believe in purifying bloodlines through incest. They claim not to engage in child marriages and that claim is suspect. However, most women are “spiritually married” to an older male relative as soon as they reach the age of consent and they have been groomed from birth for this role.
They are indoctrinated from birth to believe that The Order is everything and that the path to God and salvation lies in subjugating oneself to the will of the of the Order. They practice consecration, the practice of turning over of all of one’s worldly possessions to the Order.
The Kingston Group owns a vast network of mainstream businesses in Utah and the surrounding states, including a large restaurant supply chain. Members of the cult are assigned to work for one of these businesses. It is hard to untangle their holdings and no one really knows how many businesses they run although this article by Brooke Adams features an incomplete list of 47.
They are paid a pittance for their work and they aren’t paid at all in the traditional sense. ALL their pay is turned over to the Davis County Cooperative Society and it is used to fund an account that can be only used at the businesses owned by the Order ( the company store, as it were). They are taught from a very young age that if the Order doesn’t have it, they don’t need it. And if the Order doesn’t think you need something, you aren’t getting it, regardless of your account balance.
This economic slavery is often used punitively and members that are out of favor are often given crappy jobs as punishment not only for their own acts but for the sins of their family members, in a dynamic that resembles North Korea more than anything else. One of the rare defectors left after he realized that his children would be locked into a life of minimum wage labor in the cult’s coal mine - just like he was, because his mother had briefly left the Order and married an outsider when she was young.
The cult doesn’t doom everyone to a live of minimum wage labor, some are gifted with a higher education to perform professional services and legal work for the Order. But the cult decides and many women live their lives as low wage baby machines , working low skill jobs for no money, servicing an older “husband” who stops by their crappy apartment few times a week, and popping out child after child to increase the power and influence of the Order.
But the leaders are educated and well-spoken, issuing statements such as this
https://www.cbs.com/shows/whistleblower/news/1009257/polygamous-kingston-clan-responds-to-escapee-s-whistleblower-claims/
Which is what makes them so much more evil than some of the other cult leaders. And that they are running a vast economic empire built on slave labor in the 21st century USA.
Utah has a fairly long standing policy of not prosecuting polygamy as a crime, and the portions of the bigamy statue that applied to plural marriage have been ruled unconstitutional. The argument is that the “spiritual” multiple marriages have absolutely no legal standing and it would be discriminatory to prosecute people for adultery or cohabitation simply because they are doing it for religious purposes.
So they can’t really arrest these guys for polygamy and they are so secretive that it’s really hard to nail them for other crimes. Every now and then they get them, there was a large fraud prosecution for a Kingston company this summer. Salt Lake TribuneFeds move to seize homes and businesses from polygamous Kingston Group as fraud defendants plead guilty
But, by and large, they get away with it .
At least without naming the other one “Texas Ranger” instead of Donnie or Timmie.