This from the guy who tells prisoner “it’s damn near impossible to have a conversation with you.” Nice. Good to see that the spirit of Debate is alive and well here at the Straight Dope.
Sheesh, some of you people should be ashamed of yourselves. prisoner asks a question that is at the core of a ton of issues today, especially in the US – what exactly is the meaning behind the separation of Church and State, how is it practiced in everyday life, and how can it work to the satisfaction of everyone? If y’all had stopped grinding your damn axes for one second and actually bothered to read his posts and try to understand them, instead of resorting to anti-religious melodrama and sniping at poor word choices and derailing the question with meaningless tangents about Bush and rock lyrics, it might’ve actually managed to turn into a, you know, debate. Instead of three pages of sniping. Sometimes I wish I could give this whole damn message board a time out until everybody learns to stop acting like children.
The salient point as I see it:
The balance between Church and State is all out of whack. People have lost sight of the true value of the concept of Freedom of Religion – that everyone be entitled to practice the religion he chooses, or no religion at all. The part that everybody misses is that we all must be tolerant of all belief systems. Some people have this mistaken notion that the end goal of our society is to be completely secular. Wrong. It is merely to keep from advocating one belief system over another.
Basically, it’s to advocate an idea that’s been shat on all over this thread, that one belief system is “right” or is “better” than another. Not every display of religious faith is an attack on atheists or an example of witnessing. And not every atheist is trying to wipe out all vestiges of religious faith in the world, forcing the faithful into hiding in their churches.
But still, people get all hot and bothered and over-react to the practical aspects of living in a society that (theoretically, at least) tolerates both the religious and non-religious, so they pitch a fit whenever they see someone with a fish on the back of their car, causing some Christians to start asserting their religious icons into places where it’s not appropriate. And until people can grow up and realize that other people’s beliefs are every bit as valuable to them as their own, then the “pendulum” is just going to keep swinging.
Does Handel’s Messiah get a pass if it’s heard outside of the church? Is it crap if you hear it on the radio in a store, or at the shopping mall? Also, if Handel’s Messiah gets a pass, why does it get a pass? It is sung in English (so everyone can understand it) and it most profoundly praises God. Does that make it “filth” to you? And how is it so different from other types of Christian music?
Seriously, I’d like to know. I mean, seriously. I threaten to be relentless in requesting clarification on this.
Right. And it seems to me that those who are tolerant and appreciate the freedoms provided by the Constitution would be thrilled to see that people are exercising their right to play whatever music they like in/on their own property.
And that’s all that’s going on here. prisoner’s friend just happened to run into a person who was (according to him) exercising that right to express an anti-Christian opinion. Lots of people use it to express a Christian opinion. Many aren’t trying to express anything other than “I like these songs.”
prisoner, as long as we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion in this country, people will express their religious opinions. You will agree with some of them. Others you will not. But demanding that atheists stop expressing their opinions if you disagree with them is un-American, and it makes you (to paraphrase the words of your beloved President Bush) a “freedom hater.”
Not THE definition, YOUR definition. I said that, specifically, more than once. “Christian music” has a pretty identifiable meaning and you didn’t give anyone reason to doubt that it was Christian music, so nobody asked. At this point the specific music is important for reasons I already posted.
I suggest the off button on your monitor. You might enjoy it. Everybody might if you’ve got more posts like that in store.
I’m sure by this point in the thread, this is a bit off topic but I did read the first page and a half and this post stuck with me the entire time because I’m a huge Tool fanboy and I’m cracking myself up by humming Eulogy while reading prisoner6655321’s posts.
Hehehe. He should find the song by whatever means and give it a listen. Or at least check out the lyrics. They’re very appropriate.
I just thought that both threads might benefit from a side-by-side analysis. (For those that don’t want to read it - In a nutshell, it is a complaint about the fact that a white person is forced to listen to rap music at work, with claims of racial discrimination).
In both cases, I feel it is a case of clashing tastes in music.
Seemed like the most sensible post in the whole thread to me.
As far as music goes, there is usually crap music in shops. If it is a shop you want to be in you just ignore it. Why would anyone with half a brain ever complain about background music in a shop?
Over Xmas I came home still humming “Silent Night” many times. It’s a Christian song…EEEEEEEEEEEKKKK I have been infected! Somehow I managed to hum and sing it without catching the god bug.
Hey I even enjoyed humming it.
Some people obviously need to have more problems in their lives so they have real things to worry about.
It’s not that he’s totally wrong, I just didn’t feel the need for a lecture. It’s also decent general advice, but in this thread we’re trying (vainly) to deal with one specific situation.
True. Sorry I wasn’t being snarky. I just can’t imagine anyone actually bothering to complain about shop music for any reason.
Elton John offends the buggery out of me and I encounter him often in shops (yes I know millions love him…I don’t, he hurts my ears). I tune him out.
Surely the shopkeeper/manager can play whatever they fancy. They are in the shop all day. I don’t want to hear “yes Jesus loves me” while I am trying on shoes but I will cope. Anyone complaining about muzac (?) is just looking for something to whinge about no matter what religion/culture they come from.
It isn’t hard to ignore someone elses crap taste in music and having tolerance for others is the only way a society can function.
The title of it maybe, but the content of the OP is surely MPSIM.
Anyway, my opinion is this:
From what people in the UK see, the USA is highly religious. Scarily so in my opinion. Some guy turning off Christian rock is hardly a yardstick for the whole nation.
If it is true that an atheists opinion matters more than a religious persons, I would guess that is to do with the fact that atheists base their beliefs on logic while religious people base theirs on faith.
Or maybe god’s testing your faith by making non-believers in charge of the radio stations in shops.
Or maybe you’re wrong and the reason the whole incident has shook you up so much is that you’re not used to your beliefs coming second best in a situation.
I can’t either, actually. If they were playing something I found really terrible (only Creed comes to mind), I might not shop there anymore if I could go somewhere else convenient, but I wouldn’t complain. Perhaps that in part explains the arguments here: I’ve been wondering what the heck could’ve offended prisoner so much.
prisoner6655321: Your friend is a whiner with really crappy recall. After all, if you’re going to kvetch about music, it behooves you to remember what, specifically, you’re bitching about. You are also a whiner who goes back a year or so to manufacture something to get your knickers in a twist over.
I know that it means the world to you that you be able to piss and moan that you and yours are being persecuted, but it’s not happening. Certainly not in the US. So please stop running about and shrieking that Christians are being shat upon. You’re frightening the children. And I imagine that someone filled with Christ’s love such as yourself wouldn’t want to be responsible for the crying of children. Or would you?
I think that it’s primarily Christians that need the above pointed out to them. Repeatedly.
I was going to reply, but Spectrum has said it all.
Frankly, I enjoy imagining the world without religion. Lennon’s line"[Imagine] no religion, too" is not against God/spirituality–it’s a call to think about the damage and pain that religion has caused in the world.
I wouldn’t have any trouble with it if Lennon were saying imagine there’s no God.
It’s imagination . Oy.
What of that more current song–the one about God being a slob on the bus? (“What If God Was One Of Us?”). That’s positively blasphemous! Quick! Get the matches and wood! Burn the heretics for having imaginations!
That was written really late at night, and poorly worded so it didn’t come across as intended – sarcastic. I was trying to be as indignant as prionser has been in this thread. Sorry.
Though I do hate Christian pop and rock music, like any other human with ears, I would have no problem with them being in heaven, so long as I don’t have to live next door to them and so long as they don’t have instruments.
Since I listen to a lot of rock and roll, I was going to ask which song it was which advocated premarital sex specifically, but it appears doing so will be a waste of pixels now.
As far as I can make out, this comes down to one incident about which we have only the most nebulous information being used to demonstrate some vague and equally nebulous secularization of America or attack on Christianity. I agree America is becoming more secular. Like a very dear friend of mine whose a Wiccan, I think that’s a good thing. What constitutes an attack on Christianity is a lot harder to define. I’ve heard the case in Texas where school prayers were banned before a football game as such an attack. However, if I recall, the lawsuit was filed by a Catholic and an Episcopalian.
Earlier, President Bush was described as a supporter of Christian values. However, his current domestic policies seem to go directly against the advice Jesus gave a rich man, “Sell all you have and give it to the poor.” The increasing budget deficits, resulting cutbacks in social services and even mass transit, not to mention the administration’s failure to do anything about companies which cut pension plans in order to pay their CEO’s more appear to me to be making the rich grow richer at the expense of the poor.
Once again, we have a vague claim that things are being made worse with little evidence to back it up. Then again, maybe it just looks that way to me because I’m a bit numb.
And the annoying part of the whole thing is the people who would (and do) say things like that are the same folks who are saying “Put Christ back in Christmas.” Hello? Precisely why is Christmas an important holiday to Christians? “He became as we are that we might become as He is.” (St. Ignatius of Antioch, ca. 100 AD)
In other words, your religious beliefs don’t disqualify you – as long as you acknowledge the existence of some Supreme Being. If you don’t, sorry, no office for you.
Indiana law (but not practice) used to hold that being an atheist made one incompetent to testify or to serve as a juror. This law was finally repealed in 1998 (it was effectively repealed decades before by the Indiana Supreme Court). The current law still allows for a witness’ lack of belief in God to be raised to impeach the credibility of the witness, but does not make such lack of belief a definite bar to credibility.
Apparently, the idea is that if you aren’t afraid of eternal damnation, then your oath is as nothing, and you have no reason not to perjure yourself.
Sure. Keep pointing fingers and spreading the blame, and that’ll make the problem go away and solve everything. When we can say that fundamentalist Christians are responsible for all – no, wait, “primarily” all – the intolerance and injustice in our society, then we can just get rid of Christianity and everything’s cool.
I mean, it worked for the Romans, right? Are people just forgetting the fact that the rise of Christianity was rooted in martyrdom and an oppressed minority? And it went from that to becoming the dominant religion in the west, often using the mentality of “We’re right and you’re wrong, and our actions are justified because we’re being repressed,” to turn the tables on the oppressors.
So what’s your grand plan, Wasteful? To keep pushing back and forth every couple thousand years or so? Or to come up with something where everybody can be happy without calling each other idiots and whiners or heathens and sinners?
