yayyyyyy God

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Those are brilliant ^

[Kanada Kev]

I knew that Rebecca Black song reminded me of something ... crappy music/videos like this from the fundies:

[Kanada Kev]

[Kanada Kev]

god is doing a NU THANG!!

[Kanada Kev]

Edited May 18, 2011 by Guest

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

This should be tasteful.

Mark Burnett's The Bible could test our faith in reality TV

JOHN DOYLE

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, May. 25, 2011 12:00AM EDT

When I was a young lad in Ireland, we knew nothing about the Bible.

Oh, to be sure, we were drenched in religion. When we weren’t on our knees half the night saying the rosary we were getting up at an unholy hour to go to mass and listen to some old fella work himself into a lather describing hell to us. Those were the days, my friends.

The Bible, though, that was for Protestants. As priest-ridden peasants we were more inclined to read the Penny Catechism. The Catechism had answers. The Bible would only confuse you. Or so the nuns and Christian Brothers gave us to understand, anyway. Suppose you had a question, like, “What must you do to save your soul?†The answer was in the Catechism: “To save my soul I must worship God by Faith, Hope and Charity; that is, I must believe in him, I must hope in him, and I must love him with my whole heart.†There you go.

Thus it is with pleasure than I anticipate The Bible as it will be brought to television by Mark Burnett, the man who has brought the world such shows as Survivor, The Apprentice, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and Sarah Palin’s Alaska. The master of reality TV is doing a docudrama, pithily titled The Bible, for the History Channel, the broadcaster announced Tuesday. (Here in Canada we don’t get the channel, but I’d bet my bottom dollar that our version, History Television, will deliver it to us.)

According to the History Channel, the five-part, 10-hour series will dramatize key events in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation “using CGI to recreate famous stories including Noah's Ark and the Resurrection of Jesus.â€

It’s possible that Burnett has spotted the key element in new trends for TV escapism. After all, the most talked-about new shows of the coming season are taking viewers back into the past – The Playboy Club and Pan Am are both set in the 1960s, and the Steven Spielberg-produced Terra Nova has a group of colonists going back 85 million years, where they'll tangle with dinosaurs and rebuild civilization, or something.

Burnett is probably thinking it would be shrewd to go into a past that so many American viewers are familiar with but rarely see dramatized in the style of today’s TV.

Also there is Charlie’s Angels, which will deliver some kind of nostalgia for the 1970s, a period that is so distant to many young people today that they probably think Noah built his ark around 1972. And then there’s the salacious, gossipy Good Christian Bellescoming in mid-season, whose name at least suggests a widespread interest in things Christian.

Seriously, though, given Burnett’s track record, the mind must boggle at the prospect of his Bible series. Burnett is partly responsible for a new genre of television with his competition shows featuring ordinary people with outsize personalities. These shows are also notorious for being edited to create narrative arcs, tensions and climaxes that conform to the tropes of fiction.

What sort of biblical stories will emerge under Burnett’s influence? Will the people and critters on Noah’s Ark be engaged in ludicrous competition in order to avoid being thrown overboard? Is this Adam and Eve couple a mere alliance to save the Tribe? See what I mean about a boggled mind?

Not that I know a vast amount about the Bible, as I’ve explained. But I do know this – Burnett is an immensely clever huckster, usually correct in his judgment of viewers’ tastes and needs. If he’s doing the Bible, then maybe the Bible is the future of TV storytelling. Take that, Playboy Bunnies and Pan Am flight attendants in tight skirts. Me, I’ll be glued to it, not being brought up a Prod and all.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Interesting. Where was this when I was an impressionable young teen?

Wild Goose Revival

[Deeps]

Jah Pastafari!

Austrian wears religious collander for license photo.

[Birdy]

The first environmental activist to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize - Wangari Maathai. A Christian woman who's life work has been attributed to early childhood lessons of 'serving God by serving fellow human beings'.

"The Book of Genesis came to mean much more to me than just a book on how God created. It helped me understand that the creation is how God has made it possible for us to live on this planet — that we need to be very grateful for what he gave us, and we need to take care if it. God would have wanted us to be his custodians rather than dominion, because dominion reflects exploitation."

I just finished reading her memoir - 'Unbowed', and i highly, highly recommend it. This woman, through her religion, has done more good for this world than most of us could ever dream of.

Cause it's been awhile, and this thread is oh so deserving of a non-sarcastic 'Yay God'.

[SaggyBalls]

I've missed seeing your pretty avatar with all of those birds finally freed from your steamy armpits.

Fly away to the sun!

[Birdy]

Dirty hippie!

[SaggyBalls]

They're finally free!

[Esau.]

[Kanada Kev]

[Birdy]

I beg to differ.

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

-Archbishop Desmond Tutu

[d_rawk]

"Religions are like wisdom teeth; even though they were crucial to our ancestors, today they are unnecessary and they bring nothing but frustration and pain. Also, they provide us with no wisdom."

It has an allure, but falls short of measure.

John Dominic Crossan once put it thus - "My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally."

The thrust of contemporary anger is against orthodoxy and literalism - why people want to concede that ground and pretend that it is valid, and expend energy inside that narrow battlefield, is troubling. You let the lunatics define the scope and try to argue with lunatics on their terms. Or discount them without reclaiming the territory (the entire wealth of spiritual being) that they took from you.

Religions are like "wisdom teeth"? No they are like the philosophy of the spirit, which, like all philosophies has its fancy and flavour of the day and its dissenting voices that gain, or fail to gain, credence over time based on merit. They are like the politics of overwhelming human potential. The narrow debate, if you hand the terms to the present authority, is a dull debate. So take it back and deny that authority and put the lie to it.

I concede that people raised by evangelicals may suffer from that misfortune in the way that people given to sexual abuse in their childhood suffer from all manner of darkness around sex. But it is tiresome to hear that sex is universally violent and disruptive, just as it is to hear that religious matters are necessarily unimaginative and fruitless. A dark encounter does not a universal darkness make. Just as I refuse to concede that sexual matters, as they exist broadly, can be defined wholly by the insecurity, perversity, and desire for control that characterizes sexual abuse, I refuse to concede that religious matters, as they exist broadly, can be defined wholly by the insecurity, perversity, and desire for control that characterizes spiritual abuse. Sex jumps out only because - maybe only slightly ahead of religion - it is prone to that conflation of trauma with essence among victims. I believe this to be because these are things that are so fundamental to our make-up that they are the most prone to hijack. It could be any number of things. Food.

Religion, as far as I can tell, happens when the spirit of one man encounters the spirit of another, just as politics, as far as I can tell, happens when the freedom of one man encounters the freedom of another.

For all of my life, I have not seen a desirable life in which other people were not present - nor can I conceive of a reason to pursue one. Mythology is the repository of man's most ancient science ... to deny that there is wisdom in what persists in poking its head up through every relevant human drama through all of our shared history is blindness, not insight. Where shall we deposit cosmic truth, then?

[d_rawk]

Nobody wants to play with me ... and I'm never one to leave a good thing well enough.

In conversation with someone just two days ago - a biker dude who proudly wears the self-designated label of 'true believer' - it was very apparent that his faith, in that contemporary sense of the word, was very much contingent on his understanding of things - in this case 'things' being Christian mythology - being rooted in historical events.

I am a Jesus guy, to be sure. But I think that you would be hard pressed, no matter how well educated or devout, to find a historical basis for Jesus as we know him. Even if you could locate a Jesus of Nazareth - say through a time machine - I think you would be terribly disappointed to find that he resembled the Gospels but little. And of which of the contradicting four would he resemble, anyways?

But Christ - ah, another matter entirely. Christ re-invents itself perpetually, and what is the story of Jesus as Christ but a re-telling of a familiar story for a new place and a new people?

The resurrection is terribly important. Whether the resurrection has ever been a historical event, I'd wager not. I'm not sure that even comes close to the point, though. Was the historical resurrection of Osiris so terribly important to meaning?

I openly show my colours - my sympathies have long been with Quakerism, which though founded by Christians, also found that it could not justify an exclusivity to that, and that the principles were universal. There are hindu quakers, muslim quakers, christian quakers, agnostic quakers. There are atheist Quakers ('Nontheist Friends') as well, but that is an interesting debate in itself that needs more room to breathe.

But the debate - and I still think it an important one - gets closed down prematurely when we take the 'here is what I grew up with and I don't like it, so all must be similar' and cast that like Jackson Pollock paint over the entire cast of those involved in religious discourse. How would Martin Luther have happened, had he taken that approach?

I think a good rule of thumb - and not just for religious matters, but generally - is that no-one is as crazy as your parents. And our children won't be as crazy as us.

Dawkins basically choked on himself avoiding how to explain human kindness outside of the 'niceness' of biological nepotism.

Rejoice?

[SaggyBalls]

Rejoice - I for one find it laughable that Christians worship a demigod, not GOD, and in the process of adopting the belief that you should put a pronoun before the word GOD, debases and shatters the validity of their concept of monotheism.

Still, I'm laughing and not outright denouncing, because both their actions and mine could be taken as either blasphemous or insulting (like that's really even important if God is Love anyway). If a real person, Jesus was a singular person, not the embodiment of pure singularity. Christians continually break one of 'their' ten commandments just by being Christian. I'd look more into Judaism if I didn't like pork, shellfish, and cheeseburgers so much (and if I weren't so obviously a country WASP)

I think the one question that helped me to come to that hypocrisy conclusion wasn't so much "are you ready to take Jesus into your heart?", but the subsequent "do you understand what that means, Robby?". After awhile it started to mean that I was to feel sorry for the guy and give him a place where he could be safe from so many evangelical hypocrites. Not that I really believe I'm so galactically important but it's humbled me in the past and kept me from putting too much stock into one belief over another. If you know me then you could probably find a few shining examples, but few really jump out at me like that one does. I'm not the most compassionate person (I can be a total asshole when I drink too fast) but I have a lot of people that care for me and much of that feels pretty divine. Getting back to your point that a reality alone is not a reality one in which one probably wouldn't care to exist, I think you're onto something.

I like the concepts I've found through the stories over the years but worshiping Jesus (the first Jewish Messiah (Christ) was Simon wasn't it?) instead of using his wisdom and philosophy to better worship/appreciate GOD (the universe, love, existence, harvest, what have you) has seemed misguided and poorly conceived to me since I was a kid, though I probably wouldn't have been able to explain it like that when I was 8.

It just didn't add up properly for me before.

I wonder how many other people draw parallels between Politics/government and Religion. Where so many people keep believing/practicing because that's their culture and not based on any explanation of truths...compared to most people believing in Government and paying income taxes even though it's debatable whether they can be constitutionally enforced but going along with the lie because they've bought into a warm fuzzy feeling of doing the right thing.

After all, it's easier to go along with the system, have a SIN, bank account, mortgage/debt, and drive one's car licensed than to be enough of an expert on the various statutes and workings of legalese to live outside that reality without one's rights being infringed upon by said Government and its officials and just as the often improperly educated 'free sovereign', many knee-jerk atheists and bible thumpers alike can easily throw reason under the bus.

While I'm not off the grid and have a drivers' license etc. I don't buy into the 'Christ is Lord' hogwash. I prefer my belief that I'd have had such a great time around him that I'd feel high even if we were just drinking water, that I'd never be so distracted that I'd want to get out of a conversation with him to stuff my face, and that he would be so honest that he'd die for his convictions - and that if I were to be more like that then life would be a bit rosier for me and for my friends.

But I also put stock in the stories about Jesus' lost years where he disappeared along the silk trail to fulfill his duties as a Lama, as the 3 wise men were really lamas looking for a reincarnated holy man. "Wise" men from the east bringing 'gifts' that this child would never need? Kid was the Dalai Lama (or another important spiritual leader reincarnated, only to finally be released on the cross.

...If that kind of thing can happen, of course.

Edited June 8, 2012 by Guest

[d_rawk]

One thing that I love about you, Beats, is that you never fail to make my brain hurt

Rejoice - but it's important to note all the modern art phonies that tried to emulate the concepts of Jackson Pollock, just like all of the self-indulgent religious freaks and atheists alike that think their reality is the only valid one.

I'm not one of those, though, am I?

I think the one question that helped me to come to that hypocrisy conclusion wasn't so much "are you ready to take Jesus into your heart?", but the subsequent "do you understand what that means, Robby?". After awhile it started to mean that I was to feel sorry for the guy and give him a place where he could be safe from so many evangelical hypocrites. Not that I really believe I'm so galactically important but it's humbled me in the past and kept me from putting too much stock into one belief over another. If you know me then you could probably find a few shining examples, but few really jump out at me like that one does. I'm not the most compassionate person (I can be a total asshole when I drink too fast) but I have a lot of people that care for me and much of that feels pretty divine. Getting back to your point that a reality alone is not a reality one in which one probably wouldn't care to exist, I think you're onto something.

I have issues with the idea of a 'personal Jesus'. Rather serious ones, actually. But it gets down into the grit.

I like the concepts I've found through the stories over the years but worshiping Jesus (the first Jewish Messiah (Christ) was Simon wasn't it?) instead of using his wisdom and philosophy to better worship/appreciate GOD (the universe, love, existence, harvest, what have you) has seemed misguided and poorly conceived to me since I was a kid, though I probably wouldn't have been able to explain it like that when I was 8.

Simon was one, to be sure. There were many. It was not an uncommon thing for a man to claim messiah-hood.

Just as I'm a believer in the traditions of a more 'modern' Vipassana (arguably it's more original than the Buddhist traditions), I can see the value in a form of any religious sect that is open to change and discussion rather than blind faith in a text or commonly held belief and that's where I'm all about a less-sarcastic 'yaaay God!'.

Woot!

I wonder how many other people draw parallels between Politics/government and Religion.

Jesus did.

But I also put stock in the stories about Jesus' lost years where he disappeared along the silk trail to fulfill his duties as a Lama, as the 3 wise men were really lamas looking for a reincarnated holy man. "Wise" men from the east bringing 'gifts' that this child would never need? Kid was the Dalai Lama (or another important spiritual leader reincarnated, only to finally be released on the cross.

Osiris, too .. had his lost years in the desert, born of a virgin in a cave/manger, son of God, resurrected after being killed, was the "KRST", was re-enacted in passion plays at easter time, the empty tomb, his coming was announced by three wise men, and proved by a burning star, water into wine, all of that. Not the first, and the story repeats itself everywhere. Where Christ doesn't exist, we invent it.

Why?

Do I talk like this in person?

No.

[SaggyBalls]

My 'art phonies' comment stopped making sense to me.

You beat the edit.

I have no idea if you're a phony. I've crashed at your pad and spent time with you but you're the only one that could answer that question.

I say no, but prove me wrong and I'll probably look the other way cause we don't go to galleries anyway. I'm not writing these rambling posts much anymore for anybody else, now am I?

As far as the archetypal stories go, I think it's pretty plain that these are huge personal themes that occur in our lives from time to time.

It's so self-indulgent. I think that's what makes it sexy.

One thing I know is that I probably won't forgive myself too soon if the cans of beer in the freezer asplode tonight.

[d_rawk]

I have no idea if you're a phony. I've crashed at your pad and spent time with you but you're the only one that could answer that question.

Is it possible that you are suggesting that I am a phony? Of what, I wonder? I was only arguing that I think religious debate - even religious *shudder* conviction - is probably healthier than this thread generally wants to concede.

(So help me, I root for the underdog)

I have no stake in the ground or territory to defend. Just ideas, that come, get adapted by better ideas, and go.

As far as the archetypal stories go, I think it's pretty plain that these are huge personal themes that occur in our lives from time to time.

I think so. This is why I say that I think the resurrection is of extreme importance, and why it crops up so readily.

One thing I know is that I probably won't forgive myself too soon if the cans of beer in the freezer asplode tonight.

Don't let that happen. I gave up beer. Not for any religious reasons.

[SaggyBalls]

WOW! Awesome.

I *think* this thread is about showing off the phonies.

Got some shining examples?

[d_rawk]

I'm not sure what you are implicating (well, I can guess, but then I remain uncertain as to why)

I took umbrage with the idea that religious debate is irrelevant in a contemporary setting. I conceded my flexibility (quite probably justifiably better labelled 'waffling') of personal affiliation in these matters, emphasized that I think them still important regardless of my current standing, and offered one thread in the ongoing current debate that I find compelling and to which I am swayed as an example of present relevance.

I think to be a phony, I would have to have one conviction and pretend another. My point is that my conviction, such as it exists, is in the relevance of oft repeating stories of human conflict between the spiritual and the base, and that I insist that these stories are exceedingly relevant for people of all times and will continue to recur despite our best efforts to escape them (because they don't need escape, they need exploration and celebration [ritual]).

If I am the phony, I think that you have me unfairly pegged. If Jesus is the phony, I propose that Jesus is the imperfect telling of the perfect story. Hand me my phony, and I will eat it.

Got some shining examples?

Joseph Smith. Not what you were angling after ..

[SaggyBalls]

More like a funny Ted Haggard joke, but that works.

Edited June 20, 2012 by Guest

[Esau.]

I guess this where the line really is.. $$$$

In malpractice case, Catholic hospital argues fetuses aren’t people

Lori Stodghill was 31-years old, seven-months pregnant with twin boys and feeling sick when she arrived at St. Thomas More hospital in Cañon City on New Year’s Day 2006. She was vomiting and short of breath and she passed out as she was being wheeled into an examination room. Medical staff tried to resuscitate her but, as became clear only later, a main artery feeding her lungs was clogged and the clog led to a massive heart attack. Stodghill’s obstetrician, Dr. Pelham Staples, who also happened to be the obstetrician on call for emergencies that night, never answered a page. His patient died at the hospital less than an hour after she arrived and her twins died in her womb.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, Stodghill’s husband Jeremy, a prison guard, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit on behalf of himself and the couple’s then-two-year-old daughter Elizabeth. Staples should have made it to the hospital, his lawyers argued, or at least instructed the frantic emergency room staff to perform a caesarian-section. The procedure likely would not have saved the mother, a testifying expert said, but it may have saved the twins.

The lead defendant in the case is Catholic Health Initiatives, the Englewood-based nonprofit that runs St. Thomas More Hospital as well as roughly 170 other health facilities in 17 states. Last year, the hospital chain reported national assets of $15 billion. The organization’s mission, according to its promotional literature, is to “nurture the healing ministry of the Church†and to be guided by “fidelity to the Gospel.†Toward those ends, Catholic Health facilities seek to follow the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church authored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Those rules have stirred controversy for decades, mainly for forbidding non-natural birth control and abortions. “Catholic health care ministry witnesses to the sanctity of life ‘from the moment of conception until death,’†the directives state. “The Church’s defense of life encompasses the unborn.â€

The directives can complicate business deals for Catholic Health, as they can for other Catholic health care providers, partly by spurring political resistance. In 2011, the Kentucky attorney general and governor nixed a plan in which Catholic Health sought to merge with and ultimately gain control of publicly funded hospitals in Louisville. The officials were reacting to citizen concerns that access to reproductive and end-of-life services would be curtailed. According to The Denver Post, similar fears slowed the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth’s plan over the last few years to buy out Exempla Lutheran Medical Center and Exempla Good Samaritan Medical Center in the Denver metro area.

But when it came to mounting a defense in the Stodghill case, Catholic Health’s lawyers effectively turned the Church directives on their head. Catholic organizations have for decades fought to change federal and state laws that fail to protect “unborn persons,†and Catholic Health’s lawyers in this case had the chance to set precedent bolstering anti-abortion legal arguments. Instead, they are arguing state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights.

As Jason Langley, an attorney with Denver-based Kennedy Childs, argued in one of the briefs he filed for the defense, the court “should not overturn the long-standing rule in Colorado that the term ‘person,’ as is used in the Wrongful Death Act, encompasses only individuals born alive. Colorado state courts define ‘person’ under the Act to include only those born alive. Therefore Plaintiffs cannot maintain wrongful death claims based on two unborn fetuses.â€

The Catholic Health attorneys have so far won decisions from Fremont County District Court Judge David M. Thorson and now-retired Colorado Court of Appeals Judge Arthur Roy.

In September, the Stodghills’ Aspen-based attorney Beth Krulewitch working with Denver-based attorney Dan Gerash appealed the case to the state Supreme Court. In their petition they argued that Judges Thorson and Roy overlooked key facts and set bad legal precedent that would open loopholes in Colorado’s malpractice law, relieving doctors of responsibility to patients whose viable fetuses are at risk.

Whether the high court decides to take the case, kick it back down to the appellate court for a second review or accept the decisions as they stand, the details of the arguments the lawyers involved have already mounted will likely renew debate about Church health care directives and trigger sharp reaction from activists on both sides of the debate looking to underline the apparent hypocrisy of Catholic Health’s defense.

At press time, Catholic Health did not return messages seeking comment. The Stodghills’ attorneys declined to comment while the case was still being considered for appeal.

The Supreme Court is set to decide whether to take the case in the next few weeks.