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Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

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Re: Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

joecct said:
They won't be the last either. What claim do atheists use when they try to scam the taxman?
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We don't have religion as a rationalization so we have to be actually moral. ;)

"Sovereign Citizen" would work but those tend to be Bible Thumpers too.

It's probably some Bezosian Job Creator Mythos.
 
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Re: Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

One thing I hated growing up: attending church in the suburbs, income (or lack of it) was an issue. If you weren't at least upper middle class, you weren't really welcome. On top of that, preachers would spew a lot of pro-life and anti-LGBT nonsense from the pulpit.

When I started checking churches in the city proper, lack of income wasn't an issue. People would buy coffee or lunch for me, and it wasn't a case of pity. Really helps that my current pastor is a lesbian and views me as a younger sister. Our church doesn't evangelize, instead we go out and DO.
 
Re: Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

MissThundercat said:
One thing I hated growing up: attending church in the suburbs, income (or lack of it) was an issue. If you weren't at least upper middle class, you weren't really welcome. On top of that, preachers would spew a lot of pro-life and anti-LGBT nonsense from the pulpit.
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The Catholic church I went to growing up wasn't, thankfully, like this. It was definitely a rich diocese and there were definitely people in the congregation for whom Conspicuous Donation was a status play, but the monseigneur and the priests themselves took their money with a smile and then did good works with it. The church was very welcoming to the poor. Obviously they had their head firmly lodged in their rectum when it came to church dogma on sexual morality but they didn't preach fire and brimstone. If they touched on it at all it was with the polite pseudo-intellectual arguments you still hear from Neo-Thomists and Catholic educators. "Procreation not recreation" and other time-worn rationalizations for homophobia and misogyny.

Parishioners had the same reaction to that as they have to church teachings throughout the entire history of the HMC: the dummies bought it, the smarties excused it as the corporate blather one expects when TPTB are protecting their brand. It's no different from Exxon proclaiming their commitment to the environment, Philip Morris stating with great dignity their concern for all their customers' health, or the GOP talking about racial justice. You just ignore it as self-evident, baked-in institutional hypocrisy, perhaps have a chuckle, and move along.
 
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Re: Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

Kepler, please pass the microphone, cause it's smoking.

One other thing I hated growing up... when I was a teenager, it was all about marriage. "Save yourself for marriage. Don't have sex until marriage." There was nothing from anyone that said "being single is awesome and you are in no rush to find a partner." Hell, at my last church, if you weren't married, you were really nothing. There were events for married people all the time, but single people were constantly left out. Got so bad we had our own club that the church didn't know about. When I reminded this church you have single people and you need to take care of them too, I was basically laughed at.

In short, I received better dating advice from Motown (Shop Around, You Can't Hurry Love) than I did the church growing up. I also think pressuring kids to get married is the reason my peers got married in their 20s and were divorced by 30.
 
Re: Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

MissThundercat said:
In short, I received better dating advice from Motown (Shop Around, You Can't Hurry Love) than I did the church growing up. I also think pressuring kids to get married is the reason my peers got married in their 20s and were divorced by 30.
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"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? is the definitive song about teenage sex. Everything a teenage girl or boy needs to know is in it.

The idea of using sex as leverage for a ring ("Paradise by the Dashboard Light") captures the transactional moral sickness of so-called "family values" America. That was what teenage girls were raised on in this whole country for at least 40 years (40s, 50s, 60s, 70s) and in the backwards parts for 40 more and counting. There's nothing more loathsome than putting a mindless, craven, cowardly ideology ahead of people's health and happiness.

Whatever else Flyover has going for it, that makes it a hard no for any loved one of mine. We'll stay away from the Derp, thank you. I salute those of you who live with it and deal with it, but life's too short. Come somewhere where the average person has something alive in their mind and soul.

Life doesn't need to be so hard. Your neighbors don't have to be intolerant, insane imbeciles.
 
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Re: Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

Kepler said:
"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? is the definitive song about teenage sex. Everything a teenage girl or boy needs to know is in it.

The idea of using sex as leverage for a ring ("Paradise by the Dashboard Light") captures the transactional moral sickness of so-called "family values" America. That was what teenage girls were raised on in this whole country for at least 40 years (40s, 50s, 60s, 70s) and in the backwards parts for 40 more and counting. There's nothing more loathsome than putting a mindless, craven, cowardly ideology ahead of people's health and happiness.

Whatever else Flyover has going for it, that makes it a hard no for any loved one of mine. We'll stay away from the Derp, thank you. I salute those of you who live with it and deal with it, but life's too short. Come somewhere where the average person has something alive in their mind and soul.

Life doesn't need to be so hard. Your neighbors don't have to be intolerant, insane imbeciles.
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In terms of churches, when I joined the Episcopalians, I went from right to left. Sex isn't a dirty word. It's okay to believe in science. No pushes toward marriage. I was (and still am) welcomed and affirmed and embraced. Women are equal. A lesbian is our rector, and women serve on the vestry! And I went from stupid to these people are very smart.
 
Re: Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

MissThundercat said:
"Holland Area Churches Reckon with LGBTQ Inclusion." Oh really, you think? When I came out, I thought Grace was the only church down here that would include me, so I went there.
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Our church is going thru the Process to be Reconciling. We are a very open church- people on our Council are in same sex marriages, our Music Director is openly out and married but we haven't labeled ourselves as RIC formally. They have been adamant that we need to go thru the process. This article had some really good things to be aware of. I shared it with our Church FB page
joecct said:
Jesuits

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/07/23/catholic-case-communism
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I grew up with a rabidly anti-commie parent who labels anything that they don't like as commie pinko. Also have friends that almost literally froth at the mouth when they hear mention of 'socialism/socialist'. The latter also proclaim themselves Christian but freak if you mention trying to help people with a social net. One time when I asked the friends to explain to me why they were so reactionary the guy completely lost it. As in he became almost incoherent with rage. This is a guy who used to be able to discuss stuff. No matter how hard I try I cannot comprehend the knee-jerk reaction to either communism or socialism. What people call socialism or communism doesn't fit the definition given.

Jesus preached stuff that would fit into Socialism. From a more pragmatic angle it costs society to demonize the poor- when they need services like medicine, they cost so much more than if we did things preventatively. Not saying we should be a socialist but I don't see why we should freak any time someone mentions the word
 
Re: Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

leswp1 said:
Our church is going thru the Process to be Reconciling. We are a very open church- people on our Council are in same sex marriages, our Music Director is openly out and married but we haven't labeled ourselves as RIC formally. They have been adamant that we need to go thru the process. This article had some really good things to be aware of. I shared it with our Church FB page
Click to expand...

I learned of the other 7 churches in the Holland area at our Pride festival in 2018. I have friends who are United Methodist and their church plans to stay reconciling, even though they could lose everything. Hope Church will stay open and affirming, based on what Pastor Beth told me. Watching the RCA fracture and fall apart is difficult; I grew up in that denomination.
 
Re: Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

leswp1 said:
I grew up with a rabidly anti-commie parent who labels anything that they don't like as commie pinko. Also have friends that almost literally froth at the mouth when they hear mention of 'socialism/socialist'. The latter also proclaim themselves Christian but freak if you mention trying to help people with a social net. One time when I asked the friends to explain to me why they were so reactionary the guy completely lost it. As in he became almost incoherent with rage. This is a guy who used to be able to discuss stuff. No matter how hard I try I cannot comprehend the knee-jerk reaction to either communism or socialism. What people call socialism or communism doesn't fit the definition given.

Jesus preached stuff that would fit into Socialism. From a more pragmatic angle it costs society to demonize the poor- when they need services like medicine, they cost so much more than if we did things preventatively. Not saying we should be a socialist but I don't see why we should freak any time someone mentions the word
Click to expand...

They have undergone training since birth to both misunderstand and hate both these terms. It's hardly surprising.

Capitalism/communism belong to a short interval of time in the West which is now snapping closed. The terms themselves don't matter much outside of that interval. Just as we wouldn't try to impose "capitalism" and "communism" on the economic and political systems of the Middle Ages or the Classical Period, they aren't going to fit whatever comes next. And we are as clueless about what comes next as the feudal knights were about capital formation.

The perennial situation is the wealthy and powerful few parasitically using the poor and powerless many as means to their ends, expending them and destroying them in the process, always with some cover story about how it is morally correct and in the long run benefits everybody. That hasn't changed since the first warlord and his armed brothers enslaved the first village.

The history of human society -- warrior/slave, lord/serf, industrialist/worker, Plutocrat/wage earner -- is this.

The goal is to break the wheel. The wealthy will always tell us that's both sacrilegious and impossible, and they will employ everything from religion to entertainment to politics to pound that message home 24/7. Most of the many succumb because most people never transcend the narrative of their times. In fact the only reason there are people who oppose it is opposition is itself a narrative. We who would liberate are rarely any more imaginative than those in thrall. Typically the opposition narrative is available only to the educated. That's why the ideologies that create revolutions always come from either elites in revolt or autodidacts.

tl; dr: Don't expect people born in prison to welcome a prison break.
 
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Re: Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

Kepler said:
They have undergone training since birth to both misunderstand and hate both these terms. It's hardly surprising.

Capitalism/communism belong to a short interval of time in the West which is now snapping closed. The terms themselves don't matter much outside of that interval. Just as we wouldn't try to impose "capitalism" and "communism" on the economic and political systems of the Middle Ages or the Classical Period, they aren't going to fit whatever comes next. And we are as clueless about what comes next as the feudal knights were about capital formation.

The perennial situation is the wealthy and powerful few parasitically using the poor and powerless many as means to their ends, expending them and destroying them in the process, always with some cover story about how it is morally correct and in the long run benefits everybody. That hasn't changed since the first warlord and his armed brothers enslaved the first village.

The history of human society -- warrior/slave, lord/serf, industrialist/worker, Plutocrat/wage earner -- is this.

The goal is to break the wheel. The wealthy will always tell us that's both sacrilegious and impossible, and they will employ everything from religion to entertainment to politics to pound that message home 24/7. Most of the many succumb because most people never transcend the narrative of their times. In fact the only reason there are people who oppose it is opposition is itself a narrative. We who would liberate are rarely any more imaginative than those in thrall. Typically the opposition narrative is available only to the educated. That's why the ideologies that create revolutions always come from either elites in revolt or autodidacts .

tl; dr: Don't expect people born in prison to welcome a prison break.
Click to expand...
Yup.
 
Re: Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

I watched an interesting lecture/performance from Peterson Toscano on gender in the Bible. Among the many things I learned is that Joseph's coat of many colors is basically translated "princess dress." Jacob gave Joseph a princess dress.
 
Re: Religion Thread: We Could Say a Prayer

MissThundercat said:
I watched an interesting lecture/performance from Peterson Toscano on gender in the Bible. Among the many things I learned is that Joseph's coat of many colors is basically translated "princess dress." Jacob gave Joseph a princess dress.
Click to expand...

He knew what he was doing.

This is great!
 
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