yayyyyyy God

[Kanada Kev]

Westboro just had to show up in West Virginia to show how much god hated the miners. Good to see they got run out of town pretty quick:

http://ecopolitology.org/2010/04/09/westboro-baptist-church-gets-out-protested-in-west-virginia/

Edited April 10, 2010 by Guest

[Kanada Kev]

And a few people seem a little upset over a new German cartoon on the cover of a magazine. Wonder if they are more upset about this or the fact that countless children have been violated?

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/world/news/e3ia32c20e0500d8fa5ea4872e8a7bddf00

[bradm]

NOTE: The Ku Klux Klan, LLC. has not or EVER will have ANY connection with The "Westboro Baptist Church". We absolutely repudiate their activities.

The Ku Klux Klan, LLC.

www.kukluxklan.bz

870-427-2819

Aloha,

Brad

[Thorgnor]

"My Lord says that whosoever asks shall be saved! Whosoever!" - Angry Miner responding to the WBC Protest.

[Kanada Kev]

Not to double-up posts, but the vid here is a great take on the separation of church and state.

http://www.jambands.ca/sanctuary/showpost.php?post/641641/

[Kanada Kev]

[Kanada Kev]

Always enjoy listening to a little Pat Condell

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Here's an interesting case.

Court to hear arguments on campus Christian group

WASHINGTON — In a case that pits nondiscrimination policies against freedom of religion, the Supreme Court is grappling with whether universities and colleges can deny official recognition to Christian student groups that refuse to let non-Christians and gays join.

The high court was to hear arguments Monday from the Christian Legal Society at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law. The Christian group said its constitutional freedoms of speech, religion and association were violated when it was denied recognition as a student group by the San Francisco-based school.

The group has made this argument at several universities around the nation with mixed results. The high court's decision could set a national standard for universities and colleges to follow when Christian and other groups that want to exclude certain people apply for money and recognition from the school.

Hastings said it turned the Christian Legal Society down because all recognized campus groups, which are eligible for financing and other benefits, may not exclude people due to religious belief, sexual orientation and other reasons.

The Christian group requires that voting members sign a statement of faith. The group also regards "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle" as being inconsistent with the statement of faith.

The 30-member Hastings group sued in federal court after it was told in 2004 that it was being denied recognition because of its policy of exclusion. Federal courts in San Francisco, including the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, rejected the group's assertions that the law school's policy violated its constitutional rights.

According to a society news release, it invites all students to its meetings.

"However, CLS voting members and officers must affirm its Statement of Faith," the release said. "CLS interprets the Statement of Faith to include the belief that Christians should not engage in sexual conduct outside of a marriage between a man and a woman."

The Christian Legal Society has chapters at universities nationwide and has sued other universities on the same grounds. It won at Southern Illinois University, when the university settled with the group in 2007 and recognized its membership and leadership policies.

But a federal judge in Montana said in May 2009 that the University of Montana law school did not discriminate against the Christian Legal Society when it refused to give the group Student Bar Association money because of its policies.

Lawyers for the student group say it's only fair that groups with different viewpoints are treated equitably by university officials.

"In an earlier era, public universities frequently attempted to bar gay rights groups from recognized student organization status on account of their supposed encouragement of what was then illegal behavior," Michael McConnell, a society lawyer, said in court papers. "The courts made short shrift of those policies." McConnell argues: "The shoe is now on the other foot in much of academia. The question here is whether such groups as CLS will receive comparable First Amendment protection."

The California university said it requires all registered student organizations to be nondiscriminatory if they want to operate on campus, regardless of viewpoint.

Groups that support gay rights "cannot exclude students who believe homosexuality is morally wrong any more than CLS is permitted to exclude students who believe it is not," university lawyer Gregory Garre said in court papers.

How do these people manage to forget the range of people that Jesus is supposed to have hung out with?

[phishtaper]

well, I for one am now convinced of the existence of God ... Justin Bieber didn't win any Juno's last night ...

[SaggyBalls]

How do these people manage to forget the range of people that Jesus is supposed to have hung out with?

Seems pretty appropriate, since Jesus spoke out against worshipping in an organized fashion - he was decidedly anti-church and his teachings were quite 'buddhist' (Dhammic?).

If they worship their teacher as God, then any real attempt to ascend above and commune with divinity is arguably stuck at a glass ceiling.

Not that aspiring to live a life like Jesus isn't commendable, but there's certainly something beyond what the human mind can comprehend.

With limited scope comes limited conscience.

All the REAL Christians were killed off by the church or assimilated into other religions (such as Islam, which upholds the glory of God as Jesus aspired much more overtly)

Of course, that's mostly informed Opinion. I love Jesus as much as the next prophet - true or false.

Curious how many churches in the east/far east are in extremely close proximity to mosques, eh?

[Kanada Kev]

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

A few things worth commenting on, but this one jumped out for some reason.

Curious how many churches in the east/far east are in extremely close proximity to mosques, eh?

Do you mean intellectual/liturgical proximity, or physical proximity?

If the former, that's partly an oversimplification, and where true, partly an accident of history and geography. In the far east, Islam spread to places like Indonesia largely through Sufism, which is a world of difference away from the kind of Wahhabi, fundamentalistic strain that holds so many of the chips these days (Wahhabis like blowing up and knocking down Sufi things).

And what kind of churches do you mean? There's a pretty big spectrum there, from the Pentecostal to the... well, whatever types you might be thinking of. In modern Christianity as in Islam, there are all sorts of efforts in clear evidence of well-funded, (ultra-) conservative missions efforts that take deep root in lots of places, and shift that religious landscape quite a bit.

And don't forget about the fundamentalistic and evangelical (health-and-wealth) Buddhists, either - like Soka Gakkai.

[Kanada Kev]

[SaggyBalls]

Edit: middle east. My bad.

Geographic proximity to catholic churches.

A few things worth commenting on, but this one jumped out for some reason...

...don't forget about the fundamentalistic and evangelical (health-and-wealth) Buddhists, either - like Soka Gakkai.

Sufism (from the tiny bit I've read of) is absolutely beautiful - of course that's how it spread to the east! No wonder Indonesia has the world's largest muslim population! Amazing.

Most 'isms' ruin things eventually.

So in thinking that 'Dhammic' was a word (conjugated in english properly...), I never thought to check until today...and I *just* googled it and found this:

Dhammic Socialism

Which seems pretty akin to the way in which I used the word 'Dhammic' and my 'in an ideal world' view on socialism/communism (and in many ways other parts of the political/social spectrum).

Wiki'd

Buddhist socialism is a political ideology which advocates socialism based on the principles of Buddhism.

Unfortunately, it was not worded as such

Buddhist socialism is a political ideology which advocates socialism based on the principles on which Buddhism was founded.

Too bad the 'isms' skew it all.

Sometimes I wish I could just discount religion and focus on tangibles, but the universe is pretty amazing and feels so connected/important that I just can't.

[Thorgnor]

The connectedness thing that Buddhism is so known for is, imo, common to the deepest metaphysical insights of all of the religious ontologies I know of. Sufism is the "mystic" Islam, analogous to the Kabbalah, the Rosecrucians, or many of the current secular or new age "metaphysics".

The basic premise of Sufism as I understand it is self-abnegation in deference to love and devotion of the Prophet, and often his immediate family and companions. The patron saint of many Sunni Sufic interpretive communities is the former slave Bilal, who was adopted into the family of the Prophet and eventually married one of his daughters. Many view certain Sufi groups as similar to Gnostic Christian communities who supposedly hold the "true" faith in God's trust. Sufi are the Whirling Dervish, the conjurer, the seer, and almost without fail they are the most famous poets. Rumi was Sufi.

Buddhist socialism sounds like communism with Chinese characteristics... in other words like something that doesn't look much like the original but there's a lot of power in claiming a lineage, especially a religious one. Some would say the current Chinese leadership is already "Buddhist socialist".

[SaggyBalls]

analogous to the Kaballah?

I think that could get you shot in some places on the globe.

Gautama and Confucius had very different ideologies, T.

The current Chinese leadership is certainly not Buddhist.

However, I think you're pretty close but it's the finer points (that really do make up a lot of ground if even properly scrutinized) that don't quite match up.

[Thorgnor]

analogous to the Kaballah?

I think that could get you shot in some places on the globe.

Gautama and Confucius had very different ideologies, T.

The current Chinese leadership is certainly not Buddhist.

However, I think you're pretty close but it's the finer points (that really do make up a lot of ground if even properly scrutinized) that don't quite match up.

I'm not talking about ideology.

Who gains when we make these distinctions?

Is it helping to let details rip us apart?

Facts are war on nature.

[Kanada Kev]

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Sex education too important to be left to parents

Susan Pinker

From Monday's Globe and Mail Published on Friday, Apr. 23, 2010 6:12PM EDT Last updated on Monday, Apr. 26, 2010 5:13AM EDT

Ontario’s much derided health and sex education curriculum featured a few silly nods to political correctness. But much as I tried, I couldn’t find the porn. And the curriculum’s sudden withdrawal last week by Premier Dalton McGuinty marked a nostalgic return to la-la land.

The heated debate on the topic brought to mind a frank discussion I had with a neighbourhood friend when we were seven. Leanne’s mother had just come home with a new baby. She earnestly explained that a bird had flown over the house and had put a tiny baby in her mother’s tummy while everyone was sleeping. There it grew, until finally she went to the hospital to get it out.

“That’s not how the baby got there,†I said. “How do you know,†she demanded. Together we ran down the street and asked her mother to settle the dispute. How did the baby get into her tummy after all? Her mother looked at Leanne blankly. “Ask Susan,†she replied.

That’s how most children used to learn about sex – from their friends. It’s still true, except now they can also go to Ask.com, or a dozen other websites, some reputable, others less so. Thus informed, they venture out into the world.

However they get their information, Ontario teens are not exactly prudes. In Toronto, for example, 59 per cent of adolescents under 18 report they have had vaginal, oral or anal sex, according to a 2009 survey commissioned by three Ontario universities and Planned Parenthood. Though 37 per cent of the sample of more than 1,200 Toronto teens said they were sexually active, many couldn’t define what sex is. As in, do blow jobs really count? Over 80 per cent said they had never talked to a medical professional about contraception. They were probably afraid that the clinic personnel might spill the beans about their sex lives to their parents.

This is an understandable fear. But it’s also one reason why 4.5 per cent of teenaged girls under the age of 18 became pregnant in Toronto last year. And the very communities who pressured the government to withdraw the expanded program are the ones whose kids are more likely to get pregnant or become HIV positive. Seventy-six per cent of teens facing unplanned pregnancies have “ethnoracial minority†or “religious backgrounds†according to the Ontario report.

This attitude-versus-activity paradox has been meticulously tracked by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus. Of the 3,400 American teens he surveyed, white evangelical Christians were most likely to believe in abstinence. Yet, they were also more sexually active than teens from any other religious background, on average having intercourse for the first time just after they turned 16.

The paradox makes sense. Few adults are actually talking to these kids about sex – despite the claims of Christian and Muslim advocacy groups that it should only be discussed at home. That’s a reassuring scenario: parents sitting down with their preteens and having regular chats that are culturally and age appropriate, yet that also give them the nuts and bolts of the knowledge they need as adults-in-training. The kids learn about condoms, about how to handle complex social pressures, about confusing feelings, and about why thinking about love and sex constantly is a normal feature of adolescence – especially among boys.

So does it happen that way? Of course not. If these groups talk about sex at all, it’s mostly to say “don’t.â€

If we stop for a moment to look at the science, it becomes obvious that school sex-education programs work and preaching abstinence doesn’t. In 2007, public health researcher Douglas Kirby and his colleagues assessed the effects of curriculum-based sex education on kids’ behaviour. The scientists crunched the data from 83 published studies of sex-ed programs taught all over the world, including in Canada. They found that 42 per cent of these programs significantly delayed kids’ sexual debuts. Only one program in 83 hastened it, and the researchers attribute that to a statistical fluke.

Yet irrational anxieties that link sex ed to promiscuity persist. “Grade 6? … Give me a break. They’re going to traumatize these children – they’re going to be doing everything out in the schoolyard,†said Murielle Boudreau of the Greater Toronto Catholic Parent Network.

Intercourse by the soccer nets is unlikely, but one impact of school-based sex ed is that if teens do become entangled in the back seat of someone’s car, they’re unlikely to end up pregnant at 16, like Juno or Bristol Palin. That’s because half of the studies on the impact of sex education curriculums showed increased condom use. None showed decreased condom use. Half of the sex-ed programs significantly reduced sexual risk-taking. None increased it. More than half of the studies showed that kids’ ability to refuse unwanted sex significantly improved after a sex-ed program. And that’s a goal I expect most religious parents would applaud, not protest.

Many of the school-based programs showed long-lasting effects – some for three years or more after the program ended, which is probably longer than kids remember binomial equations. Compare that staying power to the outcome of the abstinence programs currently promoted in the United States. After spending $1.5-billion, the U.S. Congress authorized a rigorous scientific evaluation that summarized their program thus: “Teen sexual abstinence commonly addressed by Title V, Section 510 program curricula are found to have no association with sexual abstinence three to five years later.†The researchers found that formal pledges of abstinence just don’t work – either to delay the age that kids first have sex, or to reduce the number of their sexual partners. Well, Bristol Palin could have told them that. “Everyone should be abstinent, but it’s not realistic at all. … Sex is just more and more accepted now among kids my age,†she told a Fox News reporter.

Ontario’s program wasn’t perfect. If I had my druthers, teachers wouldn’t be instructed to talk about “partners†instead of “parents,†or to educate 8th-graders to distinguish between “male, female, two-spirited, transgendered, transsexual, intersex, gay, lesbian and bisexual.†Two-spirited? I can see how this might be seen as politically correct overkill. But if I had to choose, I’d take tolerance over ignorance. Granted, there is such a thing as too much information. But as any pregnant 15-year-old will tell you, it’s a whole lot better than no information at all.

Susan Pinker is a psychologist, Globe columnist, and author of The Sexual Paradox.

[Kanada Kev]

Thanks for posting that DEM. Great opinion piece. As always, the arguments get distorted and people feed on headlines.

I suppose you could just tell all those kids to think of Jesus and what he'd do in any of the sexual situations they may find themselves in.

Edited April 26, 2010 by Guest

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Go'bama!!

(Pity how this got titled, though)

LXcvbnzNIjg

[Kanada Kev]

Great vid DEM.

[SaggyBalls]

Jesus: A crank yankers puppet with Anime heartburn.

[Thorgnor]

ya'lost me.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Good band name, though.